Yes, but people aren't stupid (okay - not in all ways). It will be pretty obvious to most people participating that they're not going to win against the strange obsessive person who has no job and no life and racks up 100 crimes a week. So cash prizes aren't going to be much of a motivation for playing this. Which means most people playing it will be doing so for other motivations.
Let's face it - the primary use of such a system would be lonely males jacking off over live feeds of unsuspecting young girls. In fact, if we want to oppose this system (and we do because we don't like living in a combined police state and mob-rule society), pointing out its wonderful desirability to peadophiles is probably the best approach to take for most.
Of course there will be those with other motivations also. Those with a particular hate-agenda will love this.
In addition to all the above legitimate concerns, add sexual harrasment and a live "hot girl at location X" Twitter feed or whatever. Not to mention filming and recording of partners, ex's, bullying victims, etc. And if you thought "happy slapping" with a phone camera was something, wait till you see what people can do when broadcast live on the Internet. If a group wants to harras you, it's going to much easier for them to do so, as you say. What do you think will happen with a system like this in the hands of Anonymous or some group like them.
Of course you might be able to use this to monitor the police, but if so, expect them to implement controls on that asap.
"If the engine of the car were missing..." ??? We don't need to resort to analogy to explain this situation, we all understand it. So the only reason for resorting to analogy is to try and make the situation sound better or worse than it is. And that's bad practice.
This is someone who didn't know that the "box under his desk" was the computer itself. That's a significant level of ignorance for anyone in active life in the modern West. Yes - it's not a good sign when someone in a position of influence has that level of ignorance. That point does not require a car analogy to get across.
Oh well, we'll just pump oil now for whatever we can get and look, we are making billions! Yes, that's true, eventually though it will not be true, then they got *bupkis*. Anyone can see that, it is *by far* the easiest of futurist trends to see.
You made a great post, but I'm going to single out the above snippet because either you or I are wrong about this. I'm not saying that the spending of wealth in osme of the Arab countries hasn't been profligate. It certainly is by my standards. But it's wrong to imply that there's no re-investment going on. In fact, a lot of that money is coming back to the West in exchange for bargain sales of irreplacable things such as part-ownership of the NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange: Link. There are plenty of other significant examples of investment, but those are the most dramatic ones, I think. And it's not entirely wrong for greater cities to be built in those countries. People should live in nice places, yes? A lot of future business will be of a non-manufacturing kind - financial work or intellectual property for example. Very little of London's revenue is from manufacturing I should imagine. The key question is whether the cities are maintainable long-term due to natural resource issues. Water may be one of the most strategic issues in the future, but if these countries invest in nuclear power, then they may be okay. Of greatest concern is whether some of the money is invested into Education. After all, purchases of things like the LSE do little to benefit the mass of people in Qatar, for example.
How open are the borders generally though. That's a very, very large border. I presume it would be pretty easy to just hike across somewhere and travel round the USA that way? What about driving? Is every road really guarded or are there just not that many roads?
I have a friend who is Indian/Pakistani (but with a Swedish passport). He is stopped by customs and strip searched more or less every time he flies to the US. That cannot be a coincidence, he must fit some profile.
This is just supposition, but if it could be that he rather doesn't fit some profile. Given the number of confused comments on here the other day thinking Iranians were predominantly Arab for example, it may be that there's a considerable level of ignorance in US of the ethnic make up of a lot of countries generally. It may be that they are simply suspicious of someone who looks Indian / Pakistani but comes from Sweden. True - you'd hope customs officers would have a better idea, but that may not be the case.
Heh! I'd probably be up for seeing the *real* USA! Am supposed to go over there at some point and visit a friend. I think you and I keep having arguments here on/. so it could be intellectually stimulating.:)
I think that you might have misread my post. I am in agreement with your conclusion. Only the first sentence is where we differ - I called money an abstract way of representing the nation's wealth in order to draw attention to the flaw in the OP who seemed to think that so long as the money was spent somewhere, it didn't matter where. The invasion of Iraq is, as you say, a disgusting misdirection of America's resources. As well as an ethical failure resulting in great suffering both domestically and abroad.
And let me tell you, if people from the UK are telling you that your border-control is unwelcoming, then it must be! I also live in the UK. You can bounce around Europe crossing borders with little more than a wave of your passport and a friendly nod. Then when you come back to the UK, it's a bit of a shock. Most of the EU find Britain rather silly with how worked up about its borders it gets, given that the rest of it manages with less pomp *and* has direct land passage to outside countries. I've also heard some strong complaints from people I know about entering the US. Aren't they asking for retinal scans or fingerprints in some places, now?
Nuclear is out, because the same people who push trains are also against any form of nuclear energy.
Wrong! Watch - I think both nuclear power and greater investment in public transport such as trains is a good idea.
Don't mistake loudmouth groups like Greenpeace for representing us environmentalists. They're just loud, that's all.
Yes, because thats 1 trillion dollars we set on fire
Indeed, that's not a bad analogy for money spent on bombs. More blew up than burnt, but anyway... Don't confuse Money with Wealth. Money is an abstraction. You can print as much as you like, it's value remains backed by the wealth of the country (ultimately, anyway) which is why you can have US$1 = 47 Indian Rupees. When the GP points out that a trillion dollars has been spent on military adventures, it doesn't matter so much that a lot of the money bought things from american arms companies, paying soldiers' (and mercenaries') wages, as much as it represents that portion of the country's wealth which is represented by 1 trillion dollars being ploughed into unreclaimables such as keep a navy active in the area, building temporary bases, firing ammunition and detonating bombs, flights, supply deliveries... oh, and medical care for the many wounded US soldiers.
So no, the government didn't set money on fire - that would actually increase the value of the dollar. Instead, they effectively set a lot of your country's wealth on fire and thus devalued the dollar even more. In real terms, yes, you would have retained wealth better if you had invested it in infrastructure such as trains, rather than in flying hundreds of thousands of people back and forth around the world.
I'd go into the ethical side of the Iraq invasion - the lies about WMD and how Saddam was a threat to the US, the thousands of deaths resulting and the pillaging of a foreign country's natural resources under threat of military action, but I think the economic argument is the only one that will resonate with some people.
I'm of the opinion that if we hadn't had the competition of HD-DVD then Blu-Ray would have been even more expensive and it would have taken off even less.
The common denominator here is not that these people were Arabs or some other nationality,
Arab is not a "nationality", it is an ethnic group. This just highlights how you picture Arabs (and Persians) as one giant sprawling mono-culture. I might as well lump the US in with Mexico in with France in with Spain in with Greece. All predominantly Christian countries, yes?
but that they were all radical Muslims.
Say what now? You have no logical sequence here. You said "the sort of people who will fly a plane into a building" to include the people of Iran. I point out that the people you are referring to were actually of both a different nationality, native language and race to the Persian majority of Iran. And you respond that what matters is that they are all radical Muslims. Who says they're all "radical muslims"? You? Based on what? Just because you state something, doesn't mean it's true. If Iran were filled with people eager to die to destroy Israel, do you really think the country would be standing? It took eleven moderately funded individuals to bring down two major towers in the heart of the USA. What do you think a country filled with people keen to sacrifice themselves would have done by now? Iran hasn't launched an offensive war in, well, a long, long time.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to go through all the google hits that came up, over 1,700,000, for the phrase "Amadinejad quotes". Since you doubt the credibility of the Jerusalem Post, I am certain you can find these quotes somewhere else as well.
And that's it in a nutshell. You're not talking from a position of knowledge and familiarity. You have a point of view and when asked to back it up, you type "Ahmadinejad quotes" into Google and grab one that looks like it supports your point of view (shame you picked one so disreputable that it actually made you look like a conspiracy theorist, but never mind that). You didn't care to look at your own references to see if they were verified at all. You just passed them along to back up a point of view. Do you not think that your opinion should follow from facts, rather than selecting facts to follow your opinion? As to being certain that I "can find these quotes somewhere else" myself, you do it. You're the one telling me what Ahmadinejad believes and doesn't believe. You go and find supportable quotes. If you can't, then tell me on what basis you are making statements to people telling them what he says.
Ancient prophecies, from thousands of years ago, foretell of the scattering of the Jews all over the earth, but that they would be regathered in their own land before history as we have known it comes to an end. In 1948, Israel became a nation once again, in the Jewish homeland. Again, according to ancient prophecies, Jerusalem became the capital city of Israel in 1967.
It is also foretold that nations to the north of Israel would unite together in a very destructive war against her, but that they would be defeated. Today, much of Iran's nuclear support comes from the Russians and they support the Iranian government.
You keep repeating things like this through out the thread. You know what I think of someone who decides they can interpret God's words to the rest of us? ARROGANT. How do you dare start telling others what the prophets did and didn't mean?
The promise Jehovah God made to Abraham concerning his descendants will come true. As it is written, the two brothers Isaac and Ishmael, the ancestors of the Jews and the Arabs respectively will live in peace in the end.
Indeed. And the giving up of the attitudes and misconceptions that people like you have is more of a pre-requisite for such peace than nuclear strikes on Jerusalem is.
Agreed -- I think I'm too far removed from the situation to be well-informed about it
As are most of us, unfortunately. Most of what I have been posting in this epic thread has been critiques of other people's certainties, rather than offering my own absolute truths. Not living in Iran myself, the best that I can do is try to make informed arguments based on multiple sources and rational some consideration of the different forces' interests and resources. But still there are a lot of uncertainties. But uncertainty seems to lose out to dogmatic conviction in the mainstream media these days which is a shame, because the former leads to avoiding war and the latter, not so much.:(
I hate to dismiss a reference in entirety, but your first link is The Jerusalem Post. Even if one were unaware of the nature of this publication, a view of the page itself would make one suspicious: It's not a story or an article, but simply a page called "Ahmadinejad Quotes" detailing a list of things they say he said but without any support, even a date, a place or a speech. Bias is demonstrable in other stories on that site which makes me suspicious of this one. And having seen the travesty of a distortion in the US press that was the "wipe Israel off the map" quote, I think the US public should require more than unsubstantiated quotes in a dubious publication before deciding whether to approve of disapprove the use of their military against a country (which sanctions would require).
Regarding Holocaust denial, that is a subject I didn't raise. I don't know how solid this position is without a lot more investigating. Your second link is less convincing than it sounds out of context. It sounds more rhetorical as the completed sentence is: ", where did it exactly happen and who were the perpetrators? The second question is how exactly does that connect to the Palestinian issue?" He's asking and (later clarifies), if Europeans waged war in Europe against Jewish people, what does that have to do with Palestinian people outside Europe?
My biggest objection to your post is this however:
People willing to fly airplanes into buildings or otherwise blow themselves up, would not hesitate for one nano-second to use weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear bombs on people they hate.
You seem to think that Saudi Arabs equate to Iranian Persians. At least that's the best interpretation I can put on it. The statistical significance of less than a dozen of the millions of Saudi people engaging in the 9/11 attacks I'll leave as an exercise for anyone with more than primary school mathematics skills.
Thanks. That was an interesting read. The initial report based on Chatham House (an organ of the UK government actually) is pretty damning of the Iranian elections. But once you read past the article into the comments, you find a whole slew of corrections and explanations that are very convincing. Even Chatham's report that voter turn out was over 100% in some areas later makes sense when you realise that they are comparing local population with the number of votes there and that Iranians can vote anywhere in the country (so for example, lots of people go to work in a town and vote there, rather than back at their home village) - something that Chatham's researchers should have been (and probably were) aware of, but chose to misrepresent.
I hope this doesn't come across as seeking justifications for an existing view. I found the link very informative - but the comments, supplying additional facts, corrections and explanations to the article, were the most interesting part.
Iran has no need of a peaceful nuclear power plant system, with their own domestic, cheap oil coming out their ears
If Iran is self-sufficient in oil, then what sense would it make for oil sanctions to be used as a threat, and why would Russia be threatening to supply Iran with oil in defiance of US sanctions? Iran has raw oil deposits, they lack refinement capability. Now what makes sense to you if you're Iran - spend all your money building refinement capability so that you can (a) delay having to use nuclear power when the finite resource runs out and (b) use up yourself what you're currently selling to other people at a profit, OR build the nuclear power capability now rather than later and have cheap energy whilst selling your oil to dependent countries that haven't invested in nuclear power (e.g. the USA) ?
I don't see any double standard because:
1. Ahmadinijad keeps threatening to destroy Israel.
2. No one in Israel said anything like that about Iran.
In reverse order, Israel is right now, threatening to bomb Iran if it doesn't comply with their demands re: ceasing uranium enrichment and dismantling the infrastructure to do so. Here is the public channel from Israel: Link. Quote:
"We must work towards an accord - but if not, then we must strike our enemy when it is required."
-Ehud Barak, Israeli Defense Minister.
In diplomatic channels it has been stated quite baldly that Israel is ready to start bombing Iran. That's the biggest reason for the US's scramble for a sanctions-based solution.
As regards "Ahmadinejad keeps threatening to destroy Israel", I am unable to find a single verifiable reference. There is a bad translation out of context that gets put around a lot. There's a short discussion on YouTube about this here: Link.
If you disagree with the above links, please try to find evidence that Ahmadinejad "keeps threatening to destroy Israel".
They have only threatened Israel with extermination on almost a daily basis.
Nonsense. Try and back that up with an actual direct reference (i.e. not some biased blogger who made it up). No offense, but I'd recommend you research this properly.
Given that there was significant internal opposition to hosting U.S. missile bases in Poland [wikipedia.org] and especially in Czech Republic [wikipedia.org], with majority of citizens of both countries opposed to the project - which kinda makes sense, after all, they then become prime targets for a nuclear strike if push comes to shove, whereas without those bases they're hardly worthy of a single nuke. So I wouldn't be so certain that it's "alienating", and not the opposite.
You're right to pick up on that. I stand by what I said, however. Indeed, I think your links actually back me up. But I wasn't clear in my point and it's not something that I consider beyond argument. I should have said that the current governments of Poland and the Czech Republic feel let down by the US. There was a lot of domestic opposition to siting these bases in those countries (and rightly so, but that's a different discussion), but just like here in the UK, there are some matters where the governments just can't resist going against public will - toadying up to the US government is one of those areas, it seems. So it is a let down to those governments, especially having incurred the political cost of disregarding the people's will in assenting to the bases in the first place. From your second link:
The Polish government responded nervously. Some politicians voiced concern that the country would lose its special status in Washington, and that the move by Obama was an appeasement to Moscow. Jaroslaw Gowin, with Poland's governing Civic Platform party, said Obama's decision had been made independently of Polish sensitivities. Former Polish President Lech Walesa said he was deeply disappointed by the new US administration's plans. He stated: "The Americans have always only taken care of their own interests and they have used everyone else.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the step by the U.S. government was "no big surprise for anybody who had been following the cues in the past days and months," but that he was "100 percent convinced" that the step was no expression of a cooling in relations between the United States and the Czech Republic. However, Mirek Topolanek, who was prime minister when Prague agreed to co-host the shield, said the US decision to drop the plans "is not good news for the Czech state, for Czech freedom and independence."
Note the amusing disconnect between the Czech President's public positive statements and the former Prime Minister's more cynical one. You're right to pull me up for not highlighting the public opposition. No doubt there are many that are relieved they're not going to be a target for Russian missiles because of the US now. But I'm fairly sure the governments feel pretty slighted and are questioning just how much commmitment to their safety the US government would show in the face of Russian aggression. I'm willing to concede there's room for alternative views however, so people reading should draw their own conclusions.
Please provide a reference to that. As far as I know (and I have done some study on this) no major Christian denominations hold that Armageddon is something to be desired or promoted. Many Christians are convinced that Armageddon is just around the corner, but few see this as a good thing (except in so far as they see it as a pre-requisite to the return of Christ).
You put your finger on it with the "pre-requisite to the return of Christ" part. This is the best reference I can turn up at short notice. It's an essay by George Monbiot, but it is heavily referenced with various citations. Assess it as you wish. I find him to be a genuinely reputable writer.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/04/20/apocalypse-please
I'll only address your final question (regarding the relative scariness of Christian vs. Muslim fundamentalists) by observing that either is scary, that of the around 1.5 billion muslims in the world, those flying planes into skyscrapers are receiving rather a lot more than their share of media coverage and that, if you're comparing fundamentalist Christians in the US to fundamentalist Muslims in, say, Iraq or Palestine, then you'll note that the former don't live destitute in an occupied country having to improvise weapons. If they did, you might see them engage in exactly the same sort of improvised, asymetrical warfare and terrorism that anyone else does. Whether you use yourself as a bomb delivery method or not is less a factor of religion and more one of if you have a tank to use instead. IMO, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but people aren't stupid (okay - not in all ways). It will be pretty obvious to most people participating that they're not going to win against the strange obsessive person who has no job and no life and racks up 100 crimes a week. So cash prizes aren't going to be much of a motivation for playing this. Which means most people playing it will be doing so for other motivations.
Let's face it - the primary use of such a system would be lonely males jacking off over live feeds of unsuspecting young girls. In fact, if we want to oppose this system (and we do because we don't like living in a combined police state and mob-rule society), pointing out its wonderful desirability to peadophiles is probably the best approach to take for most.
Of course there will be those with other motivations also. Those with a particular hate-agenda will love this.
In addition to all the above legitimate concerns, add sexual harrasment and a live "hot girl at location X" Twitter feed or whatever. Not to mention filming and recording of partners, ex's, bullying victims, etc. And if you thought "happy slapping" with a phone camera was something, wait till you see what people can do when broadcast live on the Internet. If a group wants to harras you, it's going to much easier for them to do so, as you say. What do you think will happen with a system like this in the hands of Anonymous or some group like them.
Of course you might be able to use this to monitor the police, but if so, expect them to implement controls on that asap.
That whooshing sound you hear... it ain't an near-miss asteroid, I'm afraid.
"If the engine of the car were missing..." ??? We don't need to resort to analogy to explain this situation, we all understand it. So the only reason for resorting to analogy is to try and make the situation sound better or worse than it is. And that's bad practice.
This is someone who didn't know that the "box under his desk" was the computer itself. That's a significant level of ignorance for anyone in active life in the modern West. Yes - it's not a good sign when someone in a position of influence has that level of ignorance. That point does not require a car analogy to get across.
You made a great post, but I'm going to single out the above snippet because either you or I are wrong about this. I'm not saying that the spending of wealth in osme of the Arab countries hasn't been profligate. It certainly is by my standards. But it's wrong to imply that there's no re-investment going on. In fact, a lot of that money is coming back to the West in exchange for bargain sales of irreplacable things such as part-ownership of the NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange: Link. There are plenty of other significant examples of investment, but those are the most dramatic ones, I think. And it's not entirely wrong for greater cities to be built in those countries. People should live in nice places, yes? A lot of future business will be of a non-manufacturing kind - financial work or intellectual property for example. Very little of London's revenue is from manufacturing I should imagine. The key question is whether the cities are maintainable long-term due to natural resource issues. Water may be one of the most strategic issues in the future, but if these countries invest in nuclear power, then they may be okay. Of greatest concern is whether some of the money is invested into Education. After all, purchases of things like the LSE do little to benefit the mass of people in Qatar, for example.
How open are the borders generally though. That's a very, very large border. I presume it would be pretty easy to just hike across somewhere and travel round the USA that way? What about driving? Is every road really guarded or are there just not that many roads?
This is just supposition, but if it could be that he rather doesn't fit some profile. Given the number of confused comments on here the other day thinking Iranians were predominantly Arab for example, it may be that there's a considerable level of ignorance in US of the ethnic make up of a lot of countries generally. It may be that they are simply suspicious of someone who looks Indian / Pakistani but comes from Sweden. True - you'd hope customs officers would have a better idea, but that may not be the case.
Heh! I'd probably be up for seeing the *real* USA! Am supposed to go over there at some point and visit a friend. I think you and I keep having arguments here on
Regards
H.
I think that you might have misread my post. I am in agreement with your conclusion. Only the first sentence is where we differ - I called money an abstract way of representing the nation's wealth in order to draw attention to the flaw in the OP who seemed to think that so long as the money was spent somewhere, it didn't matter where. The invasion of Iraq is, as you say, a disgusting misdirection of America's resources. As well as an ethical failure resulting in great suffering both domestically and abroad.
Regards,
H.
And let me tell you, if people from the UK are telling you that your border-control is unwelcoming, then it must be! I also live in the UK. You can bounce around Europe crossing borders with little more than a wave of your passport and a friendly nod. Then when you come back to the UK, it's a bit of a shock. Most of the EU find Britain rather silly with how worked up about its borders it gets, given that the rest of it manages with less pomp *and* has direct land passage to outside countries. I've also heard some strong complaints from people I know about entering the US. Aren't they asking for retinal scans or fingerprints in some places, now?
Indeed, that's not a bad analogy for money spent on bombs. More blew up than burnt, but anyway... Don't confuse Money with Wealth. Money is an abstraction. You can print as much as you like, it's value remains backed by the wealth of the country (ultimately, anyway) which is why you can have US$1 = 47 Indian Rupees. When the GP points out that a trillion dollars has been spent on military adventures, it doesn't matter so much that a lot of the money bought things from american arms companies, paying soldiers' (and mercenaries') wages, as much as it represents that portion of the country's wealth which is represented by 1 trillion dollars being ploughed into unreclaimables such as keep a navy active in the area, building temporary bases, firing ammunition and detonating bombs, flights, supply deliveries... oh, and medical care for the many wounded US soldiers.
So no, the government didn't set money on fire - that would actually increase the value of the dollar. Instead, they effectively set a lot of your country's wealth on fire and thus devalued the dollar even more. In real terms, yes, you would have retained wealth better if you had invested it in infrastructure such as trains, rather than in flying hundreds of thousands of people back and forth around the world.
I'd go into the ethical side of the Iraq invasion - the lies about WMD and how Saddam was a threat to the US, the thousands of deaths resulting and the pillaging of a foreign country's natural resources under threat of military action, but I think the economic argument is the only one that will resonate with some people.
I'm of the opinion that if we hadn't had the competition of HD-DVD then Blu-Ray would have been even more expensive and it would have taken off even less.
I have had endless problems with Brothers at the last place I worked. On the other hand, I've had excellent performance with Samsung.
Next anecdote in 5..4..3..2..1...
Written any operating systems, lately?
Arab is not a "nationality", it is an ethnic group. This just highlights how you picture Arabs (and Persians) as one giant sprawling mono-culture. I might as well lump the US in with Mexico in with France in with Spain in with Greece. All predominantly Christian countries, yes?
Say what now? You have no logical sequence here. You said "the sort of people who will fly a plane into a building" to include the people of Iran. I point out that the people you are referring to were actually of both a different nationality, native language and race to the Persian majority of Iran. And you respond that what matters is that they are all radical Muslims. Who says they're all "radical muslims"? You? Based on what? Just because you state something, doesn't mean it's true. If Iran were filled with people eager to die to destroy Israel, do you really think the country would be standing? It took eleven moderately funded individuals to bring down two major towers in the heart of the USA. What do you think a country filled with people keen to sacrifice themselves would have done by now? Iran hasn't launched an offensive war in, well, a long, long time.
And that's it in a nutshell. You're not talking from a position of knowledge and familiarity. You have a point of view and when asked to back it up, you type "Ahmadinejad quotes" into Google and grab one that looks like it supports your point of view (shame you picked one so disreputable that it actually made you look like a conspiracy theorist, but never mind that). You didn't care to look at your own references to see if they were verified at all. You just passed them along to back up a point of view. Do you not think that your opinion should follow from facts, rather than selecting facts to follow your opinion? As to being certain that I "can find these quotes somewhere else" myself, you do it. You're the one telling me what Ahmadinejad believes and doesn't believe. You go and find supportable quotes. If you can't, then tell me on what basis you are making statements to people telling them what he says.
You keep repeating things like this through out the thread. You know what I think of someone who decides they can interpret God's words to the rest of us? ARROGANT. How do you dare start telling others what the prophets did and didn't mean?
Indeed. And the giving up of the attitudes and misconceptions that people like you have is more of a pre-requisite for such peace than nuclear strikes on Jerusalem is.
Regards,
H.
As are most of us, unfortunately. Most of what I have been posting in this epic thread has been critiques of other people's certainties, rather than offering my own absolute truths. Not living in Iran myself, the best that I can do is try to make informed arguments based on multiple sources and rational some consideration of the different forces' interests and resources. But still there are a lot of uncertainties. But uncertainty seems to lose out to dogmatic conviction in the mainstream media these days which is a shame, because the former leads to avoiding war and the latter, not so much. :(
An interesting point about Khamenei.
Regards,
H.
Heh! Saying I'm a wanker gets you +3 Informative. That's me told!
I hate to dismiss a reference in entirety, but your first link is The Jerusalem Post. Even if one were unaware of the nature of this publication, a view of the page itself would make one suspicious: It's not a story or an article, but simply a page called "Ahmadinejad Quotes" detailing a list of things they say he said but without any support, even a date, a place or a speech. Bias is demonstrable in other stories on that site which makes me suspicious of this one. And having seen the travesty of a distortion in the US press that was the "wipe Israel off the map" quote, I think the US public should require more than unsubstantiated quotes in a dubious publication before deciding whether to approve of disapprove the use of their military against a country (which sanctions would require).
Regarding Holocaust denial, that is a subject I didn't raise. I don't know how solid this position is without a lot more investigating. Your second link is less convincing than it sounds out of context. It sounds more rhetorical as the completed sentence is: ", where did it exactly happen and who were the perpetrators? The second question is how exactly does that connect to the Palestinian issue?" He's asking and (later clarifies), if Europeans waged war in Europe against Jewish people, what does that have to do with Palestinian people outside Europe?
My biggest objection to your post is this however:
You seem to think that Saudi Arabs equate to Iranian Persians. At least that's the best interpretation I can put on it. The statistical significance of less than a dozen of the millions of Saudi people engaging in the 9/11 attacks I'll leave as an exercise for anyone with more than primary school mathematics skills.
Thanks. That was an interesting read. The initial report based on Chatham House (an organ of the UK government actually) is pretty damning of the Iranian elections. But once you read past the article into the comments, you find a whole slew of corrections and explanations that are very convincing. Even Chatham's report that voter turn out was over 100% in some areas later makes sense when you realise that they are comparing local population with the number of votes there and that Iranians can vote anywhere in the country (so for example, lots of people go to work in a town and vote there, rather than back at their home village) - something that Chatham's researchers should have been (and probably were) aware of, but chose to misrepresent.
I hope this doesn't come across as seeking justifications for an existing view. I found the link very informative - but the comments, supplying additional facts, corrections and explanations to the article, were the most interesting part.
If Iran is self-sufficient in oil, then what sense would it make for oil sanctions to be used as a threat, and why would Russia be threatening to supply Iran with oil in defiance of US sanctions? Iran has raw oil deposits, they lack refinement capability. Now what makes sense to you if you're Iran - spend all your money building refinement capability so that you can (a) delay having to use nuclear power when the finite resource runs out and (b) use up yourself what you're currently selling to other people at a profit, OR build the nuclear power capability now rather than later and have cheap energy whilst selling your oil to dependent countries that haven't invested in nuclear power (e.g. the USA) ?
In reverse order, Israel is right now, threatening to bomb Iran if it doesn't comply with their demands re: ceasing uranium enrichment and dismantling the infrastructure to do so. Here is the public channel from Israel: Link. Quote:
In diplomatic channels it has been stated quite baldly that Israel is ready to start bombing Iran. That's the biggest reason for the US's scramble for a sanctions-based solution.
As regards "Ahmadinejad keeps threatening to destroy Israel", I am unable to find a single verifiable reference. There is a bad translation out of context that gets put around a lot. There's a short discussion on YouTube about this here: Link.
If you disagree with the above links, please try to find evidence that Ahmadinejad "keeps threatening to destroy Israel".
Nonsense. Try and back that up with an actual direct reference (i.e. not some biased blogger who made it up). No offense, but I'd recommend you research this properly.
You're right to pick up on that. I stand by what I said, however. Indeed, I think your links actually back me up. But I wasn't clear in my point and it's not something that I consider beyond argument. I should have said that the current governments of Poland and the Czech Republic feel let down by the US. There was a lot of domestic opposition to siting these bases in those countries (and rightly so, but that's a different discussion), but just like here in the UK, there are some matters where the governments just can't resist going against public will - toadying up to the US government is one of those areas, it seems. So it is a let down to those governments, especially having incurred the political cost of disregarding the people's will in assenting to the bases in the first place. From your second link:
Note the amusing disconnect between the Czech President's public positive statements and the former Prime Minister's more cynical one. You're right to pull me up for not highlighting the public opposition. No doubt there are many that are relieved they're not going to be a target for Russian missiles because of the US now. But I'm fairly sure the governments feel pretty slighted and are questioning just how much commmitment to their safety the US government would show in the face of Russian aggression. I'm willing to concede there's room for alternative views however, so people reading should draw their own conclusions.
Regards,
H.
You put your finger on it with the "pre-requisite to the return of Christ" part. This is the best reference I can turn up at short notice. It's an essay by George Monbiot, but it is heavily referenced with various citations. Assess it as you wish. I find him to be a genuinely reputable writer.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/04/20/apocalypse-please
I'll only address your final question (regarding the relative scariness of Christian vs. Muslim fundamentalists) by observing that either is scary, that of the around 1.5 billion muslims in the world, those flying planes into skyscrapers are receiving rather a lot more than their share of media coverage and that, if you're comparing fundamentalist Christians in the US to fundamentalist Muslims in, say, Iraq or Palestine, then you'll note that the former don't live destitute in an occupied country having to improvise weapons. If they did, you might see them engage in exactly the same sort of improvised, asymetrical warfare and terrorism that anyone else does. Whether you use yourself as a bomb delivery method or not is less a factor of religion and more one of if you have a tank to use instead. IMO, anyway.