Mabus will soon die... when the comet passes- January's Surprise Comet- Comet McNaught Options

[ABLAT Staff]

"Mabus will soon die and there will happen, A horrible destruction of people and animals: Suddenly vengeance will appear, a hundred hands, Thirst and hunger, when the comet passes." -Nostradamus

January's Surprise Comet
and Alaska Stargazers Excited About Comet


Alaska Stargazers Excited About Comet

By MARY PEMBERTON (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
January 11, 2007 10:45 PM EST
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Nothing can keep dedicated stargazers from trying to get a glimpse of the brightest comet seen in decades - not even temperatures as low as 40 below zero.

There hadn't been a lot of buzz about Comet McNaught, discovered just last year. But as the comet got closer to the sun, it brightened and the word spread - the comet was special.

Martin Gutoski drove to a lookout about five miles north of Fairbanks on Tuesday evening, when skies were especially cold and clear - good comet-viewing weather, even if it was frigid.

The amateur astronomer waited for sunset and watched as the sky turned salmon red and darkened. He turned his attention toward the spot on the horizon where the sun set.

"It is a very large spike, almost a vertical spike at sunset. ... I was more than impressed with it," he said.

Comet McNaught, discovered last year by Australian astronomer R.H. McNaught, is expected to remain visible throughout the Northern Hemisphere through Friday, when it will come to within 16 million miles of the sun and be obscured by the sun's glare. After that, it will eventually emerge for people in the Southern Hemisphere to enjoy.

Five hundred miles north of Fairbanks in Barrow, at the top of North America, Glenn Sheehan said he hadn't heard anything about a comet until a colleague spread the word that something was different overhead.

In Barrow's long, dark winter, something new in the sky is always welcome, Sheehan said. The sun set there on Nov. 18, not to rise again until Jan. 23.

"The only other outdoor distraction today was a polar bear and two cubs going through here," he said Wednesday.

Sheehan, executive director of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, went out to take a look Monday afternoon. He said he wasn't sure what the object was, briefly entertaining the thought that it was a plane.

"That didn't make sense, and I gave up and started calling people to find out," he said.

Comets are collections of ice, gas and dust that orbit the sun and usually have two tails, one made of dust and the other of ionizing gases.

NASA astronomer Tony Phillips says Comet McNaught is the brightest comet visible from Earth in 30 years. It is six times brighter than Hale-Bopp in 1997, and 100 times brighter than Halley's Comet when it appeared in 1986, Phillips told The Associated Press on Thursday.

"It will remain a spectacular comet for weeks, perhaps months, in the Southern Hemisphere," Phillips said. "It could emerge as the brightest comet in recorded history."

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?gui...70111-846506297

For more information about Nostradamus' Mabus Quatrain, see Chain Reaction- by L.C. Thomas and News Watch topics.

[ABLAT Staff]

The Pieces Are Being Put in Place
By COL. SAM GARDINER

The pieces are moving. They’ll be in place by the end of
February. The United States will be able to escalate military operations against Iran.

The second carrier strike group leaves the U.S. west coast on January 16. It will be joined by naval mine clearing assets from both the United States and the UK. Patriot missile defense systems have also been ordered to deploy to the Gulf.

Maybe as a guard against North Korea seeing operations focused on Iran as a chance to be aggressive, a squadron of F-117 stealth fighters has just been deployed to Korea.

This has to be called escalation. We have to remind ourselves, just as Iran is supporting groups inside Iraq, the United States is supporting groups inside Iran. Just as Iran has special operations troops operating inside Iraq, we’ve read the United States has special operations troops operating inside Iran.

Just as Iran is supporting Hamas, two weeks ago we found out the United States is supporting arms for Abbas. Just as Iran and Syria are supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon we’re now learning the White House has approved a finding to allow the CIA to support opposition groups inside Lebanon. Just as Iran is supporting Syria, we’ve learned recently that the United States is going to fund Syrian opposition groups.

We learned this week the President authorized an attack on the Iranian liaison office in Irbil.

The White House keeps saying there are no plans to attack Iran. Obviously, the facts suggest otherwise. Equally as clear, the Iranians will read what the Administrations is doing not what it is
saying.

It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything. On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we’ll see a few more steps unfold.

First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led
group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff. The Patriot missiles going to the GCC states are only part of the missile defense assets. I would expect to see the deployment of some of the European-based missile defense assets to Israel, just as they were before Gulf II.

I would expect deployment of additional USAF fighters into the bases in Iraq, maybe some into Afghanistan.

I think we will read about the deployment of some of the newly arriving Army brigades going into Iraq being deployed to the border with Iran. Their mission will be to guard against any Iranian movements into Iraq.

As one of the last steps before a strike, we’ll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we’ll only be days away from a strike.

The White House could be telling the truth. Maybe there are no plans to take Iran to the next level. The fuel for a fire is in place, however. All we need is a spark. The danger is that we have created conditions that could lead to a Greater Middle East War.

Sam Gardiner is a retired colonel of the US Air Force. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College.

http://www.counterpunch.com/gardiner01162007.html

[ABLAT Staff]

Iran warned as troop surge begins


Guardian Weekly


The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said this week that Iran believed it had gained the upper hand over Washington in the Middle East, but he declared a US military build-up was intended to signal American determination to remain a dominant player in the region.
Mr Gates, making his first visit as defence secretary to Nato headquarters in Brussels, delivered a defiant message at a time of rising tensions between the US and Iran, with the US arrest last week of five Iranians accused of fomenting the Iraqi insurgency and President George Bush's vow to "seek out and destroy" Iranian and Syrian "networks" in Iraq.

On Monday Iran appeared to offer an olive branch to Washington. A senior Iranian official, Ali Larijani, delivered a joint letter to the king of Saudi Arabia from the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking King Abdullah to act as an intermediary with the US.
The letter was delivered on the eve of a visit to Riyadh by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed Saudi official as saying Iran wanted King Abdullah to relay a goodwill message to Washington to "help bring opinions together" between Iran and the US.

The Bush administration has made any resumption in bilateral diplomatic relations conditional on Tehran giving up its ambitions to enrich uranium as part of its nuclear programme, a condition the Iranian leadership has so far rejected.

"The Iranians clearly believe we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in a position to press us in many ways," Mr Gates told journalists in Brussels. "They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point." He added that Tehran was seeking to foment conflict in Lebanon.

Mr Gates said the build-up of US forces in the Gulf region, involving the dispatch of an aircraft carrier and Patriot missile defence batteries as well as the deployment of more than 20,000 US reinforcements to Iraq, was intended as a signal that Washington would not be intimidated. "We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future," he said on a day the first reinforcements arrived in Baghdad.

Mr Gates did not rule out the possibility of future talks if Iran changed its behaviour. "When the Iranians are prepared to play a constructive role in dealing with some of these problems there might be opportunities for engagement," he said.

Iran is demanding the release of five Iranians arrested by US forces in Irbil. Tehran insists they are diplomats, but the US military says they are members of the elite Qods force of the revolutionary guards helping to orchestrate attacks on US and allied forces.

The allegations were echoed by the Iraqi vice-president, Tareq al-Hashemi, who warned that Iran was becoming a "major player" with "deep influence" in Iraq. "Wherever you go in Iraq you see their fingerprints," Mr Hashemi, a Sunni leader, told journalists in London.

The Bush administration rejected calls last month by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group led by the former secretary of state, James Baker, to open dialogue with Iran and has opted instead for a new confrontational approach.

Robert Tait in Tehran adds: President Ahmadinejad has suffered a potentially fatal blow to his authority after the country's supreme leader gave an apparent green light for MPs to attack his economic policies.

In an unprecedented rebuke, 150 Iranian parliamentarians signed a letter blaming Mr Ahmadinejad for high inflation and high unemployment and criticising his government's failure to deliver the budget on time. They also condemned him for embarking on a tour of Latin America - from which he was due to return on Wednesday - at a time of mounting crisis.

MPs also criticised Mr Ahmadinejad's role in the UN security council dispute over Iran's nuclear programme amid growing evidence that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has ordered him to stay silent on the issue. Ayatollah Khamenei has ultimate authority on foreign policy, and is rumoured to be so disillusioned with Mr Ahmadinejad's performance that he has refused to meet him on occasion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/s...1992477,00.html

[ABLAT Staff]

U.S. bringing second carrier to Mideast for first time since Iraq invasion

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: The deployment of the USS John C. Stennis to the Middle East will put two U.S. aircraft carriers in the volatile Gulf region for the first time since the 2003 Iraq invasion. Military officials say a second carrier group is meant as a plain warning to Iran.

The U.S. military's show of strength comes in response to Iran's recent anti-U.S. agitation in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that Iran and other U.S. adversaries believe the United States has become vulnerable in Iraq.

"This demonstrates our resolve to do what we can to bring security and stability to the region," Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said on Tuesday.

Aandahl said the Stennis carrier strike group of eight ships and nine air squadrons would arrive in Mideast waters in a matter of weeks, after crossing the Pacific and Indian oceans.

U.S. diplomats including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been touring the region to shore up American credibility. The United States' Arab allies have grown dismayed over Iraq's chaos, while a resurgent Iran is supporting militants across the region.

"Rice is promising the U.S. will stand firm against Iran. But without a show of force, without backing these words with muscle, no one will take the U.S. seriously, whether in Tehran or any Arab capital," said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst with the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "Now is the time. They have to stand or shut up."

The Stennis strike group, which was previously in line to deploy to the Pacific, will augment another Navy task force in Mideast waters led by aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, Aandahl said.

A second U.S. carrier will significantly boost U.S. air power in the region and serve as a reminder of U.S. firepower to Iran. Its arrival will give the Pentagon two carriers in the region for the first time since 2003, Aandahl said.

The USS John C. Stennis was scheduled to depart Tuesday from its homeport of Bremerton, Washington, stopping in San Diego to pick an air wing of more than 80 planes, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, the Navy said.

The Stennis could also shore up air cover for U.S. and NATO ground troops in Afghanistan, now relying on about 20 ground-based warplanes after the Eisenhower was sent to the Somali coast.

The Pentagon is also sending an additional Patriot anti-missile battalion to a U.S. allied Gulf Arab country, as well as 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq.

Two Royal Navy mine sweepers were dispatched to the Gulf on Dec. 19, Britain's Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. The HMS Blyth and HMS Ramsey, which carry a complement of 34 sailors each, is engaged in training exercises and will be for the next two years, a military spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

"Obviously their presence in the Gulf will contribute to regional stability," the spokesman said. "But this is a training mission, they have not been sent to counter any specific threat."

Two Royal Navy mine sweepers were dispatched to the Gulf on Dec. 19 and had arrived several weeks ago, Britain's Ministry of Defense said Tuesday.

The HMS Blyth and HMS Ramsey, which carry a 34 sailors each, is engaged in training exercises and will be for the next two years, a military spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

"Obviously their presence in the Gulf will contribute to regional stability," the spokesman said. "But this is a training mission, they have not been sent to counter any specific threat."

In Brussels on Monday, Gates indicated that Iran's perception of U.S. vulnerability in the region was part of the reason the Pentagon sent the Stennis and the Patriot missiles.

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are able to press us in many ways," Gates said.

Patriots defend against short-range missiles of the type that Iran could use to hit U.S. bases in the Gulf. The Pentagon has not said exactly where the Patriots will be based.

The escalating American combat power doesn't mean Washington is bent on a showdown with Tehran, Alani said. But the preparations could foretell tough U.S. action against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, with Washington preparing for retaliation elsewhere.

"They're not trying to pick a fight" with Iran, Alani said. "But if Iran makes any mistakes, the U.S. will deal with them."

Iran has denounced the Patriot deployment as part of U.S. plan to turn Arab countries into a front line of protection for Israel.

In December, Tehran's top national security official, Ali Larijani, asked Arab leaders to shut down U.S. military bases in the Gulf and instead opt for a security alliance with Iran. Gulf leaders have shown no inclination in ending their U.S. security umbrella.

The Stennis and its 3,200 sailors lead a strike group consisting of the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam, three Navy destroyers — the USS O'Kane, Preble and Paul Hamilton — the submarine USS Key West, the guided-missile frigate USS Rentz, as well as the supply ship USNS Bridge, the Navy said.

Washington will keep two carriers in the Middle East "as long as the situation demands it," Aandahl said. A typical carrier deployment lasts six months.

The United States maintains nearly 40,000 troops in Gulf countries other than Iraq, including about 25,000 in Kuwait, 6,500 in Qatar, 3,000 in Bahrain, 1,300 in the United Arab Emirates and a few hundred in Oman and Saudi Arabia, according to figures from the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

___

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report from London.



http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/16/...US-Warships.php

[ABLAT Staff]

Turkish army gathered on the Kurdistan’s boarder ready for attack

1/16/2007 KurdishMedia.com
London (KurdishMedia.com) 16 January 2007: The Turkish army have gathered and intensified its forces on the Kurdistan’s boarder ready for attack, reported local sources on Tuesday.

While Turkey is holding a conference on Kirkuk without the participation of the Kurdistan Regional Government or any Kurdish political party, Turkey has intensified its forces on the Kurdistan’s border. Some Turkmens, Arabs and a high number of Turkish MP’s have participated in the conference. It was revealed by local sources that only Turkish flag displayed in the conference.

Radio Nawa stated that the Turkish army ready for zero o’clock to attack Kurdistan.

The speaker of Kurdistan Parliament, Adnan Mufti, condemned the meeting and dismissed it as the interferences on Kurdistan’s affairs.

The Kurdistan Presidential Council led by Massuad Barzani has not made any statement regarding the Turkish conference on Kirkuk or the Turkish army’s gathering on the Kurdistan’s border.

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=13898