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Editorial: Peace In the Middle East? - Over the bodies of 3 million Palestinians
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
03/05/2006
"Everybody
has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the
settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything
we don't grab will go to them."
-
Ariel Sharon,
as Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from
the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November
15, 1998.
By now it
should be clear to all Middle East analysts that the main impediment
to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel and the right-wing
Zionist extremists in Israeli politics. Time and again the Palestinians
have expressed their sincere desire to end the inhuman conditions under
which they are forced to live by the occupying IDF forces, yet every
time that a peaceful settlement seems to be within their grasp, bizarrely,
Hamas or Islamic Jihad decide to fire a few, usually harmless, Qasam
rockets at an illegal Israeli settlement, or unknown "Palestinian
gunmen" will murder
an Israeli settler, inviting the IDF to retaliate with deadly and overwhelmingly
superior force.
How to explain
such repeated, apparently self-defeating acts by the alleged representatives
of the beleaguered Palestinian people? It has been obvious for many
years now that the Palestinians cannot win an armed conflict with
the massively militarily superior Israel and any further attacks against
Israeli forces, population or interests simply provide Israeli politicians
with the justification to increase Israeli control and oppression in
the occupied territories. And Israel's nukes ensure that no other Arab
nation dare interfere. It is equally obvious that the international
community has all but washed its hands of the conflict and is resigned
to allowing it to play out to its final and surely tragic denouement.
In the June
2005 "summit" between Sharon and PA authority Chairman Abbas,
Abbas told the Israelis that he wanted "freedom of movement in and
out of Gaza, air and sea ports re-opened, key Palestinian towns handed
back to their control and the release of Palestinian prisoners."
Such demands are widely understood to be a precursor to the formation
of a Palestinian state, an eventuality that Sharon had built his political
career on ensuring never occurs.
On that
occasion, the Israeli government agreed to Abbas' demands on the proviso
that all Palestinian attacks against Israel must first stop. What is
clear is that the only reason Sharon accepted Abbas' demands is because
he was confident that he could ensure that the Palestinian authority
would never
be able to meet the condition of a cessation of all "terrorist" attacks.
It is clear
that Israeli government oppression of Palestinians has little to do
with "security
concerns" and everything to do with harassing and murdering
Palestinian civilians and leaders in order to prevent them from establishing
themselves as a independent people with a sovereign voice on the world
stage.
Central
to this goal
is the continued portrayal of any Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation
as "terrorism", when in reality, resistance (including armed)
to an occupying power is a fundamental right laid down in the article
four of the third
Geneva Convention.
However,
according
to humanitarian law, in order to lawfully use force in a conflict you
must first be designated a lawful 'combatant'. To be a 'combatant', you
have to belong to an 'armed resistance group' and that group must belong
to a 'party' to the conflict. It is in this fact that we find one of
the
chief reasons why Israel will never willingly allow the creation of a
Palestinian state.
As long
as Palestine
does not have official state status, any Palestinian resistance group
cannot claim to be a party in the conflict and must remain a simple independent
resistance group, or "terrorist" group in modern parlance.
Not only did the developed
world oversee the theft of Palestinian land in order to create the state
of Israel in 1948, but in continuing to refuse to lobby for an independent
Palestinian state, they ensure that any Palestinian resistance to Israeli
aggression is delegitimised in advance.
To the shame
of the international community, in April 2006 it was an Israeli court
that first officially ruled that
the Palestinian Authority fulfilled all of the criteria to be classified
as a state and that Israel had no jurisdiction over Palestinian lands.
Of course, the ruling changed nothing, and any opportunity that it contained
to open international debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict was immediately
crushed by a mainstream media blackout on the story. As I have said so
often in the past, from the ruling Israeli right-wing's point of view,
open and honest discussion, dialogue and debate on the Palestine issue
must be prevented at all costs, because the day that ruling Israeli
politicians engage in fair negotiations with the PA, is the
day that they lose their death grip on Palestine and its people. And
that is the very last thing they are willing to do.
But how
then can the Israeli government be so confident that the Palestinian
dream of a state of their own will remain just that - a dream?
Israel controls
all entrances and exits to and from the Gaza strip and the West Bank,
it is Israel therefore - or more accurately Israel's military and
intelligence apparatus - that decides who and what gets in and out
of the occupied Palestinian territories. Without doubt, the Israeli
army could, with relative ease, accomplish the goal of a cessation
of all "terrorist"
attacks that successive Israeli Prime Ministers have demanded of their
Palestinian counterparts, yet the hard, cold fact of the matter
is that Israel's present position as the dominant force in the Middle
East is dependent on the continued existence of a terrorist threat. That
this has been true for many, many years was made clear by Israeli commentator,
Yoram Bar Porath, in the Israeli News outlet, Yediot Aahronot of 14 July
1972:
"It is the
duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously,
a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of
these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without
the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
In attempting to ensure
that the "terrorism" so necessary to the state of Israel is
never vanquished, Sharon and his predecessors have gone to great lengths
to infiltrate and co-opt various Palestinian resistance organizations.
Indeed, there is much evidence to support the thesis that, far from being
the victim of terrorism, Israel is in fact one of the prime instigators
of terrorist attacks in the Palestinian territories, attacks that are
conveniently set up to look like the work of Palestinians. For example,
consider the following excerpt from a UPI article from June 2002:
Hamas
history tied to Israel
Richard
Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
6/18/2002
In the wake of a
suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus that killed
19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance Movement,
Hamas, took credit for the blast.
Israeli officials
called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.
Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight "Palestinian terror"
and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization
that Sharon had once described as "the deadliest terrorist group
that we have ever had to face."
Active in Gaza and
the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish
a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety
with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.
But Sharon left
something out.
Israel and Hamas
may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several
current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late
1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over
a period of years.
Israel "aided
Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance
to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman,
Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel's support
for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for
a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,"
said a former senior CIA official. [...]
Of course,
here, we are deep into conspiracy theory territory, yet when several
current and former U.S. intelligence officials openly state that Hamas
is basically a tool of Israeli intelligence, are we talking about
a conspiracy theory, or simply the much-ignored SOP (standard operating
procedure) of most of the world's spy agencies? Readers should also
take note of the fact that, over the past few years, it has been Hamas
that has repeatedly scuppered Palestinian aspirations for statehood
by launching attacks on Israeli targets at the most inopportune moments,
thereby providing Sharon with the justification to renege on his hollow
promises to the Palestinian people.
Of course,
Israel has a willing partner in its phony terror-crime in the American
government. Vast sums ($billions) in non-refundable loans are funneled
every year from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers into the coffers of
the
Israeli treasury for the purpose of "fighting terrorism".
Israel, with the implicit support of the U.S. government, has been
allowed to contravene
or ignore dozens of UN resolutions, the Geneva conventions and
Humanitarian and International law because it claims it is "fighting
terrorism".
Indeed, the role of the current U.S. government in facilitating the continued
persecution of the Palestinian people can be clearly seen in its
promotion of the phony "war on terror" and the equally
phony 9/11 attacks that precipitated it, both of which have greatly
benefited the extreme right despots in Tel Aviv and Washington.
Israel then,
in its present configuration, is an illegal state founded on the unlawful
theft of Palestinian land and the blood of the thousands of innocent
Palestinian people that refused, and continue to refuse, to bow down
to the murderous racism of their Israeli taskmasters. Every Israeli
Prime Minister knew and understood this. They also knew that the day
that an Israeli government allows Palestine to be officially recognised
as an independent state, is the day that Israel will no longer have
the right to bulldoze Palestinian homes or arbitrarily execute Palestinian
school children and claim that they are "fighting
terrorism". On that
day, Palestinian resistance to a brutal occupying power will be legitimised
and the actions of successive Israeli governments and the IDF will
be recognised for the war crimes that they are.
For this
very reason, all "peace summits" between Israeli and Palestinian
leaders should be understood as nothing more than a sop
to the spineless international political community and a publicity
stunt designed to con the world into believing that any Israeli government
is genuinely interested in peace. Those in control of the state of
Israel and its evolution have but one plan in mind, and it can be
summed up by the words of recently elected, 80 year-old member of the
Knesset and former top Mossad agent, Rafi Eitan, as quoted by Gad
Becker of the Yediot Ahronot and which appeared in the 14 April 1983
edition of the New York Times:
"We declare
openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter
of Eretz (Greater) Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand.
We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling
to us on all fours."
The real
question therefore is not whether Israel can find a partner for peace
in Palestinian politicians, but whether there can ever be a just
and peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict while Israeli
politicians continue to insist that they have the right to bomb the
Palestinian people into submission.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Dumbed Down Americans: Chattel for Global Tyranny
Wednesday May 03rd 2006, 8:18 am
Kurt Nimmo
Education in America has done a fine job. "Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel," reports National Geographic. "Young Americans just don't seem to have much interest in the world outside of the U.S.," mused David Rutherford, a specialist in geography education at the National Geographic Society in Washington. Young Americans are so ill-educated, half of them can't find New York on a map, let alone Iran and Iraq. "Many young Americans also lack basic map-reading skills.... Told they could escape an approaching hurricane by evacuating to the northwest, only two-thirds could indicate which way northwest is on a map." But it is not simply geography.
"Three in ten respondents put the U.S. population between one and two billion (it's just under 300 million, according the U.S. Census Bureau). Seventy-four percent said English is the most commonly spoken native language in the world (it's Mandarin Chinese)." Considering the widespread ignorance of the American public-and older Americans are not much better when it comes to finding countries on a map, or for that matter naming their state representative-it makes perfect sense a gaggle of neocons, espousing what amounts to fascist authoritarianism, were able to capture the government, invade two countries in six years, and now threaten to attack a third.
As John Taylor Gatto writes, "the once mighty reading Samson of America was led eyeless to Gaza with the rest of the slaves." Gatto points out a few astounding facts. "Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered," writes Gatto, a former New York teacher of the year.
According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don't want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it's too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?
Dictatorship and despotism thrive when ignorance and stupidity rule societies. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," Thomas Jefferson declared in 1816. At the time, the populace of America understood the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, not the government. Americans read and comprehended the Preamble of the Constitution, where specific tasks are assigned to government. In the early 19th century, John Locke's "liberal" philosophy of natural rights (universal rights derived from natural law) inspired and guided many Americans. Now most Americans follow the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, although they have no idea of Hobbes or what he wrote about government. Hobbes believed that sovereignty was vested in the state. As an example of the Hobbesian state, consider that most Americans believe only the government may grant "civil rights," when in fact rights are natural, much like the physical laws of nature, and inalienable, that is to say the government cannot take them away.
In 1810, an editorialist for the Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser wrote in response to Napoleon Bonaparte's banning of printing presses: "When people are ... determined to be ignorant, what is the use of printing? When a man is determined that he will not receive information, it is of very little use to lay it before him.... You may talk to him, and print for him, he will still be ignorant.... An ignorant man is easily led astray-he envies the man of enlightened mind, and would sooner vote for an unprincipled blockhead, than an honest and upright man of talents and learning. This kind of system leads to riot and anarchy-anarchy leads to absolute despotism, and ignorance fits the people to bear that despotism."
In Napoleon's time, "prefects of departments and special censors" micromanaged news and information. Now we have the corporate media releasing select government propaganda to masses dumbed-down by decades of public education. Many people are functionally illiterate and unable to navigate the written language. Knowing the characters of American Idol is more important than knowing the names of state representatives. In such a fetid environment, tyranny grows quite naturally and unopposed-and thanks to the corporate media and state administered education, most people do not know their country is now a dictatorship, or dangerously close to this condition, and the situation will be nearly complete after our Napoleon and his minions ban the equivalent of the printing press.
Of course, for our neolib rulers and their bankster handlers, widespread ignorance-especially ignorance of geography and, more importantly, igorance of the concepts of our one-time constitutional republic-is the preferred state of existence, for chattel unenlightened make for better slaves. As George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel, 1984, the state depends on ignorance and fear to control the masses, who are of course the ultimate enemy:
At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
Original
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Editorial: Evo Morales' Courageous Move Now Makes Him A Us Target Along With Hugo Chavez
by Stephen Lendman
To get a good sense of where US policy is heading, one need only read the front page of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal - painful as that may be to do. I skip the Times but do read the Journal daily because of the audience it reaches - high level people in business and government who want real information to guide them in their work. So despite the Journal being a voice for US business and imperialism, knowing how to read it and doing it carefully yields useful information and clues about what future US policy is likely to be.
The Wall Street Journal Signals Evo Morales Is Now A US Target
The May 2 Journal was a good example as they had a feature front page story headlined "Bolivia Seizes Natural-Gas Fields In a Show of Energy Nationalism." That alone signals a call to arms that's backed up strongly in the copy that follows.
The Journal began its heated rhetoric claiming Evo Morales has been "emboldened by Hugo Chavez's moves against private oil companies" and on May 1 (symbolically on May Day celebrating working people around the world including in the US in a big way for the first time) nationalized the country's largest natural gas field, San Alberto, and ordered the army to "take control of it and the country's other fields." It went on to explain that it ordered foreign oil companies to relinquish control of the fields, accept "much tougher operating terms or leave the country."
Bolivian law is clear that the state owns the resources in the country. Up to now it's allowed foreign investors to operate the fields and take the majority share of production from them to sell for their gain. Last year, however, Bolivia raised the state's take to an effective 50% of production by increasing taxes and royalties. Yesterday the government went further by declaring the state owns the gas once it's been extracted and that the companies operating in the two largest fields would only get 18% of the production for themselves.
Translating the Journal's Message Including What They Failed to Explain
A little translation is in order. What the Journal didn't explain and never would is that those "tougher operating terms" are simply Bolivia's right as an independent nation (and all other nations as well) to get the majority benefits from its own natural resources and that foreign investors are there sharing in them only because the country allowed them to. But instead of being grateful, the Journal makes clear, without stating it, that the investors are greedy and want the lion's share and on their terms.
What's also left unsaid or unsatisfactorily explained is nationalization does not mean expropriation. Evo Morales has made it clear that foreign investors will not lose the rights to their investments. What they will lose once Morales' plan is implemented (he's giving them six months to comply) is their unfair share of the profits and benefits they never had a right to have in the first place. Under the Morales plan, a new contract will be made between the government and foreign investors guaranteeing that the people of Bolivia will receive the majority of benefits from its own resources while at the same time foreign investors will receive their fare share but no more than that. It also means the government alone now will decide the terms of revenue sharing and tax obligations due rather than Big Oil dictating them with the long shadow of the US looming in the background, which is still the case, of course.
The Journal then became more inflammatory as it has in its past and recent railings against Hugo Chavez. It claimed high energy prices have sparked a resurgent wave of nationalism from Caracas to Moscow. Of course, it forgot to mention the one country above all others where so-called nationalism and protectionism is a national religion - the US. Here where I live, no outside investors are allowed in (especially from developing nations) to profit except on the ironclad rules we set, take it or leave it. So by US imperial rules (the only ones, no others allowed), what's good for us is not acceptable or allowed for anyone else because we said so.
The Journal went on to say Morales is mimicking measures against Big Oil by "Mr. Chavez" (he happens to be the President and should be addressed that way), and that Morales and Chavez are "both playing a game of chicken with foreign oil companies." It also couldn't resist raising the specter of Fidel Castro and the fact that Chavez and Morales signed a free trade accord over the past weekend with the man the imperial US hates most.
There's more to this story as well which the Journal points out into their long article. The leading Peruvian candidate, Ollanta Humala, in the upcoming presidential runoff election against US choice by default Alan Garcia, has also called for nationalization of the country's natural gas and mining resources. And Evo Morales has made it clear he intends to nationalize Bolivia's other natural resources likely beginning with its forests and mines. Further, to cap off a growing US Latin American nightmare, last month Equador passed a law designed to cut the windfall profits of foreign crude producers (including US based Occidental Petroleum) by giving the government (meaning the people) 50% of oil company profits whenever the international oil market exceeds the prices established in existing contracts.
What These Developments Mean for the US and How It's Likely to Respond
There certainly is trouble for the US in Latin America and in the oil patch there as well as in Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and who knows where else it may spread. So what can we make of all this, and what's most likely to happen going forward. The US is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to hold on to the oil treasure it stole by invading Iraq. It's also made it clear it has designs on those same resources in neighboring Iran and may attack that country using nuclear weapons. And if that isn't enough on one plate to digest, it faces a dilemma in Venezuela it's tried unsuccessfully three times to solve.
Venezuela has even greater hydrocarbon reserves than Iraq or Iran (possibly the largest in the world even above Saudi Arabia's) and is led by a courageous man unwilling to surrender his nation's sovereignty (or its resources) to its imperial northern neighbor demanding it and them. And now the heavenly virus of the desire to be truly independent is beginning to spread to Bolivia, Peru if Hamala wins the runoff election, hopefully Equador and significant opposition groups outside the governments in other countries as well like Nigeria and Nepal. These nations, or opposition groups in them, are demanding equity and justice for their people, and are beginning to raise their heads and demand the rights they're entitled to. If they all get them, that's bad news for the US and the dominant corporate interests here that profit handsomely by exploiting the resources of underdeveloped nations and its cheap labor as well. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales know this and have spoken out and acted courageously against these longtime abuses in defense the rights of their own people. But their doing so is intolerable to the US which will do everything in its power to reverse the loss of its special privilege.
So what can we expect ahead. I have no doubt whatever, and I've written about this several times. When the heat is turned up against US interests, this country won't go quietly into the night. The plans are well underway now for a fourth attempt to oust Hugo Chavez that may include assassinations and possibly an armed assault by US invading forces. Last Sunday VHeadline published a commentary/review I wrote about Noam Chomsky's new book Failed States. In an email I received from Chomsky on April 29 he updated the views he stated in his new book and gave a blunt assessment of what may be in prospect which I'll quote again here: he said he "wouldn't be surprised to see (US inspired) secessionist movements in the oil producing areas in Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia, all in areas that are accessible to US military force and alienated from the governments, with the US then moving in to 'defend' them and blasting the rest of the country if necessary."
I share that view although I'm not privy to what hostile plans my government has in mind. I'll only state my strong belief that something big is planned to oust President Chavez (and now maybe Evo Morales as well) that will only become apparent once the fireworks begin. Today's feature article in the Wall Street Journal only strengthens my view.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog address at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Us vs. Them: The Revenge
Get ready for the Coalition of the Willing, Episode II: Bolton says US could seek Iran sanctions outside UN
By Vicki Allen
Reuters
May 2, 2006
WASHINGTON - With no clear sign the United States can win U.N. support for sanctions against Iran, the Bush administration said on Tuesday it could work instead with like-minded nations to punish Tehran for its nuclear programs.
The United States, which has its own sanctions on the Islamic republic, is lobbying for the United Nations Security Council to impose international sanctions on Iran but faces resistance from veto holders Russia and China.
"If for whatever reason the council couldn't fulfill its responsibilities, then I think it would be incumbent on us, and I'm sure we would press ahead to ask other countries or other groups of countries to impose those sanctions," John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told a House of Representatives government reform subcommittee.
Diplomats have said the United States could seek to persuade Iran's European trade partners to sanction Tehran if it fails to win support for wider sanctions at the council.
Under sharp questioning from Democrats who said President George W. Bush appeared intent on war with Iran, Bolton dismissed as "fiction" news reports that the United States has covert forces in Iran. He said Bush was focused on diplomatic remedies.
Washington says Iran is pursuing a nuclear program to develop weapons, while Tehran insists it is only for civilian energy needs.
Bolton, along with U.N. ambassadors from France and Britain are expected to introduce a new Security Council resolution this week. It would require Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment, invoking Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, making compliance mandatory.
Bolton raised the prospect that Russia and China could abstain rather than veto the Chapter 7 resolution.
"While it would be desirable to have a unanimous Security Council when we adopt this resolution under Chapter 7," Bolton said, "it's not impossible that we would proceed without them."
AT ODDS ON U.N. CHANGES
As the Bush administration presses for U.N. action on Iran and to quell the violence in Sudan's Darfur region, the hearing focused on whether U.N. sanctions can be effective given the corruption in the oil-for-food program in Iraq.
"We need an effectively functioning U.N. We need a U.N. that can handle major sanctions programs," Bolton said, pressing the administration's case for sweeping reforms at the international body.
He complained that developing nations last week adopted a resolution "which, for all intents and purposes, tanks" U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's management reform plan.
Bolton said he hoped those nations, which he said provide around 12 percent of the U.N. budget, realize "that repudiating the countries that contribute the overwhelming bulk of the U.N. budget isn't a way to win friends and influence people."
Under questioning by Democrats, Bolton said he had not read an article in the New Yorker magazine that the United States had covert military operations in Iran "because I don't have time to read much fiction."
He also rebuffed persistent questions from Democrats on whether in his previous post as the State Department's top arms control diplomat, he had a role in writing administration documents making now discredited assertions about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Congressman. I had no role in this issue," Bolton told Rep. Henry Waxman of California, top Democrat on the Government Reform committee.
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UN powers divided over Iran; US threatens sanctions
AFP
May 2, 2006
PARIS - Envoys from the top five UN powers, plus Germany, said that a "firm" international response was needed over Iran's nuclear programme, but remained at odds over what measures to take after a Paris meeting ended without agreement.
Further negotiations were to take place in coming days, with foreign ministers to gather in New York next Monday with the aim of producing a UN resolution acceptable to all.
The hardening stance against Iran, led by the West's push to impose sanctions, sent oil prices to a new record level. Brent North Sea crude for June delivery rose to 74.97 dollars a barrel.
The Paris talks were the first among senior representatives of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, as well as Germany, since the International Atomic Energy told the Security Council last Friday that Iran was in breach of a UN demand to halt uranium enrichment.
Nicholas Burns, the number three in the US State Department, said after the meeting with counterparts from the other countries that "all agreed that the Iran nuclear programme should be suspended, and agreed to begin Security Council debate and start negotiating a resolution for suspension".
But he also voiced frustration with permanent Security Council members Russia and China which are opposing the United States and its EU allies.
"It's time for countries to take responsibilities, especially those countries that have close relationships with Iran," he said.
The United States, backed by Britain, France and Germany, fear Iran is on the path to building a nuclear arsenal under cover of developing atomic energy and wants to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN's Charter -- a passage that would open the way for sanctions and eventually even force as a way to freeze its activities.
But Moscow and Beijing, which are major trading partners with oil-rich Iran, are calling instead for a softer approach.
The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said Tuesday that if a tough resolution was stymied, his country was ready to form a coalition of allies to impose sanctions outside of a UN mandate.
"If we were faced with a veto by one of the permanent members, if for whatever reason the council couldn't fulfill its responsibilities, then I think it would be incumbent on us, and I'm sure we would press ahead to ask other countries or other groups of countries to impose those sanctions," Bolton told a congressional committee in Washington.
French foreign ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the six countries involved in the Paris meeting agreed that Iran's nuclear program "is not compatible with the demands of the international community" and were concerned at its development.
He added: "It has been agreed to pursue discussions, in particular in New York, with the aim of reaching a firm decision from the UN Security Council and addressing a clear message to Iran."
But Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said earlier Tuesday there was no question -- "absolutely not" -- of Iran suspending its uranium enrichment work, and he predicted China and Russia would block the threat of UN sanctions.
"There is a very wrong assumption held by some that the West can do anything it wants through the Security Council," he told the hardline Tehran daily Kayhan.
At the same time, the head of the Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, said Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium to a higher level of purity than previously achieved.
The grade reached -- 4.8 percent purity -- would not be exceeded because "this level suffices for making nuclear fuel," he said.
The clerical regime has insisted its nuclear activities are exclusively for developing atomic energy.
Purity of more than 90 percent is required to produce the fissile core of an atom bomb -- a weapon Western intelligence assessments say Iran is at least seven years from being able to build.
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Iran close to having reactor quality uranium
Last Updated Wed, 03 May 2006 06:47:29 EDT
CBC News
Iran has nearly managed to enrich uranium to the point where it can be used to fuel nuclear reactors, the head of the country's nuclear program said on Wednesday.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh said Iran had produced uranium of 4.8 per cent purity. Last month, Tehran declared it had enriched uranium to 3.6 per cent
Nuclear reactors used to produce electricity need uranium enriched to five per cent purity.
Meanwhile, the United States, Britain and France were set on Wednesday to brief the United Nations Security Council on a proposed resolution aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear program.
Despite Iran's protestations to the contrary, Western allies are concerned the Islamic country's ambitions go beyond nuclear power generation to nuclear weapons.
However, Russia and China are likely to oppose the resolution. Both countries are concerned it would be a step toward sanctions, or even military action against Iran.
A vote has yet to be scheduled.
While a reactor needs fuel enriched to five per cent, a nuclear warhead needs uranium enriched to 90 per cent.
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Iran slams Europe policies on Iran
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-03 21:07:10
TEHRAN, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has slammed European countries for their policies on the Islamic Republic, saying they have always been under U.S. pressure, according to an interview published on Wednesday.
"We can analyze Iran's relations with Europe both in the economic, political fields and the international cooperation, then we will see that Europe adopted inapposite and illogical gestures from the beginning of the revolution and has sustained those gestures," Mottaki said on Tuesday in an interview with the daily paper Kayhan.
"Under the U.S. leadership, Europe has always put accusations which are against Iran in their list," said Mottaki.
When referring to the alleged breakage of the good relationship between Iran and Europe by Iran's new government, the minister dismissed the allege, saying "European countries have never toned down their unfriendly approach toward Iran, and have always been covetous on Iran's markets with greedy and avarice."
"These relations have always benefited the west and we have no break with them in economic relations," he stressed.
The European countries are Iran's biggest trade partners, who import oil, carpet and some other agriculture products, such as pistachios from Iran.
Commenting on Iran's sensitive nuclear issue and an attempt by the U.S., Britain and France to introduce a resolution in the United Nations Security Council to compel Iran to halt the uranium activities, Mottaki vowed that Iran would never give in to pressures.
"We will never return suspension of the uranium enrichment work. It's very wrong some people believe the west could do anything it likes through the use of a tool called Security Council," said Mottaki.
The foreign minister made these remarks when envoys from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany were meeting in Paris to discuss the current situations.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei submitted a report on April 28 to the UN Security Council, saying Iran had ignored the council's non-binding demand to suspend all uranium enrichment by the April 28 deadline. The IAEA has prompted calls from Western powers for tougher Security Council action against Iran.
Foreign ministers of five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China --plus Germany are scheduled to meet in New York on May 9 to discuss response to ElBaradei's report.
Tuesday's meeting in Paris was meant to prepare the ground for the New York meeting of foreign ministers of the six nations.
Iran announced in earlier April that it had produced low-grade enriched uranium by launching 164 centrifuges at the uranium enrichment facility in the central town of Natanz.
That marked a technical leap in the process for nuclear power plant construction, which immediately aroused strong international concern.
Iran has been insisting that its nuclear program is fully peaceful.
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This high-octane rocket-rattling against Tehran is unlikely to succeed
Tariq Ali
Wednesday May 3, 2006
The Guardian
Till now, what has prevented the crisis in Iraq from becoming a total debacle for the United States has been the open collaboration of the Iranian clerics. Iranian foreign policy - fragmentary and opportunist - has always been determined by the needs and interests of the clerical state rather than any principled anti-imperialist strategy. In the past, this has led to a de facto collaboration with Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war, the clerics had no hesitation in buying arms from the Israeli regime to fight Iraq, then backed by Britain and the US. In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq - hoping, no doubt, that clearing the path for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar might have won them a respite - the regime took a tougher stance on the nuclear question.
The Bush administration appears to be psyching itself up for a safe strike against Iran either by itself or via the Israelis, whose new leaders have referred to the Iranian president as a psychopath and a new Hitler. Why has Washington manufactured this crisis? The hypocrisy of Bush, Blair, Chirac or Olmert - their own states armed with thousands of nuclear weapons - making a casus belli of what are, by all accounts, primitive gropings on Iran's part towards the technology necessary for the lowest grade of nuclear self-defence, hardly needs to be spelled out. So long as these powers are allowed to enlarge their nuclear armouries unimpeded, why should Tehran not?
The country is not only ringed by atomic states (India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel), it also faces a string of American bases with potential or actual nuclear stockpiles in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Nuclear-armed US aircraft carriers and submarines patrol the waters off its southern coast. Historically, Iran has every reason to fear outside threats. Its elected government was overthrown with covert Anglo-American aid in 1953, and the secular opposition destroyed. From 1980 to 1988, the western powers abetted Saddam Hussein's onslaught, in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians died. More than 300 Iraqi missiles were launched at Iranian cities and economic targets, especially the oil industry. In the war's final stages, the US destroyed nearly half the Iranian navy in the Gulf and, for good measure, shot down a crowded civilian passenger plane.
For the clerical state, the war on terror has been the best and the worst of times. Oil prices have soared. Enemy regimes on both sides, Baghdad and Kabul, have been overthrown. The Iraqi Shia parties that they have been fostering for years are now in office. Washington has been reliant on their help to sustain its occupations both there and in Afghanistan. Yet social tensions in Iran are high. In this context, the nuclear issue is one of the regime's few unifying projects. It is worth recalling that the Iranian nuclear programme began under the Shah with technology offered by the Americans. Khomeini put the project on hold, considering it un-Islamic. Operations were restarted, with Russians later taking over construction of the light-water reactors at Bushehr begun by the West Germans in the 1970s. From the start, Iran, like Germany, the Netherlands or Japan, has wanted its programme to take in the full nuclear cycle, including uranium enrichment; Russia has several times threatened to impose conditions on fuel deliveries. Enrichment centrifuges were surreptitiously imported from neighbouring Pakistan; not the process, but the failure to report it, was in contravention of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreements.
There is no evidence that Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons now than was Iraq in September 2002, when Blair and Cheney assured the world that Baghdad represented a "genuine nuclear threat". Reports in 2003 by a somewhat demented sect, the Mojahedin e-Khalq, of preliminary nuclear research at the Natanz installation were no such proof. But in the competitive scramble by European powers to enhance their standing with Washington after the invasion of Iraq, France, Germany and Britain were keen to prove their mettle by forcing extra agreements on Tehran. The Khatami regime immediately capitulated. In December 2003, they signed the "Additional Protocol" demanded by the EU3, agreeing to a "voluntary suspension" of the right to enrichment guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Within three months, the IAEA was condemning them for having failed to ratify it; in June 2004, its inspectors produced examples of Iranian enrichment work, perfectly legal under the NPT, but ruled out by the Additional Protocol. Israel has boasted of its intention to "destroy Natanz" - the contrast to its stealth bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 a measure of the new balance of forces. In the summer of 2004, a large bi-partisan majority in the US Congress passed a resolution for "all appropriate measures" to prevent an Iranian weapons programme and there was speculation about an "October surprise" before the 2004 presidential poll. Plans were thus well advanced before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in the June 2005 Iranian presidential election.
Ahmadinejad reaped the vote against Khatami's miserable record between 1997 and 2005. Economic conditions had worsened and Khatami was prepared to defend the rights of foreign investors, but not those of independent newspapers or protesting students. Manoeuvring ineffectually between contradictory pressures, he exhausted his moral credit. Contrary to some reports, Ahmadinejad has not so far imposed any new puritanical clampdown on social mores. Instead, the most likely constituency to be disappointed is Ahmadinejad's own: the millions of young, working-class jobless, crammed into overcrowded living conditions, in desperate need of a national development policy that neither neoliberalism nor Islamist voluntarism will provide.
Nor is fundamentalist backwardness exhibited in the denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews and the threat to obliterate Israel, a basis for any foreign policy. To face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy - not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics.
Clearing the way for the overthrow of the Iraqi Ba'ath and Afghan Taliban regimes and backing the US occupations has bought no respite. The US undersecretary of state has spoken of "ratcheting up the pressure". Israeli defence minister Shaul Mofaz has said that "Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability, and it must have the capability to defend itself with all that this implies, and we are preparing." Hillary Clinton accused the Bush administration of "downplaying the Iranian threat" and called for pressure on Russia and China to impose sanctions on Tehran. Chirac has spoken of using French nuclear weapons against such a "rogue state". Perhaps it is simply high-octane rocket-rattling, the aim being to frighten Tehran into submission. Bullying is unlikely to succeed. Will the west then embark on a new war? If so, the battlefield might stretch from the Tigris to the Oxus and without any guarantee of success.
· Tariq Ali is the author of Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
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Power Makes Men Mad
By Patrick Seale
04/14/06
Dar Al-Hayat
Enormously powerful and yet paranoid with fear, the U.S. and Israel act as if the possession of overwhelming force is the only guarantee of their security.
An extraordinary paradox of the current international scene is that the most powerful countries in the world are also the most afraid - and fear has caused them to lose their senses.
Globally, the United States has no immediate military rival; certainly no other state has the power to strike anywhere on our planet - and far beyond it into space - at very short notice. American strategists call this the doctrine of Global Strike.
Similarly, in terms of military power, both conventional and non-conventional, Israel has no challenger in a vast region from Central Asia, across the Arab world, to north, east and central Africa. At a conservative estimate, it has a nuclear arsenal of between 200 and 300 warheads, as well as highly effective long-range delivery systems. As Ariel Sharon, its stricken leader, used to be fond of saying, Israel's sphere of influence extends as far as an F16 can fly.
And yet the U.S. and Israel behave as if they are about to be attacked by a formidable enemy. They scold and threaten, huff and puff, flex their muscles and brandish their weapons as if facing an imminent danger to their very existence.
Instead of putting their formidable power to work reducing tensions and resolving conflicts - as they should be doing - they go about stoking the fires of anger and hate, apparently unaware that the destabilization they cause must in due course engulf them too.
'Destabilization' is, in fact, too mild a term to describe the profound disturbance to the regional and global order which the United States and Israel are creating by their violently hostile approach to the Islamic Republic of Iran and to the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which the Palestinians democratically elected as their government.
Demonisation and vilification, international isolation, sanctions, boycotts and military strikes, these are just some of the policies and threats directed at both Iran and Hamas. In the United States, pro-Israeli groups, such as the powerful Jewish lobby AIPAC, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the influential think-tank AIPAC created, are beating the drums of war against Iran, while Israel has led the world-wide campaign to boycott Hamas. Shimon Peres, Israel's wolf in sheep's clothing, even travelled to the Vatican to persuade the Pope to join the boycott!
In the past week or so, as Palestinian groups continue their pinpricks of Israel with a few harmless home-made rockets, Israel launched repeated air strikes and fired more than one thousand artillery shells at the northern Gaza strip, killing at least sixteen Palestinians, including several children. It has killed about 50 Palestinians and wounded many more since the Palestinian elections last January. Last Tuesday, the Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that 'Our operations are going to intensify!' The real scandal is that the rich Arab Gulf states have not rushed to help the bankrupt Palestinian government.
In the case of Iran, U.S. air and sea strikes at hundreds of targets - including the use of tactical nuclear weapons - are being seriously considered in the more demented higher reaches of the U.S. government, according to Seymour Hersch, the usually well-informed American journalist writing in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine.
Not daring to stand up for its own values, the European Union has shamefully joined in the pressure on Iran and the boycott of Hamas. Reeking of hypocrisy and double standards, the chorus raised is that Hamas must renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist and abide by past agreements.
The truth is that Hamas has honored a truce for the past 15 months in spite of Israel's ceaseless attacks and killings. It has declared itself ready for Quartet-sponsored peace talks with Israel which, if successful, would inevitably lead to mutual recognition. But Israel refuses to negotiate with a Hamas government, has severed all political contacts with it, has demonized it as a 'terrorist organization', and has withheld some $50m a month of the Palestinians' own money raised from taxes and customs dues. Needless to say, Israel has violated every agreement concluded with the Palestinians.
Enormously powerful and yet paranoid with fear, the U.S. and Israel act as if the possession - and indeed the use - of overwhelming force is the only guarantee of their security. Dialogue and diplomacy, mutual accommodation, the search for a balance of power, the mediation of international institutions - all these traditional instruments for conflict resolution have been discarded and, as a result, the world has become a very dangerous place.
Iran claims to have successfully enriched small quantities of uranium for research purposes, up to a low level of 3.5 per cent, appropriate for use as nuclear fuel in power stations, such as the Bushehr plant now under construction by Russia. Does this Iranian achievement constitute a threat to either the U.S. or Israel? No objective expert thinks so, and certainly not the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its chief Muhammad AlBaradei, who is this week visiting Tehran.
Should the U.S. attack Iran to put a halt to its nuclear program? The usually sober New York Times this week denounced as 'reckless folly' the possibility of such an American war.
Iran has pledged that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. It cooperates closely with the IAEA. It has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the so- called Additional Protocol, which allows for intrusive and surprise inspections of its nuclear facilities. Under the NPT rules, Iran has every right to master the uranium fuel cycle in order to produce nuclear fuel. Even if it wished to build a nuclear weapon - which is by no means certain - this would require many more years of work.
So why the fuss? Why the hysteria? Rehashing the tired old cliché, General Dan Halutz, Israel's chief of staff, declared this week that a nuclear Iran was a 'threat not only to Israel but to the entire free, democratic world.' He was thus echoing the overheated rhetoric of John Bolton, that finger-wagging neocon scare-monger, surely the worst envoy the United States has ever sent to the United Nations.
The war in Iraq, ruthlessly promoted by pro-Israeli neocons, has resulted in a strategic catastrophe for the United States - with the painful end still not in sight. A war in Iran would set the region on fire; unleash a world-wide wave of anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli terror; expose U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to devastating attack; put intolerable strain on the trans- Atlantic relationship between Europe and the U.S.; endanger the oil flow from the Gulf; and trigger a world economic recession. In the view of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, it could put an end to America's role in the world.
Washington should stop its senseless sabre-rattling and instead engage Tehran in wide- ranging political talks leading to diplomatic relations, security guarantees and a recognition of Iran's important place in the Gulf. Israel, in turn, should talk to Hamas, not seek to destroy it. Peace and integration into the region are of far greater value than a few kilometers of stolen territory on the West Bank.
Commenting on Iran's claim to have enriched uranium, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary declared this week that 'This is a regime that needs to be building confidence with the international community. Instead they're moving in the wrong direction.' With greater lucidity, he might have offered this advice to his own government and that of its Israeli ally.
-Dr Patrick Seale is a leading British writer and consultant on the Middle East and is the author of many books including "Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East".
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Iran threatens Israel if US acts "evil"
By Edmund Blair
Reuters
Tue May 2, 2006
TEHRAN - Iran threatened on Tuesday to attack Israel in response to any "evil" act by the United States and said it had enriched uranium to a level close to the maximum compatible with civilian use in power stations.
The defiant statements were issued shortly before world powers met in Paris late on Tuesday to plan their next moves after Tehran rejected a U.N. call to halt uranium enrichment.
Senior officials from the U.N. Security Council's permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany discussed how to curb an Iranian program that Western nations say conceals a drive for atomic warheads.
"The participants discussed the steps to come in the United Nations Security Council," a French Foreign Ministry statement said after the dinner.
"The three European political directors presented the broad lines of a draft resolution aimed at giving mandatory force to the IAEA's (U.N. nuclear watchdog) demands, in particular those which deal with the suspension of activities linked to the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium."
Iran refuses to back down from what it calls its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
Driving home that message, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said his country had now succeeded in purifying uranium to 4.8 percent, at the top end of the 3 to 5 percent range for fuel used in nuclear power plants.
"Enrichment above 5 percent is not on Iran's agenda," Aghazadeh told the students' ISNA news agency.
Iran has previously said it had enriched to more than 4 percent, far below the 80 percent level needed for bomb-making.
It has used a test cascade of 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium so far and is building two similar cascades. It says it will start installing 3,000 centrifuges later this year -- which could yield enough material for one bomb within a year.
The United States and Israel have vowed to deny Iran nuclear weapons. Washington has not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails and Tehran has sworn to retaliate if attacked.
TARGETING ISRAEL
"We have announced that wherever America does something evil, the first place that we target will be Israel," ISNA quoted a senior Revolutionary Guards commander, Rear Admiral Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehqani, as saying on Tuesday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map".
Iran's deputy oil minister said there was "some possibility" of a U.S. attack on his country over its nuclear program.
"I am worried. Everybody is worried," Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian said in New Delhi after talks on a proposed $7 billion pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan.
Concerns that Iran's dispute with the West could lead to disruption of its oil output pushed oil prices above $74 a barrel, close to the record of $75.35 touched last month. [...]
Comment: Isn't it curious how all the uproar over Iran is being fueled not be the nation's nuclear technology, but by its alleged threats against Israel? And isn't it also curious that, as we report elsewhere on today's page, 75% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 cannot even find Israel on a map of the world??
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By Way of Deception
Impatient Mossad warns of (lies about) 'monster in the making'
April 30, 2006
WorldNetDaily.com
"This is what we know and this is what we'll do if you continue to do nothing"
If the visit to Washington last week by the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, was not enough to communicate Israel's growing impatience with the international community's failure to deal with Tehran's unchecked development of nuclear technology and bellicose threats to wipe the Jewish state "off the map," Ehud Olmert, prime minister designate, made it clear yesterday by denouncing Iran's president as a "psychopath" and comparing him to Hitler.
Mossad chief Meir Dagan, in Washington last week in preparation for a visit to the U.S. by Olmert on May 23, held secret meetings with U.S. officials to discuss Iran's nuclear program, reports the London Times. While details of the meetings were not revealed, it is believed Dagan met with his counterparts at the CIA, the Pentagon and the National Security Council.
"Dagan is not given to small talk and niceties," said an Israeli intelligence source, who believes Dagan's message to Washington policy makers was simple and blunt: "This is what we know and this is what we'll do if you continue to do nothing."
The revelation of the briefing comes in the wake of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) admission of alarming "gaps" in its knowledge of Iran's centrifuge program to enrich uranium and the level of involvement of Iran's military. Many intelligence experts believe Iran is operating a parallel nuclear program where military applications are secretly under development. Mossad reportedly claims to have evidence of enrichment sites in Iran hidden to IAEA inspectors "which can short-cut their timetable in the race for their first bomb."
"When I read the recent reports regarding Iran, I saw a monster in the making," said Dr. Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's foreign and defense committee.
Steinitz, who oversees Mossad's activities in Iran, fears Iran's first nuclear bomb is just one year away. "There is only one option that is worse than military action against Iran and that is to sit and do nothing," he said.
Comment: Let there be no mistake about the real identities of the motivators behind the entire War on the Middle East.
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Outed CIA agent was working on Iran
Rawstory
01/05/2006
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Reports Shuster in this rush transcript: "intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well."
MSNBC transcript follows:
Matthews: Ever since the White House/CIA leak scandal erupted, the nation has seen photographs here and there of Valerie Wilson, the CIA operative whose identity was blown. Now, thanks to a black tie event Saturday night, we have some video. Hardball correspondent David Shuster brings it to us and has the latest on the CIA leak case.
(David Shuster)
For the first time since bush administration officials revealed her undercover identity and ruined her career --- former CIA operative Valerie Wilson... Accompanied by her husband Joe Wilson, stepped in front of the television cameras. And their red carpet appearance Saturday night at the white house correspondent's dinner could not have come at a more dramatic moment in the CIA leak investigation itself.
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is weighing whether to indict top presidential advisor Karl Rove, otherwise known as bush's brain. And, white house supporters are stepping up their argument that unveiling Wilson's identity was not a crime. Joe Wilson's response?
Wilson: "Well the CIA I think has responded first by asking the Justice Department to open an investigation and my judgment the leak of national security information is a betrayal a minimum of one's security clearance and certainly of the public trust and I for one can't understand how Mr. Rove remains on the payroll of the US Government."
early in the case, rove admitted to investigators that he outed Valerie Wilson's identity to columnist Robert Novak -- Novak was the first journalist to publish Wilson's identity and the first to talk about it to investigators.
And last week, Karl rove testified again he may have spoken about the Wilson's with time magazine's matt cooper.
Rove said he denied that under oath for the first year of the investigation because of memory problems. A case of bad memory is scooter Libby's defense.
But in regards to Karl Rove, lawyers in the case say prosecutor Fitzgerald is still troubled by the timing of Rove's rolling disclosures: it seems that Rove's memory perks up with every new indication someone else will expose him. When rove finally began to update his testimony in October 2004... It was just days after cooper was first held in contempt for refusing to disclose confidential sources. And rove did not give cooper a clear waiver to testify until after cooper's appeals had been exhausted 9 months later.
In any case, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald considers whether to charge Karl rove with perjury, obstruction of justice, or worse... MSNBC has learned new information about the damage caused by the white house leaks.
Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.
The white house considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats.
President George W. Bush: "the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon. And now that we've got the goal in mind, we're working on the tactics."
But the tactics are not as clear in the midst of record low approval ratings and a diplomatic and military playing field limited by the u-s war in Iraq.
Madeleine Albright: "The world is in total turmoil right now. Worst I've ever seen it. (reporter) How do we get out of it? What's the number one issue as far as what's related to that turmoil? (Albright) Iraq. (reporter) What do we do about it? (Albright walks away)
the Iraq war is the backdrop for the CIA leak case. Joe Wilson had criticized the administration's case for the Iraq war... And the white house tried to undercut him by leaking, among other things, information about his CIA wife.
Shuster: the Wilsons say they've spoken to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald twice since the case began... And the last time was several months ago. So, they are waiting, like everybody else, for some sort of announcement from Fitzgerald's office about rove. Karl Rove's attorneys say they've been told by Fitzgerald that no decision will be made for at least another week. Chris?
Comment: Hmmm...now why do you suppose somone in the US or Israeli government would want to prevent anyone obtaining information about where Iran was getting its alleged WMD technology?
See this link for short video on this story
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Attacking Iran: The Israel Connection
Stephen Zunes,
Foreign Policy in Focus
May 3, 2006.
As the Bush administration spins stories on Iran, Americans are left to wonder whether we will be thrust into another war.
With even mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and The New Yorker publishing credible stories that the United States is seriously planning a military attack on Iran, increasing numbers of Americans are expressing concerns about the consequences of the United States launching another war that would once again place the United States in direct contravention of international law.
The latest National Security Strategy document published earlier this year labeled Iran as the most serious challenge to the United States posed by any country. This should be an indication of just how safe the United States is in the post-Cold War world, where the "most serious challenge" is no longer a rival superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems capable of destroying the United States, but a Third World country on the far side of the planet which, according to the latest National Intelligence Estimate out of Washington, is at least 10 years away from actually producing a usable nuclear weapon.
Furthermore, Iran has no capacity to develop any delivery system in the foreseeable future capable of landing a weapon within 10,000 miles of our shores.
However, despite the fact that there is no evidence that Iran is even developing nuclear weapons in the first place, the Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties argue that simply having the technology which would make it theoretically possible for Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon at some point in the future is sufficient casus belli.
As part of his desperate search for enemies, President Bush claimed in January that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "a grave threat to the security of the world," words that echoed language he used in reference to Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion of that oil-rich country. Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney vowed "meaningful consequences" if Iran did not give up its nuclear program and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton claimed there would be "tangible and painful consequences" if Iran did not cooperate.
The Washington Post quoted White House sources as reporting that "Bush views Tehran as a serious menace that must be dealt with before his presidency ends," apparently out of concern that neither a Democratic nor Republican successor might be as willing to consider a military option.
Not that he needs to worry about that. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, widely seen as the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, accused the Bush administration in January of not taking the threat of a nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the Bush administration for allowing European nations to take the lead in pursuing a diplomatic solution, and insisted that the administration should make it clear that military options were being actively considered.
Similarly, Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, another likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused the Bush administration of "ignoring and then largely deferring management of this crisis to the Europeans." Taking the diplomatic route, according to Bayh, "has certainly been damaging to our national security."
Despite the hostility of these two Democratic senators toward diplomatic means of resolving the crisis and the similarity of their rhetoric to the false claims they made prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government was a threat to global security and that diplomatic solutions were impossible, both Clinton and Bayh are widely respected by their fellow Democrats as leaders on security policy.
Indeed, in May of 2004, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution with only three dissenting votes calling on the Bush administration to "use all appropriate means" -- presumably including military force -- to "prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
As with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, both Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have tended to call witnesses before the relevant committees who would present the most alarmist perceptions as fact. Last month, for example, Patrick Clawson of the right-wing Washington Institute for Near East Policy testified before the Senate International Relations Committee that, "So long as Iran has an Islamic Republic, it will have a nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely."
None of the senators present, however, bothered to mention the inconvenient fact that under the secular regime of the Shah that preceded the Islamic Republic, Iran also had a nuclear program (which was actively supported and encouraged by the United States.) However, Clawson said that since a nuclear program was inevitable under the Islamic Republic, only by overthrowing the government--not through a negotiated settlement -- would the United States be safe from the nuclear threat. He insisted, therefore, that "the key issue" was not whether an arms control agreement could be enforced, but "How long will the present Iranian regime last?"
The Risks from a U.S. Attack on Iran
With the ongoing debacle in Iraq, any kind of ground invasion of Iran by U.S. forces is out of the question. Iran is three times bigger than Iraq, both in terms of population and geography. It is a far more mountainous country that would increase the ability of the resistance to engage in guerrilla warfare and the intensity of the nationalist backlash against such a foreign invasion would likely be even stronger.
An attack by air and sea-launched missiles and bombing raids by fighter jets would be a more realistic scenario. However, even such a limited military operation would create serious problems for the United States. The Washington Post, in a recent article about a possible U.S. strike against Iran, quoted Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist, as noting how "The Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it because it is so constrained" by ongoing operations in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.
Similarly, the Post quoted a former Pentagon official in contact with his former colleagues as observing how "I don't think anybody's prepared to use the military option at this point." Given that the growing opposition to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 's handling of the war in Iraq within the leadership of the armed services, as expressed by a number of prominent recently-retired generals, would make a major military operation without strong support from America's military leadership particularly problematic.
Fears expressed by some opponents of possible U.S. military action against Iran that the Iranians would retaliate through terrorist attacks against American interests are probably not realistic. Indeed, Iran's control over foreign terrorist groups and its role in terrorist operations has frequently been exaggerated by American analysts. However, there are a number of areas in which the United States would be particularly vulnerable to Iranian retaliation:
One would be in the Persian Gulf, where U.S. Navy ships could become easy targets for Iranian missiles and torpedoes.
Perhaps more serious would be in Iraq, where American troops are currently operating against the Sunni-led insurgency alongside Iranian-backed pro-government militias. If these Iranian-backed militias also decided to turn their guns on American forces, the United States would be caught in a vise between both sides in the country's simmering civil war with few places to hide.
It would be difficult for the United States to label militias affiliated with the ruling parties of a democratically-elected government fighting foreign occupation forces in their own country as "terrorists" or to use such attacks as an excuse to launch further military operations against Iran. (Given that the Iraqi government is ruled by two pro-Iranian parties, recent charges by the Bush administration that Iran is aiding the anti-government Sunni insurgency are utterly ludicrous and have been rejected by the Iraqi government.)
A U.S. air strike would be a clear violation of the United Nations Charter and would be met by widespread condemnation in the international community. It would further isolate the United States as a rogue superpower at a time in which it needs to repair its damaged relations with its European and Middle Eastern allies. Even Great Britain has expressed its opposition to military action.
Pro-Western Arab states, despite their unease at Iran's nuclear program, would react quite negatively to a U.S. strike, particularly since it would likely strengthen anti-American extremists by allowing them to take advantage of popular opposition to the United States utilizing force against a Muslim nation in order to defend the U.S.-Israeli nuclear monopoly in the region. As a result, the negative consequences of a U.S. attack may be strong enough to convince even the Bush administration not to proceed with the military option.
Israel as Proxy
Though direct U.S. military action against Iran is still very possible, it is more likely that the United States will encourage Israel to take military action instead. In such a scenario, the U.S. officials believe that the United States would gain the perceived benefits of a military strike against Iran while limiting the damage to the United States by focusing the world's wrath on Israel. Fox News reported that Bush administration officials effectively told the Israelis that "we are doing the heavy lifting in Iraq and Afghanistan... and that Israel needs to handle this themselves."
Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to violate international legal norms and -- with U.S. veto power blocking the UN Security Council from imposing sanctions, and the United States providing vast sums of unconditional military and economic assistance to their government -- its ability to get away with doing so. The Israeli government is convinced that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has radicalized the Iranian clerical leadership and that Iran, unlike Iraq in the final years of Saddam Hussein, poses a risk to Israel's national security interests. However, for reasons mentioned above, Israeli leaders have been reported to believe that the United States will not move militarily against Iran and that they will end up using their own forces instead.
An Israeli strike is not inevitable, however. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Israelis oppose the idea of an Israeli strike against Iran. Policy analyst Steve Clemons was quoted in the Washington Monthly as saying, "I have witnessed far more worries about Iranian President Ahmadinejad's anti-Holocaust and anti-Israel rhetoric in the U.S. than I did in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem... Nearly everyone I spoke to in Israel who ranged in political sympathies from the Likud right to Maretz left thought that... Israel thought it wrong-headed and too impulsive to be engaged in saber-rattling with Iran at this stage." He added, "Israeli national security bureaucrats -- diplomats and generals -- have far greater confidence that there are numerous potential solutions to the growing Iran crisis short of bombing them in an invasive, hot attack."
There is no indication that Iran would ever contemplate a first strike against Israel or any other country. Iran, like other Islamic governments in the region, has used Israel's repression of the Palestinians for propaganda purposes, but has rarely done anything to actually help the Palestinians.
It is inconceivable that the Iranians would ever consider launching a nuclear attack on Israel -- which possesses at least 300 nuclear weapons and sophisticated missiles and other delivery system that could totally destroy Iran -- for the sake of the Palestinians, many thousands of whom would die as well. However, an Israeli attack could give Iran grounds for retaliation. Despite these dangers, Israel -- with U.S. encouragement -- has long considered the possibility of an attack against Iran.
In the mid-1990s, prior to the election of the U.S.-backed Likud government of Benyamin Netanyahu to office, the peace process with the Palestinians was progressing steadily, a peace treaty had been signed with Jordan, and diplomatic and commercial ties with other Arab states was growing. With the prospects of a permanent Israeli-Arab peace, American arms exporters and their allies in Congress and the Clinton administration, along with their hawkish counterparts in Israel, began emphasizing the alleged threat to Israel from Iran as justification for the more than $2 billion worth of annual U.S. taxpayer subsidies for U.S. arms exporters for them to send weapons to Israel.
Among these was an agreement to provide Israel with sophisticated F-15 fighter bombers. As the peace process faltered due to increased repression and colonization by Israel and increased terrorism from radical Palestinian groups and as reformists appeared to be gaining momentum in Iran, Israel began focusing upon more immediate threats closer to home, though deliveries of the F-15s continued through 2001.
Last year, however, the United States unexpectedly provided Israel with an additional thirty long-range F-15s at a cost of $48 million each. The United States has also recently provided Israel with 5000 GBU-27 and GBU-28 weapons, better known as "bunker busters," warheads guided by lasers or satellites which can penetrate up to ten meters of earth and concrete to destroy suspected underground facilities. Reuters reported a senior Israeli security source as noting, "This is not the sort of ordinance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran..." Israel also has at least five submarines armed with sea-launched missiles which could easily get within range of Iranian targets.
One scenario reportedly has Israel sending three squadrons of F15s to fly over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, currently controlled by the U.S. air force, to strike at major Iranian facilities. The United States would provide satellite information for the attack as well as refueling for the Israeli jets as they leave Iranian air space for their return to Israel. The Sunday Times has reported that the Israelis have been "coordinating with American forces" for such a scenario.
That same article described Israeli commando training operations at a full-sized mockup of Iran's Natanz nuclear facility at a military facility in Israel's Negev Desert and the dispatch of clandestine Israeli Special Forces units into Iran. Meanwhile, the Israeli Ofek-6 spy satellite is now reported to have been moved to an orbit over Iranian facilities.
As far back as April 2004, President Bush exchanged letters with Sharon in which he stated, in reference to Iran, that, "Israel has the right to defend itself with its own forces."
Despite the widely-held tail-wagging-the-dog assumptions, history has shown that the United States has frequently used Israel to advance its strategic interests in the region and beyond, such as aiding pro-Western governments and pro-Western insurgencies, keeping radical nationalist governments like Syria in check and engaging in covert interventions in Jordan, Lebanon, and now Kurdistan.
During the 1980s, Israel was used to funnel arms to third parties the United States could not arm directly, such as the apartheid regime South Africa, the Guatemalan junta, the Nicaraguan Contras, and, ironically, the Iranian mullahs. Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 -- despite formal criticism -- was enthusiastically supported by the Reagan administration.
One Israeli analyst was quoted as saying in the Washington Post during the Iran-Contra scandal, "It's like Israel has become just another federal agency, one that's convenient to use when you want something done quietly." Nathan Shahan wrote in Yediot Ahronot that his country serves as the "Godfather's messenger," since Israel "undertakes the dirty work of the Godfather, who always tries to appear to be the owner of some large respectable business." Israeli satirist B. Michael describes U.S. aid to Israel as a situation where "My master gives me food to eat and I bite those whom he tells me to bite. It's called strategic cooperation."
Just as the ruling elites of medieval Europe used the Jews as money-lenders and tax collectors to avoid the wrath of an exploited population, the elites of the world's one remaining superpower would similarly be quite willing to use Israel to do their dirty work against Iran. That way Israel, not the United States, will get the blame. (In fact, there are those who blame Israel even when the United States takes military action itself, such as the various conspiracy theories now circulating that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was done on behalf of Israel.)
It Won't Work
A military strike against Iran, either directly by the United States or through Israel, will not likely succeed in curbing Iran's nuclear program. Indeed, it will likely motivate the Iranian government, with enhanced popular support in reaction to foreign aggression against their country, to redouble their efforts.
Iran has deliberately spread its nuclear facilities over a wide geographical range, with at least nine major locations. Even the bunker buster bombs may not fully penetrate a number of these facilities, assuming all the secret sites could be located.
The U.S.-backed Israeli raid of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, according to virtually all accounts by Iraqi nuclear scientists, was at most a temporary setback for Saddam Hussein's nuclear program and ultimately led to the regime accelerating its timetable for the development of nuclear weapons until it was dismantled under the watch of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency in the early 1990s. Despite this, the Congress passed a resolution in 1991 defending Israel's action and criticizing the United Nations for its opposition to Israel's illegal military attack.
The only real solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program is a diplomatic one. For example, Iran has called for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone for the entire Middle East in which all nations in the region would be required to give up their nuclear weapons and open up their programs to strict international inspections. Iran has been joined in its proposal by Syria, by U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, and by other Middle Eastern states. Such nuclear weapons-free zones have already been successfully established for Latin America, the South Pacific, Antarctica, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
The Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties have rejected such a proposal, however, insisting that the United States has the right to unilaterally decide which countries get to have nuclear weapons and which ones do not, effectively imposing a kind of nuclear apartheid. In 1958, the United States was the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region, bringing tactical nuclear bombs on its ships and planes.
Israel became a nuclear weapons state by the early 1970s with the quiet support of the U.S. government. To Iran's east, Pakistan and India have developed nuclear weapons as well, also with U.S. support: the Bush administration recently signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with India and has provided both countries with nuclear-capable jet fighter-bombers.
Located in such a dangerous region, then, it is not surprising that Iran might be seeking a nuclear deterrent. The United States and Israel do not want Iran to have such a deterrent, however, since it would challenge the U.S.-Israeli nuclear monopoly in that oil-rich region. In other words, what those in the Bush administration, the Israeli government, and the bipartisan leadership in Congress are concerned about is protecting the hegemonic interests of the United States and its junior partner Israel, not stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Such a policy does not protect the interests of the American or Israeli people, nor does it help the people of Iran and the Middle East as a whole. It remains to be seen, however, whether the American public will once again allow the Bush administration and the leadership of both parties Congress to successfully employ exaggerated stories of potential "weapons of mass destruction" controlled by an oil-rich country on the far side of the world to justify a disastrous war.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor of Foreign Policy In Focus. He is the author of "Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism" (Common Courage Press, 2003).
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Israeli Forces Kill 36 Palestinians Including 3 Children In April
IMEMC
03/05/2006
A report based on data collected from Palestinian humanitarian centers and press agencies revealed that Israeli soldiers shot and killed 36 Palestinians, including three children, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the month of April; at least 300 residents were arrested in several areas in the West Bank
Al Jeel Center for Journalism reported that most of the residents killed were either wanteds who were assassinated or were civilians killed during assassination attacks and shelling.
Ten of those killed were from the West Bank, while 26 residents were killed in the Gaza Strip during air strikes and shelling especially in the northern areas.
The month of April has been the bloodiest month since Israel carried its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, in august 2005.
In April the , Israeli soldiers arrested 320 Palestinian residents; most of the arrestees are members of resistance factions; the arrests were mainly carried out during invasions of the cities of Hebron and Nablus. Women and children werealso among the arrested.
During the invasions dozens of residents, including children, were injured.
Soldiers also causes serious environmental damage they uprooted dozens of trees, annexed and bulldozed hundreds of Dunams of Palestinian farmlands for the construction of the Wall and settlement expansion.
Most of the main Palestinian areas were closed off with residents unable to leave their areas as a result of the strict procedures practiced by the soldiers at the checkpoints scattered, all over the West Bank.
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IDF chief: I will resist demands to reenter Gaza
Haaretz
03/05/2006
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said yesterday he is currently opposed to a ground force operation in the Gaza Strip.
In an Independence Day interview for Haaretz, Halutz said he is not pushing for such an operation since it would not necessarily end the firing of Qassam rockets at targets within Israel.
"We were in Gaza for 38 years. In all the years of fighting in Gaza, we never managed to cut the number of Qassams to zero." [...]
Comment: One has to wonder how, in 38 years of almost complete infiltration of life in the tiny gaza strip, the IDF were unable to stop the firing of rockets. One would almost think that someone within the Israeli establishment wanted "Palestinian terrorists" to continue to present at least the semblance of a threat to Israel...
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Mourning a West Bank wife
By Matthew Price
BBC News, Tulkarm
In a small room on the edge of Tulkarm, they are wailing for 44-year-old Eitas Zalat.
There are tears, screams, and whimpers. Women turn to me in sorrow, and in anger.
Eitas Zalat was a mother of five. She was killed at dawn by an Israeli army bullet while sitting in her living room.
Outside one of Tulkarm's mosques, as the people of this impoverished West Bank town prayed, I spoke to Eitas Zalat's husband.
"We were sitting next to each other and the Jews shot her while we were speaking together. There were no weapons, there were no bombs. Why they do this? Why?"
Military 'mistake'
In a place as complex as the Middle East there are many answers to that question. Two are worth noting here, I think.
The first is the Israeli army's answer. I called the spokesperson's unit and was told Israeli soldiers had gone to Tulkarm to arrest a leader of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli army said they surrounded a building they believed he was in. They called for people to leave the apartment building. No one did.
Then - the army says - soldiers saw a "suspicious movement" at a window. They thought they would be fired at, so the soldiers opened fire at the house.
Mrs Zalat was killed. The army says it made a mistake. It has apologised.
That is one possible answer to Yousef Zalat's question, "Why?"
'Pattern of indifference'
Another comes from an Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem.
The circumstances under which Eitas Zalat was killed, the group says, "raise the grave suspicion that Israeli security forces acted as if they were conducting an assassination rather than an arrest operation".
B'Tselem says that between January 2004 and 1 May 2006, 157 Palestinians were killed in what Israeli forces term arrest operations in the West Bank.
Of these, at least 35 were civilians, whom the military admits were mere bystanders to the operation.
B'Tselem accuses the Israeli army of "demonstrating a pattern of indifference to the safety of Palestinian civilians".
Such words though do not comfort Palestinians.
The death of Mrs Zalat is for them just another illustration of how deadly Israel's occupation of their land often is.
It shows - they say - how they are the victims of this conflict. [...]
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French foreign ministry confirms visa denial to Hamas officials
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-03 23:17:00
PARIS, May 3 (Xinhua) -- French Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday that they have denied entry visas to two Hamas officials Salah Muhammad al-Bardawil and Mohammad al-Rantissi.
At an electronic news briefing on Wednesday, the French Foreign Ministry said after negotiating with its European partners, France decided not to issue visa for Rantissi and Bardawil before a common stand would be taken at the next European foreign ministers' meeting on May 15.
To the question if France's decision would lead to the result that the Hamas members could not get into any other Schengen country, the French ministry said: "Except that there is one country among them to decide to give them Limited Territorial Validity visas (LTV)."
The French government last month denied an entry visa to Palestinian Planning Minister Samir Abu Eisheh, who had been due to attend a conference in the French capital.
The European Union plans to discuss relations with the Hamas at the meeting on May 15.
Hamas won a landslide victory in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections. The Hamas-led Palestinian government has been under a severe financial siege since it took office in March due to its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace deals, three conditions required to get western aid.
The United States and the European Union suspended direct financial aid to the Palestinian National Authority after Hamas took over the government.
Hamas has dismissed the pressure as blackmail and punishment for the Palestinians for their rightful democratic choice.
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Rockin' and Rollin'
Big new asteroid has slim chance of hitting Earth
02 May 2006
New Scientist
A newly discovered asteroid is now the biggest thing known with a possibility of hitting the Earth in this century - and it is also the one that could hit the soonest.
But the odds of impact currently stand at just one in six million, reducing the fear factor somewhat, and these odds should further diminish with additional observations. This latest addition to NASA-JPL's list of potentially hazardous asteroids was discovered on 27 April 2006.
The asteroid, called 2006 HZ51, has an estimated diameter of about 800 metres and is the one of the largest objects ever to make the list. An object of that size would cause widespread devastation if it did strike the Earth.
HZ51 also has one of the shortest lead-times to a potential impact of any such object yet found, and the shortest of any potential Earth-impactor currently on the list. The earliest of its 165 possible impact dates is just over two years away, on 21 June 2008.
Dan Durda, an asteroid expert and president of the B612 Foundation - which aims to anticipate and prevent such impacts - thinks the discovery of HZ51 highlights that at present there are no good options when faced with so little time to prepare. "There really isn't a whole lot we could do," he told New Scientist. "Most of the options that don't resemble a Hollywood movie involve deflection techniques that require many years or decades."
Other than stockpiling food and supplies and evacuating the regions most likely to be affected, he said, we would have to "hunker down and take the impact".
But this is an unusual case, statistically speaking. It is far more likely that Earth's nations would benefit from a much greater lead time before a potential impact, allowing more time for planning.
For example, the second-most imminent threat now on the list is the asteroid Apophis, which has about a 1-in-6000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036 - plenty of time to prevent it.
Altering orbits
The B612 Foundation has been pushing for a mission to place a tracking device on Apophis sometime in the next decade, so that the possibility of impact can be definitively proved or ruled out. The foundation also wants to send a mission to test ways of altering the orbit of a non-threatening asteroid, to test the viability of such methods.
But the chance of an impact by Apophis might be ruled out as early as this weekend, which will be the last chance until 2013 to observe it by radar, from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
As for the newfound 2006 HZ51, the orbit calculations so far are based on just over 24 hours of observations, and so are likely to change quickly and should not be seen as a serious concern. As Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US, explains: "Almost certainly, observations from one or two more nights will put this to bed as a zero probability."
Comment: Correct us if we are wrong here, but does the fact that scientists claim that there are 165 possible impact dates not conflict with the claim that there is very little (one in 6 million) possiblity of an impact? That is to say, 165 *possible* impact dates seems to suggest that there is very little known about the reality of what this comet may or may not do. In which case, how can scientists be so sure that there is a very slim chance of impact?
Of course, we have a good idea as to the answer to this last question: at all costs, don't scare the population, because, who knows what they might do if they were all scared at the same time. The powers that be don't like unpredictable or chaotic scenarios - they don't augur well for an assured continuance of their grip on power.
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Earthquake Magnitude 8.0 - TONGA
2006 May 3 15:26:35 UTC
Earthquake Details
Magnitude 8.0 (Great)
# Date-Time Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 15:26:35 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
# Thursday, May 4, 2006 at 4:26:35 AM
= local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 20.035°S, 174.227°W
Depth 16.1 km (10.0 miles) (poorly constrained)
Region TONGA
Distances 155 km (95 miles) S of Neiafu, Tonga
160 km (100 miles) NE of NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga
455 km (280 miles) S of Hihifo, Tonga
2145 km (1340 miles) NNE of Auckland, New Zealand
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 7.9 km (4.9 miles); depth +/- 32.2 km (20.0 miles)
Parameters Nst=161, Nph=161, Dmin=725.7 km, Rmss=0.9 sec, Gp= 29°,
M-type=moment magnitude (Mw), Version=6
Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID usmgas
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Mild earthquake felt in parts of Pakistan
Press Trust of India
Islamabad, May 3, 2006
A slight earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale was felt in the capital city and the adjoining areas on Wednesday.
There are no reports of injuries or damage, an official said.
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Quake shakes southern Iran
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
IranMania.com
LONDON - A mild earthquake jolted the suburbs of Andimeshk city in Khuzestan province, southern Iran, Tuesday evening. According to IRNA, it was measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale.
The seismological centers affiliated to Tehran University's Geophysics Institute recorded the tremor at 21:35 hours local time (17:35 GMT)
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New Lava Dome Grows On Top Of Indonesias Rumbling Mount Merapi
AFP
May 03, 2006
Jakarta - A new lava dome has formed at the peak of Indonesia's rumbling Mount Merapi volcano, reinforcing indications that it may soon erupt, scientists said Tuesday.
The dome has been expanding since last Wednesday behind another dome that was formed in 1997, said Dewi Sri from the vulcanology office in the ancient cultural city of Yogyakarta, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of the volcano.
"It continues to grow and its volume has now reached into the hundreds of cubic meters... It is a sign that the magma pressure is increasing," she told AFP.
She said the mountain has significantly increased its activity, with a higher frequency of multi-phased earthquakes as well as those caused by lava fallout.
"All this indicates that magma pressure is building up and an eruption could follow," Sri said.
The alert status of the 2,914-meter (9,560-foot) volcano remained on "standby" however, as it has for more than two weeks, one level below that which would require a mandatory evacuation for more than 29,000 people.
Ratdomo Purbo, who heads the Vulcanology Research and Technology Development Office in Yogyakarta, was quoted by the Koran Tempo newspaper as saying that the dome had now grown some 10 meters (33 feet) high.
Purbo, who could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, was also quoted as saying that should the dome break or burst, it would spew lava accompanied by pyroclastic flows, or heat clouds.
In its last large eruption in 1994, heat clouds known locally as "shaggy goats" reached 600 degrees Celsius and speeds of over 100 kilometers per hour. They killed 66 people on the southern slope of the mountain.
Hundreds of residents have already been relocated to temporary shelters but many living on the volcano's slopes have refused to leave. Merapi, which has been rumbling intermittently over the past four years, looms above a plain in the south of Central Java province.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" noted for its volcanic and seismic activity. The country has more than 100 active volcanoes.
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Engineers Say Fla. Dike Poses Storm Danger
By BRENT KALLESTAD
Associated Press
May 2, 2006
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - With another hurricane season approaching, Gov. Jeb Bush has asked the federal government to shore up a dike that keeps the nation's second-largest lake from overflowing, after a report that predicts a catastrophe if the barrier fails.
The report by a state-hired panel of engineering experts said the flooding that could result from breaches on the dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee could harm Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades, perhaps irreversibly, and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.
"It needs to be fixed now, and it needs to be fixed right," the engineers wrote in the 82-page report. "The region's future depends on it."
A dike failure could also contaminate South Florida's drinking water and flood thousands of acres of farmland.
"It would be devastating to our economy, environment and quality of life," Bush said in a letter sent Friday to John Paul Woodley Jr., deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civil works.
Messages left for Woodley were not immediately returned Tuesday.
Bush met Tuesday with Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who was in the state capital for a readiness update on the hurricane season, which begins June 1.
"As I understand it, that presents a different set of evacuation issues than in a normal hurricane," Chertoff said. "That's something obviously we want to work very closely with the state on."
Lake Okeechobee is surrounded by the 143-mile Herbert Hoover dike, built in the 1950s in part to prevent another disaster like the 1928 hurricane, in which flooding and storm surge from the lake killed more than 2,000 people.
The report noted that the dike has a 1 in 6 chance of being breached in a hurricane, Bush said.
The 730-square mile lake is the second-largest natural freshwater lake within the contiguous United States, behind Lake Michigan.
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Freeport mine 'poisoning' West Papua's environment
By Marianne Kearney, Jakarta
May 4, 2006
THE giant Freeport mine is polluting West Papua's rivers and estuaries and a world heritage-protected national park, according to the company's own environmental assessments and Indonesian Government standards.
Documents leaked to an environment group show that the world's largest gold and copper mine has dumped a billion tonnes of mine waste, known as tailings, into surrounding rivers, polluting forests and river systems with heavy metals such as copper and arsenic, and endangering species such as the flying fox.
The environmental risk assessments were leaked to Indonesian environment group Wahli. "Freeport has known that their operation is endangering the environment but they don't do anything," Wahli spokesman Torry Kuswardono said.
The environmental assessments show that the company's tailings are polluting the world-heritage Lorentz National Park, which stretches from glacier-capped mountains to a tropical marine environment.
Wahli's Igor O'Neill, who examined the documents, said: "Modelling by an expert employed by Freeport confirmed that the tailings are reaching the coastal part of the national park and testing showed that aquatic animals are contaminated with copper."
Mr O'Neill said that while there was no direct proof that the Freeport mine was the source of high levels of copper, animals tested upstream in the rivers free of mine waste showed normal copper levels.
He said dumping the billion tonnes of tailings in rivers rather than using pipes violated Indonesian law, but the Indonesian Government was reluctant to enforce the law, because "they are scared to challenge Freeport".
Acidic waste produced by the mine was so toxic that it violated even the environmental hazard restrictions for factories.
"The mine is breaching Indonesian industrial standards and breaching water quality laws for lakes, streams and rivers. It is definitely illegal," he said.
Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar dismissed Wahli's claims, saying a team of experts from the ministry had inspected the mine recently.
"I say they are abiding by the law, following all directions," he said. "But we are scrutinising them ..."
Mr Witoelar said pollution from the mine was minor, adding that the team had found some damage to the rivers and this was being monitored.
Wahli has called on the Government to suspend operations at the mine until the company abides by environmental laws.
A Freeport spokesman declined to comment.
West Papuan groups have launched several protests against the mining giant in the past few months, accusing it of environmental and human rights abuses. Four security force officers and one civilian were killed during a violent anti-Freeport protest in the West Papuan capital of Jayapura recently.
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The Resistance
36 US House Reps Want Bush Impeachment Probe
By Matthew Cardinale
(APN) ATLANTA -- 36 US House Representatives have signed on as sponsors or co-sponsors of H. Res 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for recommending President Bush's impeachment, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.
The two latest co-sponsors, as of Friday, were US Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) and US Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA).
"For the House to impeach and the Senate to convict a President, the public must be fully informed and convinced by credible information that a President deserves impeachment. That means gathering the facts. Rep. Conyers' bill calls for setting up a select committee to gather information to see if there is any basis for impeachment - i.e., a violation of the Constitution - or if impeachment should even be considered. With that understanding I support H. Res. 635," Congressman Jackson said in a statement released to Atlanta Progressive News.
Rep. Fattah's Office was not able to provide comment in time for press, but was invited to send along comments to be added to the Atlanta Progressive News website when available.
"The Bush administration must be held accountable for the failures in their Iraq War policy. Congress has a Constitutional obligation to determine whether this disastrous Iraq policy is the result of deceit and deception or simply reckless incompetence. Providing the Congress and American people with the opportunity to seek the truth regarding the facts and the fabrications that led our nation into the Iraq War is why I am supporting the Conyers' resolution," US Rep. Betty McCollum, another recent co-sponsor, said in a statement prepared for Atlanta Progressive News.
An Atlanta Progressive News analysis has found that, interestingly, 29 of the 36 total co-sponsors are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. However, only 29 of the 62 members of the Caucus have signed on.
Atlanta Progressive News is calling out the other 33 self-described progressives who have not signed on. They are Reps. Becerra, Bordallo, Corrine Brown, Sherrod Brown, Carson, Cristenson, Cleaver, Cummings, DeFazio, DeLauro, Evans, Frank, Grijalva, Gutierrez, Tubbs Jones, Kaptur, Kilpatrick, Kucinich, Lantos, Markey, McGovern, Miller, Holmes-Norton, Pastor, Rush, Serrano, Slaughter, Solis, Thompson, Udall, Watson, Watt, and Waxman.
As noted below, two of these Progressive Caucus members who have not signed on, are in fact two of the four Democrats on the House Rules Committee, meaning they have direct influence over this bill: Slaughter and McGovern.
In the US Senate, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are currently the two co-sponsors of US Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) bill, S. Res 398, to censure President Bush.
"There has been massive support for House Resolution 635 from a very vigorous network of grassroots activists and people committed to holding the Bush Administration accountable for its widespread abuses of power," US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said in a statement prepared for Atlanta Progressive News.
"The Atlanta Progressive News has reported regularly on this bill," Conyers wrote in an article on his blog.
A spokesperson for Rep. Conyers noted the Congressman is continuing in his lobbying efforts for the bill, which was first introduced in December 2005, prior to so many recent additional shocking revelations about the actions of President Bush.
It was recently revealed, for one thing, that Bush himself authorized the leak of the identity of a CIA agent, endangering US security, in retaliation for the agent's husband questioning the US's faulty intelligence on Iraq's nonexistent WMDs.
In another recent revelation, Bush was provided with evidence that the information he was propagating on Iraq was faulty.
Conyers's spokesperson also concurred there continues to be some confusion among Members of US Congress who have not yet signed on to the bill about the content of the bill. Specifically, some members have not signed on because the media has not clearly reported that the bill is not a call for impeachment, nor an impeachment inquiry, but rather is a call for the creation of a committee that would look into the possible grounds for impeachment and could make recommendations.
Meanwhile, at least twelve (12) US cities, including Arcata, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, each in California; Woodstock in New York; and Battleboro, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro, Newfane, Putney, and Rockingham, each in Vermont, have passed resolutions call