After 60 years, Red Cross nurse Erna Flegal, who served in Hitler's bunker the last days before his suicide, and during the time that Magda Goebbels killed her six children, agreed to be interviewed by The Guardian.

• Here is the transcript of her interview with The Guardian
• More interesting is her CIA interview after Hitler's suicide.

The final paragraph of the Guardian interview leaves much to be desired. Ms. Flegel is evasive, hardly apologetic:

It was 30 years ago today that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, who renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.

An estimated three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were killed during the war....But the legacy of what the Vietnamese call the American War lingers in unexploded ordinance, in wounded veterans and in victims of Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant U.S. troops used to wipe out the jungle foliage that provided cover to their opponents.

....The Vietnamese government blames Agent Orange for the serious health problems of at least one million people. The Vietnam Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims says more than 200,000 Vietnamese live with birth defects, deformities and disease that can be traced to exposure to the chemicals.

Some more stats from the final section of the excellent BBC series, War and Protest: the U.S. in Vietnam, which begins with the period of 1946 to 1964.

The BBC reports a woman has been stoned to death in Afghanistan for adultery and that it is the second stoning of a woman for the offense since we deposed the Taliban in 2001. She is identified by Reuters as a 29 year old named Amina. Reuters says it's the first stoning since President Hamid Karzai took office.

Elian Gonzales, now 11, spoke publicly for the first time Friday. He thanked Americans for returning him to his father, Castro and Cuba five years ago.

Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban castaway whose international custody battle ended in his dramatic seizure from a Miami home five years ago, addressed a crowd of thousands Friday, thanking Cubans and Americans alike for fighting for his return to the island.

Elian thanked his family, Castro and the Cuban people for their help bringing him home. "I also want to thank the support given to our cause by the American people, which contributed greatly to my return," he said.

Elian said the day he returned was the happiest day of his life. His father spoke as well.

I have enjoyed the happy childhood of my son," the father said. His presence in Cuba "is proof that the mafia in Miami lost again."

[link via Raw Story.]

The Guardian reports:

Dozens of Saudi men caught dancing and "behaving like women" at a party have been sentenced to a total of 14,200 lashes, after a trial held behind closed doors and without defence lawyers. The men were also given jail sentences of up to two years. They were arrested last month when the police in Jeddah raided a party which was described by a Saudi newspaper as a "gay wedding".

Human Rights Watch said it had established that 31 of the men received prison sentences of six months to one year, plus 200 lashes each. Four were jailed for two years with 2,000 lashes.

[Link via Raw Story.] Background on the police raid is here.

President Bush says Democracy is coming to the Middle East, while 500,000 answered the Hezbollah call and protested in Lebanon today.

Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters waved flags and chanted anti-American slogans in a central Beirut square Tuesday, answering a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group for a demonstration to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon.

Organizers handed out Lebanese flags and directed the men and women to separate sections of Riad Solh Square. Loudspeakers blared militant songs urging resistance to foreign interference. Demonstrators held up pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and signs saying, "Syria & Lebanon brothers forever."

Other placards read: "America is the source of terrorism"; "All our disasters are from America"; "No to American-Zionist intervention; Yes to Lebanese-Syrian brotherhood."

This injustice needs further dissemination:

Six innocent people facing execution by firing squad. Six medical workers - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor - were found guilty last year of "deliberately" infecting over 400 children with HIV at a hospital in Libya. They are currently on death row in Tripoli.

In effect, these people are hostages of the Libyan government, who wish to trade them for billions of dollars in "compensation", or even for the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber imprisoned in Scotland. The "Benghazi Six" are, of course, wholly innocent. This was proven by the most important HIV researcher in the world, Dr Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the virus.

More details are available here and here. The BMSP has written an open letter to the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, appealing for him to release the six medics. They have secured the signatures of Noam Chomsky, Sir Ian McKellen, and many others .

U-2 lead singer and rock star Bono has been nominated for a Nobel Prize. But the LA Times, in an editorial, says that's not his calling, and makes a convincing case for arguing that Bono should be appointed President of the World Bank.

Bono may not have a PhD in economics, but he'd have plenty of real economists around the bank to consult. Bono is the most eloquent and passionate spokesman for African aid in the Western world. And given that both ex-President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have in recent years made Africa one of their focuses, that's saying something.

German police are trying to determine who is behind the strange practice of planting the U.S. flag with Bush's visage in dog poo....[via Mark at Norwegianity--don't miss the photograph.]

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature US flags into piles of dog poo in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: "This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time."

....We have sent out extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act," said police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. "But frankly, we don't know what we would do if we caught them red handed." Legal experts say there is no law against using faeces as a flag stand and the federal constitution is vague on the issue.

Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, Germany by allied and U.S. forces in World War II. Look who showed up and grabbed the attention:

Waving black flags and banners, thousands of neo-Nazis marched through the heart of Dresden yesterday on the 60th anniversary of the city's destruction by British and American bombers.

In the largest neo-Nazi demonstration in Germany's postwar history, about 5,000 people took part in a "funeral march" to mourn the civilians killed by the allied attack. The protest upstaged the official commemoration of the anniversary, during which the British ambassador laid a wreath at a cemetery where victims were buried.

They played the music of Wagner and Bach from their loudspeakers. There were "anti-fascists" who turned out to oppose them.

In Indonesia, a 27-year-old Australian woman is facing death by firing squad for allegedly bringing marijuana into the country.

On October 8, 2004, airport authorities found 4.2 kilograms of
marijuana in Schapelle Leigh Corby's luggage. Corby says the marijuana was not hers, and her supporters suspect it was planted there. Local police acknowledge it is highly unusual for marijuana to be smuggled into Bali rather than out of it (as marijuana prices are much lower in Bali than in Australia).

If found guilty, Corby will be shot to death by a firing squad of 12 men. Saudi Arabia is even worse - it conducts public beheadings of drug offenders by sword:

Here is a bulletin from NarcoNews about Washington's claims that "narco-traffickers in Mexico are kidnapping and murdering U.S. citizens in Mexico and that law enforcers along the border are being targeted by the “cartels.”"