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Western leaders plan partial about-face on free market rules to avert world slump

DEBKAfile Special Report & Analysis

October 11, 2008, 2:01 PM (GMT+02:00)

G7 on mission to salvage financial system and markets

G7 on mission to salvage financial system and markets

The G7 finance ministers and heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank started their meeting in Washington Friday night, Oct. 10. Euro zone countries meet with the IMF in Paris Sunday. They are desperately fighting the climate of fear hanging over the sellers-only markets worldwide, and must produce a plan to revive investors’ trust in the West’s financial system and government. The plan essentially entails partial government takeovers of crippled banks to restore the flow of credit.

Can this plan work after seven black days, in which the global stampede wiped $4.5 trillion off the value of shares world wide and threatens to dump the world into the worst slump in living memory?

Read DEBKAfile’s Special Analysis below
Full article


Three injured on fourth night of Jewish-Arab clashes in Acre

DEBKAfile Special Report and Analysis

October 11, 2008, 10:21 PM (GMT+02:00)

Acre downtown after Yom Kippur Eve Arab rampage

Acre downtown after Yom Kippur Eve Arab rampage

The three were hurt by flying stones between Jewish and Arab youths in the northern Israeli town of Acre Saturday night, Oct. 11. A third Arab apartment was torched after the occupants were safely evacuated. Mayor Lankry accused the police of being too soft in handling the violence in the town.
More...


NATO stirred into anti-piracy action by overlap with E. African jihadist terror

DEBKA-Net-Weekly Exclusive

October 9, 2008, 7:23 AM (GMT+02:00)

Pirates board Faina arms ship

Pirates board Faina arms ship

On Oct. 3, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 367 reported that the capture of the Ukrainian arms vessel, Faina, had placed Somali piracy at the center of the war on terror. On Oct. 9, sixteen days after the Faina’s capture, NATO defense ministers meeting in Budapest finally agreed to send warships “soon” to Somali waters to safeguard vessels threatened by pirates.

The DEBKA-Net-Weekly exclusive is summarized now.

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .
More...


Israel remains on high alert for Syrian, Hizballah attacks

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 9, 2008, 5:56 PM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian Russian-made T-80 tank

Syrian Russian-made T-80 tank

After Syria moved tank units up to the Lebanese Beqaa Valley border Tuesday, Oct. 7, Israel raised the alert level on its borders with Syria and Lebanon and placed its Air Force and emergency first aid teams on standby in the event of Syrian or/and Hizballah attacks. Israeli embassies and Jewish institutions worldwide are also on high terror alert. Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said recently that his promised retaliation for the death of Imad Mughniyeh “is coming.”
More...


TOP STORIES

Russia dodges questions on S-300 defense sale to Iran

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

October 9, 2008, 8:25 PM (GMT+02:00)

Russian S-300 would make Iran's nuclear sites nearly inviolable

Russian S-300 would make Iran's nuclear sites nearly inviolable

Asked if Russia had promised Israel prime minister Ehud Olmert not to deliver S-300 systems to Iran, the foreign ministry spokesman in Moscow said Thursday, Oct. 9: "We have already repeatedly stated at the very highest political levels that we do not intend to deliver those types of arms to countries which are located in troubled regions." He carefully avoided mentioning Iran or Syria.

DEBKAfile reported earlier: Russian military experts calculate that the window for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will shrink to 3-6 months if Moscow sells Iran (and Syria) the sophisticated S-300 system.
More...


Conflicting reports about US warplane’s forced landing over Iran

October 7, 2008, 10:29 AM (GMT+02:00)

US Falcon plane

US Falcon plane

Tehran first identified the plane as an American Falcon which had mistakenly strayed into Iranian airspace and was forced down Monday, Oct. 6. In that report, the eight US officials aboard, including 5 senior military officials, were interrogated overnight and released after 24 hours.

Later, Tehran produced three different versions of the incident.
More...


Three Palestinian terrorists die in battle with Syrian troops

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 9, 2008, 1:38 PM (GMT+02:00)

Palestinian fundamentalist Fatah a-Islam

Palestinian fundamentalist Fatah a-Islam

The melee erupted between Syrian special forces and suicide fighters of the Palestinian radical Fatah al-Islam in the Yarmoukh refugee camp in South Damascus. According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, it was prompted by the arrest in Syria some weeks ago of the Palestinian group’s leader Shaker al Abassi, who is associated with al Qaeda in Iraq.
More...



Full Articles and Analyses

Russian live missile fire air exercise near Alaska

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 4, 2008

Not since 1984, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, has Russia ventured to launch dozens of nuclear bombers for an exercise in which Tu-95 Bear bombers will fire live cruise missiles. Exercise Stability 2008 will take place Oct.-6-12 over sub-Arctic Russia uncomfortably close to the US state of Alaska, and Belarus.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the exercise is part of a month-long war game described by Russian air force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik as “practicing the strategic deployment of the armed forces including the nuclear triad.”

As part of the exercise, our sources reported exclusively on Oct. 1, that Russian ships armed with nuclear missiles will dock at Syrian ports Oct. 8, on the eve of Yom Kippur, before continuing to the Caribbean for joint maneuvers with Venezuela.

More than 60,000 troops and 1.500 tanks and APCs, as well as land-based and submarine-launched nuclear missiles, were tested in the first phase of the war games.

(“Nuclear triad” refers...
In full


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Iranian Early Warning Station, Anti-Air Base on Lebanese Peak

Iranian Early Warning Station, Anti-Air Base on Lebanese Peak

July 12, 2008

Mt. Sannine, Central Lebanon

Mt. Sannine, Central Lebanon

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .

In the past few weeks, Hizballah at the behest of Iran and Syria has commandeered the 7,800-foot Mt. Sannine, a strategic asset capable of determining the outcome of the next war, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly 356 revealed.

Radar-guided missile positions and an early warning station have since been deployed on its summit, which are capable of monitoring and threatening US Sixth Fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean and Israel Air Force flights.

This development was serious enough for Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak to repeat three times in as many days that the IDF is keeping a close watch on events in the northern front, especially the deepening ties between Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah. Barak travels to Washington this week.

Mt. Sannine, which dominates the roads connecting Beirut and Damascus, is one of the most prized strategic assets in the region. It was fought over for...
In full


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Iran Achieves a Four-Front Missile Command, Breakthrough on Nuclear Missile Warheads

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

October 4, 2008

Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps

Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps

DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps have created a separate missile command, in which Syria’s missile force is to be integrated. The joint command was formalized in a new mutual defense treaty signed by the Syrian defense minister, Gen. Hassan Turkmani in Tehran last week.

Israeli military sources judge the operational merger of Iranian and Syrian missile corps to be a major strategic hazard to the Jewish state.

Western and Israeli military experts connect it with other indications that Iran’s program for developing missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads has gone into high gear and reached an advanced stage. They believe the Iranians have beaten most of the technical difficulties holding it up.

On May 26, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which often goes easy on Iran, released a harsh report confirming Iran’s progress in “missile warhead design.”

The new missile command was cautiously announced last week by the...
In full


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Syrian and Iranian Generals in Intensive War Consultations


 

Rescue the Old World Financial Order or Build a New One

DEBKAfile Special Analysis

October 11, 2008

Bush leaves G7 meeting on financial crisis

Bush leaves G7 meeting on financial crisis

This weekend sees make-or-break efforts by Western finance ministers and international financial institutions to produce a plan that will drag their economies back into equilibrium before the world’s markets open Monday, Oct. 13. They are working to the dread drumbeats of turmoil, panicky investors and looming recession, which some economists predict will be more disastrous than the 1930s slump which led to World War II.

Two major rescue plans for the banking and financial systems by the US and UK have fallen short of luring fleeing investors back to the markets. In seven black days, crashing global indexes led by Wall Street - which tumbled 18 percent and London by 21 percent - followed by Asia, wiped $4.5 trillion off share values world wide. In the UK, it was calculated that one person goes bankrupt every five minutes. Iceland’s entire economy is bankrupt.

The plan on the G7’s table is essentially to partially nationalize almost half of the Western banking system by buying up...
In full


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Israel backs Georgia in Caspian Oil Pipeline Battle with Russia

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

August 8, 2008

Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, Aug. 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin threatened a “military response.”

Former Soviet Georgia called up its military reserves after Russian warplanes bombed its new positions in the renegade province.

In Moscow’s first response to the fall of Tskhinvali, president Dimitry Medvedev ordered the Russian army to prepare for a national emergency after calling the UN Security Council into emergency session early Friday.

Reinforcements were rushed to the Russian “peacekeeping force” present in the region to support the separatists.

Georgian tanks entered the capital after heavy overnight heavy aerial strikes, in which dozens of people were killed.

Lado Gurgenidze, Georgia's prime minister, said on Friday that Georgia will continue its military operation in...
In full


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Iran Has Technology for a Nuclear Warhead to Fit Shehab-3 Missile

DEBKA-Net-Weekly 351 Updated by DEBKAfile

July 8, 2008

Urs Tinner, evidence against him destroyed

Urs Tinner, evidence against him destroyed

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .

Some Western military and intelligence were shocked to learn that Iran had the blueprints for making a nuclear warhead that could fit onto its Shehab-3 missiles. The discovery was released by the former UN weapons inspector, David Albright, Sunday, June 16, ahead of the report on his investigation of the nuclear smuggling ring run by the father of the Pakistan nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan. He alleged that the nuclear blueprints passed to Libya, Iran and North Korea included “previously undisclosed designs for a compact warhead that could fit on Iran’s medium-range ballistic missiles.”

On May 22, Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, disclosed that, last December, the destruction had been ordered of a batch of 30,000 documents detailing construction plans for nuclear weapons, gas ultra-centrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium and guided missile delivery systems , evidence in a criminal...
In full


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Musharraf Dumps Hundreds of al Qaeda Operatives Back in Afghanistan



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