Even before a SEAL shot Osama bin Laden in the face, Don Shipley was finding 15 to 20 fake SEALs a day. Shipley is one of a handful of people with access to the database of all current and former SEALs, and he’s made something of a hobby out of…
Continue reading …The Dude’s cardigan is going up for auction. The sweater favored by Jeff Bridges’ character in the Big Lebowski will be part of a Hollywood memorabilia auction in Beverly Hills on May 14-15, reports the Oregonian . (The Oregon angle: It was made by a local company.) Starting bid is…
Continue reading …President Obama “couldn’t even wait until morning” to tell us about Osama bin Laden’s death—but even a day between the event and the announcement could have had big strategic benefits. There’s “a small college library” of information from bin Laden’s compound, the White House says; “even a casual World…
Continue reading …America is responding to the recent spike in gas prices in the same “depressingly predictable” fashion it always has. “We’re shocked to see prices top $4 a gallon, as if it’s never happened before,” writes Seth Fletcher in the New York Times . “We demand that something be done—not to…
Continue reading …America has a big problem: Its men aren’t working. “There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression,” writes David Brooks of the New York Times , and the problem is structural. While there are a decent number of jobs for college grads, sectors like…
Continue reading …This month, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will take part in a series of what Space.com calls “celestial summit meetings.” The four planets will converge twice to form a “trio,” defined as an instance when three planets fit in a circle with a minimum 5-degree diameter. The first such…
Continue reading …Michael Heick isn’t feeling particularly neighborly about the Jaffarya Islamic Center that sits next door to his house in the suburbs of Buffalo. He’s posted a sign in his lawn reading, “Bomb Making, Next Driveway.” Needless to say, Muslims are not pleased. “I would think it’s an incitement to hatred…
Continue reading …Mitt Romney is about to grab the third rail of 2012 candidacy—health care reform. He plans a major address on the subject Thursday on ways to “repeal and replace Obamacare,” reports the Los Angeles Times . Romney’s big knock as a candidate, of course, is that he implemented an insurance…
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It might seem a doddle being a living statue, but it’s not as easy as it looks The Silver Wizard won’t talk to me. Nor, for that matter, will the Golden Tin Man. This is, in part, because neither speak more than a smattering of English, and in part because both make a living as human statues, a profession in which not talking to strangers is, alongside standing still, more or less the whole point of the job. To the outside observer, imitating a statue must look like the easiest and least competitive career imaginable. Turn up, get dressed, stand still, get given money by passing members of the public. But the Silver Wizard, if he spoke, would tell you otherwise. Competition is fierce, and he has got a 14in scar to prove it. The wizard, real name Rumen Nedelchev, a 45-year-old former mechanic from Brest in Belarus, plies his trade on the southern bank of the Thames in central London, under the shadow of the London Eye. It was here that, one morning last year, his bronze rival The Invisible King clubbed the wizard to the ground with a concrete block for the simple crime of setting up his plinth in a prime location. After surgery, Nedelchev spent more than three months in hospital. Earlier this week, the king – 37-year-old Dechko Ivanov – was sentenced to a minimum of four and a half years in prison. It is, undeniably, a crowded market. Yesterday, on the South Bank, the wizard and the tin man jostled motionlessly for attention with a Roman centurion, the Queen, a not-very-convinving Scream and a very sweaty Spiderman. Some of these buskers appear to be taking considerably less than the minimum wage. Though professionals earn upwards of £200 a day, making a living as a living statue is much harder than it looks. David Ferguson, 42, of Statueman Living Statues, has been standing still professionally for 18 years. “To actually do it full time is quite strenuous. You have to be in control of every muscle in your body.” He and his wife Pamela have never busked, but perform exclusively for corporate events and parties, coated head to toe in gold, silver or bronze body paint. “We do up to an hour and a half per set. That’s the maximum you could do.” “There’s a difference between buskers and professionals,” he explains, when I tell him the Silver Wizard’s story. “It’s extremely hard. There’s a lot of people that do it but there’s very few that do it professionally.” Street art Art Tom Meltzer guardian.co.uk
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Matchmaker reveals how he found the right girl for al-Qaida leader – Yemeni woman who is now in Pakistan’s custody It was early in September 1999, when Rashad Mohammed Saeed Ismael, a Yemeni sheikh in his early 20s working as a preacher and a leading member of al-Qaida in Kabul, received the most important phone call of his life. Osama bin Laden had decided to marry for the fifth time and had charged Rashad, one of his closest aides, with the important task of finding him the right woman. The aide listened carefully as Bin Laden described to him his desired spouse: “She must be pious, dutiful, young [preferably aged 16-18], well mannered, from a decent family, but above all patient. She will have to endure my exceptional circumstances.” Luckily he knew just the right girl: Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, a 17-year-old daughter of a civil servant and a former student of his, was, according to Rashad, “the perfect match” for the al-Qaida leader, then 44. Now, just over 10 years later, Sheikh Rashad, who describes himself as a staunch supporter of al-Qaida in Yemen, is fighting for Amal and her daughter, who are currently being detained by Pakistani authorities to be brought back home in the wake of Bin Laden’s death. “We have a strong practice in Islam called ardth [family honour]. When a woman like Amal is widowed, it is a duty upon all Muslims to look after her and ensure her safety. All the Yemeni people want her to come home. Others fear that if Amal is brought back to Yemen she may be handed over by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to the Americans for further questioning. Any attempts by the US to hurt Amal or any of Bin Laden’s family, Rashad says, “will cause an explosion between the west and the Islamic world. Women are not warriors. America knew that Bin Laden never used women to participate in his battles.” In 2000, Rashad returned to his home town of Ibb, a verdant city in Yemen’s south-west, to make the necessary arrangements. He went to the woman first, explaining to her who Bin Laden was, what he was like, and how he moved from one place to another pursued by the Americans. After she “dutifully accepted” Bin Laden’s offer, a dowry of $5,000 was wired to Amal’s family, triggering a bout of pre-marriage celebrations in preparation for the young woman’s departure to Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s matchmaker, Amal and her elder brother left Yemen for Pakistan, first to Karachi, and then to Quetta, where they stayed for a few days until Bin Laden sent some guards to pick her up and bring her into Afghanistan. The wedding ceremony, which took place in Kandahar, then the heart of the Taliban’s operations, was an all-male affair carried out in traditional Yemeni fashion. The men sang and danced and a lamb was slaughtered at Bin Laden’s feet as distinguished guests recited poetry and sung him songs written for the occasion. Today Rashad believes the fate of Bin Laden’s family, especially his wives, is as, if not more, important to al-Qaida than Bin Laden’s death. “We [al-Qaida in Yemen] received the news of Bin Laden’s death with happiness because we knew it was his aim to die as a martyr at the hands of the Americans. But the question of his relatives is one of women’s honour, something we consider untouchable.” Last Thursday the US launched a drone attack aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual guru of al-Qaida in Yemen, on a town not far from Rashed’s village. He says he anticipates further US strikes on Yemeni soil in the near future. “The policy of the Arab world rulers has lost them the sovereignty of their countries. All constitutions and laws have been sacrificed. The Americans will continue to bomb us because Saleh’s regime no longer controls anything and will use anything to gain support and stay in power.” When asked about the size of the organisation in Yemen and its support base, Rashad replied: “Al-Qaida is a complicated web that has no end or beginning.” “This is not an organisation with application letters and a database. Those who want to join al-Qaida receive standard religious lessons and basic military training, after that they’re considered members.” Osama bin Laden al-Qaida Yemen Global terrorism Pakistan Afghanistan Tom Finn guardian.co.uk
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