The Pakistani military are under orders to take down any UAV they locate in the country's air space. So far, the only drones making incursions into Pakistani skies have been US Predators used to attack Taliban insurgents.

In a speech to troops on the border, Pakistan's Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani told them to use all means at their disposal to give a "shattering answer" to any aggression - whatever the price or consequences.

For his part, the Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, American General John R. Allen, said he did not rule out the possibility of a repeat of last month's NATO strike on Pakistani soldiers.

The news appears to be a development of the notorious friendly fire incident on November 26 on Mohmand frontier territory, when 24 border guards died and over 30 were injured after an American assault helicopter entered Pakistan territory and devastated a block post, taking servicemen for mujahedeen.

Islamabad, Pakistan - The Central Intelligence Agency has vacated an air base in western Pakistan that it had been using for drone strikes against militants in the country's tribal areas, the Pakistani military said on Sunday.

Pakistan had ordered the C.I.A. to leave the Shamsi air base in protest over NATO airstrikes that killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan on Nov. 26. Pakistan has also blocked all NATO logistical supplies from crossing the border into Afghanistan since the clash.

Pentagon and Obama administration officials declined to comment publicly on the departure from the Shamsi air base.

How to Turn Election Year Into Election Life- Their Bread, Our Circus

Sometimes words outlive their usefulness. Sometimes the gap between changing reality and the names we've given it grows so wide that they empty of all meaning or retain older meanings that only confuse us. "Election," "presidential election campaign," and "democracy" all seem like obvious candidates for name-change.

I thought about this recently as President Obama hustled around my hometown, snarling New York traffic in the name of Campaign 2012. He was, it turned out, "hosting" three back-to-back fundraising events: one at the tony Gotham Bar and Grill for 45 supporters at $35,800 a head (the menu: roasted beet salad, steak and onion rings, with apple strudel, chocolate pecan pie, and cinnamon ice cream -- a meal meant to "shine a little light" on American farms); one for 30 Jewish supporters at the home of Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, for at least $10,000 a pop; and one at the Sheraton Hotel, evidently for the plebes of the contribution world, that cost a mere $1,000 a head. (Maybe the menu there was rubber chicken.)

In the course of his several meals, the president pledged his support for Israel (in the face of Republican charges that he is eternally soft on the subject), talked about "taxes and the economy" to his undoubtedly under-taxed listeners, and made this stirringly meaningless but rousing comment: "No matter who we are, no matter where we come from, we're one nation. We're one people. And that's what's at stake in this election."

And so it begins... with news of the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with the help of a Predator spy drone. The unmanned Predator B drone was called from an Air Force base in North Dakota (along with Highway Patrol, a SWAT team, a bomb squad and deputy sheriffs) to locate three men accused of pinching some cows. Yes, that's right, cows.

To some it may sound like a neat way to track criminals, but I'm not sure they fully understand the implications that the forthcoming rapid deployment of drone technology in 'civilian' skies will have.

Drones have been developed and designed not to track American cow thieves but primarily for military applications on the battlefields of imperialistic aggression. The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases and it has already built 60 bases around the world for its unmanned, remotely controlled killer drone warplanes. With more bases under construction, defence contractor behemoths like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are competing for slices of the big fat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) pie. These companies can look forward to the profit windfall that the increasingly likely and long-planned military incursions into Syria and Iran will bring. They are now also exploiting new local markets that over-hyped illusory threats of domestic terrorism will bring to their balance sheets.

It's almost as if the contractors are colluding with Government and media to ensure they have a lucrative future for their shareholders...

Britain's dramatic use of its European Union veto after years of threats has fuelled calls at home for a complete withdrawal from the bloc, with London left more isolated than ever.

Prime Minister David Cameron went further than even "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher ever did, leaving Britain alone in blocking a treaty across the 27-member EU to resolve the euro's debt crisis.

Cameron's position was largely dictated by the need to head off a revolt from the "eurosceptic" wing of his Conservative party, even if it could eventually weaken Britain's coalition government.

John Redwood, an arch Conservative eurosceptic, told AFP that Cameron "had to do what he did".

"It was very disappointing that the rest of the EU leaders rejected the PM's generous offer," he said, referring to Cameron's calls for an opt-out for Britain that would protect the City of London financial services hub.

Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it's busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever.

The Street's biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative trading.

For years Wall Street has speculated like mad in futures markets - food, oil, other commodities - causing prices to fluctuate wildly. The Street makes bundles from these gyrations, but they have raised costs for consumers.

In other words, a small portion of what you and I pay for food and energy has been going into the pockets of Wall Street. It's just another hidden redistribution from the middle class to the rich.

Washington - The loss to Iran of the CIA's surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane's capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran's nuclear and military programs.

Just as the Soviet Union's downing of the American U-2 spy plane revealed a hidden aspect of the Cold War, Iran's recovery of the drone has shed light on the espionage that is part of U.S.-Iran hostilities.

Iran has charged the U.S. or its allies with waging a campaign of cyberwarfare and sabotage, and of assassinating some Iranian scientists. The U.S. has accused the Iranian government of helping kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan and plotting to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

"It's beginning to look like there's a thinly-veiled, increasingly violent, global cloak-and-dagger game afoot," Thomas Donnelly, a former government official and military expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said at a Washington conference.

Since the issue is between Israel and the Palestinians, then there must be "a conspiracy" involved: I have been waiting for months now for the release of the book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, written by Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and published by I.B. Tauris in the United Kingdom. The book is an English translation of the original in Hebrew.

Amazon, the company that I deal with regularly, has never delayed an order I had placed. However, this particular book was so late that I almost screamed "conspiracy". For one thing, I had ordered it last August, and was promised to receive it in October. But on 1/9/2011, I received an apology from Amazon because the book's publisher announced that it would be delayed. Then on 16/10/2011, Amazon again notified me that the publishing of the book had been cancelled. So I went to Waterstone's, which said that the book will be released on 18/11/2011. But soon afterwards, I found a new date for the book's release was posted on its website, which was 30/1/2012. I.B Tauris itself then announced on its website that the release date would be 30/11/2011, before saying that the book has not yet been published.

Dr. Peled-Elhanan is an exceptional peace advocate. I had previously cited her defense of Islam before the European Parliament, where she said that it is not Islam that she felt threatened her, but "American imperialism, European apathy and Israel's racism and violent occupation". Her book represents the results of a study she conducted on Israeli textbooks in the past five years. She describes what she found as racism - but, more than that, she says it is a form of racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Saturday defended his statement that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, brushing aside criticism that he had unnecessarily made the Mideast peace process more difficult.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a candidate debate in which he drew applause for asserting that it was time someone spoke the truth about the nature of Israel's struggle with the Palestinians.

"Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists," he said. "It's fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, 'Enough lying about the Middle East.'"

Gingrich's earlier remarks to a cable channel struck at the heart of Palestinian sensitivities about the righteousness of their struggle for an independent state. Applying the label "invented" to Palestinians suggests that their quest for independence is not legitimate, though Gingrich later said he indeed supports the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a settlement with Israel.

On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly passed nine resolutions related to Palestine as part of a set of 24 resolutions and two texts related to human rights and decolonization.

The resolutions were passed by the General Assembly after the recommendation of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee. Several of the resolutions were passed almost unanimously, with only Israel voting against them.

Among these were a resolution that called for an accelerated return of displaced persons who became refugees in 1967, and called on donor countries to assist the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in meeting the needs of the Palestinian refugees. This resolution was passed by a vote of 160 in favor to 1 opposed (Israel), with 9 abstentions.

Another resolution urged Israel to reimburse UNRWA for all transit charges incurred and other financial losses sustained as a result of delays and restrictions on movement and access, and to cease obstructing the movement and access of the staff, vehicles and supplies of the Agency. That resolution passed with a vote of 163 in favour to 7 against (Israel, Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, United States), with 2 abstentions (Cameroon, Vanuatu).