The US is conducting a manhunt for a previously unknown cell believed to be involved in the planning of the 9-11 attacks, according to a US cable released by WikiLeaks. In the cable, Mirembe Nantongo, the deputy chief of mission in Doha, told the Homeland Security Department in Washington that three Qatari men were under suspicion of conducting surveillance operations on the attack sites.

An Italian court on Feb. 1 convicted former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri on terror charges and sentenced the Tunisian man to six years in prison. Prosecutors accused Nasri of working for a terror group associated with al-Qaeda while living in Milan in the 1990s. The US transferred Nasri, who was arrested in Afghanistan, from Guantánamo Bay to Italy in 2009 along with Abdel Ben Mabrouk as the part of the government's plan to shut down the detention center. Nasri's lawyer said he plans to appeal the conviction.

These news clips, as usual, make us feel very lonely. We are constantly being told by "leftists" that anti-Semitism doesn't really exist or is (at best) grossly exaggerated as a Zionist propaganda ploy—a demoralizing abdication of the supposed leftist value of opposing ethnic scapegoating as a distraction from class analysis. Exposing and denouncing anti-Semitism falls more and more to the pro-Zionist right (which does indeed seek to exploit it for propaganda purposes) and to the centrists, who increasingly seek to censor and even imprison those who espouse it—a demoralizing abdication of the supposed centrist value of "free speech." Here, alas, is the latest litany...

The US is doing away with the color-coded terrorism alerts adopted by the Bush administration in the wake of 9-11, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced in the State of Homeland Security address at George Washington University on Jan. 27. The following day, Russia's Duma voted to adopted such a system in response to this week's deadly bombing at the Moscow airport. (UPI, Jan. 28; RTT, Jan. 27)

World War 4 Report has been keeping a dispassionate record of Barack Obama's moves in dismantling, continuing and escalating (he has done all three) the oppressive apparatus of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) established by the Bush White House. On the second anniversary of his inauguration, we offer the following annotated assessment of which moves have been on balance positive, neutral and negative, and arrive at an overall score:

The Obama administration may increase its use of controversial military commissions for Guantánamo Bay detainees, according to a New York Times report Jan. 20. Per the report, administration officials plan to rescind an order issued on Obama's first day in office that halted military commission proceedings and continues to block the government from initiating new cases under the system. If done, filings are expected within weeks, which would represent the first time that new charges are brought against detainees during the Obama administration. Officials are also reportedly drafting a new executive order that would establish mechanisms by which to review the cases of those detainees held without trial.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced Jan. 6 that Guantánamo Bay detainee Farhi Saeed Bin Mohammed was transfered to his native Algeria pursuant to a court order from November 2009. The DoD said it had successfully transferred Farhi after the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force aapproved the transfer following a comprehensive review considering, especially, the security issues. The DoD worked closely with the government of Algeria to transfer Farhi safely and securely. Farhi's lawyers had fought the transfer back to Algeria out of fear that he would be tortured and mistreated. It is unclear whether Farhi is currently in jail in Algeria.

Our last issue featured the story "9-11 at Nine: The Conspiracy Industry and the Lure of Fascism" by World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg, calling out the growing embrace of right-wing and virulently anti-Semitic conspiracy theory by the left-wing blogosphere and alternative media. Weinberg also had to issue a statement dissenting from the right-wing conspiranoid drift at New York's non-commercial WBAI Radio, where his program, the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, has been exiled to 2 AM and stripped by 30 minutes as a punitive measure in response to his protests. Our September Exit Poll was: "Is World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg an agent of the Illuminati, pawn of the Bilderbergs, Mossad operative and/or shape-shifting reptilian?" We finally received the following responses: