* Ahmadinejad: Israel lacks courage to attack Iran Iranian leader tells Al Jazeera he doesn’t think threat of attack by US or Israel is ‘serious’; says Persian Gulf states ‘too smart’ to allow use of US bases in their territory for strike on Tehran.

* Iran builds ambassador of death Ahmadinejad inaugurates first locally made unmanned long-range bomber.

* Abbas warns Ashton of threat to peace talks Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned in a letter to EU high representative Catherine Ashton that an end to Israel’s partial settlement freeze would bring an immediate halt to direct peace talks.

* Iran: If attacked our response will be wide-ranging and unpredictable Iran Revolutionary Guards unveil new high-speed missile-carrying vessels, latest in series of recent additions to country’s military arsenal.

* Combat brigades in Iraq under different name 7 Advise and Assist Brigades, made up of troops from BCTs, still in Iraq

* Iran unveils missile-launching boats Assault vessel with “high destructive power” to be mass produced.

* Sudan plans nuclear program Reactor is for “peaceful purposes”; IAEA travels to Khartoum

* Alien hunters should look for artificial intelligence A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien sentient machines.

* Petraeus says US has momentum over Afghan Taliban General David Petraeus, the top commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said the Afghan Taliban’s momentum has been reversed in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, as well as near Kabul.

* Activists rally over Ground Zero mosque Hundreds gather in New York at two separate demonstrations.

BARACK OBAMA has emerged as a classic example of charismatic leadership – a figure upon whom others project their own hopes and desires. The resulting emotional intensity adds greatly to the more conventional strengths of the well-organized Obama campaign, and it has certainly sufficed to overcome the formidable initial advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton.

One danger of such charisma, however, is that it can evoke unrealistic hopes of what a candidate could actually accomplish in office regardless of his own personal abilities. Case in point is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world.
This idea often goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama’s election would raise America’s esteem in Africa — indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father’s native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent.

But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.)

It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities.

For example, in Iran in 1994 the intervention of Pope John Paul II and others won a Christian convert a last-minute reprieve, but the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release. Likewise, in 2006 in Afghanistan, a Christian convert had to be declared insane to prevent his execution, and he was still forced to flee to Italy.

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

That an Obama presidency would cause such complications in our dealings with the Islamic world is not likely to be a major factor with American voters, and the implication is not that it should be. But of all the well-meaning desires projected on Senator Obama, the hope that he would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims is the least realistic.

For some time now, flames can be seen shooting up from one of the drilling sites of Givot Olam Oil Exploration. On more than one occasion, Givot Olam investors have been spotted nearby, doing what appears to be celebrating. The flare is adding fuel to the fire of excitement over the gas discoveries in Israel, which are a genuine treasure worth hundreds of billions of shekels, buried deep underground.

But not even the gas discoveries can save us from the troubles to come in another 50 years.

“Fossil fuel energy – coal, oil and gas – is running out,” says Prof. Arie Dubi of the Nuclear Engineering Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “All the researchers in the field have known this for a long time. I’m not a prophet; this is the real situation. It doesn’t matter what Yam Tethys finds or what [Delek Group controlling shareholder] Yitzhak Tshuva discovers. It’s insignificant on the global level. This type of energy will be gone within 50 to 100 years.”

Tshuva’s discovery might be insignificant in global terms, but in Israeli terms?

“It’s nothing. It’s meaningless. Israel must continue for a long time. We’re talking about the future of our children and grandchildren. Oil energy is running out, and that’s it, there won’t be any more. We’re already seeing that to extract oil we have to go five kilometers offshore, like British Petroleum. If there were enough oil they wouldn’t be drilling in the middle of the ocean, which is very difficult, and we can see the results.”

Dubi speaks openly about his concern for successive generations, hitting the table with his fist. “We must think ahead,” he warns. “A world without oil is a world without food, and that means a world war in which billions of people will die.”

You make it sound like Judgment Day.

“Yes, but what can I do? I do not see a different reality. Will we go back to eating bananas off the trees? No. Wars will break out, people will take the little fuel remaining and fight over it. You don’t need to be a genius to understand this. After all, what do people do in times of want? They go and take from what’s there.”

What about the alternatives that are already being developed, like solar energy?

“Anyone hanging their hope on that might as well hang themselves as well. I have nothing against wind and solar energy, they’re great and we need them. But all the alternative energy sources (such as solar, wind and wave ) put together can’t even supply 40% of what we need.”

Everything we need

Dubi, 65, a father of four and grandfather of nine, has a Ph.D. in physics. He once founded a startup and developed a program for predicting system behavior that draws on the mathematics of nuclear physics. He has published three scientific books to date, one of which has been translated into Chinese.

Dubi offers more than apocalyptic forecasts. His alternative to alternative energy sources, which could save us from impending disaster, is nuclear power.

What is nuclear energy, exactly ?

“Atoms are surrounded by electrons containing energy that we recognize as chemical, like fire,” Dubi explains.

“And there is energy inside the atom, which is released when neutrons hit the nucleus of the atom and split it. This fission produces energy. The mass of the results of fission is smaller than the original mass; the difference in mass turns heat into energy. Atomic energy alone can supply 100% of the world’s needs.”

If we’ve discovered the ultimate solution, what’s stopping us?

“Terrible ignorance, mostly. There is a myth of fear surrounding nuclear energy. Our first encounter with it was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first time people were aware of nuclear energy they saw 400,000 deaths. But this is only one side of this energy. It’s like the difference between fire in a kitchen gas range and a hand grenade: Both produce chemical energy, but the gas at home helps us. We don’t fear it or worry that it will explode. It’s hard to explain this to people.”

The explosion at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on April 26, 1986 also contributed to people’s fears about nuclear energy. Caused by human error combined with lax safety precautions during an experiment, it led to a partial meltdown of the reactor’s core and the release of radiation.

Chernobyl was one of the worst ecological disasters of the modern age, resulting, by some estimates, in 30 times more radioactive fallout than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The effects of the global panic set off by Chernobyl are still visible today, nearly 25 years later.

Nonetheless, Dubi says, countries that have overcome this fear have been successfully producing electricity from nuclear energy for years. France is the most prominent example, with 80% of its electricity supplied by nuclear reactors. “France’s entire economy is based on nuclear power,” Dubi says. “It supplies electricity to all of Europe. If France turns off the main switch, northern Italy won’t have electricity.”

France is not alone. Nuclear plants provide electricity in the United States, Europe and Asia, and new reactors are being built in many countries around the world. Dubi says the Czech Republic is building three reactors, and even Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia are moving in this direction.

Israel’s missed opportunity

Why not Israel?

“That’s a tough question. Let’s start with the fact that nothing is done in Israel. Have we solved our water shortage? If it’s possible to do nothing, we do nothing. Why? It’s political. And politicians live best when they do nothing. When they do something there’s complaints and shouting. Ehud Olmert went to war and almost got killed over it. Had he done nothing, maybe he would have been okay. In Israel, first of all, nothing is done. Then there’s the security problem. People are afraid even when there’s no reason. Someone once asked me, ‘Say, is a nuclear reactor strong enough to resist an atomic bomb?’ And I said: ‘Someone’s throwing an atomic bomb at you and you’re worried about the reactor?’ It just goes to show the level of stupidity and fear.”

Dubi is convinced that by failing to build nuclear power plants Israel is missing the boat. “There are three types of reactors in the world today: a giant, 1,000-3,000 megawatt capacity one; a small, 10 megawatt reactor, buried in the backyard and that can provide electricity to the home for 40 years. The Americans and the Chinese use these. The third is a medium-size, 200 megawatt reactor that can supply power to an entire region such as the Negev and the Arava Desert.” The latter type of reactor can also be coupled with water desalination plants, Dubi explains, and that is the missed opportunity.

“Just imagine a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, in which water is desalinated; we could turn the Arava into an oasis.” Israel could also get into the business of manufacturing these dual-use reactors, Dubi says.

How much do they cost to develop?

“There are still no exact figures because we’re not there yet. But let’s say we had to invest $20 billion in the project, so what? If a reactor sells for $1 billion and you can sell 20,000 of them, doesn’t that pay?.”

It won’t be easy to get approval in Israel for that kind of spending.

“True, but we don’t have to do it alone. We can cooperate with other countries. Many countries want to get into this field. It’s an opportunity to develop something that would solve our electricity and energy problems for the future, provide jobs to 1,000 engineers and earn a lot of money for the state.”

Isn’t there a danger that a state could make an atomic bomb using a civilian nuclear reactor?

“No. Even if it were theoretically possible to create enriched nuclear material like plutonium in a civilian reactor, it’s so difficult and complicated that there’s no cause for concern. Even if you take the best scientists in the world and they try to do it together, they won’t succeed. The enrichment being carried out by the Iranians, for example, is a million times easier. Nuclear fuel is enriched to between 4% and 12%, but nuclear explosive material requires 99% enrichment.” No one will ever be able to remove fuel from a nuclear power plant and use it to make an atom bomb, Dubi says.

So there is a chance that a nuclear power plant could be built in Israel?

“I’ve discussed it with many people, including National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau. The ministry’s Chief Scientist’s Office issued a report saying that within 30 years, Israel will require such a reactor. That is, they believe we must start to act in 25 years. But one of our biggest problems is that the government is oriented toward the private market. It wants to privatize whatever it can, reactors too. But I told the chief scientist that privatizing reactors is like replacing the army on the northern border with a private security company. It’s about as logical. An important matter like energy cannot be left to private hands, where the only consideration will be profit. Perhaps a reactor won’t be as profitable as they like, but it will give life.”

‘Disaster awaits’

Dubi is worried about the future of the planet as well as about the disappearance of fossil fuel reserves. “The danger is not only the lack of fuel,” he says, “but also population growth. People have no idea of the disaster that awaits us. In 1950, the global population was 2.25 billion. Now, 60 years later, there are 6.25 billion people. In historical terms, between the time of the first human beings and cavemen to the first half of the 20th century, it took us thousands of years to reach 2.25 billion, and just another half century later the figure has nearly tripled. In another 50 years there will be 13 billion people,” he says.

According to Dubi, the consequences of that population boom will make the attempts by refugees and labor migrants to cross the Egyptian border into Israel illegally seem like “nothing,” explaining, “Millions will be migrating, looking for food. At the same time there will be an energy problem as the population keeps growing. There will be a big war, billions will die and the world will start over.”