Iran’s Power Play in Iraq
Robert Dreyfuss
January 21, 2010 – For years, I’ve written about Iran’s untoward influence in Iraq. Now, it appears as if Iran is making a power play, using its Iraqi allies, that could checkmate US influence in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Most of the exiles installed into power by the United States, including Ahmed Chalabi, had close ties to Tehran. Now, it’s paying off. According to Iraqi sources, the decision to ban more than 500 Iraqi politicians from running in the March 7 election has been applied on a strictly sectarian basis…If the decision, by an unelected body called the so-called Justice and Accountability Commission, could destroy the elections, upend Iraq’s fledgling democracy, trigger renewed sectarian conflict, and cause the outbreak of a full-scale civil war. It’s that serious…The ultraconservative Tehran Times, an Iranian daily that serves as a mouthpiece for hardliners in the Iranian regime, has endorsed the commission’s decision, meanwhile describing those barred as “terrorists…Since last summer, leading Shiite-sectarian politicians, including Chalabi, ISCI’s leaders, and others, have made pilgrimages back and forth to Tehran and Qom to put together the misnamed Iraqi National Alliance, a blatantly pro-Iran Shiite bloc…

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How I fought to survive Guantánamo
Patrick Barkham
January 21, 2010 – It is not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from the day a Guantánamo guard blinded him, but the cool sen?sation of fingers being stabbed deep into his eyeballs. He had joined other prisoners in protesting against a new humiliation – inmates ?being forced to take off their trousers and walk round in their pants – and a group of guards had entered his cell to punish him. He was held down and bound with chains. “I didn’t realise what was going on until the guy had pushed his fingers ?inside my eyes and I could feel the coldness of his fingers. Then I realised he was trying to gouge out my eyes,” Deghayes says. He wanted to scream in agony, but was determined not to give his torturers the satisfaction. Then the officer standing over him instructed the eye-stabber to push harder. “When he pulled his hands out, I remember I couldn’t see anything – I’d lost sight completely in both eyes.” Deghayes was dumped in a cell, fluid streaming from his eyes…

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Too Terrible To Be True?
Why aren’t we talking about the new accusations of murder at Gitmo?
By Dahlia Lithwick
January 21, 2010 – Some torture stories are just too horrible to contemplate, while others are too complicated to understand. But Scott Horton’s devastating new exposé of the possible murders of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006 is neither: It’s simply too terrible to allow to be true. Which is why it has been mostly ignored this week in the mainstream American media and paid little attention by the usual crew of torture apologists on the right. The fact that three Guantanamo prisoners—none of whom had any links to terrorism and two of whom had already been cleared for release—may have been killed there and the deaths covered up, should be front-page news…

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Video: Corrupt Government Forces Afghans To Spend More Than 1/3 Of Income On Bribes
rethinkafghanistan
January 21, 2010 – A new report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reveals that bribery consumes an amount equal to 23 percent of the GDP of Afghanistan. Afghans are forced by corrupt government culture to pay more than a third of their income in bribes. Earlier this month, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that 3/4 of all their active corruption investigations involved at least one Westerner…

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Israel grilled by international experts for child abuse
SABA
January 21, 2010 – Israel was grilled on Thursday during a meeting of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) over its report on the implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported on Thursday. In a statement to journalists, Minister of State for Family and Population Affairs Moushira Khattab said that Israel was grilled during its discussion of its report on the implementation of the convention Experts of the committee condemned Israel for prohibiting free passage for children due to the building of the separation wall and called upon Israel to remove all limitations on Palestinian children, said Khattab who spoke in her capacity as an independent expert and not as a government official of Egypt…

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Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis
by Benjamin Dangl
January 21, 2010 – US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people. In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble…

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Afghans protest deaths of 4 in NATO-government raid
Reuters
January 21, 2010 – Scores of Afghans protested on Thursday over the deaths of four men in a night-time raid by Afghan and NATO-led forces. Locals said the victims were civilians, but the force said the dead were Taliban insurgents. Over 100 people took to the streets of a small bazaar in Qarabagh district in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, to demonstrate, locals told Reuters by telephone. Villagers who brought the bodies of four people to the hospital in the provincial capital of Ghazni city said three of the victims belonged to one family. Two were boys 11 and 15..

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Gaza Faces ‘Catastrophic’ Gas Shortage
The Media Line Staff
January 21, 2010 – An impending shortage of cooking gas in the Gaza Strip is likely to cause a humanitarian disaster unless Israel allows more into the coastal enclave.With winter temperatures in Gaza dropping, Palestinians are getting only a third of gas increasingly required for heating and cooking, industry representatives reported. “The whole of the Gaza Strip requires 6,000 tons of cooking gas a month but now we’re only getting 2,000 tons,” Mahmoud Shawwa, head of the Petrol and Gas Union in the Gaza Strip told The Media Line. “If we don’t get the adequate amounts, it will be catastrophic.”…

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The case of Jared Malsin – expelled by Israel
By Ayman Mohyeldin
January 21, 2010 – It probably has not made the headlines in most press around the world, but Israel has recently decided to expel an American journalist working for the respected Ma’an News Agency, based out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The case of Jared Malsin has implications for foreign journalists who work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). When the story of his detention first emerged, I spoke to a diplomatic source with knowledge of the case. He told me, Jared’s deportation was politically motivated based on his work. Israeli officials I have called regarding this case have provided any explanation regarding the deportation…

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Israel Harasses Foreign Aid Workers
IslamOnline.net
January 21, 2009 – Israel is waging its newest war on foreign aid workers in the Palestinian territories, depriving them from work permits legalizing their stay, amid warning that Israel is particularly targeting those in Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) as part of its plot to Judaize the holy city. “We are now in a very precarious legal position,” Jean-Luc Lambert, head of the Médecins sans Frontières aid group in Al-Quds, told The Times on Thursday, January 21. Israel’s Interior Ministry has stopped granting work permits to foreign nationals working in most international aid organizations operating in the occupied territories, including Al-Quds…

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Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts
by Stephen Lendman
January 21, 2010 – … After one year in office with a Democrat-controlled Congress, voters express disillusion, frustration, and anger over promises made, then broken, and a realization that once again they were betrayed. Ignoring people needs during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Obama administration supports business, militarism, and homeland repression. He backs open-ended banker bailouts, aggressive wars, repressing dissent, privatized healthcare, free, not fair trade, a war on Islam and Latino immigrants, torture, illegal surveillance, military commissions, preventive detention for dozens of detainees facing no charges, and extraordinary renditions to offshore hellholes, most of them secret…

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It’s the “New Haiti!”
Michel Collins
January 21, 2010 – The appointment of former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as key players in Haitian relief should cause the people of Haiti grave concern, if they weren’t otherwise preoccupied with survival. These former presidents’ records as pro-life advocates on the international scene is tarnished by real world outcomes. During his eight years as president, Clinton was responsible for sanctions on Iraq that resulted in the deaths of 170,000 children under five. Former President George W. Bush exceeded that death toll by invading Iraq. That caused civil chaos and conflict among Iraqis leading to the deaths of over one million citizens in that tragic nation. When you see these two coming, their record speaks for itself…

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Three More Arrested in Ni’ilin Night Raid
Jonathan Pollak
January 21, 2010 – Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas canisters at demonstrators in Ni’ilin. Three residents of Ni’ilin were arrested in a pre-dawn imilitary incursion into the village of Ni’ilin today. This is the 15th time such a raid was conducted in the past month in order to apprehend Palestinian anti-Wall activists. Today’s arrests are a continuation of a concerted assault on the popular struggle movement and its leadership.

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Iraq snapshot – January 21, 2010
The Common Ills
Thursday, January 21, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces a death, the VA does another song and dance before Congress (as approximately 1,000 veterans still wait for their FALL 2009 checks), the Senate explores the Fort Hood shootings (in which 13 people died and over forty were wounded), the Iraq election ‘process’ remains in crisis, and more…

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“Humanity cannot be divided”: Gaza shows solidarity with Haiti
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip
January 20, 2010 – “We have been living a man-made disaster actually for the past 62 years,” said Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, a chairman of the Gaza-based Committee to Break the Siege. “We would like to send out a message of solidarity to the people of Haiti, who are now facing a natural disaster. Despite the harsh conditions Gaza people live under here — the Israeli blockade and military actions — people here sent symbolic assistance to their brothers and sisters in Haiti.” The committee collected a a symbolic amount of food and some cash donations for earthquake-stricken Haiti, where tens of thousands have been killed and countless others were injured and displaced…

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Netanyahu demands eternal Israeli presence in West Bank
The Daily Star
January 20, 2010 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel must have a presence in the West Bank even after a peace agreement is achieved, dealing a fresh blow to the visiting US Middle East envoy’s effort to restart peace talks. Netanyahu said the experience of rocket attacks from the Lebanese and Gaza borders means Israel must be able to prevent such weapons from being brought into a Palestinian entity in the occupied West Bank…

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Zionism’s destabilizing force: “Israeli Exceptionalism” reviewed
Ahmed Moor
January 20, 2010 – In his new book Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, M. Shahid Alam successfully argues that the moral force behind the Zionist movement is a sense of Jewish, and consequently Israeli, exceptionalism. This claim of exceptionalism underpins what he calls the “destabilizing logic of Zionism.” According to Alam, Zionism “could advance only by creating and promoting conflicts between the West and the Islamicate” (p. 3). He defines the “Islamicate” as consisting of the broader Muslim world, with the Middle East at its heart…

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Israeli, Iranian tourism ministers meet
By RON FRIEDMAN, Jersulem Post
January 20, 2010 – Israeli Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov was in Madrid on Wednesday to formally open the Israeli exhibit at the International Tourism Trade Fair. While there he met, talked and shook hands with his Iranian counterpart. “As opposed to the cold reaction I received from the Syrian representatives when I approached their stall, the Iranians came out to greet me,” said Meseznikov in a phone interview from Madrid… Meseznikov stressed that the Iranians knew that they were speaking to Israeli officials. “They didn’t hide or scurry away, they remained and talked to us pleasantly.” Meseznikov said that he also had the chance to meet and shake hands with the Iranian tourism minister, Hamid Baghaei, when the representatives of all the participating countries took part in a formal ceremony and the two stood next to each other…

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Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors
Chris Floyd
January 20, 2020- Democrats and progressives are crying doom over the party’s defeat in Massachusetts. The loss, we’re told, is a blow to Barack Obama’s political agenda, and so it is. They say it’s a shame that yet another rightwing zealot who advocates torture is now in the Senate, and so it is. But it is precisely that agenda that led to the loss, and the shame. It is that agenda which has resurrected a rightwing party that was dead in the water, and empowered its most extreme elements. And what is Barack Obama’s agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care “reform” that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for moral, economic and political disaster…

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US Military’s “Security” Not Helping Haitians
By Dolores M. Bernal
January 20, 2010 – …You will see video from all networks showing the looting and the “violent” Haitians. It’s like deliberately dehumanizing the very same people we thought were as humans as you and I a week ago. Black people already freak out many whites in America — they are portrayed as criminals, gangsters, violent thugs. It’s nothing new, these are cultural beliefs that never seem to really improve. Showing the black people in Haiti behaving desperately, could easy trigger the notions that those are not people, they are criminals…I’ll tell you what real security is: showing up to protect the victims, not the valuables, collapsed banks or grocery stores. If anything, our troops should be blasting open those stores so people could have easier access to the food inside. The FMLN in San Salvador did just that, they blew open the marketplace because they knew people were hungry. Desperate situations call for desperate measures…

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Haiti 2010: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
by Cynthia McKinney
January 20, 2010 – President Obama’s response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working – saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa…

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India and Pakistan: Cold Start for the Hottest War?
J. Sri Raman
January 20, 2010 – We have all been witness to a long and continuing war of words between New Delhi and Islamabad ever since the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 2008 disrupted the India-Pakistan “peace process” and “composite dialogue” which had kept going until then despite smaller problems and provocations. These statements and counter-statements, however, do not constitute the exchange that should cause the most serious concern over peace in South Asia. A larger and direr threat is what a strangely less-noticed debate between the military establishments of the two countries presents. The chiefs of the two armies and security experts on both sides, besides others in either distinguished uniform or defense-related positions of prominence, have been engaged in the debate where a nuclear war is treated in mind-numbingly matter-of-fact terms…

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Video: UN reveals Afghan corruption woes
Aljazeera.English
January 20, 2010 – A recent United Nations report has Afghanistan as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has just published a report that says half of all Afghans have had to pay a bribe for a public service. The report said Afghans paid over $2.5bn worth in bribes over the last year alone, exactly the same figure generated by the country’s opium trade. Al Jazeera’s David Chater went into an Kabul pensions department office to get a sense of the country’s widespread corruption.

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Aid workers ‘being pushed out’ of Palestinian areas
James Hider
January 20, 2010 – Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, sparking fears about the future of relief operations in the Palestinian territories. The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued only tourist visas to aid groups such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and Save the Children since before Christmas. They say that their legal situation is now precarious and that some staff have been denied entry by Israeli border officials who also control all entry to the West Bank…

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Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation
Democracy Now!
January 20, 2010 – Shortly after Haiti was hit by a 6.1 aftershock earlier today, Amy Goodman and Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté report from the Port-au-Prince airport. Amy and Kim discuss how centuries of Western domination of Haiti has worsened the impact of the devastating earthquake, from the harsh reaction to Haiti’s independence as a republic of free slaves in 1804 to the US-backed overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Ives says, “This quake was precipitated by a political earthquake—with an epicenter in Washington, DC…

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Iraq snapshot – January 20, 2010
The Common Ills
Wednesday, January 20, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the Iraq Inquiry continues in London with the false 45 minute claim by Tony Blair excused as “local colour,” in the US the Fort Hood shooting gets a Congressional hearing, the barring of candidates continues in Iraq, and more…

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GAZA IS NOT ALONE; THE ENTIRE WEST BANK IS UNDER SIEGE
Steve Amsel, Desertpeace
January 20, 2010 – In a new effort to discourage, in fact stop, foreign nationals from volunteering in Humane organisations in the Occupied Territories, Israel has stopped issuing work permits to them. Israel has been successful in maintaining the siege on Gaza by not allowing foreigners to enter the area with much needed medical and building equipment. That, apparently is not enough; the zionist’s tentacles have now reached over to the entire Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as well… as can be seen in the following report……

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Military Resistance 8A12: How The Mighty Have Fallen – 18 January 2010
Thomas F. Barton
Resistance Attacks U.S. Occupation Base With Flying Bomb: Three U.S. Soldiers Wounded. U.S. troops stationed at an outpost in southern Iraq heard a chilling whistle, and then a 60-pound airborne bomb punched through a concrete blast wall and sent shrapnel flying, wounding three Americans. Explosions are commonplace in Iraq, but this was no ordinary attack. The U.S. military said Friday that militants who launched the Jan. 12 attack on a joint U.S.-Iraqi compound used an unusual weapon called an IRAM, for Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munition.

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Video: Israel’s assassination policy
TRNN interviews relatives of recently assassinated men in Nablus, Occupied Palestinian Territories
TheRealNews
January 20, 2010 – In recent weeks Israel has escalated its practice of assassinations in the West Bank and Gaza. At the end of December, Israeli special forces broke into the Nablus homes of Anan Subih, Raed Surkaji, and Ghassan Abu Sharekh and killed them. Official Israeli sources linked the three to the killing of Israeli settler Meir Avshalom Hai who was killed while driving to the illegal outpost in which he lived. The killings are the latest in Israel’s long-time practice of assassinations, illegal under international law. Many contradictory reports have surfaced over the December 26 assassinations. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky spoke to the families of two of the killed…

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Stop terrorizing the world
“War on terror” as a cover for US terrorism
Paul J. Balles
January 20, 2010 – It’s ironic. It’s hypocritical. It’s a fraud. The “war on terrorism” branded by America is a propaganda cover for the worst terrorists in the world. What was the invasion and occupation of Iraq but an act of terrorism? Everyone now knows that the faux war was born of a fraud. The deception had no legitimate purpose except to terrorize countries that (a) produce oil, (b) harbour Al-Qaeda or (c) threaten Israel. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, considered a legitimate response to 9/11, could have been avoided. The Taliban appropriately asked the US to provide evidence of Osama bin Laden’s complicity in the 9/11 affair before deporting him. Instead, we attacked Afghanistan to the cheers of terrorizing avengers. “We’ll show you what we do to those who terrorize America!” was the mantra. The USA is still terrorizing Afghanistan…Human life outside America and its stooges isn’t worth a tinker’s damn to terrorist America. Some 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died from American sanctions on Iraq. On 60 minutes in 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: “We think the price is worth it.” As of January 2010 and since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, 1,366,350 Iraqi lives have been lost to terrorist slaughterers. “Never mind,” you say? “The price is worth it. Beside, they’re only Muslims who want to multiply and take over the world.”..

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Local: Settlers attack cemetery in West Bank village
Ma’an News
January 20, 2010 – Israeli settlers attacked a cemetery on Wednesday in the Orta Village, southeast of Nablus, and vandalized graves, officials said. Ghassan Doghlas, official for the settlement file in the West Bank, said additionally that Israeli settlers broke the gate to the village school and left graffiti on the walls. Abu Salam Awad, 38, and a teacher in Orta, told Ma’an that dozens of settlers raided the village at 10pm on Tuesday, accompanied by Israeli troops, saying they were visiting a Jewish holy shrine in the village…

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Washington shuts door on Haitian refugees
By Tom Eley
January 20, 2010 – The Obama administration has taken extraordinary measures to prevent desperate Haitians from entering the US since a January 12 earthquake devastated the Caribbean nation, killing an estimated 200,000, making at least 1.5 million homeless, and orphaning 1 million children. The effort to bar Haitians from entering the US—including the wounded seeking medical treatment—illustrates that the priority of the US-led intervention is not to save lives, but to establish military control over the population…

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The Merchants of Fear: Israel’s Profiting from Homeland Insecurity
Maidhc Ó Cathail
January 20, 2010 – In the wake of the weird Christmas Day “underwear bomber” incident on Northwest Flight 253, former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, as if on cue, was all over the mainstream media touting whole-body scanners as the answer to America’s airline security problems. Since leaving public office in 2009, Chertoff had co-founded the Chertoff Group, a security and risk-management firm whose clients include a manufacturer of body-imaging screening machines. While some in the media noted this rather commonplace conflict of interest, ignored by all was a far more significant abuse of the American public’s trust…

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One year since Obama’s inauguration
Jerry White
January 20, 2010 – One year ago today, on January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. The event was greeted with enthusiasm in the US, as well as in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. Many millions around the world hoped the long period of political reaction in the US was finally ending. A year later, this wishful thinking has turned into disillusionment, anger and opposition. Some 2 million people gathered in Washington on Inauguration Day to celebrate the end of the Bush years. From the opening words of his address, however, Obama indicated that he would continue the policies of his Republican predecessor that had been repudiated by the American people…

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US Humanitarian Aid Looks More Like US Invasion
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
January 20, 2010 – If everything the United States does appears to be related to its imperial mission, that’s because it’s true. The “U.S. policy of putting the military in charge of, not only disaster relief, but foreign assistance in general, is an outgrowth of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The attitude is, “If they want American aid, they’ll have to accept the U.S. military presence.”…

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Haiti, Katrina, and Why I Won’t Give To Haiti Through the Red Cross
by Bruce A. Dixon
January 20, 2010 – At Katrina, the Red Cross used funds generously donated by millions of Americans to implement what many knew at the time was, and what has turned out to be the dispersal of much of black New Orleans to the four corners of the continental US. If the Red Cross didn’t respect the persons, the families, the communities of black US citizens, do we really imagine it will respect Haitians…

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And on the Eighth Day…
By William Bowles
January 20, 2010 – The Americans have landed, or as they used to say of the GIs in the UK during WWII, ‘they’re overfed, over sexed and over here’. So now, in spite of protestations that air-dropping supplies would cause a riot, on the eighth day of this catastrophe (one that the BBC still continues to call a “humanitarian catastrophe”) the US has decided to act…It’s clear from day one that Western concerns have been almost fanatically and single-mindedly occupied with ‘security’. This means getting bodies on the ground (not up in the air looking for a field), and now they’ve got that, the Marines have landed and not for the first time. It’s ludicrous to suggest that the US military don’t know their way around as the USA Today suggests…

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With Foreign Aid Still at a Trickle, Devastated Port-au-Prince General Hospital Struggles to Meet Overwhelming Need
Democracy Now!
January 20, 2010 – One week after Haiti suffered the worst earthquake in over 200 years, a strong aftershock hit this morning. Initial reports said the latest quake measured 6.1 on the Richter scale—one of the strongest aftershocks since the 7.0-magnitude quake crippled this country eight days ago. While tens of thousands of the wounded await medical help, the survivors are still burying the dead. The death toll is now estimated at a staggering 200,000. Some three million Haitians—a third of the country’s population—have been directly affected by the earthquake, with one-and-a-half million now homeless. Amy Goodman files a report from the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince…

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Reporters Without Borders: Iranian regime accused of crimes against humanity
Reporters Without Borders
January 20, 2010 – Condemning the continuing arbitrary arrests and illegal detention of journalists, many of whom are being held incommunicado for long periods, Reporters Without Borders today accused the Iranian regime of “crimes against humanity” and urged the international community to speak out. “The systematic suppression of all criticism of the regime’s political and religious institutions is creating a climate of terror that forces journalists to censor themselves or flee the country,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Following arrest, journalists are held in secret locations in extremely harsh conditions and with long periods of solitary confinement, in flagrant violation of their most fundamental rights.”…

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AIDA: Gaza blockade places Palestinians’ health at risk
Ma’an News
January 20, 2010 – The UN Humanitarian Coordinator and Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) on Wednesday highlighted the impact of the blockade of Gaza on the health of its population and its health services and called for an immediate opening of Gaza’s crossings. Max Gaylard, the Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories said during a news conference in Gaza City “The continuing closure of the Gaza Strip is undermining the functioning of the health care system and putting at risk the health of 1.4 million people in Gaza.”…

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Video: Gaza- Channel 10
shovrim
January 20, 2010 – Channel 10 discusses the Breaking the Silence testimonies from “Operation Cast Lead”

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The Zionization of Disaster Relief
Richard Silverstein
January 20, 2010 – Didn’t know there was anything particularly Zionist about providing disaster relief? You learn something new every day. This is a story of exploiting the suffering of poor, defenseless Haitians on behalf of Israeli triumphalism. Sol Salbe translated an eye-opening column from Yediot by an Israeli doctor who was an integral member of all Israeli international disaster response teams until recently. Then he made the mistake of writing a mildly critical statement about Israeli disaster relief efforts. As a result, he was relieved of his obligation for further IDF service and further participation in the disaster relief program. The op ed is so revealing (and not yet available online in English) I’m going to quote large sections. An explanatory note–at Israel’s Haiti field hospital, they delivered what the Israeli PR flacks called “the first baby since the earthquake.” The medical staff urged the woman to name her baby “Israel” and she was only to eager to oblige…

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Harsher Gaza War Looming on Horizon?
Analysis by Mel Frykberg
January 20, 2010 – According to several prominent Palestinians and Israelis another major Israeli military assault on Gaza, even harsher than last year’s Operation Cast Lead, is imminent. But will this change anything and have the underlying causes behind the previous bloody war been addressed? During the last week the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out a series of raids and air strikes across the Gaza Strip which have left five Palestinians dead, three of them confirmed Islamic Jihad operatives, and a number wounded…

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Video: One week on from the Haiti quake
Aljazeera.English
January 20, 2010 – One week after the earthquake, delivery of food, water and medicine has picked up. US officials, who had previously refused to make airdrops in case they led to fighting for food on the ground, have changed tack due to congestion at airports hampering food deliveries. The number of the dead is still unknown. Haitian officials estimate between 100,000 – 200,000 people were killed…

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Palestinian Prisoners Society: “More Sick Detainees In Deteriorating Conditions”
Saed Bannoura
January 20, 2010 – A lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) visited a number of sick detainees imprisoned by Israel at a number of detention facilities, and stated that there is an increasing number of detainees who need medical attention but are deprived from this internationally guaranteed right. The lawyer said that detainee Firas Yousef Qadri, 29, from Salfit, was injured in his eye after a soldier struck him while kidnapping him on February, 13, 2003. He was sentenced to 17 years, and had one surgery at Al Maskobiyya prison, yet he lost vision in his eye as he was never sent a specialist. Qadri said that after his arrest, he started suffering from abdominal pain, and was diagnosed as having infection in his pancreas. He never received treatment for his pancreas infection…

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Israel expels detained Ma’an journalist
Ma’an News
January 20, 2010 – For the first time in a week, American journalist Jared Malsin was allowed to use his mobile phone on Wednesday morning to inform Ma’an that he was being placed onto an El Al flight bound for New York. He sounded shaken and confused. He said he did not know why he was not being flown to Prague, where he was expected to be sent, saying only that flying there “would create problems.” He said he was in an armored vehicle en route to the airport gate…

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An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending
by Carl Conetta
January 20, 2010 – PDA Briefing Report #20. Analyzes the unprecedented post-1998 rise in defense spending and the return to Cold War budget levels. The causes include overly ambitious US military strategy and goals; weakness of reform and transformation efforts; failure to make hard choices in acquisition; and conduct of wars ill-suited to the US military. Also examined: the surge in military construction and the expanded role of private contractors.

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IOA demolishes Jerusalemite home without prior notice
Palestinian Information Center
January 20, 2010 — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) razed on Tuesday the home of Hasan Ka’abne in the southern area of Juba’a village to the northwest of occupied Jerusalem without prior notice. Ka’abne said that the IOF soldiers came unexpectedly and ordered all his family members out of the house in order to knock it down. He affirmed, however, that he did not receive any previous demolition order to his home that was built in 1978…

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Military Resistance 8A10: Reality – 16 January 2010
Thomas F. Barton
Haiti: The Reality Behind The Bullshit: The Media Say “The Government Was Completely Unprepared To Deal With The Crisis”. “But They Left Out Why”. “The U.S. Government And Other Powers Have Aided The Haitian Elite In Subjecting The Country To Neoliberal Economic Plans That Have Impoverished The Masses, Deforested The Land, Wrecked The Infrastructure And Incapacitated The Government”.

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