Israeli PM Netanyahu 'ready' to order strike on Iran

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he is ready to order a strike on Iran if international sanctions do not stop its nuclear programme.

"I am, of course, ready to press the button if necessary," he said.

Speaking on Israeli television, Mr Netanyahu also indicated Israel was prepared to act unilaterally.

His government has failed to get the US to set a clear "red line" for military action against Iran.

This has put a strain on relations with the administration of President Barack Obama.

Channel Two interviewed the prime minister as part of an investigative report detailing Israel's efforts to stop Iran from what it says is a drive to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes.

As long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have the atomic bomb”Benjamin Netanyahu

The Channel Two report said that in 2010, Mr Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, had given orders for the military to get ready to attack Iran within hours if required.

The programme described this as "the closest Israel has come to attacking Iran".

The orders were later withdrawn in the face of opposition from two top security officials at the time - chief-of-staff Lt Gen Gabi Ashkenazi and the head of the intelligence service, Mossad, Meir Dagan.

According to the programme Gen Ashkenazi considered such an attack on Iran, "a strategic mistake" because of the risk of a war, while Mr Dagan deemed it "illegal", saying a full cabinet decision was needed. Both men have since retired from their posts.

When Mr Netanyahu was asked about the reported exchanges he did not comment directly.

"In the final reckoning, the responsibility lies with the prime minister and as long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have the atomic bomb," he said.

"If there's no other way, Israel is ready to act."

In the documentary, there was also criticism of the handling of the Iranian nuclear threat from the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. He suggested that the current government had jeopardised its close relationship with Washington.

Mr Olmert is considering making a political comeback ahead of a general election on 22 January.

Like its US ally, Israel has consistently refused to rule out a military option to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. It believes such a weapon would threaten its existence.

BBC

Farage: Mrs Merkel, tell Cameron it's time for Britain to leave EU

The Stock Market Should Have Fallen 50%, And You Should Buy Yourself A Machine Gun

“I am surprised with the reelection of Mr. Obama. The S&P is only down like 30 points. I would have thought that the market on his reelection should be down at least 50%...I think Mr. Obama is a disaster for business and a disaster for the United States. Not that Mr. Romney would be much better, but the Republicans understand the problem of excessive debt better than Mr. Obama who basically doesn't care about piling up debt. You also have in the background Mr. Bernanke, who with artificially low interest rates enables the debt to essentially escalate endlessly.”

On where he sees the equity markets given Obama’s reelection:
“You have offsetting factors. The problem with Mr. Obama is that you get more regulation and it’s disincentive for businessmen to hire people. You probably also get higher taxes, so in terms of the economy, he is very negative in my view. But you still have Mr. Bernanke, and you still have because of money printing very high corporate earnings. They are now coming down, but they are still at the elevated level. You have money printing supporting the market and on the other hand, you have an economic slowdown globally which will affect earnings negatively. It is difficult to tell where the market will go because we have so much manipulation. I think, minimum, it will drop 20%.”

On how investors should protect their assets:
“They should buy themselves a machine gun…I need to buy a tank. Joking aside, look, we have manipulated markets. Whenever you manipulate markets, you will get unintended consequences. i think the reelection is unintended consequence of money printing, that favors the so- called 0.25%. It was easy for the Democrats to attack the wealthy fat cats of Wall Street, the elite, and the privileged people to portray them as a profiteer of the system, which to some extent, they are. Not because they wanted to but because Mr. Bernanke enabled them to be profiteers. We have a situation where you have today Mr. Obama, I doubt he will stay at the presidency for another four years. I think there will be so many scandals, but that’s another story.”

On why he believes Obama won’t make it another four years as president:
“There is so much smoke. I suppose there is some fire. That is my observation. We don't know how the world will look in five years' time. I am pretty sure central banks will continue to print money and the standards of living for people in the western world, not just in America, will continue to decline because the cost of living increases will exceed income. The cost of living will also go up because all kinds of taxes will increase. Like Proposition 30 today in California is of course negative for the Californian economy. That is the state of the world. We have worsening economic conditions, but we have money printing.”

On Speaker Boehner’s comments to Congress today on the fiscal cliff:
“I am sure that they will solve it. They will increase cosmetically some taxes and they will cut cosmetically some spending and it will all be back loaded 10 years from now. So in reality, not much will happen. But the market tends to rally towards year-end, and i think from a low of around 1360, we could have a rally to January, but I think sometime next year will be again lower.”

On whether he sees the U.S. in recession in 2013:
“Yes, I think that if the figures were compiled properly. If nominal GDP was adjusted by a proper price deflator, we would probably already be in recession…But I would like to point out one thing about the economy. GDP is not a very relevant figure. It consists of many different sectors of the economy, so you can have some sectors that are improving like housing and others that are worsening.”

On his dollar and euro positions:
“This is the choice in life. You choose what is less bad. I don't particularly like Mr. Obama, but I think he is less bad for the world than Mr. Romney. It is a tragedy of life that both candidates did not lose the election. They would have deserved both to lose.”

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/marc-faber-obama-is-a-disaster-the-stock-market-should-have-fallen-50-and-you-should-buy-yourself-a-machine-gun-2012-11#ixzz2BdqioieV

Video of Greek protesters fire Molotov cocktails, police shoot teargas

Barack Obama wins reelection: Mid East faces nuclear Iran, Brotherhood grip

Barack Obama has won re-election as President of the United States, according to all the projections of the Nov. 6 vote - albeit ahead of the final count of ballots. The prospect of another four years of Obama in the White House fills some Middle East nations, including the Persian Gulf and Israel, with trepidation.

They envisage a foreign policy that continues to focus on hitching US influence in the Muslim world – Sunni and Shiite alike – on to a wagon led by Iran as the first Islamic Shite Muslim nuclear power and the sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood rule of Sunni Arab nations.

For Israel, this policy translates bleakly into American backing for the two most forbidding ideological foes it has faced in all its 63 years: Iran, whose leaders call openly for Israel’s extinction - even from the UN platform – although this is achievable only by nuclear aggression; and the hostile Muslim Brotherhood.
Only four days ago, senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilead called the Brotherhood-ruled Egyptian government “a terrible dictatorship.” After years of close ties with Egyptian rulers and military chiefs, Gilead said: “There is no official contact between the top tiers of Egyptian and Israeli government, and I don’t think there will be.”

According to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources, Gilead offered a glimpse of a grimmer prospect which Israeli leaders are discussing behind close doors: They fear that the second Obama term will usher in a nuclear-armed Shiite Iran which will quickly reach out to the Sunni Muslim Brothers, starting with Egypt, for a joint bid to terminate the life of the Jewish state.
Before dismissing this scenario as paranoid hyperbole, it is worth taking a look at an opinion poll conducted in Egypt in late August of this year by the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Institute. It aimed at canvassing popular ratings of Iran after the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo.
Stanley Greenberg, who is close to Democratic Party leaders, was recently hired by Israel’s Labor Party as senior campaign strategist for the Jan. 22, 2013 election.
This American pollster found that 61 percent of the Egyptians surveyed approved of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, compared with 30 percent who disapproved. In 2009, the comparable figures were 40 percent for and 34 percent against a nuclear Iran.

The same poll in 2012 found 65 percent of Egyptians in favor of resuming the long-severed diplomatic ties with Tehran, as against 30 who were against.
The undisguised discord between Barack Obama and Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu is usually presented as sparked by their falling-out over military action for preempting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. This is both simplistic and misleading. Their differences are far broader in scope: Netanyahu and most other Israeli leaders contest Obama's signature Middle East objective of bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya - and ultimately Syria - by presenting the MB as a moderate movement with whom America can do business and conduct a balanced Middle East policy.
This goal actuated the Arab Revolt – or Spring - which erupted in December 2010. It has condemned Israel to an ever-tightening Islamist noose around its borders with worse to come: The last gap will be filled after the Brothers attain power in Damascus and ultimately set their sights on Jordan as the springboard to Saudi Arabia.

Whenever he is confronted with this allegation, Obama answers undeniably that he has done more than any American president for Israel’s security and raised US-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation to an unmatched level.
This cannot be gainsaid, but in the view of DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence experts, it is only one aspect of the general picture: While bolstering Israel militarily, the US president has also bolstered its worst Middle East enemies and enhanced their ability to strike at the foundations of Israel’s national security. The emergence of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic, which Israel may soon despair of thwarting, would nullify all the military or intelligence assistance the Obama administration has rendered the Jewish state to guarantee its survival.
No Israeli leader, political or military, is willing to go further than Amos Gilead and publicly admit that Israel is laboring under a dual compulsion; It is being forced to contemplate active measures for extinguishing Iran’s nuclear program while at the same time standing ready to challenge Egypt over Sinai which has swung out of Cairo’s control and deteriorated into a lawless terrorist springboard against both countries.

DEBKAfile

Retahuleu, Guatemala quake kills at least 15

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Guatemala Wednesday morning, killing up to 15 people, according to preliminary reports from the country's president.

Otto Pérez Molina told a news conference not all the deaths had been confirmed, but witnesses reported seeing people buried in some of the 30 houses that collapsed in the town of San Marcos, near the north-western border with Mexico, where most of the damage was reported.

Ovidio Perez, spokesman for the fire department in San Cristobal Cochu, San Marcos, told the Emisoras Unidas radio station that the 10, including a four-year old, were buried. At least two dozen were reported injured in the same area.

The quake, which was about 20 miles deep and centred 15 miles off the coastal town of Champerico and about 100 miles south-west of Guatemala City, shook buildings as far away as Mexico City and El Salvador.

Survivors on radio and social media talked of widespread landslides and scores of people trapped. But accounts of injuries and deaths were difficult to independently confirm as communication and roads to San Marcos had been severed.

It was the largest earthquake to strike Guatemala since 1976, when 23,000 people were killed during a similar disaster in the small central American country.

"I've been in Guatemala for almost two years I am used to earthquakes. This was a lot more severe, a lot more shaky," said a Peace Corps volunteer, Adam Baker, 27, of Carmel, Indiana, who tweeted a picture of a small landslide behind his house in the nearby state of Quetzaltenango. "Things fell in my kitchen," it said.

Nicaragua's disaster-management agency said it had issued a tsunami alert, but there were no immediate reports of a high sea wave on the country's Pacific coast.

People fled buildings in Guatemala City, Mexico City and the capital of the Mexican state of Chiapas, across the border from Guatemala.

A reporter in San Marcos, a mostly rural region about 80 miles north of the epicentre, told Emisoras Unidas that houses had collapsed on residents, while smashed televisions and other appliances had been scattered into the streets of the main town.

The local fire department tweeted that a school had collapsed and eight injured people had been taken to a nearby hospital. Local radio reported widespread power outages and cuts in telephone service.

Molina said in a radio interview that the country of 14 million had been placed on its highest disaster alert and he urged people to evacuate tall buildings as an emergency measure.

The country's minister of communications and infrastructure told Emisoras Unidas that landslides had cut off several highways in the west of the country, and it would take at least 24 hours to re-establish transport links to San Marcos.

A resident, who identified herself as Mrs Baglia, from the small town of San Pedro Sacatepequez near San Marcos, told the radio station that people had fled into the streets after being told of a tsunami alert. "People are in distress and no one can calm down," she said.

A spokesman for El Salvador's Red Cross branch said the quake had been felt throughout the country, sending people fleeing their homes in the capital, but there had been no immediate reports of injuries or serious damage. He said there had been no local tsunami warning issued.

El Salvador's civil protection agency said officials were evacuating some coastal communities as a precautionary measure.

No serious damage or injuries had been reported in the city, the Mexico City mayor said, although many people had fled their offices and homes during the quake.

The Guardian

STRONG MAGNITUDE 7.4 EARTHQUAKE STRIKES OFF GUATEMALA