The Chilcot 'Inquiry': Duplicitous Testimonies
Felicity Arbuthnot
February 2, 2010 – On Friday 29th January, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, QC., slithered in to the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq invasion in the Queen Elizabeth Conference Hall, opposite London’s Westminster Abbey. The manner of his arrival was entirely consistent with the less than transparent behaviour, which led to dodgy dossiers, an illegal invasion, a near-seven year (and counting) killing spree and those figures which which should be hewn, under his name, on a wall of shame in Parliament Square, throwing distance away: Approaching one and a half million dead, four million widows, five million orphans, four million displaced, in the name of liberation, freedom, democrocy, words defiled for all time…

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Activist Errors Series: Setting Conditions on Solidarity
Yousef Abudayyeh
February 2, 2010 – Let Me Draw This Picture For You Have you ever noticed that almost nothing the Palestinians and their resistance factions do is acceptable by the Palestine solidarity groups and Peace and Justice movements in the West? Here are some of what some of this solidarity and anti war, peace organizations keep saying so they can get out of supporting the Palestinian struggle: The Palestinian cause is very complicated. The Palestinians should abandon armed struggle. The Palestinians are asking “Israel” to give up too much…

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The flood to end occupation
By Manuel Rozental
February 02, 2010 – The obvious is now being stated daily from different angles and perspectives and supported by strong evidence. The occupation of Haiti for transnational Capital through the US and its allies is being implemented. Aid is a political, geo-strategic and military-terror tool with local and external impacts. On the ground, controlled starvation and despair are aimed at justifying the military presence and the racist arguments, while subduing the population to beg the uniformed masters for compassion at the expense of discipline, obedience and submission. Imagine becoming a beggar in your own country to a foreign occupation force for food, water, shelter, medical care, while having to express gratitude for the little bit that you finally get…

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AND IN GAZA, SHE PISSED ON THEM
by Flora Nicoletta
February 2, 2010 – She was very small. She was all white. She was lovely. She was American and she was old, 13-year old. She was without teeth. Her tongue was dangling from the left side of her mouth. She entered the Strip late on Wednesday 30 December with the Gaza Freedom Marchers: 84 activists coming from different countries, including four rabbis from Neturei Karta International-Jews United Against Zionism, eleven French nationals, one Venezuelan, one Polish, several Palestinians living in exile… We didn’t know her name and we ignored if she was included on the list of the 84 Freedom Marchers. A couple of hours before the departure of the third and last bus – a short while after 20:00, on Saturday 2 January – she came out of her bag in a conference hall of the Commodore Gaza Hotel where was stored the huge quantity of goods brought from Egypt and elsewhere to the besieged Gazans. She came out of her bag and she pissed on a piece of cardboard. When we looked carefully at the piece of cardboard, we saw it had the form of the planet, our planet. She pissed symbolically on those who turn a blind eye to the atrocities, on those who turn their backs to the Palestinian people, on those who contribute to enforce the Israeli siege on the man-made Gaza ghetto…

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Haiti after 5 centuries of genocide, slavery, isolation, colonization and globalization
By Nick Egnatz
February 2, 2010 – With the devastation of the Haitian earthquake of January 12, many Americans are literally learning of Haiti for the first time. The following is an attempt to present a very brief outline of Haiti’s history: first being dominated by Spain, then France and certainly for the last two centuries the United States. The inspiration to write this came from reading and studying William I. Robinson’s Promoting Polyarchy — Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony. Haiti, along with the Philippines, Nicaragua and Chile are case studies examined in detail. Professor Robinson demonstrates how U.S. foreign policy changed in the 1970s from supporting dictators across the globe to an official policy of “democracy promotion.” Unfortunately the democracy being promoted was not the small ‘d’ democracy that Lincoln defined as government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” It was polyarchy instead in which there is elite rule and the masses are given the illusion of democracy by participating in regular elections for pre-screened candidates. In polyarchy, the emphasis is on the forms and institutions of democracy such as regular elections, political parties and the rules and laws governing such. This is what passes for democracy in the U.S…

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Israeli Settlers and Military Occupy the Area of Oush Grab in the Bethlehem District
Maria Chiara Rioli for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
February 2, 2010 – Fear, hope and now again fear. This is how some inhabitants of Beit Sahour and several villages in the Bethlehem district describe what is happening these days. On 2 February, early in the morning, soldiers and a bulldozer came to the area of Oush Grab, in the Beit Sahour municipality, Bethlehem district, and began to demolish the buildings which were part of an Israeli military base. Some journalists and activists gathered there: the governor of Bethlehem came and spoke with the soldiers, asking what was happening. The soldiers replied that they were demolishing the buildings. In the same area settlers plan to erect the new colony of Shdema…

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WHY IS AMERICA IN SO MANY WARS?
Sherwood Ross
February 2, 2010 – America is “a nation that seeks war” and if it doesn’t change it could end up destroying itself, a law school dean warns. Given all the wars the United States has waged, “It is preposterous but true that we do not see ourselves as a nation that seeks war,” writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. “We see ourselves as a peace loving nation” and that message is constantly drummed into the public by government and media…

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Trees Against
Palestine Monitor
Febraury 2, 2010 – Planting trees against occupation, settlement expansion and land expropriation – this is the symbolic action carried out by popular committees of resistance who joined a tree-planting action in Aboud, North-West of Ramallah, last Sunday. Local villagers, students from the Birzeit University and some international peace activists gathered on the hilltops facing the village of Aboud and planted 300 trees: an effort to reclaim land confiscated by the ongoing expansion of the settlements and the wall, whose construction has turned one third of the village’s land into a buffer zone…

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Reclaiming Water in Qarawat Bani Hassan
Palestine Monitor
February 2, 2010 – End of December, accompanied by soldiers, Israeli settlers driving bulldozers started carrying out significant construction works in the area where is located the Neweitef Al – Majur spring, central source of water for farming the land of the nearby West Bank town of Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the Salfeet governorate, 30 km southwest of Nablus. Moeen Rayyan, Media Coordinator of the PGFTU (Palestine General Federation of Trade Union) works in Nablus, but he was born in Qarawat Bani Hassan and frequently returns to his native town to visit his family. He immediately reached the area when the bulldozers arrived where the springs are located and he was there on another occasion when several dozen of teens from the nearby outpost rushed to the area. He had the chance to take photos of this second incident…

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Will Iraq’s Oil Ever Flow?
Tom Engelhardt & Michael Schwartz
Febraury 2, 2010 – Americans have largely stopped thinking about Iraq, even though we still have approximately 110,000 troops there, as well as the largest “embassy” on the planet (and still growing). We’ve generally chalked up our war in Iraq to the failed past, and some Americans, after the surge of 2007, even think of it as, if not a success, at least no longer a debacle. Few care to spend much time considering the catastrophe we actually brought down on the Iraqis in “liberating” them…

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Iraq snapshot – February 2, 2010
The Common Ills
Tuesday, February 2, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the Iraq Inquiry continues in England, Clare Short tells the Inquiry, “We have made Iraq more dangerous as well as causing enormous suffering and diminishing our reputation,” Iraq’s Sunni vice president visits US officials, a US Senate Committee addresses Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and more…

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Obama budget: War, debt and cuts in social services
By Patrick Martin
February 2, 2010 – The Obama administration’s budget for the 2011 fiscal year, unveiled Monday, projects massive US government deficits for the next decade, fueled by gargantuan military spending and the impact of the financial and economic crisis of American and world capitalism. The US national debt is projected to more than double over the coming decade, increasing by $8.5 trillion. Administration officials also revealed that for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2010, the federal deficit will approach $1.6 trillion, by far the largest ever, and nearly 11 percent of total US gross domestic product. This is up sharply from the $1.35 trillion estimate last week by the Congressional Budget Office…

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Israeli Occupation Supportive Companies to Boycott
Stephen Lendman
February 2, 2010 – In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the global BDS movement for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights” for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees. Since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions and civil society actions condemned Israel’s lawlessness; its crimes of war and against humanity; occupation; discriminatory policies; illegal home demolitions, land seizures and settlements; oppression of a civilian population; the Separation Wall; the Gaza siege; and preemptive imperial wars. Nothing so far has worked. Palestine is still occupied. Its people continue to suffer. Their human rights are denied. World leaders ignore them. This no longer can be tolerated. In solidarity, people of conscience everywhere must pressure Israel with BDS initiatives that include boycotting Israeli companies, their products and services, and global ones supporting the occupation…

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Psychological trauma, nightmares stalk Gaza children
IRIN News
February 2, 2010 – Mona al-Samouni, 12, is depressed and has nightmares about the day – just over a year ago – when she witnessed her parents and a number of relatives being shot by Israeli soldiers in their home in Zeitoun, southeast of Gaza City. Like a number of other children who witnessed horrific events during last year’s 23-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Mona has become increasingly withdrawn and silent – common ways of coping with tragedies, doctors say…

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The Reign of Terror Continues in Iraq
Reidar Visser
February 2, 2010 – It is not only suicide bombers that make up the problem of terror in today’s Iraq. Also the new republic itself is looking more Jacobin by the day. After the French revolution, Maximilien de Robespierre in 1793 famously concentrated almost all power in a committee called Comité de salut public or the committee of public safety. Until its dissolution in 1794, this body fought a relentless war against real and imagined enemies of internal and external origin. Its preferred method for dealing with dissent was the guillotine; its year in power became known as “the reign of terror”. In today’s Iraq, another committee is becoming increasingly important at the highest level of government: the de-Baathification board. Its procedures are different from those followed by Robespierre and his allies, but their impact is very similar: An atmosphere of fear designed to intimidate political opponents, increasingly on the pattern of what is going on in neighbouring Iran. Developments over the past days have only underlined the extent to which the whole de-Baathification process has become politicised and devoid of any legal guarantees. After having previously presented a list of 511 banned candidates, Ali al-Lami of the de-Baathification board recently announced that a second batch of some 700 additional names was on its way to the independent election commission (IHEC)…

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“America’s Secret Afghan Prisons”: Investigation Unearths New US Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan
Democracy Now!
February 2, 2010 – A new investigation by journalist Anand Gopal reveals harrowing details about US secret prisons in Afghanistan, under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Gopal interviewed Afghans who were detained and abused at several disclosed and undisclosed sites at US and Afghan military bases across the country. He also reveals the existence of another secret prison on Bagram Air Base that even the Red Cross does not have access to. It is dubbed the Black Jail and is reportedly run by US Special Forces…

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Exclusive: Israeli commander: ‘We rewrote the rules of war for Gaza’
Civilians ‘put at greater risk to save military lives’ in winter attack – revelations that will pile pressure on Netanyahu to set up full inquiry
By Donald Macintyre
February 2, 2010 – A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year’s Gaza war, The Independent can reveal. The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as “means and intentions” – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of “literally zero risk to the soldiers”…

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Obama’s Budget Calls for Billions in New Spending for Drones
Jason Leopold
February 2, 2010 – This is how major US defense contractors reacted to the unveiling of President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2011 spending plan for the Pentagon, part of the president’s overall $3.8 trillion budget proposal. Shares of General Dynamics, a maker of military aircraft, submarines and munitions, rose 3.9 percent and closed at $69.43 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the uptick due in large part to additional spending on the war in Afghanistan, according to Sanford Bernstein, a financial research firm…

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British Citizens vs an IDF Guard
Gilad Atzmon
February 2, 2010 – The Times reported today that the British Government is blocking a deal for Paul and Rachel Chandler’s release. The British couple were kidnapped by Somalian pirates in the Indian Ocean. Paul and Rachel may be facing a doomed fate as the British Government is blocking a deal for their release…In the centre of the British Government’s refusal to interfere in this saga we meet none other than David Miliband the Foreign Secretary…Yet, it is very perplexing to find out that as much as Miliband is reluctant to interfere with the release of the abducted British couple, he rushed to voice his support in favour of the release of the IDF guard Gilad Shalit…

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Video: East Jerusalem residents languish beyond the wall
AFP
February 2, 2010 – More than 50,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem live beyond the separation barrier — areas which are officially part of the city but cut off from its daily life. AFPTV visited the isolated suburb of Kfar Aqeb, where Palestinians are deprived of most municipal services…

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Compartmentalized Reflections in a Full Circle.
Layla Anwar
February 2, 2010 – … Iraq’s tragedy, its pain, its suffering, its abandonment, its neglect as brought to you by me, the author, through small windows as in each written post, where my hidden tears of anguish, grief, solitude, exile… where my silent cries of despair, agony, memories, longing…are not your terrain anymore. You have appropriated, raped, spat on Iraq you will not do the same to me on my blog. You tried and you failed. I am here and many of you have just closed shop. I am here and I will continue saying what I need to say…and will continue exposing and denouncing you…and if need be I shall be merciless in doing so. It is a war out there, no doubt about it. It is a war of weapons and a war of ideas…the arrest of Hiba Al Shamaree just adds another confirmation. I think about her daily, I wonder what is happening to her, what are they doing to her, what abject, grotesque, heinous act are they coming up with…I wonder daily about Hiba, the Iraqi blogger…

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Iran president Ahmadinejad accepts nuclear deal terms
BBC News
February 2, 2010 – Iran’s president has said it is ready to send its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment under a deal to ease concerns about its nuclear programme. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told state TV that Iran would have “no problem” if most of its stock was held for several months before being returned as fuel rods…

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AI: Nine at risk of execution over Iran protests
Amnesty International
February 2, 2010 – Amnesty International has urged the Iranian authorities not to execute nine people sentenced to death who were arrested in relation to the protests that followed last year’s disputed presidential election. The organization said it fears the Iranian authorities are planning to execute some or all of the nine in public before 11 February, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when further protests are expected. According to Iranian media reports, Deputy Judiciary Head Ebrahim Raisi said on Monday that, after the execution of two men last week, the nine others will be executed “soon”. “Those sentenced did not have had a fair trial,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director. “They were denied access to a lawyer in the initial stages of their detention, and some or all appear to have been coerced into giving confessions.. It is also not clear whether those condemned have been able to exercise their right to appeal.”…

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Israel Owes Over NIS 8.3 Billion to Palestinian Workers from the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Hanna Zohar (Kav LaOved) and Shir Hever (Alternative Information Center)
Febraury 2, 2010 – The State of Israel owes more than NIS 8.3 billion (including interest) to Palestinian workers from the Occupied Palestinian Territories who worked in Israel. This money was deducted from the Palestinian workers’ salaries for social benefits they did not receive. This is the conclusion of detailed research conducted by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) and Kav LaOved. “This is theft, pure and simple,” notes Shir Hever, Economic Researcher with the Alternative Information Center and co-author of the research. “92.4% of the deductions taken from workers for National Insurance related social rights, for example, were transferred instead to the coffers of the Israeli Ministry of Finance. Palestinian workers from the OPT did not—and do not—receive the vast majority of social rights for which they are legally mandated to pay.”…

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Afghans protest to Iran over border killings
Reuters
February 2, 2010 – Afghanistan protested on Tuesday against what it said was the killing of five of its nationals by Iranian border forces. Host to millions of Afghan refugees for decades, Iran is also a key transit route for Afghanistan’s opium and heroin trade. The incident happened on Monday when a group of seven Afghans were trying to enter Iran, an Afghan foreign ministry official said, adding all were teenage males. Five Afghans were killed in firing by Iran’s frontier forces and the other two were wounded, the ministry said in a statement, adding it was demanding an explanation for the incident…

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Torture, Rendition Victim Maher Arar Asks Supreme Court to Allow Suit Against US Gov’t
Democracy Now!
February 2, 2010 – Lawyers for the Canadian torture and rendition victim Maher Arar are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling blocking him from suing the US government. In 2002, Arar was seized by US officials at Kennedy Airport in New York and rendered to Syria, where he was tortured, interrogated and detained in a tiny underground cell for nearly a year. Last year a federal appeals court ruled allowing the lawsuit to proceed would “offend the separation of powers and inhibit (US) foreign policy.”…

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Israeli troops wound two Palestinians including child in West Bank and Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
February 2, 2010 — Clashes between the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and Palestinians on Monday led to the injury of two citizens including a 10-year-old child in the West Bank village of Ni’lin and east of the Gaza Strip. According to B’Tselem organization, an Israeli soldier fired deliberately at very close range a rubber-coated bullet at the head of a Palestinian student in fourth grade called Mu’ataz Al-Khawaja during an anti-wall protest in Ni’lin village…

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Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite
Chris Ames and Richard Norton-Taylor
February 2, 2010 – The American elite’s unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance — based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war — is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday’s New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating “news analysis” of the Administration’s just-announced $3.8 trillion budget…

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Deaths in Pakistan ‘drone’ attack
Aljazeera.net
February 2, 2010 – Missiles fired by suspected US drones have killed at least 17 people and wounded many more in Pakistan, residents and security officials say. Officials said the missiles rained down on Dattakhel village in the Degan area of North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal region near the Afghan border, on Tuesday…

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No justice for Tristan Anderson…yet
PULSE
February 2, 2010 – When I heard about the case of Tristan Anderson in March 2009 I was disturbed and heart-broken for his family and friends. The muted reaction among the American public (excluding progressive voices) reminded me of that which became apparent after news spread of the violent murder of Rachel Corrie. Here was a young American who had travelled across the world to stand in solidarity with people he had no direct connection to. The only thing that linked Anderson and others like him to Palestinians was their shared humanity and their devotion to standing up for peace and social justice in the face of harsh adversity…

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Escaping in Gaza
Eva Barlett, In Gaza
February 2, 2010 – Many in Gaza ask me, ‘which is better, the (occupied) West Bank or Gaza?’ Not giving in to the devisive efforts of external forces and politicians, I answer that both are Palestine –it’s all Palestine– and both have their beauties and intense hardships. The presence of Israeli occupation soldiers in the occupied West Bank, of remorseless settlers capable of shocking brutality, of Israeli land annexation, of humiliating and debilitating military checkpoints and roadblocks, of lock-downs (”curfews”) and raids, of daily kidnappings and imprisonment of sons, daughters, husbands, mothers, of the complete Israeli control and stealing of water sources, of the destruction of occupied East Jerusalem…is just some of the suffering of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank…

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Israeli Police Remove Evicted East Jerusalem Family’s Tent; Israelis & Internationals Aid to Rebuild
by Circare Parrhesia
February 02, 2010 – On Tuesday at dawn, the Israeli police entered the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah to remove the tent owned by al-Gawi family, a Palestinian family evicted from their home. The family has resorted to living in a tent situated in front of their former residence, and the 13th time they have had to rebuild their makeshift home, aided by Israelis & internationals, following removal by the police. Local sources reported that the rebuilding occurred at approximately 4pm, and although it drew the attention of both settlers and the Israeli police, no clashes occurred…

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