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.

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.’

Also by Survival International:
Anti-Vedanta tribal leaders abducted
David v. Goliath: Indian tribe in ‘stunning’ victory over mining giant

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

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.