Seven Taliban insurgents including suicide bombers attacked the main airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul, early on Monday, with explosions and gunfire heard near an area that also houses major foreign military bases.

Al Jazeera:

A coordinated suicide and grenade attack on the Kabul airport has ended with all seven attackers being killed, the Afghan interior ministry has said.

The Taliban earlier claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack on Monday, telling Al Jazeera that the target was the military airport.

"There were seven assailants...two (suicide bombers) died detonating themselves and five others were killed in fighting," Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, chief of Kabul police, said.

"There have not been any casualties to the security forces, and we have not received any report of civilian casualties so far," he said.

Loud explosions and bursts of small-arms fire were heard during the attack, with the US embassy sounding its "duck and cover" alarm and its loudspeakers warning that the alarm was not a drill.

Kabul international airport was reopened, although two of the hangars were damaged in the attack.

The attack follows other recent assaults on the International Organization for Migration in Kabul and the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern city of Jalalabad that killed four people.

From The National Denier Service: "Were the Oklahoma tornadoes the result of global warming? The best answer is that scientists disagree, both real scientists and the ones paid for by right-wing front groups funded by the Koch brothers."

Your morning open thread begins below...

In May 2006, USA Today reported that the National Security Agency, under then-CIA Nominee Gen. Michael Hayden's leadership, had, since 9/11, secretly collected tens of millions of phone call records from the nation's three largest telephone companies -- Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth. Jeffrey Brown held this conversation on May 12, 2006 about the government's alleged data collection program.

USA Today:

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

''The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks,'' said Dana Perino(2006), the deputy White House press secretary, who added that appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on intelligence activities.

By Cora Currier, ProPublica

In his first year in office, President Barack Obama pledged to "collect the facts" on the death of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war at the hands of U.S.-allied Afghan forces in late 2001.

Almost four years later, there's no sign of progress.

When asked by ProPublica about the state of the investigation, the White House says it is still "looking into" the apparent massacre. Yet no facts have been released and it's far from clear what, if any, facts have been collected.

Human rights researchers who originally uncovered the case say they've seen no evidence of an active investigation.

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Via OccupyWallSt:

A playful place, a place of fun, a dancing world of bright colors, a world in which we bubble and overflow into one another and beyond.

A world without hard lines - a world in which identities exist only to be transcended. A world in which the basis of human existence is not identity, but the mutual recognition of our dignities.

Not 'I am', 'you are' — but I-you-we do-create-become. A different form of organization, a different form of coming together. The mutual recognition of humans, and also, in a different way, the mutual recognition of human and non-human forms of life.

Nonsense, of course, were it not for the fact that it already exists – as potential, as rebellion, as the force of the 'not yet' in the present.

To find the world that could exist after capitalism, we must look to the anti-worlds already being created in countless struggles against capitalism – countless cracks in the texture of capitalist domination.

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In this week's address, President Obama says that the United States Senate will soon take action to fix our broken immigration system with a commonsense bill, and urges lawmakers to act quickly to pass this bill so that we can continue to live up to our traditions as a nation of laws, and also a nation of immigrants.

"See, we define ourselves as a nation of immigrants. The promise we find in those who come from every corner of the globe has always been one of our greatest strengths. It’s kept our workforce vibrant and dynamic. It’s kept our businesses on the cutting edge. And it’s helped build the greatest economic engine the world has ever known."

"But for years, our out-of-date immigration system has actually harmed our economy and threatened our security."

Obama pointed to improvements made to the system over the past four years, beefed-up border security, better use of technology, more effective deportation of criminals and focusing on the cause of what he called the "Dreamers," the young people brought here as children. But more comprehensive action is desperately needed. That's why, he said, the proposed legislation next week is so necessary, even if imperfect.

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Newark’s hero mayor, Cory Booker, the Democratic politician who can seemingly do no wrong, officially declared his candidacy today for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant after the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg last week. At a press conference announcing his much-anticipated run, Booker acknowledged the gridlock in Congress and his critics (“Too much Twitter! Too much exposure!”), but said, “I do not run from challenges. I run towards them.” Booker will now move on to a three-way race against two Democratic congressmen, where he is a favorite to win. But will Washington change the down-to-earth leader? Not on Twitter at least, where he promised his 1.4 million followers that if elected, he’ll still respond to them on the social site.

Via:

The 44-year-old Booker had previously filed paperwork to run in the 2014 Senate election, but had not officially declared his candidacy when Lautenberg died. Many in the political world considered it all but a certainty he would win a Democratic primary next year.

But Gov. Chris Christie's plans to replace Lautenberg - an August primary and October general election - "throws a monkey wrench" in what were probably carefully laid plans for a candidacy, Ben Dworkin, the director of the Rider Institute for New Jersey Politics, said this week.

"I don’t think it’s necessarily clear that it’s Cory Booker," Dworkin said of the Democratic primary winner. "I think the governor assumed it was going to be Cory Booker. But again, low turnout, the middle of August, Booker has distinct advantages, but not as many as he would have in 2014."

Booker, a Democrat who was elected mayor in 2006, will likely face stiff competition from U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.), Rep. Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.) and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) in the Democratic primary. All three have either declared their candidacies or expressed an interest in running for Lautenberg’s seat.

In early polling of a hypothetical Senate primary, responses gave Booker 59 percent of the vote, making him an immediate target for potential Democratic opponents as well as Republicans with eyes towards the general election.

Istanbul flashes lights in solidarity with #OccupyGezi.

Your morning open thread begins below.

A week of revolution has taken place in Turkey. What started with 50 protesters defending Gezi Park, the last green space for peaceful assembly in Istanbul and “symbol of secular Turkey,” quickly swelled to more than 10,000 in the streets.

Citizens stood tall against the brutal crackdown, moving from a well-mannered protest against a shopping mall, through the hell of tear gas and water cannons, to solidarity, spirit and freedom. Hundreds of thousands of people came out into the streets, from every walk of life, in every city.

This peaceful protest was met with overwhelming force, and citizens became, in a moment, enemy combatants. They are our brothers and sisters under one family name: Occupy!

This Saturday, June 8th, Occupy Solidarity with #OccupyGeziNYC.

Join us in Liberty Plaza to gather in common cause with the Taksim Square movement and the people of Turkey.

Turks and Greeks will stand side by side with Americans and Armenians, Arabs and Kurds, Jews, Christians and Muslims and all people who would unite for justice. Istanbul, Athens, New York.

Join us to Resist and support #OccupyGezi in Every City!

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Our government may be stalking us, but at least we still have jobs. A new report from the Labor Department out Friday shows the U.S. added 175,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate rose from 7.5 percent in April to 7.6 percent, which apparently is actually a good thing because it means people are looking for work. The report shows that job growth has remained steady over the past three months, with employers adding an average of 155,000 jobs, but still not as high as the surge -- an average of 237,000 jobs added -- that occurred between November 2012 and February 2013.

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