John Pilger, New Statesman, Aug 19, 2010

The case of the Afghanistan war logs and the hounding of Julian Assange prove that there’s never been greater need to speak truth to power than today.

by Snehal Shingavi, Global Research, Aug 18, 2010

The floods which have devastated huge areas of Pakistan may be an act of nature, but the worsening humanitarian crisis that followed is a direct result of the failures of Pakistan’s venal leaders – and the impact of the U.S. “war on terror.”

According to official estimates, more than 20 million people have been displaced and another 1,600 are dead as a result of one of the worst floods in Pakistani history. In some places, the rains have made the Indus River 15 miles wide, some 25 times broader than normal.

The flooding started when the monsoon rains tore through the mountains in the northwest part of the country (called Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa). As the waters raged through the Sindh and Punjab provinces, they destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and over 1.7 million acres of farmland. Several large cities were also been submerged, like Naushera, Muzaffarabad and Abottabad. The people who have made it out of the flood-ravaged areas are crammed in makeshift shelters or in overcrowded government buildings.

Those who escaped the floods find themselves without access to food, clean drinking water, sanitation and medicine. All of this has exacerbated the crisis, as many more are likely to die as the result of diarrhea, cholera and other diseases.

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By Miles Goslett, Daily Mail/UK, Aug 17, 2010

A close relative of Dr David Kelly broke the family’s silence yesterday to voice fears that he was murdered.

Wendy Wearmouth said she found it ‘incredibly unlikely’ that he committed suicide and suggested he was assassinated.

She said that committing suicide would have been ‘totally against his whole way of being’.

Calls for an inquest: The late Dr David Kelly and his cousin Wendy Wearmouth

The 62-year-old spoke out as Dr Kelly’s death was further shrouded in mystery  –  when one doctor claimed to have read the post-mortem report despite it having been kept classified after the weapons inspector’s death.

Miss Wearmouth is Dr Kelly’s first cousin and the only member of his family to speak publicly since renewed speculation about the circumstances his death.

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The New York Times, Aug 17, 2010

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Mohammed Hanjan washed near his destroyed home in Charsadda, Pakistan, on Tuesday. More Photos »

By WAQAR GILLANI

Flood survivors told stories of taking the search for aid upon themselves, swimming to dry areas to find food for people still marooned and waiting for rescue.

As many as 8.5 million people in Punjab have been affected, and property damage is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, told reporters. Punjab’s provincial cabinet met Tuesday and ordered development funds to be used for emergency aid.

The floods have caused lasting damage to roads and other infrastructure, livestock and agriculture. On Tuesday, the World Bank pledged to reroute $900 million from other projects in Pakistan to help in recovery and reconstruction efforts.

Across southern Punjab, scenes repeatedly played out of people seeking food and aid on their own as they remained isolated by floodwaters that reached as high as five feet.

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By Sheldon Richman, Counterpunch, Aug 18, 2010

Thanks to Wikileaks and heroic leakers inside the military, we now know the U.S. government has killed many more innocent Afghan civilians than we were aware of heretofore. We also know that American military and intelligence personnel roam Afghanistan assassinating suspected bad guys. Sometimes they kill people they later acknowledge weren’t bad guys at all. “Bad guys,” like “Taliban,” is implicitly defined as anyone who resists the U.S. occupation force and the corrupt puppet government it keeps in power.

What other atrocities are our misleaders and misrepresentatives committing in our name?

Let’s get something straight: to be an enemy of American occupation, bombing, and “nation building” is not the same thing as being an enemy of America or its people. It’s time Americans understood that. When you invade another country and people there object, even forcibly, they are not aggressors. You are. To understand this, imagine our being invaded by a foreign military force. Would resistance be aggression?

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By Vilani Peiris, wsws.org, Aug 17, 2010

The flood disaster in Pakistan is worsening with 20 million people or 12 percent of the population affected, according to the latest government estimates. After visiting the country on Sunday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the devastation as the worst that he had ever seen. “In the past, I have witnessed many natural disasters around the world, but nothing like this,” he said.

“Thousands of towns and villages have simply been washed away. Roads, buildings, bridges, crops—millions of livelihoods have been lost. People are marooned on tiny islands with the floodwaters all around them. They are drinking dirty water. They are living in the mud and ruins of their lives. Many have lost family and friends. Many more are afraid their children and loved ones will not survive in these conditions,” Ban said.

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uruknet.info, August 16, 2010

By Haaretz Service

Female soldier smiles for camera in front of bound prisoners, before joking online with friends; army calls photos ‘ugly and callous’. A former Israel Defense Forces soldier has raised a storm on the internet after posting photographs of herself posing next to blindfold Palestinian prisoners on Facebook. Photographs uploaded by Eden from Ashdod and labeled “IDF – the best time of my life” show her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered. “That looks really sexy for you,” says a comment posted by one of Eden’s friend on the social networking site, alongside a picture or the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men. Eden’s repose, posted below, reads: “I wonder if he is on Facebook too – I’ll have to tag him in the photo.” Because Eden was discharged a year ago, the army has no power to prevent her from publicizing the photographs. The pictures have since been removed from the site – but not before being duplicated across the web by a variety of bloggers and news sites. The IDF said in a statement: “These actions are ugly and callous; details of the incident have been forwarded up the chain of command.” Continues >>