Pakistan Reviews Ties With U.S. After Deadly NATO Strike

Source: Xinhua News Agency
Muhammad Tahir

The November 26 attack was the 8th NATO strike on Pakistani posts in the last three years, according to the Pakistan army. A total of 72 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in such NATO strikes, but the latest strike has prompted an unprecedented angry reaction from the Pakistani military and civilian leadership...

 
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani says parliament will meet soon to reassess its relations with the United States in the wake of the November 26 deadly attack by NATO fighter jets and helicopters on two border posts, killing 24 soldiers.

The attack had caused widespread anger across Pakistan and the country's top civil and military leadership took unexpected and important decisions to review its future relationship with the U.S., close supply lines for NATO forces in Afghanistan, vacate a strategically important airbase in Balochistan province from the U. S. military and to boycott the December 5 Bonn Conference on Afghanistan's future.

The decisions are considered as a major setback in worsening Pakistan-U.S relations, which had been under stress since February this year when an undercover CIA agent, Raymond Davis, shot dead two Pakistani nationals in the eastern city of Lahore. The documents and mobile phone data of Raymond Davis mobile had unearthed a secret U.S. spy network in Pakistan, which prompted a call from Pakistan to seek details about all American secret agents and their activities in the country. Pakistan then had also asked the U.S. to withdraw its spies and U.S. trainers.

US-NATO Missile Shield directed against Russia spawning New Arms Race Says Russian Military Chief

Source: RT

Russia’s Chief of General Staff says Moscow is being pushed into a new arms race, although it has repeatedly stressed that it does not want this.

In his speech at an annual meeting with foreign military representatives on Wednesday, General Nikolai Makarov noted that at last year’s NATO-Russia summit in Lisbon, President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia could take part in Europe’s own missile defense system, but this suggestion was rejected. Moscow then offered another option – if NATO countries wanted to build their own defense system, they could simply ensure that Russia falls outside its effective radius, and the effective radius of similar Russian weapons would then remain within the country’s borders. The second plan was also rejected, Russia’s military chief said at the Moscow meeting.

BREAKING NEWS: Downed CIA Stealth Drone Marks Another Step Towards America's War On Iran

Source: Global Research
Finian Cunningham

The revelation that a US unmanned drone aircraft downed in eastern Iran was on a CIA secret surveillance operation raises troubling questions about the immediacy of Washington’s war plans on the Islamic Republic.

Initial reports of the lost drone at the weekend quoted US military officials claiming that the aircraft had strayed into Iranian territory while on a routine manoeuvre over Afghanistan as part of NATO’s occupation in that country.

However, now it emerges that the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is a sophisticated surveillance model operated by the CIA, according to the Washington Post. Iran claims that its forces shot down the drone, and is now in its possession.

The CIA has declined to comment on why the RQ-170 Sentinel was in Iranian airspace. But the aircraft is known to possess state of the art surveillance equipment and is designed to evade radar detection. It is understand that this model of spy drone is used for “highly sensitive operations”.

It appears that the drone was deliberately being flown over Iranian territory and was not the usual type of spy plane that is used by NATO in neighbouring Afghanistan, nor was it simply off course by accident.

As the Washington Post reports: “The disclosure that the drone apparently recovered by Iran was being flown by the CIA comes after previous signals from US officials that had created the impression that the plane was being flown by the US military on a more mundane mission over Afghanistan and had simply strayed into Iranian territory.”

The newspaper adds: “The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations’ air defences undetected. The existence of the aircraft, which is made by Lockheed Martin, has been known since 2009, when a model was photographed at the main US airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.”

Clearly, the use of such advanced technology in Iranian airspace indicates a more than usual sinister purpose.

Occupy Nation: The Militarization of Police

Source: RT

American anti-corporate Occupy protesters are being allowed back into a New Orleans park, after getting permission from a federal judge. A lawmaker has already called for an investigation into claims of police misconduct in dealing with activists. 

The movement shows no sign of dying down across America, with thousands demonstrating nearly three months after the first protests in New York. 

The heavy police presence isn't being scaled back either, as Marina Portnaya reports

China's Navy Prepares for Combat

Source: AFP

Robert Saiget

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat, amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.

The navy should "accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security," he said.

Addressing the powerful Central Military Commission, Hu said: "Our work must closely encircle the main theme of national defence and military building."

His comments, which were posted in a statement on a government website, come as the United States and Beijing's neighbours have expressed concerns over its naval ambitions, particularly in the South China Sea.

Several Asian nations have competing claims over parts of the South China Sea, believed to encompass huge oil and gas reserves, while China claims it all. One-third of global seaborne trade passes through the region.

Vietnam and the Philippines have accused Chinese forces of increasing aggression there.

In a translation of Hu's comments, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying China's navy should "make extended preparations for warfare."

The Pentagon however downplayed Hu's speech, saying that Beijing had the right to develop its military, although it should do so transparently.

Rense Interviews Dr. Joseph P. Farrell: Heading To War?

Source: Rense.com

EU Fulfills 'Hitler's Dream' of Dictatorship

Source: RT

Time is running out for Eurozone leaders to save their unified currency as they prepare for eleventh-hour talks in Brussels. But by preserving Euro, Europe dooms itself to Hitler’s dream of Euro dictatorship, believes journalist Tony Gosling. 

­“The individual countries, if they want to retain their sovereignty, then they are going to have to go back to their original currencies,” Gosling told RT.

U.S. Attempts To Overthrow Russian Government

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

John McCain tries to make good on longstanding threat to Putin. 

As chairman of the International Republican Institute, an organization dedicated to fomenting extraterritorial sedition and revolution throughout the world, US Senator John McCain has become a central figure in the current Western-engineered campaign against the Arab world. The IRI was even credited by the New York Times as helping "nurture the Arab uprisings" by funding and training activists from across the Arab world who would later go on to overthrow their respective governments. Unlike many of the other podium-bound puppets that constitute Western politics, McCain is fully aware and very public about the final destination of the unrest and now open war, he is ceaselessly promoting.

Image: McCain stands before the tri-color flag of the Benghazi terror brigades he, the US government and NATO funded, trained, armed, and provided air support for as they committed wholesale genocide across the nation of Libya. This would be just one of several celebratory strolls through nations he helped sow sedition and chaos throughout. Egypt being another. He now aspires to stand in the ruins of Moscow. 

Earlier this year John McCain openly said of the unrest his IRI had helped fund in Egypt, "I would be a little less cocky in the Kremlin with my KGB cronies today if I were Vladimir Putin. I would be a little less secure in the seaside resort [of] President Hu and a few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."

On the IRI's official website in regards to Russia, the organization confesses to "identifying and supporting leaders" at the local and regional levels of Russian politics to "lay the groundwork for Russia's next generation of democratic leadership." The IRI then goes on to explain it has, "created a new network of politicians, NGO activists and elected officials who are interested in the democratic development of municipal governance." And with this US-created Russian opposition network, the IRI then sponsors conferences, and roundtables to help them "increase public participation," (read: find people to join a US-backed opposition movement).

Cosmic Sabotage? Phobos-Grunt Probe Mysteriously Disabled

Source: Activist Post
Andrew W. Griffin

We have been watching the drama involving the ailing Russian Phobos-Grunt (a.k.a Fobos-Grunt or “Phobos-soil") spacecraft with great interest, as the probe appears to be stranded in Earth orbit, likely to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, perhaps as soon as next month.

In fact, latest reports on the $170 million Phobos-Grunt craft suggest that Russian scientists "have given up on any hope of regaining even minimal control" over the probe and that it is likely breaking apart, if reports from the U.S. Army Strategic Command, as reported today in The Moscow Times, are accurate.

Launched on Nov. 9 (11/9/11) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Phobos-Grunt was designed to take a trip to the potato-shaped Martian moon of Phobos where it would take samples of its soil and return to Earth in 2014. It would have been the first spacecraft On board was China’s first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1. It was rocketed into low-Earth orbit and two thrusters that would have sent it on its way to Phobos failed to operate.

And now that it is expected to crash back to Earth, there is concern about the highly toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide onboard. But it is simply expected to burn up before hitting Earth. 

So what caused the Phobos-Grunt to fail? It’s not really clear. Speculation, conspiracy theories and more have been offered up. After all, it is Phobos that had former NASA astronaut and Moon landing hero Buzz Aldrin publicly talking about the mysteries of Phobos, one of Mars's two moons, the other being Deimos.

Said Aldrin on C-SPAN in July 2009: “…(V)isit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith there - a very unusual structure on this little potato-shaped object (Phobos) that goes around Mars once every seven hours.When people find out about that they are going to say, ‘Who put that there? Who put that there?’ Well, uh, the universe put it there, or if you choose, God put it there.”

Many Astrophysicists claim Phobos is artificial

And photos do seem to show an unusual structure on the surface of the curious little moonlet.

Meanwhile, the Russians are extremely upset about this latest failure and are looking for someone to blame. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, according to the British news site The Week, “has threatened severe punishment for anyone found responsible for the failure of the … Phobos-Grunt.”

Medvedev was quoted in a Nov. 26, 2011 Reuters report that the Phobos-Grunt failure and another recent disaster involving a cargo ship, taking food and fuel to the International Space Station, are embarrassing to Russia’s space program, Roscosmos, and that if it was sabotaged somehow or simply put together in a sloppy or careless way, they will pay for what they have done.

Medvedev said: “I am not suggesting putting them up against the wall like under Josef Vissarionovich (Stalin), but seriously punish either financially or, if the fault is obvious, it could be a disciplinary or even criminal punishment.”

Russian news network, RT, offered a report titled “Did U.S. ‘climate weapon’ knock-out Russian probe?”

An interesting idea. It quotes General-Lieutenant Nikolay Rodionov who suggests that the HAARP station in Alaska – officially reported to “study … the ionosphere and its use for communication” – gave off “powerful electromagnetic radiation” and may have “affected the control system of the interplanetary probe.”

EU To Sieze Control Over National Economies With the Stroke of a Pen

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Forget the millions of Europeans affected, the EU won’t even bother to put its attempt to seize control over member state economies to a vote amongst its own parliamentary cronies, preferring instead to change the Lisbon Treaty under powers Eurocrats granted themselves.

Having repeatedly staged national referendums until they got the vote they wanted, the Lisbon Treaty was passed with a provision, the obscure ‘passerelle’ clause, Art. 126 (14) via protocol 12, that bestowed upon Brussels the power to change its terms without any kind of vote whatsoever – popular or parliamentary.

“This decision does not require ratification at national level. This procedure could therefore lead to rapid and significant changes,” according to a confidential text issued by EU President Herman Van Rompuy.

This means that any effort to change the treaty in order to create a “fiscal union,” or in other words, impose centralized control over every member state’s economy from Brussels, would simply be accomplished with the stroke of a pen and would not involve votes from any national parliament or any MEP.

This would then empower the European Commission, “to impose austerity measures on eurozone countries that are being bailed out, usurping the functions of government in countries such as Greece, Ireland, or Portugal,” reports the Guardian.

It’s all part of the technocrats’ agenda to seize “intrusive control of national budgetary policies.”

“Why bother with the one true barbarous relic – democracy – when good ole’ fascism will suffice,” reports Zero Hedge. “And that is how a bunch of corrupt kleptocratic incompetent eurocrats usurp all power in a regime now entirely controlled by Goldman Sachs.”

Anxious Greeks Emptying Their Bank Accounts

Source: Spiegel Online

Many Greeks are draining their savings accounts because they are out of work, face rising taxes or are afraid the country will be forced to leave the euro zone. By withdrawing money, they are forcing banks to scale back their lending -- and are inadvertently making the recession even worse. 

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale," he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament.

With disarming honesty, the central banker explained to the lawmakers why the Greek economy isn't managing to recover from a recession that has gone on for three years now: "Our banking system lacks the scope to finance growth." 

He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion -- by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October -- the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.

The raid on bank accounts stems from deep uncertainty in Greek households which culminated in early November during the political turmoil that followed the announcement by then-Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou of a referendum on the second Greek bailout package. 

Papandreou withdrew the plan and stepped down following an outcry among other European leaders against the referendum, and a new government was formed on Nov. 11 under former central banker Loukas Papademos. That appears to have slowed the drop in bank savings, at least for the time being.