Bay 12 Games Forum

Chomsky can say it better than i ever could

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20100702.htm


He cites this D.O.D report on the actual threat :-

 http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=58833

“With sufficient foreign assistance,” the report states, “Iran could probably develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015.”

Tautlogy, Iran can't make ICBMs but if every ICBM owning country got together and helped them they totally could be nuking us tomorrow. That's like asking other nations to fund Iran 10's of billions of dollars for no benefit other than screwing America. Not going to happen. And, only the 5 permanent members of the UN security council have these ICBMS right now, 5 countries in total. They're not about to share their monopoly with random dudes.

"The report states that central to Iran’s “deterrent strategy” is its pursuit of a nuclear program that could potentially move it closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Iran contends that its nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes."

Ok note key words - deterrent, pursuit, program, potentially, closer, developing. Which means to say there's no evidence they're anywhere near making nukes so it's complete conjecture. And if they actually had a nuke, they want it for a "deterrent" not to fire it, it is not longer a deterrent if you fire the nuke or give it to terrorists. Don't take my word for it, this is from the US Army's intelligence report.

Following on :-

“Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy,” the report says.

So the very possibility of them making a nuke in future is kept alive so that they can bluff USA in negotiating. That's the key to Iran's strategy. note that there's no talk of bombing North Korea alone out of all the "axis of evil", mainly due to their "we'll blow your heads off" rhetoric. So having nukes is an excellent deterrent.

The department’s release of the analysis comes on the heels of the Nuclear Security Summit and testimony by the Pentagon’s top policy chief, who last week said the U.S. approach to Iran remains centered on preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons and on countering Iran’s influence in the Middle East.

Here's the crux of the matter. And refer back to the chomsky article, they're more upset about Iran gaining influence through diplomacy than the threats to their own people or neighbors. THATS the true "threat" from Iran, that they diplomatically succeed. Iran doesn't have strike forces capable of invading other nations.

Pony

Yes... within not five minutes I see a message saying something like "Welcome to wikipedia! We have changed the edits you made to this article because we feel yours were not constructive." They review edits fast. It still works for the Xefer now though, so it's good enough for me.

Lol, i went back and fixed it again in a way unlikely to be reversed.

Quote from: RedKing on March 05, 2012, 05:05:27 pm

Fwa..wha??? Link, por favor? That would be HUGE (see previous ramblings about delegate numbers and Virginia).

Yeah, that was some definitely off-base hyperbole.  Damn television.  Romney's definitely walking away with Virginia.

Other interesting NBC/WSJ polls, asking people which party they feel does a better job of reaching out to non-base people.  Nationally, 55% Democrats vs. 26% Republicans.  In the category itself, 35% of self-identified Republicans said the Democratic party is better at attracting the non-hardcore to vote for them.  Along with a "what word comes to mind" question coming back like 80% negative for the Republican primary process, among Republican voters even, that is going to be some very concerning news.

I'm not too surprised, as if you look at Gallup polls, republicans are far closer to being a monoculture (73% conservative) whereas only 38% of Democrats self-identify as liberals. So Republicans have more tendency to pander to their base supporters / live in an echo chamber than democrats do.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx

Yes but that's likely to be minimum of 5 links, hence the 100 million routes i talked about. And '40' is just a guesstimate. Many pages will have more than 40 links.

Plus the memory needed to keep track of all the URLs for the various links and searching the database constantly to check that each new URL isn't on another page's path already, all for some lame web joke game.

We do that for jury duty, and the Athenians also used that (one month on the senate for all randomly selected citizens i think).

If you assign most people to committees etc rather than individual responsibility then you also mitigate the damage a single poor choice makes.

Carpenter