Like their counterparts in Pakistan, Afghanistan's Taliban demonstrate once again that they aren't above blowing up their cannon fodder at mosques—during Ramadan—to enforce their supposedly purist version of Islam. Now didn't we hear somewhere, "Do not fight them at the Holy Mosque"? We've got a word of advice for these jokers: read the Koran. From the LA Times, Sept 3:

As National Police marched in a parade at the Plaza de Armas in the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa for the Santa Rosa de Lima celebration Aug. 30, peasant cooperatives from the region rallied in the middle of the square and later held their own march to protest government plans to turn state lands over to Chilean agribusiness interests. At issue are some 475 hectares of state-owned lands at Valle de Majes that the government proposes to sell to Grupo Layconsa, which is already producing artichokes for export to the US at nearby Pampabajas. "We are the owners of our lands, not the Chileans," says protest leader Luis Calderón Lindo, asserting that Layconsa is controlled by Chilean investors.

This upcoming 9-11 anniversary will mark eight years that World War 4 Report has been publishing. We have only kept it going because nobody else is doing it, and we consider it vital: a daily digest of the GWOT news from around the world, with exacting journalistic standards and a progressive neither/nor perspective equally unsparing on imperialism and the jihad. But we have to face the fact that is has utterly failed to accrue a significant readership—at least in numerical terms.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered embassies to use a photo of Adolf Hitler's 1941 meeting with the Mufti of Jerusalem to counter international criticism over a Jerusalem settlement project, a senior official told AFP July 22. "The foreign minister ordered the distribution of the photo to all embassies abroad as a response to the Shepherd Hotel incident in order to prove a well-known point that the mufti collaborated with Hitler," the official said on condition of anonymity. Foreign Ministry staff apparently opposed the move.

On July 25, the day after the vote, an opposition party claimed there had been violations in the presidential and parliamentary elections in Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region. The opposition front called Goran ("Change") is seeking to shake up the political establishment in Iraq's three Kurdish-ruled provinces that have been dominated by two parties for decades. Early projections suggest the KDP and PUK retain their parliamentary majority, while the Goran list scored big in the city of Sulaimaniyah, a stronghold of the PUK led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Change is led by Nosherwan Mustafa, a former PUK insider who broke with the party.

The Los Angeles Times runs an op-ed July 10 entitled "Honduras' non-coup," by Miguel A. Estrada, identified as a partner at the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a native of Honduras, and a member of the official US delegation to President Zelaya's 2006 inauguration. The kicker reads "Under the country's Constitution, the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya was legal." His argument is the same one we've heard over and over:

A blogger on Daily Kos a few days ago promoted a petition to make July 11 "Peak Oil Day," a crusade apparently launched by peakster Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute. Why July 11? Heinberg, quoted at length in the post, explains:

On July 11, 2008, the price of a barrel of oil hit a record $147.27 in daily trading. That same month, world crude oil production achieved a record 74.8 million barrels per day.

David Montero blogs for the Christian Science Monitor June 24 that "as in Pakistan, many are looking to armed tribes in Somalia who adhere to Sufism—a mystical, moderate interpretation of Islam—as the best chance for peace." The post, entitled "Is promoting Sufi Islam the best chance for peace in Somalia?", quotes a Somali writer—identifying himself only as Muthuma—who writes on the Bartamaha news portal that (as we've noted) a "new axis" of conflict is emerging in Somalia, in which fighters are battling one another along religious lines: