Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sits in the
cockpit of a F-15 fighter jet, on August 11, 2009, dur-
ing a visit to the Htzerim air base in southern Israel.
UPI/Uriel Sinai/Pool

BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian state television said on Monday that the Israeli military aircraft were amassing at a US air base in Iraq for a possile strike on Iran.

Israel denied any knowlegde of such a plan and the Pentagon dismissed it as ridiculous. Meanwhile, Israel, a staunch US ally, accused Tehran of using its nuclear reactor program to conceal a plan to develop atomic bombs that would threaten the Jewish state. Israeli leaders, haven't ruled out military action against Iran. However, there's been NO recent and increased tension and no other information on Monday, to corroborate the Iranian claim.

UPI: Iran says Israeli jets preparing to strike - TEHRAN, May 2 (UPI) -- Israeli fighter jets are conducting drills at a military base in Iraq in preparation for a strike on Iran, the Islamic Republic's Press TV reported. The report said the Israeli planes participating in the drills include F-15, F-16, F-18 and F-22 fighter jets. It said they have conducted weeklong exercises,flying mainly at night.

PressTV: Israel holds 'security drill' at airport

AMMAN, (PIC)-- Israel directly killed more than 1,300 Palestinian children since the onset of the millennium, a UN official said in a new report.

They shot those children dead those children during direct military operations, said Richard Falk, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. He said seventeen Palestinian children were killed in 2010 alone while trying to gather gravel to help rebuild their families' homes destroyed during the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. Israel has prohibited the entry of building materials during its blockade of the tiny enclave. Quds Press quote Falk as saying during a press conference he held in the Jordanian capital Amman on Monday that Israel has some 226 Palestinian children detained in its prisons, held without specific charges.

Falk, who Israel has banned from entry into the Palestinian territories, said that the continued Gaza siege and escalation of Israeli abuses has led to major deterioration in the human rights situation of the children's mental and physical health in the Strip. He called on the UN to exert efforts to force Israel to abide by international laws.

[Here are images of some 300 of them:] Israel has now massacred over 300 Palestinian children in Gaza

ISLAMABAD: The United States closed two of its consulates in Pakistan to the public on Tuesday until further notice, a day after Osama bin Laden was killed near the capital Islamabad.

The US embassy in Islamabad and a third consulate in Karachi had earlier also been closed to the general public for routine business, but a decision was taken Tuesday for them to re-open as normal, said an embassy spokesman. Those closed are in the eastern city of Lahore and the northwestern city of Peshawar, which is close to the country’s tribal belt that Washington has called the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda. A statement said the embassy and all consulates, however, would remain open for “other business and for emergency American citizen services”.

Epoch Times: Bin Laden’s Last Stand Raises Concern of Pakistan Connection

A 2007 Benazir Bhutto interview in which she says the al-Qaeda leader was 'murdered' years ago contributes to the uncertainty surrounding US claims about Osama bin Laden's death.

On Monday, US President Barack Obama announced that the al-Qaeda leader was killed by US forces after he was found hiding in a compound in Pakistan. This is while in an interview following a failed assassination attempt on Pakistan's former premier in October 2007, Bhutto says bin Laden has already been killed. In the interview, she identifies the man who killed the notorious al-Qaeda leader as one Omar Sheikh, excerpts of which was sent to Press TV's UReport. In response to a question whether any of the assassins had links with the government, Bhutto said,

"Yes but one of them is a very key figure in security, he is a former military officer … and had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden."

Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 in a bomb attack as she was leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi when a gunman shot her in the neck and set off a bomb. The announcement of bin Laden's death comes almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the United States. [Video HERE]

Osama bin Laden pictures for sale at a market in Quetta,
Pakistan. Photo: Reuters

The dilemma of what to do with Osama bin Laden's body appears to have been quickly resolved if reports that he has been buried at sea prove correct.

Fears about Bin Laden's burial place turning into a shrine for Islamists were probably unfounded, since the Wahhabi/Salafi tradition rejects such things. Even Saudi kings are buried in unmarked graves.

Senior US officials initially told news agencies that his body would be disposed of in accordance with Islamic tradition, which involves ritual washing, shrouding and burial within 24 hours.

Although the swift burial complies with Islamic custom and should therefore avoid causing any offence in Muslim countries, the apparent haste could lead to claims that the person killed was not really Bin Laden – though the US authorities have taken DNA samples and appear to have no doubts.

The 24-hour rule has not always been applied by the US in the past. For example, the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein – sons of the Iraqi dictator – were held for 11 days before being released for burial.

Christian Science Monitor: Osama bin Laden's burial at sea: critics range from 9/11 families to militants

Now that it has achieved its goal of killing Osama bin Laden, the United States should withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan and the broader region. That’s the message being sent by Islamists from Pakistan, Egypt, and the Iranian government.

“If according to U.S. President Obama, America has achieved its target and killed its enemy number one, the U.S. has no justification to stay here any more,” Munawar Hasan, leader of the Pakistani Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, told a press conference called in Lahore on Monday to respond to the news that the al-Qaeda terrorist leader was dead. Hasan expressed doubt that the U.S. would withdraw from the region, however, accusing it of only being interested in its “rich natural resources.”

KABUL: Nato troops clashed Tuesday with private security guards who were apparently escorting a supply convoy for international troops, sparking a firefight in which the alliance called an air strike that killed at least five of the guards, Afghan police said.

Nato confirmed that an air strike was called in by a convoy involved in a firefight in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, but it said initial reports suggested the strike was on insurgents. The international coalition said it could not yet confirm anything more about the incident in the province’s Gelan district. "The convoy called for and received close air support. We are still assessing the results from the engagement,” a Nato statement said. Afghan officials said there were no insurgents involved in the conflict, which started sometime after dawn.

The funeral of the youngest son of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has taken place in the capital, Tripoli. Libya says Saif al-Arab, 29, and three of Col Gaddafi's grandchildren died on Saturday when Nato missiles hit his villa in the leader's compound. His funeral was attended by several thousand people as Nato planes circled in the skies above. Mourners chanted calls for revenge as the coffin, wrapped in a green Libyan flag, was lowered into the ground.

Jason Ditz: Libya Buries Gadhafi’s Son as Mourners Call for Revenge
Barry Grey: US, NATO defend air strike that murdered Gaddafi family members

LONDON - A French court on Friday ruled against Israeli orthopedic surgeon David Yehuda, who was sued for slander by Jamal al-Dura, the father of Mohammed al-Dura, the slain 12-year-old Palestinian boy who became a powerful symbol of the second intifada.

Al-Dura had sued Yehuda for libel after the doctor, who operated on him in 1994, exposed details from his medical file in order to back claims that the elder al-Dura's scars were the result of surgery - and not caused by the IDF fire that killed his son in September, 2000.

In an interview with a French Jewish publication in 2008, Yehuda claimed that the father's wounds were the result of an attack by Hamas men and the subsequent surgery he underwent six years before the second intifada. On September 30, 2000 Jamal sustained serious wounds trying to shield his son, who was killed in cross fire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants at the Netzarim junction in Gaza. Footage of the disturbing images of the father and son, crouching in front of a wall under fire, was shown around the world.

The Palestinians [correctly] accused the IDF of killing Mohammed al-Dura and wounding his father, but subsequent investigative reports cast doubt on that conclusion, claiming instead that the child had been shot by Palestinians and accusing a French TV station and crew of staging the incident.

Les Visible: SOMETIMES BLOGGING IS NO FUN AT ALL

With at least eleven confirmed deaths, April has become the deadliest month for American forces stationed in war-ravaged Iraq in nearly two years.

Of the 11 killed, six died in "non-hostile" incidents, two were killed by a roadside bomb in Numaniyah, Wasit province, and two died in separate mortar attacks in Baghdad and Babil provinces, a Press TV correspondent reported. The latest death occurred in southern Iraq on Friday, bringing to 4,452 the number of American forces killed in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country that eventually led to the ouster and execution of its executed dictator Saddam Hussein, whom the US backed in the 1980s in his war effort against the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran.

Documents recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal detailed information about the FBI's electronic surveillance capabilities. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the FOIA request in 2007 after it was reported that the agency was using "secret spyware."

The documents show that software called the Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier (CIPAV) was used by the FBI since at least 2001. The software allows the FBI to collect a variety of information from a computer every time it connects to the Internet, including the IP address, Media Access Control (MAC) address, open communication ports, list of the programs running, URLs visited, and more.

Tom Burghardt: No Place to Hide: Internet Tracking Probe Unveiled as New Smartphone Spy Scandal Unwinds

After comment-threading at Huffpost this afternoon about the range of inconsistencies between the White House account of the anti-Bin Laden operation and what appear to be the facts, this little message greeted me when I went to leave a link to tonight’s piece there an hour ago:

Post a comment: Sorry, but you have been banned from commenting.

There was nothing obscene, hateful or libellous in what I wrote. Just a comment saying how come helicopters fell out of the sky but no Navy seals died; and by the way where does it say in the Q’ran that Muslims should be buried at sea. Two weeks ago, a threader here told me to ‘expect more censorship now Arianna has sold out to the right-wing AOL mavericks’. Oh how I laughed then. Oh how silly I feel now

The excuse for the War on Terror is gone; will the War on Terror now come to an end? The bipartisan high and mighty rushed to insist that it most certainly will not. Obama, Bush, Kerry, McCain, Boehner, Schumer -- all the great and good were quick to say that "the fight is not over," the "threat is still there" -- the profitable wars and fearmongering will go on. And on. And on. (Besides, who needs bin Laden when we've got Gadafy back as the demon du jour? In any case, Great Satans are always thick on the ground when the War Machine needs greasing.)

Jason Ditz: Clinton: Wars Will Continue, Bin Laden Death Justifies Decade of War

Hmmmm…. is America trying to hide something from you? Is it just a coincidence that both What Really Happened and Uruknet cannot be accessed by your computer? OR…. is it a Denial of Service Attack (DOS) to keep you from learning the truth…. in this case about Bin Laden’s most recent death.

[And strangely, The People's Voice and Another World Is Possible were severely obstructed by MySQL error attacks just when we were preparing to comment on the official bin Laden story....]

The Knesset enacted the Nakba Law on 22 March 2011. The law authorizes the Minister of Finance to reduce funding or support provided by the state to an institution if it holds an activity that contradicts the definition of the State of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state, or that commemorates “Israel’s Independence Day or the day on which the state was established as a day of mourning.” Some Laws are made to be broken ….. this is definitely one of them!

Photos of the Nakba (“the catastrophe”): the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. In 1948 more than 60 percent of the total Palestinian population was expelled. More than 530 Palestinian villages were depopulated and completely destroyed. To date, Israel has prevented the return of approximately six million Palestinian refugees, who have either been expelled or displaced. Approximately 250,000 internally displaced Palestinian second-class citizens of Israel are prevented from returning to their homes and villages.

SHOA: Adalah: Nakba Law Violates Rights of Arab Minority to Preserve its History and Culture

OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper won re-election Monday at the head of an elusive majority government, the first for his Conservative Party since 1988, television projections showed.

In a ground-breaking election full of firsts, the left-leaning New Democratic Party was on course to surge past the Liberals, who governed for most of the last century, and become Canada’s official opposition. Capping a disastrous night for the separatist Bloc Quebecois, their leader Gilles Duceppe lost his seat two decades after he was first elected to parliament and the party was set to be reduced to just two seats, from 47. “It’s the first time a Conservative prime minister has won three back to back elections in Canada,” Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas told broadcaster TVA.

Epoch Times: Harper Wins Big in Election
National Review: Liberal Party of Canada Buried at Sea After Dying in Firefight