Iran Non-Story of The Day: Tehran Has a Plutonium Reactor!

Iran's heavy-water reactor at Arak --- still not an imminent threat to humanity

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George Jahn of The Associated Press believes he has a dramatic exclusive this morning:

While international diplomacy has focused on trying to prevent Iran from using enriched uranium to produce nuclear arms, concern is growing about another rapidly advancing project that could supply plutonium for a nuclear weapon....

The United States and its allies worry about the plutonium reactor at Arak, southwest of Tehran. U.S. envoy Joseph Macmanus told a recent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. nuclear watchdog — that the reactor is "of increasing concern" as its startup date approaches. Israel, which has taken a lead in criticizing Iran's nuclear program, is even more concerned.

Only one problem: the story is old, having been pushed by unnamed "Western officials" last month.

Make that two problems: it is not much of a story.

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Iran Feature: Newsflash --- Tehran Does (Not) Shoot Down An Enemy Drone

One of the US drones that Iran did not shoot down on Saturday

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A tale of how Iranian propaganda went a bit too far --- and how the Western media, always on the look-out for a story of Tehran's threat, went along for the ride....

Press TV, the regime's English-language outlet, put up the Breaking headline on Saturday night, Iran Cyber-Warriors Take Control of Drone". As in December 2011 and January of this year, Tehran was going to parade another Western surveillance aircraft before the Iranian press, demonstrating how the Islamic Republic could not only defy the enemy but --- by reverse-engineering the drone --- turn the foe's weapons against it.

CNN quickly picked up the newsflash, and the Associated Press put out a fuller story.

The only problem was that none of this was true.

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Syria 1st-Hand: The Story of The Beloved of Allah Brigade (Hubbard)

Photo: Khalil Hamra/APOn Nov. 17, the brigade called "The Beloved of Allah" braced for its biggest challenge yet, making it clear how far its members had come and how far the war had brought them from their former lives.

Men who once sold real estate, laid bricks, wore suits and treated sick farm animals armed themselves with vests laden with ammunition, hand grenades and pocket-sized copies of the Quran. After a two-month siege, they planned to storm a major military base in one of the larger coordinated attacks of the uprising.

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Syria Snapshot: The Defecting Senior Officers in Jordan's Camps (Halaby/Gavlak)

A UN-Run Refugee Camp in JordanIn an isolated stretch of Jordanian desert, a heavily guarded, secret compound houses 1,200 senior police and army officers who defected from nearby Syria.

The men live in trailers with fans but no air conditioning, surrounded by barbed wire, and they pass their days browsing the Internet and watching TV for news of Syria's civil war, longing to join the fight --- but they are largely unable to leave.

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Iran Snap Analysis: Walking Back from War?

A Bush-Era Cartoon on Drumbeats of WarA week ago, the media was dominated by the prospect of an Israeli strike and Tehran's reaction. But then President Obama, publicly and privately, let visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu know of Washington's line against this. The Supreme Leader, within his rhetoric of defiance, welcomed Obama's position with Israel, and the European Union accepted Tehran's offer for a resumption of talks about the Iranian nuclear programme.

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Syria 1st-Hand: Lifelong Dissident al-Labwani "I am Seeing My Long-Time Dreams Come True"

One of Syria's most prominent dissidents, who worked for years against the Assad family regime, stepped out of prison two months ago to discover that his country was aflame with the revolution he long hoped for.

Jailed since 2005, Kamal al-Labwani had heard hints about what was happening on the outside the past year from visitors and even from guards. But prison authorities kept him and other prisoners under an information blackout — no newspapers or TV news over the past 10 months when hundreds of thousands of Syrians were taking to the streets nearly daily despite a relentless and bloody crackdown, demanding President Bashar Assad's ouster.

So he was stunned to see the full extent of the revolt when he was freed in November as part of an amnesty Assad's regime ordered as a reform gesture.

"I am seeing my long-time dreams come true, even better. For years, I dreamt of revolution, change. I was astonished to see it all happening," the 54-year-old al-Labwani told The Associated Press this week in the Jordanian capital Amman, his voice welling with emotion.

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EA Twitter Special: Is the CIA Following Your Tweets? (Dozier)

A big Saturday morning hello to our readers at the CIA, who are not shy about following EA --- no "Anonymous Proxy" or "Unknown" in our StatCounter, just the straightforward "Central Intelligence Agency". 

As for all the other Twitter users they are watching.... Well, here's a message from Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press:

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

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Occupy Wall Street (& Beyond): LiveStream from Clashes at Occupy Oakland

UPDATE 1537 GMT: A slightly different view of the incident. The video starts with a police officer, via megaphone or sound system, telling the protesters that if they do not disperse they will be arrested. One could ask why that is necessarily? The protesters appear to be in a penned-off street, with the police on the other side of the barricades.

After a few seconds, the tear gas is fired, along with flash grenades. A few protesters appear to hold their ground. Towards the front of the pack, on the right hand side, a man who may already be leaving, is apparently hit my a flash grenade, or shrapnel of some kind, and falls backwards, in the direction that the majority of the crowd is moving. When protesters notice that he is injured, they move forward to help, or remove him, and a police officer, who first aims a weapon (tear gas gun?) at the crowd, throws at least 1 flash grenade into the crowd:

UPDATE 1507 GMT: This narrated video appears to show a police officer throwing a flash grenade into a crowd of people in Oakland as they try to help a wounded protester. While the video starts after the tear gas has been fired, and after the protester was initially wounded, it is clear that the crowd was helping the protester, and did not pose an immediate threat to the wall of police standing nearby:

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The Latest from Iran (6 October): Go On, Fear Our Navy....

2000 GMT: The Green Voice of Freedom website reports that it has been under sustained attack for two days and has been blocked in Iran.

1950 GMT: Deviant Current Watch. Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, has told a seminary in Qom that clerics must oppose the "current" that wants to deviate elections from the concept set by the Supreme Leader.

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Arab Spring Alert: Why, Oh Why, Are You Ruining Our Fight Against Terrorism?

Britain's Tony Blair & Muammar Qaddafi, 2004You might think that the "Arab Spring" would bring hope to everyone, given calls for democracy, justice, civil society, political representation, freedom of expression and media.

Nope.

There is one group which is worried that all of these demonstrations and discussions might be aiding terrorism. "European and Israeli intelligence officers" are worried that friendly intelligence services --- you know, Mr Qaddafi's men in Libya, Mubarak's in Egypt, Ben Ali's in Tunisia --- are being disrupted by all this fuss on the streets.

Read on....

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