Julian Assange: Expect More From WikiLeaks in 2013

Julian Assange has said that WikiLeaks is preparing to publish 1m new secret government documents as he marked six months of refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London with a speech from its balcony on Thursday.

The WikiLeaks founder has remained in the embassy to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden on suspicion of sexual offences. There is a permanent police guard and Assange will be arrested if he leaves the premises.

About 80 supporters gathered on Thursday night to hear Assange speak. They carried candles and held placards reading, “Don’t shoot the messenger” and “Don’t trust Sweden”. Some sang Christmas carols as they waited for Assange to speak from the first floor balcony, a short distance from Harrods department store. There were 60 additional police officers on duty.

Assange emerged with a raised fist and greeted the crowd: “What a sight for sore eyes. People ask what gives me hope. The answer is right here.”

He was momentarily disturbed when a journalist from Channel 4 shouted questions at him with a loudhailer, but he recovered and delivered a 15-minute speech which was high in rhetoric and low in novelty.

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Russia Sends Mixed Signals on Syria

HAIFA, Israel – Russia continues to send mixed signals over its stance in support of the Syrian regime, with President Vladimir Putin hinting that President Bashar al-Assad’s downfall is likely even as unconfirmed reports indicate Russia is shipping high-tech missiles to the embattled strongman.

The abstention of Russia in Thursday’s UN vote condemning Syria, Iran and North Korea for widespread and systematic human rights abuses, is juxtaposed by Putin’s comments earlier in the day that, “We are not preoccupied that much with the fate of the Assad regime; we realize what’s going on there.”

Unconfirmed reports suggesting that Moscow may have sent some 24 Iskander cruise missiles to bolster Syrian forces, prompting neighboring countries such as Israel, Turkey and Jordan, whose respective militaries have for some time been on a heightened state of alert due to the instability in Syria, to further increase their vigilance and monitoring of events in the region.

Reports that the Iskander missiles – also known as SS26-Stone missiles –might have been dispatched from Russia to Syria first surfaced on Dec. 9. Sources believe the weapons passed through the port of Tartus on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and have deployed at dual points: 12 facing Turkey on Syria’s northeast border, and 12 facing Jordan and Israel on Syria’s southern border. Just as worrisome for those who fear an escalation could spill over beyond Syria’s borders is the fact that a number of other vessels are reportedly on their way to Tartus.

“They (the Russian vessels) are heading to the Syrian coast to assist in a possible evacuation of Russian citizens. Preparations for the deployment were carried out in a hurry and were heavily classified,” Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.

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Egypt Constitutional Vote: ‘Things Are Definitely Worse Than Under the Old Regime’

When Alber Saber’s mother called police to protect him from a mob baying for his blood, something odd happened: they arrested him. They then threw him in prison, encouraged his cellmates to attack him, and finally took him to court where he was jailed for three months.

Mr Saber’s alleged offence was all the more significant in light of the new constitution – being voted on by millions of Egyptians on Saturday – that is at the heart of Egypt’s political crisis.

The mob in his Cairo suburb accused him of atheism and disrespect of the Prophet Mohammed, and demanded he be killed; a neighbour had alleged he had posted to his Facebook page the now notorious Islam-mocking video that triggered protests across the world in September.

His mother, Kariman Ghali, cries frequently as she describes visiting him in prison the day after the mob surrounded their apartment block.

“He had blood all over his T-shirt,” said Mrs Ghali, who claims her son was put in a wing reserved for dangerous inmates. “The policeman told the prisoners, ‘This guy insulted the Prophet, I want to see what you can do with him.’ Someone stabbed him with a razor.”

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Jon Hammar, Marine Jailed in Mexico, Released From Prison (+video)

The ordeal for Jon Hammar Jr., who languished under deplorable conditions in a violent Mexican prison for four months, is finally over.

Jon Hammar Sr. has confirmed that his 27-year-old son, a Marine combat veteran, is back on U.S. soil and with him in a rented car in Brownsville, Texas.

Hammar Sr. said his son was released from the notorious CEDES prison at 8 p.m. local time and made it back across the bridge between Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, Texas by around 8:30 p.m.

The ex-Marine, who was arrested at the same border crossing Aug. 13 after attempting to declare an antique shotgun, was suffering from a stomach virus, his father told Fox News as he and his son drove from the border looking for a hotel to spend the night.

“We’re both tired and at our wits end,” Hammar Sr. said. “We’re glad he’s out of there.”

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Pope On Gay Marriage: ‘People Dispute the Idea That They Have a Nature’

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices — and destroying the very “essence of the human creature” in the process.

Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same-sex marriage proponents in the U.S. and Europe and efforts to legalize gay marriage in places like France and Britain.

In his remarks, Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children was an “attack” on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.

“People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being,” he said. “They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.”

“The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned,” he said.

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UN General Assembly Targets Israel with 22 out of 26 Resolutions in 2012

By the end of this week the current 2012 UNGA session will have adopted 22 country-specific resolutions targeting Israel – and only four on the rest of the world combined, one each for Syria, Iran, North Korea and Burma, according to UN Watch.

On Tuesday alone The U.N. General Assembly adopted nine resolutions on ”Palestinian rights and the Golan,” sharply criticizing Israel yet making no mention of Sunday’s massacre of Palestinian Arabs by Syrian warplanes firing missiles into a mosque in a refugee camp near Damascus.

On the UN Watch’s website Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, underscored the absurdity of the resolution tally. “The U.N.’s disproportionate assault against the Jewish state undermines the credibility of what is supposed to be an impartial and respected international body, and exposes the sores of politicization and selectivity that eat away at its founding mission, eroding the U.N. Charter promise of equal treatment to all nations large and small,” he said.

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Rep. Hunter Calls for Americans to Boycott Mexico

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican and Marine combat veteran, called on Americans Thursday to boycott Mexico until that nation releases Jon Hammar, a former U.S. marine, from prison.

Mr. Hunter also said he is prepared to go to Mexico personally to demand Mr. Hammar’s release.

Mexican authorities are holding Mr. Hammer on weapons charges after he carried his grandfather’s antique shotgun across the border into Mexico in August.

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Epic Fail: Team Obama’s Entire Middle East Policy Unravels

The Benghazi Report has condemned the State Department for “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies.” Four officials have resigned, and a few more lesser heads are likely to roll. Secretary Clinton may have said she takes full responsibility, but she has successfully managed to avoid taking the blame. With the holidays fast approaching, she and senior White House officials can now wash their hands of the matter.

But the Benghazi report misses the point. The events of September 11 are a symptom of a much larger problem — the Obama administration’s entire Middle East policy has failed. And the problem is about to get much worse as the as yet unpunished but ascendant Al Qaeda and its affiliates contemplate what they might do next to attack Americans.

Less than two years ago, the entire region was at peace. Granted, it was an uneasy peace, but it’s a region where for thousands of years an uneasy peace was as good as it gets. Granted, many countries were governed by dictators, but at least they were pro-American dictators. Granted, some countries continually railed against Israel, but none of them were actually in a fighting war with Israel.

Fast forward to today. Everything has changed. The entire region is in upheaval. With our help, Egypt has replaced a pro-American dictator with what promises to be an anti-American Muslim Brotherhood dictator and Islamist constitution. We helped Libyan rebels topple their dictator, yet their new government is has failed to consolidate control. They are cowed by Al Qaeda affiliated militias and couldn’t – or wouldn’t – prevent the Benghazi attack and assassinations of our diplomats. Syria’s vicious civil war threatens to go from horrific to hellish as Al Qaeda sympathizers and Islamic extremists take over the rebel cause, chemical weapons go missing, and the ethno-sectarian violence spills over to infect Syria’s neighbors and threaten our NATO ally Turkey. Iran is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power and the dominant power in the region. Any hopes that a post-Saddam Iraq would be a pro-American ally have vanished as Iraq falls increasingly into the Iranian orbit. We will end up fighting our way out of Afghanistan, as it descends into multiparty civil war once the last American soldier takes the last helicopter out. At best, countries will be governed by the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. At worst, chaos will ensue. Political and economic chaos are waiting in the wings, and radical Islamists, terrorists and Al Qaeda expand their influence throughout the region.

If the chaos and upheavals continue, which seems likely, we could in a few years see a region stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Pakistan which is anti-American and consumed by ethno-sectarian violence. The region extends from North Africa to the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula to the Persian Gulf to Central Asia. It’s home to terrorists, much of the world’s exported oil and our long time ally Israel.

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Global Warming? Not So Much in -58 F Russia

Russia is enduring its harshest winter in over 70 years, with temperatures plunging as low as -50 degrees Celsius [-58 F]. Dozens of people have already died, and almost 150 have been hospitalized.

The country has not witnessed such a long cold spell since 1938, meteorologists said, with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower than the seasonal norm all over Russia.

Across the country, 45 people have died due to the cold, and 266 have been taken to hospitals. In total, 542 people were injured due to the freezing temperatures, RIA Novosti reported.

The Moscow region saw temperatures of -17 to -18 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, and the record cold temperatures are expected to linger for at least three more days. Thermometers in Siberia touched -50 degrees Celsius, which is also abnormal for December.

The Emergency Ministry has issued warnings in 15 regions, which have been put on high alert over possible disruptions of communication and power.

Across the country, heat pipelines have broken down due to the cold. In southeastern Russia’s Samara, the cold has broken down many heat pipelines, leaving hundreds of homes without heating, including an orphanage and a rest house. Many schools and kindergartens have been closed for almost a week.

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Russia to Ban US Adoptions in Retaliation to Magnitsky Act

The State Duma’s legislative committee has approved an amendment banning any US involvement in the adoption of Russian children. On Wednesday the Lower House will consider the second reading of the bill.

­The amendment bans both individual adoptions by US citizens and US companies and organizations acting as intermediaries for those who seek to adopt Russian kids. They were submitted jointly by United Russia and Liberal Democratic MPs.

United Russia, the majority party in Parliament, is ready to support the ban on US adoptions according to Deputy Duma Speaker Sergey Neverov. He added that if the ban is approved it must remain in force for as long as US courts pass ‘biased’ rulings in cases involving adopted Russian children. The minority factions also said they would vote in support.

Other suggested amendments deal directly with the potential for US citizens to influence Russian politics. These include a ban for US citizens to head or even to work in Russian NGOs that are engaged in political activities. It is also proposed that all NGOs receiving funding from the United States be closed.

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