In the last month we have seen what can only be described as the largest attack on 2nd Amendment in the history of the United States.

Within hours of the horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, elements of the corporate controlled media, in conjunction with a majority of politicians in a position of power, launched an all out propaganda blitz to convince the American people to accept not only a severely limited 2nd Amendment, but possibly a total gun ban.

Whether it be by Senator Dianne Feinstein, billionaire eugenicist Michael Bloomberg or President Obama himself, calls for and plans to limit private firearm ownership in America have been outlined and, in some cases, already put into law.

During the propaganda blitz that has accompanied President Obama's task force and subsequent executive orders, each and every proponent of stricter gun control has claimed that they support the 2nd Amendment and do not want any sort of all out ban or confiscation.

A police truck packed with officers and detainees struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan's largest city, killing 10 of those aboard, officials said Sunday.

It was one of four blasts Saturday that left at least 24 people dead across the country. Attacks by insurgents are a daily occurrence around Afghanistan and the Afghan police with their unarmored pickup trucks and remote checkpoints are a common target.

In the Kandahar city blast, police had driven to a residential neighborhood of the city at night to inspect a bomb that had been found there, said Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial government. They detained three suspects and were driving back with them in a police pickup truck when the vehicle struck another explosive buried in the road. Eight police officers and two detainees were killed in the blast.

After a smooth countdown at 1.40 pm today, India's missile, named BO5, emerged effortlessly breaking the balmy waters of the Bay of Bengal. The missile was launched from an approximate depth of about 50 metres, simulating exactly the conditions as would prevail during an operational launch from India's indigenously made nuclear-powered submarine bINS Arihant. The missile whose name has been variously given as Sagarika or at times K-15 or even Dhanush has finally been christened as BO5 and is a medium-range ballistic missile.

After emerging from the water, the missile followed a copy book track of its trajectory and hit its target about six minutes after launch in a very precise manner. The trajectory was tracked using several cameras and radars specially deputed for this launch.

While pundits and partisans argue about what President Obama's second inaugural address bodes for the next four years of political in-fighting, the assault on privacy rights that began under George W. Bush shows no signs of abating under Obama. Just before the New Year, the President signed into law an extension to a warrantless intercept program that infringes on basic legal precepts of privacy and, many argue, directly contradicts the Fourth Amendment.

In all the drama surrounding the "fiscal cliff," the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) - the 2008 legislation that allows for warrantless surveillance of the emails, text messages, and internet searches of US citizens - seems to have slipped under the radar.

Under the renewed law, for the next five years the National Security Agency (NSA) can eavesdrop without a warrant on US citizens who are suspected of engaging in conversations with suspicious non-US-citizens. Conversations have to contain "foreign intelligence information" - but exactly how this broad term is interpreted by the NSA is unclear. What's more, a FISA order on one specific person can be used against entire groups, potentially meaning blanket surveillance on thousands of Americans at a time.

The 2008 FAA was created in the wake of a journalistic expose revealing how the Bush Administration had circumvented a previous law - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. That earlier FISA had mandated that the NSA obtain a warrant from a special court if it wanted to spy on Americans. When confronted with the Administration's blatant law breaking, Congress took the route of least resistance, crafting the FAA, which retroactively immunized the culpable parties. It also entrenched the Bush-era blanket surveillance as law.

Thanks to a lifetime of propaganda, people will argue relentlessly that taxation is not an act of violence, they will deny that it perpetuates a complicated form of slavery, and many times get deeply offended when you point out the fact that it is theft.

Yet, peaceful people are taken against their will and thrown in cages every day for not paying taxes. If this action was not carried by the state, everyone would recognize it as a violent kidnapping.

This year in Italy alone around 12,000 people had armed government workers trespass on their property, take them against their will and lock them up in a cage.

US Federal Reserve is reporting a major deposit withdrawal from the nation's bank accounts. The financial system hasn't seen such a massive fund outflow since 9/11 attacks.

The first week of January 2013 has seen $114 billion withdrawn from 25 of the US' biggest banks, pushing deposits down to $5.37 trillion, according to the US Fed. Financial analysts suggest it could be down to the Transaction Account Guarantee insurance program coming to an end on December 31 last year and clients moving their money that is no longer insured by the government.

The Government of Antigua is planning to launch a website selling movies, music and software, without paying U.S. copyright holders.

The Caribbean island is taking the unprecedented step because the United States refuses to lift a trade "blockade" preventing the island from offering Internet gambling services, despite several WTO decisions in Antigua's favor. The country now hopes to recoup some of the lost income through a WTO approved "warez" site.

Antigua and Barbuda is a small country in the Caribbean that for years had a flourishing gambling industry.

A few years ago 5% of all Antiguans worked at gambling related companies. However, when the U.S. prevented the island from accessing their market the industry collapsed.

"What was once a multi-billion dollar industry in our country, employing almost 5% of our population has now shrunk to virtually nothing," Antigua's High Commissioner to London, Carl Roberts, said previously.

A cache of handguns, rifles and shotguns concealed behind a false wall in the days after the Dunblane massacre has been uncovered.

Simon Berni, 41, a builder, was shocked to discover a secret haul of more than 30 shotguns and pistols as well as hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

He said: "It was an incredible arsenal - full, absolutely choc-a-bloc with eight shelves of fire arms and ammunition."

Police are investigating the gun stash uncovered in a semi-detached in a quiet village.

I've been thinking about fault lines, and fractures, and diversity, and when it's all going to implode. I hope I'm still around because it is going to be one gorgeous show. Few things are as entertaining as a truly good disaster.

What is going to kill us is diversity. It isn't working well. By diversity I mean here the intermixing of large groups of people holding utterly differing and opposed values. There is too damned much diversity in America. It isn't getting better.

The current donnybrook over guns is not a political question, like whether to raise or lower taxes. It is a clash of civilizations, a confrontation between two groups who seriously don't like each other and hold irreconcilably different views of life. The two would be happier in separate countries, an idea that has occurred to them. It is that bad.

The Constitution no longer being in effect, the gun-controllers may be able to outlaw guns, chiefly because the federal government also wants to do this, though for different reasons. The gun-controllers think that they are going to stop murder, whereas the feds just want a supine and helpless population. Should they succeed in banning firearms, the result will be a very large element of the population actually hating the rest, and hating the government. Diversity.

Audit trail reveals that donors linked to fossil fuel industry are backing global warming sceptics.

A secretive funding organisation in the United States that guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator in the climate "counter movement" to undermine the science of global warming, The Independent has learnt.

The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.

However, an audit trail reveals that Donors is being indirectly supported by the American billionaire Charles Koch who, with his brother David, jointly owns a majority stake in Koch Industries, a large oil, gas and chemicals conglomerate based in Kansas.