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Cables say Israel favours Suleiman
Preference for Egypt’s new vice-president to succeed Mubarak disclosed by leaked documents obtained by WikiLeaks. |
| Mounting protests against Mubarak’s rule prompted the Egyptian leader to appoint Suleiman as vice-president [AFP] |
Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s recently appointed vice-president, has long long seen by Israel as the favoured successor to Hosni Mubarak, the current president, according to a leaked diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, and published by the UK daily, The Telegraph.
The August 2008 cable said David Hacham, a senior adviser at the Israeli ministry of defence (MoD), told US officials the Israelis expected Suleiman, spelt Soliman in some cables, to take over.
“Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim president if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated,” the cable sent from the US embassy in Tel Aviv said.
“We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman,” the memo cited US diplomats as saying.
The cable said Hacham was full of praise for Suleiman, even noting that Read more…
Iran unveils missiles, satellites as warning to foes
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran showed off new missile and satellite technology on Monday, and told its enemies it had “complete domination” of the entrance to the oil-rich Gulf.
As part of Iran’s annual revolution celebrations, a time traditionally marked by new technological and military advances, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled locally-made satellites while a senior commander showed off mass produced missiles.
“We should reach a point where we will be able to provide our knowledge and technology in the aerospace field to other countries,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech, unveiling the satellites he said were for scientific purposes, and showing film of a satellite-carrier rocket.
Although Iran is not engaged in any military conflict, it is on constant alert against possible attacks from the United States and Israel which have not ruled out possible pre-emptive strikes to stop Tehran getting nuclear weapons.
Iran says it has no intention of making nuclear bombs and that its atomic programme, which is the subject of U.S., European and U.N. sanctions, is entirely peaceful.
In 2009, Iran launched a domestically-made satellite into orbit for the first time, a step that increased the Read more…
Soros says Israel is “main stumbling block” in Mideast
The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West’s decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West’s lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away.
Egypt is more complex and, ultimately, more influential, which is why it is so important to get it right. The protesters are very diverse, including highly educated and Read more…
Map shows most of Northern Hemisphere is covered in snow and ice
At first glance it looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel program about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today – with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice.
The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm.
The map was created using multiple satellites from government agencies and the US Air Force.
That Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland and the frozen wastes of Siberia are covered in white comes as no surprise. But it is the extent to which the line dips down over the Northern Hemisphere that is so remarkable about the image.
The shroud of white stretches down from Alaska and sweeps through the Midwest and along to the Eastern seaboard. The bitter cold has reached as far as Texas and northern Mexico where in Ciudad Juarez temperatures today were expected to dip to minus 15C.
In the U.S. tens of millions of people chose to stay at home rather than venture out. In Chicago, 20in of snow fell leading to authorities closing schools for the first time in 12 years. The newspaper for Tulsa, Okalahoma, was unable to publish its print edition for the first time in Read more…
Study: Coup possible in Morocco, Saudi Arabia too
Tomer Velmer
The first signs for the governmental instability in Egypt were detected as early as two years ago, according to a new study conducted by political scientists from Hebrew University.
The study, which will be published soon by the Journal of Conflict Resolution, was conducted by Prof. Tamir Sheafer and Dr. Shaul Shenhav. The researchers measured the “democratic gap” in about 90 democratic and non-democratic countries.
“The democratic gap is the difference between the democratic aspirations of a country’s citizens and the level of democracy given to them by the state’s institutions,” explains Prof. Sheafer.
According to the study’s findings, political stability will be in danger only in the case of a “negative democratic gap”. In other words, when the citizens’ expectations for democracy are unfulfilled, there is a higher chance that the citizens will Read more…
“War Without Borders”: Washington Intensifies Push Into Central Asia
By Rick Rozoff
A recent editorial on the website of Voice of America reflected on last year being one in which the United States solidified relations with the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
One or more of the five nations border Afghanistan, Russia, China and Iran and several more than one of the latter. Kazakhstan, for example, adjoins China and Russia.
The U.S. and Britain, with the support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, invaded Afghanistan and fanned out into Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in October of 2001, less than four months after Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to foster expanding economic, security, transportation and energy cooperation and integration in and through Central Asia. In 2005 India, Iran and Pakistan joined the SCO as observers and Afghan President Hamid Karzai has attended its last five annual heads of state summits. [1]
Now the U.S. and the NATO have over 150,000 troops planted directly south of three Central Asian nations.
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are also on the Caspian Sea, a reservoir of oil and natural gas whose dimensions have only been accurately determined in the past twenty years and where American companies are active in hydrocarbon projects.
After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Pentagon and its NATO allies deployed military forces to, in addition to Soviet-constructed air bases in Afghanistan, bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The first two countries Read more…
WikiLeaks: tension in the Middle East and Asia has ‘direct potential’ to lead to nuclear war
Tension in the Middle East and Asia has given rise to an escalating atomic arms and missiles race which has “the direct potential to lead to nuclear war,” leaked diplomatic documents disclose.
By Heidi Blake
Rogue states are also increasing their efforts to secure chemical and biological weapons, and the means to deploy them, leaving billions in the world’s most densely populated area at risk of a devastating strike, the documents show.
States such as North Korea, Syria and Iran are developing long-range missiles capable of hitting targets outside the region, records of top-level security briefings obtained by WikiLeaks show.
Long-running hostilities between India and Pakistan – which both have nuclear weapons capabilities – are at the root of fears of a nuclear conflict in the region. A classified Pentagon study estimated in 2002 that a nuclear war between the two countries could result in 12 million deaths.
Secret records of a US security briefing at an international non-proliferation summit in 2008 stated that “a nuclear and missile arms race [in South Asia] has the Read more…
Saudis already have 2 Pakistani Nukes
It’s a story that pops up again and again. Saudi Arabia has acquired at least 2 functional Nuclear Weapons from cash strapped Pakistan. Certainly Saudi Arabia has the money to buy nukes from sources like France, China, Russia, North Korea and Pakistan or even India.
The worrisome thing is that Pakistani nukes may be on the move and the west has very little knowledge or control over it. Pakistan is the most dangerous country on earth. It has a population of 185 million and the majority of people there hate the west and hate Americans. Intelligence experts privately concede that the battle for Pakistan is over. They are now a de facto enemy of the U.S. Al Qaida, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood have won. The ties between Read more…
How Egypt shut down the internet
Virtually all internet access in Egypt is cut off today as the government battles to contain the street protests that threaten to topple President Hosni Mubarak.
Organisations that track global internet access detected a collapse in traffic in to and out of Egypt at around 10.30GMT on Thursday night.
The shut down involved the withdrawal of more than 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes by Egyptian ISPs, according to Renesys, a networking firm. Only one ISP out of 10, Noor Data Networks, appeared largely unaffected. It connects to the outside world via an undersea cable operated by Telecom Italia.
According to BGPMon, another networking firm, 88 per cent of Egyptian internet access was successfully shut down, however.
Renesys speculated that the apparent anomaly of Noor Data Networks may be a result of the fact it provides services to the Egyptian stock exchange. Read more…
China Funneling Weapons to Afghanistan
Originally published on www.DarkGovernment.com
The Chinese are believed to be working with Afghan Taliban groups who are now in combat with NATO forces, prompting concerns that China might become the conduit for shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, improved communications and additional small arms to the fundamentalist Muslim fighters.
QW-1M / SA-18 Grouse Anti-Aircraft Weapon
A British military official contends that Chinese specialists have been seen training Taliban fighters in the use of infrared-guided surface-to-air missiles. This is supported by a May 13, 2008, classified U.S. State Department document released by WikiLeaks telling U.S. officials to confront Chinese officials about missile proliferation.
China is developing knock-offs of Russian-designed man-portable air defense missiles (manpads), including the QW-1 and later series models. The QW-1 Vanguard is an all-aspect, 35-lb. launch tube and missile that is reverse-engineered from the U.S. Stinger and the SA-16 Gimlet (9K310 Igla-1). China obtained SA-16s from Unita rebels in then-Zaire who had captured them from Angolan government forces. The 16g missiles have a slant range of 50,000 ft. The QW-1M is a variant that incorporates even more advanced SA-18 Grouse (9K38 Igla) technology. Read more…
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