U.S. Prepared To Strike Iran
October 28, 2007
A senior Palestinian intelligence official said that based on meetings with American diplomats he “understood” the U.S. plans to target Iran’s suspected nuclear installations in two to three months if negotiations with Tehran don’t generate a major breakthrough. The official, speaking to WND yesterday on condition of anonymity, said according to what he “understood,” the U.S. will “pay” for Arab support for a U.S. strike against Iran by creating a temporary Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank by next summer.
The official met last week with U.S. secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her trip here earlier this month to prepare for a U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit slated for next month in which Israel is expected to outline a future Palestinian state in most of the West Bank
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Much of U.S. Facing Drought
October 28, 2007
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Across America, the picture is critically clear - the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association.
Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.
“We’ve hit a remarkable moment,” said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency.”
The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach’s utilities director.
It’s not just America’s problem - it’s global.
Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry spell, and population growth in urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources. Asia has 60 percent of the world’s population, but only about 30 percent of its freshwater.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists, said this year that by 2050 up to 2 billion people worldwide could be facing major water shortages.
The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000, the latest figures available from the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes residential, commercial, agriculture, manufacturing and every other use - almost 500,000 gallons per person.
Coastal states like Florida and California face a water crisis not only from increased demand, but also from rising temperatures that are causing glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise. Higher temperatures mean more water lost to evaporation. And rising seas could push saltwater into underground sources of freshwater.
Florida represents perhaps the nation’s greatest water irony. A hundred years ago, the state’s biggest problem was it had too much water. But decades of dikes, dams and water diversions have turned swamps into cities.
Little land is left to store water during wet seasons, and so much of the landscape has been paved over that water can no longer penetrate the ground in some places to recharge aquifers. As a result, the state is forced to flush millions of gallons of excess into the ocean to prevent flooding.
How Close To World War III Were We on September 6th 2007
October 27, 2007
A meticulously planned, brilliantly executed surgical strike by Israeli jets on a nuclear installation in Syria on 6 September may have saved the world from a devastating threat. The only problem is that no one outside a tight-lipped knot of top Israeli and American officials knows precisely what that threat involved.
Even more curious is that far from pushing the Syrians and Israelis to war, both seem determined to put a lid on the affair. One month after the event, the absence of hard information leads inexorably to the conclusion that the implications must have been enormous.
That was confirmed to The Spectator by a very senior British ministerial source: ‘If people had known how close we came to world war three that day there’d have been mass panic. Never mind the floods or foot-and-mouth — Gordon really would have been dealing with the bloody Book of Revelation and Armageddon.’
According to American sources, Israeli intelligence tracked a North Korean vessel carrying a cargo of nuclear material labelled ‘cement’ as it travelled halfway across the world. On 3 September the ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartous and the Israelis continued following the cargo as it was transported to the small town of Dayr as Zawr, near the Turkish border in north-eastern Syria.
The destination was not a complete surprise. It had already been the subject of intense surveillance by an Israeli Ofek spy satellite, and within hours a band of elite Israeli commandos had secretly crossed into Syria and headed for the town. Soil samples and other material they collected there were returned to Israel. Sure enough, they indicated that the cargo was nuclear.
Three days after the North Korean consignment arrived, the final phase of Operation Orchard was launched. With prior approval from Washington, Israeli F151 jets were scrambled and, minutes later, the installation and its newly arrived contents were destroyed.
So secret were the operational details of the mission that even the pilots who were assigned to provide air cover for the strike jets had not been briefed on it until they were airborne. In the event, they were not needed: built-in stealth technology and electronic warfare systems were sophisticated enough to ‘blind’ Syria’s Russian-made anti-aircraft systems.
What was in the consignment that led the Israelis to mount an attack which could easily have spiralled into an all-out regional war? It could not have been a transfer of chemical or biological weapons; Syria is already known to possess the most abundant stockpiles in the region. Nor could it have been missile delivery systems; Syria had previously acquired substantial quantities from North Korea. The only possible explanation is that the consignment was nuclear.
The scale of the potential threat — and the intelligence methods that were used to follow the transfer — explain the dense mist of official secrecy that shrouds the event. There have been no official briefings, no winks or nudges, from any of the scores of people who must have been involved in the preparation, analysis, decision-making and execution of the operation. Even when Israelis now offer a firm ‘no comment’, it is strictly off the record. The secrecy is itself significant.
Israel is a small country. In some respects, it resembles an extended, if chaotic, family. Word gets around fast. Israelis have lived on the edge for so long they have become addicted to the news. Israel’s media is far too robust and its politicians far too leaky to allow secrets to remain secret for long. Even in the face of an increasingly archaic military censor, Israeli journalists have found ways to publish and, if necessary, be damned.
Attack Iran And You Attack Russia
October 26, 2007
The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration’s relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear
The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration’s relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.
But then, as if this were not enough of a political bombshell, came the abrupt resignation of Ali Larijani as top Iranian nuclear negotiator. Early this week in Rome, Larijani told the IRNA news agency that “Iran’s nuclear policies are stable and will not change with the replacement of the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council [SNSC].” Larijani will keep attending SNSC meetings, now as a representative of the Supreme Leader. He even took time to remind the West that in the Islamic Republic all key decisions regarding the civilian nuclear program are made by the Supreme Leader. Larijani actually went to Rome to meet with the European Union’s Javier Solana alongside Iran’s new negotiator, Saeed Jalili, a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), just like President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
In itself, the Putin-Khamenei meeting was extraordinary, because the Supreme Leader rarely receives foreign statesmen for closed talks, even one as crucial as Putin. The Russian president, according to the diplomatic source, told the Supreme Leader he may hold the ultimate solution regarding the endlessly controversial Iranian nuclear dossier. According to IRNA, the Supreme Leader, after stressing that the Iranian civilian nuclear program will continue unabated, said. “We will ponder your words and proposal.”
Larijani himself had told the Iranian media that Putin had a “special plan” and the Supreme Leader observed that the plan was “ponderable”. The problem is that Ahmadinejad publicly denied the Russians had volunteered a new plan.
Iranian hawks close to Ahmadinejad are spinning that Putin’s proposal involves Iran temporarily suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for no more United Nations sanctions. That’s essentially what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei has been working on all along. The key issue is what - in practical terms - will Iran get in return. Obviously it’s not the EU’s Solana who will have the answer. But as far as Russia is concerned, strategically nothing will appease it except a political/diplomatic solution for the Iranian nuclear dossier.
US Vice President Dick Cheney - who even Senator Hillary Clinton now refers to as Darth Vader - must be foaming at the mouth; but the fact is that after the Caspian summit, Iran and Russia are officially entangled in a strategic partnership. World War III, for them, is definitely not on the cards.
Let’s read from the same script
The apparent internal controversy on how exactly Putin and the Supreme Leader are on the same wavelength belies a serious rift in the higher spheres of the Islamic Republic. The replacement of Larijani, a realist hawk, by Jalili, an unknown quantity with an even more hawkish background, might spell an Ahmadinejad victory. It’s not that simple.
Foster Child Taken Away Because Christian Couple Refuse To Teach Him About Homosexuality
October 26, 2007
To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith.
The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after.
The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset.
Earlier this year, Somerset County Council’s social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour’s new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal.
Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages.
They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings.
When the Mathericks objected, they were told they would be taken off the register of foster parents.
The Mathericks have decided to resign rather than face the humiliation of being expelled.
Mr Matherick, a 65-year-old retired travel agent and a primary school governor, said: “I simply could not agree to do it because it is against my central beliefs.
“We have never discriminated against anybody but I cannot preach the benefits of homosexuality when I believe it is against the word of God.”
Mrs Matherick, 61, said they had asked if they could continue looking after their foster son until he is found a permanent home, but officials refused and he will be placed in a council hostel on Friday.
She said: “He was very upset to begin with. We are all very close, but he’s a mature young man and he’s dealing with it.”
The couple, who have six grandchildren and one greatgrandchild, are both ministers at the nonconformist South Chard Christian Church.
When they first started fostering they took in young single mothers and their babies.
More recently they have been caring for children of primary school age.
Mr Matherick added: “It’s terrible that we’ve been forced into this corner. It just should not happen.
“There are not enough foster carers around anyway without these rules.
“They were saying that we had to be prepared to talk about sexuality with 11-year-olds, which I don’t think is appropriate anyway, but not only that, to be prepared to explain how gay people date.
“They said we would even have to take a teenager to gay association meetings.
“How can I do that when it’s totally against what I believe?”
IMF Chief Warns Dollar May Suffer Abrupt Fall
October 26, 2007
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo Rato, warned Monday there are risks of an “abrupt fall” in the dollar, linked to a loss of confidence in dollar assets.
“There are risks that an abrupt fall in the dollar could either be triggered by, or itself trigger, a loss of confidence in dollar assets,” Rato told the IMF board of governors.
He also appeared to suggest that Europe could take steps to temper the strong appreciation of the euro.
“There is a risk that exchange rate appreciation in countries with flexible exchange rates — including the euro area — could hurt their growth prospects, and that in these circumstances protectionist pressures could worsen,” he said on the final day of the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.
The outgoing IMF managing director spoke as the European single currency hit a new high of 1.4347 dollars and global equity markets tumbled amid growing fears a US housing-related credit crunch could pitch the world’s biggest economy into recession.
“The uncertainty … comes from downside risks that are much higher than they were six months ago. The turbulence in the credit markets is a warning that we cannot take the benign economic environment of recent years for granted,” he said.
“We still do not know the full effects of the decline in the housing market and the subprime problems of the US economy. Further disruption in financial markets and further falls in housing prices could lead to a global economic downturn.”
A crisis in the risky US subprime mortgage sector, where loans are given to homebuyers with poor credit histories, erupted this year as borrowers defaulted on mortgages amid rising interest rates and a sharp slump in US housing prices.
The spillover of the US credit crunch into global financial markets roiled stock markets worldwide in August and although they have recovered somewhat, the uncertainties of the extent of the credit problems continues to weigh on investors.
Rato warned that a downturn would exacerbate other risks that already exist in the world economy, citing some emerging economies’ reliance on capital inflows and the potential that central banks may not curb rising inflationary pressures.
“Some emerging economies that have relied on external financing to fund large current account deficits could be tipped into crisis by a combination of reduced demand for their exports and tighter financial market conditions,” he said, adding that those developments would also worsen the prospects of low-income countries.
“And there is a risk that central banks may falter in fighting the inflation which has been spurred in some countries by higher oil and food prices.”
Rato told the governors of the 185-nation financial institution aimed at fostering global financial stability that it was imperative to take action to avoid such a calamitous downturn from global imbalances.
“All of these risks make action on already agreed policies more urgent,” he said.
“Major economies need … to take supporting policy actions,” said the former Spanish finance minister, who is stepping down nearly two years before the end of his five-year mandate.
His successor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former Socialist finance minister of France, takes office on November 1.
In an apparent reference to recent pressures from France and other members of the 13-nation eurozone on the European Central Bank to take action to curb the euro’s sharp appreciation, which is weighing on eurozone exports, Rato said: “Policymakers need to respect the independence of central banks and support their vigilance on inflation.”
Syria Was Preparing For Large Scale Attack On Israel
October 26, 2007
Syria was preparing for a large-scale Israeli attack some two weeks ago, the Al-Khaleej newspaper, published in the United Arab Emirates, reported Wednesday.
Al-Khaleej quoted “senior sources” in Damascus as saying that Syria had received intelligence that Israel was seriously considering launching an offensive during the Id al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan.
Therefore, the article said, Syria began taking “defensive steps.”
The Syrian sources, who were unnamed, told Al-Khaleej that Russia and China, when apprised of Syria’s concerns, sent “stern warnings” to both Jerusalem and Washington that an Israeli attack would destroy the balance of the Middle East. According to the report, China and Russia asked the United States to intervene and “rein in” what Syria perceived as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s threats of war.
“Despite Israel’s calming messages, sent through mediators, there is still a possibility of a military confrontation,” the sources told the UAE paper.
The sources added that Syrian President Bashar Assad had raised the issue during his visit with Turkey’s leaders last week, and said that Turkey’s deputy military chief had given Assad his word that Turkey would not allow Israel to use its air space to attack Syria.
Meanwhile, US experts said they have identified the Euphrates River nuclear site in Syria that was allegedly bombed by IAF planes last month, as well as satellite imagery of the facility showing buildings under construction, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. According to the report, the facility was similar in design to a North Korean nuclear reactor capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year.
Photographs of the area taken before the September 6 raid show an isolated compound which included a boxy structure similar to the type of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for the reactor, expert David Albright of the US Institute for Science and International Security was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.
The newspaper also reported that International and American experts familiar with the site, who were shown the photos on Tuesday, said there was a strong possibility that they show the remote compound which was allegedly attacked by Israel. Israeli officials and the White House declined to comment.
The facility depicted was located approximately 10 kilometers north of At Tibnah in the Dayr az Zawr region, according to an ISIS report to be released Wednesday. Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, said the size of the structures suggested that Syria might have been building a gas-graphite reactor of about 20 to 25 megawatts of heat, which is similar to the reactor North Korea built at Yongbyon.
Palestinians Using Internet To Target Israel
October 26, 2007
Palestinian militants are using Google Earth to help plan their attacks on the Israeli military and other targets, the Guardian has learned.
Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes.
“We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas,” Khaled Jaabari, the group’s commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian.
Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets.
The Guardian filmed an al-Aqsa test rocket launch, fired into an uninhabited area of the Negev desert, last month. Despite the crudeness of the weapons, many have landed in Sderot, killing around a dozen people in the last three years and wounding scores more.
Al-Aqsa is one of several militant groups firing rockets, known as Qassams, from Gaza into Israel. A rocket attack by Islamic Jihad on a military base last month wounded more than 50 soldiers. Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine Qassam Brigades, is not believed to be firing rockets.
Abu Walid insists there is no contradiction between his group’s actions and talk of peace by Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s leader.
Bringing up archive footage of rocket launches on his computer, he said that the group had modified the homemade rockets to travel longer distances by cultivating salt from the sea. “It’s a secret process, but we’re very excited by the results.”
The Google Earth mapping program includes satellite maps and detailed 3D models of some areas. Although the satellite images are only updated on an irregular basis - meaning that pictures of mobile targets would be unusable - some defence experts have said the easy availability of information can increase the risks for military organisations.
“There is a constant threat of reconnaissance missions to access our bases and using these internet images is just another method of how this is conducted,” said British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge earlier this year.
It is not the first time that Google has been accused of unwittingly abetting the activities of militant groups or terrorist organisations. In January, British officials claimed that insurgents sympathetic to al-Qaida were using aerial photography in Google Earth to locate potential targets inside British bases around the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
Atheism For Kids
October 26, 2007
J.K. Rowling sparked headlines this week by declaring that a major character in her Harry Potter book series is homosexual. Christian critics, meanwhile, are paying more attention to Britain’s second-most-popular children’s author.
His name is Philip Pullman, whose best-known work is the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, which has won critical acclaim, but Mr. Pullman’s critics charge that the books undermine the Christian faith and promote atheism.
The first book, “The Golden Compass” (originally titled “Northern Lights”), won England’s Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Fiction Prize. The American Library Association deemed it a Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults. “The Golden Compass” also attracted the attention of Hollywood. A movie adaptation starring Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman and Dakota Blue Richards is due for release Dec.
Volcano Erupts in Indonesia
October 26, 2007
A volcano erupted in central Indonesia on Thursday, shooting plumes of white smoke and sand 1,500 yards into the air and covering nearby villages in ash, officials said.
Violent tremors sent farmers tilling land near Mount Soputan’s crater fleeing before the blast, said Sandy Manengke, a local monitoring official, adding that there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The nearest villages are five miles from the crater’s mouth, well clear of the danger zone, he added, but many houses were covered in black soot and residents wore face masks to protect themselves against the smoke.
Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other nation because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” — a series of fault lines stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia.
Mount Soputan, 1,350 miles northeast of the capital, Jakarta, is one of its most active. The 1,950-yard-high volcano rarely spews lava, however, Manengke said.
The mountain’s alert remained at the second-highest level despite Thursday’s activity, said Surono, a senior government vulcanologist, who goes by only one name. No evacuation order had been issued, because most people live well away from the crater, he added.
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