aflanigan wrote: 

"Are there any monsters under the bed"

"No, none... not a one!"

"If there were any monsters under the bed, how big would they be?"

"Tiny... Miniscule... Almost non-existent... Go back to sleep!"

I watched the whole speech from "The Supreme Leader" on CNN,minutes ago! Jeez,,Me SCARED!!!

Iran's "Supreme Leader" says that the outcome of the voting for President "couldn't" have any irregularities because the vote was "ordained by God"  (This from NPR source)

Rick Steves talks about his Iran visit.

I was in a traffic jam in Tehran, a city of 10 million people, and a guy in the next car saw me in the back seat and had my driver roll the window. He then handed over a bouquet of flowers and said, "Give this bouquet to the foreigner in your back seat and apologize for our traffic."

 aflanigan wrote: The guys a nut-case.  He's using the excuse that the Bush/Cheney wrecking crew weren't capable of administering the Iraq war properly & that's supposedly why preemptive war policy failed.  He'd never take the blame for the policy, itself, ideological failure.

I think Calvin Trillin summed up how that policy was formed in his 2002 poem

Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?

Consider kids who bullied Richard Perle—
Those kids who said Perle threw just like a girl,

Those kids who poked poor Perle to show how soft
A mamma's boy could be, those kids who oft-
Times pushed poor Richard down and could be heard
Addressing him as Sissy, Wimp or Nerd.

Those kids have got a lot to answer for,
'Cause Richard Perle now wants to start a war.

The message his demeanor gets across:
He'll show those playground bullies who's the boss.

He still looks soft, but when he writes or talks
There is no tougher dude among the hawks.
And he's got planes and ships and tanks and guns—
All manned, of course, by other people's sons.

Yes, all that preemptive war, manned by other people's children.  May Perle rot in hell, if there is such a thing

This has got to be the most humorous thing I've read about all week.

Richard Perle, one of the Neoconservative architects of Bush's ill-fated vanity war in Iraq, apparently appeared at the NIXON CENTER at the invitation of National Interest magazine, and proceeded to engage in monumental historical revisionism.  Then he threw in a good dose of idiocy in recommending Bush's misguided and ill-fated "preemptive" invasion of Iraq in dealing with Iran:

PRINCE OF DARKNESS DENIES OWN EXISTENCE

"Listening to neoconservative mastermind Richard Perle at the Nixon Center yesterday, there was a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.

In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday's forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:

1. Perle is not a neoconservative.

2. Neoconservatives do not exist.

3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years."

(SNIP)

PERLE: ITS BOUND TO WORK THIS TIME

"WASHINGTON — Richard Perle, a key neoconservative proponent of the Iraq war, offered a strategy Thursday for dealing with Iran that sounded eerily similar to the neocons' Iraq plans - use military action to remove the oppressive government, then let freedom reign.

"Preemptive war has always struck me as a common sense position," Perle said. "Of course, you could get it wrong." "

(SNIP)
What does he mean, "you could get (preemptive war) wrong"?  Does this fellow have any EXAMPLES?

 Johray63 wrote:
 

Iran launches first satellite

Iran Using Fronts to Get Bomb Parts From U.S.

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 11, 2009; A01

The Iranian businessman was looking for high-quality American electronics, but he had to act stealthily: The special parts he coveted were denied to Iranians, especially those seeking to make roadside bombs to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.

With a few e-mails, the problem was solved. A friendly Malaysian importer would buy the parts from a company in Linden, N.J., and forward them to Iran. All that was left was coming up with a fake name for the invoice. Perhaps a Malaysian engineering school? "Of course, you can use any other company as end-user that you think is better than this," the Iranian businessman, Ahmad Rahzad, wrote in an e-mail dated March 8, 2007.

The ruse succeeded in delivering nine sensors called inclinometers to Iran, the first of several such shipments that year and the latest example of what U.S. officials and weapons experts describe as Iran's skillful flouting of export laws intended to stop lethal technology from reaching the Islamic republic.

Despite multiple attempts by the Bush administration to halt illegal imports — including sanctions against several Dubai-based Iranian front companies in 2006 — the technology pipeline to Tehran is flowing at an even faster pace. In some cases, Iran simply opened new front companies and shifted its operations from Dubai to farther east in Asia, the officials said.

Iran in the past two years has acquired numerous banned items — including circuit boards, software and Global Positioning System devices — that are used to make sophisticated versions of the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that continue to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, according to documents released by the Justice Department and a new study by a Washington research institute. The deadly trade was briefly disrupted after the moves against Dubai companies in 2006, but it quickly resumed with a few changes in shipping routes and company names, the officials said.

"Without doubt, it is still going on," said one former U.S. intelligence official who investigated Iran's networks.

Bomb circuitry is only a small part of the global clandestine trade that continues to flourish, despite U.S. efforts to end it. A federal investigation in New York into whether banks helped customers skirt U.S. rules forbidding business with Iran and other countries turned up evidence of Iranian interests trying to buy tungsten and other materials used in the guidance systems of long-range missiles. As part of the investigation, a British bank agreed to forfeit $350 million.

While illegal trafficking in weapons technology has occurred for decades — most notably in the case of the nuclear smuggling ring operated by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan — the new documents suggest that recent trading is nearly all Internet-based and increasingly sophisticated.

Many of the schemes unknowingly involve U.S. companies that typically have no clue where their products are actually going, the records show.

"The schemes are so elaborate, even the most scrupulous companies can be deceived," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and co-author of a forthcoming study of black markets for weapons components.

Albright said the deceptions can be even more elaborate when the target is nuclear technology. "That's where the stakes are the highest," he said. "If Iran is successful, it ends up not with an IED but with a nuclear weapon."

Rare details about the illicit markets emerge in court records from the Justice Department's investigation of Iran's Dubai network, as well as in the ISIS study, which tracks four years of secret trading by Iranian and Pakistani front groups. The study includes copies of invoices and the contents of e-mails from companies looking to buy Western technology.

Iran, a veteran of such schemes, appears in the documents to be increasingly adept at using front companies, which pose as schools or private laboratories conducting business through seemingly legitimate Web sites, the Justice Department records show. If discovered — as happened with the Dubai-based Mayrow General Trading in 2006 — the businesses frequently reopen under different names in other locations.

According to the records, Mayrow was the hub of a procurement network that operated from early this decade until about 2006, chiefly in Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates and a close U.S. ally. U.S. intelligence officials have long identified the small Persian Gulf kingdom as a center for shell companies seeking to buy weapons parts and technology for countries that cannot import them legally. Since 2006, Dubai has moved to close Mayrow and toughen export regulations.

Mayrow worked in tandem with three other companies that alternated placing orders with U.S. firms for electronic parts. All four companies had the same business address and same principal managers, yet on paper they appeared to be separate and legitimate trading companies seeking parts for a variety of industrial uses, Albright said in the ISIS report, titled "Iranian Entities Illicit Military Procurement Networks." The report is due for release this week.

"The trading companies effectively created a wall between the Iranian entities and the U.S. suppliers, making it difficult for the U.S. suppliers to identify the true end-user of an item," the report says.

The Mayrow network resulted in the acquisition of hundreds of sensitive parts from U.S. manufacturers in California, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey during a four-year period, according to a federal indictment returned by a Florida grand jury in September.

All the items were shipped from Dubai to Iran, where most appear to have been distributed among several manufacturers of IEDs. These bombs account for the majority of U.S. troop casualties in Iraq, as well as the deaths of thousands of civilians, police and troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Examinations of unexploded bombs have confirmed the presence of circuit boards, timers and other parts of U.S. origin, federal officials confirm.

Mayrow's ability to trade with Americans essentially ended in 2006 when the Commerce Department imposed extensive trade restrictions on the company and its known partners. Yet months after the sanctions went into effect, a similar network based in Malaysia began asking U.S. companies for the same kinds of technology, the Justice Department documents show. The orders were primarily from a firm that called itself Vast Solution and was headed by Majid Seif, an Iranian national. Seif was named in the federal indictment as a co-conspirator in an international plot to acquire components for Iranian-made IEDs.

By 2007, the Dubai-based operation had been almost entirely replaced by the Malaysian networks, the ISIS study found. Yet, while perhaps less conspicuous than before, the Dubai network probably continues to exist, though in a different form. Typically, the new front companies will not be discovered until long after crucial technology has left American shores aboard ships ultimately bound for Iran, Albright said.

"The current system of export controls doesn't do enough to stop illicit trade before the item is shipped," he said. "Having a law on the books is not the same as having a law enforced."

Cut Them Off At The Bank

November 16, 2008: Economic problems are getting worse. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where much of Iran's foreign trade is handled, local banks are refusing to do business with the 10,000 Iranian trading firms based there. This has caused delays and cancellations of Iranian imports (over $9 billion worth from the UAE last year) and exports. This is being felt by the rule elite in Iran. There, the large extended families of the clerical leadership live the good life, and the goodies come in via the UAE. The sudden shortages of iPods, flat screen TVs, automobiles and bling in general, has been noticed in Iran, and is not appreciated.

The falling price of oil is producing another problem, national bankruptcy. The government admits that if the price of oil falls below $60 a barrel (which it has) and stays there (which it may, at least until the current recession is over), the nation will not be able to finance foreign trade (which is already having problems with increasingly effective U.S. moves to deny Iran access to the international banking system), or even the Iranian economy itself. The latter problem is largely self-inflicted, as president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad desperately borrows money to placate his few (heavily armed and fanatical) followers (about 20 percent of the population). The rest of the population has been in recession for years, and is getting increasingly angry over Ahmadinejad's mismanagement. Some 80 percent of Iran's exports are oil.

From Alternet.org:

 nuggler wrote: 
That's very interesting, since I didn't "call" any news sources.  Please explain how you arrived at your conclusion with zero information.


I agree that is true for any single news outlet.  But I don't confine myself to any single news outlet.


That's quite a run-together sentence!

If your claim is that the Internet is the only way to get credible news, I disagree.

While the Internet does make more actual news available to more people, it also allows anybody with a few bucks to put up a website, and present total BS as "news".

A recent study discovered that the majority of the nation's youth learned about current events from late night comedy shows on TV.  Comedians do parody the news, but what they say is not news itself.  But at least many comedians' jokes about current events reveal truisms that, if understood as such, can help gain great insights into current events.

Blogs and propaganda websites, OTOH do not offer news or insight.  Sure they're convenient for the lazy (both intellectually and in general), but the Internet only offers more people a greater opportunity to obfuscate real news with faux news and total BS.


Anything, but not everything.

Because "knowing stuff" isn't a need, "anything (you) need to know" can be contained in an empty jar.


CT alert!  CT alert!


So you're claiming that you are a trained, experienced and accredited journalist who somehow manages to show up at every newsworthy event, to witness it yourself.  I find that hard to believe.

The only way to know "which sources are trustworthy" is to compare what they say to what you know to be true.  And the only way to know what is true is to witness it yourself.  If you really are a super-newsman-sleuth, you might consider getting a gig reporting news...


How ironic, since earlier, you insinuated that you read braille "at my fingertips", not view images.  Which is it?

No matter how discerning your one eye is (or fingertips, for that matter), without a discerning mind, you have no advantage.  If you haven't learned to discern what is news from what are opinions, editorials and propaganda, no amount of sharpness of senses will make one iota of difference.

At any good college, the bulk of the freshman curriculum is devoted to teaching the student how to gather information, what sources of information have value, and which ones do not, and how to think objectively and logically in organizing this information into what is known as research.  Being able to do effective and valid research is the platform upon which all true knowledge is gained.

Those of you who have college educations should have at least adequate researching skills.  If not, you might ask for your money back!  Those who have not attended an institution of higher learning can learn how to research on their own, if they wish to.  It's not that hard.  But if you have made no effort to learn how to collect and process information in a way that produces useful knowledge, it should not surprise you that those of us who have are not impressed by your copy 'n' paste jobs from little-known websites of zero repute.

 Servo wrote: 
What you call credible news sources I see as nothing more than contrived opinionated blustering spin. You're only getting as much as what they deem necessary. If its mainstream you need I would suggest BBC though they're fast going the same route as CNN.
Since the advent of internet news happening on the other side of the globe is at my fingertips within minutes. Anything I need to know is out there, without all the FBI censorship & intervention (for now that is). I know which sources are trustworthy & I sleuth it myself. All it takes is a discerning eye.
Wolf Blitzer indeed. All MSM is giving you is Disneyland type showbiz with occasional snippets of dumbed down news.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

 kurtster wrote: 
About what?

I'm not making any wild-eyed, Henny Penny claims, or presenting some guy's WAG speculation as truth.  Must I explain the difference to you, so you'll understand just how inappropriate your demand is?

 Servo wrote: 

So how about a short list of news sources YOU consider credible and refer to regularly, just curious.

 nuggler wrote:
I didn't ask you to rattle off a short list of credible news sources, plus "FoxNews", I asked if you could back up your claims with actual news from a credible news source.  Apparently you cannot.

It should go without saying, but some website that I've never heard of before, that spells "news" with a "z" and has "blog" in the URL counts for nothing.  Blogs are not news.


Why are you telling me to do what I've said on many occasions that I do?   Maybe you could follow that advice before posting.


No, I'm not.

I follow the news, sure.  And I use credible news sources to help gain perspective on what is going on in the world around me.  But I do not report the news.  I'm not a journalist.  If I recount events that I've personally witnessed, that doesn't make me a journalist.  A witness, but not a journalist.

 nuggler wrote: 
Let's drop it.  You're right. Initially you didn't. I'm under pressure and I lashed out at what you posted. The truth is, that sort of thing has been weighing heavily on my mind lately and I'm searching every day for answers about what to do next, is it worth the work, WHAT do I do next, am I prepared for what's about to happen.... I mean heavy, heavy undue stress. I was wrong for it. I'm usually pretty good about letting be what is and gliding past things that I know I shouldn't let eat at me but I'm in a rough spot right now. I just hate to see it out there when I'm trying to cope with the things I am right now.

Peace,

J 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 

That was me. You know, Enzo, I gave MIM absolutely no reason to come down on me. I assume the guy has been groomed as have others before him into believing that I am just plain bad news for RP by what he said. I've brought this up before & its been denied profusely before, which is fine. But don't take me for an idiot. As for the reference to Beaker being the culprit, I have no proof & it was meant as a dig to my good friend Beaker. He does so all the time. I'd hardly classify it as a bite from a rabid dog.

dionysius wrote:
I've never read the comic but the film is actually very funny as well as eye opening. I would recommend anyone who has any sort of pre judgement of Iran and it's people to watch it. I think they's be very surprised, i know i was.