[Spiegel Online report on "The Kill Team"] 'Trophy' photos from Afghanistan are very similar to those the redneck hunters take to show off their deer kill.

No surprises here. Soldiers brainwashed to see their 'kills' as sub-human or animals will continue the war crimes as long as we send them to criminal wars.

Apologists are already saying that the release of 3 photos out of close to 4,000 photos and videos that Spiegel 'obtained' will harm the war cause. All we can say is "we hope so."

Spiegel is a partner with Wikileaks so no telling what kind of psyops game is going on. Who benefits from these photo leaks? Spiegel is certainly not doing this as an anti-war statement.

Speaking of anti-war, I was going through the radio channels today seeing what was being said about Libya and ran into one of our local neocon war whore talking heads who used the words "anti-war kooks" a least 10 times in about a 20 minute segment. That would many of us he's talking about. Those who don't go along with the program of kill them over there before they kill us here. - I'm sort of proud to be a kook.

The Guardian: US Army 'kill team' in Afghanistan posed for photos of murdered civilians
Alternet: US soldiers murder defenseless civilians in Afghanistan, then mutilate the corpses, and document the affair in 4000 photos

The Conservative government is in contempt of Parliament, a report by a committee of MPs tabled Monday concludes. The government's failure to produce all documents that had been requested from it or to provide a satisfactory explanation for withholding them impedes the ability of MPs to carry out their duties, the report said, and the government is therefore in contempt. The 26-page report was tabled late Monday afternoon and 48 hours must go by before the House of Commons can vote on whether to accept the committee's report. The finding is a historic one and it paves the way for the Liberals, or any of the other opposition parties, to move a non-confidence motion on the matter and bring down Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government.

"This contempt report — a first in the history of Canada and the Commonwealth — is the result of the Harper regime's abuse of power," Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said in a statement. He added that the finding undermines the credibility of the federal budget that is set to be delivered Tuesday, because the government can't be trusted.

Temporary housing is taking shape next to an evacuation centre in this northern Japanese town, among the first places where rebuilding from the devastating earthquake and tsunami 10 days ago has begun. Authorities aim to start moving families out of the cramped shelters where they have lived on mats -- separated from neighbours by only cardboard -- and into the houses by the end of the month.

"They have no privacy. They can't even stretch their legs at night when they sleep because they might hit another person," said Tsutomu Nakai, who helps run the evacuation centre in the gymnasium of a junior high school in Rikuzentakata. "We have around 1,000 people sheltering here in the school and I think that they will be the first to get housing. We hope to allow people to move into these temporary shelters just as soon as they are completed," Nakai said.

Steel structures, with walls and wood floors, have been erected in the parking lot of the school, which is on a hilltop overlooking the debris and devastated remains of the town. Coastal Rikuzentakata was a town of 23,000, mostly elderly people. About 740 were killed in the earthquake and tsunami. More than 1,700 remain missing. Mud-strewn mounds, mostly wood planks, glass and stones from houses where the town once stood, stretch for miles. Firemen are still slowly sifting through the debris, looking for bodies.

Visible in green within the shattered walls of Fukushima nuclear
power plant, the storage pool is dried up, exposing nuclear fuel
rods to the air. AHB (Photo: AP)

The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which is at the heart of the nuclear crisis that Japan is experiencing in the aftermath of its March 11 earthquake and tsunami, skipped a set of safety inspections, the operator of the nuclear power plant told safety regulators less than two weeks before that disaster.

The report to regulators was submitted by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) to Japan's nuclear safety regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on February 28. TEPCO said it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment in the six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. It was noted earlier that the plant had, in fact, been scheduled to be retired in February, but received a new 10 year additional lease on life. Included in those missed inspections were a motor and a backup power generator for the No. 1 reactor. The report is available on the TEPCO website. The crisis at the nuclear power facility has been centered mostly on cooling the reactors at the complex, of which there are six, in total. News about the backup power generator having missed an inspection, just prior to the earthquake, has become a topic of criticism in terms of TEPCO. Originally, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency gave TEPCO until June 2 to file a corrective plan for the plant. The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is TEPCO's oldest nuclear facility, with its origin dating back to the 1970s.

The Independent: Fresh blow in nuclear plant crisis
Bloomberg: Nuclear Plant Contaminates Sea After Damage to Fuel Rods

A US warplane has crashed in eastern Libya, following an apparent "mechanical failure," the US military has said. It said there was no indication the F-15E Eagle had been brought down by hostile fire. Both crew members ejected and are now safe. The plane went down near the rebel stronghold of Benghazi after a third night of allied air strikes against Col Muammar Gaddafi's forces. The coalition is enforcing a UN resolution to protect civilians. The US military would not give the exact location where the F-15E Eagle came down, but said both crewmen suffered only minor injuries after ejecting. The aircraft was based in England and was operating out of Italy's Aviano air base.

BusinessInsider: U.S. Marines Shot Six Villagers While Rescuing Downed Pilot
The Telegraph: Six civilians shot and injured during US rescue of pilot
The Independent: US jet crashes in Libya - Video
LA Times: U.S. F-15 crashes in Libya; crew ejects

US-led coalition forces have bombarded Libya for a third consecutive night, targeting air and ground forces of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Libyan state television reported that several sites in Tripoli and eastern Libya were targeted on Monday with Gaddafi forces retaliating with heavy anti-aircraft fire. The strikes, however, failed to free the cities of Ajdabiyah and Misratah, which remain surrounded by Gaddafi's forces. The US says that it seeks to stop the Libyan regime's forces from attacking civilians, but dozens of civilians have already been killed in Libya since the US, Britain, France and some other Western countries initiated their attacks on the North African country.

Stephen Lendman:
Imperial War on Libya
Lies, Damn Lies, and Humanitarian Intervention
Washington's UN War Resolution on Libya
Arab News: No License To Kill - Global coalition must stick to peacekeeping and leave Libya's future to its people
Al Jazeera: Explosions rock Libyan capital - Video
PressTV: Canadian jets join invasion of Libya
WSWS: Canada joins imperialist assault on Libya

Two US-led soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan as Taliban militants step up their violent campaign against the foreign forces in the war-torn country. The US-led military alliance said on Tuesday that the soldiers were killed in a militant attack in the country's volatile east, a Press TV correspondent reported. The US-led military alliance, however, did not disclose the nationality of the soldier and the exact location of the incident. However, most of the soldiers deployed in eastern Afghanistan are Americans. At least 94 US-led service members have lost their lives in the country so far this year. So far, 2010 has been the deadliest year for foreign troops in Afghanistan with at least 711 fatalities.

Burial place of British colonists' first ally found in suburban garden.

The grave of Woollarawarre Bennelong, an Aboriginal leader who played a key role in early Australian colonial history, has been discovered in a suburban front garden – solving a 200-year-old mystery.

One of the first Aborigines to interact with British colonists, Bennelong – a senior member of the Wangal tribe – struck up a friendship with the first governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip. When Phillip sailed home to England, he took the Wangal man with him, dressed him in Regency finery and introduced him to London high society. When Bennelong returned to Australia, he was ostracised by the indigenous and European communities. In 1813, having sunk into alcoholism, he died – but exactly where he was buried has been the subject of speculation ever since.

Now, after protracted detective work by an environmental scientist, Peter Mitchell, Bennelong's final resting-place has been found, The Sun-Herald newspaper reported yesterday. The discovery represents the missing link in Bennelong's extraordinary story, and is certain to reignite interest in a man who tried to bridge the gap between black and white – a challenge still facing Australians today.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries. The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Approximately 30 protesters were arrested near the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia on Sunday while protesting the imprisonment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing thousands of classified military and government documents to whistleblower web site WikiLeaks, according to The Washington Post. Among the protesters arrested was Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who released government documents, known today as the Pentagon Papers, detailing US strategy in Vietnam. Former Arm Col. Ann Wright was also arrested after a mostly peaceful demonstration led to a sit-in across Jefferson Davis Highway.

AWIP: Riot police randomly arrest an elderly blind man at a sit-in Bradley Manning protest outside Quantico - Video

Derar Abu Sisi, an engineer and deputy manager of the Gaza power plant, was reported missing last month in Ukraine after he boarded a train to Kiev but never made it.

First, bloggers reported it. Then came the mainstream foreign press, and finally, the story made it into the Israeli press via the revolving-door practice of censorship-approved quoting of foreign reports and maybe a few "I know but can't tell you" hints too. Israeli readers are accustomed to reading between the lines. A Palestinian human rights group has also now published Abu Sisi's account of his abduction.

A petition filed by an Israeli rights non-governmental organization wrested from the court permission for Israeli media to report with authority the basic information already out there, that the Palestinian engineer from Gaza is being held in Israel. Abu Sisi is in Shikma prison in southern Israel while being investigated. The gag order was only partially lifted and the full Israeli version of the circumstances of how he went missing in Ukraine and turned up in Israel won't be cleared for publication in Israel for another 30 days.

According to foreign reports, Abu Sisi arrived in Ukraine — where he had studied for a decade and earned his doctorate in electrical engineering — in late January. A few weeks later he boarded a late-night train to Kiev, where he was to meet a friend before going to the airport to meet his brother Yousef, who was coming in from Holland and whom he hadn't seen in years.

Uprooted Palestinians: Abducted Abu Sisi denied lawyer visits

Moshe Katsav sentenced to seven years in jail for rape and other crimes. The judges also handed the former leader a two-year suspended sentence and ordered him to pay a fine of 100,000 shekels ($28,000). The sentence was approved by two of the three judges at Tel Aviv district court on Tuesday, which was presided over by Judge George Kara. Katsav was convicted in December of rape, sexual harassment, indecent acts and obstruction of justice following a four-year scandal that shocked the Jewish state. He had denied charges he twice raped an aide when he was a cabinet minister in the late 1990s, and molested or sexually harassed two other women who worked for him during his 2000-2007 term as president.

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Palestinian civil society organizations and peace and human rights defenders and activists on the ground call on civil society organizations and people of conscience around the world to come to Palestine July 8 for a week of fellowship and peace-building. Israel must recognize the basic human right of entering to Palestine by those who want to visit us. Israel’s arbitrary and abusive control over entry into the Occupied Palestinian Territories is unlawful and must be vigorously opposed. (See the Right to Enter Campaign at http://www.righttoenter.ps/)

Palestinians throughout historic Palestine and in exile still believe in and work for peace based upon justice and trust that with the help of the international community we will achieve our peace and freedom and restore the values and principles that we share as human beings.

We believe in peace-building based on nonviolence for implementation of International Law and Human Rights. We believe that every single one of us is a change maker, and nobody has the right to to deny us the access to suffering populations.

We invite you. We call upon you. Join us and be the change you want to see in this world. You will be accommodated locally and enjoy Palestinian hospitality and a program of networking, fellowship, and volunteer peace work in Palestinian towns and villages (e.g. land reclamation).

Local activist groups in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa are organizing delegations. Email us atinfo@palestinejn.org if you would like to be connected to the organizing group in your country.

For further details, kindly visit: http://bienvenuepalestine.com/?page_id=232 ou bien: http://www.europalestine.com/. Please do not hesitate to contact me at ayman.qauder@gmail.com should you require further details. Peace and justice for Palestine!

Yours truly
Ayman Qwaider