Eurofever has swept southern Sweden, with the most vocal voices coming from the competition’s superfans – some of whom have travelled from the other side of the world just to be part of the action. The Local’s Patrick Reilly finds out more. … Read More
Afghanistan demands arrest of ‘American’ death squad leader
Afghan officials say that a man by the name of Zakaria Kandahari, allegedly an ethnic Afghan, but a US citizen, has led a pro-government death squad that has terrorized locals in Wardak, New York Times reports. The newspaper says three officials have confirmed that he is being sought on charges of torture and murder. A key piece of evidence is a video tape of Kandahari torturing a local, while speaking English with an American accent. Over the past year, Kandahari and his soldiers have also been seen throughout the area wearing NATO uniforms while riding on quad bikes in search of alleged insurgents, at least one of whom, Afghans say, has been found dismembered in a garbage container just outside the US base in the province, which is located just to the west of the capital Kabul. Washington does not deny the existence of the video, but claims Kandahari operates a rogue Afghan unit, and is not a US citizen. “Everybody in that video is Afghan; there are no American voices,” an unnamed American official told the newspaper. The official said that Kandahari was an interpreter for a US A-Team, based in the Nerkh district, and “went on the lam” as soon as his extrajudicial anti-Taliban campaign was discovered by the Americans, following a tip from Afghan officials. “We would have no reason to try to harbor this individual,” said the source. “We have done three investigations down there, and all absolve ISAF [NATO] forces and Special Forces of all wrongdoing.”Allegations of extrajudicial justice by the US Nerkh-based Special Forces unit, which consists of a small core of American commandos aided by local support staff, in the region first surfaced in February when President Hamid Karzai said that the mixed teams had unleashed a reign of terror over the locals and ordered them out of the province. … Read More
Europeans mark May Day with workers’ protests
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Must-see morning clip: Visiting the 9/11 museum
“60 Minutes’” Lesley Stahl went underground, 7 stories below ground zero at the tip of Manhattan, to give audiences a detailed look at the 9/11 museum, which is still being constructed.”I think any American that walks into this space is going to feel the emotion,” she told 60 Minutes Overtime. “It’s church-like. I felt the same feelings you feel in a cathedral,” she said.On what you will experience inside:”First of all, you’re going to be thrust back. You’re going to hear voices of people talking about what they were doing at that moment because all of us remember what we were doing at that moment. And then you’re going to see all the faces–3,000 faces–and it’s overwhelming to see the array of people.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Amber Dermont: The Internet expands the way we read
Amber Dermont is the author of the bestselling novel “The Starboard Sea” and a new story collection, “Damage Control.” Caitlin Macy, in the lead review of the New York Times Book Review’s “Fresh Voices” issue, wrote that Dermont “seems able to throw down a convincing story set anywhere, spun from any premise…This is not, however, one of those books whose authors appear to be casting around, trying a bit of this and a bit of that in search of a collection. [Dermont] is a deft writer, bullish on her characters, assertive in her descriptions of these specific worlds.”I spoke with the author, who teaches at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, about the differences between her short fiction and her novel, the technological paradigm shifts with short stories, and her abiding passion for comedian Nick Kroll.How do these stories differ aesthetically from your novel?Continue Reading… … Read More
An open letter from a Sandy Hook mom
In an open letter to lawmakers, Newtown, CT., mom Carrie Battaglia shared the trauma her six-year-old daughter experienced as she hid with classmates inside a bathroom while 20 children and 6 adults lost their lives in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. The first grader is now frightened by loud noises, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and has trouble sleeping at night.The letter is part of an effort by Battaglia and other parents from the community to share their experiences with politicians, urging them to pass meaningful gun control legislation. And while progress on gun reform is slow and uneven, Battaglia told the New York Daily News that her and other Newtown parents are “in the fight for the long haul.”“We’re not going to give up. We’ll keep sending letters, calling (politicians) and we’re going to vote, make our voices heard,” she told the News.Battaglia’s letter in full (emphasis mine):Continue Reading… … Read More
Prop 8 defenders have gender anxiety
Even if the Supreme Court does decide to punt on the Proposition 8 case, today’s oral arguments again made something clear: Defenders of the marriage equality ban are very, very anxious about gender roles. And a majority of the Court may not be buying it.Defenders of California’s ballot referendum banning gay marriage said, today in court and in their brief, that if marriage becomes a “genderless institution,” children will suffer, because gay people can’t procreate without help — or rather, because marriage evidently exists to sanctify the accidental baby-making of men and women, despite the fact that so many women and men making babies today are rejecting marriage. Yes, this is their real argument.Making it into a “what about the children” question sounds better than hating gay people for being gay, and it also sounds better than saying that men are intended for one thing and women for another. And yet that’s exactly the implication made clear before the Supreme Court today. (The child-welfare argument may not work, either, no matter how much Scalia fulminated about the “sociological evidence” being too inconclusive about the impact of being raised by gay parents — there was swing voter Anthony Kennedy wondering aloud whether the “voices of the children” of gay people should be heard.)Continue Reading… … Read More
