Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49998

Journalists are the target of such violence in Mexico that many have been forced to seek refuge in the United States, or to give up their profession. And the outlook at the start of this year is even grimmer for media workers in this country.

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704381604575005333978437228.html?mod=article-outset-box

SEATTLE—A push to legalize marijuana on the West Coast is picking up steam as Washington lawmakers and pot proponents in California and Oregon propose separate measures. The Washington state legislature will hold a preliminary vote Wednesday on whether to sell pot in state liquor stores, though even its authors say the bill is unlikely to pass. The same day in California, backers of a well-funded ballot measure to legalize marijuana are expected to file more than enough signatures to put the initiative before state voters in November

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24403.htm

Kai Eide, UN Representative to Afghanistan confirmed the Afghan government’s investigative conclusions that US troops handcuffed and then executed eight students enrolled in grades 6 through 10 in a night raid on December 27, 2009. The US military and NATO responded the troops involved were non-official. The most likely source of para-military “non-official” troops in Afghanistan is Blackwater/Xe. President Hamid Karzai demanded arrest of the US troops engaged in the break-in and mafia-style execution of their children. The US responded to the Afghan demand of January 1 by rejecting the findings of the Afghan government and UN with a vague promise of their own self-investigation at some later date.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/15/bush_was_responsible_for_destroying_haitian

We speak with TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, author of An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. On President Obama tapping former President Bill Clinton and former President George W Bush to co-chair US relief efforts in Haiti, Robinson says, “Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy…Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops… but that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.” [includes rush transcript]

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116221&sectionid=351020401

US drones targeted Pakistan's North Waziristan in the northwest on Friday, killing at least five people, reports said.

Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/index.html

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. Cass Sunstein: Ban conspiracy theories

Link: http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-obtains-list-bagram-detainees

In response to an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the Defense Department today released a list of the people imprisoned at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Until today, the Defense Department had refused to make the list public. The list contains the names of 645 prisoners who were detained at Bagram in September 2009, but other vital information including their citizenship, how long they have been held, in what country they were captured and the circumstances of their capture has been redacted.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34876328/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

American families were squeezed last year as their inflation-adjusted weekly wages fell 1.6 percent — the sharpest drop since 1990 while consumer inflation rose 2.7 percent.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60E0M220100115

The cost to U.S. taxpayers of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 has topped $1 trillion, and President Barack Obama is expected to request another $33 billion to fund more troops this year.

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/world/Barack-Obama-bills-banks-for.5984876.jp

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday proposed Wall Street pay up to $117 billion (£71bn) to repay taxpayers for the financial bail-out, as he slammed bankers for their "massive profits and obscene bonuses". "My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed," Mr Obama said. "We want our money back, and we're going to get it. "And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people," the president said. Obama’s regulatory “reform” plan was nothing less than a green light for the complete and total takeover of the United States by a private banking cartel. Obama has given the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy. In the past year 25 trillion- $25,000,000,000,000. has been given to the international Federal reserve bank. America is being looted into collapse, economically enslaving the people for generations to come. Obama, the ‘con artist’ president, who set up the American people with the help of his Federal Reserve cabinet members, says "Wall Street should pay up to $117 billion dollars to the tax payers." That's one trillion, seventeen billion dollars. So what about the other twenty three trillion, eighty seven billion? Its all a con, a public relations ploy to distract, misdirect and placate the people. Obama is in on it, has been from the beginning.

Link: http://www.redress.cc:80/global/rtucker20100115

”Fascism ... is a social pathology and it can legitimately be considered humanity's most urgent public health problem. If enough people come to understand what the disease is and how to diagnose it, perhaps there will emerge a means to inoculate ourselves. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past.”

Link: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/296.php

Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/world/Haiti-39Money-is-worth-nothing.5984900.jp

DESPERATE Haitians clawed at chunks of concrete with their bare hands and battered at slabs of debris with sledgehammers yesterday, trying to free people buried alive in Tuesday's devastating earthquake.