Amir Taheri
"My best guess is that we’ll have a continued recovery, but it won’t feel terrific. And the reason it won’t feel terrific is that it’s not going to be fast enough to put back eight million people who lost their jobs within a few years." - BEN S. BERNANKE,
I posted the link to buying Blackwater mercenary goods online yesterday. Today the founder of Blackwater is putting the company up for sale, so get you stuff now while its still available. I want a t-shirt and a coffee mug...
The sanctions target 15 companies linked to the Revolutionary Guard, including the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, which was involved in construction of the secret Qom facility. It imposes sanctions on 22 firms, including the First East Export Bank, that are involved in Iran's nuclear and ballistic weapons program. It also sanctions three entities controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, which is accused of transporting illicit military goods to Iran."
It's interesting that Hillary Clinton is in South America right now. Although she is desperately needed to reconnect with the governments in SA, she also is far away from the UN vote, to give the appearance that she is not influencing it in any way. In contrast, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been trying to lobby Russia, China, and Turkey. Even though Turkey voted against the resolution, their representative summed up everyone's concerns with Iran, that Iran seems to be dealing in constant double-talk and deceit: "Our vote against the resolution should not be construed as indifference to the problem emanating from Iran's nuclear program. There are serious question marks within the international community regarding the purpose of Iran's nuclear program, and this needs to be clarified. We call upon Iran to show absolute transparency about its nuclear program and demonstrate full cooperation with the IAEA in order to restore confidence." Even Iran's new BFF is still concerned about their lack of transparency, and the deal over nuclear fuel brokered between Brazil, Iran, and Turkey will now fall apart.
Obama said from the White House: "Iran is the only [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] signatory in the world -- the only one -- that cannot convince the IAEA that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Actions do have consequences, and today, the Iranian government will face some of those consequences." And Iran's reaction is like a child who feels he is being bullied: "Iran has never bowed, and will never bow, to the hostile actions by these few powers and will continue to defend its rights," Negotiating with the US or any other nation that it perceives as more powerful than it is, will always be avoided by Iran. It's too bad that they can't play well with others; maybe we need to do is get a bunch of mothers who have successfully dealt with problem children and draft them into the diplomatic core. I'll bet they would work better than any current Ambassador we have, and produce more stable relationships with other countries. Mahmoud, don't talk back to your mother...
will the real Iranian nuclear scientist please stand up...
One of the reasons that sanctions were obtained, was from information that was given to the US by an Iranian nuclear scientist who had defected while he was in Saudi Arabia last year. There had been no news whatsoever about him until this last March, when ABC news said that he had defected to the US. Before the vote, the Iranian government released a fake video from him, first shown on Iranian state television, while the second video appeared on YouTube: "In preparing for the vote, the Obama administration has been offering classified intelligence briefings to members of the Security Council. In these sessions, American officials have used new evidence to revise previous conclusions about whether Iran has suspended efforts to design nuclear warheads, according to foreign diplomats and some American officials." Both videos are propaganda, the first wholly made up by Iranian intelligence, the second by the CIA to counter the Iranian one. YouTube is now being used by intelligence service, which makes you wonder about the veracity of hundreds of videos posted on there. I hope that those high school cheerleader videos aren't CIA implants, how devolved and pitiful have we become? Are those really your friends on Facebook? Let's extend our real time paranoia into all virtual worlds.Yet, despite the sanctions, columnist Amir Taheri says that Tehran is winning the propaganda war in the Middle East against Israel: "Over the past three years, Iran’s Khomeinist regime has succeeded in changing the traditional perception of Israel. Instead of Israel being the almost invincible enemy that crushed the Arabs in the Yom Kippur War and the Six Day War, it is now portrayed as a waning power, a small and vulnerable enclave that, having lost the support of its powerful protector, the United States, is facing the might of a resurgent Muslim world under Tehran’s leadership." Israel has certainly done everything to help this assessment come true, they don't have ant more feet left to shoot. On the positive side, both ends of the land barriers into Gaza are now open, allowing people and small trade items to pass freely. Egypt opened its end right after the flotilla disaster, and Israel opened its end up this morning, though they insist that it doesn't mean they have changed their policy in any way... I was joking when I said that we needed to start using psychedelic drugs to get these diplomats to see other ways of thinking and their inter-connectedness to each other, but now I am ready to draft a bunch of old acidheads into the diplomatic core, to function as tripmasters and make sure we have the optimal setting for opening a few minds. We could get Ram Dass tripping with the leader of the Taliban...
Instead of enlightened drugs and performing scientific research into how and why they could be used, we continue to import illegally huge amounts of methamphetamines. Tweaker Nation. Used in increasing amounts, meth can accelerate your body's metabolism and burn out the sensory nerves that we use to send information about our world to the brain. The phrase developed during the 1960's reamins true: speed kills. Methamphetamines and their derivatives are the cheapest, most popular drugs available in America, we go through tons of the stuff, and are made and sold by everyone from biker gangs to the big drug cartels who use container ships to import it into the country. In the interest of diplomatic relations, Obama's Justice Department has been delaying a report on large scale production of methamphetamines in Mexico: "The report, obtained by The New York Times, is called the 2010 National Methamphetamine Threat Assessment by the National Drug Intelligence Center of the Justice Department. It portrays drug cartels as easily able to circumvent the Mexican government’s restrictions on the importing of chemicals used to manufacture meth, which has reached its highest purity and lowest price in the United States since 2005.
We have done nothing to curb our craze for destructive drugs that can be had at any junior high school in the country, in fact, the use of amphetamines is worldwide and a problem in almost every country, from Russia to Brazil, Saudi Arabia to Canada... There has been mentioned that a teacher's salary should be tied to how successful her students are, perhaps we should tie in all drug enforcement officers pay to how many kids they have kept away from speed. The DEA should be disbanded or reconfigured into some agency that works and is effective...
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