U.N. to pull some staff from Pakistan over security

By Kamran Haider
www.alertnet.org

ISLAMABAD, Dec 31 (Reuters) – The United Nations will withdraw some of its staff from Pakistan because of safety concerns, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Thursday, highlighting security threats posed by increasingly brazen Taliban militants.

“Some percentage of the international staff will be relocated and this relocation includes within the country and outside the country to safer locations,” Ishrat Rizvi told Reuters.

Despite military crackdowns, Taliban militants have been carrying out bombings that have spread from their strongholds along a lawless northwest tribal belt to major cities, including one attack near the headquarters of the powerful military.

Rizvi said the relocation was decided because “the safety and security situation in the country and safety of staff members is highly important for the United Nations”.

In October, a suicide bomber dressed as a paramilitary soldier blew himself up in an office of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in Islamabad, killing five staff members.

The Taliban, who reject any ties with Western powers and want to impose their radical version of Islam, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 43 people in the commercial capital of Karachi on Monday and sparked riots.

“Pakistan is facing its most challenging time for the last few years. In light of this, the secretary-general decided to realign the projects and programmes of the United Nations in Pakistan,” Rizvi said. Read more…

Activists protest Gaza blockade

www.irishtimes.com

Hundreds of demonstrators rallied on opposite sides of an Israeli-Gaza border crossing today to protest the blockade of the seaside territory imposed by Egypt and Israel.

In Gaza, about 100 international activists gathered with some 500 Gazans, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade.

A small number of anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jews were among them – a rare sight in Gaza.

Rabbi Dovid Feldman, from New York, said he came to Gaza for the march with three others from the small Neturei Karta sect, which denounces Israel’s existence.

Feldman said Israel’s offensive in Gaza last winter was “against Palestine, against Judaism, against the Jewish people and against humanity.”

Mairead Maguire, peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, appealed to the Egyptian Authorities to open the Rafah crossing and assist the humanitarian delegations to enter Gaza to be with the people of Gaza.

“It is particularly important as the children are suffering so much and as the human family we must all do what we can to help each other, particularly the children and civilians, who under International Law must be protected against war and violence,” she said.

Thirteen Israelis and almost 1,400 Gazans were killed in the three-week war, which Israel launched to stop years of militant rocket fire on its southern towns.

March organizers said Egypt allowed only 100 of the 1,300 international activists who came to Cairo for the march to enter Gaza. Read more…

Six dead after Finland shopping centre shooting

www.irishtimes.com

Finnish police have said that a sixth body found after a shooting at a shopping centre in city in the south of the country this morning is that of the gunman.

A Kosovan-born man is suspected of shooting dead four people in a shopping centre in Espoo and killing his ex-girlfriend in an apartment before shooting himself dead in what is Finland’s third shooting spree in as many years.

Police said Ibrahim Shkupolli, 43, killed three men and a woman at the Sello mall in Espoo, a town near Helsinki, as shoppers stocked up for the New Year holiday.

They confirmed that Shkupolli, as well as his ex-girlfriend who had worked at the mall, were among the dead after the five-hour incident.

“It has been confirmed that the sixth victim is the suspect (himself). He was found in his home,” Chief Inspector Jukka Kaski told a news conference.

Police said Shkupolli was already known to them and had a foreign background, but refused to say what nationality he held.

However, a Kosovo police source said the gunman was from Mitrovica in the former Serbian province which declared its independence last year, and had visited the town last month.

Finnish police would not confirm his motive. However, they said Shkupolli had been under a court order banning him from contacting his ex-girlfriend, who was found dead at an apartment in Espoo, and that the shootings were probably linked to their relationship. Local media said the gunman had previous convictions for firearms offences.

The ex-girlfriend, a Finnish woman born in 1967, also worked at the mall and had taken out a restraining order against Shkupolli, Kaski said. He refused to speculate if the four workers had been targeted by the shooter.

The New Year’s Eve carnage followed shootings at Finnish schools in 2007 and 2008, after which Helsinki tightened gun control regulations, with further restrictions planned.

A reporter at the Sello mall, one of Finland’s largest shopping centres, saw helicopters overhead and fire trucks around the entrances after the shootings. The centre was closed down as police hunted the gunman. Read more…

Full-Body Scanners to Fry Travelers With Radiation

NoWorldSystem

A path has been cleared for the government to publicly roll out dangerous full-body scanners after the failed terrorist attempt on flight 253. Neocons are quaking for the government to implement the human x-ray machines on a nationwide scale, radiating travelers with unhealthy amounts of ionic radiation all for the sake of preventing the next Mutallab from boarding another U.S. airliner.

Airport Travelers To Get Ionizing X-Ray Radiation

According to a recent Zogby poll, traveling Americans approve long lines and gridlock at airport passenger screening points. The majority polled appreciate delays and hassles of flying today’s suspicious skies and feel safer because the federal Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is in charge of airport screening. These happy line campers should be delighted to learn about TSA’s grossly invasive new security plans. The good times have just begun.

TSA Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell recently announced the agency’s intent to use back-scatter X-ray machines for passenger surveillance. These hugely expensive, closet-sized zappers can find the plastic bombs hidden in grandma’s underpants, while delivering a smacking dose of ionizing radiation to her breasts and thyroid gland.

Snooper X-rays penetrate a few centimetres into the flesh and reflect off the skin to form a naked body image for TSA security personnel to inspect. These machines are already being field tested at several U.S. airports, including JFK, LAX and Orlando.

The most lucrative growth industry of our times is the “terror” business. Legions of companies lusting for government contracts are churning out police state technology at a frantic pace. In the last 17 months, TSA has received over 30,000 proposals for Big Brother technology and equipment needed to keep 280 million citizen-suspects under careful surveillance from the inside out.

Big winners include companies whose equipment is assisting TSA’s Advanced Technology Checkpoint Project to nudify airline passengers. Digital Security Systems of Miami is promoting its ConPass Security Body Scanner, which can perform virtual cavity searches using deeply penetrating X-radiation. Company engineer Thomas Wiggins says the scanner can detect explosives hidden inside bodies or surgically implanted under flabby folds of skin. Wiggins admits that before 9-11, “The thought of using an X-ray system would have been like ordering our own death sentence.” Now Wiggins claims that the ConPass scanner “could scan a pregnant woman around 200 times without a health risk.”

Virtually all passengers and airline crews who pass through airport screening checkpoints in the U.S. may soon be forced to submit to compulsory, whole-body X-ray exposure. Some fliers could be “fried” several times in one day. Frequent fliers could get hit hundreds of times each year. Pregnant women, infants, the chronically ill and immune suppressed would get the rays. Grateful herds of traveling livestock, prodded by TSA drovers through federally-funded “nuke chutes,” are expected to believe Hollowell’s scientifically unsupported assertion that ionizing radiation delivered via backscatter will be “about the same as sunshine.”

Officials must naturally defend compulsory passenger X-rays as harmless. But they are signing no guarantees because ionizing radiation in the X-ray spectrum damages and mutates both chromosomal DNA and structural proteins in human cells. If this damage is not repaired, it can lead to cancer. New research shows that even very low doses of X-ray can delay or prevent cellular repair of damaged DNA, raising questions about the safety of routine medical X-rays. Unborn babies can become grotesquely disfigured if their mothers are irradiated during pregnancy. Heavily X- rayed persons of childbearing age can sustain chromosomal damage, endangering offspring. Radiation damage is cumulative and each successive dose builds upon the cellular mutation caused by the last. It can take years for radiation damage to manifest pathology.

A leading U.S. expert on the biological effects of X-radiation is Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Gofman’s exhaustive research leads him to conclude that there is NO SAFE DOSE-LEVEL of ionizing radiation. His studies indicate that radiation from medical diagnostics and treatment is a causal co-factor in 50 percent of America’s cancers and 60 percent of our ischemic (blood flow blockage) heart disease. He stresses that the frequency with which Americans are medically X-rayed “makes for a significant radiological impact.” Read more…

Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Gets Award Despite Execution of Jean Charles de Menezes

Neil Sears, Kirsty Walker, David Wilkes and Daniel Martin
Daily Mail

The woman in charge of the bungled surveillance operation on the day Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police has been recognised in the New Year’s Honours.

Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dicks is to receive the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service.

Mr de Menezes’s family last night attacked the award, which comes little more than a year after an inquest rejected claims that the 27-year-old Brazilian was ‘lawfully killed’.

It was his killing that brought Miss Dick, who joined the police in 1983, into the public eye. Officers under her ‘tactical delivery’ command mistakenly identified him as one of five wouldbe suicide bombers wanted for an attack on the London transport network in July 2005.

Mr de Menezes was tailed to Stockwell tube station in South London, followed on to a tube train – and shot seven times in the head in front of horrified passengers.

It later emerged that Miss Dick, 49, oversaw a ‘noisy and quite chaotic’ control room.

While the inquest jury said she should be absolved of any personal culpability, the Independent Police Complaints Commission criticised her for not making it explicitly clear to her officers that when she ordered Mr de Menezes to be ’stopped’ she did not intend for him to be shot.

A spokesman for the de Menezes family said: ‘Rewarding Miss Dick after her role in the biggest policing scandal of the decade displays woeful disregard for both the family and broader public opinion.

‘It is only one year since an inquest jury flatly rejected the police account that Jean was lawfully killed.

‘Public confidence in the police needs to earned through a demonstrable change to police operations and accountability coupled with the appropriate humility.

‘Handing out congratulatory medals makes a mockery of real commitment to that process.’ Read more…

Alex Jones explains depopulation agenda on Ventura’s ‘Secret Society’ investigation

www.infowars.com

TruTV’s ground breaking series ‘Conspiracy Theory’ featuring former Governor Jesse Ventura continues tonight, Wed. Dec. 30 at 10 PM Eastern with a look at the Bilderberg Group and their influence on world affairs. Alex Jones is featured in the episode and consulted heavily on the production and research.

‘Conspiracy Theory’ authority Alex Jones explains the motives for and inner-workings towards a depopulation scheme that aims to eliminate some 80%+ of the current human population. Powerful globalists inside the Bilderberg group, along with the Big Pharma, Big Agra and vaccine cartels are working towards lowering sterility and attacking the immune system through food, water, inoculations and more.

Check out key scenes featuring Alex:

Please tune in tonight and tell your friends and associates about the truth that has been allowed to air on mainstream television to literally millions of viewers per week. This is exciting!

Here’s TruTV’s synopsis of tonight’s episode, along with a teaser trailer below.

Secret Societies – NEW!
Premiere On: Wed, December 30 at 10PM ET / 9PM CT
They’re thought to be a group of the world’s elite who meet once a year at a luxury hotel and decide how they will run the world. It’s believed they plan to thin out the population through disease-and vaccines. Jesse Ventura infiltrates the Bilderberg Group.

Watch Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura On TruTv Every Wednesday Night @ 10PM ET. Check your local cable listings for TruTV.Below is a trailer for ‘Secret Societies.’ An alternate version is posted here at TruTV.com:

DJ sacked for calling queen’s speech ‘boring’

www.independent.ie

A British radio presenter who joked on-air that the queen’s speech was boring has lost his job.

Tom Binns, the comedian behind DJ Ivan Brackenbury, interrupted a re-run of the queen’s speech on four West Midlands stations, saying: “Two words: bor-ing.”

Orion Media, which owns the stations, said it had received a small number of complaints from listeners.

David Lloyd, group programme and marketing director, said: “The queen’s speech was aired in error and Tom curtailed it and made some remarks which we believe were ill-judged in the context of the hour.

“He suggested it was boring and then went on to make some topical gags which we felt were inappropriate. He was a freelance presenter and we will not be using him again on any of our radio stations,” he said.

‘Patriot Act Plus’ – Wayne Madsen On Russia Today

Russia Today

Media reports in the US claim Washington knew about the attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.

The 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had passed through security at Lagos and Amsterdam, had concealed explosives and was being watched by intelligence services in several countries.

It was even reported that CIA officials had prepared a report about the suspect after his father had gone to the American embassy in Nigeria to share his concerns about his son’s intentions.

Despite the embassy sending a cable to the State Department and the National Counter-Terrorism Center run by the director of the national intelligence, nothing was done to stop the young terrorist, claims RT contributor and investigative journalist Wayne Madsen.

Russians looking at stopping Apophis asteroid hit in 2036

www.digitaljournal.com

The asteroid will approach Earth in 2029, inside satellite orbits, the closest approach by any object recorded. It’ll be visible from Earth. The concern is that this encounter will alter Apophis’ orbit, perhaps setting it up for a hit in 2036. The idea of a “space apparatus” hasn’t been defined, but obviously looks like an orbiting option. Yahoo has this AFP article, which has been scratched together from Interfax, RIA Novosti and other sources: It quotes the head of Russia’s space agency Anatoly Perminov:

“We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done” to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.

Apophis is a pretty large object, 320-350 metres across, which Perminov says could create “a desert the size of France”. According to NASA, there are small possibilities of Apophis hitting in 2029, a 2.8% chance, to be exact. The trouble with Apophis is some level of real uncertainty about its orbit, and the fact that it seems from charts to contain a bandwidth of proximity to Earth. Matters are not improved by the fact that it’s out of radar range and out of optical observation range until 2011, according to NASA’s 2007 paper. The predicted position contains variables which could indicate a significant change, or “amplification” of its positional changes after encountering Earth in 2029, setting up the uncertainty about what it will do in 2036. NASA has nevertheless recently updated its figures, and believes that the odds of a hit in 2036 are now “four in a million”. Russia isn’t looking at a nuclear option. That particular concept was effectively scuttled in the 1990s, when it was discovered that some asteroids aren’t really solid, and even if they were, the effect of a nuclear hit could be to produce asteroid shrapnel, a scattergun effect possibly worse than the problem. The orbiting apparatus idea is new, and would require some level of maneuverability, range, and the ability to predict deflection. It would also have more flexibility and more options than a “hit or miss” scenario with a missile. Apophis isn’t in the Deep Impact category, but even a Tunguska-like airburst from a thing that size caused by atmospheric impact would produce massive, nuke-like shockwaves. Impact estimates, according to Wikipedia, (which seems to have been updated to coincide with the Russian statements) are between 1480 megatons (Russian estimate) and 880 megatons (NASA). Krakatoa was 200 megatons. The predicted area of hazard is across central Asia central America and northern South America. Read more…

8 US CIA Agents, 5 Canadians Killed in Afghanistan Forward Operating Base “Gym” Actually a CIA Surveillance Center

Jason Ditz
www.uruknet.info

More details have emerged in this morning’s perplexing story, in which a suicide bomber attacked what officials called a “gym” on a military base in Khost Province, killing eight Americans the military identified as “civilians.”

Now US officials admit that all eight Americans slain in the attack were actually CIA agents, adding a reason why the Haqqani network was so quickly blamed, as CIA drones have been bombing the Haqqanis in North Waziristan for over a year.

Moreover, the “gym” at the Forward Operating Base was actually being used as a CIA “operations and surveillance center,” explaining the conspicuous lack of military personnel harmed in the attack.

One former CIA official was quoted as saying the attack was “the nightmare we’ve been anticipating since we went into Afghanistan and Iraq,” adding that the CIA agents operating in the warzones often lack adequate protection.

In addition, five Canadians were killed on patrol in Kandahar Province. The five, four soldiers and an embedded reporter were killed when their armored vehicle hit a roadside bomb.

Finally, though details were not readily available, a Jordanian army captain was slain in Afghanistan, the first death among Jordan’s tiny Afghan contingent since the war began.

Next Page »