BBC – Japan has confirmed the existence of a secret Cold War deal allowing the transit of nuclear-armed US vessels through its ports. The move by a government-appointed panel ends decades of official denial – although the existence of the pact was an open secret. The government said that the move was aimed at increasing transparency. But it comes at an unsettled time for the US-Japan relationship, amid a row over US military bases in Okinawa. Read article
The Times – Hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in Lhasa and armed paramilitaries are patrolling the streets in the run-up to the anniversary of a bloody riot in 2008. The authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of the anti-Chinese attacks that left about 20 people dead when Tibetans rampaged through the streets of the Himalayan city setting fire to shops, offices and banks. Read Articles
Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed. Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking. The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it’s chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they smear with an ad hominem attack they are unwittingly helping giant finance houses. Read the full Op-Ed by Joanne Nova
BBC – The US has said Israel’s authorisation of new building in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank does not violate a recently announced moratorium. But a state department spokesman said it was “the kind of thing that both sides need to be cautious of”. Israel has promised a 10-month pause in settlement building in the West Bank, though not in East Jerusalem. Read article
Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign. British journalists and TV crews are to be banned from the Afghan front line once a date for the election has been set, while senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters. MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph. Read article
The Australian – PHARMACEUTICAL giant Merck is being urged to settle with hundreds of Australian heart attack victims after a Federal Court judge found the company’s blockbuster drug Vioxx doubled the risk of cardiac arrest. In a landmark decision with international ramifications, judge Christopher Jessup ruled the anti-inflammatory drug was not “reasonably fit” to be on the market and the selling of it by Merck’s Australian subsidiary breached the Trade Practices Act. Read Article
Arab News – Syria said on Thursday that Israel dropped uranium particles onto Syrian soil from the air to make it look as if a covert nuclear weapons plant was being built there, diplomats at a UN nuclear watchdog meeting said. Damascus has strongly denied US intelligence that a complex in the Syrian desert bombed to ruins by Israel in 2007 had been a nascent nuclear reactor, North Korean in design and geared to making plutonium for atomic bombs. Read article
Politico – Senate Democrats are furious that the vast majority of grants from the clean-energy program from last year’s stimulus have been awarded to foreign companies. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana announced Wednesday a new initiative to require the “Buy America” provision of the stimulus to all programs, not just the government ones. A study done by the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that 79 percent of the $2 billion in clean-energy grants allocated since Sept. 1, 2009, has gone to foreign wind companies. Read article
BBC – Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC investigation finds. Former rebel leaders told the BBC that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money. They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time. One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) – from Western governments and charities including Band Aid – was channelled into the rebel fight. Read article
Ahlul Bayt – According to Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA), the captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, was scheduled to meet US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke at the Manas Air Base for talks on waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a journalist says. Rigi had planned to meet a high-profile US official at the Manas Air Base near Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek. Read article
Washington Report – This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion. Read article
Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence will destroy all future UFO reports it receives so it does not have to make them public, a previously secret memo discloses. Britain’s official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives. Read article
Ed – One could be forgiven for thinking this is just lazy public servants not wanting to have to deal with FOI requests. But if that were the case, why bother creating any paperwork in the first place?
Washington Independent – Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military. Read article
Washington Post -A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center. Read article
Associated Press – The top U.S. general in Iraq said Monday he could slow the exit of U.S. combat forces this year if Iraq’s politics are chaotic following elections this spring. Gen. Ray Odierno said there are no signs that will be necessary, but he says he has a Plan B and told his superiors about it during Washington meetings over the past week. The U.S. has about 96,000 troops in Iraq nearly seven years after the American-led invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein. That’s the lowest number of American forces in the country since the invasion. Read article
Press TV – Iran’s envoy to the IAEA has objected to the fact that suspicions have been raised about Tehran’s nuclear activities only because it is not implementing voluntary protocols. “We have to be able distinguish between two different issues. One is the Safeguards Agreement… and the other is additional measures, which are voluntary like the additional protocol. They cover more activities,” Ali-Asghar Soltanieh told Press TV on Sunday. Read article
A comprehensive and regularly updated list of all the apparent effects of Anthropogenic Climate Change according to the mainstream media over the last two decades. CLICK HERE TO READ
EDITORS WARNING: Do not read this analysis if you are of a nervous disposition, easily confused or easily scared.
Guardian – Message boasts of Israeli player’s ‘hit on Dubai target’ amid mounting row over Hamas chief’s killing. Amid the mounting diplomatic row over Mossad’s alleged assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai, the Israeli embassy has turned to Twitter to comment. A tweet issued by the embassy today read: “@israeluk You heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on #Dubai target http://ow.ly/18A79″. It links to a story about the Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer, who beat the top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki yesterday to reach the quarter-finals of the Dubai Championship. Read article
BBC – The final mystery of 9/11 will soon be solved, according to US experts investigating the collapse of the third tower at the World Trade Center. The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers. Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse. Read article
Guardian – The troubled American private security company Blackwater faced fresh controversy today when two former employees accused it of defrauding the US government for years, including billing for a Filipina prostitute on its payroll in Afghanistan. According to Melan Davis, a former employee, Blackwater listed the woman for payment under the “morale welfare recreation” category. Read article
CNN – Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide employees allege the company charged the government for a prostitute and strippers and kept incompetent personnel for financial reasons, part of what they call a systematic pattern to defraud authorities. The accusations come in a lawsuit filed by Brad and Melan Davis — who said the fraudulent activity, such as double billing and submitting false invoices, occurred while the security firm, now known as Xe, carried out its work in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. Read article
Times Online – Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities. Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Read article
Telegraph – The UK schemes paid for by the Department for International Development (DfID) include the teaching of ‘global citizenship’ to two- and three-year-olds in Devon; the establishment of Brazilian dance classes in east London; and a photographic project costing £180,000 in Brighton to raise awareness of climate change and poverty. Read article
The head of MI5 has denied officers withheld information over what it knew about the the torture of a UK resident. In an unprecedented move, Jonathan Evans defended the security service against claims it misled MPs over the US’s treatment of Binyam Mohamed. Read article
Telegraph – Jack Straw has hit back at claims that he ignored legal advice that the Iraq war would be unlawful without further United Nations backing. He insisted he gave serious attention to a warning from his former senior legal adviser, Sir Michael Wood, that the conflict would be a ”crime of aggression” unless Britain achieved another UN Security Council resolution. Read article
