Iranian president: Our scienists have reached zenith, accessed nuclear fuel cycle

Iranian president: Our scientists have reached zenith, accessed nuclear fuel cycle
Yaakov Lappin

Iran is now a "nuclear power," its President, Mahmoud Ahamdinejad, delcared Wednesday, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency .

"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and comcribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."

That is how Billy Sunday, the noted evangelist and leading crusader against Demon Rum, greeted the onset of Prohibition in early 1920. We know now how tragically his hopes were doomed. New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Prohibition undermined respect for the law, corrupted the minions of the law, created a decadent moral climate-but did not stop the consumption of alcohol.

Despite this tragic object lesson, we seem bent on repeating precisely the same mistake in the handling of drugs.

ETHICS AND EXPEDIENCY

On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, Would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs.

I readily grant that the ethical issue is difficult and that men of goodwill may well disagree. Fortunately, we need not resolve the ethical issue to agree on policy. Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse-for both the addict and the rest of us. Hence, even if you regard present policy toward drugs as ethically justified, considerations of expediency make that policy most unwise.

Consider first the addict. Legalizing drugs might increase the number of addicts, but it is not clear that it would. Forbidden fruit is attractive, particularly to the young. More important, many drug addicts are deliberately made by pushers, who give likely prospects their first few doses free. It pays the pusher to do so because, once hooked, the addict is a captive customer. If drugs were legaily available, any possible profit from such inhumane activity would disappear, since the addict could buy from the cheapest source.

Whatever happens to the number of addicts, the individual addict would clearly be far better off if drugs were legal. Today, drugs are box incredibly expensive and highly uncertain in quality. Addicts are driven to associate with criminals to get the drugs, become criminals themselves to finance the habit, and risk constant danger of death and disease.

Consider next the test of us. Here the situation is crystal clear.  The harm to us from the addiction of others arises almost wholly from the fact that drugs are illegal. A recent cominittee of the American Bar Association estimated that addicts commit one-third to one-half of all street crime in the U.S. Legalize drugs, and street crime would drop dramatically. Moreover, addicts and pushers are not the only ones corrupted. Immense sums are at stake. It is inevitable that some relatively low-paid police and other government officials-and some high-paid ones as well-will succumb to the temptation to pick up easy money.

LAW AND ORDER

Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?

But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are  innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved-and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal-it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.

http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/prohibition_and_drugs.htm

A founding father of the Reagan Revolution has put his John Hancock on a pro-pot report.

Milton Friedman leads a list of more than 500 economists from around the U.S. who today will publicly endorse a Harvard University economist's report on the costs of marijuana prohibition and the potential revenue gains from the U.S. government instead legalizing it and taxing its sale. Ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state and federal spending, the report says, while taxation would yield up to $6.2 billion a year.

The report, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," (available at www.prohibitioncosts.org) was written by Jeffrey A. Miron, a professor at Harvard , and largely paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a Washington, D.C., group advocating the review and liberalization of marijuana laws.

At times the report uses some debatable assumptions: For instance, Miron assumes a single figure for every type of arrest, for example, but the average pot bust is likely cheaper than bringing in a murder or kidnapping suspect. Friedman and other economists, however, say the overall work is some of the best yet done on the costs of the war on marijuana.

At 92, Friedman is revered as one of the great champions of free-market capitalism during the years of U.S. rivalry with Communism. He is also passionate about the need to legalize marijuana, among other drugs, for both financial and moral reasons.

"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," the economist says, "$7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."

Securing the signatures of Friedman, along with economists from Cornell, Stanford and Yale universities, among others, is a coup for the MPP, a group largely interested in widening and publicizing debate over the usefulness of laws against pot.

http://www.forbes.com/services/2005/06/02/cz_qh_0602pot.html

Three Kern County Detention Deputies were arrested Friday as a result of a month-long investigation. Sgt. Donal Lundgren, 34, along with deputies Patrick Holloway, 26, and Joshua Bankston, 25, were arrested Friday morning on drug related charges. The arrests came after officers served search warrants on two of the deputies' homes.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16232281/

John Walters, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, recently startled the media by admitting that the $3.3 billion Plan Colombia, now in its fourth year, has failed to make a significant dent in the amount of cocaine flowing out of that country. Walters added hastily, however, that he expected to see substantial progress in the next year or so.

His comments are the latest in a familiar and dreary pattern. Each new initiative in Washington's international campaign to stem the supply of illegal drugs is launched with great fanfare. During the early phases, isolated examples of success are touted as evidence that the overall strategy is working. Ultimately, though, reality intrudes and it becomes clear that the drug supply is as plentiful as ever. Thrown on the defensive, drug warriors admit that the task has proven more difficult than anticipated but argue that if we stay the course, success is just around the corner. When such predictions prove faulty often enough, the existing initiative is quietly buried and a new one is launched with the appropriate fanfare.

That is what has occurred with Plan Colombia. The Clinton administration initiated the program in 2000, and within months U.S. officials boasted about the amount of coca plants (the raw ingredient for cocaine) that the aerial spraying program was eradicating. Similar claims of success continued until recently. The State Department's most recent annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report contended that the amount of coca cultivation in Colombia fell from 420,000 acres in 2001 to 280,000 acres in 2003.

That statistic was superficially impressive, but it ignored two important factors. First, although the acreage devoted to coca cultivation may have declined in Colombia, the acreage in Peru and Bolivia (the other two major players) had risen sharply. That reversed the trend of the mid- and late 1990s when U.S.-funded anti-drug measures led to a crackdown that reduced cultivation in Peru and Bolivia-only to see it explode in Colombia and spread to new locales such as Ecuador and Brazil.

Second, even if the acreage devoted to coca in the entire Andean region has declined slightly in recent years, drug traffickers have become more efficient. In other words, they are able to produce the same amount of cocaine from a smaller number of cultivated plants. The bottom line is that the supply of cocaine flowing into the United States (and other markets) remains plentiful, as even the nation's drug czar now admits.

Indeed, the situation in Colombia may be even worse than Walters' remarks suggest. Washington has placed great confidence in the willingness of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to wage a vigorous war on drugs. But a 1991 assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that Uribe was in league with drug trafficking organizations. Indeed, the DIA concluded that Uribe himself was one of the top 100 drug traffickers.

Uribe has denied those allegations, and the U.S. State Department criticized the DIA's assessment and expressed continued confidence in him. Nevertheless, given how thoroughly drug trafficking cartels have penetrated Colombia's political establishment over the years, the episode creates more than a little doubt.

Drug-related corruption within the Colombian police and military is certainly notorious. Just last month, the police commander of one of the major drug-producing provinces and his deputy were sacked after an 80 lb. cocaine seizure mysteriously disappeared. That was the latest in a series of scandals that included the resignation of the head of the National Police when it became apparent that members of his force took more than $1 million in bribes to return some two tons of cocaine they had seized from traffickers.

Plan Colombia has not succeeded any better than earlier anti-drug initiatives. And contrary to the drug czar's tenacious optimism, that pattern is not likely to improve in the next year-or the next 10 years. One wonders how many times U.S. officials have to travel down the road of a prohibitionist strategy before they realize that it always leads to a dead end. Given the huge profit margin that exists because drugs are illegal, supply side campaigns are doomed to fail. It is time that Walters and other policymakers recognize that reality. 

http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-13-04-2.html

RULES OF THE TALIBAN, ROCKETS HIT ISRAEL, PALESTINIANS CAN SUE ISRAEL, SOMALIA GIVES ETHIOPIA ONE WEEK TO LEAVE- OR FACE FULL WAR, GULF CALLS FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL, JAPAN WANTS N. KOREA TO EXPLAIN KIDNAP PROGRAM

An extraordinary little document is making the rounds among the Taliban of Afghanistan. As first reported in NEWSWEEK by Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai on Dec. 3, the stapled pamphlet called simply “Layeha,” or “Rule Book,” is only nine pages long. But it speaks volumes about the Taliban: their strategy, their following, their potential virtues and their persistent vices, and the full text is well worth reading.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16169421/site/newsweek/   See the last post today for an amazing article on religion and politics merger!

President Hamid Karzai directly accused Pakistan's government today of supporting the Taliban insurgency in his country, hours after a suicide attacker exploded himself in an Afghan governor's compound, killing eight.

Taliban militants have increasingly targeted government officials. Since September, they have killed one provincial governor, narrowly missed another, and killed several district-level police, intelligence and administrative chiefs.
"The problem is not Taliban. We don't see it that way. The problem is with Pakistan," Karzai told foreign journalists during a trip to Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold."  http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-afghanistan1212,0,5315569.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Fiji's ousted prime minister said Tuesday the South Pacific country was sliding toward "the worst kind of dictatorship," and offered to hold talks with the military regime to find a way to restore democracy as quickly as possible.  http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-12-fiji-coup_x.htm

The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council Tuesday demanded the application of the UN charter’s Chapter Seven on Israel after its premier implied the Jewish state has nuclear weapons. “We call for application against Israel of Chapter VII, that is to say, the imposition of sanctions,” Secretary General Abderrahman al-Attiya said in Kuwait, on the sidelines of a conference on cooperation between the GCC and Nato.

Attiya called on the United States not to apply a policy of “double standards” and to “work for the application (against Israel) of the resolutions of international legitimacy and of Chapter VII.” Chapter VII deals with action the UN Security Council might take regarding threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.

As a first step, it says the council may call for member states to impose sanctions, including complete or partial interruption of economic relations and the severance of diplomatic relations. If those measures are deemed to have failed, military action can be called for. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sparked an uproar after an apparent slip of the tongue in which he for the first time listed Israel as a nuclear power.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=35389

Spanish police arrested 11 suspected Islamic radicals Tuesday in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Morocco's north coast, an Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN.

The operation struck at "international terrorism" and the 11 suspects are linked to a cell of the terrorist Salafist Group for Call and Combat, Spain's Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The detainees are suspected of being in the initial phase of plotting a terrorist attack, CNN partner station CNN+ reported, citing Interior Ministry sources.

The suspects were involved in recruiting and indoctrination for Islamic terrorist activities to carry out attacks and had connections to terrorists in Britain and Morocco, the Interior Ministry statement said.  http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/12/spain.arrests/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq's Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Cheney's whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.

The Saudi warning reflects fears among America's Sunni Arab allies about Iran's rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran's nuclear ambitions. King Abdullah II of Jordan has also expressed concern about rising Shiite influence, and about the prospect that the Shiite-dominated government would use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population.

A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that part of the administration's review of Iraq policy involved the question of how to harness a coalition of moderate Iraqi Sunnis with centrist Shiites to back the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout of Iraq, citing fears that Iraq's minority Sunni population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.  http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/13/africa/web.1213saudi.php

Palestinian militants had fired three rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday afternoon, violating a fragile ceasefire, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

Israeli sources said the rockets were fired from northern Gaza Strip which has been the scene of a large-scale Israeli offensive in November.

Today's home-made rocket attack was the fifth breach by the Palestinians of the ceasefire, they added.

There were no reports about casualties.

Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad (Holy War) claimed responsibility for the attacks which targeted Sderot city in Israel.

In a statement faxed to the press, the brigades said that the attack came in response to the ongoing Israeli violations of the ceasefire and the aggression against the Palestinian people.

The statement noted that Israeli troops had arrested a senior Islamic Jihad militant in the West Bank city of Tulkarem.

The ceasefire, took effect in the beginning of this month, has prevented Israel from expanding Gaza military operations. But Israel insists that the ceasefire was only applied to the Gaza Strip despite the Palestinians' request for an extension of calm to the West Bank.

Source: Xinhua  http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200612/13/eng20061213_331789.html

The Israeli supreme court has overturned part of a 17-month-old blanket ban by the government on Palestinians seeking compensation for harm inflicted by the Israel Defence Forces.

The decision reopens the way for at least some law suits in the Israeli courts by Palestinians who suffer bereavement, injury or property damage at the hands of the Israeli military in Gaza or the West Bank, by cancelling a section of an amendment approved by the Knesset in July 2005.

The ruling, one of the last to be written by the recently retired court chairman Aharon Barak, was broadly welcomed by the left, and human rights groups. Adalah, one of the rights groups which had petitioned the court, said that the ruling, while "based on technicalities", would open the way for some claims through civil courts.

But right-wing Knesset members queued up to denounce the ruling and hinted at attempts to reintroduce the legislation through the Knesset. Attorney Yossi Fuchs, a member of the right-wing "Land of Israel Legal Forum" said: "The ruling is a parting gift from Aharon Barak to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a gift that will buy Barak a respected status in the eyes of the international legal community at the expense of the security of Israel's citizens."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2070194.ece

Somalia's powerful Islamist movement has given neighboring Ethiopia a one-week deadline to withdraw its troops protecting the weak government or face major attacks.

The declaration appeared to push the country even closer to a full-scale conflict that many believe could engulf the Horn of Africa and drew a swift warning from the government at its seat in Baidoa.

"We are giving a deadline to the invading forces," said Yusuf Mohamed Siad, security chief for the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

"If Ethiopian forces inside our territory do not withdraw after a week, we will not hesitate to launch full-scale attacks on them," he told reporters at a news conference in the Islamist-held capital of Mogadishu.

"From today on, all Ethiopians must start leaving Somalia, if they do not they will be responsible for the bloodshed that will follow," Siad said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061212/wl_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia_061212162137

Key witnesses in the Alexander Litvinenko investigation are missing, with their families claiming that they fear for their lives.

The sudden disappearance of a number of leading figures linked to the affair will make it even harder for British detectives, whose inquiry has now spread across five countries.  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-2501273,00.html

A key witness in the radiation death of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko claimed the poisoning took place earlier than is widely believed, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Andrei Lugovoi, a security agent-turned-businessman who met with Litvinenko at a London hotel on Nov. 1, the day Litvinenko suspected he was poisoned, said in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid that he and Litvinenko were poisoned on Oct. 16.

"Who told you that the contamination took place on Nov. 1? It took place much earlier, on Oct. 16," Lugovoi was quoted as saying by the paper. Lugovoi is himself undergoing radiation checks in a Moscow clinic.

Litvinenko, 43, a former Russian agent and a Kremlin critic, died Nov. 23 of poisoning from polonium-210.

Lugovoi supported his claim by saying that he and Litvinenko visited a London-based security firm where traces of polonium were later found only in mid-October, but did not go there on Nov. 1, meaning that the contamination couldn't have taken place on that day.

http://dose.canada.com/news/story.html?id=1bae0593-c91e-428a-9f3d-ab63b69819b8

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference questioning the Holocaust came to an end Tuesday, but not before hearing former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke say that gas chambers were not used to kill Jews.

"The Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel," Duke told a gathering of nearly 70 "researchers" in Tehran at Ahmadinejad's invitation.

"This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world," said Duke, a former state representative in Louisiana who twice ran for president.

"The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder," Duke told The Associated Press.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,236014,00.html

The United Nations' specialist on North Korean human rights is calling for Pyongyang to provide full details about the fate of Japanese abducted by North Korean agents. The appeal came as a Japanese official indicated that the number of abductees is far higher than the 17 officially recognized so far. VOA's Steve Herman reports from Tokyo.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted in 2002 that his agents had abducted 13 Japanese during the 1970's and '80s. The abductees were used to teach North Korean agents about Japanese language and culture.

Mr. Kim allowed five Japanese to return home, but said the other eight had died. Japan has so far identified 17 people as abductees, but activists maintain that the number is far higher - and the Japanese government might now be ready to agree. http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-12-13-voa12.cfm

 The Islamic Courts Union has given Ethiopia a week to withdraw its troops from Somalia and says it will attack any that do not leave."Starting today, if the Ethiopians don't leave our land within seven days, we will attack them," Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, the Islamic courts defence spokesman, said in Mogadishu on Tuesday.

He was referring to the alleged thousands of troops that diplomats and other witnesses say have crossed over the border to protect the government of Abdullahi Yusuf, the Somali president, in Baidoa.  http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/33C46686-5F0C-4662-94BE-9B174A7A6044.htm

Mad Prophets, Nazis, Bin Laden Rage in History of Religious War

CHAVEZ WINS- SHUTS DOWN INDEPENDENT TV CHANNELS!

CARACAS, Venezuela — Officials identifying themselves as members of a state regulatory agency forced the U.S.-based Spanish-language TV network Telemundo to halt transmission Sunday of its presidential election coverage.

"We're surprised by this," said Pablo Iacub, a member of Telemundo's eight-person team, which arrived last week. "We only want to do our work," he said by telephone.

At least six people who identified themselves as members of the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL), which regulates electronic media in Venezuela, arrived Sunday afternoon at the hotel from which Telemundo had been transmitting since Friday, said Iacub.

The officials said the network needed permission to transmit and lacking such could not, he said. Iacub said he was unaware of such a requirement but that the Telemundo journalists were accredited with Venezuela's national elections council.

Iacub said the Telemundo team asked how they could obtain permission and, after an hour, were told that they would not be able to transmit.

Telephone calls to Conatel offices seeking comment on the incident went unanswered.

Telemundo Communications Group is owned by NBC Universal Inc., which is controlled by General Electric Co. It claims to reach about 93 percent of Hispanic households in the U.S. and also has viewers in Mexico.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4376202.html

Anti-U.S. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claimed victory with a cry of "long live the revolution" as official results showed him heading for a landslide re-election win on Sunday.

Chavez won 61 percent, while Manuel Rosales, a governor of an oil-producing province who united the opposition, trailed with 38 percent after 78 percent of the vote had been counted, the National Electoral Council said.

If the trend continues, Chavez, 52, will have a strong mandate in his next six-year term to press his self-styled socialist revolution and forge an anti-U.S. front in Latin America to counter what he calls the superpower's "imperialism."  http://snipurl.com/13zse

-- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez backed the possibility of holding a national referendum, if he's re-elected, on whether to shut down private television stations that he has accused of subversive activities.

Chavez's comments late Thursday came amid rising tensions between the government and the country's largely opposition-aligned private media ahead of Sunday's vote.

Chavez was asked in a televised interview if he would consider asking the nation whether the government should block certain channels from renewing their broadcast licenses next year. (Watch Chavez land a nod as Time magazine's Person of the Year )

"That is perfectly possible," Chavez said. "It's perfectly possible that the country gives its opinion, including for how long."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/01/chavez.venezuela.election.ap/index.html