Still A Mess
It looks like Bibi didn’t get the reception in Washington he was looking for: Israeli Official: 2-State Focus “Stupid”.
Immediately after saying that the official started backpedaling and spinning, realized he had screwed up, major league. It was amended to mean that the idea is great, swell, wonderful, but there’s no need to concentrate on it when there are other paths to peace, [editor: that include a lot of dead bodies, which is a requirement for Israeli politicians these days.]
The Iranians are inching their way to more sophisticated weapons: Iran tests new surface-to-surface missile.
The big advance is that this is a solid fuel rocket. Their current missile with the same range [approximately 1200 miles] is liquid fuel which forces it to have static launch sites, and makes it very dangerous to transport if fueled.
If certain governments stopped talking constantly about attacking them, the Iranians might not see the need to spend the money on new weapons.
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If certain governments stopped talking constantly about attacking them, the Iranians might not see the need to spend the money on new weapons.
😈
Tom Lehrer always cuts to the chase, Hipparchia.
Mr. Duff you have obviously been away for a significant period and totally missed the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction. Do try to keep up.
My Father spent his military career creating and refining guidance systems for our weapons, while I spent the bulk of my military career watching the developments of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. I have a rather extensive understanding of threat levels and capabilities.
If you evaluate reality on its own terms without a political filter, you might understand what is going on.
BTW, Hitler was running around invading neighbors to amass “living room” and “for security reasons”. The analogy is better matched to Israel than Iran when looked at without filters. Israel is the nation with the nuclear arsenal, the history of unprovoked wars, the occupation of land, and the racial justifications.
Iran hasn’t had an offensive war since about 1780. During World War II it was preemptively occupied by the UK and US, although it was neutral.
Nobody really wants a two state strategy, at least not as currently proposed. If it were up to me, I’d move Israel to a place full of oil revenue, and far from the Middle East.
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You mean like the North Slope of Alaska or the Gulf of Mexico, Kevin?
There is no way of making everyone happy. The most you can hope for is to make the majority of people only minimally unhappy without making anyone totally miserable.
Israel was a European solution to a European problem created by European crimes, but the Arabs were the ones who lost their land. This is at the heart of all of the animosity.
I actually think the animosity might have passed if a) the Arabs had been compensated for their lands seized via ethnic cleansing (logically, by the United States, since it was U.S. pressure on Britain which created the immediate problem of Jewish militias ethnically cleansing Arabs from their lands), and b) the states where the ethnically cleansed Arabs had fled had granted citizenship to the fled Arabs. Neither happened.
When you have a stateless and poorly educated people with no hope for the future, Bad Things Happen nine times out of ten.
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Obviously compensation is a big part of it, and the land and water grab is still going on. I sure that there are people in the Gaza refugee camp who have the title to the “Israeli” settlements that are getting hit with rockets.
The UK maintained the property records during the Mandate, so it’s not like people didn’t know it went on. Farmers only have their land, and they don’t part with it willingly after being there for generations.
You look at the eminent domain battles in the US when you try to widen a road, that include compensation, and then think what they would be like if there was no compensation. We would definitely have blood shed if it was tried down here, so I don’t think people should expect a different reaction from Palestinians.
When you have a stateless and poorly educated people with no hope for the future, Bad Things Happen nine times out of ten.
Sooo… Like the USA then? 😈
ba-boom! 😉 😆
Iran didn’t decide to go nuclear and Israel has been making threatening noises since the Shah was overthrown,
You were the one who claimed that Americans don’t understand about threats to their soil, and I was pointing to the obvious threats of the Cold War. If you don’t like being shown to be in error, don’t make mistakes.
Iran began the nuclear process under the Shah as a response to the ancient “Atoms for Peace” program promoted by the US. This isn’t something started after their revolution. The problem they encountered and the reason they had to find other sources to build their facilities was the US decision to violate the contracts in place to construct the reactors, which included pressure on the German government which resulted in their breaking of contracts.
I guess you are totally unfamiliar with the Christian tradition of martyrdom. I guess you can’t imagine a British garrison holding out to the last man. I don’t suppose you ever heard of waves of British soldiers repeatedly attacking trenches in the face of machine gun fire in World War I. You apparently believe only Muslims are willing to die for what they believe. Sorry, but not everyone in a Western nation is quite as cowardly as you apparently assume.
As for your scenario with Mexico, with laughter at the absurd concept. No one is currently threatening Mexico, certainly, no one with nuclear weapons like Israel.
Israel shares no borders with Iran. Iran has never threatened Israel. Iran has never participated in any significant way in any attacks on Israel, and only became involved in support for the Shi’ia in Lebanon after Israel invaded the country. Israel creates its own enemies.
Iran is a signatory of the Nonproliferation Treaty; Israel isn’t. There are international inspections of Iran’s facilities; Israel refuses to acknowledge their existence. Iran isn’t occupying anyone; Israel is.
Denial of the reality of Israeli policies doesn’t make those policies disappear.
Do try to stay current, and you might try to read reliable translations of Farsi instead of the distortions written by Israel and its syncopates.
Ahmadinejad has never threatened Israel with anything other than retaliation uf they attacked Iran. The supposed threat that Israel will be wiped off the map, doesn’t even exist as an idiom in Farsi. What has been said is that Israel is a European transplant that doesn’t belong in the Middle East. That has always been the Iranian complaint about Israel, that it was a European solution that showed no regard for the people who lived there.
If the inspectors were thrown out, someone really should tell them they are not supposed to be there. Iran doesn’t want to discuss history with the IAEA, but the inspectors are still there. Do try to keep up.
Your stereotyping would be amusing if people in power didn’t share your delusions. You know less about Islam than you do about the military, and that takes some effort. Based on percentages, the Japanese are the most suicide prone people in the world, although the US military is rapidly closing the gap based on alarming new figures since the beginning of the Iraq War. With 1.4 billion adherents, Islam is way down the list.
Iran started funding Hezbollah and Hamas after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli support for the Lebanese Christian militias. Hezbollah was a faction of the al Dawa movement that is the current ruling party in Iraq. The al Sadr family of Iraq is actually Lebanese in origin, from a different branch of the original movement. Massacres in refugee camps tends to spur donations among the co-religious.
Disembowelment is a practice of the Samurai class, not the average Japanese. The Kamikaze didn’t commit seppuku while flying into Allied vessels and it would be considered very presumptuous for the average Japanese to attempt the ritual. You certainly have some odd ideas.
I’m a Slavic specialist, I have friends who are Persian specialists. Iran is on the border of the old Soviet Union and near to missile testing facilities, so it fell under my brief.
Actually, I advocated the creation of a consolidation of resources that combined all of the border agencies. Unfortunately what the Hedgemony did was a total screw-up with relevant agencies left out, and irrelevant agencies inserted, in the standard plan to make government more inefficient.
By the way, you left out my assistant professor of computer science, head of criminal investigations for a small law enforcement department. and small business owner. All of the various positions I have held are related to two skills – linguistics and systems analysis. I had forty years to do it, so the Mensa thing is really not a requirement.