Last Monday, jihadi suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, killing 22 people. Salman grew up in an anit-Qaddafi Libyan immigrant family. In 2011, his father, Ramadan Abedi, along with other British Libyans (including one who was under house arrest), “was allowed to go [to Libya], no questions asked," to join the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an al-Qaeda-affiliate, to help overthrow Qaddafi. In Manchester, as Max Blumenthal puts it, in his excellent Alternet piece, it was all “part of the rat line operated by the MI5, which hustled anti-Qaddafi Libyan exiles to the front lines of the war.” In Manchester, Salman lived near a number of LIFG militants, including an expert bomb maker. This was a tough bunch, and everybody—including the cops and Salman’s Muslim neighbors—knew they weren’t the Jets and the Sharks. As Middle East Eye reports, he “was known to security services,” and some of his acquaintances “had reported him to the police via an anti-terrorism hotline.” More

The American war in Afghanistan will soon enter its 16th year. Over this period, the United States and its allies have lost close to 3,000 soldiers, while an unknown number of Afghans have died. The official figure for the Afghan dead, above 150,000, is laughable. Each year, as the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) finds, the percentage of women and children among the official death toll increases, many of the deaths a result of aerial bombardment.

Afghan sources say that the number of war dead must be near the million mark. The human toll has been considerable. In 2016, over half a million people fled their homes because of the conflict. This is the highest number of displacements since 2008. Of the estimated population of 32 million Afghans, almost two million have been displaced by the conflict; about three million are refugees from the almost 40 years of war in the country. In the five months that ended in May, UNAMA found that already 90,000 people had been displaced. More

The Washington Post’s schizoid approach toward whistleblowers continues unabated. On the one hand, its news staff has effectively used authoritative leaks to expose the bizarre and possibly illegal contacts between senior members of the Trump administration and high-level Russian officials. On the other hand, its editorial writers maintain an ugly campaign against U.S. officials who have kept the Post and the New York Times aware of the dangerous antics of Donald Trump and his senior staff. Post oped writer Michael Gerson has provided the latest example of the paper’s criticism of those whistleblowers who allow investigative reporters to do their constitutionally-sanctioned job. More