Amid reports that the Syrian military is secretly stockpiling chemical weapons, U.N. human rights investigators allegedly have testimony indicating Syrian rebels have used sarin gas. Interviews with victims and doctors have provided “strong, concrete suspicions” that rebels used the deadly nerve agent, according to a lead investigator, though the U.N. does not have “incontrovertible proof.” There’s no evidence yet that the Syrian military used sarin. The latest Geneva-based investigation is separate from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s currently stalled inquiry into the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Reuters:

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

Israeli warplanes have targeted Syria twice in the last three days, and now Israel is deploying two batteries of its Iron Dome rocket defense system to the north of the country. The second airstrike early Sunday, hit a military facility just north of the capital, a Western intelligence expert confirmed. Israel declined to comment. “The sky was red all night,” said one man who lives less than a mile from the facility. “We didn’t sleep a single second. The explosions started after midnight and continued throughout the night.” The facility reportedly held Iranian-supplied missiles, which Israel contends were headed for Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel attacked the same site three months ago. President Obama, meanwhile, defended Israel on Sunday.

Video report from February 1st tells of the discovery of new burial sites at the Dozier School for boys in Marianna, Florida.

The official stance on 98 dead boys from the Dozier School in Florida is that they were "accidents," or that the children died from "natural causes." Increasingly, it seems that may not have been the case.

From The Independent:

'A concentration camp for little boys': For years, almost no one at the Dozier School even knew about the burial ground in a clearing in the woods on the edge of campus. It was forbidden territory. The soil here, churned in places by tiny ants, holds more than the remains of little boys. Only now is it starting to give up its dark secrets: horror stories of state-sanctioned barbarism, including flogging, sexual assault and, possibly, murder.

That the Arthur G Dozier School – a borstal for delinquent boys founded in 1900 – was not a gentle place was well-established. Boys as young as six were chained to walls, lashings with a leather strap were frequent and, in the early decades, children endured enforced labour, making bricks and working printing presses. When it was closed in 2011, it had already been the subject of separate federal and state investigations.

But, as suspicions deepen about how the boys in the burial ground died, pressure is growing again on the state to shine new light into the darkest days of the school in Marianna, a Florida Panhandle town that once was a bastion of the KKK and the site of the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal. The pressure is coming from some of the school's survivors, from relatives of boys who died here, and from Florida's top US Senator, Bill Nelson."

All Apologies: A NATO commander describes the shooting of children, both under 10, as case of "mistaken identity" during fight with Taliban.

A report in the New York Times explains that sharing on Facebook now comes at a cost.

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In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, Noam Chomsky sits down with Rosiland Jordan to talk about the two main tracks of his life: research and political activism. Chomsky emphasizes "The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have."

Via:

Discussing US politics, he attributes the growing popularity of the Tea Party movement, and the fanatical opposition to President Barack Obama in some quarters, to what he calls the country's "pathological paranoia".

"It’s something that exists in the country. It’s a very frightened country, always has been," he says.

At the same time, Chomsky sees Obama himself as a man without a "moral centre".

"If you look at his policies I think that’s what they reveal. I mean there’s some nice rhetoric here and there but when you look at the actual policies … the drone assassination campaign is a perfectly good example, I mean it’s just a global assassination campaign."

On Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Chomsky says "there was no effort" by Obama to even try and curb it.

"[Obama's] telling Netanyahu and the other Israeli leaders: I’ll tap you on the wrist but go ahead and do what you like .... So in fact, Obama is actually the first president who hasn’t really imposed restrictions on Israel."

Chomsky is also critical of "neoliberal programmes" that he blames for the global financial crisis:

"The New Deal regulations were in place and there were no financial crisis, none .... Starting in the 1970s it changed pretty radically. There were decisions made - not laws of nature - to reconstruct the economy."

And decades later, these decisions have resulted in a situation which "really is a catastrophe," he says.

Chomsky believes that "Nothing’s ever gone too far. Anything can be reversed; these are human decisions.The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have."

A recent video posting from "Anonymous" appears to be a response to McAfee's prediction that Anonymous will become less influential in the coming year. Anonymous has clarified that it has no plans to fade away in the New Year. It also issued a statement over the weekend that warned the world to "Expect us 2013."

Via:

McAfee argues that a lack of structure and organization in the hacking collective referred to as Anonymous has impacted the idea's reputation. Misinformation, false claims and hacking for the simple joy of it may result in the collective's political claims taking a beating. As a result, success and fame will decline -- but higher-level professional hacking groups may take up the slack, and promote a rise in military, religious, political and "extreme" campaign attacks.

The video boasts of Anonymous' campaigns and exploits carried out in 2012. It details the group's temporary shutdown of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, Universal Music, and the Motion Picture Association of America's Web sites in protest of the U.S. government's indictment of the operators of popular file-hosting site MegaUpload.

"The operations which are listed in the video are only examples, there are far more operations," Anonymous wrote in the statement. "Some of them still running, like Operation Syria. We are still here."

[Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas/Reuters]

The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember state Thursday, in a move that strengthens the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The vote tally was 138 yeas to 9 nays with 41 countries abstaining. The United States certainly seemed in the nay camp, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling the vote "unfortunate and counterproductive," and Ambassador Rice arguing the vote does not establish Palestinian statehood, and places "further obstacles in the path of peace."

NYT:

More than 130 countries voted on Thursday to grant Palestine the upgraded status of nonmember observer state in the United Nations, a stinging defeat for Israel and the United States and a boost for President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who was weakened by the recent eight days of fighting in Gaza.

The new ranking could make it easier for the Palestinians to pursue Israel in international legal forums, but it remained unclear what effect it would have on attaining what both sides say they want — a two-state solution.
...
“The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the state of Palestine,” he said before the vote.

But in the run-up to the vote, he and Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, blamed the other side for not doing enough to pursue peace.

”We have not heard one word from any Israeli official expressing any sincere concern to save the peace process,” Mr. Abbas said.

“On the contrary, our people have witnessed, and continue to witness, an unprecedented intensification of military assaults, the blockade, settlement activities and ethnic cleansing, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem, and mass arrests, attacks by settlers and other practices by which this Israeli occupation is becoming synonymous with an apartheid system of colonial occupation, which institutionalizes the plague of racism and entrenches hatred and incitement.”

“The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, settlements and occupation,” he said.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released a statement calling Mr. Abbas’s speech “defamatory and venomous” that was “full of mendacious propaganda against the IDF and the citizens of Israel.”

Here's the latest on the situation from AlJazeera:

Fresh Israeli air raids have killed at least eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and wounded dozens more, medics say, with Palestinian security sources confirming that at least three of the dead were Hamas fighters.

Israel on Saturday expanded its fierce air assault on rocket operations, striking Hamas government and security compounds, tunnels and electricity transformers after an unprecedented rocket attack on Friday aimed at the holy city of Jerusalem raised the stakes.

The Israeli army said that four of its soldiers were injured by a rocket fired from Gaza. Meanwhile, a newly installed battery of Israel's Iron Dome defence system successfully intercepted a Gaza rocket aimed at Tel Aviv on Saturday.

Palestinian medics said 40 Palestinians have been killed and 345 wounded since Israel launched the aerial campaign against the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday.

In the same period, three Israelis have been killed and 18 injured, including 10 soldiers.

Since the start of its operation, Israel's army said it carried out some 700 airstrikes. It also said that fighters have fired more than 580 rockets over the border, 367 of which hit southern Israel, and 222 of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Also now at AlJazeera, breaking news banners read "Israeli air strike hits main gaza police headquarters and prime minister ismail haniyeh's office," and "Israeli cabinet approves plan to call up 75,000 reserve soldiers as air strikes continue on the gaza strip," with no further details as yet.

An update this morning on the situation: Hamas launched a rocket into Jerusalem on Friday, the first time the current conflict with Israel has expanded outside of Gaza. Israeli media said the rocket landed outside the city and there were no causalities. A ceasefire Friday between Israel and Hamas collapsed after just three hours when Palestinians continued launching rockets over the border, and Israel resumed airstrikes in retaliation. The ceasefire had been planned for Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil’s visit to Gaza. The Israeli military also announced Friday morning that it was calling up 16,000 reservists for a potential ground operation. More on this from the Washington Post.
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Israel is continuing to pound the Gaza Strip with air strikes amidst fears that Israel could soon launch a ground invasion into Gaza. Israeli troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers are now massing near the Palestinian territory. Earlier today, 85 missiles exploded within 45 minutes in Gaza City, sending black pillars of smoke. At least 21 Palestinians have died in the most recent round of violence, while three Israelis died on Thursday. Israel said it launched 150 air strikes overnight, while Palestinians fired a dozen rockets into Israel. Israel has started to draft 30,000 reserve troops in a sign the assault may soon widen. Among the casualties of Israeli violence was the 11-month-old son of a BBC Arabic journalist, Jihad Misharawi. Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil traveled to Gaza today to condemn the Israeli attack. For more, Democracy Now! gets a report from Rafah by Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer, who says, "One thing that we ought to talk about here is the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. This is a situation of targeting a population of civilians, exactly like Israel is shooting in a fishbowl. And there is no shelter, and there is nowhere to run for the general population. Gaza is living in a very dire situation." Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! also speaks with Gershon Baskin, the founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, who was the initiator of the secret talks between Israel and Hamas for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

A rush transcript follows below the fold.

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As the Israeli army rains shells on the Gaza strip Thursday, it’s also taken the offensive online, posting videos of its attacks on Hamas targets and live-tweeting its campaign. Now the hacktivist group Anonymous has responded with a digital bombardment of its own.

In a coordinated action that began at 3 a.m. ET Thursday, hackers attacked web sites belonging to the Israel Defense Forces, the prime minister’s office, Israeli banks, airlines and security companies by flooding them with web traffic, in an operation they called #OpIsrael. “We Anonymous will not sit back and watch a cowardly Zionist State demolish innocent people’s lives.” reads one message posted to a defaced site, along with an image of smoke rising over what appears to be a Palestinian city.

Anonymous Twitter accounts provided links to what they described as an Anonymous Gaza Care Package with tools for staying online if Israel cuts Internet service the Gaza Strip during its military action. Another hacker group, Telecomix, provided its own detailed instructions in English and Arabic for using dial-up connections.

"Anonymous does not support violence by the I.D.F. or by Palestinian Resistance/Hamas. Our concern is for the children of Israel and Palestinian Territories and the rights of the people in Gaza to maintain open lines of communication with the outside world," reads a press statement from Anonymous.

Israelis try to extinguish flames from a protester who set himself on fire during a demonstration in the Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv on July 14, 2012 to mark the first anniversary of last summer's social justice demonstrations that swept the country to protest the spiralling cost of living (AFP Photo/Ben Kelmer). The video contains scenes some viewers might find disturbing.

Thousands held protests to mark the anniversary of last year's tent city rallies against social injustice throughout Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv, where one man covered his body with gasoline, then lit himself on fire. People in the crowds put the flames out before rescue workers arrived, but he still said to be in serious condition.

The man left a note at the scene that read:

"The state of Israel stole from me and robbed me. It left me helpless," it says according to the Haaretz newspaper. “Two Housing and Construction Ministry committees rejected me, even though I had a stroke.”

He also says that he blames "the state of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, for the humiliation that the weakened citizens go through every day, taking from the poor and giving to the rich."

The rallies were organized by social activist Dafni Leef. That rally culminated in a large demonstration outside government offices on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv.

"We want a fair society,” Leef was quoted by Haaretz as saying. “Today we are also celebrating. Suddenly, when people take to the streets they understand that they have power and that they are right."

In another area of Tel Aviv, an event called "The Million Man March" was held, and in other cities:

Some 500 Jews and Arabs took part in another rally in Haifa, calling on the Israeli government to do more for social justice and spend less on the military. Slogans included “Money for the neighborhoods, not for the settlements” and “Money for welfare, not for wars.”

Around 200 protesters took part in a similar event in Jerusalem, while some 300 activists rallied in Be’er Sheva.

Tens of thousands pitched tents and joined in the protest against the rising cost of living, and demanded a return to the welfare state. The movement peaked in September when nearly half a million people took to the streets in one night. When the government promised to give in on some of the protesters demands, interest waned and finally police moved in during October to dismantle the tent city.

Leef and other activists tried to re-establish the tent city just last month, and were stopped by the police, and she was arrested during a scuffle with officers as she layed on the ground. The following night thousands returned to the streets protesting police brutality and social injustice. That rally turned violent as police attacked protesters, and protesters smashed windows and blocked highways.

[Via]

At the weekly demonstration in Nabi Salih, two Palestinian women stand their ground in the face of the infamous "skunk truck." The skunk truck is a mounted water cannon that sprays a foul smelling liquid at high pressures.

The village of Nabi Salih, home to over 500 Palestinians, holds weekly demonstrations protesting the illegal confiscation of their lands by Israelis in the settlement Halamish. The Israeli Occupation Forces respond frequently with excesses of force, as the video here demonstrates.

[Via]