FLetter signed by Steny Hoyer to George Bush, June 29, 2007, demanding closing of Guantanamo:

Holding prisoners for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with a crime goes against our values, ideals and principles as a nation governed by the rule of law. Further, Guantanamo Bay has a become a liability in the broader global war on terror, as allegations of torture, the indefinite detention of innocent men, and international objections to the treatment of enemy combatants has hurt our credibility as the beacon for freedom and justice. Its continued operation also threatens the safety of U.S. citizens and military personnel detained abroad. . . . A liability of our own creation, the existence of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay is defeating our effort to ensure that the principles of freedom, justice and human rights are spread throughout the world.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, today:

Gitmo shut-down not a priority, top Dem says House Majority Leader. Steny Hoyer acknowledged Tuesday that closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison is not a top priority for congressional Democrats. In response to a question from a reporter about where shutting down Gitmo stands, Hoyer said, “I think that’s not an item, as you point out, of real current discussion. There’s some very big issues confronting us – dealing with growing the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan.” Hoyer added, “I think you’re not going to see it discussed very broadly in the near term.”

AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Palestinian Children Under Occupation

At least one Palestinian has been killed and eight others have been wounded in an Israeli attack in northern parts of the Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses say. It was not immediately clear why the Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians in the town of Beit Hanun near the Israeli border. Three of those injured are reported to be in critical condition with hospital officials saying that the death toll could further rise. A 10-year-old girl is among those injured. Most Palestinians in the area are farmers and they have to risk their lives to go to their farms near the Israeli border as their soldiers frequently open fire on them, accusing them of trying to approach the security fence. Mondoweiss: Israeli report on shootings of ‘4 civilians’ fails to state that they were three sisters, 3, 5, and 9, and their grandmother.

Tony Blair's evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry that toppling Saddam Hussein helped make Britain safe from terrorists was dramatically undermined by the former head of MI5 yesterday. Giving evidence to the same inquiry, Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed that there was such a surge of warnings of home-grown terrorist threats after the invasion of Iraq that MI5 asked for – and got – a 100 per cent increase in its budget. Baroness Manningham-Buller, who was director general of MI5 in 2002-07, told the Chilcot panel that MI5 started receiving a "substantially" higher volume of reports that young British Muslims being drawn to al-Qa'ida. She told the inquiry:

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam." [She added:] "Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before."

Her words are in stark contrast to the claim that Mr Blair made in front of the same inquiry on 29 January. AWIP/Chris Floyd: Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry".

Counterpunch: Blair Strikes Oil in Iraq. "In the 3 years since he stepped down as prime minister, Blair pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium, UI Energy Corporation. Despite his best efforts to keep his connection to UI secret, word is spreading..."

The Independent: Blair warned in 2000 Iraq war was illegal. An invasion of Iraq was discussed within the Government more than two years before military action was taken – with Foreign Office mandarins warning that an invasion would be illegal, that it would claim "considerable casualties" and could lead to the breakdown of Iraq. A policy of "regime overthrow" is proposed, but roundly condemned. In an eerily portentous assessment of the consequences of taking military action, it states:

"Such a policy would command no useful international support. An overt attempt to be successful would require a massive military effort, probably including a land invasion: this would risk considerable casualties and, possibly, extreme last-ditch acts of deterrence or defiance by Saddam."

Israel demolishing Palestinian villages in the West Bank while financing and encouraging Israeli illegal settlements Since 1967, Israel has prevented the growth of Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley by cutting off their water supply or declaring large areas as live fire zones. The IDF's Civil Administration destroyed a Palestinian village Monday morning that had earlier been cleared out when its water supply was cut off. The IDF demolished about 55 structures in the West Bank village of Farasiya, including tents, tin shacks, plastic and straw huts, clay ovens, sheep pens and bathrooms. These structures served the 120 farmers, hired workers and their families who lived in the Jordan Valley village. AWIP/WSWS: Israel land-grab escalates in East Jerusalem.

The landmark visit is considered as a show of US commitment to Seoul and a warning to the communist regime, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday. The United States and South Korea are to stage about 10 joint naval military exercises in coming months as a deterrent to North Korea, Seoul's Defense Ministry says. The first drill will start from July 25-28 off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, in the wake of the deadly sinking of Sputh Korean warship Cheonan in March that has been blamed on Pyongyang, Channelnewsasia announced Tuesday.

"Both sides will continue to conduct joint military exercises -- approximately 10 times -- in waters surrounding the peninsula for the next several months," a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman told AFP. The exercise starting Sunday involves about 20 ships including the 97,000-ton aircraft carrier USS George Washington and some 200 fixed-wing aircraft. North Korea has denounced the July 25-28 drill as "very dangerous sabre-rattling" aimed at igniting a nuclear war. BBC: US announces new sanctions against North Korea.

As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern, "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for -- and perhaps still does, it hinted -- Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers). A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter -- long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret -- revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983.

Starts off slow - but gets NASTY! ROV films oil leak coming from cracks in a ROCK on the sea floor. BP denies that oil or gas are leaking from cracks in the sea floor on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. This is just one of many videos that may prove otherwise. PressTV: BP oil spill may cost 100,000 US jobs.

The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show. Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now "bounced" to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories (created at the Guardian) that have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have fallen to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.

A court in Jerusalem has made international legal history by jailing Sabbar Kashur, a 30-year-old delivery man from East Jerusalem, for 18 months. He was convicted of "rape by deception" following a criminal trial that has drawn criticism from across Israel. The court heard accusations that Mr Kashur misled the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, by introducing himself with the traditionally Jewish name during a chance encounter on a street in central Jerusalem in 2008.

Al Jazeera Blogs: Is being Arab Israel’s criteria for rape? As Gideon Levy, an Israeli commentator, said after the ruling: "I would like to raise just one question with the judge. What if the guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman? Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not." If the definition of democracy is equal rights for all people then surely the selective application of the law against Arabs is just plain racism.

UNITED NATIONS -- The outgoing chief of a U.N. office charged with combating corruption at the United Nations has issued a stinging rebuke of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, accusing him of undermining her efforts and leading the global institution into an era of decline, according to a confidential end-of-assignment report. The memo by Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a Swedish auditor who stepped down Friday as undersecretary general of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, represents an extraordinary personal attack on Ban from a senior U.N. official. The memo also marks a challenge to Ban's studiously cultivated image as a champion of accountability. Shortly after taking office in 2007, Ban committed himself to restoring the United Nations' reputation, which had been sullied by revelations of corruption in the agency's oil-for-food program in Iraq. But Ahlenius says that, rather than being an advocate for accountability, Ban, along with his top advisers, has systematically sought to undercut the independence of her office, initially by trying to set up a competing investigations unit under his control and then by thwarting her efforts to hire her own staff. Al Jazeera: UN 'falling apart' under Ban.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said on the House floor Monday that Republicans are blocking a reauthorization of unemployment benefits in order to resurrect the America of the 1930s.

"There was no unemployment insurance back then," Grayson said, in one of the more colorful speeches on the issue. "There was no State benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had no jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather, in desperate straits, supporting a family of seven, was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell.

"That, my friends, is the America that the Republicans are trying to revive. The America of desperate straits, and for them cheap labor. The America where people have nothing, hope for nothing, and are desperate to live to the next day. That is what the Republicans are trying to resurrect by blocking unemployment insurance day after day, week after week, and now month after month."

More than 2.5 million people who've been out of work for longer than six months have stopped receiving federally-funded extended benefits since the end of May, when Congress failed to reauthorize the benefits. Republicans in the Senate, joined by Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, have filibustered the bill because they don't want its $33 billion cost added to the deficit (even though that is the usual way with federal extended benefits).

Kagan wins approval in a nearly party-line vote, with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina joining the majority Democrats. She is expected to gain full Senate confirmation in August. If she is confirmed by the Senate as expected early in August, the nine-member court will have four Democratic appointees for the first time since 1971. And for the first time ever, three of the justices will be women, and none will be a Protestant. A former Harvard Law dean and U.S. solicitor general, Kagan impressed most Democrats during last month's hearings with her solid grasp of the law, her calm manner and her sense of humor. Republicans were left frustrated. They noted that Kagan has never been a judge and spent most of her career in academia or in policy-making posts in Democratic administrations. The committee's seven Republicans tried without success in the last week to obtain a promise from Kagan that she would step aside when the Supreme Court considers a legal challenge to the healthcare overhaul law. During her hearings, Kagan said she would remove herself from cases only if she had worked on them during her time at the Justice Department.

Anthony Graber was arrested for posting a video of his traffic stop on YouTube. That Anthony Graber broke the law in early March is indisputable. He raced his Honda motorcycle down Interstate 95 in Maryland at 80 mph, popping a wheelie, roaring past cars and swerving across traffic lanes. But it wasn't his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore. In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent. Democracy Now: Maryland Man Could Face 16 Years in Jail for Videotaping Traffic Stop.

There's been lots of talk lately about body scanners — the new airport security tool that allows screeners to see through clothes. People are concerned about privacy, delayed flights, health effects. Now there's another concern. What about kids? Do they have to go through this, too? And what are parents' rights? A Baltimore family is raising the issue after their 12-year-old daughter was pulled out of line in Tampa and subjected to what they say was an embarrassing and unhealthy scan. The girl was traveling with an adult friend of the family, not her parents.

"Our daughter was scared and didn't understand what was happening," said Michelle Nemphos, the mother of the girl. She declined to give her daughter's name. "In essence they conducted a strip search on a 12-year-old girl without her parents present to advocate for her."

PARIS – China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest energy consumer, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. China immediately questioned the report, claiming its calculations were "unreliable."

The Paris-based agency said China's 2009 consumption of energy sources ranging from oil and coal to wind and solar power was equal to 2.265 billion tons of oil, compared to 2.169 billion tons used that year by the United States.

The shift is historic, coming years ahead of forecasts. In climate change talks, China has long pointed fingers at the energy consumption patterns of developed nations and is sure to feel uncomfortable with the mantle of consuming more energy than any other nation. China is also sensitive to complaints about its status as the world's biggest polluter and suggestions that its demand is pushing up energy prices on global markets.