Drones Over London?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Muller

“Communicating with the enemy, 104-D”, an article in the US Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits military personnel from “communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy” had been the charge against a cyber systems analyst based in the United Kingdom by the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations who allegedly had expressed support for WikiLeaks and had attended pro-Julian Assange demonstrations in London. That was revealed in declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents released under US freedom-of-information laws. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the analyst’s access to classified information was suspended, but the investigators closed the case without laying charges. The analyst denied leaking information.

So, WikiLeaks and Assange are now officially enemies of the United States, just like al-Qaeda and the Taliban.   Assange’s US attorney, Michael Ratner, claims this designation has very dangerous implications and could be interpreted as a green light to kill or detain Assange without charge or trial. As John Glaser at antiwar.com correctly notes,

“WikiLeaks is nothing more than a publishing platform and Julian Assange is properly understood as a journalist. For the US military to designate him in the same class as al-Qaeda militants is the greatest affront to first amendment press freedoms in a very long time.”

As Assange is currently located in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, will President Barack Obama extend his drone war to Britain?

27 September 2012 @ 10:38 am

 

Last modified September 27, 2012
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Misinformation Confirmed

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Muller

It has widely been reported that the head of Iran’s ‘s Atomic Energy Agency  Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani had, in an interview with the Arabian newspaper Al-Hayat the other day,  admitted that Iran had occasionally misinformed inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about its nuclear program because of foreign espionage.

Apparently as far as I can see he did not mention the IAEA, rather MI6, although one can be sure that Iran has been playing chess with IAEA’s Yukiya Amano and his predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei for a long time. But it makes certainly a difference what Abbasi-Davani had actually said and what is being spread through the media in times of mounting tensions about Iran’s nuclear program. “We sometimes [gave] false information in order to protect our nuclear sites and our earnings, as inevitably mislead foreign intelligence”. He predicts that “the [Iran’s] file” will be referred again to the UN Security Council by Amano in November.

So, I was probably right when interpreting the recent covering of a suspect building at the Parchin military complex, which might contain or have contained a high explosive test chamber, with a flashy pink tarp which is highly visible from space as an attempt to mislead and mock both the IAEA and those who seem to be obsessed with these kinds of satellite images.

But both sides misinform. Respective David Albright, president and founder of Washington DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), who has been beating the drums about Parchin for almost eight years now, has a strange view of what Iran is allowed under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and what not. In his complaint about NAM (Non-aligned Movement) countries’ “hypocritical” statement on Iran’s nuclear program and the Tehran Declaration he claims that, under Article IV of the NPT, “Iran cannot claim the right to nuclear energy production – or a right to enrich at all – while under investigation for possible non-peaceful uses of these capabilities.” Not just hilarious but uninformed and misleading, as Dan Joyner of the Alabama School of Law rightfully debunks.

September 22, 2012 @ 09:16

Last update September 22, 2012.

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A Rather Grim Outlook

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Muller

Tromsø University and in particular its Center of Advanced Studies in Linguistics (CASTL), which celebrates its excellence and tenth anniversary, hosts this autumn semester Noam Chomsky who gave a political talk to the public yesterday to an overcrowded auditorium. Chomsky, who has a reputation of giving rather boring speeches, surprised with his sometimes mild and often grim humor when looking back 65 years of the crisis in the Middle East, which is due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The title of his talk on “Middle East Dilemmas. Simple Solutions, Difficult Obstacles” reminded everybody that the solutions are there, on the table, and supported by the vast majority of the people. Not surprisingly, he makes US American foreign policies of numerous of its post-WWII Presidents and Administrations and, of course, Israel responsible for any impasse. Several times Chomsky compared Israel with the former apartheid regime of South Africa when describing the fate of Palestinians being humiliated and deprived of human rights for decades of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, the occupation of the Golan Heights, the sieges of and war in Gaza, Lebanon etc. The apparent solutions for the conflict are of little interest for either Israel or the US, so are the popular overthrow of dictators in the Middle East and the development of Democracy.

His pretty apologetic description of the Iranian case (albeit at least twice mentioning the malicious  regime in Tehran which even might be a threat for its own population; there are other rogue regimes, some even worse, he was quick to add) sparked criticism of at least one Iranian during the discussion who mentioned Iran’s support of Hisbollah and Hamas, even their acts of terror; and its support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Tehran’s strive for nuclear weapon capability, which is denied by the US and Israel, is seen by Chomsky as a deterrent only. The threat for both Israel and the US is, according to Chomsky, that Iran might make a decision to manufacture nuclear war heads and quickly gets into a position where threats by the former countries to attack would be of no avail any longer.

September 14, 2012 @ 11:24.

Last modified September 14, 2012.

Posted in Academics, Iran, Israel, Middle East, USA | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Just Before an Israeli Attack

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Muller

Update below.

Yukiya Amano, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has written another dangerous report on Iran’s  nuclear program. Again, the important news is that there is nothing new. His language becomes shrill, though. Non-diversion of “declared” nuclear material at the “declared” nuclear facilities and “locations outside facilities where nuclear material is customarily used” is verified as before. But he seems to express doubt that Iran declares everything it is obliged to declare under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The Fordow site near Qom has seen a doubling in (mainly not yet fed or spinning) centrifuges since his last report on Iran on May 25,  now they approximate 3000. But this time Amano also points, with increasing frustration and dismay, at the Parchin military site which had been mentioned in his November 2011 report as a site where Iran had possibly conducted illicit nuclear experiments with high explosives almost ten years ago and  which IAEA inspectors have not got permission by Iranian authorities, despite numerous requests, to visit yet. As seen on recent satellite images this site has been the subject of dramatic (de-)construction work since then. Amano stresses that, in stark contrast, nothing had changed in several years after the site (Parchin, but apparently different buildings of the huge complex) had been visited by the IAEA last time in 2005.

As an independently and cautiously acting nuclear watchdog, Amano has been a flop so far. Just a compliant US lackey. A diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks has actually proved that some time ago. Whether Israel is really preparing for an attack before the US American election in November is still not certain. Dogs which bark, don’t bite. As a matter of fact Iran has been threatened with war at this time of the year for many years.

The best solution would be if Iran could finally grant access to the Parchin site and either prove nothing had happened at and in the suspect building or declare that illicit experiments there had been stopped after 2003.

An excellent rebuttal of Amano’s latest report can be found here.

August 31, 2012 @ 08:15

Last modified August 31, 2012.

Update. Once again, Moon of Alamaba discovered a significant detail in the two Amano reports on Iran, of May 25 and yesterday. One has to carefully read and calculate to understand that Iran has in fact reduced the amount of up to 20% enriched uranium-235 in the gaseous form UF6 (which can be further enriched to weapon-grade, 90% enriched, uranium)  from 101 kg (in the May 25 report) to 91.4 kg (in the report yesterday). Apparently Iran is now producing urgently needed (for medical purposes) fuel plates of UO2 for the Tehran Research Reactor which cannot be used for further enrichment, a confidence-building measure, so to say. It proves Amano’s dishonesty that he does not mention, let alone acknowledge, simple calculations but rather conceals them in numerous paragraphs and figures in the report.

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Mocking the IAEA, ISIS

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Muller

Well, what’s missing in the latest satellite image of the “suspected high explosives test building” at the military site Parchin east of Tehran is actually a nice bow. The building, now covered with pink material, definitely looks like a gift box for the IAEA and interested western think tanks such as David Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

Why the main building, in which about ten years ago experiments had allegedly been conducted in a high explosives test chamber (see a picture of a real chamber here) as part of Iran’s then apparently military nuclear program, has now been covered by a flashy plastic foil remains a mystery. What activities do the Iranians want to hide there while everybody is watching?

David Albright’s advice to the IAEA that

“unless Iran demonstrates concretely that it is willing to address these issues [Iran’s refusal of access to the Parchin site and its refusal to discuss any other evidence of weaponization work], the Board should pass a resolution that refers this set of issues to the U.N. Security Council for further action, including the imposition of additional sanctions”

must actually be considered a further exaggeration of his now entirely absurd charade.

Let’s see whether the Iranians will finally grant access to Parchin and what IAEA inspectors will find. If nothing, well, in that case Albright might be wrong when still pretending that the site had been sanitized. He knows (or should know) best that natural or depleted uranium as a substitute for fissile materials cannot be just washed away.

August 24, 2012 @ 19:32

Last update August 24, 2012.

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