By Rory McCarthy in Haifa

The case, brought before a Haifa court by Corrie's family, challenges the official Israeli version of events in which the military said its troops were not to blame. The family hopes the hearing will be a chance to put on public record the events that led to their daughter's death in March 2003. If the Israeli state is found responsible, the family will press for at least $300,000 (£201,000) in damages.

"I think when the truth comes out about Rachel, the truth will not wound Israel, the truth is the start of making us heal," he said.

"I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she said.

He will argue her death was either due to gross negligence by the Israeli authorities or was intentional.

The first witness to give evidence was Richard Purssell, a Briton who was an ISM volunteer along with Corrie. He described how he had gone to Gaza to see the situation for himself and to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing Palestinian houses.

from the Death Penalty Information Center

On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and then summarily reversed, a federal appeals court decision that would have given a Texas defendant a new trial based on improper jury selection. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that Anthony Haynes should be retried or released because a prospective juror was improperly excluded based on the juror's race. Two different judges had presided over the jury selection; one actually observed the juror's demeanor during questioning, and the second listened to the prosecution's explanation for excluding this juror.  The Fifth Circuit said that the second judge's decision was not entitled to special deference because he had not observed the actual juror.  But the U.S. Supreme Court, in a per curiam decision, held that the lower court had misinterpreted its prior rulings, and deference should have been accorded to the judge's decision.  The high court's ruling did not exclude a review of  the juror's exclusion under the proper standard.

By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek   
20 February 2010

The chief author of the Bush administration's "torture memo" told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be "massacred," according to a report by released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.

The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department's internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects.

The report by OPR concludes that Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, and his boss at the time, Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, should be referred to their state bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings. But, as first reported by NEWSWEEK, another senior department lawyer, David Margolis, reviewed the report and last month overruled its findings on the grounds that there was no clear and "unambiguous" standard by which OPR was judging the lawyers. Instead, Margolis, who was the final decision-maker in the inquiry, found that they were guilty of only "poor judgment."

Thursday 11 February 2010
by Candice Bernd, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's alleged brutal shooting of 13 GI's stationed at the largest US military base, located just outside Killeen, Texas, drew sympathy from the national, state and military political establishments and reinforced a prejudice in the hearts and minds of many Americans.

The sure-fire coverage from the corporate media easily painted a picture of the story that would reinforce the War on Terror while leaving unanswered the deeper and more challenging questions about the state of US military establishments and the mental and emotional state of our young soldiers serving in those institutions. The Fort Hood shooting commanded an investigation into Hasan's alleged connections to Islamic radicals, but was unable to probe the everyday standards and practices of the military base itself to find the hidden causes of GI strife.

Introspection is needed to objectively analyze the effects of the current political climate on our troops and see the hidden costs of war on our country in order to reconcile tendencies towards racism in public perception and to move on after this national trauma.

Tomorrow, the people of Honduras will march in the streets of Tegucigalpa to honor the life of the most recent victim in a spate of selective murders against activists from the resistance movement. Vanessa Yamileth Zepeda, a 29- year old nurse, was abducted last Wednesday after leaving a meeting of the SITRAIHSS labor union. She was murdered and her body was dumped in a neighborhood with ties to the Resistance movement. Vanessa leaves behind 3 small children, and a country where fear is a growing commodity.

Updated February 11, 2010 07:00 AM

BAGHDAD (AP) – Iraq has ordered hundreds of private security guards linked to Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest on visa violations, the interior minister  said yesterday.

The order comes in the wake of a US judge's dismissal of criminal charges against five Blackwater guards who were accused in the September 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.

It applies to about 250 security contractors who worked for Blackwater in Iraq at the time of the incident, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told The Associated Press.

Web posted at: 1/2/2010 8:39:10
Source ::: INTERNEWS

PESHAWAR -- Of the 44 Predator strikes carried out by the American drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan in 12 months of 2009, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of around 700 innocent civilian lives.

According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the Pakistani tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009. For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by the American drones, 140 civilian Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 percent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were innocent civilians.

December 30th, 2009

Nitin Sawhney, a friend of Grassroots International and long time activist for Palestinian rights, was one of the 100 delegates, from the over 1300 international delegate-members of the Gaza Freedom March, chosen to go into Gaza through a last minute intervention by Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Nitin, and many of his colleagues including the American activist and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein decided at the last minute to not go. Here's why, Nitin explains:

Dear friends,

Upon arrival with a large group of people amassed there we all boarded two buses, but in the ensuing discussions together it became clear that many of us were deeply torn about the conditions under which we were being provided limited entry into Gaza by the Egyptian govt., for a 3-day trip leaving behind over 1300 GFM members, many still besieged at the French Embassy (camping there with riot police over the past 3 days).