Germans set to deliver advanced sub to Israel

BERLIN – One of the world’s most advanced Germanmanufactured submarines is slated to be sent to Israel this year. German media reported last week that the 68-meter Dolphin submarine, the largest post-World War II submarine to be built in the Federal Republic, was openly placed in the harbor of the northern city of Kiel.

The Dolphin submarines are mainly constructed in Kiel, located in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein on the border of Denmark. According to the daily Kieler Nachrichten, the submarine can now be viewed on the harbor compound operated by Howaldtswerke- Deutsche Werft. The highly sophisticated submarine, which is believed to contain secondstrike nuclear weapons capability, is the first of three advanced “Super Dolphin” vessels to be delivered to Israel’s navy. ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, the giant German engineering firm, owns the ship manufacturer subsidiary in Kiel.

The Kieler Nachrichten reported that a heavy police presence is guarding the Super Dolphin. Water-based boat patrols, including the police boat Vossbrook, are frequently circling the submarine.

The new Dolphin is a second- generation advanced underwater vessel. Germany’s government has previously furnished Israel with three earlier models of the Dolphin. A fifth Dolphin is slated to be delivered in 2013.

In view of the growing jingoism coming from Iran’s supreme leader, who recently declared that the “cancerous tumor” of Israel has to be cut away, the timing of the Super Dolphin’s delivery raises new questions about Israel’s strategy to confront Iran’s threats. German media noted that a spokesman from ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems declined to comment on the Super Dolphin.

Germany and Israel have agreed to the delivery of a third Super Dolphin. The Federal Republic will subsidize the sale of the third vessel with a maximum of 135 million euros.

The delivery of the Super Dolphin to Israel is filled with some irony, largely because Iran’s regime as of 2010 maintains a 4.5 percent stock control of ThyssenKrupp. According to ThyssenKrupp’s 2011- 2012 corporate report in connection with Iran sanctions, “the executive board of ThyssenKrupp AG ordered a review of the business activities with Iranian customers in existence before the tighter trade restrictions came into effect to establish whether they comply with the new laws. In September 2010, it was decided that ThyssenKrupp will not enter into any new transactions with Iranian customers.”

ThyssenKrupp, which was involved in German efforts in World War II and used slave labor to advance Nazi Germany’s military aims, has refused to evict its Iranian government stockholders from its corporate ownership. Anti-Iranian regime critics have slammed the massive steel and engineering giant over the last few years for failing completely to slash its ties with the Islamic Republic.

Jerusalem Post

"Caliphate Conference" Seeks to Islamize Europe, U.S.

A Muslim fundamentalist group is organizing a conference focused on turning Austria and other European countries into Islamic states.

The "Caliphate Conference 2012" will be held on March 10 in the Austrian town of Vösendorf, situated just south of Vienna. The main theme of the event will be "The Caliphate: The State Model of the Future."

The conference is being organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir [Party of Liberation], a pan-Islamic extremist group that seeks to establish a global Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by Islamic Sharia law.

Hizb ut-Tahrir -- which is banned in many countries, including Germany, but is free to operate in Austria -- is virulently opposed to Western capitalism and democracy and seeks to extend the future caliphate to Europe and the United States.

According to a promotional video (in German) for the conference, "the Islamic Caliphate is the only social and political system that has the right solutions to the political, social and economic problems of humanity."

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned from holding a similar conference in Belgium that had been scheduled for March 4. The group also organized a Caliphate Conference in Amsterdam last July, 2011, and well as a year earlier in Chicago in June, 2010.

Analysts say the open nature of the conference in Vienna indicates that Hizb ut-Tahrir is enhancing its recruiting efforts among European Muslims.

According to Steven Emerson, a leading authority on Islamic extremist networks, Hizb ut-Tahrir is emulating the three-stage process by which Muslims established the first Islamic caliphate after the death of the Islamic Prophet, Mohammed, in the year 632.

During the first stage, Hizb ut-Tahrir builds a party by cultivating a small number of supporters to engage in recruitment and propaganda. In the second stage (which Hizb ut-Tahrir is now entering in Europe and the United States), the group educates Muslims in order to recruit a larger group of people to join Hizb ut-Tahrir and support its revolution. Finally, having won the support of Muslims, Hizb ut-Tahrir moves to establish a Sharia-ruled Islamic government.

While Muslims are busy working to Islamize the West from within, they simultaneously insist that Westerners should not be allowed to criticize these efforts.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a group of 57 Muslim countries that purports to be the collective voice of the Muslim world, sponsored an anti-Islamophobia symposium in Brussels on February 15 and 16, 2012.

The first-of-its-kind event was entitled "Smearing Islam and Muslims in the Media," and was "aimed at establishing information mechanisms to face up to the slanderous campaigns against Islam in the media."

The workshop was part of the so-called Istanbul Process, an aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam.

The explicit aim of the Istanbul Process is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and Islamic Sharia law.

Based in Saudi Arabia, the OIC has long pressed the European Union and the United States to impose limits on free speech and expression about Islam.

But the OIC has now redoubled its efforts and is engaged in a determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18, which calls on all countries to combat "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief."

Resolution 16/18, which was adopted at HRC headquarters in Geneva in March 2011, is widely viewed as a significant step forward in OIC efforts to advance the international legal concept of defaming Islam.

However, the HRC resolution -- as well as the OIC-sponsored Resolution 66/167, which was quietly approved by the 193-member UN General Assembly on December 19, 2011 -- remains ineffectual as long as it lacks strong support in the West.

The OIC therefore scored a diplomatic coup when the Obama Administration agreed to host a three-day Istanbul Process conference in Washington, DC on December 12-14, 2011. In doing so, the United States gave the OIC the political legitimacy it has been seeking to globalize its initiative to ban criticism of Islam.

Following the Obama Administration's lead, the European Union now wants to get in on the action by hosting the next Istanbul Process summit.

Up until now, the European Union has kept the OIC initiative at arms-length. But Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the OIC, says the EU's recent offer to host the meeting represents a "qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia," according to the International Islamic News Agency (IINA), the OIC's official news and propaganda organ.

According to the IINA, "The phenomenon of Islamophobia is found in the West in general, but is growing in European countries in particular, in a manner different from that in the US, which had contributed to drafting Resolution 16/18. The new European position represents the beginning of the shift from its previous reserve over the years over the attempts by the OIC to counter 'defamation of religions' in the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations."

The IINA report continues: "Officials in the Cultural Affairs Department of the OIC said that the European Union's offer to host the third meeting (the first was in Istanbul in July, and the second in Washington, DC last December) is considered a promising new possibility of solving this problem. The 'Istanbul Process' will have an added momentum by holding the meeting in Europe, which is more affected by the phenomenon of Islamophobia and hostility towards Islam."

According to the OIC, the anti-Islamophobia workshop in February was of "particular importance" as it was held only weeks before the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva from February 27 to March 23, during which time Resolution 16/18 will come to a second vote.

In September 2011, an OIC organ called the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (IESCO),organized a seminar in Brussels on "how to deal with stereotypical images of Islam in European television programs."

The seminar was designed to help European journalists "identify characteristics of stereotypes about Islam in European television programs, highlight the dangers of defamation of religions, and clarify the distinction between freedom of expression and the right to cultural difference, the commitment to the Islamic cultural identity and the struggle against racism and hatred."

In her latest book titled "Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate," Bat Ye'or, a leading scholar on Islam in the West, writes that the OIC is essentially a "would-be universal caliphate" which exercises significant power through the European Union, the United Nations and other international organizations.

Ye'or describes an OIC strategy manual, "Strategy of Islamic Cultural Action in the West," in which the OIC asserts that "Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation." The document goes on to recommend "a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture."

According to Ye'or, "The caliphate is alive and growing within Europe…It has advanced through the denial of dangers and the obfuscating of history. It has moved forward on gilded carpets in the corridors of dialogue, the network of the Alliances and partnerships, in the corruption of its leaders, intellectuals and NGOs, particularly at the United Nations."


Stonegate Institute

Smartphone users give total access to spying apps

Every time you use your smartphone app your personal information – emails, phone numbers and even photos – is sent off to dozens of Internet companies all over the world. And you are the one who is allowing them access.

Most users are aware that Internet companies like to collect information on their clients so that they can target their adverts better. But the sheer extent of their spying is shocking. And it’s all buried in the small print of the license agreement few bother to read. Often the information collected has nothing to do with function of the application.

Despite being a social network, Facebook reads your text messages, while photo application Flickr raids your contact book. In turn, video portal Youtube can access and download all of the users’ photographs.

While it is bigger companies that get flak for the privacy policies, at least they are usually careful not to lose or sell their users’ private information. For less reputable outfits, this may not be a concern.

Chris Brauer, co-director of the Centre for Creative and Social Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London, told the Sunday Times many apps are mere “fronts” for data mining companies. Their main source of profit is selling personal information to advertisers.

Once the information passes down the chain, it is almost impossible to trace who will end up with it leaving smartphone owners open to anything from unsolicited advertising to identity theft.

While iPhone maker Apple at least tries to bind its application programmers with a common license agreement, according to Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, Android phone owners leave themselves in the greatest danger.
“Google’s name lends credibility to the Android market place, when in reality it is an unregulated Wild West with hugely intrusive applications being touted as innocent games,” he says.

Pickles points out that customer protection regulation lags years behind in a market that changes beyond recognition from year to year.

But even the most stringent regulation will not save users who voluntarily sign up to give away their most private data.

RT

Greek Bailout terms remind of Hitler Epoch

'US strengthening defenses around Hormuz'

In an attempt to counter any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon is strengthening US defenses in the Persian Gulf, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

According to defense officials, the US military has notified Congress of plans to beef up sea and land bases in the area,The Wall Street Journal reported.

The official said that plans will include new equipment to detect and clear mines as well as improved surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to the report.

Iran has made a series of threats in recent weeks to disrupt shipping in the Gulf or strike US forces in retaliation if its oil trade is shut down by sanctions, or if its disputed nuclear program comes under attack.

Iran has built up its naval forces in the Gulf and prepared boats that could be used in suicide attacks, but the US Navy can prevent it from blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the commander of US naval forces in the region said earlier in the month.

"They have increased the number of submarines ... they increased the number of fast attack craft," Vice Admiral Mark Fox told reporters. "Some of the small boats have been outfitted with a large warhead that could be used as a suicide explosive device. The Iranians have a large mine inventory."

"We have watched with interest their development of long range rockets and short, medium and long range ballistic missiles and of course ... the development of their nuclear program," Fox, who heads the US Fifth Fleet, said at a briefing on the fleet's base in the Gulf state of Bahrain.

Iran now has 10 small submarines, he said.

Military experts say the US Navy's Fifth Fleet patrolling the Gulf - which always has at least one giant supercarrier accompanied by scores of jets and a fleet of frigates and destroyers - is overwhelmingly more powerful than Iran's navy.

But ever since al-Qaida suicide bombers in a small boat killed 17 sailors on board the destroyer USS Cole in a port in Yemen in 2000, Washington has been wary of the vulnerability of its huge battleships to bomb attacks by small enemy craft.

Asked whether the US Navy was prepared for an attack or other trouble in the Gulf, Fox said: "We are very vigilant, we have built a wide range of options to give the president and we are ready... What if it happened tonight? We are ready today."

Iranian officials have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet to the Gulf through which nearly all of the Middle East's oil sails.


Jerusalem Post

Syria , Tanks destroyed in aftermath

Elite upset with the U.S. president