Rejecting Iran?

Interesting story here about the reaction to the Iranian response to the UN incentive package. It appears that the six main players may actually reject Iran's response. Some of the European governments may actually be angry with Iran at long last.

Two senior diplomats who have been briefed on the Iranian response told The Associated Press that the six world powers studying it will likely reject Tehran's terms for talks because they do not even touch on the possibility of freezing enrichment.

The diplomats said the 25-page document from Tehran does not suggest an enrichment moratorium once negotiations start and includes only a vague reference to a willingness to discuss all aspects of Iran's nuclear program. The diplomats, who spoke from two European capitals, asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the confidential Iranian proposal.

The diplomats variously described the reaction to the Iranian reply in the capitals of the six powers as disappointed and even angry because of the lack of response to the main demand — a freeze on enrichment, which can be used to generate energy but also to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told N24 television that "we are still examining" the Iranian response, "but from everything that I hear we cannot be satisfied."

None of the six nations has yet to flatly say the Iranian counteroffer is inadequate.

But it would also appear at this point that neither Russia or China is pushing too hard for negotiations, either. There is another interesting development as well: It would appear that China has requested Kim Jong Il to come to China - as soon as possible.

Beijing "has asked Kim to visit China as soon as possible, as it believes such a visit will help resolve problems" related to North Korea's July missile tests, Yonhap news agency said, quoting a "North Korea watcher" in China.

"The government hopes the visit will take place within this year," the unnamed source added, according to Yonhap.

That sounds an awful lot like an order, not a request.

Shuttle Atlantis To Launch Sunday

The crew of the US space shuttle Atlantis have arrived in Florida to prepare for a scheduled launch on Sunday. STS-115 is scheduled to do construction work on the International Space Station.

"We have a saying back in Texas, 'It's time to walk the walk,'" said Brent Jett, Atlantis' commander, after arriving from Houston by training jet. "We are ready for the challenge … All we need is a little good weather on Sunday and we'll be out of here."

And good weather appeared likely. There was only a 30 percent chance it would prevent a liftoff around 4:30 p.m. Sunday. If the launch is delayed that day, for weather or any other reason, the space agency would keep trying over several more days.

….

This mission is the start of a renewed effort to finish building the international space station before the cargo-carrying shuttles are retired in 2010.

Construction has been delayed since the Columbia accident in 2003, which killed seven astronauts. The two space missions since that time have been focused on testing safety improvements on the spacecraft.

Atlantis will carry a 17 1/2-ton addition, costing $372 million, from which two solar wings will be opened up. The solar arrays eventually will provide a quarter of the space station's power when it is finished.

As always, there is full coverage on the NASA website here. The countdown clock there is running.

“United Abominations”

This is actually pretty funny. The heavy metal group Megadeth is coming out with an album that slams the United Nations.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Heavy metal maven Dave Mustaine is so angry with the United Nations that he is naming his group Megadeth's next album "United Abominations."

"I was watching TV and saw the trucks that said 'UN' on them and said, 'Man, you are so uncool, ineffective, anything," the singer/guitarist said in a recent Billboard interview.

"I thought, 'Wow, I've got to run with this. I got it — United Abominations, 'cause it's an abomination what they're doing!"

The longtime bane of American conservatives, the United Nations has been criticized for its slow responses to humanitarian crises in hot spots such as Darfur and Rwanda. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently expressed frustration that the group took so long to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah in Lebanon.

United (Abomi)Nations. It has a certain ring to it!

How To Prove You’re An Idiot

Successfully embezzle $2.3 million dollars from your employers over a period of 3-1/2 years. (Which isn't all that smart to begin with).

Then blow all that money buying lottery tickets.

Annie Donnelly, 38, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to stealing the money over 3 1/2 years from her employer, Great South Bay Surgical Associates, where she was a bookkeeper.

She was spending about $6,000 on lottery tickets a day, a spokeswoman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office said. It was not clear how much, if any, she won.

"I don't think I'll ever see anyone spend that much money again," said a shop assistant named Shawn, who works at the MK Cards Gifts and Cellphones store in Ronkonkoma, New York, where Donnelly bought her tickets. Contacted by telephone, he declined to give his last name.

Donnelly, who lives in Farmingville, New York, a New York City suburb on Long Island, faces at least four years in prison and could serve as many as 12 years after pleading guilty to grand larceny, the district attorney's spokeswoman said.

Sheer genius.

Incidentally, one laughable line in the story: "The New York Lottery gives about 56 percent of its revenues in prizes, and a third of its revenues, or $2.2 billion in fiscal 2005 to 2006, to education in the state." That particular completely fictional statement is how they put over the lottery when they started it in New York. In reality all the money goes to the state's general fund, not to education. It's been a sore point in New York for decades.

Pluto In The Dog House

In a Mickey Mouse decision, the International Astronomical Union made the planet Pluto into a non-planet named Pluto. This was apparently the only thing of any real import on their agenda as far as anyone can tell.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The new definition of what is — and isn't — a planet fills a centuries-old black hole for scientists who have labored since Copernicus without one.

Although astronomers applauded after the vote, Jocelyn Bell Burnell — a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings — urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.

"It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called 'planet' under which the dwarf planets exist," she said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella.

So, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard humbly submit a new logo for the IAU to commemorate their historic conference. (Anyone who didn't see this coming isn't paying attention!).

Iran Training And Equipping Iraqi Shi’ites

An American general has openly stated that Iran is training, arming and supplying Iraqi groups engaged in terrorism in Iraq. The Washington Post incorrectly implies this is the first time this has been said. Actually, US military spokesmen in Iraq itself have been telling reporters this for some time. What may be a bit different here is that brigadier general Michael Barbero is openly stating that the Iranian government is involved.

Barbero said it is a "policy of the central government in Iran" to destabilize Iraq and increase the violence there.

"I think it's irrefutable that Iran is responsible for training, funding and equipping some of these (Shiite) extremist groups and also providing advanced IED technology to them," Barbero said. "IED" refers to the improvised explosive devices _ roadside bombs _ that have caused much death and destruction in Iraq.

Barbero, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would be inappropriate to specify when, where and how many Iranians have been training Iraqi insurgents.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. military leaders have talked about Iran's funding of the insurgency, but generally have been reluctant to directly blame the Tehran government.

Barbero said there continue to be problems policing the borders, particularly the one between Iraq and Syria, as Iraqis construct forts and slowly build up their own border patrol forces.

While some incidents of violence have declined a bit in Baghdad, Barbero said it is too early to tell if U.S. and Iraqi forces are winning the war there.

My son has told me that the troops know exactly when a new shipment of arms and supplies come from Iran.

Plan B Rules Eased

Women over the age of 18 will be able to buy Plan B contraceptives over the counter if they present proof of age. People under the age of 17 will require a note from a doctor. The FDA published the new compromise rules today.

WASHINGTON - Women may buy the morning-after pill without a prescription — but only with proof they're 18 or older, federal health officials ruled Thursday, capping a contentious 3-year effort to ease access to the emergency contraceptive.

Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor's note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The compromise decision is a partial victory for women's advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation's 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies.

The pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, they can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.

Age restrictions for certain products are completely appropriate. I'm sure some hard-liners will disagree completely.

Offensive Publicity Stunt

A restaurant in Mumbai that caused an international flap over its owner's choice of a name and theme has agreed to drop the name. The "Hitler's Cross" restaurant owners have not decided on a new name, but have covered the offending signs.

"Hitler's Cross", which opened a week ago using posters of the Fuehrer and Nazi swastikas for publicity, initially refused to change its name, but relented on Thursday and covered its signboards with white cloth.

The restaurant's name and its marketing gimmick had infuriated India's Jewish population, which had said it would fight any attempts at "rehabilitating Hitler".

Germany and Israel joined the protests with the Israeli consul-general in Mumbai writing to city authorities urging them to take steps to get the restaurant's name changed.

"We acknowledge that the name adopted by us for our restaurant was most inappropriate," Satish Sabhlok, one of the owners of the multi-cuisine restaurant, said in a statement.

"Our intention was not to glorify Hitler or his atrocities or ideology in any way and we regret the anguish caused by the use of this name."

Pretty cynical attempt at generating publicity. Either that or the owners are completely stupid.

UPDATE: AP reports the owner is saying that he had no idea this would be offensive. So go with choice 'B' above.

Weird Coincidence

This is just plain weird. One of the passengers on the Amsterdam to Mumbai flight that returned to Amsterdam yesterday is one of the people who tipped the FBI about Zacarias Moussaoui. He was not involved in the event that ended with 12 people arrested, but he was on the plane.

Coincidentally, among the 149 passengers aboard Northwest Flight 42, which originated at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport on Tuesday, was Tim Nelson, the tipster who first alerted the FBI to Al-Qaida operative Zacarias Moussaoui's odd behavior at a Twin Cities flight school five years ago.

Nelson, who was seated in the forward business-class section, said by phone from Amsterdam that he watched the plane dump fuel as it circled back toward the airport while federal air marshals, their badges hanging around their necks, appeared in the front of the cabin to keep order.

"It was tense," said Nelson, who added that the marshals never flashed weapons. He praised them and the flight crew for doing "an outstanding job."

Nelson said it remained unclear whether the flight crew was responding to a serious terrorist incident or "it was just a misunderstanding, where you had unsophisticated people flying."

U.S. government officials, who requested anonymity, said crew members and air marshals observed the passengers in the rear of the wide-bodied DC-10 trying to use cell phones and passing them around during and shortly after takeoff from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Cell phone use is barred on both U.S. and international flights. Some of the passengers also were trying to change seats, they said.

Small world. However, this sounds like more than "unsophisticated" behavior and the flight crew and air marshals appear to have been very justified in their actions.

Al Qaeda In Gaza?

There is not much more than speculation in this piece from The Blotter, so I hope they are mistaken. They are reporting that some analysts think the language used in the statements from the kidnappers of the Fox News journalists sounds like al Qaeda.

Terrorism analysts say al Qaeda may have conducted their first operation in Gaza. This after a video was released today of the two Fox News journalists held hostage since August 14 along with an accompanying written statement issued by a previously unknown group calling itself the "Holy Jihad Brigades."

The language in the statement, which denounces the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is similar in style and content to the kind of dispatches issued by Abu Musab al Zarqawi when he was leading al Qaeda in Iraq.

One sentence states, "You infidels and masters of oppression: Convert to Islam and you will be safe…We came to you with the intention of slaughtering or beheading." The statement goes on to denounce "democracy" and the regimes that seek secular goals, such as "democracy and freedom."

"The rhetoric is vintage al Qaeda," said Fawaz Gerges, an ABC News Consultant and professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. "This is consistent with what we have seen in Iraq and other places."

Also unusual for Palestinian militants was the extraordinary demand issued in the statement that "Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails be released within three days" in exchange for the two Fox journalists. Targeting journalists from an American news organization and making demands on the United States rather than Israel is not typical for Palestinian groups.

The problem with basing such analysis just off the wording of a statement is that one cannot know if the wording was inspired by another statement. In other words, it could just be a copycat. I hope that is the case because al Qaeda has an appalling record with captured journalists.

Dutch Arrests Update

Dutch authorities are still holding the 12 people arrested and taken off a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai. They have three days under Dutch law until they must either charge or release the people. There is still no word on exactly what the people did, but it sounds like a number of other passengers felt very, very certain something was badly wrong.

The Bombay, India-bound Northwest Airlines flight turned around over German air space Wednesday and returned to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport after a group of passengers aroused suspicion by using their mobile phones following take-off, officials said.

The Defense Ministry said the plane's captain radioed Amsterdam seeking permission to return with a military escort, and jet fighters were scrambled from a northern Dutch military air field.

A U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, said that crew members and air marshals observed the passengers attempting to use cell phones and passing cell phones back and forth while the airliner was taking off.

"It was behavior that average passengers wouldn't do," the official said.

Passengers on the diverted flight gave varying accounts.

The Algemeen Dagblad newspaper quoted Nitin Patel of Boston, who sat behind the men in business class, as saying, "I don't know how close we were, but my gut tells me these people wanted to hijack the airplane."

Another passenger, who was not identified, told NOS television he sat next to one of the men and saw nothing suspicious.

A third, who identified herself only as Alpa, told AP Television News that some of the men appeared to be of South Asian ethnicity.

It is not at all unusual to have conflicting stories since not all people were looking at exactly the same series of events from the same viewpoint.

UPDATE: Dutch media is reporting that the Justice Minister is now saying that the incident is not terrorism related. I have no idea what is going on at the moment.

But NOS news quoted Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner as saying there were no signs of a terrorist threat aboard the flight.