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An Inside Look At Iran's Nuclear Program
NotBornYesterday writes "On April 8, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his country's secretive nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz for a photo op. What came out of this visit is a series of photos which have caused a fair amount of interest among western scientists. Shown in the photos are not only some of the inner workings of the plant and current generation of enrichment centrifuges, but also key components to newer generations of more effective centrifuges. Analysts are 'intrigued' not only by the technical revelations in the pictures, but also because Iran's Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar accompanied Ahmadinejad through the facility."
>>A world without a USA would be more peaceful and habitable and more moral by anyone's measure.
A pathetic statement on so many levels it's difficult to know where to begin. Are you completely ignorant of modern history? Have you no knowledge of international trade?
Without the USA, the world would starve. You are aware of the volume of US food exports, aren't you?
Without the USA, international charity would collapse. The USA is the most charitable nation on earth?
Without the USA, the United Nations would close up shop almost immediately. Who do you think funds MOST of the UN activities?
Without the USA, REAL fascism of the variety demonstrated across Africa and the Middle-East would rapidly spread into and take root Europe.
The economies of Europe would rapidly collapse, seeing that we have effectively been their guardian for the past 50 years, allowing national budgets to be repurposed for things like extravagant social welfare programmes.
I could go on and on, and I could link to facts and figures but you know what -- there's no point. There's no use continuing because I'm quite certain your smug little mind is closed and decided and no amount of reasoning will reach you. So, in closing, go fuck yourself.
Because Iran has not attack any of it's neighbors for hundred of years.
I believe they are taking a page out of the N. Korean playbook, taunting the world with images and tests, and then laughing when the world, particularly the US, can do nothing about it. Of course nothing can be done about it because they probably do have something, and any force would be risky. Compare this to Iraq where there was little risk as iRaq has little, and unlike the some other countries in the region, apparently had relatively little influence in global events.
Of course if the US like, like the British empire in it's waning day, had not deployed it's forces so willy nilly, and has not spent itself to the brink of bankruptcy, there might be something we could do with Iran and N. Korea. As it is we can't even take care of the real and present threat, Afghanistan and Pakistan, so little else matters.
In the end though I think it is just PR. Just because you have the toys does not mean you know how to use them. And, unlike the end of WWII, two or three big bombs, with threats of more to follow, it not enough to win a confrontation. In any case, one can hardly argue that fanatical religious states with nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous. Israel, which ranks very low in freedoms granted by the modern state, and appears to be controlled by fundamentalism as any country in the region, has had nuclear weapons for years with little negatve effect.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Funny you should mention Chamberlain. People tend to assume that he avoided going to war with Hitler because he was a wimp. Thing is, when Hitler first emerged as a threat, the UK was in no position to challenge him. On top of that, there was a lot of anti-war sentiment that didn't go away until Hitler showed his true colors — several times. By playing the wimp, Chamberlain bought the Allies time to rearm. Of course, they squandered that advantage when the war actually started, but that's another issue.
There's also the little detail that many leading politicos in Chamberlain's Conservative Party considered Hitler a hero. These were the guys in the House of Commons who booed Churchill the first time he entered the House as Prime Minister. Eventually, they became politically irrelevent, but until they did, any Conservative PM who had gone against Hitler would have been out of office faster than you can say "jackboot".
Now, we don't have a lot of Islamists in U.S. politics, but aside from that, we're pretty much in the same spot now the Brits were then. It's true our armed forces are way better than theirs were, but between our global committments and the Iraq tarbaby, we've nothing to spare. Even if we did have the troops to spare, we've gone and used up all our credibility with our recent fuckups. Starting another war would turn us into absolute pariahs.
And here's one thing that really bugs me: how can we tell Iran that they can't have nukes when we have thousands. Which we are not only making no move to draw down, we are actually planning to increase
One other thing: are you willing to pay all the extra taxes it would take to cover a third war? It's true that we've been running the first two on credit, but that's playing bloody hell with the value of the dollar. So I think we should assume we're at our credit limit.
So don't bash poor Neville. At least he knew his limitations.
I don't think your other claims can be tested against data.
I said that they wouldn't use it as a first strike weapon; I'm sure if they were in danger of being overrun, they'd use them. But you say that you believe they act in their own self-interest. Do you realize how small of an area we're talking about? A nuclear strike by Israel into Syria or Iran would almost surely lead to radioactive fallout blowing through Israeli cities and polluting Israeli water-supplies as well.
Both Israel and US take substantial pains to minimize casualties--as much as possible short of avoid hostilities all together. Perhaps you consider risking even one innocent death ruthless, but I do not. I think the US substantially values the lives of foreigners and human life in general.
1. exporting the food and selling it (subsedised) in 3rd world countries under the price that local farmers ask, while protecting your own market (cotton)
2. going to war to secure oil and give friendly companies contracts in iraq. that is not democracy, it's imperialism and crime.
3. enron. morgages. health insurance. education. environment. bush.
everybody makes mistakes and nobody is perfect, so that is ok, but some modesty would be in order. you're not alone in this world, so please open your eyes and stop behaving that way.
Privacy is terrorism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/28/ST2008022803016.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113000912.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/042000-01.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/29/america/29prison.php
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PRISON_GRAPHIC.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?_r=2
http://www.jbs.org/node/7846
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.prisons29feb29,0,2057053.story
LOOK HOW SHORT IT TOOK! SIX YEARS!
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aaprisonpop.htm
NO! ONE!
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3321586
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi judge in an Iraqi court, and executed by the Iraqi government. The US supported this government, but opposed his execution (at least as quickly as it happened). Afghanistan has not had a leader executed by an invading party in recent memory; the last one to be killed was Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan, executed during a Communist coup in 1978.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Dark Reflection
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3762
I'll give you an extract
Then we have the illegal detention of suddam, and how his charges were created in court, during trial, and not before the actual trial. (Illegal in Iraq)
http://loc.gov/law//help/hussein/comments.html
And who's jurisdiction was the court under. It couldn't be the international courts, he was being tried for actions committed before it existed and thus outside of its jurisdiction
If it was Iraq's jurisdiction, then by Iraq law, Saddam was still president and thus had immunity from prosecution.
The summery of this post is.
The court that sentenced Saddam to death had no jurisdiction over him, was highly influenced by the controlling forces (The Iraq government, and probably the US), and freely broke the law to deliver the guilty verdict
Saddam did a lot of evil things I'm sure, and if its all true, he did deserve death in my books. But to suggest that his trial was just and fair is a bold lie, committed either through ignorance or unbridled emotion.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
like they've done before, with MASSIVE casualties, they lost 500.000 people, most of them children in an attempt to expand into Iraq
You fail at history. Saddam started the Iran-Iraq war, basically at our, the U.S., bidding. Of course, there wouldn't be a foreign military in the region that they might be worried about attacking them.
This also assumes that they really are secretly building a bomb, which has hardly been established, despite your intimations otherwise.
A blog about stuff.
Circumcision is child abuse.
"I suspect that has something to do with the President of Iran stating that his goal was to wipe Israel off the map. Some people don't take him seriously. People didn't take Hitler seriously, either."
It's called rhetoric and in this case actually refers to how Isreal was formed (which btw the US opposed at the time), the oft repeated statement has nothing to with nukes or conventional warfare and the neo-cons are fully aware of that fact. About 90% of Lebannon's population supports Hezbollah, 70% of Palesinians voted for Hamas in a free and fair election - the US administration use similar rhetoric to denounce these and other "terrorist" groups they take a disliking to. By your own reasoning this implies the US is run by Nazi's - correct?
Personally I found the official reception given to Ahmadinajad when he attempted to open dialogue by "walking into the lions den" was the most disgracefull (non-violent) events I have witnessed in this whole sorry saga of greed and corruption.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The "page of time" phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon. There was no implication that either Khomeini, when he first made the statement, or Ahmadinejad, in repeating it, felt it was imminent, or that Iran would be involved in bringing it about.
The US is founded on the rape, pillage and murder of an entire race of people.
The only country to have nuked another country (and its civilian population to boot) is the US.
The country to have been involved in the most number of wars in modern history is the US.
The country to have invaded the most number of countries (justified or unjustified) is the US.
In most cases where they have claimed justification, the US has directly or indirectly supported the rise to power of their opponents be they the Taleban or Saddam.
I wouldn't really be terribly proud to be an american.
P.S. Saw "Taxi to the Dark Side" a couple of days ago - a must-see for everybody.
If Saddam had had nukes, he still would have got booted out of Kuwait, but he would have been safe from invasion.
... and lost massively. (Iran lost massively too, because they kept sending in untrained children against buried-in posities. Iran lost about 500.000 of it's children that way, that is the main reason islam is so terribly unpopular in Iran nowadays)
... all are wars that the attacker could in no way hope to win ...
No, Kuwait would have gotten nuked, after which there would be nobody left (Kuwait is really small, barely larger than Israel, with only a single city).
And there would have been no alternative to giving it to Iraq. After all, there would be maybe 10000 Kuwaiti's left world-wide.
What would have stopped Saddam from nuking them ? The common decency and conscience that mass-murdering thieves tend to exhibit in times of stress ?
Use them as deterrence? Push their will on the rest of the region, which is cowering in terror under the nuclear shadow?
Actually the region has seen a LOT of wars where the agressors KNOWINGLY attacked, even when they knew the attack would destroy them.
Take the Iraq-Iran war for example. Iraq saw Iran fall back over a mountain range, and tried to pursue. Less than a month after that the Iraqi army was in shambles, supply lines cut, barely capable of policing normal streets in territory on their own side of the border.
Are you saying Saddam didn't know that would happen ? He pushed the attack when he could have easily stopped in a quasi invulnerable position, which would have provided an ideal starting point for the next attack in 10 years.
Yet he attacked
But attacking, knowing full well that retaliation might come is not a rare event in the middle east.
Egypt's attacks against Israel. Hezbollah-Israel, Israel's independance war, Jordan versus Britain, Pakistan versus India (and even worse : Pakistan versus East-Pakistan/Bangladesh)
And this is a tradition that goes back tens of centuries. When the muslims decided to attack the crusader states, they knew it would mean they'd fall to the mongols, that over 35 million people would starve (because there are letters, preserved by the libraries of Byzantium, that literally say this would happen). The muslims attacked, "won", got massacred by the mongols, and of the remaining muslims, at least 30 million starved, but not after killing the entire city that the sultan inhabited, including the sultan himself.
So let's be careful with "they won't attack if they can't reasonably win" ideas.
You make the stupid mistake to think that the Iranian government is there to defend it's people. It's not. It's there only to conquer, and to enforce islam (just read their constitution). Same with Saddam's government. It wasn't there for Iraqi's to prosper, it was there for Saddam to prosper. It attacked because of Saddam's pride.
When was the last time Ahmadinejad or Iran started any kind of military action?
Are you asking seriously?
Well, 'Iran' has never attacked anyone per se. But if by 'Iran' you mean 'Persia'...um...1826, I think. To regain land lost to Russia 50 years earlier. Russia started that series of wars, they'd had an on-again-off-again war for 100 years. And that attack was actually incited by Britian as part of their 'Great Game' with Russia which they fought throughout the middle east, a sort of proto-cold-war. And they had formerly done the same thing in 1804 for exactly the same reasons.
In 1735 it attacked India to get back some of its stuff and steal other stuff. I don't really understand what happened there, they weren't after territory.
Those three times are pretty much the only time Persia ever attacked anyone since it was formed in 1501. Iran, of course, was founded in 1921 and has never attacked anyone. (Except 'it' attacked itself and overthrew its own government in a civil war.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I've found some facts about this, it turned out that he never stated this.
He quoted someone who said something like "I wish the page of history on which Israel was created would never have been written".