Ethan Bronner of the New York Times asks how could Bahrain tolerate disruption of the Financial Center while the head of the Bahrain Human RIghts Center is beaten and threatened with rape and the “blog father” of Bahrain is missing after 50 armed security agents come looking for him.

It’s Monday morning in the US; it’s Monday evening in Japan.

Quick Summary: Over the weekend, hopes of getting the reactors and spent fuel storage pools cooled rose significantly at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station, although on Monday, new black smoke was observed rising from Unit 3 forcing another evacuation there. They’re not sure whether there was another explosion (none was heard) or about the source/cause of the smoke.

These are not the pictures that President Obama tried to block in 2009, because the incidents from this Army Stryker unit Der Spiegel describes in their story are from 2010. So the change in commanders-in-chief has not occasioned a halt to atrocities and war crimes in Afghanistan. While Der Spiegel may publish only three photographs for now, I wouldn’t be surprised if more became available. But there’s plenty of detail in the article, according to the Guardian account, to cause outrage in Afghanistan and throughout the world as well, in addition to the photos. In one incident, a staff sergeant threw a grenade at an Afghan civilian, killing him, then cut off a finger and took a tooth as trophies.

• Operation Stupid is in full swing.
• A new danger in Japan.
• Krugman: the war on Warren.
• What Josh Marshall said.
• Way to keep it classy, Republicans.

Cautious optimism, finally, from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Edwin Starr – War (What Is It Good For?)

Lily Tomlin might not have thought she was predicting the future, but her Laugh-In sketch about an omnipotent phone company with access to all our financial information rings pretty true 45 years later.

It’s a lazy Sunday in windy, rainy Los Angeles, which can explain my activity on the blog today. It’s also a busy news weekend.

It’s the eighth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq, the eighth year of an occupation so brutal, so destructive that millions remain displaced and the number of orphans cannot be counted. Iraqis have been going into the streets each week – demanding such basic reforms as electricity, an end to corruption – and this week the release of political prisoners. The response from the US installed government? Beatings, arrests and curfews.

As French jets continue to run sorties against Libyan targets, they claim that Qatar will soon deploy four planes into the region. The contention from the coalition enforcing UN resolution 1973 is that they have Arab League buy-in on the operation, and the inclusion of Qatar in the coalition would seem to confirm it. But the Arab League has actually criticized the effort after only one day.