Army brings death and carnage to the streets

A day of violence on the streets of the Thai capital left at least ten dead and 125 wounded after renewed fighting erupted in the city’s commercial heart yesterday. Soldiers fired bullets and teargas into the fortified encampment held for weeks by anti-government protesters, and street battles erupted in the city centre.

What began in early March as a defiant and proud rally intended to oust the Thai Government peacefully and fight for social justice had, by last night, largely unravelled as the army strengthened its stranglehold around thousands of diehard protesters.

Hemmed into their fortified encampment by troops, the remaining protesters digested the grim information that several of their leaders had quit. As long as the security forces remain loyal to the Government their options appear increasingly limited in the face of the army’s firepower.

From dawn yesterday the protest site centred on Ratchaprasong intersection in central Bangkok was surrounded by armed troops and police officers in armoured vehicles. They fired live rounds and rubber bullets as well as teargas at members of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship. The group has spent weeks in the centre of one of Asia’s most cosmopolitan cities demanding the dissolution of the Thai parliament, followed by elections.

Known widely as the Red Shirts, the demonstrators responded with petrol bombs and fired home-made rockets into the streets surrounding the upmarket district that they have occupied for nearly six weeks. Several thousand Red Shirts were still behind the high barricades of the site perimeter last night, protected by guards carrying thick bamboo staves.

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Afghan war costs now outpace Iraq's

The monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up.

Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. As recently as fiscal year 2008, Iraq was three times as expensive; in 2009, it was twice as costly.  

The shift is occurring because the Pentagon is adding troops in Afghanistan and withdrawing them from Iraq. And it's happening as the cumulative cost of the two wars surpasses $1 trillion, including spending for veterans and foreign aid. Those costs could put increased pressure on President Obama and Congress, given the nation's $12.9 trillion debt.  

"The overall costs are a function, in part, of the number of troops," says Linda Bilmes, an expert on wartime spending at Harvard University. "The costs are also a result of the intensity of operations, and the number of different places that we have our troops deployed." 

Obama made clear Wednesday that the U.S. role in Afghanistan would remain long after troops are withdrawn, a process planned to begin in July 2011. "This is a long-term partnership," he said during a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. 

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Soldier's widow attacks poor equipment for troops in Afghanistan

Coalition ministers came under pressure yesterday over the resourcing of troops in Afghanistan, as the widow of a soldier killed by a roadside bomb blamed his death on inadequate equipment.

"I would like to call upon this new government to urgently review the equipment and the budget," said Joanne McAleese, whose husband, Serjeant Paul McAleese, 29, died in a blast in Helmand province while trying to recover the body of a comrade killed by an earlier device. "Our soldiers fight every day in the difficult circumstances. They deserve the very best."

McAleese, whose father led the SAS storming of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980, was killed by an improvised bomb with very little metal content, which made it particularly hard to detect, an inquest into his death at Trowbridge town hall in Wiltshire heard.

Speaking at the end of the hearing yesterday, Mrs McAleese said: "As Mac's wife it's been very hard to hear some of the evidence today. In my opinion the device that killed Mac was impossible to detect with the equipment provided to our soldiers. Many more soldiers have died since Mac's death in a very similar way. How can this be allowed to continue?"

McAleese, of 2nd Battalion The Rifles, was involved in an operation to restrict Taliban movement in Sangin in the south of the country on August 20 last year.

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Oil spill could go on for years, experts say

The retired chairman of an energy investment banking firm told National Geographic in little-noticed comments Thursday that efforts to stop the oil leak under the Gulf of Mexico could prove fruitless and than oil could gush into the ocean for years.

Matthew Simmons, retired chair of the energy-industry investment bank Simmons & Company, said that BP and the US military's engineers are more or less clueless about cutting off the flow.

"We don't have any idea how to stop this," Simmons said. The former banker mocked a proposal to try and plug the leak with trash, saying it was a "joke."

Simmons noted that the pressure at 5,000 feet undersea -- where the well site is located -- is so high, that containment efforts are likely often to fail. At 5,000 feet underwater, blocking elements have to be able to hold even with pressures off 40,000 pounds per square inch.

Incoming American Association of Petroleum Geologists chief David Resink says the oil reservoir that is feeding the spill is colossal.

"You're talking about a reservoir that could have tens of millions of barrels in it," Resink said. At the current spill rate, it "would take years to deplete," he added.

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The Predictable and Inevitable Blowback

Imagine, if you can, an alternate universe.

Imagine that in this alternate universe, a foreign military power begins flying remote-controlled warplanes over your town, using on-board missiles to kill hundreds of your innocent neighbors.

Now imagine that when you read the newspaper about this ongoing bloodbath, you learn that the foreign nation's top general is nonchalantly telling reporters that his troops are also killing "an amazing number" of your cultural brethren in an adjacent country. Imagine further learning that this foreign power is expanding the drone attacks on your community despite the attacks' well-known record of killing innocents. And finally, imagine that when you turn on your television, you see the perpetrator nation's tuxedo-clad leader cracking stand-up comedy jokes about drone strikes -- jokes that prompt guffaws from an audience of that nation's elite.

Ask yourself: How would you and your fellow citizens respond? Would you call homegrown militias mounting a defense "patriots" or would you call them "terrorists"? Would you agree with your leaders when they angrily tell reporters that violent defiance should be expected?

Fortunately, most Americans don't have to worry about these queries in their own lives. But how we answer them in a hypothetical thought experiment provides us insight into how Pakistanis are likely feeling right now. Why? Because thanks to our continued drone assaults on their country, Pakistanis now confront these issues every day. And if they answer these questions as many of us undoubtedly would in a similar situation -- well, that should trouble every American in this age of asymmetrical warfare.

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Military Expands ‘Obama’s Gitmo’ in Afghanistan

The U.S. military is getting set to expand its controversial detention camp at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan — just as new reports of a “black jail” inside the facility are surfacing.

In a solicitation issued today, the U.S. military put out a request for a contractor to build three new detention housing units next to the existing facility, known formally as the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan (Bagram is in the southwest corner of Parwan Province). As of last September, 645 prisoners were held there.

The cost of the project — which will include construction of one special housing unit and two detention housing units — is projected to run between $10 million and $25 million. The contractor will have approximately nine months to complete the entire project.

Presumably, these new buildings are in addition to Bagram’s separate and previously clandestine detention facility, revealed by the International Committee of the Red Cross yesterday. Nine former prisoners say they were abused there, according to the BBC.

 Timing here is key: The jail is supposed to be handed over to Afghan control of the place, sometimes called “Obama’s Guantanamo,” sometime next year. (Afghan president Hamid Karzai would like tomake the hand-off even earlier.) Afghan and U.S. officials have signed an agreement to hand control of the Parwan facility to the Afghan ministry of defense, and eventually to its ministry of justice. The transfer may help resolve an issue that has caused a fair amount of controversy for the U.S. military.

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'Obama funding Israel for new war'

US President Barak Obama has asked Congress to pay $205 million for Israel's latest missile system, called the 'Iron dome'.

Tel Aviv completed tests in January on its short-range anti-missile system which is designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells. President Obama argues that Israel must have such a system.

Author Ralph Shoenmen spoke to Press TV about this issue. Below is the transcript of the interview:

Press TV: By choosing to fund Israel's military and missile's system, isn't the US encouraging an arms race, when it's supposed to be brokering a peace deal?

Ralph Shoenmen: Well, first of all I have to say that the idea that the United States is brokering a peace deal is nothing more than silly propaganda, quite frankly. The United States is not interested in peace, but in pacifying the Palestinian population. Pacification means intensifying occupation, and advancing the process of displacing the Palestinian people, once again under the cover of a new war. That is the process; that is the dynamic. The United States from the beginning [of Israel] has been the principle arms financier. The United States completely subsidizes the entire military and intelligence apparatus and, in fact, the entire [Israel] itself.

One hundred billion dollars, in the first forty years, and the official figures of military and other support are the tip of the iceberg, because there are a whole range of billions of dollars of loans that are never paid back.

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Civilian casualties rising in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of civilians killed by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has risen this year, despite efforts to limit fallout from the widening war against the Taliban, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Citing NATO statistics, the Pentagon said U.S. and NATO forces killed 90 civilians from January to April -- a 76 percent rise from the 51 deaths in the same period of 2009.

The increase demonstrates the difficulty of shielding Afghans from violence as the United States pours thousands more troops into Afghanistan to challenge the Taliban, often in strongholds where insurgents hide among the population.

The U.S. military has made reducing civilian casualties an explicit goal of its revised Afghan strategy, given that popular support for NATO and Afghan forces is ultimately needed to isolate the Taliban and win the war.

President Barack Obama restated the goal on Wednesday, saying the United States was doing everything possible to avoid killing "somebody who's not on the battlefield."

"Our troops put themselves at risk, oftentimes, in order to reduce civilian casualties," Obama told a joint news conference in Washington with visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"Oftentimes they're holding fire, they're hesitating, they're being cautious about how they operate, even though it would be safer for them to go ahead and just take these locations out."

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McChrystal: 'Nobody Is Winning' in Afghanistan Conflict

U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal said that although progress is being made in Afghanistan, "nobody is winning at this point," in an interview airing Thursday on the NewsHour.

"I think that in the last year, we've made a lot of progress," he said. "I think I'd be prepared to say nobody is winning at this point, where the insurgents I think felt that they had momentum a year ago, felt that they were making clear progress. I think that's stopped."

McChrystal also described what's ahead for Kandahar, the spiritual hub of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

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Angry protests over deaths in Nato night raid in Afghanistan

GUARDIAN

Fury erupted in eastern Afghanistan today after US soldiers were once again accused of killing civilians during a night raid on a private house.

The assault on the compound in the village of Qal'eh-ye Allah Nazar in Nangahar province occurred at about 1am, leaving several people dead.

Officials said it was an intelligence-led operation and that eight people had been killed during a shootout, including a Taliban sub-commander. Weapons had been recovered from the compound, they said.

That was not how the incident was seen by family members, neighbours and the local population, 500 of whom demonstrated outside the office of the governor of Surkh Rod district. One person was reported by locals to have been killed and two injured after the crowd tried to enter the government buildings.

Ahmad Zia Ab-razai, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said 14 civilians had been "murdered" and three injured. He said local authorities had started an investigation and had been in contact with US forces, who are usually responsible for mounting night operations, and was told they were looking for a Taliban commander called Shamsul Rahman.

Mohammad Rafi, 38, a member of the family whose mother and son were killed, said he was in bed when US soldiers, some of whom had climbed over the high mud walls of the traditional fort-like building, entered the compound.

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US banks under investigation

Eight Wall Street banks are facing an investigation following allegations that they provided misleading information to several ratings agencies in order to gain a better rating for mortgage securities.

New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has launched the investigation and the banks under scrutiny are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS AG, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Credit Agricole and Merrill Lynch (the latter was taken over by the Bank of America following the collapse of Lehman Brothers).

Following the news, bank shares on Wall Street fell yesterday.

Mr Cuomo has requested information from the eight banks, as well as the three major credit rating agencies – Standard and Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s and Fitch Ratings.

As part of the investigation, Mr Cuomo will try to establish whether the banks misled investors when securities and other investments were marketed to them. Much of the investments were repackaged into wider debt offerings and then resold.

Bad US mortgage debt was one of the primary causes of the financial crisis.

The investigations came after the US senate voted in favour of tougher regulation of the credit rating agencies.

Rating agencies can influence the decision of fund managers into selling government bonds, or refuse to buy newly issued bonds.

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US allowed drilling 'without required permits'

TELEGRAPH

The approvals by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) included greenlighting the well drilled by the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers before burning, sinking and spewing a sea of crude into the gulf, The New York Times reported, citing federal records.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the minerals agency is required to obtain permits before allowing drilling to go ahead in areas where the oil exploration could harm endangered species or marine mammals.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed notice of intent Friday to sue the agency over its non-compliance with the laws, the Department of Interior has approved over 300 drilling operations, three large lease sales and over 100 seismic surveys without the required permits.

"Under (Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar's watch, the Department of the Interior has treated the Gulf of Mexico as a sacrifice area where laws are ignored and wildlife protection takes a backseat to oil-company profits," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director for the environmental advocacy group.

The 60-day notice of intent to sue Salazar and the MMS is a legally required precursor to filing a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act.

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Gulf oil spill effects to reach Arctic and Europe, expert says

 The damaging effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be felt all the way to Europe and the Arctic, a top scientist told a congressional panel Friday.

"This is not just a regional issue for the wildlife," said Carl Safina, the president of the Blue Ocean Institute. Safina, who recently returned from the Gulf Coast region, presented several photographs, including one of an oil-covered bird.

"There will be a nest empty in Newfoundland," Safina said, noting common migratory patterns. Safina warned that multiple forms of marine life in the Atlantic Ocean "come into the Gulf to breed."

Safina's briefing to representatives of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was scheduled as part of an ongoing effort to draw on a broad range of expertise for cleanup efforts.

Cartwright: Expect war for 5-10 more years

For the next “five to 10 years,” the military likely will remain engaged in the same kinds of conflicts it has been fighting since 2001, said Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright.

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs on Thursday told a conference in Washington that “no one I know thinks we’ll be out of” these kinds of conflicts any time soon.

“There is nothing out there that tells us we won’t be wrapped up in these conflicts for as far as the eye can see,” Cartwright said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies-sponsored forum.

In coming years, however, the military might be tasked with fighting these kinds of wars “in different places and at different levels,” Cartwright said.

He did not point to specific nations into which U.S. forces or assets might be deployed over the next decade beyond Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

His comments come several days after Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters traveling with him to Kansas that he doubts Washington will soon launch another “protracted” operation like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. One reason, Gates said May 7, was the high cost of such missions, especially amid the ongoing economic crisis.

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US Companies Dodge $60 Billion in Taxes

May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Tyler Hurst swiped his debit card at a Walgreens pharmacy in central Phoenix and kicked off an international odyssey of corporate tax avoidance.

Hurst went home with an amber bottle of Lexapro, the world’s third-best selling antidepressant. The profits from his $99 purchase began a 9,400-mile journey that would lead across the Atlantic Ocean and more than halfway back again, to a grassy industrial park in Dublin, a glass skyscraper in Amsterdam and a law office in Bermuda surrounded by palm trees.

While Forest Laboratories Inc., the medicine’s maker, sells Lexapro only in the U.S., the voyage ensures most of its profits aren’t taxed there -- and they face little tax anywhere else. Forest cut its U.S. tax bill by more than a third last year with a technique known as transfer pricing, a method that carves an estimated $60 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury as it combines tax planning and alchemy. (See an interactive graphic on Forest’s tax strategy here.)

Transfer pricing lets companies such as Forest, Oracle Corp., Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc., legally avoid some income taxes by converting sales in one country to profits in another -- on paper only, and often in places where they have few employees or actual sales.

After an economic bailout in which the U.S. government lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion, the Obama administration faces a projected budget deficit of $1.5 trillion this year. In February, the administration said it would target some of the techniques companies use to shift profits offshore -- part of a package intended to raise $12 billion a year over the coming decade.

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Obama administration begins legal defense of health care law

Washington (CNN) - The Obama administration has launched its first legal defense of the new health care law, insisting the federal government has the power to force citizens to have health insurance.

"The health care industry operates in interstate commerce and there is a long recognized federal interest in its regulation," said a legal brief filed in federal court in Detroit, Michigan, by the Justice Department.

The government response was made in a lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center, a Michigan-based law firm involved in conservative issues. The case names President Barack Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder as defendants.

The government also argues that apart from the constitutional merits, an injunction to block the law from being implemented should not be granted because the provision requiring insurance coverage does not go into effect until January 1, 2014.

Legal briefs similar to the 46-page document filed in Detroit are likely to begin appearing in other federal courts where the law is under attack for requiring every citizen to purchase health insurance.

Several state governments have joined a lawsuit filed in Florida that makes similar claims - that Congress lacks the authority to mandate individuals to participate in an insurance plan. Many states have also challenged the federal requirement for states to extend coverage to more low-income residents without funding the additional cost.

U.S. posts 19th straight monthly budget deficit

(Reuters) - The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue.

Department officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.

The government has now posted 19 consecutive monthly budget deficits, the longest string of shortfalls on record.

For the first seven months of fiscal 2010, which ends September 30, the cumulative budget deficit totals $799.68 billion, down slightly from $802.3 billion in the comparable period of fiscal 2009.

Outlays during April rose to $327.96 billion from $218.75 billion in March and were up from $287.11 billion in April 2009. It was a record level of outlays for an April.

Department officials noted there were five Fridays in April this year, which helped account for higher outlays since most tax refunds are issued on that day.

But for the first seven months of the fiscal year, outlays fell to $1.99 trillion from $2.06 trillion in the comparable period of fiscal 2009, partly because of repayments by banks of bailout funds they received during the financial crisis.

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Mystery Disease Linked to Missing Israeli Scientist

Media outlets across the Northwest United States began reporting on April 24 that a strange, previously unknown strain of virulent airborne fungi that has already killed at least six people in Oregon, Washington and Idaho is spreading throughout the region. The fungus, according to expert microbiologists, who have expressed alarm about the emergence of the strain, is a new genotype of Cryptococcus gatti fungi.

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW: Ex-CIA Official Reveals New Details About Torture, Plame Leak

Truthout

In a wide-ranging video interview with Truthout, former CIA counterterrorism official John Kiriakou reveals new information about the capture and torture of "high-value" detainee Abu Zubaydah and discloses, for the first time, his role in the events that led to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

On March 28, 2002, at exactly 2 AM, CIA, FBI and Pakistani intelligence agents raided 14 houses in Faisalabad, Pakistan and captured 52 alleged terrorists, including one who the Bush administration had wrongly claimed was the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda and one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks: Abu Zubaydah.

The CIA official who led the team that resulted in Zubaydah's capture was, at the time, a 12-year agency veteran named John Kiriakou, who was sent to Pakistan just two months earlier to take charge of counterterrorism operations there.

Kiriakou made headlines in December 2007, when, during an interview with Brian Ross of ABC News, he became the first CIA official to publicly confirm that agency interrogators had waterboarded Zubaydah and that Zubaydah broke after 30 to 35 seconds, revealing actionable intelligence about a terrorist attack that "probably" saved American lives. Kiriakou said he believes waterboarding is torture.

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Arrest of 13 CIA Agents Sought in Spain

Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004, the newspaper El País reports this afternoon, citing sources within the court.

The case relates to Khaled El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, Germany, seized by the United States as a result of mistaken identity while he was on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. El-Masri was placed on a CIA-chartered jet that arrived in Macedonia from Palma de Majorca in January 2004, en route ultimately to Afghanistan. It appears that Majorca was used regularly as a refueling and temporary sheltering point for the CIA, with the knowledge of the prior conservative government. While held in the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, El-Masri was apparently tortured during extensive interrogations before intelligence officers realized that they had seized the wrong man. The Washington Post reported that CIA agents, fearing the consequences of releasing him, argued for his continued detention and in fact held him for at least several weeks after his release had been ordered. Condoleezza Rice, then national security advisor to President Bush, intervened and directed his release. El-Masri’s CIA abductors entered Spanish territory using forged British passports, according to the prosecutors. They are seeking James Fairing, Jason Franklin, Michael Grady, Lyle Edgar Lumsen III, Eric Matthew Fain, Charles Goldman Bryson, Kirk James Bird, Walter Richard Greensbore, Patricia O’Riley, Jane Payne, James O’Hale, John Richard Deckard and Héctor Lorenzo, according to information provided by the Spanish Guardia Civil. The case is also under investigation in Germany.

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