Rep. John Hall (D-N.Y.), who is leaving Capitol Hill after being defeated by Republican challenger Nan Hayworth, recently warned that with the massive changes to campaign finance law prompted by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, the nation could soon descend into fascism. "The country was bought," Hall told The New York Observer in an exit interview. "I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism. So that's really the question -- is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?"

An Israeli official has claimed that the US administration will exert all necessary efforts to suppress any Palestinian attempt to have a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. According to Israeli media sources, the anonymous official said that the United States will work behind the scenes to prevent any resolution condemning settlement construction from even being put on the agenda of the UN Security Council. If such efforts fail, he said, the US might use its veto or propose a "more balanced" draft resolution.

The Israeli government is fearful that the US might not use its veto to stop a "hostile" Security Council resolution condemning settlement activity. As a result, it has ordered its diplomats around the world to make contact with the representatives of the Security Council member states to campaign against any resolution which isn’t favourable to Israel.

In the early morning hours of 29 December 2010, settlers set fire to a family's dwelling in Susiya village.

The great majority of Susiya residents live in tents as their historic stone and cave dwellings have been demolished several times over by the Israeli military. Many of the tents now used have been provided by humanitarian organizations and serve as bedrooms, kitchens, storage and sitting areas for the families living in them.

The Palestinian village of Susiya is sandwiched between a handful of settlements and outposts, an army base, and an ancient synagogue. Shepherds are unable to graze their flocks freely on their own land and farmers are unable to access their fields to harvest wheat and olives due to the area's designation as a 'closed military zone' (see the video below). Israeli settlers in the South Hebron Hills, who have a reputation for being some of the nastiest settlers around, often direct their venemous aggression at Palestinians from Susiya who are surrounded on all sides.

Max Blumenthal: Never again? Elderly Palestinian women called “whores” on Yad Vashem tour, while racism explodes across Israel (Updated)
Shoah: ZIO=NAZI SETTLER & GESTAPO VIOLENCE ESCALATES IN SOUTH HEBRON HILLS

Up to 200,000 people have been affected by the floods, which have hurt the nation's lucrative mining industry and cut off major highways as the water rushes through sodden inland regions to the sea. Floodwaters continued to rise in parts of the state of Queensland on Saturday. Some communities are likely to be cut off for more than a week.

"In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," Andrew Fraser, the treasurer for the state of Queensland, said in flood-hit Bundaberg on Saturday.

The entire population of two towns has already been forced to evacuate as water swamped their communities, cutting off roads and devastating crops. The next city in the water's path - Rockhampton, near the coast - is bracing for flood levels forecast at 9.4m by Wednesday. Rockhampton airport closed to commercial flights on Saturday as flood waters continued to take hold in the central Queensland city.

At least 21 people are dead after a [car] bomb exploded outside a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, early Saturday. Officials "believe" a suicide bomber attacked as worshippers were leaving a New Year's Eve mass. [The previous sentence does not belong in this news item. It is a standard propaganda phrase added as a matter of routine, usually at the beginning of the text. They always say this, even when contradicted by their own evidence. -Why would a person kill himself by staying put in a vehicle fitted with explosives? Such a car bomb can be remotely controlled. This is how the Israelis usually do it.] The Interior Ministry said the wounded included eight Muslims from a mosque across the street from the Saints Church. Several hundred Christians protested the bombing, attacking the mosque, burning cars and clashing with police. The blast came from a car parked outside the church, but police were still investigating whether the car had been rigged with explosives or a bomb had been placed under it. Witnesses reported seeing the charred chassis of the car, with the remains of several bodies nearby and dozens wounded.

Al Jazeera: Deadly blast outside Egypt church
Kavkaz Center: Copts torturing Muslim women in monastery prison attacked in Alexandria

Alan Caruba: A Blizzard of Lies in The New York Times: Updated by Piers Corbyn
Twitter: Piers Corbyn

¶1. (C) Summary: Mission Paris recommends that that the USG reinforce
our negotiating position with the EU on agricultural biotechnology by
publishing a retaliation list when the extend "Reasonable Time
Period" expires. In our view, Europe is moving backwards not
forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with
Austria, Italy and even the Commission. In France, the "Grenelle"
environment process is being implemented to circumvent science-based
decisions in favor of an assessment of the "common interest."
Combined with the precautionary principle, this is a precedent with
implications far beyond MON-810 BT corn cultivation. Moving to
retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to
EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices.
In fact, the pro-biotech side in France -- including within the farm
union -- have told us retaliation is the only way to begin to begin
to turn this issue in France. End Summary.

2010 was a year of contrasts for those seeking to boost the role of science in the development agenda. Many new initiatives were launched; some took root, others ran into difficulties. And progress in meeting big challenges, such as conserving biodiversity and tackling climate change, remained slow. Several organisations had chosen 2010 as the target date for achieving specific goals. Perhaps the most ambitious was the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which aimed to "significantly curb" biodiversity loss by this date.

CBS News: How WikiLeaks Enlightened Us in 2010

In the year 2010, the United States has launched the greatest number of air strikes from unmanned aerial drones into the inaccessible tribal regions of northwest Pakistan, killing many people including suspected militants and innocent civilians. During the year, a total of 995 people had been killed in 122 drone strikes launched in northwestern tribal agencies of Pakistan, as compared to 53 drone strikes in 2009 which killed almost 500 people.

The number of air strikes doubled this year than the previous one, and the figure of people killed in these strikes also raised to double, which shows the growing U.S. influences in Pakistan's territory. A total of 218 strikes have been launched within the territory of Pakistan from 2004 to 2010, and approximately 1,378 to 2,109 individuals have been killed in these unprecedented attacks.

People killed in drone strikes are usually identified as militants or suspected militants by U.S. officials and Pakistani security forces. But the real fact always remains distant and far behind. There is never any details of the names of people killed in such aerial strikes on media, nor are their identities confirmed or faces shown. Their exact account always remains vague.

The News: Drone attacks up by 134 pc in 2010, deaths up by 56 pc
PressTV: US air raids kill 670 in Pakistan in '10
Xinhuanet: 4 killed in 4th U.S. drone strike in NW Pakistan

It's not something we'd like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb. Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

This decrease in size follows two million years during which the human cranium steadily grew in size, and it's happened all over the world, to both sexes and every race. Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,' Kathleen McAuliffe writes in Discover magazine. 'The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.' She was reporting on comments made by Dr John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who argues that the fact the size of the human brain is decreasing doesn't necessarily mean our intelligence is in decline as well. Some paleontologists agree with this diagnosis, that our brains may have become smaller in size, but increasingly efficient. But others believe that man has indeed become steadily more stupid as he has evolved.

A top official at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting organization has slammed blocking of Press TV bank accounts in Britain as illegal.

"Banks cannot block the accounts of the media which operate within the regulations of the host country without a reason," head of the IRIB World Service Mohammad Sarafraz told the Islamic Republic of Iran News Agency (IRNA).

Sarafraz who also heads Press TV news channel said Press TV Ltd. in London is a company, which is registered according to Britain's law and operates within that framework. Sarafraz said the London-based Press TV Ltd. "is not directly affiliated with" Press TV news channel based in the Iranian capital of Tehran. The limited company is a British entity that provides service as an independent company to the Press TV news channel.

"Western countries especially Britain advance their illegal aims through economic and banking levers and they have so far closed some of the Press TV's accounts in different banks," he further explained.

The only sound that is heard in the Al Haddad house is that of a canary chirping in one of the rooms.

Gaza: It has become clear that not even two whole years after the war on Gaza are enough to either heal the pain or reduce the sorrow of those residing in this afflicted strip. One of such families is that of Al Haddad.

In southern Tel Al Hawa, 26-year-old Mohammad Al Haddad lives in a four-storey building along with his 18-year-old brother, Salam. In the 2008 Israeli offensive in Gaza, the rest of his family members were killed.

There is complete silence in the normally chaotic house, with the only sound of a chirping canary coming from one of the rooms.

"We were mistaken to believe we were safe here," Al Haddad told Gulf News. Tel Al Hawa, in south eastern Gaza City, had always been a relatively affluent residential area with wide streets and multi-storey apartment buildings when the Israeli army resolved on advancing into this neighbourhood with troops and tanks on the January 14, 2009.

During the war, the Israeli army used to announce three hours of a temporary ceasefire so that Gazans could buy their basic needs.

"On January 15, my younger brother Salam did not mind waiting for the announcement of the Israeli army concerning the temporary ceasefire at 1:00 pm, but rather set off to my grandfather's house early in the morning. Just as we got into our car and drove no more than 100 meters from our home to the intersection at the end of the street, when we were hit," Al Haddad recounted. "The power of the explosion flung me far from the car where I lost consciousness and later found myself in the hospital," he said. "Our neighbours later told us that he was struggling to reach the car but was prevented and taken to the hospital instead while others tried to put out the fire with no success," Al Haddad's uncle Sami said.

Iraq's young nuclear scientist, Mohammad al-Fouz, was gunned down in the country's capital city of Baghdad by Israeli spy agency (Mossad). Fouz, a genius university student, had discovered a new formula for producing peaceful nuclear energy and had been awarded by several international scientific festivals. He had released his new uranium enrichment formula in a number of western journals. A member of Fouz's family told FNA reporter in Baghdad that the young scientist was targeted by unknown gunmen in New Baghdad neighborhood when he was on his way back home.

Earlier reports had shown Mossad's involvement in the assassination of more than 350 Iraqi nuclear scientists as well as more than 300 university professors, and the attack on Mohammad al-Fouz was the most recent case in a chain of attacks carried out in recent years. Mossad has also played a major role in the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists in recent months.

2010 can be defined as the year of WikiLeaks. The whisteblowing website first made headlines around the world in April when it released a video of a U.S. helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians killing 12 people, including two Reuters news staff. In July, WikiLeaks created a bigger firestorm when it published more than 90,000 classified U.S. military war logs of the war in Afghanistan. Then in October, WikiLeaks published some 390,000 classified U.S. documents on the war in Iraq—the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history and the greatest internal account of any war on public record. And in November WikiLeaks began releasing a giant trove of confidential State Department cables that sent shockwaves through the global diplomatic establishment. Throughout it all, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange were targeted by the U.S. and other governments around the world. We play our interviews with Assange and with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. [includes rush transcript]

In a New Year's message to the nation, Gbagbo said he was not going to give up. He also described the call for him to quit as "an attempted coup d'état". Gbagbo said no one has the right to call on foreign armies to invade his country. Cote d'Ivoire has been trapped in a political impasse since the landmark presidential run-off held on Nov. 28. Both Gbagbo and opposition leader Alassane Ouattara claimed victory, swore themselves in as president of the country and formed their respective government. Gbagbo was backed by the country's Constitutional Council, while Ouattara has the support of the electoral commission. The mission from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was in Abidjan on Tuesday to ask Gbagbo to cede power to his rival Alassane Ouattara. The mission of three African presidents left Cote d'Ivoire on Wednesday without any sign of success.