Archive for the ‘World At War’ Category
Protesters May Face Execution
An influential Iranian cleric told worshipers Friday that those stirring unrest in connection with the recent election should be punished “ruthlessly and savagely” and convicted for waging war against God, a crime that under Shiite Islamic law is punishable by death.
The sermon at Tehran University by Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami was broadcast live on state television, amplifying the ominous tone the state has adopted this week toward the tens of thousands of demonstrators who have massed in the streets to question the results of the June 12 presidential balloting. The government has declared the gatherings illegal.
“I want the judiciary to . . . punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson,” said Khatami, an influential cleric close to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Based on Islamic law, whoever confronts the Islamic state . . . should be convicted as mohareb. . . . They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely.”
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went after Barack Obama, demanding an apology or else. Or else what?
“Do you want to speak with this tone?” Ahmadinejad said Thursday, addressing Obama. “If that is your stance, then what is left to talk about?” “I hope you avoid interfering in Iran’s affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it.”
He asked why Obama “has fallen into this trap and repeated the comments that Bush used to make” and told the U.S. president that such an attitude “will only make you another Bush in the eyes of the people.”
Ayatollah Orders Election Probe
Iran’s state TV reported Monday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into claims of fraud in last week’s presidential election.
Khamenei ordered the powerful Guardian Council to examine the allegations by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims widespread vote rigging in Friday’s election. The government declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner in a landslide victory.
It is a stunning turnaround for Iran’s most powerful figure, who previously welcomed the results.
Meanwhile, the Iranian Embassy in Moscow announced Monday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had put off a visit to Russia, and it was unclear whether he will come at all.
Ahmadinejad had been expected to travel to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg and meet on Monday with President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in which Iran was to attend as an observer.
The change in plans came amid street protests in Iran following Ahmadinejad’s re-election in a bitterly disputed vote Friday.
On Sunday, Mousavi wrote an appeal to the Guardian Council, a powerful 12-member body that’s a pillar of Iran’s theocracy. Mousavi also met Sunday with Khamenei.
Mousavi’s backers have waged three days of street protests in Teheran.
U.S. Releases Secret Nuclear List by Accident
A 266-page document that gives detailed information about civilian nuclear sites and programs, marked “highly confidential,” was accidentally made public by the federal government, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The document’s publication was revealed Monday in an online newsletter about federal secrecy issues. The Times described the document as including maps that identify where nuclear weapons fuel is stockpiled, though it contained no information about military nuclear operations.
The NYTimes will probably ‘accidentally’ release the military information later.
N Korea Resumes Korean War
North Korea announced Wednesday that it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War, the latest and most profound diplomatic aftershock from the country’s latest nuclear test two days earlier.
The Korean War ended in an armistice, rather than in a capitulation. That armistice agreement means that the Korean War never actually ended and fifty-six years later, Pyongyang has just said its back on.
North Korea also warned that it would respond “with a powerful military strike” should its ships be stopped by international forces trying to stop the export of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
The twin declarations, delivered by the country’s state news agency, followed South Korea’s announcement Tuesday that it would join the navies that will stop and inspect suspicious ships at sea. North Korea has repeatedly said that such participation would be a “declaration of war.”
They followed other developments in North Korea that have added to the sense of jangled nerves across northeast Asia since Monday’s underground nuclear test.
The North fired three more short-range missiles off its east coast on Tuesday, said Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. North Korea had fired two missiles into the same waters on Monday.
And U.S. spy satellites have detected signs that North Korea has restarted its nuclear plant, a South Korean newspaper reported Wednesday. Chosun Ilbo cited an unnamed South Korean government source as saying that steam has been detected from a reprocessing facility at North Korea’s Yongbyon plant.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke Tuesday to her Russian counterpart as part of an effort to seek a united response with “consequences” for North Korea. But U.S. officials also stressed that they are still eager for North Korea to return to multilateral disarmament talks and are not ready to declare the multi-year effort to end North Korea’s nuclear program a failure.
“We feel the door does still remain open, that we’re ready to engage,” said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. He described the Obama administration’s effort now as trying to “bring international pressure to bear to get them to reverse their course.”
In Tokyo, a former defense minister and ruling party lawmaker said Japan should consider developing the ability to conduct preemptive strikes against North Korea, even though Japan’s constitution prohibits it from taking offensive military action.
South Korea had long resisted U.S. pressure to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which was created in 2003 by President George W. Bush and includes more than 90 countries that have agreed to stop and inspect suspicious cargo on sea and land.
Seoul was reluctant to rile North Korea, but North Korea’s second nuclear test nudged Seoul Korea to change its policy.
North Korea has long been suspected of shipping or flying missiles to customers in the Middle East and South Asia.
Iran Tests Missile That Can Hit Israel
Iran tested its longest-range solid-fuel missile Wednesday - a launch that displayed Tehran’s reach and burnished President Ahmadinejad’s hardline reputation ahead of next month’s election.
The missile was said to be capable of striking Israel, U.S. Mideast bases and Europe.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed the test, which was announced by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The launch raised concerns about the sophistication of Tehran’s missile program and Pentagon officials cautioned that it leaves Iran at a crossroads.
“They can either continue on this path of continued destabilization in the region or they can decide that they want to pursue relationships with the countries in the region and the United States that are more normalized,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
Clinton: ”We Don’t Know . . .”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad jarred the world’s nuclear experts with his recent admission that Iran has more than 7,000 working centrifuges, instead of the 3,000 the West was basing all its ‘point of no return’ calculations on.
“We don’t know what to believe about the Iranian program. We’ve heard many different assessments and claims over a number of years,” said Clinton of Iran’s latest claims.
“We do not attribute any particular meaning, with respect to the range of issues that we are looking to address with the Iranians, from this particular statement.”
Given that Iran is now believed to have the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on missiles capable of reaching all the major capitals of Europe, possibly the east coast of the United States and definitely all of Israel, an admission that the US doesn’t know what to believe is troubling, to say the least.
Japan Warns North Korea Over Missile Launch
Japan threatened to shoot down a satellite that North Korea plans to launch early next month if it shows any signs of striking its territory.
Tokyo’s warning that it would deploy its multibillion-dollar missile defence system raised tensions in the region after North Korea said that it had identified a potential “danger area” near Japanese territory along the rocket’s flight path.
Officials in Tokyo said they reserved the right to destroy any threatening object in mid-flight, despite North Korean warnings that it would consider such a move an act of war.
“Under our law, we can intercept any object if it is falling towards Japan, including any attacks on Japan, for our security,” Takeo Kawamura, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters.
China Plays High Seas Game of Chicken
Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, with one ship coming within 25 feet, a U.S. Defense Department statement said.
At one point during the incident Sunday the unarmed USNS Impeccable turned fire hoses on an approaching Chinese ship in self defense, the Pentagon said. At another point a Chinese ship played chicken with the Americans, stopping dead in front of the Impeccable as it tried to sail away, forcing the civilian mariners to slam on the brakes.
Tropical Hainan, less than 100 km 60 miles south of the mainland, hosts a Chinese naval base that houses ballistic missile submarines, according to independent analysts.
An unnamed spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington earlier denied the Chinese ships had violated maritime rules and said U.S. ships had been conducting illegal surveying, the website of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television news.ifeng.com reported.
It said the incident happened 120 km 70 miles south of the island.
Spanking the Russians
Only hours after Russia agreed to a cease-fire brokered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian forces pushed deep into Georgia, capturing the strategic town of Gori, less than an hour from the Georgian capital at Tblisi.
Thick black plumes of smoke rose from Gori as panicked residents — including the doctors and patients of the local hospital — fled to Tbilisi in packed cars and minivans. Most locals had already abandoned Gori after it was heavily bombarded by Russian forces on Tuesday, just before Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and Nicholas Sarkozy of France announced a provisional cease-fire.
With Russian tanks securing Gori, Ossetian militias and Russian cossacks began pillaging stores and homes, fleeing residents and Western eyewitnesses said. Some Georgians attempting to escape said they were told by irregulars to abandon their cars and valuables at gunpoint, and forced to walk toward Tbilisi. At least one vehicle of Western journalists was also seized at gunpoint by Russian-allied irregulars.
The EU and US are in discussions over the best way to ‘punish’ Russia for its invasion of Georgia.
For now, the US has decided to ditch an important NATO naval exercise with Russia that was due to begin on Friday. The annual exercise usually includes Britain, France, Russia and the US.
But the odds-on favorite solution being to kick the Russians out of the G-7 plus Russia. (That would make it the G-7 without Russia. That will teach those crazy Ivans!)
The G-7 plus Russia didn’t fit, anyway. The Bible speaks of the existence in the last days of two different governing authorities, which the Prophet Daniel and the Apostle John each represent as a beast with seven heads and ten horns. The seven heads represent economic authority, the ten horns represent political power.
The EU has absorbed as many as 27 nations, but there remain just ten FULL members of the European Union, which is as close to a revived form of the Roman Empire as has existed since the Fall of Rome to the Goths and Vandals in the 5th century.
The G-7 consists of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
Georgia Stands Alone
Russia continues its push well beyond the borders of South Ossetia and into Georgia itself. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says that all Russia is trying to do is bring its ‘peacekeeping mission to its logical conclusion.” Whether that logical conclusion includes the existence of an independent state called Georgia remains to be seen.
Noted one blogger, Georgia certainly identifies with — and considered itself an ally of — the West. After fighting broke out, Georgian state television even switched from the national news to the anti-Russian, Cold War classic flick “Red Dawn.” So it’s understandable that the people there are begging for Western help — they’re even looking for Israel to pressure Russia. But despite strong words from U.S. bigwigs, it’s become increasingly clear that nobody is coming to Georgia’s aid. “Georgians are wondering, where is NATO? NATO isn’t coming. Deal with it. Saakashvilli staked his presidency on it and failed.”
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