03/15 to 03/21 ***The***Winds***of***WAR***

[Witness]

Thank You Dutch!
I would have no idea what is going on behind the
scenes if it were not for your posts. I really
appreciate all the work you have done.

[almost ready]

[willdo]

Lappin recalled that Israel was always against an abrupt transition from a dictatorial system to democracy, as it saw that as a path strewn with danger, and instead preferred a gradual process.

“And now we’ve seen that if you suddenly lift the lid in a country in which Islamists have been operating for decades, the Islamists are going to come to power,” he noted, speaking of Egypt. “It doesn’t spell good news for the short term.”

Either Obama is stupid or he knew this and wanted it...either way, it's bad.

[CGTech]

And my daughter is flying out for a 2 week cruise in the carribian cruise tommorow. NOT happy with the timing..

[The Flying Dutchman]

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03:24 16.03.12

Israel officials:
Needless delays push back Iron Dome production

If not for delays in funding during development of the Iron Dome missile system, the Israel Defense Forces
would be taking delivery toward the end of this month of its fifth battery, rather than its fourth, they say.

By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition...ction-1.418963

Unnecessary delays have put production of Iron Dome intercept batteries a year behind where they would otherwise be, officials in the security establishment and defense industries have said.

If not for delays in funding during development of the Iron Dome missile system, the Israel Defense Forces would be taking delivery toward the end of this month of its fifth battery, rather than its fourth, they say.

Because every Iron Dome battery, which is manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, serves as protection against rocket fire for a medium-sized city, the delay means two cities are without protection that could otherwise have had the batteries.

In the last round of fighting with the Palestinians last week, three operational batteries were deployed, one for the Be'er Sheva area, one for Ashkelon and a third for Ashdod.

Improvements made in the system's software and lessons learned during previous rounds of fighting resulted this time in markedly greater operational success of Iron Dome - an 80-percent intercept rate of the Grad Katyusha s fired at populated areas in the south. But the small number of batteries means that there are gaps in the defensive umbrella they can provide.

Sources in the defense industries have said over the past few days that they believe there has been movement in the policy of the security establishment and the Finance Ministry. Funding has been promised for four more Iron Dome batteries, mainly from the special assistance by the U.S. government to Israel.

The sources say that new funding will be decided on soon to manufacture more batteries, particularly a significant number of intercept missiles, which are very expensive.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said this week that acquiring more intercept systems had strategic importance, which has been proven in the fighting on the Gaza border. Barak called for the missile intercept system to be declared a "national emergency project," which means the Defense Ministry will expedite the acquisition process.

The cease-fire between Israel and the Gaza Strip remains fragile. Officials say that rogue activists of Islamic Jihad, who are acting against instructions from the organization's leadership, were responsible for the Katyushas fired yesterday.

The rockets fired yesterday - the second such incident in less than 24 hours - led Hamas and Islamic Jihad to try to rein in the militants. A spokesman for Islamic Jihad denied that activists from his group had fired the rockets.

The Israeli response to the rocket fire has been relatively measured, stemming from the assumption that the leadership of the militant groups intends to stop the fire and that it may take them a few days to do so.

Yesterday the air force attacked two targets in the Gaza Strip - a tunnel dug toward Israeli territory and a storage site for Grad rockets.

The Israeli intelligence assessment remains that the calm will hold, at least for a while. The fact that Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Benny Gantz left yesterday for a working visit to the United States and Canada is another indicator of Israel's intention to maintain calm on the Gaza front.






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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*Note here:

Folks this will be a very short news run this morning -I think. 1) I surely am feeling "under the weather".

And 2) This article contains the real reason why the Islamics will push the Middle East into a regional war! The Persians/arabs cannot"allow" Israel to become energy independent!

~Dutch

Israel oil find sharpens Med energy scrap

by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Mar 15, 2012
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/...scrap_999.html

The discovery of potential oil reserves of 232 million barrels, plus another natural gas field off Israel's coast couldn't have come at a better time for the Jewish state as Egypt's Islamist-dominated parliament calls for cutting off gas exports to its eastern neighbor.

But the strikes announced Tuesday also up the stakes in a simmering energy conflict in the volatile eastern Mediterranean involving Israel, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece and Turkey and their feuds.

Israel's Modlin Energy Partnership and Canada's Adira Energy say they found the fields, named Gabriella and Yitzhak, in shallow water 15 miles off Tel Aviv. Seismic surveys indicated the fields could yield up to 232.3 million barrels of oil, 128.4 million from Gabriella alone, the Globes business daily reported.

The fields also contain some 1.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

These discoveries are relatively small compared to the 2009-10 strikes made by Noble Energy Corp. of Houston, and its partner, the Delek Group headed by Israeli tycoon Yitzhak Tshuva.

Leviathan, the biggest, which lies off Haifa, contains an estimated 20 tcf and nearby Tamar 9 tcf.

Noble Energy's also been drilling in Block 12, known the Aphrodite field, the southernmost of Cyprus' 12 exploration zones and which adjoins Leviathan. Noble estimated in late 2011 that Block 12 contained 7 tcf, but has revised that to 5.1 tcf, with a probability of 50 percent, after further investigation of its complex geological structure.

Even so, that still makes it the third largest field found in the Levant Basin after Leviathan and Tamar. Nobel estimates Leviathan also holds 1.7 billion barrels of oil.

The Delek-Noble partnership wants to raise $250 million on Israel's capital markets over the next few months to pay for developing its gas fields even though the Israel Electric Corp. agreed in January to buy gas from Tamar for an estimated $8 billion over 15 years to fuel electricity generation.

Israel and the Greek Cypriot government in Nicosia plan to pool their resources and export gas, either through underwater pipelines to the energy-hungry European Union, which desperately wants to end its reliance on Russian gas, or as tanker-borne liquefied natural gas.

This infuriates Turkey, particularly since its Islamist government broke a long-standing strategic alliance with Israel in May 2010, evoking its historical rivalry with the Greeks.

The energy bonanza in the eastern Mediterranean is swelling against the backdrop of that smoldering feud, as well as the more explosive Arab-Israeli conflict that could well escalate anew.

Neighboring Egypt's newly empowered Islamists have called for cutting off vital exports of Egyptian gas to the Jewish state.

They could go further and threaten to abrogate the landmark 1979 peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in March 1979, the first between the Jewish state and its Arab foes.

That's been the linchpin of Israeli, Egyptian and U.S. strategic policy in the region and scrapping the treaty would further isolate Israel at a time when it's locked in confrontation with Iran over its alleged plans to acquire nuclear weapons.

Lebanon, Israel's southern neighbor also plans to develop offshore fields and claims Leviathan encroaches into its waters. Both sides mutter darkly about using force.

Lebanon and Israel are technically in a state of war and fought a 34-day conflict in 2006.

Cyprus was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a short-lived coup by supporters of uniting the Greek-majority island northwest of Israel with mainland Greece.

The Turks conquered the northern one-third of the island and proclaimed it the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. But only Ankara recognizes it.

The Nicosia government, which controls the southern part of the island, is internationally recognized and is part of the European Union.

Turkey bitterly opposes Greek Cypriot plans for the gas fields Nicosia expects to find offshore and their burgeoning economic, political and -- more worrisome -- military links with Israel.

Ankara warns it will use its considerable military force if it feels threatened and insists that no exploration around Cyprus can take place until the Turkish minority is reconciled with its old enemies in the south -- a prospect that right now seems extremely remote.

The stakes are already high. The U.S. Geological Survey reported in 2011 that the eastern Mediterranean contains 123 tcf of gas and 2 billion barrels of oil.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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*The Quds Brigades = Iranian "special forces"

Islamic Jihad rockets can hit Tel Aviv: armed wing

Friday, 16 March 2012

The Quds Brigades fired most of the rockets that hit Israel in the past
week’s four-day conflict between Gaza militants and the Jewish state.

http://english.alarabiya.net/article...16/201057.html

By AFP
Gaza City

The Gaza-based militant group Islamic Jihad has weapons that can reach Tel Aviv, a member of the group’s armed wing the Quds Brigades has told AFP in an interview.

The Quds Brigades fired most of the rockets that hit Israel in the past week’s four-day conflict between Gaza militants and the Jewish state.

A member of the armed wing, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ibrahim, said the group was ready to expand the reach of its rocket fire beyond the Israeli town of Ashdod, which lies some 35 kilometers (20 miles) outside Gaza.

“If the occupation targets any leader of any Palestinian group whatsoever or any citizen, the Brigades will respond with force and expand the reach of the response beyond Ashdod,” he told AFP.

“The enemy is aware of the range that the Brigades rockets can reach,” he said, adding that the Quds Brigades possessed “many thousands” of rockets.

Islamic Jihad took the lead in attacking Israel during the recent confrontation, which began on March 9 with Israel’s assassination of the commander of the Popular Resistance Committees militant group.

By the time a truce was announced on Tuesday, 25 Palestinians had been killed ̶ many of them from Islamic Jihad ̶ and at least 250 rockets had been fired into Israel, around 180 of them launched by the group.

Some rockets landed nearly 40 kilometers inside Israel, not far from the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

A lone rocket was fired from Gaza into Israel during the first 12 hours of Friday, the Israeli military said, as the fledgling truce firmed up.

Abu Ibrahim said the Quds Brigades have “developed long-range rockets and if the aggression returns, they could be used to reach towns far beyond Ashdod.”

Abu Ibrahim said the group was receiving significant help from Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization, which he said provides “fundamental support” to the Quds Brigades, particularly by “facilitating the training of fighters.”

Another Quds Brigades member, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said “certain resistance groups, including the Quds Brigades, have Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 missiles, with a range of 60-110 kilometers.”

“But they are not for use unless Israel targets an important figure,” he said.

He also claimed that Gaza militants possessed SAM-7 missiles which he said had been fired at Israeli helicopters last year.





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[Be Well]

Take care of your health, Dutch - rest a lot! I hope you feel better soon.

[The Flying Dutchman]

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Iran Takes 'Urgent Steps' As Saturday Cut-Off Looms

Friday, 16 Mar 2012 09:44 AM
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Ira...3/16/id/432784

The sanctions vice is tightening on Iran, cutting it out of key global financial networks, but Tehran is taking urgent steps to withstand the pressure over a nuclear program the West suspects is intended to produce bombs.

The SWIFT system, which handles most cross-border payments, said in Brussels on Thursday it would disconnect Iranian institutions blacklisted by sanctions from its messaging system on Saturday at 1600 GMT, after a European Union order and pressure from the United States.

Money exchange houses in the Gulf said they were ceasing dealing in the risky Iranian rial, in another blow to Tehran's trading channels.

Meanwhile, Reuters shipping data showed that vessels carrying at least 360,000 tons of grain are lined up to unload in Iran, in a sign Tehran is stockpiling huge amounts of food to blunt the impact of tougher Western sanctions.

The Islamic Republic has even begun buying wheat from its arch-enemy — the United States.

The sanctions make it difficult to obtain letters of credit or conduct international transfers of funds through banks.

So instead, Iran has bought around 2 million ton of wheat since February at a premium to international prices in currencies including Japanese yen and Russian roubles.

"There is no doubt in my mind it is geopolitical hedging. They are trying to get as much as they can in the country to blunt the effect of any further escalation in international sanctions," Rabobank commodities analyst Nick Higgins said.

The sanctions regime exempts food.



LIFELINES CUT

Nineteen banks and 25 affiliated institutions from Iran exchanged a total of 2 million cross-border payments using SWIFT in 2010. They include banks the U.S. accuses of financing Iran's nuclear activity or terrorism — Mellat, Post, Saderat and Sepah.

The EU order "forces SWIFT to take action", SWIFT Chief Executive Lazaro Campos said. "Disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and unprecedented step for SWIFT. It is a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify financial sanctions against Iran."

Some overseas Iranian businessmen said the move could strangle their operations.

"This is like our lifeline to the outside being cut," Naser Shaker, who owns an oil and gas trading company in Dubai, told Reuters. "All the transactions will be stopped. Through the banks, there are no more options."

Morteza Masoumzadeh, of the executive committee of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai and managing director of the Jumbo Line Shipping Agency, said it was "devastating news".

"If Iranian banks cannot exchange payments with banks around the world then this will cause the collapse of many banking relations and many businesses," he said.

The Obama administration applauded the EU order to SWIFT and said it reflected consensus in the international community that "substantially increased pressure" was needed to convince the Iranian government to address their concerns about its nuclear program.

But U.S. lawmakers pushing for tougher sanctions on Iran said SWIFT needed to eradicate all Iranian financial institutions from its network, not just those blacklisted by the West.

"The impact of financial sanctions will not come close to full potential if Iran can simply go across the street to a non-designated bank to conduct the transactions with those still willing to do business with it," said Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman, who is working with Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on legislation that would extend sanctions to all Iranian banks.

Since late last year, Iran has largely been frozen out of the global banking system. Washington has used anti-money laundering legislation to make it risky for banks around the world to do business with Iran, including trade financing.

Iranian businessmen have continued to conduct some trade with Dubai and other places, however, by transferring funds through money exchange houses. But over the last few weeks, many of those houses have stopped doing Iranian rial business as well.

Mohamed al-Ansari, chairman and managing director of Al Ansari Exchange, one of the UAE's top two exchange houses, said the weakness of the rial, which saw its black market rate roughly halve against the U.S. dollar in the year to January, had made it too risky to handle the currency.

"Most exchange companies have stopped dealing in Iranian rial mainly because of its devaluation in the last few months, as well as the regulations imposed by the U.S. regulatory authorities on the financial sector," he told Reuters.



OIL TO BE RELEASED

Speculation is growing that Israel, with or without U.S. support, could launch some form of military strike against Iranian nuclear installations, which the Jewish state sees as a threat to its existence.

Iran insists its nuclear energy program is purely non-military and has been adamant it will not abandon them under external pressure. On Wednesday it welcomed a new round of nuclear negotiations with six world powers, saying the two sides should set the date and venue of the talks.

U.S. President Barack Obama warned Tehran on Thursday that "the window for solving this issue diplomatically is shrinking".

British sources said Britain had decided to cooperate with the United States in a bilateral agreement to release strategic oil stocks, in an effort to prevent high fuel prices derailing economic growth in a U.S. election year.

While there is no significant disruption of world oil supplies at the moment, sanctions on Iran are expected to cut its output when a European Union embargo takes effect from July.

Minor stoppages from South Sudan, Yemen and Syria also have contributed to a sharp rise in oil prices.




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[The Flying Dutchman]

Take care of your health, Dutch - rest a lot! I hope you feel better soon.

Me to Lady BW. Right now I feel like I am looking through a fish bowl....

[The Flying Dutchman]

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Netanyahu Makes the Case for
Going It Alone Against Iran

By KARL VICK | Time.com – 4 hrs ago...
http://news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-make...095500684.html

By his own account, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington this month with two goals. One was to continue his 15-year campaign to push Iran's nuclear program to the top of the world's agenda. That mission was accomplished, Netanyahu declared to the Knesset on Wednesday. The other aim was to hear Washington acknowledge that Israel has the right to launch a military operation on its own against Iran if it sees fit. "This position was positively received in the United States, I would even say in the most profound way," he said.

With that, the Israeli Premier launched an extended argument for defying American requests for restraint and going ahead with a strike on Iran. He cited as precedent the bold calls of three of his predecessors: David Ben-Gurion's decision to announce independence in 1948 despite the U.S. Secretary of State's advice to wait; Levi Eshkol's decision to launch the 1967 Six-Day War despite President Lyndon Johnson's warning; and Menachem Begin's 1981 decision to strike Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak (though Ronald Reagan appeared mostly amused when he heard about that strike, famously remarking, "Boys will be boys!").

(MORE: Diplomacy With Iran: Hey, What's the Hurry?)

"I presented the example I just gave you to my hosts in Washington," Netanyahu reported, "and I believe that the first goal I set -- to strengthen the recognition of Israel's right to defend itself -- I think that goal was achieved."

Never mind that, by the end of the speech, Netanyahu sounded as though the target of an Israeli attack would be the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave from which militants launched more than 300 missiles over the previous week, many of them supplied by Iran. "Gaza equals Iran," he said, concluding the speech with the warning: "Sooner or later, Iran's terror base in Gaza will be uprooted." Analysts came away from the session convinced that the first target remains Tehran and debated whether he was indeed serious about going it alone or merely giving the appearance in order to keep international pressure on Iran.

The liberal Haaretz was alarmed. "Netanyahu is preparing Israeli public opinion for a war on Iran," was the headline on the column of editor Aluf Benn. Benn quarreled with Netanyahu's rendering of history, noting that in both 1948 and '67, the Americans had privately signaled their approval of Israel acting. But the columnist took this as a signal that Netanyahu had gotten a similar wink from President Obama. He found supporting evidence in a 2,500 word column by the editor of rival newspaper Israel Hayom, the free daily owned by fierce Netanyahu (and Newt Gingrich) supporter Sheldon Adelson.

In the piece, Amos Regev argued that the cost in Israeli lives from any Iranian retaliation must be measured against the far more devastating impact of an Iranian nuclear weapon launched at Israel. The editor also insisted that, whatever was said in Washington, Obama cannot be relied upon to act militarily against Iran down the road if Israel does not soon, before Iran moves more of its nuclear apparatus deep underground. "With or without the Americans, it will be difficult. It will be bold. But it is possible," Regev wrote.

The question, of course, is whether it will also be effective. As we reported last month, a senior Israeli commander warned Netanyahu's inner Cabinet in September that the country's air force could not expect to set back Iran's nuclear program by more than a matter of months -- a year at most. "I informed the Cabinet we have no ability to hit the Iranian nuclear program in a meaningful way," a senior security official quoted the commander as saying. "If I get the order, I will do it, but we don't have the ability to hit in a meaningful way."

(MORE: Another War in the Middle East?)

Meanwhile, the economic sanctions on Iran bite deeper and deeper. The Financial Times reports that the Islamic Republic's oil production has dropped to a 10-year low and is still falling. With its central bank sanctioned and Iran now excluded from the international SWIFT system crucial to international banking, the government has been reduced to accepting Turkish lira and other local currencies (instead of more desirable U.S. dollars or euros) for its petroleum. It'll even take canned goods or lawn mowers. What have you got? "A separate barter arrangement also exists," the Iranian state press service quoted central banker Mahmoud Bahmani as saying. "Iran imports goods from China and India instead of the hard currency and faces no problem in this regard."

It's impossible, of course, to know what Netanyahu really intends. He may not yet know himself. But in the meantime, the more intent he appears on launching an Israeli strike, the more zealous Europe and others become about applying the coercive economic pressure that might force the mullahs to reappraise their relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Longtime masters of ambiguity, the Iranians may have met their match in Bibi.

"Only one thing is clear," writes Dan Margalit elsewhere in Israel Hayom: "If there is any real chance of getting Iran to stop its nuclear development without the use of Israeli and/or American and/or European force, it is based on the ability of Netanyahu and his ministers to create a credible atmosphere, to prove that their warnings are not merely hot air."




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[The Flying Dutchman]

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US Navy gears up to defend Hormuz Strait

Published: 16 March, 2012, 16:09
http://rt.com/news/us-minesweepers-hormuz-strait-737/

The US Navy is doubling the number of its minesweepers in the Persian Gulf. The move follows Tehran’s promise to block the primary route of oil exports from the region in retaliation to new US and EU-backed sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

*An additional four minesweeping ships and four accompanying minesweeping helicopters will join the four ships already patrolling the Persian Gulf.


The overall number of US minesweepers in the region will total at eight, reported US Navy Admiral Jonathan Greenert, who was made the chief of naval operations last September.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he declined to specify exactly when the deployment will happen.

"If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it's the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf," the Admiral said back in January.

Also in January, General Martin Dempsey, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, confirmed that Iran indeed has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time,” and the US must get ready to reopen it in case of a blockade.

About one fifth of the world’s oil passes through The Strait of Hormuz.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Panetta Says World United Against Nuclear Iran

March 16, 2012
http://www.rferl.org/content/panetta_iran/24517957.html

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that, for the first time, the international community is united in opposition to Iran's disputed nuclear program.

Speaking to U.S.-funded Alhurra television on March 15 in Abu Dhabi, Panetta said that firm international diplomatic and economic sanctions are having an impact.

"It is impacting on their economy. It's impacting on their quality of life. It's impacting on their business community. It's impacting on their energy community," Panetta said.

He said he does not believe that Israel has made a decision to launch a military attack on Iran in a bid to knock out nuclear facilities.

Panetta said Washington believes a diplomatic solution with Tehran is still possible.

Iran's government denies any effort to develop a nuclear weapon.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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*Off topic news article - sorry, I don't
feel like starting another thread this morning ~Dutch

Close-shave asteroid set to return next year

March 16, 2012 03:00 PM
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Env...#axzz1pI1UGXKw

PARIS: An asteroid spotted by amateur astronomers only after it had skimmed the Earth will come even closer next February, but without posing a threat, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday.

Around 50 metres (150 feet) long, asteroid 2012 DA14 has stoked concern about planetary preparedness against rogue rocks.

It was detected on February 22 only after it had flashed by at a gap of 2.5 million kilometres (1.6 million miles), or about seven times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Next February 15, it will pass Earth at just 24,000 kilometres (15,000 miles), meaning it will zip between the planet and satellites in geostationary orbit, which is 35,800 kms (21,800 miles) above the equator, ESA said.

"This is a safe distance, but it is still close enough to make the asteroid visible in normal binoculars," said Detlef Koschny at ESA's Space Situational Awareness office.

Preliminary calculations of 2012 DA14 show it orbits the Sun in 366 and a quarter days, which is a day more than Earth's year.

It jumps inside and outside of the path of Earth twice a year, according to the team who discovered it.

Next February's flyby, while not a threat, will help determine whether the asteroid's trajectory is affected -- towards either safety or risk -- by the gravitational tug of the Earth and the Moon.

According to calculations derived from NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program website, 2012 DA14 has a mass of around 120,000 tonnes. It will be at its closest point at about 1926 GMT on February 15.

A US-led mission is making inroads into counting the numbers of very large NEOs that can be a kilometre (half a mile) or more in length.

Monsters such as these are capable of apocalyptic damage, as was famously the case with the asteroid or comet that ended the long reign of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

But a more arduous greater task is to spot the hundreds of thousands of smaller rocks measuring tens of metres (dozens of feet across), that -- if they remained as large chunks after entering the atmosphere -- could wipe out a city or cause a tsunami.

An object roughly the size of 2012 DA14 caused the so-called Tunguska Event in Siberia in 1908.

Heated by friction with the atmosphere, it exploded with the power of a thousand atomic bombs, flattening 80 million trees in a swath of more than 2,000 square kms (800 sq. miles).

Discovering 2012 DA14 was a coup for the La Sagra Sky Observatory, near Granada in southeastern Spain. The telescope is located at an altitude of 1,700m (5,500 feet) in one of the least light-polluted places in Europe.




Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Env...#ixzz1pI1coxDE
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)



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[The Flying Dutchman]

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sigh, that's it for me this morning folks....

Berri warns against stalling oil sector progress

March 16, 2012 01:26 PM)
The Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Pol...#axzz1pI1UGXKw

BEIRUT: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri warned he would adjourn a regular Parliamentary session to hold the government accountable for what he says are delays in the process of oil exploration, a local daily reported Friday.

As-Safir quoted Berri as saying he “would call for a regular Parliamentary session to hold the government accountable in case it does not fulfill its promises in taking several steps in oil and gas exploration.”

The head of the Parliament also stressed on the need to establish a committee to administer the oil sector and begin drawing tenders.

Last year, Lebanon’s Cabinet approved decrees to implement a law to administer the country’s oil sector, opening the door for Beirut to draw tenders and start oil exploration off its coast.

The Cabinet also agreed to form a committee that would organize the creation of a comprehensive national plan for the oil sector, amid regional disputes between Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus and Turkey over territorial waters.

Berri has been one of the leading proponents of developing the country’s oil and gas sector, urging lawmakers to swiftly take the necessary measures to develop it.

In February, Berri traveled to Cyprus on an official visit aimed at discussing Lebanon’s dispute over maritime borders with the Mediterranean island.

The two countries have been in engaged in talks to resolve Lebanon's concerns blocking the approval of a 2007 agreement delineating the Exclusive Economic Zones between Lebanon and Cyprus.

Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, on an official to Lebanon, said Thursday that her country is committed to help resolve the issue between Lebanon and Israel over disputed maritime borders.

Lebanon maintains that Cyprus' memorandum of cooperation with Israel, signed in 2010 for surveying and mapping in joint energy projects, violates its maritime rights as both the Jewish State and Lebanon lay claim to some 850-square kilometers believed to be rich in oil and gas.

Energy and Water Minister Gibran Bassil has also urged the Cabinet to begin tackling issues halting progress in developing the oil sector.


Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Pol...#ixzz1pI2lFmxS
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)



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[Leigh19717]

you get you some rest Dutch. We all need to be healthy when this thing blows. Have you ever thought it might be the stress of reading all of this, that is making you ill? Stress can do awful things to people. I will be praying over you dear as another posted, I wouldn't know half of what I know if it weren't for you and the others!

[momof23goats]

Dutch will be praying for you today, get some rest.

[BREWER]

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.debka.com/article/21833/

Israel ultimatum: Stop the missiles by Saturday night. Hamas leader in Tehran
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 16, 2012, 1:51 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Palestinian terror missile attacks Israel Gaza Iran Egypt
Mahmoud A-Zahar of Hamas welcomed in Tehran

After five days of non-stop missile fire on a dozen towns and villages, Israel Thursday night, March 15, gave Egypt and Hamas two days to halt the shooting or else the Israeli Defense Forces would go into action against Gaza.

debkafile’s military sources report that neither Egypt nor Hamas can be expected to go up against the missile shooters now. The attacks have now been taken over from Jihad Islami by a small group of Salafi Palestinians calling itself Haraka Muhaheddin, which belongs to Jalalat, the al Qaeda roof organization in the Gaza Strip.

Most of the missiles are now coming from the Salafi concentrations in the southern part of the enclave –targeting Beersheba and Netivot Thursday morning and as night fell aimed at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Shear Hanegev and the Eshkol region. The firing escalated after Israel laid down its ultimatum.

Egypt and Hamas don’t know exactly who is giving Haraka the missiles, except that they are smuggled from Sinai through tunnels managed by Iranian intelligence agents in conjunction with local al Qaeda networks.

It is highly unlikely that Hamas will venture to lay hands on these Salafi terrorists at a time when one of its top officials in Gaza, Mahmoud A-Zahar, is visiting Tehran for talks with Iranian leaders who are keen to keep the missile assaults going.

His visit marks the Hamas fundamentalists’ return to the Iranian fold - that is if they ever really left it. This, Israeli strategists have chosen to ignore and are treating Hamas as a non-participant in the missile offensive and available to help Cairo bring the terrorists to accept a ceasefire.

The sequence of events leading up to this week’s violence points to the opposite conclusion and, therefore, the probable escalation of the violence rather than a truce.

Five days before the missile fire began, on March 5, a Hamas Deputy Politburo Chief Mousa Abu Marzouk and Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah met in Beirut and finalized tactics for building up tensions on Israel’s borders.

Monday, March 12, Mahmoud A-Zahar was in Cairo to wind up Gaza ceasefire terms with Egyptian officials when, to their astonishment, instead of returning to Gaza, he boarded a plane to Tehran. He is still there.

And so, while the Egyptians try and reach some sort of accommodation with Hamas for a truce, Hamas itself is in close communion with the Iranians, who want to see the Israeli military stuck in a messy a showdown with the Palestinian Salafis.

[Housecarl]

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18:43 15.03.12

Iran official:
Israel isn't powerful enough to fulfill military threats

Speaking during tour of southern Lebanon, Ahmadinejad's press adviser says
possible Iranian counterstrike would reach beyond 'Zionist regime,' include U.S. bases.

By Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...reats-1.418905

Israel is too weak to fulfill its threats against Iran, an adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to southern Lebanon on Wednesday, adding that Iran's counter attack in case of an assault against it would include U.S. targets.

The Iranian official's remarks came after, on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an apparent reference to the possibility of an attack of Iran's nuclear facilities, said that Israel didn't always heed to U.S. warnings against offensive action, citing such examples as the Six-Day War and the 1981 strike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor.

A Yasser missile is displayed during Iranian army parade, marking national Army Day, in front of the mausoleum of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khamenei near Tehran, Iran, April 18, 2011.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said thatthe window for a diplomatic solution with Iran over its nuclear program was "shrinking," urging Tehran to seize the opportunity of talks with world leaders to avert "even worse consequences."

Speaking during a tour of the south Lebanon town of Maran al-Ras, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's press advisor Ali Akbar Javanfekr, played down the possibility of an Israelui strike on Iran, saying that the “Zionist regime is weaker than being able to fulfill its threats against Islamic Republic.”

“Iran is not afraid of any enemy, including the occupying force of Zionist regime,” Javanfekr was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Ahmadinejad's press adviser also warned of the severity of a potential Iranian counterstrike, saying that the "consequences of any attack on Iran will not be limited to the Zionist regime and its allies, including the U.S. will be the target of Tehran’s reaction; Washington officials are well aware about the devastating answer of Iran to any aggression."

On Thursday, an international network in control of the world's largest financial messaging system announced intended to cut off Iranian banks targeted by European Union sanctions.

The move by SWIFT represents an unprecedented measure that will effectively prevent Iranian institutions from electronically transferring global funds.






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Considering the IDF's TO&E, the statement Javanfekr made isn't out of line at all....provided things stay "conventional". Considering the table stakes and the likely domino effect of things occurring, when the Israelis do pull the trigger, the only way they can do so alone with any possibility of success is to go "all in" on Day 1, Hour 1. Anything else plays into Iran and her allies strengths, and it will be equivalent to Caesar's 10th crossing the Rubicon during a "hundred year flood" in terms of global repercussions. Housecarl

[Housecarl]

After all of those talks and initial agreements Lucy has the football again and Captain Renault is shocked to find once more that there is gambling going on in the Cafe American's back room....

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82F05120120316

North Korea's plan for rocket launch stirs regional concern

Comments 3
By Jack Kim and Jeremy Laurence

SEOUL | Fri Mar 16, 2012 12:03pm EDT

(Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it will launch a long-range rocket carrying a "working" satellite to mark the centenary of founder Kim Il-sung's birth next month, sparking condemnation from the United States and others that it was in breach of a U.N. resolution.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the announcement was highly provocative and called upon Pyongyang to honor its obligations including U.N. Security Council resolutions banning ballistic missile launches.

"Such a missile launch would pose a threat to regional security and would also be inconsistent with North Korea's recent undertaking to refrain from long-range missile launches," she said in a statement.

The North, which said recently it would suspend long-range missile testing as part of talks with the United States, pledged that next month's launch would not impact neighboring countries.

Experts said the launch was clearly another long-range missile test, and could be seen as an act of brinkmanship to pressure Washington into more talks in return for aid.

South Korea, which is still technically at war with the North after signing only an armistice to end the 1950-53 Korean War, and Japan said the ballistic launch threatened regional security.

Any launch by North Korea, whether for a satellite or not, that uses ballistic missile technology violates Security Council resolutions, the Japanese government said.

"We urge North Korea to exercise restraint and refrain from the launch," said the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura.

China, the reclusive state's only main ally, was more restrained in its response, but stressed on maintaining peace on the divided peninsula.

"Protecting the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and North East Asia suits the joint interests of all parties and is the consistent expectation of the international community. This requires that all relevant parties take a constructive role," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters at a regular news briefing.

MISSILE ADVANCES

In April 2009, the North conducted a similar ballistic rocket launch which resulted in a new round of toughened U.N. sanctions, squeezing the secretive state's already troubled economy and deepening its isolation.

That launch, dismissed as a failure after the first stage fell into the Sea of Japan without orbiting a satellite, provoked outrage in Tokyo which had threatened to shoot down any debris or rocket that threatened its territory.

Another test failed in similar circumstances in 1998.

Washington says the North's long-range ballistic missile program is moving ahead quickly and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last year that the American mainland could come under threat within five years.

"The DPRK is to launch a working satellite, Kwangmyongsong-3, manufactured by itself with indigenous technology to mark the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il-sung," the North's official KCNA said, quoting a spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology.

The launch will take place between April 12-16, KCNA said. It is scheduled to occur at around the same time its foes in the South hold a parliamentary election, and just over three weeks after a global nuclear security summit in Seoul.

CELEBRATIONS, MILITARISTIC IMAGE

Pyongyang has been planning massive celebrations for years to mark Kim Il-sung's birthday on April 15, and has boasted the occasion would also mark its emergence on the international stage as a "strong and prosperous" nation.

Analysts said the launch was designed to boost the country's new leadership and to pressure Washington into making concessions.

"For the outside world this is the same as a long-range missile test," said Park Young-ho of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government affiliated think tank.

"This can interpreted as a means of applying pressure on the Americans in negotiations, and is a celebration of the founder's birth as well as an opportunity for the new leadership to celebrate the beginning of a new era," Park said in Seoul.

The state's new young leader Kim Jong-un, who became the third member of the Kim family to lead the state after his father Kim Jong-il's death in December, has presented a militaristic image to his countrymen since taking power.

He has visited several military sites and been seen mixing with top brass in what analysts say is a move designed to win the all-powerful army's backing for the succession process.

KCNA said the launch would be conducted from a base near its border with China, indicating it would take place at a newly constructed missile testing site believed to be larger and more advanced than the site used to launch previous rockets.

The launch will be made southwards and debris generated from the flight will not impact neighboring countries, it said.

(Additional reporting by Jumin Park in Seoul and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Factbox

North Korea's missile and "satellite" programmes
3:49am EDT

Related News

Russia urges North Korea to refrain from rocket launch
12:03pm EDT

[Marie]

Hope you feel better soon Dutch. And thanks to you and everyone else for keeping us up to date.
and IMHO doesn't matter if Israel has one rocket or thousands ...God has already predicted the outcome.

[northern watch]

Israeli, French naval vessels transit Suez to Red Sea

DEBKAfile March 15, 2012, 8:37 AM (GMT+02:00)

The Israeli Navy’s Lahav and Yaffo Saar-5 missile corvettes accompanied by the French supply ship Imidisi passed through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea Tuesday March 13 on their way an undisclosed destination. Egyptian security authorities reported only that the warships made a short stop at Port Said “where they joined a fleet” without identifying which fleet.

http://www.debka.com/newsupdatepopup/280/

Posted Under Fair Use Discussion

[The Flying Dutchman]

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Officials:
Escalation Will Be Met with 'Super Escalation'

Security officials threaten: an escalation of rocket fire by
terrorists in Gaza will result in a “super escalation” by the IDF.

By Elad Benari, Canada
First Publish: 3/16/2012, 11:23 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153834

Security officials threatened on Friday that an escalation of rocket fire by terrorists in Gaza will result in a “super escalation” by the IDF.

Speaking to the Yisrael Hayom newspaper, a security official said, “We cannot tolerate this fire over time. The citizens of Israel do not care who shoots at them. They care that they are being shot at.”

A senior official in the Israeli Air Force told the newspaper, “The results of an operation in Gaza will have an impact on the doctrine of the Air Force.” The official added that “the enemy understands that Israel has the Iron Dome and in the next round he will look for a different Achilles’ heel.”


The officials made the comments following the recent wave of escalation, during which Gaza terrorists fired more than 200 rockets at Israel over four days.


Despite an Egyptian-brokered ‘ceasefire’ announced earlier this week, terrorists continued to fire rockets at Israeli territory even on Friday.


A Kassam rocket which was fired from Gaza at southern Israel on Friday afternoon landed in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council. There were no physical injuries or damage.


A Kassam rocket was also fired from Gaza towards Israel overnight Thursday and exploded in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council.

At least five rockets and missiles were fired from Gaza into Israeli territory throughout the day on Thursday, including a Grad missile fired at Ashdod on Thursday evening. While the Iron Dome system successfully shot the missile out of the air before impact, the attack caused concern among local officials and led to the closure of schools across the south.


On Thursday, when schools were open, a rocket hit near a school in Ofakim. No children were wounded in the attack.

Be’er Sheva Mayor Rubik Danilovich made it clear on Thursday that “so long as there is shooting on the city of Be'er Sheva there will be no school. I maintain constant contact with the Home Front Command, I hear their assessments and professional guidelines and recommendations, but ultimately I take full responsibility for the safety of the students of Be'er Sheva.”

Danilovich added, “It’s unthinkable that you could be talking about routine and the firing of missiles continues as a fact of life. This cannot happen. We’ve created an absurd situation in which there is no quiet in southern Israel, and Gaza is quiet. Israel must make military action to eradicate this terrorism. The mayors have given the defense establishment and the Prime Minister the full backing to carry out any actions required to stop the shooting at the south. If we do not act now, we'll go back for another more difficult and more violent round.”

Meanwhile on Friday, the Islamic Jihad claimed it has rockets that can reach Tel Aviv.

A member of the terror group's Quds Brigades told AFP they were ready to expand the reach of its rocket fire "beyond the Israeli town of Ashdod."

“If the occupation targets any leader of any Palestinian group whatsoever or any citizen, the Brigades will respond with force and expand the reach of the response beyond Ashdod,” he said.

On Thursday, Minister of Strategic Affairs Minister and deputy premier Moshe Yaalon said Israel would make terrorists "beg us to stop."

“As long as they fire, it isn’t over," Yaalon said. “Anyone threatening us is risking his life. We will retaliate until they beg us to stop. They have to realize that the consequences of the rocket fire are not worth it.”





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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'Ceasefire' Continues, as Do Rocket Attacks

By Elad Benari, Canada
First Publish: 3/16/2012, 9:30 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153831

Reuters

Despite an Egyptian-brokered ‘ceasefire’ announced earlier this week, terrorists continued to fire rockets at Israeli territory on Friday.

A Kassam rocket which was fired from Gaza at southern Israel on Friday afternoon landed in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council. There were no physical injuries or damage.

The terrorists took advantage of winter-like weather conditions in the area to cover up the fact that they were firing a rocket, according to a report on Channel 2 News.

A Kassam rocket was also fired from Gaza towards Israel overnight Thursday and exploded in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council.

At least five rockets and missiles were fired from Gaza into Israeli territory throughout the day on Thursday, including a Grad missile fired at Ashdod on Thursday evening. While the Iron Dome system successfully shot the missile out of the air before impact, the attack caused concern among local officials and led to the closure of schools across the south.

On Thursday, when schools were open, a rocket hit near a school in Ofakim. No children were wounded in the attack.

The latest terror onslaught from Gaza began last Friday. Terrorists fired more than 200 rockets at Israeli cities in four days.






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Gunboats, Super-Torpedoes, Sea-Bots:
U.S. Navy Launches Huge Iran Surge

By Spencer Ackerman
March 16, 2012 | 11:55 am
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012...-persian-gulf/

Sending more aircraft carriers to the waters near Iran, it turns out, was just the start. Yes, the U.S. currently has more seapower aimed at Iran in the Persian Gulf than in the fleets of most countries on Earth, Iran included. But that was just the Navy cracking its knuckles.

In the next few months, the Navy will double its minesweeper craft stationed in Bahrain, near Iran, from four to eight. Those ships will be crucial if Iran takes the drastic step of mining the Strait of Hormuz, one of the global energy supply’s most crucial waterways. Four more MH-53 “Sea Stallion” helicopters, another minesweeping tool, are also getting ready for Bahrain, to give the U.S. Fifth Fleet early warning for any strait mining.

Then the Navy will prepare to get closer to Iranian shores. Much closer. It’s got five close-action patrol boats in the Gulf right now. Once the Coast Guard returns three that the Navy loaned out, the Navy will have five other patrol craft in the United States. All those boats are getting retrofitted. With Gatling guns. And missiles.

Sure, the guns aboard the two aircraft carriers currently near Iran are the seapower equivalent of high-powered, long-range rifles. “But maybe what you need is like a sawed-off shotgun,” capable of doing massive damage from a closer distance, said Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Navy’s senior officer. All 10 of those patrol boats, Greenert told reporters at a Friday breakfast in Washington, will get strapped with the Mk-38 Gatling Gun and should make it to the Gulf next year. (Though, alas, they won’t have the Gatling/laser gun mashup BAE Systems is working on.) They’ll also get close-range missiles that can hit Iranian shores from four miles away — the same kinds Navy SEALs use.


Consider it Teddy Roosevelt’s gunboat diplomacy for the 21st century. Over plates of greasy eggs and bacon, Greenert outlined a plan to give the U.S. what is almost certainly the biggest stick the Navy has ever had in the Gulf. The idea, which he didn’t make explicit, is to convince Iran to think long and hard before ever messing with either the U.S.’s Arab allies across the Gulf or disrupting a narrow transit point through which a fifth of the world’s energy supplies flow.

Add up the aircraft carriers, the Gatling-packing patrol craft, the Orions, the Sea Stallions and the minesweepers, and Greenert still isn’t finished with the surge. Then come the new, advanced torpedoes that can compensate for the “turpidity [and] particulate” drags of the Gulf waters. And the drone subs — or, as Greenert put it, “some underwater unmanned neutralization autonomous units” to help hunt mines. And every Navy ship that sails through the strait will come equipped with new, modular “infrared and electro-optical” visibility systems that clarify the foggy Gulf even at night. Extra spare parts and contractor crews will sustain the surge.

And if all that wasn’t enough, Greenert disclosed that he and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will soon ask themselves if the Navy needs to rotate more aircraft carriers to the Gulf. That decision, so important that it’s Panetta’s to make, will come “in the next few months.”

“I looked in every domain, undersea, surface and air,” Greenert said, “to make sure that we’re doing our best for the guys that are over there.”

Even with the prospect of an Israeli bombing campaign lingering overhead, the Navy has already proven it can get Iran to back off its bellicose rhetoric. Tehran hasn’t attacked the U.S. carriers, and it hasn’t mined the strait. Yet.

Greenert suggested that Iran’s naval forces are too sensible to actually challenge the vastly superior American force nearby. The regular Iranian navy is “professional, courteous [and] good mariners,” he said. Even the radical Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps isn’t “ramping up” in the Gulf and keeping its activities “normal.”

Perhaps true. And once the Navy’s surge forces all get into the Persian Gulf, the Iranian sea forces might not have any choice, if they want to continue existing. But if Iran’s pattern of miscalculation continues, then the larger Navy force nearby might be a provocation — and will have to end a fight quickly if it breaks out






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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MOSCOW, March 16, 2012

Russian official:
Attack on Iran imminent

Vladimir Radyuhin
http://www.thehindu.com/news/interna...cle3003440.ece

Israel will attack Iran this year if a new round of talks scheduled for April fail, a leading Russian newspaper has reported quoting a senior Russian diplomat.

Russian diplomats at the United Nations believe the strike against Iran is “a matter of when, not if”, said the Kommersant daily on Wednesday.

“The attack will be mounted before the end of this year. Israel is blackmailing [U.S. President Barack] Obama by confronting him with a dilemma: either he supports the war option or will lose the support [of the U.S. Jews],” a high-ranking official of the Russian Foreign Ministry told the paper ahead of the U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria on Monday.

After the meeting, the Russian diplomat said the attack could come earlier, any time after April when the six-nation group holds new talks with Iran.

The Kommersant quoted the diplomat as saying that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to warn Iran that the talks were a “last chance for Tehran” to avoid the attack.

The newspaper said a precise date and location for the talks was still being discussed. Iran on Tuesday confirmed that the talks would take place soon and said Turkey had been suggested as the venue.

The coming strike against Iran would save Syria from foreign military intervention, the unnamed Russian diplomat told the Kommersant.

“Americans realise that Israel will attack Iran and it would be too much to have two wars in the region,” the diplomat said explaining Washington's consent to let U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan pursue his peace efforts in Syria.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Assessing the Impact of an Israeli Attack on Iran

By TheStreet Guest Contributor
03/16/12 - 07:00 AM EDT1

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of
TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

By Gregg Schoenberg
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11456...cm_ven=RSSFeed

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- At some point during 2012, Americans may wake up to learn that Israeli jets loaded with "bunker busters" have descended on Iran's nuclear facilities. We may also learn that Israel will have paired these strikes with cyber initiatives and other measures in an unprecedented display of tactical ingenuity.

America's role may be unknown at first, but Iran's response would deepen the sense of crisis regardless. Missile strikes by Iran and its proxies against Israel may be the first response, followed by a potential widening conflict and potential Iranian blockage of the Straight of Hormuz.

In recent months, an increasing number of portfolio managers have been handicapping the probability of the scenario above and whether this country will be heading into a new Middle East conflict. The analysis is complicated by the lack of historical parallels to the current situation.

First, previous Israeli strikes against the nuclear facilities of Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007 surprised the world. Second, the Arab Spring upended many long standing assumptions about Islamic solidarity in the Middle East. And third, And third, Iran is currently facing unprecedented isolation within the community of nations.

Some investors have chosen not to modify their portfolios on the basis that leading world powers will find a way to avert a preemptive Israeli strike for now. The resumption of talks between Iran and the UN's Permanent Security Council plus Germany buttress hope that this outcome will come to pass. Recent comments from Obama administration officials and Israel's former spy chief, Meir Dagan, have furthered the view that Israel will exercise restraint.

Others have concluded that a strike before year's end is a probable outcome given the Netanyahu government's growing impatience with Iran's use of North Korea's "play-for-time" playbook. For investors with this viewpoint, adding exposure to oil, Treasuries, the dollar or gold might be a logical step.

If there were an attack, equity markets worldwide would likely swoon on fear of the unknown. However, as markets digest the news and events unfold, credible scenarios exist in which a Middle East war or a sustained crisis in the Strait of Hormuz fail to materialize.



As a result, it is possible that a strike could set back Iran's nuclear capabilities by a few years and usher in a period of tension that nonetheless falls short of the dire predictions of many experts.

According to David Wurmser, founder of the Delphi Global Analysis Group and Senior Middle Eastern Advisor in the Bush administration, "there is a distinct chance that a strike on Iran's nuclear assets would not strengthen but weaken the Iranian regime's grip on power. As such, rather than escalating the situation in a meaningful way, Iran's ruling infrastructure may pair chest-thumping threats with a renewed focus on attempting to restore order within the country for the time being."

If we are left with a world where tensions remain high but a full-scale war does not ensue, here are some equity themes that could emerge after the initial reaction.

1. Crude prices could stay at elevated levels for the foreseeable future, which could catalyze politicians (especially in a presidential election year) and corporate leaders to take genuine steps towards energy self-reliance.

Although the supermajors could benefit, companies highly levered to natural gas and/or domestic oil production could be even bigger beneficiaries. New life could also be breathed into soon-to-expire tax credits and subsidies that would benefit wind, solar and other alternative energy companies.

2. Investors may indiscriminately dump shares of U.S.-traded Israeli companies such as TEVA Pharmaceuticals(TEVA_) and Checkpoint Systems(CKP_). That could be a mistake as these and other Israeli companies are well prepared for crisis. If missile strikes are launched against Israel, these companies will have an opportunity to prove their resilience to investors like never before. They are likely to impress.

As was the case during the Arab Spring, social networking sites could become part of the story as they would likely provide ongoing news updates and insight into the reactions of people worldwide.

An even greater appreciation for the power of social networks could result, especially if an attack occurred within the time frame of perhaps the most widely anticipated IPO in history (i.e. Facebook). That attack could not only impact that offering, but also influence perception around other publicly-traded social networking players.


We can all hope that this showdown ends with diplomacy. In case it does escalate, though, it would be wise to consider that this crisis may present longer-term opportunities.

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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Netanyahu speech hints at war strike against Iran

Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem
Friday March 16 2012
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...n-3052567.html

Israeli commentators speculated yesterday that the country's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing the public for war against Iran after he delivered his most decisive speech yet on the nuclear threat posed by its arch foe.

Just over a week after returning apparently empty-handed from Washington, where he tried to enlist US support for a pre-emptive strike, Mr Netanyahu appeared to hint that he might strike Iran's nuclear facilities, potentially signalling a decision to attack within weeks or months.

"Israel has never left its fate to others, not even the best of its friends," Mr Netanyahu told Israel's parliament, citing occasions when Israel acted against US wishes. Israeli newspaper 'Maariv' reported that cabinet ministers said privately that the address "sounded like a preparatory speech for an attack".

The speech coincided with reports that Israel's cabinet is arranged eight to six in favour of a pre-emptive strike on Iran.




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[Housecarl]

It makes me wonder what exactly is going on right now between Pyongyang and Beijing (and whom in Beijing, or for that matter Shanghai), particularly in light of the developing succession mess in the PRC....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-...nt/ci_20190604

North Korea plans rocket launch that U.S. calls a 'deal-breaker'

Associated Press
Posted: 03/16/2012 01:06:12 PM PDT
Updated: 03/16/2012 04:56:12 PM PDT

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- North Korea plans to blast a satellite into space next month to mark the centenary of the birth of its founder, Kim Il Sung, which the U.S. quickly called a "deal-breaker" for a new agreement where the U.S. would exchange food aid for nuclear concessions.

After Friday's surprise announcement, the United States warned it would not send food aid to North Korea if it goes ahead with the long-range rocket launch, and U.N. Security Council members said it may violate sanctions.

The North agreed to a moratorium on long-range launches as part of the food deal with Washington, but argues that satellite launches are part of a peaceful space program that is exempt from international disarmament obligations. The U.S., South Korea and other critics say the rocket technology overlaps with belligerent uses and condemn the satellite program as a disguised test of military missiles in defiance of a U.N. ban.

The launch is to take place three years after a similar launch in April 2009 drew widespread censure.

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. now had "grave concerns" about the Feb. 29 agreement under which the North agreed with the U.S. to nuclear concessions and a moratorium on long-range missile tests in return for 240,000 tons of food aid.

Nuland said a rocket launch would call into question North Korea's good faith. She said that during the negotiations for the U.S.-North Korea agreement, "we made clear unequivocally that we considered that any satellite launch would be a deal-breaker."

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the current Security Council president, said the rocket launch would violate U.N. sanctions.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged North Korea to reconsider its decision "in line with its recent undertaking to refrain from long-range missile launches," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Japan and Russia also urged Pyongyang to abandon the launch, calling it a violation of a U.N. resolution restricting the North's use of ballistic missile technology, and South Korea's Foreign Ministry called the plans a "grave provocation."

"We call on Pyongyang not to put itself in opposition to the international community," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a a statement.

Liftoff will take between April 12 and 16 from a west coast launch pad in North Phyongan province, a spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology said in a statement carried by state media.

He said the launch would be part of celebrations marking the April 15 centenary of the birth of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung.

Pyongyang's announcement comes as North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un, seeks to solidify his rule of the nation of 24 million people in the wake of father Kim Jong Il's death in December.

[Housecarl]

In looking around I was reminded by another poster on another site that this "earth observation satellite" from what is being described as its launch trajectory a "polar orbit". In such a launch and orbit, the satellite's final velocity and orbit is not assisted by the rotation of the Earth, but instead is all the result of the launch vehicle. The other launches were towards the West with the Earth's rotational assist. As another note, the Israeli Shavit SLV launches of satellites from Israel have been towards the West and against the force of the Earth's rotation....Housecarl

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...r-s-birth.html

North Korea ‘Satellite’ Launch Plan Draws U.S. Rebuke
By Sangwon Yoon - Mar 16, 2012 11:53 AM PT

North Korea plans to launch an “earth observation satellite” in April to mark the 100th anniversary of state founder Kim Il Sung’s birth, drawing a rebuke from the U.S. and a warning such action jeopardizes a food-aid deal.

The U.S. has told North Korea that a launch would be a “deal breaker,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said today in Washington.

Next month’s announced liftoff follows North Korea’s agreement in February to halt nuclear and missile tests in exchange for U.S. food aid. The totalitarian state defied the United Nations in 2009 by firing a rocket and saying the launch was a satellite test, drawing condemnation from the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

The U.S. has been in touch with South Korea and other allies in an effort to pressure the North Korea regime to drop the plan, she said. North Korea “understood from the beginning” that such use of missile technology would halt talks, she said.

The Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite will be mounted on a Unha-3 rocket and sent from a station in North Phyongan province between April 12 and April 16, a spokesman for the North Korean Committee for Space Technology said in a statement on the official Korean Central News Agency. The launch is for “peaceful purposes” and will “strictly abide by relevant international regulations,” the unidentified spokesman said.

Missile Tests

“North Korea has always called these peaceful satellites while the U.S. and South Korea identified the past two as missile tests,” said Baek Seung Joo, North Korea specialist at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. “If the two countries designate next month’s launch as another missile test, this will mean that the promise between the U.S. and North Korea announced in February is broken.”

North Korea’s announcement is “highly provocative” and a launch would violate United Nations resolutions prohibiting North Korea’s use of ballistic missile technology, Nuland said in a statement. “Such a missile launch would pose a threat to regional security and would also be inconsistent with North Korea’s recent undertaking,” Nuland said. The U.S. is consulting its allies, she said.

South Korea and Japan also said the North’s planned satellite launch would violate UN resolutions. The move is a “serious, provocative act,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Byung Jae said in a statement.

‘Hurt Efforts’

Japan called on North Korea to show restraint and reconsider the plan.

“We are concerned the launch will hurt efforts to resolve pending issues through dialogue,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told reporters today in Tokyo. Japan has set up a working group to monitor the communist nation’s actions, he said.

The U.S. embassy in Seoul is looking into the North’s announcement, spokesman Aaron Tarver said.

Defense-related shares rose today in Seoul after the announcement. Speco Co., a maker of equipment for naval ships, rallied 4.9 percent and Victek Co. which produces electronic warfare equipment, gained 4 percent.

Kim Jong Un became leader of North Korea in December upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il. The younger Kim inherited an impoverished country of 24 million dependent on aid from China and the regime has sought to bolster his image ahead of the April 15 centennial of his grandfather Kim Il Sung’s birth. Kim Jong Il had proclaimed that 2012 would be the year the country becomes “a strong and prosperous nation.”

Food-Aid Deal

Under the agreement reached on Feb. 29, the U.S. agreed to provide an initial 240,000 metric tons of much-needed food aid, to be provided in 20,000-ton increments every month for a year. The accord opened the possibility for the resumption of six- party talks to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons development.

The North backed out of the talks, which include Russia, China, the U.S., Japan and South Korea, shortly after its satellite test in April 2009 and has shown no sign that it’s willing to resume them.

“With today’s announcement, North Korea is trying to tell its people that the ’strong and prosperous nation’ campaign is on schedule,” said Kim Yong Hyun, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “Externally the regime is trying to deliver the message that they will take charge in talks with the U.S. and try to secure another directive in future discussions.”

Missile Technology

North Korea said that “a safe flight orbit has been chosen so that carrier rocket debris to be generated during the flight would not have any impact on neighboring countries,” KCNA said.

Defense analyst Baek said that while the security threat is limited, the focus on next month’s satellite will be on whether North Korea has improved its missile technology. The Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket launched in 2009 demonstrated a reach as far as 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles), and North Korea aims to increase that to 6,000 to 7,000 kilometers, he said.

South and North Korea technically remain at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty. The North, which has twice detonated a nuclear device, has more than 250 long- range artillery installation along the world’s most fortified border in reach of Seoul.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sangwon Yoon in Seoul at syoon32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://leonidpetrov.wordpress.com/tag/unha-3/

Why Russia and China are quiet about North Korea’s plan to launch a rocket?
17 03 2012

The news about the prospective launch of North Korean rocket has just broke out and it might take time fromRussia and China to absorb it. There are several reasons why Moscow and Beijing are quiet about the news:

1) The North Korean rocket is a challenge to America and the West, and given the strong anti-Western and anti-American stance of President Putin, his government and the Russian parliament the news is being welcomed.

2) The North Korean rocket will be launched toward south-west and will not endanger the Russian Far East nor will it affect Japan or South Korea. Russia does not see the future launch as dangerous, particularly as North Korea insists that it will be a launch of commercial satellite.

3) Russia is, probably, now consulting with China about the joint position on this development, which is clearly in conflict with UNSC Resolutions 1718 and 1874 and also might derail the future round of the Six-Party-Talks.

4) Both Russia and China understand that North Korean leadership needs to demonstrate an impressive firework to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung in order to consolidate people’s trust and support. Without it, Kim Jong-Un will have difficulties in ruling the country, endangering the continuation of the status quo in Korea.

[China Connection]

The Kim's die of old age making threats. I wonder how long this one last before he kicks it.

[willdo]

Just try to live each day as if everything in the world is ok, enjoy your family and pets and God's green earth and in those quiet times, pray for this nation and our friends and allies, and our enemies, use common sense and prepare with the resources God has given you to steward. It is especially important for our kids to have hope for the future and enjoy the moments youth affords with them. I have tried to prepare them with living skills, how to be self sufficient as possible, and social skills and confidence in themselves all tempered with the good Word so they will be optimally prepared to be their best no matter in good times or bad times. You have to be like the wise virgins and be prepared in case it is time for the groom to collect his bride. Be right with God. Love people and do what is right and good and always watch. There aren't many watchers and we have a big responsibility to help people get through whatever times we are in for whatever might happen. This news back and forth can get to you if you let it. All the politics can stress you into a stroke if you let it. Don't let it. God is bigger than all of it. He will get you through the valleys. I don't know why I felt compelled to offer some encouragement, but each of you are important to His purpose. Don't let the worries of this present world get you down so that you aren't able to use the gifts he has given you for such a time as this. I will be praying for all of us, it is a heavy burden to watch and know, but it is lighter if we carry it together. Blessings to you all and I pray that God will continue to bless this nation. There are many here that love Him, and many here that are praying for Israel to be safe. There are many prophesies not fulfilled where God redirects the harm meant for Israel but there will be a time when all hell breaks loose and then God breaks loose on the hell. I do hope we are all watching that from afar when that happens. Peace and love to you.

[CGTech]

Just try to live each day as if everything in the world is ok, enjoy your family and pets and God's green earth and in those quiet times, pray for this nation and our friends and allies, and our enemies, use common sense and prepare with the resources God has given you to steward. It is especially important for our kids to have hope for the future and enjoy the moments youth affords with them. I have tried to prepare them with living skills, how to be self sufficient as possible, and social skills and confidence in themselves all tempered with the good Word so they will be optimally prepared to be their best no matter in good times or bad times. You have to be like the wise virgins and be prepared in case it is time for the groom to collect his bride. Be right with God. Love people and do what is right and good and always watch. There aren't many watchers and we have a big responsibility to help people get through whatever times we are in for whatever might happen. This news back and forth can get to you if you let it. All the politics can stress you into a stroke if you let it. Don't let it. God is bigger than all of it. He will get you through the valleys. I don't know why I felt compelled to offer some encouragement, but each of you are important to His purpose. Don't let the worries of this present world get you down so that you aren't able to use the gifts he has given you for such a time as this. I will be praying for all of us, it is a heavy burden to watch and know, but it is lighter if we carry it together. Blessings to you all and I pray that God will continue to bless this nation. There are many here that love Him, and many here that are praying for Israel to be safe. There are many prophesies not fulfilled where God redirects the harm meant for Israel but there will be a time when all hell breaks loose and then God breaks loose on the hell. I do hope we are all watching that from afar when that happens. Peace and love to you.

+1000

[The Flying Dutchman]

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Israel continues to menace Iran with military action

Israel continues to talk about war with Iran. But is the rhetoric
just part of a carefully calibrated strategy to avoid conflict?

Noga TarnopolskyMarch 17, 2012 08:41
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...srael-iran-war

[szie="3"] JERUSALEM — Despite recent reports of a rift between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to deal with Iran's nuclear program, there are growing indications that the two — and other western leaders — may in fact be acting in concert.

A flurry of statements by Israeli and western leaders in the past two days have menaced Iran with military action while encouraging it to avoid that by entering negotiations with the West.

The crux of the matter is Iran's nuclear ambition, which Israel, the United States and Europe claim is aimed at creating a bomb. Iran maintains its reactors serve civilian purposes.

"We believe the international community is capable of stopping Iran and it's just a matter of determination and of being firm," said Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's hardline foreign minister at a press conference on Friday in Beijing, where he is on an official visit.

His statement, analysts said, indicated that Israel still hopes sanctions rather than military action can convince Iran to roll back its nuclear program.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, amplified the saber rattling, if not the actual threat, of a unilateral Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities in a speech he made Wednesday.

In a rare editorial, Aluf Benn, the editor-in-chief of Israel's prestigious daily newspaper, Ha'aretz, said Netanyahu is "preparing Israeli public opinion for a war with Iran."

"Netanyahu is attempting to convince the Israeli public that the Iranian threat is a tangible and existential one, and that there is only one effective way to stop it and prevent a second Holocaust: An Israeli military attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, which is buried deep underground," Benn wrote.

In a press conference on Wednesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was on a state visit to the United States, Obama also warned Iran that time is running out for it to curtail its nuclear program.

"I think they should understand that because the international community has applied so many sanctions, because we have employed so many of the options that are available to us to persuade Iran to take a different course, that the window for solving this issue diplomatically is shrinking," Obama said.

The statements made by leaders of the three governments may give credibility to a growing theory that Netanyahu and Obama may not, in fact, be on a collision course when it comes to Iran, but may be playing a well-calibrated game of high-stakes statesmanship.

In his speech, Netanyahu appeared to leave a small crack open for the possibility of negotiations.

“We prefer that Iran abandon its nuclear program peacefully,” he said. “The obligation which is incumbent upon me is to maintain Israel's ability to defend itself against any challenge.”

On Thursday, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, (SWIFT) the principal messaging service for international financial transactions, announced that following the sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and the European Union, it was severing service for Iranian banks, including its central bank.

The move, which will paralyze Iran's ability to transfer funds internationally, is seen as one of the most harsh enacted so far. Tel Aviv University Professor Paul Rivlin, an economist and a Senior Fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, said the measure "is very significant indeed."

"It will mean that bank transfers will no longer be possible and the Iranians will have to start finding all sorts of surrogates, and then the question is, how effective are those surrogates? All this makes life more and more difficult for the Iranian economy and for organization within it, including Iran's central bank, companies and private individuals," he said.

Iranian officials seemed to scramble in response. Speaking with CNN, Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior advisor to Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's oft-repeated, and oft-misunderstood, statement that Iran wants to "wipe Israel off the map" was "definitely not" intended as a military threat and that it was "not a policy of Iran."

In an interview with Denmark's TV2, however, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbhar Salehi said that if Iranian nuclear facilities were attacked, then Israel would meet its end.

"If Israel ever, ever makes this mistake, that will set the time for the end of Israel," he said, adding that Iran would "respond forcefully" to any strike.

Not all Israeli analysts agree with Haaretz's Benn that Netanyahu's heightened rhetoric indicates war is approaching.

"Imagine a straight line going up, but inclining as it would to draw out a quarter of a circle," Rivlin said. "You are upping the rhetorical ante. You are increasing the rhetoric faster than before, but it is still rhetoric."

Meir Javedanfar, an expert on Iran and a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, agreed.

"For now, Israeli is increasing the level of psychological pressure against Iran. I don't think anyone has made a decision. Despite all the bluster from Jerusalem, it is in Israel's interest to get Iran negotiating a compromise that will be acceptable," he said.

"It is part of Israel's "jaw jaw jaw" strategy in order to avoid war, war, war."
[/size]





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Preparing to ‘Mow the Grass’ in Gaza

March 17, 2012

Even as Israeli leaders focus the world on a possible war with Iran, the neocons are prepping public opinion for another bloody assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, what one article likened to “mowing the grass.” Ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar sees the need for serious peace talks.

By Paul R. Pillar
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/17...grass-in-gaza/

The 140-square-mile patch of misery known as the Gaza Strip suffers from two degrees of inattention.

First, any hope of being lifted permanently out of the misery rests on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy that is now moribund. Benjamin Netanyahu’s war-mongering on Iran has succeeded in pushing the unresolved plight of Palestinians almost entirely off the Israeli-American agenda.

This was demonstrated earlier this month when a visit to Washington by Netanyahu and a major AIPAC conference were remarkable for how little either one explicitly addressed the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Second, to the extent that conflict gets any attention, the attention focuses more on the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), where continued Israeli colonization of conquered land is pushing a two-state solution ever closer to infeasibility.

There once were a few thousand Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip (in contrast to the half million in the West Bank), but as these numbers indicate, Israelis never coveted this piece of sand as much as they do lands to the east. Seven years ago Ariel Sharon pulled Israelis out of the strip, successfully dealing with the few diehard settlers who resisted.

Since then Israeli governments seem to have wished that the Gaza Strip could somehow just go away. That not being possible, they instead have dealt with it as if it were a den of unruly, infectious creatures that could be cordoned off, with an occasional overt use of force to swat the creatures down. The well-being of the people who really live in the strip, and the ways in which Israel’s assault on that well-being redound to Israel’s own disadvantage, do not seem to have figured into Israeli government thinking.

Whether or not anyone gives due ethical regard to the welfare of Gazans, the short-sighted cordon-and-swat Israeli approach will continually make the Gaza Strip a locus of trouble and instability.

The most recent reminder of that has occurred within the past week. The trouble began with the latest Israeli swat: the killing last Friday with an air-to-ground missile of Zuhair al-Qissi, the leader of a militant group called the Popular Resistance Committees. Palestine Islamic Jihad took the lead in retaliating by firing rockets back into Israel, which in turn led to more Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. By Tuesday the Egyptians had brokered a truce, which was still shaky as of mid-week.

The latest round of fighting demonstrates anew how Israel’s iron-fisted approach of blockades, airstrikes and invasions never has and never will bring peace to Israel’s southwestern border. It is little more than three years since Operation Cast Lead, a full-scale Israeli invasion that killed around 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and inflicted such extensive physical damage to the Gaza Strip that, combined with the effects of the previous blockade, it caused a humanitarian crisis that in some ways continues today.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders seem anxious for a new war right now in Gaza. Some Israeli politicians have warned that such a war would risk undoing the success the war-mongering talk about Iran has had in diverting attention from the Palestinians’ plight and focusing it instead on the Iranian nuclear program. The successful operation of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket defensive system has relieved what might otherwise have been greater popular pressure on Israeli leaders to strike back faster and even more forcefully.

There nonetheless is talk in Israel about launching at some point another war against Gazans. Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said “sooner or later, and I don’t want to quote dates, we will have to do a ‘root canal’.”

The talk reflects another Israeli idée fixe, one that is just as short-sighted as the reliance on cordon-and-swat: an absolute refusal to have anything to do with Hamas except to try to crush it (and occasionally to exchange prisoners with it). This obsession continues no matter what Hamas does and no matter how substantial a portion of Palestinian opinion it may represent.

Hamas has not been involved in the most recent round of rocket-firing, and it was Hamas that sought Egyptian help to negotiate a cease-fire. Hamas’s staying on the sidelines of this latest round follows months in which it has spoken more of moving away from violent resistance and has tried anew to reconcile with the Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas.

Steinitz’s comments nonetheless indicate that making things as difficult as possible for Hamas is at least as important to the Israeli government as stopping any rockets. Israel “cannot accept in the long run,” he said, a Hamas regime in Gaza.

The counterproductive (if one were interested in peace, that is) Israeli attitudes at play are vividly displayed in a paper published this week by Efraim Inbar and Max Singer of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, a version of which appeared as an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post. Their piece is titled “The Opportunity in Gaza” — it’s interesting how a violent, destructive clash is viewed as a “opportunity.”

They argue for a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip now — one even bigger and more damaging than Cast Lead, with the objective of destroying as much of Hamas as possible. They blatantly recommend exploiting the U.S. electoral calendar, arguing that “until November, the U.S. is likely to restrain rather than promote international action against Israel in response to an action in Gaza.” They say “deterrence created by Cast Lead” is “wearing thin,” and “military action now could restore deterrence.”

Someone should point out to Inbar and Singer than when you repeatedly have to go to war that means deterrence is not working. But they don’t seem to care, fully accepting the prospect that in the future “Israel will probably have to ‘mow the grass’ again.” There is not a single word in their paper about the lives and livelihoods of the residents of the Gaza Strip, or the effect what they are recommending would have on those lives.

May both Palestinians and Israelis be spared from such perverse thinking.






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Israelis find the funny in
nuclear tensions with Iran

The Associated Press
Date: Saturday Mar. 17, 2012 8:27 AM ET
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainm...h-iran-120317/

JERUSALEM — The threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and a possible Israeli military strike are not the usual ingredients of comedy.

But Israelis are responding to the heated rhetoric and dire warnings with comic skits and Daffy Duck -- gallows humour in the face of what their leaders say is a real danger.

Israel has been warning that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, despite Iranian denials. Israel believes this threatens the existence of the Jewish state, given Iran's parallel missile development and frequent references by its leaders to the destruction of Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hints at Israeli military action against Iran to stop its nuclear program if international sanctions fail. That, in turn, would likely set off Iranian retaliation and devastating barrages of thousands of rockets and missiles from hostile Iran proxies -- Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It's no laughing matter, but that hasn't stopped Israel's premier satirical TV show from taking it on.

Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country) recently showed a skit with two women at a restaurant.

"You've started working out again?" says one, biting into a juicy hamburger. "Of course, winter's almost over and I don't want to get to the beach double my size," her friend responds. The first woman asks: "What beach? That thing with Iran is happening this summer." Realizing the futility of a diet when the end is so near, the friend devours the burger.

Other TV comedy shows are also awash with Iran jokes. Comedians on a recent episode of "State of the Nation" declared that Israel won't mount an airstrike because fuel prices for the fighter planes are too high.

A Facebook group is calling for Netanyahu not to start a war until after Madonna performs in Israel in May.

In a recurring Eretz Nehederet skit, viewers are given an inside look into an Iranian nuclear reactor. When two scientists are asked where their third colleague is, the response is delivered deadpan: "He was blown up," a reference to the suspicious deaths of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists, which Iran has blamed on Israel.

A nuclear reactor even featured in a recent commercial for a cable TV company. In the ad, cross-dressing Israeli actors meet a bored Mossad agent in Iran who accidentally blows up a nuclear reactor.

"It's a very cathartic response to the existential fear we are experiencing in light of what the politicians are saying," said Orr Knispel, editor of the Israeli pop culture magazine Pnai Plus.

Knispel said Israelis responded similarly during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Israeli cities, causing panic yet inspiring comedy.

Netanyahu's grim rhetoric has come back to taunt him. A speech he gave to a pro-Israel lobby in Washington this month spawned a viral video spoof.

Countering Iran's claim that it intends to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, Netanyahu said, "If it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then what is it? That's right, it's a duck, but this duck is a nuclear duck."

In a video, his words, repeated over and over, are intercut with snippets of a sputtering Daffy Duck, all set to catchy music.

But there is evidence that all the jokes are covering up some real fears.

"The Last Day," a five-minute clip that scored hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, is a lifelike doomsday film depicting the day after an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

In a retaliatory attack, missiles slam down near a highway just outside Jerusalem. Panicked drivers attempt to flee the surrounding chaos, only to be halted by a giant mushroom cloud in the distance.

The film's creator, Ronen Barany, said the cultural responses to the Iran crisis are increasing because the Israeli public feels that the Iranian threat is more concrete than ever.

"We are really afraid and prefer not to think about it, but we know these things can happen," he said.

"We laugh about it, but we know that it should be taken seriously."



Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainm...#ixzz1pNa3gmvs



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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Islamic Jihad seeks ‘balance of terror’ with Israel

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles...-Israel.411489

Gaza militant group Islamic Jihad seeks to create a “balance of terror” with Israel, a senior member of its military wing has told AFP in an exclusive interview.

Speaking shortly after a truce ended a four-day flare-up in violence between Gaza militants and Israel, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigade hailed the fact that it forced “a million Israelis to hide in shelters”.

The leader, who goes by the nom-de-guerre of Abu Ibrahim, also warned that the Brigades possesses long-range weapons that could hit the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and could be used in its next conflict with the Jewish state.

“What we seek with our rockets is not to kill Israelis, but to maintain a balance of terror,” he said during the interview, which was conducted at a secret location, flanked by armed bodyguards.

“The fact that a million Israelis were stuck inside shelters and suffered as our people do is more important for us than deaths.”

The latest violence between Israel and Gaza militants began on March 9, when Israel’s assassinated the commander of the Popular Resistance Committees group.

In response, militants led by the Al-Quds Brigades fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel over the course of four days, bringing life in much of the region to a standstill.

Israeli war planes carried out dozens of air strikes, killing 25 people, among them 14 members of Islamic Jihad.

Around 250 rockets were fired from Gaza, according to Israeli figures, with around 60 of them intercepted by the country’s Iron Dome missile defence system.

Authorities banned large gatherings in the area and closed schools during the outbreak of violence.

The rockets hit throughout southern Israel, with some reaching around 40 kilometres inside the country. One struck just north of Gedera, which is only about 25 kilometres from the centre of Tel Aviv, whose metropolitan area is home to nearly half the Jewish state’s population of 7.84 million.






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Iran general urges Afghans to fight US

(March 17th, 2012 @ 5:49am)
http://www.620ktar.com/46/1515790/Ir...ns-to-fight-US

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A senior Iranian military commander has urged Afghans to use force to kick American troops out of their country.

Gen. Masoud Jazayeri of the powerful Revolutionary Guard said there are indications that Afghans will "soon open new fronts" against "the obsolete, worn-out American empire."

The comments by Jazayeri, who is also deputy head of Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff, were posted Saturday on the Guard's website, sepahnews.com.

The U.S. has accused Iran of arming some Afghan militants, a charge Tehran has denied. The U.S. and Tehran are at odds over Iran's controversial nuclear program, and some analysts fear that Iran will respond with proxy forces if the confrontation becomes violent.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Oil climbs on Iran tensions, weak dollar

(Reuters)
17 March 2012
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/biz/insi...section=oilgas

NEW YORK- Oil prices rose more than 2 percent on Friday on support from the continuing tensions over Iran’s disputed nuclear program and the potential for supply disruptions in the region along with the weaker dollar.

Crude futures posted marginal weekly losses, but were up on Friday after slumping the previous session on news the United States and Britain were preparing a release from strategic oil reserves later this year.

The dollar slumped after a report on U.S. consumer prices, which investors viewed as reducing the likelihood of the Federal Reserve tightening monetary policy anytime soon.

U.S. consumer prices rose the most in 10 months in February as the cost of gasoline spiked, but there was little sign that underlying inflation pressures were building.

“The reasoning is that the Fed will not be as likely to pull back on stimulus or raise interest rates, so the dollar weakened and that pushed up oil, along with the uncertainty about Iran and the SPR,” said Phil Flynn, analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago.

U.S. gasoline and heating oil also rose sharply, tagging along as Brent crude moved higher and boosted by news that Enterprise Products Partners shut a U.S. Gulf Coast-to-Midwest refined products pipeline because of a valve leak.

Brent May crude rose $3.21 to settle at $125.81 a barrel, surging above its 20-day and 10-day moving averages and reaching $126.10 ahead of the close. For the week, Brent fell a mere 17 cents.

U.S. April crude rose $1.95 to settle at $107.06 a barrel, reaching $107.25 and also pushing above its 10-day and 20-day moving averages. For the week, U.S. crude dipped 34 cents.

Brent’s premium to U.S. crude , now comparing May contracts, ended at $18.23 a barrel based on settlements.

Trading volumes in both contracts were lackluster. Brent’s volume was 34 percent below its 30-day average, with U.S. crude 27 percent below its 30-day average, with less than two hours left for post-settlement trading.

Oil briefly trimmed gains on news that Saudi Arabia is preparing to extend this year’s unexpected surge in oil sales to the United States.

Contrary to expectations that the modest recent rise in Saudi Arabia’s output was bound for fast-growing Asian markets that also might need to replace barrels from Iran, preliminary data shows that shipments to the United States have without fanfare risen 25 percent to the highest level since mid-2008.

U.S. CORE INFLATION EYED

The Labor Department said the Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent in February and that gasoline accounted for more than 80 percent of the rise. But excluding the food and energy categories, inflation pressures were generally contained, with the core CPI edging up only 0.1 percent.

Oil investors shrugged off a dip in U.S. consumer sentiment. Analysts attributed this to the survey’s director indicating that $4 a gallon gasoline did not have the “shock value” it had in previous fuel price surges.

U.S. consumer sentiment dipped in early March as rising gasoline prices pushed Americans’ inflation expectations for the next year higher, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s preliminary reading on consumer sentiment showed.

IRAN AND RESERVE RELEASES

European Union diplomats are debating whether to exempt some insurers from a ban on dealing with Iranian oil shipments after Asian oil importers lobbied for exceptions to ensure oil deliveries, government and industry sources said on Friday.

The diplomatic wrangling comes ahead of an EU foreign ministers meet on March 23 and an EU ban on importing Iranian oil slated for July.

“Spare capacity is really very tight, and any natural disaster or problem in the Middle East could be a real problem,” said Rob Montefusco, an oil trader at Sucden Financial, highlighting supply stoppages in Syria, Sudan and elsewhere.

“No one wants to go home short at the weekend,” he added.

A group of Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives is urging President Barack Obama to aggressively use the threat of releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) to rein in speculators the lawmakers believe are driving up oil prices.

Money managers raised their net long U.S. crude futures and options positions in the week to March 13, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Friday.






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