Video - Muqtada Al-Sadr: 'Iraqi Militias Must Not Get Involved in Wars outside Iraq; Iraqi Army, Not Militias, Must Be in Charge of Mosul Liberation'

Trump has no influence on the predetermined American policy. I see him as a mere pawn on the chessboard. He is meaningless. He can only implement the predetermined policy. If he is brave, and wants to do things that run counter to the predetermined American policy, he will be committing [political] suicide. Transcript HT Memri.

Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr turns up the heat on embattled Iraqi government.

Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr turns up the heat on embattled Iraqi government. (AlAraby).

Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has given Prime Minister Haidar Abadi 24 hours to form a cabinet of technocrats meant to replace party-affiliated politicians accused of perpetuating a system based on nepotism and patronage.

Addressing his followers during Friday prayers outside the main gates of Baghdad's restricted Green Zone, Sadr vowed to support any "reasonable" reforms proposed by Abadi, threatening to launch protests against any MPs who do not vote in favour of the reforms.


Asaad al-Nasseri, the Friday prayer preacher, also threatened to escalate against the government if it fails to form a new cabinet by the end of Sadr's deadline, calling to hold corrupt officials accountable for what has become of Iraq today.

"Our enemy; the Islamic State, and corrupt politicians all aim to destroy and drain the Iraqi people," he said, describing the Green Zone as a "barren" area.

On Friday morning, Sadr's followers responded to his calls and set up a protest camp outside the Green Zone, which houses Abadi's office, parliament and foreign embassies, to pressure the government into a swift cabinet reshuffle.

The protest camps were not authorized but no incident has been reported so far and the demonstrators even bonded with the security forces.


But the mood could change when the deadline expires as Sadr has threatened that his supporters will storm the Green Zone if their demands are not met.

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatens to storm Baghdad's Green Zone.

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatens to storm Baghdad's Green Zone. (AlArabiya).

Powerful Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has threatened to send his supporters to "storm" Baghdad's Green Zone, home to the country's government headquarters and foreign diplomatic missions.

Sadr made the threat on the back of a worsening political crisis in the ranks of the ruling National Alliance over quotas in the expected cabinet reshuffle.

But Sadr reassured foreign embassies they would not be harmed.

"If the people decided to enter the Green (Zone), there will be no assaults on embassies," he said.

"As for the embassies of the occupation Britain and America, I have told them that they must remain silent or withdraw. If they intervene in any way (against protesters) this will make them among the villains."

The escalation by Muqatada Sadr follows the failure of negotiations among the factions that make up the ruling coalition, regarding the political reforms planned by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Reported Iranian and even US mediation efforts have been in vain as a critical meeting of the National Alliance in Karbala on Sunday concluded without an agreement.

Sources present in the meeting told The New Arab that  talks were tense and unfriendly, prompting Muqtada al-Sadr to withdraw.

The sources said Sadr issued direct threats to other members of the coalition present if his group's demands were not met.

Sadr has since pledged protests would continue, accusing the prime minister of having no clear project. Sadr said the protests would remain peaceful, confirming major demonstrations would take place on Friday in Baghdad and other regions of Iraq.

#BreakingNews:
Just received a communique 4m Moqtada al-Sadr office in #Najaf. Would he repeats d experience of d #USA embassy 1979 n Iraq?

— Elijah J. Magnier (@EjmAlrai) March 8, 2016

Ayatollah Sistani calls on Iraqis to enlist in Fight against “Terrorists”.

Ayatollah Sistani calls on Iraqis to enlist in Fight against “Terrorists”. Source

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of most Iraqi Shiites, intervened forcefully in Iraqi politics on Thursday and Friday, giving his support to the national army and urging Iraqi men to volunteer to enlist and to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He termed the hyper-Sunni group, which has taken over the major northern city of Mosul, “terrorists.”

Unlike Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the head of the religious fundamentalist Da’wa Islamiyah (Islamic Mission) Party, Sistani did not call on private militias or paramilitaries to take up the fight. He specifically urged people to enlist in the national security forces (“al-quwwat al-amniyyah“). Sistani is said to want to improve the morale of the army, which collapsed in Mosul and elsewhere in the Sunni north.

Neither Sistani nor his representative used the word “jihad” (struggle for the faith, which can holy war under certain circumstances), contrary to what many newspapers are reporting.

In Shiite Islam most authorities do not believe it is any longer permissible to wage offensive holy war, as opposed to taking defensive action. And he is not calling for vigilanteism or revenge.

Sistani carefully used the language of patriotism, not religion. He spoke of citizens defending their country. He did say that Iraqi troops killed in the fight with the would-be al-Qaeda affiliate are considered martyrs to the faith.

On Tuesday, Sistani had issued a statement in which he called on Iraqi politicians to unite in the face of the ISIS challenge and to redouble their efforts in standing against the “terrorists,” and in providing protection to citizens from their evil deeds. He underlined the ayatollahs’ support for and backing for the armed forces and urged them to be patient and steadfast in the face of the aggressors. (Sistani is said to have been most dismayed by the way he Iraqi soldiers ran away from Mosul.)

Sistani clearly considers the rise of radical, Sunni ISIS as of major importance. Sunni fundamentalist fighters have vowed to take the Shiite holy city of Najaf and blow up its shrine.

On Friday, Sistani’s representative in the other major holy city, Karbala, gave a Friday prayer sermon elaborating on the written statement. Sheikh Abd al-Mahdi Karbala’i said that in Sistani’s view (a view binding on believers who follow him) “It is incumbent on citizens who are able to carry weapons and to fight the terrorists, defending their country, their people and their holy places, to volunteer and to enlist in the security forces so as to achieve this sacred objective.”

Many news reports are misreporting Sistani as calling for young men to simply arm themselves and go fight the Sunni extremists. Instead, he is acting as a recruitment agent and cheerleader for the Iraqi national army.

There is nothing sectarian in this call except the need to protect the shrines sacred to the Shiites; but note that many Sunnis revere figures like Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, and would be upset to see his mausoleum in Najaf reburied. Moreover, the puritanical ISIS poses a threat to other holy places such as the mystical Sufi shrines of the Kurds.

Sistani has sometimes been forced to rely on Shiite militias for his own safety, but he does not approve of paramiitaries and wants to see the Iraqi state build responsible army and police.

Sistani did intervene to insist in 2003 that the Iraqi constitution must be drafted by an elected constituent assembly of Iraqis, rather than being written by American viceroy Paul Bremer.

One may conclude that Sistani sees Sunni radicals taking over northern Iraq as the biggest crisis since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Sistani is enormously popular among Iraqi Shiites and many will in fact risk their lives if he asks it of them.

Related:

Muqtada al-Sadr Calls for Protecting Iraq’s Christian, Islamic Religious Sites from ISIL.

Muqtada al-Sadr Calls for Protecting Iraq’s Christian, Islamic Religious Sites from ISIL.

Muqtada al-Sadr Calls for Protecting Iraq’s Christian, Islamic Religious Sites from ISIL.(Taz).

Muqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Iraqi cleric, called on forming defense units against radical militants for protecting the country’s religious sites.

A state of emergency was declared in Iraq by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday after radical militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Levant attacked and occupied the oil-rich city of Mosul, Al-Alam reported.

Sadr said in a written statement on Wednesday that he was ready "to form peace units to defend the holy places" of both Muslims and Christians, in cooperation with the government.

His call came after Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said the government would arm citizens who volunteer to fight militants, following the fall of Mosul and a swathe of other territory to ISIL.

Bloodshed in Iraq is now running at its highest levels since 2006-2007 in which tens of thousands were killed.

The Rising Sectarian Violence in Iraq - Obama: 'If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!'

The Rising Sectarian Violence in Iraq - Obama: If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!(UskowiOnIran).

Three bombings, including an attack on an elementary school, killed at least 19 people and wounded at least 167 in Iraq Sunday. Two suicide truck bombers exploded almost simultaneously Sunday morning at a police station and a school in al-Qubba, a predominantly Shiite area in the outskirts of Mosul. A third attack, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest, targeted Shiite pilgrims in northeast Baghdad's al-Qahira neighborhood. (CNN, 7 October)

On Saturday, 51 people were killed and 107 others were wounded in a suicide attack that targeted Shiite pilgrims in northeastern Baghdad.

Note: The frightful escalation of violence in Iraq could well lead to a cycle of sectarian violence, pitting AQI and the Sunni militants against Shia militias and Shia-controlled security forces in the country. It’s always been easy to provoke a religious war, but it is so difficult to put a stop to it once it is started.

In the past two months, bombings by AQI and its affiliated groups have killed so many that it seems they are starting a war on the Shias. The government in Baghdad has responded by mass arrests that seem so indiscriminatory, resulting in heightened frustration and resentment among the Sunnis. And the government is seen weak by both sides, and is increasingly under pressure by the Shia militias and their Iranian backers and organizers to retaliate forcefully against the AQI and the Sunnis.

The introduction of Iranian-back Shia militias into the country’s volatile situation, however, will erode whatever credibility the Maliki government and the Iraqi security forces still have among the Sunnis. The government and its security forces will be seen as controlled by the Shia militias and Iran, and in turn the AQI attacks will increase and intensify even further, bringing violent retaliation by the Shia militias and security forces. The cycle of violence will go on and intensify.

Cooler heads must prevail. This blogger has argued that Moqtada Sadr needs to be more involved in preventing the violence to get out of hand, stopping Malaki to use Shia militias in fighting AQI.

If the cycle of violence intensifies, Sadr will be under pressure to intervene militarily on behalf of the Shias, and that’s when the Shia-Sunni violence will become an all-out religious war. The Iranians too must stop organizing Iraqi Shia militias to assassinate Sunni militants and fully enter into an armed conflict with their opponents. A Sunni-Shia war in Iraq is not in the national interests of the Iranians either. The creation of a unified and truly non-sectarian government in Baghdad is the answer to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the country.
Hmmm....Obama: 'If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!'

Iran promotes a conservative cleric close to its supreme leader to replace aging spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites.

        Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi


Iran promotes a conservative cleric close to its supreme leader to replace aging spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites.(AlArabiya).Iran is promoting a conservative cleric close to its supreme leader as a possible successor for the aging spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites, a move that would give Tehran a powerful platform to influence its neighbor, according to figures close to Iraq’s religious leadership. The 81-year-old spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is one of the most influential figures in Iraq, revered by its Shiite majority as well as by Shiites around the world. In the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein, he was strong enough to shape the new Iraq, forcing American leaders and Iraqi politicians to revise parts of their transition plans he objected to. The man Iran is maneuvering in hopes of eventually replacing him is Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a prominent insider in the clerical hierarchy that rules Iran. He was the head of Iran’s judiciary for 10 years until 2009, playing a major role in suppressing the country’s reform movement, and sits on one of Iran’s main ruling councils. Shahroudi has started to build a presence in Najaf, the Iraqi holy city of dozens of seminaries that is the center of Shiism’s religious leadership, to which many of the world’s 200 million Shiites turn for spiritual and political guidance. Posters bearing his portrait have sprung up in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, a bastion of Shiite activism and home to some 2.5 million Shiites. Iran’s growing influence in Iraq - through the economy and ties with Shiite politicians in Baghdad - is already a source of alarm to the United States and its Gulf Arab allies who see Shiite-majority Iran as a rival. It would boost Tehran’s voice in Iraq even more if Shahroudi ever succeeds al-Sistani as “al-marjaa al-akbar,” or “the greatest object of emulation.” The 63-year-old Shahroudi would likely take an even more assertive political role than al-Sistani has. Al-Sistani adheres to a “quietist” school of Shiism that rejects formal rule by clerics, in contrast to Iran’s school in which clerics hold ultimate power. Also, al-Sistani has lived in seclusion for years - he is thought not to have left his Najaf house since 2004 - and some feel he has grown out of sync with Iraq’s new generation of young and empowered Shiites. Disillusioned over unemployment and erratic services, many young Shiites are looking for a more dynamic religious leadership to counter what they see as the rising power of Sunni fundamentalists in the Arab world. “Iraq’s Shiites are deeply politicized and they have had enough of traditional marjaiyah (religious authorities) like al-Sistani’s,” said one insider in Najaf, who is in daily contact with the city’s top clerics. “Iran is taking advantage of this by working energetically to replace him with one of its own.” The insider is one of six who are well connected to the Shiites’ secretive religious establishment in Najaf and in Baghdad. They said Shahroudi appears to be angling for the post. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Al-Sistani, who was treated in London for heart problems in 2004, remains healthy and alert, according to visitors who saw him recently. But his advanced age has fueled speculation about his succession in Najaf. But the succession does not necessarily have to wait until al-Sistani’s death. It could effectively take place if al-Sistani is deemed too old to guide his followers. The position of al-marjaa al-akbar is considered the highest in Shia Islam’s spiritual hierarchy, more elevated than the several dozen clerics with “marjaa” - or “object of emulation” - status in the Shiite world. Pious Shiites generally choose a marjaa to follow. Al-Sistani has been al-marjaa al-akbar since the 1990s. Filling the post is done by an informal process of consensus among senior and middle-ranking clerics, aimed at choosing the learned and respected figure. “Campaigning” for it means showing religious clout among Shiites in general and in Najaf specifically. Ibrahim al-Baghdadi, Shahroudi’s top aide in Najaf, would not say if Shahroudi has ambitions for the position. Morteza Monajjem, a spokesman for Shahroudi’s office in the holy city of Qom, Iran’s religious capital, said the cleric “has no plan to stand next to other marjaas” and “has not officially defined himself as a marjaa.” Still, Shahroudi is laying the necessary groundwork. 
He opened a representative office in Najaf in October and plans to visit the city soon, according to al-Baghdadi. He has begun paying monthly stipends to poor seminary students, organizing “study circles” and collecting the “khoms” from followers - a tithe of a fifth of one’s income. He has sent cleric-deputies to Shiite provinces in Iraq, al-Baghdadi said. He has also increased his issuing of fatwas, or religious edicts, in response to questions sent to his website. Any ayatollah with aspirations of becoming a marjaa must write a religious textbook known as a “Tawdih al-Masail,” or “Clarification of Issues,” laying out rules for daily religious practice. Shahroudi published his just over a year ago. 
Shahroudi is already known to be the spiritual leader of powerful Iraqi factions, including followers of the Badr Organization as well as most members of the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah Brigades militia active in southern Iraq, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a hardline faction. Among his students in Qom were Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, and Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Iraqi politician. 
Shahroudi is also believed to have replaced a grand ayatollah who died in 2010 as the spiritual mentor of the Dawa Party, Iraq’s oldest and most powerful Shiite political group. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Dawa leader, visited Shahroudi during a recent visit to Iran. Shahroudi also rose in Iran’s clerical leadership. He is so close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he has been cited by many observers as his possible successor. Still, the Najaf insiders caution there are challenges in his path to succeed al-Sistani. Muqtada al-Sadr, the young anti-American cleric whose followers have 40 of parliament’s 325 seats, has been in Iran studying to become a marjaa. But he is believed to need several more years before he can reach the rank of ayatollah, a status below marjaa, according to one of his aides in Iraq. 
One of Shahroudi’s former students in Qom - now an Iraqi politician - said Shahroudi is strongly positioned. “He is relatively young, he is familiar with modern day issues and has impeccable family pedigree,” he said. “The Shiite street wants a dynamic marjaa who can compensate it for the failure of the government.”Hmmmmm............Obama: If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!"Success"...indeed.Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                    Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation updated:  Japan 5.1 !More info here.

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• Breaking News ! A few moments ago, Israel's Navy was given orders to board the'Gaza Flotilla' boats after all efforts to contact them failed.(IsraelMatzav).Read the full story here.
• 1.Th.Update - Video - Israel Navy contacts the vessels and offers them to dock in Ashdod port. Here.
• 2.Th Update - Israel Navy Soldiers Board Provocation Vessels, Leading Them to Ashdod Port.(IDFSpokesPerson).A short while ago, Israel Navy soldiers boarded the vessels which were en-route to the Gaza Strip, attempting to break the maritime security blockade that is in accordance with international law.
  The boarding was carried out following numerous calls to the activists onboard and during different points at sea. Following their unwillingness to cooperate, and after ignoring calls to divert to the port of Ashdod, the decision was made to board the vessels and lead them there.
  The Israel Navy soldiers operated as planned, and took every precaution necessary to ensure the safety of the activists onboard the vessels as well as themselves.
  Upon arrival of the vessels at the Ashdod port, the activists will be transferred to the custody of the Israel Police and immigration authorities in the Ministry of Interior.The Israel Navy notified the vessels that the area they are en-route to, off the coast of Gaza, is under a maritime security blockade in accordance with international law. The Israel Navy advised the vessels that they may turn back at any point, thereby not breaking the maritime security blockade. In addition, Israel Navy soldiers presented the activists onboard with the legal options of transferring supplies to the Gaza via the existing land crossings and after coordinating with the relevant Israeli Authorities.Read and see full story (Video+Pictures) here.

• The Balfour Declaration Was Issued 94 Years Ago In 1925 Balfour Arrived to See the Jewish State in Formation.(PictureaDay).The government of Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration 94 years ago this week, on November 2, 1917. The document in effect served as the birth certificate for a Jewish national home.British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour's declaration was in the form of a letter to a leader of the British Jewish community. It stated:

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The British Army had just captured Be’er Sheva (October 31) after months of trying to break through the Ottoman army’s Gaza-Be’er Sheva defense line. The British goal was to push north and capture Jerusalem by Christmas.  In April 1925, Lord Balfour arrived in Palestine to lay the cornerstone for Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. He was received as a hero in Tel Aviv and Rishon LeZion.See the pictures of this event here.

• The Tobin Tax Mirage - Sarkozy and Merkel lean on Obama for a levy on financial transactions.(WSJ).What happens when you get George Soros, Tom Harkin, Bill Gates, Ralph Nader and the Archbishop of Canterbury together in a French hotel room with a stick of incense and a magnum of champagne—and turn off the lights?Answer: the Tobin Tax.OK, so we need to work on our punchlines. But a tax on financial transactions is exactly what these characters have all endorsed in one form or another as the miracle cure to the world's economic ills. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have also picked up the cause, and they are leaning on President Obama to endorse it at this week's G-20 summit in Cannes, France. So here we go again.Like bell-bottoms and wide lapels, a financial-transaction tax is a fad that goes back to the 1970s. It started as Nobel laureate James Tobin's idea for reducing currency speculation in the 1970s. It then became a rallying cry for the anti-globalization crowd in the 1990s and resurfaced again three years ago as a way of taking out aggression on bailed-out bankers.The basic idea is to impose a seemingly small tax—between 0.01% and 0.1%—on trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives, foreign exchange and the like. Depending on the justification du jour, this magic tax would discourage speculation, penalize bankers, pay for bank bailouts, or raise large amounts of revenue for cash-strapped governments.The main reason the scheme hasn't been enacted anywhere is that even a small tax on every financial transaction would drive business someplace else unless everyone was in it together. The Europeans, who have been toying with imposing a transaction tax of 0.1% on securities and 0.01% on derivatives, estimate that such a move could wipe out 90% of derivatives trading in Europe and cost the British economy and its Treasury tens of billions of pounds a year. And still they favor it, hoping only that the idea will in time gain global favor and leave nowhere for capital to flee.Enter Barack Obama. The U.S. government is desperate for revenue to pay for Mr. Obama's spending sprees. But the President faces a Republican-controlled House of Representatives that is highly resistant to raising taxes amid a weak recovery and a looming election. For Mr. Obama, a tax that putatively falls on speculators, traders and bankers ticks a lot of short-term political boxes. It throws a bone to the Occupy Wall Street crowd by dinging the financiers. It brings in (on paper) a decent amount of money, thanks to the huge volumes traded in some markets. It would give the President another opportunity to claim that his opponents across the aisle were favoring Wall Street greed over Main Street need. And by banding together with the Europeans, Mr. Obama would claim that this tax wouldn't merely drive jobs, businesses and tax revenues from Chicago, Boston and New York to London.The trouble is, they would still probably pack up and go—perhaps to Switzerland, or Hong Kong, or any other enterprising state that wanted to attract talent and capital. As for those fabled revenues, if governments shut down 90% of derivatives trading in London or New York, they would soon run out of transactions to tax. The appeal of a Tobin tax rests on the myth that there is some vast pool of financial transactions that are sufficiently price-insensitive that you can skim a few dollars off each and no one will notice or care, creating a money-machine for the state. Memo to Cannes: These finance guys make the kind of money they do because they notice where the pennies add up. Two years ago at the G-20 summit in Scotland, Tim Geithner played the grown-up by shutting down speculation that the world was ripe for a global financial transaction tax. For all we know, the U.S. Treasury Secretary is still of that view. It's also America's good fortune that only Congress could enact the tax, which isn't likely to happen.Then again, as the history of the Tobin tax shows, bad ideas never die, and sometimes they even survive to become law. If the President wants to do the global economy a favor and assert America's economic leadership, he could put politics aside for an afternoon and explain the real-world consequences of James Tobin's ruinous idea.Read the full story here.
• Related - G20: Bill Gates adds his weight to calls for Robin Hood tax.(Guardian).Read the full story here.

• Unions and #OccupyWallStreet Reveal Their Hidden Agenda: A Worldwide Financial Tax.(BigGovernment).If there’s one thing about the Marxists controlling today’s unions, it is that they are predictable. If you watch them long enough, the pattern is always the same: Demand the extreme with something attainable in mind as the fallback position.In labor relations, the making of outrageous demands is a classic negotiating tactic at the bargaining table because union negotiators know company negotiators will only agree to what they are willing to based on business economics. In politics, however, the union tactic is an absolute winner because their prey (politicians, many of whom are bought by unions anyway) always fall for it and, besides, it’s only the taxpayers who are stuck with the tab. One thing though, whether at the bargaining table or in politics, unions always reveal their hidden agenda—eventually.In the case of the #OccupyWallStreet, union bosses were eager to capitalize on a slick ad campaign and some miscreant professional protesters to create a “movement” to aid their own sagging fortunes. Despite the multiple rapes, the assaults and drug dealing, open sex, public masturbation, anti-American rants, and violence, from the beginning, unions were eager to jump on board with the Neo-Communist squatters, their anti-Semites and their useful idiots in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Since then, unions have paid for protesters, water, food, legal fees, advertising and, in West Virginia, the AFL-CIO has even offered its property to use as a new “occupy” site.Despite their more ambitious young allies who have called for the seizing private property and the “de-privatization of everything,” however, unions have known that their movement wouldn’t lead to a fully Marxist nation (yet) and, as a result, have had a more attainable goal in mind from the beginning. In addition, with winter approaching, union bosses know they need to being this movement to a close sometime soon and, up until now, they haven’t formally issued their real demands.On Thursday, the #OccupyWallStreet and union movement will be taking is carnival show on the road to the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C. What is their agenda? To protest for a worldwide tax on all financial transactions involving the purchase or sale of stocks, bonds, commodities, unit trusts, mutual funds, and derivatives such as futures and options. They call it the “Robin Hood Tax.”

Via The Hill: Organizers estimate more than 1,500 union members from more than 20 labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of County, State and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA), will be outside the Treasury Department Thursday to call for what has become known as the “Robin Hood Tax.”Occupy Wall Street protesters also are being bused in from New York by National Nurses United (NNU) — yet another example of the evolving relationship between labor and the protesters that have targeted the financial sector.Karen Higgins, co-president of the NNU, told The Hill that instituting a financial transactions tax could help fund social programs that are under threat.“This is actually the first step to do something concrete and beneficial and not harm others by taking money out of social programs that help people survive,” Higgins said. “It is only reasonable that Wall Street contributes its fair share.”Never mind the fact that the “social programs” that are bankrupting Europe and America with insurmountable debt are largely union driven, the union solution is to raise more revenue through a global tax.It’s actually not a new idea. In fact, AFL-CIO boss, Richard Trumka, has been talking with the European socialists for over a year about it, has kept it in his dialogue throughout his support of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, and is now in Europe at the G-20 Summit protesting for it.

From the AFL-CIO: One key part of the plan global [union] leaders will be calling for is a global financial speculation tax. In the U.S., a tiny tax on financial transactions could raise hundreds of billions in revenue that could fund education and create jobs rebuilding our country, while discouraging speculation and encouraging long-term investment. Both Warren Buffett and Pete Peterson have urged Congress to consider a financial speculation tax. At the G-20 meeting, Bill Gates will be making proposals about financing for development.While international labor leaders push for a speculation tax during the G-20, the AFL-CIO will join working people from the area, participants from Occupy Wall Street and the National Nurses Union at a rally in Washington, DC on November 3 to call on U.S. elected officials to support the global movement for a financial transaction tax to help heal global economies.It’s likely been part of #OccupyWallStreet’s grand plan all along, as the originator, adbusters’ Kalle Lasn mentioned in a Salon piece on October 4th and again on October 18th which, coincidentally, the National Nurses’ United also mentioned it on the same day in a press release supporting the Worcester, Massachusetts occupation.Incidentally, Bill Gates (referenced above), Warren Buffet and George Soros (of Zuccotti Park ownership fame) are all supporting the Robin Hood Tax.So, for those #OWS empathizers on the Right who thought this is just a movement of frustrated, out-of-work Americans: As usual, you’ve been played by better tacticians and negotiators from the Left.Of course, there is one thing you can be certain of: Regardless whether unions fail at achieving the Robin Hood Tax during America’s fall, the weather will warm up by April and they will be back in the streets through next November. [You can take that one to the bank...so to speak.]“Hmmmm.......I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776.Read the full story here.

• 15 Trillion Dollars In Debt, 45 Million Americans On Food Stamps And Zero Solutions On The Horizon.(BlacklistedNews)By MichaelSnyder.How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt? 30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt. How in the world do supposedly rational people living in “the greatest nation on earth” allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that? It almost seems like there should be some sort of official ceremony in Washington D.C. to commemorate this achievement. It really takes something special to be able to roll up 15 trilliondollars of debt. To get to this level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending. For example, did you know that the U.S. national debt grows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute? All of this debt has fueled an unprecedented boom of prosperity for the last 30 years, but now that prosperity is drying up. Today, there are over 45 million Americans that are on food stamps. America is being deindustrialized at a blinding pace and there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. Poverty is exploding all over the nation, and millions of families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Unfortunately, there are zero solutions on the horizon. The leaders of both major political parties seem even more clueless right now than in past years. We really could use some hope, but hope is in very short supply.When evaluating the health of America’s economy, it is important not to look at the short-term numbers. Rather, the key is to look at the long-term trends and the balance sheet numbers.For example, if a mother and a father gave their teenage kids a bunch of credit cards and told them to go out and buy whatever they wanted, that would create a lot of “economic activity”, but it would also send that family to the poorhouse really quickly.Well, we have basically done the same thing as a nation. We are drowning in debt, and all of this debt is going to destroy us financially.Unfortunately, the federal government continues to spend money as if there was no tomorrow. Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.When you are running up a credit card, it can be a lot of fun and it can seem like there aren’t any consequences.But when it comes to debt, there are always consequences. The following is what former Republican Senator Alan Simpson (of the Simpson-Bowles Commission) recently had to say about the horrific debt crisis we are currently facing….“It’s very simple. If you spend more than you earn, you lose your butt”In the United States, we love to have the government spend money on all sorts of things, but we never want to pay for it.So the debt just keeps piling up higher and higher.A lot of Republicans say that spending on social programs has gotten out of control. A lot of Democrats say that spending on the military has gotten out of control.To get a really good idea of how government transfer payments have absolutely skyrocketed over the years, just check out this chart.Obviously, the course that we are on is not anywhere close to sustainable.To say that the “war on poverty” was a failure would be a huge understatement.The more money we seem to spend on social programs, the more that poverty seems to grow.Right now, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps. The economy is supposed to be “recovering”, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by over 8 percent in just the past year.Food stamps are the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned bread lines. The federal government is now feeding an almost unbelievable number of Americans.According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps. That means that approximately one out of every seven Americans is dependent on the federal government for food.That is not just a crisis – that is a total nightmare.So what can be done?Well, we certainly shouldn’t let our people starve in the streets.But handouts should only be a temporary solution.The other day, thousands upon thousands of people lined up to apply for casino jobs in south Florida. Scenes like this are going to become even more frequent in the years ahead.So do our politicians have any solutions?Of course not.The worst of the Republican candidates are actually at the top of the polls. The cold, hard truth is that Romney, Cain and Perry are all clueless when it comes to the economy.Of course you might as well call Barack Obama “Captain Clueless” when it comes to the economy. Obama keeps giving great speeches about jobs while at the same time signing more “free trade” agreements that will send thousands more businesses and millions more jobs out of the country. Even the CEOs on Obama’s jobs creation panel are shipping huge numbers of jobs out of the United States.Obama gave a speech in Washington D.C. today that exemplified his clueless approach to the economy. During the speech, Obama made the following statement….

“If Congress tells you they don’t have time, they got time to do it. We’ve been in the House of Representatives, what have you guys been debating? John, you’ve been debating a commemorative coin for baseball? You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That’s not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work”
First of all, Obama is not putting people back to work. He has been helping big corporations ship jobs out of the country at a record paceSecondly, how does he know what God wants?A lot of people actually think that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible.But it isn’t.A while after the Obama speech, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made matters worse when he told reporters the following….“I believe the phrase from the Bible is ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves”But once again, there is no such verse in the Bible.Okay, so quoting a “mystery verse” from the Bible is not that big of a thing at the end of the day, but this is yet another example of how the Obama administration just can’t seem to get anything right.Look, everyone makes mistakes once in a while. I know that I certainly do.But when you are wrong about almost everything almost all of the time, that is a major problem.Especially when you are the president of the United States.Read the full story here.

• AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka Is a Thug’s Thug.(BigGovernment).By Matthew Vadum. Richard Trumka is a thug’s thug, and a crafty one at that.The AFL-CIO boss believes the end justifies the means. Breaking the law is acceptable if it advances the cause. Unions should “forget about the law; this is about more than that,” he said at the “Future of Unions” roundtable in Detroit on April 7th.Like many union leaders, occasionally the slippery Trumka pretends to like capitalism. He supports vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, not because he actually believes in them but because his members work in industries that depend on their enforcement. Turning a blind eye to the manufacture of counterfeit machine parts could put union members out of work.But unlike most high-profile leftists, Trumka doesn’t even make an effort to conceal his radicalism. “Being called a socialist is a step up for me,” he told Bloomberg News in June. In 1994, Trumka proudly accepted the Eugene Debs Award named after the five-time presidential candidate and labor organizer who founded the Socialist Party of America.As an AFL-CIO executive, Trumka helped to create “Union Summer,” a program for training young people as organizers and political activists. Participants were made to recite a pledge called “Working Class Commitment” that included the Marxist idea “that we [union workers] produce the world’s wealth … [and] will end all oppression.”Trumka, a mine worker-cum-lawyer, admits he got involved in “the labor movement not because I wanted to negotiate wages,” but “because I saw it as a vehicle to do massive social change to include lots of people.” As he’s climbed the ranks of AFL-CIO leadership, Trumka has moved away from his modest roots. His 2011 compensation package at AFL-CIO totaled $293,750, according to LM-2 disclosure forms on file with the U.S. Department of Labor. Trumka apparently lives in a four-bathroom house assessed at $747,650 in Rockville, MD, a suburb of Washington, D.C.He helped to turn the AFL-CIO away from boosting wages and improving working conditions. Now, the labor federation focuses on recruiting government workers who benefit from higher tax rates and bigger government, a growing constituency within the Democratic Party. The federation also blackmails employers by generating adverse publicity, harassing investors, and linking arms with the media and radical activists.While at the helm of the AFL-CIO, Trumka helped repeal a longtime rule that banned Communists and fellow-travelers from leadership positions in the organization and its unions. The move to open the previously patriotic union to subversives delighted the Communist Party USA. “The radical shift in both leadership and policy is a very positive, even historic change,” CPUSA National Chairman Gus Hall said in 1996.Trumka bears more than a passing resemblance to legendary gangster Al Capone, who ruled Chicagoland with an iron fist during the Prohibition Era.Like Capone, Trumka stays close to his politicians. Trumka brags about his coziness with the Obama administration. “I’m at the White House a couple times a week – two, three times a week,” he said. “I have conversations every day with someone in the White House or in the administration. Every day.” Soon after being inaugurated, President Obama named Trumka to his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which is akin to inviting an arsonist to advise on fire safety.Both Capone and Trumka share an irredeemable corruptness. Capone bought and sold politicians by the dozen, while Trumka has on more than one occasion refused to cooperate with investigations into union corruption. Trumka indicated that he would have invoked the Fifth Amendment if he had been subpoenaed by Congress to testify about money-laundering schemes in 1998. His boss, John Sweeney, covered for him instead.And like Capone, whose enforcer, Frank Nitti, educated Saul Alinsky in mob management techniques, Trumka uses violence and intimidation to work his will. (My book, Subversion Inc., details the sordid story of Alinsky and Nitti.)Violence was commonplace when Trumka was president of the AFL-CIO-affiliated United Mine Workers of America from 1982 to 1995. In 1993, he told Illinois UMW members to “kick the shit out of every last” worker who violated the sanctity of his picket lines. Union goons damaged homes, fired gunshots at a mining company’s office, and killed the power supply for a mine, stranding 93 miners below ground.After a UMW member shot and killed non-union worker Eddie York, eight UMW strikers threw rocks at security guards who came to check on the victim. Trumka not only refused to discipline the hoodlums, but used a metaphor to justify their behavior. “[I]f you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger,” he said.Trumka fought a lawsuit filed by York’s widow for four years and then abruptly settled out of court. The legal bargain came when federal prosecutors announced they planned to release evidence from the trial of Jerry Dale Lowe, who was previously convicted on conspiracy and weapons charges related to York’s murder.Trumka encouraged and approved acts of violence by UMW strikers during a labor dispute in the late 1980s. As Virginia Circuit Court Judge Donald McGlothlin, Jr. declared, “The evidence shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that violent activities are being organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”Of course President Obama is eager to help Trumka push his violent past down the memory hole. The White House website states that in 1990 Trumka received the Labor Responsibility Award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change “[b]ecause he consistently utilized non-violent civil disobedience throughout” strikes. Yasser Arafat’s claim to the Nobel Peace Prize enjoys roughly the same moral legitimacy.It seems doubtful that Trumka could have gotten away with his shenanigans on the national stage in Capone’s day. But unlike in the Roaring Twenties, today there’s no Eliot Ness to go after Trumka. President Obama would never hire such an investigator and cross such an important friend and political ally.Trumka has reciprocated by vilifying Obama’s adversaries, including the Tea Party movement that aims to restore fiscal responsibility to government. Sounding like crackpot actress Janeane Garofalo, Trumka says anti-Obama sentiment among voters may be blamed on “right-wing race-haters” who “just can’t get past the idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man.”In the upcoming presidential election cycle, Trumka claims AFL-CIO will be more independent of Democrats because lawmakers in that party haven’t completely implemented Big Labor’s agenda.“We’re going to use a lot of our money to build structures that work for working people,” he said. “You’re going to see us give less money to build structures for others, and more of our money will be used to build our own structure.”Trumka is establishing a so-called super PAC that will allow AFL-CIO to pump limitless quantities of cash into politics. The goal is obviously to make sure the Democratic Party and President Obama don’t move rightward during election season next year.For all we know, Obama told Trumka to do it.Hmmmm.......I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776.Read the full story here.

• Dr. Ron Paul (R-TX) signs letter to Supercommittee Supporting Tax Increases.(Shenandoah).By John Galt.Why Doctor Paul? Why?What reasoning could there ever be for signing a letter supporting a tax increase? The Republicans via media reports are acting oh so cleverly by claiming they oppose tax increases, but in reality that is what they are supporting cloaked in the guise of “increasing revenue” using “fees” (aka, taxes). Dr. Paul should be held to account for this.I would love to hear him defend this position in the next Presidential debate because in my book, that is a huge strike against the principles of a true Conservative Libertarian.The full letter is below for my reader’s viewing displeasure.Read the letter here.

• CIA follows Twitter, Facebook.(HurriyetDaily).In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets up to 5 million a day.At the agency's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the "vengeful librarians" also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms, anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn't know exactly when revolution might hit, said the center's director, Doug Naquin.The center already had "predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press at the center. CIA officials said it was the first such visit by a reporter the agency has ever granted.The CIA facility was set up in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, with its first priority to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation. But its several hundred analysts 'the actual number is classified ' track a broad range, from Chinese Internet access to the mood on the street in Pakistan.While most are based in Virginia, the analysts also are scattered throughout U.S. embassies worldwide to get a step closer to the pulse of their subjects.The most successful analysts, Naquin said, are something like the heroine of the crime novel "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," a quirky, irreverent computer hacker who "knows how to find stuff other people don't know exists." Those with a masters' degree in library science and multiple languages, especially those who grew up speaking another language, "make a powerful open source officer," Naquin said.The center had started focusing on social media after watching the Twitter-sphere rock the Iranian regime during the Green Revolution of 2009, when thousands protested the results of the elections that put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power. "Farsi was the third largest presence in social media blogs at the time on the Web," Naquin said.The center's analysis ends up in President Barack Obama's daily intelligence briefing in one form or another, almost every day.After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May, the CIA followed Twitter to give the White House a snapshot of world public opinion.Since tweets can't necessarily be pegged to a geographic location, the analysts broke down reaction by languages. The result: The majority of Urdu tweets, the language of Pakistan, and Chinese tweets, were negative. China is a close ally of Pakistan's. Pakistani officials protested the raid as an affront to their nation's sovereignty, a sore point that continues to complicate U.S.-Pakistani relations.When the president gave his speech addressing Mideast issues a few weeks after the raid, the tweet response over the next 24 hours came in negative from Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, the Persian Gulf and Israel, too, with speakers of Arabic and Turkic tweets charging that Obama favored Israel, and Hebrew tweets denouncing the speech as pro-Arab.In the next few days, major news media came to the same conclusion, as did analysis by the covert side of U.S. intelligence based on intercepts and human intelligence gathered in the region.The center is also in the process of comparing its social media results with the track record of polling organizations, trying to see which produces more accurate results, Naquin said."We do what we can to caveat that we may be getting an overrepresentation of the urban elite," said Naquin, acknowledging that only a small slice of the population in many areas they are monitoring has access to computers and Internet. But he points out that access to social media sites via cellphones is growing in areas like Africa, meaning a "wider portion of the population than you might expect is sounding off and holding forth than it might appear if you count the Internet hookups in a given country." Sites like Facebook and Twitter also have become a key resource for following a fast-moving crisis such as the riots that raged across Bangkok in April and May of last year, the center's deputy director said. The Associated Press agreed not to identify him because he sometimes still works undercover in foreign countries.As director, Naquin is identified publicly by the agency although the location of the center is kept secret to deter attacks, whether physical or electronic.The deputy director was one of a skeleton crew of 20 U.S. government employees who kept the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok running throughout the rioting as protesters surged through the streets, swarming the embassy neighborhood and trapping U.S. diplomats and Thais alike in their homes.The army moved in, and traditional media reporting slowed to a trickle as local reporters were either trapped or cowed by government forces."But within an hour, it was all surging out on Twitter and Facebook," the deputy director said. The CIA homed in on 12 to 15 users who tweeted situation reports and cellphone photos of demonstrations. The CIA staff cross-referenced the tweeters with the limited news reports to figure out who among them was providing reliable information. Tweeters also policed themselves, pointing out when someone else had filed an inaccurate account."That helped us narrow down to those dozen we could count on," he said.Ultimately, some two-thirds of the reports coming out of the embassy being sent back to all branches of government in Washington came from the CIA's open source analysis throughout the crisis.Hmmm......And who's monitoring twitter and facebook inside America, for example 'occupy Wallstreet'?Read the full story here.

• Coming soon to a body near you "Computer chip implants".(SHTF).While the FDA says growing your own food is against your best interests, consuming raw milk is dangerous, and alternative medicines need to be controlled by large pharmaceutical companies, subcutaneous passive microchip implants capable of tracking and logging everything from your medical and financial history to your day-to-day movements around the city are perfectly acceptable:

The Food and Drug Administration said that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes.With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its name and price on the cashier’s screen.The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the chip’s possible dual use for tracking people’s movements — as well as speeding delivery of their medical information to emergency rooms — has raised alarm.Next Source: MSNBC

We can fully expect the new human tracking chips to be progressively integrated into our society over the next decade. Americans have already implanted the chips into one million of their pets. And what are we as citizens if not pets of the government? As such, we’ll be treated much the same way.First they’ll start with voluntary programs for those on government sponsored healthcare plans. Membership will have its benefits, and those with the chip will be able to see their doctor quicker than the unchipped. This may even be expanded to include quicker security screenings at airports and other TSA checkpoints.Then, the Department of Homeland Security will order tens of millions of chips to have on standby in case of a major disaster or emergency. In fact, the Israeli military did just that in October of 2011: PositiveID Corporation Receives VeriChip Order for Use With Israeli Military

PositiveID Corporation, a developer of medical technologies for diabetes management, clinical diagnostics and bio-threat detection, announced today that it has received an order for its VeriChip™ microchip to be used for disaster preparedness and emergency management in Israel by an integration partner.
The Company’s integration partner intends to provide the microchips to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the State of Israel’s military force.
Marc Poulshock, PositiveID’s Vice President of Business Development, said, “We believe there are many important applications for the VeriChip and our associated intellectual property including next-generation identification and bio-sensing capabilities. Our partner is looking to help healthcare organizations, militaries including the IDF, and governments with their disaster preparedness and emergency response needs.”
Source: Positive ID

What that basically means is that in an emergency situation, such as a declaration of martial law, chipping stations will be immediately deployed. It will be for you and your family, and will ensure that you’ll receive emergency rations and other services in the event of a serious catastrophe.

Next, they’ll require all government healthcare recipients to be chipped in order to prevent rampant fraud. An off-shoot may be to implement nationwide chipping programs for those receiving any government benefits including social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance.Prisoners and even detainees will be part of the first adopter groups. What better way to keep tabs on criminals and parolees?Once the benefits have been visually and linguistically programmed via Walmart shopping counter promotional TV messages and the people have been desensitized to the privacy threat (kind of like cell phone cameras and microphones in every pant pocket or purse in the country), and success stories are touted by mainstream media, we’ll move to full implementation across the entire domestic population of the United States.School safety and protecting the children is always the easiest first step, thus chip scanning stations will join metal detector security screenings at your local public education institutions. Don’t want to chip you child? No problem! That just means they can’t go to school, which means that you are an abusive parent and Child Protective Services will be coming over for a home wellness visit.Around the same time we’ll begin to see chip scanning stations deployed (much like TSA checkpoints popping up all over the country today) across public venues that include city urban centers, sporting events and public transportation systems. In fact, you probably won’t be allowed to ride on a public transit vehicle without a chip – because it’s just too dangerous.
Eventually, the chip will need to be implanted into every American. It’s a safety and anti-terrorist thing – you know how it is. We’ve got to do it!Oh, have you got a problem with all this?Why?If you’re not doing anything wrong…Hmmm..........Read the full story here.

• CAN Plans to Confront Rep. Keith Ellison.(DocsTalk).Rep. Keith Ellison is known as the first Muslim congressman, but what is less known are his close ties to groups like the Muslim American Society, Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, three Muslim Brotherhood fronts. The latter two were actually labeled as “unindicted co-conspirators” in a Hamas financing trial by the federal government! The groups’ attempts to get the designation lifted have failed, with a judge ruling in 2009 that the government had “ample evidence” connecting them to Hamas.This spring, CAN will go to Minnesota to force Rep. Ellison to defend his relationships with these groups and accept or reject the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia-based governance. For those of you unfamiliar with the Brotherhood’s agenda, their own documents state they are waging a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”Lynne Torgerson, a candidate for the Republican nomination to challenge Ellison next November, plans on making these ties a central issue in her campaign. She is particularly critical of his “close friendship” with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was founded by Muslim Brotherhood operatives linked to Hamas.She has released a video about these ties, which can be seen by clicking here.In an interview with CAN, Torgerson mentions how she asked Rep. Keith Ellison if he felt the U.S. Constitution or Sharia law is supreme. She said that he “evaded the question” and instead bashed the opponents of Sharia law as conspiracy theorists. The encounter landed her a spot on Reverend Al Sharpton’s MSNBC television show, where he tried to make it look like she just doesn’t like Muslims.“If Muslims want to worship Allah, I will protect that right,” Torgerson told CAN. She explained that she is worried about a Muslim Brotherhood-led Islamist faction that is “wholly different” from patriotic Muslims who have American values.In her segment with Sharpton, Ellison is seen saying, “I believe in the U.S. Constitution,” calling it the “bedrock of American law.” She responded that “he doesn’t answer the question of what should be supreme…that’s a very different question.” “It should be a simple answer. If he thought the Constitution is supreme above Sharia, he’d just say it,” Torgerson told CAN. You can watch the segment by clicking here.This won’t be the first time that CAN and Rep. Keith Ellison butted heads. On September 7, Rep. Allen West held a screening of our film, Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mosque, in Congress.Ellison responded by promoting an event in Congress on September 13 about “Islamophobia.” The event was based around the allegations contained in a left-wing-funded paper titled, “Fear Inc.,” which criticized CAN and Tom Trento of The United West for the event. Rep. Allen West was called a “loyal foot soldier in the misguided campaign against Sharia.” “Of course, they’ll try to say we hate Muslims, because that’s what they always do,” said Martin Mawyer, President of CAN. “We’re fighting the Islamist ideology, not patriotic Muslims who value separation of mosque and state.”Ellison regularly speaks at CAIR and ISNA events, which helps to raise them funds. The Muslim American Society, which the U.S. government says was “founded by the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” paid for his pilgrimage to Mecca in 2008. His campaign has received donations from key players in the Muslim Brotherhood network in America and attacks the integrity of Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim who is a foe of the Brotherhood and Islamist ideologues.Read the full story here.

• British Muslim Imams are speaking up against men who ‘disgrace Islam’ by their participation in the grooming and sexual abuse of girls.(IVE)The Times.British Muslims are rounding on men who are “disgracing Islam” by their participation in the grooming and sexual abuse of girls in parts of the North and the Midlands.The move by leading imams to confront what many consider a crisis comes as police and child protection agencies continue to deny the relevance of ethnicity to a pattern of grooming exposed by The Times.Lone white offenders are responsible for most child sexual abuse in the UK, but men from ethnic minorities are significantly over-represented in cases where girls, typically aged 12-16, are targeted by criminal networks.White British, Kurdish, Afghan, Bangladeshi and African Caribbean groups have all been linked to such crimes, but in 18 child sexual exploitation trials since 1997 involving two or more defendants, most of the convicted men were of Pakistani heritage.Alyas Karmani, an imam, academic and former head of race equality for the Welsh Assembly, told an audience of fellow British Pakistanis in West Yorkshire that they were “in denial of the fact that widespread sexual indecency is going on in our community”.Mr Karmani, who runs a project for Muslim ex-offenders, said: “We have our kids who are wannabe gangstas . . . and the people see them and they think this is Islam, that Islam is selling drugs and pimping women and grooming girls and going out with 12 or 13-year-old girls“How have we adopted such a despicable and such a reprehensible . . . culture like this? We need to stand up and say. ‘Not in Islam. This is not what Islam teaches.’”In Rochdale, Greater Manchester, another imam, Irfan Chishti, told worshippers that he had wanted “to dig a hole and die” after reading a newspaper account of three British Pakistanis aged in their 30s who were jailed for the rape of two 16-year-old girls.“What has happened to us as a community when we have Muslims who kidnap young, innocent lives and who rape them and pillage them, crimes that we can’t even define in the limits of the Koran?” he said.Hmmm....... finally!Read the full story here.

• Back-Door Amnesty? DHS’s Deportation Claims Questioned.(Heritage).By JessicaZuckerman.On October 18, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director John Morton announced the removal of the largest number of illegal immigrants in the ICE history. The agency boasted the record-breaking deportation of 396,906 individuals in fiscal year 2011, labeling its recent efforts to combat illegal immigration a large success. Yet, according to a recent Politico article by Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the Administration’s numbers appear to be largely smoke and mirrors. “Take away the illusion,” Smith writes, “and the facts show that the administration conjures up its deportation statistics.” It appears that DHS has artificially inflated its deportation numbers by including figures on voluntary removals. What this means is that those individuals who agree to be returned to their home countries are counted in the same way as those who are ordered to be deported by the courts. Unlike when an individual is removed under deportation orders, those who leave under voluntary removal can apply to legally return to the United States without penalty.This “fudging” of the numbers comes on the heels of recent Administration decisions that have served to weaken immigration enforcement within the United States, including the reduction of worksite raids, an emphasis on criminal deportations, and an increase in the use of prosecutorial discretion. Earlier this year, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Administration would review roughly 300,000 pending deportation cases to weed out “high priority” criminal alien cases from other “low priority” cases that would be dropped. So while the Administration is throwing numbers around, seeking to appear tough on illegal immigration, in reality it is doing just the opposite. So much so that many have labeled the Administration’s actions a back-door amnesty. Rather than continuing to erode key interior enforcement measures and perpetuate the message that once an illegal immigrant has entered the country it is easy to stay, it’s time Congress and the Administration step up and restore credibility to U.S. immigration laws.Read the full story here.

• Hotel Guests Recruited with Homeland Security TV Spots.(Cryptogon).The Department of Homeland Security is recruiting hotel guests to join the fight against terrorism.Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.During the PSA, which starts with a woman exiting a yellow taxi in front of a train station, a narrator says, “Maybe you see something suspicious. Can you be sure? If you see something, say something to authorities.”The PSA, which will be interspersed with other messages on the welcome screen, will be the same in all 5,400 hotels that LodgeNet serves. It ends by telling viewers to contact “local authorities.”Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says that reaching the “millions of guests that stay at hotels and motels each year is a significant step in engaging the full range of partners in our Homeland Security efforts.”The federal government gained access to hotel TV sets by forming a partnership with the hotel industry’s largest association — the American Hotel & Lodging Association — which connected DHS with LodgeNet, the industry’s largest TV-content provider.By entering hotels at a time when the hospitality industry is on the rebound, the government has the power to tap a growing, captive audience. Recent research from LodgeNet says 98% of hotel guests turn on their hotel TV, and the average guest keeps it on for more than three hours per day.Ann Parker, a LodgeNet spokeswoman, describes the PSAs as “well done and professional” and says the decision to air them was not difficult.“It’s about everyone doing their part to help keep each other and the country safe,” she says.Hmmmm........Gone are the days that you could watch porn in your hotel room?Read the full story here.

• Photo of the Day: Obama (Literally) Embraces Anti-Israel, Pro-Iran Islamist on the World Stage.(BigPeace).That’s Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hugging it out with the President of the United States today at the G-20 summit in France.Our European allies, by contrast, received simple handshakes.Never mind the apparent breach of protocol–what does this demonstrate about Barack Obama’s worldview?At least he didn’t bow.Hmmm....."Equals don't bow?"Read and see the full story here.

• Islamic Jihad: We don't expect truce with Israel to hold.(Jpost).The Islamic Jihad, which traded deadly fire with Israel last weekend in Gaza, does not expect a subsequent truce to last long and has at least 8,000 fighters ready for war, a spokesman said on Thursday.Islamic Jihad is the second largest armed group in Gaza, after Hamas, which rules the tiny Mediterranean enclave. The two share a commitment to the destruction of Israel and both are classified as terrorist groups by most Western governments.However, while Hamas has recently spent much of its energy on the business of government, Islamic Jihad has kept its focus firmly on the conflict, gaining in prominence and enjoying significant backing from Muslim supporters, including Iran."We are proud and honored to say that the Islamic Republic of Iran gives us support and help," Abu Ahmed, the spokesman for Islamic Jihad's armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, told Reuters in a rare, long interview.He denied widespread reports that Iran had provided his group with arms and smiled at suggestions it now receives more sophisticated weaponry from Tehran than Hamas. He also declined to comment on rumors that the Jihadists were trained by Iran."What I will say is that we have every right to turn to every source of power for help," said the burly, bearded Abu Ahmed, occasionally flicking a string of yellow prayer beads.Islamic Jihad's latest confrontation with Israel left 12 Palestinian gunmen and one Israeli civilian dead. The fighting ended only after neighbouring Egypt brokered a ceasefire with both parties, but Abu Ahmed did not see it lasting long."Theoretically the calm has been restored, but in practice it hasn't really," he said. Israel, he said, is itching for a fight in Gaza following last month's prisoner-swap accord, in which Israel released 477 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas since 2006.Israel says it attacks only in self-defense.Israel killed five senior Islamic Jihad operatives on Saturday in retaliation for a rocket attack two days earlier that it blamed on the group. That rocket caused no casualties, but landed deep enough into Israel to set off sirens on Tel Aviv's outskirts.Abu Ahmed denied responsibility for the missile, saying this was how Israel had managed to find five top fighters together in the open -- because they had not expected to be targeted.But the Al-Quds Brigades soon hit back, firing numerous rockets into southern Israel, piercing the country's defensive missile shield. One Israeli man died, at least four others were injured, while cars and a building were also set ablaze.The group posted a video online showing a missile-launcher on the back of a truck firing a salvo of rockets. It was the first time the group has claimed to have such firepower, although there was no independent confirmation of its use."The Al-Quds Brigades really surprised Israel, forcing them to rethink their assessment of us ... I don't think they realized we had that weaponry," said Abu Ahmed, indicating the vehicle was immediately hidden underground after the attack.Al-Quds Brigades cells are dotted around Gaza and Abu Ahmed said there was huge demand from youngsters to join."We take some, but can't accept everyone ... It is a question of quality, not quantity," he said, giving for the first time an estimate of the strength of the force. "We have at least 8,000 fighters, who are fully equipped."The group got a boost to its standing in August when the new rulers in Egypt started dealing with it directly over truces, rather than through Hamas. Abu Ahmed said Hamas was not involved in the latest fighting and that all the talking was with Egypt.He played down reports of tensions with Hamas, which since Israel's military offensive in Gaza in late 2008 has appeared reluctant to go head-to-head with its sworn enemy."Certainly in terms of ideology, there is no difference between Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. The difference is in the methodology," Abu Ahmed said, adding that Hamas's governmental role meant that it was "more vulnerable to outside pressure".He said Islamic Jihad's biggest problem was the Israeli armed drones that regularly buzz over Gaza seeking out operatives. "Warfare has changed. You can't just hide a gun in your jacket like you could in the 1980s," he said, adding that the Jihadist fighters were not afraid of sudden death."It is a good feeling to be under drone attack. When we chose the path of resistance, we opted either for martyrdom or victory. Martyrdom is the more desirable."Hmmm.......Perhaps the IDF can grant his wish?Something Like....... "IDF will fix it"?Read the full story here.

• Egyptian military’s draft constitution causes unrest.(Hurriyetdaily).A government-sponsored draft of guidelines for a new constitution has kicked a political storm in Egypt, with critics decrying it as an attempt by the ruling military to enshrine a supreme political role for itself.The proposal shields the military from parliamentary oversight, gives it a veto over legislation dealing with its affairs and reduces the powers of parliament to select a panel to write the constitution.Critics say the document would create a military state within the state. The uproar over the draft, which dominated the nation’s press yesterday, has deepened tension between political activists and rights groups and the military ahead of this month’s key parliamentary elections.Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood threatened Nov. 2 to bring its supporters out onto the streets over the military government’s plans to set out the basics of a new constitution. The Brotherhood and other smaller parties, most of them also Islamist, said that one million people would protest nationwide on Nov. 18 if the plans to pre-empt the promised People’s Assembly to be elected early next year were not abandoned.The Islamists were reacting to comments by Deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Salmi in Nov. 2’s edition of the state-owned daily Al-Ahram in which he said the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was “carefully considering” a plan for a “declaration of basic principles.” The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, called for Salmi’s resignation.“The national forces will not allow a small minority to impose its will on everyone,” he said, reading a statement in the name of the party and its electoral allies. He said that the government should “remember what happened to the system of the corrupt, all-powerful tyrant,” a reference to the mass revolt which overthrew veteran president Hosni Mubarak’s regime in February.Meanwhile, Egypt’s ruling generals have announced the pardon of 334 civilians who were sentenced in military tribunals since the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February. The statement posted on its Facebook page Nov. 2, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces however did not say what those pardoned were sentenced for or when they would be released. It said the names would be released later.Read the full story here.

• Iran - Military-doctrinal views of the Islamic Republic of Iran, US 'accepts' Iran Nuclear quest as 'for defence' only.(Milaz).Due to the fact that there is a totalitarian, theocratic regime in Iran Islam Republic (IIR), neither its national security concept, nor military doctrine are open document. Despite of this, based on open sources, analyze and evaluation of Iranian foreign, security, defense and military policy, it is possible to determine its views system in the military security field. After Islam revolution of 1979, the new forces came to the government in Iran, started to establish the country’s national security concept and military doctrine on the new principles. “Neither West, nor East” policy pursued by IRR leader Khomeini, at the same time its “Islam revolution export” target started to create tension and confrontation not only in Iranian relations with U.S., Israel and Western countries, but also with neighbor countries. Since this confrontation policy of Iran and its strategy to increase the tension did not bring success to him, as well as along with negative effect on the regional peace and stability, security, cause to tension in its relations with neighbor countries, official Teheran gradually softened this policy and changed it. IIR regime put forward new security model for the region. The former Foreign Minister of Iran Ali Akber Vilayeti gave explanation of this model in its statement in 1991 so: “outside countries’ interference into the settlement of regional problems is unacceptable. Only regional countries should be involved in this”. In fact, Tehran’s aim is not to give a contribution to the regional security with putting forward the “neither West, not East” model, but to provide Iran’s predomination and the regime’s security in the region. Even today they consider in the government circles of IIR that, the U.S, Israel and West states, which do not accept Iranian regime, by rapprochement to the region, building close political and economic relations intend to target Iran Islam regime in future. However, this regional security model did not go on as well. So, IIR pursuing a tension and confrontation policy in the region since the day of its establishment, not only is able to create a trust in regional countries, especially in its neighbors, but also on the contrary, it is considered one of the main source of threat for regional stability and security. At present, IIR, which is rapidly developing missile and nuclear program, implements the doctrine of “frightening and deterrence” in the field of military security, on the bases of which is nuclear weapon. The analytics of influential journal “Time” of U.S., which decided to analyze Iranian military doctrine in 2009, came to the conclusion that ayatollahs made up their military doctrine taking into account the mistakes of their holy enemy, Saddam Huseyn. According to the analytics of “Time”, the “frightening and deterrence” doctrine of Iran consists of four items:

1. Regardless of Iranian government’s opening and cooperation level, UN and International Nuclear Energy Agency (INEA) will not be able to prevent U.S. or Israel attacks directed to it. Saddam cooperating with UN, destroyed his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) potential, but could not to prove anything to anybody. To comply to UN severe monitoring will only shake national security of Iran.
2. Iran will fight with U.S. and Israel beyond its borders and determine military operation itself. Saddam lost its country and life because of its decision to resist within U.S.-Iraq borders. Iran will response to the attacks of Israel, U.S. and their allies Afghanistan, Iraq, countries of Persian Gulf, Gaza and Jordan river.
3. Iran regime can even withstand powerful and painful American attacks and do not collapse. Iraq is shown as an example again. In 1999, Saddam’s army hardly failed, the regime lost control in the north over kurds, and in the south violent upheaval of Shiites raised. However, in spite of this, the new regime continued to proceed. Ayatollahs believe that they also can bear such a loss and hold the regime. Particularly, if the population are prepared adequate to “martyrdom”. Iranian strategists consider that if U.S. loss a several thousands of forces and one barrel’s of oil to raise more than 100$, this will be enough for U.S to compromise, and this will mean a victory according to Iran.
4. IIR prepared for long-term and bloody war very well. Iran understood from the example of Libya that mobile and well-armed units can conduct non-centric partisan war, which will be able to defeat the enemy’s regular army. Iran, at the same time makes a great efforts to prevent “the fifth colonna” - any opposition, which is against the regime within the country and can give legitimacy to foreign intervention.

The analytics of “Time”, who came to the conclusion that Israel is ready to any measures to prevent the opportunities of Iran to get nuclear arm also add that, America and Israel strategists trying to plan military operation against Iran should not forget that this country’s ruling elite prepares not “limited response”, but total war. According to the report of U.S. military intelligence about military potential of Iran presented to the congress on April, 2010, Pentagon experts believe that, Iran is not going to attack on any country, prepares nuclear arm for its defense only. This report shows difference of opinions in the issue of Iran between the White House and Pentagon. This report presented by Pentagon to the Congress is the first official documents putting the White House’s policy on Iran under the doubt. According to Pentagon experts, military doctrine of Iran does not stipulate conduction of “aggressive wars” and based on necessities of providing the “guarantees of the existed regime”. In other words, Iran looks at nuclear weapon as a guarantee of the existed theocratic Islam regime. They believe in Pentagon that, “creation of nuclear arm itself composes the basis of Iranian deterrence policy”. The headquarter chairs of U.S. Armed Forces united committee heads Admiral Mick Mullen last year stated during its speech in Columbia University, in New-York that “there are people, who told me “Muller come and involve into Iran issue”. However, it may bring to such results that we even can not imagine it”. According to Admiral Mullen, military apply against Teheran is the latest measure, which servicemen do not want to review. M. Mullen also stated in his speech that “Iran’s creation of nuclear weapon will be the largest instability factor. However, attack on Iran will bring to the same results in already instable region. We do not need in this”. We should also note that, Iran does not start to any aggressive war in its modern history, and its leaders follows the doctrine of “inadmissibility of preventive attack”. This relates to both the supreme religious leader Khomeini, and Islam Revolution Watch Corpus commander. However, Israel’s position, which consider possible the attack on Iran nuclear objects still also remains a problem for U.S. servicemen. They believe in Pentagon that in this case, in spite U.S.-Israel relations’ worsening, they will have to interfere. This also shows how much the issue is sensible and complicated. This year U.S International and Strategic Research Centre also studied military policy of Iran and came to the following results:

1. Non-central war strategy plays a crucial role in military doctrine of Iran.
2. IIR by implementing the idea of non-central war, compensates its underdevelopment in weapon and military technology and settles this problem.
3. The main goal in Iranian military doctrine is to prevent U.S. achievement its purposes in the region.
4. The main methods of non-central war, which Iran considered to implement against U.S.:

- to compensate its underdevelopment, mass production and development of cheap and simple in terms of technology weapons in order to stand before U.S modern military technologies;

- establishment and preparation of military and partly-military institutions similar to HAMAS in “Hizbullah” and Gaza sector in Libya;

- doctrine of target of objects (oil platforms and oil ships) useful for U.S. in terms of economy in Persian Gulf;

6. The other feature of non-central war preparation is ship group of Iranian Military Naval Forces’ forwarding to Aden Gulf.

7. The policy of Iran implemented in Libya by means of “Hizbullah” is considered successful (April 5, 2011, http://persian-farsi.ucoz.ru/).

Nuclear program takes a central place in the military doctrine of Iran. Iran is developing its doubtful nuclear program without paying attention to the challenges of international community and sanctions of UN. On March 01, 2009 the head of U.S. Armed Forces Headquarter chairs’ joint committee, admiral Mick Mullen declared that Iran has enough nuclear fuel for preparation of nuclear bomb. It is indicated in the annual report of U.S. MKI about nuclear program of Iran that, Iran in 2009 increased the low enriched uranium reserve more than three times, “caused sufficient ballistic missile production” and “continues to prepare a number of technologies, which will be used in preparation of nuclear arm”. However, Iran insistently declare the peaceful nature of nuclear program, and its having no intention to get nuclear weapon. On February12, 2007 IIR Secretary of Supreme national security council, at present the chairman of the parliament, Ali Larijani, stated giving an interview to “Suddeutsche Zeitung” newspaper of FRG at the end of Munich conference that “There is no place for nuclear arm in military doctrine of Iran. This is inadmissible in terms of religion, our religious leader gave special instigation (fitva) forbidding WMD (weapon of mass destruction). Moreover, when Iraq dictator Saddam Huseyn applied chemical weapon against us, we felt the effect of a such weapon ourselves. We do not need such a deterrence weapon. If we have such an weapon, then the start of armed competition in the neighbor states is inescapable”. Although Iranian leadership’s “calming” statements, the anxiety regarding its nuclear program gradually increases in the world, especially in Tel-Aviv and Washington. On April 05, 2010, U.S. President Barak Obama stated after the closed evening dinner with his counterpart French N. Sarkozy in Washington that we should “calm down” Iran in the nearest future. Obama also added that U.S. will not be confine to only application of “aggressive sanctions” and “still do not exclude the other versions”, “because leadership of Iran does not want to settle the problem with diplomatic methods”. On the one hand, Iranian not rejection of its nuclear program, threatening of Israel, on the other hand, Israel’s making the “inadmissibility of Iran’s getting nuclear weapon” to official state policy, the strict position of U.S., particularly, the powerful Jewish lobby in this issue, increase confrontation not only around this program, as a whole around Iran and in the region. They think in U.S. conservative circles that Iran policy of Washington came to deadlock without leaving practically any space for maneuver and White House before the option: either it should retreat, or go by the way of force for settlement of this problem. Israel is more interested in solution of Iran issue by the force way, because Israel was indicated as an enemy state in the military doctrine of Iran since Islam Revolution. Iran uses of all opportunities in order to weaken Israel, including with support of “Hezbollah” and “Hamas”. On the other hand, Iran is indicated as a direct future adversary in official military doctrine of Tel-Aviv. The head of Israel military intelligence the General Amos Yadlin repeatedly declared in defense committee of Knesset that Iran will have already this year (2010) establish nuclear bomb. At the same time, they realize in Israel military-political circles that without support of U.S they have not sufficient resource for stopping or retard of Iranian nuclear program. By the way, on March 19, 2010, Israel ambassador to UN, Gabriel Shalev openly declared that U.S. and Israel although could not get support from a number of large world countries, are preparing for military intervention into Iran. After two days, on March 21, 2010, the head of U.S. Armed Forces Center command, General David Petreus stated during his speech in Georgetown University that at present, the regional Missile Attack Defense system (MAD) was deployed in Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain). This system is considered to defense American objects and allies in the region. The General Petreus also noted that U.S. do not content with deployment of only weapon systems of defensive nature in the region. U.S. army centre commander works out plan of attack to Iranian nuclear objects. Centre command has already prepared several versions of the settlement of the issue of Iranian nuclear program with the way of force. We should also add that, U.S. have already concluded the agreement with Israel regarding twice increase of strategic resources of American weapons in its territory. The General Petreus also is noted that, he does not expect U.S. attack to Iran in the near future. Thus, the General D. Petreus’s this statement actually was the first official declaration about existence of U.S. military operation plan against Iran. As a response to D. Petreus’s this statement, the head of Iran Armed Forces Headquarter, the General Hasan Firuzabadi told that attack to the country’s nuclear objects will cause to incitement of serious threats for U.S. in the region. Iran, which is aware of these plans, started to the implementation of active defense policy, precisely, to reinforcement of this policy. At present, Iran Islam Republic, which lives in the state of strict sanctions increases its power mainly at the expense of internal opportunities. Very few number of country seem ready to cooperation with Iran in this case. Internal and foreign policy implemented by Iran gradually reduces the opportunities of military cooperation with the third countries. Although Iran Islam Republic during the 31 years of its establishment never implemented military intervention to any state (Iraq’s territorial claim and military aggression caused to Iran-Iraq war), the countries of region, particularly the neighbor states are always beware of Iranian policy. Along with nuclear weapon, missile forces take special place in the military doctrine of Iran as well. IIR implements in this field the doctrine of “response with accurate missile attacks” of MAF. In response to the assumption of air attacks to nuclear objects of Iran by U.S. and Israel, the commander of Islam Revolution Watch Corpus (IRWC), the General Mahamad Ali Jafari declared in March 04, 2009 that, Iranian missiles are able not only to reach Israel, but if there is necessity, also able to destroy confidential nuclear objects in Demon. According to the General, “the whole nuclear powers deployed in different territories of the countries, which are under the occupation of Zionist regime place in the radius of influence of Iranian missile systems”. According to his opinion, Iranian military doctrine only has an aim of defensive nature, but a worthy response is ready in case of enemy attack. Threats regarding possible attacks to strategic targets of Israel by Iran (Iran, Libya and Gaza) have already stated before as well. In the beginnings of January, 2009, the newspaper “Times” referring to sources in Guts wrote that Iranian Fajr-3 missiles sent to Gaza are able to attack to Demon. According to the newspaper, the main reason of “Casting plant” operation was this fact. Before this, in July 29, 2008 again that newspaper as a source of information referring to Ali Jafari wrote that Iran prepares to launch “Shahab-3” missiles to Israel side and the main target is nuclear objects in Demon. During the second Libyan war (June, 2006), the newspaper “Maariv” informed referring to Israel military intelligence (AMAH) data that “Hezbollah” also targeted missiles of Iranian production to the direction of nuclear objects in Demon. Missile forces in IIR Armed Forces are also included into the structure of IICC MAF. This certainly, shows Iranian military-political leadership’s special interest in this type of army. Iran, first of all, worked out a number of tactic missiles (Oghab, Nazeat, Zelzal, Shihab-1, Shihab-2), which have a flight distance from 40 km. to 300 km. by the support of North Korea. However, Iran turned into missile state only after the creation of Shihab-3 (Shihab-3D, Shihab-3DE) missiles, which’s flight distance is 1300-1500 km. and more and at present in the combat burst. Shihab-3 missiles were created on the bases of No-Dong missiles of S. Korea. At present, S. Korea continues constructive works and tests on preparation of new generations (Shihab-4, 5 and 6) of Shihab, on the bases of Taepo-Dong-1, Taepo-Dong-2 və Taepo-Dong-Х missiles, which’s flight distances are from 1800 (Shihab-4) to 6400 km. (Shihab-6). Read the full report here.

• Al Arabiya exclusive: Moqtada al-Sadr rejects any U.S. presence after troops’ pullout.(AlArabiya).Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday set doubts over a complete withdrawal by the U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year.In an exclusive interview aired by Al Arabiya, Sadr said he would resist any American presence in Iraq, including a civilian one, beyond year-end when all U.S. forces depart nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia once battled U.S. and Iraqi troops, has opposed any U.S. military footprint and his bloc is a key part of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s fragile coalition.“We do not accept any kind of U.S. presence in Iraq, whether it is military or not,” Sadr told Al Arabiya.“If they stay in Iraq, through a military or non-military (presence) ... we will consider them an occupation and we will resist them whatever the price will be. Even a civilian presence, we reject it,” the cleric said.Sadr underlined that the withdrawal of U.S. troops will not create security vacuum in Iraq. “The Iraqi government is capable of protecting the country in collaboration with the Iraqis,” he said.United States President Barack Obama said on Oct. 21 all remaining U.S. troops, currently around 33,000, would be withdrawn from Iraq by Dec. 31 after Washington and Baghdad failed to agree on immunity for American soldiers.But a huge U.S. embassy will be maintained in Baghdad along with consular operations in Arbil in the northern Kurdish zone and in the southern oil city Basra.On his part, Sadr said that he was opposing to the opening of any U.S. consulate or embassy in his country, unless there is a full withdrawal of the troops from Iraq. “Any form of American presence in Iraq is not acceptable.” He added that there should be a balanced relationship between Iraq and the United States.Read the full story here.

• Syrian Oppositionist: 80% of Israelis Support Bashar Al-Assad; They Want to Enjoy the Taste of Spilled Syrian Blood in Their Matzas.(Memri).In an article titled "Syrian Blood for Matzas," posted on Sooryoon.net, which is close to Syrian Islamic opposition circles, Dr. Osama Al-Malouhi claimed that a public opinion poll conducted in Israel shows that 80% of Israelis support Bashar Al-Assad's remaining in power, and adds that Israel's support of Assad is the reason the world does not act against him. He goes on to state that this poll brings to mind the Jewish ritual murder to obtain blood for Passover matzas, recalls the 1840 Damascus blood libel, and says, "It may be that the Jews are reviving their heritage and religious rituals, and are taking pleasure in watching Syrian blood being spilled. Perhaps the murderer [Assad] will [even] bring it to them for [their] matza."The following are excerpts from the article:

"The clear truth is that Bashar Al-Assad is the most popular [leader] among Israelis. [They] want Bashar the murderer to stay [in power]. A few days ago, a public opinion poll was published in Israeli papers, according to which 80% of Israelis support Bashar remaining in power. [Another] poll published in Israeli papers several days ago showed that [Israeli PM Bejamin] Netanyahu's popularity rose following the Shalit deal, exceeding 50% for the first time. This means that Bashar receives more popular support among Israelis than Netanyahu at his best times."What is the reason for the Israelis' indirect, unlimited support for the murderer Bashar? Do they really fear the [Islamist] extremists that the [Syrian] regime claims exist? How can the Israelis believe this, when the regime also claims that these extremists have ties to Israel, and that they were found to posses Israeli weapons? Does Israel view every Syrian who does not support Assad as a hostile extremist who must be killed? Why, after seven months of slaughter, does the Israelis' support for Assad's remaining [in power] exceed [their support] for any Israeli prime minister since the [Zionist] entity was established in 1948? Is it conceivable that, after it became clear to the entire world, and especially to the Israelis, how much Syrian blood he has spilled, they still support him and want him to remain?..."They want that sucker of Syrian blood to remain and continue to prey and suck blood. They not only want their security, but also to enjoy the sight of Syrian blood being spilled, and possibly [to enjoy] its taste it in [their] matza. Asking myself why Jewish support of Bashar increased [even] after they saw the rivers of Syrian blood this mass-murderer spilled in Syrian towns, an old image leapt to my mind, of Jews bleeding people and using their blood to prepare matzas. Logic does not accept this, but the facts prove it."The killing of [Christian priest] Father Thomas in Damascus in 1840 by Jews in order to obtain Christian blood for the Passover matza is a terrible event that startled and engaged the world. It may be that the Jews are reviving their heritage and religious rituals, and are taking pleasure in watching Syrian blood being spilled. Perhaps the murderer [Assad] will [even] bring it to them for [their] matza. We must face this clear truth. The world's silence continues because Israel wants the murderer [to remain in power] and pressures everyone to allow this. And [Assad] knows this..."Hmmmm......Next time please give the recipe for a Pea Soup with Bacon..... Winter is coming fast.Read the full story here.

• NASA on the Antarctic Crack.(WUWT).PUNTA ARENAS, Chile – After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA’s Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress.NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. The six-year mission will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice.Pine Island Glacier last calved a significant iceberg in 2001, and some scientists have speculated recently that it was primed to calve again. But until an Oct. 14 IceBridge flight of NASA’s DC-8, no one had seen any evidence of the ice shelf beginning to break apart. Since then, a more detailed look back at satellite imagery seems to show the first signs of the crack in early October.While Pine Island has scientists’ attention because it is both big and unstable – scientists call it the largest source of uncertainty in global sea level rise projections – the calving underway now is part of a natural process for a glacier that terminates in open water. Gravity pulls the ice in the glacier westward along Antarctica’s Hudson Mountains toward the Amundsen Sea. A floating tongue of ice reaches out 30 miles into the Amundsen beyond the grounding line, the below-sea-level point where the ice shelf locks onto the continental bedrock. As ice pushes toward the sea from the interior, inevitably the ice shelf will crack and send a large iceberg free.“We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it’s very exciting for us,” said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “It’s part of a natural process but it’s pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens. To my knowledge, no one has flown a lidar instrument over an actively developing rift such as this.”A primary goal of Operation IceBridge is to put the same instruments over the exact same flight lines and satellite tracks, year after year, to gather meaningful and accurate data of how ice sheets and glaciers are changing over time. But discovering a developing rift in one of the most significant science targets in the world of glaciology offered a brief change in agenda for the Oct. 26 flight, if only for a 30-minute diversion from the day’s prescribed flight lines.The IceBridge team observed the rift running across the ice shelf for about 18 miles. The lidar instrument on the DC-8, the Airborne Topographic Mapper, measured the rift’s shoulders about 820 feet apart (250 meters) at its widest, although the rift stretched about 260 feet wide along most of the crack. The deepest points from the ice shelf surface ranged 165 to 195 feet (50 to 60 meters). When the iceberg breaks free it will cover about 340 square miles (880 square kilometers) of surface area. Radar measurements suggested the ice shelf in the region of the rift is about 1,640 feet (500 meters) feet thick, with only about 160 feet of that floating above water and the rest submerged. It is likely that once the iceberg floats away, the leading edge of the ice shelf will have receded farther than at any time since its location was first recorded in the 1940s.Read and see the full story here.