Christmas news

Bethlehem "immense prison"

"Israel's top Roman Catholic has said Bethlehem has become an "immense prison" since the West Bank barrier was built, calling for its dismantling as he joined thousands of pilgrims for midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Rev. Michel Sabbah, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, made the comments on Saturday after leading a procession from the Israeli capital to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

It marked the first Christmas that the town has been cut off from Jerusalem by a newly competed eight-metre-high concrete wall, part of the barrier that Israel has built between itself and the West Bank.

The pilgrims had to pass through a military checkpoint to enter Bethlehem.

"This wall must not exist. One day it will not exist," Sabbah told Israeli Radio after he passed through a military checkpoint into Bethlehem."

(Same position with the Home Office/polital police state slave prison grid emerging in the UK. One day it will not exist)

He said the barrier – which Israel says it erected to curb suicide bombings and Palestinians say is a land grab – has turned the town into an "immense prison."

"Nobody needs checkpoints in the Holy Land," he said, according to Israel Radio" ^CBC

Israel Bethlehem


NORAD 'track Santa'

"COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- For half a century, the military agency dedicated to detecting threats against the United States and Canada has reported Santa's sleigh ride to curious youngsters around the world.

With help from several civilian companies, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, reports Santa's progress on a Web site in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. It also answers telephone calls and e-mails as part of the Christmas Eve tradition." ^{Associated Press}

Apparently they are a lot better at tracking Santa than 4 wayward airplanes.

NORAD Santa


Rumsfeld feeds troops with lies in PR piece, as 12 including US soldier are killed and claims of election fraud are rife

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Twelve people -- including Iraqi police and soldiers, ministry employees, civilians and a U.S. soldier -- were killed in several insurgent attacks in Iraq on Saturday, police and military officials said. The violence came as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld served up meals and a pep talk to U.S. troops well to the north in Mosul." ^CNN

[...] The U.S. military said a soldier with the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade died Saturday of wounds from a rocket-propelled grenade attack near Hawija. The fatality brings the number of U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq war to 2,164

[...] "There have always been those who have suggested the cause could not be successful, that the cause would be lost," he [Rumsfeld] said."

That would be the cause of the WMDs, 'liberation', the 9/11 link to Iraq. It doesn't really get more serious than sending troops to their death and to be maimed on a pack of lies.

"Rumsfeld told the soldiers that "the great sweep of human history is for freedom, and we're on the side of freedom. And you and our country will prevail"

The great sweep of human history is for freedom but that is not what America and the UK are offering, in fact their twisted criminal regimes represent entirely the opposite.

Iraq Rumsfeld lies


Bush ordered mass spying on Americans and world



"WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said" ^NYT

Maybe that's what Rumsfeld meant by "the great sweep of human history"

'War on terror' NSA spying Bush


FBI sniff US Muslims for Nukes

The New York Times also reports that "F.B.I. and the Energy Department have conducted thousands of searches for radioactive materials at private sites around the country in the last three years, government officials confirmed on Friday.

The existence of the search program was disclosed on Thursday by U.S. News & World Report, on its Web site. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, government agencies have disclosed that they have installed radiation-detection equipment at ports, subway stations and other public locations, but extensive surreptitious monitoring of private property has not been publicly known.

U.S. News, citing people it did not name, said many of the sites that federal agents had monitored were mosques or the homes or businesses of Muslims, and the report set off a dispute between a Muslim group here and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement: "This disturbing revelation, coupled with recent reports of domestic surveillance without warrant, could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights. All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims."

"The other threat is that someone would try to detonate a nuclear bomb. Bomb fuel, either enriched uranium or plutonium, is much harder to detect, because its radiation signature is weak, physicists say. But it is also much harder to obtain."

'War on terror' suitcase nuke dirty bomb WMD