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from the We-have-always-been-at-war-with-Eurasia dept.
Iran Doesn't Have a Nuclear Weapons Program. Why Do Media Keep Saying It Does?
When it comes to Iran, do basic facts matter? Evidently not, since dozens and dozens of journalists keep casually reporting that Iran has a "nuclear weapons program" when it does not—a problem FAIR has reported on over the years (e.g., 9/9/15). Let's take a look at some of the outlets spreading this falsehood in just the past five days:
Business Insider (10/13/17): "The deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aims to incentivize Iran to curb its nuclear weapons program by lifting crippling international economic sanctions."
New Yorker (10/16/17): "One afternoon in late September, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called a meeting of the six countries that came together in 2015 to limit Iran's nuclear weapons program."
Washington Post (10/16/17): "The administration is also considering changing or scrapping an international agreement regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program."
CNN (10/17/17): "In reopening the nuclear agreement, [Trump] risks having Iran advance its nuclear weapons program at a time when he confronts a far worse nuclear challenge from North Korea that he can't resolve."
The problem with all of these excerpts: There is no documentation that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Monday October 23 2017, @02:47AM (15 children)
The basis for that claim? Two assessments by US intelligence that indicate that Iran halted its program in 2007 and may not have resumed the program in 2012 (depending on whether the second report is accurate or merely reflects biases of the time). The second assessment also comes with some touchy feelie sentiment that Israeli intelligence is thought to agree with the assessment even though public statements were made to the contrary.
In contrast, we have a 2011 IAEA report which indicates that Iran probably was still running its nuclear weapons program at the time. [cfr.org]
and on the difference with the 2007 CIA report:
So why is the press suppose to ignore that?
My take is that Iran will ease up on the more provocative parts of its nuclear weapons program as long as the incentives of the current deal remain more useful to them than that aspect of weapons development.
(Score: 4, Informative) by n1 on Monday October 23 2017, @06:24AM (12 children)
Any vaguely wealthy country with a functioning military and intelligence service runs all kinds of programs on as many 'what if' scenarios you can think of, it is in the national interest to prepare and plan for things even if there is no imminent intent to commission an actual operation to build or use the equipment required for it. This is done in an offensive and defensive situation, you have to examine and understand potential threats in as much detail as possible if you intend to protect yourself from them.
A country like Iran certainly has the incentive and wealth to understand as much about things beyond conventional warfare, such as nuclear weapons, biological warfare and cyber warfare if they wish to defend their sovereignty from adversaries with such capabilities.
I am certain every current member of the WMD club has plans on how they could bomb everyone (including allies) and scenarios it would be necessary. All of those countries have no real intent to use those weapons, but they're going to continue to improve the capabilities of them and think up as many scenarios as possible where they could be used just in case there is a time.
I would like to see the end of nuclear weapons, but while the big players in NATO, Pakistan, India, China, Israel and Russia are not giving up on their programs, I can certainly understand why other independent, wealthy, strategically important states would consider building their own and have continually refined plans to do so, even if they are not actively engaged in putting it together.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday October 23 2017, @07:52AM (5 children)
Yes, but all this does most certainly beg the question of why khallow is so abysmally ignorant about the simplest points of international relations. Is it because he his sitting on top of the Yellowstone Super-duper-Volcano, and so does not give any shits that are not incinerated as soon as they are released? Or do conservatives really, really, do not understand rationality? Why is a model of a "rational maximizer" the egotistical asshole the the rest of us off first when the shit hits the fan? Sorry, khallow. Tried to warn you about the tarbaby! And you thought it was just a kid's story, eh? We remember, the right to arm bears with nuclear weapons shall not be infringed! No Fringes on the Nukes for bears! What part of this is not making sense to you? Actually, serious question. I have a nuke under your ass right now, just for insurance. Don't make me call a "deadman's bluff". [wikipedia.org] Doesn't matter what you were holding, once the lead or plutonium begins to fly. Via con Dios, and may he have mercy on your soul.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:47PM (1 child)
Yes. But you already knew that. You and EF are probably my two favorite commenters here since it seems like you both really get that. (I'm convinced that EF is actually doing satire.)
Because a "rational maximizer" is a strongman who becomes a warlord. The ability to violently impose on other peoples' lives is the meter-stick by which they measure rationality. The word rational here is in fact truthy, or at least ironic.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 23 2017, @04:45PM
Modded up because it's criminal for this to sit at 0. With one small nitpick: I don't think Eth is doing satire anymore. He might have started that way, but he's been getting high on his own supply for at least 18 months now and it's beginning to show.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by NewNic on Monday October 23 2017, @04:04PM
FTFY.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:32AM (1 child)
Tarbaby? You racist puke. Read, you pedarast Greek http://newblackwoman.com/2011/08/02/why-yes-tar-baby-is-a-racial-slur/ [newblackwoman.com] And, do not attempt to pretend brotherhood with the black tarbaby community.
Why, yes. Tar baby IS a racial slur
August 2, 2011 New Black Woman
What is it with whiteness seeking to regulate what POCs determine as racially and ethnically offensive? The latest in this phenomenon can be found in the comment section of Think Progress’ story on Rep. Doug Lamborn’s racist comments about working with President Barack Obama. Lamborn made the comments on a talk radio show:
“Even if some people say, well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that, they will hold the President responsible,” said Lamborn said Friday during an interview on a Denver radio station. “Now I don’t want to even have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get, you get it, you know… you are stuck and you are part of the problem now and you can’t get away.”
Lamborn did eventually expressed regret (no apologies, of course) for his comments.
Of course, we saw whiteness at play as people felt the need to declare if the term is racially insensitive or not. One comment from Think Progress:
“Ignorance of history is just as bad…..
And you’re correct – the Left has become hypersensitive about any comments made by the GOP – yet ignore comments made by the Left ( Remember when Obama called African-Americans “Mongrels” ?)
I’m amazed at how people get so excited over things so meaningless….”
Another from The Huffington Post:
Oh look, more dog whistle shenanigans.
The people on the right will, of course, defend it as not being racist, much as they did with the “Obama the magic negro” thing, or the bit where they photoshopped Obama, and his family’s faces on to chimpanzees, or the photoshop of watermelons on the white house lawn, or on, and on, ad nauseum.
But yeah, it’s just the left playing the race card. Every time I hear that lame @ss excuse, my eyes roll back so hard, it flings me out of my chair.
The only thing more ubiquitous, and annoying, than the left “playing the race card” is the right playing the “playing the race card” card to rationalize that they’ve thrown their lot in with a bunch of bigots.
Another comment on Balloon Juice:
(In response to a person’s asking a black professor his opinion on the term) Not exactly an unbiased authority.
TNC has this dead on. It is pretty unlikely that Lamborn has much exposure to the OED’s references or Updike or anything other than the Uncle Remus stuff, and while that’s very much in the grey zone as a whole, the Tar Baby is not a particularly racist story. It’s a 19th-century southern white writer’s rendition of an African folk story processed through American slavery, but it isn’t about race. Lamborn is an Oklahoma GOPer so the odds that he isn’t a racist are extremely low and the odds that he isn’t a waste of organic chemicals even lower, but THIS bit of rhetoric isn’t really racist. It’s just southern. If southern folk references are decreed as always racist, I think we’re done, and not in a good way.
Revisionist history at its finest…
It should be noted the above comment was referring to a 2006 article written by Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, which he mulls whether the term is racist:
Is tar baby a racist term? Like most elements of language, that depends on context. Calling the Big Dig a tar baby is a lot different than calling a person one. But sensitivity is not unwarranted. Among etymologists, a slur’s validity hangs heavily on history. The concept of tar baby goes way back, according to Words@Random from Random House: “The tar baby is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax or other sticky material is used to trap a person.” The term itself was popularized by the 19th-century Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, in which the character Br’er Fox makes a doll out of tar to ensnare his nemesis Br’er Rabbit. The Oxford American Dictionary defines tar baby much like Romney used it, “a difficult problem, that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.” But the term also has had racial implications. In his book Coup, John Updike says of a white woman who prefers the company of black men, “some questing chromosome within holds her sexually fast to the tar baby.” The Oxford English Dictionary (but not the print version of its American counterpart) says that tar baby is a derogatory term used for “a black or a Maori.”
In reference to that comment about the phrase being “just southern.” Is it southern like the Confederate flag? Or Jim Crow? Or de jure segregation? No, tar baby isn’t just some “southern folk reference” that white people tossed around referring to sticky situations. Let’s not hide behind geographic slang and insult the intelligence of black folks by glossing over the racial implications of referring to a black person as a tar baby.
Second, these sort of comments are a shining example of how whiteness seeks to erase and redefine what a person of color determines as offensive and derogatory. Whiteness gives white people and its practitioners the authority to feel they can decide what a person of color can and should take as offensive.
While this is nothing new, its prevalence seems to have multiplied since the Obamas moved in to the White House. This mindset among those who operate under the realm of whiteness is another form of its attempt to dominate and colonize the minds of POCs.
While they are inherently unable to determine what is or isn’t racist by their societal status, whiteness gives white people and its practitioners the belief that they, not POCs, are the authority figures on race, racism and what’s racially offensive. The experiences and opinions of POCs are essentially erased, downplayed and viewed as an exception rather than the rule.
What frustrates many POCs is how whiteness often invades safe spaces and attempts to thrusts its world view on racism and racially insensitive comments onto the minds of POCs as if that opinion is the authoritative commentary on race relations. While whiteness emboldens them to do so, white people do not have the authority to tell me or any other person of color what we should see as offensive or racially/ethnically insensitive. In a perfect world in which whiteness didn’t dominate unsafe and safe spaces, the racist nature of the term tar baby would be accepted as truth by white people and there wouldn’t be this push by whites to define for POCs what is or isn’t racist.
Unfortunately, whiteness isn’t that easy to defeat.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:51AM
PLEASSSE don't throw me in da Briar Patch, Br'er Runaway!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 23 2017, @10:29AM (3 children)
I agree with every word you've said but there's still one problem. You're looking at the situation entirely from their perspective instead of from your own. That is exceedingly unwise. Darwin would even go as far as to call it unfit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @04:57PM (2 children)
Lol, so it turns out your brain may not be hardwired as a sociopath, but you freely embrace concepts that make you into one anyway! Wow, just fucking wow.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 23 2017, @05:40PM (1 child)
Please, show us more of your ignorance. A human mind that is unable to see things from its own perspective is no less damaged than one that is unable to see it from the perspectives of others.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:00AM
If it is unable to see things from its own perspective, that hardly is a perspective then, is it? Please, Buzzard, we know you are trying to defend the indefensible, but flat out contradiction is to be avoided.
And as for that "other perspective"? Well, if it's alt-right, it is more of a confusion and/or delusion than a proper perspective, so they do not really see much, either. Maybe this is the source of your confusion?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 23 2017, @01:55PM
This goes beyond what-if. I found the 2011 IAEA report [isis-online.org] in question. Look through appendix C. We have stuff like
It's worth noting as well that Iran was conducting uranium enrichment activities at Natanz as late as 2013 [nti.org]. And the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant [wikipedia.org] is buried inside a mountain. There's a lot of effort over the last decade by the Iranian military to protect its enriched uranium production, which wouldn't make sense for the oft claimed medical purposes (not to mention the volume of enriched uranium that would be produced).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 23 2017, @09:25PM
Is it really in their national interest?
Iran has several deep underground secret places that attract a lot of interest, from which IAEA and some powers are banned.
The thing is, if they open these bases to world observers, and if, as claimed, they have no Nuclear Weapons program, Iran suddenly becomes as interesting as Bolivia or Iceland, and they get to go about their business of sowing revolution in their neighborhood with nobody bothering them.
Russia is building them Reactors. Countries have offered them fuel for these reactors. [reuters.com] Take the fuel, let inspectors in, and the whole problem goes away.
The US and Russia already have such mutual inspection agreements under START treaties. Even during the height of the Ukraine conflict Russian inspectors were allowed in [freebeacon.com] for regularly scheduled visits.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday October 23 2017, @05:43PM (1 child)
In contrast, we have a 2011 IAEA report which indicates that Iran probably was still running its nuclear weapons program at the time. [cfr.org]
Thanks Obama! Your 2015 Iran deal can't even go back in time and retroactively pause their nuclear program!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 23 2017, @05:53PM
The point here is that the story claims that Iran hasn't had a nuclear program for a while based on a 2007 CIA report. However, we see a considerable effort by the Iranian military well past that date. In fact, some of the places which are part of the supposedly non-existent Iran nuclear weapons program have been active till 2013 [soylentnews.org] a couple of years before the 2015 deal. At that point, you're not speaking of a old program that's been dead for a decade, but a program that might have been suspended a couple of years ago, or it might not and we just haven't discovered the cheating yet.