Monday, July 26, 2010

Nukes: War Policy USA: Iran closer to being target, says General

Associated Press, using a map of known nuclear s+ts in Iran, via Yahoo!News, reports:
A former CIA director and Airforce General says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.

Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was "way down the list" of options. But he tells CNN's "State of the Union" that such action now "seems inexorable."

He predicts Iran will build its program to the point where it's just below having an actual weapon. Hayden says that would be as destabilizing to the region as the real thing.

U.S. officials have said military action remains an option if sanctions fail to deter Iran.  Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes such as power generation.
As USA Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton tries to gather a new alliance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, a moment of déja vu seems to call Americans back to the period when neiboring Iraq under dictator genocidist Saddam Hussein was denying admission to his country's nuclear factories, refusing monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (a UN affiliated agency)...who also had elaborate maps of nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

But the statement by the former Airforce General and CIA Director constitutes the first time anyone so h+ in rank, civilian or military, has moved the discussion into its near ultimate stage:  Sanctions have failed, now is the time to face up to the possible need shortly for effective military pre-emption of Iran's apparently oncoming nuclear threat.

-- Politicarp

Friday, July 16, 2010

EconomicsGlobal: China Agriculture Bank: New global actor in food, farm machines


MARKET PULSE
July 15, 2010, 10:46 p.m. EDT · Recommend · 

AgBank climbs modestly in Hong Kong debut

AlertEmailPrintShareBy Michael Kitchen
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Agricultural Bank of China Ltd.(HK:1288 3.270.000.00%) rose Friday in its debut trade on the Hong Kong stock exchange, although its Shanghai-listed shares (CN:601288 2.69-0.02-0.74%) slipped. AgBank's H-shares opened at 3.25 Hong Kong dollars (42 U.S. cents) and quickly rose to HK$3.29, for a 2.8% gain over its HK$3.20 initial public offering price. But the bank's Shanghai-listed A-shares slipped after their debut Thursday, with the stock falling to 2.69 yuan (40 U.S. cents) for a 0.4% loss from its 2.70 yuan close in the previous session, and just barely above its 2.68 yuan IPO price. The long-awaited debut of China's last major unlisted lender has so far raised $19.2 billion from its IPO, according to Dow Jones Newswires. If an over-allotment option is exercised, it could raise some $22 billion, breaking the world record for IPO size.

PoliticsGlobal: Iran informant: 'Scientist' spy returns to Ayatollahland

Iran scientist was longtime informant: report

Iranian scientist Amiri flashes the victory sign after a news conference at the Imam Khomini airport in TehranReuters – Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri flashes victory signs beside his father after a news conference at the …
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Iranian nuclear scientist who says he was abducted a year ago by U.S. agents was an informant for the CIA inside Iran for several years, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing U.S. officials.
Shahram Amiri returned to Tehran early on Thursday, saying he was pressured to lie about Iran's nuclear program. Washington denied kidnapping Amiri and insisted he had lived freely in the United States.
Officials said the scientist described to U.S. intelligence officers details of how a university in Tehran became the covert headquarters for Iran's nuclear efforts, the newspaper reported.
More from the Reuters story ....

Pisteutics: Clergy: Vatican makes changes in canon law regarding sex offences of priests

I was pleased to see that the Vatican has a sex-crimes expert prosecutor, Msgr Charles Scicluna.  However, the rules classifying 'ordination of women' in the same category as sex crimes, mocks the law and  is in itself preposterous!  The Vatican needs to get its head screwed on r+t! -- Politicarp

Vatican revises its rules 

on clerical sex abuse



 Charles Scicluna, Federico LombardiAP – Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi, right, and Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's sex crimes …
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican revised its in-house rules to deal withclerical sex abuse cases Thursday, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and doubling the statute of limitations for such crimes.
Abuse victims said the rules are little more than administrative housekeeping since they made few substantive changes to current practice, and what is needed are bold new rules to punish bishops who shield pedophiles.
Women's ordination groups criticized the new rules because they included the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse.
The rules, which cover the canonical procedures and penalties for the most serious sacramental and moral crimes, were issued as the Vatican confronts one of the worst scandals in recent history: revelations of hundreds of new cases of priests who raped and sodomized children, bishops who covered up for them, and Vatican officials who stood by passively for decades.
In 2003, the Vatican streamlined its 2001 procedures for disciplining abusive priests, allowing them to be defrocked without a lengthy canonical trial if the evidence against them was overwhelming. The rules issued Thursday codified those procedures into church law.
"That is a step forward, because the norm of law is binding and is certain," Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor, told reporters. But he acknowledged that the document was just a set of rules whose application was critical.
"It does not solve all the problems," Scicluna said. "It is a very important instrument, but it is the way you use the instrument that is going to have the real effect."
While the bulk of the document codifies existing practice, some new elements were introduced: priests who possess or distribute child pornography and those who sexually abuse developmentally disabled adults will be subject to the same procedures and punishments as priests who molest minors.
The new rules extend the statute of limitations for handling of priestly abuse cases from 10 years to 20 years after the victim's 18th birthday, and the statute of limitations can be extended beyond that on a case-by-case basis. Such extensions have been routine for years but now the waivers are codified.
But the new rules make no mention of the need for bishops to report clerical sex abuse to police, provide no canonical sanctions for bishops who cover up for abusers, and do not include any "zero tolerance" policy for pedophile priests as demanded by some victims.
"The first thing the church should be doing is reporting crimes to civil authorities," said Andrew Madden, a former Dublin altar boy who filed the first public abuse lawsuit against the church in Ireland in 1995.