Anti-US chants as slain Iran nuclear expert buried

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of mourners chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" on Friday during the funeral of a slain nuclear expert whom Iranian officials accuse the two nations of killing in a bomb blast this week as part of a secret operation to stop Iran's nuclear program.

This undated photo released by Iranian Fars News Agency, claims to show Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who they say was killed in a bomb blast in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, next to his son. Two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and his driver Wednesday, reports said. The slayings suggest a widening covert effort to set back Iran's atomic program. The blast killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, state TV reported. (AP Photo/Fars News Agency)

The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan has raised calls in Iran for retaliation against the U.S. and Israel, and an independent news website Friday said Iran is preparing a covert counteroffensive against the West.

Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, was killed in a brazen daylight assassination when two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car Wednesday in Tehran. The killing bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program.

State TV showed thousands of people carrying Roshan's coffin through central Tehran before it was taken to a north cemetery for burial. As it marched, the crowd chanted "death to terrorists."

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, called Roshan's killing a "cowardly assassination" and accused the U.S. and Israel of being behind the attack. He vowed Thursday that the perpetrators and those who ordered the attack would be punished.

U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon on Friday during a visit to Lebanon issued a vague condemnation of the killing, saying attacks on "any people, whether scientist or civilian," are not acceptable, according to U.N. spokesman Eduardo del Buey.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has denied any American role in the slaying and the U.S administration condemned the attack. Israeli officials, in contrast, have hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.

The assassination was carried out a day after Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a "critical year" for Iran — in part because of "things that happen to it unnaturally."

That prompted Hossein Shariatmadari, director of the hardline Iranian daily newspaper Kayhan, to ask why Iran did not avenge Roshan by striking Israel.

The independent news website, irannuc.ir, quoted an unidentified security official as saying Iran is preparing a covert counteroffensive against the West in retaliation for the bomb blast. It suggested the retaliation could include assassinations abroad.

"Iran's intelligence community is in a very good position to design tit-for-tat operations to retaliate for assassinations carried out by Western intelligence services," the official said, according to the website. "Iran's response will be extraterritorial and extra-regional. It follows the strategy that none of those who ordered or carried out (the attacks) should feel secure in any part of the world."

The website's report was also carried by the semiofficial Fars news agency, which is close to the elite Revolutionary Guard.

Source: The Associated Press

Read More

US military 'ready to engage in a conflict with Iran'

America's most senior military official has indicated that the country is ready to engage in a conflict with Iran, if President Barack Obama were to give the signal.


Tensions have been growing in the region following international condemnation over Tehran's growing nuclear ambitions.

Last month, Britain's ambassador to Iran was expelled from the country following attacks on the British Embassy. The US is also involved in a standoff over a downed spy drone, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has refused to return despite America's requests.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Barack Obama Photo: Reuters/EPA

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said that the US military had reached a point where they were ready to execute force against Iran if necessary.

In an interview with US media in Afghanistan he said: "We are examining a range of options. I'm satisfied that the options that we are developing are evolving to a point that they would be executable if necessary."

His comments come just days after Leon Panetta, US secretary of defence, said "no options were off the table" in stopping Iran develop a nuclear weapon.

Gen Dempsey said he had been quietly leading behind the scenes preparations for an attack against Tehran but said a war with the nation would be a "tragedy".

"My biggest worry is that it may miscalculate our resolve. Any miscalculation could mean that we are drawn into conflict and that would be a tragedy for the region and the world," he said.

Asked whether the US military is collecting information on the Middle Eastern nation via spy drones, Gen Dempsey said it would be "imprudent" for them not to attempt to find out what they were doing but stopped short of saying they had used unmanned aircraft.

"If you are asking are we gathering intelligence against Iran in a variety of means, the answer is of course," he said. "It would be imprudent of us not to understand what a nation which has declared itself an adversary of the United States is doing."

Gen Dempsey said the US is collaborating with Israel in its intelligence gathering but reiterated that there are no guarantees the Israelis would inform the US before launching an attack.

"We are trying to establish some confidence on the part of the Israelis that we recognise their concerns and are collaborating with them on addressing them," he said.

Leon Panetta, the secretary of defence, said this week that the US was prepared to step in to prevent Tehran realising its nuclear ambitions. He estimated that the country was only a year away from reaching its goal.

"The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "That is a red line for us and that is a red line for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will do it. If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding in developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop them. There are no options that are off the table."

If Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon, it could trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East with officials in Saudi Arabia already saying they will look towards developing nuclear capabilities if the Iranians arm themselves.

Further evidence of US reconnaissance missions in the region include the indictment of several alleged CIA spies.

In May this year, Iran's intelligence ministry announced the arrest of 30 CIA "spies" it claimed were conducting sabotage missions.

Another 15 alleged US-Israeli spies were indicted earlier this month and this week Iranian state television showed clips of ex-US Marine Amir Hekmati allegedly confessing to espionage.

Earlier this month, the EU agreed to impose new sanctions against 180 officials in Tehran in an attempt to curtail the nation's nuclear programme. EU foreign ministers also said they were looking at additional measures to impose on Tehran's energy sector.

Source: Telegraph

Read More

Pregnant Seattle protester miscarries after being kicked, pepper sprayed

A woman who was pepper sprayed during during a raid on Occupy Seattle last week is blaming police after she miscarried Sunday.

Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger that she had been with the Occupy protests since they started in Westlake Park. She said she was homeless and three months pregnant, but felt the need to join activists during their march last Tuesday.

“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’”

She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.

“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo snapped a picture of Fox in apparent agony as another activist carried her to an ambulance.

Seattle fire department spokesman Kyle Moore told The Washington Post that a 19-year-old pregnant woman was among those that were examined by paramedics.

While doctors at Harborview Medical Center didn’t see any problems at the time, things took a turn for the worst Sunday.

“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” she explained.

When Fox arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the baby had no heartbeat.

“They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too,” she said.

“I was worried about it [when I joined the protests], but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”

The Scoville heat chart indicates that U.S. grade pepper spray is ten times more painful than the blistering hot habanero pepper, according toScientific American. While law enforcement officials regulary claim that the spray is safe,researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University found that it could “produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.”

Watch this video from IowaBoyDave, uploaded to YouTube Nov. 21, 2011.

Source: RAW Story

Read More

Panel says wild weather worsens

WASHINGTON (AP) — Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press.

The final draft of the report from a panel of the world's top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become "increasingly marginal as places to live."

FILE - In this Oct. 31, 2011 file photo, Thai residents carry their belongings along floods as they move to higher ground at Bangkok's Don Muang district, Thailand. Freakish weather, from this weekends October snowstorm to the long-lasting drought in the US Southwest, is striking more often. And global warming should make future weather even weirder, a special international report says. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.

This marks a change in climate science from focusing on subtle changes in daily average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, cause economic damage and kill people. The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm, is typical of the damage climate scientists warn will occur — but it's not typical of the events they tie to global warming.

"The extremes are a really noticeable aspect of climate change," said Jerry Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "I think people realize that the extremes are where we are going to see a lot of the impacts of climate change."

The snow-bearing Nor'easter cannot be blamed on climate change and probably isn't the type of storm that will increase with global warming, four meteorologists and climate scientists said. They agree more study is needed. But experts on extreme storms have focused more closely on the increasing numbers of super-heavy rainstorms, not snow, NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said.

The opposite kind of disaster — the drought in Texas and the Southwest U.S. — is also the type of event scientists are saying will happen more often as the world warms, said Schmidt and Meehl, who reviewed part of the climate panel report. No studies have specifically tied global warming to the drought, but it is consistent with computer models that indicate current climate trends will worsen existing droughts, Meehl said.

Studies also have predicted more intense monsoons with climate change. Warmer air can hold more water and puts more energy into weather systems, changing the dynamics of storms and where and how they hit.

Thailand is now coping with massive flooding from monsoonal rains that illustrate how climate is also interconnected with other manmade issues such as population and urban development, river management and sinking lands, Schmidt said. In fact, the report says that "for some climate extremes in many regions, the main driver for future increases in losses will be socioeconomic in nature" rather than greenhouse gases.

There's an 80 percent chance that the killer Russian heat wave of 2010 wouldn't have happened without the added push of global warming, according to a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So while in the past the climate change panel, formed by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization, has discussed extreme events in snippets in its report, this time the scientists are putting them all together. The report, which needs approval by diplomats at the mid-November meeting, tries to measure the confidence scientists have in their assessment of climate extremes both future and past.

Chris Field, one of the leaders of the climate change panel, said he and other authors won't comment because the report still is subject to change. The summary chapter of the report didn't detail which regions of the world might suffer extremes so severe as to leave them marginally habitable.

The report does say scientists are "virtually certain" — 99 percent — that the world will have more extreme spells of heat and fewer of cold. Heat waves could peak as much as 5 degrees hotter by mid-century and even 9 degrees hotter by the end of the century.

Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters, who wasn't involved in the study, said in the United States from June to August this year, blistering heat set 2,703 daily high temperature records, compared with only 300 cold records during that period, making it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl of 1936.

By the end of the century, the intense, single-day, heavy rainstorms that now typically happen only once every 20 years are likely to happen about twice a decade, the report says.

The report said hurricanes and other tropical cyclones — like 2005's Katrina — are likely to get stronger in wind speed, but won't increase in number and may actually decrease. Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who studies climate's effects on hurricanes, disagrees and believes more of these intense storms will occur.

And global warming isn't the sole villain in future climate disasters, the climate report says. An even bigger problem will be the number of people — especially the poor — who live in harm's way.

University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn't among the authors, said the report was written to be "so bland" that it may not matter to world leaders.

But Masters said the basics of the report seem to be proven true by what's happening every day. "In the U.S., this has been the weirdest weather year we've had for my 30 years, hands down. Certainly this October snowstorm fits in with it."

Read More

Latest by AnonOps: Protesters worldwide have joined the "Occupy Wall Street"

Protesters worldwide have joined the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in a cry of rage against bankers, financiers and politicians they accuse of ruining global economies and condemning millions to poverty and hardship through greed.

Dozens of cities across the world - from Tokyo to Alaska via London, Frankfurt and Washington - are holding demonstrations on Saturday, in a show of solidarity with the rallies that began last month in downtown New York.

In depth coverage of US financial crisis protests

"On October 15th people from all over the world will take to the streets and squares ... to initiate the global change we want," proclaimed the website United for #GlobalChange.

"We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen. It's time for us to unite; it's time for them to listen."

Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, saw the day's first demonstration, when at least 1,000 people, including children, gathered at City Square.

"We face similar problems with our democracy here in Victoria and Australia as people face in most other developed nations," the Occupy Melbourne website said. "Our democracy is unwell."

In Sydney, about 2,000 protesters including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists, protested outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia, at Martin Place in the central business district time.

'Occupy Asia'

Demonstrations of various sizes took place in Asia, namely in Japan's Tokyo, the Philippines' Manila, Taiwan's Taipei, South Korea's Seoul and China's Hong Kong.

Several protests and rallies were held simultaneously in various locations at the Japanese capital.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched to the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to show dissatisfaction over the handling of the nuclear disaster triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Despite heavy rains in Seoul, the South Korean capital, members of more than 30 civic groups congregated outside the Financial Services Commission in Yeouido, the city's financial district.

Activists wearing Guy Fawkes masks staged performances to express their frustration with the growing income gap in Seoul, and chanted "We are the 99 per cent" - one of the seminal slogans of the Wall Street movement.

In Manila, about 100 members of Bayan, an alliance of various left-wing groups in the Philippines, marched to the US embassy, waving banners that read: "Down with US imperialism" and "Philippines not for sale", broadcaster APTN reported.

They took Saturday's occupy protest to voice support for the New York movement and to express their cricism of US troop presence in the country's south.

One man was seen carrying a placard that read: "Genuine people's democracy lives in the streets."

In Hong Kong, more than 200 people gathered at Exchange Square Podium in the city’s central shopping and business district.

Some pitched tents to stay overnight at the site while others later migrated to the HSBC building nearby.

Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, saw a smaller turnout of near 100 people than the expected 1,500, at the city's landmark skyscraper Taipei 101, home to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

#GlobalChange

The Occupy South Africa website announced "Operation Ubuntu", a Nguni word used to describe unity for a common purpose through an African worldview that people can only find fulfilment through interacting with other peoples.

Protests are scheduled in the country's major cities of Capetown, East London, Durban and Johannesburg for later on Saturday.

Greek protesters aligned with Spain's "Indignant" movement called an anti-austerity rally in Athens' Syntagma square, the focal point of many demonstrations during Greece's financial meltdown.

Cath Turner reports on Wall Street activists' defiance

In Germany, the financial centre of Frankfurt and the European Central Bank was expected to be a focus of marches called by the Real Democracy Now group.

"What is happening in Greece now is the nightmare waiting other countries in the future," Real Democracy said in a statement.

"Solidarity is people's weapon."

In Britain, about 4,000 people have signalled their intent to attend a peaceful demonstration that will start at noon today in the City of London -- a leading international financial centre -- under the banner "Occupy the Stock Exchange", according to organisers.

In the United States, the founding "Occupation Wall Street" movement has urged more people and cities to join them on Saturday.

There have also been calls for occupations similar to that in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to take place in dozens of US cities.

In Houston, Texas, protesters plan to tap into anger at big oil companies.

Alert for violence

The protests are billed as peaceful. But in a sign of what may happen, a group of students stormed Goldman Sachs' offices in the Italian city of Milan on Friday.

The students managed to break into the hall of the Goldman Sachs building in the heart of Milan's financial district.

The protests were quickly dispersed but red graffiti was daubed on its walls expressing anger at Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, and saying "Give us money".

Demonstrators also hurled eggs at the headquarters of UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank.

Italian police were on alert for thousands to march in Rome against austerity measures planned by Berlusconi's government.

Source: AnonOps

Read More

Occupy Wall Street September 28, 2011 (SHARE IT !)

Watch Noam Chomsky about #OccupyWallStreet : Video

Images Full Copyright © Giles Clarke 2011

Read More