NightBlogger

LONDON, Aug. 9 (UPI) — Some 150 unidentified flying objects have already been reported to British authorities this year, making 2008 a bumper year for UFO sightings, officials say. Just 135 sightings were reported by police and the Ministry of Defense in 2007 and only 97 in 2006, reported The Daily Telegraph Saturday, which obtained the figures under a Freedom of Information Act request. “Something really bizarre is happening in the skies over the U.K.,” said Malcolm Robinson, founder of the research group Strange Phenomena Investigations. “I’ve been dealing in sightings for 30 years and we currently have something very real which mankind cannot explain.” But British officials were more non-committal, although a spokesman for the Department of Defense insisted they remained open minded. He said as long as sightings presented no threat to British airspace, they were not investigated further.

The Government is drawing up plans to use unmanned “drone” aircraft currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to counter terrorism and aid police operations in Britain. The MoD is carrying out research and development to enable the spy planes, which are equipped with highly sophisticated monitoring equipment that allows them to secretly track and photograph suspects without their knowledge, to be deployed within three years. The plans have been backed by the House of Commons Defence Committee but have attracted criticism from civil liberties campaigners concerned about the implications of covert surveillance of civilians. More

Webster G. Tarpley
…the United States and NATO now escalating the hopeless and unwinnable Afghan war, and is preparing to send US and NATO forces on the ground to seize parts of Pakistan, a country which is almost 3 times more populous than Iran, and possesses a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. The Bush-Cheney-neocon era in foreign policy is over, and the Brzezinski-Trilateral-Rockefeller-Soros phase of aggression has begun; the US hit list now features Chinese allies like Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan. Brzezinski is striving to put together some huge provocation for the Beijing Olympics, to make the Chinese government lose face and begin disintegrating. The ultimate targets of the new Obama-Brzezinski foreign policy are Russia, China, and the other members and friends of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main pole of resistance in the world to the designs of Washington and London. The stakes are now much higher than a mere conventional clash in the Persian Gulf. Brzezinski’s adventurism goes far beyond that of the neocons, and objectively places the danger of a thermonuclear exchange on the world agenda. Watch for the Polish-Czech-Lithuanian missile crisis, a Balkan crisis, and a crisis between Georgia and Russia to point the world in this ominous new direction.

The US government is now being run by the Principals’ Committee, an interagency cabal that includes Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary Of State Rice, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, and other operatives of the Trilateral Wall Street financier faction. It is clear that under the new policy, Iran will be able to continue to process uranium: ‘The Bush administration’s decision to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with “More news and information about Iran.” Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program. First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it would meet face to face with Iran only after that country suspended its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the “More articles about Security Council, U.N.” United Nations Security Council. Second, an American partner at the table injects new importance to the negotiating track of the six global powers confronting Iran - France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States - even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until uranium enrichment stops. The increased engagement raised questions of whether the Bush administration would alter its stance toward Iran as radically as it did with North Korea, risking a fresh schism with conservatives who have accused the White House of granting concessions to so-called rogue states without extracting enough in return.’ (New York Times, July 17, 2008) This gambit of appeasing Iran is being done in the hopes of turning Iran against Russia and China ­ a project of incalculable folly. Brzezinski is glad to see the Iranians have nukes, because he thinks he can keep them, pointed at Moscow. More

LONDON—A bloody knife-crime wave sweeping across Britain has left a slew of urban teenagers and young adults dead or seriously injured. And the numbers seem to keep piling up. In London alone, 20 teenagers have been killed by knives this year, including an 18-year-old who died of stab wounds Thursday night. On a particularly lethal day earlier this month, six people were killed in knife attacks, four of them in London. More

The Telegraph
Michael Madden, 25, said he watched in disbelief as the disc-shaped object floated above his head before it “zoomed off at incredible speed”. “I work with aircraft and grew up next to Manchester Airport so I know exactly what a plane looks and sounds like. This was definitely not a plane.” Mr Madden’s claim follows a string of recent UFO “sightings”. On June 7 three soldiers said they saw 13 UFOs, which looked like “rotating cubes”, while on night patrol at Tern Hill military barracks near Market Drayton, Shropshire. One, Corporal Mark Proctor, 38, of the 1st Battalion of the Irish Regiment, recorded the sighting on his mobile phone and reported it to Army officers.

That sighting came just two hours before helicopter police officers reported an encounter with a huge craft 80 miles away near Cardiff. They claimed to have given chase to the “flying saucer-shaped” object after it almost collided with their aircraft near the Ministry of Defence base of St Athan. Then Father-of-two David Osborne, 47, videoed 12 orange objects in the night sky above Basingstoke, Hampshire, at 10.40pm on June 28. More
Also See: British UFO sightings at ‘bizarre’ levels

Britain is now in the midst of the worst housing slide since the Great Depression, economists declared after house price inflation dropped to the lowest level since comparable records began. Figures from Halifax, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, showed house prices have fallen by 8.7pc in the year to June, confirming that the property crunch is more severe than the last housing crash in the early 1990s. Hours before, the Bank of England voted to leave rates unchanged at 5pc. Prof Goodhart, now at the London School of Economics, said: “Output is going to fall, unemployment is going to rise, possibly quite sharply. It’s a horrible situation. More

Herald Tribune
It is really rather difficult to give a sense of exactly how quickly Britain’s economy is coming unglued. According to Nationwide, the British mortgage lender, house prices fell by 2.5 percent in June alone, and some economists are forecasting multiyear falls of as much as a third. Mortgage lending is down by 64 percent year on year in May as banks recoil from lending into a falling market and also because of the simple fact that Britons collectively don’t deposit enough to cover their borrowing needs.

John Lewis, a British retailer, said sales at its department stores dropped 8.3 percent in the week that ended June 28, compared with the same week a year earlier, while a rival, Marks & Spencer, also reported disappointing results. The banking sector is racing to recapitalize, not entirely successfully, with shares of the mortgage specialist Bradford & Bingley well below the level at which a new offering of stock was underwritten. Construction activity fell at its fastest pace in at least 11 years in June, while the crucial services sector shrank at its sharpest rate since just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. More

LONDON (Reuters) - Hauliers drove into the centre of London on Wednesday to lobby parliament over the cost of fuel and to plead for a cut in diesel duties. Trucks from across Britain were escorted by police convoy into Westminster in the third lorry fuel protest this year. The drivers want Chancellor Alistair Darling to abandon plans to raise fuel duty by 2 pence a litre from October. They say rising oil prices are threatening to put many hauliers out of business and are seeking a 25 pence per litre cut in the cost of diesel. More
Also See: 4 Million truckers in India protest fuel costs

FAMILIES last night claimed they watched in awe as a dozen glowing orange objects buzzed Basingstoke. In the latest UFO riddle to grip Britain, witnesses say the “alien” fleet hovered above the Hampshire town for half an hour – changing formation before their eyes. Dad-of-two David Osborne, 47 – who captured the unearthly phenomenon on video – said yesterday: “My adrenaline was pumping and I was trembling all over. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was amazing.” David, an amateur astronomer, yelled to his daughters to grab his camera after he phoned nearby RAF Odiham and was told officials could not comment “for security reasons”. More

Source: newKerala.com
London, June 27 : A doctor of psychology at Cardiff University claimed that he witnessed a UFO over the Brecon Beacons - the third reported sighting in Britain, following observations by the Army and police. Dr Simon Griffey and his son Jack were driving near Llangynidr Mountain in the Brecon Beacons, Powys, when they spotted lights over Talybont-on-Usk. “I’ve had loads of theories proposed by friends and neighbours but none of them add up,” The Sun quoted him, as saying. “There was no noise whatsoever, it was a bit eerie. I’ve driven over this mountain for 17 years and have never seen anything like it.

“There were seven lights and having read the description from the soldiers in Shropshire, there are some similarities. They were the same sort of colour and the same spherical shape that they reported. “I know I wasn’t seeing things because Jack saw exactly the same as I did - and two other cars pulled over to look,” they added. Sceptics have suggested the sightings could be huge man-made lanterns floating into the sky. However, the boffin, of Llangynidr, said: “It was too big. It was way above the horizon and stayed there for 15 minutes. It was a bit smaller than a full moon - quite big and high up.”

Jack recorded the phenomenon on his mobile phone - but when they examined the pictures later, they found only three of the seven lights showed up. Griffey said: “The police helicopter crew said they failed to record the sighting on their equipment. “If it had been a natural phenomenon you surely would have been able to photograph all of it. I’d like someone to explain - because I have no idea what to make of it.” “There is no logical explanation. I think it’s plausible that there could be life on other planets,” he added.
Also See:
Soldier spots 13 UFOs above barracks

Hollye Blades
Radical Islam is threatening to fill a “moral vacuum” in Britain as a result of a decline of Christian values, a senior Church of England bishop has said.

He quoted an academic who blamed the 1960s cultural revolution for bringing Christianity’s role in society to an abrupt end. It was said that, instead of resisting the social and sexual revolution, church leaders had capitulated. The Bishop said: “It is a situation which has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we find ourselves. Whilst the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.” More

BBC
Ministers are to consider plans for a database of electronic information holding details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the UK, it has emerged.

The plans, reported in the Times, are at an early stage and may be included in the draft Communications Bill later this year, the Home Office confirmed.

A Home Office spokesman said the data was a “crucial tool” for protecting national security and preventing crime. Ministers have not seen the plans which were drawn up by Home Office officials.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Communications Data Bill will help ensure that crucial capabilities in the use of communications data for counter-terrorism and investigation of crime continue to be available.
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Photo Dave Apple

Geoffrey Lean
independent.co.uk

Ministers have given permission for thousands of GM potatoes to be grown in Britain, a decision that is bound to provoke a new confrontation with environmentalists. Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for the Environment , has agreed to let scientists at Leeds University cultivate the potato, which has been engineered to resist eelworm, in a trial over the next three years in a test field near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. The GM Freeze protest group is considering taking legal action.

The move follows repeated clashes over a different experimental GM potato, modified against blight, in Britain last year. Trials had to be abandoned following protests by environmentalists and local farmers. Read more

Photo by McGun

Newsmonster
Christeen Skinner is one of a growing, albeit secretive, network of astrologers who work for seemingly conservative British institutions such as high street banks, City investment funds and retailers. Desperate to avoid financial meltdown in the ongoing ‘credit crunch’ and to spot fashions and consumer trends before they start, these institutions have turned to the stars to divine the future.

Jim Porter, chief technical analyst for one of the UK’s largest banks…uses heliocentric magi astrology to predict the direction of the international financial markets. Millions of pounds worth of commodities, shares and currencies are traded on his command.
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Photo by Jeff Keen
The cost of a basket of 24 basic items such as tea bags, milk, cornflakes and pasta sauce at the three biggest stores has risen by 15 per cent over the past year. The increases suggest that supermarket food inflation is more than seven times the official rate of inflation. Any large family that spent £100 a week on its grocery shopping now has to spend an extra £780 a year to buy the same products.
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