The international conference on Afghanistan has opened in Kabul amid tight security with the country's security and development at the top of the agenda. The meeting, which was inaugurated Tuesday by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is the first-ever international conference on Afghanistan held inside the country. The conference seeks additional support for rebuilding from the international community. Delegates from more than 70 countries and several international bodies, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki- moon, are attending the one-day conference. The conference is marking a new phase into deepening and broadening of our international partnership," the corrupt & unelected Karzai said in his inaugural statement. PressTV: Iran outlines solutions to Afghan crisis.

Gulf Coast fishermen and others with lost income claims against BP are outraged by a recent announcement that the $20 billion government-administered claim fund will subtract money they earn by working on the cleanup effort from any future damage claims against BP. This move, according to lawyers in Louisiana working on behalf of Louisiana fishermen and others affected by the BP oil disaster, contradicts an earlier BP statement in which the company promised it would do no such thing. Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed by President Obama as the independent administrator of the Gulf Claims Facility for the $20 billion BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster compensation fund, said yesterday that the wages earned by people working on BP's cleanup will be deducted from their claims against the company. AWIP/WSWS: “Claims czar” Kenneth Feinberg to fishermen: “Don’t blame the spill—life is unfair!”

Controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders has said he is forming an international "freedom alliance" to amplify his anti-Muslim message across the West. Mr Wilders will launch the movement later this year in five countries: the United States, Canada, France, Germany and Britain. The aim of the alliance is to end immigration of people from Muslim nations. "The message: 'Stop Islam, defend freedom', is a message that's not only important for the Netherlands but for the whole free Western world," Mr Wilders told the Dutch parliament. The far-right politician identified the five nations as "ripe" for his message as they already have a large number of Muslim immigrants and face a threat from Islamic terrorists.

Wilders and Israel: Wilders lived in Israel for two years during his youth and has visited the country 40 times in the last 25 years. Wilders stated about Israel:

"I have visited many interesting countries in the Middle East – from Syria to Egypt, from Tunisia to Turkey, from Cyprus to Iran – but nowhere did I have the special feeling of solidarity that I always get when I land at Ben Gurion International Airport." Wilders told an audience during the report that "We [in the West] are all Israel". He has also said "Israel is the West's first line of defence" against what he perceives to be a threat posed by Islam. [Wikipedia]

Dutch public TV channel Nederland 2's daily news programme Netwerk reported that numerous American supporters of Israel financially supported Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) and openly approved of his message towards Islam and Islamic terrorism. [Wikipedia]

In 1991 Geert Wilders allegedly told the following to M.B. Kwint-de Roos, the lady sitting next to him at a traditional Christmas dinner:

He was in a tipsy told [me] that he was recruited by Israeli intelligence, in Israel and received a harsh education in that context even tortured and that his career not [was handled] by himself but by others. The separation from his first wife and [the marriage with] his current [one] [was arranged] without his intervention. [misdaadjournalist]

She later added in a formal statement that Wilders also has an Israeli passport.

BRUSSELS, (PIC)-- The European campaign to end the Siege on Gaza announced Monday that Freedom Flotilla 2 will be delayed until late September or early October due to expansion in participation from European countries. The campaign noted that the fleet will have extensive media coverage at an unprecedented level, given the number of vessels and the 9,000 and counting international activists from around the world who have requested to participate in the mission. More than thirty-five media organizations have requested to participate in the Freedom Flotilla 2, the Brussels-headquartered campaign said, asserting that it intends to have the largest possible number of media on board to detect any new follies Israel may commit against international peace activists.

An Israeli female soldier admitted in a TV show entitled "soldiers behind the scenes" that she helped once her comrades to kill a Palestinian child in cold blood, but she did not disclose when and where the crime took place. "I was monitoring through the camera at the command center the movements of Palestinian children throwing stones at the army and directing soldiers to move towards the kids, and under my guidance through the walkie-talkie, they killed a Palestinian kid," the soldier said. She added that she, afterwards, received congratulations from the soldiers on the killing of the child and claimed she was shocked by this news and felt her directions were the direct cause of the death of this innocent child. She also confessed that the slain child did not constitute any threat to the heavily-armed soldiers.

Reliable sources from the horrifying Al Kadhimya prison in Baghdad ascertained today that the eye doctor Hiba al-Shamaree [1] who was abducted and imprisoned by the US occupiers' imposed Maliki puppet government, is in danger of death. The same reliable sources indicated that Hiba al-Shamaree , who was imprisoned in the horrifying Kadhimya prison has been transferred to an unknown hospital for food poisoning. It is well known that the US imposed Maliki government, forbids any visits to the detainees in the US' style democratic horrifying jails.

Back in 1987, Margaret Thatcher famously declared,

“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it… They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

Cameron is Thatcher’s heir, but he cannot display similar candour or malice, given the bitter experience of millions of people with the results of Thatcher’s slash-and-burn strategy. Instead, he cynically portrays cuts as opening “opportunities” for charities and local communities and privatization as a means of facilitating “greater local democracy.”

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

BP may be able to hold back the flow from its blown out Macondo well until next month, sparing the Gulf of Mexico any more oil as engineers prepare to kill the source for good. Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said that a new cap fitted on the well's broken riser pipe last week will be kept closed indefinitely, blocking further oil from leaking into the water, while scientists continue a "well integrity test" to check for leaks below the sea bed.

Warlords set to siphon off Afghan aid millions - A LEADING charity has warned plans to boost aid in Afghanistan are "fraught with danger" and says the British government risks repeating mistakes of the past when cash intended for relief and reconstruction ended up in the pockets of corrupt warlords.

Hundreds of Israelis managed to overcome years of bureaucratic battles in only two and a half months – without ever leaving the house. The viral activists used blogs, emails and social networks in order to pressure authorities to connect a Palestinian village to running water. "We wracked our brains over how to reach people beyond the bureaucracy. We thought about the typical Israeli and how to appeal to him, and then decided to open a blog and act through the internet." Ehud Uziel from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel told Ynet. The group, in cooperation with Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights Foundation, launched a blog entitled 'One action a day', with the aim of getting the Palestinian village of al-Tawana, located on Israeli territory south of Mount Hebron, water.