Such attacks would be a major escalation of the unpopular US drone strikes against the nation, so far confined to the area in and around the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Quetta, a city of three quarters of a million people, is the capital of Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan.

The Pakistani government has been reluctant to move against the city, which has reportedly become a hiding point for much of the former Afghan government, citing both the lack of threat posed to the Pakistani government and the lack of intelligence provided by the US about exactly where to act.

In fact, the attack on Quetta may turn out to be even more than lobbing a few missiles, as reportedly officials have discussed sending ground forces into the town to “capture or kill” any Taliban they find.

A move that has long been debated by the Obama Administration could soon become reality, as officials say the State Department delivered an ultimatum to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari during his visit last week cautioning that if he doesn’t move against the Taliban forces in the city of Quetta the US will.

The United States is threatening to launch airstrikes on Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in the Pakistani city of Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan. The threat comes amid growing divisions in Washington about whether to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan by sending more troops or by reducing them and targeting the terrorists.

From Reuters:

Israel is involved in a covert war of sabotage inside Iran to try to delay Tehran’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, a British newspaper said on Tuesday, quoting a former CIA agent and intelligence experts.

An intelligence source in the Middle East told Reuters last year Israel planned to target Iranian nuclear scientists with letter bombs and poisoned packages and had set off explosions in Iran. Analysts offered similar accounts and said such tactics would be credible, but no confirmation has been available.

Some analysts caution that reports of such a “dirty war” may form part of a psychological warfare campaign to unsettle Iran.

The intelligence source told Reuters that Israeli agents were working with Western governments and firms doing business with Tehran, whose Islamist leadership is a sworn enemy of Israel but denies accusations its nuclear programme has a military purpose.

Israel’s government, widely assumed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, declines all comment on such reports.

“Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran’s nuclear programme,” Britain’s Daily Telegraph said on Tuesday. “It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime’s illicit weapons project, the experts say.”

Quoting intelligence experts and an unnamed former CIA agent, the newspaper said Israel’s “decapitation” strategy had targeted members of Iran’s atomic programme, hoping to set back the country’s nuclear ambitions without resorting to war.

“SABOTAGE GOING ON”

Meir Javendafar, an Iran expert at Meepas, a Middle East analysis group, told Reuters there were also reports Iran was being sold faulty equipment for its nuclear programme, and that there were attempts to disrupt the electricity supply to Natanz, a uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

“I think there is sabotage going on. It’s a logical move and it makes sense in the game that is part of the overall struggle to disrupt Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” he said.

As evidence of Israel’s reported strategy, Iran watchers have pointed to events such as the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a nuclear scientist at the Isfahan uranium plant who died at home from apparent gas poisoning in 2007.

The former CIA agent told the Telegraph: “Disruption is designed to slow progress on the programme, done in such a way they don’t realise what’s happening. The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution.

“It’s a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks.”

Asked about the newspaper report, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told Reuters: “It is not our practice to comment publicly about these sorts of allegations, not in this situation, not in any situation.”

New U.S. President Barack Obama has taken a more diplomatic line with Tehran, quietening former Bush administration talk of a possible military strike against Iranian nuclear assets.

Israeli leaders have been careful not to rule out their military options, though analysts question how far a new Israeli government, still to be formed after last week’s parliamentary election, will be prepared to act without Washington’s backing.

Javendafar said there were indications several states were attempting to infiltrate Iran to disrupt nuclear development but also suggested much of the reported clandestine activity was more part of a psychological war than an actual one of sabotage.

“Numerous intelligence agencies are trying their best to do this. Not just Israel, but the Americans and many European spy agencies,” he said. “If it’s true, then it’s putting pressure on the Iranian programme technically.

“Even if there’s no truth to it, it’s part of what is a massive psychological war against Iran’s nuclear programme … It’s … much more affordable than sabotaging equipment.”

Sir David Attenborough narrates this violent and bloody natural history video recording the disturbing scenes of a real Chimpanzee territorial attack. Truly amazing scenes from BBC natural history …

Taken from a random park in Nanaimo , BC.

A Egyptian donkey has been jailed for stealing corn on the cob from a field belonging to an agricultural research institute in the Nile Delta, local media reported on Thursday.

The US government, invoking extraordinary powers granted after the 1929 stockmarket crash, has seized control of giant insurer American International Group to preserve a bulwark of the financial system.

The hypocrisy here is smothering , the US government will bail the Bankers and Corporations but can’t even entertain the thought of Universal Health Coverage.

From Mises.org:

The current economic disaster is the result of the combination of negligence, hubris, and wrong economic theory. For decades, an economic and monetary policy has been practiced based on the illusion of, “It doesn’t matter.” At first it was, “Deficits don’t matter.” From that, the policy of “it doesn’t matter” got extended to money creation, the credit expansion, the stock-market bubble, and the housing boom. Now, we’re being told that buying financial junk by the central bank to beef up banks and brokerages also doesn’t matter.

As a byproduct of this mindless economic and monetary policy, financial market operators, too, have lost their heads. Trusting the official cheerleaders, investors hold on in the trenches until they will have lost their last shirt. Economic weakness is spreading around the globe. There is no new spurt of economic growth in sight. Yet many investors stay put because they have been conditioned to believe that government will bail them out.

The current financial crisis is not of a cyclical nature. The financial turmoil is the symptom of the structural imbalances in the real economy. Over decades, expansive monetary policy has gone hand in hand with implicit and explicit bailout guarantees, and this has distorted the process of capital allocation. Under such perverted conditions, those investors will win most who cast away the restraints of prudence. It is a game that can go on for a long time — up to the point when the irrationality has become systemic.

The behavior of the investment community reflects the incentive structure that has been put in place by the authorities. Investors have learnt to dance to the tunes of the pied pipers at high places. After all, the individual market player could see from those who were ahead of him in the abandonment of prudence how money is being made. In the wake of this, financial companies have become overextended and are now in need of deleveraging. Yet the core problem lies in the imbalances of the real economy.

In the Austrian theory of the business cycle, the distinction is made between the “primary” and “secondary” depression. The secondary depression is what catches the eye: the turmoil in the financial markets. Yet the underlying cause is the distortion of the economy’s capital structure: the primary depression.

The simple fact is that the US economy is burdened with a highly lopsided capital structure as the consequence of a wide discrepancy between consumption and production, which, in turn, is the result of monetary policy. Persistent trade imbalances are the symptoms of this discrepancy. This means for the US economy that lower interest rates and government incentives aimed at boosting consumption work as pure poison. Instead of more consumption, more savings, less consumption and fewer imports are needed.