Category: News
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Horror chamber
The Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids: However, narrating his own side of the story, Alhaji Mustapha told Daily Sun that he brought his children to the witchdoctor when he noticed their poor performance in their school work. “I brought them to her for assistance when I noticed that their academic performance was unimpressive.…
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Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
NYT: In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants who do not made greater efforts to integrate. The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still…
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In a Battered City, Gravestones Tell the Story of a New Russia
LA Times: At least, Yudin said, there is the sound of birds chirping in the trees. During most of 2004, when a toxic plume from the plant killed off many gardens in Karabash and some of the surrounding countryside, the town was eerily silent. Even the butterflies left. Yudin laughed. “It’s funny that birds are…
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Suing Over the CIA's Red Pen
Washington Post: “I just told him I’m preceding. I wasn’t going to back down,” Berntsen said in an interview last week. “It was very awkward.” Berntsen resigned, wrote his book and, as required, submitted “Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: A Personnel Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander” to the CIA’s…
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Another Freedom Cut Short
Washington Post: Printed neatly on white-and-green fliers, the edicts banned vices like “music-filled parties and all kinds of singing.” They proscribed celebratory gunfire at weddings and “the gathering of young men” in front of markets and girls’ schools. Also forbidden were the “selling of liquor and narcotic drugs” and “wearing improper Western clothes.” But at…
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Americans Fight for Soviet Memorial
Moscow Times: Vyacheslav Fedchenko watched in horror as a Stinger missile fired by Afghan mujahedin struck a Su-25 fighter jet and the pilot, Konstantin Pavlyukov, parachuted out high above the Bagram Air Base. “It was so close to Bagram that everyone saw it,” said Fedchenko, who was at the base at the time. “The worst…
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Muslims and Malcontents Mix in Yaroslavl
Moscow Times: The 22 men bowed down before Allah and pressed their arms and shoulders together and chanted. They closed their eyes. They melded into a single body. And in their unity, they seemed unfazed by the ultranationalists who days earlier had firebombed this city’s only mosque for the second time in a week. Outside…
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Should He Stay?
Part 2 of Bob Woodward excerpts, Washington Post: On July 15, 2004, Herbits sat down at his computer and wrote another memo, a scathing seven-page report titled “Summary of Post-Iraq Planning and Execution Problems.” Though he discussed the postwar planning and policies, and the tenure of L. Paul Bremer III as head of the Coalition…
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Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast
NYT: Over the next few days, the skin of his 6-month-old son, Salam, bloomed with blisters, which burst into weeping sores all over his body. The whole family suffered headaches, nosebleeds and stomach aches. How that slick, a highly toxic cocktail of petrochemical waste and caustic soda, ended up in Mr. Oudrawogol’s backyard in a…
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'Prince of Marbella', arms dealer and possibly pure evil?
Syrian arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar, profiled in the Observer: Photographs furnish a stark reminder of just who Kassar is. One is of him shaking hands with Uday Hussain, Saddam’s brutal son, killed in the months after the invasion. Another photo shows the two men together with an Arab musician. Kassar says he met Uday when…
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A Portrait of Bush as a Victim of His Own Certitude
NYT Book Review: Bob Woodward reports that when he told Mr. Rumsfeld that the number of insurgent attacks was going up, the defense secretary replied that they’re now “categorizing more things as attacks.” Mr. Woodward quotes Mr. Rumsfeld as saying, “A random round can be an attack and all the way up to killing 50…
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Memo Fueled Deep Rift in Administration on Detainees
NYT: In a nine-page memorandum, the two officials, Gordon R. England, the acting deputy secretary of defense, and Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor of the State Department, urged the administration to seek Congressional approval for its detention policies. They called for a return to the minimum standards of treatment in the Geneva Conventions and for…
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STATE OF DENIAL
Part one, excerpts of Bob Woodward’s new book, Washington Post: White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was enough of a realist to see that two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. Card did not believe that Bush was incompetent, and so he had to face…
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Over 800 attacks every week in Iraq
Guardian: “It’s getting to the point now where there are 800-900 attacks a week. That’s more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,” Bob Woodward told CBS television in an interview to be aired tomorrow night. The Pentagon’s latest quarterly report on Iraq, presented to Congress and posted on…
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Judge Accepts Plea Deal in Rhode Island Fire
More on the Great White fire at The Station, NYT: Speaking today in the courtroom of Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr., David Griffith, whose brother Scott died in the blaze, said that “all of us have been victimized a second time” by the plea deal. Judge Darigan acknowledged that many relatives found the agreement inadequate…
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Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq
NYT: The warning is described in Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others…
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Iraq Contractor's Work Is Further Criticized
Washington Post: In a report released yesterday, inspectors found that the Baghdad Police College posed a health risk after feces and urine leaked through the ceilings of student barracks. The facility, part of which will need to be demolished, also featured floors that heaved inches off the ground and a room where water dripped so…
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Distrust Breaks the Bonds Of a Baghdad Neighborhood
Washington Post: “The militiamen, when they saw the American army, they fled at extraordinary speed,” said Abdul Sattar, who was too afraid to leave his house to go to work this day. “They jumped into houses. One woman saw one of them in her house and fainted.” Abu Mohammed described jumping into houses as a…
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An Innocent Abroad, Seduced by a Madman
NYT: Strange to think that the flamboyantly lethal nut job Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia just three years ago. About 80 at the time, he had fled Uganda in 1979 after murdering upwards of 300,000 souls. Larger than life physically and metaphorically, he was a former heavyweight boxing champion with a brilliant sense of…
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Babi Yar Remembered 65 Years Later
Moscow Times: The notices were posted around the capital of Soviet Ukraine: All Jews living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity must report by 8:00 on the morning of Sept. 29, 1941, to the corner of Melnyka and Dokterivska streets (near the cemetery). They were told to bring their ID cards, money and…