MOGADISHU, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Britain said on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of children could starve to death in Somalia if the international community did not ramp up its response to the famine there.

Britain has already pledged more than 80 million pounds ($130 million) to help tackle what aid agencies are calling the worst drought in decades to hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. The British government is expected to announce additional funding specifically to deal with the unravelling humanitarian crisis later on Wednesday, a diplomatic source said.

"We call today on other countries to put their shoulders to the wheel and ensure this dreadful famine ... does not claim up to 400,000 children," Andrew Mitchell, Britain's International Development Secretary, told a news conference in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Japan has also pledged about $600,000 worth of aid to the U.N. refugee agency to help famine victims at the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, home to 440,000 Somali refugees. Mitchell's visit to Somalia, which is grappling to quash an Islamist rebellion that has hampered the delivery of food aid across swathes of its southern and central regions, was the first by a senior British minister since 1992.

AlertNet: World Bank says famine in Horn of Africa is manmade

Two men have been jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Marston near Northwich, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, appeared at Chester crown court on Tuesday. They were arrested last week following incidents of violent disorder in London and other cities across the UK. Neither of their Facebook posts resulted in a riot-related event.

Madison Ruppert: David Cameron declares war on his own people, promises a British police state
Atlantic Wire: Britain's Aggressive Riot Arrests Come in for Criticism

The Economist: Civil disorder and looting hits Britain - We have been here before - Back to 1840s and the Industrial Revolution. Professor Pearson meticulously notes the widespread moral panic about the collapse of ancient, rural moral codes in the face of rapid urbanisation, the rise of working mothers and the spread of child labour (feared because it put money in the pockets of impressionable youths). "Hooligan" records an 1842 House of Commons debate, which heard how the "morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly". Still, at least no Jamaican patois, eh? Ah no, the same Commons debate saw an MP denouncing parts of the country suffering a "preposterous epidemic of a hybrid negro song".

Using the motto “Let’s stop lies and hypocrisy”, Leakymails.com was a project designed to obtain and publish relevant documents exposing corruption of the political class and the powerful in Argentina. The site was open to publish emails either from official or personal accounts, pictures, videos or any other document exposing misbehaviors or unethical actions of public figures in the Southern country, where corruption is rampant. The problem of the Website was the blurred line between the public sphere and the private sphere of public functionaries. Who decides what is really important for the general public? The site raised concerns among different sectors, some saying that the publication of private emails was risking the personal data and privacy of individuals and that the content was largely irrelevant to fighting corruption. Most of the documents published by the site so far are emails sent from personal and official accounts of prominent politicians, including the Private advisor of Cristina Fernández, the Argentinean President, Isidro Bounine and the Secretary of the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights, Santiago Canton and other visible people. The content, however, was largely irrelevant, daily or personal matters, with few exceptions.

JERUSALEM – Israeli military prosecutors have accused a senior Palestinian journalist with the Arabic language Al-Jazeera satellite network of being a member of Hamas, an accusation that he denies his lawyer said Tuesday. - Samer Allawi, Al-Jazeera's bureau chief in Afghanistan, was brought before an Israeli military court Tuesday, a week after soldiers detained him along the West Bank border with Jordan as he tried to return to Afghanistan for work, said his lawyer. At the military court Tuesday, prosecutors said they suspect Allawi of belonging to Hamas, which Israel, the U.S. and EU have labeled a terror group for conducting attacks, including suicide bombings, that have killed civilians. Allawi's lawyer, Salim Wakim, said his client has not yet been formally indicted and that the court extended his detention for an additional week while Israeli agents continue to investigate. Wakim said Israeli investigators tried to pressure Allawi to act as an informant and told him that if he refused he would be imprisoned.

Contracting funds for Afghan economy 'reverse laundered' to fuel insurgency, corruption. - The U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of the Taliban, criminals, and power brokers with ties to both. The money was awarded to Afghan businesses in a central Obama administration policy that finances business contracts to boost the economy. These losses, which end up directly funding groups U.S. forces have been battling against for a decade, are the latest in a series of reports about large amounts of U.S. aid to Afghanistan being diverted to insurgents and corrupt parties. Last year, it was found that $3 billion in diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars had been smuggled out of Kabul International Airport to financial safe havens or laundered to private ventures abroad. Similarly, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority staff concluded in June that U.S. nation-building efforts were fueling corruption, distorting local economies, and did not provide sustainable results.

When she took office as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton vowed a “forward thinking” foreign policy, using something she called “smart power.” At the time, nobody really knew what that meant, except that it was used to demand massive increases in the State Department’s budget. Today, we finally found out what it meant, as Clinton cheered the seemingly endless war in Libya as a perfect example of the “smart power” she’s been talking about all along. She insisted the US was “wisely building coalitions” in the war and had managed to “get other people on the field.” So far it doesn’t seem to be making much difference in the war, which was stalemated when the bombing campaign started in mid-March and remains stalemated to this day.

NATO massacre in Zliten, August the 8th/9th 2011.

This Global Research video was produced and directed in Tripoli by a team of committed journalists, researchers and cameramen, who decided to defy the consensus of the Western media which consists in spreading lies and misleading public opinion.

This video reveals the crimes committed by NATO, as well as those committed by the Western media, which has decided to obfuscate the casualties and human suffering of the Libyan people and uphold the humanitarian fiction of NATO's R2P mandate. War propaganda is defined under international law as a war crime.

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.

Although the presence of Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the Republican presidential primary may be looked upon warmly in the press these days, don’t expect that to last. Speaking with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday, populist author and Texas Observer contributor Jim Hightower cautioned that there’s a “very ugly side” to Perry that won’t be relatively unknown for long. “They say the higher the monkey climbs, the more you see its ugly side,” Hightower said. “Well, Perry’s got a very ugly side. He’s going to get the kind of media scrutiny that he’s not had.”

Pensito Review: Why Rick Perry’s Nickname Was ‘Crotch’
PoliticusUSA: Rick Perry’s Hardcore History of Investment in Porn

My favorites:

1. A Socialist wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.
7. Fascism is a right-wing trait.
10. Reagan raised taxes eleven times as President.
11. Reagan legalized abortion as Governor of California.
49. Separation of church and state is in the Constitution, it’s called the First Amendment.
61. Federal law trumps state law.
69. Fox News is owned by an Australian and has a Saudi prince as an investor.
72. Labor unions built this country.

CNN’s Gary Tuchman reported Monday on a fundamentalist Christian couple who killed their 7-year-old adopted daughter while practicing a violent form of discipline. They reportedly beat their nine children regularly because they thought God wanted them to. Both parents were jailed after pleading guilty to the crime and the surviving children are now in foster homes.

The right-wing Popular Party (PP) mayor of Poyales del Hoyo, in Alava province, has desecrated a mausoleum containing the remains of 10 victims executed by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Mayor Antonio Cerro ordered the bodies to be thrown back into the mass grave outside Candeleda, a village near Poyales from which they had been exhumed in 2002. Spain has some 2,000 mass graves containing 100,000 or more victims of the dictatorship. (See the map of graves at the Historical Memory Act web site.)

The exhumation at Poyales was carried out by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), a group composed of archaeologists, anthropologists and forensics scientists. Damiana Gonzaléz (PP), the mayor of Poyales del Hoyo, and the local section of her party fiercely resisted authorising space in the cemetery for the victims. According to El País, “The story of the town tells that a forefather of hers was the executioner. Or at least she bragged about it for years.” Eventually, the mausoleum was built with a plaque remembering all the names of the dead and a dove of peace on top.