[By Survival International]

Indians from the tiny Awá tribe will stage a three day protest in the Brazilian Amazon from August 1st to 3rd, to prove that they exist and to demand that their land be protected from invasion.

The event, named ‘We Exist: Land and Life for the Awá Hunter-Gatherers’, has been organized by Brazilian indigenous rights organization (CIMI) the local Catholic church and several indigenous groups.

Around 100 Awá Indians are expected to participate in the protest. For most, it will be the first time they have left their forest home. The protest will take place in Ze Doca, a town near the Awá’s land in Maranhão state in the eastern Amazon. It is in response to remarks by the local mayor’s office denying that the Awá exist.

The Awá are one of only two nomadic hunter gatherers tribes remaining in Brazil. More than 60 Awá have no contact with outsiders and are in grave danger from illegal loggers. Although Awá lands have been legally recognized, the Indians are being targeted by loggers, who are bulldozing roads into the forests, and by settlers, who hunt the game the Awá rely on, exposing the Indians to disease and violence.

A federal judge ruled in June 2009 that all invaders must leave the Awá territory within 180 days. However, the ruling has since been suspended, and deforestation and invasions are increasing.

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival, said today, ‘Denying the existence of indigenous peoples is self-fulfilling and belongs to the colonial past. It’s also a crime: deny they exist and they won’t exist, they’ll disappear like so many Brazilian tribes before them. If Brazil wants to be viewed as a leading nation, the authorities must no longer tolerate violations like this.’

Almost 2,000 Dutch troops have been deployed in the Uruzgan region, where the Taliban is active and opium production is high. The final contingent of 250 Dutch soldiers will be withdrawn on Sunday, after strong domestic opposition to participation in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force. Qari Yusuf Ahmadii, a Taliban spokesman, told the Volksrant newspaper that he looked forward to other countries following the "brave" Dutch example.

"We would like to offer the citizens and government of the Netherlands our heartfelt congratulations for having the courage to take this decision independently," he said. "We hope other countries with soldiers stationed in Afghanistan will follow the Dutch example and withdraw their troops."

AFP/Google News: Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives on Friday voted to end the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil companies that meet new federal safety requirements. The proposal to end the moratorium was an amendment to a pending energy bill the House was poised to vote on. The moratorium will not end unless the Senate also votes to terminate it and President Barack Obama signs the legislation into law. The fate of the proposal in the Senate is uncertain. The Obama administration imposed the six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in waters more than 500 feet deep in response to the BP oil spill. The moratorium runs through the end of November.

"An indiscriminate blanket moratorium punishes the innocent along with the guilty for the actions of the poor judgment of one reckless company," said Rep. Charlie Melancon, a Louisiana Democrat who co-sponsored the amendment. "If a rig meets all the tough new safety requirements issued by the Department of Interior, if it has been fully inspected and deemed safe, why should it sit idle? And the workers of that rig, why should they go jobless until the arbitrary six-month period is over?" he said.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called "Axis of Evil" members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead. Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event yesterday, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.

"If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in '41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won," Gingrich said, adding that Americans should "over-match the problem."

On the reaction to Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil," Gingrich blamed Democrats because Americans had not followed through on President Bush's words:

I believe he was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we're one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 -- and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it -- then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it's because we've stood at brink, looked over and thought, "Too big a problem."

In an interview with Newsmax, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken seriously "threats to America," and that Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.” The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site as well. WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single “dump” file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats. Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the file may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it. The Faster Times: CNN Fawns Over Shameless Snitch: Publishes fact -, news-free story fawning over hacker/informant Adrian Lamo, who turned in whistleblower Bradly Manning. Al Jazeera: Blowing the whistle.

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline. [...] What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an army accused of war crimes? Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to present a microscopic analysis of "our" relations with Israel. I have just finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his preface, "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution".

July’s Toll Worst for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan. In Kabul on Friday, a crowd of hundreds of Afghans rioted after a sport utility vehicle carrying American Embassy contractors mercenaries struck a car of Afghans, killing at least three of them, the Afghan police said. The riot happened early Friday afternoon on the busy road that connects the American Embassy and military headquarters in Kabul with the city’s airport. The crowd chanted "Death to America" and "Death to foreigners." Four contractors were in the vehicle, the embassy said. An Afghan police officer on the scene said the contractors traded fire with the police, but spokeswomen from their company, DynCorp International, and the United States Embassy said that the contractors did not fire any shots.

The death toll from three days of flooding in Pakistan has exceeded 500, as heavy seasonal monsoon rains bloat rivers, submerge villages and trigger landslides. More than a million of people have been affected by the floods in the country's northwestern sector and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a Press TV correspondent reported. The flood also left hundreds missing and at least 1 million homeless. The Northwest has been hit the hardest with the worst flooding since 1929. The flood has destroyed many bridges and shut down the highway connecting Peshawar to the capital, Islamabad. Rescue teams are trying to help thousands of flood victims as some 400,000 people remain stranded in far-flung villages.

In Spain, a judge has re-issued arrest warrants for three US soldiers over the killing of a Spanish TV cameraman who died in US tank fire in Iraq in 2003. Spain's National Court announced Thursday that it has re-issued an the arrest warrants because the soldiers are implicated in an attack on Baghdad's Hotel Palestine, where Jose Couso along with dozens of other journalists were based during the Iraq war, the Time reported. "Now we have to hope that the United States government collaborates with the Spanish justice system in the search and capture in order to sit these murderers in the court," Xinhua News quoted Jose's brother David as saying. Couso was one of two journalists killed. The other one was a Ukrainian journalist, Taras Protsyuk. Three staff members of Reuters news agency were also wounded in the attack.

An Israeli soldier detains a Palestinian boy during
clashes with Israeli settlers, not seen, on the outskirts
of Borin village near Nablus.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

● IOF shot and killed a Palestinian worker in the northern West Bank.

● IOF continued to use force against peaceful protests in the West Bank.

Four international human rights defenders and one Palestinian photojournalist were injured.
- IOF arrested twenty-one civilians, including twelve international human rights defenders, one of whom is Luisa Morgantini.

● IOF continued to fire at Palestinian farmers and workers in border areas of the Gaza Strip.

One Palestinian civilian was seriously wounded in the northern Gaza Strip.

● IOF bombarded tunnels and civilian property in the Gaza Strip.

IOF destroyed a plastic and iron pipe store in the central Gaza Strip.

● IOF conducted twenty-five incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and five limited incursions into the Gaza Strip.

IOF arrested thirteen Palestinian civilians.

● Israel has continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and has isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.

Israeli troops stationed at military checkpoints and border crossings in the West Bank arrested nine Palestinian civilians, including six children and one woman.

● Israel has continued to take measures aimed at creating a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem.

The Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem has continued to chase and confiscate goods of Palestinian street vendors.

●· IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

IOF ordered the halt of construction works n six houses in Ethna village near Hebron.
Israeli settlers continued to attack Palestinian civilians.

FBI files show bureau may have tried to get Zinn fired from Boston University for his political opinions. Those who knew of the dissident historian Howard Zinn would not be surprised that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him for decades during the Cold War. But in a release of documents pertaining to Zinn, the bureau admitted that one of its investigations into the left-wing academic was prompted not by suspicion of criminal activity, but by Zinn's criticism of the FBI's record on civil rights investigations.

"In 1949, the FBI opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn," the bureau states. "The Bureau noted Zinn’s activities in what were called Communist Front Groups and received informant reports that Zinn was an active member of the CPUSA; Zinn denied ever being a member when he was questioned by agents in the 1950s. "In the 1960s, the Bureau took another look at Zinn on account of his criticism of the FBI’s civil rights investigations."

Late last week, Republicans in the House or Representatives unveiled H.Res.1553, a resolution providing explicit support for an Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. The measure, introduced by Texas Republican Louie Gohmert and forty-six of his colleagues, endorses Israel's use of "all means necessary" against Iran "including the use of military force".

"We have got to act," Gohmert has said in regard to the measure. "We've got to get this done. We need to show our support for Israel. We need to quit playing games with this critical ally in such a difficult area."

But Gohmert's resolution may be an unprecedented development -- Congress has never endorsed pre-emptive military strikes by a foreign country. What's more, this is the minority party signaling to Israel that they can count on Republican support should the President object to Israeli strikes on Iran -- as did George W. Bush in 2008. The resolution also explicitly endorses "any means necessary", a carte blanche for the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Israel must lift its military blockade of the Gaza Strip and invite an independent, fact-finding mission to investigate its raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, a United Nations rights body said on Friday. The U.N. Human Rights Committee also told Israel to ensure that Palestinians in the occupied territories can enjoy the fundamental civil and political freedoms that Israel had pledged to uphold in the main international human rights treaty.

With 63 US service members killed, July has become the deadliest month for American forces stationed in war-torn Afghanistan. June's record of 60 US fatalities was surpassed this month after separate bomb blasts killed at least three US soldiers in southern Afghanistan over the past 24 hours. The latest deaths brought to 86 the number of fatalities among foreign troopers in war-ravaged Afghanistan this month. Boston.com: July the deadliest month of Afghan war for US.

A would-be armed robber who held up a mobile phone shop repented during the raid and left as a rescued soul after a sermon from a Christian shop assistant. Nayara Goncalves, 20, told the man calmly that God had better plans for him when he drew a gun and demanded cash from the till of the shop in Pompano Beach, Florida. The fearless shop assistant even made the robber promise he would go back to church and turn his life around as he sheepishly left after listening to five minutes of preaching. 'I said I know you have a gun and you’re going to do what you want, but let me tell you about Jesus,' said Miss Goncalves, who added she always carries a Bible. 'I’m a Christian and I have God, and let me tell you about Jesus because he can change your life, you don’t need to do this.' During the encounter, which was captured by a security camera at the MetroPCS shop, the man told her that he was going to be evicted in three days and needed $300 (£192) to cover his rent. 'I’ve never done this before,' he is heard telling her. 'I’m not very good at this, obviously. If there’s no money in the register, can you show me?' Miss Goncalves told him that there was little cash in the til but that any he took would be deducted from her wages.

US officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan has been secretly supporting the Taliban in their conflict with US-led Nato troops in Afghanistan, leaked records say.

Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documents on Sunday, revealing alleged support for the Taliban.

The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid them.

Al Jazeera interviewed one of the men specifically mentioned in the reports - retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who has been accused of being actively involved in supporting the Afghan Taliban.

He denied the allegations and said the sources of the "flawed" leaks had ulterior political motives.

An Army private suspected of leaking classified material, including videos and other documents, has been transferred from Kuwait to a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Pfc. Bradley Manning, who served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, was charged in June with eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code and is the military's focus in the investigation into who leaked tens of thousands of documents to the website WikiLeaks. Manning, 22, will remain in confinement as the Army continues an investigation to determine whether he should face the military equivalent of a trial over the charges, according to a statement released by the Army on Thursday. He has not yet entered a plea, since there has not been a decision about whether he should face trial, Army Maj. Bryan Woods said. Military lawyers for Manning referred questions about him to Woods. Daily Telegraph: FBI called in to hunt those responsible.

Arizona sheriff forges ahead with aggressive immigration sweeps even after court ruling. Lost in the hoopla over Arizona's immigration law is the fact that state and local authorities for years have been doing their own aggressive crackdowns in the busiest illegal gateway into the country. Nowhere in the U.S. is local enforcement more present than in metropolitan Phoenix, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely carries out sweeps, some in Hispanic neighborhoods, to arrest illegal immigrants. The tactics have made him the undisputed poster boy for local immigration enforcement and the anger that so many authorities feel about the issue.

"It's my job," said Arpaio, standing beside a sheriff's truck that has a number for an immigration hot line written on its side. "I have two state (immigration) laws that I am enforcing. It's not federal, it's state."

LA Times: Arizona sheriff launches 17th immigration sweep.

This 17 part film will be released 9/11 2010, This clip is a sample. I've had to change images and music because of the youtube police.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs seems to have forgotten that his boss has already broken his central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” that “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Responding to a question during his daily press briefing today, Gibbs said, “The President believes raising taxes on the middle class during this economic time would not make a lot of economic sense.” But President Obama has already broken his “firm pledge” at least eight times:

1. 156% Federal Tobacco Tax Hike (took effect April 1, 2009)
2. 10% Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (took effect July 1, 2010)
3. The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” (takes effect Jan. 1, 2011)
4. The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike (from 10% to 20%) (takes effect Jan. 1, 2011)
5. The“Special Needs Kids Tax” ($2,500 cap on FSAs) (takes effect Jan. 1, 2013)
6. The Obamacare Medical Prosthetics and Devices Tax (takes effect in Jan. 1, 2013)
7. The Medical Itemized Deductions Cap (from 7.5% to 10%) (takes effect Jan. 1, 2013)
8. The Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (up to $2,085 or 2.5% of AGI) (takes effect Jan. 1, 2014)

US President Barack Obama has signed a spending bill allocating USD 37 billion to the unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new funds bring the total cost of the two US-led wars in the region to USD 1 trillion since 2001. The spending bill had been pending in Congress due to a split among the Democrats regarding the Afghan war. The legislation was finally passed after strong support from the Republicans. Obama signed the measure two days after it cleared the House of Representatives. AWIP: US funds billions more for Afghan war. USA Today: Obama signs war spending bill.

As part of Washington’s intensifying campaign against Iran, the European Union (EU), Canada and Australia imposed hefty new sanctions this week against Tehran over its nuclear programs. While promoted as means of pressuring Iran, the sanctions are a further escalation of a dangerous confrontation that is setting the stage for war [for Israel].

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli war ministry has refused to pay the cost of medical treatment for an American-Jewish activist who lost an eye when border police officers fired a tear gas canister at her during a demonstration. Emily Henochowicz, who also holds Israeli citizenship, took part in a protest on May 31, shortly after Israel killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla. The Henochowicz family said that a policeman shot a canister directly at her face, shattering her jaw and causing her to lose her left eye. Following her treatment at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, Henochowicz's father, who had traveled from the U.S., was handed a bill for almost 3,500 dollars. Under advice from his lawyer, he asked the ministry to cover the expense, but officials refused. In justifying the refusal, the ministry claimed the tear gas was not fired directly at Henochowicz. "The canister ricocheted at her after it rebound off a concrete barrier and changed direction - it was not shot directly at her," the ministry said in a statement, which was contested by Haaretz as one of its reporters was a witness to the incident.

Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in the southwestern Helmand province to voice their anger at the killing of a 65-year-old man by US troops. The demonstrators gathered outside the governor's office, carrying his body on Thursday. They called for the prosecution of those responsible for the killing. Another demonstration was held in the southern Oruzgan province over the desecration of Islam's holy book, the Quran. That protest came in response to reports that US-led forces tore up a Quran in an attack on people's homes.

You may have heard the rumor that swirled briefly last month about an Internet “kill switch” that could power down the Web in the case of a critical cyber attack. Those rumors turned out to be largely overblown, but it turns out there are now seven individuals out there holding keys to the Internet. In the aftermath of a cataclysmic cyber attack, these members of a “chain of trust” will be responsible for rebooting the Web. The seven members of this holy order of cyber security hail from around the world and recently received their keys while locked deep in a U.S. bunker. But the team isn’t military in nature. The Internet safety program is overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit watchdog group that has access to a security system designed to protect users from cyber fraud and cyber attacks.

Despite billions in aid from Washington and a shared threat from extremists, Pakistanis have an overwhelmingly negative view of the United States, according to results of a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday. The survey also found that Pakistanis have grown less fearful of extremists seizing control of their country, perhaps reflecting gains that government troops have made against militants since early 2009. Most Pakistanis want improved relations with the United States, according to the poll. But most view the U.S. with suspicion, support for American involvement in the fight against extremists has declined, and nearly two-thirds want U.S. troops out of neighboring Afghanistan. Nearly six in 10 Pakistanis polled described the U.S. as an enemy and only one in 10 called it a partner.

Israeli settlers squatters "took over" a Palestinian home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City today, evicting about 45 members of an extended family which has occupied the building for more than 70 years. The settlers squatters claimed to have documentation to prove they had purchased the building from the owners. The Palestinian tenants, who have been fighting attempts to evict them for many years, were challenging the takeover in court. A police spokesman said the Israelis had entered the home "based on [forged] documents claiming that they owned the property". Antiwar: Settlers Seize 9-Family Jerusalem Home.

As the home of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, the city of Medellín, Colombia, used to be one of the most violent places in the world. Today, the cells and grounds of its Bellavista prison are largely populated with people who grew up in and around the city. It's an intimidating place, to say the least, yet as is evident in the images of Vance Jacobs's photographic series "Colombian Prison: A View from the Inside," even within the confines of prison walls can the beauty of the human spirit be observed. On the invitation of the Centro Colombo Americano, an English language school for Colombians in Medellín, Jacobs ventured to the Bellavista prison with an inspired assignment: to teach documentary photography to eight inmates in one week.

Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been collected and published on the net by a security consultant. Ron Bowes used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings. The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. Mr Bowes said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information. The file has spread rapidly across the net. On the Pirate Bay, the world's biggest file-sharing website, the list was being distributed and downloaded by more than 1,000 users. One user, going by the name of lusifer69, described the list as "awesome and a little terrifying". [Ron Bowes, of Skull Security, posted the torrent HERE. That failing try HERE or HERE. Facebook directory is HERE.]

The Israeli parliament is considering several new laws that could seriously impact the ability of citizens to criticise the government, according to rights groups. Human Rights Watch is reporting a crackdown on political activists who criticise Israeli’s treatment of the Palestinians. In what rights groups consider part of an alarming pattern, Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, recently admitted to spying on a young Australian activist in the West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reports from Jerusalem.

A federal judge's decision barring police in Arizona from demanding immigration documents from people they suspect of being in the country illegally was a dramatic victory for the Obama administration and civil rights groups that may be hard to overturn, at least in the short run. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix issued an injunction blocking Arizona from implementing the heart of its new immigration law Wednesday, less than 24 hours before it was to have taken effect, and endorsed the administration's argument that the state would be interfering with the federal government's enforcement of immigration laws. The law's key provision would require local police to ask for proof of legal residency from people they stop for other reasons and reasonably suspect of being here illegally. Those detained would have stayed in custody until their legal status was verified. Houston Chronicle: Legal fight begins over Arizona immigration law. USA Today: Mexico braces for effects of Arizona immigration law.

[Editor's Comment:] The Right see the immigrants as foreigners. The Left see them as people. The conspiracy theorists see them as pawns. We think all of these groups may have a point. We would like to add though, that ultimately there's no such thing as the "integrity" of the United States. This is a figment of fantasy pushed by special interest. Arizona is a temporary political unit built upon land stolen from another temporary unit, Mexico. The latter ultimately wants it back; the former wants to have its cake and eat it. -Something's gotta give.

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. The administration wants to add four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers say, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

The New York Times continues to downplay the human rights abuses, amounting in some instances to war crimes, documented in classified reports that were released to them by Wikileaks. In contrast to the Guardian and Der Spiegel, the NYT’s failed to highlight the many accounts of atrocities committed by U.S. and coalition troops in the paper’s recent coverage.

The Guardian’s article on the Wikileaks’ document release begins:

A huge cache of secret U.S. military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighboring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency.

In contrast, the New York Times’ article begins by stating the release, "offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal." It is not until the tenth paragraph that it briefly refers to special ops raids that "claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment." There is no mention of the revelations of widespread civilian casualties caused by U.S. or coalition forces.

WSWS: A record of war crimes. For its part, the [New York] Times published its story only after urging WikiLeaks to engage in self-censorship and clearing it with the White House. The newspaper’s main conclusion is that the leaked documents demonstrate the need to intensify the war in Afghanistan and spread it more aggressively into Pakistan. It has sought to spin the documents as evidence of a “hamstrung war” in which the US military has been subjected to too many restrictions while denied sufficient resources. The Times advances this line in the face of evidence detailing a staggering degree of brutality in Afghanistan.

That it was left to WikiLeaks, an online organization with a tiny fraction of the Times’ resources, to make these revelations is an indictment of the media as a whole. The Times and other news organizations, with their “embedded” reporters, are no doubt aware of many of the incidents revealed in the leaked documents, but chose not to report them. They, no less than the Pentagon and the political establishment, have conducted a systematic cover-up of the crimes against the Afghan people.

Politico: How the papers got the leaks.

Here we see one of the most bizarre twists in the story: US government sources now using the leaked documents to buttress the current anti-Iran narrative and in the process acting as though the intelligence reports are providing information that hadn’t been accessible inside government until they were leaked!

At the very same time, the State Department’s leading expert on Iran, John Limbert — a genuine source of intelligence and “the most qualified person on the Iran team at State in the three decades I have lived in the United States,” according to Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — is about to resign.

At Foreign Policy, Barbara Slavin writes:

[I]t’s hard not to view Limbert’s departure as a turning point and yet another missed opportunity in U.S.-Iran relations. A number of players with more skeptical views about the prospect of rapprochement with Tehran — such as White House aide Dennis Ross and nonproliferation experts like Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore — appear to be driving U.S. policy now, and the president himself blames the Iranian government for failing to respond to his outreach.

What could please the attack-Iran lobby more than to see the departure of the most skilled American proponent of engagement and at the same time to be served a prize piece of propaganda by an outfit aligned with the anti-war movement?!

One day after Israeli authorities razed the Bedouin village of el Araqib, village residents joined with Palestinian, Israeli and international volunteers to rebuild the village.

"We successfully rebuilt all the structures and tents destroyed, noted Dr. Awad Abu Freih, spokesperson of the el Araqib village and member of the el Araqib Popular Committee and the Arab Education Forum in the Negev. In a conversation with the AIC, Dr. Abu Freih stated that the residents of el Araqib "plan on building more than what was destroyed, in an attempt to prevent future demolitions."

Over 300 Bedouins, mainly children, were forcefully removed from their village Tuesday morning (27 July) as they watched the Israeli police destroy their homes and property. The raid began at about 4:30 in the morning and residents woke up surrounded by a huge force of 1,500 police with guns, stun grenades, helmets and shields, including hundreds of Special Riot Police as well as mounted police, helicopters and bulldozers.

Despite being unrecognized by Israel, the village of el Araqib has existed since before the creation of Israel in 1948. Bedouin residents were evicted by the newly declared Israeli state in 1951, but returned to the land on which they live and where they cultivate. Ownership of the land is now the subject of proceedings in the Be'er Sheva District Court. AWIP: Israel destroys a whole Negev Village – 200 Children left Homeless.

Oliver Stone said some true things, got in trouble with the Jews, and then had to apologize (of course, the apology was not accepted). He referred to the "Jewish domination of the media", and then went into turbo-truth mode (bowdlerization fixed):

"There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years."

This is the most true thing said by an American since Mel Gibson.

LA Times: How Jewish is Hollywood? I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.

AWIP/Gilad Atzmon: Oliver Stone apologized for Telling the Truth.

American's Journey: Isn't Oliver Stone just being truthful? -After all, his only crime is being candid. [From the Treasury link:] "Of the twenty(20) top officials in the U.S. Treasury Department, twelve(12) are Jews. This is a numerical representation of 60%. Jews are approximately 2% of the United States population.* This means that Jews are over-represented among the top officials of the U.S. Treasury Department by a factor of 30 times times, or 3,000 percent. This extreme numerical over-representation of Jews among the top officials of the U.S. Treasury Department cannot be explained away as a coincidence or as the result of mere random chance. You must ask yourself how such an incredibly small and extremely unrepresentative minority ethnic group that only represents 2% of the American population could so completely dominate the highest levels of the U.S. Treasury Department."

Consider the following:

Who Controls the U.S. Treasury Department?
Who Controls the Federal Reserve System?
Who Controls the US Economy?
Who Controls the U.S. State Department?
Who Controls the AIG?
Who Controls the Goldman Sachs?
Who Controls the CFR?
Who Controls the Ivy League?

Oliver Stone: Jewish control of the media is preventing free Holocaust debate. Outspoken Hollywood director says new film aims to put Adolf Hitler, who he has called an ‘easy scapegoat’ in the past, in his due historical context. In the Sunday interview, Stone reportedly said U.S. public opinion was focused on the Holocaust as a result of the “Jewish domination of the media.” “There’s a major lobby in the United States,” Stone said, adding that “they are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington.” AWIP/Gilad Atzmon: Oliver Stone apologized for Telling the Truth.

Yesterday, she called a media conference to confront allegations that in cabinet she actively opposed last year’s decisions by the Rudd government to slightly increase aged pensions and establish, for the first time, an 18-week, minimum-wage paid parental leave scheme.

Initially, the prime minister refused to comment on Oakes’s story. Yesterday morning, however, Gillard and her advisors did an about-face, deciding to go on the offensive and use the revelations to make a positive pitch for big business and media backing. Instead of rejecting the substance of Oakes’s report, the prime minister insisted that she had “no apology” to make—her concern had been the “affordability” of the increased spending.

Gillard was installed as prime minister on June 24, behind the backs of the population, at the direct behest of the mining giants and corporate boardrooms, in order to shift government policy away from Rudd’s preoccupation with stimulus packages to the corporate tax-cutting and austerity program that the financial markets are now demanding of governments around the world.From Greece and Ireland to Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan and the United States, savage spending cuts, retirement age increases and higher consumption taxes are being imposed in order to make the working class pay for the trillions of dollars spent to bail out or prop up the banks and major corporations during the 2008-09 global financial meltdown. [Photo: Daily Telegraph]

About Wikileaks: There is no doubt that Obama himself, his top aides in the White House and Pentagon and the leading circles in the media were well aware of these atrocities. That makes all the more criminal the president’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. AWIP: US funds billions more for Afghan war.

Man shows up in court to face G20 ‘five-metre’ charges, discovers they don’t exist: Toronto Police Chief said, “the five-metre zone around the fence is for the protection of the security barrier.” When the summit ended, Chief Blair said there never was a five-metre law!

You wouldn’t be reading the coverage of the so-called Afghanistan logs—in the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian — if Nick Davies, a senior contributor to the British paper, hadn’t tracked down WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Brussels one month ago. Davies’s interest had been piqued in mid-June when Bradley Manning, a junior army intelligence analyst and the alleged source of several high-profile WikiLeaks disclosures, was quoted in chat transcripts claiming to have leaked a voluminous amount of yet-to-be disclosed diplomatic cables. Whatever Assange had, and whomever its source, Davies knew that WikiLeaks would publish again—and hoped to convince him to let the Guardian look at any future release before WikiLeaks splashed it on its own site.

Deborah Gross couldn’t get the image out of her head Tuesday – a police cruiser driving over a blanket on the Washington Park grass, the screams that followed and then seeing Joann Burton slide out from underneath.

“I couldn’t believe what I saw,” said Gross, 48, who has frequented the park for about three months. “She tried to get up, but then fell back down. She curled up in a ball and just rocked back and forth, moaning.”

Gross looked back at Cincinnati Police Officer Marty Polk and saw a pained expression fall over his face. Near tears, he took his police hat off, wiped his hand over his head and cried “Oh my God, what have I done? ... Oh my God.” Burton – identified as homeless – died at University Hospital. She was 48.

• Photos: Woman killed in Washington Park
• Photos: Vigil for Joann Burton

Aldous Huxley was right, not George Orwell.

The US defence department is unable to account for almost $9bn taken from Iraqi oil revenues for use in reconstruction, according to an official audit released yesterday. The report by the US Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction says $8.7bn (£5.6bn) out of $9.1bn withdrawn between 2004 and 2007 from a special account set up by the UN Security Council is unaccounted for. This is separate from $53bn set aside by Congress for Iraqi reconstruction. Though the special investigator found that some of the money was spent properly, Iraqis continually complain that they see little sign of their infrastructure being rebuilt after 30 years of war and sanctions. Electricity, clean water and sewage disposal remain wholly inadequate and seven years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein there are few cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline or any other signs of rebuilding. A total of 95 per cent of the country's federal budget comes from oil revenue. The scale of the sums unaccounted for are particularly striking given they cover periods well after serious fraud and corruption had been widely publicised in Iraq and abroad. The audit says that no organisation in the defence department was set up to oversee how money from the Development Fund for Iraq was spent. It adds that "the breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss". Many of the organisations at the

There's been a sea change, a darkening of the political climate in this country. The first instinct is to discount such troubling thoughts. So perhaps the view of someone born elsewhere, but long on our shores, is more to be trusted. Ursula Franklin -- the celebrated physicist, pacifist, author and Companion of the Order of Canada -- recently spoke to CBC Radio's The Current. She had survived a Nazi death camp and come to Canada hoping for better. Now 88, Franklin is "profoundly worried about the absence and erosion of democracy in Canada."

Paris. France's interior minister said Wednesday half the country's illegal Gypsy camps would be dismantled within three months and Bulgarian and Romanian Gypsies will be sent back home if they break the law, AFP reports. Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux made the announcement after a meeting of ministers called by President Nicolas Sarkozy in the wake of violence between Gypsies and police. Hortefeux vowed Gypsies who committed offences would undergo "virtually immediate" deportation to their countries of origin. Most Gypsies in France are thought to be from Romania and Bulgaria, which both joined the EU in 2007. Sarkozy warned ahead of the meeting that some members of the minority pose security "problems", in the wake of clashes between police and Gypsies in Saint-Aignan, central France.

Rick Norsigian, a Californian antique buff, knew exactly what he was looking for when he went rooting through a Fresno garage in 2000. He was looking for a vintage barber's chair, to add to his eclectic collection of old telephone switchboards, petrol pumps and aeroplane propellers. But when the chair turned out to be a dud, he chanced upon something that changed his life: two boxes of antique glass negatives which, a Beverly Hills art appraiser declared yesterday, were the work of Ansel Adams, the father of American photography.

Mr Norsigian, a construction worker and painter, had bargained his garage sale counterparty from $75 down to $45 for the lot. Now it seems the collection is worth at least $200m (£129m). "When I heard that [figure], I got a little weak," he said.

Unveiling the photographs at a Beverly Hills gallery yesterday, after years of scepticism from the art world, an attorney, Arnold Peter, said a team of experts had finally concluded the 65 negatives were the early work of Adams, most likely taken between 1919 and the early 1930s and rescued from a fire in 1937. The photographer declared himself heartbroken at the fire, which destroyed an estimated one-third of his work.

As Pakistan authorities launch an investigation into the crash of the Airblue Airbus A321 near Islamabad, Jim Ferguson, an aviation expert based in Aberdeen, Scotland, discusses some of the possible scenarios.

■ Bad weather
■ Fuel shortage
■ Navigational error
■ Technical failure

Daily Telegraph: Pakistan's worst ever air crash kills 152. RTT News: No Survivors In Pakistan Plane Crash.

The release of 91,000 classified military documents relating to Afghanistan by the organization known as WikiLeaks offers the opportunity for a controlled experiment in an analysis of media bias. This was a suggestion by the Nieman Journalism Lab immediately following the documents release. Three mainstream media organizations (The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel) were given the same amount of time to analyze these documents prior to their public release on July 25th and all three published their accounts on the same day. Therefore, any emphasis or de-emphasis in how the material was presented can be used to test hypotheses about the mainstream media through a process known as content analysis. This involves both assessing the meaning of a given text as well as measuring how frequent a word or phrase shows up in a specific context.

The hypothesis I seek to test is that different levels of access to American officials influenced how media outlets framed their respective analyses. A first glance at the material presented in the two English-language sources, The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, reveals dramatically different approaches that each took in reporting on these leaked documents. In The Times, for example, the first headline on their Afghanistan War Logs page reads, "Pakistan Spy Service Aids Insurgents" and three of their four featured reports on July 25th either emphasize the security and military implications of Pakistan's involvement or focus on US military strategy in executing the war. The New York Times provided no article focusing on civilian casualties in the war and mention them only as small points in their summary of individual documents. In contrast, The Guardian offered two prominent articles detailing the thousands of civilians whose deaths were documented in these files--not including those who died at the hands of Task Force 373, the shadowy special forces unit engaged in assassination raids.

AWIP/International Solidarity Movement: Two dead and four children injured in Israeli nail bomb attack in Beit Hanoun, Gaza.

Germany joins NATO forces in using Israeli spy drones 27 Jul 2010 Worried by insurgent ambushes on its soldiers in Afghanistan and return fire that sometimes kills civilians or local allies, Germany last year ordered a small fleet of Israeli Heron spy drones designed to provide real-time images above a battlefield. That has brought German jet pilots to coastal Ein Shemer air base for accelerated retraining on the unmanned propeller planes, already daubed with their flag and Iron Cross emblem.

Julian Assange’s recent comment in the Belfast Telegraph about 9/11, however, may be a more tangible source of concern for me. I know Assange isn’t an idiot, so I see three other possibilities:

1. He is profoundly ignorant of the vast body of material that demonstrates that the 9/11 spectacle was a false flag operation.
2. He’s “picking his battles” and not wanting to have to deal with the inevitable conspiracy theory stigma that could threaten his media access
3. He’s running a limited hangout/honeypot

Of these three options, I doubt that it’s number two.

911Blogger.com: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth. AWIP: Wikileaks calls for more leakers to step into its spider's web. The First Post: Shame the leak didn’t come earlier, says Taliban -It ‘proves US brutality in Afghanistan’.

The US Congress has approved an extra multi-billion dollar fund to pay for President Barack Obama's increase in US troop numbers in Afghanistan. The House of Representatives voted 308 to 114 in favor of the $60bn war-funding bill. The Senate had already passed the bill, which will now go to Obama to be signed into law. The package provides roughly $33.5 billion for the additional 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan and nearly $4 billion for other programs in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. The bill also covers some expenses for military operations in the war-torn Iraq. The new money is in addition to about $130 billion the Congress already approved for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq this year. The US Congress has appropriated over $1 trillion for the two wars since 2001.

Antiwar: House Approves More Afghan War Funding: Congressmen Embrace Escalation as Evidence of War's Folly Grows. Though one would have expected that the massive release of some 92,000 classified documents Sunday underscoring just how poorly the war is going would have changed some minds, the Obama Administration has gotten its way once again, with the House of Representatives approving the $59 billion emergency funding bill to keep the war going by a 308-114 vote. House Roll Call Vote on War Funding

[Zionist-infiltrated Congress wants war. Ever more wars for Israel:] Resolution Green-Lighting Israeli Strikes on Iran Introduced by House Republicans (HuffPo)

n 2 August 2007, a US special forces team mounted what they hoped would be an assassination spectacular in the Baghni valley, in the mountains of northern Helmand. They called it Operation Jang Baz. Special operations troops, the war logs report, "tracked and fixed 2 senior Taliban commanders" to the remote spot. The files reveal their names were Mullah Ikhlas, and his deputy, known as Qalandari. Both were listed as "High Value Individuals tier 2", putting them near the top of the US "kill or capture" list. Ikhlas was believed to run the entire Taliban fighting machine in southern Afghanistan. The special forces command claimed that Ikhlas was "conducting a major Shura" – a conference of top Taliban. After dropping six 2,000lb GBU-31 guided bombs on the meeting from a B1 jet, the coalition reported "effectively destroying the primary target location" and killing 50 "Taliban senior commanders, security and fighters". Lt Gen John Mulholland, of the special operations command, later claimed "over 150 Taliban fighters" had been killed. It was later realised that despite "multiple forms of positive identification" Ikhlas had in fact probably never been there at all.

Buried among the 92,000 classified documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks is some intriguing evidence that the U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories. Several reports from Army psychological operations units and provincial reconstruction teams (also known as PRTs, civilian-military hybrids tasked with rebuilding Afghanistan) show that local Afghan radio stations were under contract to air content produced by the United States. Other reports show U.S. military personnel apparently referring to Afghan reporters as "our journalists" and directing them in how to do their jobs.

Britain’s political elite are attempting to play down the so-called Afghan War Diary—the 92,000 documents published by WikiLeaks, details of which are being serialised in the Guardian newspaper. For nine years Britain’s ruling circles have presented the intervention in Afghanistan as a fight for the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people. In the face of widespread public opposition to the occupation, both the Labour government and now the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition have insisted that it is morally and politically justifiable. The documents published by WikiLeaks—consisting of battlefield reports written by US army personnel—expose such claims as lies. They lift the lid on just some of the terror and violence routinely meted out against the Afghan people.

Israeli Interior ministry forces demolish unrecognized
Bedouin village in the Negev; dozens of families left
homeless. December 2008 (PIWP)

Netanyahu calls Bedouin citizens of Israel "real threat" – and next, an entire village in the Negev is demolished. Early this morning police raided the "unrecognized" Bedouin village of al-Arakib in the Negev, destroyed all 40 of its houses, and evicted more than 300 residents. The residents, mostly children, were left homeless. The unprecedented raid began at about 4:30 in the morning, residents were surprised to wake up surrounded by a huge force of 1,500 police with guns, stun grenades, helmets and shields, including hundreds of Special Riot Police (Yasam) as well as mounted police, helicopters and bulldozers. At the residents’ call, dozens of left-wing activists and volunteers arrived from all over the country, helping them to offer non-violent resistance. Several residents were bruised and beaten by police, thjough not needing medical attention. One woman demonstrator was detained by the police. The police removed the residents’ property into prepared containers, and bulldozers demolished the residential buildings and sheepfolds and destroyed the residents’ fruit orchards and olive tree groves. The villagers, mostly children and old people, were left stunned near the destroyed village, shelterless and waterless under the blazing sun PressTV: Hamas slams Israel's Negev demolitions. Al Jazeera: Israel demolishes Bedouin village. The Guardian: Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is facing a massive backlash today following his criticism of the ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip. Cameron insisted the blockade ‘has to change’ and that the strip “must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” Israeli Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor expressed outrage at the statement, insisting that Cameron should have focused instead on Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier being held by the Hamas government. A number of Israel enthusiasts also complained that it was unfair of Cameron to mention the Israeli blockade of Gaza without insisting that it was entirely the fault of Hamas, and a number suggested that Cameron, a long standing pro-Israel hawk, had “turned” on Israel with the comments. Cameron also used his speech today in Ankara, Turkey to reiterate his opposition of the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid ship that was bound for Gaza. Israeli commandos boarded the ship and killed nine aid workers.

Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani warns over US constant plots against the Islamic Republic, saying the US lacks courage to make any anti-Iran move. “The United States still seeks to break the Iranian nation's will. The more sanctions they issue against us, the stronger the Iranian nation's will becomes,” Larijani said in western Iranian city of Kermanshah on Tuesday. He further added that the Iranian nation still opposes the United States and stressed the importance of maintaining readiness to encounter the US. The Iranian official deplored dual policies of the US government on Iran, saying, “US President Barack Obama cannot stretch his hands to the Iranian nation while the US Congress adopts moves against Iran.” Larijani also stressed that these efforts have no impact on the will of the Iranian nation. PressTV: Iran independent of world powers.

The parliament of Catalonia has voted to ban bullfighting - the first region of mainland Spain to do so. The vote took place as the result of a petition brought to parliament, signed by 180,000 people who say the practice is barbaric and outdated. Bullfight supporters insist that the corrida, as it is known, is an important tradition to preserve. They also fear the vote could be the first of many in the country. The ban takes effect in January 2012. In Wednesday's vote, 68 backed a ban, 55 voted against and nine abstained. Barcelona's main bullring is one of the oldest in Spain, but support for the bullfight has waned. The Barcelona bullring is the only functioning one in Catalonia. The vote was brought to the agenda by activists who argue it is cruel and unacceptable and say most spectators in Catalonia these days are tourists. The campaign was led by the animal rights lobby group Prou! (Enough!). Supporters says the corrida is an art form that it is vital to preserve.

TEL AVIV - Thousands of women are being smuggled into Israel, creating a booming sex trade industry that rakes more than USD one billion a year, a parliamentary committee said on Wednesday. The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, headed by Knesset member Zehava Galon of the left-wing Yahad. party, commissioned the report in an effort to combat the sex trade in Israel. Findings showed that some 3,000 and 5,000 women are smuggled to Israel annually and sold into the prostitution industry, where they are constantly subjected to violence and abuse. The report, issued annually, said some 10,000 such women currently reside in about 300 to 400 brothels throughout the country. They are traded for about USD 8,000 – USD 10,000, the committee said. The U.S. State Department ranks Israel in the second tier of human trafficking around the world, saying the Jewish State does not maintain minimal conditions regarding the issue but is working to improve them.

Christ, what an a**hole. Zachary Chesser, an unemployed 20-year-old man in Virginia who this year threatened South Park's creators over an episode featuring the Prophet Muhammad dressed in a bear suit, has been arrested on federal charges "after speaking openly to the FBI about his connection to a terror organization and his plans to travel overseas to fight with the group." The organization known as Al-Shabaab (the longer version of their name means "Movement of Warrior Youth") is identified by the US as a terror group affiliated with al-Qaeda. Mr. Chesser was Jewish, but converted to a wacked-out, militant crazystrain of Islam that involves uploading jihadi videos to YouTube and invoking assassination unto the creators of Cartman and Butters. AWIP/04/23/10: Islamists post warning on web to South Park creators after they depict Prophet Muhammad in anniversary episode. + AWIP/04/25/10: The Radical "Muslim" Group That Threatened South Park Creators Was Founded and Run by Joseph Cohen, a Former Israeli Radical Who Used to Live in a Settlement in the West Bank.

As the Australian federal election campaign enters its second week, the major political parties and corporate media, followed obediently by the Greens and “ex-left” groups, have already sharply narrowed the terms of permissible debate. As usual, the issues most critical to the working class—including chronic underemployment and the lack of basic services—are off the list for the August 21 poll. So is discussion of planned austerity measures. The campaign’s most notable feature is the pretence that beyond Australian shores nothing at all exists. Australian “exceptionalism”—the notion that Australia is separate from and unaffected by global processes, especially economic ones—is reaching dizzy heights.

Dr. Denis Rancourt speaks to Marc Morano on his views on the politics and science of global warming. "They look to comfortable lies" says Rancort with regard to global warming believers. AWIP: Global Warming Emerging Science and Understanding Part 1-6 (Video)

Can we have our Nobel Peace Prize back, please? We got most of our decisions wrong. We should have laid much more emphasis on abolishing the military and outlawing wars, but we didn't. Such is the message about to go out to the more undeserving winners of one of the world's most coveted awards. More than half the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since 1946 have been awarded illegally, says Fredrik Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and peace activist, because they do not follow the expressed will of the millionaire inventor of dynamite. He says all but one of 10 prizes awarded since 1999 are illegitimate under Norwegian and Swedish law. Mr Heffermehl's verdict, which caused controversy when it was set out in his book Nobels Vilje (Nobel's Will) published in Norwegian in 2008, is likely to stir up passionate discussion next month when Greenwood Press publishes "The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted".

Mr Heffermehl's book emphasises that Nobel's will concentrated on rewarding the struggle to end wars through an international order based on law and abolition of military forces. Few of the recent winners can be seen to have engaged in that struggle. Among those awards he names as illegitimate are: Mother Teresa (1979); Lech Walesa (1983); Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin (1994); Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi (2003); Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai (2004); and Al Gore (2007). The will, dated 27 November 1895, disbursed large sums to various relatives, friends and servants before leaving the bulk of the estate to establishing the awards that bear his name. The relevant sentence setting out the terms of what he called a prize for the "champions of peace" is: "One part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

David Cameron used a visit to Turkey to make his strongest intervention yet in the intractable Middle East conflict today when he likened the experience of Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza strip to that of a "prison camp". Although he has made similar remarks before, his decision to repeat them on a world stage in Turkey, whose relations with Israel have deteriorated sharply since it mounted a deadly assault on the Gaza flotilla, gave them much greater diplomatic significance. Cameron's comments, in a speech to business leaders in Ankara, prompted the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to issue another strong condemnation of how Israel dealt with the flotilla. Erdogan likened the behaviour of Israeli commandos, who shot dead nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists, to Somali pirates.

A pro-Palestinian American group [USTOGAZA] has reportedly initiated a humanitarian campaign to sail an aid vessel to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip. The "US Boat to Gaza" has begun attracting funds for the purchase of the vessel, Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post wrote on Monday. The vessel, which could carry 40 to 60 crewmembers, is expected to depart in autumn with the ultimate aim of challenging the four-year-long Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli-imposed restrictions have deprived the 1.5-million Palestinian residents of the impoverished coastal sliver of food, fuel and other necessities.

"...together we will contribute to the great effort to end the blockade of Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine",

the organizers have said on their website. The boat is reportedly to be named as "The Audacity of Hope," synonymous with President Barack Obama's popular book. The Indypendent: Activists Launch Campaign for U.S. Boat to Gaza. Indian Express: Indian ship to join anti-Gaza blockade campaign.

Maureen Dowd points out wisely that the Obama administration is too white. There are only two blacks in the administration, she says. Israel lobbyist Mitchell Bard points out all the Jews in the Obama administration:

David Axelrod (2009- ) Senior Advisor to the President; Jared Bernstein (2009- ) Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor to the Vice President; Rahm Emanuel (2009- ) Chief of Staff; Lee Feinstein (2009- ) Foreign Policy Advisor; Gary Gensler (2009- ) Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Elena Kagan (2009- ) Solicitor General of the United States; Ronald Klain (2009- ) Chief of Staff to the Vice President; Jack Lew (2009- ) Deputy Secretary of State; Eric Lynn (2009- ) Middle East Policy Advisor; Peter Orszag (2009- ) Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Dennis Ross (2009- ) Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia to the Secretary of State; Mara Rudman (2009- ) Foreign Policy Advisor; Mary Schapiro (2009- ) Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Dan Shapiro (2009- ) Head of Middle East desk at the National Security Council; James B. Steinberg (2009- ) Deputy Secretary of State; Lawrence Summers (2009- ) Director National Economic Council; Mona Sutphen (2009- ) Deputy White House Chief of Staff

[That's 17 people if you'd care to count. -What if Obama had had 17 black Americans or 17 Muslims in his administration instead?]

Just like Army PFC Bradley Manning, who leaked to Wikileaks and was turned in by one of the group's hacker associates, and now faces decades in jail. These old Chaos Computer Club hackers cut a deal long ago with intelligence and law enforcement rather than be thrown behind bars. Wikileaks is a clever intel community snare but Washington's top investigative journalists see through the trap. In May, PFC Bradley Manning, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, was arrested on charges of leaking the video and other documents to Wikileaks, after confiding in former hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him in. While publishing classified documents isn’t a crime in the U.S., press reports indicate the government is concerned that Wikileaks will publish tens of thousands of sensitive State Department cables that Manning purportedly also provided Wikileaks. In chats with Lamo, Manning claimed to have given Wikileaks a database of 260,000 cables; Manning has been formally charged with downloading over 150,000 cables, and leaking more than 50 classified cables. AWIP: Wikileaks obtained and multiple sources are now reporting on a huge cache of documents related to the US war in Afghanistan. The Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation.

NYT: Wikileaks: Pakistan state spy services meet directly with the Taliban to organize networks of militant groups against American soldiers in Afghanistan and assassinate Afghan leaders, all to ensure their US war on terror funding. Antiwar: Assange: WikiLeaks Has 15,000 More Documents ‘Under Review’.

[Editor's Comment:] It is easy to see that all of this Pakistal/Taliban stuff dovetails neatly with the US war campaign in Pakistan. -Is Wikileaks a DoD/CIA black operation? If it is, this would effectively ruin the trust necessary for whistleblowers to come forward. As for the ones that do come forward, the DoD/CIA could take them down, one by one. -Intel is a murky business...

Doubts summed up:

1. Wikileaks is straight & the docs published genuine
2. Wikileaks is straight but some docs are not genuine
3. Wikileaks is not straight and is a spider's web/black op (created by/taken over by the DoD and the CIA)

We would probably have to read a fair number of the 92000 documents to try and find out what the truth of the matter is. Some of the documents clearly are very damaging to both Pakistan and the US.

AWIP/Chris Floyd: Leaky Vessels: Wikileaks "Revelations" Will Comfort Warmongers, Confirm Conventional Wisdom. [T]hese reports are being treated as if they are the "grim truth" behind the shining picture of official propaganda. But what do these stories in the NYT and Guardian actually "reveal"? Let's see:

● That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.
● That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.
● That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.
● That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.
● That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.
● That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate.

Is there anything in these breathless new recitations that we did not already know?

Kev Boyle: WIKILEAKS/WIKIPEDIA: TRUTH serving LIES (with CIA/MOSSAD oversight)
Again, innocent people get murdered by coalition troops. Evil...embarrassing....but tell us something we didn't know. We know that the powers-that-be are determined to control both sides of every argument. They lead the opposition against themselves. That's why "Stop The War" will not even MENTION 9/11 Truth and exclude from the ranks of their leadership anyone who wants to raise reasonable questions about the events of 9/11. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth. That there IN ITSELF makes him, to any sensible person, a placeman of the security services. This, like the StopTheWar position, is called a 'limited hangout'.

Elvis of Terror: Sightings of Osama bin Laden: Daily Telegraph + Daily Mail + The BBC + The Guardian

AWIP: From the grave: "Bin Laden" warns US of more attacks

Find all the current Wikileaks Mirrors here. Helpful, if the main site - wikileaks.org - is down.

The United States has assured its allies in South Asia that it has no plans to quit the region and will stay engaged with Afghanistan as well. The assurance followed reports in the US media that President Barack Obama’s intention to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan from July next year had unsettled the entire region, causing South Asian nations to prepare themselves for a post-withdrawal scenario.

[Seems like the CIA is adding fuel to the fire with this Wikileaks document -they obviously want a war between India and Pakistan:] Backing New Delhi’s finding that the ISI was actively involved in attacks on Indians working in Afghanistan, intelligence documents leaked on Sunday reveal that the Pakistani spy agency paid the Taliban and the Haqqani terror network to target Indian missions, road workers, doctors and engineers working in the country. US military documents, part of over 90,000 internal logs made public by website WikiLeaks, reveal that intelligence agencies received regular inputs on the ISI paying terror outfits to plan and execute attacks against Indian interests in Afghanistan. Rediff: Pakistan Taliban: "India is our domain, and we will attack to take possession of it...whether they are Hindus or Jews, they all are the same".

The Canadian military is rejecting a report released by WikiLeaks that suggests four Canadian soldiers who died in September 2006 in Afghanistan were killed by friendly fire from U.S. forces. The military maintains the four soldiers died in combat with the Taliban.

Former Pakistani spy agency chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul denied that he has any links to al Qaeda or Taliban insurgents and said he is willing to go to America to face any charges.

“Report of my physical involvement with al Qaeda or Taliban in planning attacks on American forces is completely baseless,” the former Inter-Services Intelligence chief said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I am not against America, but I am opposed to what the American forces are doing in Afghanistan.”

In the murky world of Pakistan army links with militants, it’s often difficult to ascertain whether former military officers like Mr. Gul are working with the tacit approval of current army personnel. Mr. Gul, however, does not work mainly in the shadows. He’s a regular presence on nightly TV talkshows, expounding his anti-American views. The ISI denied that Hamid Gul had continued to operate on behalf of the spy agency after officially leaving the organization two decades ago.

“He hasn’t worked for the ISI in any capacity since he left the organization,” said Zafar Iqbal, a spokesman for the ISI. “He doesn’t have any sanction from the ISI,” he added.

Gul, who served as director general of ISI from 1986 to 1989, had worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency in organizing a covert war against the former Soviet Union forces in Afghanistan. Gul likes to call himself a “Muslim visionary” and has remained actively involved with Pakistani radical Islamic movements and Afghan Mujahideen leaders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar since his retirement from the army in 1991. He has been a strong critic of America since then.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the United States and Israel plan to attack two countries in the Middle East as part of a conspiracy to apply pressure on Iran.

"We have precise information that the Americans have devised a plot, according to which they seek to launch a psychological war on Iran," Ahmadinejad stated in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Monday. "They plan to attack at least two countries in the region within the next three months," he added.

He said the US seeks to achieve two main objectives with the scheme.

"First of all, they want to hamper Iran's progress and development since they are opposed to our growth, and secondly they want to save the Zionist regime because it has reached a dead-end and the Zionists believe they can be saved through a military confrontation," Ahmadinejad explained.

He also advised US President Barack Obama not to follow the policies of George W. Bush.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, head of the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva and author of "The King's Torah," was arrested early Monday morning at his home in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. His book describes how it is possible to kill non-Jews according to halakha (Jewish religious law). The preface of the book, which was published in November, states that it is forbidden to kill non-Jews - but the book then apparently describes the context in which it is permitted to do so. According to Shapira, it is permissible to kill a non-Jew who threatens Israel even if the person is classified as a Righteous Gentile. His book says that any gentile who supports war against Israel can also be killed. Killing the children of a leader in order to pressure him, the rabbi continues, is also permissible. In general, according to the book, it is okay to kill children if they "stand in the way - children are often doing this."

[Editor's Comment:] These ideas have gone mainstream long ago. The Israeli army has killed, tortured & maimed thousands of Palestinians for years, without this hairsplitting and quasi-religious verbiage. They should all be in prison, both the yeshiva lunatics and the bigwigs in the army. -A deep, dark dungeon with no escape possible.

An Israeli military helicopter carrying six Israeli soldiers and one Romanian crashed on Monday in mountainous terrain near Brasov, in central Romania. According to local sources, seven bodies had been recovered by rescue forces at the crash site by nighttime. The Israelis on board the chopper included four Israeli army pilots and two airborne mechanics. The Israeli occupation army released on Monday night the names of the six Israeli crew members. According to Bucharest media reports, the Romanian Defense Ministry said the helicopter, a CH-53 Sikorsky, crashed during Blue Sky 2010 – an 11-day joint Romanian-Israeli aviation exercise. The exercise began on July 18 and is set to conclude on July 29.

The international aid agency Oxfam demanded Monday that Israel compensate Palestinians in a northern Jordan Valley village after soldiers destroyed at least $29,000 of aid. In a statement, the charity said villagers in Al-Farisiya were forced into poverty when soldiers demolished 79 structures in the village, including homes, stables, sheds, water tanks, two tons of animal fodder, fertilizer and wheat. An initial assessment by Oxfam and other NGOs in the area calculated that the demolitions affected 113 Palestinians, half of them children and identified as some of the poorest in the area. Water tanks and irrigation pipes provided by Oxfam were among the damaged goods. Oxfam’s advocacy officer, Cara Flowers, said the area looked "a natural disaster had taken place,” adding that “With no access to shelter, water or fodder for their goat and sheep herds, an entire community is being forced to leave their land.”

When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. "It's that bad. We need to start talking about who's going to pay for evacuations." In 1989, Ott, who lives in Cordova, Alaska, experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdex oil disaster. For the past two months, she's been traveling back and forth between Louisiana and Florida to gather information about what's really happening and share the lessons she learned about long-term illnesses and deaths of cleanup workers and residents. In late May, she began meeting people in the Gulf with symptoms like headaches, dizziness, sore throats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that are so deep, they're leaving scars. People are asking, "What's happening to me?" AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Growing Health Crisis in the Gulf.

'Scores die' in Afghan village raid. A Nato rocket attack on a village in Afghanistan last week killed 52 civilians, including women and children, the office of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has said in a statement. Based on reports from the Afghan National Directorate of Security, a house in Regey village in Sangin district of the southern Helmand province was hit with a rocket launched by Nato troops on Friday. Karzai has offered his condolences via telephone to the mourning families and called on Nato troops to "put into practice every possible measure to avoid harming civilians during military operations". The Afghan president has ordered the National Security Council to investigate the incident, Sediq Sediqqi, head of media relations at the presidency, said earlier. Reports surfaced on Saturday that a helicopter gunship fired on villagers who had been told by fighters to leave their homes as a firefight with troops from Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was imminent. According to witness accounts, men, women and children fled to Regey village and were fired on from helicopter gunships as they took cover. Abdul Ghafar, 45, told AFP, a French press agency, that he lost "two daughters and one son and two sisters" in the attack. He and six other families fled to Regey, about 500 metres from their village of Ishaqzai, after being warned about the imminent battle, he said. PressTV: US-led forces kill 52 civilians.

The Chilcot inquiry confirms what most suspected - the reasons for war were bogus. In future, such decisions must be transparent. It was almost exactly eight years ago that the public beat of the Washington war drums became so loud and insistent that it could no longer be ignored. But we now know that for quite some time before July 2002 Tony Blair and George Bush had been engaged in a dialogue of the determined with regime change in Iraq at the top of their agenda. Before Chilcot, we had to rely on leaked documents such as telegrams from diplomats, accounts of meetings held round the sofa at No 10, and, for lawyers, the crown jewels of the Attorney General's written advice to the Prime Minister. The Hutton and Butler inquiries helped to fill in some of the blanks, though qualified by their restricted remits and security considerations. But slowly and with only occasional fanfare the whole sad, sorry story is being systematically laid out in evidence before the Chilcot inquiry. Chilcot has not been about surprises but rather about confirmation, less about revelation and more about corroboration of what we thought we knew. Sir John Chilcot has made it clear that his committee is not a court of law and that no findings of legality will be made but just by exposing to public scrutiny the process by which legal advice was tendered and disregarded, he has provided more than enough evidence in support of the proposition that military action against Iraq was illegal.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Europe on Sunday not to join U.S. "plots" against Iran, saying that any cooperation with Washington will be regarded as hostile by the Iranian nation, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Americans have managed to persuade a part of Europe and Russia to join them in their latest anti-Iran scenario, Ahmadinejad made the remark in a festival in Tehran, according to IRNA. Any actions against Iran including disturbing Iranian airplanes or ships will be met with speedy responses from Iran, the Iranian president was quoted as saying. UN Security Council adopted last month a resolution on the Iranian nuclear issue, prohibiting Iran from investing abroad in nuclear and enrichment operations, imposing new restrictions on Iran's import of conventional arms and allowing the Iranian ships in the international water to be checked. On Thursday, the European Union agreed on sanctions against Iran's energy sector including its oil and gas industry. The agreement will come into effect if it is approved at the EU foreign ministers' meeting on Monday. PressTV: Iran deplores new EU sanctions.

The 10 states that fill out the top ranks of this year's Failed States Index -- the world's most vulnerable nations -- are a sadly familiar bunch. Shattered Somalia has been the No. 1 failed state for three years running, and none of the current top 10 has shown much improvement, if any, since FOREIGN POLICY and the Fund for Peace began publishing the index in 2005. Altogether, the top 10 slots have rotated among just 15 unhappy countries in the index's six years. State failure, it seems, is a chronic condition. AWIP/Redress: How to create your very own terrorist state.

WikiLeaks.org, the online organization that was to post tens of thousands of classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations. Since it was founded in December 2006, WikiLeaks has exposed internal memos about the dumping of toxic material off the African coast, the membership rolls of a racist British party, and the American military’s manual for operating its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Wikileaks: Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010. Summary: 25th July 2010 5:00 PM EST WikiLeaks has released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers, and mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail. The document collection is available on a dedicated webpage. The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces' activities. The reports do not generally cover top secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

“We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies,” the organization’s Web site says. “All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”

The Guardian: Wikileaks+Guardian.co.uk: Afghanistan: The war logs. Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation. Includes interview with Wikileaks' Julian Assange.

BoingBoing: Wikileaks releases classified Afghanistan war logs: "largest intelligence leak in history". An archive of classified U.S. military logs spanning six years, more than 91,000 documents, and 200,000 pages, was today made available by WikiLeaks. The papers show a picture of the war in Afghanistan that is far more grim, and far less hopeful, than previously portrayed.

PressTV: Report: Afghan civilian deaths hidden. Newly leaked US military secret documents show how US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan have killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. The documents leaked by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks "[F]or all their eye-popping details," writes the Guardian's Declan Walsh, "the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity."allege some of the casualties are caused by airstrikes, but a large number is the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists in an effort to protect themselves. The documents disclosed by The New York Times, Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel also detail many other disputed incidents involving civilian deaths that have been omitted from daily military reports. The secret documents also link Pakistan to the militancy in Afghanistan. They detail links between the Taliban and Pakistan's military and spy agency, the ISI.

Foreign Policy: The logs of war: Do the Wikileaks documents really tell us anything new? I've now gone through the reporting and most of the selected documents (though not the larger data dump), and I think there's less here than meets the eye. The story that seems to be getting the most attention, repeating the longstanding allegation that Pakistani intelligence might be aiding the Afghan insurgents, offers a few new details but not much greater clarity. Both the Times and the Guardian are careful to point out that the raw reports in the Wikileaks archive often seem poorly sourced and present implausible information.

"[F]or all their eye-popping details," writes the Guardian's Declan Walsh, "the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity."

Guards at a prison in Durango state are accused of lending the inmates weapons and vehicles to commit the murders in neighbouring Coahuila state before returning them to their cells. The same group of prisoners are thought to have carried out other killings. The prison director and at least two other officers are under investigation. The killings in the city of Torreon in Coahuila state were traced to Gomez Palacios prison in neighbouring Durango state through bullets found at the crime scene, which matched assault rifles assigned to the guards, attorney-general's office spokesman Ricardo Najera said. "They were allowed out of prison to kill using the weapons of the guards and travelling in official vehicles" he said.

Israel war planes have launched an airstrike on the southern Gaza Strip, targeting Palestinian tunnels across the border between the blockaded enclave and Egypt. Missiles from Israeli aircraft destructed two tunnels early on Monday, but left no casualties, AFP quoted Palestinian security officials as saying. Israel frequently strikes the tunnels in the Hamas-run coastal enclave while an Israeli blockade has pushed the populated territory on the verge of a humanitarian crisis with almost half of its 1.5 million residents depending on food aid handouts. Tel Aviv's crippling siege has left Gazans with no other option but to set up a network of tunnels on the border with Egypt, which in collaboration with Israel keeps the Rafah border crossing -- the only terminal not in Israel control -- sealed off.

Atrocity: US Forces Slaughter 45 Afghan Civilians - "They can see something as small as an insect just four inches on the ground, so how were they not able to see all of those women and children when they bombed them?" International forces in Afghanistan say they are urgently investigating reports as many as 45 civilians died in an air strike in Helmand province on Friday. Nato's initial investigation found no evidence, but a BBC journalist visiting Regey village spoke to several people who said they had seen the incident. At the time, dozens were sheltering in the village from nearby fighting. A significant civilian loss of life would be rare this year as a new policy of restraint has reduced casualties.

Witnesses said the attack had come in daylight as dozens sheltered from fighting in nearby Joshani. Mohammed Khan, a boy aged about 16, said helicopters had circled over the village before the incident. He said that he had warned other children to take cover. But his mother told him not to worry them. He went further away and was shielded by a wall that saved his life when the attack started. "I heard the sound of the rocket land on our house. I rushed in screaming with my father and saw bodies lying in the dust… I found I was even standing on a dead body." One of the bodies was his brother. "He had been lying asleep in the afternoon when they were killed," Mohammed said. After the attack relatives and neighbours came to assist in digging out the dead and taking the injured to hospital.

PressTV: Report: Afghan civilian deaths hidden. Newly leaked US military secret documents show how US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan have killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. The documents leaked by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks allege some of the casualties are caused by airstrikes, but a large number is the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists in an effort to protect themselves. The documents disclosed by The New York Times, Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel also detail many other disputed incidents involving civilian deaths that have been omitted from daily military reports. The secret documents also link Pakistan to the militancy in Afghanistan. They detail links between the Taliban and Pakistan's military and spy agency, the ISI.

The Taliban say one of the two missing American soldiers has been killed and the other, captured alive, is currently held by the militants. A Taliban spokesman said Sunday the group is holding both the body of the dead soldier and the captured one. "One of the two was killed in the exchange of fire and we arrested the second alive," said Zabihullah Mujahid. He said the two servicemen were attacked after they drove into a Taliban-dominated area in eastern Logar province. The group says it has not yet decided on the fate of the captive soldier. WSWS: Afghanistan casualty rate highest of war.

Saber Kushour, an Arab convicted of 'rape by deception' of a Jewish woman, gives his side of the story in an exclusive interview. Saber Kushour apologises as he asks his guests to move the plastic chairs on his breeze-block balcony a little closer to the door to his house. If he were to sit where they are now, he explains, the electronic tag attached to his ankle would set off an alarm. Kushour's edginess is understandable – he is recalling a 15-minute encounter almost two years ago which he says "has destroyed my life". Last week the married father of two from east Jerusalem was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the "rape by deception" of a Jewish woman who claimed she would not have had sex with him had she known he was an Arab. What might have been a tawdry episode – casting neither Kushour nor the woman in a favourable light – exploded into a debate in Israel about racism, sexual mores and justice. "I am paying the price for a mistake that she made," Kushour, 30, told the Observer. "I was shocked at the sentence – it shows a very vivid and clear racism." The message from the judge, he says, was that "because you are an Arab and you didn't make that clear, we are going to punish you".

Did you everwonder how manipulation and brainwashing works?

Did you ever wonder how could people take part (even by their silence) in acts of genocide?

This is a collection of items below will give you an idea.

These items are for sale, on a UK website, CafePress

The items include -in their own words- " Baby Bodysuits > Anti Islam Baby Bodysuits " and "Anti Islam designs available on 1,760 products"

"Jew designs available on 4,420 products"

Browsing through the collection, I guess you would know which items come from the "anti- Islam" section and which come from "Jewish" collection

Just to get an idea how "wonderful" freedom of speech might be, please replace:

Muhammed" with "Rabbi"
Islam with Judaism
Muslim with Jew
Qur'an with Talmud
Jew with Muslim

Then read what you see out loud, then tell me how it feels!

The United States and South Korea have kicked off a large-scale joint military exercise in the Sea of Japan, officials say. The US and South Korea on Sunday launched the major naval exercise that would involve about 20 ships, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, and some 200 fixed-wing aircraft. Some 8,000 service personnel from the two allies haven taken part in the show of force. "The USS George Washington left the southern port of Busan around 7:00am Sunday (2200 GMT Saturday). It's sailing towards the Sea of Japan (East Sea) for the exercise," AFP quoted a US military spokesman as saying. Officials at Seoul's defense ministry said other navy ships had also left from Busan and the nearby port of Jinhae for the drill, with some from the US 7th Fleet set to join them off the peninsula's east coast. South Korea's Defense Ministry announced that the drill has been relocated from the sensitive Yellow Sea in response to China's protests. ABC News: Bronze Kim Jong-il sparks rumours of despot's end.

The Taliban say they have captured two US servicemen in Afghanistan, and Nato confirmed they were missing and scrambled helicopters and planes to search for them. The US and Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the pair had gone missing after leaving their base in the capital in a vehicle on Friday. The only other ISAF service member believed held by the Taliban is Idaho National Guardsman Bowe Bergdahl, whose capture in June last year triggered a massive manhunt. His captors have repeatedly issued videos of him denouncing the war, in what the US military has called illegal propaganda. Last month was the deadliest of the nine-year war in Afghanistan for foreign troops, with more than 100 killed. Five ISAF service members were killed in across the country on Saturday, including four by one roadside bomb. "Two International Security Assistance Force service members departed their compound in Kabul City in a vehicle on Friday afternoon and did not return," ISAF said in a brief statement.

Anger has arisen in Palestinian areas over reports that millions of tax-exempt dollars from the U.S. are being funneled towards Israel's illegal settlement building in the Palestinian West Bank -- in flagrant violation of international law. This is happening under the nose of the U.S. administration despite its claims of support for a two-state solution and criticism of Israel's continued settlement building. The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in Ramallah has expressed outrage. "Adhering to international law is a big step towards holding Israel accountable for its actions," PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib told IPS from the Muqata (government) headquarters in Ramallah. "Settlements violate international law, and the United States is supposed to be sponsoring a two-state solution, yet it gives deductions for donation to the settlements," said Saeb Erekat the PA's chief negotiator. According to a recent report in The New York Times 40 U.S. groups have raised more than 200 million dollars in tax-deductable donations for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the last ten years. U.S. tax rules prohibit the use of charitable funds for political purposes at home or abroad.

An American war veteran in the US warfare in Iraq says the United States initiated the hostilities as a pretext to establish its dominion over the country. Speaking in a recent interview with Press TV, Michael Prysner, the US war veteran and peace activist said that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was "a complete sham" and not meant to liberate the Iraqis as pledged by US authorities. Prysner, a corporal in the US army at the time of invasion, said he intended to help the Iraqi people but later realized every action by the US military only added to the sufferings of the Iraqi people.

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Fathiya Suwais, 57, has been subjected to cruel interrogation rounds and severe torture at the hands of Israeli investigators in Jalama detention center ever since her incarceration five days ago, the Ahrar center for prisoners' studies and human rights reported. Fuad Al-Khafsh, the center's director, said in a press release on Saturday, that the Shabak investigators deprived the old woman from sleep and forced her to stand for long hours while blindfolded and handcuffed without any consideration for her age or health condition.

When a national police association accuses its government of what amounts to treason it is time to sit up and pay attention. Michael O'Boyce, President of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said at its annual conference in Limerick, at the end of April, 2010, that the Irish Government had been 'corrupted' and had been 'bought' by developers and bankers. (A garda is an Irish policeman, gardaí in the plural.) Mr. O'Boyce, speaking on behalf of the country's 11,000 gardaí, charged government ministers with sacrificing the country to protect 'wealthy cronies' who had bankrolled the leading government party, Fianna Fáil. Such criticism of a serving government by its police force is unprecedented in Irish history and extremely rare in any western democracy.

The United States has rejected the claims of the Chinese government to territorial control of a number of tiny islands in the South China Sea, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisting the US had a strong “national interest” in ensuring the islands remain open.

Though long of little real value, the islands are said to have a significant oil and natural gas deposit, and the claims over the territorial waters around the islands could be valuable in expanding shipping in the region.

The US declaration comes as Admiral Michael Mullen warned today that China is taking a “more aggressive” stance on the high seas, and that he has gone from being “curious” about Chinese claims to the Spratly Islands to “concerned.”

The comments are a big victory for Vietnam, which has also claimed a number of the unpopulated islands. The Chinese and Vietnamese navies have previously clashed over the claims.

But they aren’t the only two nations claiming some or all of the 100+ islands. Taiwan also claims the entire region for itself, while Malaysia and the Philippines also claim portions of the island chain. Roughly 45 of the islands have tiny military presences of one nation or another, and as their value rises officials warn it could become a source of conflict.

NABI SALAH, Occupied West Bank, Jul 23, 2010 (IPS) - Palestinian activists are being jailed, Israeli activists are under surveillance, and the Israeli military is increasingly targeting journalists who cover West Bank protests. The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel issued a statement recently condemning what it sees as a change in Israel Defence Forces (IDF) policy in their treatment of journalists covering the growing number of West Bank protests against Israel's separation barrier, illegal settlements and land expropriation.

"We would appreciate it were the authorities to remind the various forces involved, that open, unhindered coverage of news events is a widely acknowledged part of the essence of democracy. "Generally speaking this would not include smashing the face of a clearly marked photographer working for a known and accredited news organisation with a stick, or for that matter aiming a stun grenade at the head of a clearly marked news photographer or summarily arresting cameramen, photographers and/or journalists," said the FPA.

In its report, EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup, Democracy Now! states that "many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants," so Amy Goodman interviewed Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit" who disclosed how the officials are lying about many things related to the catastrophe poisoning "millions of people." The rushed transcript includes Kaufman saying, "And I think the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf. The Nation: BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle.

Following in the tradition of bigots everywhere, a Florida church is preparing to hold a book-burning. Not just any book; the Quran. Dove World Outreach Center is a non-denominational evangelical church in Gainesville, Florida. They have announced a special celebration of the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks . . . something that will show Christian love, reduce hatred between people of different religions, and lead toward greater understanding around the world. Or not. Dove will host “International Burn a Quran Day” on September 11, 2010. Pastor Terry Jones says the idea came, in part, from the recent success of “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”. He comments that “We feel, as Christians, one of our jobs is to warn,” and that burning the holy books of another religion will provide Muslims an opportunity to convert.