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.