Michael O'Hanlon and Bruce Riedel in the Financial Times.

The strike option, however, lacks credibility. America is engaged in two massive and unpopular military campaigns in the region. Given Iran's ability to retaliate against the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is simply not credible that we would use force in the foreseeable future. Tehran, Moscow and Beijing know this.

PressTV report.

The captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, was scheduled to meet US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke at the Manas Air Base for talks on waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a journalist says.

Rigi had planned to meet a high-profile US official at the Manas Air Base near Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek.

This senior US official must have been Holbrooke, who was in Kyrgyzstan to visit the only US air base in Central Asia, the IRNA news agency quoted journalist Wayne Madsen as saying on Saturday.

Jim Lobe comments.

The question is this: if the neo-conservative hawks, who played such a necessary -- if not quite sufficient -- role in getting the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, so misjudged Chalabi, why should they be taken seriously on what to do about Iran, or just about anything else in the Greater Middle East?

Novosti report.

There is no hard proof that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, but Tehran has to clarify several key issues on its nuclear program to avoid fresh international action, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

Reuters report.

Washington's clout over its Middle East ally is under scrutiny after Israel's veiled threats to attack Iran preemptively if international diplomacy fails to rein in Tehran's uranium enrichment, a process with bomb-making potential.

BBC report.

Iranian state television has broadcast a statement by a captured Sunni rebel leader in which he alleges he received support from the United States.

BBC report.

The head of the Lebanese Shia Islamist movement Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has made a rare public appearance in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Sheikh Nasrallah attended a dinner with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

BBC report.

The suspects, 17 of whom are military officers on active duty, were rounded up in a nationwide operation, CNN-Turk and Haber-Turk TV channels said.

Guardian report.

India tonight reacted angrily to the attack. Officials in New Delhi are convinced a series of previous such strikes -- the Indian embassy was targeted in both 2008 and in 2009 -- were the work of militants sponsored by Pakistan. Islamabad has always denied any connections to militants operating in Afghanistan.

Reuters report.

Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending, adjust PLA deployments, and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan.

[...]

China has the world's biggest pile of foreign currency reserves, much of it held in U.S. treasury debt. China held $798.9 billion in U.S. Treasuries at end-October.

But any attempt to use that stake against Washington would probably maul the value of China's own dollar-denominated assets.

Telegraph report.

Evidence is mounting that Chinese sales of US Treasury bonds over recent months are intended as a warning shot to Washington over escalating political disputes rather than being part of a routine portfolio shift as thought at first.

A front-page story in the state's China Information News said the record $34bn sale of US bonds in December was a "commendable" move. The article was republished by the National Bureau of Statistics, giving it a stronger imprimatur.

Telegraph report.

There is now more than a one-in-five chance of another asset price bubble implosion costing the world more than £1 trillion, and similar odds of a full-scale sovereign fiscal crisis, a key report warned.

Investors must steel themselves for the possibility of a second leg to the financial crisis, and should be equally prepared for a fiscal crisis, in which a major economy faces either default or a "sudden stop" in financing themselves on capital markets, according to the World Economic Forum.

Telegraph report.

Jorge Taiana, Argentina's foreign minister, will travel to New York on Wednsday to demand secretary general Ban Ki-moon's intervention to kick-start negotiations with Britain over the ownership of the South Atlantic islands.

The Argentine position was buoyed by the unanimous backing of a 32-country group of Latin American and Caribbean nations including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

The group also included 12 Commonwealth nations and is almost entirely composed of non-White former Spanish and British colonies.

Dawn report.

The government has allowed the UN commission investigating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto to record statements of Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and other senior military officers.

Informed sources told Dawn that the three-member UN team was given the permission by President Asif Ali Zardari during a meeting at the Presidency on Wednesday.

Anatole Kaletsky in the Times.

If nothing is done to change the US healthcare system, it can be stated with mathematical certainty that the US Government and many leading US companies will be driven into bankruptcy, a fate that befell General Motors and Chrysler largely because of their inability to meet retired workers' contractually guaranteed medical costs.

BBC report.

Turkey's leaders have met the head of the armed forces, Gen Ilker Basbug, about an alleged plot to stir up chaos and justify a military coup.

Telegraph report.

Theodoros Pangalos, deputy prime minister, said Germany had no right to reproach Greece for anything after it devastated the country under the Nazi occupation, which left 300,000 dead. "They took away the gold that was in the Bank of Greece, and they never gave it back. They shouldn't complain so much about stealing and not being very specific about economic dealings," he told the BBC.

Twisting the knife further, he said the current crop of EU leaders were of "very poor quality" and had botched this month's crisis summit in Brussels. "The people who are managing the fortunes of Europe were not up to the task," he said.

One banker said the situation was surreal. "How can they call the Germans incompetent Nazis and still expect a bail-out?"

Times report.

Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN.

Despite Britain's close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain's claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue.

From Foreign Policy.

For every dollar of U.S. investment, China spends 51 cents in Iran.

AFP report.

Iranian allegations that a top Sunni militant had been to an American military base in Afghanistan prior to his capture are "totally bogus," a senior US official said Tuesday.

Iran hailed the arrest of Abdolmalek Rigi as a major blow to the US, saying he had travelled to Europe and met with a NATO military chief in Afghanistan, while accusing the US and Britain of constant plotting in the region.

"This is of course a totally bogus accusation," a senior US official told AFP when asked whether Rigi had been to an American base in Afghanistan, where the Iranians allege he was issued with an Afghan passport.

From PBS's tehranbureau.

On Tuesday, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Assembly of Experts and Expediency Council, whom many believe is the power behind the scene in Iran, addressed the meeting of the Experts with a speech that was viewed as mostly moderate and pertaining to general political developments in the country.

What was overlooked were the threats made to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei by the head of the assembly, who is tasked with supervising Iran's Leader.

From the Nation (Pakistan).

THE arrest by Iran of Abdolmalek Rigi, the ringleader of the much feared Jundullah, while he was on his way to Kyrgyzstan from Dubai is a highly significant development. Available evidence, the Iranians claim, suggests that he was being backed by the United States to destabilise Iran. Jundullah is reported to have carried out a number of deadly terrorist attacks on the Iranian soil. The latest one was the bomb blast on October 18 that killed 42 people including the Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and other tribal leaders. The group took credit for the attack. The Iranian Interior Minister has confirmed that they are in possession of evidence which shows that Rigi was hand in glove with the US and UK to foment unrest in the country. They allege that he has an Afghan passport and had met with the NATO chief leaving no doubt of the US backing him up. Tehran also maintains that hours before his arrest, he was present in a US military base in Afghanistan. The Iranian charges seem to have an element of truth. Even US analyst Seymour Hersh had, in the past, hinted at the possibility of the Bush regime in cahoots with Jundullah to create trouble in Iran.

PressTV's report on the capture of Rigi.

Iran's security officers grounded the plane carrying the ringleader of Jundullah terrorist group Abdolmalek Rigi in one of Iran's southern ports, informed sources say.

As initial reports indicated that Iran's most wanted man was captured on a flight en-route to Kyrgyzstan from Dubai, a source talking to Press TV on condition of anonymity confirmed that Rigi and one of his deputies were captured after their plane was brought down by security forces in an airport in the Iranian Persian Gulf city of Bandar Abbas.

Iran's intelligence minister says the leader of Jundallah terrorist group was at a US base in Afghanistan 24 hours before his capture, in possession of a US-issued, forged Afghan passport.

Guardian report.

The web of intrigue surrounding the death of a senior Hamas official became more tangled today after Dubai police identified a further 15 members of an alleged Mossad squad who carried out the assassination, including another six who used apparently fake British passports.

The announcement brings to 26 the total number of people, six of them women, suspected of involvement in Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's assassination, which is widely believed to have been the work of Israel's secret service, the Mossad. Israel has flatly refused to comment.

Guardian report.

Police fired teargas in clashes with demonstrators in central Athens today after more than 30,000 people took to the streets to protest against austerity measures aimed at reducing Greece public debt.

New York Times article.

Several hundred other scientists over the years have had access to the material in that particular flask, but according to the F.B.I., all of them except for Mr. Ivins were exonerated. Mr. Ivins committed suicide two years ago just as prosecutors were moving to indict him -- an act that seems, under the circumstances, to be highly incriminating.

And yet, when you look a bit closer at the F.B.I.'s report, doubts persist, and they lend a good deal of credibility to the arguments of those, including some of Mr. Ivins's former colleagues, that the F.B.I.'s case, as Representative Rush D. Holt of New Jersey put it last week, is "barely circumstantial."

Sean O'Grady in the Independent.

Is Britain about to suffer a "Black Swan" event? This, if you follow trendy financial ideas, is the one that shocks observers who assumed such a thing could never happen, just as the first Western visitors to Australia to see a black swan were similarly startled. The idea was popularised by a former financial trader, Nassim Taleb, whose The Black Swan became a bestseller soon after its publication in 2007, at a time when the unthinkable was happening to the big banks and markets every day, and black swans were biting us with painful frequency.

Wall Street Journal report.

U.S. Special Operations Forces ordered an airstrike that killed at least 27 civilians in southern Afghanistan and the soldiers may not have satisfied rules of engagement designed to avoid the killing of innocents, Afghan and coalition officials said Monday.

From the Frederick News Post.

Jeffrey Adamovicz, former chief of bacteriology who supervised Ivins' work at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, said he found little new information in the FBI's final report.

"The evidence is still very circumstantial and unconvincing as a whole," Adamovicz wrote in an e-mail. "I'm curious as to why they closed the case while the (National Academy of Science) review is still ongoing. Is it because the review is going unfavorable for the FBI?"

Ynetnews report, quoting AFP.

The top US military officer said Monday that any military strike against Iran would not be "decisive" in countering its nuclear program.

"No strike, however effective, will be in and of itself decisive,"Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference, adding that he supported using diplomatic and economic pressure against Iran.

BBC report.

Latin American and Caribbean leaders have backed Argentina's claim over the Falklands, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has said.

At a regional summit in Cancun, Mexico, a document has reportedly been drafted giving Argentina unanimous support.

It comes a day after a British oil rig began drilling for oil off the islands, a move Argentina formally objected to.

BBC report.

Iranian authorities have arrested the leader of the Sunni Muslim militant group Jundullah, according to reports on state television.

The Arabic language al-Alam channel said Abdolmalek Rigi had been held in eastern Iran, but gave no more details.

Guardian report.

Turkey's once all-powerful military is facing the biggest challenge to its authority in decades after 49 senior officers were detained on accusations of plotting to topple the country's Islamist-rooted government in a violent coup.

A former deputy chief of the army, a retired air force chief, the chief of the navy and several generals and admirals were among those detained by police in a sweep carried out in eight Turkish cities. Hurriyet reported on its website that the round-up included 17 retired generals, four serving admirals and 27 lower-ranking officers.

Channel 4 report.

The "special relationship" is showing strain as a meeting set to celebrate UK and US intelligence sharing is called off in the wake of the decision to publish information about Binyam Mohamed.

A meeting to celebrate 60 years of UK/US defence intelligence sharing was called off last week, Channel 4 News has learned, in the wake of the controversial Court of Appeal ruling in the Binyam Mohamed case.

McClatchy report.

With diplomacy failing and precious intelligence just received about two new secret Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Tehran's nuclear complex. The strike is successful, wiping out six of Iran's key sites and setting back its suspected quest for a bomb by years.

But what happens next isn't pretty.

Nafeez Ahmed comments.

But we now know that the "alleged studies" are an intelligence fabrication. US national security journalist Gareth Porter has recently confirmed from senior US and German intelligence officials that purported evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme -- including the IAEA's 'alleged studies' as well as an alleged Iranian 'neutron initiator' document unearthed by the Times -- was forged.

[...]

To understand the Iran nuclear stalemate, just as with the Iraq-WMD fiasco, we need to look beyond official western platitudes, threats and narratives about Iran-WMD to explore the wider geopolitics and pressures emerging in the context of an increasingly strained global hydrocarbon energy system, in which access to the world's largest strategic oil and gas reserves and domination of the world's fast-emerging nuclear market are increasingly urgent problems.

Julian Borger on his Guardian Global Security Blog.

Why would a regime that is normally so paranoid about its LEU leave itself so vulnerable? One possible explanation, being mused on by British government analysts, is that the regime is deliberately inviting an Israeli air strike with the aim of creating a crisis, and using that crisis to crush dissent even more brutally than it is doing currently.

It is a terrifying idea, but not the only possible explanation. It may be, as David Albright at ISIS suggests, that the Natanz technicians were in a hurry to fulfil President Ahmadinejad's orders to enrich to 20%, and it was quicker to drive the whole cask of enriched uranium hexafluoride up the ramp to the pilot plant, than try to decant it into small containers.

A third possibility is that Iran is playing poker, bringing out its trump in an attempt to get the international community to fold, and agree to supply Iran with fuel rods to the TRR without Iran having to export its LEU in advance as it initially agreed to do in Geneva last October. Tehran may believe that the danger of an Israeli air strike is minimal because the repercussions in the Gulf would be so devastating.

Andy Worthington writes.

On Friday, it emerged in a UK court that the Metropolitan Police is investigating allegations that MI5 was complicit in the torture, in US custody in Afghanistan, of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident still held at Guantánamo. In the High Court, Richard Hermer QC, counsel for Aamer, told Mr. Justice Sullivan that Met officers had visited his solicitors, Birnberg Peirce, on Wednesday. "It became apparent they are now investigating allegations raised by Mr. Aamer into the alleged complicity of the UK security service in his mistreatment," he said, adding that the police had made an application to the court "for release of relevant documents" relating to Aamer's allegations that the confessions he made in US custody were obtained through torture.

Guardian report.

The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA's secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today.

After years of stonewalling, Warsaw's air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003.

New York Times report.

A senior Iranian official said on Monday that his country planned to build 10 more nuclear enrichment plants -- two of them within the next year -- and had identified "close to" 20 sites for such facilities.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, also said the plants would use a new kind of centrifuge, but did not provide details.

Cryptome carries Meryl Nass's response to the FBI's closing of the Anthrax case. Her blog is here.

The FBI's report, documents and accompanying information (only pertaining to Ivins, not to the rest of the investigation) were released on Friday afternoon ... which means the FBI anticipated doubt and ridicule. The National Academies of Science (NAS) is several months away from issuing its $879,550 report on the microbial forensics, suggesting a) asking NAS to investigate the FBI's science was just a charade to placate Congress, and/or b) NAS' investigation might be uncovering things the FBI would prefer to bury, so FBI decided to preempt the NAS panel's report.

Juan Cole comments.

Gen. David Petraeus, a straight shooter, admitted on Meet the Press Sunday that the Afghanistan War will take years and incur high casualties.. His implicit defense of President Obama from Dick Cheney on the issues of torture and closing Guantanamo will make bigger headlines, but sooner or later the American public will notice the admission. The country is now evenly divided between those who think the US can and should restore a modicum of stability before getting out, and those who want a quick withdrawal. The Marjah Campaign, the centerpiece of the new counter-insurgency strategy, is over a week old, and some assessment of this new, visible push by the US military in violent Helmand Province is in order.

New York Times report.

Israel's Air Force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting Iran within their range.

The new aircraft, called the Heron TP, has a wingspan of 86 feet, making it the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel's military.

Gideon Rachman on his Financial Times blog.

Exactly what happened in August, 2008, remains a subject of bitter dispute. So I have greatly enjoyed reading the painstaking reconstruction of events, by Ron Asmus, in a recently published book called, "A Little War that Shook the World" (Palgrave Macmillan). Asmus's sympathies clearly lie strongly with the Georgian side. But his research seems to be impeccable.

For me, the most fascinating revelation in the book comes on p.186, where Asmus appears to reveal that Vice-President Dick Cheney was pressing for the US to bomb Russia's invading troops in Georgia.

BBC report.

A British rig is due to begin drilling for oil in the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands, despite strong opposition from Argentina.

The platform has been towed to a point 100km (62 miles) north of the islands in the South Atlantic.

Guardian report.

Police questioned an amateur photographer under anti-terrorist legislation and later arrested him, claiming pictures he was taking in a Lancashire town were "suspicious" and constituted "antisocial behaviour".

[...]

He and his friend were taking photographs of Christmas festivities on 19 December, after attending a photography exhibition. The last images on his camera before he was stopped show a picture of a Santa Claus, people in fancy dress and a pipe band marching through the town.

He turned on his video camera the moment he was approached by a police community support officer (PCSO). In the footage, she said: "Because of the Terrorism Act and everything in the country, we need to get everyone's details who is taking pictures of the town."

Craig Murray writes.

If you missed the broadcast of David Tennant in David Hare's adaptation of Murder in Samarkand, or if you just want to hear it again, it is available for the next seven days here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qs5x7.

Form Raw Story.

Nick George, a student at Pomona College in California, was grilled by the TSA on "who did 9/11" and asked by FBI agents whether he was a communist after airport security officers found Arabic-English language learning cards in his luggage last summer, according to news reports and the ACLU.

Times report.

For the past 10 weeks a senior lawyer in the office of Baroness Scotland, the attorney-general, has been studying the cases of five British men alleged to have been unlawfully detained and tortured in Pakistan with the complicity of MI5.

Scotland may rule there is insufficient evidence to call in detectives but if she does refer the cases to the police, it could in effect paralyse the agency that Evans has led since 2007.

Times report.

The anthrax attacks that shocked America in 2001 were the work of a seriously disturbed government scientist who once called himself "Crazy Bruce" and who was obsessed with blindfolded women, according to the FBI's investigation's final report on the case.

Nineteen months after the suicide of Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher who was about to be charged with sending out a series of anthrax-laced letters that killed five people, the FBI has released new evidence that portrayed the 62-year-old scientist as psychologically fragile and apparently losing his grip on reality.

Xinhua report.

Russia opposes crippling sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear program, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday, citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

"The term 'crippling sanctions' on Iran is totally unacceptable to us. The sanctions should aim at strengthening the regime of non- proliferation," Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Interfax.

"We certainly cannot talk about sanctions that could be interpreted as punishment on the whole country and its people for some actions or inaction," Ryabkov said.

Guardian report.

The Metropolitan police is investigating allegations that MI5 was complicit in the torture of Shaker Aamer, the last remaining British resident in Guantánamo Bay, it was revealed today.

Investigating officers have applied to the high court for the release of classified government documents relating to the case. They are already investigating claims of MI5 complicity in the ill-treatment of British resident Binyam Mohamed while being held by the US.

Juan Cole (Informed Comment) comments.

It appears that, the International Atomic Energy Agency is at least allowing for the possibility that documents allegedly found on a laptop some years ago --but discounted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency as of dubious provenance and incompatible with other intelligence gathered in Iran -- point to a nuclear weapons program that no one has been able to locate. Some close observers have concluded that the laptop documents are forgeries. A new IAEA report that declines to dismiss the alleged documents will certainly cause the war lobby in the United States to redouble its efforts to get up an attack on Iran.

[...]

But Russia's General of the Army Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, warned that an American attack on Iran now, when the US is bogged down in two wars, might well lead to the collapse of the United States. He said that such an attack would roil the region and have negative consequences for Russia (a neighbor of Iran via the Caspian Sea). And, he said, the Russian military is taking steps to forestall such an American strike on Iran.

Guardian report.

Two senior Taliban officials were arrested in Pakistan this month in what appears to be a crackdown against Afghan militants operating on Pakistani territory.

Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammad, respectively the "shadow governors" of the northern Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan, were arrested in Baluchistan province, Mohammad Omar, the Afghan governor for Kunduz, told Reuters.

[...]

Earlier this week officials confirmed that a joint CIA-Pakistani security operation had captured the number two Afghan Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

BBC report.

Drilling off the coast of the Falkland Islands will begin next week despite strong opposition from Argentina, the UK territory's government has insisted.

Argentina has said it will widen restrictions on ships heading to the islands to cover all of South America.

Times report.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog has radically increased pressure on Iran by publicly describing concerns over atomic weapons for the first time.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it feared that Tehran could be working on "a nuclear payload for a missile" in its bluntest report yet on Iran's uranium enrichment programme.

The White House responded to the report by threatening "consequences" if Iran failed to co-operate with nuclear inspectors.

In the IAEA's first report on Iran under its new director-general Yukiya Amano, tougher language appeared to signal a sea-change in the attitude towards Tehran.

Daily Mail report.

MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake British passports, it was claimed last night.

A member of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, said the Foreign Office was also told hours before a Hamas terrorist chief was assassinated in Dubai.

The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action.

But the claim from a credible source that the Government had some prior knowledge of the abuse of UK passports will strengthen calls for ministers to come clean about what they knew and when.

Craig Murray comments on Bruce Anderson's nasty piece that was in the Independent on Monday.

Saloon bar bigot Bruce Anderson came out with a fierce defence of the government's use of torture. It could have been written by Torquemada, Walsingham or Franco. To get that vital information about the ticking bomb, it would be morally imperative to torture the terrorist's wife and children, he concluded.

Interesting is it not that to opine that Palestinian suicide bombers are justified is illegal, but to advocate torture of innocent women and children is patriotic?

From Haaretz.

If anyone still had doubts about an imminent conflict with Iran, it was removed this week by the arrival of the U.S. army chief in Israel and the threats from the Iranian president and Hezbollah secretary-general.

Something sinister is in the air.

If the international community's collision course with Tehran leads to harsh sanctions meant to halt its nuclear program, the spring and summer months will be especially sensitive. It would be impossible to rule out a scenario in which the increasing tension leads to all-out open war. Tehran and Jerusalem regularly exchange threatening messages via various channels, but with Beirut, Gaza and Damascus in the middle, the situation is liable to get out of control.

Independent report.

Britain's public finances are in a worse position than those of Greece, according to the latest figures on government borrowing. The Office for National Statistics said yesterday that January alone saw a net shortfall of £4.3bn, far worse than City forecasts and in a month which has always previously shown a healthy surplus. It puts the UK on track for a deficit of £180bn this year, or 12.8 per cent of GDP, economists said, shading the Greek figure, hitherto the worst in the European Union, of 12.7 per cent. In the pre-Budget report the Chancellor forecast a deficit of £178bn for the current year. Warnings that the UK could face a Greek-style crisis of confidence have been building for some weeks, and yesterday saw a sell-off of sterling and British government securities, or gilts, on the disappointing news.

Reuters report.

Greek opposition lawmakers said on Thursday that Germans should pay reparations for their World War Two occupation of Greece before criticising the country over its yawning fiscal deficits.

Guardian report.

Britain and the Falkland Islands today brushed off Argentinian moves to impede oil and gas exploration in British-controlled waters in the south Atlantic, saying there was no threat to shipping.

The Foreign Office and Falkland authorities said drilling for hydrocarbon deposits would go ahead without disruption despite an Argentinian effort to control traffic between its ports and the islands.

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

Collusion. That's what it's all about. The United Arab Emirates suspect -- only suspect, mark you -- that Europe's "security collaboration" with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel's enemies.

Telegraph report.

Bank of America and Barclays Capital, two leading oil traders, have told clients to brace for crude above $100 (£64) a barrel by next year, before it pushes relentlessly higher over the decade. This is a stark contrast from recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, when it took years to work off excess drilling capacity built in the boom.

[...]

"The groundwork for the next sustained step up in oil prices is now almost complete. Global spare capacity is likely to be reduced to low levels within a relatively short time. The global economic crisis has postponed, but not cancelled, a crunch which would otherwise be starting to bite now," said Barclays.

Telegraph report.

HMS York, a type 42-destroyer, was on a "tight leash" patrolling the seas around the islands in response to rising tensions over British firms oil explorations activities near the Falklands. Argentina has demanded a halt to "illegal" oil drilling around the Falkands and on Wednesday imposed a permit system on ships passed from its ports to the island.

Telegraph report.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, is facing accusations of collusion with Israel after two former members of his Fatah faction were linked to the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month.

[...]

Making a potentially explosive accusation, Hamas alleged that Ahmad Hasnin and Anwar Shekhaiber are employed by a company whose owner is a top confidante of Mr Abbas, the western-backed leader of the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank.

Guardian article.

The Mossad, like other intelligence services, tends to attract attention only when something goes wrong, or when it boasts a spectacular success and wants to send a warning signal to its enemies. Last month's assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai, now at the centre of a white-hot diplomatic row between Israel and Britain, is a curious mixture of both.

With its cloned foreign passports, multiple disguises, state-of-the-art communications and the murder of alleged arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh -- one of the few elements of the plot that was not captured on the emirate's CCTV cameras -- it is a riveting tale of professional chutzpah, violence and cold calculation. And with the Palestinian Islamist movement now vowing to take revenge, it seems grimly certain that it will bring more bloodshed in its wake.

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

According to a Dubai "source" of The Independent -- readers will have to judge what this means -- the security forces of the aforesaid emirate informed a "British diplomat" in Dubai (presumably the consul, since the embassy is in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi) of the UK passport details almost six days ago and "did not receive an appropriate reply". If this is true -- the Foreign Office will be wrathful in its denials -- then why didn't the British immediately express their outrage at the use of forged British passports and cough up details of the equally outrageous frauds a week ago? This misuse puts every British citizen at risk.

Times report.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been brought in to investigate the use of British passports in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Hurriyet Daily News report.

A major threat to world peace from Iran's obtaining nuclear weapons would be the kick off of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, in which a number of countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt would seek nuclear weapons, the Israeli prime minister told his Greek counterpart at a meeting in Russia.

New York Times report.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, said Tuesday that two influential Iraqi politicians now involved in blocking candidates in the parliamentary election next month had close links to Iran, which the general said was trying to undermine the vote.

BBC report.

Passports belonging to the alleged killers of a top Hamas official in Dubai are fakes, the British and Irish governments have said.

Juan Cole comments.

His capture shows just how abject former vice president Dick Cheney's attacks on the Obama administration for its handling of terrorism are. And that Joe Biden and others kept the arrest secret, in order to allow further operations against Taliban leaders in Karachi, shows a discipline that Bush and Cheney never had. They were always happy to prematurely release details of ongoing investigations to get a political bump, even if it meant allowing terrorists to escape.

Al Jazeera report.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday in Riyadh with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, Prince Saud al-Faisal said the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions demanded a more immediate solution than sanctions.

Al-Faisal described sanctions as a long-term solution, and said the threat is more pressing.

"But we see the issue in the shorter term because we are closer to the threat. We need immediate resolution rather than gradual resolution," he said.

The minister did not identify a preferred short-term resolution.

Times report.

Police in the Gulf state announced that they were hunting for 11 suspects, including a woman, for the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas commander, who was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.

Six of these suspects were travelling on British passports and three were carrying Irish passports, including the woman. The other two entered Dubai with German and French passports.

Joshua Foust comments on the Registan blog.

[...] here is the bottom line: this is a big deal. In the short run, it leaves a big hole right at the top of the Taliban; it might also not have any real long term affect on the war, since other senior, seemingly crucial figures have been killed off or captured without any real effect on the longer war.

New York Times report.

The Taliban's top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago.

Press TV report.

The altercation took place after the US envoy entered the room to remind those present to close the meeting as the time was over.

In response, Erdogan's adviser said, "It is not for you to judge the importance of our meeting, you offend our country," the Turkish daily Today's Zaman reported.

The quarrel led to physical confrontation and the two diplomats were separated with difficulty.

Financial Times article by Otmar Issing.

Once Greece was helped, the dam would be broken. A bail-out for the country that broke the rules would make it impossible to deny aid to others.

From Israeli Defense Forces news site.

"The option to attack Iran is still on the table, but we're not there yet."

From the Guardian.

A growing number of young British Muslims say they have been tortured overseas with the apparent complicity of MI5 or MI6 officers. Not all are still considered terrorism suspects -- many were released without charge -- but the intelligence and security committee has never sought to interview any of them, or their lawyers.

Independent report.

The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi is claiming that her son was savagely beaten during last week's protests and accuses the nation's supreme leader of tolerating such abuses. In an open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Fatameh Karroubi says her son Ali was beaten inside a mosque by hard-line militiamen.

Haaretz report.

The United States believes Iran's Revolutionary Guards are driving the country towards military dictatorship and should be targeted in any new UN sanctions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

BBC report.

At least 29 Israeli settlements in the West Bank are violating a government-ordered pause in building activity, the Israeli Defence Ministry has said.

Conor Gearty on the London Review of Books blog.

What a change we have seen! Binyam Mohamed's case was before the three most senior judges in the land outside the Supreme Court. None of the three is anything other than mainstream: their views can be taken reliably to reflect the atmosphere that prevails in the rarefied judicial world in which they spend their professional lives. Their decision upholds the principle of open justice as against the interests of the intelligence service and requires that the full basis for Binyam Mohamed's victory in the lower court is made clear to him.

Washington Post report.

Russia sees no reason to stall on the sale of its S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran, the Kremlin's powerful Security Council said Sunday, hours before the premier of Iran's adversary Israel was due to visit Moscow.

Guardian report.

It was in the middle of 2008 that Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5, delivered a bombshell confession to the previously compliant parliamentarians of the intelligence and security committee.

He told them, in strict secrecy as usual, that assurances of MI5 innocence previously accepted without demur by the politicians had in fact been false.

Times report.

The Obama Administration started an intense diplomatic push yesterday to achieve global isolation of Iran over its nuclear weapons programme. The move was spearheaded by Hillary Clinton, who landed in the Middle East to confer with Arab allies.

The diplomatic effort involves US officials fanning out across the region. It began as the White House said for the first time that China was close to backing a new round of UN sanctions against the regime. As America's top four diplomats landed in the region, General James Jones, President Obama's National Security Adviser, said that the US would press the UN to impose new sanctions this month.

Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic points out that Cheney has just confessed that he is a war criminal.

That seems to me to be the big news out of Jonathan Karl's interview with the former vice-president today. There is not a court in the United States or in the world that does not consider waterboarding torture. The Red Cross certainly does, and it's the governing body in international law. It is certainly torture according to the UN Convention on Torture and the Geneva Conventions. The British government, America's closest Western ally, certainly believes it is torture. No legal authority of any type in the US or the world has ever doubted that waterboarding is torture. To have subjected an individual to waterboarding once is torture under US and international law. To subject someone to it 183 times is so categorically torture is it almost absurd to even write this sentence.

Jack Shenker on the New Statesman "Staggers" blog.

Here's a thought experiment: pick a random Middle Eastern country led by an unpopular autocrat whose legitimacy is being challenged by a growing wave of public dissent. Add in widespread allegations of electoral fraud, and increasingly violent confrontations on the street between protesters and security services -- clashes that have left many civilians dead. Now imagine this politically volatile state is a major player in the area, and that change at the top could have an explosive effect on the geopolitical dynamics of the entire region. How much press coverage do you think it would receive in the west?

[...]

Whichever way you splice the figures, the disparity in media attention between Cairo and Tehran is inescapable. You can draw only one conclusion: western media outlets apply vastly different editorial judgements to these two countries and, as a result, readers at home are consuming a heavily skewed diet of Middle Eastern news. The issue is not, as some have suggested, why Egyptians remain so placid in the face of oppression from their political masters. They don't. The question is why nobody cares.

Reuters report.

Acknowledging China's reluctance, Jim Jones, Obama's national security adviser, told the "Fox News Sunday" program: "We need to work on China a little more. On this issue they cannot be nonsupportive."

Laura Rozen in Politico.

After arriving in Doha today and meeting with the Turkish foreign minister and Qatari leaders, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Saudi Arabia where she will meet with Saudi King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.

What's on Clinton's Saudi agenda? Prodding Saudi leaders to offer the Chinese energy supply guarantees in exchange for Beijing's nod for Iran sanctions, AFP's Lachlan Carmichael posits.

Richard Ingrams in the Independent.

When in doubt, shout conspiracy

It is always fair to assume that when people start referring to their opponents as conspiracy theorists they are on weak ground.

Tony Blair was doing it the other day when he dismissed critics of his Iraq policy in an interview on American TV. Sir Lawrence Freedman, a member of the Chilcot inquiry team, likewise has accused those of us who draw attention to the links between Israel and the American neocons as conspiratorial -- the irony being that those neocons have never made any attempt to conceal their loyalties. Now the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has referred in public to a "conspiracy theory" being advanced by Court of Appeal judges who have attacked MI5 for concealing their knowledge of what went on at Guantanamo.

Patrick Cockburn in the Independent.

Billed as the largest military operation by Western forces since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the offensive is partially aimed at the US and foreign media, which is present in force, to show US and Afghan forces succeeding in taking back territory from the Taliban.

Craig Murray in the Daily Mail.

When I protested in public about this torture by our allies, I made myself very unpopular in Whitehall. When I protested internally about MI6 and the CIA using 'intelligence' gained by Uzbek torturers, they decided I had to go. I had stumbled across the extraordinary rendition programme, and was endangering it.

But it is difficult to sack an ambassador for opposing torture, so the Foreign Office attempted to frame me with a series of allegations. These included offering visas in exchange for sex, being an alcoholic and driving an office vehicle down a flight of stairs.

[...]

[...] as I explained in a character note to Tennant, there is a massive difference between liking a drink and being an alcoholic. There is an even greater difference between liking women and blackmailing them into sex in return for visas. I find the very idea sickening.

I was stunned that the Foreign Office tried to blackmail me. My entire faith in the British Government had been destroyed. What I could not get my head round was the fact that New Labour Ministers who supported the use of intelligence from torture, and supported the bombing of urban areas, professed moral outrage that I liked nightclubs.

IMEMC report.

The Energy Authority in the Gaza Strip reported Saturday that Gaza's sole power plant will case functioning in a matter of hours due to the ongoing Israeli blockade, preventing basic supplies including fuel needed to run the generators, from entering Gaza.

BBC report.

Pune, known as the cultural and educational capital of the western Indian state of Maharashtra, is in shock at the bombing of the German Bakery.

Speculation by Gregory White in Business Insider.

The Greek Prime Minister is set to visit Russia next week in the middle of the biggest crisis in the country's recent history. He will sit down to economic talks with his Russian counterpart Vladamir Putin and it has to be suspected that the debt crisis may be up for discussion.

They'll also be discussing military and energy policy. Could the Greek PM be trying to strike a bargain with Putin to save his troubled country?

If so, this seems like a monster blow to the EU, and posibly to NATO.

Vincent Fernando in Business Insider.

Some banks are exposed to the risk of a sovereign debt crisis directly through bond investments, such as by owning, say, Greek bonds.

Yet even banks without any direct exposure to troubled government bonds could be slammed by a sovereign crisis as well.

Clive Stafford Smith in the Times.

Listeners to the Today programme yesterday would have heard Kim Howells, the Labour MP, demanding to know what a senior judge was "playing at". Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the Master of the Rolls, had made some harsh assertions against the security services in his original judgment on the Binyam Mohamed torture case, for which Dr Howells, chairman of the "completely independent" Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), claimed that there was no evidence.

I was astounded at Dr Howells's gall. The British public isn't permitted to see the classified evidence about Mr Mohamed's abuse. As his lawyer, I am -- albeit in the US -- and this places me in a fairly good position to call Dr Howell's bluff. I cannot reveal anything not in the public domain but I can suggest, sad to say, that Dr Howells has been less than forthright; either that, or evidence has been hidden from him and his committee.

Niall Ferguson in the Financial Times.

Yet even a casual look at the fiscal position of the federal government (not to mention the states) makes a nonsense of the phrase "safe haven". US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941.

Even according to the White House's new budget projections, the gross federal debt will exceed 100 per cent of GDP in just two years' time. This year, like last year, the federal deficit will be around 10 per cent of GDP. The long-run projections of the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the US will never again run a balanced budget. That's right, never.

Haaretz report.

Israel may lack the military means for successful preemptive strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz told Channel 2 news on Saturday.

[...]

"We are taking upon ourselves a task that is bigger than us" Halutz, who stepped down in 2007, said when asked about Israeli leaders' vows to "take care" of the perceived threat.

Reuters report.

Washington will hold preliminary talks with the Bulgarian government on hosting parts of a U.S. missile shield, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said on Friday.

New York Times article.

With tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions hitting new levels, the United States is mounting a diplomatic full-court press in the Middle East, sending four top diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to confer with Arab and Israeli leaders.

The envoys' visits to Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were planned separately in recent weeks, but they now have a common purpose, administration officials said: to reassure Iran's neighbors that the United States will stand firm against Tehran, and to enlist other countries in a global effort to put pressure on the Iranian authorities.

Robert Naiman in truthout.

Today, AFP reported, military helicopters dropped leaflets over Marjah as radio broadcasts "warned residents not to shelter Taliban ahead of a massive assault." Doesn't this suggest that the invading US forces may regard any civilian alleged to be "sheltering Taliban" as a legitimate target, including women and children?

If the US assault in Marjah results in large scale civilian casualties, the US will have committed a major war crime.

Independent report.

A major offensive was underway last night in Afghanistan as Nato forces launched a series of attacks designed to drive out the Taliban.

Helicopter-borne US Marines and Afghan troops led the first assault on the town of Marjah, in Helmand province, where they were expected to face up to 2,000 insurgents, including an estimated 100 or more foreign fighters.

Times article.

Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities.

Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

They are also suspected of recent killings in Dubai, Damascus and Beirut. While Israel's Mossad spy agency has been suspected of staging assassinations across the world since the 1970s, it does not officially acknowledge or admit its activities.

Independent report.

To disagree with the state is to 'delegitimise' the state: that is the increasingly strident response of the country's political and military establishment to those who dare to criticise its conduct.

Charles Moore in the Telegraph echoes the pro-torture sentiments of his colleague Con Coughlin, but with slightly more subtle language.

Also from the Telegraph, this article: MI5 officers diverted from counter-terrorism to fight 'torture' court cases.

Binyam Mohamed was released from Guantanamo Bay last year at the insistence of the British Government. It persuaded the American government to drop terrorist charges against him. Now our Government has been repaid for its efforts on his behalf by a legal judgment that undermines this country's ability to get information on our deadly enemies. Few of us want anyone tortured, and most of us want a system of justice that is independent of government. But we do not want a country that cannot protect itself from attack, or judges who take political decisions upon themselves. Yet this is what we are getting.

Moazzam Begg in the Guardian.

When I heard about Binyam Mohamed I felt a certain sense of relief that finally some of the truth was coming out into the public arena. But it's not a revelation to me as it's something I have maintained since my release: that the British intelligence services were present at every stage of my incarceration and knew what was happening to me and to many other British prisoners.

Guardian article.

The political storm over allegations of MI5 complicity in torture escalated tonight after Alan Johnson, the home secretary, accused the media of publishing "groundless accusations" and commentators of spreading "ludicrous lies" about the Security Service.

As defence lawyers prepared to challenge the government's success in suppressing severe criticism of MI5 officers made by one of Britain's most senior judges, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, pointed the finger at the "very top of government" saying senior ministers had probably known about claims of Britain's involvement in torture but failed to take action to stop it.

Laura Rozen in Politico.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is headed to Israel Sunday for meetings with his Israeli Defense Force counterparts on cooperation, Israeli daily Haaretz reports:

"During his visit, Admiral Mullen will meet with Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, IDF General Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as other senior IDF commanders to discuss the two countries mutual security concerns, including the situation in Iran," the paper said.

Nafeez Ahmed writes.

Despite his campaign promises, over a year into his presidency, Obama has been unable to deliver the change that Americans and the world alike had hoped for. Part of the problem is that neocon ideology is alive and well, reaching into the corridors of the White House, and dominating the airwaves.

Indeed, back in January 2009, after Obama had just announced his appointments, prominent neoconservative icons, intellectuals and ideologues were virtually jumping for joy.

Andy Worthington writes.

In December, lawyers for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, won an important court case in which judges ordered the British government to release information in its possession regarding claims that MI5 agents were present in the US prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when Shaker Aamer was subjected to torture, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo.

Clive Stafford Smith gave a similar appraisal, explaining, as Cahalan described it, that the Harper's article "added to his belief the US government was afraid of what Mr. Aamer may reveal."

Stafford Smith added: This is merely confirmation, fairly stark confirmation, that the reason they wanted not to send him home to his family in England, but rather to send him to [his native] Saudi Arabia was simply to gag him. I have known Shaker for some time, and because he is so eloquent and outspoken about the injustices of Guantánamo he is very definitely viewed as a threat by the US. Not in the sense of being an extremist but in the sense of being someone who can rather eloquently criticize the nightmare that happened there.

Foreign Policy article.

As the United States shifts from engagement to sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian opposition takes to the streets, a broad and diverse team of officials inside the Obama administration is working on the issue day in and day out.

Johann Hari in the Independent.

[...] a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely -- and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was -- and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.

[...]

The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world -- with no legal process -- and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.

[...]

Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates -- the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness.

Henry Porter and Afua Hirsch in the Guardian comment on this very nasty article by Con Coughlin in the Telegraph.

See also this blog post by Obsolete and the Wikipedia page on Coughlin: both are interesting and informative.

This is not only an extremely nasty piece, it is the kind of knuckleheaded blathering you find in the American political discourse -- coarse, ignorant, seething and disreputable. What it shows is that the Telegraph harbours on its staff someone who seems to actively support sleep deprivation and all the rest of it.

The Leveretts comment on Western interpretations of yesterday's events.

In sum, the Islamic Republic is not going away. It is remarkable how many Green Movement supporters outside Iran are now claiming that no one among them ever talked about "regime change" or the Islamic Republic's "implosion". But many pro-opposition pundits have, in fact, spoken frequently in recent months about the imminent possibility of the Islamic Republic's disappearance. These assessments were, clearly, wrong. The erroneous analyses of those who have worked so hard in Washington to promote this view should not go unremarked now.

Guardian article by Simon Jenkins.

Papers revealed by the high court depict a Foreign Office running about stamping on a stream of embarrassing disclosures, largely because Miliband was desperate not to seem a wimp in front of his hero, Hillary Clinton. We now know that both Miliband and the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, told an untruth in asserting, as the latter said last October, that British security services do not practise torture, "nor do we collude in torture or solicit others to torture people on our behalf".

Guardian report.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, mounted stiff resistance tonight to any swift bailout of Greece, as a rift opened up between European capitals over how best to tackle the risks posed to the euro.

Despite a show of Franco-German unity on the crisis and the first statement from EU leaders pledging to safeguard the currency's stability, hopes on the markets of a German-led rescue plan to shore up Greece's critical public finances were dashed by Merkel, who repeatedly emphasised that Athens would need to put its own house in order and brushed aside all questions of financial support.

Financial Times report.

Greece's budgetary and economic policies will be subjected to an unprecedented degree of surveillance by European Union authorities as the price of a promise of support agreed on Thursday by Germany and other EU governments.

Pensions and healthcare policies, the public administration, labour and product markets, the use of EU structural funds, financial sector supervision and official statistics will all be rigorously monitored by the European Commission to ensure that Greece is not let off the hook.

Report on CNBC.

The governments of every developed economy will eventually default on their sovereign debts, including the US, the UK and Western Europe, Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, told CNBC.

"In the developed world we have huge debt to GDP, in terms of government debt to GDP and unfunded liabilities that will come due," Faber said in a live interview via telephone. "These unfunded liabilities are so huge that eventually these governments will all have to print money before they default."

Economist article.

WHEN a motorcycle was blown up by remote control in Tehran last month, killing Masoud Alimohammadi, a professor of physics, the regime blamed "the triangle of wickedness" -- Israel, America and their "hired agents".

It is no secret that America, Israel and European countries are seeking to impede Iran's nuclear plans, overtly and covertly. Yet the assassination theory was widely dismissed. The professor's known works on particle and theoretical physics did not seem central to Iran's nuclear programme. And his name had appeared on a list of Iranian academics favouring Iran's protest movement. So, ran the prevailing theory, Israel or America had little reason to kill him, though Iranian hardliners may have wanted to do so.

But listen to the whispers of Western spies and diplomats, and the Iranian regime may turn out to be right. Well-placed sources in two Western countries now say the professor was "one of the most important people involved in the programme".

Joshua Foust on the Registan blog.

Perhaps because of the appalling rhetoric of counternarcotics in this country it can be difficult to bring the discussion of drugs into a more empirical discussion. In Afghanistan in particular, we have the pervasive meme that opium=Taliban, with entire books written about the topic, despite copious data to the contrary. So even though opium provides at best 25-30% of the Taliban's overall income (which is another way of saying they tax all agriculture but opium generates the most money), our leaders still labor under the belief that destroying opium will destroy the Taliban.

CBS report.

Syria approved Thursday the U.S. government's request to name a new Ambassador to Damascus, filling a post left vacant for five years in the wake former Lebanese leader Rafik al-Hariri's assassination.

Wired report.

Police forces all over the UK will soon be able to draw on unmanned aircraft from a national fleet, according to Home Office plans. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers, and will be in place in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Entertaining reminiscence from John Snow.

Somewhere on the coast of the Caspian, the Americans had built an early warning "listening" station -- a series of golf ball shaped domes from which they monitored Russian nuclear tests in the Urals on the other side of the sea.

I had spotted the profiles of the golf balls ten years earlier as a student.

New York Times report.

As security forces clashed with his opponents, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was quoted on Thursday as saying his country had produced a first batch of uranium enriched to a level of 20 percent, taunting the West by declaring that if Tehran wanted to build a nuclear bomb, it would say so.

Laura Rozen in Politico.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns is heading to Lebanon and Syria, amid growing tensions between Israel and Lebanon and the U.S. considering returning a U.S. ambassador to Damascus.

A former senior U.S. official aware of the trip described its purpose as "Iran, what else?"

Independent report.

European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, speaking at a summit of 27 EU leaders in Brussels, gave no firm offer of financial aid to Greece, and insisted that Greece hadn't asked for any.

"Euro area members will take determined and coordinated action if needed to safeguard stability in the euro zone as a whole," he told reporters, reading out a statement agreed by all euro members.

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

Can peace in the Middle East be achieved while both Israelis and Palestinians refuse to give ground? Robert Fisk takes a road trip through a divided land, from Ben-Gurion's Tel Aviv villa to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the besieged Gaza Strip.

From Iran Unfiltered.

Opposition website Jaras reports that Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had a lengthy private meeting Tuesday with Leader Ali Khamenei in which he complained about "embarrassing" government acts, in particular the continued detention of senior Mousavi aide (and son of a regime founding figure) Ali-Reza Beheshti. Beheshti has been released today, just one day after the alleged Rafsanjani-Khamenei session.

McClatchy report.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan's most brutal Islamist warlords, is holding tentative peace talks with the government of Afghanistan that could cause a split in the Taliban-led insurgency, Afghan politicians in Kabul said Wednesday.

Clive Stafford Smith in the Guardian's "Comment is Free".

Since I am not as temperate as a judge, I would not characterise the arguments made by Miliband as "irrational": after beginning with the term "foolish," I fear I would descend to epithets unfit to publish here. Suppressing any evidence of government criminality on grounds of national security sets a very dangerous precedent.

Guardian report, linking to the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security report.

In the years approaching the credit crunch, whistleblowers were limited to a few insightful economists and financial journalists. Now whistles are blowing again about another grave threat to the global economy and the security of nations. They warn of an oil crunch: an unexpected crash in global production such that supply can no longer meet demand, even if China and India throttle back.

From the Registan blog.

Now that we are, finally, attacking an area we've been promising to attack since last October, the media is dutifully reporting on it. And by "reporting," I really mean "repeating whatever the nearest uniform happens to mumble about it." Because really, why should anyone there or in the home office check easily checked facts about Afghanistan? What matters is getting the story out, even if most of it is ISAF deliberately trying to spin a specific version of reality. So with that in mind, let's talk myths!

Trita Parsi and Alireza Nader in Foreign Policy.

History shows that intervention is easier said than done. Past U.S. attempts to sway Iranian internal affairs -- such as the CIA-fomented 1953 coup d'état against a democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh -- have proven costly for U.S. interests. Most notably, Washington's support for the shah fueled the 1979 Islamic Revolution, inspiring anti-Western movements in Pakistan, Egypt, and beyond.

Haaretz report.

Four-star General Kevin Chilton was in Israel last week. He is head of the U.S. Strategic Command, whose sphere of operations includes responsibility for missiles on submarines and in underground silos, as well as bombers and satellites, and computer-network warfare. If American forces were to take part in an offensive campaign against Iran, Chilton would play a significant part in preparing them for battle and in long-distance missile launches, although responsibility for the theater itself would be retained by Gen. David Petraeus, of Central Command.

Reuters report.

The U.S. military released a Reuters photographer in Iraq on Wednesday after holding him for almost a year and a half without charge.

Herald report.

A Scottish Muslim accused of being a "wannabe suicide bomber" has attacked the justice system for criminalising "thought crime" and destroying his family's reputation.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, a student from Alva in Clackmannanshire, spoke out as he walked free from court yesterday after judges overturned his conviction on a terrorism charge.

Juan Cole comments.

McClatchy's Saeed Shah reports that only about 1200 residents have fled the Afghan city of Marjah in Nad Ali district, ahead of a major NATO/ Afghan invasion planned for later this week. The city of 80,000 is controlled by some 2000 Taliban fighters and there are many heroin labs, the profits of which help to support the Taliban.

...

The refusal of locals to leave in any large numbers may be what prompted US commanders to begin telling the people of Marjah to 'stay inside their homes' and stay out of the way of the fighting. This message is a 180 degree reversal of the earlier message, that locals should leave.

Guardian report.

Public sector workers across Greece have begun a nationwide one-day strike in protest at the austerity measures being implemented to try to address the country's financial crisis.

Guardian article.

Three of Britain's most senior judges have ordered the government to reveal evidence of MI5 and MI6 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed -- unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary.

Independent report.

Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.

The Leveretts comment.

Amidst the bravado surrounding President Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iran will start enriching uranium to 20 per cent purity, the Financial Times reported yesterday that China has passed the European Union as Iran's largest trading partner.

...

The finding is indicative of a broader trend: China's growing willingness to work with the Islamic Republic, despite objections from the United States and Europe.

In Foreign Policy.

They're back! The "Bomb Iran" crowd is making a big return to the political center stage after months of puzzlement over what to do about developments in the Islamic Republic. Hawks such as Daniel Pipes and John Bolton are arguing that Iran is dead-set on its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal -- and point to developments such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement this weekend that Iran would enrich its uranium stocks to 20 percent to argue that diplomatic avenues have reached a dead end.

The Leveretts comment.

Today, however, Tehran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- and President Ahmadinejad announced publicly yesterday -- that Iran would begin working to enrich its own uranium to the near-20 percent level required to fabricate new fuel for the TRR.

In response to this announcement, the Obama Administration and its European partners have been flailing like the proverbial headless chicken.

Reuters report.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to leaders in Turkey, Italy and France about the "urgent need" to move forward on sanctions as soon as possible, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.

Telegraph report. Of course there is no mention anywhere in the article of how many Afghan civilians have died.

Three soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan taking the British death toll above the number killed in the Falklands War. The deaths brought the total dead since operations began in October 2001 to 256.

Reuters report.

Afghan villagers should stay inside and "keep their heads down" when thousands of U.S. Marines launch a massive assault on a densely-populated district in coming days, NATO's civilian representative to Afghanistan said Tuesday.

U.S.-led NATO forces are planning one of the 8-year-old war's biggest offensives to seize Marjah, a patchwork of desert canals and opium fields that is now the last large Taliban-held bastion in Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province.

Independent report.

The US military has not given a start date for the operation to clear insurgents from the Helmand province town of Marjah, the biggest community in the south under insurgent control. But the military has said fighting will start soon and many residents weren't taking any chances.

Guardian report.

The idea that we "do have the chance to prepare" looks rather optimistic to me.

"The next five years will see us face another crunch -- the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well," Branson will say.

Juan Cole comments.

It is a trick of the Washington Establishment to scare apparently easily frightened Americans into a conviction that some small, poor, third world country is a dire threat to the most massively funded and armed military in the world. Repeating falsehoods is one way the Big Lie is implanted, that then allows US belligerence to be unquestioned at home.

The Leveretts comment.

It is hard to avoid concluding that the Obama Administration is deliberately overstating its alleged "progress" in persuading Moscow to support tougher sanctions against Iran.

Guardian report.

Geological surveys suggest there could be up to 60bn barrels beneath the seabed around the British territory, a bonanza that would transform islands famed for sheep, fish and remoteness.

Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic.

In a phrase: AIPAC's foreign policy, with Cheney's torture regime in place, to back it up. She has already stated that she wants more Israeli settlements and more Israelis in the West Bank, and is now hinting that she would also like a full-scale war with Iran.

Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times.

The Harper's report by Scott Horton is here.

Sullivan's comments at the Atlantic are here.

If there is any chance that these prisoners were accidentally tortured to death and their deaths then covered up as suicide, this is the biggest story in the grim annals of the Bush-Cheney era since Abu Ghraib. And yet, other than to carry a brief synopsis from Associated Press, no main US newspaper has delved into the Harper's cover-story.

And indeed, a year ago Hickman and his fellows went to Obama's justice department to explain what they believed needed to be investigated further. The FBI interviewed other witnesses who backed Hickman up. Last November, after months of waiting for a response, Hickman's lawyer got a call from the justice department. The case was closed. The NCIS report stood. When Hickman's lawyer asked why, he was told that Hickman's conclusions "appeared" to be unsupported.

This is the change we were asked to believe in.

Reuters report.

"Forever" is a long time.

NATO forces and their Afghan allies will hold territory seized from the Taliban in an imminent major operation "forever", the commander of British forces in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province said.

AFP report.

Iran said on Sunday its Internet connections will remain slow this week due to technical problems, ahead of anticipated protests by opposition supporters. Connections have been slow since last week and some email accounts have been unavailable for several hours each day.

Jim Lobe comments on Daniel Pipes' piece advocating the bombing of Iran.

Islamophobe Daniel Pipes makes what has to be considered the strongest case ever (and in a manner entirely consistent with his and other hard-line neo-cons notoriously cavalier attitude toward violence and war) for bombing nuclear facilities in Iran in his op-ed on National Review Online Tuesday. Obama should do it for political expediency.

BBC report.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has told a conference of the world's top defence officials in Germany that he is considering introducing conscription. The Afghan president said at the summit in Munich he wants to build an army and police force of 300,000 by 2012.

Telegraph report.

A Russian-speaker with close ties to Moscow's ruling United Russia party, Mr Yanukovych is expected to prioritise a raft of policies that will mend Ukraine's fractious relations with its giant neighbour. He is also likely to give the Kremlin more say in the management of the country's strategically vital gas pipeline network that carries gas to Europe and heats millions of European homes.

His victory would mean that Ukraine, itself a giant country on the EU's eastern flank with almost 50 million people and a huge standing army, would drop its ambitions to join Nato and put its EU membership bid on the backburner.

Interview with Shirin Ebadi in the Telegraph.

There is also a report.

Shirin Ebadi, 62, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her long career as a human rights lawyer in Iran. She spoke to The Sunday Telegraph during a stay in London.

Press TV report.

Iran said Saturday it arrested seven people, including two Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives, who planned to stoke unrest and violence on a march scheduled for February 11.

Independent report.

Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered his country's atomic agency to begin the production of higher enriched uranium.

He said in comments broadcast on state television today: "God willing, 20% enrichment will start" to meet Iran's needs.

Guardian article by Kenneth Rogoff.

Even as the European Union and the International Monetary Fund lay the groundwork for a giant first-round bailout, debate is swirling about whether Greece can avoid sovereign default.

...

There is an old joke about two men who are trapped by a lion in the jungle after a plane crash. When the first of them starts putting on his sneakers, the other asks why. The first answers: "I am getting ready to make a run for it." But you cannot outrun a lion, says the other man, to which the first replies: "I don't have to outrun the lion. I just have to outrun you."

Greece has yet to put on its sneakers, while other troubled countries, such as Ireland, race ahead with massive fiscal adjustments. Greece's new socialist government is hampered by campaign promises that suggested the money was there to solve the problems, when in fact things turned out to be far worse than anyone imagined.

Guardian report.

A staggering €8bn-€10bn (£7bn-£8.7bn) may have been taken out of Greece by private investors since it became engulfed by economic turmoil in November.

...

The growing flight of funds from Greece has whipped up much resentment among the public. "It's revolting," said one popular radio chat-show host last week. "After pillaging the country, they flee with their ill-gotten gains at the very mention of the word tax."

Nafeez Ahmed responds to Christopher Hitchens' attack on Gore Vidal (and by extension on himself).

See also: Hitchens attacks Gore Vidal for being a 'crackpot' in today's Independent.

Nafeez Ahmed's blog post on the matter.

... while denigrating Gore, Hitchens displays a chronic contempt for simple matters of fact and evidence.

Article in the Independent by Andrew McCorkell and Michael Gillard.

An Attorney General who suddenly switches his legal advice, a Prime Minister desperate to please a foreign power, Clare Short fuming on the sidelines, and the truth shrouded in mystery...

... critics claimed that it had, in effect, let the company off the hook. They pointed to comparisons with Tony Blair's handling of the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003. In that case also, Mr Blair rejected the initial legal advice offered by Lord Goldsmith, this time on the legality of the planned invasion in 2003. The attorney general later amended his opinion into line with the former prime minister's intentions.

Independent report.

The bloodiest fighting in the eight-year war in Afghanistan is expected to break out this week as British troops yesterday continued to prepare for what will be the largest air assault seen since the first Gulf war in 1991.

From the Detroit News.

The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

Independent leading article.

It is important to recognise that, while several European nations have weak public finances, Greece has exceptional problems. Athens' budget deficit is abnormally large, as is its stock of debt. And the European Commission discovered recently that the Greek government had been engaged in dishonest accounting to disguise the scale of its liabilities.

AFP report.

More than half of Iran's lawmakers have filed a new complaint urging the prosecution of opposition leaders, including Mir Hossein Mousavi, for their alleged role in post-election violence, Iran newspaper reported on Saturday.

Guardian article.

But despite Mottaki's assurances, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, today dismissed the idea that a deal was close and said it might be time to push forward with sanctions.

"The reality is they've done nothing to assure the international community" or "to stop their progress toward (building) a nuclear weapon," Gates said.

From Dawn.

Thousands of people Saturday attended the funeral of 14 people killed in Friday's double bomb attack in Karachi, as the death toll from the assault rose overnight to 31.

Independent report.

Iran sees good prospects for clinching a deal with world powers on exchanging some of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) for higher-grade fuel it can use in a reactor producing medical isotopes, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on yesterday.

Such a deal could represent a major breakthrough in the long-running dispute over Iran's nuclear programme, but it was not clear whether Iran's conditions would be acceptable to the United States and others.

Guardian story.

The admissions in the US covered BAE's huge £43bn al-Yamamah fighter plane sales to Saudi Arabia, and smaller deals in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in central Europe.

In the UK, the admissions cover a highly controversial sale of a military radar to poverty-stricken Tanzania, which development secretary Clare Short said at the time "stank" of corruption, but which the then prime minister, Tony Blair, forced through the cabinet.

Telegraph article by David Strahan.

The last time Britain suffered a winter this bitter, the phrase "energy security" meant having a full coal scuttle. Now it's all about natural gas. Forty years ago, few houses had central heating and those that did ran on imported oil. Today, following the North Sea bonanza of the 1970s and 1980s, gas heats almost every home and generates over 40 per cent of our electricity, making Britain the world's fifth largest consumer. Only the US, Canada, Russia and Iran guzzle more.

From the Oil Drum.

Mr. Gabrielli, the CEO of Petrobras, gave a presentation in December 2009 in which he shows world oil capacity, including biofuels, peaking in 2010 due to oil capacity additions from new projects being unable to offset world oil decline rates. Gabrielli states in his presentation that the world needs oil volumes the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates.

Reuters report.

Israel's new rocket-interceptor system will not be deployed near the Gaza Strip as expected but kept on standby, possibly to counter attacks from the north by Lebanese Hezbollah should conflict erupt with its backer, Iran.

Article in the Independent.

A year after the great Greek riots, the global economic crisis covers the blue Athenian sky like fog. Only four months after the election victory of the Socialist Party, which promised "better days", Greeks have suddenly realised they can't "live their myth" any more. The carefree days have passed, never to return. The future looks dim and uncertain. Disaster is at the gate.

Independent report.

The two-day protest comes after the government enacted a brutal reform package in response to a disastrous economic picture in the eurozone's weakest economy. The absence of the customs workers was already making itself felt yesterday, as lines of trucks formed at the country's borders unable to bring imports into the country except perishable goods and pharmaceuticals. Fears arose that a fuel shortage would soon result.

Telegraph report.

Julian Callow from Barclays Capital said the EU may to need to invoke emergency treaty powers under Article 122 to halt the contagion, issuing an EU guarantee for Greek debt. "If not contained, this could result in a 'Lehman-style' tsunami spreading across much of the EU."

Guardian article by Rizwaan Sabir.

Thornton's case highlights some problematic issues, not only for Nottingham, but for universities throughout the UK that wish to contribute to the debate on terrorism and counter-terrorism, but are afraid of becoming the subject of investigation themselves. If we are to address the problems associated with terrorism and are to have a successful, rigorous and informed counter-terrorism strategy, we need to take the threat posed to free and open inquiry at the behest of the UK's anti-terror legislation, and indeed by universities who fail to uphold traditions of academic freedom, very seriously indeed.

Guardian report.

The sudden deterioration in US-Chinese relations is set to accelerate after the White House confirmed today that Barack Obama will meet the Dalai Lama in Washington later this month in defiance of Beijing.

...

Obama told US legislators on Wednesday that he will take a tougher line towards China over its huge US trade surplus.

Other grievances include US plans to sell arms to Taiwan, the row with the leading search engine Google over alleged cyber attacks, and US disappointment at China's failure to support it over climate change at Copenhagen and on sanctions against Iran.

Independent report.

Britain's armed forces could be used on a regular basis on the streets of Britain to confront the threat of terrorism, under the terms of a strategic defence review announced yesterday.

Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.

What if the first country to leave the euro were to be Germany? What if the stolid Teutons, fed up with rescuing others from the consequences of their profligacy, were simply to walk away and bequeath the legal carcass of EMU to the Mediterranean states?

From Kable.

Police have confirmed that forces in England and Wales are passing up to 14m reads per day from automatic numberplate recognition cameras to a national database.

Telegraph report.

Greek debt markets have come under fresh assault from hot money funds after a commission of experts in Athens told the country's parliament that it had uncovered €40bn (£35bn) of "hidden debts" during an investigation into past manipulation by the financial authorities.

Independent report.

A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.

David Clark in the Guardian.

Cook was almost alone in exploring the case for war on its merits, and his willingness to resign because of it is the best argument against those who insist they were misled by faulty intelligence. On 20 February 2003 Cook received an hour-long private briefing from John Scarlett, in which he quizzed Britain's senior intelligence official on what was really known about WMD. This meeting confirmed his strong belief, expressed in his resignation speech to parliament a month later, that "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term -- namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target". This ran counter to the impression cultivated by the government.

Guardian report.

Iran's opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has attacked "dictatorship in the name of religion" at the start of anniversary celebrations of the 1979 revolution, boosting expectations of a new round of mass protests against the regime.

BBC report.

The Nigerian man suspected of trying to blow up a US plane on Christmas Day is now co-operating and providing "useful" information, US officials say.

Laura Rozen in Politico.

In what was being reported as a potentially signficant shift, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iranian State Television today that Iran is ready to send its uranium abroad.

...

"If Iran has something new to say, we are prepared to listen," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Report in the Register.

The Home Office has launched a page for people to report online extremism and terror-related content.

The section of the Directgov website will link directly to a team within the Association of Chief Police Officers Prevent Delivery Unit for investigation.

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

Israel under siege. That was the dreary, familiar, hopelessly misunderstood theme at the 10th annual Herzliya conference of diplomats, Israeli civil servants, military gold braid and government yesterday.

...

I remember all too well how, after the disastrous Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a huge London conference sought to find out how Israeli "propaganda" failed. Never mind the slaughter of the Lebanese and the growing Israeli military casualties. How come Israel's message didn't get across? How come the anti-Semitic press was allowed to get away with such calumny? It was an identikit forum to this week's Herzliya confab.

Guardian report.

Clare Short, the former international development secretary, today accused Tony Blair of lying to her and misleading parliament in the build-up to the Iraq invasion.

Guardian report.

Iran today dismissed the US buildup of a missile shield in the Gulf as a "puppet show" as details emerged of an unsuccessful US missile test designed to simulate an Iranian attack amid a tense standoff between the two countries.

From Rawa News.

"I have very good news for Afghans," Karzai said.

"The initial figures we have obtained show that our mineral deposits are worth a thousand billion dollars -- not a thousand million dollars but a thousand billion," he said.

He based his assertion, he said, on a survey being carried out by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), due to be completed in "a couple of months".

Daily Telegraph report.

Hare's script is an adaptation of Murray's own book Murder in Samarkand, but the BBC insisted that the play not be uncritical. Hare has travelled to Tashkent to speak to people who knew Murray in person as part of his research.

BBC report.

Some passengers at Heathrow and Manchester airports will have to go through full body scanners before boarding their flights under new rules.

It is now compulsory for people selected for a scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly.

From Culture Change: peak oil and other shortages.

Modern industrial society is based on a triad of hydrocarbons, metals, and electricity. The three are intricately connected; each is accessible only if the other two are present.

Independent article.

The US will provide new anti-missile systems to at least four Arab countries, and help Saudi Arabia triple the size of a 10,000-man force protecting its most important potential military targets from attack. America's Navy will also begin deploying ships capable of intercepting medium-range nuclear missiles off the Iranian coast at all times.

BBC report.

Speaking on US television, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was going to "meet his maker" if found guilty.

Guardian interview.

But if Israel continued to resist an end to occupation, he would resign and refuse to stand in new elections: "I will have to tell our people there is no hope and no use in my staying in office."