---

Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

---

Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

---

Account frozen...

Nuclear panel votes to report Iran to U.N.
Tehran responds with refusal to cooperate

By Elaine Sciolino
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

February 5, 2006

VIENNA, Austria – The 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency voted yesterday to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, a move that reflects increasing suspicion around the world that Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons.

The resolution, which passed by a vote of 27-3, could change the course of diplomacy toward Iran and open the door to international punishment of the country.

Only Cuba, Syria and Venezuela voted against the European-drafted resolution. Five countries – Algeria, Belarus, Indonesia, Libya and South Africa – abstained.

After the vote, Iran announced that it would immediately end its voluntary nuclear cooperation with the U.N. watchdog agency and begin full-scale production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce electricity or to help build nuclear bombs. Tehran also said a proposal by Moscow to enrich uranium in Russia was dead.

In a letter ordering the country's nuclear commission to take those actions, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote that after Iranian demonstrations of compliance and good will, “the nuclear agency has voted under pressure by few countries and has ignored our extensive cooperation and negated our legal right,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

Ahmadinejad said though the country would no longer observe the Additional Protocol that allows intrusive nuclear inspections, “all the country's peaceful activities will remain within the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty.”

The vote in Vienna was the result of a 2½-year campaign by the Bush administration to convince the world that suspicions about Iran's nuclear program are so serious that the issue must come before the Security Council for judgment.

It also signals the failure, at least for now, of the 2½-year strategy of France, Britain and Germany that was based on the premise that Iran could be coaxed into freezing crucial nuclear activities if the political, technological, economic and security rewards from the West were enticing enough.

In recent months, the three countries have moved much closer to the position of the Bush administration, which has branded Iran as part of an “axis of evil” and never held out much hope for the European negotiating track.

The resolution was passed after the United States reversed itself and agreed late Friday to include a clause expressing support for a nuclear-free Middle East that indirectly criticized Israel's secret nuclear weapons status.

Even the United States' closest European allies favored the clause, which had been demanded by Egypt and also had the support of Russia and China. Isolated, the United States backed down.

The overall resolution is a compromise between the Americans, who wanted immediate action on Iran, and the Russians and Chinese, who wanted a delay. It will allow concrete Security Council action against Iran only after a delay of at least a month.

Peter Jenkins, the British ambassador, said Iran should take the monthlong grace period to change its behavior and “begin rebuilding international confidence” as the only way to restart negotiations.

The month coincides with the schedule for the atomic agency's next formal, comprehensive assessment of Iran's nuclear program.

The vote in Vienna was touted as a significant victory for the Bush administration, which spent months briefing members of the agency's board on intelligence that it said strongly suggested but did not prove that Iran's intent was to develop a weapon.

The White House issued a statement yesterday from President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, describing the agency's vote as “a clear message” to Iran.

The statement ended with words directed to the Iranian people, saying, “Iran's true interests lie in working with the international community to enjoy the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy, not in isolating Iran by continuing to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons.”

Some administration officials have said Bush was keeping open all of his options – the code words for reserving the right to take military action if diplomacy fails as part of the campaign to get the Iranian government to back down.

Reporting a country to the Security Council is deeply humiliating and singles out a country as an unreliable actor on the global stage. Until recently, a pillar of Iran's foreign policy had been to avoid being judged in the world organization and to seek alignments with the Europeans, Russia and China against the United States and Israel.

But that changed in August, after Iran resumed converting uranium yellowcake into a gas that can be further purified for use in nuclear reactors as well as weapons. It was the first breach of its voluntary agreement with the Europeans and essentially broke off negotiations.

That was followed by the reopening last month of a small part of its nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz for what Iran called “research purposes.” Even though Iran has yet to operate any of the machinery or process any uranium material there, its reopening was the second, much more serious violation of the agreement with the Europeans.

The resolution at the IAEA came at the end of a three-day emergency session of the agency board that was triggered by Iran's refusal to heed calls to close down the uranium enrichment facility again.

It calls for the immediate suspension of all activities related to the enrichment of uranium, which can be used to make electricity or in making nuclear bombs.

It also recalls Iran's “many failures and breaches of its obligations” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and “the absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes resulting from the history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities.”

Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes like generating electricity. But it kept its program hidden for 18 years from the IAEA, fueling suspicions that it may have secret plans to become a nuclear weapons power.

The final resolution included a clause stating that “a solution to the Iranian issue would contribute to global nonproliferation efforts and to realizing the objective of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including their means of delivery.”

Yesterday's vote was particularly important because it had the backing of Russia and China, which had abstained in the last resolution on Iran in September.

Among those also backing the resolution was India, which had been pressured by the United States to vote yes if it expected to finalize a sweeping deal on nuclear energy cooperation with the United States, but will face intense domestic political opposition because of the decision.

Brazil, which has its own nuclear enrichment program similar to that of Iran, also voted in favor of the resolution, despite initial reservations that it could send a precedent for countries like it.

In recent years, the agency board has reported Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Romania to the Security Council for possible censure because of their nuclear programs. But such action does not necessarily translate into action.

AOL, Yahoo to introduce postage for companies sending e-mail

By Saul Hansell
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

February 5, 2006

Soon companies will have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers.

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay a quarter of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services.

The two companies also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.

AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a special bulk e-mail box or strip them of images and Web links.

Yahoo and AOL say the new system is a way to restore some order to e-mail, which, because of spam and online scams, has become an increasingly unreliable mode of communication even as it has become more important in people's lives.

“The last time I checked, the Postal Service has a very similar system to provide different options,” said Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman. He pointed to services like certified mail with return receipts, “where you really do get assurance that if what you send is important to you, it will be delivered, and delivered in a way that is different from other mail.”

But critics of the plan say that the companies risk alienating their users and the companies that send e-mail. The system will apply not only to mass mailings but also to individual messages like order confirmations from online stores and customized low-fare notices from airlines.

“AOL users will become dissatisfied when they don't receive the e-mail that they want, and when they complain to the senders, they'll be told, 'It's AOL's fault,' ” said Richi Jennings, an analyst at Ferris Research, which specializes in e-mail.

As for companies that send e-mail, “some will pay, but others will object to being held to ransom,” she said. “A big danger is that one of them will be big enough to encourage AOL users to use a different e-mail service.”

In a broader sense, the move to create what is essentially a preferred class of e-mail is a major change in the economics of the Internet. Until now, senders and recipients of e-mail – and, for that matter, Web pages and other information – each covered their own costs of using the network, with no money changing hands. That model is different from, say, the telephone system, in which the company whose customer places a call pays a fee to the company whose customer receives it.

The prospect of a multitiered Internet has received a lot of attention recently after executives of several large telecommunications companies, including BellSouth and AT&T, suggested that they should be paid not only by the subscribers to their Internet services but also by companies that send large files to those subscribers, including music and video clips. Those files would then be given priority over other data, a change from the Internet's basic architecture, which treats all data in the same way.

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday to consider legislation for what has been called “Net neutrality” – effectively banning Internet companies from giving preferred status to certain providers of content. The concern is that companies that do not pay could find it hard to reach customers or potential customers, threatening the openness of the Internet.

AOL and its parent, Time Warner, which also owns a large cable system offering high-speed Internet access, have not taken a public stand on the principle of Net neutrality. Neither has Yahoo, which has close relationships with AT&T and Verizon. The issue of e-mail postage has not yet come up in the debate over Net neutrality.

In the next two months, AOL will start accepting e-mail processed by Goodmail Systems, a company in Mountain View, that will collect the electronic postage and verify the identity of the sender. Goodmail has tested the system with messages from a few companies, including the American Red Cross and The New York Times.

Paying senders will be assured that their messages will be delivered to AOL users' main in-boxes and marked as “AOL Certified E-Mail.” Unpaid messages will be subject to AOL's spam-filtering process, which diverts suspicious messages to a special spam folder. Most unpaid messages will also not be displayed with their original images and links.

Professor backs Iran on Holocaust denial

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

February 5, 2006

CHICAGO – A Northwestern University professor known for denying the Holocaust has publicly sided with Iran's hard-line president, who has been on a campaign against Israel.

Engineering professor Arthur Butz said that he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks calling the Holocaust a “myth.” Butz said his comments supporting the president were published by the English-language Tehran Times and Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency.

Butz, a tenured professor whose views have been known in the United States for years, is being promoted by Iranian news sources as one of the world scholars who support Ahmadinejad's views on the Holocaust.

“I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state,” Butz said in a Mehr news report.

He posted the same comments on his Northwestern-provided Web site.

Jewish leaders expressed fear that support from a U.S. educator could add credibility to Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel and the Holocaust.

“Butz's most recent invective demonstrates the power of hate to rally extremists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers out from under their rocks throughout the world,” said Richard Hirschhaut, executive director of the Holocaust Foundation of Illinois.

A report published Wednesday by Mehr said Butz was interviewed Dec. 26 “in the wake of the international uproar that arose” after Ahmadinejad questioned the Nazi killing of 6 million Jews and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

Iran also recently announced plans for a conference to examine evidence of the Holocaust.

Butz said he spoke to the Iranian press because “sometimes I just talk about the things I'm interested in.”

Butz said in the Mehr report that the Holocaust didn't happen, that it is a “deliberately contrived falsehood” and that its promulgation was motivated by the desire to create a Jewish state in the Middle East.

As was previously suspected and alluded to at the time, a newly leaked document in Britain shows clearly that Bush conspired to create a modern-day version of the sinking of the Maine?

The sinking of the Maine..... the Gulf of Tonkin.....

---

Professor backs Iran on Holocaust denial

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

February 5, 2006

CHICAGO – A Northwestern University professor known for denying the Holocaust has publicly sided with Iran's hard-line president, who has been on a campaign against Israel....

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

....Butz said in the Mehr report that the Holocaust didn't happen, that it is a “deliberately contrived falsehood” and that its promulgation was motivated by the desire to create a Jewish state in the Middle East.

I happen to know from a person that actually witnessed mass deportations of Jews in a certain European country that those events that lead up to the Holocaust took place.

He should go down to the local video store in his area and rent a few documentaries about the Holocaust to see for himself that it really happened.

[edit]I edited 'people' to 'person'. But I'm sure I can trust the accounts of that person.[/edit]

---

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

Yeah... Great Britain have one of these too. I forget his name... Mills, Hill, or something. What puzzles me the most, is how these guys managed to get a major degree in history(!) They should've flunked them in the ground course!

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

Yeah... Great Britain have one of these too. I forget his name... Mills, Hill, or something. What puzzles me the most, is how these guys managed to get a major degree in history(!) They should've flunked them in the ground course!

It's puzzling why some 'educated' people have these views, considering all the evidence that's out there.

---

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

Yeah... Great Britain have one of these too. I forget his name... Mills, Hill, or something. What puzzles me the most, is how these guys managed to get a major degree in history(!) They should've flunked them in the ground course!

It's puzzling why some 'educated' people have these views, considering all the evidence that's out there.

I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.
But I've investigated some of this myself. Just a tiny bit of the top of the iceberg. My grandfather died in Dachau, so I got interested in the KZ camps a long time ago and did some research of my own. And, as you say, the evidence is overwhelming. It's more than just evidence, it is proof. So just ignore this professor. He's wrong.

'It's puzzling why some 'educated' people have these views, considering all the evidence that's out there.'


Thanks be to the 'information highway', don't be at all surprised when this 'evidence' of history is altered or simply goes away... We are already seeing the signs of this happening today... ;)

---

It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

?..... Question for people in other countries.....

The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act cuts off non-drug military aid, and as of 2004 some economic aid, to countries that fail to exempt U.S. personnel on their soil from the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction.

The new 'rule of law' that governs our actions in the world,..... exempt us from the law or else we will retaliate with sanctions.

If you want to remain in our favor, ....treat us as deserving of the supreme powers that we project, ........we demand that you recognize us as being above the law.

Eleven Latin American countries have had aid frozen, with possibly Mexico and Chile to join the list soon.

Has your country bent to our will yet?

---

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

Yeah... Great Britain have one of these too. I forget his name... Mills, Hill, or something. What puzzles me the most, is how these guys managed to get a major degree in history(!) They should've flunked them in the ground course!

It's puzzling why some 'educated' people have these views, considering all the evidence that's out there.

The Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Goebels obviously had a PhD. But that doesn't preclude anyone from having an agenda of their own. Common sense is something that can't be taught.

---

Account frozen...

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

Yeah... Great Britain have one of these too. I forget his name... Mills, Hill, or something. What puzzles me the most, is how these guys managed to get a major degree in history(!) They should've flunked them in the ground course!

It's puzzling why some 'educated' people have these views, considering all the evidence that's out there.

I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.
But I've investigated some of this myself. Just a tiny bit of the top of the iceberg. My grandfather died in Dachau, so I got interested in the KZ camps a long time ago and did some research of my own. And, as you say, the evidence is overwhelming. It's more than just evidence, it is proof. So just ignore this professor. He's wrong.

I'm sorry about your grandfather.

---

This guy is is missing a few cards in his deck.

Yeah... Great Britain have one of these too. I forget his name... Mills, Hill, or something. What puzzles me the most, is how these guys managed to get a major degree in history(!) They should've flunked them in the ground course!

It's puzzling why some 'educated' people have these views, considering all the evidence that's out there.

The Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Goebels obviously had a PhD. But that doesn't preclude anyone from having an agenda of their own. Common sense is something that can't be taught.

It's examples like these that reinforce by belief that people are capable of great cruelty, even if in thier minds they might not see it that way.

---

?..... Question for people in other countries.....

The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act cuts off non-drug military aid, and as of 2004 some economic aid, to countries that fail to exempt U.S. personnel on their soil from the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction.

The new 'rule of law' that governs our actions in the world,..... exempt us from the law or else we will retaliate with sanctions.

If you want to remain in our favor, ....treat us as deserving of the supreme powers that we project, ........we demand that you recognize us as being above the law.

Eleven Latin American countries have had aid frozen, with possibly Mexico and Chile to join the list soon.

Has your country bent to our will yet?

Would you care to provide links to credible sources for this information, please.

---

?..... Question for people in other countries.....

The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act cuts off non-drug military aid, and as of 2004 some economic aid, to countries that fail to exempt U.S. personnel on their soil from the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction.

The new 'rule of law' that governs our actions in the world,..... exempt us from the law or else we will retaliate with sanctions.

If you want to remain in our favor, ....treat us as deserving of the supreme powers that we project, ........we demand that you recognize us as being above the law.

Eleven Latin American countries have had aid frozen, with possibly Mexico and Chile to join the list soon.

Has your country bent to our will yet?

Would you care to provide links to credible sources for this information, please.

My understanding was that the US simply didn't sign the enabling treaty. I will admit that since I'm no longer active military I didn't follow this closely.

---

No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.