Militarized Chicago - Next month in Baltimore they're going to celebrate the War of 1812. That's what we do with wars. We say they're the last resort. We say they're hell. We say they're for the purpose of eliminating themselves: we fight wars for peace. Although we never keep peace for wars. We claim to wage only wars we have been forced into despite all possible effort to find a better way. And then we celebrate the wars. We keep the wars going for their own sake after all the excuses we used to get them started have expired. The WMDs have not been found. Osama bin Laden's been killed. Al Qaeda is gone from the country where we're fighting it. Nobody's threatening Benghazi anymore. But the wars must go on! And then we'll celebrate them. And we'll celebrate the old ones too, the ones that were fought here, the ones that were in their day not quite so heavily painted as last resorts or humanitarian missions.

Last year Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee persuaded Congress to create an Iraq-Afghanistan Wars holiday. It's on our calendars now along with Loyalty Day (formerly May Day), Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day), Memorial Day, Yellow Ribbon Day, Patriots Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and of course September 11th, among many others. Last week there was an Armed Forces Spouses Appreciation Day. The military holiday calendar is like the Catholic saints' days now: there's something every day of the year.

But there's no celebration of the times we avoided war. We claim to prefer peace to war, but we don't make heroes of those presidents or Congresses who most avoided war. In fact, we erase them. Our history books jump from war to war as if nothing happened in between. Nobody celebrates 1811, only 1812. Even the peace movement doesn't celebrate the past decade's prevention, thus far, of a war on Iran.

A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel's 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen.

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu's private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade's most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran's real objective is to build an atomic bomb - something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence.


Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were "ready" and the option was "fully available".

On Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States of America was drawn back - at least for now - from a precipice that would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our own courthouses, streets and backyards.

US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern district, found that section 1021 - the key section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, "facially unconstitutional". Forrest concluded that the law does indeed have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought the lawsuit against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact on first amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA from becoming law.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated explosives in an Afghan district close to the border with Pakistan, killing at least 10 people including children, officials said on Saturday.

The attack comes one day ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago, where the coalition intends to spell out its role in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

"The bomber blew himself up in a crowded market and it was powerful," said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, police chief of eastern Khost province.

He said the assailant was heading for a police checkpoint in the Ali Sher district along the border with Pakistan's "lawless tribal areas".

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed six children, one civilian adult and three policemen.

Eleven years into the NATO-led war against the Taliban, the Islamist group holds large sway in Afghanistan's restive south and east, where they enjoy enormous popular support.

Afghan security officials have said they expect this year's summer fighting season to be bloody as the third phase of a security handover from NATO to Afghan forces gets underway.

Several bomb blasts have struck a professional institute in the southern Italian city of Brindisi, killing one student and injuring seven. The three blasts hit as students arrived for morning lessons at the institute.

Local authorities report that the incendiary devices were planted in a trash bin opposition the professional institute Morvillo Falcone.

One of the injured has died in hospital while another has been transferred to nearby Perrino for emergency surgery.

"I was opening the window when I felt the force of the blast. I saw children thrown to the floor, blackened by the explosion, their books on fire. A truly terrifying scene. Who could've have done such a thing?" said a witness of the blast to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The explosions went off at around 8am local time (06:00 GMT), causing widespread panic among the students arriving at the school.

At least it's on the record: Most House Republicans support the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens.

During Thursday's floor debate over the latest national defense authorization act, the House GOP brought out their long knives for Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who, in their view, had collaborated on a nefarious plot to undermine national security. Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) accused the lawmakers of wanting to "coddle terrorists," while Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) warned that under an amendment they'd introduced, "as soon as a member of Al Qaeda sets foot on US soil, they hear you have the right to remain silent." National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has never heard of a same-sex marriage supporting, pro-financial regulation liberal who wasn't secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that their proposal was the result of "libertarian extremists" teaming up with liberals with an "obsession" with giving "more rights" to "mass murderers."

A new video of torture in Libya has surfaced on the Internet. The victim is allegedly a former supporter of ex-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. According to our Libyan Observer, this kind of vengeful brutality often goes unpunished.

The video was published on YouTube on May 16 by a user going by the name of Libya Albadeel. It was then re-posted by dozens of other users. It is impossible to establish with certainty the date at which it was shot; however, according to our Observer, such retributions remain frequent today. The video's title claims that the torture perpetrators are "militiamen" in Misrata, a coastal town located 200 kilometres east of the capital Tripoli.

WARNING: These images may shock viewers

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western intervention ahead of a G8 summit at which Syria and Iran will be discussed.

"Hasty military operations in foreign states usually bring radicals to power," Medvedev, president for four years until Vladimir Putin's inauguration on May 7, told a conference in St. Petersburg in remarks posted on the government's website.

"At some point such actions which undermine state sovereignty may lead to a full-scale regional war, even, although I do not want to frighten anyone, with the use of nuclear weapons," Medvedev said. "Everyone should bear this in mind."

Medvedev gave no further explanation. Nuclear-armed Russia has said publicly that it is under no obligation to protect Syria if it is attacked, and analysts and diplomats say Russia would not get involved in military action if Iran were attacked.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is urging Members to reject H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act, FY 2013 because it prepares the way for a disastrous war with Iran. Even if the House accepts a proposed amendment by John Conyers (D-MI) to state that the authorization is not a specific declaration of war, the bill still calls for aggressive redeployment of our armed services to begin "credible, visible preparations for a military option."

Global banks see market rally on Greek exit ... Major global banks are advising clients to prepare for a stock market rally and a resurgence of the euro if Greece is forced out of monetary union, betting that world authorities will flood the international system with liquidity. Bank of America said EU authorities will pull out the stops to keep Greece in the system as they weigh the full dangers of contagion. Should that fail, it expects a series of dramatic moves ... Mr Bloom said the ECB is playing a game of chicken by waiting until it has secured maximum compliance from EMU's wayward states before coming to the rescue. "Once again it is holding everybody over the edge of the abyss until they scream for mercy," he said. - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard/UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Oh, no. Greece is leaving!

Free-Market Analysis: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, with some of the best sources in the world, has buried his lead once again.

Just look at the excerpt from his latest article, above. The headline is that there will be a global rally. We figure this is a pretty good speculation.

He was told there would be, no doubt by fairly prominent people who want the word to get out.

But then he can't help report the rest, that the ECB is "playing a game of chicken by by waiting until it has secured maximum compliance from EMU's wayward states before coming to the rescue."

Say ... what? You mean all this breast-beating over Greece's expulsion from the EU was a kind of theatre?