Oil's energy contribution has declined by about 12% since 1999. The world's economies have also declined by about 12%. (Using conventional metrics, which are time delayed determinations, this will only be seen in hind sight). The massive destruction of asset values now occurring testifies to it happening.
Peak is well behind us, world economies have peaked and will continue to decline.
The United States needs to give Iran some kind of security assurance as Washington joins forces with the EU to try to persuade Tehran to give up sensitive atomic activities, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday.
This is a time to celebrate the acts of courage. This is a time to reflect on progress we've made. This is a time to call for change. This is a time to salute the women around the world who have strived for freedom and equality.
Iranian women have faced the darkest period of their history in the last three decades and wish to prevent the same thing happening to the women of Iraq.
As international pressure increases over Iran's controversial nuclear ambitions, analysts say both the Iranian and United States leadership are divided on exactly which policy to implement as a means to address the problem.
According to analysts, top Iranian decision-makers are split into two distinct, but opposing, factions. On the one side there are those who push for the production of the atomic weapon at any cost. And for the time being, this faction, led by some senior clerics and high-ranking military commanders from the Revolutionary Guards, appears to have the upper hand. On the other side are those who insist on compromising with the Europeans, who are at the forefront of negotiations.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
The defense chief rejected recent US reports which said
US surveillance planes have been overflying Iran since April 2004,
spying on Iran's nuclear program and probing for weaknesses
in its air defense. The small, pilotless planes penetrated Iranian
airspace from US military facilities in Iraq, trying to pick up traces
of nuclear activity to gather information that was not accessible by
satellites, the Washington Post quoted officials with detailed knowledge
of the secret effort as saying in early February.
When pressed about whether any US intelligence agencies might have
organized such flights, Rumsfeld did not rule out the possibility, saying
that "I can't speak for intelligence agencies, but not to my knowledge."
Source: Xinhua, March 21, 2005
LISTEN ALSO: Intelligent intelligence and Rumsfeld's knowledge
"Now what is the message there?
The message is that there are no "knowns."
There are thing we know that we know.
There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we
now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do
the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then
say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only
the known knowns and the known unknowns.
And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
Donald Rumsfeld, February 12, 2002
Press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium
The US has dismissed a call by the head of the UN's nuclear agency to offer Iran security assurances as a boost to talks over its nuclear programme.
State department spokesman Adam Ereli said the issue was not what the US would do, but what Iran would do, to allay the international concerns.
Iranian Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei has said that he would wear war attire to defend his country if it was attacked, the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.
"If the prestige and national interests of this nation would be at stake, the Iranian officials, like every other Iranian individual, would selflessly defend, unlike the US politicians. I, too, would wear war attire and get ready for leading the nation in the war," Khamenei was quoted as saying.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
Basically this article talks about blockading Iranian tankers and taking over the strategic islands in the Straits of Hormuz that Iran claims are theirs.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I don't need to watch horror films any more, just reading the news scares me sh*tless.
I can't help but feel that Iran and China would see a naval blockade as an act of war.
Basically this article talks about blockading Iranian tankers and taking over the strategic islands in the Straits of Hormuz that Iran claims are theirs.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I don't need to watch horror films any more, just reading the news scares me sh*tless.
I can't help but feel that Iran and China would see a naval blockade as an act of war.
A spokesman for the IAEA expressed Wednesday optimism regarding the start this week of a new round of Iranian-European talks in Paris on the Iranian nuclear issue.
The new round is expected to focus on assessing progress made up to now with regard to the compliance of the Iranians to international demands that they halt their uranium enrichment activities, IAEA spokesman Mark Godski said in statements to KUNA. He added that the West was not convinced of Iranian intentions to dedicate their nuclear program to peaceful purposes like producing electricity.
Israel has no intention of launching a strike against Iranian nuclear installations, a top official said Tuesday, quoting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon made the comments during talks with a visiting delegation from the US Congress, despite months of press reports to the contrary, the official said.
Georgian Opposition Leader Says Russia Helping Iran Make Nuclear Weapons
The leader of Georgia’s right-wing opposition, David Gamkrelidze, has said that Russia is helping Iran produce a nuclear bomb, Russia’s Rosbalt news agency reported on Wednesday.
Gamkrelidze was criticizing Kakha Bendukidze, Georgia’s minister of economic reforms who is also the head of the Russia’s Atomstroiexport corporation — the company building the Iranian nuclear plant at Bushehr.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
The CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service
has compiled a new gallery of photographs of Iran's
Bushehr nuclear power plant. The photographs were
taken from the Iranian Fars News Agency and from
the Persian blog rasanic.com.
The monitoring of blogs is a relatively new and fruitful
expansion of FBIS coverage of world media outlets.
The CIA has not made the new FBIS compilation on
Bushehr available to the public. But a copy was obtained
by Secrecy News, a email publication of the FAS
(Federation of American Scientists) Project on Government
Secrecy .
Iran is prepared for a possible showdown at the UN and even withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if it proves necessary to continue its right to develop a nuclear fuel cycle, according to an Iranian specialist.
Professor of Law and Political Science at Tehran University Nassar Hadian said that he "cannot rule out the possibility of a showdown, if no tangible offers are put on the table by the EU." "Iran has already put on the table whatever it considers to be objective assurances. Unless the EU puts something on the table too I doubt if Iran will continue the negotiations longer than three- and-a-half months from now," he told IRNA.
Israel and the United States have been cooperating in developing a missile defense architecture against Iran's Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile.
Officials said the Israeli and U.S. militaries have sought to pool their missile defense resources to provide a regional defense against a Shihab-3 attack. They said the effort called for the linking of such U.S. assets as the PAC-3 lower-tier system, the upgraded PAC-2 and the Aegis sea-based missile defense system. Israel would contribute the medium-tier Arrow-2 system.
The EU is considering an Iranian proposal to allow the Islamic republic to produce enriched uranium on a small scale, despite the bloc’s demand Tehran must abandon the process to guarantee it will not make atom bombs, officials and diplomats said on Thursday.
Iran made the proposal to be allowed to run a pilot centrifuge project for uranium enrichment at a meeting in Paris on Wednesday with EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany, according to a European official who asked not to be named
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 975 Location: On one of the blades of the fan
Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:38 pm Post subject:
Maverick, in future I'll just sit back and leave it all to you and stu
Thinking further about this - firstly withdrawing from the NPT is what N. Korea did after the US tried its "diplomacy" on them.
Secondly, the Iranian response to a blockade, would surely be to speed up the creation of the Oil Bourse? I said on another thread that I couldn't see how it would take a year+ it's basically just an office with some computers comms, and screens. Iran has the product - oil - and all it needs is the customers, and it has those too.
I'd say it would take a month, 6 weeks tops, to set up something like this.
If I were Iran, though, I'd make sure the dealing room was in a bunker hidden somewhere safe.....
posting the latest news to keep the thread up to date:
By Kerstin Gehmlich
PARIS (Reuters) - Iran allocated $2.5 billion to obtain three nuclear warheads last year, an exiled opposition group said Thursday, without saying whether Iran had secured any of the warheads.
The group, which has given accurate information in the past on some of Iran's nuclear facilities, also said Iran was speeding up work on a reactor south of Tehran which could produce enough plutonium for an atomic bomb by 2007.
Iran says its nuclear program will be used only to generate electricity. But Washington and European countries fear Iran could use its nuclear plants to produce bombs.
Who needs the US government to spearhead the march to Iran when you have conservative sleazeback hacks and neocon goons in charge of foundations.
Checking out Worldnetdaily I was surprised to see a number of articles on Iran rather than Terri Schiavo.
Clicked on one and came across this the Iran Freedom Foundation which seems to be led by the Swiftboat Veteran Corsi. They've even got an ad ready for TV.
Iran still makes no sense in my mind but when you have nutcases shooting off this kind of crap, a reckless administration and a media that would rather report on Michael Jackson or martha Stewart anything is possible.
The crap hasnt hit the fan yet but the anticipatory farts are stinkin up the room. _________________ UNplanning the future...
http://unplanning.blogspot.com
Iran has acquired nuclear-capable cruise missiles from Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko confirmed in an interview with NBC News on Thursday.
"I confirm this, though I do so with bitterness," Yushchenko was quoted as saying. This is the highest-level acknowledgment of the sales, which the Ukrainian president said took place under the country's previous government
From Washington, the rhetoric calls for diplomatic solutions to the nuclear standoff with Iran. But Tehran also hears a growing drumbeat for war that echoes the build-up to U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Iranian government is fast-tracking an atomic-weapons program and has allocated $2.5 billion to either buy three nuclear warheads or produce them at home, an organization of Iranian exiles claimed yesterday
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
Joined: May 21, 2004 Posts: 158 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 7:43 am Post subject:
julianj wrote:
Thinking further about this - firstly withdrawing from the NPT is what N. Korea did after the US tried its "diplomacy" on them.
Secondly, the Iranian response to a blockade, would surely be to speed up the creation of the Oil Bourse?
That's what tends to happen when countries are subject to bad-faith accusations about compliance with treaties. Particularly when:
1. They don't really gain anything by being a signatory
2. The other country is actually not complying and has the hide to accuse them.
Hence, North Korea withdrew from the NPT and said "Well, we're not signatories any more, so we can hardly be in breach". Nothing new there: India, Pakistan and Israel declined to accept NPT obligations for their own national security reasons.
As for a blockade, why would the US want to block Iranian oil from market? It'd only kill their own economy and provoke China, and upset Japan and the US (remaining) European allies.
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