Syria’s state-run media has implicitly blamed the US, Israel and their supporters in the region for what Syrian authorities called a failed attack in Damascus.
aljazeera.net

…The militants issued a warning that in future women walking down the street without a hijab faced death.

Zarqawi’s reign of terror in the most affluent Sunni neighbourhoods illustrates the insurgents’ all-pervasive power. None of the restrictions imposed by his militias are law, yet women have no legal recourse.
timesonline.co.uk

June 4th in Iraq
Violence raged across Iraq on Sunday amid signs its leaders remained deadlocked on naming new interior and defense ministers critical to restoring stability in the strife-torn country.

In one of the worst incidents, gunmen dragged 24 civilians out of their cars at a makeshift checkpoint in a town north of Baghdad and shot them “execution style”, police said.

The victims included students, children and elderly men, said a senior police official in Diyala province, scene of frequent attacks by insurgents waging a campaign of bombings and shootings to topple the U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government.

In Iraq’s south, a Sunni religious group accused security forces in the Shi’ite-run city of Basra of killing 12 unarmed worshippers in a mosque early on Sunday, but police said they had returned fire and shot dead nine “terrorists”.

The incident came just hours after a car bomb killed 28 people in Basra, challenging a state of emergency declared by new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to crack down on criminal gangs and Shi’ite factions whose feuding threatens oil exports.

2006: A CATALOGUE OF ALLEGED US ATROCITIES
Some 600 cases of abuse by GIs against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have so far been investigated by the Pentagon. Although around 230 soldiers have been disciplined, most military personnel found guilty of abusing civilians received ‘administrative’ punishment such as being reduced in rank, loss of pay, confinement to base or extra duty. Out of 76 courts martial, only a few resulted in jail terms of more than a year.

US confronts brutal culture among its finest sons

Attacks on Iraq Oil Industry Aid Vast Smuggling Scheme

Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism
By Greg Grandin
METROPOLITAN/HENRY HOLT; 286 PAGES

When Richard Nixon was told that the Marxist Salvador Allende had won Chile’s presidential election in late 1970, he screamed, “That son of a bitch, that son of a bitch,” and ordered his aides to “bring about (Allende’s) downfall.” Nixon was of course neither the first nor the last U.S. president to order the overthrow of a Latin American government. From the CIA’s ouster of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 to the Bay of Pigs attempt to unseat Fidel Castro to Washington’s support of a 2002 military coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chāvez (which lasted all of 47 hours), Chile was only one in a long sequence of U.S. impositions into the domestic affairs of our neighbors to the south.
sfgate.com

Is Latin America Really Turning Left?
…The major points of conflict are not capitalism’s aversion to socialism, nor even private ownership versus nationalization of property, let alone social revolution leading to an egalitarian society. The major conflicts are over: 1) Increases in taxation, prices and royalty payments, 2) the conversion of firms to joint ventures, 3) representation on corporate boards of directors, 4) distribution of shareholdings between foreign appointed and state-appointed executives, 5) the legal right to revise contracts, 6) compensation payments for presumed assets and 7) management of distribution and export sales.

I think it’s too early to be condemning Chavez for not being revolutionary enough. There is something very appealing about beating the capitalists on their own playing field. Besides, we’re way better off with him alive, as are the people of Latin America.

…Kahar was shot as [250] armed officers descended on a family terraced house on Lansdown Road, Forest Gate, in the early hours of Friday. He was later arrested under the Terrorism Act after being treated for the gunshot wound in the Royal London Hospital. Koyair was also held in the raid, which involved police officers, MI5 and biochemical experts.

Yesterday a family detained by police during the raid also denied any involvement in terrorism activity and said it was considering legal action. In a statement, the family, who lived in the terrace adjoining the brothers’ house, said they ‘would like to make it clear that we are completely innocent and in no way involved in any terrorist activity’.

The family, reportedly four adults and an eight-month-old child, said that police had questioned them for 12 hours before releasing them without charge on Friday afternoon. They added in a statement: ‘We would like to express our deep shock and anger at the operation that took place. My family members and I were physically assaulted. I received serious head injuries that required hospital treatment. We are liaising with our legal team on the course of action to take.’
guardian.co.uk

Knives rule the playgrounds as inter-racial violence soars
Fridays were the most scary. ‘Twenty kids would wait for me at the school gates and beat me up. Once they put me on the floor and stamped on my head. It started when I was 12.’

A group of Somali boys were sitting outside a cafe on Stratford Road in Birmingham talking about their experience of school. Modqtar, now 17, was beaten up twice a day and picked on for having poor English. The perpetrators were often Asian gangs.

Five years after his family fled Somalia, the teenager was petrified about travelling around his adopted homeland. ‘I have to get two buses here, and two buses back. That is four chances of getting beaten up every day. They shout at us to go back to where we came from. But they are not from here either.’

The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so.
nytimes.com

The Armed Forces are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit soldiers because of the “Mum factor” – the fear that sons and daughters will be killed in Iraq if they join up – a senior general says today.
telegraph.co.uk

silly Mums

CLASHES erupted between a US-backed warlord alliance and Islamic militia in Somalia overnight as thousands of angry Muslims denounced the United States and vowed to destroy their enemies.

At least 11 people were killed in fresh fighting outside the lawless capital while elders pressed the factions for a truce and some 5,000 people rallied in Mogadishu, pledging a fight to the death against the alliance.
heraldsun.news.com

What is a warlord?

…Putin said Russia was prepared to discuss domestic as well as foreign policy questions with the United States, including human rights in Russia. But noting criticism of the United States’ own human rights record by Amnesty International, he suggested the U.S. was not in a position to preach to others.

“I would like to point out that we can talk as equals with the United States” on rights issues, Putin said.

…Despite the diplomatic efforts, Rumsfeld did not retreat from his assessment of Iran. In doing so, Russia and China came under criticism for allowing Iran’s involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The group, which includes Russia, China and four Central Asian nations, was founded to build confidence among the member nations and grapple with militant Islamic groups.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was invited to the annual summit in Shanghai this month. Iran is an observer to group and has applied for full membership.

Rumsfeld said he finds it “passing strange” to bring the “leading terrorist nation in the world into an organization that says it’s against terror.”
cbs2chicago.com

Ah the irony…

Iran bomb ‘within next 10 years’
Iran resumed enrichment of uranium this year but remains a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and maintains that its activities are aimed only at energy production.

However in his interview with the BBC, Mr Negroponte said: “[Iran] seems to be determined to develop nuclear weapons.

“We don’t have a clear-cut knowledge but the estimate we have made is some time between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to have a nuclear weapon, which is a cause of great concern.”

Mr Negroponte also accused Iran of being the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism.

…BASRA – A car bomb in the southern city of Basra killed at least 28 people and wounded 62, police said. Police sources said the bomb exploded near a market in the centre of the city.
BAGHDAD – A Russian embassy employee was killed in Baghdad and four others kidnapped, Russia’s Foreign Ministry and police in the capital said.
BAGHDAD – Police found 22 bodies in different parts of Baghdad with bullet wounds and signs of torture, police said.
BAQUBA – Six policemen were killed and two wounded when gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in central Baquba 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
KIRKUK – Gunmen shot dead a civilian in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
NEAR BAQUBA – Police said they found eight severed heads by the side of a road near Baquba. Documents at the scene indicated that one of them belonged to Sunni preacher Abdulazeez Hameed al-Mashhadani of a mosque in Tarmiya 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad.
BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in central Baghdad, wounding two civilians, police said.
BAGHDAD – Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA – Gunmen killed three people in an automobile spare parts shop in Baquba, police said.
KIRKUK – Police found the body of a woman beside a highway northwest of Kirkuk.
alertnet.org