Aletho News

Russia vows support for Iran fuel swap

Press TV – May 27, 2010

Russia has pledged to “actively support” the Tehran Nuclear Declaration on condition that the landmark fuel swap proposal is fully implemented.

“If it (Iran) strictly abides by them, Russia will actively support the scheme proposed by Brazil and Turkey,” AFP quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Thursday

“We welcome this deal. If fully implemented, it will create very important preconditions not just for the solution of the concrete problem… but for improving the atmosphere for the renewal of negotiations,” Lavrov added.

The remarks come one day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized Russia for conceding to a US campaign for tougher UN sanctions against the country, calling on Moscow to “resolutely” support the May 17 declaration issued by Iran, Turkey and Brazil.

Under last week’s declaration, Tehran agreed to swap its low enriched uranium on Turkish soil with fuel for a medical research reactor.

Despite welcoming the development in the nuclear standoff as a positive step, the US and its European allies have vowed to continue seeking more sanctions and to this end submitted a Washington-drafted sanctions resolution to the UN Security Council shortly after the declaration.

Iran has rejected Western allegations that it is following a military nuclear program, arguing that as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it has the right to a civilian nuclear program.

May 27, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Israel’s Bomb out of the Shadows

Nuclear offer to South Africa’s apartheid regime blew Israel’s diplomatic cover

By Jonathan Cook – Nazareth – May 26, 2010

Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of ‘ambiguity’ on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the United Nations in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East.

Israel’s equivocal stance on its atomic status was shattered by reports on Monday that it offered to sell nuclear-armed Jericho missiles to South Africa’s apartheid regime back in 1975.

The revelations are deeply embarrassing to Israel given its long-standing opposition to signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing instead that it is a “responsible power” that would never misuse nuclear weapons technologies if it acquired them.

Reports of Israel’s nuclear dealings with apartheid South Africa will also energise a draft proposal from Egypt to the UN non-proliferation review conference that Israel — as the only nuclear power in the region — be required to sign the treaty.

Israeli officials are already said to be discomfited by Washington’s decision earlier this month to agree to a statement with other UN Security Council members calling for the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear arms.

The policy is chiefly aimed at Iran, which is believed by the US and Israel to be secretly developing a nuclear bomb, but would also risk ensnaring Israel. The US has supported Israel’s ambiguity policy since the late 1960s.

Oversight of Israel’s programme is also due to be debated at a meeting of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna next month.

The administration of US President Barack Obama is reported to have held high-level discussions with Israel at the weekend to persuade it to consent to proposals for a 2012 conference to outlaw weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

As pressure mounts on Israel, local analysts have been debating the benefits of maintaining the ambiguity policy, with most warning that an erosion of the principle would lead inexorably to Israel being forced to dismantle its arsenal.

Echoing the Israeli security consensus, Yossi Melman, a military intelligence correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper, also cautioned that declaring Israel’s nuclear status “would play into Iran’s hands” by focusing attention on Tel Aviv rather than Tehran.

Israel refused to sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, having developed its first warhead a few years earlier with help from Britain and France.

Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, reported that Israel briefly considered showing its nuclear hand in 1967 when Shimon Peres, Israel’s current president, proposed publicly conducting a nuclear test to prevent the impending Six-Day War. However, the test was overruled by Levi Eshkol, the prime minister of the time.

Mr Peres, who master-minded the nuclear programme, later formulated the policy of ambiguity, in which Israel asserts only that it will “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East”.

That stance — and a promise not to conduct nuclear tests — was accepted by the US administration of Richard Nixon in 1969.

According to analysts, the agreement between Israel and the US was driven in part by concerns that Washington would not be able to give Israel foreign aid — today worth billions of dollars — if Israel declared itself a nuclear state but refused international supervision.

Nonetheless, revelations over the years have made it increasingly difficult for the international community to turn a blind eye to Israel’s arsenal.

Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona nuclear energy plant in the Negev, provided photographic evidence and detailed descriptions of the country’s weapons programme in 1986. Today the Israeli arsenal is estimated at more than 200 warheads.

In 2006 Ehud Olmert, then the prime minister, let slip Israel’s nuclear status during an interview with German TV when he listed “America, France, Israel and Russia” as countries with nuclear arms.

Even more damaging confirmation was provided this week by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which published documents unearthed for a new book — The Unspoken Alliance by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, an American historian — on relations between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

The top-secret papers reveal that in 1975 Mr Peres, then Israel’s defence minister, met with his South African counterpart, P W Botha, to discuss selling the regime nuclear-armed missiles. The deal fell through partly because South Africa could not afford the weapons. Pretoria later developed its own bomb, almost certainly with Israel’s help.

Israel, Mr Polakow-Suransky said, had fought to prevent declassification of the documents.

Despite publication by the Guardian of a photographed agreement bearing the date and the signatures of both Mr Peres and Mr Botha, Mr Peres’ office issued a statement on Monday denying the report.

Israel’s increasingly transparent nuclear status is seen as an obstacle to US efforts both to impose sanctions on Iran and to damp down a wider potential nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

This month the US surprised officials in Tel Aviv by failing to keep Israel’s nuclear programme off the agenda of the IAEA’s next meeting, on June 7. The issue has only ever been discussed twice before, in 1988 and 1991.

Aware of the growing pressure of Israel to come clean, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, declined an invitation to attend a nuclear security conference in Washington last month at which participants had threatened to question Israel about its arms.

At the meeting, US President Barack Obama called on all countries, including Israel, to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A draft declaration being considered at the UN review conference later this week again demands that Israel — and two other states known to have nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan — sign the treaty.

Egypt has proposed that the 189 states that have signed the treaty, including the US, pledge not to transfer nuclear equipment, information, material or professional help to Israel until it does so.

Reuven Pedatzur, an Israeli defence analyst, warned recently in Haaretz that there was a danger the Egyptian proposal might be adopted by the US, or that it might be used as a stick to browbeat a recalcitrant Israel into accepting greater limitations on its arsenal. He suggested ending what he called the “ridiculous fiction” of the ambiguity policy.

Emily Landau, an arms control expert at Tel Aviv University, however, said that those who believed Israel should be more transparent were “misguided”. Ending ambiguity, she said, would eventually lead to calls for Israel’s “total and complete disarmament”.

The last Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, five years ago, failed when the US repudiated pledges to disarm and refused to pressure Israel over its nuclear programme.

– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jkcook.net.

May 26, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Australia expels Israeli diplomat over Mabhouh hit

Ma’an/Agencies – 24/05/2010

Jerusalem – Australia has expelled an Israeli diplomat after a probe revealed Israel was behind the forging of four Australian passports linked to the murder of a Hamas operative in Dubai, various media outlets reported Monday.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told parliament that Israel’s conduct was “not the actions of a friend,” the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Investigations into the assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh in January 2010 in a Dubai hotel room revealed the use of a whole host of European and international passports used by an alleged Mossad hit squad. At least four fake Australian passports are known to have been used in the incident.

The originals reportedly belonged to Australians living in Israel, with Australia deciding to hold Israel responsible for the forgeries, the BBC wrote.

Following an investigation by the Australian Federal Police, which visited Israel as part of its inquiries, the government was left in no doubt that Israel was behind what it called “the abuse and counterfeiting of the passports,” according to the British news site.

“The decision to ask Israel to remove from Australia one of its officers at the Israeli embassy in Canberra is not something which fills the Australian government with any joy,” the foreign minister said.

“On the contrary, the decision was made much more in sorrow than in anger.”

In March, Britain expelled an Israeli diplomat over the use of forged passports by suspected Israeli agents, noting that it was not the first occasion during which UK passports had been used in Israeli assassination plots. At the time, Britain had received a promise from Israel that a similar incident involving forged passports would not reoccur.

Meanwhile, Dubai police investigations revealed that one genuine British passport was used by a suspect in Mabhouh’s killing. The British government responded by saying, “We’re very concerned that someone who has possession of what appears to be a genuine British passport may have been involved in some way with the killing of Al Mabhouh. We cannot rule out the possibility that the passport was obtained by deception,” British consulate spokesman in East Jerusalem Fadi Adeeb told Ma’an.

The British government is providing its full assistance to the Emirati authorities in their investigation, Adeeb added.

May 24, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Oyoun Qarra Massacre, 20 May 1990

20/05/2010 — reham alhelsi

In the early hours of Sunday, May 20^th, 1990, a group of 100 Palestinian labourers from the Gaza Strip were waiting at the Oyoun Qarra (Rishon Lezion) bus stop to be transported to their working place. An Israeli occupation soldier, Ami Popper, from nearby Rishon Lezion Zionist colony approached the workers and asked them for their IDs. After making sure all the workers were Palestinians, Popper lined them up, asked them to kneel down in 3 lines and using his M16 sub-machine gun he opened fire killing 7 on the spot and injuring others. When the Israeli police finally arrived to the scene of the massacre, they started beating the Palestinians workers who had survived the death machine. On that day, later known as “Black Sunday”, at least another 6 Palestinians were killed by Israeli occupation forces in subsequent demonstrations while protesting the massacre.

As with all massacres committed by Zionists, the Israeli government rushed to declare Popper deranged. But when it was proven that he wasn’t, he was tried and charged with murder in 7 cases. However, while in detention, the terrorist Popper receives “special treatment”; he was allowed to get married, had 3 children with his wife and is allowed 48-hour furloughs. In 1997, the Israeli government reduced the prison sentences of 4 Zionist terrorists convicted of murdering Palestinians and ordered the release of a fifth Zionist terrorist. Popper’s sentence of 7 life terms was reduced to 40 years.

The 7 Palestinian martyrs were all refugees. Their parents were expelled from their homes and villages in 1948 by Zionist terrorists. To feed their families, these Palestinians were forced to work as slaves for the Zionists who had made refugees out of them. The martyrs of Oyoun Qarra massacre are:

Abdil Rahim Mohammad Salim Baraka, 23 yrs, from Khan Younis

Ziyad Mousa Mohammad Swe’id, 22 yrs, from Rafah

Zayid Zeidan Abdel Rahim Al-’Mour, 33 yrs, from Khan Younis

Suleiman Abdel Raziq Abu ‘Anza, 22 yrs, from Khan Younis

Omar Hamad Ahmad Ad-Dahleez, 28 yrs, from Khan Younis

Zakariya Mohammad Qdeh, 35 yrs, from Khan Younis

Yousif Ibrahim Mansour Abu Daqa, 36 yrs, from Khan Younis

Palestinian martyrs killed by the IOF in subsequent demonstrations on 20.05.1990:

Iyad Ismail Abdallah Saqir, 17 yrs from Ash-Shati’

Shifa’ Naim Ali Al-Hummus, 23 yrs, from Khan Younis

Mousa Ibrahim Abdel-Hay Hassounah, 27 yrs, from Ash-Shati’

Ali Mahmoud Mohammad Az-Za’amrah, 21 yrs, from Halhoul

Husam Abdel Rahman Abdallah Ghazal, 14 yrs, from Qabatia

Wail Mohammad Al-Badrasawi

© http://avoicefrompalestine.wordpress.com

May 21, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Japan backs Tehran declaration

Press TV – May 21, 2010

As Washington is trying to impose new sanctions on Tehran, Japan’s foreign minister has backed a nuclear declaration signed by Iran, Turkey and Brazil.

During the separate teleconference with his Turkish and Brazilian counterparts, Katsuya Okada stressed the importance of implementing the new initiative in settling Iran’s nuclear issue, Kyodo News quoted Japan’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday.

The declaration was signed by the foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey, and Brazil in Tehran on Monday.

It commits Iran to deposit 1,200 kilograms of 3.5% low-enriched uranium in Turkey, which would be exchanged for 120 kilograms of 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor, which produces radioisotopes for cancer treatment.

Okada called on Ahmet Davutoglu and Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim to keep in close consultation with Iran on the declaration.

The foreign ministers said that the declaration “provides a chance to settle the standoff diplomatically,” the ministry added.

The talks came as the top Japanese diplomat is scheduled to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Tokyo on Friday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.

US officials have stressed that despite the declaration they will continue pursuing the imposition of more UN restrictions on Iran and have stepped up efforts to garner the support of veto-wielding members of UN Security Council on a draft sanctions resolution.

Iran argues that as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is entitled to a civilian nuclear program.

May 21, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

What explains the anti-establishment sentiment?

By Glenn Greenwald | May 19, 2010

After last night’s election results, there’s no doubt that the electorate has contempt for Washington incumbents and the political establishment.  Virtually every media account dutifully recites the same storyline — that these results reflect an “anti-incumbent” mood — but virtually none of these stories examines the reasons for that “mood.”  Why do Americans, seemingly regardless of party affiliation or geographic location, despise the political establishment?

One reason why media mavens seem reluctant, even unable, to grapple with this question is because it so plainly falls outside their familiar, comfortable narratives.  Contrary to efforts earlier this year to depict the problem as one aimed at Democratic incumbents due to the unpopular health care plan and the growing “tea party” movement, Republican voters — as demonstrated in Florida, Utah, and last night in Kentucky — clearly hate their own party’s leadership at least as much as the animosity directed toward Democratic incumbents.  The trend is plainly trans-partisan and trans-ideological, and the establishment political media has a very difficult time understanding or explaining dynamics about which that is true.

So extreme is the anger toward the political establishment that not even popular politicians have any impact on it.  Despite the fact that he remains quite popular with his state’s GOP voters, Mitch McConnell’s handpicked candidate was slaughtered in Kentucky by a highly unconventional and establishment-scorned Rand Paul.  And just as Massachusetts voters did in December when President Obama traveled there to plead with them to elect Martha Coakley, only for them to reject those pleas and send Scott Brown to the Senate, Democratic voters completely ignored Obama’s vigorous support for incumbent Senators Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln, sending the former to ignominious defeat after 30 years, and forcing the latter into an extremely difficult run-off with Bill Halter (who was recruited by Accountability Now, an organization I helped found and continue to run).

It makes perfect sense that the country loathes the political establishment.  Just look at its rancid fruits over the past decade:  a devastating war justified by weapons that did not exist; a financial crisis that our Nation’s Genuises failed to detect and which its elites caused with lawless and piggish greed; elections that seem increasingly irrelevant in terms of how the Government functions; grotesquely lavish rewards for the worst culprits juxtaposed with miserable unemployment and serious risks of having basic entitlements (Social Security) cut for ordinary Americans; and a Congress that continues to be owned, right out in the open, by the very interests that have caused so much damage.  The political establishment is rotten to its core, and the only thing that’s surprising is that the citizenry’s contempt isn’t even more intense than it is.  But precisely because that dynamic so clearly transcends Left/Right or Democratic/GOP dichotomies, little effort is expended to understand or explain it.

One of the most interesting and important questions is whether this trans-partisan, anti-establishment anger can bring about some cracks in the rigid partisan polarization that serves, more than anything else, to preserve the status quo.  Consider, for instance, that Rand Paul’s campaign included some serious questioning of the war in Afghanistan and that Sen. Tom Coburn recently threatened to filibuster the $33.5 billion war supplemental spending bill if it isn’t independently paid for, combined with the Democrats’ realization that they will be forced on their own to fund the endless — and increasingly ugly — war in Afghanistan.  Or consider the odd spectacle that numerous Republicans are beginning to take the lead in questioning and even objecting to the Obama administration’s efforts to further whittle away civil liberties and vest itself with greater unchecked power.

It’s possible that the pervasive, trans-partisan anger can muddle, even re-arrange, the rigid partisan divisions that prevent citizens of similar interests from working together against the factions that control Washington.  One saw that in the alliance between progressives (such as Alan Grayson and Bernie Sanders) and conservatives (such as Ron Paul) that led to the enactment of the Audit the Fed bill, as well as in similar alliances during the Bush years in opposition to the assaults on the Constitution (such as the one forged by Al Gore and Bob Barr).  This isn’t Broderian bipartisanship where the two parties’ mix their policies into a muddled, watered-down mish-mash of nothing for its own sake.  It’s far more substantive than that:  a refusal to allow ordinary citizens to be divided (and thus weakened) along artificial tribal lines, thereby enabling the establishment factions that feed at the Washington trough to maintain their same power in unchallenged form.

I’m not particularly optimistic about this possibility.  The reality is that the American Right is still the movement of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and Sarah Palin, really no different — despite its “tea party” re-branding — than what spawned the Bush/Cheney extremism of the last decade.  And even Rand Paul, who some are trying to depict as a crusading civil libertarian and anti-war advocate, ran on a platform (as Scott Brown did) of opposing the closing of Guantanamo, the use of civilian trials for accused Terrorists, and the granting of visas to people from numerous Muslim countries.  Many of the key ignorant and primitive orthodoxies of modern conservatism are as strong as ever.  Other than some (extremely hypocritical and opportunistic) war questioning and some anger over the growing corporate-Government overlap, I have a very hard time looking at the American Right and finding much cause for optimism about any of what’s taking place over there.

Still, it’s hard not to be encouraged by the disgust which the citizenry clearly has for the political establishment regardless of party, as well as the resulting (and increasing) fear and confusion on the part of the political class.  This sort of citizenry anger can re-arrange political alignments and explode political orthodoxies in fundamental and unpredictable ways.  There is, to be sure, a risk in that, but there is a far greater risk in simply allowing the destructive political status quo to linger in unchanged form for much longer.

May 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Half an hour of mobile use a day ‘increases brain cancer risk’

A landmark study into the health dangers posed by mobiles has found people who speak on their handset for more than half an hour a day over 10 years are at greater risk of brain cancer.

Telegraph | 17 May 2010

The World Health Organisation’s Interphone report, to be published this week, will say that “heavy users” are more at risk of developing glioma tumours.

It concludes that there is no increased risk of developing the disease in other users. However, the minimum amount of time which researchers designated at heavy use was just 30 minutes a day.

The study also excluded anyone under 30 from its results, prompting scientists to demand further research into the health implications of mobile ‘phone technology.

“Today mobile ‘phone use has become much more prevalent and it is not unusual for young people to use mobile ‘phones for an hour or more a day,” said the scientists in a statement.

The project conducted studies in 13 countries, interviewing tumour sufferers and people in good health to see whether their mobile phone use differed. It questioned about 12,800 people between 2000 and 2004.

A spokesman for the Mobile Operators Association has previously indicated that more than 30 scientific reviews had found no adverse health effects.

May 17, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Erdogan eyes better ties with Greece

Al-Jazeera | May 13, 2010

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, is set to travel to Greece for talks in an effort to improve historically tense relations between the two countries.

Erdogan, accompanied by almost a dozen cabinet ministers and more than 100 Turkish businessmen, arrives in Athens on Friday for the start of a two-day visit.

Dimitris Droutsas, Greece’s alternate foreign minister, said the visit would allow Greek officials to discuss investments and business opportunities.

“Business activity in Turkey has displayed impressive growth, and I think this is a very good opportunity, particularly in the economic situation Greece is going through,” he said.

EU accession

George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, said his talks with Erdogan will include discussion of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. Greece supports Turkish accession, which has been delayed for years.

Turkey went through a banking crisis in 2001, so Erdogan may offer advice to his Greek counterpart, currently implementing a series of tough austerity measures to address a debt crisis.

Education will be another issue on the agenda with Turkish officials having reportedly promised to change passages in textbooks which portray Greece as a threat to Turkish sovereignty.

Turkey and Greece are both NATO member states, but they have been rivals for decades, particularly over Cyprus.

The island has been split since Turkey occupied its northern third in 1974, a response to an Athens-engineered Greek-Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece. The two countries also disagree on sovereignty in some areas of the Aegean.

Turkish fighter planes routinely fly in airspace claimed by Athens, leading to regular mock dogfights with Greek jets. Though the dogfights are usually harmless, a Greek pilot died in 2006 in a mid-air collision.

Erdogan’s last official visit to Athens came in 2004. He canceled a scheduled trip last year for health reasons.

May 13, 2010 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Leave a comment