NEWS ANALYSIS: Russia Tells UN Security Council: Don’t Fret Over Iran

By  Jim Kouri

Special to DavidKinchen.com

As the Iranians are moving closer and closer to developing a viable nuclear weapons program, our Russian friends (?) are telling the world not to worry. A Russian official is being quoted as saying the centrifuges available to Iran are not sufficient to launch industrial uranium enrichment. Another Russian, a nuclear expert concurred.

“Uranium enrichment in Iran is not arousing concerns in Russia.There is nothing unexpected in this. The availability of 164 centrifuges in Iran is a fact that has been known for a long time,” Russian Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko told China‘s communist party-controlled news agency.

“These centrifuges allow Iran to conduct laboratory uranium enrichment to a low level in insignificant amounts. The acquisition of highly enriched uranium is unfeasible today using this method,” Kiriyenko said.

However, a senior Iranian official and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani told the Kuwait News Agency that Iran had operated the first unit of 164 centrifuges and successfully enriched uranium.

And then there’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragging that Iran had “joined the world club of nuclear technology.”

However, in order for the Iranian scientists to produce their own fuel at least for the initial loading of a nuclear reactor, “one needs to have not some hundred-and-a-half centrifuges, but thousands of times more,” Viktor Mikhailov, ex-minister of the Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy who leads the ministry’s Institute for Strategic Stability.

But why should the United States and the United Nations believe the Russian government? After all, US intelligence agencies have for years known about Russian duplicity in Iraq. In fact, recent declassified reports indicate that Russian intelligence gave Iraq‘s military leaders US war plans for the 2003 invasion. Former Iraqi General Georges Sada claims there were Russian intelligence agents and military advisors in Iraq right up to the start of the US-led invasion.

Today, Iran and Syria are cash cows for the Russians and it’s in their best interest to prop up the current regimes. Sanctions on Iran would cut off the Russian weapons sales such as a recent purchase by the Iranians of  state-of-the-art anti-aircraft systems.

According to officials at the Arms Control Association, “Russia has become Iran‘s main source of advanced conventional arms, an alleged supplier of know-how and technology for its ballistic missile and chemical and biological warfare programs, and its sole source of civilian nuclear technology.”

The ACA maintains that Iran also wants to be able to deter potential threats from the United States, Israel, and, more recently, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Afghanistan. Tehran‘s efforts to modernize its armed forces and acquire weapons of mass destruction are driven by a desire to bridge the gap between its military weakness and its image of itself as a regional power and the standard bearer of revolutionary Islam. To these ends, Tehran has turned to Russia — the only country that can provide it with arms in the quantity and the quality that it desires.

And the Russians are more than happy to accomodate the Iranians with high-priced weapons systems that would be aimed at the West, including the United States.

Tehran cherishs this relationship with Moscow. One need only look at how the Iranians have remained silent over Moscow‘s bloody suppression of a Muslim separatist movement in Chechnya. These are Iran‘s fellow Jihadists, yet the Iranians defer to the Russian government in order to keep the relationship in tact. Iran wants access to sophisticated weaponry and the Russians want to buttress their unstable economy with Iranian cash.

Russia’s arms and technology transfers to Iran have created diplomatic and security headaches for Washington, as Tehran develops some fairly sophisticated military niche-capabilities and builds ballistic missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that threaten US interests and allies in the region. Even more troubling for Washington, it has been able to do very little about it and its options seem limited, according to ACA.

In addition, intelligence experts believe — as with the Saddam regime in Iraq — Russian intelligence officers are assisting the Iranians. Jane’s Intelligence Review reports that while the KGB was dismantled, the Russians are continuously growing a huge intelligence network that is deeply entrenched in the Middle East.

It’s believed that Russia is hosting Iranian intelligence officers at their training facilities and academies in order to upgrade their training in intelligence gathering and analysis, covert actions, and strategic planning.

So when Russia tells the world that Iran is basically no threat at this point in time, should we really believe them?

 

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Jim Kouri is  fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). He’s a former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. Kouri has appeared as on-air commentator for more than 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.  His book “Assume The Position” is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.U.S.

                

PARALLEL UNIVERSE: Israel, French Mayor, Jewish Leaders Condemn Iran Holocaust Cartoon Exhibit; Rioting Fails to Break Out Across the World

By David M. Kinchen

 

Hinton, WV   – Have you heard about all the rioting by Jews in the wake of an exhibit in Tehran, Iran of cartoons mocking the Holocaust? Of course you haven’t because it hasn’t happened, unlike the major worldwide Muslim uproar several months ago in the wake of the Danish newspaper publishing cartoons mocking Islam.

Several months after the Danish paper in September 2005 published the cartoons lampooning the founder of Islam, Muhammad, rioting broke out all over the world, with 139 people killed and several European embassies burned.

What HAS happened, according to Reuters is that the Israeli government, Jewish groups and the mayor of Paris on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006 “condemned an Iranian exhibition of cartoons on the Nazi Holocaust, accusing Tehran of spreading hatred and trivializing the murder of six million Jews.”

I first read about the exhibit in an online story in the New York Times, which quoted exhibition organizers as saying the show was created to challenge Western taboos about the Holocaust – an event that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed as a “myth” – for which he has drawn international condemnation. Holocaust deniers like Mel Gibson’s dad notwithstanding, the meticulous Germans  documented everything on the slaughter of six million European Jews of all nationalities as part of the Nazi regime’s “Final Solution.”

 Times reporter Michael Slackman interviewed Iran’s sole Jewish member of Parliament, Morris Motamed, who expressed disgust with the exhibit. Yes, Iran still has a few thousand Jews resident in the violently anti-Semitic country. The vast majority of Iran’s once large and ancient Jewish community – which lived in peace with their Muslim countrymen under the late Shah —  are refugees living  in the greater Los Angeles area or in Israel.

Reuters: “Israeli government spokesman Gideon Meir called on the international community ‘to express disgust from such an anti-Semitic and inhuman event.’

“Yosef Lapid, chairman of the council of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, said: ‘The exhibit not only is horrific propaganda that supports Holocaust denial, it also paves the road to justifying genocide of the Jews in Israel.’” 

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel‘s destruction, saying he wants to “wipe the Zionist regime off the map.” 

According to Reuters, “Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe condemned the display in a letter to Iran‘s ambassador, saying it ‘intended to mock the tragedy of the (Holocaust) and to trivialise a new anti-Semitic bid under the false pretext of art and freedom of speech’”. 

The news service, which was in the news itself a few weeks ago for distributing a doctored digital photograph of bomb damage in Lebanon, noted that “France is home to western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities. It is a crime in European countries such as France, Germany and Austria to deny the Holocaust.” 

This forthright expression of disgust from France, a country that has displayed anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments in recent times, is a welcome sign that Europe may be waking up to reality.

Radical Islamists of the kind found in Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere are against Christians as much as they are against Jews and it’s to Delanoe’s credit that he seems to recognize this.

Here’s a link to the Reuters story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060817/wl_nm/iran_holocaust_reaction_dc_1

Investor’s Business Daily, a widely read and respected Los Angeles-based publication, has an excellent editorial on the exhibit: http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=241398849503517

The New York Times story can be accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/world/middleeast/25iran.html

 

KINCHEN AT THE MOVIES: ‘Beowulf & Grendel’ Brings New Twist to Ancient Epic Poem; Grendel’s Rage Explained in Limited-Release Canadian-Icelandic Flick

By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network

Hinton, WV  – The distribution of independent movies will always remain a mystery to me. Why, for example, has the outstanding Canadian-Icelandic film “Beowulf & Grendel” had such a limited release?

I saw the 103-minute, R-rated movie in mid-July in Chicago; according to all the sources I’ve checked, the 2005 film, directed by Icelandic born Canadian Sturla Gunnarsson and written by Andrew Rai Berzins – based on the Epic Old English poem dated anywhere from 700 to 1000 C.E.—has been in “limited” release in the U.S. since mid-June 2006. “Limited” usually means L.A.-Chicago-NYC. According to Amazon.com, the DVD will be available for sale Sept. 26, 2006.

If you liked the “Lord of the Rings” movies, the various adaptations of the King Arthur Legend and “Harry Potter,” you’ll probably enjoy this movie, starring Gerard Butler (“The Phantom of the Opera”) as Beowulf, Ingvar Eggert Sigurosson as Grendel, Stellan Skarsgard as King Hrothgar and Sarah Polley as Selma the witch. Hringur Ingvarsson is Young Grendel and Spencer Wilding is Grendel’s father.

Here’s a plot synopsis, written by Roundstound Communications, found on IMDb.com: “Beowulf & Grendel” is a medieval adventure that tells the blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior’s battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel. Heads will roll in this provocative take on the first major work of English literature. Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar, the much respected Lord of the Danes, Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster. The monster, Grendel, is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood – immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged, while Beowulf, a victorious soldier in his own right, has become increasingly troubled by the hero-myth rising up around his exploits. Beowulf’s willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is more responsible for the troll’s rampages than was first apparent. As a soldier, Beowulf is unaccustomed to hesitating. His relationship with the mesmerizing witch, Selma, creates deeper confusion. Swinging his sword at a great, stinking beast is no longer such a simple act. The story is set in barbarous Northern Europe where the reign of the many-gods is giving way to one – the southern invader, Christ. Beowulf is a man caught between sides in this great shift, his simple code transforming and falling apart before his eyes. Building toward an inevitable and terrible battle, this is a tale where vengeance, loyalty and mercy powerfully entwine.”

Old English — “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien was one its all-time greatest authorities – needs translation to modern English. Although it’s one of the foundations of modern English, it’s a foreign language, unlike the Middle English of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” which can be deciphered by modern readers with a little assistance (OK, a lot of assistance!).

Here’s a sample from “Beowulf,” along with a modern English translation: “Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.” In modern English: “Lo! We the Spear-Danes, in days of yore, have heard of the glory of the people’s kings how the noble ones did deeds of valor.” Don’t worry, this is no Mel Gibson production; the language in “Beowulf & Grendel” is modern English.

The movie opens with a flashback explaining why Grendel is so obsessed with Hrothgar and his entourage. Spoiler alert: I’m not going to give it away! This is a perfect DVD movie, because you’ll have to see it several times to nail the details of the plot.

When I entered the theatre on North Clark Street in Chicago not far from Wrigley Field, I noticed a group of middle-aged women in the auditorium. In my inimitable manner, I called out “You’re either English majors or Gerry Butler fans.” In the ensuing laughter I could tell that the answer was the latter. Scottish-born Butler, who played the hunky Phantom in the 2004 movie, has attracted female fans of all ages. With his beard and Viking getup, you’ll be hard-pressed to recognize Butler as the mad genius of the Opera Populaire but he more than holds his own with the other veteran actors of the cast.

You don’t have to be an English major (like the reviewer) to enjoy “Beowulf & Grendel.” I still can’t understand why the movie wasn’t released widely in the States. It hasn’t even been released in Europe, as far as I can determine.

If you’re interested in seeing it, the DVD is probably your best choice.

Here’s the web site for “Beowulf & Grendel”:
http://www.beowulfandgrendel.com/site/framestestvertical.html

For more about “Beowulf”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf