Global Roadway with Fraud in Trade Agreements

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

Being a fully connected world has major implications for fraud, terror and collusion. It is already a major security threat to not control borders and vet travelers. When it comes to foreign transportation, control and inspections receive little control as well.

Plans for superhighway linking Britain and America

The Russian proposal would allow Britons to travel overland from Britain to the United States

Plans for an ambitious 12,400-mile superhighway linking the Atlantic and the Pacific are reportedly being considered by Russian authorities.

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the further you travel from Moscow.

The proposal, outlined in the Siberian Times, would see the road follow a similar route to the Trans-Siberian railway, through cities including Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil. The rail network may also be extended to the Chukotka region of Russia and across the Bering Strait to Alaska – making overland trips from Britain to the US – via the Channel Tunnel – a possibility.

^{Much of eastern Russia’s road network is of poor quality (Photo: AP/Fotolia)}

The idea, which developers hope will help boost tourism and make Russia a global transportation hub, was presented at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science. But he added: “It will solve many problems in the development of the vast region. It is connected with social programs, and new fields, new energy resources, and so on.

“The idea is that basing on the new technology of high-speed rail transport we can build a new railway near the Trans-Siberian Railway, with the opportunity to go to Chukotka and Bering Strait and then to the American continent.”

^{The Trans-Siberian (Photo: Alamy)}

The Trans-Siberian Railway links Moscow and Vladivostok, covers 9,258km (6,152 miles) and takes seven days to complete.

According to Anthony Lambert, Telegraph Travel’s rail expert: “The principal attraction of the journey is, of course, the Russian landscape – the vast panoramas and sense of immensity so vividly captured by such artists as Isaac Levitan and Ivan Shishkin. The taiga is mesmerising.

“Looking out at the panorama of larch, silver fir, pine and birch induces the kind of reverie that is one of the pleasures of train travel, a random stream of thoughts and images that drifts on like the forest. In clearings, villages that could have come from a Levitan or Shishkin painting break the spell and make one wonder what life must be like in such a remote land.”

Beyond questionable financiers of a global highway, the elites and government investments with carve-outs lead to other implications and policy decisions.

Leaked Pacific trade pact draft shows investment carve-outs sought

(Reuters) – Australia’s medicine subsidies, Canadian films and culture, and capital controls in Chile would be carved out from investment protection rules being negotiated in a Pacific trade pact, according to a draft text released by Wikileaks on Wednesday.

An investment chapter, dated Jan. 20, from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal was released amid controversy over rules allowing companies to sue foreign governments, which critics say should be dropped from the pact.

The 55-page draft says countries cannot treat investors from a partner country differently from local investors, lays out compensation to be paid if property is expropriated or nationalized and sets out how to resolve disputes.

Consumer group Public Citizen said the definition of investment was too broad, covering even “failed attempts” to invest such as channeling resources to set up a business. But Center for Strategic and International Studies senior adviser Scott Miller said most treaties defined investment broadly and the draft was close to a publicly available U.S. model text.

Lise Johnson, head of investment law at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said governments’ rights to regulate for environmental and public interest purposes seemed “very weak.” But Miller said they were not a big carve-out.

A footnote says that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules do not apply to Australia, although it notes: “deletion of footnote is subject to certain conditions.”

The exemptions sought would protect countries from being sued by foreign corporations that complain they do not get the same treatment as domestic firms because of government actions, such as sovereign debt defaults or government procurement.

Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia want a free pass for foreign investments requiring special approval, often for sensitive local sectors such as banking or communications.

Australia wants to exclude medical programs and Canada to exempt cultural sectors, including films, music and books.

An annex states that Chile’s central bank can impose capital controls and maintains restrictions on foreign investors transferring sale proceeds offshore.

Chile and other emerging markets have seen large inflows of foreign investment, which can push up currencies and destabilize the local economy.

Critics argue the rules give companies too much power to sue governments. But business groups say they are necessary to stop unscrupulous governments from discriminating against foreigners.

TPP countries hope to wrap up negotiations on the deal by midyear.

A U.S. Trade Representative spokesman said investment agreements sought to protect Americans doing business abroad and ensure the ability to regulate in the public interest at home.

WH Standing with Iran, Without Pre-Condition

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

Inside the talks with Iran on the nuclear program is the matter of the IAEA. The White House and John Kerry both have publically telegraphed that they rely on the good work and viable inspections by the IAEA. Even if there is a quality inspection and a violation has been determined, then what? No one has answered that.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to a nuclear agreement with Iran has been Tehran’s refusal to answer questions by the IAEA about past nuclear activities that appear to be related to nuclear weapons development.

Iran struck an agreement with the IAEA in November 2013 to answer these questions as part of a 12-step process. This agreement has been described by U.S. officials as an important factor in reaching a final nuclear deal with Iran since it reassure the world that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it halted any weapons-related research and development.

Although Obama officials regularly claim Iran has fully cooperated with the IAEA during the nuclear talks, Iran has only addressed one of the 12 areas identified by the IAEA.

According to a shocking Wall Street Journal article published on March 26, Western states hope to get beyond this problem by proposing to weaken the 12-step agreement by asking Iran to grant the IAEA access to a few nuclear sites now and answer questions about nuclear weapons-related work sometime in the future.

According to the Journal article:

“Under the new plan, Tehran wouldn’t be expected to immediately clarify all the outstanding questions raised by the IAEA in a 2011 report on Iran’s alleged secretive work. A full reckoning of Iran’s past activities would be demanded in later years as part of a nuclear deal that is expected to last at least 15 years.”

The Journal also noted that France is leading the way in pushing Iran to answer questions about its past nuclear weapons work because it believes concessions on this issue “could set a bad precedent that weakens international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.”

Instead of a 10-year duration for a nuclear agreement with Iran, France is pushing for a agreement to last 15 years with an additional 10 years of intensive IAEA monitoring.

Does anyone really believe Iran will answer for past nuclear weapons work after a final nuclear agreement is in place when it refused to do so during the nuclear talks? And why won’t the news media focus on how the socialist government of French President Francois Hollande has become the hold-out to the Obama administration’s nuclear sell-out to Iran’s mullahs?

This nuclear deal with Iran is looking worse and worse.

How much of an open freeway is the Obama administration really giving to Iran versus Israel? Simply put, Israel is the enemy du jour and when breaching a 50 year relationship is proof, but declassifying documents on Israel’s nuclear program rather cross the Rubicon.

In Shocking Breach, U.S. Declassifies Document Revealing Some of Israel’s Nuclear Capabilities

On February 12, the Pentagon quietly declassified a top-secret 386-page Department of Defense document from 1987 detailing Israel’s nuclear program – the first time Israel’s alleged nuclear program has ever been officially and publically referenced by the U.S. authorities.

In the declassified document, the Pentagon reveals supposed details about Israel’s deterrence capabilities, but it kept sections on France, Germany, and Italy classified. Those sections are blacked out in the document.

The two main exceptions in the international media that wrote about the declassification at the time were the state-funded Iranian regime station Press TV and the state-funded Russian station RT.

Both these media were rumored to have been tipped off about this obscure report at the time by persons in Washington. (Both the RT and PressTV stories falsely claim that the U.S. gave Israel help in building a hydrogen bomb. This is incorrect.)

Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons. To do so might spark a regional nuclear arms race, and eventual nuclear confrontation.

The declassification is a serious breach of decades’ old understandings concerning this issue between Israel and its north American and certain European allies.

The Pentagon’s February declassification coincided with intense pressure on the Netanyahu government by the Obama administration, trying to force the Israeli prime minister to cancel a planned speech to Congress questioning the wisdom of a highly risky nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

However, in the past 24 hours several media in the U.S. and elsewhere have now chosen to report on the February declassification by the Pentagon. This coincides with stepped up efforts this week by the Obama administration to weaken Israel’s deterrent capabilities, including leaking to the Wall Street Journal incorrect allegations that Israel directly spies on the U.S.

An informed person connected to the government in Jerusalem, tells me:

“Over the years there have been backhanded references and comments made by individuals with some familiarity with this issue. But there has never before been any official description of the quality and capacity of installations. This kind of declassified document constitutes a whole different level of acknowledgement. It is part of a pattern of carefully controlled leaking of information which is very hard to attribute to a specific government agency or individual. Nevertheless it is clear what is happening.

“The failure to maintain the degree of mature and cooperative discretion that officials from several governments have exercised up to now, marks a serious change in the code of conduct. It is not wise to draw attention to this issue because it would tend to destabilize the international order and encourage others to pursue nuclear capabilities.”

The Pentagon declassification is not the first time the Obama administration has seemingly tried to curtail or control Israeli efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

In May 2011, the State Department revealed that the Israeli business tycoon brothers Sami and Yuli Ofer, were sending their cargo ships to Iran, as reported, for example, here in the Financial Times.

The Sunday Times of London, again on the basis of tip-offs, reported on June 5, 2011 that cargo ships owned by a subsidiary of the Ofer Brothers Group were being used to shuttle Israeli agents and reconnaissance equipment into Iran.

According to the report, at least eight ships belonging to companies owned by the Ofer group docked in Iranian ports to load and offload cargo in the years prior to 2011, as Israel made substantive efforts (aided by some European countries) to slow down and hamper Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Sami Ofer died on June 2, 2011, three days before that report was published.

The full story of the Obama administration’s effort to undermine, and effectively attempt to take control of, Israel’s deterrent capabilities in various spheres is yet to be written. There have been several other aspects to these efforts.

Many might say that the Israeli government has had little choice but to turn for assistance to Congress and to persons in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities, who share Jerusalem’s intense concerns about the nature of the anticipated deal with the Iranian regime Obama seems determined to sign.

The FBI, Hillary and the Alavi Foundation (Iran)

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

It was a secret:

The Alavi Foundation says its purpose is “promoting the teaching of Islamic culture, Persian language, literature and civilization.”

The Alavi Foundation’s site, a 36-story midtown Manhattan skyscraper originally built in the 1970s by the Pahlavi Foundation, an entity of the Shah-led government of Iran. After the Shah was overthrown in 1979, the new Iranian regime took it over and renamed it.

Lev L. Dassin, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that Farshid Jahedi, the president of the Alavi Foundation, was indicted for allegedly destroying documents subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating the Alavi Foundation’s relationship with Bank Melli Iran and the ownership of a Manhattan office building. On December 19, 2008, Jahedi was arrested in New York City on a criminal complaint in this case.

According to the indictment filed yesterday, the criminal complaint, and other documents filed in Manhattan federal court:

On December 17, 2008, in connection with a grand jury investigation concerning the Alavi Foundation and its financial relationship with Bank Melli Iran (Bank Melli) and two offshore entities controlled by Bank Melli—Assa Company Limited and Assa Corporation—Jahedi was served, as president of Alavi, with a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena was directed to the Alavi Foundation and commanded the production to the federal grand jury of financial documents concerning the Alavi Foundation, Assa Corporation, Assa Company Limited, and the building located at 650 Fifth Avenue Company. Jahedi was explicitly cautioned by law enforcement agents not to destroy any documents called for by the subpoena. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) personnel observed Jahedi discarding torn documents into a public trash can. Further investigation revealed that these documents concerned Assa Limited, Assa Corporation, and 650 Fifth Avenue Company.

Clintons Received Money from ‘Front for the Government of Iran’

As President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry close in on a nuclear deal with Iran, it’s worth remembering that the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation received money from “a front for the government of Iran” called the Alavi Foundation.

The front gave the Clintons $30,000 between April 2005 and March 2006, according to tax forms. This occurred years after law enforcement officials tied the group to Iranian radicals. “The center is funded by the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which law enforcement officials say is closely tied to the mullahs who dominate Iran,” the Washington Post reported in 2003.

“David Cohen, the New York City Police Department’s intelligence chief, said in a recent court document that the Alavi Foundation is ‘totally controlled by the government of Iran’ and ‘funds a variety of anti-American causes,’ including the Potomac center and other mosques. These organizations, said Cohen, a 35-year veteran of the CIA, have affiliates that support Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, two groups the U.S. government has deemed terrorist.”

In 2009, U.S. attorney Preet Bharara called the foundation a “front for the government of Iran.” “The Alavi Foundation has effectively been a front for the government of Iran … For two decades, the Alavi Foundation’s affairs have been directed by various Iranian officials, including Iranian ambassadors at the United Nations, in violation of a series of U.S. laws.”

The Clintons pledged in 2009 not to return the donations. “Matt McKenna, a spokesman for both the former president and the William J. Clinton Foundation, which focuses on public health, climate change, and economic opportunity both domestically and internationally, said the Alavi Foundation donated the money to a tsunami relief fund set up by Clinton in 2005 and that the Clinton Foundation had no plans to return it in the wake of Thursday’sgovernment action. He said neither Clinton nor the foundation had any comment on the government’s actions,” Newsweek reported.

Iran’s Fortified Bunker, Why?

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

Concessions abound as John Kerry is desperate to get a deal.

“We can see a path forward here to get to an agreement, we can see what that path might look like,” the official told reporters, cautioning however that this “doesn’t mean we’ll get there.”

Six world powers negotiating with Iran since late 2013 want Iran to disable parts of its nuclear infrastructure in order to put an atomic bomb out of reach and end a 12-year standoff.

After missing two deadlines in 2014 to turn a interim accord struck in November 2013 into a lasting deal, the parties set March 31 for a “framework” agreement with a full pact to be agreed by July.

But it remains unclear how detailed the framework between Iran and the six powers will be, particularly with the United States and France appearing split on the issue.

The US may let Iran run 6,000 uranium centrifuges in a fortified bunker

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The United States is considering letting Tehran run hundreds of centrifuges at a once-secret, fortified underground bunker in exchange for limits on centrifuge work and research and development at other sites, officials have told The Associated Press.

The trade-off would allow Iran to run several hundred of the devices at its Fordo facility, although the Iranians would not be allowed to do work that could lead to an atomic bomb and the site would be subject to international inspections, according to Western officials familiar with details of negotiations now underway. In return, Iran would be required to scale back the number of centrifuges it runs at its Natanz facility and accept other restrictions on nuclear-related work.

Instead of uranium, which can be enriched to be the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, any centrifuges permitted at Fordo would be fed elements such as zinc, xenon or germanium for separating out isotopes used in medicine, industry or science, the officials said. The number of centrifuges would not be enough to produce the amount of uranium needed to produce a weapon within a year — the minimum time-frame that Washington and its negotiating partners demand.

The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the sensitive negotiations as the latest round of talks began between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. The negotiators are racing to meet an end-of-March deadline to reach an outline of an agreement that would grant Iran relief from international sanctions in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. The deadline for a final agreement is June 30.

One senior U.S. official declined to comment on the specific proposal but said the goal since the beginning of the talks has been “to have Fordo converted so it’s not being used to enrich uranium.” That official would not say more.

The officials stressed that the potential compromise on Fordo is just one of several options on a menu of highly technical equations being discussed in the talks. All of the options are designed to keep Iran at least a year away from producing an atomic weapon for the life of the agreement, which will run for at least 10 years. U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has joined the last several rounds as the negotiations have gotten more technical.

Experts say the compromise for Fordo could still be problematic. They note it would allow Iran to keep intact technology that could be quickly repurposed for uranium enrichment at a sensitive facility that the U.S. and its allies originally wanted stripped of all such machines — centrifuges that can spin uranium gas into uses ranging from reactor fuel to weapons-grade material.

kerry zarif iran nuke REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger John Kerry, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (LtoR) pose for photographers before a meeting in Vienna November 24, 2014.

And the issue of inspector access and verification is key. Iran has resisted “snap inspections” in the past. Even as the nuclear talks have made progress, Iran has yet to satisfy questions about its past possible nuclear-related military activity. The fact that questions about such activity, known as Possible Military Dimensions, or PMDs, remain unresolved is a serious concern for the U.N. atomic watchdog.

In addition, the site at Fordo is a particular concern because it is hardened and dug deeply into a mountainside making it resistant — possibly impervious — to air attack. Such an attack is an option that neither Israel nor the U.S. has ruled out in case the talks fail.

And while too few to be used for proliferation by themselves, even a few hundred extra centrifuges at Fordo would be a concern when looked at in the context of total numbers.

As negotiations stand, the number of centrifuges would grow to more than 6,000, when the other site is included. Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran nuclear file as a deputy director general of the U.N’s International Atomic Energy Agency until 2010, says even 6,000 operating centrifuges would be “a big number.”

Asked of the significance of hundreds more at Fordo, he said, “Every machine counts.”

Iran reported the site to the IAEA six years ago in what Washington says was an attempt to pre-empt President Barack Obama and the prime ministers of Britain and France going public with its existence a few days later. Tehran later used the site to enrich uranium to a level just a technical step away from weapons-grade until late 2013, when it froze its nuclear program under a temporary arrangement that remains in effect as the sides negotiate.

Twice extended, the negotiations have turned into a U.S.-Iran tug-of-war over how many of the machines Iran would be allowed to operate since the talks resumed over two years ago. Tehran denies nuclear weapons ambitions, saying it wants to enrich only for energy, scientific and medical purposes.

Washington has taken the main negotiating role with Tehran in talks that formally remain between Iran and six world powers, and officials told the AP at last week’s round that the two sides were zeroing in on a cap of 6,000 centrifuges at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment site.

That’s fewer than the nearly 10,000 Tehran now runs at Natanz, yet substantially more than the 500 to 1,500 that Washington originally wanted as a ceiling. Only a year ago, U.S. officials floated 4,000 as a possible compromise.

One of the officials said discussions focus on an extra 480 centrifuges at Fordo. That would potentially bring the total number of machines to close to 6,500.

David Albright of Washington’s Institute for Security and International Security says a few hundred centrifuges operated by the Iranians would not be a huge threat — if they were anywhere else but the sensitive Fordo site.

Beyond its symbolic significance, “it keeps the infrastructure in place and keeps a leg up, if they want to restart (uranium) enrichment operations,” said Albright, who is a go-to person on the Iran nuclear issue for the U.S. government.

40 Points Against Israel

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Obama plan to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed, so it appears the mission of Europe is to force a Palestinian versus Israel confrontation.

There is little doubt the White House is fully supportive of this operation. EU plans to pressure Israel as diplomat warns of ‘collision course’ Leaked report outlines 40 suggestions to sway Israeli policy; EU source: more chance of implementation in wake of Netanyahu rejection of Palestinian state. A European Union report obtained by Ynet on Wednesday outlines suggestions on how to pressure Israel into returning to negotiations, in a list of 40 possible decisions. An EU diplomatic source told Ynet that there was a definite chance that the recommendations in the report, which the member states have yet to approve, were more likely to be implemented following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement during his election campaign that a Palestinian state would not be created under his rule.

Netanyahu and Merkel. Israel and Europe are at loggerheads. (Photo: Reuters)

“We are on a collision course,” said the European diplomat. “It’s clear to everyone in Brussels that there must be a response to these statements.” The diplomat said the EU does not believe Netanyahu’s subsequent backtracking on the creation of a Palestinian state. He added that Europe is interested in having a positive relationship with Israel, but considers Israel to be an entity that does not extend beyond the Green Line – the boundaries of Israel from its founding in 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War. “If Israel continues its policy beyond the Green Line, it will affect the relationship between European nations and Israel,” he warned. The heads of diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah recommend several steps in the report, and the majority of the 40 recommendations may be hard for Israel to swallow. The European source hinted that the election results and expected formation of a right-wing government in Israel mean the recommendations will be taken especially seriously by the EU.

The report describes 2014 as one of the tensest years in Jerusalem since the end of the Second Intifada. Drafted before the end of Israel’s election campaign, the document warns against “a vicious cycle of polarization and violence following the rapid deterioration of the situation on the ground.”

EU seeks to increase involvement in peace process

The EU is keen to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table after peace talks collapsed last year, with the bloc’s new foreign policy chief seeking to reinvigorate European involvement in the negotiations. Israel should make “every effort to ensure an early resumption of the Middle East peace process,” the EU said in a series of annual reports assessing progress on democracy and human rights in countries close to the 28-nation bloc. A separate report urged the Palestinian Authority to pursue “positive steps” to restart peace talks. EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, who took on her position in November, wants to more closely involve Arab states in the work of the Middle East Quartet, which comprises the United States, United Nations, the EU and Russia. Rather than expanding the Quartet, it would hold more frequent top-level meetings with at least Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, senior diplomats have said. Last week, the bloc chose veteran Italian negotiator Fernando Gentilini as its special representative to the Middle East. In its reports, the EU called on Israel to ensure respect for international law and human rights in the Palestinian territories. While the EU recognized Israel had the right to defend itself, the “devastating effect” of last year’s Gaza conflict on civilians “underlined the significant challenges attached to Israel’s responsibilities in the occupied territories,” it said. Hamas and other Gaza militant groups fought a 50-day war with Israel last July and August in which more than 2,100 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed. On the Israeli side 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed. The EU also urged the Palestinian Authority to resume full governmental responsibility in Gaza and to organize free and fair presidential and legislative elections.