February 4, 2012 - Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government's deadly crackdown on protests for the second time. Thirteen countries voted for the resolution proposed by European and Arab nations to give strong backing to the Arab League's plan to end the crackdown. But Russia and China made a repeat of their rare double veto carried out on Oct. 5....

 

February 4, 2012 - On the 24th January, the day President Obama delivered his last State of the Union speech to Congress before the election, citing the:"selflessness and teamwork of America's Armed Forces (their) focus on the mission at hand", the "selfless" Staff Sgt., Frank Wuterich, leader of the massacre at Haditha, in Iraq, became the seventh soldier to walk free - from the mass murder of twenty four unarmed men, women and children, in three homes and a taxi. It was another chilling, ruthless, cold blooded, up to five hour rampage, revenge for the death a colleague, in a roadside bomb - which had nothing to do with the rural families that paid the price. The youngest to die was one year, the oldest was seventy six year old, wheelchair-bound amputee, Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali. He died with nine rounds in the chest and abdomen. Other children who died were aged 3,4,5,8,10 and 14....

 

February 4, 2012 - A former Libyan diplomat who went over to the opposition National Transitional Council last year was detained and then tortured to death by a militia force based in the town of Zintan, according to a statement from the group Human Rights Watch. Omar Brebesh was detained in Tripoli on January 19. His body was found at a hospital in Zintan, 60 miles southwest of the Libyan capital, the next day, with multiple injuries and fractured ribs. Evidence of torture included welts and cuts on Brebesh's body and the apparent removal of toenails. Human Rights Watch said that the militia in control of Zintan, al-Shohada Ashura, which also has forces in Tripoli, was implicated in the killing. The group said in a statement that its representatives "read a report by the judicial police in Tripoli, which said that Brebesh had died from torture and that an unnamed suspect had confessed to killing him." This same militia presently has custody of Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, who was captured November 19, after the overthrow of the regime and the murder of his father. He is being held at a prison in Zintan....

 

February 4, 2012 - On January 10, while I was visiting the US for events marking the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo, the World Can't Wait, the campaigning organization responsible for my visit, hosted a screening of the documentary film, "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo" (which I co-directed with Polly Nash) at a branch of Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C... I told the audience about the "Close Guantanamo" campaign, and our petition on the White House's "We the People" website, asking President Obama to fulfil his promise to close Guantanamo. The petition has a one-month deadline, which comes to an end on February 6, so please sign it if you haven't done so already...

 

February 3, 2012 - The presence of a few Palestinian members in the Knesset (MKs) is often touted as a sign of Israel's robust democracy. Yet elected representatives of the Palestinian community inside Israel face growing harassment by the state, by fellow MKs and the media. On Monday, the trial of MK Said Naffaa, from the Balad party, opened in Nazareth. Naffaa is charged with "travelling illegally to an enemy state, assisting in organising a visit to an enemy state, and being in contact with a foreign agent" - all relating to a trip he made to Syria as part of a Druze delegation in 2007....

 

February 3, 2012 - Last night, a new friend of mine noticed that I try to highlight the issue of Palestinian political prisoners in my writings. That led to a long chat about my interest in bringing out their stories. I started by describing how being the daughter of a former detainee has inspired a passion toward my homeland and the feeling of having a duty toward my people, especially our forgotten prisoners, within me. I told him how attending the weekly protest with prisoners' families in the Red Cross has turned to be a psychological cure for my own pains. It's true....

 

February 3, 2012 - Homs: Relayed via al-Khaldieh resident: More than 200 martyrs have fallen and the toll is rising due to the constant bombardment of the town. The LCC are working on verifying these numbers. Homs: Security forces and shabiha stormed al-Amal Hospital where more than 50 martyers and 100 wouded civilians lie. People are afraid that everyone will be killed or kidnapped...

 

February 3, 2012 - When Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush on June 9, 2008, the 35 had been selected from drafts of nearly twice that many articles. President Obama has accumulated his own massive list of high crimes and misdemeanors that were unavailable for Bush's list (thing's like openly murdering U.S. citizens, launching massive drone wars, selectively and abusively prosecuting numerous whistleblowers as spies, holding Bradley Manning naked in isolation, attacking Libya without so much as bothering to lie to Congress, etc.)....

 

February 3, 2012 - Over the past two decades, Palestinians have sat around the "negotiating table" on numerous occasions with successive Israeli governments and with a stated view of achieving a negotiated resolution to the intractable Palestine-Israel conflict. For years, Israel has claimed that the persistent failure of this so-called peace process was the result of Palestinian intransigence and of Israel having no reliable "partner for peace". However, an independently authenticated cache of confidential documents, records, contemporaneous notes and transcripts of private meetings between the two sides leaked in 2011, revealed a very different picture...

 

February 3, 2012 - Anonymous is on a rampage today. Just hours after leaking a confidential phone call between the FBI and Scotland yard, members have released a huge archive of emails and documents related to the 2005 Haditha Massacre, which left 24 Iraqi civilians dead. Just a few minutes ago, Anonymous announced they had stolen 2.6 gigabytes of email belonging to the law firm Puckett Faraj. Neal Puckett represents Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who was accused of leading the group of Marines who killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in November, 2005-what later became known as the Haditha Massacre. Last month, Wuterich struck a plea deal where he'll be demoted from Staff Sergeant to Private, but will serve no prison time...

 

February 3, 2012 - ....The NATO's Afghan war is no tale of heroic deeds and impressive soldiering, as been brought home by the embedded media to the western publics. It has been a shameful story of its trepidation and spinelessness. And it has been a narrative of the most devious kind of deceit and deception right from the outset. As the ISAF knights were cooling their heels in their Kabul redoubt and the American warriors in their Bagram nestle immovably for years, fattening their bellies with endless pints of beer and rolls of hamburgers, they kept crying that Taliban had fled and settled in safe havens in Pakistan from where they launched attacks on them and Afghan territories....