Craig Murray writes.

An FCO source warns me this morning that a vicious rearguard action is being fought within the FCO, to ensure that any government inquiry excludes my evidence and does not consider whether there was a policy of complicity with torture. Rather the security services wish it only to look at individual cases like Binyam Mohammed and assess compensation for them. The cover-up that these individual cases were accidents would be maintained.

Telegraph report.

The documents have been kept secret since the war but were released to the Chilcot Inquiry, which is holding hearings into the Iraq conflict, after Sir Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, ruled that they raised "unprecedented" matters of public interest.

They show that in the months running up to the war, Lord Goldsmith repeatedly made clear that he had concerns about the legality of an invasion.

BBC report.

A judge-led inquiry is to be held into claims British security services were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, the BBC understands.

Independent article.

But a BIS report warned yesterday that repeating these measures could be impossible. It said: "Events coming out of Greece highlight the possibility that highly indebted governments may not be able to act as a buyer of last resort to save banks in a crisis. That is, in late 2008 and early 2009, governments provided the backstop when banks began to fail. But if the debts of the government itself become unmarketable, any future bailout of the banking systemwould have to rely on external help." Central bankers fear Europe is running out of "external backstops" that could step in, other than the US and the International Monetary Fund. This has unnerved capital markets in the EU, prompting some sharp swings in the value of shares and other financial instruments in recent days.

Daily Mail report.

Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly's death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly's home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing - but before his body was found.

Reuters report.

Iran's Red Crescent Society has cancelled a plan to send a shipload of aid to the Gaza Strip, saying it was denied access to pass through the Suez Canal, a claim rejected by an Egyptian official.

A ship had been due to set off from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas over the last few days as part of Iran's support to efforts to break Israel's blockade of the strip.

BBC report.

Turkey has barred an Israeli military flight from Turkish airspace, in apparent retaliation for Israel's raid on an aid convoy bound for Gaza.

Turkey's prime minister confirmed that a "ban" had been implemented following the 31 May raid, in which nine Turkish citizens on the flotilla were killed.

BBC report.

A bomb blast at the offices of Greece's public order ministry in Athens has killed one person, police say.

Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian.

I hope for the best at the G20 summit this weekend; I hope against hope. But if I were you, wherever you are, I'd prepare for more pain -- and watch out for another avalanche.

Brian Whitaker on the Guardian's CiF.

Derakhshan, who has been imprisoned since his arrest in November 2008, is accused of "propaganda against the Islamic regime, propaganda in favour of anti-Iranian regime political groups, managing and running lurid and immoral websites and co-operating with hostile governments," according to the Fars news agency.

Craig Murray writes.

General Stanley McChrystal has tendered his resignation (not necessarily accepted) as the rows about his crazy surge and plans to make Jalalabad a second Fallujah spill out into the public domain.

[...]

UK Special Envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles - who is less keen on killing people but believes we should occupy Afghanistan for at least a generation - has been sent away on extended leave to lie down for a few weeks in a darkened room.

New York Times report.

American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday.

The investigation, begun last year by the House Subcommittee for National Security, found that money given to these Afghan warlords often amounts to little more than mafia-style protection payments, with some NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords coming under attack.

IMEMC report.

The Al Mustqbal Lebanese paper stated that France has information from different sources, mainly from Washington, revealing that Israel intends to wage a war against Lebanon in order to strike the Hezbollah party.

[...]

The experts told their American counterparts that preparations are nearly complete, and that the decision to go to war has already been approved, but will not be implemented at the current stage due to the congressional elections in the United States on November 2nd 2010.

Guardian report.

The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the centre of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to tell the Guardian he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert.

[...]

Assange appeared in public in Brussels for the first time in almost a month to speak at a seminar on freedom of information at the European parliament.

Craig Murray writes.

The 300th British soldier killed in the Afghan War died today. The poor fellow survived for eight days before giving up in a Birmingham hospital. His injuries must have been appalling and that should remind us of the thousands of British soldiers maimed who did not die, some of whom sometimes wish they had.

Afghan casualties are, of course, very many times higher, with the additional horror that at least six Afghan civilians have been killed for every Afghan fighter.

We immediately have David Cameron and Liam Fox spewing out the standard propaganda about the occupation of Afghanistan making the world a safer place. This is quite simply a ludicrous proposition, and one to which the security, military and diplomatic establishments do not subscribe.

Guardian report.

Britain's special envoy to Afghanistan, known for his scepticism about the war in the country and his support for opening talks with the Taliban, has resigned from his post just a month before a critical international conference in Kabul.

[...]

A top diplomat in Kabul said Cowper-Coles had increasingly come to believe that "sod-all can be done" about turning round the fortunes of the nine-year war.

BBC report.

Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) it will not allow two of its inspectors to enter the country, state media report.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, said they had prematurely published a report he described as "untruthful". Mr Salehi did not say which parts of the report he considered inaccurate.

Some optimism from the Long Now Foundation.

Fusion power, like nuclear fission power, would cost less per kilowatt hour than wind (and far less than solar), yet would be less capital intensive than fission. For the constant baseload power no carbon is involved, no waste stream, no possibility of meltdown or weaponization, and there is no such thing as peak hydrogen.

Independent report.

Created with the involvement of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, it increases protection for anonymous sources, creates new protections from so-called "libel tourism" and makes it much harder to censor stories before they are published.

"It will be the strongest law of its kind anywhere," said Birgitta Jonsdottir, MP for The Movement party and member of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which first made the proposals. "We're taking the best laws from around the world and putting them into one comprehensive package that will deal with the fact that information doesn't have borders any more."

Independent report.

European leaders meet in Brussels today amid growing fears that Spain, Europe's fifth-largest economy, is preparing to ask for a bailout which would dwarf the €110bn (£90bn) rescue plan for Greece.

Craig Murray writes.

There is a peculiar symmetry about the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the killing by soldiers of unarmed demonstrators concluding just as the Israeli inquiry into the shooting of unarmed peace activists is set up. But there is another fascinating common factor - David Trimble.

[...]

It is therefore no surprise at all that it was that indefatigable - and extremely well remunerated - Friend of Israel, Tony Blair, who gave Netanyahu Trimble's name as a safe pair of hands for the cover-up.

Guardian report.

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks says it plans to release a secret military video of one of the deadliest US air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed.

[...]

The video could prove to be extremely embarrassing to the US military and risks weakening Afghan support. The US said it was targeting Taliban positions when it used weapons that create casualties over a wide area, including one-tonne bombs and others that burst in the air. But two US military officials told a newspaper last year that no one checked to see whether there were women and children in the buildings.

Daniel Tencer on Raw Story.

So why is this news now? To many, the story's timing suggests a Pentagon public relations campaign designed to extend public support for the war with the hope that, in time, Afghanistan may be able to raise itself out of abject poverty.

Juan Cole writes.

The report that geologists have found $1 trillion in mineral wealth in Afghanistan is less important than it seems. That Afghanistan has minerals is not in fact news. But none of the sort of research that would be necessary to place a value on them has been done, so no one actually knows what they are worth of if they are worth anything after expenses.

The US will likely end up spending $1 trillion destroying things in Afghanistan.

So even if the whole benefit of the minerals went to the US, it would be in the hole.

Craig Murray writes.

Yesterday Maxim Bakiyev, son of the recently ousted Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was arrested in the UK when he arrived at Farnboro in a private plane.

[...]

It is interesting that the specific count of corruption cited relates to Pentagon contracts given to Maxim Bakiyev for the supply of the US airbase in Kyrgyzstan. This appears to be the standard US modus operandi for bribing dictators in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan, the US has given massive supply contracts to dictator's daughter Gulnara Karimova.

This is yet another ill effect of the Afghan war - the increase in corruption and the personal reward of dictators by the USA. Is the Pentagon exempt from the reach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States?

David Samel comments on Mondoweiss. See also this.

While the Times article offers a plethora of valuable information, its unbiased reporter, Isabel Kershner, fails to mention the best part. One of the international observers is none other than Lord David Trimble -- who won the Nobel Peace Prize bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Some may fear that a Northern Irish peacemaker like Lord Trimble, despite his impeccable integrity, is too unfamiliar with the Middle East to bring any expertise to his observer position. Not so!

Just last month, Trimble and a group of his international colleagues launched the "Friends of Israel Initiative," self-described as a new project in defense of Israel's right to exist. Trimble and his fellow sponsors, including former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, an icon of rationality in the field of international relations, acted out of outrage and concern about the "unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities."

Guardian report.

Pakistani officials have denounced claims by a British researcher that President Asif Ali Zardari secretly met with Taliban insurgents two months ago to assure them of his support and "friendship".

"This is a nonsensical report; it's absolutely wrong," said presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar. "There has been no secret contact, no secret meeting. That would go against everything we stand for."

Guardian article. The LSE report referred to is here (PDF).

Pakistani intelligence is so deeply involved in the arming and funding of the Afghan Taliban that it holds a seat on the militant leadership council and has sent the president, Asif Ali Zardari, to make prison visits to captured leaders, a report by the London School of Economics has said.

Researcher Matt Waldman said Pakistani support for the insurgency was "official" policy, implemented by the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency in the form of money, weapons and training.

Times report, possibly to be treated with some caution.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom's air defences will return to full alert.

Independent report.

Reports in the US say officials are seeking to apprehend Julian Assange, the website's founder who has pioneered the release of the kind of information the mainstream media are either unwilling or unable to publish.

Ilan Pappé in the Independent.

The forced peace is not negotiable as far as the Israeli political elite is concerned, and it offers the Palestinians a limited control and sovereignty in the Gaza Strip and in parts of the West Bank. The Palestinians are asked to give up their struggle for self-determination and liberation in return for the establishment of three small Bantustans under tight Israeli control and supervision.

[...]

The international response is based on the assumption that more forthcoming Palestinian concessions and a continued dialogue with the Israeli political elite will produce a new reality on the ground. The official discourse in the West is that a very reasonable and attainable solution is just around the corner if all sides would make one final effort: the two-state solution.

Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle.

Jonathan Cook writes:

If the confrontation with the activists on the flotilla has proved to Israelis that the unarmed passengers were really terrorists, the world's refusal to stay quiet has confirmed what Israelis already knew: that, deep down, non-Jews are all really anti-Semites.

Meanwhile, the lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions.

Jeremy Leggett in the Guardian.

Big as BP's problems are as a result of failed risk assessments, it will very probably soon become worse. Growing numbers of people doubt its annual review of oil reserves, published today.

Who to believe? Much hangs on that. A global oil crunch would be worse than the credit crunch, especially if oil-producing companies start husbanding their resources, cutting back on exports. For some oil-consuming countries, energy crisis then morphs very quickly into energy famine. This would be something far worse than a regional oil spill, with worse liability implications for the companies society might blame for hiding the risk.

Patrick Cockburn on Erdogan in the Independent.

With his leadership, Turkey is once more becoming a powerful player in the Middle East to a degree that has not happened since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

Guardian report.

Oil firm Rockhopper Exploration has raised £48.5m from the stock market to fund its drilling operations off the Falklands Islands.

[...]

However, the Argentinian government remains opposed to the drilling. Twenty eight years after the Falklands War, it still hopes that Britain's hold on the islands can be loosened. Later today the Organization of American States (OAS) will debate "the colonial situation of the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands and adjoining maritime spaces".

Guardian report.

Iran has warned that it could send Revolutionary Guard naval units to escort humanitarian aid convoys seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza -- a move that would certainly be challenged by Israel.

Any such Iranian involvement, raised today by an aide to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would constitute a serious escalation of already high tensions with Israel, which accuses Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon and of backing Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

BBC report.

A video broadcast by Iranian TV purports to show Mr Amiri saying he was kidnapped and is living in Arizona.

Hours later, another video posted on YouTube appeared to show the scientist saying he was happy in America. The US denied abducting him.

Daily Mail story.

The investigation into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly is likely to be reopened, it has emerged.

The case has 'concerned' Attorney General Dominic Grieve and - as the highest ranking law officer in England - he is considering an inquiry to review the suicide finding, Whitehall sources say.

At the same time, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is considering a request from campaigning doctors to release medical files relating to the death.

Independent report.

Mr Elshayyal, a reporter for the Arab channel al-Jazeera, was standing to one side of the ship and had a view of the front and back of the vessel when the fighting started. By his account, soldiers fired down on the protesters from the helicopters before an Israeli soldier had even set foot on the ship. A man next to him was shot through the top of his head, dying instantly.

"What I saw were shots being fired from the helicopter above and moments later from below -- from the ships," Mr Elshayyal said. "As far as I am concerned, it's a lie to say they only started shooting on deck."

At least two other eyewitnesses saw soldiers firing from above the ships before they landed on the Marmara's deck. It is possible that this is what prompted the fierce resistance to the soldiers when they dropped down. Several passengers recount how organisers urged their peers to stop hitting the soldiers, aware of how it would harm their claim to be peaceful protesters.

Others on the ship claim they raised a white flag, but say that it was ignored. They also used a loudspeaker to reiterate their message of surrender and requested that the injured be taken off the ship to get medical assistance. Again, they were ignored.

Craig Murray writes.

The Rachel Corrie has now been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters.

As usual the BBC's immediate reaction is simply to retail Israeli propaganda. The Rachel Corrie has been boarded "with the full compliance of the crew", BBC News tells us. That is almost certainly not true, unless you count without violent resistance as "full compliance".

Guardian report.

Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

IMEMC report.

The Rachel Corrie is 150 miles away from Gaza in international waters and on her way. They will arrive on Saturday morning. The 1200 ton cargo ship is the last ship from the Freedom Flotilla and is loaded with construction materials, 20 tons of paper and many other supplies that Israel refuses to allow into the imprisoned people of Gaza.

Guardian report.

Counterterrorism police have targeted hundreds of surveillance cameras on two Muslim areas of Birmingham, enabling them to track the precise movements of people entering and leaving the neighbourhoods.

The project has principally been sold to locals as an attempt to combat antisocial behaviour, vehicle crime and drug dealing in the area. But the cameras have been paid for by a £3m grant from a government fund, the Terrorism and Allied Matters Fund, which is administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Telegraph article.

A small band of hedge funds is now building up a series of sizeable bets on Britain defaulting. In the past few weeks, they have placed more than $3 billion worth of bets on that precise outcome in the credit default swap market. History -- three centuries without default -- suggests that they will be proved wrong. But these are unprecedented times. Had Britain joined the euro, it would certainly have shared Greece's fate, and would have been too big to be bailed out.

Guardian report.

An Algerian activist, who giving only a first name of Sabrina, accused Israeli commandos of taking a one-year-old child hostage.

"They point a gun to his head in front of his Turkish parents to force the captain of our ship to stop sailing," she said.

Telegraph report.

"They were kicking my legs to make me fall and mocking me in Hebrew," she said. "They were trying to take trophy pictures with me and they liked laughing in my face.

"They also searched me but I won't go into that. They took pleasure in humiliating us."

Independent report.

A bomb-detector long exposed as useless continues to be used by the Iraqi army and police at hundreds of checkpoints in Baghdad as their chief method of finding out if vehicles contain explosives and weapons.

The continuing reliance of the Iraqi security forces on the instrument may explain how al-Qa'ida has succeeded in sending vehicles packed with explosives undetected into Baghdad, where they have killed and wounded several thousand people over the last year.

Craig Murray writes.

What I was being told last night was very interesting indeed. NATO HQ in Brussels is today a very unhappy place. There is a strong understanding among the various national militaries that an attack by Israel on a NATO member flagged ship in international waters is an event to which NATO is obliged - legally obliged, as a matter of treaty - to react.

[...]

I leave the last word to one of the senior NATO officers - who incidentally is not British:

"Nobody but the Americans doubts the US position on the Gaza attack is wrong and insensitve. But everyone already quietly thought the same about wider American policy. This incident has allowed people to start saying that now privately to each other."

Paul Woodward on Mondoweiss.

This is a major development. The Irish-flagged MV Rachel Corrie cargo ship, whose passage to join the Freedom Flotilla may have been delayed because of sabotage by Israelis, is now heading for Gaza -- and it has the full support of the Irish government. This is no longer just a question of how easily Israel can trample on the rights of a humanitarian organization.

Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic.

It's only when you glimpse into this mindset that you realize how deeply paranoid and disturbed it is. When trained commandos open fire on activists, it is because those commandos are allegedly in danger! When a tiny strip of dense urban development is strafed with missiles infinitely more powerful than anything Hamas can lob, it is apparently out of self-defense. When casualties are always lop-sided to an almost absurd degree - in Gaza and on the Mavi Marmara - Israel is always the victim, and the blood is always on the hands of the victims, even when some of those victims are children buried in rubble. When a ship in international waters, carrying the flag of a NATO member, is attacked, the real victims are the attackers, who faced a "lynch mob", according to Noah Pollak.

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

Where were our politicians yesterday? Well, we had the ridiculous Ban Ki-moon, the White House's pathetic statement, and dear Mr Blair's expression of "deep regret and shock at the tragic loss of life". Where was Mr Cameron? Where was Mr Clegg?

[...]

How did we get to this point? Maybe because we all grew used to seeing the Israelis kill Arabs, maybe the Israelis grew used to killing Arabs. Now they kill Turks. Or Europeans. Something has changed in the Middle East these past 24 hours -- and the Israelis (given their extraordinarily stupid political response to the slaughter) don't seem to have grasped what has happened. The world is tired of these outrages. Only the politicians are silent.

Financial Times editorial.

With Monday's brazen act of piracy, Israel dealt a blow to the legitimacy of its own struggle. The killing of activists aboard the captured ships sent Israel's way of defending its security, which it was already imperative to return within the bounds of international law, hurtling into lawlessness.

Israel claims the activists had links with extremist groups and that some attacked Israeli soldiers with knives and sticks (and in some accounts the odd light firearm). Even if true, this would not justify the illegal capture of civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid in international waters, let alone the use of deadly force.

Independent report.

Israel was struggling to contain a rapidly mounting diplomatic crisis last night after naval commandos killed at least nine pro-Palestinian activists in international waters after storming their Turkish passenger ship as it attempted to reach the coast of the besieged Gaza strip.

AlertNet story.

Israel's navy is ready to stop another aid ship headed to Gaza, a commander said on Tuesday, playing down the prospect of his men shying from confrontation after their bloody seizure of a Turkish vessel a day earlier.

Israel's Army Radio reported that the MV Rachel Corrie, a converted merchant ship, would reach Gazan waters by Wednesday.

Nafeez Ahmed comments.

What really happened? Well, the Israeli story, at face value, is difficult to take seriously. The activists on board the Flotilla were not peace activists, they are "terrorists" and "terrorist sympathisers" who supposedly in PM Netanyahu's words "mobbed, beat, stabbed and maybe even shot at" Israeli soldiers who were, of course, just popping in for a nice cup of tea... or bowl of homous... or whatever.