BABA NO’IL MARTYRED IN GAZA
by Flora Nicoletta
January 5, 2010 – When King Herod ordered the killing of all male infants up to the age of two, the Holy Family fled from Palestine to Egypt. The only way was Via Maris, the Gaza Sea Road. And it is believed that the Holy Family took a rest under a sycamore of the region. There are indeed biblical images in Gaza: a shepherd who leads his golden flock through the golden dunes of El-Mawasi-Khan Younis; two young Bedouin shepherds sitting under an old olive tree and attending their flock with their brown donkey, on the periphery of Gaza City, not far from a flour mill bombarded during the Israeli war “Cast Lead”. However, we have some doubts… First, we should check on the map where Gaza is located… If Gaza is indeed in Palestine, thus Gaza is part of the Holy Land. The question is: who cares about the holiness of Gaza and the holiness of all Palestine? Who protects it? Second, is it possible a Christmas not merry? Yes, it’s possible! Where? If you can, come to see in Gaza, and in all the Holy Land where Jesus was born and lived…

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Obama adds 675 million Muslims to the ultimate US Terrorism List
Franklin Lamb
January 5, 2010 – However President Obama is judged on various subjects for his first year in office, he has already made history in the way that neither his predecessor nor any other leader has ever managed. On January 3, 2010, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued new security directives to all United States and international air carriers with inbound flights to the U.S. effective January 4, 2010. The TSA press release sought to assure the traveling public: “The new directive includes long-term sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners.” At midnight Washington DC time, January 3, it went into effect and placed 675,000,000 (675 million) more Muslims and Arabs on yet another ‘Terrorism ‘list. Also added were Nigerian and Cuban Christians but they were not the target…

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Israeli Use of Painful Shackling As A Form of Torture
Stephen Lendman
January 5, 2010 – Founded in 1990 to highlight a growing problem, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI – stoptorture.org) “believes that torture and ill treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law. (It) advocates for all persons – Israelis, Palestinians, labor immigrants and other foreigners in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) – in order to protect them from torture and ill treatment by the Israeli interrogation and law enforcement authorities.” They include the Israeli Police, the General Security Service (GSS), the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In June 2009, PACTI published a report titled, “Shackling As A Form of Torture and Abuse.” Its findings are discussed below. PACTI reviews the “serious phenomenon” of shackling Palestinian detainees “in a systematic manner and throughout all stages of detention and interrogation.” Its purpose is to dehumanize and inflict pain, suffering, punishment, intimidation, and discrimination as a way of lawlessly extracting information even though experts acknowledge that torture is ineffective, counterproductive, and, of course, illegal under all circumstances at all times with no exceptions allowed ever…

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CIA reportedly ordered Blackwater to murder 9/11 suspect
Diana Sweet
January 5, 2010 – In 2004, the CIA sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill an alleged al Qaeda financier who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, according to a little-highlighted element in a Vanity Fair article to be published this month. The report cited a source familiar with the program as saying the mission had been kept secret from the German government…

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Salvador Option Fomenting Civil War In Pakistan
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
January 5, 2010 – …The drone attacks, which intensified under the Obama administration, have played a major role in fomenting anti-American feelings among the masses and gradually turning the traditionally highly patriotic tribal population of FATA against the state especially while the US pressured the army into moving into this area in 2004. Now the army operation is destabilizing the whole country as the people became victims of increased suicide bomb blasts. Economic centers are also being destroyed as we have seen in Karachi on December 28 when around 4,000 shops were set on fire in the main shopping centers. In short, a civil war is brewing in Pakistan, thanks for US policies adopted by a Washington installed government in Islamabad…

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Refugees, deaths, oil — it’s Iraq
The Common Ills
January 5, 2010 – …But the illegal war’s not a tragedy for all. After all General Dynamics found a way to profit from the tragedy and crimes. Will Daley (Bloomberg News) reports that they will make “tanks and Gulfstream business jets” for the occupied government in Iraq having been awarded a $198 million US Army contract. The Toledo Blade explains that the manufacture/construction will take place “at its Lima, Ohio plant and facilities in Scranton, Pa; Anniston, Ala., and Tallahassee, Fla.” And Hibah Yousuf and Blake Ellis (CNN Money) report, “Oil continued to rally for an eighth straight session and closed at the highest level in more than fourteen months as a pricing dispute and disruption in crude exports between Russia and Belarus worried investors. Oil for February delivery rose $2.15, or 3%, to close at $81.51 a barrel, the highest settlement since Oct. 9, 2008.”…

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Gazan Fishermen Face Everyday Struggle
Alex Kane
January 5, 2010 – Had it not been in Palestine, the scene would have been unsuspecting. People laughed and smiled. The Mediterranean Sea sparkled, and waves set the rhythm of the boat. Yet only mentioning that would be a mirage. The boat had set off from a port in Gaza City with around 30 international delegates who had traveled to Gaza from Cairo, and were accompanied by around 5 Gazan fishermen. Even in the calming ocean, the crippling Israeli siege and last year’s assault on Gaza can’t be escaped, a fact amply demonstrated by the sight of destroyed buildings off the coast. The outline of Israeli territory, where you’d be free if you were to set out to sail, could be seen, reminding everyone of the prison that is Gaza…

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Iran to attend London confab on Afghanistan if conditions met
Tehran Times
January 5, 2010 – Iran has announced it will attend the international conference on Afghanistan in London later this month if it is allowed to play an important role. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has invited Afghan President Hamid Karzai, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, NATO allies, Afghanistan’s neighbors, regional powers, and key international bodies to a conference in London on January 28 to set a political and security timetable for Afghanistan for 2010 and beyond. The task includes setting out a roadmap for Afghan forces to gradually take over more security responsibilities, and refining an exit strategy for NATO forces…

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Afghan barber is jailed for refusing to visit judge’s residence to trim his beard
Hadi Ghafari
January 5, 2010 – A high court chief in central Dai Kundi province has put a barber behind bars for refusing to visit his residence to trim his beard. Syed Ahmed, 38, a barber in the provincial capital of Nilli, ended up in jail for disobeying the order of Judge Daud Bakhtiyari. Ahmed’s wife told Pajhwok Afghan News on Tuesday: “Four days back, the judge called my husband to his house to give him a haircut. But my husband could not go to the judge’s residence because of the heavy workload at his shop.” As a result, she said, her husband was ordered jailed by Bakhtiyari for not giving him prompt tonsorial services. The local police officials, who exhibited remarkable alacrity in arresting the hairdresser, argued he had committed contempt of court…

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Al-Qae’da in Arabic : What does it mean ?
Layla Anwar
January 5, 2010 – Someone asked me the question if the noun Al-Qaeda in Arabic means latrine ? This very short post will give you different meanings for the word al-Qaeda, including some etymological roots – by no means exhaustive as Arabic is a complex and rich language. Every noun in Arabic derives from a Verb. Qa’ada is the verb to sit Maq’ad is a noun meaning — a seat, a chair, a position, and a polite word for bottom. i.e the part of the body that one sits with/on. Qae’da is another noun meaning – the base/foundation of something, can be thing, concept, etc…

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CCR Denounces Blanket Decision Not to Release Guantánamo Detainees to Yemen
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
January 5, 2010 – In response to news that President Obama has decided to suspend all transfers of detainees from Guantánamo to Yemen, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement: Dozens of men from Yemen who have been cleared for release after extensive scrutiny by the government’s Guantànamo Review Task Force are about to be left in limbo once more due to politics, not facts. Many are about to begin their ninth year in indefinite detention. Halting the repatriation of Yemeni men cleared by the Task Force after months of careful review is unconscionable. It will also effectively prevent any meaningful progress towards closing Guantánamo, which President Obama has repeatedly argued will make our nation safer…

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Para-militarization of Universities in Iran
By Cyrus Bina and Hamid Zangeneh
January 5, 2010 – …The academic community has no border. And the institutions of higher learning in Iran are no exception. We all have a standard to go by, and these outright cheatings and egregious acts of dishonesty have no place in the academic community at large. This also speaks both to one’s character and one’s qualification as a learned person, yet—in the case of Iran under the Islamic Republic—it has become an art form and a class by itself to para-militarize the universities in order (1) to contain nearly all administrative and faculty functions that lend themselves to education of the most promising intellectual stratum of the population and (2) to control and reverse the atmosphere of tolerance for (universal) academic freedoms, critical thinking, and authentic curricula and genuine acquisition of knowledge, particularly in social and political sciences in Iran. We need to watch the Iranian universities at the commencement of current academic year, particularly in the aftermath of the post-Election bloodshed that laid bare the para-militarization of the economy, polity, and the public space and that had metamorphosed the Islamic Republic since the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005…

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Mash’al tells Saudi loyalty lies with Arabs
Ma’an News
January 5, 2010 – Hamas leader in exile Khalid Mash’al assured Saudi Arabian his movement’s loyalty to Arab states, the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya reported from an official visit between Saudi and Egytian officials Tuesday. “I asked Khalid Mash’al whether the movement stood with Arabs or with others,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told the paper, reportedly referring to Iran…

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‘Afghanistan bomber not necessarily a Jordanian’
By Hani Hazaimeh
January 5, 2010 – Government officials on Tuesday said there was no proof that the suicide bomber who killed eight people at a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base in Afghanistan was a Jordanian. However, a senior government official acknowledged yesterday that 32-year-old Humam Khalil Abu Mulal Al Balawi, whom international media reports pointed to as the perpetrator of the attack, was a Jordanian doctor who had supplied security agencies with information about terrorists targeting Jordan’s security…

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A Journey to the Gaza Border
By Kim Bullimore
January 5, 2010 – Its New Year’s Eve and my team mate and I are on our way to Israel’s Erez Crossing, one of the 6 border crossings into Gaza which has been repeatedly closed by the Zionist state as part of its illegal collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza. We have joined three bus loads of Israeli and Palestinian activists in Jaffa to make the hour long journey to the Gaza border crossing to protest Israel’s ongoing siege. As we wait for the buses in Jaffa, I look around the slowly gathering crowd and recognize some of the faces from demonstrations in the Occupied West Bank: several of the courageous and dedicated activists from Anarchists Against the Wall, as well as some activists from Gush Shalom and others from Ta’ayush. But there are many I don’t recognize – young people, as well as older folk – all of whom are outraged at Israel’s repeated war crimes and collective punishment of the Palestinian people of Gaza…

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Galloway convoy blocks entrance to Egyptian port following riot
Ma’an News
January 5, 2010 – Over 2,000 riot police were called to the scene of the Galloway convoy’s camp site at the port of Al-Arish on Tuesday Kevin Ovenden, Viva Palestina convoy leader, said in a statement on the organization’s website. “This late afternoon we were negotiating with a senior official from Cairo who left negotiations some two hours ago and did not return. Our negotiations with the official was regarding taking our aid vehicles into Gaza,” he wrote. “We have now blocked the entrance to the port and we are now faced with riot police and water cannons and are determined to defend our vehicles and aid.”..

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