Afghan, foreign forces kill ten protesters
Ten Afghan people were killed and 25 others wounded as NATO-led soldiers opened fire on residents protesting civilian deaths.
Zainullah Stanikzai
January 12, 2010 – Ten people were killed and 25 others wounded as NATO-led soldiers opened fire on residents protesting civilian deaths and desecration of the Holy Quran in southern Helmand province on Tuesday. Dwellers of the restive Garmser district said International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers raided the house of a tribal elder, killing three of his family members and torching copies of Quran in a local mosque…

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IRAQ: Coup rumors paralyze Baghdad
Liz Sly and Ned Parker
January 12, 2010 – When Baghdadis awoke this morning to find their streets sealed off and the city under virtual lockdown, the rumors began to fly. Army officers had staged a coup in the Green Zone, one version said. No, it was Baathists loyal to the former regime who had taken over, according to another. Mostly, the rumors concerned the Sunni lawmaker Saleh Mutlak, who has been recommended for disbarment from the upcoming March elections by the former De-Baathification Committee, now known as the Accountability and Justice Committee…At midday, government officials appeared on television to calm the capital.,,

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Israel Dragging Gaza to New War: Analysts
Ola Attallah
January 12, 2010 – With its recent aggressions, Israel is trying to provoke the Palestinian resistance factions into retaliatory attacks that could be used as a pretext for launching a new deadly offensive on the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, analysts believe. “The message in the recent attacks is very clear, and the resistance should read it carefully,” Talal Okal, a political analyst, told IslamOnline.net. Israel has mounted several deadly strikes over the past ten days killing more than 12 Palestinians in the coastal enclave…

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We’re Sailing Again: Join Us!
Free Gaza Team
January 12, 2010 – This spring, the Free Gaza Movement is sending at least six boats to Gaza to break Israel’s illegal blockade on 1.5 million Palestinians. This blockade constitutes an act of collective punishment, a crime prohibited under international humanitarian law. Gaza’s man-made and internationally perpetuated crisis is set to deepen as Egypt builds an Iron wall 30 meters deep on the southern Rafah border, closing off the final route for Palestinians to get basic supplies. The urgency of breaking the blockade grows by the day, as Palestinians living in this prison are denied their most basic rights..

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The US as a great warrior tribe
By Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst
January 12, 2010 – According to tribal Yemeni tradition, if a dispute has been resolved peacefully, any dagger that has been drawn cannot go back into its scabbard unless it tastes blood. Traditionally, an animal is slaughtered to satisfy its thirst and restore its holder’s honour. Since the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact without a single shot, let alone nuclear warheads, being fired, the ‘Greater Middle East’ region has been turned into a real theatre of war…

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13 Afghan demonstrators killed by NATO
Aljazeera.net
January 12, 2010 – Villagers in southern Afghanistan have claimed that Afghan and Nato forces killed 13 demonstrators after a group of people took to the streets to protest the alleged desecration of the Quran. Residents in Garmsir district of Helmand province on Tuesday said that Nato-led forces raided a house in the area on Sunday and destroyed copies of the holy book in a local mosque. Haji Abdul Manan, one of the protesters, told the German Press Agency, DPA: “The people came out of their homes today to protest this action of foreign forces in a peaceful way, but the Afghan and international forces opened fire on us.” He said more than 20 others were wounded in the firing…

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AFGHANISTAN: Kapisa Province IDPs flock to Kabul
IRIN News
January 12, 2010 – Hundreds of families allegedly forced out of their homes in Kapisa Province, northeastern Afghanistan, by clashes between Taliban insurgents and pro-government Afghan and foreign forces have sought refuge in the eastern outskirts of Kabul. “There is always fighting, bombing and insecurity in Nejrab and Alasaay,” said one displaced man referring to the two Kapisa districts affected. He said he had lost his 15-year-old son in the fighting. “Some families have fled because of ethnic and tribal hostilities,” Haji Zekria Zakir, a representative of the displaced families, told IRIN…

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Fear and Paranoia as Guantánamo Marks its Eighth Anniversary
Andy Worthington
January 12, 2010 – On the eighth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, the fate of the 198 prisoners still held is, in many ways, no clearer than it was a year ago. President Obama has released 42 men since taking office on January 20, 2009, but has already admitted that he will miss his self-imposed deadline for the prison’s closure on January 22. On this gloomy anniversary, 103 of the men still held have been cleared for release by an interagency Task Force established by Obama on his second day in office, but their chances of regaining their freedom any time soon are remote…

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Assassinated Iranian scientist worked on regional project with Israelis
Laura Rozen
January 12, 2010 – The Iranian nuclear physicist killed by a remote controlled bomb device in North Tehran today had been the Iranian representative to regional scientific project in which Israelis also participate, the Washington Post reports: Iranian news media and officials described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear physicist, but academics in Iran and abroad said he specialized in particle and theoretical physics. Tehran University listed him as a professor of elementary particle physics. The regional research project in which Ali-Mohammadi participated, along with other scientists from Iran, Israel and various Middle Eastern countries, is called Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, or SESAME. It is based in Jordan and operates under the auspices of the U.N. Educational and Scientific and Cultural Organization

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Making a business out of Palestine’s struggle
Yaman Salahi
January 12, 2010 – Soliciting the support of people in the US-based Palestine solidarity movement, Palestine Note recently launched a new website that aspires to become the online hub for all things Palestine. While the website announces its dedication to “news, stories and views about Palestine and Palestinians,” and its aspiration to become a “cultivator of community,” my brief interaction with its personnel revealed that there is more behind the enterprise than meets the eye…

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Israeli incursion reported near Gaza cemetery
Ma’an News
January 12, 2010 – Residents reported an Israeli military incursion into the eastern Gaza Strip on Tuesday afternoon. A convoy of eight army vehicles and bulldozers reportedly entered the coastal enclave 200 meters northeast of Ash-Shaja’yeh. Onlookers said forces began a sweep of the area and fired machine guns and artillery shells near the eastern cemetery. No injuries were immediately reported…

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US backs plan for Egypt’s wall with Gaza
AFP
January 12, 2010 — The United States Tuesday voiced its support for a wall being built by Egypt to block a network of tunnels stretching out from the Gaza Strip, arguing it would stop arms smuggling. “We believe that weapon-smuggling should stop and that measures taken to stop that weapon-smuggling should be, could be carried out, yes,” said State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid. The vast network of tunnels from Gaza to Egypt, constructed in the sandy earth to bypass a crippling Israeli blockade, has become an economic lifeline for the Palestinians…

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Amnesty International: Iran must release mothers who were beaten and arrested for mourning their children, says Amnesty
Amnesty International
January 12, 2010 – Amnesty International has urged the Iranian authorities to release a group of women who were beaten and arrested during a peaceful vigil in Tehran at the weekend. The 33 women, members of a group known as the ‘Mourning Mothers’, were seized during their weekly Saturday meeting in Laleh Park, Tehran, according to media reports. All 33 women are now being held in Tehran’s Vozara Detention Centre. Several of the women were beaten and 10 were taken to hospital. Nine of the women are believed to suffer from illnesses, increasing concern for their well-being…

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Gaza offensive adds to scale of displacement
Norwegian Refugee Council
January 12, 2010 – According to the UN, 2009 marked one of the most violent periods experienced by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza since the occupation began in 1967. The three-week Israeli offensive in Gaza launched in December 2008 cost the lives of over 1,000 Palestinians and led to the displacement of over 100,000 people, according to an updated country profile from NRC´s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)…

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Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable
By Emily Spence and Brian McAfee
January 12, 2010 – While in the eastern Congo last summer, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here.” In relation, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s UN supported armed assault against rebels in the eastern Congo has promoted widespread death, rape and other forms of brutality. Indeed, the decade long war has claimed at least 5.4 million lives — the most in any conflict since WWII…

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Iraqis say they were forced to take Blackwater settlement
By Liz Sly
January 11, 2010 – Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified. The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they now believe are inadequate settlements because they were told the company was about to file for bankruptcy, that its chairman was going to be arrested and that the U.S. government was about to confiscate all of the firm’s assets. This would be their last chance to get any compensation, the victims said they were told…

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Netanyahu: Israel will never share Jerusalem
Ma’an News
January 12, 2010 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday that Israel would never cede control of occupied East Jerusalem, according to a bureau statement quoted by Israeli news reports. The statement came after Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said last week that Netanyahu would discuss making East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state, a position accepted by most of the international community. Netanyahu “has not changed his declared stance, and insists in all his political talks that united Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty in any peace agreement and that Israel’s defense borders will not be paved back to the 1967 lines,” the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the statement as stating…

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Nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi assassinated in Tehran
AFP
January 12, 2010 – IRANIAN nuclear scientist and opposition supporter Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed yesterday in a rare bomb attack in Tehran that the regime quickly blamed on the US and Israel. Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said the booby-trapped bike was parked outside Professor Mohammadi’s house and exploded as the 50-year-old got into his car. “The judiciary has launched an investigation . . . no suspects have yet been arrested,” he said. “Given the fact that Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist, the CIA and Mossad services and agents most likely have had a hand in it.”..

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Strip Search, Arrest and Car Detonation at Reikhan Barta’a Checkpoint, Jenin
by Nathan Stokes
January 12, 2010 – A Palestinian man was subjected to a strip search today at the military checkpoint of Reikhan Barta’a, near Jenin in the North of the West Bank, before having his vehicle detonated by border police. A Palestinian man was subjected to a strip search today at the military checkpoint of Reikhan Barta’a, near Jenin in the North of the West Bank, before having his vehicle detonated by border police…

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TURKISH TV IS THE REAL THREAT TO PEACE … NOT ISRAEL’S BOMBS
Steve Amsel, Desertpeace
January 12, 2010 – Israel seems to think that Turkish TV is a greater threat to world peace than missile attacks on Gaza. A diplomatic row is in the making over a new Turkish series which depicts Mossad agents as baby snatchers.
Now, we all know that Israel or its agents are not capable of involvement in anything remotely illegal. Since 1948 they have adhered to every international law on the books. How dare those Turks ‘rock the boat’! (for the academically challenged community, the above is what we call sarcasm)…

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Quran desecration claims cause anger in Afghanistan
CNN
January 12, 2010 — Allegations that NATO-led soldiers desecrated a Quran in a weekend operation against the Taliban spurred an angry protest Tuesday in southwest Afghanistan, authorities said. The protests, which turned violent, occurred in the Garmsir district of Helmand province, according to a statement by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. During the protests, an insurgent sniper shot an Afghan official, the statement said. ISAF service members then shot and killed the sniper, the statement added…

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