be just

How Kenya's 'Little Mogadishu' became a hub for Somali militants - Yahoo! News : "Eastleigh, Kenya – The streets of Eastleigh, a Somali enclave of Kenya's capital, Nairobi, are crowded and dirty. Sewage and rotting garbage flow through gullies. Police are virtually nonexistent; restaurants are locked, even when open, for safety reasons; and guns are readily available for sale at the market. No one ever said 'Little Mogadishu' was paradise, but now the sprawling neighborhood has become a hub of financing and recruiting for militant Islamists waging holy war in neighboring Somalia, according to residents, security analysts, and diplomats."

Jamal Dajani: Settlement Freeze: Been There, Done That What Mr. Netanyahu failed to mention is the fact that almost all land inside Israel's 1948 borders, including West Jerusalem, has been registered as "state land" managed by a body known as the Israel Lands Authority, which does not sell to Palestinians, especially residents of East Jerusalem who do not hold Israeli citizenship. But then again, Mr. Netanyahu continues his delay tactics following in the footsteps of his mentor the former Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir who, shortly after the Madrid conference, admitted that he had intended to play delaying tactics at the negotiating table for 10 years, while accelerating settlement-building and accomplishing facts on the ground, thus creating an irreversible situation that even the peace process would not overcome...his words cannot be more true today. Are we in for another round of ten-year delay tactics talking about "settlement freeze?"

US Copter Opens Fire on Afghan Medical Clinic -- News from Antiwar.com : "US and Afghan forces, backed by a US Apache helicopter attacked a medical clinic in the Paktika Province of Afghanistan yesterday after receiving reports that a wounded Taliban commander had “sought treatment” at the facility."

Obama Bows to Israel Over Settlements, Iran -- News from Antiwar.com : "In a deal scheduled to be finalized tomorrow during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to London, Israel will accept a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. The deal came as a result of President Obama caving to virtually every demand made by Israel."

Fighting in Yemen escalates -- latimes.com : "Reporting from Cairo - Fighting in the mountains of northwestern Yemen intensified Sunday as the government announced that it had killed more than 100 Shiite Muslim rebels, and humanitarian organizations voiced alarm over an estimated 100,000 people who have fled their homes since the conflict flared nearly two weeks ago."

SudanTribune article : Rescuing SPLM-led government from collapse : "The genuine case for the emergence of the SPLM-DC is that the current leaders of the SPLM have blocked and locked out the strong cadres who could have implemented the SPLM Vision and Objectives prudently and successfully within the framework of the CPA. Had these bad leaders allowed reform from within, especially during the 2nd National Convention of the SPLM in Juba in 2008, the SPLM-DC would have not emerged as the strongest and unavoidable challenger of the SPLM failed leadership. The desired change for good democratic leadership would have come from within the SPLM itself and not from without it. The current panic and fever of the SPLM leaders from SPLM-DC existence would have been avoided without painful need to swallow heart attack and blood pressure pills for nerve calming."

SudanTribune article : Southern Sudanese will likely choose unity in a free referendum: NCP : "August 21, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The citizens of South Sudan will vote for unity rather than the secession in the upcoming 2011 referendum if they are afforded “total freedom” a top official at the dominant National Congress Party (NCP) said."

BBC NEWS | Americas | Blackwater 'hired for CIA plan' : "The CIA hired contractors from the US private security firm Blackwater as part of a secret programme to track and kill top al-Qaeda figures, reports say. The New York Times quotes current and ex-government officials as saying Blackwater helped the CIA with planning, training and surveillance. Several million dollars were spent on the programme but no militants were caught or captured, the report says. Blackwater staff were used to guard US government personnel in Iraq from 2003. But they were accused of using excessive force on a number of occasions, including the killing of 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007. The North Carolina-based firm has not had its licence to operate in Iraq renewed. The company, which was founded by Erik Prince, has since been re-named Xe. Lethal authority' The New York Times reports that the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for the programme to locate and kill senior membe...

RebelReports : "Hmm. Well, let’s see. How is it not just a wee bit of interference to have James Carville, one of the Clintons’ top consiglieri, acting as a campaign advisor to one of the leading candidates? Carville, who says he is working as a “private citizen” for candidate Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official, was an advisor to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election and has deep ties to Obama’s current Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke. Ghani and former Unocal executive turned US-puppet, Hamid Karzai, would both be acceptable to Washington, but Carville’s involvement certainly raises some questions. Carville, according to NPR, “won’t say whether he’s being paid to advise Ghani.”"

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Bosnia on the brink of crisis : "A stall was selling memorabilia decorated with the face of Radovan Karadzic, the war-time Bosnian Serb leader, now on trial for genocide in The Hague. Apparently, he is a hero to some. In Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, I met people who now worry that the leadership of Republika Srpska is determined to pull this country apart."

Report: Israeli Troops Killed Unarmed Gazans Carrying White Flags -- News from Antiwar.com : "The latest in a long line of charges of war crimes by Israeli forces during January’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, a new report by Human Rights Watch cites investigations and reports of eyewitnesses who say Israeli soldiers shot 11 unarmed Palestinians, including five women and four children, who were waving white flags at them."

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Many dead in fresh Caucasus clashes : "At least four policemen and two gunmen have been killed in a gun battle in Chechnya, in the latest sign that violence in Russia's Caucasus region is escalating. Chechnya's interior ministry said security forces battled with two gunmen in Kerla-Yurt, northwest of Grozny, the capital, on Friday, killing at least four officers and injuring four others."

Witnesses: 5 Pakistani preachers killed in Somalia | Antiwar Newswire : "Six gunmen with assault rifles and pistols stormed Tawfiq Mosque in Galkayo and forced six Pakistani preachers and a Somali man outside, said Ismail Mohamud Hassan, who was in the mosque at the time. The gunmen then opened fire, he said. 'Five of them died on the spot while two others were injured — one Pakistani and a Somali,' Hassan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Galkayo, 470 miles (750 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Mogadishu. It was not clear who was behind Wednesday's killing in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and one of Somalia's extremist Islamic groups, al-Shabab, condemned the killings."

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Charity head found dead in Chechnya : "The head of a Russian charity and her husband who were kidnapped in Chechnya have been found shot dead, the Interfax news agency has reported. The bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov, her partner, were found in Grozny, the Chechen capital, on Tuesday. 'The rights activists were found in the boot of a car with gunshot wounds in the settlement of Chernorechye,' Interfax quoted an official government source as saying. They had been taken a day earlier by five masked and armed men from the offices of the Save the Generation charity, which provides medical and psychological help to young people who have suffered as a result of violence in Chechnya. The murders come less than one month after Natalya Estemirova, one of the best known activists in Chechnya and head of the rights group Memorial, was killed in similar circumstances."

Hezbollah No. 2 says group ready for war with Israel - Haaretz - Israel News : "Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said his organization is ready for any outbreak in hostilities that may erupt along the border with Israel. Qassem, who spoke during a remembrance gathering marking three years since Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war, said the Shi'ite militia is not waiting for Israel to begin fighting before making the necessary preparations. Qassem said Israel 'is an aggressive entity that can act at any moment and so the organization is always ready and it will prevent Israel from attaining its goals.'"

SudanTribune article : Sudan vows response to AU countries supporting ICC : "August 7, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government today slammed African nations that have recently announced that they will not stand by the African Union (AU) decision halting cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on arresting president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir."

MeretMeshetu-Qetluwalaug2009.pdf (application/pdf Object) The traitorous regime of Meles Zenawi has ceded Ethiopian land to the Sudan and it is now giving more than 1.6 million hectares of fertile land to foreigners coming from the Middle East and East Asia. The effect of this appropriation of land by foreigners is negative and not to be underestimated. Presently, 10 million Ethiopians need food aid and lack of food has been a recurrent and persistent problem. Dictatorial rule and bankrupt economic policies have ruined Ethiopian agriculture and reduced the peasantry to starvation and benumbing poverty. The ruling EPRDF is interested only in selling Ethiopian land and gaining financial and political benefits. As Ethiopians starve, foreign investors become owners of the fertile land and Saudi Arabia has already exported wheat produced in Ethiopia. A total number pf 8,420 mostly foreign investors (Indian, Saudi, Chinese, etc) have received licenses for commercial farms. It is not by accid...

Ethiopian News | The ruling tribal junta convicts 13 Ethiopian opposition leaders ADDIS ABABA 7 (Reuters) - A U.S.-based university professor is among 13 men convicted in absentia by [a kangaroo court in] Ethiopia for plotting to overthrow the government, the state news agency said on Friday.

Ethiopian News | The Ogaden genocide discussion - Riz Khan

Eritrea denies sending weapons to Somali militants | Antiwar Newswire : "Eritrea brushed off a U.S threat of sanctions Friday and said Washington is exacerbating the conflict in neighboring Somalia by providing the country's government with tons of weapons and training."

No More War on Terror, White House Claims : "The Obama administration has declared an end to the “war on terror,” which undoubtedly scares the neocons as much it warms the hearts of those opposed to the war from the beginning. But opponents of the war shouldn’t light up the peace pipes just yet. The declaration doesn't mean much of anything. The announcement, the Washington Times reported, came in a speech by the head of the White House homeland security office, John Brennan, at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic And International Studies. In March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the term “war on terror” was no longer in use, the newspaper observed, but the official “end” of the war had not been decided."

Hiroshima Day: : Information Clearing House - ICH : "August 06, 2009 'Truthdig' -- It was a hot August day in Detroit. I was standing on a street corner downtown, looking at the front page of The Detroit News in a news rack. I remember a streetcar rattling by on the tracks as I read the headline: A single American bomb had destroyed a Japanese city. My first thought was that I knew exactly what that bomb was. It was the U-235 bomb we had discussed in school and written papers about, the previous fall. I thought: 'We got it first. And we used it. On a city.' I had a sense of dread, a feeling that something very ominous for humanity had just happened. A feeling, new to me as an American, at 14, that my country might have made a terrible mistake. I was glad when the war ended nine days later, but it didn't make me think that my first reaction on Aug. 6 was wrong."

Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? | DrugReporter | AlterNet : "A new book explains how we're steering people away from cannabis and toward the use of a very harmful and deadly substance: alcohol."

RebelReports August 5 on Countdown with Keith Olberman discussing more details from the sworn statements of former Blackwater employees about the alleged actions of company founder Erik Prince.

Hiroshima, 64 years ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com : "Tomorrow, August 6th, marks 64 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan by the United States at the end of World War II. Targeted for military reasons and for its terrain (flat for easier assessment of the aftermath), Hiroshima was home to approximately 250,000 people at the time of the bombing. The U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber 'Enola Gay' took off from Tinian Island very early on the morning of August 6th, carrying a single 4,000 kg (8,900 lb) uranium bomb codenamed 'Little Boy'. At 8:15 am, Little Boy was dropped from 9,400 m (31,000 ft) above the city, freefalling for 57 seconds while a complicated series of fuse triggers looked for a target height of 600 m (2,000 ft) above the ground. At the moment of detonation, a small explosive initiated a super-critical mass in 64 kg (141 lbs) of uranium. Of that 64 kg, only .7 kg (1.5 lbs) underwent fission, and of that mass, only 600 milligrams was conv...

Clive Hamilton: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog : "The revelation this month in GQ magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means? The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush’s Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light. In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated. In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nation...

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder : Information Clearing House - ICH : "August 05 2009 'The Nation' -- A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince 'views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,' and that Prince's companies 'encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.' In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting 'illegal' or 'unlawful' weapons ...

Warnings of Violence Ignored in Nigeria, Clerics Say : "MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Aug. 2 -- Nigerian authorities ignored dozens of warnings about a violent Islamist sect until it attacked police stations and government buildings last week in a bloodbath that killed more than 700 people, Muslim clerics and an army official said. More than 50 Muslim leaders repeatedly called Nigeria's police, local authorities and state security to urge them to take action against Boko Haram sect militants but their pleas were ignored, Imam Ibrahim Ahmed Abdullahi said. He spoke Saturday to the Associated Press along with several other Muslim scholars in the battle-ravaged city of Maiduguri. 'A lot of imams tried to draw the attention of the government,' Abdullahi said, drawing nods from other scholars sitting with him in a Maiduguri slum. 'We used to call the government and security agents to say that these people must be stopped from what they are doing because it must bring a lot of tro...

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Deadly clashes in South Sudan : "More than 185 people are reported to have been killed in heavily armed clashes between two rival groups in South Sudan, the latest in a series of bloody ethnic clashes. Sudanese officials said on Monday that tribal fighters from the Murle ethnic group attacked a camp in the Akobo area of the region's swampy Jonglei state, where oil exploration is under way, on Sunday morning. 'At least 100 women and children, 50 men and 11 SPLA [soldiers from the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army] are being buried by the riverside this morning,' Goi Jooyul Yol, the Akobo commissioner, said in a statement on Monday. Officials said most of the victims were from the Lou Nuer group, locked in a tribal war with the Murle that has already claimed over 700 lives this year in attacks and counter-attacks. 'We fear there may be more dead to find,' Yol said said from Bor, the capital of Jonglei. 'The situation in...

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel evicts Palestinian families : "Israeli security forces have forcibily evicted two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem after a court rejected an appeal against their eviction. The al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families who were evicted on Sunday have been living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood since 1956. Israel has reportedly set aside the land their houses were built on for a planned hotel project."

Economist: U.S. More Permissive Of Torture Than China : "Six in 10 Americans approve of having an international convention saying that 'governments should never use physical torture' as a means of trying to get information, while 39 percent say such a ban is too restrictive, according to a new WorldPublicOpinion.org/Knowledge Networks poll. A majority also opposes nearly all methods for coercing detainees to give information, even when it might be critical to stopping a terrorist attack against the US. Respondents were presented a scenario in which a detainee is being held who is likely to have 'information about a possible terrorist attack on the US that may prove critical to stopping the attack.' They were then presented a series of methods for coercing the respondent to reveal the information."