• 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.

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  • 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.

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  • From The New York Times:
    MOST musicians I know don’t just play music on Saturday night,” Henry Wessel explained. “They play music every day. They are always fiddling around, letting the notes lead them from one place to another. Taking still photographs is like that. It is a generative process. It pulls you along.”

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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”.

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  • Photo Essay by Paolo Pellegrin, from MagnumPhotos:

    Since February 2006, Angola is going through its worst ever cholera epidemic, with 33,000 cases reported and more than 1,200 deaths. Over the 16,200 cases occurred in Luanda, Angolan capital city, more than 13,000 have been treated by the medical orgqnisqtion Médecins Sans Frontières. The outbreak has rapidly spread from Luanda to the provinces and to date, 11 of the 18 provinces are reporting cases. The outbreak erupted in Boa Vista, one of the poorest shantytown that surround the centre of Luanda.

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  • From Wooster Collective:

    Last week Matthew Rodriguez got picked up by the cops wearing a rooster costume while glueing up candycorn characters in new york during his art show at the show room gallery with scion. This week hes in newyork again for another art show at the mf gallery that opens this saturday.

    This time he’s wearing a snowmans costume and glueing up christmas tree monsters.

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  • 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.

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  • From Manowar:

    Heavy metal and outdoor adventuring may seem to be disparate entities, but in fact, they have one distinct quality in common: They are both lifestyles. It isn’t an easy task to find a “casual” metal fan, just as it is an enviable venture to dredge up an outdoorsman who doesn’t live and breathe his craft. There is a distinct sense of passion, devotion and intense involvement to be found within each field making each more than a hobby, but a way of life. Now, Eric Adams and Chester Moore – esteemed zoologist, outdoorsman, and wildlife journalist – have joined forces to create a unique and exciting look into the adventurous world of outdoor life in their upcoming hunting DVD “Wild Life & Wild Times.” This DVD release is scheduled for June 26, 2006.

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  • From LA Weekly:

    Over the past decade, as pious citizens have shuddered at metal’s devil horns and tattoos, Korn, Marilyn Manson and Dio have extended a claw to the kids who were being abused, rejected and driven onto the streets. Lamb of God have scientifically demolished the patriotic oaferies of militarism. Cattle Decapitation have bellowed about the trashing of the Earth.

    …

    Another Murderfest band later introduced a recently conscripted member. “This isn’t our original bassist,” proclaimed the vocalist, “this is his father!”

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  • From the Guardian:

    Last year’s Cannes film festival opened in a discreetly classy, impeccably French fashion with Dominik Moll’s Lemming. This time around the Cote d’Azur is set to become one big Hollywood circus, complete with a nocturnal laser lightshow that looks set to induce epileptic seizures in the old women and small dogs who routinely prowl the Rue d’Antibes. Incidentally, there was a press screening of The Da Vinci Code late last night. By all accounts, the film sucks to high heaven.

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  • Sick of waiting for Guitar Hero 2? From Freetar:

    The video above shows the Freetar editor in use. This is the first of a two-part project to create a totally FREE PC rhythm based game that you can use any game pad with. Including guitar-shaped ones. Create and play your own songs, the way YOU want.

    The beta version of the editor will be released to the public soon, with the game portion a little later on.

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  • 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.”
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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.”

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  • From Wooster Collective:

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  • From Rob Galbraith:

    Photoshop CS2 (aka v9.0) for Windows and Mac has been updated to v9.0.1. The free update is comprised mostly of bug fixes and minor tweaks; the download page for each platform, linked to below, lists the changes. Note that the Mac updater is for English copies of the application only, whereas the Windows updater covers all languages.

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  • Eggmanland.

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