Gloom descends after a deeply flawed election in Afghanistan. By mid-morning on August 20th, election day, the police standing outside the Haji Janat Gul High School, a polling centre a few miles east of Kabul, estimated it had been visited by just four lorries, carrying a score of voters each, and three or four cars. After long conflicts, the second set of elections is often a story of unrealistic expectation turned to disillusion and apathy. Across Kabul, turnout was sluggish. WSWS: Washington’s double standard: The elections in Iran and Afghanistan: Despite the increasing evidence of systematic and massive vote fraud, the Obama administration and the American media are still seeking to sustain the pretense that Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election was a basically democratic affair. In Iran, the declaration of victory by Ahmadinejad was treated as evidence of a major vote-rigging effort. A similar declaration in Afghanistan is dismissed as insignificant. The comparison of the two elections demonstrates the fraud of the US posture of defending democracy and popular sovereignty. One election is praised and the other damned, without regard to evidence, in order to further the interests of the imperialist power which seeks to dominate both countries.

Why does the Obama administration seem so arrogant and self-satisfied? Lee Siegel says blame smug press secretary Robert Gibbs, who should take a page from the courtly style of Tony Snow.

In a speech delivered Monday to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Arizona, President Barack Obama promised to intensify the US military engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, wind down the war in Iraq, and create a new military that would be better-equipped to wage unconventional warfare. The speech’s central purpose was to prepare public opinion for an escalation and prolongation of the US war in Afghanistan and its further expansion into neighboring Pakistan. It's a pity he can't be "un-elected"...William Pfaff: Could Obama please tell us what he thinks the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are about?

URUKNET: Even before it kicks off, Afghanistan's showcase presidential election is likely "sold" and "stolen", analysts warned, stressing that a growing sense of disillusion amongst voters in the war-torn country is adding to the polls’ severe crisis of credibility. "August 20 will not guarantee free, fair democracy here," Wadir Safi, of Kabul University's law and political sciences faculty, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, August 16. "It will be forged and fake democracy and elections."

"Regardless of means, every Australian is entitled to attend a public hospital and receive medical treatment free of charge." NYT: The Swiss Menace: "Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens."

A tidal wave of suffering and human need has been on display this week at a free healthcare clinic inside a Los Angeles-area sports arena. Just as the New Orleans Superdome, packed with refugees from Hurricane Katrina, shocked the world in 2005, the scene in Inglewood, California gives a glimpse of the social crisis devastating America. And it could be multiplied, a thousand times over, in every city, suburb and rural district of the United States, as deepening unemployment and spreading homelessness exacerbate what was already a vast unmet need for healthcare services.

Israeli Knesset Member from the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality Dove Hannen was one of hundreds of international and Israeli peace activists who participated in the weekly anti-wall protest in the village of Bil'in on Friday. Hannen was tear gassed, shot at with rubber-coated metal bullets and subjected to sound bombs by soldiers from his country’s military as he marched with Palestinian villagers and internationals toward the Israeli separation wall being built on the village lands.

Which is your favourite apocalyptic scenario? If you really had to choose would it be the intergalactic stand-off? Zombie plague? Over on Slate, Josh Levin and Chris Wilson have been asking people to choose - from of an exhaustive list of 144 potential apocalypses - the scenarios that strike them if not as the best, then as the most likely to precipitate America's downfall.

This video covers a small portion of foundational information regarding the Anglo-American establishment.

As Afghanistan heads towards presidential elections, residents of the district of Sherzad, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, have witnessed a sudden spurt in violence.

Four men with the U.S. firm once known as Blackwater are said to be under investigation in the deaths of two Afghans. A U.S. report found serious fault with private security firms in Afghanistan. Mirza Mohammed Dost stood at the foot of his son's grave, near a headstone that read, "Raheb Dost, martyred by Americans." His son was no insurgent, Dost said. He was walking home from prayers on the night of May 5 when he was shot and killed on a busy Kabul street by U.S. security contractors. "The Americans must answer for my son's death," Dost said as a large crowd of young men murmured in approval.

There’s a disturbing new development in Australia. A law proposal was disclosed to the public that would get ISPs to spy on the contents of all communications to monitor for compliance. Presumably, the amendments would get Australian ISPs to monitor their networks for p2p activity and hand all their information to copyright holders.

Germany’s gold reserves are actually in the custody of the United States. This is a detail the Bundesbank long has denied to others who have inquired and is potentially a matter of great controversy in Germany. It raises the question of whether the German gold reserves are actually intact at all or whether they have been used by the U.S. government as part of its long-time gold price suppression scheme or have been comingled and diminished with the gold reserves of other countries held in the United States.

A man was just sentenced to 300 hours of community service and a year of probation. His crime? Leaving water in the desert for illegal immigrants so they won't, you know, die.