See Rome: Innocents Die as Imperial Pot Boils
Chris Floyd
January 23, 2010 – …This week there was yet another killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the ever-surging NATO-led forces, including two boys, aged 11 and 15… This is the reality when we should keep in mind as we wade through the endlessly chewed cud of petty partisan in-fighting among the court factions of our militarist empire. Every day, every night, someone’s blood is being offered up on the imperial altars. That’s what empire is. That’s what empire does.

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Tawil: “Israeli Compensation To UN, Scandal, Helps Israel Hide Its Crimes”
Saed Bannoura
January 23, 2010 – Palestinian Legislator, Husam Tawil, stated that the United Nations’ stance in accepting the 10 Million USD from Israel as a compensation for bombarding its facilities during the war is a scandal that saves Israel from being held responsible for its crimes against the Palestinian people. Tawil stated that the bilateral talks between Israel and the UN and this arranged compensation would grant Israel a chance to close the file of its crimes against the civilians in Gaza, and its attacks against the UN itself. The legislator further stated that Israel repeatedly targeted international organizations and always managed to escape unpunished for its crimes…

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Taliban again spurn Karzai offer to lay down arms
The News International
January 23, 2010 – Taliban again spurned Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s offer to lay down weapons and resume normal life in lieu of money and jobs. “The government would not be able to divide and weaken the Taliban by using money,” Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yousuf Ahmadi told Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) by phone from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. He said the first thing Karzai and occupation forces should understand was that the Taliban were united. “They are neither rigid nor moderate but fighting to gain the willingness of Allah Almighty and independence of their country. They are fighting against foreign invaders,” Yousuf Ahmadi said. The government would fail to buy the fighters and create strife among them, he said…

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Video: Inside Iraq – Iraq’s election dilemma
Aljazeera.English
January 23, 2010 – Inside Iraq asks what the ramifications will be of the decision to ban some candidates from participating in the upcoming election.

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An Open Letter to Sir John Chilcot
Various undersigned
You stated the Iraq Inquiry would not apportion blame, but if it produces evidence that this country’s invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal, then the public deserves that the matter not be allowed to rest there. As it is, the Inquiry’s Legal Advisor Sarah Goom has confirmed that if the Inquiry receives any ‘new evidence that criminal offences have been committed’, it would be obliged to refer that evidence to the appropriate investigating authority. You also said the Inquiry is not ‘here to provide public sport or entertainment.’ Justified public outrage is neither, and must be fully and appropriately addressed…

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Horror of Nigeria clashes uncovered
Aljazeera.net
January 23, 2010 – Nearly 400 people have died in violence between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria. Reports on Saturday said that about 150 bodies had been recovered from wells in Kuru Jantar, near the city of Jos, where clashes began last week before spreading to nearby villages. Locals in Kuru Jantar, also known as Kuru Karama, told Andrew Simmons, Al Jazeera’s Africa editor, that a massacre had taken place in the village. They said armed men had surrounded and attacked the village on Tuesday. Al Jazeera saw the bodies recovered from wells, as well as the burnt bodies of children recovered from ransacked houses…

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Settlers Attack Nablus Village, Two Youth Wounded By Soldiers
Saed Bannoura
January 23, 2010 – Palestinian medical sources reported on Saturday evening that two Palestinian youths were wounded by Israeli military fire as the soldiers opened fire at local residents who were defending themselves after being attacked by fundamental settlers near Nablus. The settlers attacked local villagers of Iraq-Burin village, south of Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank…

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Afghan resistance statement
What the Colonialists Do to Occupied Nations
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
January 23, 2010 – The imperialist and colonialist powers, as their official policy, kill scientist, professionals and eminent literary and social figures of the Islamic Ummah. The same is true of Afghanistan where the notorious Blackwater is given free hand to carry out this wicked task under the supervision of Joint Special Operations—a Pentagon undercover army which was previously under the command of Mc Crystal, the current top American commander in Afghanistan. The aim is to pave the way for uneducated, ignorant and unaware stooges to remain at the helms of power thanks to multi-faceted support of imperialism. Then the Western powers bind their surrogates by various agreements at the expense of national, cultural and religious values and vital interests of the nation. They take hold of all strategic assets of a country including telecommunication, dams, transportation, mines etc. After that, colonialism tends to plunder the wealth and natural resources with both hands…

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Iraq – That Old Hag from Mesopotamia.
Layla Anwar
January 23, 2010 – …Iraq is very ill, a patient on a death bed – shoot the morphine, intravenous needles stuck up her arteries and plastic tubes dangling from an empty bag filled with words… Iraq is ill…very ill…her temperature rising, feverishly hot and sometimes hypothermic like some anonymous cadaver tucked in an icy morgue…waiting for a final burial. Doctors surround her death bed — quacks and charlatans, whose names are listed in secret files in America, Iran, England, Israel… Strange names, who are these people ? She used to call them “Huthala”, scum in Arabic, below scum…and today they are treating her…on a hospital bed, the murderer is a doctor, and the nurse its torturer…

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As US prepares long-term occupation, Haiti’s quake victims still without aid
By Bill Van Auken
January 23, 2010 – With the US military “surge” into Haiti expected to include some 20,000 troops on land and on ships parked offshore by this weekend, a US official indicated that Washington is preparing for a protracted occupation of the impoverished and earthquake-devastated Caribbean nation. “We are there for the long term, this is not something that will be resolved quickly and easily,” said Ambassador Alejandro Wolff, the US deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, on Haiti following a meeting on aid to the battered country…

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Human traffickers find easy prey amid the rubble of Haiti
Island of Lost Children
by Nicolette Grams
January 23, 2010 – In Haiti’s unstable post-quake atmosphere, at least one industry is poised to flourish. For those who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labor, Haiti is ripe with opportunity. When the earthquake struck the impoverished island country last Tuesday afternoon, human traffickers suddenly gained access to a new population of displaced children. With parents dead, government offices demolished, and international aid organizations struggling to meet life-or-death demands, these kidnappers are in a unique position to snatch children with very little interference. In today’s world, the twin causes of human slavery—poverty and vulnerability—increase exponentially after natural disasters…

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US to hold 50 Guantanamo prisoners indefinitely
By Barry Grey
January 23, 2010 – The US Justice Department has determined that nearly 50 of the remaining 196 detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are to be held indefinitely, without charges or trial, according to a front-page article published Friday by the Washington Post. The Post reports that the decision is the result of a case-by-case review of the remaining Guantanamo prisoners by a Justice Department-led task force set up by President Obama last year. The detainees have been held under barbaric conditions and subjected to torture, most of them languishing in the prison camp for eight years. The Post report cites unnamed administration officials, who spoke of the task force’s conclusions in advance of the public release of its report. News of the decision came on the one-year anniversary of Obama’s signing of an executive order to close the infamous prison at Guantanamo. That pledge was announced with great fanfare on the second full day of the new administration as evidence that Obama would reverse the Bush administration’s legacy of criminality and contempt for democratic rights. It has not been carried out…

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Afghans protest NATO raid for second day
?slâmi Davet
January 23, 2010 – Afghans, for the second consecutive day, staged an anti-NATO rally to protest the killing of civilians by foreign troops in the country. The protesters in the district of Qarabagh in Ghazni Province on Friday vented their anger against what they said was the killing of four innocent civilians, including two children, in Qarabagh on Wednesday and also against the threatening behavior of NATO-led forces. One protester, Mullah Shoaib, claimed that the Afghan homes are searched by the troops and that the civilians are threatened with dogs. “These people, these foreigners who attacked this house, showed how wild and cruel they are,” said Hashim Nasiri, another protester…

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Maariv: ‘The painful truth: Haiti’s disaster is good for the Jews’
By Paul Woodward, War in Context
January 23, 2010 – If I came up with a headline claiming the devastation in Haiti is “good for the Jews”, I could reasonably be accused of being anti-Semitic. But it’s not my headline. It comes from this report on a site run by Israel’s popular Hebrew daily, Maariv. Every disaster needs a hero, the report says, and the heroes in Haiti are the Israelis. The message that Israel is saving Haiti was likewise captured in an editorial cartoon in Yediot Aharonot which shows American soldiers digging for earthquake survivors. A voice from beneath the rubble calls out, “Would you mind checking to see if the Israelis are available?” Bnei Akiva, the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, in partnership with Latet, an Israeli humanitarian aid organization, launched a Haiti appeal saying: “We are not only helping Haitians with their tragedy, but uniting the Jewish world and demonstrating the Jewish values of the State of Israel…

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Gazan patients dying waiting for travel permits
Karl Schembri
Saturday, January 23, 2010 – Fidaa Talal Hijjy, 18, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 2007. At first she was treated at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, but with her health deteriorating, doctors told her she needed a bone marrow transplant – a procedure which is not available in the Gaza Strip. Referred to Tel HaShomer Hospital in Israel on 20 August last year, Fidaa obtained an appointment for 23 September for a life-saving transplant, but the Israeli authorities did not respond to her application to cross into Israel, resulting in her missing the appointment. As her health deteriorated further, she was given a new appointment for 20 October and submitted a new application to Israeli authorities be able to enter Israel, but yet again the Israeli authorities did not respond. Her last appointment was set on 9 November, but Israelis only responded three days later. By then Fidaa had died…

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Iraq’s crippled infrastructure fails to help struggling war amputees
Reuters
January 23, 2010 – …Iraq’s health ministry said it has no specific figures but it estimates the number of physically and mentally disabled people at between 2 million and 3 million. US-based Mercy Corps considers 2 million conservative…The government says it cannot cope. The health ministry has just 21 rehabilitation centres and 12 prosthetics workshops and cannot open more because it lacks doctors and technicians. Only a quarter of amputees who need artificial limbs get them because the raw materials are not available, it said. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs gives disabled people about 50,000 Iraqi dinar (Dh146) a month…

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The environmental impact of Israeli military activities in the occupied Palestinian territory
by Maysaa Jarour
January 23, 2010 – An often-overlooked factor in the field of sustainable development and resource management is the impact of the military on the environment and unfortunately this is no exception in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Whilst there have been many studies and reports on the economic, social and political repercussions of the continued Israeli occupation, there has been scant attention paid to the detrimental effects on the environment from Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) activities and the military infrastructure which supports them. This is in no small part because of the lack of information provided by the Israeli authorities and the high level of secrecy surrounding the IOF. For example, whilst conducting research for this paper it was not possible to view any images of the military bases in the oPt post 2004 because all sources have been doctored to erase any evidence of their presence…

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Biden backs election ban on Iraq’s Baath party
AlArabiya
January 23, 2010 – Vice President Joe Biden told Iraqi officials on Saturday the United States backed a ban on Saddam Hussein’s Baath party and said he had faith Iraq would resolve a row over the banning of election candidates suspected of links to it. U.S. officials say the arbitrary way the list banned candidates appears to have been drawn up and the questionable legitimacy of the panel could undermine the election. But Biden, on his third visit to Iraq since U.S. troops pulled out of city centers in June, said Washington had no problem with holding Baath party loyalists accountable. “I want to make clear I am not here to resolve that issue (of the banned candidates). This is for Iraqis, not for me. I am confident that Iraq’s leaders are seized with this issue and are working for a final, just solution,” Biden said…

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Israelis protest over ‘fascist’ Jerusalem settlements
Demonstrations against evictions of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers
By Donald Macintyre
January 23, 2010 – At least 15 protesters were arrested yesterday as several hundred left-wing Israelis held their biggest demonstration yet against demolitions and evictions of east Jerusalem Palestinians designed to make way for Jewish settlers. Police moved in to force back the noisy but largely peaceful protest in Sheikh Jarrah, the inner-city district that has rapidly become the main flashpoint of the struggle to prevent further government and local authority-approved inroads by settler groups in the city…

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German sources: Israel-Hamas prisoner swap deal about to collapse
Saed Bannoura
January 23, 2010 – According to the German paper Der Spiegel, a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the elected government of the Palestinian people (represented by the Hamas party) was about to collapse due to the Israeli refusal to sign onto the agreement that they had negotiated. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had been scheduled to sign the agreement at Christmas, but refused – even though the terms of the agreement had been negotiated for months and he had said that they were acceptable to him…

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2 US service members killed by roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan
By Rahim Faiez (CP)
January 23, 2010 — A roadside bomb killed two U.S. service members in southern Afghanistan on Saturday as the country’s top NATO commander acknowledged an increased risk to foreign troops will accompany an influx of reinforcements aimed at routing the Taliban. The deaths brought to at least 22 the number of American service members killed so far this month – compared with only 14 for the whole of January last year. A mild winter has brought no respite to the fighting, which traditionally drops off during the cold months…

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Israel: Ariel College student says taken off bus for speaking Arabic
Yaheli Moran Zelikovich
January 23, 2010 – An Arab-Israel student at the Ariel College in the West Bank claimed she was told to get off a bus because she “dared” to speak Arabic on her cell phone. Hanin Muslah said that during Thursday’s incident she was also subjected to a full body search. Muslah, who is originally from the Wadi Ara area and is studying for a degree in engineering at the establishment’s architecture and interior design department, said two armed security guards boarded the bus near a checkpoint as it was leaving Ariel. She claimed that the guards questioned her after hearing her speak Arabic and eventually ordered her to get off the bus…

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Call for halt to Haiti adoptions over traffickers
Martin Fletcher in Port-au-Prince
January 23, 2010 – Thousands of children unaccounted for since Haiti’s earthquake are at risk of falling prey to child traffickers, aid agencies have wearned, as fears were raised over at least 15 children who have vanished from hospitals within the past few days. Unicef, the UN children’s agency, warned that “traffickers fish in pools of vulnerability. We know from past experience that trafficking happens in the chaos that usually follows emergencies.” A Unicef adviser, Jean Luc Legrand, said he knew of at least 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals…

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U.S. forces put off release of Kirkuk detainees
Aswat al-Iraq
January 23, 2010 – U.S. forces have postponed the release of several detainees from Kirkuk residents until after the upcoming parliamentary election despite a lack of evidence against them, a member of Kirkuk’s provincial council said on Saturday. “The U.S. forces have informed the council that they will postpone the release of 14 detainees from their jails until March 14, 2010,” Ramla Hameed al-Obeidi, who belongs to the council’s Arab List, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency…

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Israeli government supports continued prosecution of filmmaker Mohammed Bakri
By Danny Richardson
January 23, 2010 – Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz has announced that the government will support the efforts of five reservist soldiers to appeal the decision of a lower court that rejected their claim for libel against Mohammed Bakri for his film Jenin, Jenin, released in 2002. If successful, Bakri, a widely acclaimed Arab Israeli filmmaker and actor, will face severe fines. Jenin, Jenin deals with the incursion by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in April 2002 into the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank. The Israeli Army launched the assault, codenamed Operation Defensive Shield, with the declared aim of “cleansing known areas that harboured terrorists.” The area surrounding Jenin was subject to a tight lockdown, and a curfew was imposed. No media, medical or human rights personnel were allowed anywhere near the town. After journalists and human rights groups entered the camp and spoke to survivors, they accused Israeli troops of war crimes…

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Abu Sha’ar: Over 55 thousand Jerusalemites deprived of basic services
Palestinian Information Center
January 23, 2010 — Dr. Taleb Abu Sha’ar, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs, said Saturday that more than 55,000 Jerusalemite citizens living in the neighborhoods of the eastern part of the occupied city of Jerusalem are isolated and deprived of basic human services as a result of the Israeli segregation wall. In a press statement, Dr. Abu Sha’ar added that this policy of isolation pursued by Israel is aimed to force those citizens to willingly leave their homes and lands…

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Israeli forces attack Beit Safafa family, Italian consular employee
Ma’an News
January 23, 2010 – Four members of the E’lieyan family were transferred to hospital and several others suffered tear-gas inhalation and bruising when an Israeli border guard chased down a teen from the family outside his Beit Safafa home, witnesses said. The youth, 14, was said to have been attacked unprovoked, and when his father rushed outside the home to prevent the assault, he said he was “surprised to see dozens of Israeli police gathered near the home.” Among those beaten in the scuffle that ensued were a woman, 60, and Khalid Daoud E’lieyan, 40, an employee of the Italian Consulate in Jerusalem…

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Israeli forces detain three journalists across the West Bank
Ma’an News
January 23, 2010 – Israeli forces detained three journalists in separate incidents across the West Bank, as they complied news reports near settlements on Saturday. Al-Quds TV representatives said that a journalist and a cameraman were detained near the illegal settlement of Ariel, south of Nablus. Correspondent for Al-Quds TV Mus’ab Al-Khatib, 25, and Ahmad Al-Kilani, 23, who works for Pal Media, were arrested whilst preparing a news report about a university near the settlement that was recognized recently by Israeli authorities…

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