During a radio show on Saturday, Rep. Michele Bachmann described herself as a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines” in Washington, D.C. The Republican congresswoman went on to tell WWTC-AM:

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

Millions of jubilant south Sudanese voted on Sunday in an independence referendum which could cut Africa's biggest country in two and deprive the north of most of its lucrative oil.

People queued for hours in the burning sun outside polling stations in the southern capital Juba, and many were turned away as the first day of voting ended in the week-long ballot. "This is the moment the people of southern Sudan have been waiting for," southern president Salva Kiir said after casting his ballot, urging people to be patient as they waited to vote.

The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace deal ending a civil war which has raged on and off since 1955, fueled by oil and ethnicity, between the mostly Muslim north and the south, where most people follow Christianity and traditional beliefs. The war left two million dead and displaced four million people and Southerners view the poll as a new beginning after decades of strife and perceived repression by north Sudan. "I am voting for separation," said Nhial Wier, a veteran of the north-south civil war that led up to the vote. "This day marks the end of my struggles. In the army I was fighting for freedom. I was fighting for separation."

Al-Manar TV: Referendum on South Sudan Separation Resumes
PressTV: Clashes in Sudan's Abyei region kill 33

On New Year’s Day, a devastating terrorist bombing at a Coptic church in Egypt killed 21 people and injured 79 others. Although the identity of the culprits was not known, it was assumed that they were Muslim extremists, intent on targeting those they saw as heretics. Religious tensions immediately rose in the country, and angry Copts stormed streets, battled with police, and even vandalized a nearby mosque. The riots and heightened tensions between the Muslim and Coptic communities was likely what the terrorists wanted — to divide the Egyptian community and create sectarian strife between different religious groups.

Yet by Coptic Christmas Eve, which took place Thursday night in Egypt, things had changed completely. As Egyptian Copts attended mass at churches across the country, “thousands” of Muslims, including “the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak,” joined them, acting as “human shields” to protect from terrorist attacks by extremists. The Muslims organized under the slogan “We either live together, or we die together,”

President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today. It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

TecHi: Why Obama's National Internet ID Solution is a Really, REALLY Bad Idea

US Ambassador to Iceland Luis Arreaga has been summoned by that nation’s foreign ministry to answer questions about the Justice Department’s attempt to subpoena secret information from MP Birgitta Jonsdottir’s twitter account. Jonsdottir is an outspoken free speech supporter and has past ties with WikiLeaks. It is assumed that the efforts to subpoena her account information, as well as that of a number of other people, is related to the Justice Department’s effort to find something with which to charge those affiliated with the site. Iceland’s Interior Ministry said it was concerning that the US was trying to acquire such information about any of its citizens, and “even more serious when put in perspective and concerns freedom of speech.”

Indeed, Jonsdottir says she believes the subpoena is centered chiefly around intimidating her and others associated with WikiLeaks, and it does seem pretty unlikely that the Justice Department will manage to cull enough data from Twitter for a criminal case. At the same time, the Justice Department apparently attempted to keep the subpoenas secret, ordering Twitter not to inform those users who were targeted. Twitter is believed to have challenged to order, which was unsealed shortly thereafter.

The First Post: Iceland and Twitter stand up to US WikiLeaks probe
Jason Ditz: Obama’s Anti-WikiLeaks Subpoenas Cast a Broad Net

Scott Horton interviews Daniel Ellsberg, January 10, 2011. (Listen to the interview.)

Glenn Greenwald: Government-created climate of fear

A US court has ordered social networking site Twitter to hand over records on Wikileaks staff members and supporters. The records sought include online activity, messages, addresses and bank account details. The order has caused a stir within rights groups, while WikiLeaks condemned the move. The government of Iceland said it would lodge an official complaint.

The Independent: US demands Twitter release Assange details
Andre Damon: US government demands Twitter account information of WikiLeaks and followers

Figures recently released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) index of 55 food commodities indicates that worldwide food prices hit a record high in December. Though the costs of some food commodities like rice, corn and soy actually decreased, oil seeds and sugar jumped significantly due to various factors including erratic weather and droughts, according to reports.

In the past, such ups and downs on the commodity market did not immediately affect actual food costs for consumers, but some experts say that this is no longer the case, and that "food inflation" will occur right alongside the commodity price gains. And rapid food inflation has already taken place in India, for example, with recent reports indicating that the country experienced an overall food inflation rate of 18 percent in 2010. Low food stocks, droughts and poor weather conditions have all contributed to the escalating food crisis, which has led many nations to cut off exports in order to save supplies for their own populations. And the resulting global shortages only exacerbate the problem further as importing nations scramble to source needed commodities for their own populations.

The Obama administration's $78 billion cut to US defense spending is a mere "pin-prick" to a behemoth military-industrial complex that must drastically shrink for the good of the republic, a former Reagan administration budget director recently told Raw Story. "It amounts to a failed opportunity to recognize that we are now at a historical inflection point at which the time has arrived for a classic post-war demobilization of the entire military establishment," David Stockman said in an exclusive interview.

"The Cold War is long over," he continued. "The wars of occupation are almost over and were complete failures -- Afghanistan and Iraq. The American empire is done. There are no real seriously armed enemies left in the world that can possibly justify an $800 billion national defense and security establishment, including Homeland Security."

Short of that, he suggested, the United States has "reached the point of no return" with its artificial creation of wealth, and will eventually face a sharp economic decline.

The UK government is tightening grip on the British people in various aspects of their lives from economy to social liberties, education, health and security. The government's policies including its austerity drive which covers each and every corners of the people's being, the rise in university tuition fees and cuts to higher education, police schemes to ban protests altogether, which is considered as a serious blow to the so-called democracy, imposing restrictions on how and who votes, again considered as depriving a person from its inalienable right as part of the nation's human rights, giving permission to police forces to sneak through people's life and the most humiliating of these the “control orders” which prompted an international cry and call for them to be abolished. International human rights campaigners have unanimously condemned the British government for carrying out one of the “most serious violations” of natural injustice in any developed democracy by renewing the so-called control orders.

Dozens of soldiers brought the village of Nabi Saleh to a standstill today in yet another attempt to curb demonstrations in the village. One protester was arrested, and two required medical treatment for their injuries. Dozens of villagers, joined by Israeli and international supporters took part in the weekly demonstration in the village despite the siege laid on the village by the army, and the unusually large number of soldiers who occupied the village’s streets. Many hiked through the mountains the entire area was declared a closed military zone as early as 9 am and a gate that was installed at the entrance to the village earlier this week was shut closed.

Senior Iranian lawmaker Esmail Kowsari says the assassins of an Iranian nuclear scientist have confessed to being supported by the Israeli intelligence service. In July 2010, Iranian nuclear physics scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed when a remote-controlled bomb detonated near his house in the north of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Following security operations, Iran finally succeeded in arresting the main agents behind the terrorist incident and dismantled a network comprising of spies and terrorists commissioned by Israel, Intelligence Ministry announced on Monday. Long before the assassination of Ali-Mohammadi, the intelligence officials of Israel, the UK and the US had publicly threatened to kill our nuclear scientists, Kowsari said on Monday.

NYT: Iran Claims to Have Broken Israeli Spy Ring

[Translated by Mark K. Jensen] The founder of WikiLeaks met us in a large dark living room. A firm handshake. He's tall and looks quite youthful, with a rather stiff, almost comical gait. Wearing a tweed jacket and a little V-necked sweater, he could pass for the owner of the place were it not for his rocker hair style. "'Rolling Stone Italy' has conferred on me the title of rock star of the year!" he told us with a laugh, his eyes as crinkly as a child's. It made him laugh, the way a schoolboy laughs at a joke. But when he answered questions, he turned into a thinker: his face serious, slow delivery, his words weighed and carefully chosen.

The media started with the assertion that Jared Lee Loughner was actually a left-winger. This is standard procedure, so much so that I think they must have a media guide instructing them how to handle difficult PR situations. When the videos obviously demonstrated an obsession with the ideas of the extreme right (which is no longer distinguishable from the mainstream right), they immediately switched to the idea that he is insane, and therefore partisan politics became irrelevant.

Following the 'fair and balanced' idea of providing 'objectivity' by staging debates between right wingers of varying degrees of radicalism, the main argument is now that both right and left wingers have to tone down the rhetoric, the right-wingers for painting cross-hairs on their political opponents and making both overt and veiled threats of extreme violence, and the left-wingers for the 'name-calling' in complaining about it! Since both sides are to blame, it can't be a partisan issue!

WSWS: Arizona assassination spree tied to political right
Raw Story: Conservatives mocked DHS report warning of ‘antigovernment’ violence
Natural News: In wake of Giffords shooting, the mere act of questioning the government now being demonized
ABC News: Jared Loughner Radically Changed Before Alleged Shooting, Friend Says: 'He Was a Good Person... I Don't Know What the Hell Happened to Him' [MKULTRA...]