The Chilcot report is out; the BBC summarizes.

Tony Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had “wholly inadequate” plans for the aftermath, the UK’s Iraq War inquiry has said.

Chairman Sir John Chilcot said the 2003 invasion was not the “last resort” action presented to MPs and the public.

There was no “imminent threat” from Saddam – and the intelligence case was “not justified”, he said.

The Beeb offers highlights:

• The circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were “far from satisfactory”
• The invasion began on 20 March 2003 but not until 13 March did then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith advise

Deutsche Welle has more on that IS video from yesterday.

The video, which was verified by the US-based SITE Intelligence Group and Terror Monitor Group, contained clear signs that the terror group has some Bangladeshi nationals working for it.

One of the Bangladeshi jihadists shown in the video said: “what you witnessed in Bangladesh … was a glimpse. This will repeat, repeat and repeat until you lose and we win and the Sharia is established throughout the world.”

The video also appreciated last Friday’s attack on a restaurant in Dhaka that killed at least 22 people, the majority of them foreigners, from Italy, Japan, India and the United States.

The attackers were mostly from wealthy, liberal families – a development

IS has released another disgusting video saying it’s going to kill us all unless sharia is established everywhere.

Hailing the July 1 Gulshan terror attack, international terrorist group Islamic State has now released a video calling for jihad in Bangladesh and threatening more attacks on “crusaders” and “crusader nations.”

The video message believed to be issued from Raqqa in Bangla was first found in an IS-affiliate website and then released on YouTube early Wednesday.

…

In the video, three of the speakers are of Bangladesh origin, but they could not be identified immediately.

One of them said they would not stop until establishing Shariah law all over the world. “The Jihad that has come to Bangladesh now has been promised

You know how people like to use “intersectionalism” as a kind of intellectual bludgeon? Well that’s a silly question; of course you do, because we keep talking about it. Anyway – I’m wondering how they’re dealing with Toronto Pride and BLM. They crashed right into each other at that intersection on Sunday.

Members of the Black Lives Matter Toronto group briefly halted the Pride parade today, holding up the marching for about 30 minutes.

The parade didn’t re-start until after Pride Toronto executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed a document agreeing to the group’s demands.

The organization was given the status of Honoured Group for the parade, which is the grand finale of Pride Month. It did not give Pride

Here’s a bad thing I overlooked, from the NY Times on June 23:

Echoing anti-Semitic claims that led to the mass killings of European Jews in medieval times, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accused rabbis in Israel of calling on their government to poison the water used by Palestinians.

He made the unsubstantiated allegation during a speech to the European Parliament on Thursday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement later that Mr. Abbas had spread a “blood libel” in the speech.

He retracted the claim two days later.

Mr. Abbas was repeating a claim initially made on the website of an office of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Anadolu, the Turkish state-run news

Islamists like their televangelists too.

One of the attackers, suspected to be Rohan Imtiaz – the son of a politician of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League – posted a message on Facebook last year quoting 50-year-old Naik, a Mumbai-based doctor and an Islamic televangelist, the Daily Star reported.

…

Naik’s speeches are beamed on Peace TV across the sub-continent, even in China, with a100 million viewership. He is said to be wildly popular in Bangladesh.

The founder of the Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation, Zakir Naik is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speeches. He is also among 16 Islamic scholars banned in Malaysia.

So, Zakir Naik may have been one of the influences on the slaughterers at … Read the rest

NASA has put a spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter.

Around 10:30 p.m. on Monday, Juno passed over Jupiter’s north pole and through a region that Heidi Becker, the leader of Juno’s radiation monitoring team, described as “the scariest part of the scariest place.” In this belt of radiation, electrons bouncing back and forth at nearly the speed of light could have knocked out the computer and other electronics.

“They will go right through a spacecraft and strip the atoms apart inside your electronics and fry your brain if you don’t do anything about it,” Dr. Becker said.

But a titanium vault built for Juno proved up to the task of shielding its crucial systems.

Someone in a NASA video … Read the rest

Crap news from India:

A Facebook group, which levelled a death threat against Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, has raised fears of the influence and presence of dreaded Mideast terrorist group Islamic State in Kerala. The page, which had posts in Malayalam and English, was taken down on Saturday morning soon after media started reporting about its existence.

It is not clear who moderates the group, Ansarul Khilafa (The Followers of Khalifa). The threat against the Bangladesh writer known for her progressive views was made by one of the members of the group. The group had 135 likes before it was deactivated. The group’s presence comes amid a spate of terror attacks in Bangladesh, the busting of an IS module

News via Leo Igwe:

JUST IN: TWO ALLEGED WITCHES BURNT IN CROSS RIVER STATE

I just received the news that two alleged witches were burnt to death in Akpabuyo in Cross River state in Southern Nigeria. According to a local source, an angry mob lynched the two men after a ‘native doctor’ declared that they were responsible for several deaths of young people in the village. The native doctor is currently in police custody but according to my local contact person none of those who killed the alleged witches had been arrested. There are concerns that the matter may eventually die, that the ‘native doctors’ could be released any moment from now and nobody would be brought to justice!

Now Medina:

A suicide bomber has killed four security officers and injured five others near one of Islam’s holiest sites in the Saudi city of Medina, according to the interior ministry.

The bomber struck as the officers were breaking their Ramadan fast near the Prophet’s Mosque, al-Arabiya TV says.

The mosque is the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad and Medina the second-holiest city in Islam after Mecca.

Blasts also struck two other Saudi cities on Monday.

Guess who the prime suspect is. No prizes for correct answers.

A series of deadly attacks worldwide were either claimed by, or blamed on, IS over the past week:

• A suicide gun and bomb attack targeted Istanbul airport on 28 June.

The New Republic points out that the right wing in the US has been encouraging ignorance and anti-intellectualism for decades and thus grooming a large chunk of the population to be unable to see through Donald Trump. Well yeah – it’s obvious, but worth saying anyway.

Not so long ago, in the days before Marco Rubio endorsed Trump, the Florida senator called him a “con artist.” It’s hard to imagine how anyone could dispute Rubio’s evaluation. The operations of Trump University alone paint the convincing portrait of a swindler. Yet the deeper question is how such an obvious mountebank could win the majority of a major party’s delegates. Is there something in the nature of the Republican Party and its

Now Nigel Farage has joined David Cameron and Boris Johnson in deserting the ship that they sank.

Nigel Farage says he is standing down as leader of the UK Independence Party.

Mr Farage said his “political ambition has been achieved” with the UK having voted to leave the EU.

Marina Hyde has some commentary on this scarper.

It is fair to say Nigel remains unaware of the difference in calibre between himself and a figure such as Theresa May (whatever your views on her). You sense he will be condemned to wonder furiously why the call to the top table doesn’t come, much as Liz Hurley may enquire furiously of her agent why she has been overlooked again for a

A press release by One Law for All:

Today, an unprecedented number of women’s rights campaigners and organisations from Britain and internationally have submitted a letter to the Home Secretary raising serious concerns about the government’s ‘independent review’ into Sharia courts in Britain. The letter states that the limited scope of inquiry and its inappropriate theological approach will do nothing to address the discriminatory effect and intent of the courts on private and family matters: areas where, arguably, the greatest human rights violations of minority women in the UK take place.

Rather than taking a human rights approach, the government has constituted a panel and terms of reference more suited to a discussion in theology than one which serves

Peggy Orenstein in Mother Jones:

I have spent three years interviewing dozens of young women about their attitudes toward and experiences with physical intimacy. On the one hand, girls would enthuse about pop icons like Beyoncé, Gaga, Miley, and Nicki who were actively “taking control” of their sexuality. Whereas earlier generations of feminist-identified women may have seen Kim Kardashian West’s “happy #internationalwomensday” tweet and accompanying nude selfie (Instagram caption: “When you’re like I have nothing to wear LOL”) as something to denounce, many of today’s generation talked about it as an expression rather than an imposition of sexuality—brand promotion done on her own terms.

As one college sophomore told me, she never feels more “liberated” than

H/t Stacy… Read the rest

Clive James puts it well – briefly, savagely, tragically, well.

After the death of Jo Cox at the hands of Thomas Mair, I found myself comparing two photographs and wondering if I hadn’t lived too long. One was of Jo Cox: radiant, intelligent, with no limit to the good she might have done. The other was of Thomas Mair, the face of her killer. Here was a face with nothing in it except an unspoken question: do you really want to go on living in a world where a twerp like me can take the life of a woman like her?

That’s pretty much what I kept thinking. It’s what we all have occasion to think so much too often. … Read the rest

The murderers at the Holey Artisan Bakery wanted to get famous.

Sumir Barai was hiding in the washroom when one of the gunmen shouted “Bengali people, come out.”

“You don’t need to be so tense,” one of the men told them. “We will not kill Bengalis. We will only kill foreigners.” At that, Mr. Barai’s gaze flicked to the floor of the restaurant, where he could see six or seven bodies, apparently shot and then sliced with machetes. All appeared to be foreigners.

The gunmen, he said, seemed eager to see their actions amplified on social media: After killing the patrons, they asked the staff to turn on the restaurant’s wireless network. Then they used customers’ telephones to post