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Kurds flee homes as Iran shells villages in Iraq
Iraqi Kurdish officials expressed deepening concern yesterday at an upsurge in fierce clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces in the remote border area of north-east Iraq, where Tehran has recently deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards. Jabar Yawar, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan regional government, said four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces had hit mountain villages high up on the Iraqi side of the border, wounding two women, destroying livestock and property, and displacing about 1,000 people from their homes. Mr Yawer said there had also been intense fighting on the Iraqi border between Iranian forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed Iranian Kurdish group that is stepping up its campaign for Kurdish rights against the theocratic regime in Tehran.

Muqtada al-Sadr: The British are retreating from Basra
The British Army has been defeated in Iraq and left with no option but to retreat from the country, claims radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Violent resistance and a rising death toll among UK troops has forced a withdrawal, he said in an interview with The Independent. 'The British have given-up and they know they will be leaving Iraq soon,' Mr Sadr said. 'They are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. Without that, they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt.' The young nationalist cleric heads Iraq's largest Arab grassroots political movement, and its powerful military wing, the Mehdi army. It has clashed frequently with British forces in southern Iraq, most recently in the battle for power over the oil-rich port city of Basra. Scores of British soldiers have been killed and wounded by Sadrist militants.

Castro: Cuba not cashing U.S. Guantanamo rent checks
The United States pays Cuba $4,085 a month in rent for the controversial Guantanamo naval base, but Cuba has only once cashed a check in almost half a century and then only by mistake, Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published on Friday. The ailing Cuban leader, who has not appeared in public for more than a year, said he had refused to cash the checks to protest the 'illegal' U.S. occupation of the land which he said was now used for 'dirty work.' 'The base is needed to humiliate and to do the dirty work that occurs there,' he said of the detention camp where some 355 terrorism suspects are still being held with no legal rights despite international criticism.

Roadside bomb kills Iraq governor
The Shia governor of Iraq's southern Muthana province has been killed by a roadside bomb, officials have said. The governor, Mohammed Ali al-Hasani, was killed when the bomb exploded next to his convoy as it drove through the provincial capital, Samawa, police say. Several bodyguards were also injured in the explosion, which happened at 0800 local time (0400 GMT). Mr Hasani belonged to the largest Shia party in Iraq, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SiiC). He is the second Shia governor killed this month. The governor of Diwaniya, Khalil Jalil Hamza, was killed by a roadside bomb along with police chief Maj-Gen Khaled Hassan.

Police clash with protesters at Heathrow
Six people were injured and 14 arrested last night after clashes between police and climate change protesters near Heathrow airport. No disruption of the airport or major roads was reported, but skirmishes between more than 1,600 police and 1,400 protesters continued into the night. The protests over the aviation industry's growing carbon emissions and attempts to expand Heathrow airport were expected to continue until midday today. Protesters accused the police of using unwarranted force to contain them. Officers with truncheons tackled about 100 protesters heading for the BAA offices. Five people were treated by the camp medical teams for head injuries. 'It was an unprovoked, unwarranted attack,' said one spokesman for the camp.

Plane explodes at Japanese airport
All 165 passengers and crew successfully evacuated a Boeing jet today, moments before it burst into flames. The China Airlines plane exploded near the Naha airport terminal building in Okinawa, Japan. A spokesman for the Taiwanese airline said the Boeing 737 caught alight after it skidded on the tarmac on its way to a gate after landing. 'The fire started when the left engine exploded a minute after the aircraft entered the parking spot,' the transport ministry official AhihikoTamura said.Airport traffic controllers had received no report from the pilot that anything was wrong, he said.

U.S. foreign policy experts oppose surge
More than half of top U.S. foreign policy experts oppose President George W. Bush's troop increase as a strategy for stabilizing Baghdad, saying the plan has harmed U.S. national security, according to a new survey. As Congress and the White House await the September release of a key progress report on Iraq, 53 percent of the experts polled by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress said they now oppose Bush's troop build-up. That is a 22 percentage point jump since the strategy was announced early this year. The survey of 108 experts, including Republicans and Democrats, showed opposition to the so-called 'surge' across the political spectrum, with about two-thirds of conservatives saying it has been ineffective or made things worse in Iraq.

Tyranny Of The Few
Headlines scream out at you: “Lal Masjid threatens to give the call for jihad.' “Clash with security forces leaves 16 students dead.' And all this accompanied by pictures of women in burqas wielding lathis longer than themselves. Talk of women power!! Another one: “Flaming jeep drives into Glasgow airport.' (No, it was not Lucifer trying to catch a flight either). “Doctor from Bangalore was the driver.'
What’s the common thread in these and many other such headlines? The names of the actors are all Muslim. And the pressure mounts on all of us - normal, harmless, garden-variety of Muslims - to explain what is going on in the name of Islam.

Airport bomber's email to relative said he wanted to die for Allah
Detectives investigating the attempted car bombing of Glasgow airport have recovered a 'claim of responsibility' written by Kafeel Ahmed, who died from burns he suffered in the attack, the Guardian has learned. Ahmed, 27, suffered more than 90% burns after he drove a Jeep laden with improvised explosives into the airport terminal, in Britain's first attempted suicide car bombing. Evidence recovered pointing to his role in June's attempted attacks in London and Glasgow includes an email message sent just before the Glasgow attempted bombing, talking of martyrdom; CCTV footage from one of the failed car bombings in London showing a man relatives say is Ahmed, running away; evidence from a computer he used, showing visits to bomb-making websites; and his mobile phone from the smouldering Jeep.

Suicide blast kills Pakistan troops
A suicide car bomber has struck a security post in a tribal area of Pakistan, killing four soldiers and wounded nine more, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad says. News agencies quoted police sources as saying that a paramilitary post was targeted on Monday near Thal in the North West Frontier Province, near the border with Afghanistan. The sources said that the attack killed four Frontier Constabulary troops and wounded eight others. Major-General Waheed Arshad, a Pakistan army spokesman, confirmed the car bombing, but said three soldiers were killed and 12 more wounded. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different death tolls.

Tatchell: 'There may be a case for people of Zimbabwe to kill Mugabe'
Peter Tatchell speaks very carefully. He stops in mid-sentence to edit his words - 'Sorry, let me rephrase that' - as if a conversation is a radio interview. Remember that when the famed campaigner for human rights says something truly shocking about what he would like to see done to Robert Mugabe. But first this thin, intense man is telling me the terrible things that other people would like to do to him. 'We are going to kill you gays,' says Tatchell, reading from a transcript he has made of threatening telephone calls. 'The punishment for sodomy is death.' The calls have been frequent, usually late at night. He takes them in this musty room, where every spare space is filled with stacks of books or papers. They tell him: 'You are going to be beheaded: that is the punishment in Islamic law.'

Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans
With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and detention without charge permitted, with torture and spying without court oversight all the rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations between lawyers and their clients, and with the judicial branch now infested by rightwing judges who would have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, for all they seem to care about common law tradition, the only real thing holding the line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the jury.

'In Debt We Have Trusted' For over 300 years
After decades of searching for the lynch-pin that literally holds everything about this corrupted world together; this morning brought an answer in a Forty-seven minute video. It asks a seemingly very simple question: Where Does Money Come From?
The answer is equally simple but devastatingly obvious, once the players and their rules are clarified. This also tangentially explains just how it is that the Corporatocracy and the Banks continue to demand that “growth must always increase' – every hour, every day, every year and every decade. This is impossible because under the laws of nature nothing can go up forever—and yet that is exactly what our entire monetary system is based on - along with its shadow partner - the ever-expanding debt of individuals, companies, corporations, and especially governments. See also