Nato chief seeks Taliban peace deal
The Press Association.
January 25, 2010 – Nato’s top commander in Afghanistan has raised the prospect of a negotiated peace with the Taliban. Ahead of a major London conference on the future of the country, US general Stanley McChrystal said there had been “enough fighting” and that he wanted to see a political solution to the long-running conflict. His comments came as another British soldier from 3rd Battalion The Rifles died in Helmand province – the 251st British military death since the Afghan campaign started in 2001…

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Delaying aid for a photo-op
Jesse Hagopian
Janaury 25, 2010 – EVERYTHING YOU need to know about the U.S. aid effort to assist Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake can be summed up by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s touchdown in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, January 16: they shut down the airport for three hours surrounding her arrival for “security” reasons, which meant that no aid flights could come in during those critical hours. If there was one day when the Haitian people needed aid to flow all day long, that was the day, because the people trapped under the rubble on Tuesday evening couldn’t survive much beyond Saturday without water…

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Israel’s PR exploitation of Haiti aid
Sarah Irving
January 25, 2010 -Despite logistical problems, the 12 January earthquake in Haiti has seen much of the “international community” pull together to provide food, doctors and other emergency aid for the already poverty-stricken country. But the disaster has also provided apologists for the State of Israel’s human rights abuses an opportunity to try and grab high moral ground. It was a chance remark by anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Ivor Dembina that first alerted me to this. “There’s this whole email campaign going out, saying, ‘Look at what Israel is doing, this is what we mean by a disproportionate response,’” he commented while I was interviewing him on 22 January for an Electronic Intifada article…

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The humanitarian myth
Richard Seymour
January 25, 2010 – WITHIN DAYS of Haiti suffering an earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the U.S. government had sent thousands of 82nd Airborne troops and Marines, alongside the super-carrier USS Carl Vinson. By this Sunday, a total of more than 20,000 U.S. troops were scheduled to be operating in Haiti, both on land and in the surrounding seas. “We are there for the long term,” explained Alejandro Wolff, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The justification for sending troops is that there is a “security” crisis, which soldiers have to deal with in order to facilitate the distribution of aid…

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New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief’s conflict of interest
Report, The Electronic Intifada,
January 25, 2010 – The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army. Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest. Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in an email to The Electronic Intifada this morning: “Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”…

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A legal setback for Mumia
Marlene Martin of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty explains the latest travesty of justice in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Marlene Martin
January 25, 2010 – MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, who has been fighting for freedom from his Pennsylvania death row cell for the past 28 years, was dealt a legal setback in a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 19. A federal judge had ordered a new sentencing hearing for Mumia on the grounds that the trial judge, Albert Sabo—who was heard to say during the original trial “I’m gonna’ help ‘em fry the nigger”—gave improper jury instructions about deciding on a death sentence. Prosecutors appealed this order, as well as a federal appeals court decision upholding the ruling. Last week, the Supreme Court justices overturned the ruling for a new sentencing hearing and sent the case back to a lower court for “further consideration.”…

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War on Goldstone now deploys human-rights orgs and, you guessed it, the Holocaust
Philip Weiss
January 25, 2010 – The war that was launched this past weekend against the Goldstone report in the New York Times is aimed at the mildmannered Sec’y General of the United Nations. So Norman Finkelstein tells me, and this Haaretz piece confirms. On February 5, Ban Ki-moon will report to the General Assembly on the progress of the report (which was published last summer by the UN Human Rights Council). Before then Ban will have gotten the Israeli gov’t’s response to the Goldstone report–its effort to nullify the findings–and Haaretz says the goal is to get Ban to say, I accept the Israeli response to the charges, let the Israelis investigate the Gaza slaughter…

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Obeid: Gaza electricity station to come to a complete halt by Thursday
Palestinian Information Center
January 25, 2010 — The sole electricity generation station in Gaza Strip is to stop functioning by Thursday because the European Union (EU) stopped financing fuel shipments to the Strip, Kenan Obeid, the deputy chairman of the Palestinian energy authority, said. He appealed to the Arab countries, in a statement to the PIC, and all free people of the world to immediately act to save the Strip. Obeid said that half of the stations’ capacity was stopped on Monday because the Israelis stopped supplying the Strip with necessary fuel to operate the station…

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Powers to back truce with Taliban commanders: US envoy
AFP
January 25, 2010 — World powers meeting in London this week will back plans for a truce with local Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, provided the fighters renounce Al-Qaeda, US envoy Richard Holbrooke said Monday. The special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said 65 nations meeting in London on Thursday would back Kabul’s proposal to set up a reintegration fund to persuade Taliban fighters to lay down arms…

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Flight 253 Cover-Up: “No Smoking Gun” Claims Undercut by New Disclosures
Tom Burghardt
January 24, 2010 – Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged. Along with new reports, evidence suggests that the administration’s cover-up of the affair has very little to do with a failure by the intelligence apparatus to “connect the dots” and may have far more serious political implications for the Obama administration, and what little remains of a functioning democracy in the United States, than a botched bombing…

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Securing Disaster in Haiti
By Peter Hallward
January 24, 2010 – Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it’s now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island’s recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti’s own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor. All three tendencies aren’t just connected, they are mutually reinforcing. These same tendencies will continue to govern the imminent reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political action is taken to counteract them…

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At least 36 killed as three blasts target Baghdad hotels
by Salam Faraj
January 25, 2010 – At least 36 people were killed and 71 wounded in three massive apparently co-ordinated minibus-borne bombings that targeted hotels in Baghdad on Monday less than six weeks from a general election. Iraqi politicians and US forces have warned of rising violence ahead of the March 7 vote, the second parliamentary ballot since the 2003 US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein but ushered in a deadly and long-lasting insurgency…

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Mughraqa Disaster part of Israeli “war crimes” and will be documented
Middle East Monitor
January 25, 2010 – Dr. Ahmed Bahr, the Palestinian Legislative Council’s Deputy Chairman has stressed that the criminal occupation which contributed to the flooding of the Mughraqa area will not go unnoticed adding that the disaster will be documented as a war crime to be presented to the war crimes tribunals. On Monday January 18th, Mughraqa village which lays at the centre of the Gaza Strip experienced massive floods after forces of the Israeli occupation opened one of the dams of Wadi Gaza. This resulted in the deluge of dozens of homes and the displacement of hundreds of residents. Bahr stressed his great concern for what was happening in the centre of the Strip, holding the occupation’s government fully responsible for the safety of Gazans and the negative consequences they are suffering from…

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Haiti: Rescue effort ended as people still emerge from rubble
By Bill Van Auken
January 25, 2010 – The Haitian government together with United Nations authorities announced over the weekend the official end to efforts to rescue people trapped in the rubble from the January 12 earthquake, even as survivors were still being pulled out alive. The latest rescue by a French team came Saturday, when 24-year-old Wismond Jean-Pierre was rescued, apparently unharmed, from the ruins of the Hotel Napoli Inn in Port-au-Prince. Two other people, including an 84-year-old woman, were found Friday after being buried alive for 10 days…

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The Face of Evil…
Layla Anwar
January 25, 2010 – … This is something I can’t remain indifferent to, this is something I must denounce, and this is something you must actively fight as well. The Face of Evil is what you need to fight. The Face of Evil and his nick name is VIOLENCE against WOMEN. It must be stopped by any means. ANY MEANS. I have said it before and will repeat it again, Violence against women kills more women than wars, disease and accidents combined… From rape, to torture, to abuse, to battering, to harassment, to acid burning, to trafficking, to honor killings to whatever… IT MUST BE STOPPED. There is one remarkable woman, by the name of Musarat Musbah, a Pakistani woman who alone is helping women victims, victims because touched by the Face of Evil. Her foundation is called Smile Again. All my respects and support to you dear Lady…

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Israel Creates First ‘Army-owned’ University
By Jonathan Cook – Nazareth
January 25, 2010 – Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, approved last week the upgrading to university status of a college in a settlement located deep inside the West Bank, a move certain to further undermine Palestinian confidence in the peace process. The decision, authorising the first Israeli university in Palestinian territory, is expected to entitle the college to significant extra funding, allowing it to expand its student population. About 11,000 students, most from inside Israel, already attend the college in Ariel, studying amid a population of 18,000 settlers…

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Flight 253 Cover-Up: “No Smoking Gun” Claims Undercut by New Disclosures
Tom Burghardt
January 24, 2010 – Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged. Along with new reports, evidence suggests that the administration’s cover-up of the affair has very little to do with a failure by the intelligence apparatus to “connect the dots” and may have far more serious political implications for the Obama administration, and what little remains of a functioning democracy in the United States, than a botched bombing…

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IOA assaults WB workers, endorses tough punishment against those helping them
Palestinian Information Center
January 25, 2010 – Israeli occupation authority’s (IOA) border policemen captured nine Palestinian workers east of occupied Jerusalem on Sunday and beat them up for trying to enter the holy city for work without having permits. Relatives of the workmen said that the border guards used riffle butts and batons to attack the workers who suffered fractures all over their bodies. Hussein Salah, the father of one of those laborers, said that his son Rani, 26, was severely battered and that his teeth were broken and could not walk…

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There is no help. We need food and water. Urgently
Tom Phillips & Andrew Purcell
January 24, 2010 – In front of the presidential palace, its roof folded in like a collapsed soufflé, Marcellus Samuel, a Haitian preacher, grabs my notebook and scribbles frantically on to the page. “There is no help. Everybody is sleeping in the streets. We need food, water and clothes,” he writes. “URGENTLY!” Around him, hundreds of Haitians left homeless by the recent earthquake crowd into a rag-tag refugee camp cobbled together from black tarpaulins, filthy carpets and branches, and erected in the square in front of the palace’s wreckage…

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Hezbollah’s New Political Platform
By Fawwaz Traboulsi
January 24, 2010 – The following article by Fawwaz Traboulsi appeared in the Beirut daily as-Safir of December 2, 2009. Traboulsi’s article is an assessment and left critique of the main themes in Hezbollah’s new political platform. The platform was released on November 30 at the conclusion of a general congress that had met intermittently over several months. It was published partially or entirely in several Arabic-language media outlets, inside and outside Lebanon, in early December 2009. The platform now becomes Hezbollah’s political manifesto in place of its founding document, its so-called 1985 Open Letter…

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Auden—The Shield of Achilles
By Scott Horton
January 24, 2010 – …A society that tortures and kills those placed entirely in its power and passes this fact by as a matter of indifference truly is plunging into the dark side of the world which these two poets describe–one at the dawn of man’s recorded history, the other in the crucible of modernity. On the day of these deaths in 2006, the American commander in Guantánamo violated the Homeric rules of decorum by taunting the dead and afflicting their families. The deceased prisoners “have no regard for human life,” he said. But in the end we must ask to whom those words more appropriately attach–the prisoners or those who have orchestrated the tragedy at Guantánamo? Another saying of the Achaean epoch applies to this tragedy. Long associated with the story of the Minotaur on Crete, it was recalled near the end of the nineteenth century by a philosophy professor at the University of Basel who waded deeply into the history of the era. “He who does battle with monsters,” he wrote, “needs to watch out lest he in the process become a monster himself.”…

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