Israel's Defense Minister speaks: "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel"

Reuters reports:

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted on Thursday as saying he does not view Iran as a threat to the existence of the Jewish state, a view that would seem to depart from Israeli statements of the recent past.
Israel's mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth daily quoted Barak, the head of Israel's center-left Labour party, as saying "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel."

In response to a question about Tehran's nuclear programme which Israel has said it sees as destined to produce atomic weapons that could put its existence at risk, Barak said in an interview with the paper:

"I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel."

Is this why Artic melting paused this year?

Here's the news about Arctic melting.

When not to outsource?

From today's London Times:

Art Keller, a blond, blue-eyed CIA agent, sits inside a decrepit building deep inside al Qaeda territory, staring at his computer screen. He is forbidden by his Pakistani minders from venturing out into the badlands of Waziristan to help to find and kill the world’s most wanted man.

...Mr Keller was one of an estimated 50 to 100 CIA agents and special operations officers whose mission for the past eight years has been to find and kill bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders. . .

   Some of these guys have been hunting bin Laden for years,” Mr Keller says. His replacement, whom Mr Keller believes is still in Pakistan, has spent eight months a year since the September 11 attacks working out of these CIA safe houses looking for the top al-Qaeda leadership.

So why haven't they been able to find him?  Here's my guess:

The hunt for bin Laden is largely run by the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, an organisation for whom many CIA officials harbour deep mistrust because of its historical ties to the Pashtuns of Waziristan. . . CIA agents were rarely allowed to leave the compound by the Pakistanis. . .

“Our role in the hunt was done entirely from in front of a computer inside the base,” Mr Keller says. When he wanted to follow up a lead, he would get in touch with a local Pashtun proxy to ask him to travel to a certain area to glean information.

When a senior al-Qaeda figure was identified and located — Mr Keller said that it would take weeks, often months, to build a case for an airstrike by a US Predator drone — and even if the go-ahead was finally given by CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the Pakistanis still had to approve. “Since 9/11, with 99 per cent of these strikes, the Pakistanis were consulted and they have to approve them,” he said.

Then of course there is this:

...even if someone wanted to betray him — and collect the $25 million (£15 million) reward — there is no one to turn to. The local police know bin Laden is there. “If you report bin Laden’s location there is a good chance you will get killed,” Mr Keller says.

Gender equality in Iraq

Police recruit, Karbala, Iraq

Poppy culture: Update on opium

From the 2009 "Afghan Opium Survey", the annual report produced by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime:

• Poppy cultivation declined 22 percent from May 2008 to June 2009 from 477 acres to 304 acres (or if you prefer your statistics in hectares - from 193,000 hectares to 123,000). 
• 20 out of 34 provinces are now poppy free.

How to explain the improvement?  Two words: military operations.  Here's a list of the damage they were able to do: 

• 90 tons of the chemicals to produce heroin
  
• 450 tons of poppy seeds
• 50 tons of opium
• 7 tons of morphine
• 1.5 tons of heroin
• 19 tons of hash
• 27 laboratories