As Julian Assange evades arrest by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge to escape extradition to Sweden, and possibly the US, British commentators have targeted him with shrill abuse. They almost froth with rage as they cite petty examples of his supposed gaucheness, egotism and appearance, as if these were criminal faults. These criticisms tell one more about the conventionality and herd instinct of British opinion-makers than they do about Assange. Ignored, in all this, is his achievement as founder of WikiLeaks in publishing US government cables giving people across the world insight into how their governments really behave. Such public knowledge is the core of democracy because voters must be accurately informed if they are to be able to chose representatives to carry out their wishes.

Iran lawmakers prepare to close Hormuz Strait: Iranian lawmakers have drafted a bill that would close the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers heading to countries supporting current economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"There is a bill prepared in the National Security and Foreign Policy committee of Parliament that stresses the blocking of oil tanker traffic carrying oil to countries that have sanctioned Iran," Iranian MP Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi told reporters. "This bill has been developed as an answer to the European Union's oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Agha-Mohammadi said that 100 of Tehran's 290 members of parliament had signed the bill as of Sunday. Iran's threats to block the waterway through which about 17 million barrels a day sailed in 2011 have grown in the past year as US and European sanctions aimed at starving Tehran of funds for its nuclear programme have tightened. The Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping route through which most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq and nearly all the gas exported from Qatar sails. An EU ban on Iranian oil imports came into effect on Sunday.

US drones attacked a house in the Shawal Valley, in North Waziristan Agency along the border with Afghanistan overnight, killing eight “suspected militants” who were, as usual, entirely unidentified by local officials.

Local officials said that they thought some of the slain might have been foreigners, but that the strikes had burned the house down and the bodies were so charred that there was no way to tell for certain who they were.

The area attacked is the domain of Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the leader of a local Taliban faction. There is no indication, beyond the location, that the people killed had anything to do with Bahadar, but that seems to be the assumption Pakistani officials are operating under.

This is the second time the Shawal Valley has been attacked in less than a week, with a Tuesday night attack against the valley burning another home to the ground and killing the six people inside. None of the victims of that attack were identified either.

We noted Friday:

Barclays and other large banks – including Citigroup, HSBC, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lloyds, Bank of America, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland– manipulated the world’s primary interest rate (Libor) which virtually every adjustable-rate investment globally is pegged to. That means they manipulated a good chunk of the world economy.

We actually understated the impact of the Libor scandal. Specifically, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, the global economy – as measured by the world’s gross domestic product – is less than $80 trillion. In contrast, over $800 trillion dollars worth of investments are pegged to the Libor rate. In other words, a market more than 10 times the size of the entire real world economy is effected by Libor.

Washington's Blog: Mainstream Economics is a Cult - Neoclassical Economics Is Based on Myth

New intelligence from US defense officials suggests that the Syrian version of the story of how the Turkish F-4 warplane was shot down was accurate, and threw serious doubt into NATO ally Turkey’s version of events. - Syria had insisted that the warplane was speeding toward Latakia Province when they fired a missile at it, and it crashed in Syrian waters off the coast. Turkey admitted to the plane violating Syrian airspace, but claimed it was shot down over international waters some 15 minutes later. The US intelligence says that the type of fire used to shoot it down suggests the plane was flying low, as Syria claimed, and agreed that it was almost certainly hit inside Syrian airspace. They also expressed doubts about Turkey’s claim that the surveillance plane just happened to enter Syrian airspace on “training.”

The head of the US Senate's powerful intelligence oversight committee has renewed calls for Julian Assange to be prosecuted for espionage. - The US Justice Department has also confirmed WikiLeaks remains the target of an ongoing criminal investigation, calling into question Australian government claims that the US has no interest in extraditing Mr Assange. ''I believe Mr Assange has knowingly obtained and disseminated classified information which could cause injury to the United States,'' the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dianne Feinstein, said in a written statement provided to the Herald. ''He has caused serious harm to US national security, and he should be prosecuted accordingly.''

The United States is spending $92 million to build Afghanistan a new "Pentagon," a massive five-story military headquarters with domed roofs and a high-tech basement command center that will link Afghan generals with their troops fighting the Taliban nationwide. - But when Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak asked for a bigger office in the building -- a change that would cost about $300,000 -- he got a firm "no." Such changes cost time and money, U.S. military officials said, and in Afghanistan, both are in ever-shorter supply. "We could do them, but we're not going to do them," Col. Andrew Backus, the director of engineering for the NATO command in charge of training and equipping the Afghan security forces, said of the Afghans' proposed revisions. "What we're going to do is finish the project with strict change control and turn it over to the Afghans. And if they want to change it, then they can change it." The military headquarters is one of the most prominent public symbols of America's ongoing financial commitment to [occupation of] Afghanistan. Rising amid Kabul's dusty streets, the 516,000-square-foot building, still cloaked in scaffolds and cranes, dwarfs other buildings in town. "Once it's finished, it will be a permanent and a very significant illustration of the U.S. support for [occupation of] Afghanistan," Wardak said in an interview.

AWIP: Troops have withdrawn from Iraq, but U.S. money hasn’t

Russia has warned the United States that their relations would suffer "serious damage" if Washington adopts a bill to penalise Russian officials for human rights abuses, a state news agency reported on Saturday. - Itar-Tass said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at talks on Friday in St Petersburg that "the possible endorsement in the United States of the 'Magnitsky law' will bring serious damage to relations between our countries." The Russian Foreign Ministry had no comment on the report. The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week passed the "Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act", named after a Russian anti-corruption lawyer whose death in 2009 while in pre-trial detention drew widespread condemnation. The bill would deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians suspected of involvement in his death. Despite broad support in Congress, the bill's future remains uncertain, partly because the U.S. administration is unenthusiastic about a measure that Russia says would be an unwarranted intrusion into its internal affairs. The passing of the bill has added to tension between the White House and the Kremlin over international engagement in Syria, among others.

Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera has confirmed an attempt to overthrow the government after the police riot which started last week with the storming of the Operations Tactical Unit. - "At least six elements that showed that there was an attempt to alter the constitutional order in the country, from the police mobilisation, influenced by political actors on the right", Garcia Linera told a press conference Wednesday. Some politicians took advantage of a legitimate economic demand of the police to bring the situation to staggered stages of coup against democracy, said the vice president. Garcia Linera highlighted elements such as rupture of the democratic state by the police, storming of institutions, the paralysis of government operations and bombings on the Legislative Assembly and the Presidential Palace, seat of the executive.

Russia and China say any decision on a transition of power in Syria should only be made by the Syrian people. - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi announced the stances of their countries after a meeting on the situation in Syria at the United Nations office in Geneva on Saturday. Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. Many people, including security forces, have been killed in the turmoil. Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Webster Griffith Tarpley, an author and historian from Washington, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

The Syrian crisis is to be resolved by a transition government consisting of the current authorities and opposition leaders. The proposal was announced by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan after talks in Geneva. The unity government should be formed on the basis of "mutual consent" said Annan. The Syrian-led transition should take place within a fixed period of time and the envoy hopes this may happen by the end of the year. Annan, announcing the official communiqué of the international meeting in Geneva, called on the Syrian regime and opposition groups to re-commit to a ceasefire and to start implementing his six-point peace plan immediately, without waiting for the other side. The plan urges the sides in the Syrian conflict to cooperate with UN observers, allow humanitarian aid delivery, release detainees and grant journalists access to the country. The right to peaceful demonstrations must also be respected, stressed Annan.

Jason Ditz: Experts: Annan’s New Syria Plan Unlikely to End War
USA Today: Syrian opposition rejects U.N. transition plan