MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – Rival militias massed on the northern edge of Somalia’s lawless capital Saturday, prompting hundreds to flee their homes amid fears that another surge of violence was imminent in this Horn of Africa country, witnesses said.

Islamic militias and a rival alliance of secular warlords signed a ceasefire last week after more than 140 people were killed in just eight days, but tensions remained high. Most of the casualties have been noncombatants caught in crossfire or killed by stray missiles.
news.yahoo.com

May 20 – Clashes break out in Gaza following apparent assasination attempt on Palestinian intelligence chief loyal to Abbas.

Clashes broke out on Saturday (May 20) between between militants close to the Palestinian intelligence chief who earlier in the day survived an apparent assassination attempt and members of an alternative militia Hamas.
reuters.com

Israeli strike kills Palestinians
Four Palestinians have been killed and several injured in an Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City.
A senior militant from Islamic Jihad and three members of a family were among the dead, including a child.

Islamic Jihad said Mohammed al-Dahdouh was one of its senior engineers involved in weapons manufacture.

The Israeli army has struck at militant targets in this way many times before, a BBC correspondent in Gaza says.

The strikes form part of their effort to stop militants from firing rockets into Israeli territory.

For their part, militants often say their attacks are in retaliation for Israeli military action in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Two French special forces troops and a US soldier were among 34 combatants killed in Afghanistan in a fresh upsurge of the deadliest fighting since the removal of the Taliban in 2001. In the worst clash, militants hiding in a vineyard ambushed an Afghan army convoy, shooting dead four soldiers but losing 15 of their own.

Fears of a resurgence of the Taliban have been fuelled by a sharp rise in violence during recent weeks, much of it in Helmand province, where 3,300 British troops are deploying. Some 120 people died in 24 hours last week before a brief respite, but attacks resumed on Friday, claiming another 34 lives by Saturday afternoon.
independent.co.uk

May 20 – Iraqi parliament finally approves the country’s government of national unity as fresh sectarian violence leaves dozens dead

The national unity government of Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds was voted in after internal wrangling over who should occupy the powerful interior and defence posts almost caused yet another delay.

The inauguration of Iraq’s first government since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion was preceded by more sectarian attacks across the country. The worst of the bloodshed was in the Shi’ite slum district of Sadr City where a bomb attack killed more than a dozen labourers.

The United States is looking to the new unity government to restore law and order to Iraq.
reuters.com

Under-fire Iraq minister to head nation’s finances
BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq’s new Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh is a controversial choice to manage the nation’s finances having been the target of persistent allegations of Shiite sectarianism while at the helm of the interior ministry over the past year.

Who’s who in Iraq’s new cabinet

Iraq’s Latest Man of Hour Is Hard-Liner
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The new prime minister carrying U.S. hopes for bringing stability to Iraq is a Shiite Muslim hard-liner whom fellow Shiites once thought they could never sell to the Americans.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Cabinet took office Saturday, promising to combat terrorism, promote national dialogue among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and build a country free of sectarian and ethnic discrimination.

If he succeeds, that will hasten the day when 132,000 American soldiers can begin heading home.

“Prime Minister Maliki realizes the new government must forge unity and reconciliation amongst the Iraqi people,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said after the swearing-in ceremony.

The balding, stern-faced al-Maliki appears eager to heal the sectarian divisions that have raised fears of civil war in Iraq.

Although he was unable to get agreement from his governing partners on naming ministers of interior and defense, he repeated assurances that he will choose figures who have no ties to sectarian militias and death squads Ñ a key U.S. demand.

“This government was formed through intensified dialogues and it did not come from a sectarian background as some have said,” al-Maliki said Saturday. “Efforts were exerted to come up with a most coherent government.”

Only a few weeks ago al-Maliki was not considered a unifying figure. He had a reputation as a Shiite hard-liner dating back to the years when he supervised Shiite guerrillas fighting Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Arab-dominated regime from his exile in Syria.

Inside Iraq’s hidden war
As a new ‘national unity’ government prepares to take power in Baghdad, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from behind the lines of a vicious sectarian conflict rapidly spiralling towards civil war

hidden from who?

The equipment that technician Mark Klein learned was installed in the National Security Agency’s “secret room” inside AT&T’s San Francisco switching office isn’t some sinister Big Brother box designed solely to help governments eavesdrop on citizens’ internet communications.

Rather, it’s a powerful commercial network-analysis product with all sorts of valuable uses for network operators. It just happens to be capable of doing things that make it one of the best internet spy tools around.

“Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”
wired.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. public can see images of the Iraq war on television on Sunday that are so potentially disturbing the Pentagon has warned soldiers it may cause them to relive the trauma of war.

“Baghdad ER,” a documentary airing on the cable TV network HBO, features graphic scenes from a combat hospital emergency room, including an amputation and footage of Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Mininger dying despite the exhaustive efforts of the medical staff.

“I hope that when the American people see this film they have a clearer idea of what the soldiers are flashing back to when they suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome and get a clearer idea of why we need to support these soldiers,” co-director Matthew O’Neill told Reuters.

Jon Alpert, the other co-director, said bringing the images home was the most patriotic job he felt he ever had. He also said the most graphic images were cut from the film.
news.yahoo.com

Mom finds ‘blessing’ in film
WASHINGTON — Medics work desperately to save 21-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Mininger, who lies dying on an operating table in Baghdad, Iraq, after being hit by shrapnel in an explosion 17 hours earlier.

As the drama unfolds, filmmakers for an HBO documentary are capturing every moment.

Chaplain David Snyder, at Mininger’s side, whispers in his ear: “Keep fighting. And if you need to go, that’s OK. We’re with you.”

A year later, at a screening of the documentary in Washington, Paula Zwillinger witnessed first-hand the final moments of her son’s life.

“It’s a blessing to know what happened at the end,” Zwillinger said after watching Baghdad ER, which airs at 8 p.m. Sunday. “This allows me to be there with him in his final moments.”

Her eyes full of tears, she praised the medical team for “doing everything they could” to save her son’s life. She also thanked the makers of Baghdad ER for showing the graphic scenes.

When the film was over, Zwillinger walked to the stage of the auditorium at the Smithsonian Institution to voice her appreciation. One by one, three soldiers who survived their injuries joined her on stage and hugged the doctors and nurses who saved their lives.

The documentary, Zwillinger acknowledged, is raw and gut-wrenching. “There’s no getting around it. But it’s important for the public to know what’s going on over there.”

No images of Iraqi fathers holding their broken babies in their arms, I am sure.

Conservative darling Sen. John McCain was harangued by hecklers, booed and even subjected to paper airplanes as he gave the commencement speech for the New School yesterday.
Afterward, the Arizona Republican, who is widely believed to be preparing for a presidential run in 2008, appeared annoyed by the rude reception.

“I feel sorry for people who live in a dull world where they can’t listen to the views of others,” McCain told the Daily News.

Graduating students turned their backs on the senator, booing and hurling insults as he expressed his support for the war in Iraq.

“We’re graduating, not voting!” one screamed near the close of his 20-minute address.

“Enough!” another shouted.

A student selected to deliver remarks on behalf of the 2,630 graduates logged her displeasure at McCain’s presence at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

“The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded. Preemptive war is dangerous and wrong,” Jean Sara Rohe declared as McCain listened stoically.
nydailynews.com

…The most widely influential figure who symbolised the multi-faceted anguish of French solidarity with the cause of Algerian independence was the Martinican psychologist, Frantz Fanon. A decorated World War Two veteran, Fanon was working as a psychologist in Algeria when the war began in 1954. By 1956, he had resigned his post and moved with his French wife and their child to Tunisia. Based there, he worked for the FLN until his death from leukemia in 1961. Among many other things, his final book “The Wretched of the Earth” defined fundamental questions relevant to solidarity with movements in resistance to imperialism.

The power of Fanon’s arguments derived from his experience of and reflections on racism and its role in imperial domination. The timely cooperation of Jean Paul Sartre with its clearly dying author helped extend the reach of “The Wretched of the Earth” to a large international readership. Sartre’s preface to the book is one of his most controversial pieces of work, because he made a determined effort, unprecedented for a leading European philosopher, to put imperialist realities remorselessly from the side of a resisting, oppressed and dehumanised majority. (Subsequently his preface was repudiated by Fanon’s widow, Josie, because Sartre supported Israel during the 1967 war.)

The book made people all over the world rethink the way they defined themselves and others. For some, the emphasis on the cathartic role of violence against oppression was overstated and repulsive. For others, the work suffered too much from over-generalisation and vagueness. Still others, argued that decolonization need not be accompanied invariably by violent insurrection, as Fanon was interpreted to argue. The fundamental move Fanon made was to place the colonial oppressors at the periphery and to focus on the humanity and the revolutionary political and moral potential of their victims.

…What French governments did in Algeria is being variously repeated now by the US and its allies and their proxies in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia. Over the last two years United Nations forces have used brutal, colonial-style murder and terror against people in Haiti. Constant threats and menaces are sustained by the same imperialist bloc against countries, like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, that defend their national interests. Blatant intervention in countries with weak national governments is routine. International norms like the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg principles, human rights covenants as fundamental as that on the Rights of the Child, all have been effectively trashed.

But the criminal politicians who have wrecked those protective covenants and agreed rules declare constantly they are acting to defend the highest ideals of freedom, democracy and “civilization”. They do this at the same time as they massacre civilians and pollute targeted countries with their poisons, be it depleted uranium in Iraq or glyphosate in Colombia. In the case of depleted uranium, they know very well they are slowly murdering their own troops who use such munitions and genetically damaging those troops’ future children. Little compassion can be expected from such politicians and their military commanders for the occupied populations and none is shown. In accordance with the sadistic traditions of past colonialism, the contradiction between the rhetoric used to justify their crimes and the horrific barbarism of what they do is total .
axisoflogic.com

Colonel Tim Spicer is the future of warfare. Immaculately dressed, effortlessly charming, a keen Eric Clapton fan with tickets for most of Slowhand’s gigs over the summer, he is also effectively in charge of the second largest military force in Iraq: the estimated 20,000 private security personnel who outnumber the British army by almost three to one. Spicer’s company Aegis has a contract with the Pentagon worth almost $300m to oversee the 16 private security companies providing personnel, security, military training and reconstruction. As Bush’s poll ratings fall, it looks as if these private soldiers will only increase.
guardian.co.uk

Six detainees have been injured at Guantanamo Bay in the most violent uprising since the prison began holding suspected al-Qaida and Taliban supporters four years ago.

Clashes broke out on Thursday night as 10 detainees wielding improvised weapons made from lights, fans and pieces of metal, fought with 10 US military guards, according to the Pentagon. The revolt was suppressed with “non-lethal force”, including rubber bullets and pepper spray. Six of the detainees were treated for minor injuries, while some of the guards suffered bruising.

The incident was the second organised protest by prisoners in less than a year, following last August’s mass hunger strike; it was seen by human rights activists as a sign of growing despair among the prison’s inmates.

According to Guantanamo Bay naval base commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the unrest began when guards were set upon as they came to the aid of a detainee pretending to hang himself in Camp 4, a medium security section of the base where prisoners live in groups of 10.

Earlier on Thursday, two other prisoners made suicide attempts by swallowing prescription medicine they had been hoarding. Military officers yesterday described them as stable but unconscious.
guardian.co.uk