be just

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Senior Islamist among Nigeria dead : "The deputy leader of a Muslim group battling security forces in northern Nigeria was among dozens of people killed after troops shelled their base in the city of Maiduguri, military officials said. Heavy fighting was reported overnight into Thursday as the army attacked a compound and mosque used by the Boko Haram group. 'The deputy leader of the Taliban by the name Abubakar Shekau was in the early hours of today killed along with 200 followers by Nigerian troops,' a police officer told the AFP news agency. The Nigerian government had vowed to hunt down members of the group after hundreds of people were killed following a series of apparently co-ordinated attacks on police in four northern states."

US Blackwater-Xe mercenaries spreads fear in Pakistani town (Feature) - Monsters and Critics : "Peshawar - Fear is spreading across University Town, an upmarket residential area in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar, due to the overt presence of the controversial US private security contractor Blackwater. Sporting the customary dark glasses and carrying assault rifles, the mercenaries zoom around the neighbourhood in their black-coloured armoured Chevy Suburbans, and shout at motorists when occasionally stranded in a traffic jam."

: Information Clearing House - ICH : "Casualties of War The hell of war comes home By Dave Phillips July 28, 2009 'The Gazette' July 26, 2009 -- - Marquez's 3,500-soldier unit — now called the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team — fought in some of the bloodiest places in Iraq, taking the most casualties of any Fort Carson unit by far. Back home, 10 of its infantrymen have been arrested and accused of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter since 2006. Others have committed suicide, or tried to.Before the murders started, Anthony Marquez’s mom dialed his sergeant at Fort Carson to warn that her son was poised to kill. It was February 2006, and the 21-year-old soldier had not been the same since being wounded and coming home from Iraq eight months before. He had violent outbursts and thrashing nightmares. He was devouring pain pills and drinking too much. He always packed a gun. (A word of caution about the language and content of this story: Please se...

"One big, tall Caucasian American" | Salon News : "July 22, 2009 | Allegations of a massacre near Dasht-e-Leili, Afghanistan, by Taliban forces soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began to surface during U.S. law enforcement interviews with detainees at Guantánamo. Roughly 10 detainees described similar stories of the mass killing in late 2001 by asphyxiation in shipping containers. Some detainees also alleged that U.S. forces stood by but did nothing to stop the massacre, though the number and specificity of those claims remains unclear. The document reprinted below, heavily redacted, records an interview with one detainee who reported seeing a 'big, tall, caucasian [sic] American.' The Criminal Investigative Task Force, or 'CITF,' named below refers to an investigative task force drawing on such agencies as the FBI, CID and NCIS."

: Information Clearing House - ICH : "July 20. 2009 'The Guardian' -- For the winning punters chancing their luck at Hawaiian Gardens' charity bingo hall in the heart of one of California's poorest towns, the big prize is $500. The losers walk away with little more than an assurance that their dollars are destined for a good cause. But the real winners and losers live many thousands of miles away, where the profits from the nightly ritual of numbers-calling fund what critics describe as a form of ethnic cleansing by extremist organisations. Each dollar spent on bingo by the mostly Latino residents of Hawaiian Gardens, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, helps fund Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in some of the most sensitive areas of occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the Muslim quarter of the old city, and West Bank towns such as Hebron where the Israeli military has forced Arabs out of their properties in their thousands."

Beyond the Hype: Cronkite and the Vietnam War by Norman Solomon -- Antiwar.com : "Media eulogies for Walter Cronkite – including from progressive commentators – rarely talk about his coverage of the Vietnam War before 1968. This obit omit is essential to the myth of Cronkite as a courageous truth-teller. But facts are facts, and history is history – including what Cronkite actually did as TV’s most influential journalist during the first years of the Vietnam War. Despite all the posthumous praise for Cronkite’s February 1968 telecast that dubbed the war 'a stalemate,' the facts of history show that the broadcast came only after Cronkite’s protracted support for the war. In 1965, reporting from Vietnam, Cronkite dramatized the murderous war effort with enthusiasm. 'B-57s – the British call them Canberra jets – we’re using them very effectively here in this war in Vietnam to dive-bomb the Vietcong in these jungles beyond Da Nang here,' he reported, standing in front ...

Afghan Villagers Attack Taliban - WSJ.com : "Villagers attacked the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, a rare instance of locals turning on insurgents after being promised aid money and security by the government. Friday's confrontation was welcome news for Afghan and U.S. authorities, in what is shaping up to be one of the bloodiest months for the U.S-led coalition since the start of the war. Tribesmen in Nangarhar, a province in the east, broke ties with the Taliban after being promised development money and security at a pair of meetings with Afghan officials in recent months, said tribal elders and a spokesman for the provincial government, Ahmad Zia Abdulzai."