Iraqi doctors demand cancer probe
Aljazeera.net
January 4, 2010 – Iraqi doctors believe depleted uranium from US military equipment used in the 2003 invasion is spreading cancer through the population. They are recording a shocking rise in the number of cancer victims south of Baghdad, they claim. Outraged, they have demanded an investigation be held into the matter. Cancer rates in the province of Babil have risen almost tenfold in just three years. In 2004, 500 cases of cancer were diagnosed there. That figure rose to almost 1,000 two years later. By 2008, the number of cases had increased sevenfold to 7,000…

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One year after Gaza massacre
By: Chris Garaffa
January 4, 2010 – Dec. 27 marked one year since the beginning of Israel’s 2008-2009 brutal siege and invasion of Gaza. The three-week land and air assault on the Palestinian residents of Gaza was a highly concentrated use of firepower directed overwhelmingly at civilians. The Gaza massacre was a methodically planned, murderous crime against humanity. It is inconceivable that it had anything other than the full backing of U.S. imperialism. As a result of Israel’s barbarity and its blatant attempt to destroy infrastructure and the spirit of the illegally occupied people of Gaza, opposition to the occupation around the world has escalated over the past year…

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Yemen dismisses Al Qaeda threat as ‘exaggerated’
By Borzou Daragahi
January 4, 2010 – Yemeni officials on Sunday dismissed the threat posed by Al Qaeda in their country as “exaggerated” and downplayed the possibility of cooperating closely with the United States in fighting Islamic militants, even as the U.S. and Britain temporarily closed their diplomatic outposts in Yemen because of unspecified Al Qaeda threats. The statements by Yemen’s foreign minister, chief of national security and Interior Ministry came a day after the region’s top American military commander vowed to step up U.S. military support for the beleaguered Arabian Peninsula nation…

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Iraq snapshot – January 4, 2010
The Common Ills
Monday, January 4, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Iraqis suffer from exposure to depleted uranium, US troops patrol Iraqi villages attempting to coerce Iraqi civilians (in the name of “psyops”), and more. “This is our life and this is our environment,” declares Zahraa Mohammed, a young mother of two who has been diagnosed with lung cancer. “All have been polluted by the war. I am 23 and I have cancer though I’m the only one to be infected in my family history. I wish I could become better for the sake of my children. If I die, who’s going to take care of my children?” Zahraa speaks in the video report at the start of the latest Inside Iraq (Al Jazeera) where moderator Jasim al-Azzawi is joined by Dr. Jawad al-Ali (consultant oncologist) and Christopher Busby (radiation expert) to discuss the huge rise in cancer that coincides with the start of the illegal war and the use (by the US and others) of depleted uranium. Jasim al-Azzawi noted that the Pentagon was invited to participate in the discussion but declined to participate…

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Israel carries out two separate air raids on Gaza
Xinhua
January 4, 2010 – Israeli war jets on Monday evening carried out two separate air raids on Palestinian militants in northern and eastern Gaza Strip, no injuries were reported, witnesses and security sources said. The witnesses said that an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired one missile at a group of Gaza militants east of Gaza City, the militants survived and no injuries or damaged were reported. Hamas security sources said that Israeli warplanes, mainly F-16 and drones have been hovering over several areas in the Gaza Strip for several hours.

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Are US Forces Executing Kids in Afghanistan? Americans Don’t Even Know to Ask
DAVE LINDORFF
January 4, 2010 – The Taliban suicide attack that killed a group of CIA agents in Afghanistan on a base that was directing US drone aircraft used to attack Taliban leaders was big news in the US over the past week, with the airwaves and front pages filled with sympathetic stories referring to the fact that the female station chief, who was among those killed, was the “mother of three children.” But the apparent mass murder of Afghan school children, including one as young as 11 years old, by US-led forces (most likely either special forces or mercenary contractors working for the Pentagon or the CIA), was pretty much blacked out in the American media. Especially blacked out was word from UN investigators that the students had not just been killed but executed, many of them after having first been rousted from their bedroom and handcuffed…

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Surge in casualties predicted in Afghanistan
By Gina Cavallar
January 4, 2010 – Americans should prepare to accept hundreds of U.S. casualties each month in Afghanistan during spring offensives with enemy forces. The dire forecast was made by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an adjunct professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in a periodic assessment of political and security issues he has conducted in the war zone since 2003…

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My Husband: Jailed for Protesting Israel’s Wall
Majida Abu Rahmah
January 4, 2010 – On International Human Rights Day in last year, my husband Abdallah Abu Rahmah was in Berlin receiving a medal from the World Association for Human Rights. This year on the same day, December 10th, Abdallah was taken away at 2am by Israeli soldiers who broke into our West Bank home. Abdallah was arrested for the same reasons he received the prize – his nonviolent struggle for justice, equality and peace in Israel/Palestine. My husband is a school teacher and farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in. When Israel built its apartheid wall here, it separated Bil’in from more than half of its land, in order to facilitate the expansion of the illegal settlement Mattityahu East…

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“I hope that I die on my land”
Jody McIntyre writing from Bilin, occupied West Bank
January 4, 2010 – Fatima Mohammed Yassin, 49, is a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bilin in the occupied West Bank. In spite of Israel’s occupation and construction of its wall in the West Bank, including on Bilin’s farm land, Yassin and her husband continue to work their land on a daily basis. Jody McIntyre spoke to her for The Electronic Intifada…

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PFLP fighters say Israeli warplanes strike Gaza
Ma’an News
January 4, 2010 – Palestinian fighters in Gaza said they narrowly escaped a missile fired by an Israeli warplane in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday evening. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) reported the airstrike…

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Ma’ale Adumim – Annexation and the Architecture of Apartheid
by Michael Ratner
January 4, 2010 – Today we came away stunned, shocked and almost numb from our trip to East Jerusalem with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. And when I say we, I mean my family—my wife and two children, 19 and 21. We have spent the last 10 days trying to get into Gaza from Egypt; demonstrating against the Gaza siege and joining demonstrations in Israel at the Erez crossing and protesting the evictions in the Sheikh-Jarrah area of East Jerusalem. But nothing and I mean nothing prepared me for today and our trip through East Jerusalem and to Ma’ale Adumim, a city a few kilometers away…

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Guantánamo: The Definitive Prisoner List (Updated for 2010)
Andy Worthington
January 4, 2010 – Back in March, I published a four-part list identifying all 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002, as “the culmination of a three-year project to record the stories of all the prisoners held at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.” Now updated (as my ongoing project nears its four-year mark), the four parts of the list are available here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. As I explained at the time, the first fruit of my research was my book The Guantánamo Files, in which, based on an exhaustive analysis of 8,000 pages of documents released by the Pentagon (plus other sources), I related the story of Guantánamo, established a chronology explaining where and when the prisoners were seized, told the stories of around 450 of these men (and boys), and provided a context for the circumstances in which the remainder of the prisoners were captured…

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Live Impressions from New Baghdad…
Layla Anwar
January 4, 2009 – One of the most depressing afternoons I have spent…Depressing is not the right word, it was an afternoon filled with a shared sad rage. I met H. who has just returned from Baghdad where he had spent two months. I have known H. for a long time now…but since the Occupation, our relation changed…I don’t hate him or anything but his welcoming the occupation left me let’s say —very distant… H. is not an essentially bad person, he is just a fucked up opportunist. H. always cared about his own personal interests first and foremost. So when Baghdad fell, he was grieved but at the same time exhibited some hope for change…He hated Saddam Hussein and blamed everything that went wrong in Iraq on him -even the US occupation ! But like the rest of us, he was driven out of the country — fear gripped him when members of his family were murdered by the Shiite death squads. By the way H. is half Shiite, half Sunni. Last year, he decided to give it a try again and return to “sort out his business”. So he’s been traveling quite frequently to Baghdad…

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Blowback On the Border: The Purpose of the Terror War System
Chris Floyd
January 4, 2010 – …The Terror War is not an event, or a campaign, or even a crusade; it is a system. Its purpose is not to eliminate “terrorism” (however this infinitely elastic term is defined) but to perpetuate itself, to do what it does: make war. This system can be immensely rewarding, in many different ways, for those who operate or assist it, whether in government, media, academia, or business. This too is a self-sustaining dynamic, a feedback loop that gives money, power and attention to those who serve the system; this elevated position then allows them to accrue even more money, power and attention, until in the end — as we can plainly see today — any alternative voices and viewpoints are relegated to the margins. They are “unserious.” They are unimportant. They are not allowed to penetrate or alter the operations of the system…

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US aid for Israel tied to arms sales: 75% of the aid must be used to buy military material made in the US
ANNE DAVIES
January 4, 2010 – Just before Christmas, the US President, Barack Obama, signed into law one of his country’s biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries on the World Bank’s list. It was a deal for $US2.77 billion ($3 billion) to go to Israel in 2010 and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade. Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per cent of the aid to buy military hardware made in the US: in the crisis-racked US economy, those military factories are critical to many towns…

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Israeli forces ‘deliberately let him bleed to death’
Ma’an News
January 4, 2010 – On 4 January 2009, one year ago today, Iyad Samouni, his wife, and five children were together with about 40 other members of their extended family in the house of Asaad Samouni, a relative. At around 1am, they heard noise on the roof. At about 5am, Israeli soldiers walked down the stairs from the roof, knocked on the door, and entered the house. They asked for Hamas fighters. The residents replied that there were none…

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Over 70% of Americans in favor of U.S. troops in Yemen – poll
RIA Novosti
January 4, 2010 – Over 70% of Americans would favor sending U.S. troops to Yemen to combat Al Qaeda militants, a poll posted on the FOXNews.com website said. With over 20,000 people taking part in the poll, 71% voted that “the problem is not going away,” and “troops need to be sent there to eliminate Al Qaeda and the threat it poses to national security.” Meanwhile, 23% voted against saying that “the U.S. military is already engaged in a costly war in Afghanistan,” and “sending soldiers to Yemen would jeopardize that mission.”…

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Five NATO Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan
Reuters
January 4, 2010 – Four U.S. servicemembers and a British soldier were killed in two separate improvised bomb explosions in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, foreign forces said on Monday. The four U.S. troops were the first American military casualties in Afghanistan in 2010. They were killed in an improvised explosive device (IED) strike, NATO-led forces said in a statement. A spokesman declined to give further details, saying next-of-kin were being notified…

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Yemen rules out US intervention
Aljazeera.net
January 4, 2010 – Yemen’s foreign minister has ruled out direct US military intervention to tackle the al-Qaeda group operating in his country. Abu Baker al-Qirbi made his remarks to Al Jazeera on Monday as the US and British embassies in the capital, Sanaa, remained closed to public following threats by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. “Yemen is going to deal with terrorism in its own way, out of its own interests and therefore I don’t think it will counterfire,” al-Qirbi said. “The negative impact on Yemen is if there is direct intervention of the US and this is not the case.”…

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Aaronovitch, Miliband & Me
Gilad Atzmon
January 4, 2010 – David Aaronovitch , The Times and Jewish Chronicle pundit, doesn’t learn the lesson. We are not exactly on equal footings and we don’t see eye to eye. Though we happen to fling mud at each other, it seems that what I point out about him sticks, some of it permanently. His invective against me, on the other hand, blossoms into kudos. Aaronovitch fails to realise that within the discourse which I am engaged with, attacks from Zionists are interpreted as moral credentials. David Aaronovitch , The Times and Jewish Chronicle pundit, doesn’t learn the lesson. We are not exactly on equal footings and we don’t see eye to eye. Though we happen to fling mud at each other, it seems that what I point out about him sticks, some of it permanently. His invective against me, on the other hand, blossoms into kudos. Aaronovitch fails to realise that within the discourse which I am engaged with, attacks from Zionists are interpreted as moral credentials. Five years ago when I was subject to Aaronovitch’s vitriol for the first time, a friend in the media called to congratulate me. “To be slagged off by Aaronovitch” he said, “is almost as great as being smeared by Benjamin Netanyahu”. I was naive then, I didn’t know much about Aaronovitch, but as soon as I learned who he was, I realised that with his Zionist apologist record, his islmophobic ranting and support of the Iraq war, the man would be best advised to seek shelter rather than attract attention…

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320 Israeli settler attacks in Nablus in 2009
Middle East Monitor
January 4, 2010 – Ghassan Daghlis, head of village affairs in the West Bank district of Nablus has confirmed there were 320 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property throughout 2009. He said the past year which witnessed the highest number of attacks since records began was particularly difficult for farmers and civilians. Daghlis explained the attacks took the form of uprooting of trees, expansion of settlements, stoning of farmers and shooting at them…

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The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
Tom Burghardt
January 4, 2010 – Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the heimat, the botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves. Talk about validating that old Wobbly slogan: Direct action gets the goods! And yet, the closer one looks at the available evidence surrounding the strange case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the more sinister alleged “intelligence failures” become. As this story unfolds it is becoming abundantly clear that U.S. security officials had far more information on the would-be lap bomber than we’ve been told…

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Israeli org. says world’s major human rights groups engaged in ‘political warfare’ against Israel
Saed Bannoura
January 4, 2010 – The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) recently hosted a conference in which a right-wing Israeli settler-led organization presented a ‘report’ claiming that virtually all of the world’s major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ‘lack credibility’ and are engaged in ‘political warfare’ against Israel because they have called for an investigation of the Israeli army’s conduct during last year’s invasion of Gaza. The NGOs in question include renowned human rights groups Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Trocaire , Finn Church Aid, Diakonia and Cordaid…

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Video: Gaza economy suffocates under blockade
RussiaToday
January 4, 2010 – Four years on, Gazans are still facing the fallout from an election that saw Hamas come to victory. Since then, Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade that makes it almost impossible for goods to travel in and out.

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When Does It Become Genocide?
by Nadia Hijab
January 4, 2010 – During a visit to Ramallah a year ago while the Israeli bombardment of Gaza was underway, I shared my fears with a close Palestinian friend. “It may sound insane, but I think the Israelis’ real objective is to see them all dead.” My friend told me not to be silly, the assault was horrific, but it was not mass killing. I said that wasn’t the issue: This was a population already very vulnerable to disease, ill-health, and malnutrition after years of siege, with its infrastructure rotted, its water and food contaminated. Israel’s war would surely push the people over the brink, especially if the siege was maintained — as it has been. In other words, Israel would not directly kill tens of thousands of Palestinians, but it would create the conditions for tens of thousands to die. Any epidemic could finish the job…

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Questions mount over attempt to bomb Detroit-bound jetliner
Patrick Martin
January 4, 2010 – Ten days after the failed attempt to explode a bomb onboard Northwest Flight 253 as it approached Detroit—an action that, if successful, would have killed nearly 300 people—there are mounting questions about the actions of US government agencies. According to the official story, propagated by the Obama administration and uncritically parroted by the US media, the various components of the US national security apparatus were incapable of bringing together the following known facts: • In May, the British government withdrew its student visa for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who had studied at University College, London, and placed him on a watch list, barring him from reentering the country • In August, US intelligence agencies learned of Al Qaeda discussions of an operation against a US target to be organized from Yemen, using a “Nigerian.”…

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IOA continues to desecrate Mamanullah cemetery
Palestinian Information Center
January 4, 2010 – The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) is still unearthing and destroying the ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, the Mamanullah (or Mamillah) graveyard, the committee for reconstruction of Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem said. It charged the IOA in a statement on Monday with sending its municipality bulldozers to the graveyard in western Jerusalem to cover it with a thick layer of wood shavings. Mustafa Abu Zuhra, the committee’s chairman, rushed to the scene and halted work of the bulldozers, the statement said, adding that Abu Zuhra contacted the municipality and asked it to remove the wood shavings…

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Anti-wall activists rally outside Israel’s Ofer Prison
Ma’an News
January 4, 2010 – Anti-wall activists demonstrated outside Israel’s Ofer Prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday to demand the release of detained activist Jamal Juma to concide with the convening of his military court hearing. Jamal Juma, 47, the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall campaign was detained on 16 December 2009 without being charged and is considered “a prisoner of conscience” the organizers of the rally said in a statement on Monday…

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One Year After The Gaza Conflict: A Persistent Quest for Justice
Valentina Azarov
January 4, 2010 – On 27 December 2009, one year had passed since the commencement of the devastating atrocities of Israel’s 22-day-long assault on the occupied Gaza Strip (otherwise known as Israel’s Operation “Cast Lead”). There has been a considerable amount of writing done about the conflict and its context over the past year. On its one year anniversary, this brief tribute will focus on the current state of the justice and accountability process through the lens of international law by first considering the significance and credibility of the Goldstone mission report, examining the first phase of the accountability process in light of the international law applicable to post-conflict responsibilities of the parties to the conflict and concluding on where the victims of these atrocities stand today…

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Who Was the CIA Suicide Bomber in Afghanistan?
Kawther Salam
January 4, 2010 – The report below was published in Al-Jazeera Arabic. It surprised me that Al-Jazeera English is not publishing the same information on their homepage, or at least translating this important report from Arabic. There is a deep gap between what the Arabic and English editions of Al-Jazeera are reporting. Nobody knows why Al-Jazeera in English seems to follow an editorial policy based on misleading their foreign (not Arabic speaking) readers, especially with their reports about the American and the Israeli occupations…

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Military Resistance 8A2: Ten Strike – 2 January 2010
Thomas F. Barton
10 Reasons The U.S. Military Should (Officially) Use Marijuana: “If You Asked Any Of Us What, Out Of Everything, Was Most Effective In PTSD Treatment, We Would Tell You Marijuana”. “We Gave Big Pharma 40 Years Of Government Handouts And They Came Up With Zilch” .”It’s Time To Put Science Ahead Of Politics”.

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Military Resistance 8A1: “What Would I Be Dying For?” – 1 January 2010
Thomas F. Barton
What Are You Dying For? Military Experts Say U.S. Troops Will Die In Afghanistan To Re-Elect Obama: “We Believe The President Knows Perfectly Well That Afghanistan Is Vietnam All Over Again”. “He’s Seeking The Same Cynical Exit Strategy That Richard Nixon And Henry Kissinger Did”. Obama “Has Already Been Seduced By The Old Beltway Calculus That Sometimes A Little Wrong Must Be Done To Get Re-Elected”.

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