Things and stuff

At least we'll have somewhere to move to when we wreck this one:  Rise of the Super-Earths Astronomers have discovered a giant new kind of planet that could hold life -- and they could change everything

Good.  Is anyone paying attention?  Ahmadinejad says Iran ready for nuclear talks

Monsanto, bringing chemicals to your stomach via genetically altered food. Millions against Monsanto. Leaked: US to Start ‘Trade Wars’ with Nations Opposed to Monsanto, GMO Crops And Monsanto's herbicide Roundup linked to infertility.  But what's not to like?

Superbugs spied off the Antarctic coast...  Didn't Godzilla start this way?

Gutting public schools because the Koch brothers want you dumb.

And uh... duh:
Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

*edited for crappy grammar.

Germany and the US in agreement over Iran

And not a roast pig in sight.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama have condemned the Iranian government for cracking down on citizens who have questioned the results of the June 12 presidential election, which President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is said to have won.

The two leaders were speaking at a joint news conference on June 26.

"Today we speak with one voice," Obama said. "The rights of the Iranian people to assemble, to speak freely, to have their voices heard -- those are universal aspirations. And their bravery in the face of brutality is a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice. The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous. And despite the government’s efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it, and we condemn it."

Merkel, speaking in German, seconded Obama’s statement, adding, "We will not forget this."

No Apologies

Obama said he and Merkel want Iran to uphold what he called "international principles" of permitting peaceful dissent, and he ridiculed the idea that he should apologize to Ahmadinejad for criticizing the crackdown.

On June 25, Ahmadinejad was quoted on Iranian television as urging Obama to "show [his] repentance" for promising change during his campaign for the presidency but then, in the Iranian leader’s view, taking the same approach of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

On June 26 Obama said, "I don’t take Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran. And I’m really not concerned about Mr. Ahmadinejad apologizing to me. I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people."

The US leader suggested that Ahmadinejad turn his attention to the families of demonstrators who have been "beaten or shot or detained."

Merkel said her government would make an effort to identify the victims of Iran’s crackdown, and the treatment they’ve faced. She said, "Iran cannot count on the world turning a blind eye."

Nice to finally have adults in charge...

Mutual assured destruction

Isn't it interesting that we haven't heard this term being used recently? The actual reason why the Cold War didn't devolve into a real World War? The fact that it actually worked?

Besides discussing the horrific and mind-boggling numbers of how many people would actually die if Israel and Iran had a nuclear war, Julian Delasantellis at Asia Times reminds us: (my bold)

The success of deterrence is intimately related to the nature of politics and politicians. From their days in short pants, the world's leaders have dreamt of possessing power and dominion over millions of their fellow citizens; whether they do so through democratic or other means is only a question related to the random chance of what nation they were born in.

After they assume ultimate national power, after a lifetime of political striving and ambition, those who say that deterrence does not work are, in essence, saying that these leaders will put some abstract hatred or ideology above the lives and interests of their fellow citizens who put them into power. The countering argument to this is that you can't rule a country if there's no country to rule.

Reading the article, it is clear that Iran and especially Tehran would suffer the worst from any kind of nuclear attack on Israel or any other neighbor.

And as Bush has shown these last horrible eight years, he ignores, insults, maligns those countries he calls allies; he threatens, strong-arms, smears those countries he calls evil; and ... he negotiates with those who are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.

So any tinpot dictator has quickly put two and two together, and has proceeded to move heaven and earth and a few centrifuges to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has been in the cross-hairs of the Bush cabal (and it makes me wonder if they had been aiming for Iran all along if the Iraq War had taken Rumsfeld's projected six weeks...) So it's natural that Iran would do the logical thing and get nukes. Especially after being called one of the axis of evil. Especially because of the ever louder saber-rattling that this White House has been doing.

It's also interesting to note Cheney and Wolfowitz were involved in an earlier deal:

President Gerald R. Ford signs a presidential directive giving the Iranian government the opportunity to purchase a US-built nuclear reprocessing facility...

[snip] (my bold)

The shah has argued that Iran needs a nuclear energy program in order to meet Iran’s growing energy demand. Iran is known to have massive oil and gas reserves, but the shah considers these finite reserves too valuable to be spent satisfying daily energy needs. In a 1975 strategy paper, the Ford administration supported this view saying that “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.” Top officials in the Ford administration—including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, who is responsible for nonproliferation issues at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency—are strong supporters of Iran’s ambitions.

Interesting that the very people involved in the control of nonproliferation then are the ones now so very anxious to break the taboo and actually use nukes.

Notice the key word

ELECTED.

TEHRAN: A rival to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected by an overwhelming majority as speaker of the Iranian Parliament on Wednesday, a strong signal of growing impatience with the president's economic policies and a possible sign of a political shift in the country.

Hey, Georgie! Look at this, a democracy! And this is the one country in the region you want to nuke?

Nope. Not me. Ah'm not allowed to even touch the button.

(edited to include this necessary pic)


Unka Dick is going to do it.

WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday denied a published report in Israel that said President Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term in January.
A story in the Jerusalem Post quoted a "senior official" there as saying that Bush plans to attack Iran in the coming months. The story says the unidentified official claimed that a "senior member" of Bush's traveling entourage made the statement about attacking Iran in a closed meeting. Bush was in Israel last week.

The article also says the unnamed Bush official said that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "were of the opinion that military action were called for."

[snip]

Perino said the "president of the United States should never take options off the table, but our preference and our actions for dealing with this matter remain through peaceful diplomatic means. Nothing has changed in that regard."

Diplomacy? Isn't that appeasement to Georgie? I think this means we're going to attack Iran before the year is out.

And McBush apparently doesn't give a fuck who is actually in charge in Iran:

Yesterday, the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) often incorrectly portrays Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as if Ahmadinejad has a significant role in formulating Iranian foreign policy. He doesn’t. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iran’s National Security Council set Iran’s foreign policy.

Yesterday, Time’s Joe Klein pressed McCain on the issue, but McCain refused to concede he was wrong, saying he disagreed that Khamenei runs Iranian policy behind the scenes. McCain added that because the “average American” thinks Ahmadinejad is Iran’s leader, that’s good enough for him:

MCCAIN: I mean, the fact is [Ahmadinejad’s] the acknowledged leader of that country and you may disagree, but that’s a uh, that’s your right to do so, but I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know.

Ahmadinejad? Khamenei? What does it matter if we're going to nuke the place anyway?



crossposted at SteveAudio

War with Iran is inevitable

So says Spengler of the Asia Times:

As usual, the American media are slow to grasp how profoundly the landscape has shifted during the past week. Writing in the October 27 Washington Post, for example, David Ignatius argued, quite incorrectly, that Ahmadinejad "faces growing resistance, starting with former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Sources tell me that Rafsanjani's allies have been advising officials in Europe and the Middle East that Ahmadinejad is weak and vulnerable." I do not know what Rafsanjani's allies have been saying of late, but I am certain that their credibility is exhausted.

Ignatius worries that if the United States or Israel were to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran would retaliate through such proxies as Hezbollah and various terrorist operations under its control.

These fears are well-founded. In February 2006, I argued that a few sorties by American aircraft could put the Iranian problem to rest, but that the window for a clean military operation would not last long.

The longer Washington dallies, the more resources Tehran can put in place, including:
# Upgrading Hezbollah's offensive-weapon capabilities in Lebanon.
# Integrating Hamas into its sphere of influence and military operations.
# Putting in place terrorist capability against the West.
# Preparing its Shi'ite auxiliaries in Iraq for insurrection.[1]

One might add to this complications on the Turkish-Iraqi border, as Iran and its ally Syria have taken the Turkish side against Kurdish rebels, which Iran claims have the covert assistance of the United States.

In early 2006, I predicted "war with Iran on the worst terms", and that is what the West is likely to get. I warned at the time, "if Washington waits another year to deliver an ultimatum to Iran, the results will be civil war to the death in Iraq, the direct engagement of Israel in a regional war through Hezbollah and Hamas, and extensive terrorist action throughout the West, with extensive loss of American life. There are no good outcomes, only less terrible ones. The West will attack Iran, but only when such an attack will do the least good and the most harm."

[snip]

The West has no choice but to attack Iran, because Iran believes that it has no choice but to develop nuclear weapons. Make no mistake: this attack will destabilize the entire region, past the capacity of the king's horses and king's men to reassemble it. The agenda will shift from how best to promote stability, to how best to turn instability to advantage.

He said Hitler. Are you scared yet? Hitler... anything?

You're supposed to scream and run around in circles. Hitler. Because we need to bomb Iran. Hitler and diplomacy Hitler doesn't Hitler work.

Glen Greenwald writing for Salon:

That about covers the full set of arguments and knowledge of our nation's leading neoconservative war cheerleaders.

Whoever is next on the War List is always The New Hitler and the country they lead is always The New Nazi Germany. Anyone who wants the new war is the brave and glorious Churchill. Everyone who opposes the new war is the cowardly appeaser Chamberlain, willing to allow Hitler to Take Over the World and impose Caliphate and burquas and humiliation on everyone. That's the level of advice which both George Bush, the current President, and Rudy Giuliani, the leading GOP presidential candidate, have chosen to receive and -- by all appearances -- follow.

Josh Marshall:

It's almost an insult to what the world faced in the late 1930s. Germany, industrial powerhouse, with arguably the most powerful army in the world, at the forefront of technology, overawing and invading neighboring countries. Iran, minor economic power, second or third-rate military power, which may get a couple of small nuclear-weapons compared to the couple hundred high-end nuclear warheads in Israel's arsenal (plus, a robust second strike capacity, as Fareed notes) and the many thousands we have -- and our blue water navy, satellites, air force. Please. Time's running out for us? We're going to look back on this fifty years from now and see the non-podhoretz-loons as the Chamberlains of the day? I don't know what to say. Just watch ...

Iran reaches out to Turkmenistan

As China and Russia carefully watch...

Moscow - Iran and Turkmenistan were on Wednesday discussing how to divide up the large reserves of oil and gas in the Caspian Sea as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid a visit to his Central Asian neighbour. The two countries have the same views on a future cooperation in the Caspian Sea, "which should become a sea of friendship and harmony," Ahmadinejad said in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat.

The countries which border the Caspian - including Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in addition to Iran and Turkmenistan - have been squabbling for years over the status of the inland sea and how its territory should be divided up.

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad and his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov stressed the good partnership that existed between the two countries.

[snip]

Following Ahmadinejad's two-day visit, the two presidents are due to travel together to Kyrgyzstan where they plan to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit that starts Thursday in Bishkek as observers.

The SCO was founded in 2001 and consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The long carving knives are coming out.

It's not convenient

We'll just stand back here and watch you circle the drain, thank you. Guess Cheney's frantic visit to Saudi Arabia didn't patch things.

Via Eli at Multi Medium, Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post:

Now the White House ponders what Abdullah's sudden and sparsely explained cancellation of the dinner signifies. Nothing good -- especially for Condoleezza Rice's most important Middle East initiatives -- is the clearest available answer.

Abdullah's bowing out of the April 17 event is, in fact, one more warning sign that the Bush administration's downward spiral at home is undermining its ability to achieve its policy objectives abroad. Friends as well as foes see the need, or the chance, to distance themselves from the politically besieged Bush.

Official versions discount that possibility, of course. Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, flew to Washington last week to explain to Bush that April 17 posed a scheduling problem. " 'It is not convenient' was the way it was put," says one official.

But administration sources report that Bush and his senior advisers were not convinced by Bandar's vagueness -- especially since it followed Saudi decisions to seek common ground with Iran and the radicals of Hezbollah and Hamas instead of confronting them as part of Rice's proposed "realignment" of the Middle East into moderates and extremists.

Abdullah's reluctance to be seen socializing at the White House this spring reflects two related dynamics: a scampering back by the Saudis to their traditional caution in trying to balance regional forces, and their displeasure with negative U.S. reaction to their decision to return to co-opting or placating foes.

Abdullah gave a warm welcome to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Riyadh in early March, not long after the Saudis pressured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into accepting a political accord that entrenches Hamas in an unwieldy coalition government with Abbas's Fatah movement.

"The Saudis surprised us by going that far," explained one White House official in a comment that reached -- and irritated -- Saudi officials. So don't count on Abdullah to put new force behind his long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative at the Arab summit scheduled this week in Riyadh.

So the romping in the flowers and the hand-holding means nothing?

Forcing Syria to side with Iran

Looking at the history cited in the article, the US has a long history of meddling in Syria to horrible effect. This latest debacle in Iraq has forced Syria to side with Iran against the US:

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad went to Tehran last Saturday for a much publicised meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His two-day visit received a lot of media attention, coming in the midst of Saudi-Iranian talks over Lebanon, the situation in Palestine and much speculation on how Syria can help combat the insurgency in Iraq.

By all accounts, Syria's allies seem to be winning throughout the region. In Palestine, despite all the thunder, Hamas has been called in to form another government with Esmail Haniya as prime minister. This is a victory for Syria. Its allies in Iraq, headed by President Jalal Talabani, are putting great effort in normalising relations between Baghdad and Damascus. And in Lebanon, Hezbollah is still struggling to bring down the anti-Syrian cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. They have not won in Lebanon, but they certainly are not losing. The situation in each of these three countries is linked, one way or another, to the Syrian-Iranian alliance. If anything, Bashar's visit to Tehran is further proof that to the great displeasure of the United States, this relationship is intact.

The Syrians have long realised that so long as George W. Bush is in the White House, a rapprochement with Washington is difficult.

The same applies to France ruled by Jacques Chirac. Since the doors to Washington and Paris are closed, the only alternative for Syria are the doors to the other "superpower". For the sake of argument, let us describe Iran as a superpower, or a superpower in-the-making, or at least, a regional superpower. It is engaged in its own Cold War with the US, resembling, in many cases, the standoff between the US and the USSR during the better part of the 20th century. Syria was forced to take sides in the 1950s and is forced again to take sides in 2007.

Things that make you go hmmm... or aaaarrrggghhh depending

This article:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has marked the 28th anniversary of Iran's revolution by pledging to maintain the country's nuclear programme, but adding that he wanted to remain within international rules.

"We are ready for talks, but will not suspend our activities," he said in a speech broadcast on state television on Sunday.

Along with this article:

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has arrived in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a three-day tour of the Middle East aimed at building energy and military ties with traditional US allies.

The tour began a day after Iran asked Putin to block any UN resolutions passed against it when a deadline to halt nuclear work expires on February 21.

Along with this article:

MUNICH, Feb. 10 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, in some of his harshest criticism of the United States since he took office seven years ago, said Saturday that Washington's unilateral, militaristic approach had made the world a more dangerous place than at any time during the Cold War.

"The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way," he said in an address at an annual international security conference here. "Nobody feels secure anymore, because nobody can take safety behind the stone wall of international law."

Although the US brushed off the criticism:

But Washington has clearly decided to politely brush aside Mr Putin's remarks rather than to escalate tensions with Russia.

Making his first appearance at the conference as the new US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates tried to deflate President Putin's attack by poking a bit of fun at their past careers as spies.

"As an old Cold Warrior," he said, "one of yesterday's speakers almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time. Almost.

" Many of you have backgrounds in diplomacy or politics. I have, like your second speaker yesterday, a starkly different background - a career in the spy business.

"And, I guess, old spies have a habit of blunt speaking"

Mr Gates bluntly said there was no new Cold War and that the US certainly did not want one.

We know that the PNAC neocons remember fondly the good old days when the USSR was the evil empire, defense spending unquestioned, and the world chess board game was easier to play than fighting stateless terrorism. Condi's 'strength' was purportedly the Soviet Union. Could they thinking 'wouldn't it be nice to go back to the 1960s'?

Or are they still working on the old plan to piss everyone in the world off?

Update: This is interesting: (my bold)

It is seldom that the Russian president is publicly contradicted by officials in Moscow. But in the Russian reaction to Tehran's proposal for formal cooperation among the major gas-producing countries, it happened.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei conveyed the Iranian suggestion to the visiting secretary general of Russia's National Security Council, Igor Ivanov, in Tehran on January 28. The next day, Russia's Gazprom reacted in Moscow that "establishing a gas OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] is impossible because of different structuring of the oil and gas business".

A spokesman of the Russian Economic Development and Trade Ministry also reacted sharply: "I do not understand why Russia would need to create a gas cartel - I do not see any sense in it. The more so as Iran is now coming under serious external pressure." The official asked: "Why should we undertake commitments to synchronize our actions, why force ourselves into regulatory frameworks which could boil down to setting quotas?"

Then came a structured Russian position when Ivanov put the Iranian proposal in perspective at a press briefing in Moscow this Tuesday. He said the Iranian side mentioned the idea "not as a question or proposal for discussion, but as a general idea that natural-gas producers should seek such forms of cooperation, which fully supports their interests. As far as I know, no talks on setting up a cartel are under way."

But two days later, at a press conference in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin took a giant leap forward. He said, "A gas OPEC is an interesting idea, and we will think about it. In this initial stage we will agree with the Iranian specialists, with our Iranian partners and with some of the other countries that are large suppliers of fossil fuels, above all gas, to world markets, and we are already trying to coordinate our activities on the markets of third countries. We plan to continue doing so in future."

Putin added, "We have no plans to create some kind of a cartel, but I think it would be a good idea to coordinate our activities, especially in the context of achieving our main aim of ensuring a certain and reliable supply of energy resources for our main consumers."
However, five days later, Russian Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko was still at Square 1. "Fantasies about cartels and 'gas OPECs' are products of a sick imagination," he said.

So what's the problem? First, Moscow wanted to see that alarm bells didn't ring in Western capitals, especially when a top-level European Union delegation was due to visit Moscow. In the West, sweat breaks out at the very mention of "cartel", invoking images of production quotas, price rigging, and so on. Second, Moscow knows that a "gas OPEC" is still a decade away from realization, given the regional structure of the market, absence of a floating gas price (gas is mostly price-indexed to petroleum), double dependency resulting from the transportation through pipelines (gas-carrier ships are nowhere near meeting the needs of transportation) and the prevalence of long-term contracts between the supplier and the consumer, and, of course, the absence of a developed gas-liquefaction infrastructure.

Third, a masterly stroke in ambiguity doesn't do Russian interests any harm. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has visualized that it is a matter of time before a "gas OPEC" takes shape. On the sidelines of the last NATO summit, in Latvia in November, there were calls for the formation of a "gas NATO" that is geared to safeguarding the energy security of Western consumer countries.

Thanks to Russian ingenuity, between the illusion and the reality of a "gas OPEC" a gray zone has appeared, with no certainty that this zone will not incrementally become the reality itself.

[snip]

Clearly, Tehran has sized up the growing assertiveness in Russian regional policies and is keen to harness it geopolitically. But more important, Tehran has signaled to European capitals that they may have to pay a heavy price for any further identification with the US policy toward Iran. The fact that the

Iranian proposal on the "gas OPEC" as made by spiritual leader Khamenei should leave Western capitals in no doubt that Tehran is not scoring a propaganda point. They must now rethink before imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.

Iran is the "last frontier" for European countries seeking to access natural gas from the Middle East. By 2015-20, Europe will face serious gas shortages, even if Russia augments its supplies via the Northern European pipeline. Tehran knows it is a "special case" for European countries. Tehran was hoping all along that it could normalize relations with the European Union, and that it would receive serious economic and political carte blanche.

NTodd at Dohiyi Mir notes the similarities between Bush and Putin, both of them 'vile, anti-democratic creatures'.

Step by step replay

We are just waiting for the Pearl Harbor moment.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was "not possible" until Iran halts uranium enrichment.

If we talk to Iran we would actually have to come to an understanding which means the Iranians get to sit at the same table which means we'd have to acknowledge they are equals to the macho mighty muscly Bush administration who apparently is incapable of listening to anyone. Further in the article (my bold):

"Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us," Burns continued.
[snip]
Ahmadinejad said last week that Iran is "ready for anything" in its confrontation with the United States.

Iran conducted missile tests on Monday, the first of five days of military maneuvers southeast of Tehran.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the U.S. buildup in the Gulf was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable.
[snip]
Some among the audience of Dubai-based diplomats and analysts complained that American wars in the Middle East were already threatening the region's stability and asked Burns to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before turning attention to Iran.

"What we are not interested in is another war in the region," Mohammed al-Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns. "Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess."

Burns' speech appeared to respond to similar comments by Iranian officials in Dubai and Bahrain last month. In December, Iran's top national security adviser, Ali Larijani, appealed to Gulf Arabs to shut down American bases on their soil and instead join Iran in a regional security alliance.

Iranian students in hiding

After burning a picture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"Iranian student activists who staged an angry protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week have gone into hiding in fear for their lives after his supporters threatened them with revenge.

One student fled after being photographed holding a banner reading, "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not for you", during Mr Ahmadinejad's visit to Tehran's Amir Kabir university. At least three others have gone underground after being seen burning his picture. Vigilantes from the militant Ansar-e Hezbollah group have been searching for them."