Lawyer for MF Global Victims: Holder's DOJ 'Biggest Enabler Of Financial Crime In U.S. History'
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Obama Kept Iran's Short Breakout Time a Secret
The Barack Obama administration has estimated for years that Iran was at most three months away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb. But the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public.
Speaking to reporters and editors at our Washington bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that the U.S. has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three months away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. When asked how long the administration has held this assessment, Moniz said: "Oh quite some time." He added: "They are now, they are right now spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their roughly 19,000. Plus all the . . . . R&D work. If you put that together it's very, very little time to go forward. That's the 2-3 months."
Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed to me Monday that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1.
Here is the puzzling thing: When Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune. He emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb, without mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only two to three months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered the most challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes that Iran is only two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for a bomb, creating a sense of urgency for his Iran agreement.
Back in 2013, when Congress was weighing new sanctions on Iran and Obama was pushing for more diplomacy, his interest was in tamping down that sense of urgency. On the eve of a visit to Israel, Obama told Israel's Channel Two, "Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close."
On Oct. 5 of that year, Obama contrasted the U.S. view of an Iranian breakout with that of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time said Iran was only six months away from nuclear capability. Obama told the Associated Press, "Our assessment continues to be a year or more away. And in fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services."
Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist and columnist for Al-Monitor, reported last year that Israel's breakout estimate was also two to three months away.
A year ago, after the nuclear talks started, Secretary of State John Kerry dropped the first hint about the still-classified Iran breakout estimate. He told a Senate panel, "I think it is fair to say, I think it is public knowledge today, that we are operating with a time period for a so-called breakout of about two months."
David Albright, a former weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told me administration officials appeared to be intentionally unspecific in 2013, when the talking points used the 12-months-plus timeline. "They weren't clear at all about what this one-year estimate meant, but people like me who said let's break it down to the constituent pieces in terms of time to build a bomb were rebuffed," he said. Albright's group released its own breakout timetable that focused solely on the production of highly enriched uranium, not the weapon itself. It concluded Iran was potentially less than a month away.
When USA Today asked a spokeswoman for the National Security Council about Albright's estimate, she responded that the intelligence community maintained a number of estimates for how long Iran would take to produce enough material for a weapon.
"They have made it very hard for those of us saying, let's just focus on weapons-grade uranium, there is this shorter period of time and not a year," Albright told me. "If you just want a nuclear test device to blow up underground, I don't think you need a year."
This view is supported by a leaked document from the International Atomic Energy Agency, first published by the Associated Press in 2009. Albright's group published excerpts from the IAEA assessment that concluded Iran "has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device based upon (highly enriched uranium) as the fission fuel."
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst who is now an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, told me that most of the technical estimates about an Iranian breakout were not nearly as precise as they are sometimes portrayed in the press. "The idea there is such a thing as a hard and fast formula for this is nonsense," he said. "All the physicists come up with different answers depending on what inputs they use."
In this way, Obama's new, more alarmist figure of two to three months provides a key selling point for the framework reached this month in Switzerland. When Obama announced the preliminary agreement on April 2, he said one benefit was that if it were finalized, "even if it violated the deal, for the next decade at least, Iran would be a minimum of a year away from acquiring enough material for a bomb."
Hence the frustration of Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "We've been researching their claim that a deal would lengthen the breakout time for Iran from two to three months to a year," he told me of the administration. "We're just trying to confirm any of their numbers and we can't confirm or make sense of what they are referencing."
Nunes should hurry. The Iranian nuclear deal is scheduled to breakout in less than three months.
To contact the author on this story:
Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor on this story:
Thursday, April 16, 2015
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." Matthew 18:6
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it
would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he
were drowned in the depth of the sea." Matthew 18:6
Police: Muslims threw Christians overboard during Med voyage
- AFP
Police: Muslims threw Christians overboard during Med voyage
Associated Press Videos
Raw: 400 Migrants Believed Drowned Off Libya
The 15 were accused of multiple homicide aggravated by religious hatred, police said in a statement.
The survivors said they had boarded a rubber boat April 14 on the Libyan coast with 105 passengers aboard, part of the wave of migrants taking advantage of calm seas and warm weather to make the risky crossing from Libya, where most smuggling operations originate.
During the crossing, the migrants from Nigeria and Ghana — believed to be Christians — were threatened with being abandoned at sea by some 15 other passengers from the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea Bissau.
Eventually the threat was carried out and 12 were pushed overboard. The statement said the motive was that the victims "professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim."
The surviving Christians, the statement said, only managed to stay on board by forming a "human chain" to resist the assault.
Earlier Thursday, the International Organization of Migration said four migrants who were picked up in recent days by the Italian Navy reported a shipwreck to aid workers after arriving in the Italian port of Trapani Thursday. Their boat had originally been carrying 45 people; the others are presumed dead.
The IOM said the migrants — two Nigerians, a Ghanaian and one Nigerien — were found floating in the sea by a helicopter and were rescued by the Italian Naval ship Foscari. They had left Tripoli in Libya on Saturday and stayed adrift for four days. The location of the rescue was not immediately known.
The
new tragedies come just days after aid agencies reported 400 presumed
dead in the sinking of another ship near the Libyan coast. The deaths
have raised calls for a more robust search and rescue of the seas
between Libya and Europe amid a surge in migration between the Middle
East and Africa toward Italy.
___
Colleen Barry contributed to this report from Milan.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
First Signs of Self-interacting Dark Matter?
First Signs of Self-interacting Dark Matter?
Dark matter may not be completely dark after all
15 April 2015
For the first time dark matter may have
been observed interacting with other dark matter in a way other than
through the force of gravity. Observations of colliding galaxies made
with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
have picked up the first intriguing hints about the nature of this
mysterious component of the Universe.
Using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s VLT in Chile, along with images from Hubble in
orbit, a team of astronomers studied the simultaneous collision of four
galaxies in the galaxy cluster Abell 3827. The team could trace out
where the mass lies within the system and compare the distribution of
the dark matter with the positions of the luminous galaxies.
Although dark matter cannot be seen, the team could deduce its location using a technique called gravitational lensing.
The collision happened to take place directly in front of a much more
distant, unrelated source. The mass of dark matter around the colliding
galaxies severely distorted spacetime, deviating the path of light rays
coming from the distant background galaxy — and distorting its image
into characteristic arc shapes.Our current understanding is that all galaxies exist inside clumps of dark matter. Without the constraining effect of dark matter’s gravity, galaxies like the Milky Way would fling themselves apart as they rotate. In order to prevent this, 85 percent of the Universe’s mass [1] must exist as dark matter, and yet its true nature remains a mystery.
In this study, the researchers observed the four colliding galaxies and found that one dark matter clump appeared to be lagging behind the galaxy it surrounds. The dark matter is currently 5000 light-years (50 000 million million kilometres) behind the galaxy — it would take NASA’s Voyager spacecraft 90 million years to travel that far.
A lag between dark matter and its associated galaxy is predicted during collisions if dark matter interacts with itself, even very slightly, through forces other than gravity [2]. Dark matter has never before been observed interacting in any way other than through the force of gravity.
Lead author Richard Massey at Durham University, explains: “We used to think that dark matter just sits around, minding its own business, except for its gravitational pull. But if dark matter were being slowed down during this collision, it could be the first evidence for rich physics in the dark sector — the hidden Universe all around us.”
The researchers note that more investigation will be needed into other effects that could also produce a lag. Similar observations of more galaxies, and computer simulations of galaxy collisions will need to be made.
Team member Liliya Williams of the University of Minnesota adds: “We know that dark matter exists because of the way that it interacts gravitationally, helping to shape the Universe, but we still know embarrassingly little about what dark matter actually is. Our observation suggests that dark matter might interact with forces other than gravity, meaning we could rule out some key theories about what dark matter might be.”
This result follows on from a recent result from the team which observed 72 collisions between galaxy clusters [3] and found that dark matter interacts very little with itself. The new work however concerns the motion of individual galaxies, rather than clusters of galaxies. Researchers say that the collision between these galaxies could have lasted longer than the collisions observed in the previous study — allowing the effects of even a tiny frictional force to build up over time and create a measurable lag [4].
Taken together, the two results bracket the behaviour of dark matter for the first time. Dark matter interacts more than this, but less than that. Massey added: “We are finally homing in on dark matter from above and below — squeezing our knowledge from two directions.”
Notes
[1] Astronomers have found that the total mass/energy content of the Universe is split in the proportions 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter and 5% “normal” matter. So the 85% figure relates to the fraction of “matter” that is dark.[2] Computer simulations show that the extra friction from the collision would make the dark matter slow down. The nature of that interaction is unknown; it could be caused by well-known effects or some exotic unknown force. All that can be said at this point is that it is not gravity.
All four galaxies might have been separated from their dark matter. But we happen to have a very good measurement from only one galaxy, because it is by chance aligned so well with the background, gravitationally lensed object. With the other three galaxies, the lensed images are further away, so the constraints on the location of their dark matter too loose to draw statistically significant conclusions.
[3] Galaxy clusters contain up to a thousand individual galaxies.
[4] The main uncertainty in the result is the timespan for the collision: the friction that slowed the dark matter could have been a very weak force acting over about a billion years, or a relatively stronger force acting for “only” 100 million years.
More information
This research was presented in a paper entitled “The behaviour of dark matter associated with 4 bright cluster galaxies located in the 10 kpc core of Abell 3827” to appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on 15 April 2015.The team is composed of R. Massey (Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, Durham, UK), L. Williams (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA), R. Smit (Institute for Computational Cosmology, UK), M. Swinbank (Institute for Computational Cosmology, UK), T. D. Kitching (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, Surrey, UK), D. Harvey (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Observatoire de Sauverny, Versoix, Switzerland), H. Israel (Institute for Computational Cosmology, UK), M. Jauzac (Institute for Computational Cosmology, UK; Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa), D. Clowe (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA), A. Edge (Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham, UK), M. Hilton (Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, South Africa), E. Jullo (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Université d’Aix-Marseille, Marseille, France), A. Leonard (University College London, London, UK), J. Liesenborgs (Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium), J. Merten (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA), I. Mohammed (Physik-Institüt, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland), D. Nagai (Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA), J. Richard (Observatoire de Lyon, Université Lyon, Saint Genis Laval, France), A. Robertson (Institute for Computational Cosmology, UK), P. Saha (Physik-Institüt, Switzerland), R. Santana (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA), J. Stott (Department of Physics, Durham, UK) and E. Tittley (Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, UK).
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.
Links
Contacts
Richard MasseyInstitute for Computational Cosmology
Durham University, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 7740 648080
Email: r.j.massey@durham.ac.uk
Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org
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Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Lawyer for MF Global Victims: Holder's DOJ 'Biggest Enabler Of Financial Crime In U.S. History'
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