Official: Iran Imports, Exports Not Affected by New Sanctions

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Security Council's sanctions resolution against Iran will leave no impact on the country's imports and exports, a customs official said on Sunday, stressing that the measure cannot inflict any damage on the Iranian nation. "The new Security Council sanctions against Iran have been imposed on strategic goods, including weapons and munitions, and will not have any effect on Iran's exports and imports of commodities through intermediaries and investment," Iranian Customs' Director-General for Statistics and Information Technology Hossein Kakhaki told FNA.
The official also said Iran's non-oil exports showed a 33.3% growth in value and amounted to over $4.5 billion in the first two months of the current Iranian year (March 20 to May 20).

read the details via docstalk.blogspot.com

U.S. Discovers Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

Guess what America found in Afghanistan?  your next laptop and car.  too bad our government isn't as bad as the Anti-War Left says we are... if we really had occupying tendencies then we would not of let the rest of the world outbid us for oil fields in Iraq that we let the Iraqis put on the market autonomously.  now apparently American blood will also spill in the Afghan... without any financial gain... and now apparently we just found one.  

The previous leftist claim was that the Afghan territory was of use for the pipeline between Iran, Turkey and Russia.  That never held water because there were other routes.

Now apparently we have something to lose.  I have no doubt that those against the war will attempt to spin this.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

This is only good news for the U.S. if America wants to occupy the Afghan long term. The alternative Lithium mining for us is Bolivia which is also an unstable Nation. It's good news for those that would like to fight the opium trade, but the oil in Iraq for example was given in bid and lost to America by non American companies because the U.S. does not force business over the countries they occupy and for the most part allows the locals to get the best price for their resources

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.
“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.
So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.
Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.
The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.
Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, undersecretary of defense and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.
At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.
Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

via nytimes.com

If the United States people really were evil and as bad as the Anti-war people claim then this would be very good news. Sadly... as we have learned watching the similarity between Bush and Obama in theory, the Anti War people are wrong. It would be nice to see America running our Chevy Volts on Afghan Lithium... but the real good news would be a local U.S. source of Lithium

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Russia: Sanctions ban S-300 missiles

MOSCOW — The new UN sanctions prevent Russia from delivering S-300 air-defense missiles to Iran, a Kremlin official said Friday, in a reversal of the position announced by Russia's Foreign Ministry the day before.
The Kremlin statement was sure to please Israel and the United States, which have long urged Russia not to supply the powerful missile system. Russia signed a deal to sell the missiles in 2007, but has delayed their delivery.

The UN resolution does not specifically prohibit Russia from supplying the S-300, the US State Department spokesman said. "However, for the first time, the resolution calls for states to exercise vigilance and restraint in the sale or transfer of all other arms and related materiel," spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington. "We appreciate Russia's restraint in the transfer of the S-300 missile system to Iran."

via jpost.com

Here's betting the Russians find a way to say they're allowed to sell Iran the S-300 if (when?) the US Congress passes sanctions against Iran's oil industry that don't exempt Russia.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

How much do you want to bet that this will not stop the Chazar claim of Arabs? Genetic study sheds light on Jewish diaspora

Scientists have shed light on Jewish history with an in-depth genetic study.

The researchers analysed genetic samples from 14 Jewish communities across the world and compared them with those from 69 non-Jewish populations.
Their study, published in Nature, revealed that most Jewish populations were "genetically closer" to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbours.
It also revealed genetic ties between globally dispersed Jews and non-Jewish populations in the Middle East.
This fits with the idea that most contemporary Jews descended from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents in the Middle Eastern region known as the Levant. It provides a trace of the Jewish diaspora.

via news.bbc.co.uk

How much do you want to bet that this will not stop the Chazar claim of Arabs?

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

The Results Are In: Helen Thomas Was Wrong--Jews Are A People And Israel Is Home

The results of a study by New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University proves--among other things--that Helen Thomas is wrong:

Researchers say the study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, puts to rest age-old questions about whether Jews are a group of unrelated people who share a religious ideology or a distinct ethnicity with common ancestry.

“The debate is over,” said Dr. Edward R. Burns, one of the lead authors of the study. “The Jewish people are one people with a common genetic thread that evolved in the second or third century BC.”



The study, “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era ,”  [available here] compared the genetic analyses of 237 Jews, including Sephardic (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews — as well as an analysis of 418 non-Jews worldwide, and found that the Jews were more closely related to each other than to their fellow countrymen.

Past studies have reached similar conclusions, but they looked at smaller populations and considered only blood groups, mitochondrial DNA (a type of DNA passed down by mothers) or Y chromosomes (passed down by fathers).

For this inquiry, researchers conducted a genome-wide analysis of the major groups of the Jewish Diaspora — Ashkenazi Jews; Italian, Greek and Turkish Sephardic Jews; and Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian Jews.

The study — and a second genetic study published Friday in the journal Nature [available here] — scientifically undermines arguments made by those who challenge Jews’ historical relationship to Israel, such as former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who resigned last week after saying Jews in Israel should “go home” to Germany, Poland and the United States.

Turns out, the Jews in Israel are already there.

More on that second study--

“It seems that most Jewish populations, and therefore most Jewish individuals, are closer to each other [at the genetic level], and closer to the Middle Eastern populations, than to their traditional host population in the Diaspora,” Israeli geneticist Doron Behar, author of the Nature study, told the BBC.

Behar’s study examined the genes of people from 14 Jewish communities and compared them to 69 non-Jewish communities, finding — as the American Journal of Human Genetics did — a common ancestral Middle Eastern link among all Jews.

One key difference in Behar’s study is that it also included Ethiopian and Indian Jews; he found that those communities were genetically closer to their non-Jewish neighbors than the other Diaspora groups were to theirs. This may be due to a higher degree of genetic, religious and cultural crossover when the Jewish communities in these areas became established.

Both studies also find that Jews have a strong genetic link to modern Palestinians, Druze and Bedouins, following another traditional understanding of both the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of the region. (Israeli Jews and Palestinians sometimes refer to each other as “cousin,” a term used to recognize the common Biblical understanding that both groups descended from Abraham.)

In addition to the claim that Jews are merely a religion and nothing more, there is another claim that is also debunked by the findings of the study:

DNA analysis in both studies shows that European Jews are related to Middle Eastern Jews and non-Jewish Middle Eastern people, a finding that also repudiates claims by some that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of Slavs or Khazars, a north Caucasus group, who converted to Judaism in the ninth century.

“It de-legitimizes the attempts to suggest that there is an alternate origin to Judaism,” said Paul Root Wolpe, professor of bioethics at Emory University in Atlanta, who was not part of the study. Despite “all of the attempts to try to rewrite the Jewish people’s understanding of their own history, over and over again genetic studies show that there is more truth to the tale.”

Wolpe notes that Jewry had a similar reaction in 1997, when a Y chromosome study revealed a strong genetic marker that seemed to support the Biblical account of a priestly family, the Cohanim, descended from Moses’ brother Aaron.

It's not as if anti-Semites have any lack of claims to make against both Jews and against Israel--nor will 2 scientific studies prevent the same old claims from being made--but now it is clear that those kinds of claims and the people who make them are not to be taken seriously.

via daledamos.blogspot.com

Saudis deny giving Israel air corridor

On Saturday night, I blogged a Times of London report that indicated that 'our friends the Saudis' had decided to give Israel an air corridor to fly over on the way to an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Saudis are now denying that story (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Earlier Saturday, the Times reported that Saudi Arabia has practiced standing down its anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage on their way to attack Iran's nuclear installations, adding that the Saudis have allocated a narrow corridor of airspace in the north of the country.
Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi envoy to the U.K. speaking to the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, denied that report, saying such a move "would be against the policy adopted and followed by the Kingdom."
According to Asharq al-Awsat report, bin Nawaf reiterated the Saudi Arabia's rejection of any violation of its territories or airspace, adding that it would be "illogical to allow the Israeli occupying force, with whom Saudi Arabia has no relations whatsoever, to use its land and airspace."

Well, what did you expect them to say? Did you think they would confirm it? Did you think they would practice 'air corridor ambiguity'? Any reporter who actually expected the Saudis to confirm that story is a moron. In fact, when the time comes, if Israel does fly over Saudi Arabia, look for some kind of story about how Israel fooled the Saudi air defenses (for which the US will be at least partly to blame). What do these reporters expect? Good grief....

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

It’s Official: There was No Humanitarian Aid on Mavi Marmara

BS”D
by Gil Ronen of Israel National News
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed Israel’s representatives the world over that there were never any humanitarian supplies or equipment aboard the Mavi Marmara, where Israeli commandos were ambushed by armed mercenaries posing as peace activists. The commandos opened fire and killed nine of the attackers after three soldiers had been brutalized and temporarily captured.

Of the seven flotilla ships that were intercepted by Israel on May 31 and afterward, only four were freight ships, the MFA reported to its embassies and consulates: The Challenger 1 (a small yacht), the Sfendonh (a small passenger boat) and the Mavi Marmara (a passenger ship) did not carry any humanitarian aid, and had only the passengers’ personal belongings.
The four freight ships are the Gaza, the Sofia, the Defeny and the Rachel Corrie. As of  June 7, Israel had only offloaded equipment from the Defeny. The equipment offloaded was loaded onto 26 trucks, and an additional eight trucks are waiting at the Kerem Shalom crossing to enter Gaza.
The equipment includes:

1. 300 wheelchairs
2. 300 new mobility scooters
3. 100 special mobility scooters for the disabled
4. Hundreds of crutches
5. 250 hospital beds
6. 50 sofas
7. Four tons of medicine
8. 20 tons of clothing, carpets, school bags, cloth and shoes
9. Various hospital equipment – closets and cabinets, operating theater equipment, etc.
10. Playground equipment
11. Mattresses

Click here to continue reading….

via avideditor.wordpress.com

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

'Sunday Times': Submarines with nuclear missiles in Persian Gulf

'Israeli subs with nukes in Gulf'
By JPOST.COM STAFF Photo by: IDF
Israel is planning to permanently station a submarine carrying nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
Israeli submarines have visited the Gulf before, but the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

The paper claims that the government has decided to station at least one of three submarines armed with nuclear missiles permanently within striking distance of Iran in the Persian Gulf. via jpost.com

Saudi Arabia will allow Israeli jets to use its airspace to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities reported The Times of London on Saturday.
The report cited a US defense source as saying the Saudis have already done tests to ensure no jet is shot down in the event of an Israeli attack. The source added that the US State Department is aware of the action and agrees with it.
via jpost.com

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Video: Bill Maher On Why The Media Is Pro Palestinian

According to Maher, it's not pro-Palestinian bias.

And it's not anti-Israel bias.

It's stupidity.

For a more direct answer to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's question: "Who speaks out publicly in a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli way in mainstream American politics, or media?" Newsbusters provides some examples.

• NYT's Bronner Hits Israel's 'Disproportionate Force'; Times Also Botches Rachel Corrie Incident
  
  
• CBS Finds ‘Even [Israel’s] Friends Question’ Blockade of Gaza, Ignores Regular Aid Shipments Through Israel
  
  
• Time's Klein: AIPAC Unpatriotic for Telling Obama to Ease Up on Israel

[Hat tip: Newsbusters]

via daledamos.blogspot.com

"Who speaks out publicly in a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli way in mainstream American politics, or media?" Maddow asked.
Aside from the obvious answer - Helen Thomas, the media have attacked Israel time and time and time again.

However, that prompted Maher to say the media are anti-Israel, pro-Palestine. And he offered a reason why. [Emphasis added]
"I think most of them do because I think the media, to take up your point, mostly - is way too stupid to understand the issues," Maher said. "So what they do is they go toward, ‘Oh, who's a victim?' And yes, their situation in Gaza is tragic. But partly it is tragic of their own making."

via newsbusters.org