by Nicholas Kralev (source: Washington Times)
Friday, December 18, 2009

The Obama administration has waived some Iran sanctions so that ordinary Iranians can download U.S.-made software used in social media and networking Web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, that help disseminate information bypassing government censorship.

The administration’s unusual move coincided with its opposition to economic sanctions approved by the House of Representatives this week, which would end access to U.S. markets for foreign companies that sell gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran.

[Read the report]

Ian Cobain in Ramallah

Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.

Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups.

The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved – Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) – is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians’ work.

[Read the report]

Related:
Torture is systematic in Egypt ‘police state’: rights groups

Summary:

A number of groups from 28 different countries, including IATP, have issued an open letter to President Obama asking him to reconsider the climate emissions reduction target put forward in Copenhagen.

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12-18-09 Obama, Copenhagen.pdf
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Publication date:
Dec 18 2009

Joti Brar, The Gaza Blog, 17 December 2009

The third international convoy to Gaza departed from London 12 days ago, on 5 December 2009.

The convoy is made up of volunteers from Britain, Ireland, Belgium and Malaysia, who have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds in their local communities to pay for ambulances, minibuses, vans and lorries, and to fill them with medical and other aid that is desperately needed in Gaza.

[Read the report]

Glen Ford
BlackAgendaReport.com

The organization formerly known as “Progressives for Obama” has changed its name. After almost a year of President Obama’s massive transfers of the people’s wealth to Wall Street, his escalation of U.S. wars in South Asia, his shameless alliance with insurance and drug corporations, and his callous disregard for Depression-level Black unemployment, even the president’s most loyal sycophants on the Left are running for cover. It’s not a pretty sight.

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