Russia delivered 1,800 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Venezuela in 2009

WaPo

Russia delivered at least 1,800 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Venezuela in 2009, U.N. arms control data show, despite vigorous U.S. efforts to stop President Hugo Chavez's stridently anti-American government from acquiring the weapons.

The United States feared that the missiles could be funneled to Marxist guerrillas fighting Colombia's pro-American government or Mexican drug cartels, concerns expressed in U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and first reported in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

... the American commander for military forces in Latin America, Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, publicly expressed concern this year that Venezuela was purchasing as many as 2,400 of the missiles, also called the IGLA-S.

Matt Schroeder, a missile expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said the missiles are among the most sophisticated in the world and can down aircraft from 19,000 feet.

Stuxneted

Choice!

Iran's nuclear program is still in chaos despite its leaders' adamant claim that they have 

contained the computer worm that attacked their facilities, cybersecurity experts in the United 

States and Europe say.

The American and European experts say their security websites, which deal with the 

computer worm known as Stuxnet, continue to be swamped with traffic from Tehran and other 

places in the Islamic Republic, an indication that the worm continues to infect the computers 

at Iran's two nuclear sites.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/09/despite-iranian-claims-stuxnet-worm-causing-nuclear-havoc/#ixzz17mFEEFca

Iran Placing Medium-Range Missiles in Venezuela; Can Reach the U.S.

From Hudson NY:


Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources[1], according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit o Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles....

According to Die Welt, Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an "emergency". In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for "national needs" – radically increasing the threat to neighbors like Colombia. The German daily claims that according to the agreement, Iranian Shahab 3 (range 1300-1500 km), Scud-B (285-330 km) and Scud-C (300, 500 and 700 km) will be deployed in the proposed base. It says that Iran also pledged to help Venezuela in rocket technology expertise, including intensive training of officers...

More

Iran Nuclear Scientist Defects to U.S. In CIA 'Intelligence Coup'

From ABC Blotter
"The significance of the coup will depend on how much the scientist knew in the compartmentalized Iranian nuclear program," said former White House counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant. "Just taking one scientist out of the program will not really disrupt it." (more)

Still, its a start and a definite plus.

Gathering Storm Clouds?

There are some interesting things going on today. See if you can connect the dots:

Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.

'Iran will deliver telling blow to global powers on Feb. 11'
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the "global arrogance" on this year's anniversary of the Islamic Revolution

Fears that US missiles move may be exploited by Iran's hardlinersDeployment may strengthen repressive regime in

Secret CIA-Mossad meeting, preparation for new war?
A secret meeting between the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Leon Panetta and Israeli officials has reportedly centered on Iran's nuclear program.

Global War On Terror (GWOT) Updates

Oh wait. We aren't supposed to use that term- "Global War On Terror." What is it the present Administration wants us to use? Oh yes, "A Man Made Disaster."

Not a fan of the renaming of the GWOT but, well, that's what it was wasn't it? 14 dead. A man made disaster- yup that pretty much sums it up. Caused by a man that was perhaps a bit unstable, who believed ardently that others should be converted, who was frustrated terribly when others failed to see his way and agree with him. But the man of whom I speak was not at Ft Hood last week. At least not in the flesh. The man of whom I speak is Mohamed himself. With apologies to those Muslims who reject Islam's violent beginnings/teachings, Mohamed would have been proud of what happened at Ft Hood as surely as he lopped off the heads of the tribal leaders who opposed him in Medina. ( I wonder how many nasty comments/death threats I'll get from offended Jihadists? Maybe I'll make the list of websites deemed dangerous by the Jihadists. Probably not but its an interesting list. I've added many of the sites under the GWOT heading.)


He would have been proud for two reasons. First, Hasan was earning his way into heaven. You see, unlike Christianity, which says one cannot get to heaven through good works alone but only by the grace of God, Islam lets you earn your way in. As long as you have more marks in the good column than the bad, you are good to go. If you fall behind you can double up on prayers and the like and get extra points to close the gap. If you are really bad and go to strip clubs and fail to marry and have kids like a good Muslim should, like Mr Hasan. (Or if you are homosexual which could explain the fact he was 39 and unmarried as well as the HIV meds found in his apartment) Then you need something BIG to catch up on the good marks. Now doubling up on prayers isn't going to help you much here so what do you do? You call in the big point makers like Jihad and killing infidels. And lo and behold only a short time after al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi wrote an article in the Jihadi magazine that called for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets, Mr Hasan decides to get a morning coffee and start squeezing off rounds.


Which brings us to the second reason Mohamed would have been proud. Since Muslims see Mohamed as the perfect man and pious Muslims are called to emulate him, then it stands to reason that even his violent ways are to be copied. When Mohamed consolidated power in Medina (read- killed off the competition) he marched back to Mecca, from whence he had been in effect, exiled, and made his request again. Will you convert? This time, however he had an army to back him up, so his request had two choices: convert or be killed. Which is why Jihad and killing infidels scores such big points. It is true that not all Muslims accept the violent ways of Mohamed as behavior to be followed but to ignore the fact that so many do is to invite the type of carnage that we have seen all these years, most recently at Ft Hood.

Still there are those who will say that this is simply the machinations of a mad man, that he acted on his own. That he was mad, I will agree. That he worked alone is a lie.

Daniel Pipes has a really good article contrasting those who would say that Hasan was but an "over-stressed victim" crowd with those who see it as a symptom of the Jihadist disease which infects society. Here is a list and some of the colorful descriptions from the killer as victim crowd.

1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building) 2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald's restaurant)
2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)

Perhaps this shooting has woke us up. Mosques and buildings are being seized because of ties to Iran. Although it is clear these investigation have been ongoing. The time has come to take off the gloves.

Still, the call has gone out. More of these types of attacks will occur. The Jihadists are chomping at the bit. Sleeping too much? Follow the link and read the comments that have been reproduced on this blog. Keep you up better than a case of energy drinks.

In addition, Baitullah Mehsud, the most feared and dangerous militant commander in Pakistan’s tribal region has promised an attack on Washington

And Iran may be behind the insurgency in Afghanistan (Shocker!) while it continues unabated toward its goal of making a nuclear weapon and the poor state of military readiness of Russian forces has lowered the nuclear threshold.

Thankfully we have a decisive, strong leader in place to keep us safe at night.
Sleep tight and sweet dreams.

Israel Is Nervous and Iran Is Ready To Build A N-Bomb

Like so many campaign pledges, Obama's pledge of "commitment to the very best relations with Israel" have quickly fallen by the wayside. Friction between the two countries has caused both domestic consternation as well as hostility within Israel itself:

...While nearly 80% of American Jews voted for Mr. Obama, that friction has been visible enough to propel him to meet with American Jewish leaders recently to reassure them about his policies. But last month, despite those reassurances, both the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League issued statements critical of the president’s handling of Israel....

...But the Obama administration has managed to win the mistrust of most Israelis, not just conservative politicians. Despite his great popularity in many parts of the world, in Israel Obama is now seen as no ally. A June poll found that just 6% of Israelis called him “pro-Israel,” when 88% had seen President George W. Bush that way. So the troubles between the U.S. and Israel are not fundamentally found in the personal relations among policy makers. ...(WSJ)

The Obama Administration has done nothing to reassure Israel in the face of Iranian intransigence concerning its nuclear program preferring instead to concentrate on the Palestinian question:

...in fact following a highly ideological policy path. Its ability to cope with, indeed even to see clearly, the realities of life in Israel and the West Bank and the challenge of Iran to the region is compromised by the prism through which it analyzes events.... (WSJ)

Thus, in the face of intelligence assessments that indicate that Iran is merely "waiting for the Ayatollah's order," to begin building a nuclear weapon that it has promised to use against it, Israel will have no choice but to take its own action.

...Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times.
The sources said that Iran completed a research programme to create weaponised uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader....

...should Ayatollah Khamenei approve the building of a nuclear device, it would take six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. The Iranian Defence Ministry has been running a covert nuclear research department for years, employing hundreds of scientists, researchers and metallurgists in a multibillion-dollar programme to develop nuclear technology alongside the civilian nuclear programme.... ( Times)


Word in Israel is that, should talks fail, an attack upon Iran may come as soon as October.

Obama's 'Go-Soft-With-Killers' Approach

While taking a hardliner attitude toward Israel, Obama is treating Iran, Hammas et al with kid gloves. Disturbing to say the least and a prelude I fear to hard days ahead because when weakness is percieved, people die.

From the American Thinker:


"...While many European leaders have been using very tough language to criticize the Iranian regime for its handling of the election and its aftermath, and standing with the demonstrators, Barack Obama alone seems to be siding with the regime. Clearly, Obama does not see regime change in Iran as a positive development, and seems fearful of offending the mullahs and Ahmadinejad.

This go-soft-with-killers approach is causing unusual verbal gymnastics by Obama acolytes in the left wing press (e.g. the Nation, the Guardian) who are desperate to find a way to spin the story so that Obama's reticence in challenging the crackdown and the election theft is in fact seen as a calculated and nuanced approach to the Iranian situation.

Israel, on the other hand, seems to be a different story, and the Administration seems to think it important to go public with criticism of Israel virtually every day. Three separate news stories in the last two days should make clear to all but the willfully blind that Obama still has Israel in its sights. "

Told Ya So

In the "Told Ya So" department, we have two articles.

First, NASA makes the startling discovery that "...Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming."

from Daily Tech:

A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat. According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

And the American Thinker says this may be one more, in a long line of inconvenient backtracks by Gore's NASA lapdog, DR. James Hansen.

In the past Dr. Hansen was forced to admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year on record due to a lack of standardization of weather reporting stations. Hansen also misstated that “October 2008 was the hottest on record,” largely because the data used repeated September’s.


Finally, in an ongoing attempt to forestall my retirement we have this bit of good news from our Persian friends:

Iran's main nuclear plant expanding rapidly, says IAEA
Iran's main nuclear plant is expanding so rapidly that United Nations inspectors have asked Tehran for improved safeguards against the production of weapons-grade uranium....

Let me know how that works out will ya?

Obama prepares to throw Israel under the bus

Sanity from across the pond. The UK Spectator offers some keen insight on the Obama administration's abandonment of Israel:

... White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly told the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday that efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. General James Jones, National Security Adviser to Obama, reportedly told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel. Ha’aretz reports:

Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine ‘a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.

Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-ordinating the crime....

Yesterday Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear programme stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.

The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.

It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that America is behaving as if it is Israel which is holding up a peace settlement when Israel has made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90 per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year -- only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all and is not being pressured to do so.

It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that America is now choosing to beat up. In any sane world, one might think the Americans would be piling the pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their genocidal ambitions against Israel, to stop teaching and training their children to hate and kill Jews, to adhere to the primary requirement in the Road Map that they must dismantle their infrastructure of violence as the first step in the peace process; one might think, indeed, that they would view Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state to be the main impediment to peace. (more)


Iran is, predictably delighted with this turn of events:

At a joint press conference with Syrian President Bashar Assad Tuesday, Ahmadinejad boasted that “those who one day called Iran and Syria part of the axis of evil now want to develop relations with Iran and Syria.” “Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favor,” Arab media quoted him as saying. “We are on the road to victory.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meets with Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, Syria on Tuesday, May 5, 2009.

The Iranian leader also reiterated Iranian-Syrian support for “Palestinian resistance,” calling Israelis “destructive microbes” and saying that U.S. forces in Afghanistan were uninvited, unwelcome visitors who should withdraw. (more)


Moderate Arab states on the other hand are alarmed:

From CNSNews:
CAIRO - Washington's efforts to start a dialogue with Iran have sent ripples of alarm through the capitals of America's closest Arab allies, who accuse Tehran of playing a destabilizing role in the Middle East.

The concerns being raised by Arab leaders sound strikingly like those coming from the mouths of Israeli officials.

"We hope that any dialogue between countries will not come at our expense," said a statement Tuesday by the six oil-rich nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, who have long relied on U.S. protection in the region...(more)