Fresh Coffee with a Cup of News…

June 24, 2011

US Hits Iran Air, Port Company with Sanctions

Filed under: Need Truth — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 10:18 pm

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration hit two pillars of the Iranian economy with sanctions Thursday, targeting the Islamic republic’s national airline carrier and a major port company on charges that they facilitate illegal weapons trade and help the mighty Revolutionary Guard corps in destabilizing activity in Iran and nearby countries.

The Treasury Department’s action blocks any assets in the United States belonging to Iran Air, Tidewater Middle East Co. and three other firms. It also prevents Americans from doing business with them.

In a joint statement, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the hardline Revolutionary Guard’s use of Tidewater and Iran Air for proliferation activities was indicative of its increasing power in the Iranian economy. This displaces legitimate private Iranian companies in the commercial and energy sectors, which they called “deeply troubling.”

The Revolutionary Guard serves as the “enforcer” for the Iranian regime by suppressing peaceful protests, and imports and exports weapons for the government, the secretaries said. They also blamed it for supporting terrorism in the Middle East.

The other companies sanctioned were the Mehr-e Eqtesad-e Iranian Investment Company, Iran Air Tours and the Behnam Shahriyari Trading Company. Iranian businessman Behnam Shahriyari was personally targeted for his alleged role in providing weapons to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Although the sanctions only apply to the United States, senior Treasury and State Department officials said they hoped other countries would take a closer look at business being conducted with the companies. The U.S. is hoping authorities will halt the refueling of Iran Air planes, though non-U.S. airports are not required to take any action against the company, the officials said.

The Treasury Department says Iran Air has helped the military obtain raw materials such as titanium sheets, which can be used in support of advancing nuclear weapons. It has also transported rockets on passenger planes and taken missile components to Syria, Treasury alleges.

The airline operates about 40 aircraft flying to 35 international destinations.

The statement from Geithner and Clinton said preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a top U.S. priority. They said they remain deeply concerned about Iran’s uranium enrichment program, even if the Iranian government insists it is solely designed for energy purposes.

“The international community must continue to increase and broaden the scope of pressures on Iran,” the two secretaries said. “We have made important progress in isolating Iran, but we cannot waver. Our efforts must be unrelenting to sharpen the choice for Iran’s leaders to abandon their dangerous course.”

Tidewater manages seven ports in Iran and serves as a key element in Iran’s infrastructure and transport network. Treasury says it has operations at terminals that have facilitated the Iranian government’s weapons trade.

The company has no relation to Tidewater Inc., an international shipping company based in the United States.

© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

June 15, 2011

Facebook Hires Ex-Press Secretary for Bill Clinton

Filed under: Need Truth — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 3:41 pm

SAN FRANCISCO — Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton, is joining Facebook to oversee the company’s policy, international, and corporate communications efforts.

Lockhart, who joins Facebook next month as global communications vice president, represents the company’s latest move to enlist Washington insiders.

In May, Facebook hired two former officials who worked for former President George W. Bush, including Joel Kaplan, who served as Bush’s deputy chief of staff.

Facebook, the world’s No. 1 Internet social network with more than 500 million people, has grown in influence in the Internet industry as well as in the spheres of public policy and world affairs during its seven-year history.

The service has been credited with playing a key role in recent uprisings in the Middle East, helping protesters organize and communicate.

Facebook is also increasingly in the spotlight for its privacy practices, with some privacy advocates criticizing the way it treats users’ personal information.

Lockhart was the chief spokesman and senior adviser to President Clinton between 1998 and 2000, according to the biography on the website of the Glover Park Group, a communications firm he co-founded in 2001.

“His experience building and running a press office at the White House gives him particular appreciation for the demands of a global 24-hour news cycle and the challenges of responding effectively to intense scrutiny,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy, in an emailed statement.

Lockhart will initially work in Facebook’s office in Washington, D.C., but will move to California, where Facebook is headquartered, as soon as family commitments allow, a Facebook representative said.

© 2011 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.

May 19, 2011

US quietly expanding defense ties with Saudis

Filed under: Need Truth — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 12:56 pm

WASHINGTON – Despite their deepening political divide, the United States and Saudi Arabia are quietly expanding defense ties on a vast scale, led by a little-known project to develop an elite force to protect the kingdom’s oil riches and future nuclear sites.

The U.S. also is in discussions with Saudi Arabia to create an air and missile defense system with far greater capability against the regional rival the Saudis fear most, Iran. And it is with Iran mainly in mind that the Saudis are pressing ahead with a historic $60 billion arms deal that will provide dozens of new U.S.-built F-15 combat aircraft likely to ensure Saudi air superiority over Iran for years.

Together these moves amount to a historic expansion of a 66-year-old relationship that is built on America’s oil appetite, sustained by Saudi reliance on U.S. military reach and deepened by a shared worry about the threat of al-Qaida and the ambitions of Iran.

All of this is happening despite the Saudi government’s anger at Washington’s response to uprisings across the Arab world, especially its abandonment of Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian president who was a longtime Saudi and U.S. ally. The Obama administration is eager to ease this tension as it faces the prospect of an escalating confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program.

Saudi Arabia is central to American policy in the Middle East. It is a key player in the Arab-Israeli peace process that President Barack Obama has so far failed to advance, and it is vital to U.S. energy security, with Saudi Arabia ranking as the third-largest source of U.S. oil imports. It also figures prominently in U.S. efforts to undercut Islamic extremism and promote democracy.

The forging of closer U.S.-Saudi military ties is so sensitive, particularly in Saudi Arabia, that the Pentagon and the State Department declined requests for on-the-record comment and U.S. officials rejected a request for an interview with the two-star Army general, Robert G. Catalanotti, who manages the project to build a “facilities security force” to protect the Saudis’ network of oil installations and other critical infrastructure.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to two written requests for comment.

Details about the elite force were learned from interviews with U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of Saudi security concerns, as well as in interviews with private analysts and public statements by former U.S. officials.

The special security force is expected to grow to at least 35,000 members, trained and equipped by U.S. personnel as part of a multiagency effort that includes staff from the Justice Department, Energy Department and Pentagon. It is overseen by the U.S. Central Command.

The force’s main mission is to protect vital oil infrastructure, but its scope is wider. A formerly secret State Department cable released by the WikiLeaks website described the mission as protecting “Saudi energy production facilities, desalination plants and future civil nuclear reactors.”

The cable dated Oct. 29, 2008, and released by WikiLeaks in December said the Saudis agreed to a U.S. recommendation to create the program after they received an Energy Department briefing on the vulnerability of certain oil facilities.

The program apparently got under way in 2009 or 2010, but it is not clear how much of the new force is operating.

The Saudis’ security worries were heightened by a failed al-Qaida car bombing in February 2006 of the Abqaiq oil processing facility, one of the largest in the world. The State Department cable said a subsequent U.S. assessment of Abqaiq security standards determined that it remained “highly vulnerable to other types of sophisticated terrorist attacks.” That warning was conveyed to top Saudi officials on Oct. 27, 2008.

“The Saudis remain highly concerned about the vulnerability of their energy production facilities,” the cable said. “They recognize many of their energy facilities remain at risk from al-Qaida and other terrorists who seek to disrupt the global economy.”

One U.S. official said the Saudi force’s mission might be expanded to include protection of embassies and other diplomatic buildings, as well as research and academic installations. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue.

The newly established specialized force is separate from the regular Saudi military and is also distinct from Saudi Arabian National Guard, an internal security force whose mission is to protect the royal family and the Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina. The U.S. has had a training and advising role with the regular Saudi military since 1953 and began advising the National Guard in 1973.

The new arrangement is based on a May 2008 deal signed by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef. That same month the U.S. and Saudi Arabia also signed an understanding on civil nuclear energy cooperation in which Washington agreed to help the Saudis develop nuclear energy for use in medicine, industry and power generation.

In October 2008, Ford Fraker, then the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, called the facilities security force program “probably the single biggest initiative for the U.S.-Saudi relationship” and said the value of contracts associated with the program could reach tens of billions of dollars.

Christopher Blanchard, a Middle East policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the arrangement is important on multiple levels.

“The noteworthy thing is that it’s such a sensitive area,” he said in an interview. “It’s probably the most sensitive area for the Saudis, in the sense that those facilities are the lifeblood of the kingdom.”

“It’s not only about defending against a single military threat like Iran but also an expression, politically and symbolically, of a U.S. commitment to Saudi Arabia’s long-term security,” he added. “It’s about seeing the U.S.-Saudi relationship into the next generation.”

The U.S. had dozens of combat aircraft based in Saudi Arabia from 1991 to 2003. When the planes departed, the U.S. turned over a highly sophisticated air operations center it had built in the desert south of Riyadh.

The U.S.-Saudi relationship has been rocked by a series of setbacks, including the 9/11 attacks in which 15 of the 19 hijackers turned out to be Saudis. Saudi Arabia also is the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader killed by U.S. Navy SEALs on May 2 in Pakistan, and Saudis remain active in al-Qaida in Afghanistan. U.S. officials said this month a Saudi considered the No. 1 terrorist target in eastern Afghanistan, Abu Hafs al-Najdi, was killed in an airstrike. They said he helped organize al-Qaida finances.

Even so, Saudi Arabia has become one of Washington’s most valued counterterrorism partners. It also is a top client for U.S. arms. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Riyadh in April, he reaffirmed U.S. intentions to proceed with the deal announced last fall to sell up to $60 billion in weaponry, including 84 F-15s and the upgrading of 70 existing Saudi F-15s.

U.S. officials said the arms deal might be expanded to include naval ships and possibly more advanced air and missile defense systems. The Saudis want to upgrade their Patriot air defenses to the latest U.S. version, which can knock down short-range ballistic missiles in flight. And they have expressed interest in a more capable system designed to defend against higher-flying, medium-range missiles.

___

Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

April 13, 2011

This Will Make You Think…

Filed under: American Lies, Need Truth, Obama, Politically Incorrect, Rotten Crooks, Rotten Politicians, War — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 8:37 am

Was Obama Stampeded Into War?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan157.html

“NATO is moving very slowly, allowing Gadhafi forces to advance,” said rebel leader Abdul Fattah Younis, as the Libyan army moved back to the outskirts of Ajdabiya, gateway city to Benghazi.

“NATO has become our problem.”

Younis is implying that if NATO does not stop Libyan soldiers from capturing Ajdabiya, the rebels may be defeated – and NATO will be responsible for that defeat.

And who is Abdul Fattah Younis?

Until six weeks ago, he held the rank of general and interior minister and was regarded as the No. 2 man in Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

Yet his military assessment does not appear too far off.

Last week, Gadhafi’s forces were again on the offensive, after having been driven by U.S. air and missile strikes all the way back to his hometown of Sirte.

What gave the Libyan army its new lease on life?

The Americans handed off the war to NATO and moved to the sidelines, restricting U.S. forces to supporting roles.

As of today, however, it appears that if the U.S. military does not re-engage deeply and actively in this war, the Libyan uprising could go down to defeat. And we will be blamed.

How did Barack Obama get us into this box?

Last week, Sen. Jim Webb questioned Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command.

As neither the United States, nor its citizens, nor any U.S. ally had been attacked or imperiled, Webb asked, what was the justification for the U.S. attack on Libya, whose government, Gadhafi’s government, the State Department still recognizes as the legitimate government of Libya?

“To protect lives,” was Ham’s response.

Yet, as last week brought news of the slaughter of 1,000 civilians by gunfire and machete by troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the man we recognize as the legitimate president of the Ivory Coast, a question arises: Why was a real massacre in West Africa less a casus belli for us than an imagined massacre in North Africa?

Was Obama stampeded into war by hysterical talk of impending atrocities that had no basis in fact?

That is the issue raised by columnist Steve Chapman, that ought to be raised by a Congress that was treated almost contemptuously, when Obama launched a war without seeking its authorization.

On March 26, over a week after he ordered the strikes on Libya, hitting tanks, anti-aircraft, radar sites, troops and Gadhafi’s own compound in Tripoli, 600 miles away from Benghazi, Obama told the nation he had acted to prevent a “bloodbath” in Benghazi.

“We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi – a city nearly the size of Charlotte – could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

White House Middle East expert Dennis Ross reportedly told foreign policy experts: “We were looking at ‘Srebrenica on steroids’ – the real or imminent possibility that up to 100,000 people could be massacred, and everyone would blame us for it.”

A hundred thousand massacred! And our fault? But that is seven times the body count of Katyn, one of the Stalinist horrors of World War II. Was Benghazi truly about to realize the fate that befell Carthage at the hands of Scipio Africanus, at the close of the Third Punic War?

How did the White House come to believe in such a scenario?

In this low-scale war, the cities of Zwara, Ras Lanuf, Brega, and Ajdabiya have changed hands, some several times. Misrata, the only rebel-held city in the west, has been under siege for seven weeks.

Yet in none of these towns has anything like the massacre in the Ivory Coast taken place, let alone Srebrenica. The Guardian’s Saturday report read, “Fierce fighting in Ajdabiya saw at least eight people killed.”

Yemeni President Saleh’s security forces killed six times that many civilians just to break up one rally in his central square.

True, on March 17, Gadhafi said he would show “no mercy.” But as Chapman notes, he was referring to “traitors” who resisted him to the end. And Gadhafi added, “We have left the way open to them.”

“Escape. Let those who escape go forever.” Gadhafi went on to pledge that “whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned, protected.”

Perhaps Gadhafi is lying.

But there is, as yet, no evidence of any such slaughter in any town his forces have captured. Nor do the paltry forces Gadhafi has mustered to recapture the east – Ajdabiya was attacked by several dozen Toyota trucks – seem capable of putting a city of 700,000 to the sword.

With the Libyan war now seemingly a stalemate, and pressure building for the United States to renew air and missile strikes, and train and equip rebel forces, Congress needs to learn how we got into this mess.

Was Obama stampeded into this war by the panic and hysteria of his advisers? Because, quite clearly, he did not think this thing through.

April 13, 2011

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire. His latest book is Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. See his website.

Coffee Talk!

April 6, 2011

‘Panic button’ of democracy…

Filed under: American Lies, Need Truth, Nuts Crazy and Loony, Obama, Politically Incorrect, Rotten Crooks, Rotten Politicians, War — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 1:44 pm

“Each cell phone model has its unique operating system, and it should be compatible with Apple, Android, Windows Mobile and Nokia`s Symbian.”

The US is promoting a ‘panic’ button application that a pro-democracy activist can press to automatically delete the phone’s entire address book and simultaneously transmit a warning to other activists. It is unclear how many insurgents in North Africa and the Middle East have used this program in recent months. However, journalists found out that at least $50 million have been spent on the project since 2008. But for the US these are actually long term investments that are usually repaid in case pro-American parties win in once totalitarian countries, says Vladimir Sazhin, professor at the Institute of Oriental Studies.

“The US would spend millions of dollars to support the opposition in Iran. And, of course, not only in the US but in some other western countries there are mass media involved in information warfare in totalitarian states. By the way, in the US they also like getting access to blocked websites in foreign countries.”

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/04/06/48544147.html

Coffee Talk!

March 30, 2011

Obama Raises American Hypocrisy to a Higher Level

Filed under: American Lies, Need Truth, Obama, Politically Incorrect, Rotten Crooks, Rotten Politicians, The Western Press, War, sad — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 5:45 am

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts297.html

What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion.

Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in Libya.

Moreover, Gadhafi is putting down a rebellion against state authority as presently constituted, but Obama and Bush/Cheney initiated wars of aggression based entirely on lies and deception.

Yet Gadhafi is being demonized, and Bush/Cheney/Obama are sitting on their high horse draped in cloaks of morality. Obama described himself as saving Libyans from violence while Obama himself murders Afghans, Pakistanis, and whomever else.

Indeed, the Obama regime has been torturing a US soldier, Bradley Manning, for having a moral conscience. America has degenerated to the point where having a moral conscience is evidence of anti-Americanism and “terrorist activity.”

The Bush/Cheney/Obama wars of naked aggression have bankrupted America. Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the money wasted on the Iraq war could have been used to fix America’s Social Security problem for half a century. Instead, the money was used to boost the obscene profits of the armament industry.

The obscene wars of aggression, the obscene profits of the offshoring corporations, and the obscene bailouts of the rich financial gangsters have left the American public with annual budget deficits of approximately $1.5 trillion. These deficits are being covered by printing money. Sooner or later, the printing presses will cause the US dollar to collapse and domestic inflation to explode. Social Security benefits will be wiped out by inflation rising more rapidly than the cost-of-living adjustments. If America survives, no one will be left but the mega-rich. Unless there is a violent revolution.

Alternatively, if the Federal Reserve puts the brake on monetary expansion, interest rates will rise, sending the economy into a deeper depression.

Washington, focused on its newest war, is oblivious to America’s peril. As Stiglitz notes, the costs of the Iraq war alone could have kept every foreclosed family in their home, provided health care for every American child, and wiped out the student loans of graduates who cannot find jobs because they have been outsoured to foreigners. However, the great democratic elected government of “the world’s only superpower” prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance the profits of the military/security complex. More money is spent violating the constitutional rights of American air travelers than is spent in behalf of the needy.

The moral authority of the West is rapidly collapsing. When Russia, Asia, and South America look at Europe, Australia and Canada, they see American puppet states that contribute troops to the aggressive wars of the Empire. The French president, the British prime minister, the “president” of Georgia, and the rest are merely functionaries of the American Empire. The puppet rulers routinely sell out the interests and welfare of their peoples in behalf of American hegemony. And they are well rewarded for their service. One year out of office former British prime minister Tony Blair had a net worth of $30 million.

In his war against Libya, Obama has taken America one step further into Caesarism. Obama did Bush one step better and did not even bother to get congressional authorization for his attack on Libya. Obama claimed that his moral authority trumped the US Constitution. The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not know:

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

This from the Great Moral Leader who every day murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and now Libya and who turns a blind eye when “the great democracy in the Middle East,” Israel, murders more Palestinians.

The American president, whose drones and air force slaughter civilians every day of the year went on to say Libya stands alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.” Obviously, Obama thinks that one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and an unknown number of murdered Afghans is just a small thing.

The rest of Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.

How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?

March 30, 2011

Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail], a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts297.html

March 23, 2011

US diplomat Warren Christopher dies

Filed under: Need Truth — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 9:56 am


Warren worked to end the Balkans war and negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran [File: AFP]

Warren Christopher, a former US secretary of state who worked to end the war in Bosnia and negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran, has died, aged 85.

He ”passed away peacefully, surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles” of complications from kidney and bladder cancer, local media quoted his family as saying in a statement on Friday.

As the chief US statesman under former president Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, Christopher was a behind-the-scenes negotiator.

Often called the “stealth” secretary of state, he was known for his understated, self-effacing manner.

“Careful listening may be the secret weapon,” the New York Times quoted him as saying in a 1981 speech when he was deputy secretary of state.

“I observed some time ago that I was better at listening than at talking.”

That “secret weapon” helped Christopher weather diplomatic crises.

In 1995, he intervened during the crucial final days of the US-brokered Bosnian peace talks at Dayton, Ohio. He had an important role in closing the deal, according to his then deputy, Richard Holbrooke, the force behind the agreement.

As secretary of state, Christopher devoted much of his time to the Middle East. He made at least 18 trips to the region in pursuit of peace and a ceasefire in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

In 1994, he witnessed the signing of a peace treaty between Jordan and Israel.

As Jimmy Carter’s deputy secretary of state, he negotiated the release of 52 Americans taken hostage at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. The hostages were freed on January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in to succeed Carter as president.

He also helped negotiate the Panama Canal treaty, worked on establishing normal relations with China and played a major role in developing Carter’s human-rights policies.

March 22, 2011

Obama embarks on Latin America trip

Filed under: Need Truth — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 9:48 pm

Obama has embarked on a trip to Latin America that many in the hemisphere consider long overdue and that the White House believes will help restore US influence in the region.

Over the next five days, Obama, who landed in Brasilia on Saturday, is to visit Brazil, Chile and El Salvador in what his aides cast as a mission to build job-creating opportunities for the US and to address regional security concerns.

The trip is also an effort to solidify relationships that have declined two years after Obama declared “a new chapter of engagement” with the region.

In that time, China has expanded its economic footprint in the region and has surpassed the US as Brazil’s senior trade partner.

Despite the competing, pressing demands on Obama, the White House has been determined to proceed with the trip, emphasising the potential of the burgeoning region for US economic growth.

Obama’s departure on Friday came a day after the UN Security Council approved a no-fly zone over Libya and authorised “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from attacks by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.

In Latin America, Obama will meet Dilma Rousseff, the recently elected Brazilian president; Sebastian Pinera, his Chilean counterpart; and Mauricio Funes, the El Salvadoran president.

Stark contrast

In selecting those three countries in particular, Obama is reaching out to nations whose political leaders have displayed a pragmatic governing style and where anti-Americanism is on the wane.

As such they stand in stark contrast to Venezuela and Bolivia, led by leftist populists known for agitating against the US.

At the same time, in Brazil, Chile and El Salvador, Obama is highlighting democracies that have emerged from turbulent pasts and that, in his administration’s view, serve as examples of a pathway out of the current upheaval in the Middle East.

Obama first travelled to the region in April 2009 when he attended a 34-nation summit in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Since then, however, his attention to Latin America has been devoted to drug-related violence in Mexico as other issues in the region took a back seat to domestic and international priorities.

November 15, 2010

America is a Sick Country - Lets Bribe Israel…

Filed under: Israel, Need Truth, Nuts Crazy and Loony — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 3:18 pm

Netanyahu, who was in the United States last week to hammer out the details of the “compromise,” has been offered $3 billion (1 billion pounds) worth of advanced F-35 jets. These on top of the 20 F-35s Israel already plans to buy for $2.75 billion drawn from annual grants it gets from Washington.

In other words, Israel is slated to receive 40 advanced fighter jets – a package worth just under $6 billion dollars (absolutely free of charge courtesy of the US taxpayer) if Israel agrees to extend its freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank for 3 months…

Merry Christmas - Israel…

Coffee Talk!

October 17, 2010

Israel and nuclear strike capability…

Filed under: American Lies, Israel, Need Truth, The Western Press, War — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 5:44 pm
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones Nuclear weapons stat...
Image via Wikipedia

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that Tehran was ready to restart talks with world powers on its nuclear program in November in exchange for a statement on Israel’s atomic capability.

If this is a concern of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad then it is justified.

“Israel is widely suspected to have nuclear weapons, but has refused to either confirm or deny their existence.”

From what I have picked up here and there in web articles from 2006 to present day and there may even be a reference in the web article, Life After the Oil Crash, http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ Israel has one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world.

These nuclear weapons have been created in a secret but approved Israeli nuclear weapons program. They exist in Israel as a deterrent against nations attacking the oil fields in the region of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, and so on and as a deterrent to attacking Israel itself.

I thought it odd that this statement from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would come up in an article because I thought it was widely known around the world that Israel has the third largest nuclear strike capability in the world.

1. United States
2. Russia
3. Israel

When I first came across this information I was pretty surprised. I could have been doing some research to understand the political relationship between the United States and Israel and why the two countries were so close politically. It just did not make any sense to me why Israel and the United States were so close politically.

Once again there are political ties between both countries that go back to World War II if not before.

I believe these ties became more formal after the Holocaust in Europe, when many Jews fled to the United States for freedom and safety.

After discovering that Israel was thought to have the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world I simply attributed it to both protection of oil assets of the United States in the Middle East and protection for the Jewish population living in Israel so that they would not have to go through another Holocaust scenario. Both reasons justified a strong nuclear deterrent.

A quick search on the internet reveals these articles on the subject

1. Israeli Nuclear Weapons
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

“Israel has not confirmed that it has nuclear weapons and officially maintains that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Yet the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is a “public secret” by now due to the declassification of large numbers of formerly highly classified US government documents which show that the United States by 1975 was convinced that Israel had nuclear weapons.

History
Israel began actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days. In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF’s Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.
The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure “that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter.” Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense’s Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC. By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials…”

2. Israel and weapons of mass destruction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

“Israel is widely believed to possess weapons of mass destruction, and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).[1] The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment has recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program.[2] Officially Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons.

Although no official statistics exist, it has been estimated that Israel possesses up to 400 thermonuclear weapons, believed to be of Teller-Ulam design, including strategic warheads in the megaton-range.[3][4][5] Delivery mechanisms include Jericho intercontinental ballistic missiles, with a range of 11,500 km.[6] Additionally, Israel is believed to have an offshore nuclear second-strike capability, using submarine launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles.[7] The Israeli government maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity on whether it has nuclear weapons, saying only that it would not be the first to “introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”[8] Former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons.[9]

Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, on July 13, 2008, Israel took part in a regional conference of the Union for the Mediterranean which pledged to pursue a Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction.[10]”

3. Nuclear weapons and Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel

Israel is widely believed to be the sixth country in the world to have developed nuclear weapons[5] and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the others being India, Pakistan and North Korea.[6] Former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons,[7] but Israel maintains a policy known as “nuclear ambiguity” (also known as “nuclear opacity”). Israel has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons, instead repeating over the years that it would not be the first country to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East, leaving ambiguous whether it means it will not create, will not disclose, or will not make first use of the weapons. Israel has refused to sign the NPT despite international pressure to do so, and has stated that signing the NPT would be contrary to its national security interests.[8]

Israel started investigating the nuclear field soon after its founding in 1948 and with French support secretly began building a nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant in the late 1950s. Although Israel first built a nuclear weapon in the late 1960s, it was not publicly confirmed from the inside until Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, revealed details of the program to the British press in 1986. Israel is currently believed to possess between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads with the ability to deliver them by intercontinental ballistic missile, aircraft, and submarine.[2]

4. Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Israel/index.html

Israel is believed to possess the largest and most sophisticated arsenal outside of the five declared nuclear powers. Israel has never admitted possessing nuclear weapons, but abundant information is available showing that the capability exists.
A short essay on the history of Israel’s nuclear weapons program
April 1997 revelations about Israeli-South African nuclear collaboration
The center of Israel’s weapons program is the Negev Nuclear Research Center near the desert town of Dimona (the center is usually identified simply as “Dimona”). A nuclear reactor and plutonium production facility was built by France at this facility in the late 1950s and early 60s. All of the production and fabrication of special nuclear materials (plutonium, lithium-6 deuteride, and enriched and unenriched uranium) occurs at Dimona although the design and assembly of nuclear weapons occurs elsewhere.

So based on these four articles, it can be safely assumed that Israel is a non-recognized nuclear power.

The reason why Israel has political ambiguity in not confirming their nuclear weapons is that it would lead to an escalation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

If there was a nuclear war between Israel and another Middle East country it would lead to the destruction of the entire Middle East area and its oil producing capabilities.

Therefore in recognition of the past Holocaust atrocities against the Jewish people during World War II Israel has been allowed to develop its nuclear program and develop nuclear weapons in order to protect itself from future transgressions.

The nuclear weapons program was allowed as long as Israel kept silent about its nuclear strike capabilities. This it has done to date and will do so in the foreseeable future.

Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons or a nuclear arsenal based on the above information. In this particular case, a balance of power will not be allowed in the Middle East due to the extreme danger of a nuclear war destroying the oil facilities in the Middle East.

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