Link: http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/01/was-swine-flu-a-false-pandemic/

That’s the contention by more than a dozen members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which reportedly plans to conduct an inquiry into the influence that drugmakers may have had on the World Health Organization, scientists and governments. A resolution was introduced last month by Wolfgang Wodarg, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party who chairs the PACE health committee, and it reads:

Link: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/underwear-bomber-opr-report-and-torture

It's hard to ignore the ongoing coverage of the underwear bomber and the TSA's new security regulations. We think Amy Davidson of The New Yorker's Close Read blog put it best, writing of the Christmas Day bombing attempt: It's a bit hard to follow the arguments Cheney et al. are making about how the near-miss over Detroit on Christmas Day shows that we really need to waterboard people and lock them up in places like Guantanamo. This is especially odd because, in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, we seem to have had the raw intelligence we needed, and just didn't use it intelligently—it was more a failure of reading comprehension than information gathering. (It might also have helped to read his Facebook page.)

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100104/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bankruptcy_boom

U.S. consumers and businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a pace that made 2009 the seventh-worst year on record, with more than 1.4 million petitions submitted, an Associated Press tally showed Monday. The AP gathered data from the nation's 90 bankruptcy districts and found 1.43 million filings, an increase of 32 percent from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December, up 22 percent from the same month a year before.

Link: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/70142

"Obama’s surge has another dimension as well: it is aimed at Pakistan hence the demand that it must deal with the Taliban as well as al-Qaeda “sheltering” in Pakistan. This is merely a pretext; America’s real aim is the dismantling of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This explains the constant harping on the issue. The specter of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremists is constantly invoked. The US would like to take them out because these weapons are viewed as a potential threat to the Zionist entity...

Link: http://www.redress.cc:80/palestine/slittlewood20100104

Stuart Littlewood views British Premier Gordon Brown’s weasel words in response an open letter by Medical Aid for Palestinians calling for an end to the criminal blockade of Gaza. He calls on Brown to do what really counts for Israel: impose sanctions. "...while Brown prattles about how unacceptable it is that Israel still prevents aid from reaching those who so badly need it, there is no sign that he’s prepared to do anything about it. On the other hand Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, is much more positive. He tells UN Radio: ‘Israel does not respond to language of diplomacy, which has encouraged the lifting of the blockade, and so what I am suggesting is that it has to be reinforced by a threat of adverse economic consequences for Israel.'"

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/4/judge_dismisses_all_charges_against_blackwater

A federal judge in Washington, DC has thrown out all charges against the five Blackwater operatives involved in the 2007 Nisoor Square massacre that killed seventeen Iraqi civilians. Judge Ricardo Urbina handed down his ruling late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve. Urbina accused the Justice Department of building its case on sworn statements that the guards had given under a promise of immunity. We speak with attorney Scott Horton. [includes rush transcript]

Link: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_pictures_of_war_you_arent_supposed_to_see_20100104/

War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all talk of human rights is a farce.

Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/01/05/2010-01-05_agent_saves_flight_from_joan_rivers.html#ixzz0blUZyHSM

Rivers, 76, was deemed a danger to national security and booted from a Newark-bound flight in Costa Rica on Sunday by a jittery Continental Airlines gate agent who found the two names on her passport fishy. Her passport reads: Joan Rosenberg AKA Joan Rivers. Rosenberg was her late husband's last name. The "nasty and cruel" Continental gate agent bumped Rivers from the last flight out Sunday and the comedian found herself alone (her daughter, Melissa, flew out to Los Angeles earlier in the day) and with no ATM card and just $100 cash, she said.

Link: http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/the-strange-case-of-umar-farouk-abdulmutallab/

Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the heimat, the botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/04/egypts-shameful-ban

IN THE last week of 2009, 1,360 activists from 43 countries converged on Cairo for the Gaza Freedom March. We intended to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, controlled by Egypt, for a display of mass international solidarity with the Palestinian people on the one-year anniversary of Israel's punishing attack that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and injured thousands more.

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/world/British-solider-and-four-US.5953129.jp

A BRITISH soldier and four American servicemen have been killed in two separate improvised bomb explosions in southern Afghanistan. The British soldier, from the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, died in a blast while on foot patrol in the Nad-e Ali area of Helmand Province, yesterday, the Ministry of Defence said. Next of kin have been informed.

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49879

As China moves up in the world and the need for investment in its own infrastructure declines, Chinese investors and financiers are eyeing lucrative contracts in less developed countries, winning bids to build dams, power plants and highways from Burma to Uzbekistan and Angola.

Link: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/70154

"If British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were genuinely interested in finding out why his predecessor followed George Bush into the Iraq quagmire, his appointment of Sir Lawrence Freedman to the five-member Chilcot Inquiry was an odd choice. As the political editor of the BBC’s Newsnight programme, Michael Crick, pointed out, “Critics of the war might argue Sir Lawrence was himself one of the causes of the war!”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/04/new-scanners-child-porn-laws

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.