Hasta La Gadget!

A month after former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was convicted on nine felony counts with circumstantial metadata, the zealous prosecution is now having potentially major consequences — casting doubt on the credibility of claims by the U.S. government that Iran has developed a nuclear weapons program.

With negotiations between Iran and the United States at a pivotal stage, fallout from the trial’s revelations about the CIA’s Operation Merlin is likely to cause the International Atomic Energy Agency to re-examine U.S. assertions that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

In its zeal to prosecute Sterling for allegedly leaking classified information about Operation Merlin — which provided flawed nuclear weapon design information to Iran in 2000 — the U.S. government has damaged its own standing with the IAEA. The trial made public a treasure trove of information about the Merlin operation.

Last week Bloomberg News reported from Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered, that the agency “will probably review intelligence they received about Iran as a result of the revelations, said the two diplomats who are familiar with the IAEA’s Iran file and asked not to be named because the details are confidential.”

The Bloomberg dispatch, which matter-of-factly referred to Merlin as a “sting” operation, quoted a former British envoy to the IAEA, Peter Jenkins, saying: “This story suggests a possibility that hostile intelligence agencies could decide to plant a ‘smoking gun’ in Iran for the IAEA to find. That looks like a big problem.”

After sitting through the seven-day Sterling trial, I don’t recall that the government or any of its witnesses — including 23 from the CIA as well as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — ever referred to Operation Merlin as a “sting.” Instead, it was consistently portrayed as an effort to send Iran down the wrong technical path. In fact, over the years, Operation Merlin may have been both.

Near the end of the Clinton administration, CIA documents released at the trial show, Merlin was a botched effort to screw up Iran’s nuclear program. (There is no evidence that Iran’s government took the bait.) But documents also show that Merlin continued for years, with the CIA considering plans to widen the operation beyond Iran.

As a matter of fact, one CIA document was not redacted sufficiently to hide evident interest in also trying a similar tactic against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. History certainly tells us that the Bush-Cheney administration would be capable of seeking to cite fabricated evidence in a push to justify military action against a targeted country.

Investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler, my colleague at ExposeFacts, has written an extensive analysis of the latest developments. The article on her EmptyWheel blog raises key questions beginning with the headline “What Was the CIA Really Doing with Merlin by 2003?”

An emerging big irony of United States of America v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is that the government has harmed itself in the process of gunning for the defendant. While the prosecution used innuendos and weak circumstantial evidence to obtain guilty verdicts on multiple felonies, the trial produced no actual evidence that Sterling leaked classified information. But the trial did provide abundant evidence that the U.S. government’s nuclear-related claims about Iran should not be trusted.

In the courtroom, one CIA witness after another described Operation Merlin as a vitally important program requiring strict secrecy. Yet the government revealed a great deal of information about Operation Merlin during the trial — including CIA documents that showed the U.S. government to be committed to deception about the Iranian nuclear program. If, as a result, the International Atomic Energy Agency concludes that U.S. assertions about an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program lack credibility, top officials in Washington will have themselves to blame.

It’s been 42 years since Spider-Man’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, died in the final pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #121 — a death that changed comic book history forever and was quite possibly Marvel’s first admission that superheroes can’t save everyone.

But what if she wasn’t dead? What if, in an alternate universe, Peter Parker died and Gwen Stacy became a badass superhero with all of Spider-Man’s powers and a heck of a lot more angst?

Behold: Spider-Gwen.

Spider-Gwen Exclusive Preview

Spider-Gwen #1 hit the shelves on Wednesday, satisfying a longtime demand for a spinoff that establishes Gwen as a superhero, Kotaku reports.

READ USA TODAY’S IN-DEPTH REPORT ON SPIDER-GWEN

“It’s a rare character that gets the public outcry that Spider-Gwen got,” senior editor Nick Lowe said before the book’s release. “From the sell-out of Gwen’s first appearance to the groundswell on Twitter we’re excited to bring more Spider-Gwen into the world with the creators who started it all!”

To be sure, the Internet has already fallen in love with the new heroine. Some are just happy to have a strong female lead in the Spider-verse. Kotaku and IGN give a lot of credit to the character design, focusing on her cool new duds:

“The enthusiastic reaction to Spider-Gwen is due in part to a great character design. Her costume — which brilliantly fuses negative space ideas, high-contrast coloring and could-actually-exist practicality — is one of the best riffs on the Spider-Man motif in decades.”

The first issue is certainly receiving good reviews, but its success remains to be seen. Is Spider-Man out? Is Spider-Gwen the new hotness? Will Emma Stone play her when the movie inevitably comes out?

Only time will tell.

Here’s an awesome 3D visualization from NASA that shows how the Sahara Desert helps fertilize the Amazon rainforest even though they’re on two different continents that are separated by an entire ocean. The Saharan dust is carried over by wind and the phosphorous in the dust is essential to the Amazon.

Read more…

This past Monday, I did a segment on Hannity regarding race relations after Common and John Legend’s powerful Academy Award acceptance speech and performance. John Legend stated that “Selma is now and that the struggle for justice is right now.” Legend went on to bring up topics such as voter identification and the incarceration rate (especially among that of African Americans, pointing out the fact that there are more African Americans imprisoned than there were enslaved in 1850).

I found these to be powerful statements and I applaud Common and John Legend keeping the conversation alive – so that it continues to receive coverage on shows such as Hannity. Regardless of your feelings about Sean Hannity’s political views, he is a proprietor of keeping tough conversations like this alive, and that should be admired. It is an important facet of our society that I’m blessed to be a part of.

Based on the reception from folks on Twitter and Niger Innis (Executive Director of teaparty.net and my counter-guest), I began to reflect. Why is it that these artist’s statements don’t receive validity? Isn’t John Legend an American? Aren’t his feelings and political views valid? How many Bob Dylan’s, Bruce Springsteen’s, Bono’s, Public Enemy’s, Kendrick Lamar’s, Common’s and John Legend’s need to come along before we start listening to these people? Can’t the Academy Awards be a venue for conversations larger that film? How many studies have to come out that show that voter I.D. laws impede the ability of legitimate, registered, American citizens to vote? How many African American’s need to die at the hands of police for baggy pants before we can have a discussion?

America! Progress, don’t oppress! Michael Brown may have pushed a store clerk and even robbed a store, but does that mean he deserves to die? It is the job of police to apprehend a suspect and let a jury of his peers decide, not shoot an unarmed citizen six times!

When I go on a show like Hannity with the topic “Race Relations,” I get the feeling that Mr. Innis and others pundits who share his views, aren’t on the same page as America, or the African-American community. Anybody who is preaching to African Americans, “pants up, don’t loot” doesn’t have a clear understanding of why millions of Americans who took to the street chanting, “Hand-up, Don’t Shoot.” They don’t comprehend the principles and values that started the civil rights movement and ultimately lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And they definitely don’t realize the power of the emerging electorate, which is taking America by storm.

Here are the facts, I’ve been to Ferguson, I’m from Miami, and I live in Washington, DC. I listened to what people in Ferguson had to say and reported accordingly – citizens are outraged. Radio Talk Show host and Democratic Strategist may be the credentials that get me on Hannity, but it is part of my job to communicate the voices that I hear every day! As long as we continue to have these conversations, progress is on the horizon.

Richard Fowler is the youngest syndicated progressive and/or African-American radio host in the United States.

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