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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: 2) by VLM on Monday October 23 2017, @01:55PM (1 child)
That's the bully vs bullied thing and the long term multi century history of countries and cultures thing.
So the Iranians, Germans (unified or not...), French, English, Israelis (when they had a country in the old days) have spent the last 3000 years periodically screwing over their neighbors and fighting for the sheer hell of it and generally smashing stuff up "because its there" similar to the old quote about why climb mountains. So nuclear arming those countries sounds really stupid and irresponsible from the perspective of world peace. Naturally, those are the countries we've armed with nukes LOL. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with giving such friendly and peaceful people nukes LOL?
On the other hand there's countries like Poland and Korea which have been brutalized speedbumps for large empires for most of recorded history. So you give them rifles and instead of invading Germany they kinda chill. So you give them tanks and instead of rolling thru Paris they chill out. Give them nukes and they'll sit on them until the next empire thinks it would be funny to run them over like a speed bump. I'm not really seeing a huge problem here? I mean, who are the least likely people on the planet to set off a nuke as a strategic or tactical military strike, the Poles, the Koreans, maybe Iceland or Costa Rica...
Much like American politics everyone knows sometimes whats said is the opposite of action, to appease. Likewise the norks talk a good game about how they'll kick everyones ass repeatedly every day of the week, but in practice they're one of the more peaceful countries out there, they have no bases all over the world, they haven't done an amphibious invasion of Japan, they don't even try to drive tanks up to Peking, they're like the drunk guy who can't even stand up to fight but hollers about kicking everyone's butt. I'm trying to think of the norks most impressive civilization-scale military victory... I guess they sat down during the Korean Police Action and let the Chinese retake their country for them. Or they do 007 spy stuff once in awhile.
The above was like semi-factual historical analysis. For anecdotes sake my Korean ex-coworker described the norks as hillbilly isolationists, I donno if this is universal among SK or just his political faction. The point of view expressed was if you leave the norks alone the odds are certain they'll leave you alone, kinda like the Swiss, its deeply ingrained in their temperament.
I mean, cross out the names to eliminate preconceived bias, and look at the dossier of the last couple thousand years of English foreign policy vs Korean, perhaps, and its kinda obvious which one makes the world relatively safer if they have nukes.
The hidden analogy of the Star Trek Universe isn't that the Ferengi are Jews, although that is pretty funny, its that the Klingons are Euros, not Africans. In Star Trek world the Africans are that stone age tribe from the recent action flick that were still pounding rocks together. The warlike Klingons are Prussians not Somalians. You can tell its a good SN post when the Trek analogies come out to play.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @06:08PM
In ST:DIS, Klingon culture has a striking resemblance to the alt-right, which dovetails nicely with the allusions to the N-word in earlier productions that take place later in the 23rd century.