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.