A $65 million water treatment plant is designed to treat and purify water from the nearby Tigris River and provide more than 500,000 residents of Baghdad’s Sadr City district with potable water. U.S. Army photo

Read the story here.

On the same day it runs an editorial saying anything less than full-scale occupation of Afghanistan “looks like a loser”, The Washington Post (WaPo) runs an article of sob-stories from still-occupied Iraq describing how Iraqis want the U.S. occupation to remain there.

The Obama Administration ordered U.S. troops out of Iraqi urban areas in June besides of those to train local forces. Eduardo Londorio wrote in today’s WaPo of local Iraqi politicians fearing U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Mr. Londorio reports “they are feeling powerless and abandoned” because the “looming demise of the local councils—at least as the Americans established them—… will no longer have grass-roots representation and that power will become far more centralized in the hands of a few”. Omar Rahman Rahmani, who was “tapped for a position on the district’s council” said the central government “seemed uninterested in working with the local councils”.

Sounds as American as apple pie.

“I never expected we’d come to this point,” said Hassan Shama, the head of the Sadr City District Council. “The U.S. Army and the U.S. Embassy have abandoned us. After six years of very hard work, we’re worthless. [People] call us agents, spies for the Americans.”

Forget that Mr. Shama has been a U.S. collaborator of the Iraq occupation or he wouldn’t have had his post. Mr. Londorio writes that U.S. commanders “served as advocates and intermediaries” for the local councils. ”They used to come to our meetings, and they had all the power in their hands,” Mr. Rahmani said.

Nadam Naim, another member of the Sadr City council—who Mr. Londorio describes as a “petite woman” that “never leaves home without a handgun given to her by the previous U.S. brigade commander responsible for Sadr City”—said “in a whispered interview” that she will ask for refugee status “if the Americans leave” because working with them has made her “many enemies”.

Nowhere in this propaganda piece of anecdotes is the fact that 124,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, that the Obama Administration plans to leave 30,000 to 50,000 after combat missions are due to end 31 August 2010, or that the Pentagon reported to Congress that “more than 80 percent of Iraqis surveyed in April said they had confidence Iraq’s army and police could protect them, compared with just 27 percent for American forces”.

Propaganda piece to sell what?

Coincidentally, the WaPo editorial today backs the full-scale counterinsurgency occupation of Afghanistan pushed by the U.S. top commander, General Stanley McChrystal, over the occupation-relatively-lite strategy pushed by some in the White House—most notably, Vice President Joe Biden.

The so-called “Biden Option” would still leave 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan leading the 100,000+ International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition with NATO, but would refuse Gen. McChrystal’s call for a troop surge of reportedly up to an additional 40,000 troops.

The WaPo makes its case using the Iraq Surge as its rationale. “[T]he fresh Iraqi forces could not carry the fight on their own; as the insurgency grew stronger, sectarian conflict erupted in Baghdad and other areas,” writes the WaPo editors. “Only by launching the surge in 2007, which partnered American and Iraqi units in pacifying population centers, was Mr. Bush able to reverse the downward spiral. U.S. commanders absorbed the lesson: That is why Gen. McChrystal and nearly every other present or former U.S. commander in the region favor adapting the surge model to Afghanistan.”

The WaPo asserts that the “Biden Option” is a similar “the alternative to Gen. McChrystal’s plan” to the and “would essentially perpetuate that losing effort”. We agree that “the alternative” option pushed by Mr. Biden repeats “Mr. Bush’s error” in Afghanistan which “is a proven loser”.

What’s clever is the crafting of the totality of today’s paper by the WaPo editors. It really is an artform.

But, nowhere in the WaPo editorial is that COIN in Iraq was heavily based on bribing dissident factions with established hierarchies along with backing an elected leader where these dissidents could be used to manufacture consent among the people.

Nowhere in the WaPo editorial is the fact that there are no Sons of Afghanistan. A mission to “win the hearts and minds” of the people with ISAF troops overtly propping up a government that likely stole the August election is either self-defeating; or purposefully manufactures the self-fulfilling prophesy of a long-term occupation virtually enslaving the Afghans and their government to U.S. interests.

Despite the efforts of the WaPo to manufacture consent for what seems like an inevitable long-term full-scale occupation of Afghanistan, our stance is unwavering: Get out of Afghanistan. In an act of cowardice, Mr. Obama has taken this option off the table.

RELATED RECENT POSTS:

• Taliban: Attacking West ‘Not on Agenda’, Only ‘Braced for Prolonged War Against Colonization’ in Afghanistan
• Obama on Afghanistan: ‘Drastic Reduction in Troops’ Not an Option
• Questions Regarding Afghan COIN Strategy
• Military Sources: McChrystal Report Calls for 500,000 Troops in Afghanistan
• Psychotic Neo-Con Iraq War Architects Call For Escalation of Afghan Occupation
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• Gates Open to Troop Increase in Afghanistan On Top of Obama Surge as More Civilians Die and Most Americans Oppose the Occupation

The Iraqi who threw his Shoe at George W. Bush: “My Flower” to Bush, the Occupier
Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush gave this speech on his recent release.

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.

Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.

But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland’s) sons under its boots, whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few years, more than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and the country is now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because of displacement inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him. And despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10 years, for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until we were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. (The occupation) divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and the son from his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents. And our graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is the occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship and the sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into makeshift prisons.

I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad burned. And my people being killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, and this weighs on me every day and pushes me toward the righteous path, the path of confrontation, the path of rejecting injustice, deceit and duplicity. It deprived me of a good night’s sleep.

Dozens, no, hundreds, of images of massacres that would turn the hair of a newborn white used to bring tears to my eyes and wound me. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Fallujah, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. In the past years, I traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and hear with my own ears the screams of the bereaved and the orphans. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.

And as soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies of the Iraqis, and while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the traces of the blood of victims that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had entered homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been violated? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting, bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims and wanted flowers in response.

Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation or after.

I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on the day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why didn’t he ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to shame him? And now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when we were ordered to ask no questions before the press conference began, but only to cover the event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.

And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.

I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish to apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those establishments. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.

History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at the hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt against Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war by deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many other examples that I won’t get into here.

But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious agencies — the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that follow them — will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize me, and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that these agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways, physically, socially or professionally.

And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels to say that he didn’t sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I had found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with the most horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting hit with metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the press conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could hear the voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my screams and moans.

In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked me in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth from the people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were involved in torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in the government and in the army.

I didn’t do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an ancient civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history — especially in America — will state how the American occupation was able to subjugate Iraq and Iraqis, until its submission.

They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain their objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them and spoke up for their cause: Never.

Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.

And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any political party, something that was said during torture — one time that I’m far-right, another that I’m a leftist. I am independent of any political party, and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to any who need it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I would.
My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all those whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the souls of the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who occupied Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I pray for peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are oppressed with the chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are patient and looking to God for release.

And to my beloved country I say: If the night of injustice is prolonged, it will not stop the rising of a sun and it will be the sun of freedom.

One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my fellow detainees. They said, ‘Muntadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight to the omnipotent powers’ — I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray to Him — ‘remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting in prisons because of an informant’s word.’

They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.

They’ve only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons. And now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear me or see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government and the officials and the politicians to look into what’s happening inside the prisons. The injustice that’s caused by the delay in the judicial system.

Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you

The translation is by McClatchy’s special correspondent, Sahar Issa.
[copied from globalresearch.ca, 2009-09-15]

Afghanistan: Where Empires Go to Die
Genghis Khan could not hold onto Afghanistan. Neither will the United States

by Dahr Jamail
Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild and also a Truthout contributor, is very clear about the overall illegality of the invasion and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan by the United States.

“The UN Charter is a treaty ratified by the United States and thus part of US law,” Cohn, who is also a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and recently co-authored the book “Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent” said, “Under the charter, a country can use armed force against another country only in self-defense or when the Security Council approves. Neither of those conditions was met before the United States invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban did not attack us on 9/11. Nineteen men – 15 from Saudi Arabia – did, and there was no imminent threat that Afghanistan would attack the US or another UN member country. The council did not authorize the United States or any other country to use military force against Afghanistan. The US war in Afghanistan is illegal.”

Thus, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, along with the ongoing slaughter of Afghan civilians and raiding hospitals, are in violation of international law as well as the US Constitution.

And of course the same applies for Iraq.

The United States Empire is following a long line of empires and conquerors that have met their end in Afghanistan. The Median and Persian Empires, Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Indo-Greeks, Turks, Mongols, British and Soviets all met the end of their ambitions in Afghanistan.

And today, the US Empire is on the fast track of its demise. A recent article by Tom Englehardt provides us more key indicators of this:

# In 2002 there were 5,200 US soldiers in Afghanistan. By December of this year, there will be 68,000.
# Compared to the same period in 2008, Taliban attacks on coalition forces using Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) has risen 114 percent.
# Compared to the same period in 2008, coalition deaths from IED attacks have increased sixfold.
# Overall Taliban attacks on coalition forces in the first five months of 2009, compared to the same period last year, have increased 59 percent.

Genghis Khan could not hold onto Afghanistan.

Neither will the United States, particularly when in its desperation to continue its illegal occupation, it tosses aside international law, along with its own Constitution.

[copied from GlobalResearch.ca, 2009-09-18]

Why I Threw the Shoe

I am no hero. I just acted as an Iraqi who witnessed the pain and bloodshed of too many innocents

By Muntazer al-Zaidi

September 19, 2009

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.

I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.

As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologise. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day. The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.

I didn’t do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country.

Source

Population of Iraq in 2008  28,221,181

No one can say  Bush and company wanted a war for any reason other then oil and gas.

The US should pay retribution to Iraq for all the damage that has been done in the name of theft, greed, control and profiteering.

The homeless need homes, the orphans need care. The maimed need support. The list goes on and on.

For the million who have died. And those who were tortured.

Prison is where Bush and company should be.

Over a million have died, that is a Crime against humanity.

That is genocide.

That is a war crime.

The war is illegal based on lies, propaganda and fraud. There were no weapons of mass destruction.

Just the WMD the US used on the Iraqis.  They used things like White Phosphorus, Napalm, 240,000 cluster bombs, 10,000  unguided munitions, 20.000  precision bombs and missiles were dropped and I am pretty sure they also used Bunker Busters (type of nuclear bomb),  all by May 1, 2003.

That is definitely overkill. Excessive use of force against a country that had been under sanctions for about a decade. The US loves to attack the defenseless and weak.

Since then the killing has continued. The war wasn’t over as Bush declared, again he lied.  Bush is a criminal.

For that the criminals should be held responsible, to do less would be a crime against all of us.

• Genocide
• War crimes
• Crimes against humanity
  
• Crimes of aggression

The rest of the world cannot sit by and allow anything this horrendous to go unpunished.

It’s time for the US and other forces to get the hell out of their country.

Spanish judge resumes torture case against six senior Bush lawyers

Iraqis celebrated US troop withdrawals from cities in a way that has not been seen since the invasion

There was a pop concert and celebrations in the Baghdad zoo park, fireworks in the night sky, and jubilation in the streets.

Security forces were everywhere, all leave cancelled, for fear that the bombers might strike again.

But even the checkpoints were garlanded with flowers and flags, and many had music blaring.

They were marking the arrival of the last day of June, the deadline for US forces to be out of Iraqi towns and cities.

It’s been named Sovereignty Day, and declared a public holiday. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said it is a huge victory for Iraq.

But the fact is that for most people in Baghdad and elsewhere, 1 July will look very similar to 30 June or 29 June.

‘A few miles away’

American troops have rarely been seen on the streets in many areas in recent months.

Most of the tasks involving contact with the public have been taken over by Iraqi security forces.

But the withdrawal process did see the US troops either dismantling some 86 bases in the capital or handing them to Iraqi forces.

At one such base, Joint Security Station Comanche on the edge of Sadr City, American soldiers were toiling last week in the baking heat to meet the deadline.

People have tasted democracy, they have worked on democracy… Nobody can enforce dictatorship again on this country Haidar al-Obadi Shia MP

Huge concrete blast-walls were taken to pieces and trucked away in the dust to another base outside the city.

The US soldiers from the 1st Cavalry’s Ironhorse Brigade were packing their kitbags and backpacks, stashing them in MRAP armoured vehicles, and being driven away.

“Since we came here in February, our 2,300 men haven’t suffered a single fatality,” said the position commander, Capt Chris Clyde.

“We’re moving to another base a few miles away outside the city, and will continue working with our Iraqi partners from there.”

JSS Comanche is already a thing of the past.

It is no longer a military position. It has been totally dismantled. The building used as its command centre was handed back to its original owners, the Iraqi Agriculture Ministry.

‘Sacrifices’

On Monday, there was a symbolic ceremony at the old Iraqi Ministry of Defence building in the centre of Baghdad, the last US-held position to be handed over to the Iraqi authorities.

At another big ceremony and parade on Tuesday, Mr Maliki paid tribute to the “increasing credibility” of the Iraqi security forces.

He said the US withdrawal from the cities vindicated the position taken by Iraqi negotiators in the tough talks with the US that led to the agreement under which American troops should be entirely out of Iraq by the end of 2011, and that the withdrawal timeline would be adhered to.

As far as the towns and cities are concerned, while US forces remain on call outside city limits, their role in urban areas now changes to one of training and advising.

“This is a huge day both for the American and Coalition forces and for the Iraqis,” said the chief spokesman for the US-led Multinational Forces, Brig Gen Steve Lanza.

“This is the culmination of much hard work and sacrifice over the years, as Iraqi security forces now have primacy and control in this country.”

Election test

Much now depends on whether Iraqi forces can prevent the upsurge of violence which heralded the approach of the US withdrawals from triggering another spiral of sectarian violence – the clear aim of a series of deadly bomb attacks directed almost exclusively against Shia neighbourhoods and markets.

It was just such attacks which provoked Shia militias to take brutal revenge against Sunnis in 2006 and 2007, taking the country to the brink of civil war and disintegration.

More than 130,000 US soldiers remain in Iraq, with full withdrawal due in 2011

“Iraqi society, two years and more ago, looked into that abyss and rejected it, and that is the trend now,” said British ambassador in Baghdad Christopher Prentice, looking ahead to key general elections scheduled for January.

“The concentration and effort across Iraq now is on a very vigorous political campaign. Six months from a landmark election, this is almost unique in the region, a country that is focusing on coalition building, on real politics, and the question is which politicians can win the trust of the electorate to deliver better services and build on the improving security in the way that meets the national needs.”

The period leading up to the elections will be a real test for the Iraqi forces.

They still have 131,000 US troops standing by to help if they run into trouble.

But if they do have to call them back in, it will be seen as a reverse for the Iraqi government, and for President Barack Obama’s hopes of getting all of his forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011 without leaving chaos in their wake.

Changed society

Last January’s provincial elections set an impressive model of democracy in action, with powerful parties in some cases losing out, but accepting the results with good grace.

Will they do so in future elections, when the Americans are no longer around to stiffen the resolve of security forces? Is democracy now sufficiently rooted that it will survive the US withdrawal?

Haidar al-Obadi, a Shia Member of Parliament and close adviser to the prime minister, believes it is.

“There is no going back to a dictatorship or a one-party system in the country now,” he said.

“People have tasted democracy, they have worked on democracy, it is an operation not only at the centre, but also in other areas, in the governorates and in the regions. Nobody can enforce dictatorship again on this country.”

Welcome to Newslip. Today is Sunday, 28th June 2009. I’m Wesley Gerrard and here are the stories making this week’s news…

The world of football had one of its biggest ever shocks this week when underdogs, USA, beat tournament favourites, Spain, in the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup in South Africa. Spain had a world record of 15 consecutive wins and had been unbeaten in 35 matches. The USA had been comprehensively beaten by Italy and Brazil earlier in the tournament. Goalkeeper Tim Howard kept them in the game. Goals came from Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey. The winning scoreline was 2-0. Their win makes it the first time that they will appear in the final of a major international tournament. The USA face Brazil in the final who promise that their own weak semifinal performance against South Africa will be bettered.

Nine people were killed and about 70 injured in a subway train crash in Washington DC. Carriages of one of the trains came to rest on top of the other after a moving train hit a stationary vehicle above ground near a station. The crash which was the worst in the 33 years of the Metro system, happened above ground between Fort Totten and Takoma at 1700 local time on Monday. Two men and seven women died, including Jeanice McMillan, 42, who was the driver of the moving train. The train that crashed was part of a fleet of older carriages and the ongoing investigation into the crash is gathering details from the black box recorders to try to find out what caused it.

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”. The kangaroo-like marsupials have been getting into poppy fields grown for medicine in Tasmania. Australia supplies about 50% of the world’s legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers. Apparently the effect of stoned animals grazing on opium and then walking around in circles till they fall over in a heap was first noticed in sheep. The circle hopping wallabies are the latest revelation in the global crop circle mystery which often blames aliens for the strange designs in fields. The evidence on the phenomenon was presented to the Australian government as part of a report on the security for poppy crops.

The row over MPs expenses has spilled over to other areas of the public sector. The BBC’s director general Mark Thompson has said £350,000 in expenses claims paid out to the corporation’s top executives was “reasonable and justified”. He defended his decision to publish the salaries of executives but not of BBC talent. Claims included luxury hotels, vintage champagne, parties and a private aeroplane. There was public demand to discover what amounts were being paid to the BBC’s so-called ‘stars’ but Thompson said that in such a competitive industry as that of entertainment, where there was no history of such disclosure, in publishing salary information the BBC could potentially face a talent drain.

A bomb killed at least 72 people on Wednesday at a busy market in eastern Baghdad’s Sadr City slum. About 127 people were wounded by the blast in the poor, mostly Shi’ite Muslim area. A witness said the explosion tore through a part of the Mraidi Market where birds are sold, setting stalls ablaze. Bloodshed has dropped sharply across Iraq in the past year, but militants including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda continue to launch car and suicide bombings aimed at undermining the government and reigniting sectarian conflict. Wednesday’s market bombing came four days after the U.S. military formally handed control to local forces in Sadr City, where U.S. and Iraqi forces fought fierce battles against Shi’ite militiamen in the spring of 2008.

The Swine Flu endemic continues to engulf the globe. Statistics show that there are now more than 1 million cases in the US. In Britain. There are 3600 confirmed cases with only one death so far. The worst hit areas in the UK are the West Midlands, London and Glasgow. The West Midlands has about twice as many cases (more than a thousand) than each of the other two areas. Two university students and a ten year old have showed signs of the disease at the Glastonbury music festival. Due to the rapid spread of the disease, UK officials have dismissed the possibility of containment exercises by closing schools . 29 schools where cases of the disease have been found are indeed staying open. Officials have remarked how surprised they are at the unexpected low death levels that the pandemic has induced so far across the world.

Popular BBC television series Top Gear has pulled a remarkable publicity coup. The hit series for car lovers, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, has a cult driver, The Stig, whose white suit and crash helmet keep his identity disguised as he performs driving feats. He has a massive following and to mark the start of a new series, presenter Clarkson promised a moment in television history to ‘rival the moon landings and JR’s shooting.’ The Stig was unveiled, to everyone’s surprise, as former German formula 1 world champion, Michael Schumacher. Doubters of the veracity of this mystery solution were immediate and the internet was full of conspiracy theories. At the end of the show doubt was cast on Michael Schumacher’s Stig as he made a terrible mess of a test drive. Publicity stunt or not, does the Stig’s identity remain a mystery? It is certainly no mystery that viewing figures rose substantially.

A gunman opened fire in a packed restaurant in West London on Friday night. A man and a fifteen year old boy are suffering from non life threatening bullet wounds. The incident occurred at Harry Morgan’s restaurant in St John’s Wood High Street, a relatively affluent area of the capital. Pop star Rachel Stevens was dining at the venue at the time. A spokeswoman for the former S Club 7 member said: “Rachel and her family were in a restaurant where there was gunfire. It was very frightening for everyone there but none of the diners were hurt.” A man in a motorbike helmet brandishing two automatic pistols chased the two victims into the restaurant and opened fire, sending diners scurrying to the floor to hide beneath their tables. Harry Morgan’s was established in 1948 by a London butcher and has been shortlisted in the Evening Standard Restaurant Awards. Fortunately none of the diners were hurt.

Britain has expelled two Iranian diplomats from the country in a clear sign of ever-worsening relations with the Middle Eastern country. The decision was made by the Prime Minister as a tit-for-tat response after two British diplomats were expelled from Tehran. As the post-election crisis continues further foreign influence carries on. President Obama said Mir Hossein Mousavi, the head of the opposition, had captured the imagination of groups in Iran that were interested in opening up to the world. Dr Arash Hejazi, who is studying at a university in the south of England, has spoken of the moments when he tended to the shot female protestor, Neda Agha-Soltan, who bled to death. President Ahmadinejad accuses foreign governments of stirring up the current troubles and his paranoia is not without reason as the history of Iran is full of foreign intelligence inspired coups, in particular coups provoked by the CIA and SIS or British MI6.

And this week’s top story…

‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson has died suddenly after suffering a cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home. After collapsing, his personal physician failed to revive him and ambulance crews rushed the singer to the UCLA medical centre where he was pronounced dead. The star was fifty years old and was in preparations for a heavily scheduled farewell world tour, commencing with a series of gigs at London’s O2 Arena. Fans immediately began congregating outside the hospital and rumours flew across the media. It was the biggest ever single news event on twitter and all major web services reported carrying capacity problems, including Google who thought that they were under attack by spammers. Michael Jackson was one of the most famous people on the planet and not since the death of Elvis Presley has such a death devastated the entertainment world. His album, Thriller is the biggest selling album of all time. Jackson’s life was surrounded by a media circus and his death appears no different. He is often mocked for his extensive plastic surgery and the controversial child abuse court case severely affected his reputation in recent years. However, I am sure that the annals of history will remember this star, who has died before his time, for his remarkable catalogue of hit pop music. Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson.

That’s all for Newslip. Thanks for tuning in. See you again soon. Goodbye.

Shoes lay scattered around the site of the deadly blast

Nearly 70 people have been killed by a bomb blast in the eastern Sadr City area of Baghdad, Iraqi officials say. Police said the device went off in a market place in the predominantly Shia area of the Iraqi capital. More than 130 people were also reported to have been injured in the blast, one of the worst in Iraq this year.It comes less than a week before US soldiers pull out of all Iraqi cities, a move the US said would not be affected by a recent surge in violence.

Iran protests described as a “massacre” today; Gareth Porter on the Saudis protecting bin Laden; BBC interview with former detainees at Bagram describe being tortured; $48.8 bn more money that doesn’t exist for international state cronyism; U.N. report on drugs; and more…

“Khobar Towers Investigated: How a Saudi Deception Protected Osama bin Laden” is a five-part series by Dr. Gareth Porter, of which three have been published at IPS:

Part I: “Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List” – 22 Jun 09
Part II: “Saudi Account of Khobar Bore Telltale Signs of Fraud” – 23 Jun 09
Part III: “U.S. Officials Leaked a False Story Blaming Iran” – 24 Jun 09

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei extended the deadline for the Guardian Council to investigate complaints about the presidential election five days. (AntiWar.com) The BBC posted video of more protesters clashing with Iran stormtroopers, that they believe happened today. Pres. Ahmadiejad’s primary opposition candidate, Mir Housein Mousavi, is barred from speaking in public under 24-hour guard. (The Independent) An unnamed eyewitness told CNN that today was a “massacre”. (4:30):

Mr. Obama called the image of Neda Soltani’s death “heartbreaking” and that seeing such an image makes one know there’s “something fundamentally unjust” about it. I wondered what Mr. Obama thinks when sees the pictures of the children he kills and Helen Thomas asked about torture photos, which the president ignored and Glenn Greenwald commented on. The Guardian reports Ms. Soltani’s family has been kidnapped by the Iran stormtroopers.

Read more on events in Iran today on the Guardian’s live blog.

The BBC interviewed 27 former detainees of the U.S. that were held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, almost all described being tortured. Bagram remains open during the Obama Administration and Amnesty international has called for a wide probe of abuses there. Watch the video here.

At least 69 were killed and over 100 injured in a market bombing in Sadr City, Iraq. (AntiWar.com)

The U.K.’s inquiry into its invasion of Iraq role might publicize its results. (Press TV)

“Achieving peace requires an Israeli partner and commitment to international law, United Nations resolutions and the land for peace principles,” said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarding Israel’s 40+ year occupation of the Golan Heights. (Ha’aretz)

240 new colonial housing units were approved by Israel Defence Minister Ehud Barak to be erected in the West Bank. (FT) Italy and France have joined the call for Israel to freeze settlements. The U.K. has ruled out an arms embargo on Israel.

The House Appropriations Committee approved a $48.8bn foreign spending bill. The bill grants $2.5bn to Afghanistan, $2.2bn for Israel, $1.5bn for Pakistan. (FT) Kill nearly 1,000 Palestinian civilians in three weeks, steal a few hundred more homes, or displace 2 million Pakistanis and this is your reward.

The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime released its 2009 report on the drug market today. See the report here. (Haven’t read it yet.) BBC has posted a lot of pretty graphs here.

“[W]hy is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive [private healthcare providers] out of business?… That’s not logical,” said President Obama. (LAT) Gov’t monopolizes the Iron Fist of Force business, so it’s logical when you keep the gov’t plan in business as a false competetor printing money on the backs of the working-poor, guaranteeing contracts with this monopoly money and bigger subsidies to your favorite Big Pharma cronies, while blocking affordable competitors out of the market protecting their patents. Business as usual, right, Mr. President?

Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo was charged with “inciting subversion”. Mr. Liu has been in jail three times for a total of six years — never having been charged of any crime. Now, he has a right to a lawyer, but China’s continued a pattern of refusing licenses to civil rights advocates. (CSM)

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there is a new petition to sign for leonard peltier one of the oldest american indian political prisoners in the united states. here is the text of the petition as well as the link to sign it:

Convicted in connection with the deaths on June 26, 1975, of Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Leonard Peltier remains imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, despite proof that he was convicted on the basis of fabricated and suppressed evidence, as well as coerced testimony. In fact, the court record clearly shows that government prosecutors have long held that they do not know who killed Mr. Coler and Mr. Williams and, according to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals: “Much of the government’s behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed.” In spite of these facts, Mr. Peltier has served more than 30 years in prison.

After careful consideration of the facts in Mr. Peltier’s case, we have concluded that Leonard Peltier does not represent a risk to the public. First, Mr. Peltier has no prior convictions and has advocated for non-violence throughout his prison term. Furthermore, Mr. Peltier has been a model prisoner. He has received excellent evaluations from his work supervisors on a regular basis. He continues to mentor young Native prisoners, encouraging them to lead clean and sober lives. He has used his time productively, disciplining himself to be a talented painter and an expressive writer. Although Mr. Peltier maintains that he did not kill the agents, he has openly expressed remorse and sadness over their deaths.

Most admirably, Mr. Peltier contributes regular support to those in need. He donates his paintings to charities including battered women’s shelters, half way houses, alcohol and drug treatment programs, and Native American scholarship funds. He also coordinates an annual gift drive for the children of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation — a successful program that, in 2006, expanded to include other reservations throughout the country.

Leonard Peltier is widely recognized in the human rights community for his good deeds and in turn has won several human rights awards including the North Star Frederick Douglas Award; Federation of Labour (Ontario, Canada) Humanist of the Year Award; Human Rights Commission of Spain International Human Rights Prize; and 2004 Silver Arrow Award for Lifetime Achievement. Mr. Peltier also has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize six times.

Mr. Peltier is now over 60 years of age — a great-grandfather — and suffers from partial blindness, diabetes, a heart condition, and high blood pressure.

Rather than presenting a threat to the public, Mr. Peltier’s release would help to heal a wound that has long impeded better relations between the federal government and American Indians.

Mr. Peltier deserves to be reunited with his family and allowed to live the remaining years of his life in peace.

We, the undersigned, support justice and human rights for all people of all nations; recognize that the U.S. courts, by their decisions, have recognized the undisputed misconduct in Peltier’s case, yet have failed to take corrective action; determine the U.S. government’s handling of the Peltier case as a clear abuse of the legal standards of American justice; and do hereby call for justice for Leonard Peltier in the form of an immediate grant of parole.

for those who want background information on peltier’s case the film incident at oglala offers some important context:

dahr jamail, famous for his unembedded reporting in iraq, has a new article aptly entitled “destroying indigenous populations” which is an important read for understanding the wider context of american colonialism at “home” and its imperial advances in iraq:

The Fort Laramie Treaty once guaranteed the Sioux Nation the right to a large area of their original land, which spanned several states and included their sacred Black Hills, where they were to have “the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the land.

However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, President Ulysses S. Grant told the army to look the other way in order to allow gold miners to enter the territory. After repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors and by migrant workers crossing the reservation borders, the US government seized the Black Hills land in 1877.

Charmaine White Face, an Oglala Tetuwan who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is the spokesperson for the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council (TSNTC), established in 1893 to uphold the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. She is also coordinator of the voluntary group, Defenders of the Black Hills, that works to preserve and protect the environment where they live.

“We call gold the metal which makes men crazy,” White Face told Truthout while in New York to attend the annual Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in late May. “Knowing they could not conquer us like they wanted to … because when you are fighting for your life, or the life of your family, you will do anything you can … or fighting for someplace sacred like the Black Hills you will do whatever you can … so they had to put us in prisoner of war camps. I come from POW camp 344, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We want our treaties upheld, we want our land back.”

Most of the Sioux’s land has been taken, and what remains has been laid waste by radioactive pollution.

“Nothing grows in these areas – nothing can grow. They are too radioactive,” White Face said.

Although the Black Hills and adjoining areas are sacred to the indigenous peoples and nations of the region, their attempts at reclamation are not based on religious claims but on the provisions of the Constitution. The occupation of indigenous land by the US government is in direct violation of its own law, according to White Face.

She references Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

The spokesperson for the TSNTC declares, “We need our treaty upheld. We want it back. Without it we are disappearing. They might have made us into brown Americans who speak the English language and eat a different kind of food, and are not able to live with the buffalo like we are supposed to, but that is like a lion in a cage. You can feed it and it will reproduce, but it is only a real lion when it gets its freedom and can be who it’s supposed to be. That’s how we are. We are like that lion in a cage. We are not free right now. We need to be able to govern ourselves the way we did before.”

Delegations from the TSNTC began their efforts in the United Nations in 1984 after exhausting all strategies for solution within the United States.

Homeland Contamination

There is uranium all around the Black Hills, South and North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. Mining companies came in and dug large holes through these lands to extract uranium in the 1950’s and 1960’s prior to any prohibitive regulations. Abandoned uranium mines in southwestern South Dakota number 142. In the Cave Hills area, another sacred place in South Dakota used for vision quests and burial sites, there are 89 abandoned uranium mines.

In an essay called “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” political activists Ward Churchill and Winona LaDuke state that former US President Richard Nixon declared the 1868 Treaty Territory a “National Sacrifice Area,” implying that the territory, and its people, were being sacrificed to uranium and nuclear radiation.

The worst part, according to White Face, is that, “None of these abandoned mines have been marked. They never filled them up, they never capped them. There are no warning signs … nothing. The Forest Service even advertises the Picnic Springs Campground as a tourist place. It’s about a mile away from the Cave Hills uranium mines.”

The region is honeycombed with exploratory wells that have been dug as far down as six to eight hundred feet. In the southwestern Black Hills area, there are more than 4,000 uranium exploratory wells. On the Wyoming side of the Black Hills, there are 3,000 wells. Further north into North Dakota, there are more than a thousand wells.

The Black Hills and its surroundings are the recharge area for several major aquifers in the South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming regions. The crisis can be gauged from the simple description that White Face gives: “When the winds come, they pick up the [uranium] dust and carry it; when it rains or snows, it washes it down into the aquifers and groundwater. Much of this radioactive contamination then finds its way into the Missouri River.”

She informs us that twelve residents out of about 600 of the sparsely populated county of Cave Hills have developed brain tumors. A nuclear physicist has declared one mine in the area to be as radioactively “hot” as ground zero of Hiroshima.

Red Shirt, a village along the Cheyenne River on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has had its water tested high for radiation and local animals have died after consuming fish from the river.

After three daughters of a family and their mother died of cancer, a family requested White Face to have the municipal water tested. The radiation levels were found to be equal to those inside an x-ray machine. Little wonder then that the surviving sons and their father are afflicted with the disease. People procuring their grain and cattle from the region are advised to be extra cautious.

One cannot but feel the desperation of her people when White Face bemoans, “It’s pure genocide for us. We are all dying from cancer. We are trying not to become extinct, not to let the Great Sioux Nation become extinct.”

The Ogala Sioux are engaged in ongoing legal battles with the pro-uranium state of South Dakota. They are aware of the unequal nature of their battle, but they cannot afford to give up. White Face explains how “… Our last court case was lost before learning that the judge was a former lawyer for one of the mining companies. Also, the governor’s sister and brother-in-law work for mining companies [Powertech] and a professor, hired by the Forest Service to test water run-off for contamination, is on contract with a company that works for the mining company. When I found out the judge was a lawyer for the mining company I knew we would lose, but we went ahead with the case for the publicity, because we have to keep waking people up.”

Other tribes, such as the Navajo and Hopi in New Mexico, have been exposed to radioactive material as well. Furthermore, the July 16, 1979, spill of 100 million gallons of radioactive water containing uranium tailings from a tailing pond into the north arm of the Rio Puerco, near the small town of Church Rock, New Mexico, also affected indigenous peoples in Arizona.

Her rage and grief are evident as White Face laments, “When we have our prayer gatherings we ask that no young people come to attend. If you want to have children don’t come to Cave Hills because it’s too radioactive.”

The exploitative approach to the planet’s resources and peoples that led to these environmental and health disasters collides with White Face’s values: “I always say that you have to learn to live with the earth, and not in domination of the earth.”

Nuking the Colonies

The US government practices another approach. In occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, the uranium that has caused genocide of sorts at home has proceeded to wreak new havoc.

Two Iraqi NGO’s, the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI) and the Conservation Center of Environment and Reserves in Fallujah (CCERF) have extensively documented the effects of restricted weapons, such as depleted uranium (DU) munitions, against the people of Fallujah during two massive US military assaults on the city in 2004.

In March 2008, the NGO’s were to present a report titled “Prohibited Weapons Crisis: The effects of pollution on the public health in Fallujah” to the 7th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council

Muhammad al-Darraji, director, MHRI and president, CCERF, was to present the report with an appeal, “We are kindly asking the High Commissioner for Human Rights to look at the content of the report in accordance with the General Assembly’s resolution 48/ 141 (paragraph 4) of 20 December 1993, to investigate the serious threat (to the) health right in Fallujah and Iraq, and to relay the results of this investigation to the Commission on Human Rights to take the suitable decisions.”

Attached to the aforementioned is another report co-authored by Dr. Najim Askouri, a nuclear physicist trained in Britain and a leading Iraqi nuclear researcher and Dr. Assad al-Janabi, director of the Pathology Department at the 400-bed public hospital in Najaf. Their report includes a section on the “Depleted Uranium Crisis” from Najaf, 180 miles from where DU was used in the First Gulf War.

Dr. Najim begins the report by noting that Coalition Forces, mostly US, used 350 tons of DU weapons in about 45 days in 1991, primarily in the stretch of Iraq northwest of Kuwait where Iraqi troops were on their retreat. Then, in 2003, during the Shock and Awe bombing of Baghdad, the US used another 150 tons of DU. He says that cancer is spreading from the conflict area as a health epidemic and will only get worse. The cancer rate has more than tripled over the last 16 years in Najaf.

According to Dr. Najim, “When DU hits a target, it aerosolizes and oxidizes, forming a uranium oxide that is two parts UO3 and one part UO2. The first is water soluble and filters down into the water aquifers and also becomes part of the food chain as plants take up the UO3 dissolved in water. The UO2 is insoluble and settles as dust on the surface of the earth and is blown by the winds to other locations. As aerosolized dust, it can enter the lungs and begin to cause problems as it can cross cell walls and even impact the genetic system.”

One of Dr. Najim’s grandsons was born with congenital heart problems, Down Syndrome, an underdeveloped liver and leukemia. He believes that the problems are related to the child’s parents having been exposed to DU.

Detailing a skyrocketing rate of cancer and other pollution-related illnesses among the population of Fallujah since the two sieges, the report states, “Starting in 2004 when the political situation and devastation of the health care infrastructure were at their worst, there were 251 reported cases of cancer. By 2006, when the numbers more accurately reflected the real situation, that figure had risen to 688. Already in 2007, 801 cancer cases have been reported. Those figures portray an incidence rate of 28.21 [per 100,000] by 2006, even after screening out cases that came into the Najaf Hospital from outside the governorate, a number which contrasts with the normal rate of 8-12 cases of cancer per 100,000 people.

“Two observations are striking. One, there has been a dramatic increase in the cancers that are related to radiation exposure, especially the very rare soft tissue sarcoma and leukemia. Two, the age at which cancer begins in an individual has been dropping rapidly, with incidents of breast cancer at 16 (years of age), colon cancer at 8 (years of age), and liposarcoma at 1.5 years (of age).” Dr. Assad noted that 6 percent of the cancers reported occurred in the 11-20 age range and another 18 percent in ages 21-30.

“The importance of this information confirms there is a big disaster in this city…. The main civilian victims of most illnesses were the children, and the rate of them represents 72 percent of total illness cases of 2006, most of them between the ages of 1 month and 12 years…. Many new types and terrible amounts of illnesses started to appear [from] 2006 until now, such as Congenital Spinal cord abnormalities, Congenital Renal abnormalities, Septicemia, Meningitis, Thalassemia, as well as a significant number of undiagnosed cases at different ages. The speed of the appearance these signals of pollution after one year of military operations refers to the use of a great amount of prohibited weapons used in 2004 battles. The continued pollution maybe will lead to a genetic drift, starting to appear with many abnormalities in children, because the problems were related to exposure of the child’s parents to pollution sources and this may lead to more new abnormalities in the future. According to the security situation with many checkpoints and irregular cards to allow the civilians to enter or exit the city until now, all this helps to continue the terrible situation for this time. Therefore, we think that all these data is only 50 percent of the real numbers of illnesses.”

The Sioux tell their youth to avoid their radioactive native lands if they wish to procreate and prosper. Those in Iraq have no option but to lead maimed lives in their native land.

On February 4, 2009, Muhammad al-Darraji sent President Barack Obama a letter, along with the aforementioned report. A few excerpts are presented here:

“We have the honor to submit with this letter our report on the effects on public health of prohibited weapons used by the United States during its military operations in Fallujah (March-November 2004). It was our intention to present the report to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations on 4 March 2008, but both security and political reasons played a significant role in making this task impossible. The report, now in your hands, contains vast evidence and documentation on the catastrophic and continuous pollution in Iraq (to prevent) which nobody has taken any real action to help the victims or clean up polluted places. Some months ago, and in June 2008, I sent this report directly to some US congressmen. Two of them went to my town, Fallujah, and visited the general hospital to investigate the claims contained in our report. No substantial result came out of this visit. In February 2009 one of my colleagues, who worked in the hospital’s statistical office and helped gather information about the pollution, was killed by unknown individuals. The blood of my friend is the driving force that led me to write to you directly in order for you to release the facts for which my friend paid with his life. Therefore, we are kindly asking you to look at the content of the attached report and to investigate the serious threats to the right to life of the inhabitants of Fallujah and other polluted places in Iraq, as well as to publicly release the results of this investigation under right of information about what really happened in Iraq.”

The president has yet to respond.

———

Jason Coppola and Bhaswati Sengupta contributed to this article.

and there’s more. irin news published a timeline of violence in iraq that falls on obama’s watch–these are obama’s wars now and the blood is entirely on his hands:

Iraqi deaths have been caused by US-led forces, Iraqi forces, foreign insurgents, sectarian violence and indirectly by war-related effects on their health, on food security and sanitation. Estimates range from 100,000 to well over a million.

22 June 2009: A bomb in Husseiniya vegetable market on northern outskirts of Baghdad killed five. Parked car bomb in central Baghdad’s Karrada District killed five. Suicide bomber killed himself and seven others outside west Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib municipal council building.

20 June: A suicide truck bomb killed 73 and wounded about 150 others outside a mosque in Kirkuk, 250km north of Baghdad.

12 June: A gunman killed the head of parliament’s biggest Sunni Muslim bloc and five other people at a mosque in west Baghdad.

10 June: 33 killed and 70 wounded in a car bombing in the town of Batha, west of Nasiriyah in Dhiqar Province.

8 June: A bomb attached to a minibus killed seven people and wounded 24 others at a bus terminal in southern Baghdad.

3 June: 9 killed and 31 wounded by a bomb planted in a cafe in southwest Baghdad.

21 May: A suicide bomber killed 12 and wounded 25 in a market in Baghdad’s southern Doura District. Three US soldiers also killed in the attack. In Kirkuk, a suicide bomber killed seven people and wounded eight.

20 May: At least 41 people killed and 82 wounded in a car bombing in the Shula District of northwest Baghdad.

6 May: A truck bomb killed 10 people and wounded 37 others in a vegetable market in Doura District, southern Baghdad.

29 April: At least 51 killed and many more wounded in a twin car bomb attack in Baghdad’s Sadr City.

24 April: At least 55 killed, including 20 Iranian pilgrims, by two suicide bombers outside the Al-Kadhim Shia shrine in Baghdad.

23 April: A suicide bomber killed 56, mostly Iranian pilgrims, in a restaurant near Muqdadiyah town, 80km northeast of Baghdad. A woman suicide bomber also killed 28 in an attack on police in central Baghdad.

6 April: Car bombings in mainly Shia districts of Baghdad kill at least 34 people.

26 March: At least 20 killed by a car bomb near a Baghdad market.

23 March: At least 25 killed by a suicide bomber in Jalawla, northeast Baghdad.

10 March: A suicide bomber kills at least 33 tribal leaders and army officers outside the town hall in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad.

8 March: A suicide bomber killed 28 at a Baghdad police academy.

13 Feb: A female suicide bomber killed 35 pilgrims, mainly women and children, near central city of Hilla.

4 Jan: A female suicide bomber killed 35 pilgrims at a Baghdad religious procession.

2 Jan: At least 23 killed in a suicide attack in Yussufiyah, south of Baghdad.

and the escalation of the massacring in pakistan is entirely obama’s war. today obama’s bombs fell on pakistanis attending a funeral for another massacre perpetrated by obama’s bombs the previous day:

At least 45 people have died in a missile strike by a US drone aircraft in Pakistan, officials there have said.

The people killed in South Waziristan region had been attending a funeral for others killed in a US drone strike earlier on Tuesday.

Intelligence officials said at least 45 people had been killed and dozens more injured in the later strike, when two missiles were fired.

But a local official told BBC News the death toll was more than 50.

jeremy scahill contextualizes the savagery of these drone massacres:

Three days after his inauguration, on January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama ordered US predator drones to attack sites inside of Pakistan, reportedly killing 15 people. It was the first documented attack ordered by the new US Commander in Chief inside of Pakistan. Since that first Obama-authorized attack, the US has regularly bombed Pakistan, killing scores of civilians. The New York Times reported that the attacks were clear evidence Obama “is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy.” In the first 99 days of 2009, more than 150 people were reportedly killed in these drone attacks. The most recent documented attack was reportedly last Thursday in Waziristan. Since 2006, the US drone strikes have killed 687 people (as of April). That amounts to about 38 deaths a month just from drone attacks.

The use of these attack drones by Obama should not come as a surprise to anyone who followed his presidential campaign closely. As a candidate, Obama made clear that Pakistan’s sovereignty was subservient to US interests, saying he would attack with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. Obama said if the US had “actionable intelligence” that “high value” targets were in Pakistan, the US would attack. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, echoed those sentiments on the campaign trail and “did not rule out U.S. attacks inside Pakistan, citing the missile attacks her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, ordered against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. ‘If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured,’ she said.”

amazingly there are still muslims who think obama is great because he cited a few suras from the qur’an. but i maintain actions speak louder than words. you cannot claim to respect islam on the one hand and massacre muslims on the other.

David Gordon’s review of Killing in War; 19 to 150 dead in Iranian resistance Saturday; Mousavi ‘prepared for martyrdom’; U.S. put the ‘Green’ in ‘Green Revolution’; Gordon Prather on Israel’s nukes; Thomas Woods on Paul Krugman FAIL!; Did the CIA kill RFK?

David Gordon reviews Killing in War which counter’s a soldier’s, “I was just following orders”. (LvMI)

Protesters in Iran today faced “a very large show of force” from the Iranian government. 19 people died in unrest Saturday in Tehran, hospital sources said. Unconfirmed reports put the death toll at 150.. Ayatollah Khamenei ordered the people to not protest today. Amnesty International has noted that Iranian law does not prevent people from organizing peaceful rallies. Iranian police are using live ammo, firing water cannons, and the Basiji government-backed militias (dressed in white in any videos you see) are beating the shit of people in the streets. The primary opposition to President Ahmadinejad, Mir Housein Mousavi, says he’s “ready for martyrdom” after declining to meet with Iran’s Guardian Council today. “I should emphasize that all protests held in the past week were illegal and beginning today any gathering critical of the election would be illegal,” said acting Police Chief Brigadier General Ahmad-Reza Radan. “Police will deal with the protest firmly and with determination. Those who provoke street protests should know that they will be arrested and prosecuted.” Video from today (h/t: The Raw Story):

Did the U.S. put the ‘Green’ in ‘Green Revolution’? (LRC Blog) Daniel McAdams has a great post on the CIA’s use of ‘color-coded’ revolutions, citing a WaPo article where Kenneth Tillerman writes, “The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques…. Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Mr. McAdams wrote a great piece re-posted here on the U.S. involvement in the mass resistance to Moldova’s election in April. Ivan Eland says the U.S. should butt out even more in an article today.

“Governments rig elections for only one reason: They’re afraid of the people,” commented The News Tribune editorial page days ago. “How brutal are Khamenei and Ahmadinejad? How determined are the demonstrators? Those questions may be answered in the next few weeks.” We’re finding out, alright. (h/t: McClatchy)

Israel Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon says the protests in Iran will lead to revolution. (Ha’aretz) “Mousavi and his wife have brought a new spirit of openness and freedom,” said Mr. Ya’alon. “”It is impossible to hide this energy – and therefore there will eventually be a revolution in Iran. Seventy percent of Iranians oppose the regime of the ayatollahs.”

A suicide bomber hit a Tehran shrine to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the ‘79 revolution. Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) is suspected of carrying out the attack by an al Jazzera correspondent before the election. The Kurdish Marxist group played a large role in the revolution of ‘79. Seymour Hersh has written for The New Yorker that “in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States”. Iranians are calling it a false-flag attack by the government. the bombing killed two and injured eight.

“Whatever happens in the weeks and months that follow, the events of the past 10 days have shaken the Islamic Republic,” writes Lindsey Hilsum in her report on today’s protests. (Guardian)

Gordon Prather comments on this week’s drama around IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei — Iran and Israel’s nuclear weapons (the former being non-existent, the latter being very existent), Israel’s refusal to allow for its facilities to be inspected while rattling the sabre at Iran, and Mr. ElBaradei’s “gut feeling” that Iran wants nukes in contradiction to his own research and findings from snap inspection as the head of the U.S. nuclear watchdog agency. (AntiWar.com)

“Distorting U.S. Intel On Iran: Obama Follows Bush’s Lead, Again” by Charles Davis (AntiWar.com) is a great article on the ridiculous perceived threat of an Iranian nuke.

Sadr City control has been handed over from the U.S. to the government of Iraq. A spokesperson for Muqtada al-Sadr has called this “an important step”. Mr. al-Sadr has been branded a terrorist for his resistance to U.S. occupation in leading the al-Mahdi army opposition. As a part of “The Surge”, many Mahdi soldiers were bought off. Mr. al-Sadr is a Shi’a theologian studying in Iran for Ayatollah and one of the most influential voices in Iraq. Over two million Iraqis live in Sadr.

A suicide truck bomb killed at least 46 67 in Kirkuk. UPDATE: The AP is now reporting 55 dead. UPDATE2: Aswat al-Iraq and CNN are reporting at least 67 dead and 200 wounded in the deadliest attack in Iraq this year.

NYT reporter escapes Taliban after seven months. Pulitzer-winning David Rhode was research a book and kidnapped in November with a local reporter and their driver. Mr. Rohde and the reporter, Tahir Ludin, jumped a wall where they were held in North Waziristan, found a Pakistan Army scout and were flown to the U.S. Bagram Air Base. The driver, Asadullah Mangal, did not escape with the reporters.

“Krugman Failure, Not Market Failure” by Thomas Woods (LRC): “So the New York Times’ Paul Krugman called the housing bubble, or so he tells us. I could have called the housing bubble, too, if like Krugman I advocated the very policies that led to it. Yesterday, for instance, I predicted that the Pepsi I put in the refrigerator would be cold when I took it out that night. I’m pretty good at this.” Mr. Woods, author of the NYT bestseller Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, was interviewed by a self-proclaimed “big government guy” this last week. The link to the interview is here.

U.N. will begin investigating Pakistan’s Fmr. PM Benazir Bhutto’s assassination next month. The six-month investigation will be conducted by a three-member commission: Chilean ambassador to the U.N., a former Indonesian attorney general, and a former deputy police commissionerfrom Ireland.

“Venezuela Stifles Dissent” is the headline of The Miami Herald’s editorial yesterday on President Chavez’s increasing methods to curb freedom of the press. (h/t: McClatchy)

“Did the CIA Kill Bobby Kennedy?” A Shane O’Sullivan piece from the London Guardian in 2006. Really great read, if you’re into that stuff. (h/t: LRC)

The following is a translation of a story from Alarabiya, a UAE-based media network, which was published on its Arabic website a few hours ago. While IGLHRC has not verified all of the allegations, many are consistent with patterns of human rights violations being reported from within the country. As a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Iraqi government has an obligation to protect the right to life (Article 6) and the right of all its citizens “to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (Article 7).

On Friday April 17, IGLHRC sent a letter to the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, asking her to take specific measures to protect LGBT Iraqis. On April 8, IGLHRC and Human Rights Watch submitted an urgent appeal to the Special Procedures of the United Nations to ask for an investigation. In 2006, after a wave of violence targeted LGBT Iraqis, IGLHRC sent a letter to then Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, requesting that the U.S. government conduct a thorough investigation of the violations.

IGLHRC will continue to monitor the situation and gather more evidence about the recent wave of violence against Iraqi LGBT people.

Bodies of 7 Gays in Baghdad Morgue

http://www.alarabiya.net/save_print.php?print=1&cont_id=71071

by Hayyan Neyuf -Dubai/ Ali Al-Iraqi – Baghdad

A prominent Iraqi human rights activist says that Iraqi militia have deployed a painful form of torture against homosexuals by closing their anuses using “Iranian gum.” … Yanar Mohammad told Alarabiya.net that, “Iraqi militias have deployed an unprecedented form of torture against homosexuals by using a very strong glue that will close their anus.”

According to her, the new substance “is known as the Ameri gum, which is an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq.”

According to this human rights activist, for the past 3 weeks a crackdown on homosexuals has been going on based on a religious decree that demands their death; dozens have been targeted. She says that the persecution of homosexuals is not confined to the Shiite clerics. Some Sunni leaders have also declared the death penalty for sodomy on satellite channels.”

63 People Tortured
According to Hassan from the Iraqi LGBT group in London, attacks against homosexuals have been abundant in Shiite neighborhoods, especially poor regions and remote areas such as the southern provinces and the Hurriya, Sho’la and Sadr neighborhoods in Baghdad. So far, 63 members of the group have been tortured.

Hassan also confirmed the use of “Iranian Gum” in the torture process, adding that, “I talked to many young men who have been tortured by this method. They went to the hospital for treatment and in some cases they were refused treatment.” According to Hassan, “all religious leaders, whether Sunni or Shiite, call for the eradication of homosexuals, but the Shiites are the ones who are most involved in these attacks.”

Vigilante Groups
According to newspaper reports from local news sources in Sadr City in East Baghdad, a previously unknown group “Ahl al-Haq (the followers of Truth) have stepped up the persecution of Iraqi homosexuals after the murder of a number of them in the past few days. The news sources say that, “3 lists, each with the name of 10 gay men were circulated in Sadr City for a few hours.” The lists included a quote saying, “You, prostitutes, we will punish you!”

7 Bodies in Bagdad’s Morgue
The Alarabiya reporter, visited the Baghdad Morgue in Bab-al-Moazaam in central Baghdad, where the Neman Mohsen, the medical examiner, confirmed that they have the bodies of 7 homosexuals in the morgue. He said, “We were not able to identify the culprits who dumped the bodies in front of the morgue and fled, without being seen.”

He explained, “There were bodies with gunshots in the head and chest and the rest of the body without any obvious causes of death.”

Khalaf Abdul Hussein, from the Legal Affairs Office at the Police Station in Sadr City, told Alarabiya: “the extra-judicial killing of any citizen is a crime punishable by law. No one has the right to become a substitute for judicial authorities or executive authorities, and if there are complaints against individuals, there is law and there are police and there are government agencies. No group or class has the authority to punish people instead of the state.”

He said: “We, like everyone else, have heard rumors about these cases, but we can’t comment on something that is not evidence, and there is no evidence for these crimes either in terms of motivation or in terms of the nature of the criminal acts. We do not know the motives of the killers and we do not know the intentions of those killed.”

“Son of a Bitch”
Officials and tribal leaders in Sadr City are reluctant to provide details about the murder of homosexuals. However, Sheikh Hashem Mokhani, one of the tribal elders in the city, said: “The people refer to these sexual perverts as ‘son of a bitch,’ but most of the victims were not residents of Sadr City. They used to hang out in a [gay] cafe, on Palestine Street in Baghdad.”

Sheik Salal Al-kaabi, one of the elders of Sadr City says: “we have heard that the tribes, to whom these perverts belonged, declared their lives worthless and allowed their death, but we have also heard that an organization calling itself the followers of Truth (ahl-al Haq) are reponsible for the murders and have written on the chest of victim a sentence that reads: This is the fate of a son of a bitch.”

Hossein Alizadeh

Hello dear friends,

In just the last 3 short months since the inauguration of beloved President Obama, the world has openly and thoroughly kicked off any semblance of nationalism, traditionalism, and religious orthodoxy. This trend has been in the mix for YEARS. But the fetters, blinders, and restraints have come off! The social engineers, the multicultural warriors, the globalist visionaries have all but won fair and square.

And yes, even in good old America, individualism is being replaced by the global collective! I see it on Noggin and Nickelodeon every day.

This post-modern, post-fundamentalist, post-nationalist world is no different than any other fascism that has ever existed. The grandiose ideas and rights of the FEW determine the laws, freedoms, and prosperity (or poverty) of the MANY. “The masses do not know what is good for them. They are not educated or enlightened enough to govern themselves. They are too ignorant, isolated, and self-seeking to bring about the global peace and prosperity of the new universal human consciousness we desire.”

If you honestly DO NOT see this DOMINATING the world stage today, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

Maybe you are too ignorant and isolated to defend yourselves against it! Maybe you need me to come slap yah up side the head! *grin*

Don’t worry, it is NOT up to you, as Glenn Beck says! It actually is not up to policy, finance, society, or even the Church to do anything about!!!!!!!

Why do I say that?

Because prophecy is Prophecy! What God has put in motion, let man just stand back and watch in dumb amazement.

Christians and Jews WILL be persecuted. Unlike at ANY OTHER TIME in the HISTORY of the world.

The principles of the Bible will be HATED.

The Name of Jesus will be blasphemed, profaned, and mocked.

The world will HATE us because of HIS NAME’S SAKE.

But do not be afraid. GREATER IS HE THAT IS IN YOU THAN HE THAT IS IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!

Our ONLY BUSINESS is the GOSPEL OF CHRIST!!!!!!!

And I quote:

“Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ, and will deceive many. ⁶You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸All these are the beginning of birth pains.

⁹“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. ¹⁰At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, ¹¹and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. ¹²Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, ¹³but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. ¹⁴And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

- Matthew 24 NIV

Italy earthquake kills more than 90 and leaves thousands homeless

• 6.3-magnitude tremor centres on local capital L’Aquila
• Prime minister Berlusconi declares state of emergency

Scores of people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless in central Italy today after a powerful earthquake shook a mountain region, severely damaging a historic city and surrounding villages.

At least 92 people were known to have died, the Italian news agency Ansa reported, quoting local rescue workers. More than 1,500 people had been injured, the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, told a press conference in L’Aquila, the badly damaged capital of the Abruzzo region, close to the quake’s epicentre.

The 6.3-magnitude tremor, which struck at 3.32am local time (2.32am BST), was the country’s deadliest since the Irpinia quake in the south in November 1980, which killed more than 2,500 people.

Up to 50,000 people may have been left homeless by this morning’s quake, a spokesman for Italy’s civil protection agency said.

The Alliance and Obama have a shared vision and both need Turkey …
…Not all the moves of political celebrities carry special and secret meanings, and April 6 and 7 may have just been the most suitable dates for Obama to visit Turkey, but the coincidence is still meaningful. Using the logic Kınıklıoğlu applied to the relation between Davos and the Obama visit, one can say that 10 years ago there wouldn’t have been a AOC forum in İstanbul. In fact, there wouldn’t be a AOC at all.

Kınıklıoğlu suggests that what brings both Obama and the AOC to Turkey is the same thing: the immense bridge-making capacity Turkey promises for the future of the world...

“There is a correspondence of visions here. Obama is the most cosmopolitan, multicultural president of the United States ever. He is radically different from his predecessors in his understanding of world politics. He listens to others. He is open to dialogue with Iran, Syria and others,” he says.

The overlap of Obama’s vision and the vision of the AoC can be observed from a reading of Obama’s inauguration speech and the AoC’s first High-level Group Report presented to the secretary-general of the UN. Both texts refer to multiculturalism, the multi-polarity of the world, international law, human rights, accountable leadership, civil society, education, youth, immigration, intercultural peacemaking and bridge building.

Barack Obama’s New World Order

…At almost every stop, Obama has made clear that the U.S. is but one actor in a global community. Talk of American economic supremacy has been replaced by a call from Obama for more growth in developing countries. Claims of American military supremacy have been replaced with heavy emphasis on cooperation and diplomatic hard labor. (Read “Obama in Europe: Facing Four Big Challenges.”)

The tone was set from Obama’s first public remarks in London on Wednesday, at a press conference with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, where the American President said he had come “to listen, not to lecture.” At a joint appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Baden-Baden on Friday, a German reporter asked Obama about his “grand designs” for NATO. “I don’t come bearing grand designs,” Obama said, scrapping the leadership role the U.S. maintained through the Cold War. “I’m here to listen, to share ideas and to jointly, as one of many NATO allies, help shape our vision for the future.”

On Thursday night, after the G-20 summit ended, Obama took so many questions from the foreign press, including British, Indian and Chinese reporters, that a group of them applauded when he left the stage. Two American reporters asked Obama for his response to the claim by Brown that the “Washington consensus is over.” Obama all but agreed with Brown, noting that the phrase had its roots in a significant set of economic policies that had shown itself to be imperfect. He went on to talk about the benefits of increasing economic competition with the U.S. “That’s not a loss for America,” he said of the economic rise of other powers. “It’s an appreciation that Europe is now rebuilt and a powerhouse. Japan is rebuilt, is a powerhouse. China, India — these are all countries on the move. And that’s good.”

At a town hall in Strasbourg, France, Obama stood before an audience of mostly French and German youth and admitted that the U.S. should have a greater respect for Europe. “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” he said before offering other European critical views of his country. “There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

The contrast is striking. Only four years ago, George W. Bush, in his second Inaugural Address, described what he called America’s “considerable” influence, saying, “We will use it confidently in freedom’s cause.” Bush’s vision of American power was combative and aggressive. He said the U.S. would “seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture.” He continued, “We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom.”

Obama, by contrast, is looking for collaboration. He is looking to build a collective vision, not to impose an American one. And the response has been notable, from the endless flashbulbs that fired off at his town hall to the cheers of spectators who lined his motorcade routes and gathered outside his events in London. At the end of Obama’s Friday press conference, French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the issue directly, speaking through an interpreter. “It feels really good to be able to work with a U.S. President who wants to change the world and who understands that the world does not boil down to simply American frontiers and borders,” he said. “And that is a hell of a good piece of news for 2009.”

The End of Christian America

North Korea missile: punishment up to US

Security Council’s struggle to respond to Sunday’s rocket launch also portends challenges for Obama’s nonproliferation goals with Iran.

Washington – The UN Security Council’s inability to take harsh action against North Korea in an emergency session Sunday – the first such gathering of the Obama presidency – leaves the challenge posed by Pyongyang’s launch of a long-range missile in Washington’s lap.

That is just where North Korea’s attention-starved leader, Kim Jong Il, wants it.

“North Korea was way down on the list of priorities for Obama, but with this one test firing, they have put themselves at the top of his list of things to do,” says Chaibong Hahm, a Northeast Asia expert at RAND Corp., in Santa Monica, Calif.

By launching the long-range Taepodong-2 rocket despite warnings from world leaders such as President Obama, Pyongyang is daring the international community and, in particular, Washington to ignore its progress in missiles and weapons delivery at their peril.

Series of bombings in Baghdad Shiite areas kill 33

BAGHDAD (AP) — Six bombs rocked Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad on Monday, killing 33 people and wounding more than 90 in a dramatic escalation of violence as the U.S. military is thinning out its presence before a June 30 deadline to pull combat troops out of the cities.

Angry survivors hurled stones at Iraqi soldiers at the site of one of the blasts in Sadr City after troops fired guns into the air to disperse crowds of people trying to care for the injured, witnesses said.

The deadliest blast occurred in a market in western Baghdad where two car bombs exploded near-simultaneously, killing 12 people and wounding 29 others, an Iraqi police official said.

Burned hulks of cars and twisted metal were scattered across the marketplace, as Iraqi soldiers and police officers surrounded the bombing site, driving off onlookers and journalists.

The day’s violence started with a car bomb at 7:30 a.m. in the center of the capital, that killed at least six people and wounded 16, said a police official, who described the victims as mostly day laborers seeking work.

Day of Suicide Attacks Displays Strength of Pakistani Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a crowded Shiite mosque just south of the capital on Sunday, killing at least 26 people. It was the third suicide attack in Pakistan in 24 hours, in a sign that the Pakistani Taliban are overwhelming the nation’s security forces.

The assault south of the capital, Islamabad, appeared to be carefully planned. It took place in Chakwal, a town that has historically had strong ties to the Pakistani Army, and in a Shiite mosque. The Pakistani Taliban have increasingly attacked Shiite mosques.

The latest bombing occurred about 12 hours after a suicide bomber struck in an upper-class neighborhood of Islamabad on Saturday night, killing eight paramilitary security officers assigned to guard foreign diplomats and wealthy residents. On Saturday morning, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a group of civilians on the side of the road in Miram Shah, in North Waziristan, killing at least eight people, including schoolchildren.

KABUL (AFP) — Thousands of extra US troops headed to Afghanistan will not stop the Taliban insurgency but fuel further attacks, the militia said Monday in a statement directed at the top US military commander.

Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters in Kabul Sunday that an extra 17,000 US troops to be deployed to Afghanistan in coming weeks would allow security forces to start to turn the tide against insurgents in the south.

Mullen has been holding two days of talks in Afghanistan with US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

“As much as the foreign forces increase, fighting will increase and there will be increased civilian casualties,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

“And there will be more opportunity for the Taliban to attack and the battle will expand,” he said.

The conflict would not be settled through war, the spokesman said.

Senators introduce bill to federalize cybersecurity

A new bill would create a “cybersecurity czar” who would oversee the government’s computer security programs. More controversially, the czar would have power over some private networks if they are considered to be “critical infrastructure.”

With President Obama’s 60-day comprehensive review of US cybersecurity still underway, Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snow (D-ME) on Wednesday introduced sweeping legislation that would establish a cybersecurity “czar” within the White House and bring both governmental and private sector “critical infrastructure” under a unified regulatory regime.

The “czar”—more precisely, an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor within the White House—is established in a separate short-but-sweet bill running a mere three pages. It specifies that the post will be subject to Senate confirmation, and it gives the cybersecurity advisor a backstage pass to all of the federal government’s cyber-related “special access programs,” a designation given to highly secret initiatives.

Most of the action is in the much longer Cybersecurity Act of 2009. In case a lone cybersecurity advisor doesn’t seem like enough, that legislation provides for the creation of cybersecurity advisory panel to be staffed by stakeholders from the governmental, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors.

The bill establishes a dizzying array of programs, administered by a variety of agencies, over the course of its 51 pages. Perhaps most significantly, the bill tasks the National Institute of Standards and Technology with developing a set of security standards and vulnerability tests that will apply to any information networks or software used by federal agencies and contractors—but also by any private entity designated as “critical infrastructure” by the President. The President is also empowered to order the disconnection of any federal or private critical infrastructure network, either during a “cybersecurity emergency” or for reasons of national security more broadly.

Battle Over Access to Guns Renews After Shootings in New York, Pennsylvania

As the nation gets a clearer picture of two killers who have made headlines in recent days — one near Pittsburgh, one in Binghamton, N.Y. — some are wondering whether Americans have too much access to guns.

CHISINAU (AFP) — The pro-European Communist Party of Moldova has won an absolute majority in the ex-Soviet republic’s parliamentary elections, with 49.92 percent of the vote, officials said Monday.

The Moldovan Communist Party (PCM) headed by President Vladimir Voronin was followed by the Liberal Party with 12.9 percent of the vote and the Liberal Democrats (LPDM) with 12.24 percent, election officials announced.

The election result puts the Communist Party in a position to determine the landlocked country’s next president.

Voronin is barred by the constitution from running for a third term. The Communists came to power in 2001 and were reelected in 2005.

The PCM was once pro-Russian but changed course dramatically in 2005 and now seeks closer ties with the European Union, while maintaining good relations with Russia, on which it depends for, among other things, gas supplies.

Hmm…right about now Obama is looking like the poster child

for the New Age/UN/EU/Globalist vision!!!!! Read below!

Obama outlines sweeping goal of nuclear-free world

PRAGUE – Declaring the future of mankind at stake, President Barack Obama on Sunday said all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms and that the U.S. had a “moral responsibility” to lead because no other country has used one.

A North Korean rocket launch upstaged Obama’s idealistic call to action, delivered in the capital of the Czech Republic, a former satellite of the Soviet Union. But Obama dismissed those who say the spread of nuclear weapons, “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” cannot be checked.

“This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime,” he told a cheering crowd of more than 20,000 in the historic square outside the Prague Castle gates. We “must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, ‘Yes, we can.’”

US President Barack Obama has arrived in Turkey on a two-day visit, after giving his support to Ankara’s efforts to join the European Union.

He said Turkey’s accession to the EU would send an important signal to the Muslim world and firmly anchor the country in Europe.

But French President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was up to the EU itself to decide who joined the bloc.

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Blair steps up fight to be crowned first ‘President of EU’

Brown gives grudging blessing to his old rival’s return to new job at centre of the global stage

Tony Blair has emerged as the leading candidate to become the first permanent president of the European Union after Gordon Brown gave his grudging blessing to the plan. The former prime minister has stepped up his campaign for the job, which he wants to use to build a bridge between Europe and the new Obama administration.

His return to the global stage would be a shock to his critics over the Iraq war and dismay many in Europe.

But The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Mr Brown has accepted that his old rival should be in pole position for the appointment, on the basis that Britain needs to have a key figure in the architecture of the “new world order”.

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World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government

World Bank President and Bilderberg elitist Robert Zoellick openly admitted the plan to eliminate national sovereignty and impose a global government during a speech on the eve of the G20 summit.

Speaking about the agenda to increase not just funding but power for international organizations on the back of the financial crisis, Zoellick stated, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”

In other words, give global institutions the power to regulate national policy as part of the creation of global government.

What Zoellick is outlining is essentially the end of national sovereignty and the reclassification of national governments as mere subordinates to a global authority that is completely unaccountable to the voting public of any country.

The more cynical amongst us would call this a global dictatorship. Zoellick couches the plan in flowery rhetoric of helping the poor and alleviating poverty, but as we have documented for years, the global elite’s goal of world government has little to do with saving the planet and everything to do with creating a global fascist state.

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Turkish President Mentions “New World Order”

For controversial Turkish President Abdullah Gül, the recent war in Georgia signals a “new world order” that will emerge from the rubble of South Ossetia and force the United States to share its power,The Guardian reported.

Gül said America’s inability to prevent Russia’s invasion shows that the US can no longer shape world politics as it once did.

“I don’t think you can control all the world from one centre,” Gül said. “There are big nations. There are huge populations. There is unbelievable economic development in some parts of the world. So what we have to do is, instead of unilateral actions, act all together, make common decisions and have consultations with the world. A new world order, if I can say it, should emerge.”

The geopolitical turmoil in the Caucusus — a region between Europe and Asia that includes the nations of Georgia and Turkey — has placed Turkey in a difficult position between pleasing its neighbor Russia and not hurting its relationship with the US.

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Leading climate scientist: ‘democratic process isn’t working’

Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. “The democratic process doesn’t quite seem to be working,” he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: “The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.