Puppet MastersS


Eye 2

Nothing new: Thatcher's mentor urged her to run a 'campaign of fear' to cut teenage pregnancies

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'The young concerned tend to be the least mature from the least good homes', Thatcher was told in 1982
Margaret Thatcher's 'ideological mentor' urged her to run a campaign of fear to deter teenage girls from becoming pregnant, according to newly published files.

Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph wanted the Government to produce a series of 'scare' films in an attempt to curb the number of pregnancies among immature adolescents from 'the least good homes'.

Joseph - one of Mrs Thatchers closest Cabinet allies - believed a 'sharply rising trend' of bad parenting was a 'major cause of poor education and crime', and he had no doubt who was responsible, according to official papers released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule.

'Those girls who are at most risk will tend neither to restrain themselves nor insist on or use contraceptives nor to have sufficient grip even to consider abortion in sufficient time.'

His solution, he acknowledged, would be controversial.

'One possibility - delicate and fraught with risk - would be to try to use, in connection with pregnancy, the approach used in connection with cigarette smoking - that is fear,' he said.

Airplane

Drone attack in Pakistan kills four; bodies burnt beyond recognition

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An official says eight missiles hit a house and bodies were burnt beyond recognition.
US drones targeting a suspected militant compound on Friday killed four people in Pakistan's restive tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said.

The attack took place in Gurbuz town, 65 kilometres southwest of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal district, a security official said.

"The drones fired two missiles on a house believed to be a militant centre. Four militants were killed and two injured," he said.

Another official said eight missiles hit the house and the bodies were burnt beyond recognition.

"We have no information about the identity of those killed in the missile strike," the official said.

A security official in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar confirmed the toll.

USA

The other Bradley Manning: Jeremy Hammond faces life term for WikiLeaks and hacked Stratfor emails

A federal judge has refused to recuse herself from the closely watched trial of jailed computer hacker Jeremy Hammond, an alleged member of the group "Anonymous" charged with hacking into the computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor and turning over some five million emails to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Hammond's lawyers had asked Federal Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself because her husband worked for a client of Stratfor, and himself had his email hacked. Hammond's supporters say the Stratfor documents shed light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. He has been held without bail or trial for more than nine months. We speak with Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, about Hammond's case.


Pirates

Western-backed terrorists in Syria attempt to blow passenger plane out of the sky

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Newly-released video footage shows militants in Syria using anti-aircraft fire to shoot at, what appears to be, a passenger plane.

In the video, circulated on the Internet on Thursday, a militant is heard saying in Arabic, "It's a mistake. That's a passenger plane."

"No, it's a warplane," another one says.

A third militant is heard saying, "Even if it's a passenger plane, Sheikh Ahmad says shoot it down."

The militants then fire at the plane, but it is not clear whether the aircraft is actually downed.

Pistol

Turkey kills 13 PKK rebels

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Teamwork
Thirteen militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were killed in the Hatay and Osmaniye provinces as a result of a special operation conducted by Turkish Security Forces, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Six militants were detained during the special operation. Also ammunition owned by the PKK was seized.

Turkish army resumed military operations against them PKK militants after they became active.

Over 10 months Turkish security forces have rendered harmless 716 PKK militants, including 496 terrorists have been killed, 21 were wounded, 44 were arrested and 155 surrendered to the authorities.

During this period, the security forces have held six large-scale and 19 local operations against militants.

The conflict between Turkey and the PKK has lasted for over 25 years. The PKK is recognised as a terrorist organisation by both the UN and the EU.

Pistol

3 police, 10 Taliban killed in clashes in Afghanistan

Three Afghan police and 10 Taliban insurgents were killed in separate clashes in Afghanistan, local officials said Tuesday.

Eight Taliban insurgents were killed and 18 others were injured in a joint Afghan-Nato operations in Abuzio, Raml, Katal, Maidani, Shahid Ba Ba, Sayed Kala, Agha Kuli, Basram and Badi Abad distrits of eastern Laghman province on Monday, local security officials said.

Two Afghan policemen were also killed in the operations, officials said.

The joint forces have seized many weapons during the operations, officials added.

It comes as an Afghan police and two Taliban insurgents were killed in clashes in Ala Say district of northeastern Kapisa province, provincial governor Mehrabuddin Safi said.

Four civilians, including a women and child, were injured in the clashes, he said.

In the past a week, several Taliban commanders has been captured or killed by Afghan and Nato operations.

Pistol

Unknown gunmen shoot 12 dead in Christmas Eve attacks on Nigerian churches

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© naharnet.com
Church set on fire on Christmas Eve

At least 12 people died in northern Nigeria when attackers raided two churches during Christmas Eve services, police said.

One assault occurred at the Church of Christ in Nations in Postikum, in Yobe province. Gunmen attacked worshipers during prayer, killing six people, including the pastor, and setting the building on fire

Worshippers also were attacked at the First Baptist Church in Maiduguri, in Borno state. A deacon and five church members were killed.

USA

17 killed as U.S.-backed Yemen army clash with tribesmen

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'Revolution' in Syria = good; Real revolution in Yemen = bad.
Yemen's army has launched an offensive against tribesmen suspected of repeatedly sabotaging an oil pipeline in the country's east, sparking clashes that left 17 people dead, tribal sources say.

The dead included 10 tribesmen and seven soldiers, said the sources, who added the offensive in Marib province's Habab valley, 140 kilometres east of the capital Sanaa, was launched in the early hours of Tuesday and backed by air raids.

The sources said the army was "randomly shelling" the area where some al-Qaeda militants joined tribesmen battling Yemeni troops. Marib is a major al-Qaeda stronghold.

Tribesmen, of whom 18 were also wounded according to the same sources, fought back with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, one source said.

Rocket

When U.S. drones kill civilians, Yemen's government tries to conceal it

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Victims of a US drone strike in a war that officially doesn't exist
A rickety Toyota truck packed with 14 people rumbled down a desert road from the town of Radda, which al-Qaeda militants once controlled. Suddenly a missile hurtled from the sky and flipped the vehicle over.

Chaos. Flames. Corpses. Then, a second missile struck.

Within seconds, 11 of the passengers were dead, including a woman and her 7-year-old daughter. A 12-year-old boy also perished that day, and another man later died from his wounds.

The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its Soviet-era jets had carried out the Sept. 2 attack. But tribal leaders and Yemeni officials would later say that it was an American assault and that all the victims were civilians who lived in a village near Radda, in central Yemen. U.S. officials last week acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike.

"Their bodies were burning," recalled Sultan Ahmed Mohammed, 27, who was riding on the hood of the truck and flew headfirst into a sandy expanse. "How could this happen? None of us were al-Qaeda."

More than three months later, the incident offers a window into the Yemeni government's efforts to conceal Washington's mistakes and the unintended consequences of civilian deaths in American air assaults. In this case, the deaths have bolstered the popularity of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network's Yemen affiliate, which has tried to stage attacks on U.S. soil several times.

War Whore

Obama kills 5 rebels in Yemen with drone strikes

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I come in peace
The first drone strike hit a vehicle in a town in Al Bayda province

At least five people were killed in two drone strikes in south Yemen on Monday in what security and local officials said were attacks on suspected Al Qaida-linked insurgents. Improving stability and security in Yemen is a priority for the United States and its Gulf Arab allies because of its strategic position next to the world's top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and shipping lanes, and because it is home to one of the most active wings of al Qaida.

Monday's strikes were the first in almost two months by pilotless aircraft against suspected Al Qaida men in Yemen, an impoverished country of mountains and desert on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

The United States has escalated its use of drones against Al Qaida in Yemen, where the group exploited mass anti-government unrest last year to seize swathes of territory in the south before being driven out by a military offensive in June.