Brian Haw, founder of the Parliament Square Peace Campaign, interviewed by Anas Altikriti for Al Hiwar TV in 2010

Stephen Lendman: Remembering Brian Haw
New Statesman: The passing of Brian Haw
BBC: Parliament Square peace campaigner Brian Haw dies

On March 2, 2007 – retired US General Wesley Clark had told Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) that a 2003 Pentagon memo revealed that Washington had drawn-up a plan to invade seven Muslim countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finally Iran. - Several American Jewish groups have been demonizing Muslim-majority government in Khartoum for decades to serve Israeli interests in Africa. They used the Zionist-controlled mainstream media to spread their propaganda lies about human rights abuses in Sudan just like they did in case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya and Nigeria. On the other hand, Israel armed and trained rebels fighting against Khortoum. Jewish Lobby also used International Criminal Court to convict Sudanese President for war crimes while ICC had refused to prosecute Israeli mass-murders. ICC to In January 2011 referendum bore Jewish efforts to dismember the largest Musim country in Africa, when the non-Muslim majority South voted to separate from the Muslim-majority North. Israel-Firster Barack Obama was the first world leader to congratulate Southern Sudanese for chosing separation from Khartoum. Fahmi Howeidi asked in Khaleej Times: “Israelis can tell the whole story of Sudan’s division – they wrote the script and trained the actors“.

A European aid convoy with 53 pro-Palestinian activists has entered the Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing to help ease the conditions of Palestinians in the coastal sliver. - According to Press TV, the humanitarian aid convoy, called “Miles of Smiles 3”, entered Gaza with about 30 tons of medicine, medical supplies and milk powder on Sunday, a Press TV correspondent reported. The activists accompanying the convoy are from different nationalities and traveled thousands of miles to bring smiles to the Gazan faces, hence the convoy's name. They hope the aid would save lives and alleviate some of the pain and suffering of those who need medical attention in Gaza. “It is very important to show the world that the siege has to be broken, and we have got to bring normality back to Gaza and bring the people of Gaza back into the world,” said Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the British independent charitable organization Interpal.

Head of Israel's Nuclear Energy Commission Shaul Horev says Tel Aviv has returned nuclear waste from its Sorek nuclear reactor to the United States.

Horev, who spoke at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ministerial conference on nuclear safety in Vienna on Monday, did not specify the exact amount of waste, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported. According to estimates, Israel has sent back at least dozens of kilograms, probably more, of 93-percent enriched uranium. The operation took place after Israel's Nuclear Energy Commission and the US Department of Energy signed an agreement for the return of the nuclear waste over a year and a half ago.

Following the agreement, an American ship collected nuclear waste from both Israel and Turkey. The Sorek research reactor is a small five megawatt facility that was donated to Israel by the US within the framework of former US President David Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. Israel also received 93-percent enriched uranium to fuel the reactor. The reactor has remained under IAEA supervision for years.

The agreement with the US does not apply to the Dimona nuclear reactor, where international sources believe Israel produces fissile material from uranium and makes plutonium for stockpile of nuclear weapons, and waste from Dimona is not being returned to the US. Horev also said that the reactor at Dimona is 12 kilometers (8 miles) from the nearest town, a satisfactory distance in the event of a radioactive leak.

Treasury ministers have admitted that the Government is drawing up contingency plans for a Greek bankruptcy after being warned by a former foreign secretary that the euro “cannot last”. - Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary, said that a “quick” end to the single currency was now better than a “slow death”. In an emergency debate, senior MPs from all parties demanded that Britain stand aside from a new rescue package for Greece and push for the country to leave the euro. Mark Hoban, a Treasury minister, admitted that “many scenarios were being considered”. He said it would “not be appropriate” to discuss the detail, but added he would be “guilty of not stepping up to the responsibilities of his office” if plans had not been made to cope with a default. He said British banks had about £2.47billion in outstanding loans to Greek institutions and individuals. Last night, after leaving a meeting with eurozone ministers in Luxembourg, George Osborne, the Chancellor, insisted that he did not want to see Britain dragged into providing money for a second bail-out.

PS Europe: Nigel Farage: Greece must be allowed to default

Two prominent hacker groups say they are combining forces to attack governments in what they say is a war on corruption. - LulzSec, the hacker group whose list of victims has included the U.S. Senate, the CIA, Sony and most recently, it says, the FBI and SOCA, a British police agency, says it is at the forefront of the hacking campaign. "Stop fearing three-letter agencies, friends. They're humans with slightly more paper and fancier uniforms; they are just like you and me," LulzSec tweeted Sunday. Joining LulzSec is the group Anonymous, which has gone after governments and large companies, including Visa and MasterCard last year, in what they say was an effort to prevent Internet censorship. The two groups are using the code name Operation Anti-Security.

WL Central: LulzSec Declares War

The Libyan government said on Monday 19 civilians were killed in a NATO air strike on the home of one of Muammar Gaddafi's top officials, a day after NATO admitted killing civilians in a separate aerial attack.

Libyan officials took reporters to Surman, 70 km (45 miles) west of Tripoli, to the site of what they said was a NATO air strike on the home of Khouildi Hamidi, a member of Libya's 12-strong Revolutionary Command Council, led by Gaddafi.

Rescue teams were looking for survivors while reporters visited the site. Reporters were then taken to a hospital in nearby Sabrata where they were shown nine bodies, including those of two children, plus some body parts, which the Libyan government said were all of people killed in the attack.

The state-run Jana news agency later reported on its website that eight children were among 19 people killed in the attack. The dead included members of Hamidi's family, it said. The government said Hamidi himself was not hurt.

NATO acknowledged on Sunday for the first time that it had killed multiple civilians in Libya, when a strike intended to hit a missile site erred and destroyed a house in Tripoli. Bouchard said he regretted the loss of life in that incident, and a system failure may have knocked the weapon off course.

Libyan officials say NATO forces have killed more than 700 civilians, although they have not presented evidence of such large numbers of civilian deaths and NATO denies them. Libya says one of Gaddafi's sons and three of his grandchildren were killed six weeks ago when Gaddafi's Tripoli compound was hit.

You Tube: Nuevo Bombardeo OTAN.mov - A las cuatro de la mañana hora local del lunes 20 de junio fueron lanzados contra la residencia de Khweldi Hamidi, uno de los líderes históricos de la Revolución Libia. Otras residencias colindantes en la zona de Surman a unos 70 kilómetros al oeste de Trípoli también fueron impactadas por el bombardeo. Fueron rescatados los restos de 15 personas, descendientes principales de la familia Kheweldi Hamidi, el hijo mayor, su esposa, otras seis mujeres, dos niños y el resto hombres. Para el portavoz del gobierno libio Moussa Ibrahim este ha sido otro acto bárbaro, de terrorismo. Esta es la tercera masacre que comete la OTAN en menos de dos días. Frente a estos ataques el primer ministro libio, Baghadi al Mahmoudi, ha hecho un llamado a la Comunidad Internacional para intervenir inmediatamente y detener la brutalidad y el genocidio contra su país.

You Tube: Another day of U.N.-sponsored "Humanitarian War" more funerals, Jun 20 2011

The Libya war propaganda drive has plunged to new depths of cynicism, depravity, and a downright embarrassing lack of credibility. - Over a week after the ICC’s completely baseless claims of ‘rape being used as a weapon’ by Gaddafi’s forces, today CNN is running a propaganda set-piece that is so blatantly invented it makes one cringe with embarrassment for this rabble of liars and propagandists. CNN claims that rebel forces have found mobile phone footage on ‘Gaddafi loyalists’, which allegedly shows them ‘raping women and torturing people’. Lo and behold, the story completely falls apart upon the most cursory inspection. CNN plainly admits that they “cannot confirm when or where the video was shot“. To make matters worse for the propagandists behind this nonsense, there is no date to the video, and the men in the video are not even wearing Libyan Army clothing – they are dressed in civilian attire. But it gets better.

EmpireStrikesBlack: NATO’s Terror Over Tripoli
American Everyman: CNN’s Misogynistic Cell Phone Porn Propagnada

President Barack Obama will announce the size of his drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan on Wednesday, mapping out an endgame for a 10-year war that has exacted a fearsome human and financial toll. - Two administration officials said Obama would reveal the fruit of his deliberations on a pullback due to begin next month, in a pivotal moment for US war strategy and his own political prospects ahead of his reelection bid. "The Afghanistan speech will be on Wednesday," one official said, on condition of anonymity, as Obama moved closer to a final decision on the size of the withdrawals and the future US footprint on Afghan soil.

Bill Van Auken: Behind Obama’s Afghan withdrawal decision - The Pentagon has made it clear that it wants to keep the withdrawal down to a token number of support troops, while maintaining the US combat force on the ground in Afghanistan intact, at least through this and next year’s summer “fighting seasons,” when the Taliban and other armed groups opposing the US-led occupation launch their military offensive. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is leaving his post at the end of this month, has publicly insisted that any withdrawal be “modest” and that the US not “rush for the exits” in Afghanistan. Even though talks have begun, Gates stressed that this did not mean there should be any let-up in US military operations. Thus, US troops will continue to kill and die in Afghanistan, but what for what? The pretense that they are defending America from attack has lost all credibility.

American troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan neither to defeat terrorism nor to champion democracy. The real objective of this war is to secure for US imperialism a base of operations for projecting its domination over the energy-rich region of Central Asia and for control over the pipeline routes for funneling this natural wealth to the West.

The KKE denounces the particularly dangerous persecution and the judicial decision of the Danish authorities to sentence to 6 months imprisonment without parole Anton Nielsen, president of the Resistance Fighters’ Organization “Horserød Stutthof Foreningen”, a member of FIR ( International Federation of Resistance Organizations) and Viggo Joergensen cadre of the Construction Workers’ Union of Denmark on the charge of “supporting terrorism”.

This dangerous indictment is a political persecution and considers people’s organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to be terrorist organizations. Their conviction, which constitutes the implementation of the modern terror laws promoted by the EU and the plutocracy of every country and their governments, must not pass.

Video footage of a Tamil journalist apparently executed in the final stages of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war underscores the need for an urgent international inquiry, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. - The U.K.'s Channel 4 has screened amateur footage of the body of Tamil news presenter Shoba, indicating that she was shot and killed during the government's final military surge in the northeast. Shoba, who went by one name, also reported under the name Isaipriya or Isaippiriya for the media division of the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to Channel 4 and the pro-LTTE TamilNet news website. "Her role was as a journalist rather than a direct fighter," Channel 4 reported. The footage, shown June 14 in the documentary "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields," shows Shoba's body, half-naked with her hands bound, among the corpses of Tamil Tiger rebels apparently captured, and executed by Sri Lankan government forces.

AWIP: Sri Lanka's Killing Fields (Channel 4)

After the indignity of seeing its economy overtaken by China's earlier this year, Japan has clawed back a little pride, beating its east Asian rival to produce the world's most powerful computer for the first time in seven years. - The machine, nicknamed K – a play on the Japanese word kei, meaning 10 quadrillion, the number of operations per second it is designed to perform when it is completed next year – crushed the opposition when the latest rankings were announced at the International Supercomputing conference at Hamburg. It harnesses more power than the next five supercomputers combined, and is mush faster than its closest rival, designed by China's National University of Defence Technology. About 1m desktop computers would have to be linked up to replicate its performance.

A study found that whining is the most effective way of distracting people carrying out elementary cognitive tasks. - The sound of fingernails on a blackboard, people having loud conversations on mobile phones in public - the list of things that annoy us is extensive. But, as has long been suspected, the sound of a child whining is the most irritating in the world to adults, according to scientists. Participants who were asked to do simple subtraction while listening to a range of noises - including machine noise, infant cries and neutral speech - made more mistakes and completed fewer problems while listening to the whines of a child. 'You’re basically doing less work and doing it worse when you’re listening to the whines,' said study co-author Rosemarie Sokol Chang, a professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz. The results weren't affected by the gender of participants, or whether or not they had children of their own. 'It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, everybody’s equally distracted,' said Chang.

The EU has designated this springy, soggy piece of Irish earth a Special Area of Conservation and has ruled that no more turf cutting can take place there in order to preserve the bogs. - The Irish government is concerned that the EU will levy heavy fines on the republic for flouting environmental directives laid down 14 years ago. But Fitzmaurice, 43, who started turf cutting with his father when he was four, rejects the notion that his government has to adhere to Brussel's environmental edict because Ireland owes so much to the EU.

"It wasn't turf cutters and their families who bankrupted this country. It was the banks and the builders and their politician friends who got Ireland into such a mess. "We are not responsible for that so why should we pay such a massive price just to do what Europe says."

Not far away in a dank little cottage 87-year-old Ella McKeague is warming herself at the fire, the pungent smell of turf smoke filing up her room. Adjacent to her home is a small bog she owns which neighbours recently extracted enough turf from to keep the frail pensioner warm for the rest of the year.

"I can't afford oil. We all rely on our turf to get us through the year. "Tell them to let us keep cutting the turf like I used to do for 60 years, " she says gripping her walking frame and leaning forward to place another few strips of the black and brown natural fuel on to her fire.