The moment an angry crowd protesting against Ground Zero mosque turns on man in a skull cap... because they think he is a Muslim. Walking through the protesters minding his own business, this is the terrifying moment an innocent man finds himself at the target of a crowd demonstrating against the proposed building of a mosque near New York's Ground Zero. The powerfully-built man is called a 'coward' and verbally abused by some opponents to the construction - all because they think he is a Muslim. Remonstrating with his detractors that he does not practice Islam and that they 'don't know why I'm here', the man - identified as a carpenter called Kenny - is saved by the intervention of two men. ut that doesn't stop one construction worker in a hard-hat, seeming spoiling for a fight, from squaring up to him. After a series of jostles, the man is eventually asked to leave the site for his own safety and escorted away by police officers. Al Jazeera: New Yorkers rally over mosque plan -VIDEO.

[Editor's Comment:] Right-wing lunacy & mob hysteria against a proposed Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan: These people are fascists, and like most authoritarians, they're unable to think properly. They are incapable of understanding very much and don't know the true meaning of the words they're constantly bandying about ('hallowed', 'sacred', etc.). There's nothing particularly sacred about ground zero. This is not some special, hallowed ground. Generally, you don't look for anything particularly holy, hallowed or sacred anywhere in the material world. Either everything is holy or nothing is. But if something is, then everything else is so too. We are not the authors of Reality. We're utterly unable to make anything more/less holy/unholy than what it was to begin with. We would like to have this ability, but we don't. We cannot decide or detemine what is holy or whatever. We should be glad this is so because we would make a mess of it. In fact, we are making a mess of it.

You do however look for what is holy and sacred where you can reasonably expect to find it: in your brother & sister. Their hearts are the unified Altar where we all are supposed to lay our gift of appreciation and friendship. The only hallowed ground is the sacred space between two people who, in the briefest of moments, during an inexplicable suspension of time, understand the deep truth of this.

"To carry the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening."

However, these people demonstrating in Manhattan are very ignorant and intend to keep the 9/11 wound open in order to use it as a platform for authoritarian aggression. And yes, thermite was found at ground zero...

Bob Altemeyer: The Authoritarians

[Forward] The crowded streets around the World Trade Center site feel deeply ordinary: Commuters pour in and out of the subway stations; shoppers pour in and out of Century 21, the popular discount department store; tourists pour in and out of the Millennium Hilton. The Pit, glimpsed through gates and holes in the fence, looks like a construction site because it is a construction site. Which is odd because, as President Obama said when he voiced support for the right of a controversial Islamic cultural center to be built nearby, “Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”

“The question of where to define [as] sacred ground is still very current for events that occurred a hundred years ago or more,” said Kenneth Foote, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Disputes continue for generations at places like Gettysburg and Manassas, over boundaries of nearby development and the propriety of commerce near the sites. Blog posts published in recent days by Talking Points Memo and other websites offered an object lesson in the particular difficulty of drawing sacred boundaries in Lower Manhattan. The posts detail the sacrilege that can be found within two blocks of the Pit: a strip club called New York Dolls; an off-track betting parlor; a couple of fast-food joints, and at least one Irish pub — all as close to Ground Zero as the proposed site of the future Islamic cultural center.

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission. PAKISTAN: Minister tasked with saving US airbase at the cost of the displacement of thousands. The presence of Pakistan army personnel speaks to the fact that the breach of Jamali bypass was intentional and ordered from above. It has been reported earlier that the US Air Force has denied the relief agencies use of the Shahbaz airbase for the distribution of aid and assistance. Soldiers of the Pakistan army, a federal minister and the administration of Sindh province are blamed for the incident involving Shahbaz Airbase at Jacobabad district in Sindh province in which it has been reported that flood waters were diverted in order to save the airbase. The diversion of the floodwaters is blamed for inundating hundreds of houses and the displacement of 800,000 people. According to the media reports, the Federal Minister of Sports along with soldiers from the army and a contingent of officials from the Sindh provincial government breached the Jamali Bypass in Jafferabad district of Balochistan province during the night between August 13 and 14 to divert the water entering the airbase which has remained in US Air Force hands since the war on terror started in 2001.

A NATO raid in Afghanistan's northern Konduz province has left six civilians dead and 11 more injured, a Press TV correspondent reports. Provincial officials said the fatalities of the Monday raid include a woman and a child. They further added that US-led forces took four other civilians with themselves. The Western military alliance is already under fire over the rising civilian death toll in the war-torn Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 Afghan civilians were killed during the first half of 2010. AWIP: US-led forces kill Afghan woman.

Stephen Lendman: US kills civilians to intimidate people.
Uruknet: "Scores" of Afghan civilians killed in NATO raid.
AWIP: US/Nato probes reports raid killed 45 Afghan civilians.
AWIP: Afghan war logs [the 92.000] reveal U.S. death squad’s crimes.

KABUL -- Four U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in three incidents Sunday, raising the total casualties this month to 33 international troops, including 21 Americans, NATO officials said. Three of the soldiers were killed in insurgent attacks in the south and east and one was killed by a homemade bomb in the south, NATO officials said. The Taliban has stepped up its campaign of violence in those regions to counter a buildup of international forces. NATO offered no other details about the deaths, citing procedures for notifying family members. The number of U.S. troops killed this month is on a pace well below July's 66, which marked a monthly high in the nine-year war. That month had surpassed the previous high of 60 in June. With the arrival of 30,000 additional U.S. troops this summer for a fall push into Taliban-controlled areas, NATO officials have predicted an increase in violence and casualties. Taliban fighters have spread beyond their traditional strongholds in the south and east to the once-peaceful north.

Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blower website Wikileaks, has categorically denied Swedish sexual abuse charges launched against him. The country's prosecution authority has dropped an arrest warrant for a rape charge, but a separate molestation accusation is still under investigation. WikiLeaks has been criticised for leaking Afghan war documents.And despite warnings from the Pentagon, the website is preparing to release a fresh batch of classified documents. In an exlusive interview with Al Jazeera, Assange said that the accusations are part of a "smear campaign" against him.

Justin Raimondo: Dirty Tricks: Smear campaign against Julian Assange reaches new low.

“One of the two women behind the charges yesterday told a Swedish newspaper that the women who alleged rape had been a stranger who had also attended speeches by Mr. Assange. The woman had approached her and she had agreed to attend a police interview to lay the charges and make a complaint of her own.

“’I believed her information immediately because I had a similar experience myself,’ she said. ‘The other woman wanted to report a rape, I gave my statement as a support statement to her story and to support her.’”

Sisterly solidarity in the Pentagon’s cause: just one of the many ways Western feminism is useful in the selling of the Afghan war (that recent Time magazine cover is another example). Looks like the War Party is aiming its propaganda at a targeted demographic: it’s all so very professional.

Al Jazeera: Assange to fight molestation claim.
Xymphora: Four things about the attempted American frame-up of Julian Assange.

Following the inauguration of the Bushehr power plant, Washington has acknowledged that the Iranian nuclear facility carries no risk of proliferation. Iran began injecting fuel into the Bushehr power plant on Saturday with the attendance of UN inspectors.

"We recognize that the Bushehr reactor is designed to provide civilian nuclear power and do not view it as a proliferation risk," AFP quoted State Department spokesman Darby Holladay as saying on Saturday.

Holladay, however, repeated the claim made by White House spokesman Robert Gates that launching the Bushehr power plant "underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability if its intentions are purely peaceful," since Russia is providing fuel for the plant.

Pulse Media: Israel lobby pushes US to attack Iran.

Ezer Weizman once said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum [and the] next war will not be conventional." From the 1950s the US trained Israeli nuclear scientists and providing nuclear technology, including a small 'research' reactor in 1955 under the 'Atoms for Peace' program. The French built a uranium reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant in the Negev desert, called Dimona. The Israelis lied, stating it was "a manganese plant, or a textile factory". In return for uranium, Israel supplied South Africa with the technology and expertise that allowed the white supremacist regime to build the "apartheid bomb".

In 1979 US satellite photographs revealed the atmospheric test of a nuclear bomb in the Indian Ocean off South Africa, Israel's involvement was quickly whitewashed by a carefully selected scientific panel, kept in the dark about important details. Israeli sources have since revealed "there were actually three tests of miniaturised Israeli nuclear artillery shells".

Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dimona. A supporter of Palestinian rights, Vanunu believed it was his duty to warn the world about the danger Israel posed. In 1986, he smuggled out photographs showing that the plant was producing enough plutonium to make 10 to 12 bombs a year, and that at least 200 miniaturised bombs had been built.

One influential Republican senator has changed his mind on President Barack Obama's plan to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. After a recent trip to the region, Sen. Lindsey Graham returned to say that he believes some troops could be removed in July 2011.

"After this trip, I think we can transition next summer some areas of Afghanistan to Afghan control," Graham told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday. "I see progress I had not seen before. I see a scenario if things continue to develop the way they are that certain areas of Afghanistan can be transitioned to Afghan control and we could remove some troops safely without undermining the overall war mission," he said. "But at the end of the day the president has to let the Afghan people, the regional players know, the American people know that we're not going to leave until we're successful. But I do see a path forward next summer to transition in certain areas of Afghanistan but we will need substantial troops well past July of 2011 to get this right," continued Graham.

The new administrator for damage claims from Gulf oil spill victims said Sunday it was his idea, not BP's, to require that anyone who receives a final settlement from the $20 billion compensation fund give up the right to sue the oil giant. But Ken Feinberg told reporters that he has not yet decided whether the no-sue requirement will extend to other companies that may be responsible for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. He insisted that payouts from the claims facility he will run will be more generous than those from any court. Feinberg also ran the government compensation fund created after the 9/11 attacks, and there was a similar no-sue provision.

"It is not in your interest to tie up you and the courts in years of uncertain protracted litigation when there is an alternative that has been created," Feinberg said. He added, "I take the position, if I don't find you eligible, no court will find you eligible."

Kenny's Sideshow: Zionist Kenneth Feinberg, 9/11 Cover Up Agent, to Administer BP's $20 Billion Claim Fund

After destroying their homes and giving them $383, France is flying 700 Roma people to Romania and Bulgaria. The government has been dismantling Roma settlements, saying they were havens for illegal trafficking, child exploitation, begging and prostitution. But Romania's foreign minister says he's worried France's action is creating xenophobia. Al Jazeera's Estelle Youssouffa looks at the man leading the French drive for security and public order.

As a student artist, Emily Henochowicz has always been fascinated by the way the brain processes visual signals to form images of the physical world around us. That has been a theme of her work at the prestigious New York art college, Cooper Union, which she joined three years ago. In her first term she made a costume out of papier-mache for the inaugural freshman's parade that neatly expressed that fascination. It was meant to be a monster cyclops, but the way it came out it resembled a giant eyeball with her arms and legs sticking out of it. For more than a year she has used a photograph of that eyeball as the icon of her art blog, thirsty pixels. It is all too ironic, she laughs now. The irony is that in May Henochowicz became – in her own words – a cyclops. She lost her left eye as she was demonstrating against Israeli government policy in the Palestinian occupied territories. With her loss, she became yet another casualty of the ongoing Israeli occupation. But what makes Henochowicz's story singular was that her experiences were filtered through the lens, the eye, of an artist.