Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-5q4Bk8YPo&feature=player_embedded

Pressed on CNN’s Situation Room about details on his budget cut plans, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says end all foreign aid–and when pressed further says that includes to Israel.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/26/venezuela-chavez-housing-crisis-squats-caracas

Hugo Chávez has sent out troops to take over farms and urged the poor to occupy "unused" land in wealthy areas of Caracas, prompting a wave of squats that is rattling Venezuela's middle class. The move by Venezuela's president to step up the campaign to "recover" land and other property follows a housing crisis that has left millions of people in shabby conditions and affected his popularity in the run-up to next year's election.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350708/Genetically-modified-mosquitoes-released-Malaysia-sparks-fears-uncontrollable-new-species.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Malaysia has released 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes into a forest in the first experiment of its kind in Asia aimed at curbing dengue fever. The field test is meant to pave the way for the official use of genetically engineered Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes to mate with females and produce offspring with shorter lives, thus curtailing the population.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/obam-j26.shtml

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.

Link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/lawsuit-border-guard-fired-pot-legalized/

A former border guard who says he was fired for suggesting to a co-worker that marijuana should be legalized has filed a lawsuit against the US Border Patrol. In documents (PDF) filed in a federal court in west Texas last week, Bryan Gonzalez alleged that he lost his job in 2009 after telling a colleague on the Mexican border that he believed legalizing marijuana could reduce drug war violence. "The simple truth about America's marijuana prohibition: any law that allows the easy incarceration of any citizen any time those in power want to do it is the ultimate enemy of democracy. With 800,000 annual arrests over an herb used by tens of millions of Americans, it is the cornerstone of a police state." - Harvey Wasserman ►What Would Happen if Everyone You Know, Knew This information? - Video

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/26/capital-of-conservatism

Democrats are as responsible as Republicans for the right-wing climate in Washington. THE DOGMAS and delusions of conservatives and Corporate America are still dominating national politics--and their most effective advocate has turned out to be a Democratic president.

Link: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/01/26/the-palestine-papers-and-the-dead-end-of

The Palestine papers released this week by Al Jazeera provide documentary confirmation of what is becoming plain to millions of Palestinians: the nationalist project of building an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories has become transformed into a new means of their oppression.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/paki-j26.shtml

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.

Link: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2011/01/26/traitors-with-bloodstained-hands

The documents recently published by Al Jazeera which reveal the large volume of the concessions made by the Palestinian “negotiators” to the israeli zionist organization are not my inspiration to write this report. The awful and miserable reality imposed by that americanized Palestinian, Saeb Erekat, on my homeland Palestine, on the town of Hebron where I was born, can be described as the treason which inspired me to write this article.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27344.htm

The Hamas movement in Gaza stated that Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, does not represent the Palestinian people, and is no longer authorized to negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. Hamas political leader, Khalil Al Hayya, stated that Hamas is withdrawing its authorization granted to Abbas under the National Unity Agreement of 2006, which was never implemented.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/fbir-j26.shtml

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression has revealed that a government agent infiltrated the Anti-War Committee (AWC) and later the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) during a two-and-a-half year undercover operation leading up to the raids of activists’ homes and offices on September 24, 2010. The raids, based on the bogus charge of providing “material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations,” initiated a government crackdown that resulted in subpoenas requiring 23 activists appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/food/149716/why_you_can_now_kiss_organic_beef%2C_dairy_and_many_vegetables_goodbye/

The USDA ruled that farmers are now free to plant GE alfalfa, and USDA won't even keep track of who plants it where. The implications are huge. Monsanto has been trying for years to gain approval for its genetically modified Roundup-Ready alfalfa seed. On January 27, 2011, it finally got the green light in the form of "deregulation." This means that farmers are free to plant GE alfalfa, and the USDA won't even be keeping track of who plants it where. There will be no tracking, no notification system, and no responsibility on the part of Monsanto for any business that is lost as a result of the genetic contamination that is certain to result. If the ruling stands, we can kiss organic dairy and beef goodbye, and many organic vegetable growers will have to switch the cover crops they use on their fields.

Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/031115_Thomas_Manton_oil_spill.html

Former President and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation, Dr. Thomas B. Manton heroically fought to expose the truth about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which was caused by a BP oil platform explosion in April 2010. However, all of his hard work resulted in his false imprisonment and subsequent murder, an all-too-common scenario among whistle blowers who expose lies and corruption.

Link: http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/ken-okeefe-interview-with-jonathan-adams.html

A thoughtful and revealing interview with one of our greatest heroes. In Conversation With Ken O'Keefe from pentos films on Vimeo.

Link: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hogwash_mr_president_20110126/

What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn’t tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out Tuesday evening. I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble. He embraced clean air and a faster Internet while ignoring the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible—understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration. He had the effrontery to condemn “a parade of lobbyists” for rigging government after he appointed the top Washington representative of JPMorgan Chase to be his new chief of staff. The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole. Instead the president conveyed the insular optimism of his fat-cat associates: “We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” How convenient to ignore the fact that this bubble of prosperity, which has failed the tens of millions losing their homes and jobs, was floated by enormous government indebtedness now forcing deep cuts in social services including state financial aid for those better-educated students the president claims to be so concerned about. His references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up...What nonsense to insist that low public school test scores hobbled our economy when it was the highest-achieving graduates of our elite colleges who designed and sold the financial gimmicks that created this crisis...“The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called ‘a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.’ Obama appointed as his top economic adviser Lawrence Summers, who as Clinton’s treasury secretary was the key architect of that “turning point,” and Summers protégé Timothy Geithner as his own treasury secretary. Profligate behavior that has hobbled the economy while running up an enormous debt that Obama now uses as an excuse for a five-year freeze on discretionary domestic spending, that small part of the budget that might actually help ordinary people.