The United Nations rated Pakistan’s floods as the greatest humanitarian crisis that the UN has ever faced. It has already affected more people than the tsunami in Southeast Asia and the recent earthquake in Haiti. Although the current 1,600 death represents a fraction of the 610,000 people killed in the three previous events, some two million more people - 13.8 million - have been negatively impacted. The UN estimated that over $1 billion will be needed to help Pakistan recover once the rains stop. The World Food Program said that 4 million people will need food supplies for three months after the rains stop. But that is the crux of it, because the relentless rain is projected to continue for several days. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has admitted to the world that the Pakistani government does not have the resources to handle a disaster of this magnitude and pleaded for more international aid. AWIP: Floods affect 14mn in Pakistan.

Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah has presented evidence proving that Israel masterminded the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

At a press conference in Beirut on Monday night, the Lebanese resistance movement's secretary general presented video materials captured by Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as well as recorded confessions by Israeli fifth columnists substantiating that the February 14, 2005 assassination of Hariri in the capital was carried out on orders from Tel Aviv. The Lebanese network Al-Manar aired the speech and incorporated the evidence, showing intercepted footage of Hariri's house in the lead-up to the massive car bombing which killed him and claimed the lives of 22 other people. The network showed videos, taken by the drones, monitoring the route that Hariri used to take every day. The Lebanese Defense Ministry reports show Israeli warplanes and reconnaissance aircraft flew over the area where Hariri was assassinated on the day he was murdered, Nasrallah said. Al-Manar also aired film footage showing Israeli espionage agents acknowledging their roles in the assassination. LA Times: Hezbollah accuses Israel in Rafik Hariri assassination. Daily Star: Nasrallah unveils ‘Israeli footage’ of Hariri route. Naharnet: Nasrallah Unveils 'Israeli Drone Footage' of Hariri Murder Site. NowLebanon: Israel assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri because he played a major role in preventing sectarian strife in Lebanon.

The US Congress has decided to block some 100 million dollars in aid to Lebanon's military over the August 3 border clash between Israeli and Lebanese forces. Lebanese soldiers clashed with Israeli forces near the southern Lebanese village of Adissyeh last Tuesday when Israeli troops tried to cut down a tree on the Lebanese soil. The border breach prompted an exchange of fire which killed three Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist and also left a senior Israeli officer dead. Al-Manar TV: The Myth of the US Military Aid to Lebanon. [AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Recent Israeli Provocations]

London, UK: The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza today describes the statements of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a "pointless pantomime of political propaganda." In light of PM Netanyahu’s statement that "Israel is a liberal, democratic country governed by the rule of law, with independent courts, a bona fide parliament, and a free press," we wish to highlight a number of issues, including:

● Why the footage, cameras and electronic devices of the civilians onboard the humanitarian "Freedom Flotilla" were illegally taken by Israeli authorities and have yet to be returned/or were instantly wiped. All footage should be immediately released and private property returned.

● Why the Mavi Marmara was not preserved as a potential crime scene Under international law, as the Mavi Marmara was a Turkish flagged vessel, Turkey is responsible for conducting any investigation into any violence which took place on the boat.

● While he legitimately calls for the Third Geneva Convention rights of Gilad Shalit to be observed why does he continue to enact a policy violating the Fourth Geneva Convention rights of 1.5 million civilians in Gaza – which the International Red Cross described on the 14/06/10 as constituting "a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law".

PressTV: Israel's Flotilla probe a cover-up. Yahoo: Israel threatening to quit UN probe into flotilla. Al-Manar TV: Netanyahu Defends Mavi Marmara Massacre During Testimony.

Ynet News: Barak contradicts Netanyahu's testimony on flotilla. Defense minister testifies before committee probing deadly IDF raid on Gaza-bound flotilla, says seven-minister forum dealt with both military, media aspects of operation. 'I take full responsibility for the orders given,' he adds, says government did not discuss possibility of violent resistance onboard Marmara.

The Dong Feng 21D

Nothing projects US global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas. China may soon put an end to that.

US naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500km. The weapon, a version of which was displayed last year in a Chinese military parade, could revolutionize China's role in the Pacific balance of power, seriously weakening Washington's ability to intervene in any potential conflict over Taiwan or North Korea. It could also deny US ships safe access to international waters near China's 18,000km -long coastline. While a nuclear bomb could sink a carrier, assuming its user was willing to raise the stakes to atomic levels, the conventionally-armed Dong Feng 21D's uniqueness is in its ability to hit a powerfully defended moving target with pin-point precision. Airang: China Constructs New Missile Base in Guangdong Province.

In yet another example of why sanctions don't work, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) is booming. In fact, the TSE just hit a record high, and it remains one of the most undervalued markets on Earth. You know the deal...Iran has been a supporter of terrorism for the past forty years. The current president is a rabble-rouser who plays to his most conservative Islamic base. He denies the holocaust, and threatens to destroy Israel on a regular basis. He steals elections. His thugs in the militia beat and jail students who protested the sullied election. His judges sentence females accused of adultery to death by burying them up to the waist, and having their neighbors throw rocks at their heads. PressTV: Iran's gas export increases 50 percent.

The following important warning from former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern. We’ve already seen Israel stirring up trouble on its border with Lebanon this week. The United States could be drawn into yet another unwinnable war if Israel attacks Iran.

KABUL — A prisoner killed two US Marines in southern Afghanistan after escaping a prayer room and grabbing a rifle, NATO said Monday. The alliance said the gunman [Afghan] was later shot dead and that the incident on Saturday was under investigation.

"The prisoner escaped a room where he was observing prayer time, acquired a rifle and subsequently engaged Afghan and coalition forces. The Marines were killed while trying to subdue the prisoner," said NATO in a statement.

Another NATO soldier was killed by a bomb in the south on Monday. Eight foreign troops were killed over the weekend, two by the prisoner and six by bombs -- the Taliban's choice weapon in their southern heartlands of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where 30,000 international troops are deployed. The latest deaths bring the overall number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 426, compared to 520 for all of 2009, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website.

Danger Room's Spencer Ackerman is at Bagram Air Force Base today for the first time since 2008, and he sees the base expanding and hardening into something very permanent. The base is packed with planes of all stripes and the base's main road has become a "two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds." There are hangars going up, cranes everywhere, and cement is "being manufactured right inside Bagram's walls" by a Turkish contractor. Ackerman captures the change thusly:

I haven't been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn't think possible in late summer 2008.

And here's your population-centered counterinsurgency update:

Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram's outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn't have believed two years ago.

Ackerman's bottom line: "Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul."

Omar Khadr wounded and captured in
Afghanistan

[Al Jazeera] The "confessions" of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen charged with terrorism, can be used as evidence in his trial, even though they may have been obtained through torture, a US military judge has ruled. Lawyers for Khadr claimed statements to military interrogators were illegally obtained through torture and asked a US war crimes court to throw them out. That request was denied on Monday by a military judge at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

US forces captured Khadr in Afghanistan in July 2002, when he was just 15 years old. "Omar Khadr could potentially be the first child soldier to be prosecuted for war crimes in modern history," Al Jazeera's Monica Villamizar said, reporting from Guantanamo Bay. "Under international law, children captured in war should be treated as victims and not perpetrators." Khadr is accused of killing a US soldier after throwing a grenade at the end of a four-hour US bombardment of an al-Qaeda compound in the eastern Afghan city of Khost. The Canadian citizen, who is now 23, has refused a plea deal. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of charges that include conspiring to commit terrorism and murder.

Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force agents, aided by a uniformed Willits police officer, serving a search warrant at 64 Franklin Avenue on July 27, shot and killed a family pet, an 8-year-old half-pit bull mix named Tonka. When agents searched the home, they found nothing directly linking the residents to the arrest of Craig Anthony Gelber, the target of the search, according to MMCTF Commander Bob Nishiyama. According to resident Anna White, Tonka's owner, the police shot her pet while it was in a fenced area on her front porch. "We found the shell casing outside by the fence area. Tonka then ran into our house, got onto my bed and died." White described her bedroom following the search, claiming Tonka's body had been dumped from the bed onto the floor and items from her room dropped onto the body and into the dog's blood. "They destroyed our house and found nothing," says White.

Residents of US states along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico are angry at a government report suggesting that %75 of the oil leaked from the ruptured BP well is gone. The affected Americans in the Gulf coastal states maintain that the rosy report presented by the US government is going to keep BP's disastrous spill out of the limelight. "There is no way anyone can tell me that is it over with. I have proof. I know where it is at," shouted a Gulf resident angrily, holding up a contaminated water sample from the Gulf, Sky News reported on Monday. The government's point man overseeing BP's response to the massive oil spill, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, told CNN that there are still a lot of oil left in the sea water. "I think what we need to understand is there's a lot of oil that's been taken care of but there's a lot of oil that's still out there.

In April of 1968, the stamped date of the never-before-seen photograph above, J. D. Salinger would have been 49 years old. He was recently divorced, and three years into the seclusion that would span the last 45 years of his life. He has bags under his eyes and grooves in his face but, ever so faintly, he is smiling. The intimacy of his setting—the milky tangle of used blankets and sheets—is offset by the spare thrift of his Cornish, N.H., bedroom, with its humble furnishings: small wastebasket, austere dresser. Bare, blank walls. Pack of smokes. But the most telling detail is on the door, at the left edge: a flash-enhanced glint on the room’s steely lock. It’s a reminder of its tenant’s unflinching mantra: keep out.

But that lock didn’t just keep busybodies at bay. Reader, it guarded something else. Because in a small nook across that ascetic cell of a bedroom, Salinger kept a safe. A packed safe, a safe filled with piles and heaps of unpublished. Call it a coming attraction, because to know any more, you’ll have to wait until Shane Salerno is good and ready to tell you. Salerno, a Hollywood screen-writer (Shaft), has spent six years and millions of dollars researching the author’s mysterious world—though the details, such as the story behind this photo, he won’t divulge just yet. Like Franny Glass, who clung to her copy of The Way of a Pilgrim as a kind of dog-eared talisman, Salerno has a spiritual relationship with Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. He also has rules. “Do not read J. D. Salinger on a Kindle,” he says, with a snort of disgust. “Grab that broken paperback.”

It’s hard not to feel a little guilty peeping into the world Salinger tried so fervently to shield, but the motive seems pure: The Private War “will substantially rewrite the record of J. D. Salinger’s life, and correct many inaccurate stories that have been told for decades,” Salerno says. As Holden himself might say, there’s nothing phony about wanting to set the record straight.

Just before the start of the official summer holidays, the French government headed by President Nicolas Sarkozy made yet another significant move to the right. It linked the issue of domestic security with ongoing racist attacks against Roma and immigrants, thereby adopting the line followed by the extreme right-wing National Front (FN). Marine Le Pen, the FN’s vice-president, reveled in the fact that the head of state had confirmed the perspective held by her party for the last 30 years. During a speech in Grenoble on July 30, celebrating the appointment of the new superintendent of the Isère administrative district, Sarkozy set out the main tenets of the new course, which had been backed by the whole government two days before. According to this, all the camps of nomadic Roma are to be dismantled, penalties will be leveled against whole families rather than individuals, and criminalized French citizens with a migrant background will have their citizenship revoked. AWIP: France to dismantle illegal Gypsy camps, deport Roma to Romania and Bulgaria. + AWIP/Saman: The Plight of the Romani People.