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from the not-sure-that-threats-will-work dept.
President Rouhani warns that White House failure to uphold Iran nuclear deal would prompt firm reaction from Tehran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called on US President Donald Trump to uphold the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, or "face severe consequences".
In a televised speech, Rouhani said the "Iranian government will react firmly" if the White House fails to "live up to their commitments" under the agreement.
The warning comes weeks in advance of a May 12 deadline for Trump to renew the deal.
The US president has previously said he would scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he has called the "worst deal in history", unless "a better option" is presented to him.
[...] The landmark deal reached in Lausanne, Switzerland in April 2015 with China, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany and the US offered Iran more than $110bn a year in sanctions relief and a return to the global economy in exchange for halting its drive for a nuclear weapon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:01PM (11 children)
capitalism probably is required to achieve a great peaceful society but it is clearly not sufficient. You need sensibles laws against murder, rape, assaul, thefts and most importantly a group to enforce it and a group to check that group of enforcers. Without that you get Liberia, I hope you enjoy paying protection money to your warlord....
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:07PM (6 children)
You mean taxes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:46PM (5 children)
I feel better about funding universal healthcare and public schools that I feel about the money given to a dude in Libéria but looking at it autistically I see how one might confuse a proper gouvernement to a properly paid warlord.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JNCF on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:56PM (4 children)
Roads! Healthcare! Also bombs that we drop on literal children, but let's not talk about that! Funding foreign wars of aggression to prop up the petrodollar feels bad, man.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:06AM (3 children)
Then stop driving oil-based-fuel-hungry SUVs. What? That's not what you meant? Well, too bad, because that's exactly at the heart of the problem!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:26AM
Lulz. I'm rolling around on one to four cylinders, depending on the day. I'm still part of the problem, but these are not the Hummers you're looking for. And I think petrol is only part of the problem -- they'd be trying to proliferate the dollar through other means, including force, anyway. Global acceptance of the dollar means that inflation sucks value away from the world, rather than just Americans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:11PM (1 child)
You are being ridiculous.
Try "power hungry fighter jets, tanks and war ships". Control over oil and wars for control over oil are not about SUVs, they are about military and about militaries of the world, both allied and potential adversary.
Having civilians at it is just for making oil's price bearable and production and supply abundant, keeping the industry alive in times of peace. If you want to reduce global carbon footprint, military gear has to switch over to "green" (no offense for you, swabs and airmen blue coats) or at least to portable nuclear first, and then the rest of the world will follow.
For instance, all military seafaring vessels could be nuclear propelled, theoretically maybe even the tanks and heavy transport vehicles, and perhaps even large cargo planes. And the fighter jets could use bio-fuels, or cryo-hydrogen. Then, the oil usage as energy source may just as well cease.
But then again, if the military energy of choice becomes something which can be sourced most anywhere, then the tap is gone, and so is idea of controlling the tap. So, basically, the strategists will have to make a decision.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:44PM
Ennnngggh...I think there are a few problems with this.
Do we even have access to enough nuclear goo to fit out the whole navy with it? Aside from that--and being enormously expensive to retrofit and maintain--that would also massively increase the amount of nuclear waste we're producing. Which we still don't have a place to put since they keep killing Yucca Mountain, right? Which is in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Nevada, but no no no! Not in our backyard!
And no, you can't power a tank with a nuclear reactor. Reactors can't be miniaturized that much and still produce enough power for what you're talking about, AFAIK. RTGs can be made quite small, but they don't produce enough power. And there's no way you could fit a real reactor in an Abrams. Plus, y'know, it's really not the best idea to be sending a bunch of reactors into combat so they can contaminate everything where you're fighting when they get destroyed.
And as for the "large cargo planes," yes there were technically projects for nuclear-powered aircraft, but bear in mind these were enormous planes, and with the amount of radiation shielding you need to keep from irradiating everything onboard, it's not very practical payload-wise.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:11PM (3 children)
Nope. Exploitation of The Working Class by a separate Oligarchical Ownership Class is absolutely not necessary for anything.
There are thousands of worker-owned cooperative around the globe that demonstrate the fact.
The violent mess that USA has made of the globe is proof enough for anyone not wearing bottle-bottom rose-colored glasses that Capitalism and the resulting greedy, grasping Oligarchy is NOT the way to go.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:17PM (1 child)
This. There was and still is a massive amount of violence perpetrated to further capitalist interests. These tangentially benefitted the US as a whole, but then globalism came and the capitalists realized they could make a lot of money putting labor markets against each other. Immoral decisions made for the bottom line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:31PM
There was and still is a massive amount of violence perpetrated to further capitalist interests
Yup. Major General Smedley Butler, who came up from the rank of Private and was twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor, looking back on his years in the Marine Corps said in his book "War is a Racket"
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:38PM
You don't understand.
Capitalism is just one of many possible forms of establishing a pecking order or power pyramid in human society. If we concentrate just on the methods, we are missing the big picture behind them.
When capitalism had been rejected before, the hierarchy nevertheless emerged again, and it had even more unpleasant methods of assuring its internal structural integrity then capitalism. Ditto for socioeconomic systems preceding the rise of capitalism. There may be other possible alternatives, but the question remains: how is the power distributed and deployed?
So, if you want to change the world, you better start thinking about why humans need to control other humans, to counter and subvert others' will, and what would make that superfluous and non-rewarding. Once that riddle is solved, that would be the end not only of capitalism, but also of any other system of subjugation. But, I don't promise you will like what you may find out - there is a reason we are living like this and not like that. But then again, if it becomes technically possible, there is a very real possibility that capitalism will get retired, but I am afraid that once the carrots are removed from the toolbox, only the sticks will remain in it for us (erm, for the humans living at the time).