Torture Never Stopped Under Obama
by Shamus Cooke
January 26, 2010 – What is Torture? It can be physical or physchological, quick or unhurried. It implies lasting trauma unbefitting a human. The U.N. defines torture as: “ …any act by which severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession…” (U.N. Convention Against Torture). By this definition the U.S. continues to practice torture…

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“I was supposed to be born in a villa by the sea”
Marryam Haleem writing from the occupied Gaza Strip
January 26, 2010 – Her name meant “lively.” And from the way her grandson spoke about her, she was in nature as in name. Aisha, full of life. She lived in a beautiful villa on the sea. She was friendly, passionate and generous, like most Palestinians. And proud of her hometown, like most Jaffans. When Jewish refugees rolled in from war-torn Europe in the 1940s, Palestinians took them into their homes. Aisha took in a teenaged girl, gave her a room, and made her part of their family. In 1948, when Jewish terrorist gangs attacked Jaffa and started to round up the people, killing and throwing them out of their homes, Aisha refused to leave her beloved home. But the Jewish girl who lived with her in her home put a gun to Aisha’s head and forced her out of the house. Aisha screamed, “What are you doing?! I gave you my home! I gave you my family! And this is what you do?!”…

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When Scholars Join the Slaughter
Dahr Jamail
January 26, 2010 – A core tenant of the Obama administration’s plans for “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan is an increased reliance on counterinsurgency. As previously reported on this web site, the US military has sent shock troops – anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists – with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, who also donned helmets and flak jackets. By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four or five person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 US combat brigades that were busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan…

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Bagram: The Annotated Prisoner List (A Cooperative Project)
Andy Worthington
January 26, 2010 – On Friday January 15, 2010, the Pentagon responded to a FOIA request submitted by the ACLU last April, and released (PDF) the first ever list of 645 prisoners held, as of September 22, 2009, in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan (the Bagram Theater Internment Facility), which has been in operation for eight years. In the hope of making the list more readily accessible — and searchable — than it is through a poorly photocopied Pentagon document, I reproduce it as a separate web page here, with commentary on some the prisoners I have been able to identify. This is very much a work-in-progress..

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Only an idiot would say Israel has frozen settlement activity
By Akiva Eldar
January 26, 2010 – Monday morning, as George Mitchell was on the way home from another diplomatic mission short on breakthroughs, Saeb Erekat did not sound dismayed. On the contrary, the head of the Palestinian negotiation team vehemently argued that the American envoy’s last visit actually moved up the moment of truth for the White House. The veteran adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorite move of throwing the ball into the Palestinians’ court stopped working with the Americans…

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Bombs kill 2 NATO troops in Afghanistan
Associated Press
January 26, 2010 – Bomb strikes killed two NATO soldiers – a Briton and a Norwegian – while a rocket attack at the major international military base in southern Afghanistan wounded eight other international troops, officials said yesterday. Bulgaria’s defense minister was at the base but was not injured. The violence came three days before a London conference on Afghanistan that is expected to focus on a government plan to reintegrate Taliban militants willing to lay down their arms…

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Baghdad slammed with another bombing
The Common Ills
January 26, 2010 – Jenny Booth (Times of London) reports a Baghdad suicide car bombing has targeted the police forensic service. Booth notes many dead and “Around 80 people were injured in today’s attack. Hospitals in the Iraqi capital reported receiving a surge of wounded people and dead bodies.” Yousif Bassil (CNN) counts 18 dead in addition to the eighty wounded. Al Jazeera explains the forensic services were part of the Interior Ministry and adds “Five of the dead and 25 of those injured worked in the interior ministry building…

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Israelis impose “financial punishments” on Palestinian prisoners
Middle East Monitor
January 26, 2010 – Israeli prison staff impose financial punishments on Palestinian prisoners. A human rights organisation has claimed that Israeli prison staff are imposing financial punishments on Palestinian prisoners. In a statement, the Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said that guards and administrators in Israeli prisons force Palestinian detainees to pay for the water and electricity that they consume as a form of additional punishment.

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GAZA WILL NOT GO DOWN
by Flora Nicoletta
January 26, 2010 – The walls of Gaza are the unofficial Gazette of the Strip. On them one can follow what is going on. The walls are covered by scores of posters, pictures of martyrs, murals, slogans, calls, giant portraits of Yasser Arafat by the young artist Mohammad Ed-Derry, announcements… At the end of the year the external wall of the Esh-Shifa hospital – months ago refreshed with coats of paint color rusty – was covered with more than twenty paintings depicting the Israeli war and the suffering of the people. In Mustafa Hafez St, a superb mosaic was composed on the wall of the UNRWA HQ, near the main entrance. The mosaic is around 5 m. long and 4 m. large. It represents a group of Palestinians looking toward the sky. At the bottom is written “Gaza Freedom March 31.12.2009"…

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“Reconstructing Haiti” on starvation wages
Bill Van Auken
January 26, 2010 – Government ministers, international bankers and aid agencies gathered in Montreal Monday to discuss plans for reconstructing earthquake-ravaged Haiti. At the heart of their proposals is the exploitation of Haitian workers at poverty wages. The conference offered nothing concrete in terms of new assistance, instead scheduling a donors meeting at the United Nations in March. Much of the rhetoric coming out of the gathering seemed to bear little relationship to the situation on the ground in Haiti, where 150,000 people have been confirmed dead, hundreds of thousands more are wounded and over 1.5 million are homeless…

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Israeli Settlers Invade at-Tuwani Village, Enter Palestinian Homes, and Throw Stones at Palestinians; Israeli Military Attacks Palestinian and Throw Tear Gas
Christian Peacemaker Teams
January 26, 2010 – On Tuesday, 26 January 2010 approximately fifteen Israeli settlers from the Israeli settlement of Ma’on and the Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on attacked Palestinians in the village of at-Tuwani. The settlers were accompanied by Israeli soldiers in three army jeeps and the settlement security agent of Ma’on. Villagers from at-Tuwani arrived, protesting the settlers coming into their village. An Israeli soldier punched a Palestinian villager, who was hospitalized for his injuries. Immediately thereafter, Israeli settlers began throwing stones at the Palestinian villagers while soldiers fired three canisters of tear gas at Palestinians…

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The sanctity of military spending
Glenn Greenwald
January 26, 2010 – Administration officials announced last night that the President, in tomorrow’s State of the Union address, will propose a multi-year freeze on certain domestic discretionary spending programs. This is an “initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit,” officials told The New York Times. But the freeze is more notable for what it excludes than what it includes. For now, it does not include the largest domestic spending programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And all “security-related programs” are also exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to military spending, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid. As always, the notion of decreasing the deficit and national debt through reductions in military spending is one of the most absolute Washington taboos. What possible rationale is there for that?..

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Haiti: Human Trafficking On The Rise After Earthquake
Eve Blossom
January 26, 2010 – Some groups (UNICEF) are now stating that thousands of children in Haiti are being trafficked out of the country. UNICEF has even reported children taken from hospitals. During such chaotic times with many international groups, planes, supplies moving in and out of the airport and borders, there is a greater opportunity for human trafficking. Security in and around Haiti is relaxed to move goods and aid in as fast as possible but that also allows trafficking to occur more easily…

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Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’
Graeme Murray and Chris Watt
January 26, 2010 – One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland. Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor…

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Video: Women struggle in Haiti aftermath
Aljazeera.net
January 26, 2010 – While aid distribution in the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake has improved, many are still fighting to survive and some of the most vulnerable are pregnant women. Haiti already had the worst maternal mortality rate in the Western hemisphere and now, with the country’s hospitals in ruins, pregnant women face even more dangers..

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It’s only human to rage at Israeli crimes
By The Daily Star
January 26, 2010 – The upcoming trip by an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset to Auschwitz is the latest chapter in the saga of seeing accusations of anti-Semitism used to smear the Arab and Muslim world. Mohammad Barakeh of the influential party Hadash will make the trek as part of an Israeli parliamentary delegation, which has predictably angered hardline Zionists who reject the idea of an Arab being allowed to participate in an official ceremony at a place with such symbolic meaning for Jews…

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Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward
George Monbiot
January 26, 2010 – …So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I’ve laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the ?reward, the greater the number of ?people who are likely to try. At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press ?governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No ?civilised country can allow mass ?murderers to move on…

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When Zionists Loved Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Lawrence of Cyberia
January 26, 2010 – Today you can hardly utter the acronym BDS without hearing that the very idea is anti-semitic. But in the February 1921 edition of The Atlantic Magazine, Prof. Albert T. Clay (Assyrologist at the University of Pennsylvania) described how the Zionist incomers to Palestine were imposing their politics on the pre-existing Jewish minority there, which was largely made up of religious, non-Zionist Jews. Ironically, their tactics comprised 1. Boycotting non-Zionist Jewish businesses; 2. Divestment of Zionist funds from non-Zionist Jews; 3. Sanctions such as threatening the removal of non-Zionist Jews from office, the closure of their businesses, denial of essential services to them, and their exclusion from any dealings with other Jews…

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Israeli Terrorism
by Ismail Zayid
January 26, 2010 – … The late professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor, and then chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, wrote: “There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state, which, almost from its inception, has used its intelligence service (the Mossad) to assassinate people on foreign soil with any violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends.” The actions of the state of Israel since its creation, and those of the terrorist gangs (the Stern, Irgun Zwei Leumi and the Haganah) that brought it about, testify to Israel’s long-established record in terrorism, not only in the Middle East but on the international scene. This record is massive and would take volumes to relate but I will refer only to a few examples:

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My family’s ongoing Nakba story
Mohammad Alsaafin writing from Doha, Qatar
January 26, 2010 – One of the most traumatic effects wrought upon Palestinian society by the 1948 Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine, is the physical separation it forced upon Palestinians, between those in the diaspora and the refugees, between those living in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and those who became citizens of Israel. Yet this process is ongoing to this very day, and targets even individual families, like mine. This is our story. My dad was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962, the son of refugees, and left to the United Kingdom along with his wife and first son (myself) in 1990 to pursue his PhD at the University of Bradford. By 2004, I had a brother and two sisters, and our entire family moved back to Palestine, this time to the town of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank…

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U.S. Mulls Legality of Killing American al Qaeda “Turncoat”
By MATTHEW COLE, RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS
January 26, 2010 – White House lawyers are mulling the legality of proposed attempts to kill an American citizen, Anwar al Awlaki, who is believed to be part of the leadership of the al Qaeda group in Yemen behind a series of terror strikes, according to two people briefed by U.S. intelligence officials. One of the people briefed said opportunities to “take out” Awlaki “may have been missed” because of the legal questions surrounding a lethal attack which would specifically target an American citizen. A spokesperson said the White House declined to comment…

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Israeli Information Minister Slams All Reports on Gaza War as Anti-Semitic
UN Report on Last Year’s War Linked to Holocaust
Jason Ditz
January 26, 2010 – Just days before Israel is expected to release its own report on the January 2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Information Minister Yuli Edelstein declared that the UN report on the war, and every other report since the war ended, “are simply a type of anti-Semitism.” The UN’s report, also known as the Goldstone Report, successfully moved through the UN Human Rights Council in October. It faulted both Israel’s government and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip for the massive civilian poll in the war…

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Lebanon, Middle East Reject AIPAC’s H.R. 2278
By Franklin Lamb
January 26, 2010 – …As for the Lebanese, they continue their opposition to H.R. 2278 widely seen as an American-Israeli assault on more than 400 TV channels based in Lebanon, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. A continuing crescendo is rising of regional cries of gross hypocrisy, attacks on freedom of expression, aggression against the 19 black listed countries, and violations of Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights…

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Iraq: The New De-Baathification Board?
Reidar Visser
January 26, 2010 – The big news out of Iraq today is of course the passage of the 2010 budget, but since the final document (including the all-important annexes) has been a little slow to emerge, we might as well have a look at another interesting item in the meanwhile, published this morning by Sumaria TV. Sumaria, which was also the first to publish the names of the 511 banned candidates for the 7 March parliamentary elections, claims to have obtained the revised list of candidates for the de-Baathification board that the government is eager to put in place in order to improve the legal façade of its de-Baathification process. According to the sources, the new names are Kamran Rasul and Bakhtiyar Umar from the Kurdistani list, Haydar Hanun of Daawa, Falah al-Shanshal of the Sadrist list (he has lately been the most outspoken parliamentary supporter of Lami/Chalabi’s de-Baathification policy), Muhammad Salim and Mahdi Salih listed as Iraqi National Alliance (presumably ISCI or close to ISCI since the Sadrists are listed separately), and Abd al-Razzaq Hassan of Tawafuq…

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Agha: Israel created Gaza valley flood to cause environmental disaster
Palestinian Information Center
January 26, 2010 — Palestinian minister of agriculture Dr. Ramadan Agha, said Wednesday that the flooding in Gaza valley was deliberately created by Israel in order to cause an environmental catastrophe and destroy the agricultural life in the areas of the valley, Johr Al-Deek and AL-Maghraqa. During a symposium on Gaza valley flood organized by the ministry, Dr. Agha noted that Israel used to dump chemical waste in the eastern side of the valley and when it opened the floodgates of one of its dams, all this is swept throughout the flooded areas leading to the contamination of soil and water…

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Israeli Occupation Forces prevent Mas-ha villagers from reaching their lands behind the Isolation Wall.
The Land Research Center – LRC
January 26, 2010 – Every New Year’s eve, people renew their wishes of a life full of prosperity and peace. Mas-ha villagers had another idea since they have received the New Year with the resumption of their misery which began with the construction of the Racist Segregation Wall back in 2003. The Wall isolated and destroyed more than 5500 acres (95% of the total area of the village). The village was turned into an isolated and besieged camp after it lost most of its area and its connection with its Palestinian surrounding. In 2010, the Israeli Occupation Army decided to permanently seal gate number 1543 located to the north west of the village…

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The Israeli Bulldozers Ethnically Cleansed Khirbet Tana and Displaced its residents
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem
January 26, 2010 – Khirbet Tana, a small Palestinian community located 6 kilometers to the east of Beit Furik village northeast of Nablus city and west of Mekhora settlement. It is inhabited by 56 Palestinian families with a total population of approximately 350 residents most of whom are actually farmers and herders of animals and who rely on the plenty of springs and water wells for their animals and crops as the area is rich of water resources. Families in Kherbit Tana live in small area houses build from stone or concrete blocks and covered with metal sheets. The Kherbit also has many caves which are used by residents to keep their livestock.

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Yousef: “Occupation Deliberately Tries To Humiliate Figures and Legislators Visiting Gaza”
Saed Bannoura
January 26, 2010 – Dr. Ahmad Yousef, advisor of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Gaza, stated that the Israeli occupation deliberately tries to humiliate international figures and legislators who attempt to visit the Gaza Strip. He added that what Israel’s behavior towards Belgian Development Minister, Charles Michel, preventing him from entering Gaza, is another Israeli violation to the international law.
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