Concessions To Iran May Spark Nuclear Arms Race
The international community’s nuclear negotiations with Tehran have already prompted other Middle Eastern countries to seek a nuclear infrastructure, said Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia’s NewsTalk 990.
Heinonen, who previously served as head of the Department of Safeguards for the IAEA, was asked whether the nuclear bargaining with Tehran “could possibly result in triggering a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
“I would not say a race,” he replied, “but certainly there will be a positioning by these countries because they have to think about their national security.”
Heinonen explained there are already signs moderate regimes like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and others are seeking a legal nuclear program. “They have started to build their nuclear program very differently compared to that one which they had in place two years ago, three years ago, when they were only seeking to buy nuclear reactors to produce electricity.
“But now you see that they are more dealing on nuclear infrastructure,” he continued. “They are going in a very reasonable way to build an infrastructure.”
In an interview with CNN last week, the Saudi ambassador to the United States refused to rule out the possibility of the Saudis building a nuclear weapon to counterbalance Iran’s nuclear program.
Earlier this month, Russia inked a $10 billion deal to build Jordan’s first nuclear power plant. And in February, Russia signed a preliminary agreement to jointly build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant.
The United Arab Emirates in 2009 signed a $20 billion deal with Korea Electric Power Corporation for the country’s nuclear power plan, which is currently under construction.
Christians In Danger Of Being Driven Out Of Middle East, Says Lebanese Parliamentarian
If the U.S. and international community do not intervene, Christians may be driven out of the Middle Eastern Arab countries within two years, warned Lebanese parliamentarian Samy Gemayel during an interview on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”
Gemayel, a senior member of the Phalange Party, descends from a historic Lebanese Christian family. His father, Amin, was the country’s president, while his brother, Pierre, was a member of parliament and a government minister before his assassination Nov. 21, 2006. Samy Gemayel’s uncle, former president-elect Bashir Gemayel, also was assassinated.
Gemayel warned Christians and moderate Muslims are victims of two extremist forces fighting each other. He said, “Today all the moderates in the region are taken between two big extremists powers. On one side you have ISIS and on the other side you have the Islamic state of Iran.
So you have two Islamic states with two very extremist ideologies fighting against each other. And the moderates are stuck in a sandwich between these two powers.”
Amid widespread reports of Christian persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists, Gemayel complained regional Christian leaders and minority communities are not receiving enough support from the U.S. and international community.
He warned that “maybe in two years you will not have Christians in the region anymore except in Lebanon because we are strong and we are still defending ourselves.”
Chomsky Deems Obama An Israel Apologist
According to liberal political activist and highly influential professor Noam Chomsky, “Obama has bent over backwards to support Israeli policies.”
Chomsky, who was praised by Osama bin Laden as “one of the most capable” U.S. citizens, told this reporter in an e-mail interview that the Obama administration has gone “so far as to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution (February 2011) supporting his official policy: opposition to expansion of settlements.”
Chomsky claimed that with American support, the Israeli government has been “gradually integrating into Israel what it values in the West Bank, leaving the rest unviable – all illegal as determined by the highest international authorities and as recognized by virtually the entire world, Israel excepted, and even by the U.S. not many years ago, though ‘illegal’ has been downgraded in recent years to ‘not helpful to peace.’”
Author Of Controversial Article Denies Being Behind Current Economic Crisis
In divining the origins of President Obama’s fiscal policies, some critics have gone so far as to accuse the president of implementing the infamous so-called Cloward-Piven Strategy.
The plan, first proposed in 1966, calls for a flood of Americans to obtain public welfare with the intention of precipitating an economic crisis that hastens the fall of capitalism, which will then lead to a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty.”
Now for the first time, the co-author and namesake of the strategy, Dr. Frances Fox Piven, spoke to this reporter about the contention Obama that is motivated by her radical blueprint, claims which were popularized by former Fox News host Glenn Beck.
Piven is professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her strategy was co-authored by the late Columbia University professor and activist Richard Cloward and appeared as an article in The Nation magazine in May 1966, titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.”
Piven was petitioned to respond to Beck’s repeated contention the Cloward-Piven strategy helped to inspire Obama’s policies. In one of many broadcasts, on February 18, 2010, Beck said: “You’ve got total destruction of wealth coming … It’s the final phase of the Cloward-Piven strategy, which is collapse the system.” Beck brought Piven’s article into the limelight in 2010 when he claimed Piven was responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.”
Piven, though, claims it’s “something of a hoax to attribute that change that occurred in this period in American society to an article in the Nation. The hoax is the work of Glenn Beck, who likes to point to particular people as villains or, from my point of view, as heroes. I don’t deserve to be a hero or a villain in this story. It’s a sort of made-up narrative, tells a simple fairy tale about how change occurs in America. And it doesn’t occur because of a Nation article.”
