In August, I witnessed the third demolition of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al-Arakib in Israel’s Negev desert. It was a harrowing scene that I will never forget. And it has been repeated five times since then, forcing the residents to sleep in the open air while rebuilding their homes over and over. I knew at the time that the Jewish National Fund, a quasi-governmental organization that plants trees all around Israel, especially over destroyed Palestinian villages, planned to establish a forest on the land that Al-Arakib stood. But I didn’t know at the time that the financing for the forest came from an extreme dominionist evangelical broadcasting network called GOD TV, or that the forest, which already represented an insane plan since it was going to fill an arid desert with non-native trees, would be called “GOD TV Forest.”

Since then, GOD TV’s real motives have come to light. Since then, GOD TV’s real motives have come to light. And (surprise, surprise!), GOD TV personality and complete huckster Rory Alec makes no secret of his desire “to plant a million trees to prepare the land for the return of [God's] son.” Once again, the Jewish — I repeat, Jewish! — state of Israel has partnered with open anti-Semites to dispossess the Palestinian un-people.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (World News) — The number of deaths from cholera in Haiti rose to 2.901 victims with official estimates on Thursday showed the highest daily death toll since the outbreak occurred in mid-October. The number of cholera deaths were confirmed on December 19, record the second largest number of victims in a day, accounting for less than 100 people, according to data presented by the Ministry of Health of Haiti, much higher than other peaks which counted 80 people in mid-November.

The total number of infected surged close to 150,000 in Haiti and the Dominican Republic authorities, neighboring countries to the west of Haiti, on Thursday reported 120 cases occurred, but no fatalities. Haiti’s first outbreak of cholera occurred more than a century ago that the dysfunction torture poor countries and politically, is now trying to rise from the massive earthquake in January that killed 250,000 people.

Julian Assange has set the ultimate dead man's switch: Arrest or kill him and thousands of files will be automatically released, including documents that out CIA-backed Arabs. The Wikileaks leader had previously claimed to have files on auto-release. That he had info on CIA ties was first-mentioned in an interview yesterday with Al-Jazeera. This is exactly the type of information that lead people to condemn Wikileaks as dangerous. If released it would certainly endanger many American operatives and cause a massive political disruption. [WikiLeaks is dangerous to the bad guys ("American operatives" and their Middle East stooges). Massive political disruption is positive and very necessary.]

The Peninsula: Many Arab officials have close CIA links: Assange

Residents hit by dramatic floods in Queensland will be eligible for disaster relief money, Australia's prime minister has said as she visited the affected area. Heavy rains battered the state for several days and river levels have continued to rise, leading to water covering an area larger than France and Germany combined. Some of the 200,000 people who live in the region have been forced to leave their homes and the military has sent planes to fly drop supplies into towns.

MB.com.ph: 200,000 affected by Aussie flood
Crikey: Bureau of Meteorology shows the real flood picture

Nearly 1,100 Palestinian children have been arrested by Israeli troops in 2010, a new report by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Detainees' Affairs shows. The ministry said on Wednesday that about 500 of the above-mentioned figure were detained in the city of al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank, Maan news agency reported.

PA Detainees' Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe said the high number reflected the Israeli policy to systematically pursue children, particularly in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), where children were often put under house arrest. According to the report, prisoners were routinely kept in solitary confinement in cells, which resembled graves. Some prisoners, including Hassan Salameh and Ahmad al-Mughrabi, have been spending more than eight years in such inhumane conditions. The Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet ordered 12 Palestinian prisoners to serve long sentences in solitary confinement, the report said.

The US military is investigating the leadership of an army brigade whose soldiers are accused of running a "kill team" that murdered Afghan civilians, as further evidence emerges of widespread complicity in the deaths. A brigadier general is conducting a "top to bottom" review of the 5th Stryker brigade after five of its soldiers were committed for trial early next year charged with involvement in the murders of three Afghans and other alleged crimes including mutilating their bodies, and collecting fingers and skulls from corpses as trophies. Among the issues under investigation is the failure of commanders to intervene when the alleged crimes were apparently widely spoken about among soldiers.

The Guardian: US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies'

President Obama’s claims of progress in the Afghan War don’t seem to be cutting into the realities of record death tolls and official predictions of more record death tolls to come, as a new CNN/Opinion Research poll (PDF) shows support for the conflict continuing to wane.

The poll now shows 63 percent of the American public opposed to the war, the largest opposition yet from the regular poll. The breakdown showed strong opposition across race, gender, regional and age lines. A secondary question asked the public how “things are going” in Afghanistan and showed 56 percent of Americans believe the war is going either “moderately badly” or “very badly.”

Kavkaz Center: Robert Gates: 'We're not ever leaving' Afghanistan

A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago. The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports. The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja's genetic health. They follow two alarming earlier studies, one of which found a distortion in the sex ratio of newborns since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a 15% drop in births of boys.

It is these very images Raed Abu al-Hummus remembers of spending more than six years in an Israeli prison. Raed is one of many Palestinians who have experienced excessive torture in Israeli prisons. Now, a new report reveals 90% of these prisoners being physically and mentally tortured by the Israeli security service are deprived from consulting with an attorney or their family before confessions are made.

The study, produced by the Israeli human rights organization, Public Committee Against Torture and Palestinian Prisoners' Society, has found that during some periods when prisoners are kept from meeting with their lawyers, Shin Bet, begins its interrogation. The report cites these cases as a an act of "systematic violence" and torture. Many Palestinian prisoners who have testified have claimed that the excessive torture and the psychological abuse were merely some tools to get the prisoners to confess to crimes they were accused of. Ironically enough, the prisoners were granted a visit to a lawyer, but only after they have agreed to confess to the crimes.

Democracy Now interviews Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the only U.S. citizens to be executed under the Espionage Act. He states:

Now, but it’s not surprising that the government would use conspiracy, whether it’s against my parents or whether it’s against the WikiLeaks people, because if you’re anybody who engages in conversation or discussion, and the government can get one person to testify that that discussion was to leak classified material, or to transmit information to the Soviet Union, in my parents case, they could be swept up in the dragnet. And you could get people to rat out their friends in order to get more lenient sentences. It sows distrust among the community of support. It scares other people into silence.

And so, what we see here is, if there is a criminal indictment for conspiracy, not an attack on just Julian Assange himself, but on the entire community of support that is seeking to promote the very revolutionary idea that the people have the right to know what their government is doing, that’s what this ultimately is all about. And every left-wing, every progressive organizer, every organizer, in general—how can you engage in organizing, in getting groups of people to protest and coordinating activities, without engaging in what the government would term a conspiracy? And so, it is a threat to all of us. And that is really why I issued my call for us to recognize this. This Espionage Act of 1917 has been the sword of Damocles, sitting quietly, mostly unused, ready to spring out and attack dissenters. And when you have it in the context of the growing secrecy that we face today ... and an authoritarian-oriented Supreme Court, it is a danger to us all.

The entire interview is very worth watching.

A newly released British document confirms that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for more than three decades.

Secret files released by Britain's National Archives said on Wednesday that British officials feared Tel Aviv would use its nuclear weapons in case of another war with Arab countries in the region.

Israel, which is considered as the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, has never confirmed or denied that it has produced nuclear warheads. It has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and also adamantly rejected international inspection of its nuclear facilities. Former US President Jimmy Carter acknowledged for the first time in May 2008 that Tel Aviv has 150 nuclear warheads in its arsenals.

In 1986, Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, leaked the news that Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. Vanunu was a former worker at the country's Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert.

In May 2010, the UK's Guardian newspaper said secret South African documents reveal that in 1975, Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the then-apartheid regime in South Africa. According to documents obtained by the newspaper, a secret meeting between the then-Israeli defense minister, Shimon Peres, and his South African counterpart, P.W. Botha, ended with an offer for the sale of warheads “in three sizes.” The Guardian claimed that those “sizes” referred to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.

Israel has initiated several wars in the region in its 60-year-old history of occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

The United States has allocated billions of dollars to its nuclear weapons complex, despite agreeing to the New START treaty which demands a reduction of nuclear warheads. According to Newsweek, US President Barack Obama's administration has earmarked 84.5 billion dollar for modernizing America's nuclear arsenal over the next decade. That is an increase of at least 20 percent compared to money spent on nuclear laboratories during Obama's predecessor George W. Bush's tenure.

The new development comes months after Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce the number of their active nuclear warheads. The pact inked on April 8, 2010, would limit Washington and Moscow to a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads each, about 30% down from the current level of 2,200.

These are not my wishes. I myself believe that our planet will be much safer without a Jewish state. I have only one wish for Israel, that it would become a state of its citizens.

The ACLU maintains an ever-growing database of these indignities, many so graphic they're illegal to broadcast over public airwaves. Actions that violate FCC standards are embraced by the TSA. "Mary in Texas" reported:

The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone ... I was touched in the pubic region in between my labia ... She then moved her hand across my pubic region and down the inner part of my upper thigh to the floor. She repeated this procedure on the other side. I was shocked and broke into tears.

A woman named Chris said:

"In the four times she explored the area where my inner thigh met my crotch, she touched my labia each time, and one pass made contact with my clitoris, through two layers of clothing. I told her I felt humiliated, assaulted and abused ... In my work as a nurse, if I did what the TSA did against a patient's will it would be considered assault and battery, and I did not see how the TSA should have different rules."

Recipients of such treatment aren't allowed to show distress. Melissa from Massachusetts did anyway:

"I was shaking and crying the entire time. I was begging them to hurry up but they kept stopping and telling me to calm down. It is impossible to gain composure when a stranger has her hands in your underwear."

British study shows conservatives' brains tend to have larger amygdalas, which responsible for primitive emotions. If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks. "It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes," Geraint Rees, the neurologist who carried out the study, told the media.

Simkanin had been experiencing weakness, chest pain, and had a large lump on his chest. He was 67 years old at the time of his death. [...] Dick Simkanin stood up for America, for all American workers and for all American Business owners when he decided in 2000 that his company was no longer going to participate in the withholding racquet, alleged, forced and demanded by law from Congress. Dick had spent 6 years researching American history and foundational principles. Ultimately he was spiritually convicted that he had no business being an unpaid bookkeeper for the Federal government, therefore, he had to give his workers 100% of their pay. How American of him! Thank God for Dicks' courage as it has cost him everything.

Two years after Israel’s aggression on the Gaza Strip (Operation Cast Lead), tens of thousands of Gaza residents continue to live a life of displacement. While the United Nations (UN) agencies and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have had the willingness and resources to support the re-construction of the houses Israel destroyed during the war, Israel continues to restrict the entry of construction materials, denying the victims from meaningful relief and from their right to adequate housing.

Directly after the military operations ended, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, visited Gaza and expressed his outrage at the scenes of destruction the territory sustained due to Israeli attacks. Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, said that, in light of the devastation of infrastructure, “[I]t’s absolutely critical that these kinds of (construction) material now be allowed into Gaza on a regular and hopefully free basis.”1 Fourteen months later, in March 2010, Mr. Moon visited Gaza again and criticized the Israeli blockade that had continued to foil the efforts to re-build Gaza.

Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a "discriminatory and disproportionate" European law. With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades. From 1 May 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse effects caused by herbal medicines.

Of all the talk about S.510, virtually no one has actually read the language in the bill -- especially not those lawmakers who voted for it. The more you read from this bill, the more surreal it all becomes. For example, did you know there's a global FDA power grab agenda hidden in the Food Safety Modernization Act? Keep reading and I'll quote text straight out of the bill itself.

China is preparing for conflict 'in every direction', the defence minister said on Wednesday in remarks that threaten to overshadow a visit to Beijing by his US counterpart next month. "In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction," said Liang Guanglie in an interview published by several state-backed newspapers in China. "We may be living in peaceful times, but we can never forget war, never send the horses south or put the bayonets and guns away," Mr Liang added. China repeatedly says it is planning a "peaceful rise" but the recent pace and scale of its military modernisation has alarmed many of its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific, including Japan which described China's military build-up as a "global concern" this month.

If you thought last week was as cold as you could bear it, brace yourself. Forecasters say the worst is yet to come, and this winter could be the harshest since the Thames froze over more than three centuries ago.

Temperatures for December are the coldest on record, with the average reading close to minus 1c – almost six degrees below normal.

And with forecasters warning that this winter’s ‘mini ice age’ might last until mid-March, this winter could be the worst since 1683-84 when a fair was held on the Thames.

Wendy McElroy: "Settled"? It's not even "Science"

Peninsula has an article based on a continuation of last week's interview with Julian Assange by Ahmed Mansour for Al Jazeera Arabic.

The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the names of some top Arab officials with alleged links with the CIA. ...

What is being published by the five media partners of WikiLeaks are only those details which they think are interesting for their readers. There are some Arab officials who are ‘stealing’ oil of their countries. “We need these media partners to focus more on this issue.”

[translate.google.com] The video surveillance at demonstrations is passé. This was decided by the Supreme Administrative Court in a landmark ruling. Cameras impaired right to demonstrate, the judges. Demonstrators may be filmed less in the future: The Supreme Administrative Court has in a landmark ruling, the video images of an anti-nuclear demonstration in Münster in June 2008, not declared to be legal. The ever-visible camera car police believe people from exercising their right to freedom of demonstration, the decision of 23 November. Citizens could have been deterred for fear of government monitoring of the participation in the event.

The French government has come up with a wizard wheeze which seems to be entirely designed to back the software giant Microsoft. In a Franco-American alliance, the likes of which has not been seen since the French backed a campaign by anti-democratic terrorists against its lawful government, the French are going to tax every tablet which does not come out with Windows software on-board. The logic is that if you are running Android, Linux or the MacOS you must be a pirate as Windows is the tool of choice for all decent minded French citizens.

The following photo essay provides a glimpse into the harsh living conditions of shanty-dwellers in central Colombo, Sri Lanka. The pictures were taken by photojournalist Shantan Kumarasamy.

Over 70,000 families or more than 50 percent of central Colombo’s population are to be removed and their homes demolished by the Sri Lankan government. The mass evictions are part of plans by President Mahinda Rajapakse to free-up nearly 390 hectares of prime inner city real estate and transform the country’s capital into a South Asian financial hub.

The government has placed the Urban Development Authority and the Land Reclamation and Development Board—two civilian bodies—under the authority of the defence ministry, which has already deployed soldiers and police to forcibly carry out evictions.

A number of shanty dwellers, with the assistance of the Socialist Equality Party, have formed an Action Committee to Defend the Right to Housing (ACDRH) and issued an appeal to all workers and youth to support their struggle to protect their homes. [More HERE.]