The promise to scrap his predecessor’s hardliner war-on-terror policies, which helped Barack Obama win presidential election, is apparently off the table. The political reality is that the current administration is doing quite the opposite thing.

Long before he became US president or the winner of a Noble Peace Prize, Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. During his election campaign he vowed to reverse the abuses and policies of his predecessor George W. Bush. Three years later, many civil rights advocates, who once cheered “yes, we can,” are finding themselves disillusioned.

“Not only has the Obama administration blocked torture accountability and refused to investigate and prosecute. He has basically maintained indefinite detention. He has revived military commissions. As well he has expanded targeted killings – they’ve increased under the Obama administration manifold, and he’s even authorized the killing of a US citizen,” explains Maria LaHood from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Russia Today: ‘Obama just didn’t have the balls to follow with the right thing’

The Taliban have attacked the largest American military base in Afghanistan on the first day of the New Year despite US efforts to negotiate with the militant group, Press TV reports. - A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said on Sunday that fatalities had been caused after the militants hit the US Bagram Air Base in the north of the Afghan capital Kabul with nine missiles. He added that they launched the attack when the US forces were celebrating the start of the new year. Afghan officials also announced that the heavily-fortified airbase had been hit by a barrage of rockets, but claimed that the attack had not caused any casualties.

One of China's best known dissidents, missing for 20 months, is now said to be in a Xinjiang prison - Gao Zhisheng, an attorney who's defended activists & religious minorities, is an outspoken critic of the Chinese government. - Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer, was arrested in February 2009, released briefly in March 2010 and disappeared soon after. The official Xinhua news agency reported last month that Mr Gao had been sent back to jail for three years for violating probation rules. On Sunday his brother said he had received a court document saying his brother was in jail in Xinjiang. Gao Zhiyi said he planned to visit his brother in the Shaya County jail in the western prefecture of Aksu later this month. "I did not know where my brother was for over a year,'' he told AFP news agency. ''I always knew that he was not free and he was under control of the government and state security." In the 1950s and 60s, political prisoners were often sent to Xinjiang. Human rights activists, responding to the news, said that imprisoning Mr Gao in the remote area was an attempt to deter visitors.

The Palestinian Prime Minister of the Gaza government, Ismail Haneyya, arrived in Istanbul Sunday on the third leg of his tour where he received a warm welcome from the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. - The vicious onslaught that Jerusalem is being exposed to in terms of Judaization and expulsion of its indigenous population and ways to support Jerusalemites and protect holy places were discussed during the meeting of the two leaders. Erdogan expressed support for Palestinian reconciliation, according to Anadolu Agency. The rebuilding of the Gaza Strip was also discussed and Haneyya revealed after the meeting that there was a Turkish comprehensive plan for the development of the Gaza Strip.

"HUNDREDS of ultra-Orthodox Jews, some wearing yellow stars or the uniforms of Holocaust death camp inmates, have demonstrated against what they called media attacks against them over their efforts to segregate the sexes in public."

The bearded men and boys, in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighbourhood, were ostensibly gathered to protest against the jailing of a member of their community for leading vigilante attacks against a local religious bookshop, which was considered not religious enough by hardliners. But ultra-Orthodox news website Kikar HaShabbat said the main purpose of the rally had become that of fighting back against ''incitement against the ultra-Orthodox public''.

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A number of Palestinian and international solidarity activists were wounded, including one shot in the neck, and several other protestors were detained in numerous anti-wall protests taking part in a number of West Bank villages on Friday afternoon. - In their weekly protest, the villagers of Kufr Qaddum, near the West Bank city of Nablus, organized a march joined by hundreds of residents and international supporters. Israeli soldiers suppressed the protest by firing a number of tear gas canisters and concussion grenades at them. Several were wounded as a result of this, and were treated by field medics. Protestors raised Palestinian and Fatah party flags to commemorate the forty seventh anniversary of the establishment of the Fatah party. In the village of Al-Ma'asara, near Bethlehem, Israeli troops detained Irene Nasser, aged 35, from Nazareth, in addition to an international supporter who was at the protest.

Dramatic amateur footage has emerged from cities across Syria of an apparently brutal crackdown by government forces after the biggest demonstrations in months. - Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters took to the streets across Syria's towns and cities after Friday prayers as an Arab League monitoring mission observed. Government forces purportedly used water cannons to disperse protesters in the southern city of Daraa. Amateur video also purports to show an Arab League observer reporting to have witnessed snipers in the city. "We saw them with our own eyes. We call on the authorities to remove them immediately. We will contact the Arab League immediately and if they do not comply within 24 hours, there will be other measures," he said. In Hama, a group of men appear to run into the street to retrieve a body as heavy gunfire rang out. The authenticity of the amateur material cannot be verified as Syria has banned most foreign journalists and prevented independent reporting inside the country.

Police in New York have arrested around 70 Occupy protesters, who had come back to retake their former campsite at Zuccotti Park. - The late Saturday night arrests were made in the midst of New Year's celebrations. “All week, all year, we'll still be here,” protesters chanted. When they saw the police arresting the protesters, other New Yorkers also came to the park to show their support for the push to retake the encampment. According to police sources, one protester assaulted an officer. The police evicted the demonstrators from Zuccotti Park in an early morning raid in mid-November. The attack led to other raids on many encampments across the US from Boston to Los Angeles.

PressTV: Over 5,800 OWS protesters arrested - The US police have arrested over 5,800 anti-Wall Street protesters since the beginning of the anti-capitalism movement in September last year. According to the website occupy-arrests.com, at least 5,748 occupy protesters were arrested till December 31, 2011. Another 68 demonstrators were detained in New York City's Zuccotti Park on Saturday night.

Denmark plans to build a 20-kilometer tunnel under the Baltic Sea to Germany in what would be the largest infrastructure project in Europe and one of the world's longest undersea tunnels. Most Danes support the project, but resistance is growing on the German side. - On a cold winter's day in Lalandia, a holiday resort on the Danish Baltic island of Lolland, two men faced off in a kind of duel. One came from Germany, the other from Denmark. The issue was whether Lolland and Fehmarn -- in other words, Denmark and Germany -- should be linked by a tunnel or a bridge. Or whether everything should remain as it is. It also had to do with two kinds of politics. Hendrick Kerlen, the German, sat in the audience. He opposes a fixed link. In fact, he thinks a tunnel would be just as absurd as a bridge -- and he came armed with arguments and figures and, above all, questions. Steen Lykke, the Dane, sat on the panel of experts. He works for Femern A/S, the Danish state-owned company tasked with realizing the project. Lykke had also come with figures and plenty of answers. Kerlen and Lykke are engineers, both well over the age of 60. They have both had successful careers and worked abroad for many years. They share similar views of the world: Both men are cool-headed, rational and interested in feasible projects. They actually should be allies. The problem is that Lykke's answers don't match Kerlen's questions.

Military ruler says emergency laws to be lifted this week and consultations on new constitution to start in February. - Fiji's military ruler Commodore Frank Bainimarama has announced that emergency laws in place since a 2009 political crisis will be lifted this week. In a New Year speech, Bainimarama also said consultations would start in February on a new constitution to replace one annulled in 2009, at the height of a political crisis over his rule. "I will in the next few weeks announce the nationwide consultation process which will commence in February 2012," Bainimarama said on Monday. "To facilitate this consultation process, the public emergency regulations will cease from 7 January, 2012." He said, adding that the new constitution should be based on equal rights for all Fijians, regardless of ethnicity.

Figure jumps to nearly 1,500, and likely to rise further, as many bodies remain buried in the debris in country's south. - The death toll from killer floods in the Philippines has risen by more than 200, more than a week after the disaster struck, with officials expecting more corpses to be found. The confirmed toll reached 1,453 on Tuesday, up sharply from 1,236 the previous day as navy and coastguard ships fished more bodies out of the waters off the southern island of Mindanao, the civil defence office said. The stench of death pervaded the region, a sign that many corpses still remained unrecovered on land, Ana Caneda, the regional civil defence chief, said. Tropical storm Washi brought heavy rains, overflowing rivers and flash floods to the southern Philippines from December 16 to 18, sweeping away whole villages built on sandbars and riverbanks.