The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) have filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., demanding to know more about an alleged policy of assassinating Americans thought to be involved in terrorist activities. "The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so," Vince Warren, Executive Director of the CCR, said in a media advisory. "The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law." The groups have sued President Obama, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense. WaPo: Civil liberties groups challenge constitutionality of secret U.S. program to target terror suspects for killing.

Less than two weeks ago Americans were glued to their TVs for footage of the “last brigade” of US soldiers withdrawing from Iraq. With embedded MSNBC journalists and in-studio officials trumpeting a military victory, an America exultant in having finally “won” the war, it was extremely successful, and that 50,000 US troops are still there and hundreds of Iraqis have died since the announcement was really only a minor hiccup. It was so successful, in fact, that the Obama Administration has decided to do it again, which is one of the advantages fake endings of wars have over actual endings.

Antiwar: Pentagon is desperate to stay (The Dog Ate My Exit Timeline)

We are still under siege, darkness...And hunger...
Do you still remember us?!

To get water we have to walk so far...To fill a bottle or a jar...
Do you still remember us?!

We still have No food...Or medicine to be fed...Our kids...are dying every day...
in their beds...And many have just tears to shed...
Do you still remember us?!

Death! is everywhere...that sometimes we have No place, to make Our prayer...
Do you still remember us?!

We have nothing but pain...illness...And daily sadness...to Share...
Do you really still remember us?! -At least in your prayer?!

***

Gaza children implore you! They are dying due to the blockade!
There is 'growing humanitarian crisis,' happening in Gaza...
There is an EXTREME restricted access, to food, water, and medicine!!

● We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
● We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
● We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
● We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
● We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
● We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
● We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
● We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.
● The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.

Lebanese counter-intelligence continues to round up a number of alleged Mossad agents embedded inside the Lebanese political structure and telecommunications sector, according to reports reaching WMR from Beirut. Although Hezbollah provided Daniel Bellmare and his UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) office in Beirut with six DVDs showing Israeli surveillance drone footage of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s locations prior to his remote bombing assassination in February 2005, Bellemare wants Hezbollah to turn over more data on how Hezbollah was able to intercept Israel command and control communications with its drones over Beirut. WMR has learned that Bellemare’s team is riddled with Israeli agents and CIA agents who are also working on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Hezbollah has charged, and WMR has previously reported, that Mossad was behind the assassination of Hariri in order to rid Lebanon of Syrian forces and destabilize the country, thus weakening Hezbollah’s influence. The operation against Hariri, as WMR also previously reported, involved the CIA and operatives for the CIA proprietary firm Blackwater, now known as Xe Security. Israel is obviously concerned that some of its agents in Lebanon, of which there are many, may be double agents passing intelligence to Hezbollah.

Photo: AP/ScanPix

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile—As Chilean government rescuers prepare to start the months long task of digging out 33 miners trapped half a mile below ground, questions are emerging about whether the men will be paid during their ordeal.

The firm that ran the mine, Cia. Minera San Esteban Primera, has said it may have to declare bankruptcy, because of the shutdown of the mine and the flurry of government investigations and civil actions it is facing. The local mining union has asked the government to step in and meet the San José payroll starting in September. But on Monday, government officials said that, while they are keen to assist the miners, the government isn't legally permitted to pay their salaries.

The salary debate unfolded Monday as the government made final preparations to start using a massive 30-ton drill to burrow down to where the miners have been holed up since Aug. 5. The government said it could take three to four months to reach the miners and then hoist them out.

A labor ministry subsecretary, Bruno Baranda, replied that the government "cannot legally, within the regulations, take over labor responsibilities such as paying salary or pension benefits." He and other government officials said the government had planned to offer the miners training and assistance in finding other jobs. That doesn't answer the question of how the workers' families will survive until they are rescued.

Three days before the direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are officially launched in Washington on Thursday, a Palestinian official revealed on Monday that Israel began to expand two Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinian state-run news agency Wafa has quoted Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) official, who is in charge of the Jewish settlement file in northern West Bank, as saying that the expansion have begun in the settlements of Elon Moreh and Giv'at Gilad north of Nablus.

"We saw the Israeli authorities allowing five caravans into the settlement of Elon Moreh north of the city of Nablus," said Daghlas, adding that similar expansion has taken place into the settlement of Giv'at Gilad on the road between Nablus and Qalqilia.

France's deportation of Roma is nothing short of state-sponsored racism. When will the international community stand up for us? What era are we living in? The sad answer is that we are living – once again, it would seem – at a time when France is harassing and expelling its Romany population in the name of law and order. Last week, the French government began the roundup of more than 700 Romany immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, and ordered special flights chartered to send them back to their home countries. The deportations will begin on Thursday. Over the past month, the French government began dismantling Romany camps; at present, more than 50 camps all over France have been destroyed by the state. At the same time, France has announced two other policies directed at Roma, Travellers and other immigrants: the criminalisation of entire families rather than just individuals and the stripping of citizenship from immigrants with criminal convictions.

AWIP: Back to Vichy
Saman: The Plight of the Romani People
AWIP: First they came for the Muslims; then they came for the Roma...(VIDEO)
Michaela Stanková: A wall to keep out Roma and The cost of excluding the Roma minority
Pete Brook: The Roma People: Matt Lutton building upon a legacy of wandering photographers

The actual footage of Pastor Steven Anderson getting Tazed and breaten by DHS agents! We also examine interstate check points and watch how the pros from www.CheckpointUSA.org handle it.

As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent one month filming 29 tapes: "What I saw at certain moments and in certain places ... is very disturbing!" He never handed them over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since.

AWIP: U.S cameraman has proof 911 was a lie

Gareth Williams was a UK spy "who made regular trips to the US National Security Agency." On 23 August 2010, the police found his body in an MI6 flat near to MI6 HQ in London. According to "a source" Mr Williams’ body was found during a "welfare check" by police following a call from one of his colleagues at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in Cheltenham. According to Nicholas Anderson, a Former MI6 agent, "It took nearly two weeks for the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) employee assistance head to follow up on why he hadn't been at work."

Iran's oil output stood approximately at 3.8 mil-
lion bpd in 2009.

Iran has discovered 13 new oil and gas fields with in-place reserves of 14 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas within the past 12 months.

The Islamic Republic has also exported around 2,200,600 barrels of oil per day in the past year, according to a report published on the Oil Ministry's SHANA news agency.

The report added that Iran's revenue from oil exports during the past year reached $69.1 billion.

Earlier this year, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) director of exploration Mahmoud Mohaddes announced plans to explore new reserves of 500 million barrels of oil and 5 trillion cubic feet of gas per year during a five year plan. Mohaddes said that during the course of Iran's fourth five-year development plan (2005-2010), the country has discovered 19 new oil fields and eight new gas reserves.

Iran is OPEC's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia. In 2009, Iran's crude production stood approximately at 3.8 million barrels per day. The Persian Gulf country sits on the world's second-largest gas reserves after Russia.

Two private security contractors in Afghanistan were killed by coalition forces who mistook them for "insurgents", the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Saturday. The incident happened Friday on a highway in the central province of Wardak, ISAF said. A coalition patrol on the highway had just been fired at by insurgents in a location known as a hot spot for attacks, ISAF said. A vehicle then approached the coalition patrol at a high rate of speed with a man shooting out of the vehicle's windows.

"Perceiving the vehicle to be a threat, the gunner fired at the vehicle and killed two of the occupants," ISAF said.

PressTV: Seven Americans killed in Afghanistan.

The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America’s military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more "enemies," as Gen. McChrystal suggests—posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come. General Petraeus must be replaced, and the U.S. military’s policy of direct and mass assassination of Muslims ended.

Following Obama 'Victory' Address, Efforts to Sell End of War Ring Hollow. It has been a week and a half since the American public was told in no uncertain terms that the “last brigade” had left Iraq, and President Obama took time out of his vacation yesterday to declare his campaign pledge to end the war “a promise kept.” Pointing out that the war hasn’t really ended is of considerable interest to some Americans, notably the families of the 50,000 US troops still fighting it, but nowhere is the reality of the situation more sobering than on the streets of Baghdad where, after seven and a half years of American occupation, the rising violence and the prospect of several more years of occupation and fighting make this supposed “end” a tough line to swallow. Not that Iraqi media outlets aren’t desperately trying to go along with the “end” terminology, reporting that a sniper shot what would have been, in any other time, called a US combat soldier. But now he is a “US reconstruction team servicemen entrusted with protecting the US reconstruction,” and his being shot must come with two paragraphs about how the US has withdrawn all combat forces.

That the withdrawal was a complete fiction, however, is not a closely guarded secret, and in the run-up US officials readily admitted that their plan was to simply rename all their combat troops to something else so they could announce there weren’t any left. This has left the post-announcement reporting centered primarily around stating the obvious or towing the official line.

Chris Floyd: Back to the Heart of Darkness in America's Unended War in Iraq

Hundreds of infrastructure projects are incomplete or abandoned. A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets. As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency. That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.

AboveTopSecret: FEMA Photographer Kurt Sonnenfeld - Complete WTC Photos

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rushed on Sunday evening to distance himself and his government from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s death wish for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian people, after the flood of angry Palestinian reactions to the comments. “These words do not reflect the approach of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, nor the position of the government of Israel,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

AWIP: Palestinians should perish from this world: Ovadia Yosef.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A US-Israeli exploration group said on Sunday it will begin drilling for natural gas at a new site off Israel’s Mediterranean coast in October and that there was a small possibility of reaching oil under the gas. The main objective in drilling at the Leviathan prospect is to recover commercial amounts of natural gas.

Noble Energy, which leads the group and owns 40 percent of Leviathan, has said the well has gross unrisked mean resources of 16 trillion cubic feet of gas [453 billion cubic meters] and has a 50 percent geologic chance of success. The consortium also includes Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration, which hold 22.7 percent each, and Ratio Oil Exploration with another 15 percent. Delek Drilling and Avner are units of conglomerate Delek Group. The group said in a statement they will be drilling at a depth of 5,095 meters for natural gas. It said that a secondary target would be to drill for oil at depths of 5,800 to 7,200 meters. The upper layer has gross unrisked mean resources of 3 billion barrels of oil but the probability of geological success is 17 percent. The lower layer is estimated to have 1.2 billion barrels of oil but its probability of success is just eight percent. Israeli energy shares were up 6 to 9 percent.

AWIP: The Issue of Territorial Waters: Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields

National service? I hear the left-wing collectivists pushing this idea on the public on talk shows and written media. Yeah - we're all going to get together, bring shovels, pickaxes, hoes, hammers, saws - and with donated materials we will, together, rebuild our now-crumbling police state into a shiny new police state. But there is one thing President Soetoro and his NWO cronies ask you to leave at home - your brain. Serve your country as a citizen - not a slave. Hold your "representatives" accountable - there is strength in numbers.

A July 14, 2010 file photo shows protester Greg Johnson,
right, and counter protesters Ina Marshall and Tim Foster,
left, arguing during a demonstration against a planned
mosque and Islamic community center in front of the
Rutherford County Courthouse in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

One of the most under-reported political stories is the increasingly vehement, nationwide movement -- far from Ground Zero -- to oppose new mosques and Islamic community centers. These ugly campaigns are found across the country, in every region, and extend far beyond the warped extremists who are doing things such as sponsoring "Burn a Quran Day." And now, from CBS News last night, we have this:

Fire at Tenn. Mosque Building Site Ruled Arson. Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb. Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson....The chair of the center's planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff's department. "Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen," said Fathy. "They are so scared"...

Larry Chin: Masterminds, mosques and mass insanity

Marc Lynch: How Arabs view the anti-mosque movement

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

AWIP: Palin: ‘I hope that Dr. King would be so proud of us’ -Video.

The concert was one of the “Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts,” and featured the band Barlow Girl. According to the band’s web site, BarlowGirl is “tender-hearted, beautiful young women [they are three sisters] who aren’t afraid to take an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God.” Major General William E. Chambers, a self-described born again Christian, created the Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concert series at Fort Eustis when he was the commanding general there. The revelation that US soldiers were punished for refusing to attend a religious rock concert on their base is the latest evidence that Christian fundamentalism is supplanting the Constitution in the American military.

A series of leaks to the New York Times and the Washington Post over the past week has revealed that members of the Afghan government headed by President Hamid Karzai are paid agents and informers of the CIA. The revelations began on August 25 when senior Times’ correspondents Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti reported that a close aide of Karzai who is accused of corruption, Mohammed Zia Salehi, had been on the CIA payroll for “many years”. The information was provided by anonymous sources “in Kabul and Washington,” suggesting it came from high up within the US military or the Obama administration itself. Two days later, the Washington Post cited other US sources alleging that the “CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of the Karzai administration”. The Post stated:

“The CIA has continued the payments despite concerns that that it is backing corrupt officials and undermining efforts to wean Afghans’ dependence on secret sources of income and graft”.

The CIA revelations underscore the cynical nature of the American propaganda used to justify the war since 2001. Venal individuals who take payments from a foreign occupying power and plunder the country have been portrayed as the representatives of a democratic future for Afghanistan. The Afghans who have resisted the occupation and fought for the liberation of the country have been labelled terrorists, killed in their tens of thousands and hunted down by 150,000 foreign troops.

Floodwaters have inundated a large town in southern Pakistan, spreading further destruction in an area where hundreds of thousands of people who fled to higher ground are in dire need of food and water.

Almost all of Sujawal's 250,000 residents fled from the town before the water rushed in, but the damage to homes, clinics and schools added to the widespread devastation the floods have caused across Pakistan, said Hadi Baksh, a disaster management official in southern Sindh province.

Authorities in Sujawal were trying to limit the damage, but the water level has already risen to 5ft (1.5m) in the centre of town and up to 10ft (3m) in the surrounding villages, said Anwarul Haq, the top official in Sujawal.

The floodwaters also threatened Thatta, one of the major cities in southern Sindh and the base of operations for local authorities trying to cope with a disaster that has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and international partners who have stepped in to help.

The floods began in the mountainous North West about a month ago with the onset of monsoon rains and have moved slowly down the country toward the coast in the south, inundating vast swaths of prime agricultural land and damaging or destroying more than a million homes.

"A Friday Dose Of Father Coughlin - August 27, 1939". Coughlin is, of course, a 'monster', because he believed usury was evil and because he was against American involvement in the Second World War (and because he was an 'anti-Semite'). Coughlin believed:

1. Unions should be strengthened.
2. Child labor should be stopped.
3. The working man should have a living wage.
4. Wealth should be redistributed through increased taxation of the wealthy.
5. The Federal Reserve should be nationalized to end the Depression by preventing the cash squeeze imposed by the banksters (I wonder what he'd think of the cash squeeze the banksters have the United States under today?).
6. New Deal policies were correct (but he later turned against Roosevelt believing that Roosevelt had been captured by the banksters).
7. Money wasted on wars should be distributed to the poor.

In summary, an utter monster. It is hilarious that 'progessives' in America are trying to make some kind of point by airing radio broadcasts from the 1930s of a guy who was so far to the left to be unrecognizable to today's 'progressives'.

JERUSALEM: Just ahead of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestine, an influential Israeli spiritual leader has denounced the move, dubbing the Palestinians and their leader "an evil and bitter enemies of Israel"who should "perish from this world."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the upcoming launch of peace talks an opportunity to secure endurable peace, lasting generations. But, Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the religious Shas party in the government, denounced the talks, scheduled to kickstart on September 2, and said,

"Abu Mazen (nom de guerre for Abbas) and all these evil people should perish from this world," "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," Rabbi Ovadia was quoted as saying during his weekly sermon at a synagogue near his Jerusalem home.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu today said he is optimistic that a that a deal will be reached during the talks.

PressTV: Rabbi slammed for promoting 'genocide'.

Sound too conspiratorial to be true? Like the cover-up ops of spy novels? Well, it's reality. And it is possibly the most bizarre, inhumane and abusive way that the White House is expanding its power over the American people. It's not an extremist belief or theory of the far right. It's a fact that has been confirmed by The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC and even documented by the far-left online magazine Salon.com. And it's the gravest nightmare of U.S. citizens and abandonment of our Constitution to date: a presidential assassination program in which U.S. citizens are in the literal scopes of the executive branch based upon nothing more than allegations of terrorism involvement as the branch defines it.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Nazification of the United States

KABUL, Afghanistan — Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan's embattled southern and eastern regions, NATO said Sunday. Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified. The latest deaths bring to 42 the number of American forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after July's high of 66. A total of 62 international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.

Fighting is intensifying with the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to bring the total number of international forces in Afghanistan to 120,000 — 100,000 of them American. Most of those new troops have been assigned to the southern insurgent strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces where major battles are fought almost daily as part of a gathering drive to push out the Taliban.

This 30-second ad will appear on TV screens all over New York City. Please go to BuildingWhat.org to contribute. Every $750 raised will allow 10,000 more New Yorkers to see the collapse of Building 7 for the first time.

A federal cybersecurity bill that critics say creates a presidential "kill switch" for the Internet could be added on to a defense spending bill and passed without much debate, technology news sources report. Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), one of the sponsors of the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, told GovInfoSecurity.com that the Senate is considering attaching the bill as a rider to a defense authorization bill likely to pass through Congress before the mid-term elections. "It's hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own," Carper said.

Backstage at the Restoring Honor event in Washington, Sarah Palin talks to reporters about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I hope that Dr. King would be so proud of us, as his niece Dr. Alveda King is very proud as a participant in this rally,” Palin says. “This is sacred ground where we feel his spirit and can appreciate all of his efforts. He who so believed in equality and may we live up to his challenge.”

Danny Schechter: God To Beck,”Do Not Use My Name In Vain”.
NYT: At Lincoln Memorial, a Call for Theocracy

PressTV: Dream deferrers converge on DC. A huge rally of US conservatives in Washington has drawn criticism from progressive groups as it has coincided with the anniversary of a civil rights event. At the "Restoring Honor" rally, about 100,000 conservatives and advocates of the Tea Party movement gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday to, as the organizers of the event said, honor US principles. The event was led by right-wing icons such as Fox News conservative talk show host Glenn Beck and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, AFP reported. But African-Americans and civil rights groups have criticized the organizers' choice of time for holding the rally since it coincides with the 47th anniversary of civil rights legend Martin Luther King Jr.'s historical speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.

Two vessels carrying 46 international human rights activists have reached the Gaza Strip, despite Israel's strict 14-month siege of the Palestinian territory. The end of the mission to symbolically break the siege came after Israel backed down from an earlier warning to the 'Free Gaza' protest group not to breach the blockade. Al Jazeera's Ashraf Amritti in Gaza said:

"The arrival of these two boats is a very symbolic gesture for the Palestinian cause, to end the siege, end the occupation. In fact, those phrases are written across the peace boats which carry flags from more than 70 nationalities."

The boats set sail on Friday on a 370km voyage from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus carrying activists from 17 countries, including Israel, with the aim of drawing attention to Israel's blockade of Gaza and its affect on the people there. The boats sailed through choppy waters into Gaza City's main port on Saturday, where they were greeted by thousands of people waving Palestinian flags, many of them sailing around the harbour in boats.

The senate blocks investigation of BP. The House voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power. The Senate blocked it. No subpoena powers. No real investigation.

Here is an important matter that I have been sitting on for days and that people who care about American support for Palestinian oppression need to be aware of: the extent to which Firedoglake, a leading progressive site, suppresses criticism of Israel. The battle demonstrates that even inside the left, the Israel lobby is a strong force. Indeed, the founder of the site, movie producer Jane Hamsher, has dismissed concern for Palestinians as a "pet issue." As I have said often, our country cannot make progress on this critical policy issue until people who care about Palestinian freedom find one another and make a political combination to take on the Israel lobby. And one way we will find one another is by taking on the corruption inside the left when it comes to human rights in Palestine.

The latest evidence of FDL's entrenchment is an exchange yesterday at Firedoglake's community site, The Seminal. An FDL author whom I follow-- Kathleen Galt, who writes under the name Leen and for whom Palestine is front and center-- did a post called "Change?" saying that Israel/Palestine continues to be off limits for the liberal mainstream media.

Electric Blues: Jane Hamsher is still a lying propagandist.

Today, a personal story of a national tragedy. Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans building contractor, stayed in the city while his wife and children left to Baton Rouge. He paddled the flooded streets in his canoe and helped rescue many of his stranded neighbors. Days later, armed police and National Guardsmen arrested him and accused him of being a terrorist. He was held for nearly a month, most of which he was not allowed to call his wife, Kathy. Today, in a rare broadcast interview, Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun join us to tell their story, along with the man who chronicles it in the book Zeitoun, Dave Eggers. [includes rush transcript]

I am deeply confused by the claim in the article The Deaths that Chilcot Forgot and published by the Morning Star, that according to Iraq Body Count only 106,000 violent deaths have occurred within Iraq since 2003, a figure that is contrary to everybody who actually works inside of Iraq, when even according to the Iraqi Government themselves, there are now, at minimum, over three million orphans within Iraq.

Couple that with the fact that over one million widows have been created since 2003 and in 2006/2007 alone, at the height of the sectarian tensions, there were an estimated 3.000 deaths "reported" per month and these figures do not even include the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi deaths caused by the UN imposed sanctions .

Majority of the hospitals have also been unable to keep an accurate record of Iraqi deaths, due to shortages and with civilians also being fearful of collecting the deceased from mortuaries because of the various death squads, the reality is that Iraqi deaths caused by the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is likely to exceed even the one million number, that is universally recognised by all consistent organisations and international bodies.

As Iraq Body Count only include the deaths which have been "documented" by the Western media , the denialism that now exists surrounds the fact that many undocumented deaths do include those who have died due to a lack of medicines, trauma related suicides, shrapnel and combat induced injuries, along with birth defects and still births, caused by displacement and the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Shortly after Australia banned flu vaccines in children due to an alarming increase in vomiting, fevers and seizures caused by the vaccines (http://www.naturalnews.com/029586_A...), Finland has now suspended H1N1 vaccines due to increased reports of narcolepsy in children and teens. Narcolepsy is a nervous system disorder characterized by extreme fatigue and daytime sleepiness. It indicates a serious malfunction of the brain and nervous system.

Finland is now reporting that narcolepsy is appearing in children immediately following vaccination with H1N1 vaccines. So far, six children are confirmed of suffering the neurological side effect and nine more are in the process of being confirmed, reports The Epoch Times (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/con...).

Israel planning to attack Hezbollah arms depots in Syria. Israel cannot exist without attacking someone. War is in their blood. And the U.S. should be held responsible for this disease. After all, if it were not for the U.S. supplying Israel with over $3 billion a year in the most sophisticated weapons Israel would not be the monster it is today. Israel is not satisfied until they eliminate every one of its Arab neighbors, falsely portraying themselves as the victims while promoting this lunatic idea that the Arabs intend to “wipe Israel off the map.” For your information, there hasn’t been anything even resembling Israel being wiped off the map, while we have seen in just the last few years, all of Gaza nearly wiped off the map and the same thing true with Southern Lebanon. Now if Syria or Hezbollah made a pre-emptive attack on Israel right now, especially with this latest intelligence on Israel’s military buildup on Syria’s border, who do you think would be blamed for the attack? Of course, Syria and Hezbollah would be blamed. Israel would be given the green light to retaliate and the U.S. would support Israel all the way.

Unusual Evacuations & Power-Downs in the WTC 911 Demolition: Take a close look at the manner in which WTC 7 collapses straight down. For the building to collapse in this fashion, all of the load bearing supports would have had to fail at exactly the same time. The claim that the collapse was the result of a fire requires the fire be equally distributed throughout the entire floor of the building, providing equal heat for an equal amount of time, so that all the load bearings members would fail at the exact same moment. Do you find this plausible?

Power Downs, Evacuations, Strange Events in Weeks Before 9/11

Barack Obama plans to visit Jerusalem and Ramallah in the coming year to press Israel and the Palestinians to make painful concessions in order to clinch a historic Middle East peace agreement in 2011. The president, who set Middle East peace as one of his top foreign policy goals, will oversee the relaunch of direct peace talks between the sides next week in Washington. In order to achieve the ambitious target date set for a comprehensive peace agreement within a year, leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the president plans to take a hands-on approach. He will make his first visit as president to Israel and the West Bank to shore up support for the deal.

German intellectuals on Saturday called for an end to US and Israeli military threats to Iran. They criticized the United States for orchestrating UN sanctions on Iran over nuclear program. More than 40 prominent German personalities, among them politicians, lawyers, artists, publishers and journalists, urged the UN Security Council in a petition to deal with ongoing US and Israel threats against Iran, saying it was a 'clear violation of the UN Charter.' The intellectuals accused the US of wanting nothing less than Iran's total surrender on the issue which they said was simply unacceptable. The row over Iran's nuclear program has become a matter of 'national dignity', the statement said. The group reaffirmed the need for 'serious and credible negotiations' based on 'the fact' that Tehran was not even interested in having a military nuclear program. The peace activists stressed that Iran could not 'be forced' to give up part of its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), alluding to Tehran's right to have uranium enrichment.

Police in Afghanistan have confirmed that the US-led warplanes are to blame for the killing of six Afghan children in the country's volatile east. Police said on Friday that the children were collecting scrap metal in the mountain of eastern Kunar Province when a US-led plane dropped bombs on the area on Thursday.

"In the bombardment six children, aged six to 12, were killed. Another child was injured," AFP quoted a regional police commander as saying.

NATO confirmed in a statement that the US-led military alliance has carried out an airstrike in the mentioned area. The US-led attacks have left several Afghan civilians dead across the country over the past few days.

In a recent meeting with US Congressmen, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that the United States was not making progress in the war because of the growing civilian casualties. The issue of civilian casualties has long been a source of friction between Kabul and Washington. The UN has put the number of civilian casualties at nearly 1,300 so far this year. It blames a quarter of the deaths on foreign troops.

Antiwar: Bombing in Kunar Province Killed Children Collecting Scrap Metal. In the wake of an a revenge attack on an apparent Taliban attack on a police station in the Kunar Province, NATO warplanes bombed a group of small children between the ages of 6-12, killing six of them and wounding one other. The children were collecting scrap metal on a nearby mountain. There were apparently no Taliban at the site of the attack, according to local police. NATO said it was “aware” of the reports and is investigating.

Three weeks ago the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) published a notice, as it is legally required to do, announcing that Israel has ordered massive quantities of various fuels suitable for military use, and in the case of the order for JP-8 jet fuel, suitable only for military use. The massive order is valued at some $2 billion and, as well as the 284 million gallons (1.075 billion litres) of JP-8 jet fuel, the order also includes 60 million gallons (227 million litres) of unleaded gasoline and 100 million gallons (378 million litres) of diesel fuel.

The Israeli government has issued a statement warning Palestinians of the consequences of their efforts to extend a permanent appeal to the international community about Israel's occupation. Issued by the Foreign Ministry, the document warns against Palestinian efforts to draw the attention of various UN agencies to Israel's practices and human rights violations in the occupied territories and inside Israel itself. According to the Ministry's statement, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is also preparing to submit an appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, asking for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and detention camps to be declared "prisoners of war". In a telling link to the current settlement "freeze", due to end next month, the document drew attention to the Palestinians' threat of what the Foreign Ministry calls "civil disobedience" in response to the expected resumption of settlement construction.

An article in Hebrew-language Yediot Wednesday reported the Palestinian Authority-led boycott of settlement-produced goods is having an economic effect on settlement industry, according to a translation by Israeli news blog Coteret. Officials and business owners from the Ariel settlement attested to the effects of both the Palestinian-led boycott of settlement goods as well as the impact from international solidarity boycotts like the divestment announced in Norway Monday.

Ted Clement-Evans introduces a detailed and forensic-like analysis of the transcript of the BBC Panorama programme “Death on the Med”, broadcast on 16 August 2010, which reveals chronic bias and lack of impartiality on the part of the BBC. An extraordinary document has been sent to the BBC – a carefully detailed and forensic-like analysis of the transcript of the Panorama programme “Death on the Med”, broadcast on 16 August 2010. Below is the transcript of this programme, together with the resulting dissection and complaint of bias and lack of impartiality which is now in the hands of the BBC.

Barrie Zwicker was the first journalist in the world to deeply question, on national television, the official story of 9/11. It was a great honor in 2003 for snowshoefilms to meet Zwicker in Toronto. We knew his courageous series of programs questioning the official story had cost him his career in journalism. Zwicker spent no time lamenting. He was organizing, with colleagues, a 9/11 truth movement, determined to expose the big lie: the false-flag inside job terrorist attack would be and was being used as justification for the 'war on terrorism', the war on Islam, the destruction of Iraq. If the 9/11 official story was so preposterous, how come it wasn't easily seen through? Zwicker, a professional media analyst, poses and answers that question in his book. He explains why the corporate media wasn't going to look at it. Another puzzler: Chomsky and most of the left academics and liberal media outlets accept the official story.

Zwicker to 9/11 truthers #4 snowshoefilms
AWIP/WRH: Shaped Charges and the World Trade Center Collapses.

Everyday it seems we get more and more proof that oil and dispersant are still poisoning the Gulf of Mexico. Project Gulf Impact recently took their second boat trip in the last week. The first trip brought us photos of freshly sprayed dispersant, totally destroying the myth that this disaster is reaching its end. Large oil and dispersant plumes still linger, continually poisoning and destroying our precious oceans. Internal BP documents show that there were not one but TWO wells, raising the possibility that the ROV cameras may have never been placed near the real leak.