Results tagged “war”

CNN reports that Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn (aka Azzam the American) released a video to apologize for innocent victims killed in Afghanistan and other nearby regions: "We express our condolences to the families of the Muslim men, women and children killed in these criminal acts... We also express the same in regard to the unintended Muslim victims of the mujahedeen's operations against the crusaders and their allies and puppets, and to the countless faceless and nameless Muslim victims of the murderous crusades." With the upcoming American troop surge, CNN says Al Qaeda "appeared to be trying to improve the group's image." more ›

Today, President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize from the Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway. The committee's decision had set off controversy, because Obama hasn't even completed a year in his presidency—something that he acknowledged in October, calling the prize "as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century." In his remarks today, Obama struck a similar tone, "I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations - that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice." more ›

A Staten Island gang war that has claimed the lives of four men so far this month has gotten so intense that members of the Bloods are apparently skipping town to stay safe. According to the Daily News, the internal squabble between Bloods members from New Brighton and those from Port Richmond and Mariners Harbor turned deadly on Nov. 7, when an argument over a girl lead to the shooting of Jermaine "Big Den" Dickerson in an Arlington housing development. more ›

Confirming the worst fears of many hipster analysts, long-simmering tensions between rival cardboard tube factions erupted into full-scale war on Sunday, with many women and children caught in the crossfire. Photojournalist Katie Sokoler risked grave injury to bring us these shocking photographs from the front lines; she reports that the casualties were innumerable, and only one young girl (photo 2) emerged triumphant from the cardboard carnage, smiting her foes with pitiless cruelty: "The guys were scared of her, she had no shame in aiming for the crotch." Sokoler also reports that the remaining survivors "helped to clean up and recycle the cardboard after the event." more ›

Kathryn Bigelow's directorial visions have spanned genres, from the freewheeling surfing bank robbers of Point Break to heady science fiction voyeurism in Strange Days, from the police thriller Blue Steel to submarine intrigue in K-19: The Widowmaker. We spoke with the former painter this week about her new movie, the Venice Film Festival Grand Prize-winning The Hurt Locker, which is set in a land that Americans seem increasingly inclined to look away from: Iraq. more ›

Neighbors aggrieved about guests chatting on the Cooper Square Hotel outdoor patio have employed increasingly gross tactics to undermine the cachet of downtown's latest fancy hotel. When co-owner Matt Moss previously promised that tenement clotheslines were exactly "the kind of thing people want to see," while paying upwards of $300 a night at the hotel, the neighbors called his bluff by hanging increasingly soiled unmentionables in full view of the patio and rooms. Last week the underwear on display was exceptionally foul, and now Vanishing New York reports that neighbors have further escalated the situation by hanging a "Douche Bag" from the fire escape. We're not really sure what a douche bag actually looks like (besides this), and we're sure as hell not about to do a Google image search on that, so it's unclear whether the item in question is literally the infamous feminine hygiene product. (And let's just keep it unclear, k thx.) What's next, colostomy bags and roadkill? Stay tuned to the Cooper Square Douchebags blog! more ›

A Mister Softee truck driver in Queens didn't find anything funny about a rival Good Humor man encroaching on his turf, so he decided to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. According to the Post, on Tuesday afternoon in Elmhurst, George Peralta, 27, pulled his Mister Softee truck in front of 50-year-old Good Humor man Ernesto Valverde, while accomplice Andy Arevalo parked his ice cream truck behind Valverde, blocking him in. With the help of a third man, they allegedly took Valverde's keys and told him to "stay off [our] route, we know where you live, we know where you parked the truck." more ›

On Saturday afternoon, the super-hyped Snuggie™ Pub Crawl will capture a generation's lazy zeitgeist by bringing debauchery, blankets and irony together in one time-wasting event. (For the uninitiated, the Snuggie™ is a blanket with sleeves; this commercial will fill you in on the details.) But wait, there was a Snuggie™ pub crawl this weekend! Did we miss it? more ›

Playwright Michael Weller, who made his big theatrical debut in 1972 with a play about America's convulsions during Vietnam, is again dramatizing our deeply dysfunctional national psyche during yet another catastrophic war. His new play Beast is described by Weller as "a fever dream in six parts." And while some of those parts are definitely less compelling than others, Weller's "fever dream" is staged vividly here by director Jo Bonney. It's also brutally funny, in the tradition of other dark, absurd war stories like Full Metal Jacket. (If you're going to see it and hate spoilers, here's where you'll want to stop reading.) more ›

After 21 years in business, beloved David's Bagels on 1st Avenue and 14th Street closed at the end of August. According to Vanishing New York, the landlord opened a Hot & Crusty franchise next door and refused to renew David's lease. In retaliation, a group of devastated neighbors have banded together to hit the Crusty where it hurts, with a weblog BLAZING WITH CAPS: "It is TERRIBLE and a downright SHAME...It hurts that they are gone because of your corny EYESORE of a “Hot and Crusty” that doesn’t even serve a decent bagel nor an “OK” pizza. In addition, it is NAUSEATING to walk by your pizzeria to see your Spanish guys leave half-made UNCOOKED pizzas to linger in the sun for long periods of time. Leaving the uncooked pizza dough in the sun while the chintzy layer of sauce dries up, is plainly NOT HEALTHY, UNSAFE and UNBELIEVABLY UNAPPETIZING." But what really burns is that David's lovers must now traverse five blocks to the owner's other location. more ›

The Daily News reports that "local Georgians are planning to march from the UN to the Russian Consulate Thursday afternoon to protest the conflict in their native country." They will meet at 3 p.m., in front of hte U.N., and will begin the march at 4 p.m. In the meantime, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says Russia will, per the Times, "act as an international guarantor of the two pro-Russian enclaves at the center of the crisis," which flies in the face of President Bush's request that "the sovereign and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected.” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation." more ›

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt to military action in Georgia, saying, "I have taken the decision to end the operation to force Georgian authorities into peace...The aggressor has been punished and suffered significant losses." The aggressor being Georgia, which tried to take back separatist state South Ossetia back, leading to the Russian army to step in. However, fighting has seems to be continuing. Yesterday, President Bush denounced Russia's earlier actions, "Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century," and that the incident had "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world." The U.S.'s largest Georgian enclave is in NYC, mostly in Brooklyn. more ›

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Speed Racer, from the mysterious sibling filmmakers behind the Matrix trilogy, is opening to well-deserved critical derision. It’s a 135-minute insipid, soulless commodity that lifts some of the Japanese original’s storyline but absolutely none of the charm. The movie opens with a 34% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes; perhaps J. Hoberman’s pan gets it best: “Ideologically anti-corporate, previous Wachowski productions aspired to be something more than mind-less sensation; Speed Racer is thrilled to be less. It's the delusions minus the grandeur.” more ›

Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris was on hand last night for a Tribeca Film Festival screening of his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, a nuanced exploration of the detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those familiar with Morris’s innovative oeuvre won’t be surprised to hear that, far from a tendentious indictment of the perpetrators, his film is a circumspect consideration of some of the factors that contributed to those infamous photographs of humiliation. [Today, the NY Times' movie critic Manohla Dargis calls it a "blockbuster of a documentary."] more ›

On Tuesday night at St. Ann's Warehouse, David Byrne, longtime advocate of bikes, big suits, lamp dancing and PowerPoint, will be joining a who's who list of New York performers to observe the fifth anniversary of the official start of the Iraq invasion. Called Speak Up!, the sold-out show is raising money for United for Peace and Justice and Iraq Veterans Against the War. If you don't have tickets, you might want to skip over the list of artists you'll be missing: Laurie Anderson, Antony, Lou Reed, Blonde Redhead, Bill T. Jones, Norah Jones, Moby, Damien Rice, Scissor Sisters, DJs MEN. Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism will be a featured speaker, among others. But before the concert, from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Klein and a other activist groups will host a free forum, book signing and art exhibit at the nearby Powerhouse Arena bookstore [37 Main St, DUMBO, Brooklyn]. more ›

Yesterday, The Daily News printed an article that began, "A cop-bashing art exhibit at a taxpayer-funded museum in Brooklyn portrays the city's Finest as trigger-happy racists who have put bull's-eyes on the backs of black New Yorkers." more ›

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Now that the cold weather is likely here to stay, at least until the next freak 60 degree day, you might want to hunker down with a cozy-sounding book. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an amputation on Hudson St. in Manhattan, an under-a-train fatality at Lenox Ave. and Central Park North in Manhattan, and a stabbing on 34th St. in Queens.
• Auvryn Scarlett, the sanitation truck driver who mowed down a pair of British tourists as they strolled down a midtown sidewalk, was arraigned on manslaughter charges yesterday.
• Saturday Night Live will attempt to make up for lost time and laughs by putting its writers' and cast's noses to the grindstone with four straight weeks of new shows.
• Food for thought: Con Ed recommends customers save energy by turning off lights, yet the utility leaves its many office lights on.
• After ten straight losses to Obama, it may be the Alamo for Hillary Clinton in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Supporters are amassing funds to boost Clinton and offer "contrast" ads about Obama.
• The heiress to a vast (billions) fortune narrowly avoided death by deciding to sleep at her mom's place last week - that's what happens when the 400-pound Venetian chandelier over a bed tears free from the ceiling,
• Nathan Hale may have regretted having but one life to give for his country, but the Revolutionary War martyr has multiple locales of his execution.
• You think your super is crazy? Does yours write numerous signs threatening to kill you?
• The originator of the phrase "Ithaca Is Gorges" died last week at the age of 78.

The above photo is a living replica of the Statue of Liberty, painstakingly recreated with 18,000 people at Camp Dodge in Des Moines, Iowa. The image is from 1918, and is one of many "living photographs" by Arthur Mole and John Thomas, who attempted to "recover the old image of national identity at the very moment when the United States entered the Great War in 1917." more ›

Don't have a Valentine's Day card yet? Print out this page, cut out the cards and give it to yourself! You can also download EPS versions of these Valentine's Day cards immortalized on the Simpsons' episode, I Love Lisa, at deconcept. more ›

After the stunning Giants' Super Bowl win, people cheered like they hadn't seen a Super Bowl victory in 17 years! Throughout the city, folks were stumbling onto streets, chanting the names of players and even getting arrested. more ›

The International Center of Photography is now in possession of something truly magnificent -- three lost valises of negatives belonging to wartime photographer Robert Capa. For the few of you who haven't heard of him, Robert Capa was a wartime photographer who died while on assignment in Indochina in 1954; he was only 41 years old. In his short life, he documented five wars and founded the famous Magnum photo agency. more ›

New York City officials are planning for a Dunkirk-like evacuation of Manhattan island in the case of an emergency. In the early days of World War II, a "bathtub navy" was assembled between Dunkirk, France and Dover, England, in order to move hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the Continent to safer ground as the Nazis advanced across France. Hundreds of small craft were sent across the English Channel to ferry stranded and cornered British troops back to England. more ›

• Perhaps the big surprise (besides Juno getting nominated for Best Director and Best Picture) was Ruby Dee for her work in American Gangster (its only other nomination was for art direction)

Brilliant, reclusive and eccentric, Chicago-born and Brooklyn-bred Bobby Fischer died at age 64 in Iceland. His spokesman said the cause was kidney failure, after a long illness. more ›

Anthony Lappé is a writer, blogger, television producer and executive editor of GNN.tv, the web site for the Guerrilla News Network. He's written for mainstream press like the Times and was the National Affairs Editor for Black Book, and in 2003 he collaborated on the award-winning Showtime documentary about Iraq called BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire’s Edge, which covered the front lines of the simmering guerrilla war in Iraq in 2003. Part of what he saw there influenced his new graphic novel, Shooting War, which started out as a serial on the Smith Magazine website. The lavish hardcover print edition, with illustrations by Dan Goldman, follows the gonzo adventures of a New York blogger who becomes a media darling in 2011 after his footage of a bombing at a Williamsburg Starbucks gets picked up by the mainstream media. Looking to keep coverage of the ongoing Iraq quagmire edgy, a global news network hires him to bring a youth angle to the guerrilla war. Part satire, part dystopian nightmare, Shooting War is unflinching in its depiction of the hellish future toward which the Bush administration is corralling us. more ›

The Parks Dept. decided to throw in the towel on litigation that's been going on for three years and conceded to reevaluate its requirement that no more than 50,000 people could gather on Central Park's Great Lawn at one time. more ›

with illustrator Dan Goldman, which is "a spoof of the network news, the war in Iraq, and the burgeoning 'citizen journalism' movement set in the near future." Expect a lively discussion about all of the above! more ›