It sounded conciliatory, even friendly, brimming with the outward trappings of a shift to the center, but President Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union speech was, at its core, an unmistakably partisan challenge to congressional Republicans. Yet for all the surface civility, Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later.

State of the Union Speech: You can read our full coverage below. The signature line everyone will remember came at the end: "We do big things."

[Editor's Comment:] Yes, that's what Obama does. Big things. And he's right to boast about them (more so than Bush anyway, who was pretty good at boastin' too). -In Iraq Obama still is killing a lot of people, creating terror & mayhem on a daily basis, continuing where Bush left off. In Afghanistan he does things in a seriously big way as well, terrorizing many, and killing thousands of innocent civilians (oh, yes, children too), in the streets, in people's homes, in mosques and market squares. -Impressive! Why, in Pakistan he even murders them using drones, killing hundreds, thousands of them from a distance. So you see, retail clearly is not worthy of a Peace Laureate. Wholesale, that's the way to go. So if you're lookin' to do somethin' really, really, really BIG in the way of peace, Obama's the man...Why not join the Army?

WSWS: Obama outlines right-wing, pro-corporate agenda in State of the Union speech In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama outlined a reactionary political agenda that amounted to a full-scale embrace of the policies of the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives. The speech was a demonstration of the bipartisan consensus of the American ruling elite. Both Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of the financial aristocracy, from whom they are taking their marching orders to cut domestic social spending and enact further tax breaks for the wealthy. Obama displayed utter callousness and indifference toward the social distress of tens of millions of Americans. There was virtually no reference to unemployment or the staggering growth of economic inequality, and no proposals for creating jobs for the 17 million workers who are jobless or forced to subsist on part-time and temporary work. The words “poverty,” “foreclosures,” “hunger” and “homelessness” were not uttered, despite sharp increases in all four during the first two years of Obama’s tenure. Listening to Obama’s desultory remarks, one would never have guessed that just 28 months ago the American financial-corporate elite brought the American and world economy to its knees, precipitating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The speech was a paean to American capitalism and the very financial bandits who are chiefly responsible for the catastrophe facing the American people.

The Economic Collapse: Empty Promises: 5 Reasons Why Barack Obama’s State Of The Union Address Was Completely Wrong About The Economy What the American people really need are some very real answers to some very real problems. So were there any real answers in Barack Obama's State of the Union address? Well, Barack Obama promised that America will "out-innovate, out-educate and out-build" the rest of the world. He also pledged that America will become "the best place in the world to do business" and that the government must "take responsibility" for our deficit spending. But does all of this rhetoric mean anything or is all this just another batch of empty promises to add to the long list of empty promises that Barack Obama has already made and broken? The American people certainly don't need any more empty promises. Millions of American families have been pushed to the edge of desperation by this economy.

The Qatar-based broadcaster Al- Jazeera launched Monday a second cache of documents quoting Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as saying it would be "illogical" to ask Israel to absorb five million refugees as part of a final peace deal. The leaked files said that Abbas privately acknowledged the return of even one million refugees would mean "the end of Israel" and does not seem practical. According to the documents, not only did Palestinian officials offer a low figure of returnees, Chief Palestinian negotiator Saed Erekat said that "refugees would not have voting rights on a possible peace deal with Israel."

The new documents also showed that in the course of peace talks in 2008 and 2009, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni proposed moving several Arab villages now in Israel into a future Palestinian state as part of a land-swap deal for West Bank Jewish settlements. The Arab satellite news channel launched a first cache of new documents on Sunday. Al-Jazeera said it has obtained nearly 1,700 documents, maps and minutes of decade-long records of negotiations. The Arab satellite news channel said the leaks cover more than 10 years of secret talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The documents also showed Abbas was warned in advance of Israel 's 2008 invasion of Gaza.

Uruknet: The Palestine Papers: Offering Palestine
Uruknet/The Guardian: Palestinian refugees rule out compromise on return to homeland
Uruknet/The Guardian: Palestine papers: MI6 plan proposed internment – and hotline to Israelis

The first protester is dead in Egypt according to tweets and media reports. 20-year-old Mustafa Reda Mahmoud Abdelfattah is said to have been killed by a shot to his heart. SkyNews confirmed this report. A second protester has also been killed according to Reuters. Police have started firing live ammo at the crowd along with tear gas. Now the sun is setting and the crowds are still out. Click HERE to see photos of the Egyptian riots.

Xinhuanet: Egyptian authorities ban further protests Egyptian authorities said Wednesday that further protests will be banned after Tuesday's mass gatherings in Cairo and some other places in Egypt. A statement of the Interior Ministry said anyone who organizes protests would be subject to legal questioning. The statement called on people to discard attempts to exploit their problems and to bear in mind the dangers of stirring the sentiments of ordinary people to open doors for havoc and chaos. "Police separated the crowds after we learnt that the protesters planned to escalate matters and invite other groups," the ministry's statement said. The statement also denied that massive protests took place in other places, saying the intensive presence was in Tahrir Square in central Cairo where no more than 10,000 protesters amassed and by the evening they were reduced to half.

WSWS: Tens of thousands march in Egypt against Mubarak regime
PressTV: Further protests banned in Egypt
AhramOnline: Live Updates of the Protests in Egypt - it is growing
SifyNews: Egypt president's son, family flee to Britain
The Independent: Robert Fisk: A new truth dawns on the Arab world

Demonstrations were held in Cairo yesterday demanding the ouster of President Mubarak and calling for reforms. This was inspired by recent events in Tunisia and by the works of our talented Associate, Carlos Latuff. Carlos’ works were featured on many of the placards carried in the event. Egyptian demonstrators hold up placards during a protest in central Cairo to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and calling for reforms on January 25, 2011. The protesters, carrying flags and chanting slogans against the government, rallied in a protest inspired by the uprising in Tunisia which led to the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A video of the demonstration, courtesy of Al Jazeera, can be seen here.

Boy's claim of innocence prompted judge to try him as adult. A Pennsylvania boy who was 11 years old when he allegedly shot and killed his father's pregnant fiancee could find himself being the youngest person ever sentenced to life without parole. Human rights campaigners have said the case shows the US' justice system to be unusually harsh towards juvenile offenders, and argue that a life sentence for the boy could violate international law.

Prosecutors allege that Jordan Brown, now 13, shot and killed 26-year-old Kenzie Houk as she slept in her home in Lawrence County, near Pittsburgh, in February, 2009. Houk was pregnant with a nearly full-term child at the time. Brown was charged with two counts of homicide. Brown's lawyers on Tuesday argued an appeal against a judge's earlier decision to have the adolescent tried as an adult.

[russkeller:] Can't audit the CIA either. It's why they got into drug sales so they could have cash off the books and not be held accountable.
[Editor:] The Federal Reserve (FED) can't either...

Click on image to check out the rest of the info. (Hat Tip: Lauren Jackson)

We read: US fury over UN expert's 9/11 'cover-up' claims 25 Jan 2011 The United States on Tuesday demanded the sacking of a UN human rights expert for "noxious" [?] comments claiming there had been a US cover-up over the September 11 attacks... The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, called Falk's views "despicable and deeply offensive" and said she had registered a protest and called for his dismissal. Falk wrote in his personal blog on January 11 that there are "awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations" given for the attacks when hijacked [sic] jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. He said there was "an apparent cover-up" by the US government over its knowledge of the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden. Falk said mainstream US media had been "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials."

Except that the events of September 11th were not a 'bin Laden' operation. They were a Cheney/Neo-con operation, six ways to Sunday.

Most variations of international-relations realism include some notion of states sacrificing ethical considerations at the altar of national interest. It's never been completely clear, of course, whether this is a descriptive claim, or a prescriptive one—whether, in other words, the idea is that states should behave this way, or that they in fact do. Those pondering this question ought to consider the case of Norway. In a brief but revealing cable included in the vast WikiLeaks "CableGate" trove and published last week by the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, US embassy officials report that the Nordic nation opted to divest its sovereign wealth holdings from companies violating "humanitarian principles" and "fundamental ethical norms."

In case you are thinking that major global corporations aren't exactly quaking in their boots at the prospect of divestiture by Norway, think again. Built on the healthy revenues of Norway's thriving oil sector, the country's sovereign fund invests its considerable wealth in over 7,000 corporations worldwide. In fact, the fund is the largest single investor in Europe. To judge from the WikiLeaked cable, the combination of Norway's financial heft with its righteous ethical stance concerned American diplomats because, well, it disproportionately affects US corporations—specifically, America's highly-profitable and politically-influential arms manufacturers.

[Erta Ale, a volcano in the deserts of Ethiopia’s Afar Triangle in northeastern Africa, erupts. The volcano’s crater had always had a bubbling soup of silver-black lava. But, in November 2010, it started erupting again after decades of lying dormant.]

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor -- and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company -- and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano's crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

NATO's senior official in Afghanistan Mark Sedwill has said foreign forces will remain in the war-wrecked country far beyond 2014 to take new "tasks". The NATO official made the remark at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that a new phase in the war will begin in 2014 despite the planned handover of security to Afghan forces, Xinhua news agency reported. Sedwill further explained that the tasks and roles of NATO forces would undergo a change and stressed that after 2014 priority would shift to providing socio-economic support for the war-torn country rather than military and security aid.

Last November, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that NATO would start handing over control to Afghan security forces from the beginning of 2011 and the transition would be completed by the end of 2014. Despite because of the presence of some 150,000 US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan, the war-hit country remains devastated by militancy as well as persistent bombings and ground attacks by foreign troops that supposedly target militants but leave many civilians dead.

More about NATO's "tasks" here.

Thousands of people rallied on Sunday in Mir Ali, a town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal agency, and in Peshawar, the capital of the country’s north-west Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, in furious protest against a wave of US Predator missile strikes on homes and vehicles inside Pakistan. Hundreds of Pashtun tribesmen spontaneously assembled for the Mir Ali demonstration. Just hours before, a Predator had stalked a car allegedly carrying four anti-US militants and incinerated it with Hellfire missiles when it parked in the village of Doga Madakhel. All the occupants were killed. Two other Predator strikes followed. A motorcycle rider and two others were killed not far from Doga Madakhel, then at least six people were killed by another missile strike on a house near Miranshah, the largest town in North Waziristan. Sunday’s demonstration in Peshawar highlighted the growing fury in Pakistan over the US operations inside the country—which are gross violations of Pakistani sovereignty and war crimes under the Geneva Convention, which bans extrajudicial assassinations and the targeting of civilian housing and vehicles.

Institutionally biased to the Left [???], politically correct and with a rudderless leadership. This is Peter Sissons’ highly critical view of the BBC in his new memoirs, in which he describes his fascinating career over four decades as a television journalist. Here, in the latest part of our serialisation, he reveals how it was heresy at the BBC to question claims about climate change . . .

Yesterday nine members of anti-war and Palestinian solidarity groups were compelled to appear before the Chicago grand jury for the first time. One of these is Maureen Murphy, a journalist who has been active in opposition to Israel’s repression of Palestinians. In a statement, Murphy said she and the others would refuse to comply with the grand jury, calling the process a “fishing expedition.” Coinciding with yesterday’s grand jury hearing, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression held demonstrations in Chicago, Minneapolis, and other cities. The 14 activists victimized in the September raids invoked their Fifth Amendment right when requested to appear before the Chicago grand jury, and subpoenas were withdrawn. The FBI infiltration of political groups, police raids, and the grand jury inquisition by the Obama administration aim to intimidate and criminalize opposition to government policy and roll back democratic rights. They come at a time of deepening economic crisis and a war that has lasted longer than any other in US history.

Maureen Murphy: I Will Not Dignify This Witch Hunt