Author: Trent

From The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?:

Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value of an American bombing campaign. “The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,” the European intelligence official told me. “He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.” An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. “Iran is no longer living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to U.S. movies and books, and they love it,” he said. “If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.”
Another European official told me that he was aware that many in Washington wanted action. “It’s always the same guys,” he said, with a resigned shrug. “There is a belief that diplomacy is doomed to fail. The timetable is short.”

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From Wired:

“Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA’s charter or with FISA,” Klein’s wrote. “And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals’ phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.”

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From the Moscow Times:

A cult leader who promised to resurrect children killed in the Beslan school attack has been detained on suspicion of fraudulently obtaining money from parents of the victims, Moscow prosecutors said Thursday.

Police detained Grigory Grabovoi during a seance Wednesday evening at the Kosmos Hotel in northeast Moscow. Around 30 followers tried to prevent the police from taking him away, but police were able to take him out through a back entrance, NTV reported.

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From the Mail & Guardian:

“I can personally say that $400 000 would be acceptable, a fine offer on both sides,” said the elder, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This is not a ransom but a fine for illegally fishing in Somalia.”

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From the Washington Post:

More than 200,000 Chinese filed through the remains of Japan’s notorious Unit 731 here last year, visiting the ghosts of World War II. In exhibits mounted throughout the bleak headquarters building, they saw wrenching descriptions of biological warfare experiments carried out on thousands of Chinese prisoners from 1939 to 1945.

The phrase “Do not forget us” has been inscribed on the wall of one room, where visitors can see the names and photos of some of those who received botulism injections, were made to suffer frostbite or had their internal organs removed by Japanese military doctors.

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From the Washington Post:

During the years when he commanded 30 men and killed more enemy soldiers than he can recall, Tyrese Nyekar said he was known as “War Face.” But in the newly democratic and largely peaceful Liberia, he has traded his machine gun for a shovel. And for $2 a day, he is working to rebuild this battered capital on a road repair crew.

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From the Washington Post:

Bush has been a major critic of leaks of classified information, and his aides have repeatedly said they want to “get to the bottom” of who leaked the name of Wilson’s wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to the media, which touched off Fitzgerald’s investigation . But in the past 33 months the White House has never disclosed Bush’s apparent involvement in the deliberate disclosure of information meant to undermine Wilson.

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From the Washington Post:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of “tactical errors” in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively.

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