In comments today Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insisted that he was “encouraged” about the war in Afghanistan, saying that “there is a general feeling that there has been some progress” since the massive December escalation. The comments are in keeping with those of Gen. David Petraeus and a number of other officials who claim that some sort of progress is being made despite the ever-rising death toll and seeming lack of any visible gains. But they also seemed to raise the prospect that the December assessment of the Afghan War, long pointed to as a vital date to show "progress", would not be met.

Common Dreams: Never Forget: Bad Wars Aren't Possible Unless Good People Back Them.

Caver Andy Eavis compares his hand size with painted prints on the walls of the recently discovered Black Hands Cave, part of the massive Gunung Mulu cave system in the Malaysian section of the island of Borneo (map).

The handprints are among several finds featured in newly released photographs taken in May during a U.K.-led expedition to the remote caves. In addition to the prints, explorers found prehistoric bacteria alive inside stalactites and an ancient human burial ground perched on a cliff face.

Eavis, a veteran explorer of the Borneo caves, said the handprints have yet to be dated—but he suspects they aren't as old as they seem. Local inhabitants often enter the caves to gather swift nests made from the birds' spit. Considered a delicacy in Asia, particularly China, they are eaten in soup.

"The nests are the same value as silver," Eavis said, and "that cave has quite a bit of modern graffiti from people collecting bird nests."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has once again rejected calls to extend a partial freeze on settlement activities in the occupied territories.

"The prime minister has not changed his position on this issue, there is no question of extending the moratorium," an unnamed Israeli official told AFP on Friday.

Last week, US President Barack Obama said it would make sense for Tel Aviv to extend the 10-month moratorium during its direct talks with the Palestinian Authority. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Tel Aviv on Thursday to extend the deadline, which expires at the end of this month. Meanwhile, the European Union said that the settlements are "illegal under international law" and called for an "extension of the moratorium decided by Israel."

Stephen Lendman: Hypocrisy Defined: Another Round of Peace Talks

According to a witness, Israel soldiers burst into a house in the West Bank last night and shot a Palestinian associated with Hamas three time in the neck and head while he was still in bed. According to the IDF, the Palestinian was running towards IDF soldiers refusing to stop.

Middle East Monitor: Israeli soldiers open fire on handcuffed Palestinian. Israeli media sources have confirmed that an Israeli soldier shot and killed a handcuffed Palestinian youth on Tuesday morning in Tel Aviv. Soldier says that he "was shot accidentally from his weapon." The 18 yr old Palestinian was killed instantly as a result of the shot in the back.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) warns that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should not protect nuclear-armed Israel at the organization's own cost. The movement, which dissociates itself from major superpowers, used the final day of an IAEA meeting in Vienna to highlight Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, a Press TV's correspondent reported on Thursday. The 118-member movement expressed its "grave concern over the selective approach of the IAEA towards the issue of the Israeli nuclear capabilities." This attitude "puts at stake the viability of the IAEA as an independent technical body," NAM said.

"Get it through your head, the constitution and your 'rights' are only what we say they are."

For years Breyer has been talking about globalization and how the supreme court is and will be influenced by world laws and views not necessarily in sync with traditional U.S. constitution rulings. It's not Sharia law as zionist shill Pamela Geller says. He is talking about more of a hybrid of the Talmud and globalist Orwellian control.

The sentencing phase in the trial of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, began yesterday at the Ofer Military Court. Abu Rahmah was convicted of organizing illegal marches and of incitement last month, but cleared of the violence charges he was indicted for – stone-throwing and a vindictive arms-possession charge for collecting used tear-gas projectiles and displaying them.

My Family: From "Origins of the Romani People" by Ian Hancock.

In the run-up to yesterday’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels, European officials and heads of state disavowed criticisms of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s mass deportation of Roma by European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.

France has already deported over 8,000 Roma to Romania. While the summit endorsed a free trade deal with South Korea and temporarily waived tariffs on Pakistani goods, coverage of the meeting largely focused on the Roma issue. On Tuesday, Reding denounced Sarkozy’s policy as

“discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race”. She implicitly compared it to fascist ethnic cleansing policies, such as Vichy France’s policy of deporting the Roma during the Nazi Occupation, adding, “This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War”.

Whatever the political calculations that prompted it, including a desire to obscure the prevalence of similar xenophobic policies by other member states and the EU authorities themselves, Reding’s statement articulated concerns shared by millions of people.

AWIP: Stop this state persecution of Roma!
AWIP: Driving out the Unwanted - Sarkozy's War Against the Roma.

The U.S. poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent in 2009 from 13.2 percent the year before, bringing the percentage of the population living in poverty to the highest level since 1994, as the economic downturn took its toll on jobs, the U.S. government said on Thursday. The U.S. Census Bureau said 43.6 million people, or one in seven Americans, lived in poverty last year, up from 39.8 million in 2008. The data paints a picture of rising hardship and declining incomes for many living in the United States and hands more bad economic news to Democrats ahead of November 2 congressional elections.

WSWS: Forty-four million living in poverty in the US.
AWIP: 40 Million Americans Now Subsisting On Foodstamps.

US Census Bureau has announced in a recent report that forty-four million Americans -- one in seven residents -- lived in poverty in 2009. The Census Bureau said in a report published on Thursday that compared to the year 2008, the number of poor people in America increased by 4 million making the poverty rate climb to 14.3 percent in 2009 from 13.2 percent in 2008. This marks the highest record since 1994. The poverty line in 2009 for a single adult was $10,830 in pretax cash income and $22,050 for a family of four.

The report also shows that the number of Americans who did not have health coverage also increased, rising from 15.4 percent to 16.7 percent which means almost 51 million people. Losing employer-provided health insurance was one of the effects of recession on the lives of Americans who lost their jobs. The report comes as a bitter blow to US President Barack Obama who based his presidential campaign on a pledge to reduce poverty. The figures are announced only weeks before US congressional election that are to be held on November 2 while voters are highly worried about the slow pace of improvement in economy and the high rate of unemployment. This might affect people's decision over keeping Democrats in power or replacing them with republicans.

Stephen Lendman: Growing Hunger in America
Stephen Lendman: Child Homelessness in America
Stephen Lendman: America Facing Depression and Bankruptcy
Fabius Maximus: We’re still blinded by our fetters of the mind and so unable to fix the economic crisis.

[Editor's Comment:] As regards the Twin Towers, they may may be a case apart from the rest of the World Trade Center complex. They collapsed and came down because of explosions alright, but the mid-air pulverization and the "ground-hugging" pyroclastic flows so evident in all the footage would strongly suggest thermonuclear detonations. Samples of the fallen dust were taken on 12 and 13 September 2001 from sites within a half-mile of Ground Zero. Analyses yet to be confirmed may prove that widespread molecular dissociation took place at Ground Zero in New York City. The Twin Towers probably were nuked. They were nuked because of the unfavorable height/footprint ratio. They simply were too tall to be demolished in the same controlled manner as WTC7. Non-conventional methods had to be used. (More HERE.)

Each year since the tragic terrorist attacks on NYC’s twin towers, on every September 11th since 2001, the Municipal Art Society has shone two bright lights skyward from Manhattan's Financial District. Known as the Tribute of Light, the beams have struck an emotional chord with a lot of residents. This year, more than 10,000 birds flew into the beams and got trapped, unable to fly away. Because they are in their fall migration, the birds could be depleting crucial fat stores by flying endlessly in the light beams, unable to get away and continue their journey south.

New York City Audubon has kept an eye on the light tribute, and when they saw the gathering of helpless birds, let the Municipal Art Society know so they could shut down the beams (Migratory birds are protected by federal law).

"We have a protocol in place in partnership with the Municipal Arts Society in case something happens like it did on Saturday night," explains John Rowden, Citizen Science Manager for NYC Audubon. "There were huge numbers of birds flying through and large numbers did have difficulty navigating out of the beams. Through the course of the night we shut the lights off five times for approximately 20 minutes each time, which allowed the birds to clear out (and then new birds moving through would accumulate). The Municipal Arts Society were very supportive of our goals of minimizing risk to migratory birds." A similar situation happened in 2004 but because of the ways birds navigate the skies, and the way local weather affects their migration routes, these large numbers of migratory birds do not always pass through NYC on September 11th.

Lights pose problems for birds far beyond the Tribute of Lights. According to the New York chapter of the National Audubon Society website, Susan Elbin, the NYC Audubon director of conservation, said that 90,000 birds die annually in New York City, because of collisions with the reflective glass in buildings. Birds fly into glass that reflects sky, clouds, trees, and get disoriented by artificial that interfere with their natural navigational cues, especially in foggy and rainy weather. In 2005, NYC Audubon initiated the Lights Out New York campaign to encourage city dwellers to turn out lights at night between September through November. Dozens of Manhattan skyscrapers participate in the program, including the Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, and JP Morgan Chase among others.

Brian Williams interviewing iranian president ahmadinejad in Tehran.

ROVE SEES THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS…. On Tuesday night, Karl Rove appeared on Fox News and said what he believed about Delaware’s U.S. Senate race. In light of Christine O’Donnell’s primary win, Rove called some of the nominee’s remarks “nutty” and said “this is not a race we’re going to be able to win.” (In Fox News context, “we” means “Republicans.” He went on to describe the extremist candidate in less-than-flattering terms: “It does conservatives little good to support candidates who, at the end of the day, while they may be conservative in their public statements, do not evince the characteristics of rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.” Right-wing personalities — Palin, Limbaugh, Malkin, Erickson, Pat Buchanan — were deeply unhappy with Rove’s criticism of a Republican. Would he apologize? -Well, not explicitly, but this morning’s walk-back on Fox News was rather humiliating. Shortly after explaining that it’s not his job “to be a cheerleader for every Republican,” Rove quickly reversed course. “Look, I endorsed [O'Donnell] the other night…. I was one of the first to do it,” Rove argued. Remind us, Karl, did the endorsement come before or after you questioned her “rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character”? Rove went on to insist this morning that he personally intervened to help O’Donnell’s campaign, not only with an endorsement, but with financial support from the party. The Fox News screen only showed Rove from the chest up, but if the camera panned down, we might have seen his tail between his legs.

US-led forces in Afghanistan have killed at least two people and wounded three others in the troubled southern Uruzgan province. The victims were among some one hundred protesters who had gathered outside a foreign military base in the region. They were angry at the desecration of the Muslim holy book of Qu'ran in the United States on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The loss of civilian lives at the hand of foreign forces has dramatically heightened anti-American sentiments in Afghanistan, causing thousands of Afghans to protest against US-led military presence in the country.

This morning shortly before sunrise in the wasteland of Israeli democracy, Israeli armed forces destroyed a Bedouin village in the Negav desert…for the fifth time. According to the Ma’an news agency, “On 27 July, all 40 homes in the Al-Araqib village were destroyed and 300 residents, all Israeli citizens, were evicted during the raid after an Israeli court deemed the village illegally built on state land. The Bedouin residents say they have proof of land ownership, and have been in court for several years. At least 200 children were left homeless as a result, as police removed residents property into prepared containers, and bulldozers razed buildings and sheepfolds, local activists said in a statement. Fruit orchards and olive grove trees were destroyed in the process.Israeli activists who were present at the initial demolition described the move as an “act of war, such as is undertaken against an enemy.”The Bedouin residents of Al-Araquib hold Israeli citizenship and many have served in the Israeli army. Al-Araquib is becoming a prime example of what Israel means when it calls itself a “Jewish and democratic state.” Jews receive democracy and everyone else is pushed off of their land and striped of their rights.