Yusuf Bey and his "family" are a group of entrepreneurs and reformed ex-cons who operate a patchwork of businesses and non-profits throughout the city of Oakland. They're also that city's most prominent Black Muslims, treated with noted deference by the East Bay's political and media elite--in part because they claim to be positive role models for African-American youth. East Bay Express staff writer Chris Thompson rips off that mask in part one of his special report "Blood & Money," showing that Bey and some of his followers have left a trail of violence, brutality and fraud that stretches back nearly a decade.
According to Harris Meyer, Jim DeFede is learning what it means to make the "transition from kicking powerful butts in the pages of the freewheeling (Miami) New Times to doing the same at the more sedate (Miami) Herald." Meyer reports that DeFede, speaking at a local SPJ meeting, said that when he wrote a tough column criticizing two local businessmen, the Herald was "flooded with angry responses" and "the paper essentially repudiated his column in an editorial the next day lavishing praise" on the targets of DeFede's ire. On the other hand, DeFede said, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas now returns his calls.
Alan Baer's "love for the obscure and the nontraditional led him to the alternative news weekly," Omaha Reader writes of its eccentric owner, who died of cancer Nov. 5. The paper remembers Baer as "the philanthropist and the gentle man with a quirky sense of humor, who never lost faith in those around him and in the city he loved."
The U.S. objective in Iraq is not to strike against terrorism and a rogue regime. It's not even to secure the smooth flow of oil from the region, Roger Trilling writes in The Village Voice. Based on a report by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, the true objective in removing Saddam Hussein from power is that a more friendly government in Iraq "would drastically reduce the requirement for U.S. military forces to deal with the problems that remained." The report argues for a less visible U.S. military presence, while remaking the region in our own political image.
San Antonio Current's David Wallis goes inside Storm Mountain Training Center, the "Andover" of private sniper schools. In the rural 208-acre compound military sniper program washouts and other wannabe killers can learn the same long-range shooting techniques the Beltway snipers used. "In a country where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, where the National Rifle Association intimidates legislators into voting against common-sense gun control laws designed to keep children from accidentally shooting other children, learning to kill with long-range rifles is considered not only a useful skill for law enforcement officers but a legitimate leisure time activity," Wallis writes.
