Category: News
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Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines to the Mass Killing of Civilians
From the New York Times: Hiba Abdullah survived the killings by American troops in Haditha last Nov. 19, but said seven others at her father-in-law’s home did not. She said American troops shot and killed her husband, Rashid Abdul Hamid. They killed her father-in-law, Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a 77-year-old in a wheelchair, shooting him…
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Coverup of Iraq Incident by Marines is Alleged
From the Washington Post: But, he (Congressman Jack Murtha) said, “I will not excuse murder, and this is what has happened,” adding that there is “no question in my mind about it.” He reiterated a previous statement that shootings of women and children occurred “in cold blood” and that there was no firefight in which…
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Chechnya names first beauty queen
From the BBC: And the correspondent was also keen to get his views on fashion issues. “Long skirts,” Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov said. “As if they were going to church.” But then he added a little later: “Well, about skirts, if she’s got good legs then a bit shorter. But if she’s got bad…
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Bringing it all Back Home
From Scott Anderson (photos by Eugene Richards/VII), New York Times Magazine: Norris, too, had come to understand that his presence was not appreciated, or worse. His officers, he told me, “were always drumming into us: ‘Hearts-and-minds, hearts-and-minds. We’ve got to win these people over.”‘ He gave a laugh. “These people just wanted us dead.” Here.
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Okigwe: Imo State's wretched city of darkness and dry taps
From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids: Any time you meet a person telling you that the government of Imo State has turned the state to wonderland, don’t believe it until you go to Okigwe, one of the three major cities of the state. After your visit to Okigwe, you will have every…
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Okwe, a town under siege
From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids: “Pressman, you have no need to ask questions on whether we live under the terror of security operatives. You have witnessed it and we guess your story will just be a narration of what you have encountered”. It was a story that told itself and investigation…
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Elusive Uganda rebel in war plea
From the BBC: Joseph Kony adds: “Most people do not know me… I am not a terrorist… I am a human being, I want peace also.” The former altar boy and self-proclaimed mystic, who has said he wants to run Uganda along the lines of the biblical Ten Commandments, agrees to end attacks in southern…
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Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos
From Dexter Filkins, The New York Times: Even in a country beset by murder and death, the 16th Brigade represented a new frontier. The brigade, a 1,000-man force set up by Iraq’s Ministry of Defense in early 2005, was charged with guarding a stretch of oil pipeline that ran through the southern Baghdad neighborhood of…
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DR Congo warning over bodyguards
From the BBC: Congolese politicians have been warned that they should not have more than 25 bodyguards, amid pre-election tension. The warning was made by Defence Minister Adolphe Onusumba, amid reports that some politicians have hundreds of armed personal guards. Here.
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In Germany, Concern Over Racial Violence at World Cup
From The Washington Post: On June 21, neo-Nazi sympathizers are scheduled to hold a rally in the city of Leipzig before a match between Iran and Angola, to show support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel and denied the Holocaust happened. The rally sponsor, the far-right National Democratic…
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Listening In
From Seymour Hersch, The New Yorker: A security consultant working with a major telecommunications carrier told me that his client set up a top-secret high-speed circuit between its main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center. This link provided direct access to the carrier’s network core—the critical area of its…
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St. Petersburg Police Shoot Suspected Racist
From The Moscow Times: St. Petersburg police shot and killed a 21-year-old man wanted in several racist attacks after he lunged at arresting officers with a knife, prosecutors said Friday. A police officer shot Dmitry Borovikov, a founder of the extremist group Mad Crowd, once in the head at around 10 p.m. Thursday, St. Petersburg…
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Inside Iraq's hidden war
From the Guardian: Adel says 10 Sunnis have been killed in his neighbourhood in the past month. In retaliation 20 Shia were kidnapped and killed by Sunni insurgents. During one week the Guardian spent in Yarmouk in May, a grocer, his two brothers and a cousin, a school guard, a generator operator, and four ministry…
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Belgians Seek Roots of Racist Crimes
From the Washington Post: When 18-year-old Hans Van Themsche was expelled from his boarding school dormitory for smoking, police officials here say, it pushed him over some existential edge. He shaved his head, bought a Winchester hunting rifle, put on a black leather trench coat and wrote a note saying he was going to kill…
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Horror! This man lured his son to farm, then shot him
From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids: “My father told me to accompany him to a certain place in the farm. On the way, he said he wanted to ease himself. He dropped his bag, entered the bush with his dane-gun and told me to move forward so that the smell of the…
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Student offers 7 ways to avoid being attacked
From The Moscow Times: I am writing in response to the growing wave of racially motivated attacks across Russia. As we mourn the deaths of our brothers, I believe that abandoning our studies in fear should not be an option. “Skin terrorism” must not be allowed to win. However, each and every one of us…
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Drug gangs bring chaos to streets of Sao Paulo
From the Washington Post: Leaders of First Capital Command gang, or PCC, reportedly used cellphones to order the attacks. Gang members then riddled police cars with bullets, hurled grenades at police stations and attacked officers at their homes and after-work hangouts. On Sunday night, the gang employed a new tactic: sending gunmen onto buses, ordering…
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Wikipedia: Westboro Baptist Church
From Wikipedia: We don’t picket to win people over, idiot. It’s to harden people’s hearts. Make them hate. Make them hate God even more than they already do. Our goal is to preach the Word of God to this crooked and perverse generation. By our words, some will repent. By our words, some will be…
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Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling
From ABC News: A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources. “It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation. Here.
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What does the Kremlin want?
Anne Nivat, from LeMonde: As she knows, it is necessary to have an account of the dead to back up a claim of genocide in Chechnya, and the numbers do not exist. “We waited too long before we started counting. If we want to find out how many Chechens have died and how many have…