Category: News

  • 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 in the chest and abdomen, she said.

    Her sister-in-law, Asma, “collapsed when her husband was killed in front of her eyes,” Ms. Abdullah said. As Asma fell, she dropped her 5-month-old infant. Ms. Abdullah said she picked up the baby girl and sprinted out of the house, and when she returned, Asma was dead.

    Here.

  • 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 civilians were killed in a crossfire, as some Marines asserted after the event.

    “This is worse than Abu Ghraib,” he said, referring to the abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers at a prison west of Baghdad that, when revealed in spring 2004, became a major setback for the U.S. effort in Iraq.

    Here.

  • Chechnya names first beauty queen

    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 legs best to have a long skirt.”

    Here.

  • Bringing it all Back Home

    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.

  • Okigwe: Imo State's wretched city of darkness and dry taps

    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 reason to boldly stand up and tag the person laying claims to such wonders a liar.

    Here.

  • Okwe, a town under siege

    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 practicalised by the constant visit of daring security men to the town. There were three of such visits on Monday, May 8, and we all ran into the bush whenever they came. One managed to peep from the hiding to catch a glimpse of the armed men who called like ravenous wolves to take a prey.

    Here.

  • Elusive Uganda rebel in war plea

    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 Sudan.

    Here.

  • Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos

    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 Dawra. Heavily armed and lightly supervised, some members of the largely Sunni brigade transformed themselves into a death squad, cooperating with insurgents and executing government collaborators, Iraqi officials say.

    “They were killing innocent people, anyone who was affiliated with the government,” said Hassan Thuwaini, the director of the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s protection force.

    Here.

  • DR Congo warning over bodyguards

    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.

  • 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 Party, caused controversy this spring by publishing a glossy tournament schedule with a photo of a German soccer player and the headline, “White — Not Only a Color for Jersey!” Critics called it a thinly veiled insult to foreign-born players on Germany’s national team.

    Last week, a former German government spokesman warned World Cup fans from abroad “and anyone with a different skin color” to avoid towns and villages outside Berlin and other rural parts of eastern Germany. “They may not leave with their lives,” said Uwe-Karsten Heye, who served as chief spokesman under former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and now heads a civil rights group.

    Here.

  • 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 system, where all its data are stored. “What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,” the consultant said. “They’re providing total access to all the data.”

    “This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order,” a former senior intelligence official said. The Administration’s goal after September 11th was to find suspected terrorists and target them for capture or, in some cases, air strikes. “The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence,” the former official said.

    Here.

  • 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 prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Yelena Ordynskaya said.

    “The officer fired a warning shot in the air, but [Borovikov] tried to stab him, and the officer was forced to take action,” Ordynskaya said.

    Here.

  • Inside Iraq's hidden war

    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 of education employees, all Shia, were killed. Two Sunnis were killed in the same week.

    “Look, a full-scale civil war will break out in the next few months. The Kurds only care about their independence. We the Sunnis will be crushed – the Shia have more fighters and they are better organised, and have more than one leadership. They are supported by the Iranians. We are lost. We don’t have leadership and no one is more responsible for our disarray than [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, may God curse him,” he said.

    Here.

  • Belgians Seek Roots of Racist Crimes

    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 foreigners. Then he went on a shooting rampage in the narrow cobblestone streets of this ancient port city.

    Here.

  • Horror! This man lured his son to farm, then shot him

    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 excreta would not disturb me. It was at that point I suspected my father wanted to harm me.

    Before I could do anything, he shot me on the shoulder from the back. I shouted Jesus! Jesus!! I regain my balance and started running away and my father started pursuing me with a cutlass”.

    Here.

  • 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 must be vigilant and street smart. Here are some ways to avoid racist attacks:

    1. Stay six steps away from everyone in all directions. This measure won’t save anyone from gun attacks, but it is a sure way to fend off knife attacks.

    2. Avoid going to dangerous nightspots. It is stupid to go to a club where a dark-skinned foreigner was knifed a few weeks back.

    3. When invited by a stranger for a chat or a drink, thank him or her and walk away or pretend to be deaf.

    Here.

  • 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 passengers and drivers off, and torching the vehicles.

    …

    “It’s absurd — the gang members can do whatever they want? They can just start a war? And why would they attack the transportation, normal people? Next it will be schools,” he said. “We should get the military on every corner and kill them.”
    Here.

  • Wikipedia: Westboro Baptist Church

    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 condemned. Whether they hear, or whether they forbear, they will know a prophet has been among them… our goal is to glorify God by declaring His whole counsel to everyone… we hope that by our preaching some will be saved.

    Here.

  • 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.

  • 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 fled to western Europe or Russia, we’d have a few surprises. There are hardly any Chechens left in Chechnya. I know that it’s hard for a European to understand this conflict. But it’s an aberration to destroy all the elements of a people’s culture.”

    She points out that during the 1944 deportation “all the old history books in Chechen and Arabic were burned on the main square of Grozny. Today nobody is capable of explaining how the old towers in our mountain villages were built. The tradition is lost. Only 50 of them remain out of 300. We can’t even visit them, because troops are stationed in the mountains.”

    Here.