This one might bear a little attention, however:

BEIJING — Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani arrived in China on Tuesday fora four-day visit, picking up some welcome diplomatic support at a critical moment in Pakistan’s relations with the United States.

The prime minister’s visit was planned as part of a long-planned celebration of diplomatic ties, but analysts said Pakistan is using it to hint that China is an alternative source of security and economic aid — a reassuring message for a nation angered and humiliated by the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Here is one by Iraq veteran Brian Turner:

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

– Brian Turner

A long time Agonist reader has started a new website dedicated to seeing the American faces of today, faces most likely to be airbrushed out of the mainstream media. It's a collective and it's crowd sourced. I hope to contribute some photos to the site in the weeks and months to come.

In the meantime, give the site a look and add it to your RSS feed. I expect great things there.

One would think that if you killed three children in four days your COIN policy might not be so successful. Maybe we should fine tune our freedom bombs? Aren't they smart enough to avoid children?

Nota bene: Amy Davidson has more. I'll note that QB makes good points about the deaths not being attributable to drones, which is what my sarcastic comment above would lead one to believe. Fair points. But my critique that maybe COIN isn't working out so well stands. The death of these children was preventable.

Overall thrust of the letter clearly undercuts their larger version of events

Greg Sargent | May 16

WaPo - CIA chief Leon Panetta has written a private letter to Senator John McCain that offers the most detailed answer yet to questions about the relationship between torture and Osama Bin Laden’s death — and undercuts the claim by former Bush administration officials that torture was key to Bin Laden’s killing.

The letter has not been released publicly but was sent my way by a source. Marie Harf, a CIA spokesperson, confirmed the letter’s authenticity to me, but declined further comment. ...

French Colonialists torturing a Vietnamese individual. Photo by joaquinuy

Andrew Bast | May 15

Newsweek - Photos obtained by NEWSWEEK reveal a more aggressive buildup than previously known. So why does Washington still stay mum?

Even in the best of times, Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program warrants alarm. But these are perilous days. At a moment of unprecedented misgiving between Washington and Islamabad, new evidence suggests that Pakistan’s nuclear program is barreling ahead at a furious clip.

According to new commercial-satellite imagery obtained exclusively by NEWSWEEK, Pakistan is aggressively accelerating construction at the Khushab nuclear site, about 140 miles south of Islamabad. The images, analysts say, prove Pakistan will soon have a fourth operational reactor, greatly expanding plutonium production for its nuclear-weapons program.

“The buildup is remarkable,” says Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security. “And that nobody in the U.S. or in the Pakistani government says anything about this—especially in this day and age—is perplexing.” ...

Exclusive satellite imagery taken in April 2011 exposes a new nuclear facility (circled) in Khushab, Pakistan—which now has the fastest-growing nuclear program in the world. The facility was undetectable in satellite images take as recently as December 2009. Pictured directly above the circled area are two white boxes which are also nuclear reactors.

. . . heck is this all about?

The floodwaters of the Mississippi are getting higher and higher and from this New York Times article it doesn't look like the peak has yet to reach Old River Control or the Morganza Spillway.

In light of the recent floods and the talk of Old River Control and the Morganza I went back and re-read John McPhee's excellent "Atchafalaya." It's a long essay about the history of the Mississipi and how over the last several thousand years it's jumped and shifted. I have zero idea what will happen. And I have even less of a idea (or opinion) on what to do. It's fascinating and terrifying all at the same time to read what might could happen.

As Darrell Scott writes in his song, "River Take Me:"

Oh the river flows and a young man dreams
And the river can drown you
Or it can wash you clean
It can take you away to some other place
It can power your cities, carry your waste
And give all that you drink a peculiar taste

In the face of a brown god like the Mississip human desires pale.

I understand his message on one level, but his rationale smacks of a re-election justification. If so, it's one of the weakest arguments ever used:

Senator Scott Brown said yesterday that the federal corruption trial of former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi highlights the dangers of one-party dominance in Massachusetts and a go-along-to-get-along political culture.

Injecting politics into a normally celebratory moment, Brown said in remarks delivered at the Lasell College commencement ceremony: “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican — just as one political party can’t be right 100 percent of the time, it shouldn’t have 100 percent of the power. Unchallenged power grows arrogant over time. It is what has given us one case of graft after another.’’

The more we hear about Fukushima the worse it gets. The mainstream media has an answer to that reality: say less!

The phrase "not as bad as Chernobyl", one I have used myself, will likely someday be recognized for what it will have become, level 8, Fukushima.

Tepco is announcing that a full meltdown is underway. The current fairy tale of an offered solution to stop a contiuous flow of radioactive elements entering the sea is a retaining wall dug down to bedrock (50 feet if we can believe another numbers based "fact") forecasted to take months if not years to build.

Dan Carden | Indianapolis | May 13

nwitimes.com - Overturning common law dating back to the Magna Carta, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled citizens there have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

The Brunette and I are going to see Zoe Keating tonight here in Austin. Bet you're jealous!

. . . of the OBL raid does exist? Very Interesting, when Panetta claimed it did not. Who shall I serve the crow to?

Dublin | May 13

AP - Chalk up another first for Twitter: It's now helped to form a whole government.

The five parties in Northern Ireland's government took turns Friday picking the government departments they want to lead for the next four-year term. And they announced their choices to the world and each other live via the social media platform.

The major Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, went first and chose the powerful Finance Department. The Irish nationalist Sinn Fein went second and chose Education. Within a half-hour all 10 government ministries were parceled out.

It's reckoned to be the first time that any government has used Twitter as the vehicle for managing its formation

#niexecutive.

Mark Kinver | Stellenbosch, South Africa | May 12

BBC - The world is set to consume three times more natural resources than current rates by the middle of the century, according to a United Nations report.

It predicts that humanity will annually use about 140 billion tonnes of fossil fuels, minerals and ores by 2050.

The authors call for resource consumption to be "decoupled" from economic growth, and producers to do "more with less".

Growth in population and prosperity are the main drivers, they observe.

David S. Cloud | May 13

LA Times - The decision is intended to help curb the cost of the Afghan war as training and salaries are paid by the U.S. But experts say it may necessitate a smaller initial reduction in U.S. troops set to begin in July.

What? You thought they would really bring a significant number of troops home? This is so incredibly stupid...

Caption contest:

Madison, Wisconsin | May 9

Daily Mail -

Wisconsin-based traditional farming school teaches 20 farmers every weekend from all over country

When farmers Danielle and Matt Boerson realised they could no longer afford to run their tractors, they took the bull by the horns - and ditched them for oxen.

Hey, Don!

Oliver Wright | May 13

The Independent - MI6 drew up proposals to support a coup against Saddam Hussein three months after the terrorist attacks on 11 September in the United States, previously classified documents indicate.

The papers outline a proposal for regime change in Iraq backed up by airstrikes. The files were read by the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who described them as "very perceptive". He recommended Tony Blair, who was then Prime Minister, also read the files.

Richard Norton-Taylor | London | May 12

The Guardian - A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government's claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Foreign Policy Journal, By Thomas C. Mountain, May 12

As the U.N. famine warning center issues urgent reports that millions of Ethiopians are once again starving in the Somali populated Ogaden, the International Committee of the Red Cross publishes a statement that the Ethiopian government has denied the Red Cross an operating permit to carry out relief work in the region. Blocking the Red Cross from relief work somewhere is almost unheard of, yet when it comes to Ethiopia, headed by the G-20 “statesman” Meles Zenawi, this is business as usual.

For the past four years, all aid agencies, including the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and U.N. relief agencies, have been blocked by the Ethiopian military from feeding starving people in Ogadenia; millions of starving people, maybe as many as 6 million—though no one can say for sure because no one is allowed into the region.

Why is this? Why is there no outcry against this enormous crime against humanity, the blocking of food aid to millions of starving people?

The Zombie lies live on:

He argues that the financial crisis of 2008 refreshed the relevance of Marxism, but he does not examine the fact that “rational” economic central planning, of the sort contemplated by scientific materialists like Marx, contributed to the crisis—for example, through the socialization of mortgage risk by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the cartelization of the credit-rating agencies, the subordination of lending standards to political mandates, and the like.

It's really hard for me to believe that even now people still believe that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the cause on the financial crisis. As opposed to these guys, you know?

Why don't all the libertarians and Ayn Randians move to the free market paradise of Haiti?