Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 - "Symphony of lamentation songs"

A series of US drone attacks have killed at least twelve people and wounded several others in the troubled northwestern Pakistan. - The first attack targeted a vehicle in the Kurram tribal agency, leaving five people dead. As tribesmen gathered at the scene, the vehicle was struck again, killing two more people. Another air strike targeted a near-by house, killing five people. Washington claims its airstrikes are directed at militants, but local officials dispute the claim and say mostly civilians have been killed so far.

PressTV: French attack kills 5 Afghan civilians

NATO says it destroyed a surface-to-air missile site in northern Tripoli overnight. Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said: "Nato is planting the seed of hatred in the hearts of Libyan people for years to come. They won't allow foreign armies to decide their future."

You Tube: Day 93 of Obama's 'non-war' --NATO has been busy killing civilians in Libya
Peter Symonds: NATO bombs kill Libyan civilians in Tripoli
Jason Ditz: NATO Raid Kills Children, Other Libyan Civilians

A Comment (mentalinfest): Very moving piece. I'm glad that people are trying to highlight just how bad the apartheid in Israel/Palestine is in a way which isn't alien to them (in the UK). Brings it closer to home than it being some problem for people we don't know in a far off land.

[Bellona, 20/10-2008 - Translated by Charles Digges] A new report from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) has revealed that thorium-based nuclear energy plants – once vaunted as a clean alternative type of nuclear energy – have the same negative environmental consequences as their uranium-based cousins do. - The newly released NRPA report dealt with the environmental consequences of potential thorium related industry in Norway. The report takes on various aspects of the thorium fuel cycle from mining and extraction, fuel production, reactor operation and waste handling. The report concludes that the environmental consequences of using thorium-based nuclear power will result in the same problems the world faces today with uranium bases reactors. “The NRPA invalidated that thorium is kind nuclear power, as many have earlier asserted,” said Nils Bøhmer, Bellona’s daily manager and nuclear physicist. “Using thorium leads to highly radioactive nuclear waste and the risk of accidents will always be present.”

In Sri Lanka, Libya, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere, human rights abuses are being recorded and the evidence is on the internet. - The broadcast last week of Channel 4's Sri Lanka's Killing Fields documentary was a defining moment not just for the media, but for those who investigate war crimes. Chronicling the final bloody weeks in 2009 of the country's civil war which claimed the lives of at least 40,000 Tamil civilians, it captured in sometimes grainy, often terrifying footage, the horrors of a nation violently divided. There was much in the documentary to commend. Its recognition that Tamil Tigers were prepared to use as pawns the civilians they claimed to represent; the forensic way it explored the UN's unconscionable retreat as the conflict worsened; the wide range of experts interviewed to provide ballast and balance. But the real significance of the film emerged from the extraordinary, almost unwatchable, footage of the horrors of those grim weeks, much of it recorded on mobile phones.

The Israeli regime has reportedly punished former Mossad chief Meir Dagan by asking him to return his diplomatic passport following his criticism of top Israeli officials' stance on Iran. - Earlier in May, Dagan publicly criticized Israel's stance on Iran, warning Netanyahu that should the Israeli regime launch an attack on the Islamic Republic, more than 1,000 rockets will hit “central Israel for an undetermined period of time” on a daily basis. The former Mossad chief said that any Israeli aerial attack against Iran's nuclear facilities would be “the stupidest thing,” and warned that any such measure “could start a regional war which will include missile fire from Iran.” Dagan also expressed fears that "reckless and irresponsible individuals" within the Israeli premier's circle may ignore the US opposition to an attack on Iran and Washington's demand to go ahead with talks with the Palestinian side based on the 1967 borders. In reaction to Dagan's assessment, Netanyahu's associates accused the former spy chief of being a “traitor,” “saboteur,” and “gang leader.”

Last week, an audit by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction revealed that of the $20 billion flown by the United States to Iraq, some $6.6 billion is still completely unaccounted for and believed stolen. - But Iraqi officials say the amount is much higher, with Parliament Speaker Osama Nujaifi saying that the Iraqi government’s probe found some $18 billion still missing, and that the nation’s parliament is still expecting an answer for where it went. The US shipped the $20 billion in Iraqi government funds (part of the UN’s Oil for Food program) in physical cash, $100 bills stacked on palettes and crammed into the airplanes. There was virtually no effort to keep track of where all these $100 bills went. But while Iraqi officials have discussed suing the US for losing their money, the government now says that the UN Security Council’s resolutions gave the US total immunity from lawsuits related to the 2003 invasion and by extension any money lost or stolen since then.

LA Times: Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say - Reporting from Washington— After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born. Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

CNN: Feds probe -- for a 3rd time -- loss of billions in Iraqi funds

MADRID (AFP) – More than 100,000 protesters took to the streets in Spain on Sunday blaming bankers and politicians for causing a financial crisis that forced the country to adopt painful spending cuts. - Demonstrators of all ages linked to a movement called the "indignants" also protested against crippling unemployment and a failure to take on government corruption. The El Mundo newspaper, quoting police sources, said as many 40,000 protesters flooded streets in Madrid. In Barcelona, the nation's second-largest city, police said 50,000 people turned out, while groups of several thousand demonstrators rallied in other cities. Protesters assembled in several neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Madrid early Sunday, then formed six columns and converged on the city centre. They tried to gather at parliament but were stopped by police, who had set up barricades and used 12 vans to block several major roads. When it called for nationwide protests, the "indignants" movement insisted workers and the unemployed needed to make clear that they would not passively accept spending cuts to help ease Spain's economic crisis.

"The banks and the governments that caused this situation must know that we do not agree with the measures and the budget cuts, that we intend to be heard," the group said.

Alejandro López: More evidence of provocations, repression of Barcelona protests

Amazing ass-covering posting by Juan Cole: "Top Ten Mistakes in the Libya War". Read number 2, and weep (my emphasis in red):

"NATO has focused on a ‘shock and awe’ strategy of pounding the capital, Libya, especially targetting the compound of dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Shock and awe does not work, and to the extent that it looks like a targeted assassination, it raised questions in critics’ minds about the purpose of the intervention. If command and control is being hit to protect noncombatants from military operations against them, this should be explained more clearly by NATO generals and specifics given."

Cole is trying to talk his way around the targeted assassination issue - missing the fact that the British Defence Secretary has left no question that the mass bombing of civilian neighborhoods in Tripoli is indeed intended to assassinate Gadaffi - by questioning the optics of mass 'shock and awe' bombing of civilians, as if such bombing wasn't completely illegal in and of itself. Cole is a moral monster. Advocating war crimes is itself a war crime.

On Sunday, June 19, the US-backed NATO war against Libya became illegal under US law. The War Powers Act, adopted by Congress in 1973 after overriding a veto by President Richard Nixon, mandates that any presidential dispatch of US military forces into “hostilities” in any other country must receive congressional approval within 60 days. If the president fails to gain such approval, he has an additional 30 days to carry out the safe withdrawal of all US forces. The Obama administration sent US forces into combat against Libya on March 20, 2011, with the bombing of Libyan anti-aircraft installations and radar sites. The 60-day deadline passed on May 20, without any effort by the administration to gain congressional approval. The 30-day period for withdrawal of US forces elapsed on June 19, but the war continues, with no significant opposition by any section of the US ruling elite.

Jason Ditz: Growing Congressional Condemnation of Obama’s Libya War

Latin American migrants risk life and limb to reach the US border in search of the American dream. - Men and women from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua make a beeline to cross the river that forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico. They want to enter Mexico, illegally. But they have another destination in mind. The United States of America. Each year more than one million illegals flee the poverty of their own countries, and try their luck on this road; a road to what some call "the impossible dream". On the Mexican side, the military turns a blind eye for a few dollars. The greenback is the illegals' only passport. To reach the border with Texas, they have to cross the entire Mexican coast. It is a journey of about 4,000km, and one that begins at the Arriaga train station. The freight trains are the only means of transport for the illegals. Thousands take the moving trains every day, regardless of the danger. Each one tries to find his or her own spot – on the roofs, on the axles between the coaches. There can be as many as 1,000 hitching a ride; a ride that could turn into a trap. Police stop the trains in the middle of the countryside in order to make the maximum number of arrests. And there is nowhere to run. Only 40 per cent of all those who attempt exile reach the US border.