Ahmadinejad Develops Long Range Ballistic Missile

TimesOnline-President Ahmadinejad demonstrated yesterday that he has become a master of playing cat and mouse with the West — and this time the mouse was real.

Once again, the Iranian leader offered a last-minute concession to head off the West’s drive for new sanctions against the Islamic republic. At the same time, Iran thumbed its nose at UN restrictions on its ballistic missiles programme by sending a rocket into space carrying a mouse, two turtles and some worms.

In an interview on state television, Mr Ahmadinejad said that Iran had no problem shipping enriched uranium abroad in a deal that Tehran had resisted for months. The surprise announcement came as the West prepared to ask Russia and China to back UN sanctions on the Iranian energy sector, central bank and Revolutionary Guards — the first UN sanctions since March 2008.

Political directors from the “big three” EU powers — Britain, France and Germany — are to hold a telephone conference call with their US counterpart tomorrow before consulting Russia and China later in the day.

Western officials acknowledged that Iran’s about-face on the uranium swap would undercut their case.

While they mulled the implications of Mr Ahmadinejad’s latest move, Tehran’s state television showed the Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) rocket blasting off, carrying what it called living organisms. The ISNA news agency said that the capsule returned to Earth with its rather unusual “passengers”.

Mr Ahmadinejad hailed the launch as a breakthrough that would help to break “the global domineering system” of Western powers. At a ceremony for a new satellite he said that Iran hoped to send astronauts into space soon.

Western experts suggested that the space programme provided cover for the development of long-range missiles capable of carrying a nuclear pay-load. The White House denounced the launch as a “provocative act”.

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Bin Laden wording ‘indicator’ of upcoming attack

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden’s word choice in the latest audio message attributed to him is seen as a “possible indicator” of an upcoming attack by his Al-Qaeda network, a US monitoring group warned Sunday.
IntelCenter, a US group that monitors Islamist websites, also said that manner of the release and the content of the message showed it was “credible” that it was a new release from the Saudi extremist.
“The Osama bin Laden audio message released to Al-Jazeera on 24 January 2010 contains specific language used by bin Laden in his statements in advance of attacks,” IntelCenter said in a statement.
The group said it considered the language “a possible indicator of an upcoming attack” in the next 12 months.
“This phrase, ‘Peace be upon those who follow guidance,’ appears at the beginning and end of messages released in advance of attacks that are designed to provide warning to Al-Qaeda’s enemies that they need to change their ways or they will be attacked,” the group said.
In a statement carried by Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden praised the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a US airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.
He warned the United States that, “God willing, our attacks against you will continue as long as you maintain your support to Israel.”
IntelCenter said the audio statement “appears to be exactly what it purports to be, an audio message from bin Laden.”
“The manner of release, content of message and other factors indicate it is a credible and new release from bin Laden,” it said.
The center said similar language attributed to bin Laden was made in a March 19 2008 condemnation of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed which was followed by an attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad on June 2, 2008.
The phrase also was used in bin Laden’s April 15, 2004 European truce offer, which was followed by Al-Qaeda attacks in London in July 2005, according to the IntelCenter, which said the 14-month lapse could be explained by the “difficulty” in actually putting an attack into operation.
Audio releases were bin Laden’s normal vehicle for statements, with video statements having been very rare since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed almost 3,000 people, IntelCenter said.

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PA Will Not Negotiate With Israel Unless…

The US envoy to the Middle East was holding talks with the Palestinian leader on Friday afternoon, even as hopes that Washington could restart Israeli-Palestinian peacenegotiations anytime soon continued to fade.

US President Barack Obama’s Mideastenvoy failed Friday to lure Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas back to peace talks with Israel, as Abbas stuck to his insistence that an Israeli settlement freeze come first.

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said following the Mitchell-Abbas meeting that the onus is on Israel, not the Palestinians.

“When we say a settlement freeze that includes Jerusalem, that is not a Palestinian condition,” he said. “That is rather an Israeli obligation, and the same thing is applicable to our demand to have negotiations resume where we left them in December 2008.”

Erekat said Mitchell appealed to Abbas to resume negotiations immediately, but the Palestinians disagreed and asked Washington “to have the Netanyahu government drop its conditions.”

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California sees 4th day of rain, evacuations urged

Southern California authorities strongly urged residents of endangered foothill homes to obey evacuation orders Thursday as the week’s fourth Pacific storm blew into the region and flash flood watches were expanded to numerous urban areas including downtown Los Angeles.

The siege of storms has led to several deaths statewide and flooding in urban areas and on freeways.

“It’s time to roll, it’s time to evacuate,” said Los Angeles County Public Works Director Gail Farber.

In the upper reaches of suburban La Canada Flintridge, where mountainsides rise sharply from the backyards of homes, authorities put pink ribbons on the mailboxes of residents who stayed behind so they would know where to search in the event of a catastrophe.

One person who didn’t leave was Delos Tucker, a retired geologist who has lived in the community since the homes were built in 1962.

“I’m just gambling it’s not going to happen,” he said. “Let’s hope I’m right.”

The county’s extensive flood-control system was working, but many of the basins designed to catch debris-laden runoff from fire-scarred mountains were full and evacuations remained necessary, Farber said.

“The Los Angeles County Fire Department is anticipating that a significant mud flow and debris flow is likely today,” said Chief DeputyJohn Tripp, announcing that fire departments in a five-county region had been put on alert that urban search and rescue teams might be needed.

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Russia to Start Iranian Nuclear Plant

MOSCOW, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Russia will start up the reactor at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant this year, the chief of Russia’s state nuclear corporation told reporters on Thursday.

“2010 is the year of Bushehr,” Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Moscow.

“There is absolutely no doubt that it will be built this year. Everything is going according to schedule,” he said. (Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya, writing by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Conor Humphries)

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Obama to ‘guarantee’ strategic territory to Palestinians

By Aaron Klein
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

TEL AVIV – President Obama is planning to issue a letter in the next few weeks guaranteeing U.S. support for a plan to give much of the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem to Palestinians within two years, WND has learned.

The presidential letter is slated to stress U.S. commitments to Israeli security as well.

It would state the final borders of a Palestinian country will be determined by direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations but that the U.S. supports a Palestinian state in the general 1967 borders – meaning the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem.

According to a source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, the Israeli leader is pushing against a formal letter from Obama, recommending the U.S. president issue an official oral declaration instead.

The contents of the letter are being discussed by Israelis with both Egypt and the U.S. and separately by the Palestinian Authority with Egypt and the U.S. Egypt is a key broker in the matter.

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Former budget office chiefs say ’something has to give’

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A blue-ribbon panel that includes three former heads of the Congressional Budget Office is telling President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress that the federal deficit must be cut now or the national debt within about two generations will be 600 percent of the gross domestic product.

“The debt level of the United States is unsustainable, something has to give,” said Rudolph Penner, former head of the CBO and co-chairman of a report issued last week by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration.

The report concludes federal deficit spending is so out of control that unless  Obama and Democrat leaders on the Hill make changes now, debt in 2080 will be six times what the nation produces.

The alarm is being sounded just as the Obama administration is preparing to push his nationalized health care plan through Congress. It comes from a bipartisan group of top economic policy experts, including three former heads of the CBO, who warned existing entitlement programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security already are creating a fiscal crisis for the nation without the addition of government-funded universal health care.

“The fundamental problem is that we have these three very large programs – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – that … are growing faster than tax revenues and faster than the economy,” Penner told WND

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‘Revolution, food riots in America by 2012′

Commodity Online
The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions – all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman
Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 percent.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape
transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.”There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

The George Washington blog has compiled a list of quotes attesting to Celente’s accuracy as a trend forecaster.

“The Trends Research Institute is the Standard and Poors of Popular Culture.” – The Los Angeles Times

“If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.”- New York Post

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EU ‘prez’ champions ‘global management of planet’

Article by WorldNetDaily

In accepting his appointment to be the first permanent president of the European Council in the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy affirmed his belief that the new world order would be dominated by international organizations that would seek to destroy the last vestiges of nation-states on the face of the globe, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

In the following speech captured by BBC and posted on YouTube, Van Rompuy proclaimed, “2009 is the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis.”

He continued, “The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step toward the global management of our planet.”

Mario Borghezio, a member of Italy’s Lega Nord who is also a member of the European Parliament, pointed out in a speech to the European Parliament that Van Rompuy is a frequent attendee at Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Committee meetings.

Borghezio asked how it is possible that no one has mentioned Van Rompuy is a candidate of these “occult groups” who “meet behind closed doors to decide matters over the heads of the people.”

Van Rompuy is known in Europe for his proposals that in the EU national symbols need to be replaced by European symbols, such that the national flags of the EU member nations would disappear in favor of the EU flag, and the same would happen with license plates, identity cards and even sporting events, as reported by the Telegraph in Great Britain.

“Even the selection of the largely unknown Van Rompuy to be the first EU Council president and the selection of the equally unknown Lady Catherine Ashton, an EU trade commissioner, to be EU foreign policy head, smacked of back-room deals made by global elitists seeking to fill the new posts created by the Lisbon Treaty with EU global elitists like themselves,” Corsi wrote.

He said neither Van Rompuy nor Ashton was elected, noting that Lady Ashton has never held an elected position in her life.

Contemplating the appointment of Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton, Corsi said he is reminded of Jean Monnet, a key architect of the European Union.

In his “Memoirs,” Monnet recalled that in his Luxembourg office he kept on his desk a photograph of the Kon-Tiki, the raft Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl used in his 1947 expedition from South America to the Polynesian islands across the Pacific.

When asked about the photograph, Monnet explained that he admired the young men who sailed the Kon-Tiki because once they chose a course, they knew they could not turn back.

“We too are headed for our objective, the United States of Europe,” Monnet openly proclaimed, “and for us too there is no turning back.”

Corsi wrote, “Following Von Rompuy’s comments, there should be no doubt that the globalists have no intention of stopping or slowing down, as even the EU itself is simply one small step of regionalism on the new world order journey of international government in which nation-states themselves become bygone entities of a once-treasured past.”

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‘Ahmadinejad has enough uranium to go whole way’

THE INDEPENDENT -

Senior US official says secret facility is right size to make ‘bomb or two a year’

By David Usborne and Andrew Grice in Pittsburgh

The crisis in relations with Iran escalated ominously yesterday after the leaders of the US, Britain and France accused the regime in Tehran of operating a secret uranium enrichment facility buried deep in a mountain bunker near the ancient religious city of Qom. Barack Obama called Iran’s activity “a direct challenge” to the international community.

The accusations were made public in an extraordinary joint statement by the US President, flanked by Gordon Brown and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy before the start of the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Iran had previously insisted that its plant at Natanz, which is open to international inspection, was the only one involved in enrichment. The new revelation sharply raises the stakes at a time when Israel has been signalling that military strikes against Iran are on the table.

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