I'm all for Iran introducing greater freedoms, but do you actually realise that you're hoping for the losers of an election to overthrow the democratically elected candidate? There were accusations of electoral fraud, but even US agencies concede that Ahmadinejad was almost certainly elected and that his majority is real.
From people I've spoken to, the anti-American feeling in Britain comes from a mixture of:
I think you give the British people too much credit (I'm British, btw) with your list of reasons. I think the moral transgressions of the USA cause less resentment to most people here than a few less noble reasons. First off, many of us hate the way the UK government cares more about pleasing the US president than they do about us. The common depiction of Blair in some papers cartoons was a poodle on a leash held by Bush. We hate that we are sold out by those we (sort of) elected. Secondly, a lot of media from the US makes its way to the UK. This has led the usual bitching about the "rubbish people watch / listen to" to shift from being a product of bad education / youth today to "American pollution". Gerry Springer valiantly leapt in and became the target for the usual generational bitching. And also Britain is a small nation that has squandered much of its greatness over the last hundred years. It reassures many to be able to look down their noses at a rich and powerful nation like the USA. The OP worried about his opportunity to be "that American", but he never will be. If some interviewer wants to show how ignorant Americans are and accidentally stops him on the street to ask if he knows where Afghanistan is, well when he answers correctly, that interviewer will just go and ask others until some idiot points at Australia. People see what they want to see.
Mind you, you Americans do have that weird need to wear white socks all the time. That does look pretty silly.;)
So provable facts and polite analysis based on them is "Troll" now, is it? That took less than a minute! I don't think anyone can actually finish reading my big waffly post in that time!;)
Yea, but then what would you call a revolution? Putting down your teacup with a clatter, standing up abruptly, saying in a stern voice "Good DAY to you sir!" and storming out?
I'm very glad you replied. I'd feel awfully depressed if I wrote that epic and nobody cared.;) Although having said that I just cut and pasted a chunk of it into the day's Iran story. I wouldn't normally do such a think (never done it before), but as I wanted to say pretty much the same thing to someone else and I posted this after the story had died down, hopefully I'm not spamming more than a handful of people.
Anyway, I think we're pretty much in agreement (so we can both sit back and marvel at what an intelligent poster the other person seems;). A couple of thoughts...
Only that's neither new, nor is Iran the only country seeking a nuclear capability. It is however the only country actively seeking to build political capital and extend its influence in a region considered strategic by the US (in contrast to North Korea which is isolationist and inward looking.) The nuclear story is a side show in my opinion, useful because of the irrational fear it evokes in mist people.
You make a good point about Iran having been on the road to nuclear capability for some time, so why now? But there's another possibility than it being just an excuse, which is that they really are getitng close to getting the Bomb, much closer than they've been before. But if it is a sideshow as you say, then I could see that being the case. When you say "expanding its influence" are you referring to anything specific? I'd be interested in hearing your take. To me, the risk that the US and Israel would perceive here wouldn't be any immediate expansionism, but rather Iraq and Afghanistan becoming strategic partners of Iran. If a pro-Western government could be installed there, or if the country could simply be "taught a lesson", then the US and Israel might think that would work. I personally don't as with its large Shia population and stability (okay - the word may not seem wise, but its a big and rich country with a broadly homgenous culture so regardless of any current problems it has a good foundation for stability), Iran is a natural ally of Iraq in some ways. Afghanistan less so (and it also has Pakistan, potentially), but the interest is there. So I think the days of the US playing Great Nations with the Middle East are inevitably numbered, but I can see why the US and Israel would have an interest in this without the nuclear weapons issue. I still personally think, based on analyses I've read, that nuclear weapons are the issue.
I'd go further than that and say that if there'd be a war between Israel and Iran it would be a proxy war by the US against Iran and it would likely be perceived as such in the region. I'm not so sure Russia wouldn't intervene in that nightmare. They might be too proud to risk loosing credibility internationally and the Georgian incident shows they've become bolder in recent years.With the US overextended as it is I'm not sure Russia would blink first if it came to a confrontation, Russia might be willing to make that gamble (that's how stupid wars get started after all.)
Yes, you are right, it would be seen as a proxy US war. If it went badly, maybe you are right that Russia would stick its nose in. They probably don't want to see a powerful, independent Iran either, but they've had a few suspicious meetings with Ahmadinejad and have been threatening to sell Iran modern air-defence systems. It would be hard for Russia to intervene once the US was involved without getting themselves in a war with the US. But if they timed it right... Hmmmm... If I were Russia, and didn't have a conscience, and there were war Iran and the US and Israel, I would not declare a position against the allies, I would simply roll into Iran "to help" and take what was wanted. Neither the US nor Israel can sustain an occupation of Iran, they'd have to fall back sooner or, well, sooner. Leaving Russia in charge. Is nice
But yeah, you're right on the last point - we've stopped bitching about government bailouts of the banking industry. Good catch.;)
The log "in your own eye" is pretty big. Witness the near constant half-accusations in the media about Iran at the moment. The repeated "some people think the elections were rigged" claim even when the US's own research suggests Ahmadinejad won the election because he really is very popular in Iran. A sudden rush of "look at the Iranian totalitarianism" stories. The constant exaggeration and air-brushing of the protests in the media. Mousavi supporters setting fire to cars? Nothing. Police arresting people? All over the news. Ahmadinejad does something questionable? Everywhere. Any questionable behaviour by Mousavi? Never reported. Ahmadinejad blames outside forces for formenting unrest - mockery. Mentioning that the US Congress has allocated millions to supporting opposition groups within the country and that two years ago the CIA were given approval by Bush to carry out destabalisation operations in Iran (both matters of public record) - most people don't know that.
You can only have an effective democracy if the populace is informed. That's true of Iran, and it's also true of the USA. If you want to know why we're suddenly seeing news stories about Iran everywhere and outraged people appearing online everywhere, the reason is simple and very scary. The USA thinks it might get dragged into a war with Iran by Israel and wants to get pre-emptive approval by its populace. Whether or not people think the USA should go to war or not, they should at least grant or withold their approval based on the actual situation. Not "someone was censored but no, we're not giving specifics" sort of stories.
I'm going to try and outline why I think the US is doing a media war on Iran. Apologies for length, but I could write triple this quite easily.
It's news all of a sudden mostly because there's a crisis with Iran at the moment. Iran may or may not be working towards nuclear weapons. We don't know for certain. They're working toward nuclear power which they have every right to and, in fact, if they have sense, really need to develop for a number of good reasons. But there are suspicions that they are also trying to gain nuclear weapons capability. Which given the threats to them from other powers, also makes good sense for them, but they deny that they are doing this. A lot of the intelligence comes from the Israeli intelligence communities who seem pretty confident that their is a nuclear weapons program and that, although nuclear capability isn't imminent, is on the roadmap (I've heard figures like ten years passed around, but also a couple of lower estimates). Anyway, say what you like about the Israeli's ethics, they have a Hellishly effective black ops^H^H^H^H^H intelligence community. If anyone knows what the Iranian government is up to other than the Iranians themselves, it's the Israelies.
Now we don't know that they're developing nuclear weapons. But Israel is serious enough about this that they're talking about military action. Now this bit is personal opinion, but I don't think a nuclear-capable Iran would attack Israel. Why would they? It would only invite similar retribution in kind. Plus Iran hasn't initiated a war of aggression in forever. Plus they have nothing to gain in material terms. Not even in political capital as even the Palestinians don't want to see Israel suffer nuclear strikes (they just want their own state and bit less bombing, please). If Israel went to war, the Palestinians would suffer more than anyone. But what a nuclear capable Iran would mean would be that the Palestinians suddenly had a big brother that couldn't be threatened and it would change the regional power balance quite heavily. It looks like Israel wont countenance that possibility, hence the talk of pre-emptive strikes.
Now sorry for having been so long-winded in all this, and that much of it has been about Israel, but it really is the elephant in the room. The nice thing here however, is that the USA is in some ways, finally back in the roll of the good guy (which is exactly what the r
It's news all of a sudden mostly because there's a crisis with Iran at the moment. Iran may or may not be working towards nuclear weapons. We don't know for certain. They're working toward nuclear power which they have every right to and, in fact, if they have sense, really need to develop for a number of good reasons. But there are suspicions that they are also trying to gain nuclear weapons capability. Which given the threats to them from other powers, also makes good sense for them, but they deny that they are doing this. A lot of the intelligence comes from the Israeli intelligence communities who seem pretty confident that their is a nuclear weapons program and that, although nuclear capability isn't imminent, is on the roadmap (I've heard figures like ten years passed around, but also a couple of lower estimates). Anyway, say what you like about the Israeli's ethics, they have a Hellishly effective black ops^H^H^H^H^H intelligence community. If anyone knows what the Iranian government is up to other than the Iranians themselves, it's the Israelies.
Now we don't know that they're developing nuclear weapons. But Israel is serious enough about this that they're talking about military action. Now this bit is personal opinion, but I don't think a nuclear-capable Iran would attack Israel. Why would they? It would only invite similar retribution in kind. Plus Iran hasn't initiated a war of aggression in forever. Plus they have nothing to gain in material terms. Not even in political capital as even the Palestinians don't want to see Israel suffer nuclear strikes (they just want their own state and bit less bombing, please). If Israel went to war, the Palestinians would suffer more than anyone. But what a nuclear capable Iran would mean would be that the Palestinians suddenly had a big brother that couldn't be threatened and it would change the regional power balance quite heavily. It looks like Israel wont countenance that possibility, hence the talk of pre-emptive strikes.
Now sorry for having been so long-winded in all this, and that much of it has been about Israel, but it really is the elephant in the room. The nice thing here however, is that the USA is in some ways, finally back in the roll of the good guy (which is exactly what the rest of the world desperately needs, given how powerful the US is). Obama's government has been doing everything they can behind the scenes to defuse this situation. That's why there was a lot of talk about sanctions not long ago. If sanctions could be shown to work, then there's a non-military option for pressuring Iran into "behaving". Israel will hold back, oil can carry on being shipped, Russia will stop exploiting the situation (they're, well, I'll save Russia for another post) and generally things can calm down a bit.
Unfortunately the sanction strategy that the US has desperately been pushing hasn't played out very well for a few reasons. Firstly, sanctions don't typically work very well. They punish the common people and strengthen the current rulers by providing an outside threat. (If you think the US and UK government get away with a lot through made up threats like the War on Drugs or Terrorists under your bed, just see what a government can do when there really is a threat). Secondly, sanctions aren't really ethical - Iran has every reason to feel threatened and almost any nation faced with nuclear capable enemies finds the only way to defend itself is to acquire its own. (Japan is an exception, bless them, as having been subjected to the actual reality of a nuclear attack has withdrawn from the very idea in horror). Thirdly, sanctions against Iran aren't really feasible anyway. For a start Russia would have to support them too for geographical reasons and they probably wont, and secondly, Iran can retaliate by closing one of the most important oil shipping lines in the world (Strait of Hormuz).
Which brings us back to the nightmare possibility of war. If Israel is really convinced that this is their window of opportunity to
I came up with the idea myself, but I have no doubt that others must have reached similar conclusions. It is, after all, a viewpoint with considerable utility.;)
Anyway, your questions are useful even for others, as it prompts anyone attempting to answer to define their views more precisely. I look forward to more of them. As regards what my utility metric is - well, the answer is obvious once thought of. I believe that I actually wrote "perceived utility". This is an important caveat as it recognizes the subjectivity of wealth (including the possibility of error). But if we accept that we are talking about perceived utility, then we have our metric - cost! Our metric is the value people assign to it with whatever exchange mechanism they use - whether dollars, euros, glass beads or anything else.
However, although I'm quite pleased with the definition, utility, at least in the English language isn't completely perfect. Although you can say that a painting has a utility in that it can be used to produce valued emotional reactions in the viewer, etc., the word utility doesn't normally have these connotations. A word that does have enough breadth to cover this in English would be "value". But this is even more arbitrary. Wealth is indeed a subjective judgement and I sense you are looking for something more universal. I am afraid that utility is the closest that I can currently offer to you as "wealth" is a product of consensus rather than anything that is a direct physical attribute of something like mass or hardness or conductivity. But if you come up with a better definition than "utility", please post it back as I would be very interested to hear a different take on it.
I have found that collecting a number of perspectives on matters such as economics is useful as it lets me choose the best model for whatever my current purpose is.
Incidentally, notice how my post, which was nothing but factual information with conclusions that were supportable, no personal attacks or immaturity got hammered down with more "Troll" mods than any goatse ever was. That bias alone should give one pause for thought.
Moral status is hereditary, didn't you know? If your great, great grandfather helped overthrow the British for example, then you gain credit for that and can feel proud of yourself. Similarly, if someone else's great, great grandfather was involved in a genocide or enslaving people, they owe apologies for it.
So anyone who posts substantiated evidence that the US has provided financial support to Iranian opposition is a... white supremist? Uh, why? And what's with the name calling?
Seeing as how Iran can ban anyone from running for any reason, why bother rigging a vote illegally; they already can legally.
Okay. Who in Iran do you think had comparable popularity to Ahmadinejad that was prevented from putting themselves forward as a candidate? If no-one, then what does your criticism mean?
All well and good, but a democratic tyranny is still a tyranny.
I very much agree. I live in a country (the UK) where a semi-democratically elected party is imposing all sorts of surveillance measures. But it's important that we criticize and act according to the truth as best we can determine it, rather than allow our own governments to mislead us into believing whatever will make us support their actions. I'm not on a crusade to say Iran is perfect. I just believe that we can only have an effective democracy if we have an informed populace. Governments and big media endlessly repeating the same unsubstantiated allegations run contrary to this. Did you see the browser plugin someone linked to further down that directs people toward stories and discussions critical of Israel so that they can astroturf them en masse? The battle against FUD gets bigger every year.
Oh dear gods, not this again?:) Make a couple of eye holes and a little radio antenna hole. Which is easiest to conceal? A soldier in full battle gear, or a pair of floating eyes and a little pointy wire? I think the US legal system has a lot to answer for - it's breeding a generation of people who see only either utter unfeasible success, or complete failure. If such a "cloak" can be created, and if somehow it were cost effective to deploy (and that's a whole other question), then it would be one useful technique amongst many. Not an "I Win" button.
Wow us Americans have gotten sneakier, we go in stage massive riots, convince many many Iranians who hate us that their president cheated on the vote, and then got out, without leaving evidence... I would have bought all but that last bit.
Heh! Yes, the last bit would be hard to swallow. However, there is in fact evidence. A lot of it right out in the open. You tend not to see much of it in the mainstream press, but for example, the US Congress approved US$10million for promoting anti-government groups in Iran (reference). The normal figure bandied about is US$120million but it's in bits, I think. That's just one part of it. As to other evidence, well Bush sanctioned the CIA in 2007 to begin operations in Iran to destablise the regime there. That's a matter of public record though what they got up to is not. It's only a couple of years ago, so it's not unreasonable to presume the CIA had contact with current opposition groups. Senior officials in Pakistan put about the figure that the CIA have distributed 400 million to opposition groups within Iran. There's plenty of supporting evidence, just not in the mainstream US press - unsurprisingly.
Yes, there are a number of things wrong with that report. It's been fairly well discredited since June, although the analysis of what is wrong with it didn't receive a fraction of the coverage of the initial report itself (go figure). The first attention grabbing element of the report is that two provinces showed more than 100% turnout. Dramatic fraud it would seem. But in fact, Iranians are eligible to vote at any station. When you have places that a lot of people work, you get more than the number of people who are registered as from there voting there because they come in from outlying provinces. It's something that election worker in Iran could have explained and is the reason for this. But willfully or otherwise, the report does not provide this information. It just drops in a very loaded "fact" to make things sound obviously underhand. The rest of the report is basically a very long-winded way of saying Ahmadinejad is really popular and we don't think he should be. It ignores that exit polls and research conducted (by Western agencies) accorded very closely with the actual results and showed that Ahamdinejad really was that popular. It ignores why Ahmadinejad might have been popular. He instituted a number of programs which have really helped the rural poor in Iran. A lot.
There's a very thorough deconstruction of the report hosted here which is long but easily skimmed through if you like. Very much worth taking a look at. I can dig out some more information on pre-election polls by Western agencies that showed the strength of Ahmadinejad's support if you need me to. I hope the above is of interest, anyway.
You might also consider that the source of the report you quote is Chatham House. An English think tank that is very highly regarded by the British government whenever they want to prove something.:(
Anyway, I see I have been modded troll for my original post. I guess someone with mod points finds it incredulous that the government would manipulate public opinion in order to secure support for military action.;)
So basically, if we want to see where the pro-Israel lobby is astroturfing, we just have to download their "megaphone" app and wait for it to point us in the right direction. Then we can just follow them there and post actual facts. Brilliant!:D
A failed "colour" revolution sponsored by the USA by US aligned factions in Iran. All the real evidence points to Ahmadinejad actually having won the election but we still get repeated hints of vote rigging in all the media. Seldom actually saying why, just saying that it's said that they were rigged. Just the same old "if you repeat something often enough" principle. The West would really have liked it if Mousavi had won the election - they'd have someone compliant in power there. (Well, not "in power," because the clerics wield vast influence which has to be accounted for, but still...). But Mousavi was basically supported by a wealthy urban elite who would be the ones to gain the most from selling out the country to Western interests. They weren't enough to win the election.
Anyway, we have another rush of stories highlighting the evils of Iran. That means the US is considering the possibility that it might get dragged into military conflict with Iran and wants to keep people onside.
One can be against piracy and DRM at the same time. This is not "similar to tariffs in that it distributes money to one small group by taking from everybody else in a nation". Aside from that sentence not actually making sense (distributing to one group) or particularly relating to tariffs (a duty imposed on goods crossing political boundaries), content producers do not take from everbody in a nation. They take from those that give them money in exchange for the content. It's a free choice.
Now DRM is bad because I've yet to see an implementation that doesn't restrict my legitimate use of something I've purchased. But that doesn't mean I'm in favour of freeloading by taking things without paying for them. Watermarks I'm absolutely fine with - they enable producers to protect their rights without interfering with what I can do with what I've bought.
Well I fully acknowledge that I don't know whether the climate is significantly warming due to humans or not, and what the effects will be if it is. I am a skeptic which is a good thing. Skeptic just means you question and don't take things on faith. If I were dogmatically certain that there wasn't such warming, then I'd be open to criticism. But skepticism is good.
So how do I choose good courses of action (or who to support) when I'm unable to spend the years necessary to inform myself to the level necessary (and even then, I wouldn't know)? Well, there's no guarantee, but I keep an eye out for certain things - people with incentives to lie to me, political correctness, absence of evidence, silencing of critics. That's all I can base things on really as a layperson. And the funny thing is that some years back, this approach led me to consider the global warming faction more convincing. I could see examples such as those people paid by oil money to go and disrupt public talks on global warming. That made me distrust the anti-climate change faction considerably. But what have I seen since? We've moved from "global warming" to "climate change", we've seen endless shifts in the theory - none of which I'm qualified to judge, but the constant changing and of the basic theories of climate change indicate there is great uncertainty, and now this: some of the World's most influential proponents of climate change have now been shown to be deliberately suppressing inconvenient truths, lying and fudging data to fit what they want it to prove. And this has been a sustained behaviour over a period of years. And their methodologies have been shown to be shoddy to the point of negligence. And that bias which so puts me off trusting a side, which formerly worked to make me distrust the anti-climate change groups? Well now I see gross bias in the media over this. I've only heard about this because I read sites like Slashdot and The Register. This is a BIG story and how much coverage have I seen in the British press? The Guardian has run a couple of stories on it - good for them. My own usual paper The Independent hasn't printed a word on it. In fact today, they printed a fifteen page special on the "Facts" of Climate Change without a single reference to these events anywhere in the paper that I could find.
Even if this story had been a hoax, it would have been worthy news to talk about it. Now that it's confirmed, I still see nothing. The head of one of Britain's most influential environmental organizations has just resigned disgraced and nary a word is printed. You want me to trust people talking about global warming when I can see this level of media bias and suppression right in front of me? There's no way I can look at the facts and figures of something like this and draw my own conclusions. It has to be done on the basis of which sources I trust. And right now, the climate change lobby has just fallen very far in that regard.
I don't know whether the chart was valid or not, but he didn't say that the chart was produced from random noise as you stated. He said that the method for producing the chart gives the same sort of hockey stick result even when you feed it random noise.
I know this is hard, but sometimes you have to read the article.;) Apparently, Danish law gives the individual the right to make a non-commercial backup for personal use. That isn't a law saying you may do something, it's saying you have a right to do so. In which case DRM infringes on that right.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, me and a few mates made explosives. Big deal! We're still here. We did hurt a tree a bit, though.
I'm all for Iran introducing greater freedoms, but do you actually realise that you're hoping for the losers of an election to overthrow the democratically elected candidate? There were accusations of electoral fraud, but even US agencies concede that Ahmadinejad was almost certainly elected and that his majority is real.
I think you give the British people too much credit (I'm British, btw) with your list of reasons. I think the moral transgressions of the USA cause less resentment to most people here than a few less noble reasons. First off, many of us hate the way the UK government cares more about pleasing the US president than they do about us. The common depiction of Blair in some papers cartoons was a poodle on a leash held by Bush. We hate that we are sold out by those we (sort of) elected. Secondly, a lot of media from the US makes its way to the UK. This has led the usual bitching about the "rubbish people watch / listen to" to shift from being a product of bad education / youth today to "American pollution". Gerry Springer valiantly leapt in and became the target for the usual generational bitching. And also Britain is a small nation that has squandered much of its greatness over the last hundred years. It reassures many to be able to look down their noses at a rich and powerful nation like the USA. The OP worried about his opportunity to be "that American", but he never will be. If some interviewer wants to show how ignorant Americans are and accidentally stops him on the street to ask if he knows where Afghanistan is, well when he answers correctly, that interviewer will just go and ask others until some idiot points at Australia. People see what they want to see.
;)
Mind you, you Americans do have that weird need to wear white socks all the time. That does look pretty silly.
So provable facts and polite analysis based on them is "Troll" now, is it? That took less than a minute! I don't think anyone can actually finish reading my big waffly post in that time!
Mods +1 Spiffing Post.
I'm very glad you replied. I'd feel awfully depressed if I wrote that epic and nobody cared.
Anyway, I think we're pretty much in agreement (so we can both sit back and marvel at what an intelligent poster the other person seems
You make a good point about Iran having been on the road to nuclear capability for some time, so why now? But there's another possibility than it being just an excuse, which is that they really are getitng close to getting the Bomb, much closer than they've been before. But if it is a sideshow as you say, then I could see that being the case. When you say "expanding its influence" are you referring to anything specific? I'd be interested in hearing your take. To me, the risk that the US and Israel would perceive here wouldn't be any immediate expansionism, but rather Iraq and Afghanistan becoming strategic partners of Iran. If a pro-Western government could be installed there, or if the country could simply be "taught a lesson", then the US and Israel might think that would work. I personally don't as with its large Shia population and stability (okay - the word may not seem wise, but its a big and rich country with a broadly homgenous culture so regardless of any current problems it has a good foundation for stability), Iran is a natural ally of Iraq in some ways. Afghanistan less so (and it also has Pakistan, potentially), but the interest is there. So I think the days of the US playing Great Nations with the Middle East are inevitably numbered, but I can see why the US and Israel would have an interest in this without the nuclear weapons issue. I still personally think, based on analyses I've read, that nuclear weapons are the issue.
Yes, you are right, it would be seen as a proxy US war. If it went badly, maybe you are right that Russia would stick its nose in. They probably don't want to see a powerful, independent Iran either, but they've had a few suspicious meetings with Ahmadinejad and have been threatening to sell Iran modern air-defence systems. It would be hard for Russia to intervene once the US was involved without getting themselves in a war with the US. But if they timed it right... Hmmmm... If I were Russia, and didn't have a conscience, and there were war Iran and the US and Israel, I would not declare a position against the allies, I would simply roll into Iran "to help" and take what was wanted. Neither the US nor Israel can sustain an occupation of Iran, they'd have to fall back sooner or, well, sooner. Leaving Russia in charge. Is nice ;)
But yeah, you're right on the last point - we've stopped bitching about government bailouts of the banking industry. Good catch.
The log "in your own eye" is pretty big. Witness the near constant half-accusations in the media about Iran at the moment. The repeated "some people think the elections were rigged" claim even when the US's own research suggests Ahmadinejad won the election because he really is very popular in Iran. A sudden rush of "look at the Iranian totalitarianism" stories. The constant exaggeration and air-brushing of the protests in the media. Mousavi supporters setting fire to cars? Nothing. Police arresting people? All over the news. Ahmadinejad does something questionable? Everywhere. Any questionable behaviour by Mousavi? Never reported. Ahmadinejad blames outside forces for formenting unrest - mockery. Mentioning that the US Congress has allocated millions to supporting opposition groups within the country and that two years ago the CIA were given approval by Bush to carry out destabalisation operations in Iran (both matters of public record) - most people don't know that.
You can only have an effective democracy if the populace is informed. That's true of Iran, and it's also true of the USA. If you want to know why we're suddenly seeing news stories about Iran everywhere and outraged people appearing online everywhere, the reason is simple and very scary. The USA thinks it might get dragged into a war with Iran by Israel and wants to get pre-emptive approval by its populace. Whether or not people think the USA should go to war or not, they should at least grant or withold their approval based on the actual situation. Not "someone was censored but no, we're not giving specifics" sort of stories.
I'm going to try and outline why I think the US is doing a media war on Iran. Apologies for length, but I could write triple this quite easily.
It's news all of a sudden mostly because there's a crisis with Iran at the moment. Iran may or may not be working towards nuclear weapons. We don't know for certain. They're working toward nuclear power which they have every right to and, in fact, if they have sense, really need to develop for a number of good reasons. But there are suspicions that they are also trying to gain nuclear weapons capability. Which given the threats to them from other powers, also makes good sense for them, but they deny that they are doing this. A lot of the intelligence comes from the Israeli intelligence communities who seem pretty confident that their is a nuclear weapons program and that, although nuclear capability isn't imminent, is on the roadmap (I've heard figures like ten years passed around, but also a couple of lower estimates). Anyway, say what you like about the Israeli's ethics, they have a Hellishly effective black ops^H^H^H^H^H intelligence community. If anyone knows what the Iranian government is up to other than the Iranians themselves, it's the Israelies.
Now we don't know that they're developing nuclear weapons. But Israel is serious enough about this that they're talking about military action. Now this bit is personal opinion, but I don't think a nuclear-capable Iran would attack Israel. Why would they? It would only invite similar retribution in kind. Plus Iran hasn't initiated a war of aggression in forever. Plus they have nothing to gain in material terms. Not even in political capital as even the Palestinians don't want to see Israel suffer nuclear strikes (they just want their own state and bit less bombing, please). If Israel went to war, the Palestinians would suffer more than anyone. But what a nuclear capable Iran would mean would be that the Palestinians suddenly had a big brother that couldn't be threatened and it would change the regional power balance quite heavily. It looks like Israel wont countenance that possibility, hence the talk of pre-emptive strikes.
Now sorry for having been so long-winded in all this, and that much of it has been about Israel, but it really is the elephant in the room. The nice thing here however, is that the USA is in some ways, finally back in the roll of the good guy (which is exactly what the r
It's news all of a sudden mostly because there's a crisis with Iran at the moment. Iran may or may not be working towards nuclear weapons. We don't know for certain. They're working toward nuclear power which they have every right to and, in fact, if they have sense, really need to develop for a number of good reasons. But there are suspicions that they are also trying to gain nuclear weapons capability. Which given the threats to them from other powers, also makes good sense for them, but they deny that they are doing this. A lot of the intelligence comes from the Israeli intelligence communities who seem pretty confident that their is a nuclear weapons program and that, although nuclear capability isn't imminent, is on the roadmap (I've heard figures like ten years passed around, but also a couple of lower estimates). Anyway, say what you like about the Israeli's ethics, they have a Hellishly effective black ops^H^H^H^H^H intelligence community. If anyone knows what the Iranian government is up to other than the Iranians themselves, it's the Israelies.
Now we don't know that they're developing nuclear weapons. But Israel is serious enough about this that they're talking about military action. Now this bit is personal opinion, but I don't think a nuclear-capable Iran would attack Israel. Why would they? It would only invite similar retribution in kind. Plus Iran hasn't initiated a war of aggression in forever. Plus they have nothing to gain in material terms. Not even in political capital as even the Palestinians don't want to see Israel suffer nuclear strikes (they just want their own state and bit less bombing, please). If Israel went to war, the Palestinians would suffer more than anyone. But what a nuclear capable Iran would mean would be that the Palestinians suddenly had a big brother that couldn't be threatened and it would change the regional power balance quite heavily. It looks like Israel wont countenance that possibility, hence the talk of pre-emptive strikes.
Now sorry for having been so long-winded in all this, and that much of it has been about Israel, but it really is the elephant in the room. The nice thing here however, is that the USA is in some ways, finally back in the roll of the good guy (which is exactly what the rest of the world desperately needs, given how powerful the US is). Obama's government has been doing everything they can behind the scenes to defuse this situation. That's why there was a lot of talk about sanctions not long ago. If sanctions could be shown to work, then there's a non-military option for pressuring Iran into "behaving". Israel will hold back, oil can carry on being shipped, Russia will stop exploiting the situation (they're, well, I'll save Russia for another post) and generally things can calm down a bit.
Unfortunately the sanction strategy that the US has desperately been pushing hasn't played out very well for a few reasons. Firstly, sanctions don't typically work very well. They punish the common people and strengthen the current rulers by providing an outside threat. (If you think the US and UK government get away with a lot through made up threats like the War on Drugs or Terrorists under your bed, just see what a government can do when there really is a threat). Secondly, sanctions aren't really ethical - Iran has every reason to feel threatened and almost any nation faced with nuclear capable enemies finds the only way to defend itself is to acquire its own. (Japan is an exception, bless them, as having been subjected to the actual reality of a nuclear attack has withdrawn from the very idea in horror). Thirdly, sanctions against Iran aren't really feasible anyway. For a start Russia would have to support them too for geographical reasons and they probably wont, and secondly, Iran can retaliate by closing one of the most important oil shipping lines in the world (Strait of Hormuz).
Which brings us back to the nightmare possibility of war. If Israel is really convinced that this is their window of opportunity to
Wonderful. To paraphrase AvP - Whoever wins, we lose. Or from a somewhat older source, the first casualty of war, is Truth.
I came up with the idea myself, but I have no doubt that others must have reached similar conclusions. It is, after all, a viewpoint with considerable utility.
Anyway, your questions are useful even for others, as it prompts anyone attempting to answer to define their views more precisely. I look forward to more of them. As regards what my utility metric is - well, the answer is obvious once thought of. I believe that I actually wrote "perceived utility". This is an important caveat as it recognizes the subjectivity of wealth (including the possibility of error). But if we accept that we are talking about perceived utility, then we have our metric - cost! Our metric is the value people assign to it with whatever exchange mechanism they use - whether dollars, euros, glass beads or anything else.
However, although I'm quite pleased with the definition, utility, at least in the English language isn't completely perfect. Although you can say that a painting has a utility in that it can be used to produce valued emotional reactions in the viewer, etc., the word utility doesn't normally have these connotations. A word that does have enough breadth to cover this in English would be "value". But this is even more arbitrary. Wealth is indeed a subjective judgement and I sense you are looking for something more universal. I am afraid that utility is the closest that I can currently offer to you as "wealth" is a product of consensus rather than anything that is a direct physical attribute of something like mass or hardness or conductivity. But if you come up with a better definition than "utility", please post it back as I would be very interested to hear a different take on it.
I have found that collecting a number of perspectives on matters such as economics is useful as it lets me choose the best model for whatever my current purpose is.
Regards,
H.
Incidentally, notice how my post, which was nothing but factual information with conclusions that were supportable, no personal attacks or immaturity got hammered down with more "Troll" mods than any goatse ever was. That bias alone should give one pause for thought.
Moral status is hereditary, didn't you know? If your great, great grandfather helped overthrow the British for example, then you gain credit for that and can feel proud of yourself. Similarly, if someone else's great, great grandfather was involved in a genocide or enslaving people, they owe apologies for it.
So anyone who posts substantiated evidence that the US has provided financial support to Iranian opposition is a... white supremist? Uh, why? And what's with the name calling?
Okay. Who in Iran do you think had comparable popularity to Ahmadinejad that was prevented from putting themselves forward as a candidate? If no-one, then what does your criticism mean?
Amen.
I very much agree. I live in a country (the UK) where a semi-democratically elected party is imposing all sorts of surveillance measures. But it's important that we criticize and act according to the truth as best we can determine it, rather than allow our own governments to mislead us into believing whatever will make us support their actions. I'm not on a crusade to say Iran is perfect. I just believe that we can only have an effective democracy if we have an informed populace. Governments and big media endlessly repeating the same unsubstantiated allegations run contrary to this. Did you see the browser plugin someone linked to further down that directs people toward stories and discussions critical of Israel so that they can astroturf them en masse? The battle against FUD gets bigger every year.
I am of course open to factual counter-arguments.
Oh dear gods, not this again?
Heh! Yes, the last bit would be hard to swallow. However, there is in fact evidence. A lot of it right out in the open. You tend not to see much of it in the mainstream press, but for example, the US Congress approved US$10million for promoting anti-government groups in Iran (reference). The normal figure bandied about is US$120million but it's in bits, I think. That's just one part of it. As to other evidence, well Bush sanctioned the CIA in 2007 to begin operations in Iran to destablise the regime there. That's a matter of public record though what they got up to is not. It's only a couple of years ago, so it's not unreasonable to presume the CIA had contact with current opposition groups. Senior officials in Pakistan put about the figure that the CIA have distributed 400 million to opposition groups within Iran. There's plenty of supporting evidence, just not in the mainstream US press - unsurprisingly.
Yes, there are a number of things wrong with that report. It's been fairly well discredited since June, although the analysis of what is wrong with it didn't receive a fraction of the coverage of the initial report itself (go figure). The first attention grabbing element of the report is that two provinces showed more than 100% turnout. Dramatic fraud it would seem. But in fact, Iranians are eligible to vote at any station. When you have places that a lot of people work, you get more than the number of people who are registered as from there voting there because they come in from outlying provinces. It's something that election worker in Iran could have explained and is the reason for this. But willfully or otherwise, the report does not provide this information. It just drops in a very loaded "fact" to make things sound obviously underhand. The rest of the report is basically a very long-winded way of saying Ahmadinejad is really popular and we don't think he should be. It ignores that exit polls and research conducted (by Western agencies) accorded very closely with the actual results and showed that Ahamdinejad really was that popular. It ignores why Ahmadinejad might have been popular. He instituted a number of programs which have really helped the rural poor in Iran. A lot.
There's a very thorough deconstruction of the report hosted here which is long but easily skimmed through if you like. Very much worth taking a look at. I can dig out some more information on pre-election polls by Western agencies that showed the strength of Ahmadinejad's support if you need me to. I hope the above is of interest, anyway.
You might also consider that the source of the report you quote is Chatham House. An English think tank that is very highly regarded by the British government whenever they want to prove something.
Anyway, I see I have been modded troll for my original post. I guess someone with mod points finds it incredulous that the government would manipulate public opinion in order to secure support for military action.
So basically, if we want to see where the pro-Israel lobby is astroturfing, we just have to download their "megaphone" app and wait for it to point us in the right direction. Then we can just follow them there and post actual facts. Brilliant!
A failed "colour" revolution sponsored by the USA by US aligned factions in Iran. All the real evidence points to Ahmadinejad actually having won the election but we still get repeated hints of vote rigging in all the media. Seldom actually saying why, just saying that it's said that they were rigged. Just the same old "if you repeat something often enough" principle. The West would really have liked it if Mousavi had won the election - they'd have someone compliant in power there. (Well, not "in power," because the clerics wield vast influence which has to be accounted for, but still...). But Mousavi was basically supported by a wealthy urban elite who would be the ones to gain the most from selling out the country to Western interests. They weren't enough to win the election.
Anyway, we have another rush of stories highlighting the evils of Iran. That means the US is considering the possibility that it might get dragged into military conflict with Iran and wants to keep people onside.
One can be against piracy and DRM at the same time. This is not "similar to tariffs in that it distributes money to one small group by taking from everybody else in a nation". Aside from that sentence not actually making sense (distributing to one group) or particularly relating to tariffs (a duty imposed on goods crossing political boundaries), content producers do not take from everbody in a nation. They take from those that give them money in exchange for the content. It's a free choice.
Now DRM is bad because I've yet to see an implementation that doesn't restrict my legitimate use of something I've purchased. But that doesn't mean I'm in favour of freeloading by taking things without paying for them. Watermarks I'm absolutely fine with - they enable producers to protect their rights without interfering with what I can do with what I've bought.
Well I fully acknowledge that I don't know whether the climate is significantly warming due to humans or not, and what the effects will be if it is. I am a skeptic which is a good thing. Skeptic just means you question and don't take things on faith. If I were dogmatically certain that there wasn't such warming, then I'd be open to criticism. But skepticism is good.
So how do I choose good courses of action (or who to support) when I'm unable to spend the years necessary to inform myself to the level necessary (and even then, I wouldn't know)? Well, there's no guarantee, but I keep an eye out for certain things - people with incentives to lie to me, political correctness, absence of evidence, silencing of critics. That's all I can base things on really as a layperson. And the funny thing is that some years back, this approach led me to consider the global warming faction more convincing. I could see examples such as those people paid by oil money to go and disrupt public talks on global warming. That made me distrust the anti-climate change faction considerably. But what have I seen since? We've moved from "global warming" to "climate change", we've seen endless shifts in the theory - none of which I'm qualified to judge, but the constant changing and of the basic theories of climate change indicate there is great uncertainty, and now this: some of the World's most influential proponents of climate change have now been shown to be deliberately suppressing inconvenient truths, lying and fudging data to fit what they want it to prove. And this has been a sustained behaviour over a period of years. And their methodologies have been shown to be shoddy to the point of negligence. And that bias which so puts me off trusting a side, which formerly worked to make me distrust the anti-climate change groups? Well now I see gross bias in the media over this. I've only heard about this because I read sites like Slashdot and The Register. This is a BIG story and how much coverage have I seen in the British press? The Guardian has run a couple of stories on it - good for them. My own usual paper The Independent hasn't printed a word on it. In fact today, they printed a fifteen page special on the "Facts" of Climate Change without a single reference to these events anywhere in the paper that I could find.
Even if this story had been a hoax, it would have been worthy news to talk about it. Now that it's confirmed, I still see nothing. The head of one of Britain's most influential environmental organizations has just resigned disgraced and nary a word is printed. You want me to trust people talking about global warming when I can see this level of media bias and suppression right in front of me? There's no way I can look at the facts and figures of something like this and draw my own conclusions. It has to be done on the basis of which sources I trust. And right now, the climate change lobby has just fallen very far in that regard.
I don't know whether the chart was valid or not, but he didn't say that the chart was produced from random noise as you stated. He said that the method for producing the chart gives the same sort of hockey stick result even when you feed it random noise.
I know this is hard, but sometimes you have to read the article.