A large number of casualties occurred in the city of Zliten, in the district of Misurata. In Zliten, 85 people were killed including 33 children, 32 women, and 20 men as a result of NATO's deliberate targeting of residential areas and civilian infrastructure. Many of the injured civilian victims are in critical condition and near death. Zliten has been under constant NATO bombardment for several days. The recent NATO attacks started at about 11:30 p.m. EET on August 8, 2011. At least 7 civilian homes belonging to local farmers were destroyed, killing entire families. In all 20 families were the targets of the NATO bombings. This video exposes the media's role of covering up the truth. The mainstream media did not report about this properly or accurately. The media did this to whitewash NATO's war crimes against the Libyan people.

As Libya’s new interim ruler Mustafa Jalil gave the last areas not under his control a surrender or die ultimatum, the rebel council he commands announced that they believe 50,000 people are dead since the uprising began. - Col. Buhahiar, one of the rebels’ many commanders, reported that 15,000 were slain between Zlitan and Misrata, on top of previous estimates, and that the rest of the slain were prisoners that they couldn’t find and are therefore assumed dead. Speculation about where the real death toll lies will no doubt continue for months and even years, and it is unclear if the rebels’ official count includes the large number of black people that they have executed under the assumption that they are probably mercenaries.

Brian Becker: The Truth About the Situation in Libya

NATO plans to continue to support rebels militarily, but a spokesman failed to explain how airstrikes were protecting civilians at this point. - Libyan rebels are planning to launch an attack within days on Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, the ousted Libyan leader’s last major bastion of support. Rebels began to converge on Sirte en masse this week, where negotiations with pro-Gadhafi tribal leaders for a transition of power have not borne fruit for the Transitional National Council (TNC). Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the rebels’ TNC, said that negotiations with forces in Sirte would end Saturday after the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Fitr, when the rebels would “act decisively and militarily.”

An aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has hit out at Dick Cheney, saying the former Vice President s fears being 'tried as a war criminal'. - Powell's long-time aide and chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson told ABC news Cheney, 'Was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration,' adding, '[He] fears being tried as a war criminal.' The attack comes in the wake of attempts by Cheney to publicise his new book, with Powell accusing the one-time vice president of taking 'cheap shots' at the former Bush administration. According to early reports, Cheney's forthcoming book breaks with the former administration's version of events. But former Secretary of State Powell has dismissed Cheney's sensational claims as 'supermarket tabloid' material designed to 'pump up sales'.

A 9/11 coloring book has emerged on the brink of the tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. It is entitled “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom,” and was published by Missouri-based Really Big Coloring Books. The color book begins with Osama bin Laden plotting to attack the United States and ends with bin Laden being shot by a Navy SEAL. A spokesperson for the publisher said that seeing bin Laden get shot “provides closure” for children. Dawud Walid, Michigan representative for the Council on American Islamic Relations, called the book disgusting because it portrays all Muslims as terrorists.

Nahida Izzat: Another "Religion" in the Making

Kenny's Sideshow: The truth is the greatest enemy of the State - The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is turning out to be both absurd and surreal. Propaganda for profit is even targeting the little kids with a coloring book so full of crap that it would make Fox News blush. According to the NY Times, the White House has issued detailed guidelines/talking points to government officials on how to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks but with slightly different versions for domestic or foreign consumption. Very Orwellian.

Ten years after Sept. 11, 2001, Americans continue adjusting to evolving Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport safety procedures. While there is a limit to what Americans can reasonably expect TSA to accomplish to reduce the risk of terrorist attempts in an open society, there is also a limit to what TSA can reasonably expect a free people to tolerate.

In “The Road to Serfdom,” F.A. Hayak warned England and America in the aftermath of World War II that the increasing tendency of a central government to use administrative coercion to control citizens is incompatible with preserving a free society. Once a population internalizes that authorities have the power to coerce, few will experience actual coercion because passive submission avoids it. Excessive government control ultimately leads to a psychological change in the people of a nation.

Security forces fire on protesters throughout Syria as people mark Eid al-Fitr, which normally is a peaceful holiday celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan. - Security forces firing into crowds of protesters killed a 13-year-old boy and six other people across Syria on Tuesday, activists said, closing the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, one of the bloodiest periods of President Bashar Assad's months-long military crackdown on a popular uprising.

Amnesty International: Syria’s surge of deaths in detention revealed

ISLAMABAD – The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States recruited over 1,500 men from Mazar-e-Sharif for fighting against the Qaddafi forces in Libya. - Sources told The Nation:

“Most of the men have been recruited from Afghanistan. They are Uzbeks, Persians and Hazaras. According to the footage, these men attired in Uzbek-style of shalwar and Hazara-Uzbek Kurta were found fighting in Libyan cities.”

When Al-Jazeera reporter pointed it he was disallowed by the ‘rebels ‘to capture images. Sources in Quetta said:

“Some Uzbeks and Hazaras from Afghanistan were arrested in Balochistan for illegally traveling into Pakistan en route to Libya through Iran.

Aljazeera’s report gave credence to this story. More than 60 Afghans, mainly children and teenagers, have been found dead after suffocating inside a shipping container in southwestern Pakistan in an apparent human smuggling attempt. More than 100 illegal immigrants were discovered 20km from the border town of Quetta last week inside the container, which had been locked from the outside. Aljazeera having dubious record gave human touch to this story as most of the men who intruded inside Pakistan from Afghanistan were recruits for Libyan Rebels’ Force.

Michel Chossudovsky: The "Liberation" of Libya: NATO Special Forces and Al Qaeda Join Hands

Libya's interim leaders have given pro-Gaddafi forces until Saturday to surrender or face military force. - Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who leads the National Transitional Council (NTC), said the ultimatum applied to loyalists of Col Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte and in other towns. The announcement came after Col Gaddafi's wife and three of his adult children fled to neighbouring Algeria. Algeria has defended the move, which the NTC called an "act of aggression". Col Gaddafi's own whereabouts are unknown - rumours have variously placed him in Sirte, in regime-controlled Bani Walid south-east of Tripoli, and in the capital itself.

Al Jazeera: Surrender deadline set for Gaddafi forces

Lizzie Phelan: The truth about the causes and effects of the NATO war on Libya - VIDEO

The post-9/11 years at the Department of Defense have seen an enormous increase in no-bid contracts, with the lack of competition approaching 50% during the first six months of this year - Over the course of the last 10 years, the amount of money spent by the Pentagon on non-competitive contracts has almost tripled, from $50 billion in 2001 to $140 billion in 2010, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News. And the reliance on no-bid deals has only gone up so far in 2011—to 45%—the highest rate recorded since 2001. Like other federal agencies, the Defense Department is supposed to demand competitive bidding. But numerous loopholes in federal law make it possible for contracting officers to bypass restrictions and select a single company to provide goods and services.

Al Jazeera: Pentagon 'wasted $30bn' on contracts

Women and children had their hands tied behind their back and were shot in the head in house raid, which was covered up by the military. - As revealed by a State Department diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last week, US forces committed a heinous war crime during a house raid in Iraq in 2006, wherein one man, four women, two children, and three infants were summarily executed. The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, addressed to then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. American troops approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, a farmer living in central Iraq, to conduct a house raid in search of insurgents in March of 2006.

“It would appear that when the MNF [Multinational Forces] approached the house,” Alston wrote, “shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued” before the “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.

Incredible speech given by Brian Becker, National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition. The event on June 24 was sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition.To learn more, go to http://www.answercoalition.org/national/index.html video credit ~ http://www.youtube.com/user/liamh2

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word to discuss the memoir recently published by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“He’s wounding his former colleagues,” she said in regards to his depiction of Condoleezza Rice. “He’s shown nothing but contempt.” “And I think it is so ironic that Dick Cheney, who touts his national security prominence and expertise, has never once accepted any responsibility, nor regret, for the outing — the betrayal — of a CIA officer that was working on nuclear weapons — finding them, stopping them.”

Medea Benjamin: Ten Reasons to Move Cheney’s Book to the Crime Section

They aren't attacking Libya because of Gaddafi, they're attacking Gaddafi because of Libya. - At least fifty more people have been found killed in the expanding Tripoli massacres, Many of these, I think around three dozen, were burnt to literally skeletal remains in a warehouse. This is blamed saqurely, by a self-described escapee of the fire and a couple of others, as committed by the Gaddafi regime against those in the uprising. The find was made in the just-overrun area near the headquarters of the much demonized "Khamis brigade," long reported to engage in serious crimes against humanity. The incident remains, in this researcher's mind, extremely questionable.

On 19 August, 16-year-old Yazen Abbasi was brutally beaten by a gang of soldiers after noon prayer outside the mosque in Ras al-Amud, a neighbourhood in Silwan in East Jerusalem.

Over 100 soldiers were present for Friday prayers that day. According to worshippers, the closure of Al Aqsa mosque for Ramadan brings many more worshippers to Ras al-Amud’s mosque. Yazen, waiting for his family outside the mosque, was startled by the loud bang of a firework set off. Unknown youths threw it in the direction of an assemblage of soldiers, his older brother, Hussein, tells The Palestine Monitor. Yazen was peering over a wall, looking for the source of the firework, when three soldiers attacked him from behind. “Witnesses told us the soldiers beat him with batons and the butts of their rifles,” Hussein notes, “before army commanders arrived and joined in until about ten soldiers were involved.”

They dragged him into an army jeep, preventing passersby efforts to free the boy using cans of pepper spray. From there they drove Yazen to an East Jerusalem police station. His father came to the station after being notified of Yazen’s arrest. During questioning by police officers, Yazen denied accusations of stone throwing. Yazen was then taken to a police station in West Jerusalem where police took his DNA and fingerprints. He was released at 19:00 that evening and taken to hospital where doctors discovered severe damage to his left eye. Along with serious bruises and cuts to the head, he has been left with blurry sight in this eye. Hussein told The Palestine Monitor the damage may be permanent.

Stephen Lendman: Israeli Persecution of Palestinian Children
Stephen Lendman: Israel Shooting and Electric-Shocking Palestinian Children
Stephen Lendman: Israel Toughening Conditions for Palestinian Detainees
PIC: UN official: Israel killed 1,300 Palestinian children since 2000
AWIP: Israel harasses Palestinian children
AWIP: Israel's War on Jerusalem's Children: 1,200 Arrested in One Year

The commission on wartime contracting blamed an over-reliance on contractors, poor planning and fraud for the waste. It had evidence of lax accountability and inadequate competition, it said. Writing in the Washington Post, the report's authors warn that investments in the two countries could be wasted even after US involvement there ends. Among the examples cited was a $40m prison for Iraq that the country did not want and was never completed. US-funded projects in those two countries also risk going to waste because host governments are unable or unwilling to sustain them.

The UK government, in yet another Islamophobic step, has instructed university staff including lecturers, chaplains and porters to report Muslim students who are depressed or isolated to the police. - As part of the government's new strategy and under its new guidance to combating extremism, university lecturers and student union officials are obliged to inform the police in case they witness a Muslim student behaving as if he/she is depressed or isolated, or there is fear the student might become radicalized. But, student union officials and university lecturers expressed shock at the new guidelines, which have resulted in deep discomfort among them and are seen as an infringement of students' civil liberties.

Files declassified in America have revealed covert public relations and lobbying activities of Israel in the U.S. The National Archive made the documents public following a Senate investigation. They suggest Israel has been trying to shape media coverage of issues it regards as important. You can download the files from the web-site of the Institute for Research on Middle Eastern policy. And we can cross to Washington now and talk to Grant F. Smith who is a director at that Institute.

The Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Monday that its former head Dominique Strauss-Kahn paid a visit to the global lender and met with its chief and staff members. - He visited IMF headquarters Monday afternoon, and current IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde met him prior to his meeting with Fund staff, an IMF spokesman said in a short statement. "These were private meetings, arranged at his request. We have no further comment to offer," noted the statement. IMF spokesman David Hawley said on Aug. 25 at an IMF press conference that Strauss-Kahn was scheduled to make a "personal visit" to the IMF as early as this week. Strauss-Kahn resigned from the IMF in May to fight criminal charges in New York.

WASHINGTON — At least 83 people died as human guinea pigs in macabre US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday. - Nearly 5,500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by human contact or inoculations in research meant to test the drug penicillin, the presidential commission found. Within that group, "we believe that there were 83 deaths," said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission, which has pored over 125,000 documents linked to the shocking episode since being set up by Obama last November. Among the 1,300 people exposed to STDs during research between 1946 and 1948, "under 700 received some form of treatment as best as could be documented," Hauser said.

Robert Parry: Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression

TRIPOLI, Libya — Ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's wife and other relatives fled to Algeria Monday, the Algerian foreign ministry said. - The Algerian government said Gadhafi's wife, daughter, two of his sons and their children entered the neighboring country on Monday. It did not say whether Gadhafi himself was with the family. It said the U.N. secretary-general and Security Council and the head of Libyan rebel National Transition Council were informed. The report came as battles raged on two sides of Sirte, the southern city that is the headquarters of Gadhafi's tribe and his regime's last major bastion. The rebels were consolidating control of Tripoli, the capital. Despite effectively ending his rule, the rebels have yet to find Gadhafi or his family members — something that has cast a pall of lingering uncertainty over the opposition's victory.

Al Jazeera: Gaddafi family members flee to Algeria
PressTV: 'Gaddafi, 2 sons in town south of Tripoli'

Taking away dead is a priority as Tripoli struggles with a shortage of medicine, water, fuel and food.

The shots came from two of the high-rise buildings, long bursts of Kalashnikov fire which made the rebel fighters on the ground scatter in alarm. The stubborn resistance at Abu Salim hospital, the last redoubt of the Gaddafi loyalists in Tripoli, was not yet over. The scale of the fighting is now much reduced, but the bodies keep piling up – civilians caught up in the crossfire during the fierce violence of the past few days; fighters from both sides killed in action; those summarily executed, black men by the rebels for being alleged mercenaries, and political prisoners by the regime. Outside Bab al-Aziziyah, Muammar Gaddafi's fortress stormed last week, the dead, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, many with their hands tied behind their back, some gagged, have been left on display on the roadside by the revolutionaries. Inside Abu Salim, the dead from the mortuary, some with marks of manacles on their wrists, spill into other rooms at the hospital. Yesterday brought the news of another massacre, the remains of 53 people in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, shown to a Sky News reporter.

Jason Ditz: Rights Group: Evidence Emerges of Revenge Killings Across Tripoli
Patrick Martin: Evidence mounts of atrocities by Libyan “rebels”
Stephen Lendman: Rebel Assassins Terrorizing Libyans

Progressive Radio News Hour Guests for August 25, 27 and 28, 2011. Progressive Radio News Hour Guests The Progressive Radio News Hour Guests for August 25, 27 and 28, 2011. Thursday, August 25 at 10AM US Central time: Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician/writer/activist critic of Israeli repression against Palestinians and its Arab citizens. He's also the author of "The Wandering Who?" His new book and Middle East/North African issues will be discussed. Middle East issues will be discussed.

Stephen Lendman: Palestinian Right of Self-Defense

The Wandering Who? is out soon. You can now pre-order the book on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. You can find Gilad's articles on AWIP here.

The international development minister, Alan Duncan, has been forced to remove a video from a government website in which he accused Israelis of a “land grab” in the middle-east, after protests from Jewish leaders.

The minister made his remarks in a recording during a visit to the region earlier this year. He announced British aid to support primary education for 35,000 Palestinian children, help to create 8,000 jobs in the area and “direct payments” to 215,000 people so they can buy food, medicine and other essentials. Mr Duncan, Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton, also accused Israeli settlers of “deliberately” taking water away from the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In the video, Mr Duncan declared:

“The wall is a land grab. It hasn't just gone along the lines of the proper Israel boundary. “It's taken in open land which actually belongs to Palestine. Israeli settlers can build what they want and then immediately get the infrastructure so that takes the water deliberately away from Palestinians here.”

The Board of Deputies wrote to Mr Duncan – and the Foreign Secretary William Hague - and demanded that he take the video down. Shortly afterwards, the footage was removed.