U.S.-Supported Night Raids Bring Terror to Afghanistan
Firedoglake
February 7, 2010 – An assortment of American military, security contractors from the U.S., and Afghani security and police organizations that likely answer to U.S. military leaders engage in war on a daily basis and, as Anand Gopal recently detailed, are subject to targeted assassinations, night raids, secret detention centers, disappearances, and other acts of “counterterror.” Many Americans have heard stories seep into corporate media’s news coverage of the Afghanistan War (or, in general, the “war on terror”). Americans know detention has been a common tool used against “terror suspects” and that certain “suspects” have in many cases been held secretly. Who knows how many Americans are aware of disappearances which terrify a population along with targeted assassinations that come from foreign military or security forces that are seeking to enforce “counterterror” measures…

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Video: Gaza in Plain Language
alawson911
February 7, 2010 – The article “Gaza in Plain Language”, by Joe Mowrey, first published by Dissident Voice, was brought to my attention by Robert H. Stiver, and I immediately agreed to do a video treatment of it. Joe and I shared the research effort, and we would like to thank all of those whose video and photographic work is included in this chilling tale of a fledgling nation gone mad…

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On Why Zionism Dehumanizes Its Enemies
Lawrence of Cyberia
February 7, 2010 – …The real reason why Israel cannot treat Palestinians according to normal humanitarian standards is that its own Zionist ideology requires that the non-Jewish population under its rule be treated inhumanely. This is very difficult for Zionist Israelis – raised on a narrative of their own essential and eternal victimhood, and of an honorable Jewish ethical tradition – to acknowledge. Zionism has always sold itself as simply an innocent, humanitarian project for Jewish self-determination. The aspect of Zionism that Zionists inevitably fail to come to terms with is that it involves pursuing Jewish self-determination in a land where other – overwhelmingly non-Jewish – people already live, and live in such numbers that it is impossible to establish an exclusive Jewish right to self-determination without destroying the fundamental right of everyone else to equality. As there is no people on earth that is going to quietly acquiese in the establishment in its own homeland of a sectarian state that by its very nature denies them equality, political Zionism in Palestine was always going to end up in violent confrontation with the non-Jewish population under its rule…

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Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways
Securing US Control of Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden
Michel Chossudovsky
February 7, 2010 – The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site. Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It is of crucial importance to the US military…

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As they say: we’re terrorists
‘Emad W. Nazzal-Pales
February 7, 2010 – “The world stood silent, while we urged for help. The world turned their heads, while we were being slaughtered. The world turned deaf to our screams for help. They laughed with joy to the screams of pain, and sipped on their liquor while amusing themselves listening to the screams of the raped ones. They were more amused to learn what pain can make one do. The world watched our falling bodies and watched us bleed. We knew then that we were all alone. Do you know what it is like to see your father being beaten to death? Do you know what it is like seeing your mother being raped?…

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The truth lies in Iraq, not Chilcot!
Hussein Al-alak, The Iraq Solidarity Campaign
February 7, 2010 – To Comrades of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The recent article “Why we should not call for jailing of Tony Blair” published by Weekly Worker (4/2/2010) gave a simplistic response to those involved with the campaign to have Tony Blair arrested and in some points also came across as being quite flippant. Watching Blair rehash the old rhetoric at Chilcot, was like listening to a scratched record, where once again we had to endure the same old garbage about Saddam’s WMD, the false link to Al-Qaida and the other allegations relating to human rights abuses…And whilst you simply state that abuses have “continued under the occupation”, with no reference to any of the facts, for the Iraqi people the abuse is far more systematic than these simple words can even muster.The mass murder of one million Iraqi’s, the creation of five millions orphans, the destitution of millions of refugees, along with the forced unemployment of millions, under the banner of “de-Baathification”, is not even worthy of a trial at the Hague but of direct justice at the hands of the Iraqi people…

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Video: Afghan displaced face harsh winter
Aljazeera.net
February 7, 2010 – Nato and Afghan troops are preparing for a major offensive against Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. Ahead of the operation, thousands of civilians have fled their homes near the Marjah area of Helmand province. Many will be going to displacement camps near the capital, Kabul…

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The Unbearable Loneliness of the Iranian People
by A. Abadani, via Revolutionary Flowerpot Society
February 7, 2010 – …All the difficult work to eliminate this regime will have to be done by the Iranian people or the outcome would be either a rampant and out of control capitalism of the peripheral flavor, or national disintegration fuelled by foreign interventions and schemes. The Iranian people have no strategic friends in this fight except themselves and other ordinary people in the world, whom they have inspired immensely in the last year. No ‘international community’ or a foreign state will ever look out for their interests; nor should the support of any foreign government be sought. The people’s movement in Iran has gained the solidarity of many progressive, liberal, socialist and working class organizations from around the world, and that is where it will have to seek its international support…

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The apartheid will end when Israelis have to face its cost
Tony Karon
February 07, 2010 – The former US president Jimmy Carter set off a firestorm in 2006 when he said that Israel would have to choose between maintaining an apartheid occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians. That Mr Carter brokered Israel’s most important peace treaty with an Arab country was immaterial; he was branded an enemy of Israel, an anti-Semite and even a Holocaust-denier. Israel’s friends in the US reacted out of instinct, knowing that an association with apartheid – South Africa’s erstwhile system of racial oppression – would bring international condemnation and isolation…

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Video: Palestinians battle Israeli wall
Aljazeera.net
February 7, 2010 – Palestinians and Israeli dissenters are getting together to fight Israel’s plan to build another section of the separation wall in the occupied West Bank. According to environmentalists, the wall will stop the flow of water to the natural springs and thus threatens to dry out much of the Palestinian land. They also see the wall – illegal under international law – as a part of long-term Israeli policy to grab more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank. But the Israeli government says the separation wall is for security reasons, in order to stop Palestinians carrying out attacks in Israel.

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Karzai eyes return to conscript army
AFP
February 7, 2010 – Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is mulling a return to a conscript army as he seeks to build his insurgency-hit nation’s security forces over the next five years. “This will be philosophically one of our pursuits as we move ahead, into the future, in consultation with the Afghan people,” Mr Karzai told senior officials and security experts at a conference in Munich, southern Germany. “Right now we have a volunteer system, which means an army entirely paid for, and professionals,” he said, noting, “as in other countries, Afghanistan had a strong tradition of conscript army”…

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U.S. soldier ‘waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn’t recite alphabet’
Daily Mail
February 7, 2010 – A U.S. soldier has been accused of ‘waterboarding’ his four-year-old daughter because she couldn’t recite the alphabet. Joshua Tabor admitted to police that he used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry. As his daughter ‘squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face – upwards – three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline. Tabor, 27, admitted to investigators that his daughter was terrified of water and he had deliberately chosen the punishment…

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Ahmadinejad orders nuclear work
Aljazeera.net
February 7, 2010 – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has instructed Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation to begin enriching uranium for use as nuclear fuel, casting doubt on the prospect of a deal with the West. Ahmadinejad’s comments on Sunday, carried on state television, were directed at Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the atomic energy body and who was sitting in the audience at the time of the speech…

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Israel arrests two foreign tourists in West Bank
Amsterdam News.Net
February 7, 2010 – Two women have been dragged from a home in Ramallah by the Israeli army for overstaying their visas. The Israeli army swept into Ramallah in the West Bank Sunday in a pre-dawn raid to arrest two women who had overstayed their visas. The women were seized from a Ramallah home where they were staying, after soldiers broke down the door. The two had taken part in protests against the Israeli barrier which has been constructed throughout the West Bank. One of the women is from Australia, and the other from Spain…

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Iraqi Shiites protest ‘Baathist’ election candidates – Summary
DPA
February 7, 2010 – Thousands of supporters of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawaa Party demonstrated outside the house of parliament in Baghdad on Sunday, to call for the exclusion of “Baathist” candidates from the March polls. Al-Maliki had called for a special session of parliament to meet Sunday to discuss the electoral commission’s decision last week to reverse its previous ban on some 500 candidates in the parliamentary elections, imposed because of their alleged connections to the former ruling Baath Party…

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Female Iraq election candidate shot dead in Mosul: police
AFP
February 7, 2010 – A woman planning to stand in Iraq’s March 7 general election was gunned down Sunday in the restive northern city of Mosul, police said, just days before campaigning is officially due to start. Suha Abdul Jarallah, a candidate on the list of pro-Western former prime minister Iyad Allawi, was shot dead as she left a house in the Ras al-Jadda neighbourhood in central Mosul, 350 kilometres (218 miles) north of Baghdad…

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U.S Vows To Burry Goldstone Report At UN
Saed Bannoura
February 7, 2010 – Israeli sources reported Saturday that the United States vowed to Israeli leaders to bury the report of Judge Richard Goldstone on Israel’s war in Gaza last year. The sources added that the Israeli government vowed to respond to the report of Goldstone by forming an independent committee. The United Nations is set to convene soon to discuss the report but did not schedule a date for the discussion. Bur Israel sources said that Israel will not show “any further cooperation” and that the United States will not allow the report to reach the Security Council…

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Hamas Says It Did Not Apologize For Civilian Israeli Casualties During Israel’s War On Gaza
Saed Bannoura
February 7, 2010 – The Hamas-led government in Gaza stated Saturday that it did not apologize for Israeli civilian deaths during the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip. The statements of Hamas came in its report responding to the report of Judge Richard Goldstone. Hamas said that resistance is an internationally guaranteed right, and that the Palestinians, living under Israeli occupation and aggression, have the internationally guaranteed right to resist the occupation. The government added that the report it submitted in response to the Goldstone report, did not include any apology and that some of its articles were apparently misinterpreted…

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Remaining fuel to light Gaza for 24 hours
Palestinian Information Center
February 7, 2010 — The Palestinian energy authority has announced that one of the generators in the Gaza electricity generation station had stopped functioning on Saturday for lack of fuel and that the remaining quantity of fuel would allow operating the station for 24 hours only. The authority, in a statement, said that the power generation in the station had decreased to 30 megawatt, warning that Gaza districts would suffer longer power failures. It explained that the power shortage had reached 50% and could reach 60%…

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Silent occupation
Ali Jumuah
February 7, 2010 – …Travel down any street in Jerusalem, and a far more frightening site emerges. Street signs displaying names in Hebrew, Arabic, and English; but the Arabic is blotted out. The perpetrators, usually Jewish youth, use paint, or stickers with religious and nationalistic slogans that obscure the Arabic names. While both Arabic and Hebrew are official languages, and English holds a “semi-official” status, English is exempt from the attacks. Only Arabic is being erased. Simply obscuring the names is not enough. A recent effort to Hebraize the names of many cities has gone largely unnoticed outside of Israel…

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JERUSALEM POST LIES TO JUSTIFY ITS WITCH HUNT AGAINST THE LEFT
Steve Amsel, Desertpeace
February 7, 2010 – The Jerusalem Post has canceled Naomi Chazan’s biweekly column, after she and the New Israel Fund of which she is president threatened legal action against the paper over a recent advertisement. The decision was taken by Jerusalem Post management after a legal threat was received at the paper from the NIF and Chazan’s lawyers. Along with other publications, the Post last Sunday carried an advertisement criticizing Chazan and the New Israel Fund in the context of the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead…

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