The BBC reports:

It is not clear if any DNA from Bin Laden or any family members was ever obtained.

Washington has been arguing that Dr Afridi should be freed and allowed to live in the US.

Mr Panetta also repeated US claims that someone in authority in Pakistan must have known where Bin Laden was hiding at the compound – located close to the country’s top military academy.

But were it the case, why would it be so?

Panetta talks to CBS News.

The Pakistan Government has refused to accede to the US request for Afridi to be released. An earlier request in July last year by the Secretary of State was met with a similar rejection:

Official sources have confirmed that US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari on July 28 to seek his help in securing Dr Afridi’s release.

However, President Zardari reportedly turned down the request, arguing that the matter was before the judicial commission, which has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the death and presence of Bin Laden in Abbottabad, sources said.

“The matter is sub judice and it is only the Abbottabad Commission which will decide his (Afridi) fate,” said an official quoting President Zardari as having told Secretary Clinton.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Express Tribune that the detained doctor may be summoned by the Abbottabad commission for questioning.

The high-powered commission, which is headed by a recently retired senior Supreme Court judge Justice Javed Iqbal, had already barred the government from extraditing Bin Laden’s widows and other persons who are connected with this incident. Afridi was one of several Pakistanis who were detained by the country’s security agencies over allegations of working for the CIA. Afridi has yet to be charged formally, but if he is, he could face the death penalty for collaborating with a foreign spy agency.

It is unclear how the CIA first recruited Afridi to work for the United States.

It is fairly clear that the CIA is a law unto itself, and the failure again to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty and laws is unlikely it popular in that country. The alternative would be to establish and respect international laws which would have two significant drawbacks. It would call into question the resort and reign of violence to solve differences and laws could not be applied as victor justice.

Press TV reported in February 2011 on the CIA’s secret war in Pakistan:

That might be described as an outlier, an extreme event. Of course, once I saw this video the analogy stuck with me (via Real Climate):

 

The ABC is prepared to continence a wider range of opinion, while always cleaving loyally to the perceived mainstream consensus that the media is in the process of creating. ABC Online reports:

Some of the protesters said they were aware Mr Abbott was inside the restaurant but not the Prime Minster, however others say Ms Gillard is a coward for not stepping outside to speak to them.

“The Opposition Leader talks about ripping the tent embassy off us. The other leader fails to even come out and speak to us as Aboriginal people. She runs like a coward, she runs,” activist Sean Gordon said.

This morning, Mr Abbott said Aboriginal people could be very proud of their achievements since the tent embassy was first established but that it was probably time to move on.

“I think the Indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian,” he said.

“I think a lot has changed since then and I think it probably is time to move on from that.”

But Mr Gordon says many people were angered by those remarks.

“We have not moved on in 200 years. We are hand out to government,” he said.

“We have no economic base for who we are as Aboriginal people. We have title to land we aren’t able to do anything with. How have we moved on?”

Tent embassy founder Michael Anderson says Mr Abbott’s comments are disrespectful and amounted “to inciting racial riots”.

Ms Gillard has refused to comment on whether Mr Abbott should apologise for his remarks.

There are questions concerning the PM’s behavior. Why did she allow herself to be treated in this way. Why did she not attempt to speak to the demonstrators? Why does she refuse to comment Abbott should apologize? One of the requirements of leadership is physical courage, along with a set of core beliefs and vision. Whatever John Howard’s faults, and I am no fan, he possessed those qualities.

ELSEWHERE:

The BBC report describes the fraca as “absolutely extraordinary scenes in the Australian Capital”.  In this report the protesters do not seem to be exceptionally violent, and numbering about 200 people.

En Passsant was a participant in the demo and reports on what he saw and experienced.

CODA:

The thought occurs, as was once observed they are “a weird mob” .  In those other places, noticeably in Zuccotti Park and the campus of Davis, the police manhandle and mistreat the protesters whereas in this apparent alternative world, the police manhandle the political leaders.

On Tuesday Iran said it expected the EU to backtrack on the embargo and repeated a threat to close the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane if the West succeeds in preventing Tehran from exporting crude.

“The West’s ineffective sanctions against the Islamic state are not a threat to us. They are opportunities and have already brought lots of benefits to the country,” intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi told the official IRNA news agency.

The tone in the Islamic Republic was defiant, even sceptical.

“The global economic situation is not one in which a country can be destroyed by imposing sanctions,” Mr Moslehi said, repeating Iran’s stance that with the EU in economic and monetary crisis, it needs Iran’s oil more than Iran needs its business.

A spokesman for the oil ministry said Iran had had plenty of time to prepare for the sanctions and would find alternative customers for the 18 per cent of its exports that up to now have gone to the 27-nation European bloc.

“The first phase of this (sanctions action) is propaganda, only then it will enter the implementation phase. That is why they put in this six months period, to study the market,” Alireza Nikzad Rahbar said, predicting the embargo could be rescinded before it takes force completely.

“This market will harm them because oil is getting more expensive and when oil gets more expensive it will harm the people of Europe,” state TV quoted him as saying.

“We hope that in these six months they will choose the right path.”

The embargo will not kick in completely until July 1 because the bloc’s foreign ministers who agreed the ban at a meeting in Brussels were anxious not to penalise the ailing economies of Greece, Italy and others to whom Iran is a major oil supplier.

Robert Fisk in The Independent has a similar view concluding: Bring on the sanctions. Send in the clowns”. Israeli leaders have a long track record of accusing Iran of wanting to build nuclear weapons. Some of this history is detailed by Robert Fisk:

The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story.

So perhaps the story of an Iranian bomb might help Israel. As Robert Fisk notes:

For Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel is the brutal, colonising, occupying power. But the moment Iran is mentioned, this colonial power turns into a tiny, vulnerable, peaceful state under imminent threat of extinction. Ahmadinejad – here again, I quote Netanyahu – is more dangerous than Hitler. Israel’s own nuclear warheads – all too real and now numbering almost 300 – disappear from the story. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are helping the Syrian regime destroy its opponents; they might like to – but there is no proof of this.

Kevin Rudd, now in the eyes of some critics, the putative PM, got into the act, but then it turned out that Australia does not import oil from Iran.

RT reports on the suggestion, other wise reported by Press TV that India and China plan to buy Iranian oil with gold:

So what is going on? Pepe Escobar concludes in his article at Tom Dispatch:

t’s not at all far-fetched to imagine hardcore Full-Spectrum-Dominance practitioners inside the Pentagon riding a false-flag incident in the Persian Gulf to an attack on Iran (or simply using it to pressure Tehran into a fatal miscalculation). Consider as well the new U.S. military strategy just unveiled by President Obama in which the focus of Washington’s attention is to move from two failed ground wars in the Greater Middle East to the Pacific (and so to China). Iran happens to be right in the middle, in Southwest Asia, with all that oil heading toward an energy-hungry modern Middle Kingdom over waters guarded by the U.S. Navy.

So yes, this larger-than-life psychodrama we call “Iran” may turn out to be as much about China and the U.S. dollar as it is about the politics of the Persian Gulf or Iran’s nonexistent bomb. The question is: What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Beijing to be born?

Pepe Escobar talks with Scott Horton on AntiWar.com.

If true, aside from the likely increase in the price of oil for Europeans in particular, the end of the Dollar as the reserve currency of the world that the schemozzle is as much an obscenity of military power as it is of an absurdity – although real people have been, and one supposes may be, murdered.

The BBC reports:

Our planet is being bombarded by high-energy particles unleashed by the strongest solar storm since 2005, scientists say.

The charged particles are mostly a concern for satellites – which they can disrupt – and astronauts.

But they can also cause communication problems for aircraft travelling near the poles.

The geomagnetic storm has been caused by a potent flare that erupted from the Sun at 0400 GMT on Sunday.

The effects are likely to be felt on Earth throughout Wednesday.

A more benign effect of the outpouring of particles is the ability to see aurorae, or “Northern lights”, further south than is usually possible.

A spokesman for US space agency Nasa said that flight surgeons and solar scientists have modelled the flare’s predicted effects.

They decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to take any action to protect themselves from the incoming stream of particles.

Solar flares are caused by the sudden release of magnetic energy stored in the Sun’s atmosphere.

In an event called a coronal mass ejection (CME), bursts of charged particles are released into space.

This can interfere with technology on Earth, such as electrical power grids, communications systems and satellites – including satellite navigation (or sat-nav) signals.

Some have seen the potential for disaster in this solar phenomenon, but Nasa physicist Alex Young is not concerned – to the chagrin of at least once critic who suggest that over the last four to five cycles the effect is getting larger:

Lets talk more about the sun and infinity of space more, so as to recognize that what may divide us may in this perspective to inconsequential and our planet and life are precious.

ELSEWHERE:

Astrophysicist, Adam Frank, reviews the latest solar storm and its significance for NPR.

The New Zealand Herald explained the process:

Kim Dotcom and three others were arrested in New Zealand after a request for “mutual legal assistance” by the United States Government – which plans to extradite the accused.

The men have not been charged by police in New Zealand and are being held in custody on the warrant issued by the US Government.

Extradition is the official process allowing for the surrender of a suspected or convicted criminal from one country to another.

Requests are made under the Extradition Act 1999, any relevant treaty and the law of the foreign country. New Zealand signed an extradition treaty with the US in 1970.

Normally, a formal request for extradition is received through diplomatic channels. The Minister of Justice may request an arrest warrant and then the District Court determines whether the individual is eligible for surrender.

The indictments on five counts were sanctioned by a Grand Jury in Virginia, which perhaps was guaranteed to approve the US Government’s action. It is one thing to arrest and charge a person; it is another to confiscate property prior to the judgement of a relevant court. I am not across the legal issues, but perhaps there are issues of extra-territoriality in play here.

Glenn Greenwald draws two conclusions that in their own way are a form of indictment:

1. It’s wildly under-appreciated how unrestrained is the Government’s power to do what it wants, and how little effect these debates over various proposed laws have on that power. . . It’s true that website-seizures-without-trials are not quite as lawless as indefinite detentions, since there are actual statutes conferring this power. But it nonetheless sends a very clear message when citizens celebrate a rare victory in denying the Government a power it seeks — the power to shut down websites without a trial — only for the Government to turn around the very next day and shut down one of the world’s largest and best-known sites. Whether intended or not, the message is unmistakable: Congratulations, citizens, on your cute little “democracy” victory in denying us the power to shut down websites without a trial: we’re now going to shut down one of your most popular websites without a trial.

2. The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. That is not hyperbole. Supporters of both political parties endorse, or at least tolerate, all manner of government punishment without so much as the pretense of a trial, based solely on government accusation: imprisonment for life, renditions to other countries, even assassinations of their fellow citizens. Simply uttering the word Terrorist, without proving it, is sufficient. And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy.

Since US courts are now apparently performing no useful function perhaps they do can be closed, as is suggested for other government functions to save money. Court Martials could used to ensure that the correct conclusions were reached. The letter and spirit of the Constitution is now irrelevant, so that could be another cost saving. Then again as the parties to the action against the Megauploads and the authors of SOPA and PIPA would contend fictions and myths are essential to any national story, with the benefits worth more than a costs.

In a World Public Opinion poll of sixteen nations in 2009, 69 percent of Americans supported the view that nations are obliged to abide by international law even when doing so is at odds with their national interest. Furthermore, a 2010 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found 82 percent of Americans favored ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (rejected by the GOP-dominated Senate in 1999), 70 percent favored participation in the International Criminal Court (rejected by President George W. Bush), and 67 percent backed a new international treaty to combat climate change. In December 2008, a World Public Opinion poll found that 77 percent of Americans backed an international treaty abolishing nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, most Americans favor expanding the role of the United Nations in world affairs. Polling in 2010 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that majorities of Americans favored creating a standing UN peacekeeping force (64 percent), giving the United Nations the authority to enter countries to investigate human rights violations (72 percent), creating an international marshals service with the power to arrest leaders responsible for genocide (73 percent), and empowering the United Nations to regulate the international arms trade (55 percent).

Overall, as public opinion studies show, Americans want a smaller—rather than a larger—global footprint for their nation. According to a 2010 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 8 percent favored the United States playing the role of the preeminent world leader, while 71 percent favored a cooperative approach. Gallup polls have turned up similar results. In 2011, Gallup reported that only 16 percent of Americans endorsed the option of the United States playing “the leading role” in world affairs. According to Gallup, 32 percent of Americans favored “a minor role” or “no role” at all for the United States, while 50 percent wanted the United States to “take a major role, but not the leading one.”

“It’s the media. . .” Justin Lewis deconstructs the mediation of public polling and political leadership (2006):

POSTSCRIPT:

The Republican Primary in South Carolina won by Gringrich with 40.4% of the votes cast is not relevant, even the turnout given rain at 22% of the total number of registered voters was good. By that measure Grinrich overwhelming level of support, compared to Romney’s 27.8%, represents 9% of South Carolina’s potential voters. Of course the percentage of the voters who cast ballots has no effect on the electoral outcomes and suppressing the vote is an effective political tactic in the general election.

ABC News reports:

Afghan security forces, or insurgents dressed in their uniforms, have attacked and killed international troops or trainers more than a dozen times in the past two years.

This latest attack will undermine trust between Afghan and western troops. But London Think Tank Chatham House spokesman Dr Gareth Price says the coalition has no choice but to forge on. “The whole strategy is to build up the Afghan National Army and there isn’t really an alternative strategy,” he said. “The alternative would be just to leave Afghanistan. “It would be quite self-defeating if those western countries stopped building it up.”

As for vetting methods during recruitment, Dr Price says it is “tricky” for the Afghan National Army to improve its measures. “The issue with the Afghan army at the moment is it’s very much an army of non-Pashtuns, and that’s difficult for an army that eventually is going to be mainly operating, if it’s taking the turnabout, in Pashtun areas,” he said. “There are attempts to get more Pashtuns within the Afghan National Army and that’s when things get more difficult in terms of vetting. “But at the moment it’s very much an army of northern ethnic groups rather than the southern ones.”

Former Prime Minister, and now Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, could detect no erosion of resolve in his meeting with the French Foreign Minister. This might be as close a reading of French politics as the continued mission in Central Asia is of Afghan politics.

Ramin Mazaheri reports for Press TV Global News that President Sarkozy may have good political reason not to stop at the suspension of combat operations and military training:

John Glaser in an interview with Scott Horton is somewhat pessimistic about the claims of success in Afghanistan.

Will he situation miraculously improve by 2014?

He is OK now and he and Hannah seem to be getting on if the mutual licking of their faces is any indication.

As always the problem is to reduce the number of photos. One way to do that is to create collages, as I have done with the creek in flood.

””””””””””””””’
Enya sings listen to the rain. We seem to be doing some of that in recent times:

………………………………
Friday Ark may be sailing this week and if so, we will be seeking to go on board to meet the other passengers.
………………………….
Picasa was used to set up the photos.

Monarchy may have survived a Republican India and Ireland, but it is doubtful other than existing in an underground box wearing proudly and forlornly the Order of the British Empire, a Republic of Scotland. Referenda from long experience here necessarily evoke scepticism, so how likely are the Scots to vote for independence from England? What would be implied by Scotland leaving the British Union?

Andrew McFadyen at Aljazeera goes through some of the immediate political and economic outcomes that a successful referendum may produce:

[PM David Cameron's] government’s austere programme of spending cuts is beginning to bite; the Scottish Nationalists are counting on them becoming even more unpopular as the referendum approaches. If Salmond gets his way and the Scots vote for independence, the UK will lose 90 per cent of its oil and gas reserves in the North Sea and almost half its land mass.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, who served as Britain’s Defence and Foreign Secretary, told Al Jazeera, “I have no doubt that if Scotland became a separate state the perception would be that the UK was a much diminished country.”

One of the major issues that Rifkind fears could be at stake is Britain’s status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The composition of the Council reflects the world as it was in 1945, rather than today. There is no longer any logical reason for Britain to be a permanent member instead of countries with stronger economies, like Germany or Japan, or emerging powers like India or Brazil. Rifkind, who is himself a Scot, said that if Scotland declares independence, “It would certainly open up the question of permanent membership of the Security Council in a way that would be quite awkward for the UK.” In the understated language of British diplomats, “quite awkward” almost nearly always means “absolutely bloody awful”.

If Scotland declares independence, it is also likely that the UK will be forced to find a new home for its four Trident submarines, which are currently based at Faslane, around 25 miles from Glasgow. The Scottish National Party detailed the matter in their election manifesto: “Our opposition to the Trident nuclear missile system and its planned replacement remains firm – there is no place for these weapons in Scotland.” Salmond confirmed to Al Jazeera that “an independent Scotland will not have nuclear weapons, and after we become independent Trident weapons of mass destruction will no longer be based in Scottish waters.” Defence officials are already looking at contingency plans to transfer Britain’s nuclear deterrent to England if Scotland declares independence, but England does not possess a deep-water port with the same secluded and easy access to the North Atlantic. And even if a suitable site could be found, developing a new port would be phenomenally expensive.

As I have suggested there may be other implications as well. The British Government is putting pressure on the Scottish Parliament to hold the referendum as soon as possible, and perhaps certainly on the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 2014.

The Scotsman’s assistant editor Peter MacMahon discusses recent developments and how things might pan out: