By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press, 10 February 2009

“With God’s help, I will lead the next government,” Netanyahu told a raucous crowd of cheering supporters chanting his nickname Bibi. “The national camp, led by the Likud, has won a clear advantage.”

Soon after, Livni took the stage before a crowd of flag-waving supporters and flashed a V-for victory sign. “Today the people chose Kadima. … We will form the next government led by Kadima.”

Earlier, exit polls showed Livni with a slight lead, but strong gains by right-wing parties overall would make it difficult, and perhaps impossible, for Livni to form a government.

[…]

If Livni’s projected victory holds, it is likely due to a strong showing by ultranationalist candidate Avigdor Lieberman, who appears to have taken a sizable chunk of votes that would have otherwise gone to Netanyahu.

The partial results gave Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party 16 seats, placing it in third place behind Kadima and Likud — and ahead of Labor, the party that ruled Israel for decades. That gives Lieberman, who based his campaign on denying citizenship to Israeli Arabs he considers disloyal, a key role in coalition building. Livni would almost certainly not be able to form a government without his support.

[Read the report]

When called upon during Obama’s first “prime-time” presidential news conference, Helen Thomas asked if he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons. In keeping with tradition, he refused to acknowledge the obvious or speak to the hypocrisy of forcing Iran to uphold a treaty that Israel refuses to sign.

MJ Rosenberg forgives Obama.

Why Did Obama Diss Helen Thomas?
MJ Rosenberg, Director of Policy for the Israel Policy Forum
Huffington Post, 10 February 2009

Had Obama spoken the truth, the media would have made his “blunder” the story of the night. He cannot afford that because, frankly, we have more important things to worry about, like rescuing the economy.

So I don’t fault Obama. But I salute Helen Thomas. Next time she should ask how he felt about those pictures that came out of Gaza. As the father of those two precious girls, we all know how he felt. But it would help America in the eyes of the world if he’d just say it.

Only specialists in twisted logic would dare propose it possible to separate the funding of war crimes and a perpetual war industry from any economic rescue. The destroy and rebuild strategies that underlie wealth cartelisation are unsustainable; internally, due the insatiable greed and amoral code of its architects and contractors and externally, due to simple math. The costs outweigh the benefits.

Rosenberg’s ham-fisted reassurance Obama really, truly cares about the victims of U.S. and Israeli crimes despite all evidence to the contrary and his suggestion a publicity stunt is in order rather than real foreign policy changes is black and white ugly.

Since being feted by Tony Blair, Ethiopia’s government has grown increasingly intolerant of dissent – and the leader of its main opposition party is paying the price.

By Daniel Howden, The Independent, 3 February 2009

Birtukan Mideksa has been sentenced to life in prison. She spends her days and nights in solitary confinement in a two-metre by two-metre cell. She cannot leave it to see daylight or even to receive visitors. Previous inmates say the prison is often unbearably hot.

Her crime: refusing to say sorry. The judge, aged 34, is the head of Ethiopia’s most popular political party, the only female leader of a main opposition party in Africa.

The government in Addis Ababa had her arrested on 28 December, claiming she had violated the terms of an earlier pardon.

Her previous release in 2007, which came after serving two years in prison, was conditional on her signing an apology for taking part in protests against fixed elections.

[Read the report]

U.S.-backed raid fails, and Congo rebels run wild
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt, IHT, 6 February 2009

DUNGU, Congo: The American military helped plan and pay for a recent attack on a notorious Ugandan rebel group, but the offensive went awry, scattering fighters who carried out a wave of massacres as they fled, killing as many as 900 civilians.

[…]

The United States has been training Ugandan troops in counterterrorism for several years, but its role in the operation has not been widely known. It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with that country, according to senior American military officials. They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing them with satellite phones, prized intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

[…]

“We provided insights and alternatives for them to consider, but their choices were their choices,” said one American military official who was briefed on the operation, referring to the African forces on the ground. “In the end, it was not our operation.”

[…]

This used to be a tranquil, bountiful spot where villagers grew corn, beans and peanuts, more or less untouched by the violence that has plagued the eastern part of this country. But thousands have recently fled, and the town is now crawling with soldiers, aid workers and United Nations personnel, the movable cast that marks the advent of a serious problem.

[Read the article]

Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, 29 January 2009

The Human Terrain System, a program which embeds social scientists with brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, is billed as a mechanism for improving the U.S. military’s knowledge of culture and local populations — heretofore perceived as sorely lacking. “It’s a chance to change the military; it’s a chance to change the Army,” one HTS member said at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in November. The HTS Web site states that the program “does not collect intelligence or have a role in targeting.” However, AAA’s executive board has formally opposed the program, citing a number of ethical issues including the potential misuse of anthropological information for targeting purposes — which would violate the bedrock principle that those studied should not be harmed.

One of the leading critics of HTS has been Roberto J. González, an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University. In American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain, forthcoming February 1 from Prickly Paradigm Press, and distributed by University of Chicago Press, González strongly critiques the human terrain concept in its historical and contemporary contexts. He answered some questions for Inside Higher Ed.

[Read the interview]