Stay classy Israel.

Wow Israel sure does like to conentrate Palestinians into camps and then kill them.

A good day to bury bad news and Iranian Scientists.

On 9/11 New Labour spin doctor Jo Moore stated it was a "good day to bury bad news" which while an excellent idea in PR thinking it was very bad PR for her (she lost her job) when it became more widely known and the media and political opponents etc voiced hypocritical anger about it.

Personally I think it was a piece of timeless wisdom and it seems I'm not alone in that. With the ongoing Wikileaks diplomatic cable leak US or Israeli (ah but I repeat myself) intelligence officers have seen fit to try and murder two Iranian nuclear scientists with bombs in two separate incidents, succeeding in one case. The current leak provides excellent cover because as I said the documents that have been released take Iran having a nuclear weapons programme for granted and normalises this unproven scenario in the public mind. In which case murdering a scientist, if anyone notices, is easier to justify as necessary to keep the peace in the region or suchlike.

One should also note that Iran has killed none of the Israeli scientists involved in the wholly illegal Israeli nuclear weapons program but no one cares about that.

War Crimes trial for SS Captain who emptied entire magazine into 13 year old Jewish girl.

Oh wait no, I typoed, turns out an Israeli Captain emptied an entire magazine of his assault rifle into a 13 year old Palestinian girl and then he was found completely innocent by an IDF investigation!

A detailed narrative of how US Troops raped a 14 y/o girl and killed her family

The title says it all really, the article, an extract from a book about a platoon stationed in a dangerous part of Iraq early on in the occupation, details how four soldiers carried out the act and to an extent examines why they did it.

The usual defence of a few bad apples will likely be applied and it certainly has more merit as an argument than it did in defence of the top down tolerated abuse of prisoners in detention centres in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib (though it is noteworthy some of those who did not commit the crime didn't feel compelled to report their later knowledge of the incident to superiors) rape and cold blooded murder are not official US tactics in Iraq or Afghanistan (JSOC notwithstanding), this ain't Vietnam kids.

That to me is irrelevant, the reality of war is that horrifically unpleasant events combine with periods of complete boredom to adversely affect people. In addition those who are awful people to begin with can take advantage of the confusion and their relative power within a conflict zone to do awful things. The deification of Troops means neither appropriate questions are asked nor appropriate oversight is given to the activities of these young, often disturbed young men in unstable and chaotic parts of the world. Maybe most soldiers are nice people (well nice trained killers) but the fact remains that when you inflict armed conflict and invasion upon a country, no matter how noble your rhetoric, you are opening the door to this kind of event. As a civilian majority we need to be much more aware of this and much more cautious to endorse military intervention given the amount of suffering this will inflict upon the civilian population of the countries we choose to invade.

British Army will maybe possibly investigate deaths of 109 Iraqis in their custody

So 109 people died while in the custody of the British army, some of them obviously beaten to death or whatever but the Ministry of Defence doesn't think we need a public inquiry or anything and anyway its unpatriotic to question the actions of "our boys". Anyway the Iraqis totally ungrateful for the opportunities we gave them for urban regeneration, massive building projects and paediatric research are now launching a legal challenge in the UK to try and force a public enquiry I don't know why they're bothering though, it'll just turn out they committed suicide anyway.