You should've known the answer to that one yourself SirHamish !Originally Posted by sirhamish
LOL Anorak alert!!!!
Didn't you used to rip along the Beeslow Rd in one in your youth.....?
LOL Anorak alert!!!!
You should've known the answer to that one yourself SirHamish !LOL Anorak alert!!!!
Didn't you used to rip along the Beeslow Rd in one in your youth.....?
Nah, useless information is allright for pub quizzes.
A ROAD in Beeslow.........where..........where???LOL
Found this in Google
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
This is from The Foundation for Middle East Peace
http://www.fmep.org/reports/vol15/no...or_the_pa.html
Hamish
Here's more info on the Iranian President from The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days...686737,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world...686652,00.html
Maybe I'm naive, but i genuinely believe that the Iranians are developing their nuclear resources for purely civilian purposes, but with all the history and distrust between America and Iran, I feel conflict is brewing, and in the current climate, America doesn't need many reasons to conduct military operations in other countries, so this issue could be used as a flag of convenience to justify conflict against Iran. If the Europeans join up with the Americans, we would all be in grave danger of getting caught up in the crossfire, because the war won't be just restricted to Iranian territory. It will make Iraq look a picnic in comparison.
You may well be right. But given Iran's statement that it wants the State of Israel wiped off the face of the earth - does it make sense to then allow them carte blanche to play with precisely the type of technlogy that would enable them to do this ? If a small child wants to use a pair of scissors - chances are they'll do so without any harm. But because the risk of harm is still there, that's why they have to do so supervised (or with special 'neutered' plastic scissors, to reduce the likelihood of harm).
It's the same with Iran. They've been offered the opportunity to have the uranium required for nuclear fuel supplied to them directly by Russia. This would enable them to use it as a power source, but prevent them from accessing uranium in a 'weapon's grade' strength (the nuclear equivalent of giving a kid plastic scissors). So what is wrong with that proposed solution, if their intent is genuine ?
It places Iran dependant on Russia for future energy supplies. In a world where energy is becoming more scarse it is not a serious proposal.
Fine summing up mypost. Iran is floating on a lake of oil, as they say so why the need for nuclear power?? They claim that when the oil runs out they'll have this "alternative" energy.
As to whether they want it for energy only I honestly don't know, to tell you the truth but maybe they're doing a North Korea and telling the US to lay off.
I see Israel today, too, has made it rather clear they won't let them do it.
This situation is rolling out of control I think and will need some super-diplomacy to calm things down.
What - you mean like half the rest of the Western world is already dependent upon Russia for its future oil and gas supplies ?!?! Do you read the papers......?
Regardless - it's Hobson's choice for Iran. Take it from Russia or do without, and risk getting in serious sh!t with the international community. In that light, the Russian offer is a phenomenally serious proposal.....
I don't doubt that Iran wants to develop nukes. As has been said, works keeping North Korea safe from attack.
I'd much rather no countries had nukes, but the hypocracy of those that do beggars belief. I doubt we'd be threatened with sanctions if we developed nuclear power stations (rather than rely on nuclear power from the UK), so why should Iran? Just because we don't like their elected leader*
*may not be the most democratic election, but still a better election than Pakistan, Saudi etc etc that are okay with the west.
If you attack me with stupidity, I'll be forced to defend myself with sarcasm.
Iran Has an 'Inalienable
Right' To Nuclear Energy
By Enver Masud
The Wisdom fund
1-19-5
Iran has an "inalienable right" to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes such as the production of electric energy, and the enrichment of uranium for its nuclear reactors. Could it be that Iran's plan for an oil exchange trading in Euros is the real issue? Or is it Israel? Article IV of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force on March 5, 1970, states:
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.
2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world. Thus, not only does Iran have an "inalienable right" to use nuclear energy for electricity, the NPT obligates the nuclear powers to "further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes." Iran has gone beyond its obligations under the NPT to assure others of it's peaceful intentions.
According to Dr. Gordon Prather, a nuclear physicist who was the top scientist for the army in the Reagan years, in December, 2003, Iran had signed an Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement and had volunteered to cooperate with the IAEA - pending ratification by the Iranian Parliament - as if the Additional Protocol were actually "in force." Iran also offered, says Dr. Prather, "to voluntarily forego a complete fuel cycle . . . if the Europeans would get the United States to reverse the campaign of denial, obstruction, intervention, and misinformation." Iran had already offered on March 23, 2005 a package of "objective guarantees" (developed by an international panel of experts) that met most of the demands later made by the conservative, Washington based Heritage foundation says Dr. Prather. The International Atomic Energy Agency has found no "smoking gun" in Iran that would indicate a nuclear weapons program, says Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the IAEA. Thirty years ago, Iran developing a nuclear capacity "caused no problems for the Americans because, at that time, the Shah was seen as a strong ally, and had indeed been put on the throne with American help", says Tony Benn, Britain's secretary of state for energy from 1975-79.
With world oil production approaching a peak it makes sense for Iran to look toward alternative means for generating electricity, and to reserve its oil supply for other purposes including increasing revenues from the export of the additional oil not used for electricity production. A major reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "to install a pro-U.S. government in Iraq, establish multiple U.S. military bases before the onset of global Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency." Iran is about to commit a far greater "offense" than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro for Iraq's oil exports in the fall of 2000. Beginning in March 2006, the Tehran government has plans to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades - using a euro-based international oil-trading mechanism," writes William R. Clark the author Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar.
According to Toni Straka, a Vienna, Austria-based financial analyst who runs a blog, The Prudent Investor, Iran's "proposal to set up a petroleum bourse was first voiced in Iran's development plan for 2000-2005. . . . Cheaper nuclear energy and increases in oil exports from the current level of roughly 2.5 million barrels a day will result in a profitable equation for Iran. "Only one major actor stands to lose from a change in the current status quo: the US" says Toni Straka, "which with less than 5% of the global population, consumes roughly one third of global oil production." "There could hardly be a clearer example of double standards than this, and it fits in with the arming of Saddam to attack Iran after the Shah had been toppled, and the complete silence over Israel's huge nuclear armoury," says Tony Benn. Yes, given the technology and knowledge Iran could develop a nuclear weapon. But "under the current regime, there is nothing illicit for a non-nuclear state to conduct uranium-enriching activities . . . or even to possess military-grade nuclear material," says ElBaradei. Thirty-five to forty countries possess this capability. Israel - not a signatory to the NPT - has had this capability for years, is believed to have several hundred nuclear bombs, the missiles to deliver them to Iran, and it is no secret that it has been threatening strikes on Iran's Bushehr nuclear electric power plant - just as it launched an unprovoked and illegal attack on Iraq's, Osirak nuclear electric power plant in 1981.
U.S. news media's timidity was a significant factor in the launching of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This invasion has claimed the lives of over 2000 U.S. soldiers and over 180,000 Iraqis. It has left uncounted others wounded and maimed, it has destroyed much of Iraq's - indeed the world's - cultural heritage, and is likely to cost U.S. taxpayers "between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought," according to a report written by Joseph Stiglitz - recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. John Ward Anderson of the Washington Post wrote on January 13: "The foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France called Thursday for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for violating its nuclear treaty obligations." Neither he nor the editors or ombudsman at the Post have responded to our request to identify which "nuclear treaty obligations" is Iran violating. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jack Boureston and Charles D. Ferguson say, "In pursuing a civilian nuclear program, Iran has international law on its side. . . . The best way to know the full extent of Iran's nuclear doings is to offer it help."
I do ocasionally read the papers, and amoungst the things I've reas is that western europe is very concerned about being dependant on Russia for energy. So much so that a lot of countries are considering building a lot more nuclier power plants. The issue came to a head recently when Russia increased the price of gas in Ukraine because of who the Ukrainians voted into government.What - you mean like half the rest of the Western world is already dependent upon Russia for its future oil and gas supplies ?!?! Do you read the papers......?
Iran, sensibly enough, does not want to walk into the same weak position.
I suspect just like Russia (they have built nuclear power plants recently) Iran sees more value in exporting oil & satisfying its own energy needs through nuclear.
In fairness, nuclear is something we're going to have to consider too. Even if you're one of the head in the sand brigade that ignores the fact we already use nuclear produced electricity through the link with the UK National Grid.
I actually heard a report on 5live from Paris (The Worriker Programme, when they had the constitution referendum (that's as good a reference as I can get sorry) where the French Green campaigners were pro-nuclear electricity. They reckoned it was the least bad environmentally of the options compared to coal, oil, gas etc...
If you attack me with stupidity, I'll be forced to defend myself with sarcasm.
Oil is only going to get more expensive & more unpredictable & since we have virtually no fossil fuels of our own we gonna get screwed even more in the future. At least with Nuclear energy you are self reliant.
Nimbys complain enough when an Incinerator is being build so can only imagine the hassle if even discussed nuclear...
Guys, problems with nuclear power is that
1. It's "cheap" 'cos every government gives it massive subsidies - otherwise, like the absence of fuel tax on planes, it would be unbelievably expensive. Therefore, citizens pay for it before, during and long after the energy it produces.
2. Not included in the costs of building each nuclear power station will be the decommissioning costs which will be paid for also by? Yeah, citizens' taxes.
3. No satisfactory method has been found to store nuclear waste - I mean, waste is stored far too close to fault lines in the Irish sea and remember that small earthquake recently in the Irish South East? Guess where the focus and epicentre of that emanated from? More storage facilities are muted for the same area in caverns.
4. Wish I could fund the source now but I did read recently a report by (NOT alternative energy proponents BTW) energy experts that by the time a new generation of nuclear power stations are up and running, the costs will be the same as a viable combination of the clean energy sources.
5.Nuclear power stations DO generate carbon emissions - so much for their cleanliness.
6.A reduction in the sheer waste of energy would make unbelievable savings regarding use of power. I mean, how many houses have proper insulation double glazing? There's a small start. There are, literally, millions of ways countries can reduce waste in energy use.
6. Many of you are too young to remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl - people ore still dying and being born hideously deformed from the latter.
7.Ok Chernobyl was in the old USSR with awful standards in safety BUT the nuclear power industry has a history riddled with corruption, false or non reporting of safety (and dangerous) incidences, "hidden" costs and inefficiency - not just in Sellafield (Windscale) but everywhere - check it out.
How does that tie in with Iran? If Iran goes ahead with even nuclear development for peaceful purposes, it will suffer lack of foreign expertise and finance which means lack of safety within its facilities and with regard to where it will store its waste - not a pleasant prospect.
Besides, given that the mad mullahs organ grinders (and their civilian monkeys) are in control, they are not to be trusted with such awesome forces. I mean, if our so-called open governments are associated with such a dodgy nuclear industry, how, in God's, name can we trust Iran??
Japan
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...09/ai_n7190373
http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/ni...92coverup.html
India
http://www.satribune.com/archives/fe...P1_iyangar.htm
Britain and elsewhere
http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nucl...eld/37480.html
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=112&format=rss
http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/ar...692252,00.html
(Latter from Guardian 22/01/2006)
Anti-Nuclear sites
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/WARevNP.html
http://www.ieer.org/reports/npdb.html
Pro Nuclear (with a little bit of anti) Nuclear
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/State...p2003n022.html
http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/fring.../safenuke.html
Last point, as some have wrongly stated (not in Foot.ie) nuclear energy is NOT an indigenous source of power - uranium has to be imported and uranium in the world is fast running out. So, more and more countries are building nuclear power plants and intend to do so, where will there be enough uranium for them all???
Last edited by hamish; 24/01/2006 at 6:19 PM.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review
Belligerent Until the Bitter End
If You Can't Win One War, Start Another
By Paul Craig Roberts
04/07/06 "Baltimore Chronicle" -- -- The Bush regime currently has wars underway in Afghanistan and in Iraq and can bring neither to a conclusion. Undeterred by these failures, the Bush regime gives every indication that it intends to start a war with Iran, a country that is capable of responding to US aggression over a broader front than the Sunni resistance has mounted in Iraq.
The US lacks sufficient conventional capability to prevail in such widespread conflict. The US also lacks the financial resources. Iraq alone has already cost several hundred billion borrowed dollars, with experts' estimates putting the ultimate cost in excess of one trillion dollars.
Moreover, the Bush regime's belligerent foreign policy extends to regions beyond the Middle East. The Bush regime has recently declared election outcomes in former Soviet republics as "unacceptable."
The Bush regime with the support of both political parties preaches democracy to the world while ignoring it at home. Polls show that Americans are opposed to open borders and amnesties for illegals. But a government willing to dictate to the world is willing to dictate to its own citizens. The "unacceptable" outcomes are those that do not empower parties aligned with the US and NATO. Russians view the Bush regime's "democracy programs" for Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus as an effort to push Russia northward and deprive it of warm water ports.
Russian leaders speak of the "messianism of American foreign policy" leading to a new cold war.
An article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, long regarded as a voice of the American foreign policy establishment, concludes that the Bush regime "is openly seeking primacy in every dimension of modern military technology, both in its conventional arsenal and in its nuclear forces." The article suggests that the US has now achieved nuclear superiority and could succeed with a preemptive nuclear attack on both Russia and China. Considering the extreme delusions of the neoconservative warmongers who control the Bush regime, the publication of this article will encourage more aggressive assertions of American hegemony.
The article has "had an explosive effect" in Russia, according to former prime minister Yegor Gaidar. The fact that Russia's nuclear missiles are no longer seen to be sufficiently robust to serve as deterrents could dangerously unleash restraints on the neoconservatives' proclivity to impose their will on the world. The authors of the Foreign Policy article write that America's nuclear primacy positions the US "to check the ambitions of dangerous states such as China, North Korea, and Iran." Neocons, of course, never see their own ambitions as dangerous.
The Bush regime has succeeded in committing America to a belligerent and messianic foreign policy that means years of wars at a minimum and likely preemptive US nuclear attacks against other countries.
How will Americans pay for the decades of war that the neocons are fomenting? The Afghan and Iraqi wars are being financed by the Chinese and Japanese whose loans cover the Bush regime's budgetary red ink. Can US nuclear primacy succeed in forcing the indefinite extension of this financing as a form of tribute? Can the neoconservatives subdue the Islamic Middle East with nuclear weapons without endangering the flow of oil?
The classic method of war finance is inflation. The Romans destroyed the intrinsic value of their coinage with lead. When the US can no longer sell its bonds, it can print money.
The US might have nuclear primacy, but it no longer has economic primacy. The US economy has been living on debt. In 2005 American consumers overspent their incomes for the first time since the Great Depression. The rising trade deficit is cutting into economic growth. Middle class jobs for Americans are being lost to offshore outsourcing and to foreigners brought in on work visas. Salaries in the jobs that remain are being forced down. Adjusted for inflation, starting salaries for university graduates are declining. Business Week's Michael Mandel (September 15, 2005) compared starting salaries in 2005 with those in 2001.
Adjusted for inflation, starting salaries for university graduates are declining.He found a 12.7% decline in computer science pay, a 12% decline in computer engineering pay, and a 10.2% decline in electrical engineering pay. Psychology majors experienced a 9.3% fall in starting salaries, marketing a 6.5% decline, business administration a 5.7% fall, and accounting majors were offered 2.3% less.
Economist Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve, estimates that 42-56 million American service sector jobs are susceptible to offshore outsourcing. Whether or not all of these jobs leave, US salaries will be forced down by the willingness of foreigners to do the work for less.
By substituting cheaper foreign labor for US labor, globalization boosts corporate profits and managerial bonuses at the expense of workers pay. We are seeing the end of the broadly shared prosperity of the post-WWII era. Education and re-training are no protection against offshoring and foreign workers entering America on work visas.
Americans at the lower end of the income scale are being decimated by massive legal and illegal immigration that has dramatically increased the labor supply in construction, cleaning services, and slaughterhouses.
With incomes flat or falling and prices rising, increased taxation to finance the neoconservatives' wars of aggression is not in the cards.
The Bush regime with the support of both political parties preaches democracy to the world while ignoring it at home. Polls show that Americans are opposed to open borders and amnesties for illegals. But a government willing to dictate to the world is willing to dictate to its own citizens. We are witnessing the American citizen's loss of his voice and the rise of concentrated power. The primacy that the neocons are seeking over the world will prevail over the American people, too.
From that excellent journalist Seymour Hersh
http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle12645.htm
Sample
"One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”
I was told recently that the US Federal Reserve will no longer publish the amount of currency in circulation (i think its called M3) which means a period of hgher inflation on the cards. Shortsighted solution of print more money.
When will the americans vote these goons out of power?
Good points Pete - they have literally wrecked the US economy - many jobs now created are "McJobs" and poorly paid. The US isin hock to the Japanese, Saudi Arabians and China - the dollar is virtually worth less and when The Iranian Burse gets on track - trading oil in Euros - then the sh!t will really start hitting the fan. An attack on Iran will be one of the final nails in the economy - back on thread.
The US empire is showing all the traits of end of Empire that the Romans, Brits etc showed, massive debts, unhappy citizenry, over-stretched militarily, disliked ideologically worldwide, the rulers saturated in their own hubris. etc etc etc.
One thing overlooked, there has been not one shred of real evidence that Iran has the tools to make a bloody bomb.
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