Broadcast 10 April 2009 (filmed on 17 March, prior to 31 March dismissal decision by Executive of the Board of Governors)

Denis G. Rancourt: University of Ottawa: Dean caught lying in cover up + Denis G. Rancourt articles on AWIP

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan turns another corner as it passes into its ninth year of civilian and foreign troop casualties and many more damages. October 7th marks the ninth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. The United States and its allies arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 to crush the Taliban terrorist group following the September 11 attacks in New York. The war-torn country continues suffering insecurity and instability despite the presence of more than 150,000 US-led forces. The largest grassroots US peace organization, Peace Action, along with 10 other US organizations and coalitions, are urging local communities and activists to take action to end the catastrophic war.

Chris Sands: Afghanistan nine years on
AWIP: AFGHANISTAN Archive
AWIP: Category -Afghanistan

Photo is from a previous US/police terror attack.

At least 30 people, including several civilians, have been killed in air strikes by US-led troops in northern Afghanistan, according to the local population.

Witnesses told a Press TV correspondent on Thursday that the attacks occurred in Takhar province late Wednesday.

Provincial spokesman Feyz Mohammad Tohidi said that the air strikes were operated by US-led forces in three different regions of the province. All the victims were "Taliban militants", including two Taliban top leaders, the spokesman added claimed.

However, local people said that Afghan civilians were among the people killed by the US-led troops. The air and ground attacks by the US-led foreign forces have been claiming civilian lives since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan officials announced Wednesday that two other Taliban leaders lost their lives during operations in Badghis and Faryab provinces.

Toxic red sludge from a spill at an industrial plant in Hungary has reached the River Danube, officials say. They say alkaline levels that killed all fish in one river were now greatly reduced, but were being monitored. PM Victor Orban called the spill an "ecological tragedy". There are fears the mud, which burst out of a reservoir on Monday, could poison the Danube. Countries downstream from Hungary, including Croatia, Serbia and Romania, are drawing up emergency plans. So far, no dead fish have been spotted in the Danube itself.

Monday's accident at an alumina plant in Ajka in western Hungary killed four people and injured more than 100. It also caused massive damage in nearby villages and towns, as well as a wide swathe of farmland. Disaster official Tibor Dobson said all life in the Marcal, which feeds the Danube, had been "extinguished". On Thursday Mr Orban visited the village of Kolontar, the worst-affected settlement, and said some areas would have to be abandoned.

Today's Times has a piece by Mark Landler on the fact that the U.S., led by Israel lobbyist-cum-Obama-policymaker Dennis Ross, wants to give Israel the store in exchange for a two-month extension of the settlement freeze.

[T]he United States is offering military hardware, support for a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, help with enforcing a ban on the smuggling of weapons through a Palestinian state, a promise to veto Security Council resolutions critical of Israel during the talks and a pledge to forge a regional security agreement for the Middle East. For all this, people briefed on the details said, the United States is seeking a single 60-day, nonrenewable extension. It’s an extraordinary package for essentially nothing.

I would just like to point out that the five experts the story quotes are: Martin Indyk, Daniel Kurtzer, David Makovsky, Rob Malley and Daniel Levy. Five Jews. Is this fair? Shouldn't the Times at least quote someone who is not Jewish? Shouldn't it quote a Palestinian or Arab about a matter that deeply affects Palestinian aspirations?

Mondoweiss: ‘When history speaks’ for Israel in the Times it leaves out the Palestinians.

Israeli troops have humiliated a blindfolded Palestinian woman by filming her while one of the soldiers was belly dancing close to her in a detention center.

The video clip that shows the Israeli soldier dancing next to the handcuffed woman sparked outrage after it was circulated on YouTube.

"I saw the video on Al-Jazeera. I didn't sleep all night because I felt humiliated and frustrated," Ihsan al-Dababsi, 35, told AFP on Wednesday. "The sound of the soldiers' laughter and the music were ringing in my ears," she said of the video. "I could hear the laughter of the soldiers, their voices and the music. I could see what was happening because the blindfold was not tight, and I begged them not to film me." "But they continued to videotape me, and they were drinking alcohol and dancing," the Palestinian woman said.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas resistance movement have also condemned the move, saying the clip was "deeply offensive to the dignity of women". "This is a disgusting illustration of the sick mentality of the occupier. This is not an isolated incident," said a statement from the office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

AWIP: ‘Facebook soldier’: I'd love to butcher Arabs.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party is moving closer to fulfilling one of its campaign promises, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to bring part of the controversial “loyalty oath” proposal before the cabinet on Sunday. The proposal, which is widely expected to pass, would demand any prospective non-Jewish citizen swear an oath not just to the Israeli government as such, but to the notion of the Israeli state as a “Jewish state.” The demand would not apply to people under the “Law of Return,” so new Jewish immigrants would not be affected by the requirement. This is only a small part of what Foreign Minister Lieberman envisioned, which was to require all non-Jewish citizens to take such an oath or have their citizenship stripped from them. The current proposal would only apply to new citizens and not to those already in Israel.

Violence against NATO fuel tankers in Pakistan has continued to grow, with another 57 tankers being destroyed in a pair of major attacks today alone. Well over a hundred tankers have been destroyed in less than a week. The violence was sparked by an attack by US helicopters against a Pakistani military site, which killed three members of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps. Pakistan’s government retaliated by closing the Khyber Pass to NATO traffic, one of only two border crossings. Though most of the attacks have involved strikes against tankers stuck on the Pakistan side of the Khyber route, today’s attacks included a strike on a convoy in Quetta, in the Balochistan Province. The convoy was headed to the still-open border crossing on the western side of the country. The Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed credit for today’s attacks, and has done so for some of the previous attacks.

The Ice is Melting, the Hurricanes are blowing. and it is all YOUR FAULT. SCARED? -Don't Be, Its not True.

The world's two biggest carbon emitters clashed at UN climate talks in China today as the United States' top climate envoy accused his counterparts of trying to renegotiate last year's global climate agreement, and threatened to pursue alternatives to the United Nations negotiation track. China retaliated by calling the US's overall negotiating stance "totally unacceptable."

Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy special envoy for climate change, said the first three days of talks in Tianjin had yielded disappointing results because participants were revisiting old arguments over procedure rather than building on the Copenhagen accord.

I’m delighted to see that the JIDF’s initial success in having David Duke banned from YouTube has been reversed. I find it appalling that some people in the Jewish community take it upon themselves to inflate perceived threats to the Jews, and then self-righteously exploit the unnecessary fears they create to nurture and grow an ‘industry’ which provides a steady income from donations, and a platform for the sale of novelty goods and other items. On several occasions, incidents of ‘anti-Semitism’ have been subsequently discovered to have been staged by Jews, and whether it was intended or not, the effect often is to needlessly upset those who suffered in the holocaust, and their families, and to legitimise the “anti-Semitic/racist” industry.

AWIP: Israel's hackers brag how they control YouTube!

Guatemala calls for documents of a research conducted by US scientists in which hundreds of people in the Central American country were deliberately infected with Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs). On Wednesday, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom asked the US to give full information about how some 1,500 Guatemalans were used without being informed in tests that infected them with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946-1948. "All of the information has been requested officially but it is still at the university where they found the archives," AFP quoted Colom on Wednesday.

Robert Parry: Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression

In August, Truthout conducted soil and water sampling in Pass Christian Harbor, Mississippi; on Grand Isle, Louisiana; and around barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana, in order to test for the presence of oil from BP's Macondo Well.

Laboratory test results from the samples taken in these areas show extremely high concentrations of oil in both the soil and water.

These results contradict consistent claims made by the federal government and BP since early August that much of the Gulf of Mexico is now free of oil and safe for fishing and recreational use.

The samples taken were tested in a private laboratory via gas chromatography.

The environmental analyst who worked with this writer did so on condition of anonymity and performed a micro extraction that tests for total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH). The lower reporting limit the analyst is able to detect from a solid sample is 50 parts per million (ppm).

McClatchy: Report: White House squelched release of BP oil spill estimates.
Florida Oil Spill Law: Cleanup crew supervisor: In the last 3 weeks oil’s washing up heavier than it was before — From Pensacola, FL to Dauphin Island, AL (VIDEO)

U.S. researchers claim that having a daughter could even boost a couple’s chance of getting a divorce. Divorced mothers of daughters were also less likely to remarry and stay married than those with sons. According to data drawn from more than three million adults from the U.S. Census, researchers from the University of California in San Diego and Berkeley, claimed couples with a first-born girl were more likely to divorce than parents of a first-born boy. That break-up factor rocketed to 10 per cent when there were as many as three daughters.

Reding told the meeting that the US terrorism alert for Europe was not based on any new security developments and did not therefore require additional security measures: “On the terror alert in the US, some European ministers have given the answer already—they have said there is nothing new, and that threats have been on the table for several years.”

The statements by Reding and de Maiziere unequivocally refuted the claims made by the US State Department at the weekend. The bluntness of their remarks is unusual, but is in line with the scepticism expressed by a number of security experts over the US reports. The source of the latest US terror claims is alleged to be the confession made by a 36-year-old German national captured by NATO forces in July in Afghanistan. The man, Ahmed Sidiqi, is currently being held captive at the US military’s Bagram air base near Kabul, where he is being interrogated tortured by US officers.

Daily Mail: Terrorist attack in Britain is 'very likely' according to extreme French Foreign Ministry warning.

See Senator Inhofe's reaction to video at www.epw.senate.gov/inhofeblog

A non-UN-sanctioned US strike has killed at least six people and wounded several others in Pakistan's troubled northwestern tribal region. Local officials say an unmanned plane has fired two missiles into a residential compound in North Waziristan. The attack has triggered fire in the building; its smoke was seen from as far as a half a kilometer away. The death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition.

Unauthorized airstrikes in Pakistan, initiated by former US president George W. Bush, have continued under President Barack Obama, contributing to the death of hundreds of Pakistani civilians. While Washington says the attacks target militants, reports show that mostly civilians bear the brunt. The US military has launched record numbers of such attacks this year.

The attacks have turned into a source of tension between Islamabad and Washington. Islamabad has condemned the airstrikes, describing them as a violation of its sovereignty. In retaliation to the surge in cross-border attacks, Pakistan has closed its borders with Afghanistan to NATO supply trucks. The recent Pakistani move against the US-led forces has not stopped the US military from carrying out such attacks inside Pakistani territory.