Roger Franklin: They set out to compare Douglas Mawson's century-old observations with their own modern readings, but a stranded band of true-believing, Australian-led warmists has discovered there is still plenty of ice in Antarctica. Also, that embarrassment can be almost as painful as frostbite. ■ Somewhere in a parallel universe a prominent climate scientist much given to doom-laden predictions leads an Antarctic expedition of likeminded warmists intent on chronicling the damage mankind’s CO2 emissions are doing to our fragile planet. His party finds the polar sea largely free of ice and he concludes that whales and penguins are in all sorts of trouble as waters warm and food sources vanish. After re-tracing the route of Douglas Mawson’s expedition and comparing his measurements and findings with contemporary readings, everyone voyages back home, the ABC sends a camera crew to the dock and that night’s news is another warmist sermon dressed up as that fabled stuff “quality journalism”.

UPDATE: At last report the rescue ship was itself stuck in those not-quite-melting ice floes. | And here is something else that has been withdrawn: Any mention in press coverage that Turney and colleagues headed south to assess the ongoing impact of global warming. The closest any report comes to describing the expedition’s original purpose is the rather inadequate explanation that it is an attempt at “recreating Australian explorer Douglas Mawson’s century-old voyage to Antarctica.” When Turney is quoted he is mentioned only as a common or garden-variety “professor”, not as UNSW’s official Professor of Climate Change. Anthropogenic global warming may or may not be altering the planet, but the lack of it can certainly mess up even the best planned scientific expedition/PR offensive.

Heather Linebaugh has opened up about her “haunting” experience as a drone analyst and how the “failures” of the targeted killing program result in the deaths of innocent women, children and foreign soldiers. ● In an article published in the Guardian on Sunday, Linebaugh, who served in the US Air Force from 2009 until March 2012, says few of the US and British military officials who so "brazenly" defend the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program have a real clue how it actually works. “They feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs,” she writes.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote an extensive investigative piece last week featured in the London Review of Books, which details the Obama administration’s “cherry-picking” of intelligence related to the August 21 Damascus chemical attack. “Whose sarin?” was originally intended for the Washington Post, but neither the Post nor Hersh’s usual New Yorker Magazine published it – presumably because its allegations and conclusions are too explosive and embarrassing for those already heavily invested in the accepted narrative of D.C. official sources. Read the following bombshell revelation from the first paragraph: "Most significant, he [Obama] failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad." Hersh goes on to detail an intelligence community revolt, involving high-level officers, against the administration claim that only the Assad regime could have been responsible for the August 21 incident.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered security to be stepped up across the country, following two separate bombings in the southern city of Volgograd. | “Russian President Vladimir Putin has given a number of instructions to the National Antiterrorism Committee with the purpose of building up security across Russia,” an unnamed committee representative said on Monday. “The president will receive daily reports from the National Antiterrorism Committee about the measures it has taken, as well as situation reports.” Putin’s announcement came after an emergency meeting was held to discuss two separate bombings which Russian officials have described as terrorist attacks.

Russia Today: Consecutive Volgograd suicide bombing kills at least 14 - Photos, Graphic Video
Russia Today: Volgograd trolley bus blast - LIVE UPDATES

Julian Assange: Surveillance is new strategic weapon owned by single Power. ● There is “no hope” that mass strategic interception – as it is termed by the US – will go away. The whistleblower then drew a historical analogy with how the US has retained nuclear weapons in the past. Assange’s comments were made during a panel discussion of the documentary film ‘Mediastan’ on RT. The panel also included director Johannes Wahlstrom and Afghan journalist Enayat Najafizada, who participated in the movie. The film depicts different stages in undercover WikiLeaks journalists’ trips across Central Asia. “These powers do not give up voluntarily any significant ability to control the world like that,” Assange told RT. He compared any US compulsion to cling onto such abilities as a form of need for global control, pointing out that after the end of the Cold War, the US retained excessive nuclear weapons, despite an enormous anti-nuclear lobby. “Many movies were critical of it – it was a very expensive system to maintain,” he said. “The US could have reduced its numbers without any significant problem, and yet it still has 5000-6000 nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that there was no need for the country to maintain such a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. Assange also pointed out further reasons for not standing down from the clutches of the existing system, describing it as "invisible, intangible, complex, and decreasing in cost by 50 percent every 18 months."

A new technology opens the door to new ways to arrest people. ● As drivers prove their innocence at warrantless police checkpoints this New Year, they will not only be scrutinized over their potential consumption of alcohol. A new technology will enable the police to detect and arrest drivers for having marijuana, narcotics, and “other drugs” in their bloodstreams. The recently unveiled device is a portable saliva swab analyzer, capable of immediately sampling body fluids for the presence of foreign intoxicants. The machines were paid for by grants from the state. “Traditionally, our office has focused on drunken driving cases,” Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said. “We’re expanding drug collection and aggressively enforcing all impaired-driving laws.”

Congress and the government of United States is totally alien to the interests of the American people and are hurting this nation, Dr. David Duke has told an international audience via PressTV. ● Speaking during an interview conducted from Florida, Dr. Duke was asked about a recent opinion poll, conducted by Time magazine, which found that two-thirds of Americans surveyed agreed that the current Congress is the worst in their lifetime. Nearly three-quarters of respondents — rich and poor, young and old, Democrats and Republicans — agreed this is a “do-nothing” Congress. See the interview on PressTV here.

Video courtesy: Russian Investigative Committee. WARNING! Some users could find this footage disturbing. The video shows Volgograd railway station following a suicide blast that killed at least 15 people and left dozens of injured. LATEST.

BBC: 'Suicide bomber' hits Russia's Volgograd train station - Video

President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday sent a message to Pope Francis conveyed by Minister of State Joseph Sweid during his meeting with the Pope's Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin. ● In the message, President al-Assad expressed the Syrian people and leadership's appreciation of the stances of his holiness regarding the crisis in Syria, highlighting that the crisis will be solved through national dialogue among the Syrians and under a Syrian leadership without foreign intervention as to enable the Syrians to determine their future and leadership through ballots. The message stressed Syrian government's readiness to participate in the international conference on Syria "Geneva 2," highlighting that combating terrorism that is targeting citizens is a decisive factor in making any peaceful solution to the crisis a success. The message also highlighted that stopping terrorism requires having the countries which are involved in supporting the armed terrorist groups stop providing any sort of military, logistic or training support, noting that this support was provided by some of Syria's neighbors and other known countries in the Middle East and abroad. President al-Assad stressed the Syrian government's keenness on carrying out its constitutional duty of protecting its citizens, regardless of their race and religion, from the crimes of the takfiri groups that target their homes, schools and places pf worship with terrorist bombings or arbitrary shelling. During the meeting, Archbishop Parolin said his holiness is constantly following the situation in Syria and is deeply concerned over the suffering of the Syrian people, adding that Pope Francis affirms the need to solve the crisis in Syria through dialogue among the Syrians without foreign intervention.

Top Secret NSA catalog reveals US government has been secretly back dooring equipment from US companies including Dell, Cisco, Juniper, IBM, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and more, risking enormous damage to US tech sector. ● When it comes to modern firewalls for corporate computer networks, the world's second largest network equipment manufacturer doesn't skimp on praising its own work. According to Juniper Networks' online PR copy, the company's products are "ideal" for protecting large companies and computing centers from unwanted access from outside. They claim the performance of the company's special computers is "unmatched" and their firewalls are the "best-in-class." Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off -- the United States' National Security Agency. Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company's digital firewalls. A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry -- including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.

Have something to say against Israel's conduct (or the conduct of any US government criminal ally?) Well, that kind of behavior might earn you a visit from your local FBI thugs. They just want to make sure "everybody's safe" and "nothing happens." Hats off to this intrepid citizen who put these jack asses for hire back on their heels and videotaped the event for all of us to learn from.

The president called defense bill a "welcome step" toward closing Gitmo, but civil liberties issues abound. ● On Thursday President Obama signed into law the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a sweeping defense policy bill, which includes some improvements in terms of civil liberties and human rights on its previous two iterations. However, a number of provisions — as in the 2012 and 2013 NDAAs — should keep civil libertarians concerned. As a notable improvement, NDAA 2014 includes a provision that Obama called a “welcome step” toward fulfilling his longtime promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The bill relaxes regulations that have held up the transfer of detainees out of the detention center. The defense act also includes provisions aimed at intervening in the epidemic of sexual assault in the U.S. military. But, as the Washington Post noted, “it stops short of the broad reforms that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and other advocates have been calling for.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald condemned the mainstream media during an address at a German computer conference on Friday and accused his colleagues of failing to challenge erroneous remarks routinely made by government officials around the globe.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald condemned the mainstream media during an address at a German computer conference on Friday and accused his colleagues of failing to challenge erroneous remarks routinely made by government officials around the globe. ● Thousands of attendees at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg packed into a room to watch the 46-year-old lawyer-turned-columnist present a keynote address delivered less than seven months after he started working with former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Revelations contained in leaked documents supplied by Snowden to Greenwald and other journalists have sparked international outrage and efforts to reform the far-reaching surveillance operations waged by the NSA and intelligence officials in allied nations. But speaking remotely from Brazil this week, Greenwald argued that the media establishment at large is guilty of failing significantly with respect to accomplishing its most crucial role: keeping governments in check.

Grant Smith: Dual-citizen nominee's lifetime benefit to Israel comes at a heavy cost to America. ■ The rushed campaign to insert Stanley Fischer straight from his position leading Israel’s central bank into the number two spot at the Federal Reserve has allowed little time for research into the appointee’s career or for informed public debate about his record. Like the failed recent Obama administration-Israel lobby pincer move to ram approval for U.S. military strikes on Syria through Congress, avoiding such due diligence through velocity may actually be the only means for successful Senate confirmation.

From Aaron Swartz to Assange, Monsanto to Manning, fracking fears, Iraq carnage and more, here are RT’s "Top 13 of 2013." These vastly underreported stories are some of the biggest ones to fly under the mainstream media’s radar this year.

Revelation 2:9 - I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

Les Visible ■ On the Doorstep of a New World Israelis [...] have got a personal agenda that is indifferent to the welfare of anyone but themselves. For them, Christmas means killing 3 year old children in occupied lands, illegally occupied by them and they do it to celebrate the bloodlust of the demon god they serve, who demands blood sacrifice in order to assist them in their ongoing war against the whole of the human race. You disagree with my analysis? Then explain to me how it is that nearly every Christmas they crank up their war machine and most of the time it involves an assault on a captive populace that they have corralled into an ever diminishing territory, which is for them no more than a playground for applied genocide.

Sheldon Richman ■ The American people should know that pending right now in Congress is a bipartisan bill that would virtually commit the United States to go to war against Iran if Israel attacks the Islamic Republic. “The bill outsources any decision about resort to military action to the government of Israel,” Columbia University Iran expert Gary Sick wrote to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in protest, one of the bill’s principal sponsors. The mind boggles at the thought that Congress would let a foreign government decide when America goes to war.

The Washington Post is running a terrific article in which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden explains why he revealed how far the NSA and other federal agencies had gone toward constructing a national security surveillance state. Short answer: Because it's unconstitutional. The Post interviewed Snowden for 14 hours in Moscow and he comes off much better than the pack of liars who run the NSA or the enablers who "oversee" its activities in Congress or in the Administration.

Even Before 9/11, NSA Knew In Real-Time Which Countries Both Parties to Phone Calls Were In. In finding the NSA’s metadata collection program legal today, Judge William Pauley III ruled: The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda. [...] The Government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program—a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data. [...] Judge Pauley is uninformed … and he fell for the “big lie” behind NSA spying. [W]hile Binney headed NSA’s global digital communications gathering efforts prior to 9/11, his team knew in real-time which countries calls were made from and received in. The NSA is lying if it claims otherwise.

Reason.com: Judge Says the NSA Can Look at Your Phone Records Because They're Not Yours

The newest version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes an amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on the American public, reports Michael Hastings of BuzzFeed.● The amendment — proposed by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed in the House last Friday afternoon — would effectively nullify the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. Thornberry said that the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way,” according to Buzzfeed. The vote came two days after a federal judged ruled that an indefinite detention provision in the annual defense bill was unconstitutional. Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who released a highly critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, dedicated a section of his report to Information Operations (IO) and states that after Desert Storm the military wanted to transform IO "into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations."

An appeals court in the United States has approved the indefinite detention without trial of prisoners held by the US military in Afghanistan. ● The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in a 44-page decision on Christmas Eve that habeas corpus petitions filed by five prisoners who are held by the US military at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan are “beyond the reach” of the US Constitution. The petitions invoked the prisoners’ right to challenge unlawful detention. While the right is not fully implemented in practice, it is recognized by the US Supreme Court for prisoners held at the notorious US-run Guantanamo prison in Cuba. However, the US appeals court rejected on Tuesday Bagram prisoners’ petition citing administration claims that there are differences between Guantanamo and Bagram, which is also known as “Afghanistan’s Guantanamo.”

On December 25th 2013 Edward Snowden delivered an alternative Christmas message on the UK's channel 4 TV station. Before the broadcast, a short version of the speech was leaked and immediatly uploaded to youtube. That upload was immediatly blocked but many re-uploads made the clip available everywhere. This is one of those places. If you want to thank Edward Snowden for giving up his relationship, familiy, job and any chance of a normal life to inform us all go here (freesnowden.is/donate/index.html) and donate. Or spread his message. And do something with it. Because if something is done all of Edward's sacrifices have meaning. (Channel 4)

Bloomberg: Snowden Says Surveillance Worse Than Orwell’s ‘1984’ Envisioned
Russia Today: ‘Tracked everywhere you go’: Snowden delivers Xmas message on govt spying

A co-founder of the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement says the war on Syria is aimed at destabilizing the whole Middle East in favor of the Israeli regime. In an interview with Press TV on Wednesday, Mark Glenn pointed out that large numbers of people displaced by the foreign-backed militancy in Syria are headed for neighboring countries, which cannot cope with the massive inflow of refugees.

[Dealing with Syrian refugees] “was exactly what was factored into the entire equation when the United States, her Western allies and Israel went about this process of destroying Syria. This is not just a war against Syria, it is a war against all the neighboring countries of Syria. So this is a war that has been waged against all of these countries… and so this just fits in with both Israel and United States’ plan of destabilizing all of the countries in the Middle East so as to make Israel the lone superpower in the region. The United States and these countries create the problem, then they will come in and they will offer solutions to this problem. But attached to these solutions will be concessions that are not in the interests of these [neighboring] countries in the long-term or in the short-term”

The remarks followed a report by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) saying Syrian refugees make up some 20 percent of the population in Lebanon. According to Glenn, the situation in Lebanon and other neighbors of Syria is analogous to the aftermath of the US-led war in Iraq, which sent millions flooding into Jordan and to other nearby countries.

The most obvious and easily provable discrepancy in the official version with regard to the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2013 lies in the way the buildings "collapsed". Not only, for the first time in the history of the world, did three steel-framed skyscrapers collapse into their own footprints from fires, but they did so through the path of maximum resistance; something unheard of. Even more alarming is the fact that WTC 7 collapsed due to small fires even though no "aircraft hit" had occurred or any other major damage. Worse still is the fact that the owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, admitted on-camera that he "gave the order to pull", a fact corroborated by none other than now US Secretary of State John Kerry. David Connor spoke to the Voice of Russia about these matters and the structural aspects of the WTC buildings.

Albert Einstein: “A Foolish Faith In Authority Is The Worst Enemy Of The Truth” - Washington's Blog