US threatens Iran with military action

In an interview aired on Sunday on CNN, Mullen again accused Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons and said he does not believe “for one second that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful.”

“Iran is still very much on a path to be able to develop nuclear weapons,” he added.

“We've actually been thinking about military options for a significant period of time. And I've spoken with many others, that we've had options on the table… And we will continue to do that in the future,” the official said.

Earlier in November, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also urged Washington to launch a military attack on Iran.

Mullen's remarks come as US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has earlier this month rejected the idea of any future military action against Iran, saying no strike can stop Tehran's nuclear program and diplomacy is the best way to resolve Iran's nuclear issue.

Mullen made the remarks following Iran's announcement that the Bushehr nuclear power plant in south of the country has started to generate electricity.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, said on Saturday that the fueling of the Bushehr nuclear power plant is complete and expressed hope that the plant would hook up with the national grid in one or two months.

Amid a standoff over Iran's nuclear program, both Tel Aviv and Washington have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the possibility of military attack on the Islamic Republic, based on the unfounded but constantly repeated allegation that Tehran's nuclear program may consist of a covert military agenda.

While the US possesses and has used nuclear weapons in the past, Washington, in a politically-motivated move, is imposing unilateral sanctions against Iran, which does not possess nuclear weapons nor does it seek to develop such weapons.

The UN Security Council imposed a US-engineered sanctions resolution against Iran on June 9 over its nuclear program, and the United States and the European Union have imposed additional sanctions of their own.

Tehran has repeatedly declared that it will not give up the legitimate nuclear rights of the Iranian nation under Western pressure and threats.

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and thus has the right to enrich uranium to produce fuel.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran's civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.

AS/MGH

Source: Press TV

Egyptian archaeologist admits pyramids contain UFO technology

In a shock statement, head of the Cairo University Archeology Department, Dr Ala Shaheen has told an audience that there might be truth to the theory that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the oldest of pyramids, the Pyramids of Giza.
On being further questioned by Mr Marek Novak, a delegate from Poland as to whether the pyramid might still contain alien technology or even a UFO with its structure, Dr Shaheen, was vague and replied "I can not confirm or deny this, but there is something inside the pyramid that is "not of this world".
Delegates to the conference on ancient Egyptian architecture were left shocked, however Dr Shaheen has refused to comment further or elaborate on his UFO and alien related statements.

Source: All News Web

War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat

FORT BENNING, Ga. — War would be a lot safer, the Army says, if only more of it were fought by robots.

And while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. New robots — none of them particularly human-looking — are being designed to handle a broader range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries.
In a mock city here used by Army Rangers for urban combat training, a 15-inch robot with a video camera scuttles around a bomb factory on a spying mission. Overhead an almost silent drone aircraft with a four-foot wingspan transmits images of the buildings below. Onto the scene rolls a sinister-looking vehicle on tank treads, about the size of a riding lawn mower, equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.
Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed.

The machines, viewed at a “Robotics Rodeo” last month at the Army’s training school here, not only protect soldiers, but also are never distracted, using an unblinking digital eye, or “persistent stare,” that automatically detects even the smallest motion. Nor do they ever panic under fire.
“One of the great arguments for armed robots is they can fire second,” said Joseph W. Dyer, a former vice admiral and the chief operating officer of iRobot, which makes robots that clear explosives as well as the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. When a robot looks around a battlefield, he said, the remote technician who is seeing through its eyes can take time to assess a scene without firing in haste at an innocent person.
Yet the idea that robots on wheels or legs, with sensors and guns, might someday replace or supplement human soldiers is still a source of extreme controversy. Because robots can stage attacks with little immediate risk to the people who operate them, opponents say that robot warriors lower the barriers to warfare, potentially making nations more trigger-happy and leading to a new technological arms race.
“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.
Civilians will be at greater risk, people in Mr. Wallach’s camp argue, because of the challenges in distinguishing between fighters and innocent bystanders. That job is maddeningly difficult for human beings on the ground. It only becomes more difficult when a device is remotely operated.
This problem has already arisen with Predator aircraft, which find their targets with the aid of soldiers on the ground but are operated from the United States. Because civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have died as a result of collateral damage or mistaken identities, Predators have generated international opposition and prompted accusations of war crimes.
But robot combatants are supported by a range of military strategists, officers and weapons designers — and even some human rights advocates.
“A lot of people fear artificial intelligence,” said John Arquilla, executive director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School. “I will stand my artificial intelligence against your human any day of the week and tell you that my A.I. will pay more attention to the rules of engagement and create fewer ethical lapses than a human force.”
Dr. Arquilla argues that weapons systems controlled by software will not act out of anger and malice and, in certain cases, can already make better decisions on the battlefield than humans.
His faith in machines is already being tested.
“Some of us think that the right organizational structure for the future is one that skillfully blends humans and intelligent machines,” Dr. Arquilla said. “We think that that’s the key to the mastery of 21st-century military affairs.”
Automation has proved vital in the wars America is fighting. In the air in Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft with names like Predator, Reaper, Raven and Global Hawk have kept countless soldiers from flying sorties. Moreover, the military now routinely uses more than 6,000 tele-operated robots to search vehicles at checkpoints as well as to disarm one of the enemies’ most effective weapons: the I.E.D., or improvised explosive device.
Yet the shift to automated warfare may offer only a fleeting strategic advantage to the United States. Fifty-six nations are now developing robotic weapons, said Ron Arkin, a Georgia Institute of Technology roboticist and a government-financed researcher who has argued that it is possible to design “ethical” robots that conform to the laws of war and the military rules of escalation.

But the ethical issues are far from simple. Last month in Germany, an international group including artificial intelligence researchers, arms control specialists, human rights advocates and government officials called for agreements to limit the development and use of tele-operated and autonomous weapons.

The group, known as the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, said warfare was accelerated by automated systems, undermining the capacity of human beings to make responsible decisions. For example, a gun that was designed to function without humans could shoot an attacker more quickly and without a soldier’s consideration of subtle factors on the battlefield.
“The short-term benefits being derived from roboticizing aspects of warfare are likely to be far outweighed by the long-term consequences,” said Mr. Wallach, the Yale scholar, suggesting that wars would occur more readily and that a technological arms race would develop.
As the debate continues, so do the Army’s automation efforts. In 2001 Congress gave the Pentagon the goal of making one-third of the ground combat vehicles remotely operated by 2015. That seems unlikely, but there have been significant steps in that direction.
For example, a wagonlike Lockheed Martin device that can carry more than 1,000 pounds of gear and automatically follow a platoon at up to 17 miles per hour is scheduled to be tested in Afghanistan early next year.
For rougher terrain away from roads, engineers at Boston Dynamics are designing a walking robot to carry gear. Scheduled to be completed in 2012, it will carry 400 pounds as far as 20 miles, automatically following a soldier.
The four-legged modules have an extraordinary sense of balance, can climb steep grades and even move on icy surfaces. The robot’s “head” has an array of sensors that give it the odd appearance of a cross between a bug and a dog. Indeed, an earlier experimental version of the robot was known as Big Dog.
This month the Army and the Australian military held a contest for teams designing mobile micro-robots — some no larger than model cars — that, operating in swarms, can map a potentially hostile area, accurately detecting a variety of threats.
Separately, a computer scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School has proposed that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency finance a robotic submarine system that would intelligently control teams of dolphins to detect underwater mines and protect ships in harbors.
“If we run into a conflict with Iran, the likelihood of them trying to do something in the Strait of Hormuz is quite high,” said Raymond Buettner, deputy director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School. “One land mine blowing up one ship and choking the world’s oil supply pays for the entire Navy marine mammal program and its robotics program for a long time.”
Such programs represent a resurgence in the development of autonomous systems in the wake of costly failures and the cancellation of the Army’s most ambitious such program in 2009. That program was once estimated to cost more than $300 billion and expected to provide the Army with an array of manned and unmanned vehicles linked by a futuristic information network.
Now, the shift toward developing smaller, lighter and less expensive systems is unmistakable. Supporters say it is a consequence of the effort to cause fewer civilian casualties. The Predator aircraft, for example, is being equipped with smaller, lighter weapons than the traditional 100-pound Hellfire missile, with a smaller killing radius.
At the same time, military technologists assert that tele-operated, semi-autonomous and autonomous robots are the best way to protect the lives of American troops.
Army Special Forces units have bought six lawn-mower-size robots — the type showcased in the Robotics Rodeo — for classified missions, and the National Guard has asked for dozens more to serve as sentries on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. These units are known as the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System, or Maars, and they are made by a company called QinetiQ North America.
The Maars robots first attracted the military’s interest as a defensive system during an Army Ranger exercise here in 2008. Used as a nighttime sentry against infiltrators equipped with thermal imaging vision systems, the battery-powered Maars unit remained invisible — it did not have the heat signature of a human being — and could “shoot” intruders with a laser tag gun without being detected itself, said Bob Quinn, a vice president at QinetiQ.
Maars is the descendant of an earlier experimental system built by QinetiQ. Three armed prototypes were sent to Iraq and created a brief controversy after they pointed a weapon inappropriately because of a software bug.
However, QinetiQ executives said the real shortcoming of the system was that it was rejected by Army legal officers because it did not follow military rules of engagement — for example, using voice warnings and then tear gas before firing guns. As a consequence, Maars has been equipped with a loudspeaker as well as a launcher so it can issue warnings and fire tear gas grenades before firing its machine gun.
Remotely controlled systems like the Predator aircraft and Maars move a step closer to concerns about the automation of warfare. What happens, ask skeptics, when humans are taken out of decision making on firing weapons? Despite the insistence of military officers that a human’s finger will always remain on the trigger, the speed of combat is quickly becoming too fast for human decision makers.
“If the decisions are being made by a human being who has eyes on the target, whether he is sitting in a tank or miles away, the main safeguard is still there,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, which tracks war crimes. “What happens when you automate the decision? Proponents are saying that their systems are win-win, but that doesn’t reassure me.”

Source: New York Times

6 Reasons To Start World War III If You Are A Globalist

The average person can barely imagine why World War III would be anything but a civilization-ending event.  And, yet, we have heard Neocons ramping up rhetoric that suggests a new world war would be a viable option to correct a dying dollar and economy.  Or, perhaps it is simply a sound investment if you are a Globalist.

RAND Corporation documents point to a desire for total war abroad and at home.  The recent reactivation of North and South Korea tensions could be a potential catalyst in an East-West World War scenario possibly involving nukes.  However, the next World War doesn't necessarily need to be a conflagration; it could be a steady, slow, coldly calculated design to plunge the globe into austerity and totalitarian control through regulations such as those proposed by Codex Alimentarius and Agenda 21.

So, if one puts on the thinking cap of a sociopath, one might find the following 6 reasons are perfect to start World War III, by nukes or by stealth, and further the agenda of world governance.

Distraction: Regional conflicts both military and financial are being exposed as blatant economic looting and divide-and-conquer techniques.  Protests are erupting across the globe as people are waking up to their enslavement en masse.  Simultaneously, the high-tech police state is unfolding; endgame legislation is being passed to criminalize independence and control the Internet; and a reduction in the standard of living is minimizing the ability to purchase even simple distractions like cable TV.  The greatest awakening is that an exponential number of people are beginning to realize that their voice has no meaning in the political arena.  The left-right political paradigm is in grave danger, and has been made even more glaringly obvious by recent actions such as Obama awarding the medal of freedom to Bush, Sr.  Add to this the calls for arresting Bush, Jr. as a war criminal (and the subsequent questioning of why Obama would not support such a trial) and we begin to see indications that people are seeing through The Quigley Formula.  With such a populist uprising against all forms of oppression, the time appears to be ripe for the ultimate distraction.

Boost the Dollar : The first thing that happened when shots were fired between North and South Korea was a flight to the dollar, just like every other crisis.  Russia and China just announced that they quit the dollar, and yet the dollar refuses to collapse despite fundamentals that are truly sickening.  It is almost as if there are too many crises for the Russia-China announcement to even matter.  Perfect timing.  Rather, it would be a fine strategy for the dollar to rebound before being dissolved into a global currency, as the dollar backs the premier world superpower.  We now have a twin storyline of both financial and military wars leading toward the same goal.  This could be the beginning of a monetary and real WWIII strategy set up to coordinate a universal collapse to benefit global interests.  And let's not forget on which currency it actually reads New World Order.  

Global Hegemony:  The elimination of "rogue nations" is at the heart of the Globalist agenda, which seeks consolidation into the hands of a few powerful regions.  In fact, it has been the stated goal of The Trilateral Commission since its inception in 1973 under Rockefeller and Brzezinski.  Brzezinski's response in 1974 to the question, What is The New World Order? says it all: "We need to change the international system for a global system in which new, active, and creative forces -- recently developed -- should be integrated."  Since then, integration has been used to great effect by the U.S. to start wars where "terrorist" regimes can be subverted or dismantled, and their flags (resources) captured.  China is in a similar position with the vassal rogue state of North Korea where they can cattle prod it to action when convenient.  China is now being pressured by the global community to rein in the regime.  Perfect, they can consolidate their holdings in a similar fashion to what the U.S. has already done with South Korea.  This new Korean conflict could have the perfect dual effect of the Western world running to the safety of the Anglo-American establishment (and the dollar), while the East seeks the backing of China to correct instability in the region.  And all the while Russia and Iran are there for a potential final solution. 

A "Feel Good" War:  For those not attuned to the larger Globalist agenda, America is in dire need of a feel-good war . . . another Nazi Germany-style threat possessing undisputed intentions of global dominance.  Enter China from stage left.  Communist China has not condemned North Korea for their latest actions, and has given early warnings to the U.S. about naval exercises in their "exclusive economic zone."  If this continues, they only enhance their position as the perfect common enemy of the West.  Those who are naturally opposed to Globalism see China as the prime example of the policies which will lead to global tyranny.  A war with China, or Communism in general, will give the West more than just a bogeyman in a cave, but one that truly is seen as a physical and economic threat to Western civilization.  Mass opposition to the lies that led to wars in the Middle East have all but exhausted the Bin Laden version of Goldstein pushed in that Orwellian storyline.  Time to roll out the real threat, as the Globalist agenda accelerates toward its endgame.

Investment in the Military-Industrial Complex:  54% of the U.S. Federal budget is spent on the militarymind-controlled soldiers straight out of science fiction are set to align with the surveillance and tracking capabilities of biometrics and predictive behavior criminology.  New wars are always needed; particularly small-scale regional conflicts such as those suggested over and over again by Zbigniew Brzezinski and other Globalist geo-politicians.  However, their own writings indicate a time when the regional conflicts must morph into a global one in order to fulfill the final agenda of an integrated scientific global dictatorship which comes after the consolidation required by Word War III.  The final war won't have a name because it will be global governance unabashedly unleashed against the people it has systematically enslaved.  This final war has one goal:  in all of its forms, as it continues to expand at warp speed overseas and on the streets of America.  Traditional weapons of physical destruction, as well as high-tech weaponry and

Depopulation:  This part of the agenda is still difficult for most people to grasp, but it is imperative to ask the question, What will global governance offer once its objectives of "order out of chaos" are achieved?  We need only look at the results on a country-by-country basis when Globalist organizations like the World Bank and IMF have taken over: more poverty, more sickness, and a decrease in life expectancy.  They already have been operating by stealth with soft-kill weapons designed to weaken resistance and cause sterility.  The Russian geopolitical analyst, Konstantin Sivkov, who believes WWIII has begun already stated that, "History shows that the 'elite' of selfish civilizations do not get stopped by human sacrifices if there is a guarantee that they, themselves, will survive in bunkers."

They have the bunkers.

We may or may not hear WWIII announced on the evening news, but we can look for the signs of global consolidation that defines the agenda of the New World Order.  With every new conflict and every new piece of legislation it seems that those signs are becoming more obvious by the day.

Source: Activist Post

The FBI Has a History of Creating Terrorists, to Terrorize Americans (VIDEO)

N Korea deploys missiles near borders

"(The missiles) appear to be targeting our fighter jets that fly near the Northern Limit Line (NLL)," a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity, referring to the Yellow Sea border, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday.
According to the report, the North has deployed the Soviet-designed SA-2 missiles that have a range of between 13 and 30 kilometers.
The South Korean sources also report that the North has deployed Samlet and surface-to-surface Silkworm missiles as well on its western coast with ranges of up to 95 km.
The source added that the South Korean “military is preparing for the possibility of further provocations as the North Korean military has deployed firepower near the NLL and is preparing to fire.”
The situation has grown more tense after South Korea began long-planned joint naval exercises with the US in the region that include the participation of nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington.
Earlier, Pyongyang warned of unpredictable consequences "if the US brings its carrier to the West Sea of Korea at last.” It added, “No-one can predict the ensuing consequences."
The drills take place less than a week after an alleged North Korean artillery fire on the small island of Yeonpyeong. Four people died in the incident and several more were injured. Many homes were also set ablaze in the strike.
Eralier, Seoul asked residents of the Yeonpyeong Island to take shelter in bunkers for forty minutes after artillery fire was heard on the North Korean mainland as US warships began naval exercises in the nearby waters of the Yellow Sea.

Source: Press TV

New Korean war could ensnare Canada, documents suggest

[I]t is not inconceivable that a Canadian navy warship could find itself operating in South Asian waters in the coming months, either as an add on to any continued U.S. navy presence or part of a stepped up international effort to interdict North Korean vessels.

Canada announced last month it was adopting a “controlled engagement” policy, ending all official bilateral contacts between Ottawa and Kim Jong Il's regime in Pyongyang.

Ottawa: If war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, Canada could become embroiled due to a half-century-old United Nations military alliance, federal documents reveal.

Canada's military obligations in the volatile region are outlined in a briefing note prepared for Defence Minister Peter MacKay shortly after North Korea detonated a nuclear device last year.

The note by the Defence Department's policy branch, which was obtained by The Canadian Press, says the UN alliance could be used to generate an international fighting force if war erupts.
....
Because Canada was one of the combatants in the Korean War, it became part of an organization known as the United Nations Command – or UNC – following the 1953 armistice that ended three years of war between North and South Korea.

“Recent tensions have caused ADM (Pol) to review Canada's military obligations on the Korean peninsula if armed hostilities were to erupt,” the memo reads.

“The UNC structure would be used as a means of force-generating and receiving and tasking any contributions that UNC Sending States may choose to contribute in the event of a crisis.”


Canada was one 16 countries that took part in fighting the Korean War and all signed the July 27, 1953, armistice that paused three years of hostilities. North and South Korea have remained technically at war since then, but the armistice has been supervised by a UN military commission along the 243-kilometre long Demilitarized Zone between the two countries.

As the briefing note outlines, the main “fighting formation” that would take the lead in any new conflict is the joint United States-South Korea Combined Forces Command. But that joint command “includes under its strategic organizational umbrella the legacy United Nations Command.”

Canada remains a member of the UNC because it was one of the 15 “Sending States” that supplied troops to the Korean conflict, the memo says.

Paul Evans, the director of the Institute of Asian Research at University of British Columbia, said he doesn't believe the current situation will become a full-blown military crisis. If it does, he said, “it would be difficult to use the UNC structure in the event of a conflict except as an initial advice.”

That's because the UN's role would be minimized by fact that Russia and China wield vetoes as permanent members of the all-powerful Security Council, Mr. Evans said.

“I have a hunch that the UN role, whatever its formalities are now through the military commission and other things, are likely to be superseded almost immediately by a coalition of the willing that would be led by the United States and South Korea.”

Federal officials say there have been no “asks” to Canada for military support in the region.

The American aircraft carrier George Washington and the South Korean navy are to conduct a joint training exercise on Sunday. North Korea said Friday the exercise was a provocation that could push the region to the “brink of war.”

Mr. Evans said it is not inconceivable that a Canadian navy warship could find itself operating in South Asian waters in the coming months, either as an add on to any continued U.S. navy presence or part of a stepped up international effort to interdict North Korean vessels.

Canada announced last month it was adopting a “controlled engagement” policy, ending all official bilateral contacts between Ottawa and Kim Jong Il's regime in Pyongyang.

The government said the move was in retaliation for the fact a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship this past March, killing 46 sailors. Canada contributed three military experts to the international investigation that eventually pointed the finger at North Korea.

The briefing note indicates Canada's military footprint in the Korean Peninsula today is very light. Canada's defence attache to Seoul, a colonel, and his assistant, a sergeant, represent the country on the UNC. Canada's defence attach in Tokyo represents Canada at the UNC's “rear” headquarters in Japan. And Canada also contributes a major to the Korean Army Staff College.

The censored briefing note does not elaborate on what would follow if a “crisis” erupted and an international military coalition had to be created.

Source: Global Research

Global warming has slowed down over the past 10 years, say scientists

The rate at which global temperatures are rising has slowed in the past decade, scientists said today.

In a report published today, the Met Office said the slow in the rate of warming was down to a combination of natural variation in the weather and pollution.

Scientists say one of the major factors is the rise in heavy industry and pollutant 'aerosols', particularly in Asia.

An upsurge in industrial emissions such as sulphur which are being pumped into the atmosphere reflects sunlight and could lead to a cooling effect.

Changes in the amount of water vapour in the stratosphere may also be a factor, the report suggests.

The admission will be seized upon by climate sceptics as evidence that man-made global warming has been overstated.

Since the 1970s, the long-term rate of global warming has been around 0.16C a decade but that slowed in the last 10 years to between 0.05C - 0.13C depending on which of the three major temperature record series are used.

Vicky Pope, head of climate science advice, said: 'The warming trend has decreased slightly. There's still a warming trend but it's not as rapid as it was before.

'The question is why has that happened. It's a question that sceptics often bring up.'

However researchers from the Met Office say there is still a warming trend over the 10 years since 2000 and the decade was the hottest on record.

They also said a lack of data from the Arctic, where warming has been particularly strong in the last 10 years, and changes to the way sea surface temperatures are measured have led to an underestimate of the rate at which temperatures are rising.

And while the UK is currently experiencing a cold snap and last year had the harshest winter for 30 years, the scientists said the evidence for man-made global warming had grown even stronger in the past year.

Dr Pope said for global warming it was important to look at the global picture - which last year saw many parts of the world experience very warm temperatures even while the UK was gripped by snow and ice.

And she said: 'We are starting to see changes in the climate even in the UK which we can link to global warming. We're seeing more heatwaves and seeing fewer of these cold winters.'

Ahead of the next round of international talks aimed at securing a deal on climate change, the Met Office also said the 12 months to the end of September were the second warmest on record - while another analysis by scientists in the US indicate the year was the hottest ever.

Dr Pope said: 'We may be underestimating the warming.'

Partly this is due to gaps in the temperature data from the Arctic, where there is evidence warming has been stronger than other parts of the world.

The Met Office does not make estimates for areas where there are gaps in the Arctic data, instead leaving them out, which would leave their overall results for global temperatures on the low side.

And changes to the way sea surface temperatures are measured - with a shift from predominantly ship-based measurements to the use of buoys drifting around the oceans in the past 10 years - led to an underestimate of temperature rises.

Correcting the analysis of the sea surface temperatures could mean global temperatures as a whole could have risen by up to 0.03C above what has already been recorded.

Source: Daily Mail

Body Scanners Even More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

Dr. Russell Blaylock is a nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon, health practitioner, author, lecturer, and editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report.

The growing outrage over the Transportation Security Administrations new policy of backscatter scanning of airline passengers and enhanced pat-downs brings to mind these wise words from President Ronald Reagan: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: Im from the government and Im here to help you.

So, what is all the concern really about - will these radiation scanners increase your risk of cancer or other diseases? A group of scientists and professors from the University of California at San Francisco voiced their concern to Obama's science and technology adviser John Holdren in a well-stated letter back in April.

The group included experts in radiation biology, biophysics, and imaging, who expressed serious concerns about the dangerously high dose of radiation to the skin.

Radiation increases cancer risk by damaging the DNA and various components within the cells. Much of the damage is caused by high concentrations of free radicals generated by the radiation. Most scientists think that the most damaging radiation types are those that have high penetration, such as gamma-rays, but in fact, some of the most damaging radiation barely penetrates the skin.

One of the main concerns is that most of the energy from the airport scanners is concentrated on the surface of the skin and a few millimeters into the skin. Some very radiation-sensitive tissues are close to the skin - such as the testes, eyes, and circulating blood cells in the skin.

This is why defenders using such analogies as the dose being 1,000-times less than a chest X-ray and far less than what passengers are exposed to in-flight are deceptive. Radiation damage depends on the volume of tissue exposed. Chest X-rays and gamma-radiation from outer space is diffused over the entire body so that the dose to the skin is extremely small. Of note, outer space radiation does increase cancer rates in passengers, pilots, and flight attendants.

We also know that certain groups of people are at a much higher risk than others. These include babies, small children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with impaired immunity (those with HIV infection, cancer patients, people with immune deficiency diseases, and people with abnormal DNA repair mechanism, just to name a few).

As we grow older, our DNA accumulates a considerable amount of unrepaired damage, and under such circumstances even low doses of radiation can trigger the development of skin cancers, including the deadly melanoma. I would also be concerned about exposing the eyes, since this could increase ones risk of developing cataracts.

About 5 percent of the population have undiagnosed abnormal DNA repair mechanism. When exposed to radiation, this can put them at a cancer risk hundreds of times greater than normal people.

It also has been determined that when skin is next to certain metals, such as gold, the radiation dose is magnified 100-fold higher. What if you have a mole next to your gold jewelry? Will the radiation convert it to a melanoma? Deficiencies in certain vitamins can dramatically increase your sensitivity to radiation carcinogenesis, as can certain prescription medications.

As for the assurances we have been given by such organization as the American College of Radiology, we must keep in mind that they assured us that the CT scans were safe and that the radiation was equal to one chest X-ray. Forty years later we learn that the dose is extremely high, it is thought to have caused cancer in a significant number of people, and the dose is actually equal to 1,000 chest X-rays.

Based on these assurances, tens of thousands of children have been exposed to radiation doses from CT scanners, which will ruin the children's lives. I have two friends who were high-ranking Environmental Protection Agency scientists, and they assure me that in government safety agencies, politics most often override the scientists real concerns about such issues.

This government shares House Speaker Nancy Pelosis view when she urged passage of the Obamacare bill sight unseen - Lets just pass the bill, and we will find out what is in it later.

When the real effects of these scanners on health become known, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and the rest of the gang who insist the scanners are safe will be long gone.

Source: Rense

Cosmos may show echoes of events before Big Bang

Evidence of events that happened before the Big Bang can be seen in the glow of microwave radiation that fills the Universe, scientists have asserted.
Renowned cosmologist Roger Penrose said that analysis of this cosmic microwave background showed echoes of previous Big Bang-like events.
The events appear as "rings" around galaxy clusters in which the variation in the background is unusually low.
The unpublished research has been posted on the Arxiv website.
The ideas within it support a theory developed by Professor Penrose - knighted in 1994 for his services to science - that upends the widely-held "inflationary theory".
That theory holds that the Universe was shaped by an unthinkably large and fast expansion from a single point.
Much of high-energy physics research aims to elucidate how the laws of nature evolved during the fleeting first instants of the Universe's being.
"I was never in favour of it, even from the start," said Professor Penrose.
"But if you're not accepting inflation, you've got to have something else which does what inflation does," he explained to BBC News.
"In the scheme that I'm proposing, you have an exponential expansion but it's not in our aeon - I use the term to describe [the period] from our Big Bang until the remote future.
"I claim that this aeon is one of a succession of such things, where the remote future of the previous aeons somehow becomes the Big Bang of our aeon."

This "conformal cyclic cosmology" (CCC) that Professor Penrose advocates allows that the laws of nature may evolve with time, but precludes the need to institute a theoretical beginning to the Universe.
Supermassive find
Professor Penrose, of Oxford University, and his collegue Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan State University in Armenia, have now found what they believe is evidence of events that predate the Big Bang, and that support CCC.
They looked at data from vast surveys of the cosmic microwave background - the constant, nearly uniform low-temperature glow that fills the Universe we see.
They surveyed nearly 11,000 locations, looking for directions in the sky where, at some point in the past, vast galaxies circling one another may have collided.
The supermassive black holes at their centres would have merged, turning some of their mass into tremendous bursts of energy.
The CCC theory holds that the same object may have undergone the same processes more than once in history, and each would have sent a "shockwave" of energy propagating outward.
The search turned up 12 candidates that showed concentric circles consistent with the idea - some with as many as five rings, representing five massive events coming from the same object through the course of history.
The suggestion is that the rings - representing unexpected order in a vast sky of disorder - represent pre-Big Bang events, toward the end of the last "aeon".
"Inflation [theory] is supposed to have ironed all of these irregularities out," said Professor Penrose.
"How do you suddenly get something that is making these whacking big explosions just before inflation turns off? To my way of thinking that's pretty hard to make sense of."
Shaun Cole of the University of Durham's computational cosmology group, called the research "impressive".
"It's a revolutionary theory and here there appears to be some data that supports it," he told BBC News.
"In the standard Big Bang model, there's nothing cyclic; it has a beginning and it has no end.
"The philosophical question that's sensible to ask is 'what came before the Big Bang?'; and what they're striving for here is to do away with that 'there's nothing before' answer by making it cyclical."
Professor Cole said he was surprised that the statistical variation in the microwave background data was the most obvious signature of what could be such a revolutionary idea, however.
"It's not clear from their theory that they have a complete model of the fluctuations, but is that the only thing that should be going on?
"There are other things that could be going on in the last part of the previous aeon; why don't they show even greater imprints?"
Professors Penrose and Cole both say that the idea should be shored up by further analyses of this type, in particular with data that will soon be available from the Planck telescope, designed to study the microwave background with unprecedented precision.
Source: BBC

Lockheed Martin Proposes Manned Mission to the Dark Side of the Moon

The Obama administration may have axed NASA’s ambitious manned moon exploration plans for even an even more ambitious deep space exploration agenda, but for those developing the technologies that will one day take us to deep space the moon is just too ripe a testing ground to ignore. Lockheed Martin is pitching NASA what’s being called an L2-Farside Mission that would launch a manned Orion spacecraft into a stationary halo orbit on the other side of the moon.
The mission, Lockheed says, will serve several purposes. Most immediately, it would allow astronauts to study, via unmanned robots, some lunar real estate that hasn’t been seen with human eyes since the Apollo missions. But its real function is to test out technologies and skills that will be necessary to make a manned trip to an asteroid, and then on to Mars.
The idea is to park an Orion space capsule at the L2 Lagrange point about 40,000 miles above the moon’s far side, where the combined gravity from the Earth and the moon would allow the spacecraft to essentially hover in one place in sync with the moon. From there, the astronauts would deploy and conduct remotely-operated surface science, collecting rock samples and exploring the South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the oldest craters in the solar system. From the L2 point, the capsule would continuously maintain line of sight with both the Earth and the far side of the moon.
But the mission would also serve as a test bed for everything from the Orion capsule to the astronauts themselves. The medium-duration missions would test the durability of both the crew and the vehicle over several one-month spans before attempting an asteroid mission, which would likely last six months to ensure both bodies and capsules could withstand prolonged doses to deep space radiation. It would also allow NASA and Lockheed to demonstrate the high-speed reentry necessary for return trips from deep space – speeds reaching up to 50 percent faster than re-entry from LEO.
Lastly, astronauts on an L2-Farside mission would travel 15 percent farther from Earth than the Apollo astronauts did and spend nearly three times longer out in the vacuum. Essentially, the L2-Farside missions would be stepping-stones to prove that human stamina and technological wherewithal are both where they need to be to take the next big step out into deep space.
Of course, Lockheed isn’t going anywhere by itself. To get to the Lagrange point without resorting to a complicated multi-rocket scheme, Lockheed needs NASA to supply a new heavy lift launch vehicle – something that the space agency is working on but doesn’t have on the shelf. It a new heavy lifter does materialize, Lockheed sees an L2-Farside mission feasible as early as 2016.
Source: PopSci

Police to get major new powers to seize domains

Editors Note: Once again we see a coordinated effort of similar policies and legislation being implemented simultaneously in different countries, as the system inches toward a standardized code of behavior (ACTA) to be decided by a global governing bureaucracy.   

Police could soon have the power to seize any domain associated with criminal activity, under new proposals published today by UK domain registrar Nominet.

At present, Nominet has no clear legal obligation to ensure that .uk domains are not used for criminal activities. That situation may soon change, if proposals from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) are accepted.
SOCA wants Nominet to change its registration terms and conditions, giving the registrar the power to suspend domains if it has "reasonable grounds to believe they are being used to commit a crime".
And Nominet gives us an example of what those "reasonable grounds" might consist of - "a request from an identified UK Law Enforcement Agency".
Such a move would mark a massive extension of the authorities' powers to clamp down on illegal web sites - and possibly just those that the powers that be deem to be a thorn in their side.
Two weeks ago, Fitwatch, a site dedicated to campaigning against what it sees as heavy-handed practices by police surveillance units, was taken down by its UK-based web hosting company, JustHost, after a formal request by the Metropolitan Police.
The site was accused of publishing guidance to students involved in the recent violent Millbank protests to escape detection by the police.

But in a matter of days Fitwatch was back up and laughing in the face of the law, with a heap of extra publicity under its belt. The site is now hosted in the United States, where its hosting company is beyond the jurisdiction of UK police.
With no specific powers to seize the site's domain name - the memorable address ending in .co.uk that is used by servers on the internet to point browsers in the direction of a specific server's numeric IP address, Fitwatch could simply set up on the other side of the Atlantic and point the same domain name towards their new servers instead.
SOCA's new proposals, if accepted, would put an end to that, giving Nominet the power to grab back a name at the police's request - and effectively increasing the powers of censorship wielded by the UK's law enforcement agencies.
With its domain name suspended, the only way for visitors to find a rogue site would be to type in its lengthy (and decidedly less memorable) numeric IP address.
Unsurprisingly, the issue is a hot potato - but it won't be the first time Nominet has involved itself in controversial name-grabbing. In December 2009, Nominet suspended over 1,200 domain names at the request of the Police Central eCrime Unit.
Back then, Nominet used the legal fig leaf that these sites had provided the registrar with false information in their registrations. If the new proposals are passed, they won't have to.

Source: THINQ

Oregon: FBI Thwarts Own Car Bomb

Will Americans recoil in yet more contrived fear?

Tony Cartalucci,  -- Activist Post 

The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claims to have thwarted their own car bomb Friday, November 26, 2010 at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square.

A 19 year old man, Mr. Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was in contact with undercover FBI agents since June of 2010. FBI agents claim they were acting as an accomplice of a supposed Pakistani terrorist that Mr. Mohamud had been in contact with as early as 2008. Unlike the supposed Pakistani terrorist Mr. Mohamud was in contact with, the FBI actually supplied him with a bomb.

According to the FBI, their undercover agents had decided to meet with Mr. Mohamud in Portland in July 2010, where Mr. Mohamud expressed a desire to conduct "Jihad" against non-Muslims. The story fast-forwards to Friday, November 26, 2010, when Mr. Mohamud was arrested after trying to detonate an inert bomb supplied to him by the FBI, on the corner of Southwest Yamhill Street and Sixth Avenue -- in full view of the ceremony.

Perplexing is why the FBI, knowing Mr. Mohamud's criminal intent, and upon delivering the bomb to the willing would-be terrorist, would allow him to approach a large public venue and attempt to detonate the device in public view. While the US Attorney's Office maintains that "the public was never in danger," they apparently didn't read the news about a recent stampede in Cambodia that cost 450 panicked people their lives.

Maximum bloodless terrorism upon a public increasingly skeptical about the official narrative of the "War on Terror" comes to mind. This skepticism, of course, comes from the fact that the only groups that seem to be actually building bombs and conducting terrorist operations are within our own Western governments. This is reinforced by shocking revelations  that Anwar Al-Awlaki dined at the Pentagon, months after 9/11 while listed as Al Qaeda's #3. Al-Awlaki has since been linked to the the "Underwear Bomber," the "Fort Hood Shooter," the "Times Square Bomber," and the "Shoe Bomber," as well as the recent Yemeni parcel "bombs."

Parallels between Portland's staged terror stunt can be seen with a very similar FBI operation that went "wrong" on  February 26, 1993 at New York City's World Trade Center. The FBI was also in contact with willing terrorists whom they assisted in building an inert bomb. Inexplicably, the FBI agents switched the inert explosives with a real device which was then delivered to the WTC and detonated, killing 6 and injuring 1,042.

These revelations were made public after FBI informant, former Egyptian army officer Emad Salem, revealed recordings he made of his conversations with the FBI agents. He became suspicious of their motives and feared for his own safety upon realizing real explosives were being used. The recordings were published by the New York Times.

While the mainstream media attempts to downplay the outrage of Americans concerning the government's latest choice for air passengers -- a hazardous ineffective x-ray machine or an equally ineffective, humiliating, and un-Constitutional groping -- the stage was set for another high-profile terrorism story to reinforce the establishment's faltering propaganda. 

Will Americans recoil in fear from a bomb the FBI admits they constructed, gave to a patsy, and sent to disrupt Portland's Christmas celebrations? Will Americans continue to be dragged into the staged "Clash of Civilizations?" Or will their fury over a failed, dictatorial government bent to the will of foreign bankers be compounded by this latest, juvenile attempt at stoking fear and compliance across the population? That story must be written by the American people.

Additional Note: The Justice Department's official statement found here , says Mohamud attempted to detonate the device remotely, which is not "in public view," though apparently the van was indeed parked next to the square and contained an explosive device described as "inert." Additionally, it states that FBI agents constructed and detonated a real device with Mohamud on November 4, 2010 in a run-up to the actual event. The implications of FBI agents posing as terrorists, constructing and detonating real explosives are frightening.

Fresh WikiLeaks release 'imminent'

WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website, is said to be hours away from releasing around three million secret US government files.
The classified documents reportedly cover correspondence between US diplomatic missions abroad and the state department in Washington and could reveal "unflattering" views that American officials held about close EU allies and countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.
Governments around the world on Saturday braced for the publication of potentially embarrassing diplomatic cables, as Washington raced to contain the fallout.
US diplomats skipped their Thanksgiving holiday weekend and headed to foreign ministries hoping to stave off anger over the cables, which are internal messages that often lack the niceties diplomats voice in public.
Wikileaks said the newest release will be seven times the size of the October publication of 400,000 Iraq war documents, the biggest leak to date in US intelligence history.
The site also published 77,000 classified US files on the Afghan conflict in July.

'Diplomatic catastrophe'
According to Der Spiegel, which was granted early access to the files, the release will contain more than 250,000 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives - mostly from the last five years.
The German news magazine took down its article summarising the data dump after publishing it briefly online.
In addition to Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País are said to have been allowed to review the files beforehand.
According to White House sources cited by a correspondent of the US website Politico, none of the documents are classified as 'Top Secret'. But reportedly six per cent are listed as 'Secret' and 40 per cent as "confidential".

Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, said the leaks are from correspondence "between US diplomats and between US embassies ... not what is said about enemies, but about [US] friends".
He said the files could include particularly sensitive information previously "well out of the public view" about US diplomats' perceptions of crises in Israel and Palestine.
Hanna said that US officials have emphasised how national security - not just public embarrassment - is at stake in the WikiLeaks release.
Less than five per cent of the files are about EU nations, according to OWNI, a French news site with a live blog covering the "StateLogs".
Speculation has swirled on the inclusion of cables about US ties to separatist groups in Turkey, perceptions of the UK coalition government, and allegedly corrupt politicians in several countries.

US containment
The Obama administration said earlier this week that it had alerted Congress and begun notifying foreign governments that the website was preparing to release a huge cache of diplomatic cables whose publication could give a behind-the-scenes look at American diplomacy around the world.
The US says it has known for some time that WikiLeaks was in possession of the diplomatic cables.
Some 2.5 million US government employees have access to SIPRNet - the US government's secure version of the civilian internet - where the files reportedly originated.
Thus far, no one has been charged with passing them to the website, but suspicion focuses on Bradley Manning, a US army intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak.
"WikiLeaks are an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people," James Jeffrey, US ambassador to Iraq, said. "They will not help, they will simply hurt our ability to do our work here."
He said that anyone whose "confidential discussions find their way into the press is going to be very unhappy and very upset".

Admiral Mike Mullen, the most-senior US military commander, has urged WikiLeaks to stop its release of documents, according to a transcript of a CNN interview set to air on Sunday.
"I would hope that those who are responsible for this would, at some point in time, think about the responsibility that they have for lives that they're exposing and the potential that's there and stop leaking this information."

Source: Aljazeera

UN revises Haiti cholera estimates

Official says epidemic is spreading faster than originally estimated and could infect hundreds of thousands.

Haiti's deadly cholera epidemic is spreading faster than originally estimated and could result in hundreds of thousands of cases, a senior UN official has said.
The disease has killed about 1,400 people since it first appeared in mid-October.
But Nigel Fisher, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Haiti, said on Tuesday that the real death toll might be "closer to two thousand than one" because of lack of data from remote areas, and the number of cases 60,000-70,000 instead of the official figure of about 50,000.
Fisher said experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) were now revising their estimate that the disease would cause 200,000 cases within six months.
"They are now revising that to 200,000 in closer to a three-month period. So this epidemic is moving faster," he said, adding that it was now present in all 10 of Haiti's provinces. "It's going to spread."
"The medical specialists all say that this cholera epidemic will continue through months and maybe a year at least, that we will see literally hundreds of thousands of cases," Fisher said.
Fisher said UN and other aid organisations needed to "significantly ratchet up" their response, including going through faith groups to distribute chlorine tablets to purify water, and increasing the number of treatment centres.

'Worst-case scenario'
The WHO has said it is expecting to treat 400,000 cholera cases in the country over the next 12 months.
Al Jazeera's Cath Turner, reporting from the capital, Port-au-Prince, said that the new estimates were done after the organisation collected data from areas that were previously unaccessible.

"The WHO says that number is the worst-case scenario, that's if nothing changes, if the environment, the conditions and the lack of awareness doesn't change."
The anti-cholera campaign has been complicated by unconfirmed reports that UN peacekeepers from Nepal brought the disease to Haiti, where it had been absent for 100 years.
At least two people were killed and dozens were injured in clashes last week between UN troops and protesters. The UN has blamed the trouble on political agitators looking to inflame tensions ahead of elections next Sunday.
Fear has grown that the disease could spread more quickly in an election environment when people have to move around and congregate to campaign.
Some human rights groups have called for a delay of the vote in light of the cholera outbreak.
"Cholera is a game changer in the most fundamental sense," Melinda Miles, the executive director of the group "Let Haiti Live," said.
"What we can say, definitively, is that... no elections held in the midst of the current exploding cholera crisis can be considered credible."
But Kenneth Merten, the US ambassador to Haiti, urged no delay with the polls, saying on Tuesday that issues surrounding the disease and the election can be avoided "as long as people are informed... of how they can protect themselves from cholera and what treatment to seek."

Source: Aljazeera

Lew Rockwell & Becky Akers on TSA and the state (Podcast)

TSA is a microcosm of what government is. It strips, it fondles, it leers, it violates, it assaults, and does it all with camp-guard assurance and money looted from the productive. Its assaults and abuses cannot be tweaked or reformed; it must be abolished. No more must the Michael Chertoffs of the world grow rich off our degradation and oppression. Never put your child in their groping hands or before their naked cameras. No trip or vacation or visit is important enough. Airline security should be the business of the airlines, not a socialist agency dedicated to violating the 4^th amendment as its daily bread. No more TSA!



  

Source: Lew Rockwell

Computer meltdown leaves millions of Aussies without cash

A freak computer glitch at Australia's biggest bank froze cash machines and left millions of people struggling to access their money on Saturday.

National Australia Bank (NAB) said a corrupted file wiped out a huge number of transactions, including salary payments and transfers, and crashed some ATMs, angering many customers who were facing a weekend without money.
Spokeswoman Meaghan Telford said NAB was opening branches on Saturday and Sunday and bringing in extra call-centre staff as technicians scrambled to fix the problem.
"We're very apologetic," she told AFP. "We recognise this has caused people a lot of inconvenience. We're just working to resolve the problem."
Telford said the rogue file knocked out transactions on Wednesday, including salary deposits, bill payments and transfers to other banks, and then work to fix the problem hit Thursday and Friday's business.
As the electronic system buckled, some ATMs had crashed, she said, without revealing how many.
"There's been some issues with the electronic system because of the pressure the system has been under as a result of trying to resolve these issues," she said. "This has meant some ATMs have experienced issues."
Customers using microblogging site Twitter reported chaos with their bank accounts as mystifying sums appeared and disappeared, leaving many unable to withdraw cash.
Telford said NAB had cleared most of the delayed transactions but could not predict when the system would be back to normal. She did not estimate how many of NAB's 11.5 million customers were affected.
According to national news agency AAP, international banking giant HSBC's transactions to other banks, payroll deposits and direct debits were also affected, as NAB clears payments for HSBC in Australia.
NAB also warned on its website that its Internet banking was slow as millions of customers checked their accounts.
The meltdown comes at a time of growing discontent towards Australia's "big four" banks over rising interest rates and a swathe of minor fees, with even Prime Minister Julia Gillard urging unhappy customers to switch lenders.
Last week 250 investors brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit against NAB claiming it failed to properly disclose its exposure to toxic US debt during the financial crisis.

Source: PhysOrg

A Quick Note on Korea

By Gabriel Sean Wallace

This morning CNN had an article about members of the South Korean military protesting outside of the Defence Ministry building in Seoul as if it was a big deal. Allegedly, they were upset that their government wasn’t responding heavier against the artillery shelling by the North Korean armed forces three days ago, even after the resignation of Kim Tae-young, the South Korean Defence Minister at the time. All debates about whose fault it was aside, take note that there are no protests by any non-military civilians. This is not their war. There was no missile fired at the South Korean people from any mysterious uranium-enriching nuclear plant.

Tomorrow, going against advice from the Chinese government, the U.S. and South Korean military will be participating in war games that are scheduled to continue for four days in the Korean peninsula in order to practice drills to be used in the case of another attack. The shots by North Korea on Wednesday were preceded by the mobilisation of 70,000 South Korean soldiers and artillery fire into disputed waters. If that was enough to provoke an attack, the deployment of American military personnel arriving via the USS George Washington is begging for more.

Three days before the incident that has reportedly left four people dead, it came to light that Siegfried S. Hecker, a scientist at Stanford University, was given the privilege of being the only person to be shown a secret nuclear plant in North Korea containing “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges. He claims that he was not allowed to take any pictures of the plant, and he did not report this revelation until back in the United States, when he apparently had a private talk with officials from the White House about it. It is known that such a plant definitely did not exist in April 2009, when the last international inspectors were thrown out of the country. It is also known that low-enriched uranium (which the country says that they are producing) is incapable of creating a nuclear bomb – this requires high-enriched uranium.

This could be just the stuff the U.S. need for an excuse to go to war with another country – whilst Congress is out on Thanksgiving weekend. Yes, Kim Jong-il is a dictator and bad for the North Korean people – but the United States has done far more damage to the nation by cutting off trade with them and intimidating them with 30,000 troops in military bases in South Korea. And although North Korea may not be reckless enough to react rashly to the military operations in the next few days, the U.S. are already trying their best to entice North Korea’s only ally – China – to cut off their trade with them, and will doubtless try their best to provoke them to cross that threshold.

So which protests should really make the headlines?