WAR 12/02:***The***Perfect***Storm***

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THE WINDS OF WAR​

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2010-12-01
Al-Qaeda group calls for uprising in Lebanon against 'de facto' ruler Hezbollah

Statement of 'The Brigades of Abdullah Azzam'
adds to existing sectarian tensions.

Middle East Online
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=42812​

BEIRUT - A group linked to Al-Qaeda has urged Sunni Muslims in Lebanon to rise against the government as well as Shiite militant Hezbollah, a US-based group that monitors jihadist websites said on Wednesday.

"The Brigades of Abdullah Azzam released a statement from its field commander, Saleh bin Abdullah al-Qaraawi, urging Sunni Muslims in Lebanon to rise up against the government and the alleged de facto ruler, Hezbollah," SITE Intelligence Group reported.

SITE quoted Qaraawi as saying: "We call upon you to not deal with the military intelligence and with its checkpoints that are present today in large numbers in your areas.

"Show your refusal of this clear injustice that is upon you, and which -- undoubtedly -- is done by the authority of Hezbollah."

The statement came amid high tension in Lebanon, where there are fears of a Sunni-Shiite conflict linked to a UN-backed court which is reportedly poised to indict members of the powerful Shiite Hezbollah in connection with the murder of Sunni ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

Lebanon's army chief General Jean Kahwaji has expressed concern over the possibility of attacks by fundamentalists after the Special Tribunal for Lebanon releases its indictments.

The Brigades of Abdullah Azzam has reportedly claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on northern Israel last year.

Abdullah Azzam was Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden's mentor. He was killed in a 1989 bomb blast.

The majority of Lebanon's population of four million is Muslim, with Shiites and Sunnis each representing some 30 percent.



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09:56 02.12.10

Will Hezbollah go to war against Israel to avoid civil strife in Lebanon?


If the Hariri tribunal indict several Hezbollah operatives, as expected, the militant group could use an escalation against Israel to divert the political storm.

By Avi Issacharoff
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/mess-r...ael-to-avoid-civil-strife-in-lebanon-1.328379​

It is not clear in which direction Lebanon is heading: Is it a country on the verge of collapse? Is it heading toward a civil war? A war against Israel? Or is it just facing another political crisis that too will pass?

There have been an increasing number of reports of late hinting at Hezbollah's preparations for a war against Israel. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam reported on Wednesday that the Shi'ite organization has completed its preparations for a war against Israel, including the construction of an extensive network of tunnels throughout the whole of Lebanon.

The report comes amidst the threat of an escalation against Israel when the findings of the United Nations tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri - the father of current Lebanese Premier Saad Hariri - are published in the near future.

According to the report, Hezbollah has completed equipping its arsenal of missiles and weapons and finished building its defensive network against a possible Israeli attack. The network stretches from the length of the Lebanon's coast to the country's mountainous eastern region.

According to the same report, the decision whether to go to war or to preserve the quiet is in Hezbollah's hands.

Although one should not get too worked up over reports like this, it should be of interest to the Israeli public and security establishment.

According to the Kuwaiti report, Hezbollah's preparations for an Israeli attack include booby-trapped tunnels equipped with sensors and mines.

"Hezbollah is preparing for confrontations with Israeli soldiers [in the tunnels]," the report said.

According to the report, Israeli soldiers have trained against tunnel models based on the tunnels in Tora Bora, Afghanistan but the tunnels constructed by Hezbollah in Lebanon differ from the Tora Bora tunnels. The report said that the training undergone by Israeli soldiers would not aid them against Hezbollah due to the differing nature of the tunnels.

Likewise, Hamas has reportedly dug tunnels between Rafah and Gaza City of a similar nature to the Hezbollah tunnels.

The Hariri tribunal is expected in the coming days to indict Hezbollah operatives for the assassination and various publications in Lebanon and the Arab world have touched on the possibility of a war against Israel.

Last week, the Lebanese newspaper ad-Diyar reported that the tribal would make its indictments today. But that report was denied by the Lebanese foreign ministry and it is still not clear when the tribunal will publish its conclusions.

Saad Hariri, who met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this week, said France would stand by the findings of the tribunal, in an attempt to signal to Hezbollah and other political actors in Lebanon that the tribunal's findings would be released despite efforts to end the crisis in country.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia and Syria, in an effort to end the crisis and avoid a civil war in Lebanon, are trying to delay the publication of the findings of the tribunal and also attempting to determine how the various political Lebanese political factions will respond to the findings.

Meanwhile, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman on Wednesday began meetings with representatives of various organizations and groups in Lebanon in order to bring about the renewal of government activities. The government has been paralyzed because of the tribunal issue.

Hezbollah, which has the power to veto government decisions, had demanded that the Lebanese government freeze financial aid provided to the tribunal. Hariri refused to freeze the funding, leading to paralysis of government activity.

The bottom line is that there does not yet appear to be a light at the end of the Lebanese tunnel. It seems that the danger of a civil war hangs over the country in light of the upcoming publication of the tribunal's conclusions.

The question is what Hezbollah will do until then and whether it will use an escalation against Israel in order to deflect the political storm within Lebanon. And as can be seen from both the Israeli and Hezbollah sides, another violent Israel-Hezbollah confrontation would make the Second Lebanon War of 2006 look like child's play in comparison.





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Al-Qaeda-linked militant group urges Lebanon's Sunnis to rise up against government, Hizbullah


By Patrick Galey and Agence France Presse (AFP)
Daily Star staff
Thursday, December 02, 2010
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=122098#axzz16xUS5plL​

BEIRUT: A militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda has urged Lebanon’s Sunni community to rise up against the government and challenge Hizbullah’s armed dominance in the country, a US jihadist monitoring website said Wednesday.


The call coincided with that of the founder of the Salafi Movement, Dai al-Islam al-Shahhal, who asked Shiite parties to put an end to attempts to weaken Sunni political influence.


“The Brigades of Abdullah Azzam released a statement from its field commander, Saleh bin Abdullah al-Qaraawi, urging Sunni Muslims in Lebanon to rise up against the government and the alleged de facto ruler, Hizbullah,” SITE Intelligence Group reported.


Qaraawi was reported as attempting to stoke inter-sectarian tensions, as well as fermenting efforts to undermine the security situation, as maintained by the Lebanese Army. “We call upon you to not deal with the military intelligence and with its checkpoints that are present today in large numbers in your areas,” SITE quoted Qaraawi as saying. He also accused Hizbullah of colluding with the Lebanese Army over security: “Show your refusal of this clear injustice that is upon you, and which – undoubtedly – is done by the authority of Hizbullah.”


Shahhal, in a Wednesday news conference in the northern city of Tripoli, warned that “means used by certain Shiite political groups are harmful and drag the conflict to an unethical sphere.”


Qaraawi accused the Lebanese Army of victimizing Sunni residents.


The group’s latest message comes at a time when fears of sectarian violence is heightened, due in large part to the political deadlock currently gripping Lebanon due to debate over the United Nations-backed probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.



Successive politicians have stressed that the kind of violence not seen in Lebanon since May 2008 – when pro-government and opposition gunmen clashed in west Beirut and parts of the Chouf Mountains – will not reappear in the event that anticipated Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) indictments against Hizbullah materialize.


The Brigades of Abdullah Azzam accused Hizbullah of controlling Lebanese Army intelligence infrastructure which “didn’t defend Sunnis” during May 2008. Qaraawi suggested Hizbullah was gathering weapons in order to “slaughter” Sunni Lebanese.


The group claims to be active throughout Lebanon and predominately operates in the country’s 14 officially recognized Palestinian refugee camps. In 2009, it took responsibility for a series of rocket attacks on northern Israel in a video, which labeled Hizbullah head Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah “a big imposter.”


Several Sunni militant groups are known to operate in Lebanon, including Fatah al-Islam, against which the Lebanese Army fought bloody 2007 battles in the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. The fighting killed hundreds and razed most of the camp’s buildings.


Dozens of individuals linked with Al-Qaeda-affiliated operations are currently held in Lebanese custody. – With AFP



Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=122098#ixzz16xUXRaMR
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)



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Iran vows military support to Lebanon

Published: Dec. 1, 2010 at 10:24 AM
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Se...litary-support-to-Lebanon/UPI-98101291217085/​

TEHRAN, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Iran has vowed to help Lebanon's army bolster its arsenal, state media here reported.

"We have stated on several occasions and we say it again that we stand alongside the Lebanese army and we are prepared to cooperate with it," Iran's Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian television on the sideline of meetings with Lebanon's visiting Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The remarks were made as the Iranian defense minister offered a gilded sub machine gun to Hariri after talks. The symbolic move was broadcast by Iranian television. The Tondar model gun is used in urban warfare.

The move came as U.S. lawmakers sounded heightened concern over the influence of Iran and Syria on militant Islamist groups in Lebanon, including Hezbollah.

"Hezbollah, with the help of Iran and Syria, is massively rearming, the Lebanese government is becoming more and more subordinate to Iran and Syria, and the line between the Lebanese armed forces and Hezbollah is gradually being erased," Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

"We need to have a clear vision of what the end state is and how we can achieve it," she said, citing mounting concerns over what she alleged to be ill-fated diplomatic efforts by the United States and the United Nations to counter Hezbollah's growing might.

Last month the United States, trying to counter Iran's influence over Lebanon, lifted a freeze on $100 million in U.S. military aid to Lebanon.

But wooing its traditional partner, Iran this week criticized a U.N. tribunal probing the 2005 assassination of Hariri's father, former Premier Rafiq Hariri, while condemning his killers as "enemies of Lebanon."

The probe has suggested the indictment of Hezbollah members believe to have orchestrated the murder. Leaders of the Lebanese militant group have threatened retaliation.

The court is expected to announce its findings by the end of 2010.

Iran has long aided Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah, which however is spearheading opposition against the Hariri government on charges of leaning to the West.

A U.N. resolution in 2004 called for the disbanding and disarmament of all militias in Lebanon.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Lebanon in October, signing more than 17 bilateral agreements, exclusively focusing on strengthening trade and military cooperation.

The visit was the first official trip by Hariri to Iran as Lebanon's prime minister.



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Lebanon’s surging economy imperiled, as Hariri indictments loom

By David Rosenberg/ The Media Line
December 2, 2010, 12:32 pm
http://thedailynewsegypt.com/econom...omy-imperiled-as-hariri-indictments-loom.html​

Investors, businesses and consumers are signalling growing fears that Lebanon’s surging economy is imperilled by the threat of a conflict between Hizbullah and the country’s pro-Western government over the investigation into former Prime Minster Rafik Hariri’s 2005 assassination.

Official figures show the economy is on track for another year of strong growth, but many economists say the data don’t capture the nervousness that has developed since last summer, when reports began circulating that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon would indict Hizbullah officials for the killing. Hizbullah has regularly issued warnings that indictments could lead to “instability.”

“Our indicator of consumer confidence has been declining since July on worries about the political outlook,” Nassib Ghobril, chief economist at Byblos Bank, told The Media Line. “We know there are some companies that had expansion plan but are now taking a wait-and-see approach.

There’s been a decline in the stock market since the summer, which has reflected political sentiment more than underlying performance.”

Since Lebanon emerged from a 2008 political deadlock that brought it close to civil war, gross domestic product has expanded an average of 9 percent a year, led by booming tourism and construction sectors and inflows of capital from abroad. Merrill Lynch revised upwards its forecast growth to 8 percent in 2010 and 5.9 percent next year.

“Economic activity seems to have slowed down relatively in August-September,” Merrill said in a November 17 report. “While this slowdown can partially be attributed to Ramadan, increased concerns on politics might have been at play as well.”

Byblos Bank expects GDP to show annualized growth of 4 percent for the second half of this year, half the pace it expanded in the first half amid growing uncertainty over the country’s future. Merrill warned of “volatility” in Lebanon before an agreement is brokered between the two sides by outside governments, Merrill said. “Should it remain contained, politics and economics can conveniently diverge,” it added.

Political analysts have warned that a standoff between the ruling March 14 coalition and Hizbullah over how to respond to the expected STL indictments could lead to the collapse of the government and violent conflict. Al-Akhbar, a Beirut daily close to Hizbullah, reported Tuesday that the group will act on plans to take over Lebanon, if an indictment issued.

The STL hasn’t said when it will issue indictments, but they are widely expected to act in the next few weeks. The Lebanese Shia militant organization has more men under arms that the Lebanese army and fought a bitter one-month war with Israel in 2006.

Standard & Poor’s affirmed Lebanon’s B/B credit rating this week, but it warned that the STL indictments could cause Hizbullah to bolt the government. But some economists, like Marwan Barakat, chief economist at Audi Bank, say Lebanon will be able to weather the current political crisis as it has others.

Lebanon has suffered political traumas on a regular basis that would send other economies reeling, including the 2005 Hariri assassination, war with Israel in 2006 and the 2008 political standoff when Hizbullah briefly dispatched it fighters through Beirut and threatened to bring down the government. On top of that, the economy is weighed down by a debt-to-GDP ratio of close to 140 percent at a time when investors are especially alert to such parameters.

“Recent economic history has shown Lebanon is resilient to such shocks,” Barakat told The Media Line. “If you go back four or five years, the country was able to get out of them. Even during those shocks, we didn't have outflows of massive capital because of the perception that it will be contained.”

One reason is that Lebanon’s conservative banking industry avoided the lending excesses that led to the global financial crisis and has thus enjoyed an influx of foreign capital from investors, particular expatriate Lebanese. Barakat said inflows reached $20 billion in 2009 and will nearly match that level this year.

Merrill Lynch forecasts that public debt will decline to 133 percent of GDP at the end of 2010 and to 131 percent in 2011.

But, even without the threat of violence or political upheaval, S&P and Merrill Lynch both warned that political paralysis that has been created by the STL controversy is blocking progress on key economic reforms.

Lebanon’s 2010 budget awaits approval and the 2011 remains blocked as are privatization and other structural reforms. Barakat, however, said he is confident that the economy can manage even if the steps are delayed.

“Definitely it’s important for country with high debt ratio to go into structural reforms to ensure a soft landing in pubic finance positions, which is vulnerable to the economy,” he said. “Lebanese debt is held by the Lebanese themselves, which avoids the risk of massive exit. And, you have a very high level of reserves at the central bank.”




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Dec. 2, 2010

Lebanon: The Fire Next Time

Lee Smith: Lebanon’s Problems are Made in Tehran - and That's Bad News in Bells

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010...n=Feed:+CBSNewsOpinion+(Opinion:+CBSNews.com)​

Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri’s planned trip to Tehran Saturday, November 27, is perhaps best understood as a coda to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tour of Lebanon two months ago. With that visit, the Islamic Republic of Iran effectively declared that the tiny country of 4.1 million on the Eastern Mediterranean is nothing more than an Iranian victory garden, to be chewed up in the next round of war between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese surrogate, Hezbollah

Ahmadinejad’s trip finally awakened the Obama administration to the fact that its Lebanon policy had gone awry. The White House dispatched Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman to Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to consult with allies, and now Lebanon is back on Washington’s front burner, almost as in the heyday of the Bush administration’s freedom agenda. The U.N. Security Council’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is due to hand down indictments in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The threat of Hezbollah-Iran’s client and Syria’s partner in murdering Hariri-to take over all of Lebanon has the White House up in arms.

But the Obama administration may be too late to save an independent Lebanon. Hariri, the Lebanese Sunni leader, has shown by his journey to the citadel of Shia power that if you want to contest the fate of Lebanon, as with so much else in the Middle East these days, the doors to knock on are in Tehran.

This is an unhappy turn of events for Lebanon, which just celebrated the 67th anniversary of its independence. President Obama marked the day with a cursory promise to protect that independence, even as his policy ideas have undermined that goal since the earliest days of his candidacy. Unlike Bush, we were told, Obama would reach out to Syria and find common ground. After all, as the senator from Illinois explained on the campaign trail, talking to your enemies is not a reward for them. Maybe not in theory, but in practice, talking to Damascus meant selling out the anti-Syrian politicians of Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution.

Fearing that Washington was about to sacrifice its Lebanon policy in the name of entente with Syria, as it had done throughout the 1990s, the one-time pillar of Lebanon’s pro-democracy March 14 movement, Walid Jumblatt, changed sides, traveling to Damascus to kiss the ring of Bashar al-Assad. Perhaps more important, Saudi Arabia, patron of Lebanon’s Sunni community, actually chose friendship with Syria over its Lebanese partners.

Oddly enough, after all of this jockeying for Syrian favor, Damascus turns out to be a distraction. “Hariri’s trip highlights the fact that Damascus is no longer a central actor,” says Tony Badran, research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The Syria-Saudi initiative is a sideshow, and the Iranians have been saying this for a while: The Saudis have to negotiate with [Tehran], but the Saudis don’t want to consecrate this fact.”

Iran is now the power on the ground in Lebanon, via Hezbollah’s arms. Its general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah has renewed his warning that Hezbollah will cut off the hands of anyone who tries to touch the weapons of the “resistance,” in part no doubt to scare off the Hariri assassination tribunal from issuing indictments of Hezbollah members. In the event of such indictments, the Party of God’s reputation would suffer another blow in the court of Arab opinion for murdering a Sunni leader.

But many analysts inside and outside Lebanon believe that Nasrallah is bluffing. It’s not clear that Hezbollah has anything to gain by extending its South Lebanon satrapy over the whole national territory. It already proved itself capable of doing so in May 2008 when it overran Sunnis loyal to Saad Hariri in West Beirut and surrounded Jumblatt’s Druze in the Chouf Mountains. Indeed that near-coup so damaged Hezbollah’s reputation with the region’s Sunni majority that it is hard to see how indictments might further tarnish it, or how a genuine coup against the Sunnis would protect it. Maybe more to the point, the Iranians would prefer to keep their asset in reserve for the next round of fighting with Israel rather than spend it for uncertain gain.

In any case, it is difficult to see how indictments of Hezbollah would be enforced: Who is in a position to arrest suspects and bring them to account? The Lebanese Armed Forces is already penetrated by Hezbollah. The chief of the Internal Security Forces, one of Saad Hariri’s confidants, has himself just been identified as a possible accomplice in the murder of Saad’s father by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report. Surely neither the U.S. government, nor the U.N., nor the “international community” is going to lay its hands on suspects.


If the Bush White House let its Lebanese allies get slaughtered in May 2008, then the Obama administration is even less likely to intervene, even as it is putting out word that it’s not going to take Hezbollah’s threats lying down. A Lebanon under overt Hezbollah control, American diplomats are letting on, will be treated like a pariah state. That raises the bleak prospect of Lebanon as the new Yemen, with Hezbollah in the crosshairs of drone strikes. It’s a far cry from the “Freedom, Sovereignty, and Independence” of the Cedar Revolution, only five years ago. More likely, though, Hezbollah will simply continue its slow-motion, behind the scenes takeover of the Lebanese state.

You can certainly argue that Lebanon has little strategic value and that it was foolish for the Bush administration to see it as a gemstone of its policy to promote democracy and freedom in the Arab world-a piece of sentimentality that the Obama administration has outgrown. Defenders of the Obama approach will say as much in their cold-blooded moments. The human cost in Lebanon, of course, is horrific, and nowhere more so than in the story of Wissam Eid, a Lebanese policeman and terrorism investigator.

As the CBC reports, Eid single-handedly pieced together the telecommunications evidence that pointed to Hezbollah’s complicity in the Hariri assassination. Eid’s report was misplaced by the U.N. investigation team and when they discovered it two years later it got the attention of Hezbollah agents. Shortly after Eid met with the investigators in January 2008, he was blown up in a car-bombing in a Beirut suburb.





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THE BORDER BADLANDS​

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Drug gangs murder police chiefs in Mexico

Dec 2, 2010, 5:02 GMT
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/n...php/Drug-gangs-murder-police-chiefs-in-Mexico​

Mexico City - Two police chiefs have been murdered in Mexico this week by drug gangs, news reports said.

On Wednesday, unidentified gunmen ambushed the police chief of Ciudad Juarez, Alvaro Gilberto Torres Ramirez. The 41-year-old was killed in his car.

On Monday, Hermila Garcia Quinones, Mexico's first woman police chief, was shot and killed in the city of Meoqui in Chihuahua state. The 38-year-old had held the position for only 50 days. According to state prosecutors, assassins had waited for Garcia near her home. The policewoman's body was later found on a road outside the town.

Authorities said Garcia had received no previous threats, which was one of the reasons why she took charge of Meoqui's police on October 10, as men have stayed away from the post.

Also in October, 20-year-old police cadet Marisol Valles Garcia made headlines, as the only candidate to step forward to become police chief of Praxedis G Guerrero, near Ciudad Juarez.

Violence is on the rise in the region due to turf wars between drug gangs as well as police operations against them.




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Narco-Sharks Replacing Drug Mules

By Emilio Godoy*
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53746​

MEXICO CITY, Dec 2, 2010 (IPS) - Sharks are facing a new threat: they are being fished off the Pacific coast of Central America and Mexico and used to smuggle cocaine to the United States, through Mexico.

This stretch of ocean and its coasts have become a transit route for drugs produced in Colombia and shipped to the United States, the world's largest market for cocaine, according to United Nations figures.

"What is happening on the high seas is going on with all types of fishing, not just sharks," Juan Carlos Cantú, head of the Mexico programme of Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington-based organisation working to protect endangered species, told IPS.

Cantú explained that "Mexico hardly exports any shark, except for fins. In fact, it imports shark from Costa Rica for domestic consumption." There is evidence of a link between shark capture and drug trafficking. In June 2009, the freighter Dover Strait, bound for Mexico with a cargo of frozen shark loaded at Caldera, a private port in the western Costa Rican city of Puntarenas, was intercepted by the Mexican authorities.

Stuffed in the shark carcases were 894 kilograms of cocaine. One month later, Costa Rican authorities seized another 419 kilos of cocaine from a fisherman who was carrying the drug in a refrigerated van, hidden under layers of shark and red snapper.

Most cocaine trafficking in the area is done by sea, Carlos Alvarado, head of the Costa Rican Drug Institute, told IPS.

"We have to make an effort to patrol our territorial waters up to the 12-mile limit with a fleet of speedboats," and seek international cooperation beyond that limit, he said.

Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have established sea routes in the Pacific, sailing from Colombia and following the Central American coastline. Costa Rica has taken on the specific role of refuelling the drug traffickers' speedboats, among other tasks. On the high seas, the drug traffickers pay fishermen for fuel with packages of drugs. There are no estimates for the value of this payment in kind.

Private docks, like Caldera, are another serious problem, Costa Rican biologist Randall Araúz, head of the local office of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, told IPS.

Araúz was awarded the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize for combating the "finning" of sharks, an abominable practice that has intensified in the area and is apparently related to cocaine trafficking. Sharks are captured and their fins cut off while they are still alive, then tossed back in the sea where they die because they are unable to swim.

"The police can only enter the private docks if they have a search warrant from a judge. It's true that the owners often let the authorities in, but it's not the same," the biologist said.

So it is up to the Mexican authorities to keep a watch on the passage of fishing boats along the country’s Pacific coast, and to take action if their Central American counterparts warn them of any suspect vessel.

Overfishing of shark in Mexico has grown worse in recent years, to the extent that several species have been brought to the brink of extinction, and therefore catch numbers have now declined.

In 1990 the shark catch was 34,000 tons, while in the last few years the average annual catch has been 26,000 tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Mexican fishing authorities have granted some 240 fishing permits for shark, according to the National Fisheries Chart, last published in 2006.

Official regulations in force since 2007 prohibit finning, and stipulate the types of fishing methods and of boats suitable for catching shark. Previously there were no regulations, and whales, seals, dolphins and sea turtles were wastefully caught as by-catch because of the large trawling nets used.

In Costa Rica, a 2006 law prohibits tossing finned shark overboard. The fins weigh five percent of the sharks' total weight, but are the most profitable part because of high demand from China and Japan for shark fin soup and other delicacies.

Mexican activist Cantú said that at present "80 percent of the country's shark species are endangered. There is a lot of illegal fishing, and a total absence of controls."

But Mexico’s official regulation 059, on endangered species, lists only three imperilled varieties of shark: the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), the basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) and the whale shark (Rhincodon typus).

However, not even these three shark species enjoy special protection status, as they are still controlled under the General Law of Sustainable Fishing and Aquaculture of 2007. When a species is designated as protected, it comes under the scope of the Environment Ministry and the Wildlife Law, in force since 2000.

Sharks are "top predators" at sea, Erick Ross, coordinator of sustainable marine resources for the Costa Rican office of MarViva, a non-governmental organisation, told IPS. They are at the top of the food chain, and they maintain the health of ecosystems by eliminating the weakest individuals from fish populations lower down the chain, thus improving the gene pools of species.

"A clear indication of a sick ecosystem is the absence of top predators, like sharks, groupers, marlins and so on. It is also an indication of overfishing, because fish are being extracted in an unsustainable way," Ross said. An attempt in March to include a group of shark species in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), at the 15th Conference of the Parties in Qatar, met with failure.

Appendix II lists species that are not necessarily threatened with immediate extinction, but that may become so unless trade is closely controlled.

"It's unfortunate the shark species weren't included, because it would have provided in-depth knowledge about what is going on in international trade, what volumes are being imported and exported, between which countries, and which species," said Cantú.




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http://www.debka.com/article/20414/

 

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http://www.debka.com/article/20414/

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Sarkozy: North Korea to supply Iran with nuclear bomb components


DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
December 2, 2010, 9:43 AM (GMT+02:00)
www.debka.com/article/20414/​

Nicolas Sarkozy - discreet pressure on WashingtonIn quiet contacts, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile's intelligence sources report. The French president has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea – not just because of its aggression against the south, but to hold back Pyongyang's nuclear aid to Tehran.

Our sources report urgent secret calls from the Elysée to the New York hospital where Saudi King Abdullah is recovering from surgery, to his foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal and intelligence chief Prince Moqrin Bin Abdul Aziz as well as to the Emir of Kuwait, Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. He asked them to use their influence and lean hard on Washington for urgent action. In Sarkozy's opinion, Iran only agreed to meet the Six-Power representatives on December 6 for talks as a gambit to play for time until the North Korean nuclear supplements are in hand. He told the Gulf rulers that he had been informed by highly credible sources that the items from North Korea would help Iran solve the technical problems plaguing the program and holding up its progress.

Our sources also report a closed briefing session the French president held in Paris a few days ago for high officials in his government in which he enlarged on his warning. He found fault with President Obama's tactic of massing air and naval strength around Iran's shores in recent months to keep the Islamic Republic under military pressure ahead of nuclear talks. Those units, he said, would have been better employed surrounding North Korea in order to block its export of nuclear components to Iran. The sea is Pyongyang's only consignment route to Tehran, Sarkozy explained. If we all work together (US, France, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf emirates), he said, we can still abort it.

debkafile's military sources add that the US-French naval and air deployment opposite Iran numbers two American and one French aircraft carrier, the USS Truman, USS Lincoln and the Charles de Gaulle and their strike forces. Several British and German warships have joined this armada. Sources familiar with the Sarkozy briefing quote him as maintaining that the USS Lincoln should have been sent to the Yellow Sea before the crisis erupted over North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island in the third week of November. He would then have ordered the Charles de Gaulle to join the US carrier at the Korean scene.





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re: Dopers shooting public officials.

The Viet Cong assassinated any public official in the villages that was not corrupt and was doing his job. Corrupt officials were left in place. Then Left Wing US reporters came along and discovered that all village officials were corrupt.

That meant the whole country was corrupt just like the central government.

When it was discovered what the VC was actually doing, the NATION mag said that was perfectly legitimate method of overthrowing a corrupt regime because after all, it was corrupt.

In Mexico, in certain areas it will eventually become suspected that public officials not assassinated must be tools of the Dopers.

Does not bode well for the future of that place.

 

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Sarkozy: North Korea to supply Iran with nuclear bomb components


DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
December 2, 2010, 9:43 AM (GMT+02:00)
www.debka.com/article/20414/​

Nicolas Sarkozy - discreet pressure on WashingtonIn quiet contacts, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile's intelligence sources report. The French president has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea – not just because of its aggression against the south, but to hold back Pyongyang's nuclear aid to Tehran.

Our sources report urgent secret calls from the Elysée to the New York hospital where Saudi King Abdullah is recovering from surgery, to his foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal and intelligence chief Prince Moqrin Bin Abdul Aziz as well as to the Emir of Kuwait, Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. He asked them to use their influence and lean hard on Washington for urgent action. In Sarkozy's opinion, Iran only agreed to meet the Six-Power representatives on December 6 for talks as a gambit to play for time until the North Korean nuclear supplements are in hand. He told the Gulf rulers that he had been informed by highly credible sources that the items from North Korea would help Iran solve the technical problems plaguing the program and holding up its progress.

Our sources also report a closed briefing session the French president held in Paris a few days ago for high officials in his government in which he enlarged on his warning. He found fault with President Obama's tactic of massing air and naval strength around Iran's shores in recent months to keep the Islamic Republic under military pressure ahead of nuclear talks. Those units, he said, would have been better employed surrounding North Korea in order to block its export of nuclear components to Iran. The sea is Pyongyang's only consignment route to Tehran, Sarkozy explained. If we all work together (US, France, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf emirates), he said, we can still abort it.

debkafile's military sources add that the US-French naval and air deployment opposite Iran numbers two American and one French aircraft carrier, the USS Truman, USS Lincoln and the Charles de Gaulle and their strike forces. Several British and German warships have joined this armada. Sources familiar with the Sarkozy briefing quote him as maintaining that the USS Lincoln should have been sent to the Yellow Sea before the crisis erupted over North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island in the third week of November. He would then have ordered the Charles de Gaulle to join the US carrier at the Korean scene.





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So this is the reason for all that mess over there?

 

[Housecarl]

BTT for the night crew......HC

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.........
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LL03Ak01.html

Middle East
Dec 3, 2010

Nuclear chill to descend in Geneva
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

After a year-long hiatus in diplomacy, Iran and the "Iran Six" nations are gearing up for another round of negotiations in Geneva next week. Expectations on both sides are low and the environment polluted by the recent flurry of anti-Iran activities, ranging from tough new sanctions to nuclear terrorism and sabotage in Iran, to the demonization of the Islamic Republic by US officials who have used the WikiLeaks releases to underscore Iran's isolation.

In a small dose of pre-talk diplomacy, both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, are attending a security conference in Bahrain, sponsored by a London think-tank, and the chances are that they will use the opportunity to get a better insight of each other's mindset going into the Geneva talks.

After this week's assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist and the injuring of another, which Tehran attributed to United States and Israeli agents, Iranian officials have understandably stiffened their posture and are in no mood to appear as unduly flexible. The big question is what are the realistic expectations of each side in Geneva talks?

Officially, the US is sticking to its long-standing demand of Iran's full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the complete cessation of uranium-enrichment activities. Iran's primary goal, on the other hand, is to generate interest in this past May's so-called Tehran Declaration, signed by Iran, Turkey and Brazil, whereby Iran consented to ship 1,200kg of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey for temporary safekeeping in exchange for the delivery of 120kg of nuclear fuel for its Tehran reactor which produces radioisotopes for treating cancer patients in Iran.

The "Iran Six" nations at the negotiating table with Iran in Switzerland will be the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain - and Germany. But others may also be present.

"There may be more parties at the [Geneva] talks," Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad stated recently, alluding first and foremost to Turkey and Brazil; this while both Iranian and Turkish politicians and media continue to hammer the question of why Iran's proposal of holding the talks in Turkey was turned down by the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton?

Depending on last-minute diplomacy, Turkey may manage to slip through the doors and sit at the table - the ball is in Washington's court to take a second look at the specifics of the Tehran Declaration, which was readily dismissed as "defective" by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton within hours of its signing.

Indeed, there are several decent arguments in favor of adopting the Tehran Declaration. First, any argument that Iran should dish out two or three times as much of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) does not make sense from the point of view of the Tehran reactor's need, ie, the 1200 kg covers a 10-year cycle of fuel (See New signs of Iran nuclear flexibility Asia Times Online, November 24, 2010), as confirmed by various nuclear experts.

Second, a "narrow-focus" on the fuel swap is not tantamount to ignoring a Western-favored "broad-based" negotiation. On the contrary, zeroing in on the details of the fuel swap could prove a timely catalyst for widening the themes up for discussion, by acting as confidence-builder and, perhaps, convincing Iran to show some flexibility on both transparency issues as well as the scope of its spinning centrifuges. For example, Iran may agree to adopt "dry spinning" without enriching for sometime, the so-called stand-by option.

Third, Iran's agreement to ship out a bulk of its LEU should be welcomed by the West, irrespective of their reservations that the volume is not big enough - a tangible first step should not be ignored for the sake of unrealistic expectations that are not justifiable from the prism of IAEA's technical cooperation standards.

The "Vienna Group", consisting of US, Russia, France and the IAEA, may need to reconvene if the generalities of the fuel swap deal are adopted in Geneva next week. Such a fuel-swap compromise would definitely represent a mini-victory for both sides and a major ice-breaker in terms of reducing tensions. It would also raise the ire of Israelis and their Washington lobbyists thirsting for another war.

Fourth, the June 2008 proposal by the "Iran Six" to Iran is still on the table, according to Ashton. This involves an array of economic, security, and nuclear assistance offers to Iran that could conceivably be further fine tuned in Geneva, such as by the US showing willingness to participate in the modernization of the Tehran reactor, which was initially built by the US before Argentina redesigned it years ago.

Needless to say, for the Obama administration to be able to seriously consider such concrete steps in light of the US's domestic contingencies, it must show that it has somehow reached a breakthrough in bracketing Iran's proliferation risk. A number of Iranian experts, such as professor Kayhan Barzegar, in an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, have suggested that Iran may well re-adopt the intrusive Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus allowing the US and its allies to claim a significant concession from Iran.

If the Geneva talks fail and the US blocks Iran's request from the IAEA for cooperation on fuel delivery to its medical reactor, then we can safely expect a negative backlash in terms of Iran's cooperation with the atomic agency, which has been complaining of insufficient Iranian cooperation with its inspectors.

This is not a desirable outcome for the US, which claims to support Iranian people, who would be sure to turn against US President Barack Obama if humanitarian assistance to cancer patients were denied. And in any case, should any failure of talks be followed by military aggression against Iran, the fury of a united Iran striking back is all but a foregone conclusion.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. He is author of Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and his latest book, Looking for rights at Harvard, is now available.

Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

________


US papers twist Iranian missile tale
(Dec 1, '10)

Leaks test Tehran's nuclear nerve
(Nov 30, '10)

_________


1. Pakistan stares into a valley of death

2. China to dump North Korea, really?

3. The real Asian invasion

4. The lunatic who thinks he's Barack Obama

5. US papers twist Iranian missile tale

6. The naked emperor

7. Beijing faces a technology rap

8. Russia loses power status

9. Okinawans try to vote US base out

10. China's urbanites rediscover Buddhism

(24 hours to 11:59pm ET, Dec 1, 2010)

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use......
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=128549

IAEA criticises Iran, Syria over co-operation
UNITED Nations nuclear agency chief Yukiya Amano criticised Iran yesterday over its lack of co- operation with his inspectors, ahead of long-stalled discussions between Tehran and other major powers, and demanded that Syria provide access to the remains of a suspected nuclear site.
FREDRIK DAHL and SYLVIA WESTALL
Published: 2010/12/03 07:41:55 AM

UNITED Nations nuclear agency chief Yukiya Amano criticised Iran yesterday over its lack of co- operation with his inspectors, ahead of long-stalled discussions between Tehran and other major powers, and demanded that Syria provide access to the remains of a suspected nuclear site.

Mr Amano’s comments to the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) highlight the challenges negotiators will face in seeking to resolve a dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

"The agency needs Iran’s cooperation in clarifying outstanding issues that give rise to concern about possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme, including by providing access to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the agency," Mr Amano said. Iran says it is fully co-operating with the agency.

Western powers accuse Iran of seeking to develop atom bombs and want the country to suspend uranium-enrichment activities, which can have both civilian and military uses.

Iran says its nuclear programme is aimed at generating electricity and has repeatedly rejected demands to curb it.

Throwing independent weight behind the West’s suspicions about Tehran’s atomic ambitions, Mr Amano said in a report on Iran in February that the IAEA feared Tehran might be working to develop a nuclear-armed missile.

His latest report on Iran, to be debated at the two-day closed- door board meeting, reiterated that Tehran was not providing the necessary co-operation to permit the IAEA to confirm that all of its nuclear activities were peaceful.

Iran has accused Mr Amano of bias and relations soured further in June when Mr Amano said Iran’s barring of some of the agency’s inspectors was hampering its work.

With Iran saying that its nuclear rights are nonnegotiable, diplomats and analysts do not expect any breakthrough at the December 6-7 talks in Geneva with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

They say the first such meeting in more than a year could be the start of a process that the West hopes will lead eventually to a resolution of the row, which has the potential to provoke a regional arms race and military conflict.

Germany’s envoy to the IAEA said the talks offered a "chance for serious and substantial negotiations", which could also include other topics of mutual interest.

Mr Amano also said yesterday that he had urged Syria to provide his inspectors with speedy access to the remains of a suspected nuclear site, signalling growing frustration over the issue.

For more than two years, Syria has blocked IAEA access to the remains of a desert site that US intelligence reports say was a nascent North Korean-designed nuclear reactor intended to produce bomb fuel.

The site — known as either al- Kibar or Dair Alzour — was bombed and demolished by Israel in 2007. Syria, an ally of Iran, denies ever having had a nuclear weapons programme. Reuters

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use......
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/03/1954919/not-the-best-kept-secrets.html

Posted on Friday, 12.03.10

FOCUS ON ISRAEL
Not the best-kept secrets

BY FRIDA GHITIS
FJGhitis@gmail.com

What have we learned so far from the Wikileaks trove of secret documents?

We have discovered that what American diplomats say behind closed doors is not terribly different from what they say in front of open microphones. The tone changes a bit, and the diplomatic jargon and niceties fall away. But, from what we have seen so far, the overall policy objectives seem to align rather closely with what officials say in public.

Not so in the Middle East, where the cables confirm some of the worst fears of the region's many conspiracy theorists. Shock of shocks, Iran's Arab neighbors fear Tehran much more than they fear Israel. And, horror of horrors, a number of Arab countries get along with Israel much better than they claim.

The Wikileaks documents detail dozens of meetings in which Arab leaders urge Washington to take military action against Iran's nuclear program. This comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who follows the region closely or who has talked to people in the Arab world. Arab leaders have carefully avoided speaking out against Iran's nuclear program, or about Tehran's aims to dominate the region, or its support for terrorist organizations.

In private, however, all of these fears emerge clearly and urgently. While Arab leaders frequently declare Israel is the main threat to the region, in private they express no such concern. Instead, there's the King of Saudi Arabia demanding that Washington ``cut off the head of the snake,'' a wish repeated frequently by his Arab neighbors.

We have often heard Israel describe Iran as an existential threat. But never before did we have a record of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi calling Iran the ``primary external threat'' to his country, nothing less than an ``existential'' threat.

Arab leaders express certainty that Iran seeks nuclear weapons -- and more. Oman's top military commander warns of Tehran's ``expansionist ideological desires,'' and a long series of Arab leaders complain about Tehran's support for terrorist organizations and its meddling in their countries' affairs. Their conclusion, in the words of Bahrain's King Hamad: Iran ``must be stopped.''

Surprisingly, the Wikileaks cables show one Middle Eastern leader making a strong argument for using economic sanctions against Iran. None other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues forcefully for using stringent sanctions before trying anything else, saying the sanctions actually have a chance of bringing down the regime. Shock of shocks, that's exactly what the prime minister has been saying in public. How confusing.

It seems democratic governments are more truthful than their undemocratic counterparts. Another shocker.

I doubt that Arab leaders have fooled many of their own people with their duplicitous remarks, although in other countries, far from the Middle East, some may take their public words at face value.

At home, the unelected Arab regimes fear their people. So, they try to say what they think the people want to hear. That's why they prefer to act as if nothing is more important to them than the Palestinian cause. But Iran is what keeps them awake at night, much as it does Israelis. It's hardly a surprise, then, that they secretly have less-than-terrible relations.

One of the documents describes a ``good personal relationship'' between then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah Ibn Zayed, and it refers to secret long-standing conversations between Israel's then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the UAE. In fact, there's evidence of friendly interaction between Israel and most Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, complete with talks between Saudi Arabia and Meir Dagan, the head of Israel's secret service, the Mossad.

Now that the yawning gap between what Arab leaders' public and private priorities and actions has been uncovered, the question is what will happen next.

They could come clean and openly tell the truth, openly challenge Iran, openly befriend Israel. Or, they might stop all contact with Israel, and retrench on their requests to the United States regarding Iran, apologizing to the Islamic Republic and mending fences with the regime they fear will soon become the most powerful in the region.

There's another route. They might deny it all, say the Wikileaks documents are false, maybe claim they were planted by the CIA or the Mossad, swear they never met an Israeli they didn't hate and never had a negative thought about Iran. They could, horror of horrors, continue to lie.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.......
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...UwleRg?docId=6bbac70d13904928840ce690e0e60061

Egypt considering nuclear arms if Iran gets them

(AP) – 11 hours ago

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's president would consider turning his country into a nuclear power if Iran acquired atomic weapons, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables revealed.

A cable from May 2008, one of hundreds of secret diplomatic documents released by the WikiLeaks website over the past week, described how President Hosni Mubarak told a U.S. Congressional delegation that everyone in the region was "terrified" of a nuclear Iran.

"Egypt might be forced to begin its own nuclear weapons program if Iran succeeds in those efforts," the cable said in reporting about a meeting between Mubarak and the delegation on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Iran's growing nuclear program, which it insists is only for peaceful energy production, has sent chills throughout the region and several Arab countries expressed their concern to the U.S. about it, included support for military strikes.

The head of Egypt's intelligence service, Omar Suleiman, however, cautioned against military strikes against Iran in the same briefing, according to the cable. He said such an attack would not only leave Tehran's nuclear capability intact but would unite its people against the U.S.

Instead he recommended pursuing sanctions.

In a meeting nearly a year later with the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, Suleiman does not shy away from describing Iran as a threat to the entire region.

He described Iran in an April 2009 cable as "very active" in Egypt, attempting to recruit Sinai Bedouins and smuggle arms and money into the Gaza Strip — measures he said Egypt was successfully combating.

The intelligence chief, who is Egypt's chief interlocutor with the United States and neighboring Israel, added that he was conducting countermeasures of his own against Iranian influence, including recruiting agents in Iraq and Syria.

Egypt and Iran have had fraught relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and despite occasional tentative efforts at rapprochement, ties remain severed and the two regard each other as regional rivals.

A street in Tehran is also named after Khaled Islambouli, the assassin of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Suleiman offered the U.S. Egyptian assistance in taking on Iran around the region.

"If you want Egypt to cooperate with you on Iran, we will ... it would take a big burden off our shoulders," he said, according to the cable.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.