There is nothing unfortunate about not respecting the rather vile iranian regime currently in power and which stands on the necks of the citizens of Iran...who are worthy of respect.
K. Summary
52. While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, as Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation, including by not implementing its Additional Protocol, the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.
Maybe the IAEA is in better position to judge whether Iran is flouting than you are.
It doesn't matter what Israel thinks. Syria is governed by a vile bunch of murders and the likelihood is that things aren't going to get worse even if the next bunch of rulers are also a bunch of vile murderers.
they'll be wielding less control.
on the other hand, there are reasons for thinking that the next regime will be a better one.
conspiracy???? please, Dr Cole, please. the "right" to petition the government for redress doesn't not include the right to set up camps in parks and to hold the land in occupation at the expense of the owners and/or the public.
but if you think otherwise, I'll send you an "OCCUPY JUDEA" t-shirt
The blockade has benefiting neither the Irsaelis nor any one else other than Hamas. Hamas taxes the "tunnel economy" as a revenue source and a source of employment for tis supporters
It might be underestimating the Arabs or it might be based on thinking that there are conditions of education and literacy, economic development and distribution, or "acceptance on the norms of compliance" which would facilitate acceptance of power-sharing and allow for those "losing" on an issue to accept the lose and continue to participate.
it might be right or wrong, made in wisdom or foolishness, racist assumptions or simply assessing a situation based upon assumptions concerning Democracy rather more than assumptions concerning Arabs.
crying racism sometimes is based on little more than assumptions also.
I don't think that you get to lay the responsibility for the fighting between the Turks and the Kurds at Bush's feet.
The Turkish government has to carry the weight of their own repressive policies and actions. ... as do the Kurds.
Bush is already neck-deep in catastrophic failure and it's merely piling on stuff where he's but a minor irritant in a large and long-lived open wound.
If Chris Hedges says that OWS is going to change the world by sitting in Zuccotti Park, using the bathrooms of the businesses that service the Wall Street firms and having donated food delivered via UPS...then it must be true, because Chris Hedges is entirely, like, rational.
Well yes, the subsidy cuts have reduced consumption through the glorious method of allowing the poor to consume less.....and with the currency growing ever more worthless, the poor in Iran will soon be able to consume just about nothing at all
------When one really looks at US history there are not any examples where it single handedly took on a power greater than itself and defeated it through conquest-----
if you structure your sentence so that the conditions described comprise a null set of events....(the US and never warred alone against a greater power and sought a "defeat through conquest")
it's not all that surprising that it hasn't happened.
Iranian power isn't growing and the Obama administration doesn't think it to be.
The Saudis aren't being encouraged by the US to arm...They're arming because they see the US as insufficiently confrontational toward Iran.
The GCC countries are the ones most threatened by the Iranian nuclear weapons program and the Saudis are going to be ramping up their program to push against Iran, it's ally Assad and the Iranian proxy in Lebanon. The Saudis are enlisting Turkey and upset that Israel is too crazy to to make some kind of deal with the PA, because then the Saudis would have some cover to work with the israelis against the Iranian expansionist theocracy.
You've got a good point that Obama's administration i centrist and maybe a bit right of center.
You're quite wrong to think that there's even the slightest problem with fielding a candidate to the right of that position. A heck of a lot of voters are center-right.
The R's run a guy that sounds sane like Romney and the economy stays lousy, they've got a good chance.
The problem, as Cole says, is that they can't all get enthused about someone who sounds reasonable or whose campaign rhetoric doesn't include chunks of Jesus and the invisible hand
iran has already enriched enough Uranium to meets that need for quite some time and won't find it difficult to obtain additional supplies in future if they abandon their enrichment program.
"Would it help for appeals in the US, like those in Italy, to have a jury? That step might counter-act the natural instinct of any court to preserve its authority by resisting a charge of having made a major error."
an appeals court is entirely different from the trial court and there's no threat to the authority of the appellate judges' authority entailed in reversing the result of the trial.
The Pakistan military will do nothing except gripe when the US declares the Haqqani network a terrorist organization and starts bombing them, just as they do nothing to fight the Haqqani network.
I doubt that they'll admit that drones are taking off from the Shansi air base, and be willing to bet that they won't close that base to the drones.
But I thank Dr Cole for printing that Jinnah editorial with that hilarious line...." trustworthy friendly countries like China and Iran" backing Pakistan's role in the war on terror. Iran's backing is mighty funny.....and it's rather obvious to the Chinese that Pakistan is allowing itself to be used to train insurgents who are increasingly challenging the Chinese regime.
Mullen was not only saying what everybody in DC knows to be hard fact, but has spent the last couple of years going to Pakistan every couple of months to quietly try to get Pakistan to change the facts.
He's been patient and persistent and he's been unable to get anywhere with Pakistan.
Thomas Cole's comparison of Mullen to MacArthur is extremely ill-considered,
the easiest way to defeat Pakistan is to stop sending it money and other aid and wait a couple of years for the next coup. (or facilitate one) and make a deal with the new government.
but, of course, none of that will be necessary. Pakistan isn't going to more than grumble ( and look for cash and weapons to brandish along the border with India) when we start blowing up the Haqqani installations.
Indeed there are many different factions in the ruling circles in pakistan and Sen Graham is correct to suggest that we should consider many options (as long we have) in order to try to influence actions in Pakistan that we desire.
I would think that the military actions he's suggesting are drone strikes against some of the terrorists that receive safe haven in Pakistan and that he's not advocating attacking the "official" armed forces of Pakistan.
if the palestinians go to court with their claims against Israel, rather than employing violence, it will be a good thing. they responded with violence when the UN invited the Israelis (and the Palestinians) to establish a state.
far too much violence from both sides .... and far too many claims from both sides that have far too little truth. it's long past time to put the violence and the lies away and accept the hard truths about the atrocious behavior that every party in the conflict refuses to admit about themselves
what if most Westerners want to be "colonialistic"?
would it be equally undemocratic for the Egyptian voters to oppose that?
in the US, our government was crafted with an eye toward blunting bad and ugly ideas that might attract the support of a majority.
for example, freedom of religion is something that Americans are guaranteed whether the majority of the citizens agree with it or not.
in places such as Iran or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan there is no freedom of religion.
in Egypt, religious freedom isn't quite guaranteed and if the majority of Egyptians want to abolish it altogether and impose religious conformity, opposing that may well seem "undemocratic" but opposing their preference also seems like a real good idea.
it's not at all clear that the Israelis are unwilling to agree to a two-state solution. the record shows that it's been the Palestinians and the Arabs that have been opposed to it far more than the Israelis.
at present there's little hope of it being realized and that's not all on the Israelis. Hamas also opposes a peace-and-partition deal which means that the Palestinians can't deliver their end of a deal.
----"Why would he describe this as “hostile” instead of describing the UN as attempting to seek justice?"----
because there's some truth in his statement. see Durban I and II ......
even if you think that all of those UN resolutions that you say Israel violates are attempts at reaching justice, the speeches and statements from those World Conferences against Racism in 2001 and 2009 are not really defensible as "just" rather than expressions of hostility.
well Joseph, it IS a little more complicated than that. ending the occupation isn't a guarantee of anything and there's little reason to think that peace will follow a return to the '67 borders. when Israel was at those borders, there certainly wasn't peace.
peace doesn't follow unless both sides want it and can deliver it, working to thwart those on their own side who will oppose it.
the Palestinians can't deliver peace at present....(and Lord knows that the present Israeli government is uninterested in working to deliver a just peace).
you're quite right and, hopefully quite soon, a palestinian state will be established. that happy day isn't yet at hand for Iran is supporting Hamas in obstructing any possible deal to end the occupation and Netanyahu's coalition of fools and racists is also unwilling to accept any decent deal.
excellent comment. Israel is indeed displaying an extremely hard line, but Turkey's more been moved to embracing their Arab neighbors by a need to find markets for its products, particularly after being shot out from membership in the EU. than by anything from Israel.
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There is nothing unfortunate about not respecting the rather vile iranian regime currently in power and which stands on the necks of the citizens of Iran...who are worthy of respect.
asserting that Iran is not flouting the IAEA and hasn't a history of flouting, is what's known as being untruthful......
link to iaea.org
K. Summary
52. While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, as Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation, including by not implementing its Additional Protocol, the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.
Maybe the IAEA is in better position to judge whether Iran is flouting than you are.
Gingrich will say stuff even he himself isn't too ignorant to believe.
Right now, his focus is on pandering to the Know-Nothings and muscular Christians and blind xenophobes of the radical right of the Republican base.
These nuts are a large part of the voters in Republican primaries and they believe that Gingrich is too "soft" and liberal.
So Newt's talkin tough.
It doesn't matter what Israel thinks. Syria is governed by a vile bunch of murders and the likelihood is that things aren't going to get worse even if the next bunch of rulers are also a bunch of vile murderers.
they'll be wielding less control.
on the other hand, there are reasons for thinking that the next regime will be a better one.
conspiracy???? please, Dr Cole, please. the "right" to petition the government for redress doesn't not include the right to set up camps in parks and to hold the land in occupation at the expense of the owners and/or the public.
but if you think otherwise, I'll send you an "OCCUPY JUDEA" t-shirt
“the Jews” have designs on the Pyramids.
could be true....might even attempt an artisan's lien.
Gareth Porter sez so?????????
Outside of Orly Taitz, who's LESS credible than Porter?
Porter has no evidence for his claim other than "Danilenko's recollections of the early period of his career..." published in some book.
Of course, the IAEA didn't name the guy, and it might not have been Danilenko who was interviewed by IAEA........
but ley's go with "fallen apart"
it's suits what we wish to belief.
DB-- three years is a good estimate....but it's hard to see how the iranian regime can be forced to open its doors.
---"My question is why would they want to lob a missile onto a large country such as Iran, knowing full well there’s going to be retaliations?"----
As retaliation, PiaP
The blockade has benefiting neither the Irsaelis nor any one else other than Hamas. Hamas taxes the "tunnel economy" as a revenue source and a source of employment for tis supporters
IF it happens, it won't be an Israeli attack........
link to old.news.yahoo.com
Abdullah was cheated, the US didn't like it, couldn't really do anything about it.
Can anyone think of an American politician that would do a better job than Karzai?
----
Jesse Jackson
It might be underestimating the Arabs or it might be based on thinking that there are conditions of education and literacy, economic development and distribution, or "acceptance on the norms of compliance" which would facilitate acceptance of power-sharing and allow for those "losing" on an issue to accept the lose and continue to participate.
it might be right or wrong, made in wisdom or foolishness, racist assumptions or simply assessing a situation based upon assumptions concerning Democracy rather more than assumptions concerning Arabs.
crying racism sometimes is based on little more than assumptions also.
I don't think that you get to lay the responsibility for the fighting between the Turks and the Kurds at Bush's feet.
The Turkish government has to carry the weight of their own repressive policies and actions. ... as do the Kurds.
Bush is already neck-deep in catastrophic failure and it's merely piling on stuff where he's but a minor irritant in a large and long-lived open wound.
It would be a shame if NATO went to war with Iran's government.
The honor of stamping out the nest of snakes that is the theocracy belongs to the Iranian people.
If Chris Hedges says that OWS is going to change the world by sitting in Zuccotti Park, using the bathrooms of the businesses that service the Wall Street firms and having donated food delivered via UPS...then it must be true, because Chris Hedges is entirely, like, rational.
---- But then why bring in Interpol, why not just source the accusation to Iranian intelligence?----
because it would insult everyone's ? and Interpol is not instantly dismissible.
Well yes, the subsidy cuts have reduced consumption through the glorious method of allowing the poor to consume less.....and with the currency growing ever more worthless, the poor in Iran will soon be able to consume just about nothing at all
leaving plenty more for the IRGC.
------When one really looks at US history there are not any examples where it single handedly took on a power greater than itself and defeated it through conquest-----
if you structure your sentence so that the conditions described comprise a null set of events....(the US and never warred alone against a greater power and sought a "defeat through conquest")
it's not all that surprising that it hasn't happened.
Iranian power isn't growing and the Obama administration doesn't think it to be.
The Saudis aren't being encouraged by the US to arm...They're arming because they see the US as insufficiently confrontational toward Iran.
The GCC countries are the ones most threatened by the Iranian nuclear weapons program and the Saudis are going to be ramping up their program to push against Iran, it's ally Assad and the Iranian proxy in Lebanon. The Saudis are enlisting Turkey and upset that Israel is too crazy to to make some kind of deal with the PA, because then the Saudis would have some cover to work with the israelis against the Iranian expansionist theocracy.
Marcy is wonderful, PW, but it's all supposition at this point.
Thanks for printing this, Dr Cole.
Digby that " Obama, a traitor to his race" really sucks.
You've got a good point that Obama's administration i centrist and maybe a bit right of center.
You're quite wrong to think that there's even the slightest problem with fielding a candidate to the right of that position. A heck of a lot of voters are center-right.
The R's run a guy that sounds sane like Romney and the economy stays lousy, they've got a good chance.
The problem, as Cole says, is that they can't all get enthused about someone who sounds reasonable or whose campaign rhetoric doesn't include chunks of Jesus and the invisible hand
iran has already enriched enough Uranium to meets that need for quite some time and won't find it difficult to obtain additional supplies in future if they abandon their enrichment program.
That's an absurdly confused statement.
American 'hatred' for Iran was non-existant in the 1950s and played no part in that.
it was the rather hate-filled Ruhollah Khomeini that brought Americans to hate Iran
Thank you for the explanation. I now see your point.
There's some truth in it about resistance, but the practice in Italy doesn't fit a common law system.
"Would it help for appeals in the US, like those in Italy, to have a jury? That step might counter-act the natural instinct of any court to preserve its authority by resisting a charge of having made a major error."
an appeals court is entirely different from the trial court and there's no threat to the authority of the appellate judges' authority entailed in reversing the result of the trial.
I don't see your point here.
Anybody who lived through the Reagan years and didn't notice that things were being changed wasn't awake.
depends on how you define spying, without even getting into PC.
I read the Levitt piece and failed to note where he showed that the NYPD was doing anything illegal.
Mater of fact, he seemed to say that he himself didn't know enough to say if anything illegal was being done by NYPD.
The Pakistan military will do nothing except gripe when the US declares the Haqqani network a terrorist organization and starts bombing them, just as they do nothing to fight the Haqqani network.
I doubt that they'll admit that drones are taking off from the Shansi air base, and be willing to bet that they won't close that base to the drones.
But I thank Dr Cole for printing that Jinnah editorial with that hilarious line...." trustworthy friendly countries like China and Iran" backing Pakistan's role in the war on terror. Iran's backing is mighty funny.....and it's rather obvious to the Chinese that Pakistan is allowing itself to be used to train insurgents who are increasingly challenging the Chinese regime.
Mullen was not only saying what everybody in DC knows to be hard fact, but has spent the last couple of years going to Pakistan every couple of months to quietly try to get Pakistan to change the facts.
He's been patient and persistent and he's been unable to get anywhere with Pakistan.
Thomas Cole's comparison of Mullen to MacArthur is extremely ill-considered,
the easiest way to defeat Pakistan is to stop sending it money and other aid and wait a couple of years for the next coup. (or facilitate one) and make a deal with the new government.
but, of course, none of that will be necessary. Pakistan isn't going to more than grumble ( and look for cash and weapons to brandish along the border with India) when we start blowing up the Haqqani installations.
Indeed there are many different factions in the ruling circles in pakistan and Sen Graham is correct to suggest that we should consider many options (as long we have) in order to try to influence actions in Pakistan that we desire.
I would think that the military actions he's suggesting are drone strikes against some of the terrorists that receive safe haven in Pakistan and that he's not advocating attacking the "official" armed forces of Pakistan.
if the palestinians go to court with their claims against Israel, rather than employing violence, it will be a good thing. they responded with violence when the UN invited the Israelis (and the Palestinians) to establish a state.
far too much violence from both sides .... and far too many claims from both sides that have far too little truth. it's long past time to put the violence and the lies away and accept the hard truths about the atrocious behavior that every party in the conflict refuses to admit about themselves
what if most Westerners want to be "colonialistic"?
would it be equally undemocratic for the Egyptian voters to oppose that?
in the US, our government was crafted with an eye toward blunting bad and ugly ideas that might attract the support of a majority.
for example, freedom of religion is something that Americans are guaranteed whether the majority of the citizens agree with it or not.
in places such as Iran or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan there is no freedom of religion.
in Egypt, religious freedom isn't quite guaranteed and if the majority of Egyptians want to abolish it altogether and impose religious conformity, opposing that may well seem "undemocratic" but opposing their preference also seems like a real good idea.
hey super, just how do you think Israelis refusal to publicly confirm it's quite well-known nukes somehow links up to stealing more land?
that linkage eludes me.
it's not at all clear that the Israelis are unwilling to agree to a two-state solution. the record shows that it's been the Palestinians and the Arabs that have been opposed to it far more than the Israelis.
at present there's little hope of it being realized and that's not all on the Israelis. Hamas also opposes a peace-and-partition deal which means that the Palestinians can't deliver their end of a deal.
----"Why would he describe this as “hostile” instead of describing the UN as attempting to seek justice?"----
because there's some truth in his statement. see Durban I and II ......
even if you think that all of those UN resolutions that you say Israel violates are attempts at reaching justice, the speeches and statements from those World Conferences against Racism in 2001 and 2009 are not really defensible as "just" rather than expressions of hostility.
well Joseph, it IS a little more complicated than that. ending the occupation isn't a guarantee of anything and there's little reason to think that peace will follow a return to the '67 borders. when Israel was at those borders, there certainly wasn't peace.
peace doesn't follow unless both sides want it and can deliver it, working to thwart those on their own side who will oppose it.
the Palestinians can't deliver peace at present....(and Lord knows that the present Israeli government is uninterested in working to deliver a just peace).
@ Eric Stetson,
you're quite right and, hopefully quite soon, a palestinian state will be established. that happy day isn't yet at hand for Iran is supporting Hamas in obstructing any possible deal to end the occupation and Netanyahu's coalition of fools and racists is also unwilling to accept any decent deal.
excellent comment. Israel is indeed displaying an extremely hard line, but Turkey's more been moved to embracing their Arab neighbors by a need to find markets for its products, particularly after being shot out from membership in the EU. than by anything from Israel.