A man touches the forehead of a loved one killed
in a US-NATO pre-dawn attack on Mehtar Lam,
in Laghman province. Photo: AP/Rahmat Gul

[Note: This photo is from an earlier US atrocity.] The official statement reads largely the same as the others do. “An individual with a weapon” is spotted during the raid and after being determined a threat “was shot and killed.” Other than a protest in Jalalabad nothing was unusual. Most of the time the story would end there. We would never hear who the “individual” was, we certainly would never hear that troops ransacked the home during the raid. In ordinary cases, this would be just another Afghan with a gun, killed by NATO troops and chalked up as a combat death.

But this time we do know the victim. Amanullah, a 30 year old auto mechanic and father of five, who made a panicked phone call to his distant relative, Afghan MP Safiya Sidiqi, that the family compound was being raided by what he assumed was a “gang of thieves.” He had no reason to think anything different [They were no different. They are a gang of thieves and murderers.]. After all, who figures that the US would launch a night raid against the family home of a member of parliament? Shot six times by the raiding US troops, including in the face and heart, Amanullah was slain on the spot. In the raid, the US troops handcuffed everyone in the compound and took fingerprints, they claimed they were looking for a “Taliban facilitator.” They never did find him.

The Democratic proposal includes increased money for border patrol and drug war agents, equipment, helicopters and unmanned drones. It would create a national ID -- which is dubbed a "biometric social security card." Though Democrats insist that it is not an ID card and can only be used for employment purposes.

In an effort to woo Israel after nearly a month of tense relations, Washington warns Iran and Syria against “making threats” to Tel Aviv's security. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an attempt to make amends with Tel Aviv officials after relations hit an unprecedented low last month over an Israeli settlement project on occupied Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem (Al-Quds). Clinton, who was addressing the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee, struck a conciliatory tone when she stressed that the US commitment to Israeli security is “unshakable” in the face of threats posed by Iran and Syria. AWIP/Jeff Gates: When will Israel attack the USA – again? AWIP: AIPAC has "persuaded" more than three-quarters of the members of the US House of Representatives to sign a letter calling for an end to public criticism of Israel. + Clinton vows 'personal commitment' to Israel's security.

[Editor's Comment:] Please note that Ms Clinton (in principle) could have stated that she was personally committed to peace (in the Middle East). However this is not what she is committed to. -Peace essentially entails justice & dignity for everyone involved. Peace means peace and is different from the mere absence of hostilities. This is not, repeat, not what Israel wants and therefore it is not what Ms Clinton wants either. Her incessant assurances of a personal commitment' is coded politician's lingo and needs to be "translated". They need to be seen as a groveling oath of 'fealty' to the most belligerent state in the Middle East. Israel's "security", then, means billions of $$$, an endless supply of US military hardware and US soldiers fighting & dying for Israel. This is what Israel's "security" means. The long of it, that is. The short of it is simply: 'war'. -Endless wars for Israel. This is what she is personally committed to.

Insists Conference Must Focus on Iran's 'Violations' [not Israel's nukes] Despite repeated claims by the Obama Administration to that effect, neither the US nor any other nation has ever presented any evidence that Iran was in violation of the NPT, and the IAEA’s claims have strictly been limited to the additional demands imposed upon Iran through the UN Security Council, and not the treaty itself. Clinton expressed concern that the Iranian president would “disrupt” the conference from what she sees as its primary purpose, which is to rail against Iran’s civilian nuclear program.

The Nation: Crippling, Crushing, and Suffocating Iran:

On Wednesday afternoon, members of the House and Senate gathered for a conference committee meeting to discuss the bills passed by each house to impose sanctions on Iran. As I sat down at my desk to write this, I pulled out my Roget's Thesaurus to see how many synonyms for "crippling," 'crushing," "overwhelming," "suffocating," and so on there are. There are a lot. And many of them, including those just mentioned, were used by members of Congress competing to see strongly each one could condemn Iran. It wasn't pretty.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Goldman Sachs Executive Vice President and CFO David Viniar, Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations hearing, April 27, 2010

Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into trading at Goldman Sachs, raising the possibility of criminal charges against the Wall Street giant, according to people familiar with the matter. While the investigation is still in a preliminary stage, the move could escalate the legal troubles swirling around Goldman. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which two weeks ago filed a civil fraud suit against Goldman, referred its investigation to prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, which has now opened its own inquiry.

President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated three new Federal Reserve Board members whose confirmation would appear to give Fed chief Ben Bernanke a firmer grasp on the course of interest rates.

● Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, to be vice chairman of the Fed's board of governors. She is nominated for a full 14-year term expiring in 2024.
● Peter Diamond, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for a term ending in 2014.
● Sara Bloom Raskin, the Maryland state banking regulator, for a term ending in 2016.

Average Americans today aren’t hurting because the economy has stopped generating wealth. Average Americans are hurting because the wealth the economy is generating continues to cascade disproportionately to the top. Between 1983 and 2007, the nation’s richest 1 percent took in over one-third of the nation’s total gain in marketable wealth, over triple the 11.2 percent that went to the bottom 80 percent of the nation’s households. And since 2007 the top 1 percent of the nation’s households have seen their overall share of the nation’s wealth increase from 34.6 to 37.1 percent.

The Hamas Interior Ministry later said in a statement the gas used to try to clear the tunnel was poisonous. Besides those killed, six people were injured, it said. "This is a terrible crime committed by Egyptian security against simple Palestinian workers who were trying to earn their daily bread," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum to The Associated Press. "It was a killing in cold blood. Hamas and all the Palestinian people condemn it strongly." PressTV: Hamas: Egypt kills Gazans with gas.

Dozens of men corroborate extensive torture toward false confessions during their prolonged, indefinite detention in a Baghdad prison—kept secret for months—after village raids from September through December 2009 by the Iraqi government, interviews with Human Rights Watch (H.R.W.) reveal. The men were kidnapped during raids in Sunni Arab areas in Nineveh.

Last month, while the American media were distracted by the health care vote in Congress, the British Parliament published the results of its investigation into East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that has been at the center of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) controversy. It seems that many were hoping that no one would read this report, at least not beyond the milquetoast executive summary. Buried deep within the report is a compelling piece of evidence. In volume two, there is a memorandum submitted as evidence from Lord Lawson of Blaby, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was in response to four very significant questions from the investigating committee. This memo confirms the claims by many global warming skeptics that the scientists at CRU were trying to hide data and silence the skeptics. Climate Realists: Is Michael Mann Seriously Off his Head? Cfact: Top UN scientist complains about YouTube video, claims defamation. Marc Morano argues that everything in the video about Mann's unscientific methods is true. AWIP: Global Warming Emerging Science and Understanding -VIDEO.

Workers along the Mississippi River try to con-
tain the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel
oil from a barge and ship collision on Wednesday.
The river is now closed to the Gulf of Mexico.
Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-Picayune

Oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the well beneath where a British Petroleum (BP) drilling rig exploded at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, a rate five times greater than earlier estimates, the US government reported late Wednesday night. US Coast Guard officials said a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had reached the conclusion based on aerial surveys of the slick.

The spill, which is expected to hit land Friday near the mouth of the Mississippi River, threatens an ecological and economic disaster, imperiling beaches, estuaries, marshlands and wildlife. Gulf Coast fishing and tourism industries could be crippled.

Eleven workers died and four more were critically injured in the April 20 explosion on the oil rig operated by BP contractor Deepwater Horizon as it neared completion of drilling. A blowout caused by cementing operations was the likely cause.

At the current rate of leakage, some 210,000 gallons daily, the Gulf oil spill will exceed the volume of the Exxon Valdez disaster by the third week of June. By some time next week the spill will likely surpass the magnitude of the 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California. That disaster led to the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide portions of the US coast that President Obama now wants lifted.

Efforts to cap the leak, at a depth of 5,000 feet, have so far failed. Proposed solutions, such as drilling an offset well to relieve pressure or dropping a dome over the leak at the seafloor, are untested and could take weeks or months to implement. A large-scale mobilization is now under way to try to contain the spill, but major damage appears inevitable. Globe & Mail: New leak found in Gulf Spill. -Incompetent drilling leads to environmental catastrophe (about 210,000 gallons a day). The Star: Halliburton said it did a variety of work on the rig and was assisting with the investigation ["Oil slick approaches U.S. wildlife reserve"]

Back in January last year, David Bond packed a rucksack, kissed his pregnant wife Katie and toddler Ivy, climbed into his Toyota Prius and drove away from home. Nobody knew where he was going – he didn’t even know himself. One thing he was sure about was this: “I’m going to leave my life behind and disappear,” he said. Katie remembers, about the amount of information on him and his family that was already out there. As he looked into it, he found that the UK, once a bastion of freedom and civil liberties, is now one of the most advanced surveillance societies in the world, ranked third after Russia and China. The average UK adult is now registered on more than 700 databases and is caught many times each day by nearly five million CCTV cameras. Increasingly monitored, citizens are being turned into suspects. Within 100 yards of Bond’s home, he discovered, there were no fewer than 200 cameras.

Hillary Confirms America Will Go To War For Israel - The Obama administration is warning Iran and Syria that America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakable and that they should understand the consequences of threats to the Jewish state.

Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi has criticized Western powers for spewing Iranophobic propaganda in the Middle East. He made the remarks during a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Thursday, ahead of the 12th session of a joint Syrian-Iranian commission aimed at strengthening diplomatic and economic ties. Rahimi dismissed the anti-Iran agitprop as ineffective in light of Iran's cordial relations with the region's nations. The First Vice President also stressed that Tehran is committed to pursuing its right in developing civilian nuclear technology for peaceful purposes despite pronounced threats from the United States and its allies. [PressTV: UN's Ban shows bias on nuclear issue.]

Kuwait Wont' Allow Obama To Bomb Iran From Its Soil - "Kuwait will express to the US its support for a diplomatic solution over Iran's nuclear file to avoid any action that may transform the region into a volcano."

A senior Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri has held Egypt responsible for the death of four Palestinians killed in a border tunnel and has demanded for an impartial investigation. Speaking at a press conference in Gaza on Thursday, Abu Zuhri strongly condemned Cairo's application of gas against Palestinian citizens. The Hamas official also demanded Egypt to conduct an immediate probe into the incident and to prosecute the perpetrators, the International Middle East Media Center reported. "This is not the first time Egypt launches poison gas attacks against tunnel workers. At least 40 tunnel workers have been poisoned by toxic gasses since the siege on Gaza began. A total of 145 have lost their lives in various events," Abu Zuhri pointed out.

Aaron Russo, a Film Director interviews the makers of the Bio Chip.

Special US envoy George Mitchell has visited the area, armed with a special letter from President Barack Obama to the Palestinian president reiterating what seems to have been a US-Israel understanding that the proximity talks will take place soon. The Palestinian side is keen this time not to waste time on talking for the sake of talking, or based on the idea of incremental negotiations. Palestinians are determined to tackle the issue of borders first and walk back from that to how to implement the establishment of the Palestinian state. In meantime the Israeli tourism ministry (in its most recent maps) has unilaterally annexed Palestine to Israel and has omitted the existence of many Palestinian communities. While the West Bank is not demarked nor mentioned as the West Bank, the general southern area is listed as Judea and in the north the area is listed as Samaria (both Biblical names). The Gaza strip, however, is demarked with the words “Azza (Gaza) strip.”

For most people, one time being killed by the United States is plenty. Even the most hardened insurgent can rarely claim to have been killed more than a couple of times before it takes on an air of permanence. But Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has them all beat with the apparent confirmation of his latest survival, his seventh overall. According to a senior member of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency Hakimullah, who was “confirmed” killed in January and then assumed to be gravely wounded, and who was “confirmed” the have died of his injuries in February, is alive and “basically ok.” Hakimullah has not been seen publicly since a late February video was released, though with the Pakistani military attacking the TTP in several agencies across the tribal areas and with so many threats against his life it is perhaps unsurprising that he is keeping a low profile. Hakimullah took power of the TTP in August after the US successfully assassinated his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, in an air strike. Baitullah’s death was initially thought to be a serious blow to the group but the aggressive and charismatic Hakimullah has made the group arguably far more dangerous, launching several major attacks and orchestrating the bombing of a CIA base in neighboring Afghanistan.

US Death Squads in Afghanistan - From the attack on a bridal shower in Gardez on February 12, 2010 that killed numerous civilians, including two pregnant women, to the growing list of executions of insurgents in the Kandahar area, Special Forces have become the US military version of death squads.

When Palestinians violently react to Israels criminal behavior they're murdered by Israel, when they peacefully react they're murdered by Israel but with much less coverage.

Records of Afghan detainee transfer orders showing whether Canadian military commanders took the risk of torture into account are buried in sea shipping containers and "may take years" to locate, the Military Police Complaints Commission was told Tuesday. The revelation by Maj. Denis Gagnon emerged when he was closely questioned by lawyer Paul Champ, who said the commission is on the verge of deciding whether it has to suspend public hearings, partly because of missing and delayed documents from the Defence Department. Gagnon said the documents are "all thrown together in a storage bin, a sea container" and an assessment of how long it would take to catalogue documents and identify the records requested by the commission may take years. The hearings are into a complaint by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association that Canadian military commanders ordered the transfer of detainees to Afghan custody despite a high risk of torture and that military police failed to investigate. Such transfers are illegal under international law.

The Obama administration is seeking to compel a writer to testify about his confidential sources for a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency, a rare step that was authorized by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The author, James Risen, who is a reporter for The New York Times, received a subpoena on Monday requiring him to provide documents and to testify May 4 before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., about his sources for a chapter of his book, “State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration.” The chapter largely focuses on problems with a covert C.I.A. effort to disrupt alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research. Mr. Risen referred questions to his lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg, a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel L.L.P., who said that Mr. Risen would not comply with the demand and would ask a judge to quash the subpoena.

The North Korean military has recently altered its wartime contingency plans against South Korea to concentrate on attacking the Seoul metropolitan region, a military source said yesterday. South Korean commanders will meet next month to discuss the change and their response to it. According to the high-ranking source, the North’s military recently decided to do away with the so-called “Five-to-Seven” plans dating from the 1980s to adopt a new plan in which it would occupy only a part of South Korea and start negotiating a cease-fire. “We believe the North made the change to better deal with the upgraded weapons systems of the U.S. and South Korean forces,” the source explained.