Was Key Nuclear Evidence Against Iran Fabricated?

This piece by Gareth Porter for the Asia Times makes a strong case for it:

IAEA Safeguard Department chief Olli Heinonen signaled his de facto acceptance of the “alleged studies” documents when he presented an organizational chart of the purported secret nuclear weapons project based on the documents at a February 2008 “technical briefing” for member states.

Meanwhile, the IAEA has portrayed Iran as failing to respond adequately to the “substance” of the documents, asserting that it has focused only on their “style and format of presentation”.

In fact, however, Iran has submitted serious evidence that the documents are fraudulent. Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Vienna, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told IPS. He said he had pointed out to a team of IAEA officials in a meeting on the documents in Tehran in early 2008 that none of the supposedly top-secret military documents had any security markings of any kind, and that purported letters from Defense Ministry officials lacked Iranian government seals.

Soltanieh recalled that he had made the same point “many times” in meetings of the Board of Governors since then. “No one ever challenged me,” said the ambassador.

The IAEA has never publicly acknowledged the problem of lack of security markings or official seals in the documents, omitting mention of the Iranian complaint on that issue from its reports. Its May 2008 report said only that Iran had “stated, inter alia, that the documents were not complete and that their structure varied”.

But a senior official of the agency familiar with the Iran investigation, who spoke with IPS on condition that he would not be identified, confirmed that Soltanieh had indeed pointed out the lack of any security classification markings, and that he had been correct in doing so.

As Porter points out, the lack of similar markings on the Niger “yellowcake” forgeries are what caused the IAEA to swiftly expose them as such.

There’s more:

Iran has also provided the IAEA with evidence that the handwritten notes on a May 2003 letter, which supposedly link a private Iranian contractor to the “alleged studies”, were forged by an outside agency. The letter was from an engineering firm to the private company Kimia Maadan, which other documents in the collection identify as responsible for part of the alleged covert nuclear weapons program called the “green salt project”.

The letter itself has nothing to do with any “green salt” project, but handwritten notes on the copy of the letter given to the IAEA by an unidentified government referred to individuals who are named in other intelligence documents as participants in the “alleged studies”, according to the latest IAEA report.

But the original letter, which Iran has provided to the IAEA, has no handwritten notes on it. Ambassador Soltanieh recalled that he showed that original letter to an IAEA team led by the deputy director of IAEA’s Safeguards Department, Herman Nackaerts, in Tehran from January 22 to 23, 2008.

But of course this doesn’t fit the neocon “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” dream-wish, so you won’t hear about in any US news media outside of blogs like this one.

Honduras Coup, Act III, Day 59

Update2 : Foreign Policy Journal has an analysis of Honduras by Jose Cuesta that is not completely obtuse. One interesting claim is that “I estimated that the feared losses by this elite sector must have exceeded a whopping 11 percent of the GDP in order to green-light the military ousting of Mr. Zelaya.” This is equivalent to roughly $1.50 per person per day, or $6/day for each working adult. So, according to Cuesta, they would overthrow the country rather than raise wages 80 cents/hour. But there’s no indication whatsoever that Zelaya had such radical ideas. What outraged the golpistas was that he raised the minimum wage from 14 cents per hour to 23 cents per hour. Let’s just say that the people running Honduras are evil and leave it at that.

Radio Globo says that the names of the Israeli commandos that are operating inside Honduras will be released.
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Update: Al Giordano raises the alarms about a website (www.erph.org) purporting to be connected to the resistance and promoting armed conflict, but explicitly rejected by the resistance.

El Libertador has clear photos of the Conatel people trashing Color Cable’s broadcast equipment (the report is from Tiempo and Tiempo has more photos here). Notice that they are on the roof, and there is no evidence of harassment or traces of water balloons. Here’s one photo:

Vos el Soberano has good photos of the demos of September 15th (see below). They show both that there were massive demonstrations in many localities of Honduras, and also how difficult it is to quantitate the demos. In this one, there appear to be ca. 15 people across the street, standing 2-3 feet from one another over the course of several blocks (perhaps 250 ft.)  So, this is perhaps 1500 people.  But because the street bends, who can tell how many are in the march? Aerial photos would help. I have not seen any from Google Maps that show demonstrations. 

Picchu is on Channel 36. One of the interesting things about the resistance is the intense involvement of the Zelaya women in it.
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RAJ has a slightly more detailed explanation of the attacks on media that occurred Sept 18. La Prensa has the only intelligible explanation of the government’s action from the government’s viewpoint that I have seen:
1. One allegation, filed 12/8/08, of theft of telephony for the use of VOIP, because Honduras charges different amounts for national and international calls. Since (as I understand it) the network operator of a VOIP system has no real control over how calls are routed, and because VOIP is billed in bytes rather than minutes, this is ridiculous. Stormcrow, feel free to contradict me.
2. A second allegation attempts to force Cable Color to carry channels 30, 21 and 45 (nice respect for private property).
But if you read La Tribuna, Conatel was just trying to do an inspection.

All of this sounds like excellent reasons to send down masked men to tear down an antenna.

Tom Loudon of the Quixote Center has a piece in Truthout describing the competing Independence Day celebrations, a description of the visits by human rights organizations (he thinks Judge Garzon’s visit made the most impression on the coupistas), and a description of shifting tactics by the coup:

By the end of August, tactics of the security forces had changed. Frontal attacks on marches and caravans seem to have stopped. However, other forms of intimidation have been adopted. The police and army follow along with the marchers, (in an attempt to intimidate them), either directly behind or on either side of peaceful protesters. Security forces take photographs of protesters and follow them after the marches disburse. They arrest anyone caught spray-painting.

A notable exception to this new approach occurred during a protest in Choluteca when the mayor arrived at a protest armed with a pistol and accompanied by some 100 men armed with machetes, who proceeded to attack the demonstration. The demonstrators were protesting the presence of Elvin Santos, the Liberal Party candidate for president, whom they consider illegitimate. Five of the protesters were arrested.

Selective murders continue on a weekly basis. On Saturday, August 29, Ismael Padilla was murdered by unknown assailants in front of his house. Padilla was president of the Association of Microbuses, and had accompanied President Zelaya to pick up ballot boxes in one of the buses on the day before the coup. His assassination was a clear message to all who oppose the coup and support the call for a Constitutional Assembly.

Loudon also links an article by the Council of Hemispheric Affairs analyzing the coup.

A program on Radio Catolica, En La Plaza, was suspended for having interviewed Father Tamayo, according to Vos El Soberano.

Via Bo-Rev, you can listen to Micheletti being interviewed by Greta van Susteren on FOX Noise (9/17/09). The transcript, which barely resembles the conversation, is no less hallucinatory than the interview. For example: “Cool honey — to be in a Supreme Court by the way it — get on the Supreme Court.” But he makes some statements:
* He claims to have learned of Zelaya’s ouster 4 or 5 hours before it happened
* He says that Hillary called him, just after coming back from Asia, and very respectfully talked to him about Zelaya returning to power.
* He outright lied about Zelaya’s return to Tocontin airport.

Is FOX In Financial Trouble?

Yesterday I referenced Emptywheel’s piece on how Univision is overtaking FOX in various ratings (and how Obama is tacitly acknowledging this by blowing off FOX’s Sunday gabfest for Univision’s Al Punto), much to the open and vocal dismay of FOX and its Republican allies in Congress.

There are other signs that the FOX empire is not as strong as advertised. For one thing, it’s trying to sell off the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the nation’s premier stock market index.

It’s hard to imagine the megalomaniacal Murdochs willingly giving up the ability to control the most powerful stock market index in the world. The first thought that comes to mind is that they must be in need of liquid cash, and urgently so.

Deaths from uninsurance more than twice as high as previously believed

It’s an article of faith among right-wing ideologues that people who are uninsured get medical care just as good as anyone else. That’s not true, and the difference in quality of care costs well over 40,000 American lives every.f–king.year– almost as many Americans as died in Vietnam and more than died in Korea! Every year!

Numerous investigators have found an association
between uninsurance and death. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that
18314 Americans aged between 25 and 64 years die annually because of lack of health insurance, comparable to deaths because of diabetes, stroke, or homicide in 2001 among persons aged 25 to 64 years. The IOM estimate was largely based on a single study by Franks et al. However, these data are now more than
20 years old; both medical therapeutics and the demography of the uninsured have changed in the interim.

…

[The conclusions of the present study are that] Lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44789 deaths per year in the United States, more than those caused by kidney disease (n=42868). The increased risk of death attributable to uninsurance suggests that alternative measures of access to medical care for the uninsured, such as community health centers, do not provide the protection of private health insurance

But the teabaggers have the nation’s best interests at heart…much as Colonel Sanders deeply loves chickens. Maybe if we instituted a national lottery that would randomly sacrifice 40,000 right-wingers to their money god every year, they would start to see the need for health care reform.

Honduras Coup, Act III, Day 58

Avast!
Update (in progress): Channel 36 is running a mass by Father Tamayo on the occasion of President Zelaya’s birthday at the STIBYS (beverage workers’) union. So, it’s a combination of solemn religious moment, party, and union rally. It has to be seen to be believed. As Fr. Tamayo speaks, the pianist supplies mood music, occasionally breaking into Api Birtdei (not Las Mananitas, I notice). Father Tamayo’s opening prayer is to ask for forgiveness and cleansing when feelings of impotence lead to anger, a good prayer. A speaker prays that the resistance be granted the strength of a buffalo. Communion first and then birthday cake, to what sounds sort of like Middle Eastern music, but probably is ranchero.

Brother John has a little piece about agricultural methods. Greenhouses, basic grains, family gardens, sustainable agriculture… sounds like a good program.
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Tiempo has a detailed run-down on the attack on CableColor of yesterday (See also here). Human rights organizations CODEH and Ciprodeh denounced the attack. In addition to what we learned yesterday about the complete absence of due process, the fellow behind the attack on Channel 11 is former Nationalist Party candidate Elías Asfura, who wants to have his programming included on all cable transmissions. Coupistas have a great respect for private property, as long as it’s their own. Also, it turns out that the judge who authorized the inspection-at-gunpoint was Iris Normandina Ortiz, who also handled the charges against Zelaya. And, in an article in La Prensa that uncritically reprints the government version of events, claiming that they couldn’t finish their “inspection” because the resistance was pushing them and throwing water balloons (all the way to the roof, I suppose; the only people on the roof were the Fiscalia and station management), we learned that Jaime Rosenthal also owns Cable Color, who also owns Tiempo.

Hooded policemen are a prominent feature of democracies

(Image from Tiempo)

Tiempo did not put out a printed edition on Friday because a mysterious power surge damaged printing equipment to the tune of $10,000. They haven’t had any trouble since the 1980s, when the repression also sabotaged the electricity.

(In an article describing how the resistance rushed to the defense of CableColor and Channel 11, we learn that) today is Zelaya’s 58th birthday.

RAJ has a very nice piece on the danger of history, and how the regime is systematically attempting to destroy efforts under Zelaya to preserve community history. This is an underappreciated point. The official record of history relies typically on newspapers, government documents, and books. The first is produced by the wealthy. The second is produced typically without regard for individuals; when individuals are mentioned, they are the limited subset with whom the agency intereracts. The third is produced by academics, and by the wealthy and powerful. Nowhere does the story of powerless–or even the middle class–enter into the narrative.

It’s true that the powerful usually lead interesting lives and the powerless usually much less interesting lives. However, because there are so many of the latter, there is an entirely different narrative to be written, one that–as Howard Zinn has shown–is often much more enlightening than the official history. This narrative is harder to develop. Often one has to rely on oral sources. Occasionally these can be corroborated with letters, gravestones, baptismal records, archaeological evidence or other “objective” sources, but scholars–especially those infected with the scientism that made mid-20th century academic work so tedious (think Robert McNamara and the Pentagon of the 1960s)–shy away from talking to human beings. There is another side to this history of the powerless: the very act of writing history causes the powerless develop a sense of identity and importance. The powerful find this very, very dangerous. The Americas are filled with the descendants of conquered peoples and people brought here involuntarily. To remember the group identity is to remember wrongs and who committed them. History is, indeed, dangerous.

A number of people have linked Jesse Freeston’s interview on Real News with filmmaker Oscar Estrada. After a number of tries, I finally got it to run, and it is very good.

Via Narconews, Jeremy Kryt, writing at Earth Island Institute describes the harassment of the father of Isis Obed Murillo, the first murder victim of the coup:

Obed’s father, Jose David Murillo, a well-known anti-deforestation crusader with the Environmental Movement of Olancho (MAO), and head pastor of the New Life Church, had long taught his family the virtues of peaceful resistance to authoritarian power…Without being told what charges had been made against him, the pastor – a big man in his late fifties, with close-cropped, still-dark hair and massive, work-worn hands – was cuffed and taken to the Via Della police station. There, deep in the basement, he was ordered to sign a fabricated “confession”, stating that he had murdered three people and raped another. When Murillo balked, a sergeant put a 9 millimeter pistol in his ribs, and shouted “Firma aqui!” – “Sign here!”

…

After signing the bogus document, Pastor Murillo was driven to a penitentiary in the Olancho district, where he was held in solitary confinement for the next 37 days. There were never any formal charges filed in court, which makes his detention illegal under the Honduran Constitution. Finally, on August 13, after weeks of pressure and investigation by COFADEH and others, the pastor was fined $25,000 lempira (about $1,322 U.S. dollars), and released. But it didn’t end there….

Pastor Murillo must report to the prison in Olancho every two weeks, and the family is still deeply in debt from paying the fine. Murillo recently applied to have his driver’s license renewed, but was turned down when the computer system showed him to be a “felon”. Their home is under constant surveillance, including helicopter fly-bys. A few weeks ago, when two of their daughters received death threats, the family was forced to go into hiding. Being on the run makes it almost impossible for Murillo to serve his community, either as pastor or conservation activist.

The New Media Reality

Emptywheel points out that the Obama administration is acknowledging the power of Latino voters in a way that is really ticking off the people at FOX News: Instead of appearing on FOX News Sunday, he’s appearing on Univision’s Al Punto program.

Of course, as Emptywheel mentions, the Usual Republican Suspects (especially the Southern ones) are screeching in protest over this. But simple demographics outweighs all of their racially-tinged hissy kabuki:

As such, it seems to me, it ought to focus some attention on Al Punto’s role in the Sunday line-up. And, as it turns out, the White House can justify blowing off Fox for Univision not just to reach out to Latinos rather than white racists. According to Univision’s corporate communications, Al Punto (531,000) does better than FNS (417,000) in the all-important 18-49 demographic (and has done so for the last 10 months), and it often beats CBS’ Face the Nation in that demo as well.

It’s not just on Sunday mornings that Univision is making FOX sweat, either. In this article on Univision’s new president Cesar Conde, it’s stated that Univision came in second — just after FOX — during prime time in the television ratings for July among U.S. among the very desirable 18 to 34-year-old demographic.

Honduras Coup, Act III, Day 57/updated

[snark]There’s definitely nothing happening in Honduras. [/snark]

Update3: Brother John has two new articles. The first describes feeding poor children. The second says that Bishop Santos probably did not say that the Pope rejects the coup, but rather that the Pope said last year that he supports the Honduran people and that after the coup the Pope said he prayed that “those who are responsible in that nation and all its inhabitants will travel the path of dialogue, of mutual understanding and reconciliation.” This sounds more like the Pope that I know, and I’m sorry for him. One would think he could get around to expressing revulsion at a crime that the entire world has denounced, but I guess not.

Adrienne found a pre-release report of Stiglitz on the global financial crisis. I don’t think it’s fundamentally different in tone than what he’s been saying all along. He understood Chavez and Ortega as a rejection of neo-liberalism almost three years ago, and he called Bushco economics the application of leeches. In this piece he says that globalization must meet the needs of all. It’s neat reading it a few days ahead of the embargo date, but it seems in line with what he’s been saying for years.

Adrienne also has a report from Oscar, which describes:

the contempt of the oligarchy for the schools and their problems

the challenge teachers face in negotiating their contract next year

the recruitment of Evelio Reyes by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to persuade people to vote

As you may recall, the golpista who I caught posting as hermaphrodite attacked my integrity for not covering in detail the fact that Honduran banks withdrew their deposits from the BCIE. Today, the BCIE answered that saying, in effect, (and quoting me), yawn.
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Update2: Adrienne translated a PR release by Channel 11,which reads in part:

In what appears to be a new attack against freedom of expression, workers and functionaries of the National Commission of Telecommunications (Conatel) and the public prosecutor’s office have intruded in the facilities of Cablecolor and Channel 11 this morning.

The manager of Cablecolor, Jesús Torres, indicated that technicians and functionaries from the Public Ministry arrived without notice to carry out a series of tests aimed at forcing the company to include channels that do not fit the technical parameters to carry their signal.

RNS has a piece on the political nature of the Supreme Court. Here’s excerpts:

Each of the present justices represents a particular political faction within the country. The factions in turn make up the political parties. For example, Tomas Arita Valle, the justice who signed the backdated detention order for Zelaya, for example, is a loyal member of Carlos Flores’s faction.

This Supreme Court, made up of members of factions that support the coup, has also done its part in supporting the coup, from backdating the detention warrant for Zelaya to approving blatantly trumped up charges from the prosecutor, as we’ve previously examined, to issuing a legal opinion about the constitutional impediments to the San Jose Accords that’s used by the de facto government to support its continued intransigence.

So pressuring this Supreme Court is appropriate political action on the US part.

Nell has a new post on the importance of a broadbased grassroots politics to prevent the kind of corruption that Honduras suffers and a link to an international conference in Tegucigalpa, Oct. 8-10 calling for a Constitutional Convention. The website she links, Hibueras, has a full explanation of the issues in the attack on CableColor (it seems my explanations were more or less on target).
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Update: The Frente says that Conatel is decommissioning satellite upload equipment for CableColor and Channel 11; Radio Globo has its signal with “that enterprise” (presumably Cable Color). Conatel claims it’s a routine review. Channel 36 says “shadowy interests” are behind the seizure of TV frequencies. It sounds as if Channel 11 is the primary target. There’s an interview of Eduardo Maldonado of Radio Globo. Huge numbers of people from the resistance–my guess is as many as ten thousand– have shown up; I think they may be too late. But interestingly, there are no soldiers or police that I can see. Juan Barahona says they are going overthrow the regime. Impossible to make much sense over the loudspeaker and the recorded chant of Ultima Hora! (Breaking News). Something about Carlos Flores Facusse interceding. The attorney for Sotel/Channel 11 (Walter Booden?) spoke very quickly, saying the Fiscalia didn’t take the money, only copies of contracts. Conatel’s lawyer also gave a rapid comment, citing sections of what I assume are the law NUE-this and -that and defined the crime as something like “sobreviencia”. Channel 36 says that among the people who showed up at 10 o’clock to execute Fiscalia’s orders were “encapuchados” (hooded men). As I understand the announcer, he alleges thatthe owner of Channel 8 is technically incompetent and wants to boost his signal to cover the whole country, so he is behind this.

Henry Waxman Signs On for Net Neutrality

Henry Waxman has signed on as a co-sponsor of the Net Neutrality bill introduced by fellow Democrats Ed Markey and Anna Eshoo. His support is important. Mr. Waxman is chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which oversees the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the Internet in the U.S.

The bill is H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The only other co-sponsors are Joe Sestak and Lynn Woolsey. We need to ask our representatives why they’re not co-sponsoring this bill.

Friday Cat Blogging

Just Keep Diggin’ That Hole, Mitt

Just when you thought you were safe from Willard, he’s tanned, rested, and spewing gibberish in his battle with Tim Pawlenty for the 2012 votes of the Cleon Skousen-Glenn Beck fan base as he attacks President Obama’s eminently sensible decision to scrap the useless and costly Reagan-Bush Star Wars missile shield concept once and for all.

Y’know, it might not be good for the Mittster to draw attention to himself right now, not when the news of the utter health care reform failure of RomneyCare (aka the MaxTax Co-Ops Beta) in his former home state is starting to make it onto the national media’s radar screens.