Iranian threat is like the Arab threat to destroy Israel in 1967, a history professor tells Newsweek. The danger: Western complacency.

The Iranian Threat is like the Arab world's threat to destroy Israel in 1967, and Israel must attack Iran now, a Harvard University history professor told Newsweek. He said the he biggest danger is Western complacency.

The magazine,which last week published a scenario of how Israel till attack Iran if it decides to do so, featured on its website on Monday an article by Prof. Niall Ferguson.

He pooh-poohed five arguments why Israel should not stage a military strike on Iran: Iranian retaliation, new Arab Spring rebellion, a recession caused by doubling of the price of crude oil, boomerang support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within Iran, and the ability to live with a nuclear Iran.

Prof. Ferguson maintains that whether he likes it or not, President Barack Obama will comes to Israel's defense if it attacks Iran in an attempt to slow down its nuclear development, if not destroy its nuclear facilities altogether.

Moscow - Iran is capable of carrying out military strikes on U.S. interests all around the world if the Islamic Republic is attacked by the United States, Iran's ambassador to Moscow said on Wednesday.

The United States has tried to force Tehran to scrap sensitive nuclear work by imposing sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and giving U.S. banks new powers to freeze Iranian government assets.

Iran's ambassador to Moscow said that the United States would be making a serious mistake, akin to suicide, if it risked a military strike on OPEC's No. 2 oil exporter.

Washington has announced no such plans, but has said a military option is always on the table if Iran cannot be otherwise prevented from developing atomic weapons.

"The Americans know what kind of country Iran is. They are well aware of our people's unity," Iranian ambassador Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi told a news conference in Moscow.

"And that's why Iran is fully able to deliver retaliatory strikes on the United States anywhere in the world," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

"Even if it attacks, we have a list of counter actions. (The United States) would be disappointed with their huge mistake."

Iran has increasingly issued threatening statements against the West in recent weeks as tension has increased over its uranium enrichment program, which it moved last month to a mountain bunker better protected from possible air strikes.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful while Western powers fear Tehran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.

"The issue of a military attack from America on the Islamic Republic of Iran has been on the agenda for several years," said Sajjadi, adding that Iran would never strike first.

Iran has warned its response to any such strike would be "painful," threatening to target Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, along with closing the Strait of Hormuz used by one third of the world's seaborne oil traffic.

Russia, the world's biggest energy producer, opposes further U.N. Security Council sanctions over Tehran's nuclear program and has sharply criticized U.S. and European Union sanctions.

Writing by Steve Gutterman and Guy Faulconbridge

The German government called in Syria's ambassador after security officials in Berlin arrested two men suspected of spying for Syrian intelligence on groups critical of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We will signal unambiguously to Syrian officials that any apparent activity against the Syrian opposition in Germany is in no way tolerable and a violation of the law," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Berlin today as he announced the diplomatic protest.

The men, identified as 47-year-old Mahmoud El A., who holds German and Lebanese citizenship, and Akram O., 34, a Syrian national, were arrested in Berlin earlier today in an operation that involved about 70 investigators, who searched the suspects' apartments and those of six others.

The two detained are "strongly suspected of carefully observing the Syrian opposition in Germany for a Syrian intelligence agency for years," Germany's Federal Prosecutor said in a statement. Other suspects, whose apartments were searched, were accused of providing assistance, it said.

The arrests come three days after Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution backing an Arab League plan for a transfer of power in Syria. Escalating unrest directed at Assad's government has killed more than 5,400 people in the country since March, according to the UN.

The Department Of Homeland Security is the very epitome of unnecessary bureaucracy. Its formation was predicated on the existence of terrorist threats, many of which the U.S. government and orbiting alphabet agencies either created through acts of war, or fabricated out of thin air. Its policies of centralization were sold to the public as necessary to prevent systemic "miscommunications" that never actually took place. Throughout our history, it has been a rare occasion indeed when an attack falls upon American infrastructure or interests that was not influenced, directly or indirectly, by the actions of agencies which were supposedly employed to prevent such events from ever occurring. Whether through 'blowback', or through 'false flag', frankly, most of the harm that comes to our nation is perpetrated by the guiding hand of our inexorably corrupt government.

Knowing that the DHS was established on false pretenses forces us to question the agency's true intentions, especially when a professional fear-monger like Secretary Janet Napolitano announces that the globalization of the world economy falls within her jurisdiction:

See this

Average citizens would assume that the DHS is a U.S.-centric institution, and regardless of its Orwellian behavior, is at the very least a distinctly American brand of tyranny. However, under encroaching strategies enforced since 2006 through the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), it is becoming very apparent that the Department Of Homeland Security is quickly taking on an "all-of-nation" role, most prominently in the defense of globalization:

National Infrastructure Protection Plan (pdf)

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop "incapacitating chemical agents" for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control.

The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counter terrorism division.

"We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a "sovereign citizen" in traffic.

We all read about the U.S. national debt, and whether we should be concerned that it's in the $12 trillion range these days. But the United States isn't the only country carrying a huge amount of debt. In fact, it seems that operating just about any country is a money losing proposition.

According to the CIA's Worldbank data, the majority of countries carry huge sums of national debt. And for most countries - although there are exceptions - that debt is constantly rising.

Look at Mexico: In 2000, the country had a $150.3 billion national debt. That's miniscule by U.S. standards, yes, but, like the United States, Mexico's debt is growing. Worldbank estimates that the country's national debt has risen to $189.4 billion in 2010.

And Mexico is far from alone: Poland's national debt has risen from $65.8 billion in 2000 to a much higher $185.2 billion in 2010. Hungary's debt has jumped from $29.5 billion to $134.7 billion during the same time, a rather large bump.

Turkey, too, has seen its national debt soar. The country's debt stood at $117.3 billion in 2000, but is estimated to be at $310.6 billion now. In India, the national debt has risen from $99.1 billion in 2000 to an estimated $204.5 billion in 2010.

Camp LeJeune, North Carolina - With beach landings, 25 naval ships and an air assault, the United States and eight other countries are staging a major amphibious exercise on the US East Coast this week, fighting a fictional enemy that bears more than a passing resemblance to Iran.
After a decade dominated by ground wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the drill dubbed Bold Alligator is "the largest amphibious exercise conducted by the fleet in the last 10 years," said Admiral John Harvey, head of US Fleet Forces Command.

About 20,000 US forces, plus hundreds of British, Dutch and French troops as well as liaison officers from Italy, Spain, New Zealand and Australia are taking part in the exercise along the Atlantic coast off Virginia and North Carolina.

An American aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships including France's Mistral, Canadian mine sweepers and dozens of aircraft have been deployed for the drill, which began on January 30 and runs through mid-February.

Monday was 'D-day' for Bold Alligator, with US Marines stepping on to the beach from hovercraft, near the Camp Lejeune base in North Carolina.

In December of last year I covered a study conducted by MIT with the help of "advisers" from the exact corporations which would benefit from the implementation of the recommendations of the report, and now it appears that these ideas have made their way all the way to Capitol Hill.

This bill, which is reportedly currently before Congress, would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) significantly more monitoring power of the cybersecurity practices of private industries and services which are supposedly part of the United States' critical infrastructure.

The details of the bill have yet to be released, and I have not even been able to track down a number for the legislation yet so I can actually read it (if anyone can help me out with this I would be quite grateful).

The small portions of the bill which have been made public attempt to define which companies are covered by the bill, although it is hardly as precise as one might like.

Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division.

"We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said.