28 December, 2011 — Information Clearing House

Gaza: Remembering Cast Lead
By Stephen Lendman
Missiles, bombs, shells, and illegal weapons were used against defenseless people. Mass slaughter and destruction followed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30090.htm

Israel’s Useful Idiot
Romney Takes Swipe at Ron Paul on Iran Nuke Policy
By Emily Friedman
“At the same time the greatest threat Israel faces and, frankly, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran,” Romney said. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30092.htm

Exit America
By Vijay Prashad
Eight years after the war, no justifications remain. It was a dumb war, and it remains so. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30096.htm

War is God
By Michael Carmichael
We are the most warlike nation. We must, therefore, be the most warlike people ever to have populated this planet. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30091.htm

Congress, Obama Codify Indefinite Detention
By Sheldon Richman
As Human Rights Watch put it: “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30089.htm

Recall:
Montanans Organize to Remove Senators Who Voted For Traitorous Detainment Bill
By Mac Slavo
One thing is clear with the passage of this legislation, and that is those Senators and Congressman who voted for its passage are violating their oaths to support and protect the Constitution of the United States. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30095.htm

Vote Obama
If You Want A Centrist Republican For US President
By Glenn Greenwald
The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30087.htm

Department of Homeland Security
Using Fake Facebook and Twitter Accounts to Monitor Posts
By Electronic Privacy Information Center
User data will be stored for five years and shared with other government agencies. The legal authority for the DHS program remains unclear. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30094.htm

The Book of Jobs
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
The trauma we’re experiencing right now resembles the trauma we experienced 80 years ago, during the Great Depression. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30097.htm

U.S. Lawmakers Get Richer As Voters Struggle
By Andrew Jones
The wealth gap between members of Congress and ordinary Americans is growing larger, with nearly half of all lawmakers now worth more than one million dollars, according to US media reports Tuesday. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30093.htm

Occupy Wall Street: How Cash Has Corrupted Congress
By Jeff Smith
Why members of Congress keep getting richer while the rest of the country has flatlined.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30088.htm
 
3 NATO occupation force troops killed by bomb in Afghanistan:
Three NATO service members have been killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance said Wednesday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the target was a U.S. military convoy. 
http://usat.ly/uroOSG

US removes Mullah Omer from most wanted terrorist list:
According to the reports, the US wanted to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table in order to end the conflict in Afghanistan. http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-135362.html

Karzai: Afghan gov’t will accept Taliban office in Qatar: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai says he will accept Taliban insurgents opening a representative office in the Gulf state of Qatar for the purpose of holding peace talks, although Saudi Arabia or Turkey would be preferable venues. http://bit.ly/uoODuv

Afghanistan to Disband Irregular Police Force Set Up Under NATO: President Karzai has taken steps to disband a little-known, irregular police force financed by the American military. Some members of the force are former militiamen and thugs known as much for extorting money from ordinary citizens as for intimidating insurgents. 
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11361/1199548-82-0.stm

Afghanistan signs first major oil deal with China: Afghanistan’s first major oil exploration contract will see state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation develop three oil fields in the relatively peaceful north of the country along the Amu Darya river. http://bit.ly/snFd2R

Pakistan: IHRC rejects NATO probe into border attack:
International Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has officially rejected the findings of a US-NATO investigation into the recent attack on a border outpost. http://bit.ly/vrrqtY

Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing: In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. http://wapo.st/rW0VK7

5 killed in Yemen clashes: Yemen’s army exchanged machinegun fire with Al-Qaeda suspects in the country’s south in clashes that left two soldiers and three militants dead, military and local officials said on Wednesday. http://yhoo.it/t3iCpd

US grants Yemen president unconditional visa, officials said: The assistant secretary general of the General People Congress Party Sultan al-Barakani affirmed that the US embassy in Sana’a had informed them that the president was offered unconditional visa to the US. http://www.yobserver.com/front-page/10021740.html

Four Syrian soldiers killed in ambush, activists say: Activists say at least four soldiers have been killed and 12 others wounded in southern Syria in an ambush carried out by a group of military defectors. http://bit.ly/uevSSu

Syria: Arab League Monitors Say ‘Nothing Frightening’ in Homs:
The head of the Arab League’s monitoring mission in Syria has angered protesters by saying he saw “nothing frightening” in the flashpoint city of Homs. http://bit.ly/sDS0CZ

Qatar builds up anti-Syria Wahhabi army: The Doha-funded army has been mobilized in the form of military battalions and brigades in bases in Syria’s northern neighbor, Turkey. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/218149.html

Four policemen killed in northern Iraq attacks: At least four policemen were killed Wednesday in two separate attacks in the northern Iraqi province of Mosul, according to security sources. http://bit.ly/w4wBrw

Nouri al-Maliki warns of ‘rivers of blood’ in Iraq: Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, warned Saturday that efforts to create an autonomous Sunni region within Iraq would divide the country and lead to “rivers of blood.” http://bit.ly/vbp2kA

Iraq blocs talking to Iran over standoff: sources: Charges that Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi ran a death squad have plunged Iraq into political crisis, and representatives of several parties have spoken to top officials in Tehran, according to senior political sources in Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish region, where Hashemi is holed up. http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/12/27/184852.html

Iran to ‘block’ Gulf oil if sanctions proceed: No oil will be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz if the West applies sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi has warned. http://bit.ly/twldne

U.S. Navy warns Iran against blocking Strait of Hormuz: A spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is warning Iran that any disruption of traffic flowing though the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil route, “will not be tolerated.” http://bit.ly/urOpmp

One killed, in Israeli attack on Gaza:
Palestinian medics named the dead man as Abdallah al-Telbani, 22, and said he was riding in a motorised rickshaw in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip when the attack took place late on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if the other casualties were riding with him. http://bit.ly/vtcQXO

Israeli army chief says second Gaza attack inevitable: Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz on Tuesday marked the three- year anniversary of the Operation Cast Lead, hailing it “an excellent operation that achieved deterrence for Israel vis-a-vis Hamas Xinhua reported http://en.trend.az/regions/met/arabicr/1974986.html

Report: Israeli FM irked by secret EU report on Israeli Arabs: Confidential memo by European diplomats outlining growing gaps between Israel’s Jewish, Arab communities reportedly enrages Foreign Ministry http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4167800,00.html

Jewish zealots strike fear in flashpoint Israel town: The ultra-Orthodox make up only about 10 percent of Israel’s population of 7.7 million. But their high birthrates and bloc voting patterns have helped them secure welfare benefits and wider influence. One of Netanyahu’s biggest partners in the coalition government, Shas, is a party run by rabbis. http://reut.rs/uzJgae

NATO’s Libya campaign targeted in Russian human rights report: The Foreign Affairs Ministry has released its first report into the state of human rights in countries abroad, taking particular umbrage with NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya. http://themoscownews.com/russia/20111228/189332559.html

Protesters block main highway in Libya’s capital: About 200 men have blocked a main highway in the Libyan capital and stormed the local city council demanding justice over the death of 15 soldiers from their neighborhood in an ambush. 
http://on.msnbc.com/rZM44s

Australia Buys $950 Million Worth of Military Planes from U.S.:
Australia will purchase from the United States 10 military planes and other equipment worth $950 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency informed the U.S. Congress on Wednesday on the sales of C-27J aircraft, missile warning systems and radar. http://bit.ly/u1b9LY

U.S. Fukushima Medical Study Estimates 14,000 Dead U.S. Infants from Fallout:
TEPCO maintain that the effects of the disaster have been contained. Not so, according to a just published peer reviewed medical paper appearing in the U.S., which indicates that Fukushima’s pernicious consequences have traveled across the Pacific. http://bit.ly/vKeIFv

TEPCO says it ‘no longer owns’ Fukushima fallout: IN terms of sheer chutzpah, Tokyo Electric Power Co’s claim that it no longer owns the radioactive isotopes that spewed out of its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March takes some beating. http://bit.ly/uq6P7c

25,000 radioactive sites in Russia: There are as many as 25,000 hazardous underwater objects containing radioactive waste in Russia, emergency ministry officials said Monday. http://bit.ly/vjq56a

Reports: Cuba frees thousands of prisoners: Amnesty deal to grant freedom to nearly 3,000 people, including five political prisoners and 86 foreigners. http://bit.ly/tCoo58

Brazil economy ‘overtakes Britain’:
Brazil’s rise to world’s sixth-largest economy is part of larger trend where many emerging economies are growing fast. http://bit.ly/t1D3RD