Puppet Masters
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's blowup at New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny.
© Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images
Palestinian activists have called for a "Global March to Jerusalem" to mark the day when Israeli Arabs protest against government policies that they say has stripped them of land.
Arab news channel Al Jazeera reported in a live blog on its website that the Israeli army was "pushing protesters back towards Ramallah with the use of tear gas and water cannons".
It also reported that there are close to 1,000 protestors gathered in Ramallah.
Israeli forces were put on high alert at frontier crossings with Lebanon and Syria but there were no reports of any protesters nearing the border fences, unlike last year when several demonstrators were killed there in Land Day protests.
© Just Label It
In the agency's latest decision, undoubtedly amazing thousands of individuals yet again, the FDA virtually erased 1 million signatures and comments on the 'Just Label It' campaign calling for the labeling of genetically modified foods.
The 'Just Label It" campaign has gotten more signatures than any campaign in history for the labeling of genetically modified foods. Since October of 2011, the campaign has received over 900,000 signatures, with 55 politicians joining in on the movement. So what's the problem here?
Evidently, the FDA counts the amount of signatures not by how many people signed, but how many different individual letters are brought to it. To the FDA, even tens of thousands of signatures presented on a single petition are counted as - you guessed it - a single comment.
This is how, despite over a million supporters being gathered by the petition, the FDA concluded a count of only 394.
'This is an election year and there are more than a million people who say this is important to them. This petition has nothing to do with whether or genetically modified foods are dangerous. We don't label dangerous foods, we take them off the shelves. This petition is about a the citizens' right to know what they are eating and whether or not these foods represent a novel change.' said Andrew Kimbrell an attorney for the Center for Food Safety, one of the partner groups on the Just Label It campaign.
© The Associated Press/Itsuo Inouye
In this March 29, 2009 file photo, PAC-3 land-to-air missiles are deployed at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo as part of Japan's military mobilization to protect the country from any threat if North Korea's looming rocket launch fails.
In this March 29, 2009 file photo, PAC-3 land-to-air missiles are deployed at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo as part of Japan's military mobilization to protect the country from any threat if North Korea's looming rocket launch fails.
The Unha-3 rocket is expected to fly past western Japan after its launch from North Korea's west coast sometime between April 12 and 16. The plan has raised concerns that a failed launch, or a falling stage of the rocket, could endanger Japanese lives or property.
Friday's order from Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka came at a meeting of Japan's national security council and followed earlier instructions for the military to prepare to intercept the rocket if it enters Japanese territory.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura urged people to stay calm, saying the military is preparing "just in case.
"We don't believe anything would fall over Japan's territory. Please carry out your daily lives and business as usual," he said.
A statement from the Defense Ministry said Japan would send destroyers equipped with Aegis missile defense systems to the Pacific and East China Sea and deploy mobile Patriot missile launchers in Okinawa. An interceptor missile unit is also likely to be deployed in Tokyo, although the capital is far from the expected flight path.
© Desconocido
Tensions are high following a spate of killings in southern France by a radical Islamist that left seven people dead and two wounded and ended up with police killing the gunman last week after a 32-hour standoff.
President Nicolas Sarkozy gave no details about the reasons for Friday's arrests or what the detainees were suspected of.
"It's in connection with a form of Islamist radicalism," Sarkozy said on Europe-1 radio. "There will be other operations that will continue and that will allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people who have no reason to be here."
Sarkozy said he didn't know whether the 19 detainees were part of any network.
A police investigator told The Associated Press that the anti-terrorist section of the Criminal Brigade detained five men before dawn in Paris who had suspected links to an Islamist movement. Weapons were also seized, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the department's rules.
Comment: For more information on the current Sarkozy situation, see these Sott articles:
Toulouse Attacks: The Official Story of the Death of Mohamed Merah is a Lie
Sarkozy's Backers To Use Toulouse Attacks To Steal French Election - UPDATE!
Kabul - An Afghan policeman killed nine of his fellow officers as they lay sleeping in a village in the eastern Paktika province on Friday, police said, blaming the attack on the Taliban.
Provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran said the incident took place in Yayakhil town of Yayakhil district.
Bowal Khan, chief of Yayakhil district, identified the gunman as Asadullah, who goes by one name. He said the gunman was assigned to a small command post when he woke up at 3 a.m. for guard duty. He then used his assault rifle to kill the nine men sleeping inside the post, took their weapons and piled them in a pickup truck.
According to Khan, Asadullah then sped away in the truck.
Khan said the victims included one of his brothers and the commander of the post, identified as Mohammad Ramazan. He said two of the dead were Ramazan's sons.
The motive for the killing was not known, but police in the area blamed the Taliban for the attack. Paktika is a stronghold of the Haqqani network, a Pakistani-based group with ties to the Taliban and al-Qaida. Although they mostly attack U.S.-led coalition forces, they have often carried out assaults and bombings against the Afghan army and police.
Provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran said the incident took place in Yayakhil town of Yayakhil district.
Bowal Khan, chief of Yayakhil district, identified the gunman as Asadullah, who goes by one name. He said the gunman was assigned to a small command post when he woke up at 3 a.m. for guard duty. He then used his assault rifle to kill the nine men sleeping inside the post, took their weapons and piled them in a pickup truck.
According to Khan, Asadullah then sped away in the truck.
Khan said the victims included one of his brothers and the commander of the post, identified as Mohammad Ramazan. He said two of the dead were Ramazan's sons.
The motive for the killing was not known, but police in the area blamed the Taliban for the attack. Paktika is a stronghold of the Haqqani network, a Pakistani-based group with ties to the Taliban and al-Qaida. Although they mostly attack U.S.-led coalition forces, they have often carried out assaults and bombings against the Afghan army and police.
© RAIM Global Digest
Appalled by the excesses of the U.S. military, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has followed suit, initially demanding that the U.S. restrict its soldiers to their bases, a move that would mean that the American presence in Afghanistan could well end in short order after the loss of another trillion dollars and the deaths of some tens of thousands of coalition soldiers and Afghan civilians. Even if Karzai accepts a continued U.S. presence that is more managed by his own "sovereign" government, the writing is on the wall, and all that is needed is a firm departure date. Oh, and the Taliban will definitely be coming back in one form or another.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Pakistan, the parliament is debating ending all cooperation with the United States because of the continuing drone campaign, which, true to pattern, kills mostly civilians. Pakistan is nuclear-armed and actually has real terrorists roaming its tribal regions. The departure of Pakistan from the game enables the manifest waste of the past 11 years to become completely clear, with Washington leaving Central Asia in far worse shape than it was when the U.S. Army and the CIA arrived.
Was Mohamed Merah a French secret service informant? So says a former head of an intelligence agency here in France. Also, an Italian paper says Merah travelled to Israel in 2010 - with the support of French spy agencies.
Media Watch France 24
© Reuters
Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Iran could probably rebuild most of its centrifuge workshops within six months after an attack on its nuclear sites, according to a new report by U.S. congressional researchers, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
The report by analysts at the Congressional Research Service, citing interviews with current and former U.S. officials, said that the Islamic Republic's centrifuge "workshops" are widely dispersed and hidden, which could complicate a potential Israeli military strike.
According to the report, neither Israel nor the U.S. knows for certain where Iran's nuclear facilities are located and the possibility of dispersed nuclear sites makes any assessment of a military strike's success more difficult. It is "unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons," Bloomberg quoted the report as saying.
The congressional researchers said that, "An attack that left Iran's conversion and centrifuge production facilities intact would considerably reduce" the time Iran would need to resume its nuclear activities.
Moreover, the researches quoted a former U.S. official as saying that Iran could probably replicate most of its centrifuge workshops within six months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has recently voiced "serious concerns" about possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear activities.
Iran denies suspicions that it is covertly seeking nuclear weapons capability, in part by coordinating efforts to process uranium, test high explosives and revamp a ballistic missile cone to accommodate a nuclear warhead.
© n/a
To show that Bibi's aggressive, interventionist approach isn't a fluke, UPI reports that Israel is negotiating with Greek Cyprus for placement of an Israeli air base on the island, ostensibly to protect the new Israeli-Cypriot joint gas exploration project:
Israel is already preparing to launch a major security operation to protect the offshore fields and the attendant facilities in its waters.This field is in dispute with Lebanon, which also claims title. Turkey too disputes the area on behalf of Turkish Cyprus. This certainly is one reason for the Israeli move.
This will involve missile-armed patrol vessels, round-the-clock aerial surveillance by unmanned drones and other naval detachments, primarily to defend the energy zones against attack by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed force in neighboring Lebanon.
Comment: And the cycle of violence continues.