Free Republic

Oct 13,2008 The Nation -- The elections in Iran are nearly a year away, but it's encouraging to see the emerging possibility of a new bid for the presidency by former President Mohammad Khatami. Last week, he hinted that he's considering running against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nutball whose support lies mainly in the paramilitary Basij force and elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Can Khatami ju-jitsu the all-powerful Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei and his election-rigging Guardian Council? Can Khatami loom so large that even Khamenei might choose to support him over Ahmadinejad? Might Khamenei decide to back Khatami as...

It was in October 2005 that the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, first said that the "Zionist regime" must "be wiped off the face of the Earth." And it was in April 2006 that he called Israel a "fake regime" that "cannot logically continue to live." In the years that have since passed, the man who favors a second Holocaust and denies the occurrence of the first one has repeated these genocidal statements almost daily. These are also the years in which Iran's nuclear weapons program has proceeded exponentially. It is a program that endangers the very existence of the Jewish...

Who is Vera Baker? Some people in Chicago claim she was Obama’s Finance Director for his 2004 Senate campaign. FEC Senate campaign records show she was paid a pretty penny as “Finance Director”. However, people familiar with Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign say Claire Serdiuk was Obama’s Finance Director. Looking through everything we can see online for that 2004 campaign, Claire Serdiuk is consistently listed as the Finance Director - because that’s what she was. There’s no mention of Vera Baker…but Vera Baker was paid as the “Finance Director” too. And then, suddenly, Vera Baker was relocated to New York. Right...

Until recently, it was possible to believe that whatever Ahmadinejad's intentions, Iran was a long way from acquiring the capabilities it needs to achieve its goals. But a blue-ribbon commission has reported to Congress on what appears to be an Iranian drive to obtain the means to carry out an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack. An EMP attack is produced by launching a ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon attached -- and detonating it high above the Earth. This produces a massive pulse of ionized particles that could damage or even wipe out many electrical and information systems. Such an attack...

Washington -- A little known hawkish group is offering assistance to embattled Kadima minister Shaul Mofaz in his fight to reverse results of the party's primary election that put Tzipi Livni in line to create a new government coalition. Stand Up America, a security-minded organization led by former generals of the United States military, has hired the services of the attorney who represented President Bush in the 2000 post-election legal dispute, and has suggested that the attorney travel to Israel and take on the Mofaz case if it ever reaches the Supreme Court. The offer, while marginal in its potential...

Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.

Although oil prices have tumbled by almost half since approaching $150 a barrel in July, it looks like black gold still has further to fall... "...OPEC will need to revive demand. “We now know that the global economy couldn’t really handle prices above $100 and OPEC will have to figure out a price the economy can handle,” Lebow said."

'We must stand together': Bush warns countries as G7 agrees 'plan of action' tor rescue world economy G7 group agree 'plan of action' to solve financial crisisBush warns countries they must stick together U.S. follows Britain by buying up banks stocksFTSE has worst week ever, dropping 21% in just five daysPresident Bush today warned countries against acting alone to try and ease the financial crisis after a catastrophic week of nosediving shares that saw £250billion wiped off the Stock Market. In his 20th emergency statement in since September, Mr Bush stressed that the biggest powers in the world have to...

World leaders are coming together to take decisive action to help a faltering world economy rocked by a credit crisis and unnerved by plunging global stock markets, accoring to President Bush. In a Rose Garden address shortly before 8 a.m., Bush pledged that the economy would emerge stronger as a result of the actions taken by G7 nations. “I'm confident the world's major economies can overcome the challenges we face,” said Bush, backed by Treasury Sectretary Henry Paulson and other G7 finance ministers. “We're in this together. We'll come through this together.” He said the G7 nations had agreed to...

Are we in another Cold War with Russia? I don't think so. It's more a case, perhaps, of history appearing to repeat itself--the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The trouble with the real Cold War was that, although the West won it in the sense that Russia abandoned communism and lost much of its empire, the elite of the old regime remained in charge. ...Russia has no ideology, other than the ruthless retention and exploitation of power. It is not burdened by the rule of law, which does not exist there. It has no moral principles of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States plans to announce on Saturday that it will take North Korea off its terrorism blacklist in a bid to salvage denuclearization talks, a U.S. official familiar with the decision said. The official, who asked not to be named as the announcement is set to be made later in the day, said Pyongyang had provided assurances on verifying its nuclear activities and President George W. Bush decided to proceed with taking the North off the U.S. list of states considered sponsors of terrorism. The move, which will be unpopular with some conservative Republicans who see...

BERLIN - An Iranian businessman arrested a week ago in Germany on suspicion of illegal exports to Iran was a valued agent of the German foreign intelligence service BND, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Prosecutors had advised the BND before the arrest they had no choice but to detain the man, 61, who had the code name Sindbad, because of suspicions that he was supplying equipment needed to make Iran's Shahab missiles, Spiegel said. In a story to hit the streets in its Monday issue, Spiegel said Sindbad's intelligence deliveries to Germany included photographs of tunnel-drilling machinery,...

Iran to open 2 health clinics in Bolivia October 10, 2008 Iran to build 2 health clinics in Bolivia, looks to expand medical aid to Latin America LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Iran's top diplomat in Bolivia says his country will open two low-cost public health clinics in South America's poorest nation. Business attache Hojjatollah Soltani said Friday the Islamic republic plans to use Bolivia as a base for future Red Crescent medical programs across the continent. He did not offer details or cost figures for the clinics. Bolivia and Iran, both outspoken critics of the United States, have only...

The failing North Korean nuclear deal appears to have been saved from collapse after the United States agreed to remove the isolated dictatorship from its list of terrorist states. But the move has alienated the government of Japan, which opposes such concessions until Pyongyang has told the truth about Japanese citizens which it abducted during the Cold War. The fragile agreement on North Korean nuclear disarmament, finally agreed last year after four years of tortuous negotiation, had appeared to be in danger after North Korea threatened to reactivate the plutonium reactor where it has generated the material for an unknown...

The financial meltdown on Wall Street and elsewhere is not simply endangering investments, payrolls, consumer purchases, and business transactions in America. It is also triggering predictions—especially from overseas—that the era of American financial primacy is coming to a dramatic end. The unique role of the U.S. dollar as the world's broadly chosen reserve currency, along with the globe-straddling role of the U.S. financial sector, have long been a key source of power, prestige, and financing opportunities for American companies and the U.S. government. Eroding that stellar status endangers a central pillar of the mostly U.S.-inspired system that has basically defined...

The Russian's alleged role was disclosed in a document, obtained by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which describes complex and highly sensitive experiments supposedly conducted inside Iran.

As the United States gets closer to electing its 44th president, there is a keen sense of interest in Russia in the outcome of a most thrilling race for the White House, but also a palpable feeling of detachment about the possible implications for Russian-U.S. relations. There is a consensus that, after eight years of George W. Bush, America will enter a period of major foreign policy adjustment, but Russia will not be at the heart of it. No one seriously expects a magical transformation of U.S. foreign policy, but there is a hope that the state of world affairs...

Japan rejects N Korea proposal By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and David Pilling in Tokyo Published: October 10 2008 02:58 | Last updated: October 10 2008 02:58 Japan has rejected a North Korean proposal on nuclear verification, in a major blow to US efforts to reach a deal with Pyongyang towards removing nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula. Taro Aso, the Japanese prime minister, has informed the Bush administration that he cannot accept the North Korean offer, which Washington had urged him to support, two sources familiar with the decision told the Financial Times. Washington and Pyongyang have for months...

Four miles under the ocean's surface off Brazil's lush coast lie billions of barrels of recently discovered light crude — a treasure that could transform the country into an oil superpower. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called it "a gift from God" and pledged to end chronic poverty and narrow the country's broad gap between the rich and the poor.

The US must increase its nuclear arsenal in response to China's growing military might, according to a State Department report. The International Security and Advisory Board (Isab), which reports to Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned that "holding the US homeland hostage to missile attack is important to Chinese military goals". It claimed that China will have "in excess of 100 nuclear-armed missiles that could strike the United States" by 2015. By contrast, it said the US had allowed its nuclear stockpile and expertise to "deteriorate and atrophy across the board" for the last two decades. The ISAB...

Russia supports the creation of "an international petroleum bank," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said at a ceremony honoring late Argentine guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "We are going to create an international petroleum bank," Chavez said Wednesday on the eve of the 41st anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, who was executed by the Bolivian army on Oct. 9, 1967. "Enough already with our people's resources having to be deposited in banks in the north, which you can see are sinking," Chavez said, referring to the global financial crisis. Chavez said Russia expressed its support for the bank, a...

The Libyan government has decided to halt oil deliveries to Switzerland, the Libyan oil company Tamoil has said. "Libya has requested the company to halt all oil deliveries to Switzerland," Tamoil CEO Issam Zanati told AFP in a telephone interview. "It is a decision of Libya and not Tamoil," he said. Zanati was unable to say how suspension would last or why the decision was taken. Libyan authorities declined to comment. Libya threatened to halt oil deliveries after the son of Libyan leader Moamar Kahdafi, Hannibal, was arrested in Switzerland in July along with his wife after two servants claimed...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- North Korea announced Thursday that it is preparing to restart the facility that produced its atomic bomb, clearly indicating that it plans to completely pull out of an international deal to end its nuclear program. North Korea told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it was stopping the process of disabling its main nuclear site and barring international inspectors from the Yongbyon facility, the agency said. Pyongyang "informed IAEA inspectors that effective immediately access to facilities at Yongbyon would no longer be permitted," the U.N. nuclear watchdog said. North Korea "also stated that it has stopped...

/snip South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Kim Tae-young told a parliamentary committee Wednesday that he believes the North "has been pushing to develop a small warhead to be mounted on a missile." Kim was quoted as saying by his office that it is unclear whether the North has already manufactured such a small nuclear warhead. North Korea, which conducted an underground nuclear test in 2006, maintains a stockpile of plutonium believed to be sufficient to produce about a half dozen bombs. /snip

Politics/Diplomacy 2008/10/08 03:05 KST N. Korea fires two short-range missiles in Yellow Sea: source SEOUL, Oct. 8 (Yonhap) -- North Korea fired two short range missiles in the Yellow Sea adjoining China Monday as part of its routine military training, a defense source here said Tuesday. "We understand that North Korea fired about two missiles in the Yellow Sea in the afternoon of the seventh (of October)," the source said. "It seems that the missiles were fired as part of their routine drill." The missile launch, the first since March when a North Korean naval vessel fired three Styx...

Security: Buried in last week's news, the CIA director warned that the next president's top national security problem is the Axis of Oil. With campaigns focused on wars all but won, will our next leader be ready?He'd better be, because presidential debates and conventional wisdom now hold that Iraq and Afghanistan are the main foreign policy issues for the next president. Maybe today, but with those wars heading for victory, other threats loom: Namely, according to CIA director Michael Hayden, the growing threat of petrostates like Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And those threats are barely on the country's radar, he...

Iceland expressed disappointment that western allies had failed to provide support to help ease the country’s financial crisis, forcing it to turn to Russia for a €4bn loan.

An Iranian news agency said Tuesday that a United States warplane had been forced to land in Iran, but the Pentagon said there was no evidence to support the claim, and Tehran moved quickly to play down the claim. Within moments of the first report on the semi-official Fars news agency, an Iranian state television channel, Al Alam, said on its Web site that the plane “was not a military plane and did not belong to the United States.”

Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 days of imports like oil and food. Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 bn in the coffers. The government is engulfed by crises left behind by Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who resigned the presidency in August. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to inflict huge damage on the economy. Given the country's standing as a frontline state in the US-led "war on terrorism",...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States will not permit Israel to attack Iran's nuclear program as long as American troops are stationed in Iraq, an Israeli television report quoting unnamed diplomatic sources said on Monday. An Israeli official accompanying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on a visit to Moscow declined to comment on the report. Olmert flew to Moscow to press Russia not to sell advanced missiles and weapons technology to Iran and Syria

Russia is committed to stopping Iranian nuclearization for military purposes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Moscow on Monday night.

Poland has claimed that it has assembled enough votes to block a landmark EU climate change agreement after spearheading a revolt by Eastern European states that fear the package would increase their dependence on Russian natural gas supplies. A six nation bloc on the EU's eastern fringes signed a pact to fight a proposal designed to cut carbon dioxide(CO2) emissions by a fifth by 2020.... While viewed in Brussels as a necessary act of leadership in the climate change debate by Europe, the proposal has been criticised for granting an unfair advantage to the richer Western European nations. In particular...

France's foreign minister says that the world knows Israel will attack Iran before it can develop a nuclear weapon. As Middle East correspondent, Ben Knight, reports Bernard Kouchner was speaking with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz ahead of his visit to Israel. The foreign minister says he doesn't believe a nuclear weapon would give any immunity to Iran, because Israel would hit the country first - something the Iranians, and everybody else knows. Mr Kouchner says the solution lies in dialogue and sanctions against Iran. Yesterday Iran rejected a proposal to accept foreign supplies of nuclear fuel for its reactors, saying...

A brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Ahmed Wali Karzai, may be involved in the illegal drug trade, which is prompting serious concern among top US officials, The New York Times reported on its website Saturday. Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said the US ambassador to Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief and their British counterparts, discussed the allegations against Ahmed Wali Karzai with Hamid Karzai as far back as 2006. But the Afghan president has so far resisted calls to move his brother out of the country, arguing he had not seen any conclusive evidence against Ahmed,...

Not since 1984, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, has Russia ventured to launch dozens of nuclear bombers for an exercise in which Tu-95 Bear bombers will fire live cruise missiles. Exercise Stability 2008 will take place Oct.-6-12 over sub-Arctic Russia uncomfortably close to the US state of Alaska, and Belarus. DEBKAfile's military sources report that the exercise is part of a month-long war game described by Russian air force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik as "practicing the strategic deployment of the armed forces including the nuclear triad." As part of the exercise, our sources reported exclusively on Oct.1,...

/begin my translation Kim Jong-il's Reappearance to Calm Things down 2008-10-04 If it is true that Kim Jong-il resurfaced after 51 days of absence to watch the soccer match of Kim Il-sung University as KCNA reported, this could have been an attempt to quiet down disaffected residents in Pyongyang, according to a high-ranking Chinese official who recently visited N. Korea and met Kim Young-nam, the Chairman of Standing Committee. After his Pyongyang visit, he met Chinese businessmen in a city next to Sino-N. Korean border, in which he said that general mood in Pyongyang is the worst (he has seen,)...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has made his first public appearance in more than a month, a state-run news agency said from Pyongyang on Saturday amid speculation about his health. Kim watched a university soccer game held to mark the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the university named after his late father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, the Korean Central News Agency reported. The 66-year-old leader had not been seen in public since mid-August, missing two key occasions—the 60th anniversary of the founding of North Korea and Korean Thanksgiving. U.S. and South...

Their progress watched closely by increasingly jittery western militaries, dozens of nuclear bombers will take part in the exercise. Tu-95 Bear bombers will fire cruise missiles at targets in sub-Arctic Russia for the first time since 1984. While Russia insists that the war games are not meant as a gesture of aggression, the West is growing increasingly uneasy about the scale of the manoeuvres. The aerial exercises, which will take place close to American airspace in Alaska, are part of a month-long war game known as Stability 2008 that Russia claims is the biggest for 20 years.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: The House of Representatives has approved a $700 billion bailout package for US banks, under pressure from all sides as the effo rt to head off a spreading financial crisis hung in the balance. The House approved the financial rescue plan by a vote of 263-171, sending the measure to President George W. Bush and concluding two weeks of legislative haggling in Congress that had roiled and captivated global markets. Wells Fargo & Co stepped in to buy Wachovia Corp, a bank badly hobbled by the credit crisis, providing a rare bit of positive news for the financial...

At its annual Vienna powwow this week, the world's nuclear watchdog is taking Iran for a few spins over its atomic ambitions. But the mullahs in Tehran know this diplomatic waltz well, and they can rest assured the dance merely frees up more time and space for them to get their bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency report does at least tell us the Iranians are closer than ever to becoming a nuclear power. In unusually scathing terms for an outfit disinclined to criticize Iran, the IAEA lays bare Tehran's lack of cooperation and implies it was hiding illegal military...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of sending military personnel to fight against Russia in Georgia. Mr Putin said that Ukrainian specialists operated anti-aircraft missile systems used against Russian aircraft during the August war. Russia has said Ukraine helped arm Georgia before the war, but Mr Putin said missile sales may have been conducted after the war already stated. And he said the systems were operated by Ukrainians. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said a parliamentary panel in Ukraine would investigate allegations of arms sales. She said that under Ukrainian law the president and his Security Council is...

Markets flashed signs of panic Thursday as evidence of recession mounted and banks remained wary of lending to one another. Stocks and commodities slid, prices for U.S. Treasury bonds and other safe-haven investments rose sharply, and European currencies slumped amid worries that economic weakness there will deepen. In the U.S., new data showed a seven-year high in jobless claims and a plunge in factory orders, underscoring the woes in non-financial sectors of this country's economy that have gotten relatively little attention amid the recent debate over a rescue package for troubled Wall Street firms. Traders welcomed the passage of that...

Asian investors placed little faith and credit in the U.S. Senate's passage of a revised bailout package; stock indexes in Japan, South Korea and Australia deepened their morning descent into the red as Thursday wore on. Markets were moving on signs of a intensified global downturn rather than on U.S. bailout developments, some analysts said. Hong Kong managed, however, to turn around its early losses in the final hour of trading. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.9%, to 11,154.76 points, as manufacturers and financials slid. The broader Topix suffered an even steeper decline of 2.2%, to 1,076.97. Shares of Japanese automakers...

Greek officials said the state would cover "all bank deposits, whatever the amount." The move follows the dramatic decision by Ireland this week to guarantee the deposits and debts of its six biggest lenders in the most sweeping bank bail-out since the credit crisis began. "The whole of Europe will have to do same thing, otherwise Europe will have a split banking system," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. British banks are already facing a haemorrhage of deposits to Irish banks that now enjoy the AAA sovereign rating of the Irish state. Greece has so far escaped attention...

Bill Manville says he is proud of his representative, freshman Democrat Nancy Boyda of Kansas, for helping vote down the $700 billion financial-rescue bill Monday. But the Winchester farmer and staunch Republican quickly adds that doesn't mean he will necessarily vote next month for Rep. Boyda -- a top target of Republican strategists. The size and timing of the rescue plan, a month before Election Day -- and with early balloting already under way in parts of the country -- made it the most consequential vote many House members say they have ever taken. The short-term economic consequences were quickly...

Dow futures are down -110 per Fox News post bailout vote. The Hang Seng just opened at the top of the hour and is already down 2.0%. The Nikkei was up 0.7% prior to the vote, and now it is down 1.1%. I think the Asia markets don't like this bill.

The package before the Senate will be similar to the House version, with these additions, the New York Times reported in its online edition: * The higher limit for insured bank deposits sought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which asked to raise the cap to $250,000 from $100,000, to quell opposition by individual and small-business depositors. * Tax breaks for businesses and alternative energy, part of a package that has been caught in a stalemate in the House of Representatives. The Senate version of the gridlocked tax legislation would cost more than $100 billion and extend and expand many...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate is set to vote Wednesday evening on its version of the emergency financial rescue package rejected Monday by the House of Representatives, which will include an increase in the cap to the level of deposits in bank accounts insured by the federal government up to $250,000, a senior senate Democratic aide said Tuesday. The vote will also include the Senate version of an extension to a series of renewable energy and other business tax credits. There had been speculation throughout Tuesday that the Senate might move to act on the bailout legislation after a surprise...

The US Department of Defense has approved the sale of 25 F-35 stealth-enabled Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) to the Israeli Air Force (IAF), Israel Radio reported Tuesday evening.

1. This is the largest expansion of government in the history of the world. 2. When the surgeon screws up a procedure and you sue for malpractice, who do you hire for the next surgery to repair the damage? The "oversight board" that the bill purported to create consisted of the exact same people who let this happen in the first place. 3. We are willing to take a short term hit in order to prevent the next trillion dollar bail out, and the next, and so on, because we don't believe either Wall Street or the government should be...