Islamabad: Pakistan will review all its agreements with the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the aftermath of the November 26 airstrike that left two dozen Pakistan Army soldiers dead, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said. - Mr Gilani said in Lahore on Sunday that the government had decided to review the agreements made by the then President Pervez Musharraf's government with the US, NATO, United Nations (UN) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), reported Dawn. The NATO airstrike on two checkposts in Mohmad Agency late last month left 24 Pakistan Army soldiers dead, sparking outrage in the country. Islamabad promptly stopped NATO supply through the country.

Jason Ditz: US Begins Pullout From Pakistan’s Shamsi Airbase
Daily Mail: US forced to leave Pakistan base as relations reach new low after attack that killed 24

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored Washington's latest warnings on the consequences of adopting a radically hostile approach against Tehran by reiterating his anti-Iran rhetoric. - In a Sunday speech at an annual gathering for the Israeli regime's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu made reference to the United States' recent rebukes of Israel over Tel Aviv's belligerent rhetoric against Iran and said Israel will make "the right decision at the right moment," even when allies object, Reuters reported.

Julian Assange has been granted an appeal to the UK Supreme Court to halt his extradition to Sweden over sex crimes allegations. If the appeal had been denied the WikiLeaks founder would have been en route to Stockholm within 10 days. Assange himself says he is thankful for this opportunity, and “the long struggle for justice for him and others continues.”

“The issue of extradition safeguards is a concern to many people. There are many aggrieved families in the UK and in other countries in Europe that are struggling for justice,” Julian Assange said. “This afternoon the parliament of the United Kingdom is considering in depth the matters that arise from various extradition cases in the UK, including my own. Today the High Court has decided that an issue that arises from my own case is of general public importance and may be of assistance to other cases and should be heard by the Supreme Court. I think that is a correct decision and I am thankful.”

As for now, the team of his lawyers has 14 days to petition the Supreme Court for appeal, RT’s Laura Smith reports from London. Should it be unsuccessful, they can still turn to the European Court of Human Rights.

Russia Today: Unequal partners: UK rethinks US extradition treaty - Video Dozens of British MPs are calling for a review of what they see as a one-sided extradition policy with the US. Drawn up in the post-9/11 panic, it decrees that Washington can demand anyone's extradition without proof, and London is obliged to obey. All take and no give – that is the growing feeling in Britain’s parliament against America’s controversial extradition treaty. It was signed in 2003 and makes it far easier for the US to take people from the UK than the other way around. Now, 45 members of British parliament from three main parties have crossed the political divide and joined forces. They have finally forced a debate and parliamentary vote on what they call an injustice.

The Telegraph: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange wins right to challenge extradition - Video

The extreme militarization of American police forces has been brought to public attention by the tactics employed against Occupy protesters, which often appear more appropriate to counter-terrorism operations than to the control of non-violent protest. According to investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, however, the proper term for this ruthless suppression of dissent should be “Israelification.” In an article which begins with examples of American police training alongside Israeli security forces, Blumenthal writes,

“Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people.[...]"

Israeli soldiers attack Palestinian civilians who
organized a peaceful demonstration in Beit Ummar
town near Hebron in protest to settlement activities

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Escalate Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Gaza Strip.

IOF have continued to use force against peaceful protests in the West Bank. Two Palestinian civilian were wounded.

Israeli war planes launched a number of air strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip. A greenhouse and a training site were bombarded.

The Israeli Navy has continued to attack Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip. Israeli naval troops arrested 14 Palestinian fishermen and confiscated a number of fishing boats.

IOF conducted 40 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and two limited ones into the Gaza Strip. IOF arrested 5 Palestinians, including 3 children. IOF raided offices of a car rental company in Nablus and confiscated money and documents.

Israel has continued to impose a total closure on the OPT and has isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world. Israeli soldiers arrested 4 Palestinian civilians, including a child, at various checkpoints in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers arrested a Palestinian patient at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern Gaza Strip.

IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property. IOF demolished 4 houses, 4 agricultural rooms, a mosque, 3 water wells and two animal farms. IOF arrested two girls who protested the demolition of their home. Israeli settlers threw stones at Palestinian civilian vehicles travelining on Nablus –Qalqilya road.

Barbarism, inhumanity, war crimes... [Video source]

The Local Coordination Committees in Syria was able to document 848 martyrs who fell from being shot by security forces and the regime's army during the month of November including 44 martyrs who died under torture in different security branches, 44 male children and 15 female children in addition to 14 women; despite the killing and the human losses the Syrians insist on their legitimate demands of toppling the criminal regime and to live in freedom and dignity in a civil country for everyone.

Hardline Salafis, forecast to become powerbrokers in Egypt's first post-uprising parliament, are seeking to allay fears in the minority Christian community of an Islamist-dominated assembly. - The Salafis, who mostly eschewed politics during Mubarak's rule, are predicted to win second place after the more moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in the first round of parliamentary elections. The surprise showing by the fundamentalists comes at a time of heightened sectarian tensions followers of Salafi Islam have been blamed for stoking. Salafis, who advocate a strict interpretation of Islamic law, were blamed for bloody clashes around a Cairo church in May that killed 15 people, and attacks on the shrines of Sufis, an esoteric brand of Islam. A spokesman for the leading Salafi Al-Nur party told AFP Thursday that neither Christians nor liberal Muslims have anything to fear from his group, which he says will focus on improving all Egyptians' lives.

A judge in Chile last week issued an indictment against a retired US Navy officer in connection with the arrest, torture and murder of two American journalists, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi, in the wake of the CIA-backed military coup led by Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet that toppled the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. - Judge Jorge Zepeda has charged Capt. Ray Davis (retired) with providing the Chilean secret police with intelligence that led to the abduction and murder of Horman and Terrugi and with failing to take any action to stop the killings. At the time of the coup, Davis was the chief of the US Military Group at the American embassy in Santiago. The judge has filed a motion with the country’s Supreme Court to seek Davis’s extradition from the US. The slaying of Horman and Terrugi, who were supporters of the Allende government, was carried out as part of a savage wave of repression that saw tens of thousands of people tortured and executed and hundreds of thousands more forced into exile by a US-supported dictatorship that went on to rule the country for 17 years.

British lawmaker and Newport West MP Paul Flynn was criticised on Thursday after suggesting the country’s ambassador to Israel may be biased because he is Jewish. - MP Paul Flynn has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks after questioning whether the British ambassador to Israel should be Jewish. Flynn added: “I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist.” In my opinion, the evidence against British Ambassador Matthew Gould appears to be pretty conclusive.

Teams from the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University will launch fully-fledged joint research next year aiming to recreate the giant mammal, Japan's Kyodo News reported from Yakutsk, Russia.

By replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's marrow cells, embryos with mammoth DNA can be produced, Kyodo said, citing the researchers. The scientists will then plant the embryos into elephant wombs for delivery, as the two species are close relatives, the report said. Securing nuclei with an undamaged gene is essential for the nucleus transplantation technique, it said. For scientists involved in the research since the late 1990s, finding nuclei with undamaged mammoth genes has been a challenge. Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago. But the discovery in August of the well-preserved thigh bone in Siberia has increased the chances of a successful cloning.

My favorite local news site to comment on has been The Tennessean. Until today. Corporate parent Gannett has partnered with Facebook and has mandated on all their newspaper web sites that you must have a FB account to comment. The article that announced the change had this title and byline:

More media outlets ban anonymous Web comments
Media outlets aim to tame discourse.

As of last night there were almost 500 comments at the article with at least 90% blasting The Tennessean and Gannett for their corporate big brother/sis move. They are all gone/deleted now with only a few facebookers leaving remarks. As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in 2010:

“Facebook is only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing and the loss of privacy is part of that change.”

The 'rumor' that Facebook was seeded with CIA and NSA money and that they are in bed with them is apparently true despite the movie that conveniently left that part out as well as not identifying Zuckerberg as a jew and who actually controls the media, social and otherwise. No surprise there and it wasn't as if we didn't know.