Tragedy & Irony…
Layla Anwar
January 15, 2010 – …So who is to blame ? The Haitians are not blaming God, and they have no power over nature or the accumulated effects of big corporations run by blood sucking power centers of the West and their contribution to ecological disasters, but they did have some power over their local politics…which America, that vampire America, meddled in time and time again…With a population living on less than 2$ a day, how can anyone expect buildings to hold when disaster strikes? And this impoverished population was indeed cursed by the devil and that devil’s name is America. Had America not meddled, the chances are that the extent of the catastrophe would not be as monumental… And ironically, the Haiti tragedy reminded me so much of Baghdad’s. Where bodies were littering the streets in hundreds, and the stench unbearable, just like in Port au Prince and they were left there in the streets for weeks…with stray dogs feeding on them…

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The history that “binds” the US and Haiti
Bill Van Auken
January 15, 2010 – In his statement on the Haitian earthquake Wednesday, President Barack Obama referred to the “long history that binds us together.” Neither he nor the US media, however, have shown any inclination to probe the history of US-Haiti relations and its bearing on present catastrophe confronting the Haitian people. Rather, the backwardness and poverty that have played a substantial role in driving the death toll into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands are presented as a natural state of affairs, if not the fault of the Haitians themselves. The United States is portrayed as a selfless benefactor, ready to come to the aid of Haiti with donations, rescue teams, warships and Marines…If the Obama administration and the Pentagon carry through with reported plans to deploy a Marine expeditionary force in Haiti, it will mark the fourth time in the past 95 years that the US armed forces have occupied the impoverished Caribbean nation. This time, as in the past, rather than aiding the Haitian people, the essential purpose of such a military action will be to defend US interests and guard against what the Times refers to as the “proclivity for insurrection.”…

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US provides more troops than aid
Death toll mounts in Haiti
Patrick Martin
January 15, 2010 – More than 48 hours after a devastating earthquake leveled much of the city of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, millions are without shelter, power, food and water. The estimates of the death toll range from 50,000 (the Red Cross) to ten times that number, and with each passing hour, the higher figures seem more and more likely. Aid workers have rushed to Haiti from dozens of countries—from as far away as China to neighboring Cuba and the Dominican Republic. However, the vast number of victims of the quake overwhelms the rescue effort. Countless people, living and dead, lie under the rubble, and in many neighborhoods desperate family members equipped only with hand tools are trying to dig them out. Dozens of aftershocks pose an additional threat of further collapses and landslides…

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Afghan resistance statement
Response of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Concerning the Desecration of the Holy Quran and Martyrdom of Innocent Afghans
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
January 15, 2010 – Last Sunday, the American and Coalition invading troops burnt a copy of the Holy Quran in Darvishan area of Garamsir district, Helmand province. Thousands of residents of this district took to the street on 12.10.2010 to protest against this blasphemous act when the invading troops and their hirelings soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators pointblank. As usual, farcically, they claimed that a sniper from among the demonstrators had fired at them or that the demonstrators had thrown stones at the security department of the district. These are the same hackneyed lies, which the public of the world have been hearing for the last eight years.. .Now it has been proved that the invading Americans tread on the humane and religious values of people in Afghanistan. They are involved in genocide and racial cleansing which resulted in the killing of thousands of civilians in Afghanistan last year. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan calls on all independent institutions, entities, leaders, writers and statesmen to join their voice with that of the Islamic Emirate to defend the common and shared values of humanity…

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Persian ambitions
Galal Nassar
January 14, 2010 – …Iraqi president Saddam Hussein warned repeatedly of the expansionist goals of Iran and its use of religion as a weapon. But his warnings went unheeded. Arab intellectuals maintained their sympathy with Iran. Many thought that Gulf states who sided with Saddam against Iran were acting as lackeys of the West. Many assumed that Saddam was exaggerating the Iranian threat. Iran is refusing to let go of the three UAE islands — Lesser Tunb, Greater Tunb, and Abu Moussa — that it occupies. It calls the Gulf “Persian” and is resentful when we refer to it as “Arab” or even “Islamic”. It is trying to turn Shias in various Arab countries against their governments… Tehran helped the US — the country it once labelled the Great Satan — to destroy Iraq, undermine its territorial integrity, and wreck its sovereignty. And it tried to destroy the national fabric of Bahrain and other Gulf states…Iran will go to any length to promote its Persian-Shia project. When the Iranians thought it beneficiary to go into alliance with US imperialism, as was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, they didn’t hesitate to do so. Besides, Iran’s best friend in the Gulf is Qatar, home to the biggest US military base in the region…

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Dangerous moves
Banning the Sunni National Dialogue Front from participating in March’s parliamentary elections is a reckless move that could further destabilise Iraq
Salah Hemeid
January 14, 2010 – Iraq’s Justice and Accountability Commission, which is responsible for ensuring the constitutionally banned Baath Party does not return to Iraqi politics, last week decided to ban a key Sunni politician from running in March’s parliamentary elections, citing alleged links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party… The decision has also triggered wide popular discontent among Iraqi Sunnis, who have charged that it lacks legal justification and is prompted by sectarian rivalry. Following last week’s ruling, some Sunnis held demonstrations in Baghdad and other provincial cities, with others warning that they would press ahead with protests if the decision was not revoked…Sunni Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are also worried that the ban will further marginalise Iraqi Sunnis. Writing in the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Tareq Al-Homeid warned on Sunday that the ban was designed to “target a large community in Iraq”, referring to the Sunnis. “De-Baathification has now turned into de-Sunnification,” wrote Al-Homeid…

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Israel Cracks Down on the Press
By Mya Guarnieri*
January 15, 2010 – ared Malsin, the editor of the English edition of Maan News Agency, has been detained by Israeli authorities. Malsin, a Jewish-American who lives and works in the West Bank, was picked up on Tuesday at Ben Gurion International Airport, as he and his partner returned from vacation in the Czech Republic. After being subjected to eight hours of interrogation, Malsin was deemed a security threat and was slated to be deported to Prague Thursday morning. Why?…

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America’s next security measure: ‘Israelification’ of airports?
Craig Nelson
January 14, 2010 – The Obama administration’s measures to toughen airport and airline security following last month’s failed bombing attempt of an American airliner by a 23-year-old Nigerian man are rushing ahead. Some 450 body-scanning machines have been ordered for airline terminals, more than 10 times the number now in use. Airline passengers coming to the United States from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and nine other nations are to undergo extra screening. Amid the growing clamour to ratchet up airline security comes the call for one more step: the “Israelification” of US airports…

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Our role in Haiti’s plight
Peter Hallward
January 14, 2010 – ..The noble “international community” which is currently scrambling to send its “humanitarian aid” to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti’s people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s phrase) “from absolute misery to a dignified poverty” has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies. Aristide’s own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smouldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country…

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Education under Attack in Gaza
Bianca Zammit
January 14, 2010 – On December 28th 2008 mid-term examinations had been scheduled to take place at the University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS) in Gaza. When the day arrived, however, the University College’s rooms, which usually cater for 8000 students, were void of any life. This was the second day of operation Cast Lead. The University remained closed and examinations were postponed. Concentration, patience and motivation; the three pillars to learning were the main targets of operation Cast Lead as it sought to instill a sense of danger in every spot in Gaza. Operation Cast Lead wholly demolished or rendered unusable several educational facilities across the Strip. Amongst these facilities were 280 kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, the American International School, the library of the Al Aqsa University and the laboratory of the Islamic University. Many other educational facilities were shot at causing facades to become tarnished with indelible war stains and windows to shatter in a deliberate attempt to undermine education…

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Afghanistan: NATO Intensifies Its First Asian War
by Rick Rozoff
January 14, 2010 – With former Joint Special Operations Command chief General Stanley McChrystal in charge of what will soon be over 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, Washington will conduct its largest counterinsurgency operations since those in Indochina in the 1960s and early 1970s. NATO, established in 1949 supposedly to confront the Soviet Union and its allies in Central Europe, is waging its first land war almost 3,000 miles east of its former border with the Warsaw Pact. The world’s sole military superpower…is extending its troop deployments, bases, missile shield components, warplanes and warships to all six inhabited continents, over the past decade to Afghanistan, Australia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, the Philippines, Poland, Romania and Seychelles…

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Bilderbergs of the world unite!
William BOWLES
January 15, 2010 – …The corporate media would have you believe that anyone who cries ‘Oil!’ when Iraq comes up is some kind of nut, akin to alien abductees, a ‘conspiracist’ no less. In 2003 when the USUK invaded Iraq I was struck by the desperate pleas in the corporate press that the invasion had nothing to do with oil, accusing those who asserted that oil had everything to do with the invasion were nutty conspiracists living no doubt in Area 51. “Conspiracy theories abound… Others claim it was inspired by oil… [This] theor[y] [is] largely nonsense.” — The Independent, April 16, 2003. By contrast, the oil companies were not backward in coming forward concerning the central role of oil in the invasion of Iraq, echoing what the suits over at the Heritage Foundation were saying: “I would say that especially the U.S. oil companies…look forward to the idea that Iraq will be open for business [after the overthrow of Saddam],” says an executive from one of the world’s largest oil companies.” “What they [the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration] have in mind is denationalization, and then parceling Iraqi oil out to American oil companies… We take over Iraq, install our regime, produce oil at the maximum rate and tell Saudi Arabia to go to hell.” James E. Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. …

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Iraq snapshot – January 15, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, a witness testifying before the Iraq Inquiry reveals either extreme ignorance or a wilful desire to lie, tensions continue to flare over the efforts to ban Sunnis from running for office, and more…

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Tele-Capitalists: Bleeding Money From Frantic Haitians
Free the phone lines to Haiti!
by Radical-Eyes
January 14, 2010 – While workers scramble to bring communication systems in Haiti back on-line, phone card companies in the U.S. are making a profit off of the suffering and heartbreak of the Haitian and Haitian American communities. A friend of mine from Haiti informs me that each time he attempts to call someone back home, the phone card company charges him a dollar, even when there is no answer on the other end. (He has yet to reach any of his immediate family members.) His calling card coss have added up to close to a hundred dollars arleady. For him, this is a significant sum. “It’s like adding insult to injury,” as he puts it. “I wish we could expose what they are doing.”…

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Iraq: Constitutional Disintegration (Part III): The IHEC Is Making Up the Law
Reidar Visser
January 15, 2010 – One of the bewildering aspects of the recent decision to bar Salih al-Mutlak and some 500 other candidates from standing as candidates in the 7 March election is the apparent resolve of both the accountability and justice board as well as the Iraqi elections commission (IHEC) to enforce the ban also at the level of political entities, where some 15 parties are expected to be excluded. The rationale is the idea that an entire political entity should automatically meet the same fate as its political leader. But where exactly is the legal basis for that approach?…The fact is that the legal basis does not appear to exist…

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What hope for Hebron?
Seth Freedman
January 14, 2010 – “The situation is getting worse here,” says Zleikha Muhtaseb, the principal of a Palestinian kindergarten in Hebron’s old city. “After the intifada calmed down, we thought things were improving, but now it’s getting worse again: roadblocks are increasing, soldiers are attacking Palestinians at checkpoints, and the settlers are becoming more violent. Day and night the settlers threaten [local Palestinians], throwing stones and trying to burn their property, in order to put more and more pressure on them.” Since the establishment of Israeli settlements in Hebron, life has never been easy for the Palestinian residents, who have felt the full force of the occupation come down on their city and stifle the area both economically and socially…

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Settlers Steal 25 Dunams Near Nablus
Saed Bannoura
January 15, 2010 – Israeli settlers stole on Thursday 25 Dunams (6.17 Acres) of Palestinian lands that belong to the residents of Dir Istia village, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Local sources reported that dozens of heavily armed settlers from the Rifaka illegal settlement outpost grabbed by force 25 Dunams in Khallit Azzam and uprooted the trees using military bulldozers…

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Gaza completes its siege by building a harbour at the end of the steel wall
Palestinian Information Center
January 15, 2010 – Egyptian authorities are going to build a harbour at its sea border with the Gaza Strip to be used by Egyptian naval patrol boats, an Egyptian security source announced on Thursday. International news agencies reported security sources said that the depth of the dock is 10 meters and extends 25 meters from the seashore at the Egyptian side of Rafah…

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Israel Refuses to Take Responsibility for the Rehabilitation of Gaza’s Civilian Amputees
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
January 15, 2010 – Shortly after the Israeli assault on Gaza ended last January, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-IL) embarked on a campaign to obtain responsibility from the Israeli Ministry of Defense for the treatment of Gaza civilians seriously injured during the assault. According to estimates provided by health organizations such as the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) and the Artificial Limb and Polio Center in Gaza, over 100 civilians lost limbs during or in the aftermath of the 23-day offensive which took place between December 2008 and January 2009. PHR-Israel demanded that Israel cover the costs of rehabilitation and prosthetic limbs for three individuals specifically who had been injured during the offensive. In addition, PHR-IL continued demanding that Israel cover the treatment costs of an amputee from Gaza who had been injured in 2008, months prior to the offensive…

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Palestinian olive grove destroyed in the night
Christian Peacemaker Team
January 15, 2010 – In the afternoon of 14 January Palestinians discovered that a family owned olive grove in Khoruba valley had been recently destroyed. Twenty mature olive trees were broken at their trunks. The family believes that Israeli settlers from the Ma’on settlement and Havot Ma’on outpost are responsible for the vandalism. A Palestinian farmer informed internationals who documented the destruction that this was the fifth time since 1997 that settlers have destroyed the olive trees in this grove. He also stated that the trees would not be able to bear olives for at least three years…

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Iraqi army personnel involved in oil smuggling
By Fatima Kamal
January 14, 2009 – Personnel from the Iraqi armed forces have been found smuggling crude oil and selling it on the open market, a senior oil ministry official said. Alaa Muhideen, the ministry’s inspector-general, said investigations conducted in the past two months have revealed that the army has been directly involved in oil smuggling operations. “We have discovered four (oil) smuggling operations in the past two months,” Muhideen said, adding that in army personnel were involved in the four cases…

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Haiti: opportunity knocks
Richard Seymour, Lenin’s Tomb
You want to hear about chutzpah? You want to hear about sheer gravity-defying audacity? Well, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, prepare to catch your lower jaw. Forget Limbaugh’s racist anxieties. Forget about Pat Robertson drooling about Haiti’s ‘pact with the devil’. He’s a senile old bigot, and his sick provocations are familiar by now. This is the Heritage Foundation on the Haiti earthquake, which is estimated to have killed 100,000 people: Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S…

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Catastrophe in Haiti
by Ashley Smith
January 14, 2010 – …The corporate media at least reported that shifting tectonic plates along a fault line underneath Port-au-Prince caused the earthquake — and that Haiti’s poverty and the incapacity of the Préval government made the disaster so much worse. But they didn’t delve below the surface. “The media coverage of the earthquake is marked by an almost complete divorce of the disaster from the social and political history of Haiti,” Canadian Haiti solidarity activist Yves Engler said in an interview. “They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why.” Why were 60 percent of the buildings in Port-au-Prince shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal circumstances, according to the city’s mayor? Why are there no building regulations in a city that sits on a fault line? Why has Port-au-Prince swelled from a small town of 50,000 in the 1950s to a population of two million desperately poor people today? Why was the state completely overwhelmed by the disaster? To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line — US imperial policy toward Haiti…

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Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA
Why the Blood Is on Our Hands
by Ted Rall
January 14, 2010 – As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere…” Gee, I wonder how that happened? You’d think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich. How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d’état against every democratically elected president they ever had? It’s an important question. An earthquake isn’t just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn’t kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince…

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Israeli Democracy or Hypocrisy
Stephen Lendman
January 14, 2010 – …In November, the Mitzpeh Aviv community, under the jurisdiction of the Galilee Misgav Regional Council, passed an amendment to its internal bylaws, stipulating that land allocation be conditional on residents’ placing the “highest priorities (on) Zionist values and the values of the state as a Jewish and democratic state.” Then on December 10, a new Knesset bill passed its preliminary reading by a large majority after the Ministerial Committee on Legislation adopted it. It aims to “preserv(e) the ability to realize the Zionist vision in practice” throughout Israel by imposing a “loyalty” condition on persons seeking residency applications in Jewish communities. The bill affects Jews primarily as almost no Arabs live in Jewish areas. However, it entrenches racism and discrimination against non-Jews by letting communities choose their own residents…Declaring loyalty, however, is troublesome. How to do it is the issue: by renouncing Islam; converting to Judaism; accepting second class citizen status; racist insults and assaults; or perhaps staying silent or going along with denying Arabs the same rights as Jews?..

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“This is life:” remembering earlier massacres in Gaza
Eva Bartlett writing from occupied Gaza Strip
January 14, 2010 – It’s a sunny day in the border region east of Beit Hanoun. Aside from a glaring absence of the citrus and olive trees which for decades abounded on this fertile land, finally razed by Israeli military bulldozers, all seems idyllic. “This is the first time I’ve returned here since my friends were killed,” Ahmad Hammad says. He stands at the edge of a vacant plot and gestures to its far end which lies over 1 km from the border separating Israel and the Gaza Strip. “They were over there, I was standing here,” he explains. Hammad, 24, recalls the day two years ago when three of his friends, all in their early twenties, were torn apart by an Israeli-fired surface-to-surface missile…

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Gaza: 75 Deformed Babies Caused by the War
Pal Telegraph
January 14, 2010 – Recent scientific analyses have shown that the war was a direct cause of the increasing numbers of birth defects, miscarriages and cancer in the Gaza Strip. A report by Conscience Organisation for Human Rights concerning the environmental and health dangers resulting from the bombardment and invasion revealed that incidents of children born with deformities have risen markedly in the Gaza Strip. The report said that in the three months prior to the start of the war in December 2008 just twenty-seven children were born with such deformities. During the same period in 2009 the number was forty-nine, a significant increase. The report indicated that 50% of the confirmed cases relate to the nervous system and joining of organs…

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Israeli authorities prevent 17 Palestinians from getting necessary eye surgery
Saed Bannoura
January 14, 2010 – After the Israeli human rights group Physicians for Human Rights arranged a donation of 17 corneas to allow sight-impaired Palestinians from Gaza to receive necessary eye surgery, Israeli border agents stationed at Erez crossing prevented the sight-impaired patients from entering the West Bank. The cornea donations had to be discarded. According to the Physicians for Human Rights, “Because of this delay, the medical window of opportunity to perform the transplants for these patients was closed, because corneas can be transplanted only within the shortest time frame (24-48 hours after they are extracted from the donor’s body). The patients from Gaza whose exit was prevented will therefore have to wait for another donation, which may or may not happen.”

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Israeli Threats Against Gaza Grow
Ira Chernus
January 14, 2010 – Israel’s hawks are starting to make frightening noises. If Israel attacks Gaza again, Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant will run the operation. Galant recently said that right now “the sun is shining – but one can see dark clouds in the distance.” His soldiers are training to face trouble ahead, and “civilians are rightly preparing themselves for another round of fighting.” A few days later, Galant’s predecessor, Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia (who still heads the reserves who would invade Gaza), sounded even more ominous: “We are before another round in Gaza,” he predicted…

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In letter to UN, Gaza children demand justice
Ma’an News
January 14, 2010 – Marking the aniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza, hundreds of children gathered in Gaza City to sign a letter asking that the UN denounce as criminal the Israeli actions that lead to the death of their friends and loved ones. The Thursday rally saw the children march from the center of Gaza City to the UN headquarters. Children headed up the march, followed by groups of women and police officers who were targeted by Israeli forces during the war. Members of the de facto government in Gaza took up the rear of the march in solidarity…

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System Failure: The Ban on Mutlak
Reidar Visser
January 14, 2010 – The Iraqi elections commission (IHEC) has reportedly upheld the decision by the accountability and justice board to bar around 500 candidates, including Salih al-Mutlak, from participating in the 7 March elections, based on allegations of Baathist sympathies. The banned candidates can appeal to a board of seven judges that came into existence only three days ago, and whose names still appear to remain a secret. It is hard to describe this development as anything than other than complete system failure in the new “democracy” in Iraq. Almost inevitably, the atmosphere of the elections will now turn into a repeat of December 2005, with escalating rhetoric that can easily turn sectarian. Parliament had the obvious option of marginalising Ali al-Lami, the Iran-connected leader of the former de-Baathification committee; instead they went for the more convenient solution of approving seven judges that now have the delicate and enormous task of dealing with hundreds of appeals in a matter of weeks. Why did they not ask Ali al-Lami to step down instead? Why did not the “independent” IHEC offer any resistance? What are the forces the Iraqi parliament and the IHEC are so afraid of? Mutlak has played a constructive role in Iraqi politics since 2005…

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Yemen ‘must resist foreign forces’
Aljazeera.English
January 14, 2010 – A group of Muslim leaders have said Yemenis have a religious duty to resist foreign military intervention in the country. “In the event of any foreign party insisting on hostilities against, an assault on, or military or security intervention in Yemen, then Islam requires all its followers to pursue jihad,” a statement signed by 150 clerics on Thursday said…

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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 02/2010 (06-13 Jan. 2010)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
January 14, 2010 – Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law continued in the OPT during the reporting period (06 – 13 January 2010): Shooting: During the reporting period, Israeli occupation forces killed 6 Palestinians, including a child, in the Gaza Strip. A seventh Palestinian died of previous wounds. Additionally, two Palestinian civilians were wounded. On 08 January 2009, 3 Palestinian civilians, including one child, were killed, and two others were wounded when Israeli warplanes bombarded a tunnel on the Egyptian border, south of Rafah. Another 6 civilians working in tunnels survived the attack as they crossed towards the Egyptian side of the border. On 10 January 2010, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at 3 Palestinian resistance activists in Wadi al-Salqa village in the central Gaza Strip, killing them…

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The Occupation Municipality in Jerusalem sets a new plan to Judaize three neighborhoods in Jerusalem
pls48
January 14, 2010 – The Wadi Helwa Center revealed a plan set by the Occupation municipality to execute a project called 11555 that aimed at the confiscation of 70% of the land of Wadi Helwa in favor of this project and make it available to the use of the Municipality and District Committee. The Information Center of Wadi Helwa explained that the Wadi Helwa lands’ area is 548.5 Dunums, where 18.17% of it dedicated for residential purposes that includes houses and near by vacant areas, as well as settlement. However, the project allots 8.14% from the Land for cemeteries, which means half of the area dedicated for the alive, furthermore 9.6% will be dedicated for roads, 1.7 for housing and 2.4 for religious structures, knowing that the neighborhood combine a mosque and a Church, which means that they will add at least one synagogue…

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Iraq election officials bar nearly 500 candidates from poll
By Salam Faraj
January 14, 2010 — Iraq’s election organisers on Thursday barred nearly 500 politicians and parties from contesting the country’s upcoming national poll. We decided this afternoon to exclude around 500 names and political entities from the list of candidates,” said Hamdia Husseini, a senior official with the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC). Husseini did not specifically mention the Baath party, but said the excluded candidates “fell under the law of the committee of justice and integrity” which bars Saddam loyalists from taking part in elections…

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Rebuffing the optimists
Khaled Amayreh
January 14, 2010 – Discounting recent suggestions that he might have moderated his extremist views vis-à-vis major contentious issues with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has reasserted the rejectionist orientation of his government, saying that Israel would neither withdraw from East Jerusalem, return to the 1967 borders, nor allow Palestinian refugees to be repatriated to their homes in what is now Israel. Netanyahu issued the statement in response to criticisms from his far-right colleagues who charged that he had crossed the government’s political redlines during his recent visit to Cairo…

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Barghouthi: Detention of Sheikh Salah an attack on Jerusalem
Ma’an News
January 15, 2010 – Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, condemned the recent Israeli court decision to incarcerate Sheikh Raed Salah. The religious leader is head of the Islamic Movement in northern Israel, and is a seminal figure in mobilizing Muslims in the country in the protection of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He was previously banned by the state from entering the Holy City, and has faced arrest on more than one occasion. On Monday he was sentenced to 9 months in prison for assaulting an Israeli officer…

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An online campaign for Gaza
Tim Hartman, Madison, Wis.
January 15, 2010 – ON DECEMBER 27, 2009, a well-organized Twitter campaign by activist Nadine Moawad brought together over 100 activists to “tweet” about the invasion and the atrocities in Gaza. The effort sparked the interest of many, and the message quickly spread. At its peak, the topic “Gaza” ended up third on Twitter’s “trending topics” list. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of Twitter users becoming aware of the still-grave situation in Gaza, a situation that is largely ignored by the Western media…

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U.S. forces committed to train Peshmerga – Talabani
Aswat al-Iraq
January 14, 2010 – Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that U.S. forces have made a commitment to train Peshmerga (Kurdish) forces after unifying them. “Negotiations are underway with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to form two military divisions in Kurdistan,” Talabani said on Wednesday from his hometown, Sulaimaniya.

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Iraq snapshot – January 14, 2010
The Common Ills
Thursday, January 14, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Najaf is rocked by bombings, Nouri targets more political opponents, more Iraqi executions announced, exploring the opposition to Avatar, Pig gets arrested (again!) for being a sexual predator (again!), and more…Starting in Iraq where Hannah Allam and Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reported that any hopes last week’s announcement of parties and politicians banned from Iraq’s elections (expected to be held in March) would be overturned appear to be over as it now appears that an additional 100 candidates may be announced banned shortly…

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The United States, Israel and the retreat of freedom
Ali Abunimah
January 14, 2010 – The world is suffering from a “freedom recession” according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House (”Freedom in the World 2010,” 12 January 2010). Established in 1941, Freedom House markets itself as “an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.” Its board of directors, chaired by a former US deputy secretary of defense, is a who’s who of Democratic and Republican former US government officials, prominent neoconservatives and Israel lobby stalwarts such as Tom Dine, former executive director of AIPAC. In 2007, more than two-thirds of its $16 million budget came directly from the United States government. Not surprisingly then, Freedom House’s report reveals more about the groupthink of the US establishment — especially with respect to its continued efforts to dominate the Middle East and ensure Israel’s supremacy — than it does about the countries surveyed…

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Witnesses: Israel performs Gaza incursion
Ma’an News
January 14, 2010 – Residents near the Sufa border, southern Gaza, reported that an Israeli military incursion was undertaken late Wednesday night. Witnesses said Israeli forces entered close to the border, opened artillery fire while F16 warplanes were sighted above the skies. The forces were then seen moving towards the eastern Gaza border, and fired at agricultural land in Jabalia in the north, they added…

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