Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a Security Council resolution backing an Arab League peace plan that calls for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down amid escalating violence. - The other 13 members of the council, including the United States, Britain and France, voted in an unusual weekend session favor of the resolution aimed at stopping the ongoing violence in Syria. The rare double-veto was issued following days of negotiations aimed at overcoming Russian opposition to the draft resolution. Several European envoys said before the session that they felt compelled to call for the vote despite Russia's attempts to seek a delay because of the escalating violent crackdown by Assad's regime. The urgency was heightened by an assault by Syrian forces firing mortars and artillerey on the city of Homs. Activists said more than 200 people were killed in what they called one of the bloodiest episodes of the uprising against Assad. The U.N. says more than 5,400 people have been killed over almost 11 months in a government crackdown on civilian protests.

NYT: Deadly Attack on Syrian City Adds to Push for U.N. to Act

In a barrage of shelling, Syrian forces killed 200 people and wounded hundreds early Saturday in Homs in an offensive that appears to be the bloodiest episode in the nearly 11-month-old uprising, activists said. - The offensive was reported in Homs, which has been one of the main flashpoints of opposition to the regime during the uprising against President Bashar Assad. Two main opposition groups, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees, said the death toll was more than 200 people. More than half of the killings — about 140 — were reported in the Khaldiyeh neighborhood. "This is the worst attack of the uprising, since the uprising began in March until now," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the head of the Observatory, which tracks violence through contacts on the ground. The reports could not be independently confirmed.

Syria opposition leaders raised the death toll to 260 in a military assault Saturday on the ravaged central city of Homs, an attack that opposition leaders described as the government’s deadliest in the nearly 11-month-old uprising. - Reports were contradictory, given the difficulty of communications with Homs, and the Syrian government flatly denied the toll, calling it an attempt at propaganda ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting Saturday on Syria. But videos smuggled out of the city and reports by opposition activists showed a harrowing barrage of mortar shells and gunfire that left hundreds more wounded in the city. “It’s an unprecedented attack,” said Mohammed Saleh, an opposition activist from Homs who recently fled to a nearby town to escape the mounting strife there. As word spread of the barrage, opposition protests broke out Saturday at Syrian embassies around the world, including Egypt, Germany and Kuwait. Accounts by activists, independently basing their information on what they described as contacts in Homs, said the barrage was apparently unleashed after defectors attacked two military checkpoints and kidnapped soldiers. One activist put the number of abducted soldiers at 13, another 19. They suggested that enraged commanders then ordered the assault, which lasted from about 9 p.m. Friday to 1 a.m. Saturday, focusing on the neighborhood of Khaldiya. Five other neighborhoods were also assaulted. The precise number of dead was almost impossible to obtain.

USA Today: Syrian activists: 200 dead in government assault

A photojournalist wounded when Israeli troops used
force to disperse a peaceful demonstration in Bil’ein
village, west of Ramallah.

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period.

Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF wounded 3 Palestinian civilians, including 2 cameramen, in the West Bank. In the West Bank, during the reporting period, IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank. As a result, Muhib Mohammed Asaad al-Barghouthi, 46, photographer of al-Hayat al-Jadida Newspaper, sustained wounds by two bullets to the feet. Al- Barghouthi was transferred to Palestine Medical Compound in Ramallah for treatment. Also Mohammed Ateya al-Tamimi, cameraman of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlement in Nabi Saleh village, sustained wounds by a tear gas canister to the right foot. A third Palestinian demonstrator also sustained wounds by a bullet to the right leg. PCHR fieldworker was unable to get the personal information of the third wounded person as he came from another village and he was not transferred to any hospital or medical center for treatment. On 31 January, Imad Ahed Khalil Abu Hashem, 21, sustained shrapnel wounds by a sound bomb when IOF used excessive force against a peaceful demonstration in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron. Additionally, dozens of Palestinian civilians and human rights defenders participating in peaceful demonstrations suffered from tear gas inhalation. [...] Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 56 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, during which they arrested 12 Palestinian civilians, including 3 children and a university professor. In the Gaza Strip, on 29 January 2012, IOF, backed by military vehicles and apaches, moved into Gaza International Airport, in the far southeast of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip amid indiscriminate firing. IOF arrested Hajjaj Yousif Ehmeid al-Soufi, 21, who is a university student and Ahmed Hussein Awad Abu Athra, 20, who is a member of the Palestinian National Security Service. Al-Soufi and Abu Athra are from al-Shouka village in the east of Rafah. Restrictions on Movement: Israel had continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

Following Twitter’s decision last month to begin censoring the messages of users based on restrictions of their respective countries, Google has followed suit and announced that it will begin a similar practice with its own blogging service. - Blogger, the web-log service run by Internet giant Google, will begin censoring the personal posts of its users in order to comply with local laws rather than encouraging an internationally open Internet. While the company has previously allowed users of the World Wide Web to post wide-open opinions on its Blogger site, it will now allow individual jurisdictions to govern what can and can’t be posted on the Web. Under Google’s new policies, personal pages hosted on Blogger will be redirected to country-specific URLs, such as “.in” for India and “.au” for Australia. The company writes that “Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law.” By implementing this, adds Google, “content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers." Specifically, they acknowledge that "Content [will be] removed due to a specific country's law.”

I think what people in the Occupy movement mean when they burn the US flag is that they are saying that flag no longer and probably never did represent them.

It represents the US government which is a tool of the corporations and of the bankers and that they are rejecting it and they are saying; we are burning this flag because it no longer represents what we stand for. And they are saying rather we need to create our own institutions and our own society and we reject the society this flag stands for, which talks about freedom and then when we pour out in the streets and try to use that freedom, clubs us, maces us, and attacks us. You know, there is so much talk in the media right now that they are saying that the occupiers did not have the right to be in Zuccotti Park. But I disagree, because if you look at Zuccotti Park, every stone in Zuccotti Park was laid by mason workers, all of the iron handles were cast by iron workers, sanitation workers clean that park but Brookfield Properties a corporation that owns Zuccotti Park had nothing to do with it but the fact that they owned it and that is a real example of how every thing works in the United States. The 99 percent, the working class creates everything, but a small group does nothing but owns it. And we are trying to overcome that and as a movement where we are trying to get beyond the capitalist system, where 1 percent owns and the rest creates and gets nothing but a small bit of wages in exchange.

President Obama said that drones are used against “al-Qaeda operatives” engaged in “active plots against the United States.” We know from reporting by Pakistani journalists that the vast majority of suspected militants targeted are not members of al-Qaeda, nor are they involved in plots against the U.S. homeland. Many of the targets are actually anonymous, low-level militants who provide operational support to the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan.

The Obama administration’s claim boils down to “if they die from our drones, they were al Qaeda.” There is no gray area, no question of whether they were insurgents, suppliers of insurgents, the son of an insurgent, at the same party as an insurgent, an actual al Qaeda operative, or an al-Qaeda sympathizer, plotting to attack the homeland, or just documenting the aftermath of drone strikes, etc. If we kill them, clearly they were bin Laden reincarnated. The catchall claim, which so far no public official has been properly scrutinized for, is analogous to Richard Nixon’s claim that “if the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Bill Van Auken: Obama publicly embraces drone killings

The administration appears not to have responded to the requests, even to claim that the data was classified. The ACLU is preemptively arguing that the “secrecy” claim is not reasonable given the many relevant public comments made by President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit today in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, complaining that the Obama Administration failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests relating to the assassinations of three US citizens in Yemen. The ACLU condemned “the government’s self-serving attitude toward transparency,” arguing that the administration publicly and loudly releases bits of information related to the assassinations but declines to provide the full story, claiming the killings were “secret.” The requests centered around the September 30 assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born Muslim cleric that the administration regularly claimed was a “terrorist,” as well as his teenage son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and US citizen Samir Khan. The ACLU sought information on the process through which the Obama Administration decides who lives and who dies, as well as on the legal rationale for “kill lists.”

PressTV: Rights group sues US for 'targeted killing' memos

Even as the Obama administration says it’s close to defeating al-Qaida, the size of the government’s secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States has more than doubled in the past year, The Associated Press has learned. - The no-fly list jumped from about 10,000 known or suspected terrorists one year ago to about 21,000, according to government figures provided to the AP. Most people on the list are from other countries; about 500 are Americans. The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner. The government lowered the standard for putting people on the list, and then scoured its files for anyone who qualified. The government will not disclose who is on its list or why someone might have been placed on it. The surge in the size of the no-fly list comes even as the U.S. has killed many senior members of al-Qaida. That’s because the government [says it ] believes the current terror threat extends well beyond the group responsible for the September 2001 attacks.

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) rounded up 320 Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and occupied Jerusalem in the first month of 2012, a researcher specialized in prisoners’ affairs said on Wednesday. - Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that 53 children were detained in this sweep the youngest being six-year-old Ali Al-Dirbasi in occupied Jerusalem. He added that the detainees also included four lawmakers, including parliament speaker Dr. Aziz Dweik, eight women, and an ex-prisoner who was liberated in the exchange deal between Hamas and Israel. Ashqar said that the Israeli courts passed and renewed administrative detention verdicts against 50 Palestinians.

A review by Tasmania Police has exonerated the actions of officers who twice strip-searched a 12-year-old girl during a drug raid. - Deputy Commissioner Scott Tilyard has finished a review of police actions during the raid on Wednesday at Rokeby on Hobart's eastern shore. The girl was searched in a bedroom of her house with her mother present. No drugs were found on her. Mr Tilyard says a review was conducted rather than an internal investigation because the facts did not suggest any of the officers involved had acted unlawfully. The review found both searches were justified based on the behaviour of the girl and others in the house at the time. Mr Tilyard says the officers involved have his full support.

UK, London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange attends a debate on the subject of whistle-blowing with prominent public figures on secrecy and transparency issues at Kensington Town hall in central London on April 9, 2011.

Russia Today: Sweden unbiased? Assange appeals extradition [01 February, 2012]

Electronic Intifada: Protesters attacked, injured during commemoration for Palestinian teen murdered by Israeli settlers

The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. - The surveillance — detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six of the scientists and doctors, who filed a lawsuit against the FDA in U.S. District Court in Washington last week — took place over two years as the plaintiffs accessed their personal Gmail accounts from government computers. Information garnered this way eventually contributed to the harassment or dismissal of all six of the FDA employees, the suit alleges. All had worked in an office responsible for reviewing devices for cancer screening and other purposes.

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. - The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour? - Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing "inappropriate" clothes and being late for school. "It's very much tied in with some of the hyperbole around the rise in juvenile crime rate that took place back in the early 90s," said Deborah Fowler, deputy director of Texas Appleseed, an Austin legal rights group, and principal author of a 200-page study of the consequences of policing in Texas schools. "They ushered in tough, punitive policies. It was all part of the tough-on-crime movement." Part of that included the passing of laws that made the US the only developed country to lock up children as young as 13 for life without the possibility of parole, often as accomplices to murders committed by an adult.

Justice Center: Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study on How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement

Not even a month after President Barack Obama signed his name to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, the US government is already using the legislation to justify its ongoing detainment of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. - Musa'ab al-Madhwani had barely entered adulthood when he first arrived at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002. But in the months between his capture in Pakistan and transfer to Gitmo, the Yemeni national experienced more than most would see in a lifetime. Before he turned 23, he says he was beaten and kicked, threatened with death and suspended by his hands in an underground torture chamber. Now for the prisoner, about to celebrate the 10-year-anniversary of his arrival at Gimo, the rest of that lifetime looks to be spent behind bars thanks to the NDAA.

The ACLU [has] set up a special page allowing people to compare multiple versions of documents with just a simple mouseover. This came out a few months ago, but I didn't get a chance to write it up until now. It's pretty enlightening to see just what makes the censor's cut, and (not surprisingly) raises significant questions about the government's temptation to simply excise stuff they don't like, rather than information that there are valid reasons to keep hidden.

Hundreds of police clad in riot gear and wielding a variety of weapons attacked a procession of protestors in Oakland, California, on Saturday. It was the largest altercation between police and protestors in Oakland since the October 25 confrontation that left several wounded, including Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen. - In order to contain the crowd of between 1,000 and 2,000 protestors, the City of Oakland mobilized police and sheriff departments across the San Francisco Bay Area. More than 400 protestors were arrested over the course of the evening, with marches continuing late into the night. Police used rubber bullets, flash bangs, smoke grenades, bean bag guns, batons, and tear gas to suppress the demonstration. Images of children wearing tear-gas masks surfaced in the wake of the demonstrations, and one women was reportedly shot in the back from point-blank range by a police officer. (Video here).

Russia Today: Stun gun vs Occupy DC: Cops tase protester in pyjamas (VIDEO)
Russia Today: Oakland: Cops bend law in brutal arrest wave
PressTV: 500 protesters nabbed in Oakland
Washington Post: One protester tased, arrested at Occupy D.C.
CNN: Park service to crack down on Occupy DC camps
Keeping track of the apprehensions: Occupyarrests.com

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a better way to spy on Facebook and Twitter users. The Bureau is asking companies to build software that can effectively scan social media online for significant words, phrases and behavior so that agents can respond.A paper posted on the FBI website asks for companies to build programs that will map sentiment and wrongdoing. [...] Although the police, including in Britain, already use Facebook routinely to ascertain the whereabouts of criminals, automatically filtering out irrelevant information remains challenging. The new FBI application will be able to automatically highlight the most relevant information. The FBI is seeking responses by 10 February.

State Dept. Drones Cover All of Iraq to 'Protect Embassy'. - Another irksome aspect of the lingering American presence beyond its military withdrawal, the US State Department has fielded a whole fleet of surveillance drones to fly over Iraq. They say the flights are meant to protect the city-sized US Embassy on the outskirts of Baghdad. For the Iraqi government, however, the unwelcome overflights amount to a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, and they have a point. It is hard to imagine the US would give unfettered access to the whole of its airspace to any other nation’s surveillance drones, no matter how big its embassy was. The State Department’s Diplomatic Security branch hasn’t exactly been keeping the drones a secret, but it hasn’t broadcast them very loudly either. Their mention is a single paragraph buried near the back of its recent annual report.

BEIRUT - In dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, Syrian troops stormed rebellious areas near the capital Sunday, shelling neighborhoods that have fallen under the control of army dissidents and clashing with fighters. At least 62 people were killed in violence nationwide, activists and residents said. - The widescale offensive near the capital suggested the regime is worried that military defectors could close in on Damascus, which has remained relatively quiet while most other Syrian cities descended into chaos after the uprising began in March. The rising bloodshed added urgency to Arab and Western diplomatic efforts to end the 10-month conflict. The violence has gradually approached the capital. In the past two weeks, army dissidents have become more visible, seizing several suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus and setting up checkpoints where masked men wearing military attire and wielding assault rifles stop motorists and protect anti-regime protests.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has warned that his country faces 'the specter of bankruptcy and all the dire consequences that it entails.' - Lucas Papademos said on Sunday that Greece would default on its debts and might not be able to pay off its loans, and thus forced out of the eurozone unless the country's international creditors agreed to a new bailout. The warning comes as Greece's international lenders say the country needs EUR145 billion of public money from the eurozone for its second bailout to escape economic failure. The figure is more than the planned EUR130 billion because of the deteriorating economic situation in Greece. The European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have presented Greece with two rescue packages so far in return for specific austerity measures, which include cutting public sector salaries and pensions, increasing taxes and overhauling the pension system.

Stefan Steinberg: Berlin calls for EU-run bankers’ dictatorship over Greek economy

No trial, no doctor, no judge: A man who spent two years in solitary confinement after getting arrested for DWI was awarded $22 million for suffering inhumane treatment in New Mexico's Dona Ana County Jail. - Stephen Slevin was arrested in August of 2005 for driving while intoxicated, according to NBC station KOB.com. He said he never got a trial and spent the entire time languishing in solitary, even pulling his own tooth when he was denied dental care. "'[Prison officials were] walking by me every day, watching me deteriorate," he said. "Day after day after day, they did nothing, nothing at all, to get me any help." Slevin said he made countless requests to see a doctor to get medication for his depression, but wasn't allowed to see one until only a few weeks before his release. He also never got to see a judge. The $22 million settlement, awarded by a federal jury on Tuesday, is one of the largest prisoner civil rights settlements in U.S. history, according to KOB.com. Slevin's attorney, Matt Coyte, told KOB.com, "I have never been with or seen a braver man who stood up to these guys for what they did to him ... [This case] It affects everybody and it's not good for this country. It's not good for Mr. Slevin for sure and it's not good for this country. It has to stop."

The anti-corporatism Occupy movement has reportedly had more than 6,000 of its protesters arrested across the United States since the campaign's evolution in September 2011. - Occupyarrests.com, a website, which keeps track of the apprehensions, says the US police have so far laid at least 6020 Occupy protesters under arrest. The figure includes 37 people, who were arrested in New York City on Thursday, while demonstrating among others against an auction of foreclosed homes at Brooklyn Supreme Court. The protesters had begun chanting when the bidding started. At least three Occupy Minneapolis protesters were also arrested at the headquarters of the US Bank in the city on Tuesday. The protesters were demanding talks between bank officials and two people whose homes were being subjected to foreclosure. The Occupy movement emerged after a group of demonstrators gathered in New York's financial district of Wall Street on September 17, 2011 to protest against the excessive influence of big corporations on the US policies and the high-level corruption in the country. Despite police crackdown and mass arrests, the Occupy movement has now spread to many major US cities as well as to Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal as well as other countries.

Reporters Without Borders: 2011-2012 World Press Freedom Index
AWIP: After OWS, U.S. Drops in Press Freedom Rankings

Twitter has announced it will begin restricting tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East. - "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post. It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with some countries. "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," it said. Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content". A Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog.

BBC: FBI plans social network map alert mash-up application

This is What Democracy Looks Like...

The nation drops 27 places in annual index thanks to the harsh treatment of reporters covering the protests.

The United States tumbled 27 places in the latest edition of the annual Press Freedom Index, thanks in large part to the rough treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street protests that took place around the country this past year. Last year, the United States came in 20th, sandwiched between the United Kingdom and Canada at 19th and 21st place, respectively. After 2011, however, the United States finds itself tied for 47th place with Romania and Argentina on the list, which is compiled by Reporters Without Borders, a not-for-profit advocating for press freedom around the globe. "The crackdown on protest movements and the accompanying excesses took their toll on journalists," the group explains in the annual report. "In the space of two months in the United States, more than 25 were subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police who were quick to issue indictments for inappropriate behaviour, public nuisance or even lack of accreditation." The drop is not unprecedented, however. In 2005, the United States ranked 53rd on the list as a result of the imprisonment of journalists and what the group called the "deteriorated" relationship between the press and the George W. Bush administration.

In a move that has triggered outrage, Google has announced plans to bring all data collected from users’ separate accounts on its sites into a combined profile. Besides raising dubious questions about privacy, this offer is one you… cannot refuse. - The changes will take effect on March 1. Before that date, Google will notify its hundreds of millions of users about the new rules of the game. In preparation, the company is boosting its privacy policy and terms of service. Users will have to decide whether to agree with the new terms – or lose access to some of their favorite sites. There is no way of opting out of the changes. Some say Google’s privacy announcement is frustrating and a little frightening."Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out,” said Common Sense Media chief executive James Steyer, as cited by the Washington Post.

After days of protests and hacker attacks, Poland has signed the controversial ACTA copyright protection treaty. Opponents call it an assault on online freedom, since it demands that internet service providers police user activity.

Warsaw’s Ambasador to Tokyo Jadwiga Rodowicz-Czechowska signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Japan on Tuesday. The treaty aims to harmonize international copyright protection standards in a number of industries from pharmaceutics to fashion. The agreement now has to be ratified by the parliament, which is unlikely to oppose it, reports RT’s Aleksey Yaroshevsky. The news came amid mass protests in Poland, where tens of thousands of people took to the streets, while many more joined online action against ACTA. Some 15,000 activists marched in Krakow, 5,000 in Wroclaw, and several thousand in other Polish cities. A number of websites, including that of Prime Minister Donald Tusk were attacked by hackers demanding that the country boycott the treaty. This however didn’t stop the authorities from proceeding with their plan. The agreement, which has already been signed by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, has been criticized by human rights groups for the secrecy, in which it has been developed, and the potential for abuse it poses. The deal has been compared to the SOPA/PIPA bills, which drew worldwide opposition and an internet strike, once the danger the posed became widely publicized. It the case of ACTA, the public remained mostly unaware of its nature, before the hacktivist group Anonymous spread the message.

On December 9th a group of internet hackers who go by the name Anonymous shut down biotech giant Monsanto’s public relations firm. Anonymous, who have temporarily shut down FBI and Justice Department websites are now targeting the GMO giant itself by attacking Monsanto.com. This group of hackers, seemingly working in the shadows, focus their efforts on corrupt organizations in all forms.

Colombia's neo-paramilitary groups continue to enjoy the protection of elements of the state, the director of a leading think tank said Tuesday. - In an interview with Colombia Reports, Leon Valencia, director of Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris, which monitors Colombia's illegal armed groups, said "it is impossible to exhibit such a degree of illegal activity without the protection of the security forces and without ties to politicians." "The day the state as a whole is directed to pursue all of these people is the only time it can be over," he added. Explaining his remarks, Valencia outlined how the organizational structure supporting such groups is made up of three essential elements. "On the one side there is the illegal [neo-paramilitaries], who are hidden away and have a secret life, the second tie is the one in civil life, who are lawyers, businessmen and people who have a good stature, and then there are the police and military." Valencia went on to explain that the frequency of failed police actions against drug trafficking operations, whereby no illegal activity could be detected despite good intelligence supporting the action, can only be the result of "immediate feedback" from within the security forces warning of the impending sting.

Deadly clashes between ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces have spread to a second area in southwestern China, the government and an overseas activist group said Wednesday. - The group Free Tibet said two Tibetans were killed and several more were wounded Tuesday when security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters in Seda county in politically sensitive Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province. It quoted local sources as saying the area was under a curfew. According to the Chinese government, a "mob" of people charged a police station in Seda and injured 14 officers, forcing police to open fire on them.

Photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind. - UK souvenir maker Temple Island Collection Ltd has won a ruling against New English Teas which it had accused of breaching copyright by using a photo of a London bus on its packaging. Welcoming the news, Temple Island Collection's managing director Justin Fielder – who shot the image in August 2005 and then manipulated it using Photoshop – said: 'As creator of the Red Bus image, and originators of the product concept, we gave New England Teas the opportunity to license with us and work collaboratively, but this was declined.' The case, heard at the Patents County Court in London on 12 January, could have serious implications for photographers, according to photographic copyright expert Charles Swan, a lawyer at Swan Turton, who said: 'His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.'

[PUKE READ:] Following is the transcript of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 2012, as released by the White House: THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought — and several thousand gave their lives. We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. (Applause.) For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. (Applause.) For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. (Applause.) Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home. These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

PressTV: Obama renews anti-Iran war rhetoric
Russia Today: Obama’s new fairytale: Peace and prosperity for war-bent US
Patrick Martin: Obama’s State of the Union address: War and wage-cutting

Film Accuses All Muslims of Plotting to Overthrow US. - Last year, the New York Police Dept. was caught in an ugly scandal when the Village Voice reported it showed a 72-minute film titled The Third Jihad to police as a “terrorist training” video. Officials at the time downplayed the number of officers who saw it, and claimed it was quickly pulled when it was deemed “inappropriate.” The video condemns Muslims in general and moderate American Muslims in particular, claiming that all non-violent Muslims are part of a secret conspiracy to overthrow the US government and impose Sharia law in its place.

AWIP: In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims

The top United Nations human rights official criticized Iraq on Tuesday for carrying out a large number of executions, including 34 on a single day last week, and voiced concern about due process and the fairness of trials. - "Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, in a statement referring to executions carried out on January 19. "Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure," she added. At least 63 people are believed to have been executed since mid-November in Iraq, where the death penalty can be imposed for some 48 crimes including a number related to non-fatal crimes such as damage to public property, Pillay said. "Most disturbingly, we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress," she said.

AWIP: US rights group says Iraq becoming 'police state'

Little known fact about Sweden, that supposed bastion of liberal idealism: If a Swedish transgendered person wants to legally update their gender on official ID papers, a 1972 law requires them to get both divorced and sterilized first. - Sweden is considered extremely gay-friendly, with one of the highest rates of popular support for same-sex marriage, and more than half the population supports gay adoption. Arguing that the current law is both unpopular and abusive, the country's moderate and liberal parties want to see it repealed. In response, the small but powerful Christian Democrat party formed a coalition with other right-of-center parties to join in upholding the requirement for sterilization. End result: a proposal for new legislation that allows trans—a preferred term for many people who undergo gender reassignment—to be married, but continues to force them to be sterilized.

Human Rights Chief Slams Arbitrary Detentions. - In a statement issued today, UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay slammed the Obama Administrationfor reneging on promises to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. “It is ten years since the US Government opened the prison at Guantánamo, and now three years since 22 January 2009, when the President ordered its closure within twelve months,” the statement noted. “Yet the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained – indefinitely – in clear breach of international law.” The massive facility has seen eight detainees die in custody, including six termed “suicides” by the US government, and only six “trials” have ever been completed. President Obama has expressed the belief that many of the detainees will be held without trial for the rest of their lives. Despite making no effort to close the facility, President Obama’s advisers insist he remains “committed” to closing Guantánamo. The new commander at the facility has also imposed strict new rules, sparking increasing unrest among the inmates, who after a decade are growing less and less confident they will ever see anything resembling a courtroom.

Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America...This is the war you don’t know about.”

This is the feature-length film titled “The Third Jihad,” paid for by a nonprofit group, which was shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department. In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers. A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: “The Third Jihad,” which includes an interview with Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training. During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.

The Zionist Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre (Bicom) has collaborated with the state-controlled British Office of Communications (Ofcom) to ban the alternative English-language channel Press TV in the UK, a political analyst says.

“With anti-Iran sabotage activities high on its agenda, Bicom has worked closely with Ofcom towards eliminating a critical voice: Press TV,” Ismail Salami, Iranian author and Middle East expert, wrote in an article published on Press TV on Sunday. Ofcom revoked Press TV's license and removed the channel from the Sky platform on January 20 for what it claimed to be the news network's breach of the Communications Act. The British media regulator also served Press TV's London office with an order to pay a 100,000-pound fine. “An office with intimate ties to the [British] Royal Family, Ofcom has issued the verdict under the sway of some influential parties in the government and the Bicom firm to boot,” Salami added. He went on to explain the activities and objectives of the Israeli-sponsored company, pointing out that as a “London-based” organization “tasked with inseminating the Zionist political ideology, Bicom also funds those who are in one way or another involved with anti-Iran activities.” “Apart from garnering support for the Zionist regime among Britons, the office also serves as a bridge between the Mossad and MI6,” with its current head, Lorna Fitzsimons, a member of the parliamentary lobby group Labor Friends of Israel (LFI), Salami elucidated.

The Iranian author also pointed to the October 2011 scandal over Adam Werritty -- an “influential member” of Bicom and “an unofficial chief of staff” to the former British Defense Minister Liam Fox -- and his efforts to subvert the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Werritty was financially backed by murky sources such as Bicom. And he was considered an influential member of the organization and a highly regarded agent for Mossad,” he noted.

Gilad Atzmon: Liam Fox Is Not a ‘Useful Idiot’
Gilad Atzmon: This Is How Israel Runs The British Press
Ismail Salami: Unfolding a plot: Mossad at work
Craig Murray: Matthew Gould and the Plot to Attack Iran
Jonathon Blakeley: Atlantic Bridge, Liam Fox, Adam Werritty & Israel

Stephen Lendman: UK Government Suppresses Truth
AWIP: Britain bans Iran-based TV channel

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has slammed the United States for a wide range of rights violations in the country, including torture, child labor, overcrowded prisons and a flawed judicial system. - According to a recent report by the New York-based HRW, the US has the largest incarcerated population with some 2.3 million inmates serving time in prisons across the country. American courts sometimes impose very long sentences tainted by racial disparities, the report added. Pointing to the detention of 368,000 immigrants in 2010, the report highlighted the increasing number of non-citizens being held in immigration detention facilities. The HRW criticized Washington's counter-terrorism policies, citing detentions without charge at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and flawed military commissions. The rights group also slammed the effective blockage of any lawsuit seeking redress for torture victims in US custody. In review of the country's cruel punishments, the report finds that there are 34 US states that continue implementing the death penalty, as 39 people were executed in the United States in 2011. The report also examines issues such as poverty and extreme criminal punishments as well as child labor in the United States. Some 46 million Americans live in poverty, the largest number in 52 years.

An international human rights group says Iraq's Shiite-led government has cracked down harshly on dissent during the past year of Arab Spring uprisings, turning the country into a "budding police state" as autocratic regimes crumbled elsewhere in the region. - Human Rights Watch says in its World Report 2012, which covers 2011, that Iraq is slipping back into authoritarianism as security forces abuse protesters, harass journalists, torture detainees and intimidate activists. The New York-based group says that the U.S. failed to leave behind a stable democracy in Iraq when American soldiers exited nine years after toppling the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein.

AWIP: Iraq's Maliki accused of detaining hundreds of political opponents

Assad's popularity, Arab League observers, US military involvement: all distorted in the west's propaganda war. - When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation. Qatar's royal family has taken one of the most hawkish lines against Assad – the emir has just called for Arab troops to intervene – so it was good that The Doha Debates published the poll on its website. The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go. The key finding was that while most Arabs outside Syria feel the president should resign, attitudes in the country are different. Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war – a spectre that is not theoretical as it is for those who live outside Syria's borders. What is less good news for the Assad regime is that the poll also found that half the Syrians who accept him staying in power believe he must usher in free elections in the near future. Assad claims he is about to do that, a point he has repeated in his latest speeches. But it is vital that he publishes the election law as soon as possible, permits political parties and makes a commitment to allow independent monitors to watch the poll.

Every week, I watch videos of the weekly anti-occupation protests all over the West Bank, documented by excellent video journalists like TamimiPress, HaithamKatib, Davivreeb, YisraelPNM and many others. Every week there is new material to comment on. In every video you would see a brutal act by an Israeli soldier that requires accountability, but typically the act passes away at the end of the day without any of the soldiers being held accountable for their crimes. Often, we find human rights organizations compiling video footage and working to hold the criminal soldiers accountable; B’tselem is one of the leading human rights centers in this field. In the video above, by YisraelPNM, the video description notes that in minute 6:38 of the video, a masked soldier is seen holding a rifle capable of firing metal bullets coated with rubber or another kind of live ammunition. The point here is that the soldier, unlike any of his colleagues, is wearing a full face mask in order to hide his identity in case he were to be held accountable if he seriously injured or killed a Palestinian unarmed protestor.

Khalid Amayreh: "Jewish state" is euphemism for Jewish fascism
IMEMC: Trial Of Dr. Dweik Delayed Until Tuesday
PCHR: Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

A controversial American anti-piracy act was recalled on Friday, which came as no small victory for hacktivists who launched history's largest attack on several websites – including that of FBI – in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. - Those opposing the controversial law have grown jubilant, with many seeing Friday's news as real victory in a sort of war for online freedom. The vote on the anti-piracy legislation, which was due on January, 24, has been postponed. The words of House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith – who was the chief sponsor of SOPA – came as a bombshell: he stated that American legislators would delay action on similar proposals until the matter is more widely agreed upon.

“I have heard from the critics, and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.” “The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, and financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property.”

He said in a statement that the Judiciary Committee welcomes input “from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem.”

Russia Today: PIPA postponed indefinitely

Britain has revoked the press license of Iran-based English language broadcaster Press TV, accusing it of violating press regulations. But some say the decision was really motivated by British geopolitical interests. - The Office of Communications (Ofcom), a government-approved watchdog overseeing broadcasting and telecommunications in the UK, says the channel does not control its content. It also says the channel’s license should be held by its office in Tehran, not London, since its editorial control is clearly coming from the Iranian capital. In addition, Press TV is accused of not paying a fine of £100,000 ($156,000) for airing an interview with an imprisoned journalist in 2009. Press TV says it's being silenced, calling the withdrawal of the license “a clear act of censorship."

PressTV: 'Taking Press TV off air: UK censorship'
PressTV: Ofcom fines Press TV after ban in UK
PressTV: How to watch Press TV in UK

Disclosure likely to intensify controversy over long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups. - Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal. In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers – whom they have not seen in decades – were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children's mothers for many years. One of the spies was Bob Lambert, who has already admitted that he tricked a second woman into having a long-term relationship with him, as part of an intricate attempt to bolster his credibility as a committed campaigner. The second police spy followed the progress of his child and the child's mother by reading confidential police reports which tracked the mother's political activities and life. The disclosures are likely to intensify the controversy over the long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups.

A staple of Washington’s war missions, targeted assassinations and spying operations overseas, unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, are now being used by US police in the domestic arena, stirring up privacy concerns among Americans. - According to John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney from the Rutherford Institute, US police departments have been authorized to use drones extensively in pursuit of their duties on home soil. “There have been, I think, almost 266 applications that have been approved for police departments to use drones as aerial surveillance devices,” he said. Drones can be armed with a wide range of surveillance technology, including high-powered zoom lenses and infrared and ultraviolet imaging. As the US government flies prying eyes through the sky, lawmakers have neglected to create any privacy protections for American citizens.

Secrecy News: Army Foresees Expanded Use of Drones in U.S. Airspace

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America. In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group. “It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.