MFS -The Other News - What the main papers don't say.

  Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 5.6 ; Solomon Islands 5.3 ; Indonesia 5.2!More info here.

• Reality Check: Multiple Experts Find the ‘Official’ Unemployment Rate Is Missing A Whole Lot of Unemployed People.(BigGovernment).the current 8.3% “official” unemployment rate compared with the 10.9 percent rate including the “invisible unemployed” who have “stopped looking for work,” as former Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee put it in 2003. Meanwhile, as shown in the blue line, the Administration in January 2009 predicted that under its 2009 stimulus plan the official unemployment rate today would be 6.1 percent, or effectively at full employment.Read and SEE all the proof here.

• 'Retain military options against Iran'.(Jpost).BERLIN – A military option should remain on the table to force Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, the Christian Democratic Union’s foreign policy spokesman in the Bundestag told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.“After the West has for years allowed the wool to be pulled over its eyes, Iran cannot take us seriously,” Philipp Missfelder, one of Germany’s strongest advocates for the security of the Jewish state and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, told the Post. “The military option arises from the rising crisis situation. If Iran does not give in, a military attack will be more likely.”“We should not take away any option from the table, including the military option,” Missfelder, 32, told Berlin daily BZ over the weekend.He now shares the positions of British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal, both of whom advocate maintaining the military option as a fall back if Iran does not suspend its nuclear enrichment program.Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, rejects military engagement in Iran, a country with which Germany has longstanding financial and political ties.Trade between the countries totals roughly 4 billion euros a year. Westerwelle represents the pro-business Free Democrats and many of the party supporters have business activities in Iran.“The oil embargo must be implemented in a forceful manner. We must also consider how we can further isolate Iran in the world of finance,” Missfelder told the Post.Hmmm....the sanctions are a JOKE as long as Turkey , India , Russia ...etc continue business as usual.Read the full story here.

• Syria - Top Iran military official aiding Assad's crackdown on Syria opposition.(Haaretz).A top Iranian military official is activily aiding the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad in suppressing popular unrest throughout the country, a top member of the National Syrian Council said on Monday. According to the Syrian official, Kassam Salimani, commander of the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard special forces unit, has arrived in Syria recently and has taken up a spot in the war room which manages army maneuvers against opposition forces.The war room is also reportedly populated by Assad himself, as well as his brother Maher, brother-in-law Assaf Shaukat and cousin Rami Makhlouf, with the Syrian chief of staff's authority reportedly restricted and divided up between other military commanders. The Quds Force includes 15,000 elite soldiers who operated, among other locations, in Iraq during the war, and the specialty of which is engaging in unconventional warfare on foreign soil. Among other duties, the Quds Force is in charge of traning and funding Hezbollah. Salimani's presence in Syria serves as an indication of the kind of battle that Assad is planning against opposition forces, with the Syrian army reportedly planning to wage all out war against the rebel city of Homs.Read the full story here.

• "Sanctions that Bite" - Iran's Oil Exports to India Up 37.5% in January.(Fars). TEHRAN (FNA)- Media reports said on Thursday that Iran's crude exports to India have increased to 550,000 barrels a day in January which shows a 37.5% growth compared with the same period last year.India has increased oil imports from Iran to become the Islamic Republic's largest customer last month, ignoring recent sanctions imposed by US and EU on importing Iran's oil. The development, the Wall Street Journal report said, has partly offset a 50 percent cut in crude exports to China as a result of pricing dispute. China now imports around 250,000 barrels a day from Iran. The news comes despite the West's rising pressure on Iran to halt its peaceful nuclear program. On the New Year's Eve, the United States imposed new sanctions against Iran aimed at preventing other countries from importing Iran's oil and doing transactions with its central bank. After months of debates, the EU member states also eventually reached an agreement in their meeting on January 23 to sanction oil imports from Iran and freeze the assets of Iran's Central Bank within the EU. Following the decision, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton claimed that the sanctions are aimed at pressuring Iran to return to talks over its nuclear program. Despite Ashton's claims, Iran has always underlined its preparedness to resume talks with the West but has meantime stressed that it will never accept any precondition for such talks.Read the full story here.

• 'Iran must attack Israel by 2014'.(JPost).Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's strategist provided the legal and religious justification for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people, in a document published on conservative Farsi website Alef. Reports of the document began to circulate the internet this week.The document, written by strategy specialist Alireza Forghani, outlined the reasons why, "In the name of Allah, Iran must attack Israel by 2014." Claiming to only represent the personal opinion of its author, and not the Iranian government, the doctrine was published on a website believed to have close ties with the Ayatollah.Forghani called the Jewish state a "cancerous tumor for the Middle East" and reminded his readers that "All our troubles are due to Israel!""Every Muslim is obliged to equip himself against Israel," he urged, reasoning that if the Muslim world does not attack Israel in the near future, "the opportunity could be lost and it may not be possible to stop them."The document explained that the war against Israel must be carried out in the name of "defensive jihad" - or the protecting of Islam against aggressors "who want to gain domination over the Muslims and kill them." It also clarified that although Israel had yet to strike Iran, its occupation of Palestinian lands already justifies an attack as Islam dictates that "the political borders [of the world] cannot divide Muslims and the earth is divided into two parts - Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries."Forghani pointed out that Israel is the only country in the world with a Jewish majority, using the findings of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics's last consensus for veracity. He posited that since Israel requires US and western support in order to attack Iran, the latter should take advantage of western "passiveness" to "wipe out Israel."The document also provides a "concise description of mid- and long-range ballistic missiles that can target territories of this regional cancerous tumor" and destroy Israel in "less than nine minutes."Read the full story here.

• First foreign troops in Syria back Homs rebels.Damascus and Moscow at odds.(Debka).British and Qatari special operations units are operating with rebel forces under cover in the Syrian city of Homs just 162 kilometers from Damascus, according to debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources. The foreign troops are not engaged in direct combat with the Syrian forces bombarding different parts of Syria's third largest city of 1.2 million. They are tactical advisers, manage rebel communications lines and relay their requests for arms, ammo, fighters and logistical aid to outside suppliers, mostly in Turkey.This site is the first to report the presence of foreign military forces in any of the Syrian uprising's embattled areas. Our sources report the two foreign contingents have set up four centers of operation - in the northern Homs district of Khaldiya, Bab Amro in the east, and Bab Derib and Rastan in the north. Each district is home to about a quarter of a million people.Our military sources also report that Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 8, Assad sent the 40th Mechanized Brigade of heavy T-72 tanks to Homs for an all-out effort to beat the rebellion, counter the foreign contingents and reinforce the 90th Infantry Brigade commanded by his kinsman, Gen. Zuhair al-Assad, the backbone of the military force battering the city for the past five days at the cost of hundreds of dead.  The presence of the British and Qatari troops was seized on by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan for the new plan he unveiled to parliament in Ankara Tuesday, Feb. 7. Treating the British-Qatari contingents as the first foreign foot wedged through the Syrian door, his plan hinges on consigning a new Turkish-Arab force to Homs through that door and under the protection of those contingents. Later, they would go to additional flashpoint cities.In the close to eleven months of the Syrian revolt, Erdogan has hatched more than one scheme for countering the Assad regime's savage crackdown on dissent. His most persistent was a plan for the creation of military buffer zones to shelter rebels and civilians persecuted by the Syrian authorities. But nothing came of those plans because, every time they came up, Assad reinforced his contingents on the Turkish border and deployed air defense and surface-to-surface missile batteries. He made it clear that the first Turk crossing the border would spark a full-scale war.Read the full story here.

• Gaza Hamas chief to visit Iran this week: officials.(AlArabiya).The Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, is on Friday to make a visit to Iran, which is celebrating the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian government officials said.The Palestinian leader was to be received by Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, the officials said, without giving other details or the duration of the visit.Media said Haniya would hold talks with Iranian officials and receive an honorary degree from Tehran University.But sources close to Haniya, currently on a tour of Arab states in the Gulf, could not confirm the visit, which the Palestinian daily Al-Quds said leaders in the Gulf were urging him to call off because of their strained ties with Tehran.Israel views Hamas as a terrorist group and has accused Iran of being its main arms supplier.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is to give a speech on Saturday to mark the day 33 years ago the revolutionaries claimed victory over the deposed regime of the U.S.-backed shah, has strongly backed the Palestinian cause.He has voiced Iran’s longstanding policy of rejecting the continued existence of Israel and of supporting foes of the Jewish state, including the Islamist movement Hamas.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last week called Israel “a cancerous tumor that must be removed, and God willing it will be.”Hamas this week signed a deal with its rival, Fatah, which runs the West Bank under Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, to form a consensus government ruling both Palestinian territories.Israel has rejected the union, and warned Abbas to choose between reconciliation with Hamas and making peace with the Jewish state.A senior Fatah official has told AFP the new Palestinian government would be announced in Cairo on February 18.Read the full story here.