UPDATED
True or not, this is exactly how it will happen; sketchy, uncertain reports backed by minimal scientific data, precluded by rhetoric from Iran and rhetoric from Israel, and at a time of maximum American political instability.

In any event, true or not, it seems abundantly clear that diplomacy has failed with Iran. Senator Obama says he’d talk to Iran, that more sanctions would work (as if even possible given Russian and China’s near lovefest w Iran). Well, if the good Senator really believed that, then he’d have already opened backdoor talks himself, or quietly met w an Iranian ambassador at a friendly, neutral embassy.

Iran is making nuclear bombs
Diplomacy has failed
If this report is true, then there are nukes near the Straits of Hormuz-ready to be used against 25% of the world’s oil shipping, against hundreds of thousands of Americans in the area, or to be put on a ship and sent to a target city.

Sober up people. America’s at war. Do we need a warrior or a lawyer? Do we need a man who can’t fit his the long list of resume accomplishments into a single book, or a man who has zero national accomplishments on his resume, and barely 100 y/n votes in his entire lifetime? You decide which wil deter Iran. Meanwhile, the bombs are near the ships, and they’re already in the shadows.

Israel Insider exclusively reports that a seismic event this weekend in southern Iran may in fact have been a massive underground nuclear bomb test. According to the USGS, the tremor measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale took place Saturday night, October 25 just before midnight Iran time, with its epicenter at 26.70°N, 55.02°E, just north of the strategic straits of Hormuz, opposite Abu Dhabi.
Zoomable map source: Google Maps.

The claim that the tremor was in fact a nuclear test came from an Iranian nuclear scientist who claims to be working in uranium enrichment for the project. A report published by Israel Insider on Friday, October 24 included a captionless map that portrayed the area of the seismic event that occurred the following night, based on location information previously provided by the Iranian source.

Israel Insider’s source reports that the test is in fact the second in a series. A 4.8 Richter scale event occurred on October 21 with an epicenter (26.70N, 54.96E) within 5 km (3 miles) of the October 25 tremor

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UPDATE
North Korea’s nuclear tests were actually announced just before they happened so as to prevent any military response. However, they were conducted in October of 2006 (just before a US election at a time of maximum American political instability), and they were confirmed by seismic data. They were also conducted relatively close to the coastline.

Whether the reports about Iran are true or not…the UN’s IAEA claims that Iran might already have a nuke. They at least have hundreds of ballistic missiles that could devastate any city in the Middle East, and they have enough radioactive matl to make those warheads dirty.

There is a very real threat from Iran-according to Senator Obama (who has also said there is no threat from Iran; duplicitous as usual). In a matter of hours, we’ll know how America will deal with them.

Yeah, ’cause…this couldn’t POSSIBLY be related to the worldwide oil crunch and economic crisis. Nah, must be a blood for oil neocon conspiracy! People

The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London.

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.

Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation’s reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces.

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Hmmm, USN surrounds the area. British send ships. NATO sends ships. Somali officials authorize the use of force from the intl community against the pirates, Russia sends ships, and-wha? All of a sudden the ship is freed? Gee, how did that happen? No, this is not the Ukrainian ship w Russian tanks on board, or the Spanish ship. It’s the Iranian ship where the pirates who were briefly exposed to “something” suddenly became sick, and 50 reportedly died. Now the ship is on the loose.

On August 21, the pirates seized the Iranian bulk carrier, carrying 42,500 tons of minerals and industrial products.

“The ship Dianat was released on Friday morning after even weeks of negotiations with Somali pirates and all 29 members of the crew are safe,” Said public relations office of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line (IRISL).

The ship is sailing towards international waters, IRISL added.

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There’s an interesting order of battle listed on this article that you’ll want to check out. Ironic that almost 8yrs to the day after the USS Cole was attacked in the area…the USN and NATO ships are still there, and driven to action.

NATO officials said the seven frigates from a group that were to have taken part in an exercise in the Suez Canal region would arrive off the Somali coast within two weeks in response to a request from the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).

The decision to send the ships was taken at a meeting of defence ministers from the 26 NATO member states in Budapest, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.

“Piracy is a serious problem for shipping in that area. It is also an immediate threat to the lives of the people in Somalia,” he said. “Substantially more than 40 percent of the population depend on the food aid being delivered by ship.”

The European Union has agreed to start planning for a joint naval force that could be ready for deployment by the end of the year.

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Yes, this is the same ship Flopping Aces reported on a while back. There is no more news about it other than this report which is yet another confirmation of the strange pirate deaths. The msm and govts are not talking about this at all. It’s a full on blackout.

A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.” The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.

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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — There have been four failed pirate attacks in the last 24 hours off the lawless Somali coast despite the presence of six American warships guarding a hijacked ship full of weapons, a U.S. navy spokeswoman said Saturday.

Navy Commander Jane Campbell, from the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, says three attacks were averted because crew members escaped at high speed.

Another attack was foiled because the pirates were badly prepared: The ladder they had brought to climb onto the ship was too short.

The Navy says that three of the attacks were in the heavily patrolled corridor within the Gulf of Aden. The location of another was not precisely known but was somewhere off the Somali coast.

Last week’s attack on a Ukrainian ship laden with 33 Soviet-designed tanks and weapons has focused international attention on piracy in Somalia. American officials have expressed fears the weapons onboard the MV Faina could fall into the hands of Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked Islamic insurgency.

Eight European countries have offered to help form an anti-piracy force. On Friday, Russia called for greater efforts to protect the Gulf of Aden waters, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. There have been nearly 70 pirate attacks this year already and some 26 ships successfully hijacked

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Europe is coming! Europe is coming!
QUESTION: Why doesn’t this deter pirates (or pretty much anyone)?

An international armada was preparing to head towards the Somali coast yesterday as the stand-off with pirates holding a Ukrainian ship to ransom threatened to escalate.

Amid warnings that an effective blockade by the pirates could spark a famine in the Horn of Africa, European Union defence ministers meeting in Paris agreed to set up a naval taskforce to tackle the threat.

Two Royal Navy frigates, HMS Chatham and HMS Lancaster, are already in the region and could join the proposed fleet.

The pirates who seized the Ukrainian cargo ship MV Faina were in defiant mood yesterday, vowing to fight if there was an attempt to rescue the crew of 20. They also said that they were only prepared to hand over the cargo of tanks and weapons in return for a ransom of £11 million.

“Anyone who tries to attack us or deceive us will face bad repercussions,” Sugule Ali, a spokesman for the pirates, told the Associated Press in a satellite telephone interview. The vessel is surrounded by half a dozen American warships but no moves have been made to board it.

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The U.S. naval officers leading the anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden has warned shipping companies to take additional precautions, because the fifteen warships in the Gulf cannot possibly protect all the merchant ships passing through the area.

The key problem is that no one wants to go ashore and take on the Somali warlords responsible for the surge in piracy. No wonder, as the natural state of Somalia, over the last few centuries, has been violent anarchy. This would be bloody, mainly for the Somalis, and no nation wants to get accused of war crimes and brutality by the media. Read the rest of this entry »

SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST…

While we in the US concentrate only on our ourselves, and what we always perceive to be our failings, the media fails to point out is that this “rescue plan” is, in some degree, also active in other Euro nations.

In the UK, the Parliament is under discussions about the nationalization of Bradford and Bingley.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s government will nationalize troubled mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley (BB) and is discussing the sale of its savings book and branches, people in the banking industry familiar with the matter said.

The Treasury is leading talks on the rescue of the bank and on Sunday said discussions were continuing. A full statement will be made by Finance Minister Alistair Darling before Monday’s market opening.

The Treasury would have preferred a private-sector rescue for Britain’s ninth-biggest mortgage provider, but rivals appear unwilling to come in as a “white knight” amid a global credit crisis and weakening British housing market.

The BBC said B&B will be nationalized and its mortgage book merged with Northern Rock, the lender taken under state ownership in February.

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Praise for Palin’s diplomacy to an ally, from today’s Investment Business Daily.

While the Dems were dodging the leader of a South American ally, Palin demonstrated the grace and diplomacy of a true POTUS.

Uribe didn’t come asking for much — only that Congress keep its word on an agreement that will drop tariffs on American goods sold in Colombia and help his country develop and prosper as a bulwark of democracy in a battered region.

“We consider that in the coming years if the free-trade agreement were approved . . . the main economic result could be the increase in investments in our country,” Uribe told the Brookings Institution.

“And the more we increase legal investments in our country, the less difficult our task to defeat terrorist groups, to defeat illegal drugs.”

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who arbitrarily iced Colombia’s free trade deal last April, refused to meet Uribe and didn’t acknowledge a White House invitation to an event in his honor. Later, her staff regally complained that Uribe didn’t call her.

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