Six In The Morning

Pakistan’s top military officials are worried about militant collaborators in their ranks

By Karin Brulliard, Saturday, May 28,
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Embarrassed by the Osama bin Laden raid and by a series of insurgent attacks on high-security sites, top Pakistani military officials are increasingly concerned that their ranks are penetrated by Islamists who are aiding militants in a campaign against the state.

Those worries have grown especially acute since the killing of bin Laden less than a mile from a prestigious military academy. This week’s naval base infiltration by heavily armed insurgents in Karachi — an attack widely believed to have required inside help — has only deepened fears, military officials said.

WikiLeaks accused Bradley Manning 'should never have been sent to Iraq'
Guardian exclusive: Soldier held over US intelligence leak was known to be mentally fragile and unsuited to army life
Maggie O'Kane, Chavala Madlena and Guy Grandjean
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 May 2011 22.25 BST

The American soldier at the centre of the WikiLeaks revelations was so mentally fragile before his deployment to Iraq that he wet himself, threw chairs around, shouted at his commanding officers and was regularly brought in for psychiatric evaluations, according to an investigative film produced by the Guardian.

Bradley Manning, who was detained a year ago on Sunday in connection with the biggest security leak in US military history, was a "mess of a child" who should never have been put through a tour of duty in Iraq, according to an officer from the Fort Leonard Wood military base in Missouri, where Manning trained in 2007.

Chairman Mao may not be the author of his 'Little Red Book'

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing Saturday, 28 May 2011

Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" is the closest thing to a bible that Marxist-Leninist, materialist and atheist Chinese society can have.

By some estimates, five billion copies of The Thoughts of Chairman Mao were published during its heyday, the Cultural Revolution, that violent period of ideological fervour in the 1960s and 1970s. But questions have now been raised about whether the Great Helmsman actually wrote it himself, or got a ghost writer to do it for him.

Egypt eases restrictions at Gaza's Rafah border
Egypt has opened its border with the Gaza Strip, easing restrictions and allowing more Palestinians to cross.

The BBC 28 May 2011
Women, children and men over 40 are now allowed to cross freely. Men aged between 18 and 40 will still require a permit, and trade is prohibited.

The move - strongly opposed by Israel - comes some three months after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak lost power.

Israel and Egypt both closed borders with Gaza after the militant movement Hamas took power in 2007.

Israel retains concerns that weapons will be imported into Gaza through the Egyptian frontier, but Egypt insists it will conduct thorough searches of all those crossing.

Paying with Life and Limb for the Crimes of Nazi Germany
A Time of Retribution
By Christian Habbe
It was a deceptively beautiful summer. Never before had the light of East Prussia seemed so bright, the sky so high, the countryside so vast, as in 1944, wrote Hans Graf von Lehndorff, a doctor and chronicler, in his diary. And yet the streets were already filling with columns of refugees; Germans from Lithuania, whose abandoned cattle roamed the countryside. Light tremors echoed distant detonations. Sometimes at night, a red glow was visible in the east, where border towns along the Niemen River were burning: Unmistakable signs that Soviet forces were moving inexorably closer.

Libya rejects G8, open only to AU peace talks

TRIPOLI, LIBYA - May 28 2011
"The G8 is an economic summit. We are not concerned by its decisions," said Libya's deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaaim, after Russia joined NATO calls for Gaddafi's departure.

Tripoli also rejects Russian mediation and will "not accept any mediation which marginalises the peace plan of the African Union," he said. "We are an African country. Any initiative outside the AU framework will be rejected."

Kaaim said it had no confirmation of a change in Russia's position.