Afghan men prepare to move the body of a man killed by
US soldiers [who] said [he] fired on them near the village
of Samir Kalacheh in Arghandab valley north of Kandahar
July 28, 2010.

American soldiers murdered Afghan civilians for sport and kept finger bones, leg bones, a tooth and a skull as grisly trophies, according to documents released by the Pentagon on Wednesday. The case is the worst such atrocity yet revealed in Afghanistan. It underscores that just as in Iraq, the US military intervention is a brutal colonial war in which the entire population of the country is a target.

The official charge sheets released by the US Army greatly expand the case initially brought against five soldiers charged in June with premeditated murder and beating a fellow soldier who was threatening to inform on them. A total of 12 soldiers now face 76 charges, with multiple counts of drug abuse, mutilating corpses, filing false reports, lying to military investigators and acts of violence against fellow soldiers. (See “The twelve soldiers charged in atrocity and cover-up”) All 12 soldiers are from the same company of the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington. The brigade recently returned from a year-long deployment near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Six of the soldiers face charges of keeping body parts from Afghan corpses, while three are charged with taking or possessing photographs in which US soldiers posed with the bodies of their victims. One is charged with stabbing a corpse.

AWIP: US soldiers killed Afghans as sport.
The Olympian: Grisly details in charges against soldiers
PressTV: GIs collecting 'body parts' stir up anger.

Fury built across the Muslim world against a US pastor's threats to immolate the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. In a turbulent start to the festival of Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims worldwide mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, leaders of countries including Afghanistan and Indonesia issued dire warnings against the provocative act. Radical Florida evangelist Terry Jones issued a heavily conditioned offer to call off his event, which he had planned for Saturday's ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in protest against the "evil of Islam".

"We have heard that in the US, a pastor has decided to insult Korans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an Eid message. "By burning the Koran they cannot harm it. The Koran is in the hearts and minds of one-and-a-half billion people. (But) insulting the Koran is an insult to nations."

PressTV: US-led troops shoot Afghan protesters
BBC: US Koran-burning protests sweep Afghanistan.
Sky News: US Pastor 'Will Not Burn Koran' Amid Uproar
Der Spiegel: Terry Jones Accused of 'Spiritual Abuse' at Cologne Church
CNN: Florida pastor says he's 'rethinking' canceled Quran burning.
The Guardian: Qur'an burning: Pastor's threat escalates into international crisis.
Digital Journal: Koran-burning pastor was kicked out of German church.
Straits Times: Quran burning 'will ignite' the feelings of Muslims throughout the world.

News junkies who watch a lot of television broadcasts could not help but notice with puzzlement that as the cosmic catastrophe unfolded in Pakistan, it was nearly invisible on American networks. I did a LexisNexis search for the terms “Pakistan” and “flood” in broadcast transcripts (covering mostly American networks) from July 31st to September 4th, and it returned only about 1,100 hits. A search for the name of troubled actress Lindsay Lohan returned 653 search results in the same period and one for “Iraq,” more than 3,000 hits (the most the search engine will count). A search for “mosque" and "New York” yielded 1,300 hits. Put another way, the American media, whipped into an artificial frenzy by anti-Muslim bigots like New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and GOP hatemonger Newt Gingrich, were far more interested in the possible construction of a Muslim-owned interfaith community center two long blocks from the old World Trade Center site than in the sight of millions of hapless Pakistani flood victims.

More than 230,000 elderly people in Japan who are listed as being aged 100 or over are unaccounted for, officials said following a nationwide inquiry. An audit of family registries was launched last month after the remains of the man thought to be Tokyo's oldest were found at his family home. Relatives are accused of fraudulently receiving his pension for decades. Officials have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least 150 years old if still alive. The Justice Ministry said some of those unaccounted for may have died as long ago as World War II, possibly during the post-war turmoil. Others may have emigrated without reporting their status to local authorities, or relatives simply did not report the deaths.

Mizuho Aoki: GROWING OLD ALONE: Cleanup after unnoticed death now a growing industry in Japan.

John T. Williams got killed in Seattle Washington.
John T Williams Vigil Seattle S'Klallams (VIDEO)
Seattle Police Want To Talk With Anyone Who Witnessed Execution Of John T Williams (VIDEO)

Peace Talks Already Failed. A picture is not always worth a thousand words. The recently released photographs of Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Washington during their first direct talks in many months certainly don’t say anything new. It was the status quo at its best, a mere procession of regional and US leaders before hungry cameramen. The leaders promised "not to spare any effort" and praised the undeniable altruism embedded in the very concept of "peace". Israeli Prime Minister repeated the martyr-like emphasis of past Israeli leaders regarding the "painful" compromises and sacrifices required to defeat the many obstacles standing before them. Mahmoud Abbas – with his expired presidency over a corrupt Palestinian Authority - smiled, shook hands and spoke unconvincingly about his hopes and expectations. Jordanian and Egyptian leaders also attended. Their presence was purely an endeavor to mark a difference between this event and the last failed attempt at reaching a peace agreement. When late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s Ehud Barak were herded into Camp David under the auspices of then President Bill Clinton, Arafat was left to fend for himself without any Arab backing. This left Barak, fully backed by the US, with all the cards. The process was a mockery then, as it is now.

Peace talks started on September 2nd. Following the resumption of negotiations, Israel refrained from attacking Gaza for just 2 days. Then it ordered the bombing of 2 Rafah tunnels, killed 2 workers, and left 2 severely injured. ISM activists filed this report. “Out of the blue, the tunnel was bombed, there was an enormous crash and I fell unconscious, I didn’t feel anything. When I woke up, I found myself at the tunnel entrance, screaming for help. There was fire all over the place, fire over me.” This was 22 year old college student Ali Al-Khodary describing the horror of Israel’s bomb attack on Gazan tunnels four days ago (4 September 2010 – two days after ‘peace talks’ resumed) which left him and another man, Hassan Abu Armana, covered in severe burns. The bombing set alight the entrance of the tunnel – where they were delivering gasoline.

Fidel is getting old and wants to see the crippling American blockade lifted before he dies. Fidel knows who runs the United States. Fidel starts musing, out of the blue, about an attack on Iran. He has good intelligence, so we know his 'Iran talk' was bullshit. Then he agrees to an interview with none other than the concentration camp guard, who we know, from the recent Hitchens interview, is the world's worst interviewer, besides knowing fuck all about anything other than ultra-Zionism.

The interview turns out to be about the evils of anti-Semitism (the concentration camp guard is even taking credit for the elimination of anti-Semitism in Venezuela as a result of the magical words of Fidel!!!), particularly by President Ahmadinejad. Wtf??? Not to mention photo-ops with the Jews! Castro also throws in a bit of self-criticism of the 'Cuban model' directed to the concentration camp guard and his handler from the Council on Foreign Relations (to rub it in, the 'Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies'!). Wtf???

This video highlights the connection between the environmental movement and those who are striving to bring about a new system of control to the world.