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| Topic: Does Israel's nukes count? | |
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Influential Europeans – including many Muslims – recently debated freedom of expression with the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed which led to riots. Held in Berlin, it was a good, at times blazing, debate.
Freedom of expression, we were given to understand, is one of the valves in Europe's heart that must remain open to keep our continent alive and healthy. In good faith I exercise that freedom in this column. Let us see if readers and interest groups will support my right to write what follows even if they violently disagree with my observations. From past experience I bet many will find that impossibly hard. They will denounce me as an enemy within, a rule-breaker of unspoken rules, bringing up stuff that must be left buried in the name of peace and justice. I see no reason to comply. This week shows us how such doublethink and doublespeak pulls the world towards Armageddon. Leaders of the rich nations have turned their fire on Iran, quite rightly. On Friday came news that the Islamic Republic had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant near Qom. Then the junta fired test missiles, to prove that the bearded ones have really big willies. Unlike Iraq under Saddam, there are, in Iran, nuclear developments that could lead to weapons of mass destruction. It is not an immediate but a future danger, say credible intelligence experts and indeed Barack Obama himself. Suddenly the president has got uncharacteristically belligerent, instructing Iran to open up all its nuclear facilities for inspection if it wants to avoid "a path that is going to lead us to confrontation". In May, Obama stood in Washington with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who we were told was there to seek assurances that there would be no shift from the conventional US position of total and unconditional support for Israel's policies right or wrong, known and clandestine. On Thursday the US, China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany meet in Geneva and, by that time, Iran will be expected to submit to international scrutiny. As a supporter of the now crushed and broken reformers in Iran, I back the ultimatum to the fanatic and bellicose Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what about that camel in the room? The one we all see but can't point out? What about the only power in the Middle East, also fanatic and aggressive, which has a vast stockpile of weapons enough to obliterate the region? Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now. I have been in contact with a young Iranian woman who wore a green scarf and lipstick on the streets of Tehran, whose uncle is currently being tortured in prison there for demonstrating against the results of the election. Somehow she escaped from the country and is in Britain briefly before going on to the US to make a new life. Let us call her M. Nobody could hate Ahmadinejad more than M; she hates the whole regime, the treacherous leaders who betrayed the people. When she speaks she often gets asthmatic. But yet, but yet, she finds her passions rising for her country this week because of fears of military strikes by Israel and the manifestly unfair way that Israel is indulged. "I will go back if they attack my country, even if they put me to jail," M says. "That is my duty. Israel is the enemy of peace and America gives them money to get more arms. I don't want Iran to have these terrible weapons, but Israel must also be stopped." The big powers are moving tentatively towards global de-nuclearisation, taking small but significant steps to show they do want everyone to pitch in. Obama's decision to shelve the European defence missile programme shows serious intent, so too Gordon Brown's announcement that Britain would cut down from four to three its Trident missile-carrying submarines. There was a moment this spring, albeit fleeting, when Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus breaking the 40-year-old silence and US complicity in its accumulated, un-inspected arsenal. Her reasonable appeal provoked apoplexy in a nation that assumes special, indeed exceptional, treatment. In the 1960s, Israel successfully hid its weapons from US inspectors. In 1986, Israeli nuclear technical assistant Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about the concealed stockpiles and has been punished ever since. Hubristic Israel no longer cares to deny that it has hundreds of atom and hydrogen bombs and devastating biological "tools". Netanyahu has been warning he will destroy the Iranian sites if his country feels the danger is real. Now he has just what he wanted – another crisis in the Middle East, to keep up the idea of plucky, vulnerable, endangered little Israel. Alarmingly, even the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is on side. History has made too many Israelis fear all humanity in perpetuity and that fear brings out the worst in that nation. It has predictably rejected the long, sober, unbiased UN report on the last assault on Gaza chaired by Richard Goldstone. He accused Hamas of crimes against Jewish civilians and charged Israel with grave crimes, the breaking of the Geneva convention, punishing and terrorising unarmed civilians. I have some images of these victims sent to me by a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist. Children turned to ash, blistered mothers weeping, and on and on. There still is no respite for the hungry and dying in Gaza. If Israel can mete out such treatment and not be called to account, just think what the state feels entitled to do to Iran. The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: "Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection." The US has leverage because it maintains and funds Israel. If Obama shies away from this, there can be no moral justification to go for Iran or North Korea or any other rogue state. And the leader whose election and dreams gave hope to millions thereby hastens the end of the world. |
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Once a country has Nukes, there is nothing we can do. It is in the world's best interest to ensure that dictatorships don't get access to nukes. Israel has never attacked another country unprovoked. They have never promised to use nuclear weapons to destroy another country. It is in the Iranian's and the World's best interest that Iran never gets nukes.
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Edited by
cashu
on
Wed 09/30/09 04:44 PM
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Influential Europeans – including many Muslims – recently debated freedom of expression with the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed which led to riots. Held in Berlin, it was a good, at times blazing, debate. Freedom of expression, we were given to understand, is one of the valves in Europe's heart that must remain open to keep our continent alive and healthy. In good faith I exercise that freedom in this column. Let us see if readers and interest groups will support my right to write what follows even if they violently disagree with my observations. From past experience I bet many will find that impossibly hard. They will denounce me as an enemy within, a rule-breaker of unspoken rules, bringing up stuff that must be left buried in the name of peace and justice. I see no reason to comply. This week shows us how such doublethink and doublespeak pulls the world towards Armageddon. Leaders of the rich nations have turned their fire on Iran, quite rightly. On Friday came news that the Islamic Republic had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant near Qom. Then the junta fired test missiles, to prove that the bearded ones have really big willies. Unlike Iraq under Saddam, there are, in Iran, nuclear developments that could lead to weapons of mass destruction. It is not an immediate but a future danger, say credible intelligence experts and indeed Barack Obama himself. Suddenly the president has got uncharacteristically belligerent, instructing Iran to open up all its nuclear facilities for inspection if it wants to avoid "a path that is going to lead us to confrontation". In May, Obama stood in Washington with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who we were told was there to seek assurances that there would be no shift from the conventional US position of total and unconditional support for Israel's policies right or wrong, known and clandestine. On Thursday the US, China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany meet in Geneva and, by that time, Iran will be expected to submit to international scrutiny. As a supporter of the now crushed and broken reformers in Iran, I back the ultimatum to the fanatic and bellicose Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what about that camel in the room? The one we all see but can't point out? What about the only power in the Middle East, also fanatic and aggressive, which has a vast stockpile of weapons enough to obliterate the region? Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now. I have been in contact with a young Iranian woman who wore a green scarf and lipstick on the streets of Tehran, whose uncle is currently being tortured in prison there for demonstrating against the results of the election. Somehow she escaped from the country and is in Britain briefly before going on to the US to make a new life. Let us call her M. Nobody could hate Ahmadinejad more than M; she hates the whole regime, the treacherous leaders who betrayed the people. When she speaks she often gets asthmatic. But yet, but yet, she finds her passions rising for her country this week because of fears of military strikes by Israel and the manifestly unfair way that Israel is indulged. "I will go back if they attack my country, even if they put me to jail," M says. "That is my duty. Israel is the enemy of peace and America gives them money to get more arms. I don't want Iran to have these terrible weapons, but Israel must also be stopped." The big powers are moving tentatively towards global de-nuclearisation, taking small but significant steps to show they do want everyone to pitch in. Obama's decision to shelve the European defence missile programme shows serious intent, so too Gordon Brown's announcement that Britain would cut down from four to three its Trident missile-carrying submarines. There was a moment this spring, albeit fleeting, when Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus breaking the 40-year-old silence and US complicity in its accumulated, un-inspected arsenal. Her reasonable appeal provoked apoplexy in a nation that assumes special, indeed exceptional, treatment. In the 1960s, Israel successfully hid its weapons from US inspectors. In 1986, Israeli nuclear technical assistant Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about the concealed stockpiles and has been punished ever since. Hubristic Israel no longer cares to deny that it has hundreds of atom and hydrogen bombs and devastating biological "tools". Netanyahu has been warning he will destroy the Iranian sites if his country feels the danger is real. Now he has just what he wanted – another crisis in the Middle East, to keep up the idea of plucky, vulnerable, endangered little Israel. Alarmingly, even the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is on side. History has made too many Israelis fear all humanity in perpetuity and that fear brings out the worst in that nation. It has predictably rejected the long, sober, unbiased UN report on the last assault on Gaza chaired by Richard Goldstone. He accused Hamas of crimes against Jewish civilians and charged Israel with grave crimes, the breaking of the Geneva convention, punishing and terrorising unarmed civilians. I have some images of these victims sent to me by a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist. Children turned to ash, blistered mothers weeping, and on and on. There still is no respite for the hungry and dying in Gaza. If Israel can mete out such treatment and not be called to account, just think what the state feels entitled to do to Iran. The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: "Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection." The US has leverage because it maintains and funds Israel. If Obama shies away from this, there can be no moral justification to go for Iran or North Korea or any other rogue state. And the leader whose election and dreams gave hope to millions thereby hastens the end of the world. we couldn't find them when they were here either . but I remember when israel stole them from us .but if you have family there think of what you want for them long and hard before you wish for it . god does some time give you every thing you ask for . |
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Edited by
s1owhand
on
Wed 09/30/09 05:13 PM
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Israel could not give them up (if they acknowledged having them) because they are surrounded by countries who have recently sworn to destroy them and have repeatedly attacked them with bus, cafe and marketplace bombings as well as indiscriminate rocket attacks aimed at heavily populated civilian areas. If they could be made to believe that they are in no threat but instead are surrounded by friendly neighbors who accept them then they would have no need for nukes - or an army either for that matter.
Nuclear armaments and religious fundamentalism are the stuff that Crusades and Inquisitions are made of.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNKhIJfB510 |
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Setting Iran as the moral equivalent of Israel is a reach. Israel has every reason to fear it's neighbors. Iran does everything possible to instill fear in everyone.
There is no reason to think Israel would use it's nukes unless actually endangered as a country. There is every reason to think Iran would use nukes in the most belligerent of ways. Iran is truly a terrorist nation. |
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 The entire world should be nuclear disarmed, especially the MiddleEast (including Israel).
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Once a country has Nukes, there is nothing we can do. It is in the world's best interest to ensure that dictatorships don't get access to nukes. Israel has never attacked another country unprovoked. They have never promised to use nuclear weapons to destroy another country. It is in the Iranian's and the World's best interest that Iran never gets nukes. Ah, you've learned the lessons of neoconservative warmongering well. I suggest you read "A Foreign Policy Of Freedom" by Dr Ron Paul and abandon your destructive thought patterns before they destroy you. 
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The entire world should be nuclear disarmed, especially the MiddleEast (including Israel). I would agree. I would like to add that since the US is the only nation that has ever used nukes or credibly threatened to use nukes (other than the defunct USSR), the American military complex is objectively a bigger threat than Iran. |
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Edited by
Quietman_2009
on
Wed 09/30/09 06:08 PM
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The entire world should be nuclear disarmed, especially the MiddleEast (including Israel). well that IS the point of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (which Iran signed) #1 to prevent any additional nations from developing nuclear weapons #2 to reduce and eliminate existing nuclear weapons the latest on #2: The Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT), better known as the Moscow Treaty "represents an important element of the new strategic relationship between the United States and Russia".[1] with both parties agreeing to limit their nuclear arsenal to 1700–2200 operationally deployed warheads each. It was signed in Moscow on May 24, 2002. SORT came into force on June 1, 2003 after the Bush-Putin ratification in St. Petersburg, and expires on December 31, 2012. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported that President Bush directed the US military to cut its stockpile of both deployed and reserve nuclear weapons in half by 2012. The goal was achieved in 2007, a reduction of US nuclear warheads to just over 50 percent of the 2001 total. A further proposal by Bush will bring the total down another 15% -wiki |
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The entire world should be nuclear disarmed, especially the MiddleEast (including Israel). I would agree. I would like to add that since the US is the only nation that has ever used nukes or credibly threatened to use nukes (other than the defunct USSR), the American military complex is objectively a bigger threat than Iran. If I was a citizen of another country,I would indeed fear Americans.They have good reason to fear us.
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Slowhand , you're really ignorant when it comes to this subject.
Surrounded by countries who want to destroy them? Why haven't they attacked? Surely they're not scared that they'll get nuked. And you keep bringing up cafe bombings. Have you been to Israel ever? there are checkpoints at the border that makes the Mexican border look disgraceful. Mossad's already been busted for committing bombings posing as palestinians. If anyone got across the border, it's because an IDF soldier was bought off or let them in. This is fact. |
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Slowhand , you're really ignorant when it comes to this subject. Surrounded by countries who want to destroy them? Why haven't they attacked? Surely they're not scared that they'll get nuked. And you keep bringing up cafe bombings. Have you been to Israel ever? there are checkpoints at the border that makes the Mexican border look disgraceful. Mossad's already been busted for committing bombings posing as palestinians. If anyone got across the border, it's because an IDF soldier was bought off or let them in. This is fact. * 1948 War of Independence (November 1947 - July 1949), that started by a 6 months of civil war between Jewish and Arab militias at the end of the British Mandate of Palestine and that turned into a regular war after the declaration of independence of Israel and the intervention of several Arab armies. In its conclusion, a set of agreements were signed between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria called the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the armistice lines between Israel and the West Bank, also known as the Green Line. * Six-Day War (June 1967) - fought between Israel and Arab neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The nations of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria also contributed troops and arms to the Arab forces. Following the war the territory held by Israel expanded significantly ("The Purple Line") : The West Bank, Golan Heights and Sinai were occupied from Jordan, Syria and Egypt, respectively. * War of Attrition (1968-1970) - a limited war fought between the Israeli military and forces of the Egyptian Republic, the USSR and the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1967 to 1970. It was initiated by the Egyptians as a way of recapturing the Sinai from the Israelis, who had been in control of the territory since the mid-1967 Six-Day War. The hostilities ended with a ceasefire signed between the countries in 1970 with frontiers remaining in the same place as when the war began. * Yom Kippur War (October 1973) - fought from October 6 to October 26, 1973 by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel as a way of recapturing part of the territories which they lost to the Israelis back in the Six-Day War. The war began with a surprise joint attack by Egypt and Syria on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Egypt and Syria crossed the cease-fire lines in the Sinai and Golan Heights, respectively, which had been captured by Israel in 1967 during the Six-Day War. |
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Once a country has Nukes, there is nothing we can do. It is in the world's best interest to ensure that dictatorships don't get access to nukes. Israel has never attacked another country unprovoked. They have never promised to use nuclear weapons to destroy another country. It is in the Iranian's and the World's best interest that Iran never gets nukes. Israel attacked Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon . You must have a short memory . The US and many nations have the Atom bombs and look what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan . I se the US and NATO with Israel as the most dangerous entities on earth . Just look to their history as it stands witness for their crimes . |
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Edited by
germanfidelio
on
Thu 10/01/09 03:43 PM
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This is funny... Yes Israel should be blamed for all the world's problems. I think you all need a history lesson. I think it is pretty self-explanatory. We all know how wonderful the Arab culture is, we all know how noble of people they are....
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Once a country has Nukes, there is nothing we can do. It is in the world's best interest to ensure that dictatorships don't get access to nukes. Israel has never attacked another country unprovoked. They have never promised to use nuclear weapons to destroy another country. It is in the Iranian's and the World's best interest that Iran never gets nukes. Israel attacked Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon . You must have a short memory . The US and many nations have the Atom bombs and look what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan . I se the US and NATO with Israel as the most dangerous entities on earth . Just look to their history as it stands witness for their crimes . I would agree with that. |
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Does Israel's nukes count? Israel's nukes, fire power etc would not matter if Iran would stop their foolish behavior. The ball is in the Iranians' court. What they do in Geneva will be a fundamental test for the Iranians. If Iran wants to continue the path they are on I would recommend, sanctions to include restrictions on financial services – particularly the financing and insuring of the oil trade – and imports of refined oil products such as petrol. Russia does not even like Iran's Nuke Issue. Bottom line is Iran needs to come up to the 21st century and quit the suppression of it's people. Bob Out |
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Edited by
A1CBob
on
Thu 10/01/09 04:24 PM
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Once a country has Nukes, there is nothing we can do. It is in the world's best interest to ensure that dictatorships don't get access to nukes. Israel has never attacked another country unprovoked. They have never promised to use nuclear weapons to destroy another country. It is in the Iranian's and the World's best interest that Iran never gets nukes. Israel attacked Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon . You must have a short memory . The US and many nations have the Atom bombs and look what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan . I se the US and NATO with Israel as the most dangerous entities on earth . Just look to their history as it stands witness for their crimes . I would agree with that. May of attacked but not after warning the country's to stop the killing and fly overs and lobbing of RPG etc...Come on they were provoked. It's the Hamas way. Bob |
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Edited by
A1CBob
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Thu 10/01/09 04:23 PM
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Gettin ahead of myself :)
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The entire world should be nuclear disarmed, especially the MiddleEast (including Israel). What if Nukes were the Number 1 preventer of massive war? Hmmmm.... Does kinda make you think doesn't it? |
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