Another US drone flattened a house near Miramshah in the North Waziristan Agency today, killing the five people inside. The attack was the third strike in the immediate area in the past few days. Another US drone flattened a house near Miramshah in the North Waziristan Agency today, killing the five people inside. The attack was the third strike in the immediate area in the past few days.

In statements released today, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry declared the threat posed by al-Qaeda “exaggerated” and insisted that the Yemeni government was capable of tackling the militants in its country without foreign help.

TSA to require advanced screening for mainly Muslim countries such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan and others. Just for a little variety, Cubans will also be required to go through advanced screening. BBC: Tougher US air screening for 'security-risk' countries. NYT: U.S. Intensifies Screening for Travelers From 14 Nations. There's word for this: racism. BoardingArea: The TSA makes another stupid move: Screening Management SOP, TSA

John Pilger a seasoned documentary maker and author of many books on the world order says it as it is.

Four American soldiers and one British soldier have been killed in two separate explosions in southern Afghanistan. The dead soldiers, who were serving under NATO's International Security Assistance Force, were killed on Sunday, NATO said in a statement Monday. The US soldiers died following an improvised explosive device strike, the statement said without giving more details. Meanwhile, a British soldier was killed in another roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan, according to British forces. Good!

Along with Wall Street’s resurgent bonuses will come a jump in an ancillary benefit: tax breaks. For all banks and Wall Street firms, “I’m sure we’re talking $200 billion total compensation, which would create a tax savings for the firms of $80 billion,” said Robert Willens, an accounting and tax analyst in New York who runs a consulting firm, Robert Willens LLC. The figure does not include bonus plans by hedge funds, which are likely to reduce their payouts after a down year.

Burma to hold first elections in 20 years, Burmese told by dictator to make "correct choices." The last election was ruled "invalid" after the military overwhelmingly lost.

It is still showing up in Google, but changes are afoot, odd that a headline like that can’t stand on its own. “Coldest December since 1981″ => "Icy conditions lead to closure of Giant’s Causeway".

I am [...] glad to report that Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research. AWIP: Global Warming Emerging Science and Understanding -VIDEOs

Fourteen fresh claims of torture against the British Army include detailed accounts of a shadowy team of military and MI5 interrogators who are alleged to have authorised the physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees. The new allegations bring the total number of cases being investigated by the Government to 47.

[One graphic and disturbing image sums up the violence that is always at the heart of war. Titled “American Soldier showing a severed Iraqi arm hung in a mosque to terrorize the Iraqi resistance”, it portrays a gloating American youth in fatigues flaunting his prize. The spoils of the hunt, his gruesome human arm, was hung against the wall of a house of worship like a rancid slab of meat. more @ Emily Spence / TPC]

So, let’s pause a moment as the New Year begins and take stock of ourselves as what we truly are: the preeminent war-making machine on planet Earth. Let’s peer into the future, and consider just what the American way of war might have in store for us in 2010. Here are 10 questions, the answers to which might offer reasonable hints as to just how much U.S. war efforts are likely to intensify in the Greater Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia, in the year to come. BlacklistedNews: World’s Sole Military Superpower’s 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars. Kenny's Sideshow: What We're Looking Foward To.

US and Israeli officials suspected a Somali group linked to al-Qaeda was responsible for the bombing and speculated that the suspects had smuggled the missiles into Kenya from Somalia. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan is believed dead following a raid by JSOC forces (U.S. Army Special Forces) including U.S. Navy Seals in four helicopters (including at least two AH-6s) on Monday September 14, 2009. Nabhan was driving south of the capital Mogadishu near Baraawe in a two vehicle convoy when attacked by the little bird assault helicopters. The raid, code-named Operation Celestial Balance,[10] took place around 1:00 pm local time, with the helicopters arriving from a ship offshore, firing on the vehicles, and landing briefly to take bodies. President Barack Obama is reported to have signed an "Execute Order" for the operation ten days before the attack was launched.

In one of its most cynical moves yet, the Australian Government will delay the implementation of Internet censorship until after the next Australian Election. In a letter to an opponent of internet censorship, Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy wrote that the Government would introduce “legislative amendments into Parliament to require all ISPs, starting twelve months from the passage of the legislation, to filter RC material hosted on overseas servers.”

The ease with which the plane bomber could operate exposes the vacuity and recklessness at the heart of the US response to 9/11. So there was no ticking time bomb. No urgent need ever arose to torture anybody who was withholding crucial details, so that civilisation as we know it could be saved in the nick of time. No wires had to be tapped, special prisons erected or international accords violated. No innocent people had to be grabbed off the street in their home country, transported across the globe and waterboarded. Drones, daisy-cutters, invasions, occupations were, it has transpired, not necessary.

Already faced with a rapidly ageing fanbase at home and widespread incomprehension and rejection abroad, Spanish bullfighting has suffered another major setback after the Catalan parliament voted to outlaw it completely across the region. The decision was so controversial that some deputies hunched over their desks to hide their fingers from photographers as they punched in their votes.

Once again, as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, American imperialism is preparing a military bloodbath in an impoverished country, using a terrorist attack—in this case a failed attempt—as the pretext. According to reports by the UN and Yemeni government statistics, some 35 percent of the adult population of the country is unemployed. Yemen is the poorest of the Arab countries, has exhausted its very limited oil export capacity, and now faces severe water shortages. But Yemen possesses, like Afghanistan and Iraq, a highly strategic geographic location, adjacent to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, and the Red Sea, controlling access to the Suez Canal. Yemen also borders on the Gulf of Aden, the shipping route for much of the oil leaving the Persian Gulf.

In a throwback to 1950s America, Israel allows gender-based segregation on its public buses and looks the other way when women are violently abused for not sitting in the back of the bus. Egged, Israel's state transport company, runs around 100 mehadrin (super-kosher) bus lines catering to haredi (ultra-orthodox) riders. In theory, gender segregation on these publicly-funded lines is voluntary. In practice? Women are verbally abused, publicly humiliated and sometimes even beaten if they don't "voluntarily" dress modestly, board and exit from the rear bus doors, and sit in the back of the bus.

Remember we were all gona die of AIDS? The swine flu pandemic existed only in the media. Do you hear anything about it now? Did your friends relatives anyone you know die of it? As soon as the media found something else to scare you with its all gone, forgotten. Gloabal warming? This is the coldest winter on record in Britain.