The rumour and the scoop vs. the (still existing?) discussion of politics in the media
INSIDE DOPE by DAVID GRANN – Mark Halperin and the transformation of the Washington establishment.

Posted by: b | Oct 19 2004 22:54 utc | 3

And while we’re on the subject, what’s with those liberal women’s organizations that can’t recruit enough women? They’re losing membership numbers. The League, AAUW, NOW, Feminist Majority, they need to reach out to MORE than just lesbians, college students, women of color, unmarried [for now]professionals [for now], and elderly/dying bridge players.
They need to reach out to married mothers. What IS the feminist agenda for them, besides avoiding marriage and motherhood altogether? Government funded childcare and health care issues, while valuable to working mothers, don’t seem to be getting traction with this demographic: Because they ignore the biggest reason women stop expecting their own childcare and healthcare: gender discrimination in the tax code.
That’s right folks, married working women pay the highest marginal taxes in America. And NOT ONE women’s organization has decried this blatant gender discrimination — which contributes to married women dropping OUT of the paid workforce in droves, which in turn results in employer rationales to discrimninate against them in hiring, pay, promotions etc. It also means these women no longer require childcare; and it means that they rely on their husband’s health benefits and that they vote, by the way, to give their husbands bigger tax cuts. It’s a vicious circle.

Posted by: gylangirl | Oct 19 2004 23:42 utc | 5

What is that IMHO, anyway?
International Mothers Hoes Organization?
Just seriously curious.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Oct 20 2004 0:27 utc | 7

RINO Republican In Name Only
gylangirl

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 20 2004 0:49 utc | 9

Thanks gylangirl:
Ran into IMHO so many times; had no clue what it meant. Also LOL, and OTOH.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Oct 20 2004 0:57 utc | 11

Thanks gylangirl & JMFeeney,
I’ve struggled with the acronyms ever since I’ve been reading this & Billmon’s blogs. Sometimes I just post and ask (not too often), I have at times asked another blogger friend, and sometimes it just comes to me and I say, Ah Ha!
International Mothers Hoes Organization was one that just dawned on me recently FlashH. I’d struggled with that one for months.
But the main mystery I have the most fun with is figuring out the handles, gylangirl & JMFeeney (USA)?, of the contributors here? Some are very enlightening as when I got it from r’Giap and discovered General Giap.
I’ve copied your list gylangirl and appreciate it.

Posted by: Juannie | Oct 20 2004 1:29 utc | 13

For reference on the gender discrimination in the US income tax code, see the book Taxing Women by Edward J McCaffery. Great economics text.

Posted by: gylangirl | Oct 20 2004 2:00 utc | 15

A teacher in a small Texas town asks her class how many of them are Bush fans. Not really knowing what a Bush fan is, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raise their hands except one boy, little Johnny. The teacher asks Johnny why he has decided to be different. Johnny says, “I’m not a Bush fan.” The teacher says, “Why aren’t you a Bush fan, Johnny?” Johnny says, “Because I’m a John Kerry fan.” When the teacher asks why, the boy says, “Well, my mom’s a John Kerry fan, and my Dad’s a John Kerry fan, so I’m a John Kerry fan!”
The teacher is a little put out about all of this. After all, this is Texas, so she says, “What if your mom was a moron, and your dad was an idiot, what would that make you?” Johnny says, “That would make me a Bush fan.”

Posted by: jj | Oct 20 2004 4:06 utc | 17

I now expect Kerry to win, at least in the
actual voting process, if not, perhaps, in
subsequent legal maneuvering to disqualify his majority. Numerous reports indicate that the Bush team is quite ready to try to repeat the same vote suppression strategy and covering fire of the Supreme Court that permitted them to prevail in 2000. It’s not so clear that the court majority will be as docile this time. More to the point, however, is my belief that even if Bush risks a constitutional crisis and manages to eke out a tainted “victory”, he will not complete his term of office. Just as Nixon won in 1972 only to be flushed away by Watergate, so too Bush finds himself abandonned by the very elites (traditional Republican strongholds like Wall Street and the military in the first place) that will bring him down. The project will require time to bathe the Bush electorate in “news” of scandals which are already well known to anyone who has been really watching. The Sibel Edmonds case comes readily to mind,
but that may only be the opening wedge in a media “shock and awe” campaign. It would be better for the country if this torturous
path can be avoided, but the Bushites show no signs of being willing to go quietly.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 20 2004 4:54 utc | 19

I also expect Kerry to win, and have felt this way for the past 9 months or so. In a small way this election seems in reverse of the Carter – Reagan election, this time Bush being Carter with a long record of foreign policy failure coupled with a flagging economy, and Kerry offering a different and more optimistic way out of the morass albeit not as cheerily as Reagan. And I would add these endgame factors for Kerry:
1) The inability to face the consequences of four more years, even if you like some of Bushs policys.
2) The rooting for the underdog” effect” (that often adds a few extra points).
3) The yet undesclosed advantage of the large number of recently registered voters.
4) The underestimation of just how pissed off half the country is, and their ability to do something about it, like an unusually high turnout – which always benifits the Democrats.
5) More slippage in the stock market.
6) More trouble in Iraq
7) The fact that I have cast a very potent spell in favor of Mr Kerry

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 20 2004 7:03 utc | 21

On the not so bright side, I saw a headline recently which read “Prisoners Held by US Exposed to Torture, Report Says.”
Exposed to torture? What, they were shown a picture of torture? Someone played them a tape of torture? They were assembled in a small theatre and someone was tortured in front of them? What is this “exposed to torture,” the latest chicken-manure euphemism?
Either they were tortured or they weren’t. Criminy. Does language even mean anything any more, or are well over the border into Orwell-land?

Posted by: DeAnander | Oct 20 2004 8:16 utc | 23

Jonathan Freedland in a Guardian comment: Faith against reason

For the clash under way now is about more than Bush v Kerry, right v left. It seems to be an emerging clash of tradition against modernity, faith against reason. The true believers pitted against the “reality-based community”.
That leaves two questions, one for the future, one for November 2. For the future: how long can these two competing world views, so far apart from each other and so sharply divided, co-exist in the same country? For November 2: which of these two camps is going to be absolutely determined to win?

Posted by: b | Oct 20 2004 9:27 utc | 25

DeAnander: That’s absolutely disgusting. And of course it’s completely illegal, like most of the laws implemented in Iraq. The occupiers simply can’t legally change the key laws and economic system of the land.
And that’s a key reason why the rest of the world should better take note of what happens. One day, some country may well be invaded just so that Monsanto can sell that crap.
This shit has to stop, as soon as possible. But I suppose it would be fairly un-PC to wish for the fast annihilation of the current world-enslaving ultra-capitalist econimic system. The same way it is un-PC to say I wouldn’t mind if the entire occupying Army, occupying foreign administration, mecrenaries and contractors were wiped out next morning.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Oct 20 2004 10:41 utc | 27

Looking at the most recent CENTCOM newsreleases pertaining to Falluja, I’ll be surprised if Zarqawi does not show up in custody (or in a post-mortem photo) very soon. He may beat the odds but I increasingly doubt it – and I read his very public oath of allegiance as an indicator that he doubts it, too.
I’m not sure how long we’d have him before disclosure; two days maybe.

Posted by: Pat | Oct 20 2004 13:58 utc | 29

@b real – layout – my fault, corrected – thx

Posted by: b | Oct 20 2004 15:51 utc | 31

@Hannah,
Did you know that some astrologists have also been predicting that Bush will not complete his second term?
@b,
The Guardian’ Faith against Reason’ analogy plays into the same false dichotomy followed by the Bush administration: that faith and reason are opposites. Instead of positing that either science OR faith is real, the reality is that faith and science co-exist. Even Einstein had a faith. And science validates some mysteries of faith, the mind-body connection being one, the matter/energy connection being another.
One of the worst philosophical ideas, in terms of human consequences, has been the ideological separation of the spirit from the body. It has resulted in the denial of half of human reality by both religious and secular organizations.

Posted by: gylangirl | Oct 20 2004 16:31 utc | 33

Here goes one last time, then I promise to shut up.
(HGOLATIPTSU, often abbreviated Golat) 😉
Bush’s presidency has been a secret presidency. It has been fraught with fraud and lies. My guess is that we don’t even know a small part of the things he has done, nor do we know exactly how the neocon cabal intends to hold on to power. — Look at the discussions of an October Surprise!
Admitting that manipulations, trickery, fraud, or even exteme measures (e.g. code red and martial law) will play a role in elections invalidates them and means that the better cheater will win. At that point, discussing the merits of the two candidates in conventional terms of political position, past performance, number of adherents, etc. is no longer rational.
** 1. Bush has already shown that he (or rather BushCo ..) is the better manipulator. Why on earth shouldn’t he manage it again?
It is too late. The American people should have risen up and demanded justice and proper accounting after the previous election. After 9/11 they should have protested at practically every step the Gvmt. took. They didn’t.
BushCo, I am sure, took careful note. They may even have been surprised at the lack of opposition and may now be a little over-confident. I doubt that the small window of opportunity offered (an over-confident opponent can be tripped up) will be exploited by the Democrats, Kerry seems set on out-Bushing Bush, following the misguided principle of ‘moving to the center’ or ‘doing better than your opponent on the issues but in the same direction’, etc. (Other matters may play a role.. money…Israel…)
** 2. So: who, one asks, set the agenda? Bush. Who wins? The person who set the agenda.
Hope I am wrong.
————–
gylangirl, I didn’t know that about married women in the US, interesting.

Posted by: Blackie | Oct 20 2004 16:51 utc | 35

from “the despoiling of america” by katherine yurica. this is not conspiracy theory stuff
How Dominionism Was Spread
 
 
The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.
 
At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called “Christianity” it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep’s clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.[9]
 
Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.” Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:
 
 
“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”[10]
 
 
Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’”[11]  Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.” It read:
 
 
“Rule the world for God.
“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.
“Hide your strength.
“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.
“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.”[12]
 
 
Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.”[13]
 
It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside “enemy,” which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society.
 
When one examines the progress of its agenda, one sees that Dominionism has met its time table: the complete takeover of the American government was predicted to occur by 2004.[14] Unless the American people reject the GOP’s control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws.
much more at http://www.yuricareport.com

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 20 2004 17:15 utc | 37

rgiap: that the middleclass and working poor vote for these right wing jackals is not even pitiable. You are right: the ‘people’ are monstrously culpable.
M.S. Merwin:
My friends without feet sit by the wall
Nodding to the lame orchestra
Brotherhood it says on the decorations
My friend without eyes sits in the rain smiling
With a nest of salt in his hand
….

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 20 2004 17:32 utc | 39

Oil and Water, Japan and China Robert Feldman, Morgan Stanley (Tokyo)

No, this piece is not about how Japan and China do not get along politically. Rather, it is indeed about oil and water — or more precisely about how the competition for resources will shape the world in which Japan and China interact over the next decades.

Posted by: b | Oct 20 2004 18:36 utc | 41

@Juannie,
gylany and androcracy.
I had the same life-changing reactions to The Chalice and The Blade, including lending it out too much.

Posted by: gylangirl | Oct 20 2004 19:14 utc | 43

Bernhard: “However, fortunately, the details suggest that Japan and China (along with the United States) have much more to gain by cooperation than by competition, especially military competition.”
Well, sure, but you have to be purely rational and reality-based for that. I think Jaures wrote in the early 1910s that the main European powers were so interconnected economically, by the capitalist financial system, that they wouldn’t go to war against each other ever again. Except that national pride and insane greed of some rulers hoping to take on half the continent came into play, and tens of millions paid the price in the next 30 years.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Oct 20 2004 19:57 utc | 45

@CJ
I agree with you – the cooperative solution may not happen – most probably because the US will interfere. The strategic interest of the US is to hold China down and they can use Japan to do so.
On 1910 – on thought I have running around today is the comparrison of Bush with William II

Recent analyses of records of his birth in the former Imperial Archives have also suggested that he may have experienced some brain trauma, possibly leading to some brain damage. Historians are divided on whether such a mental incapacity may have contributed to his frequently aggressive, tactless, headstrong and occasionally bullying approach to problems and people, which was evident in both his personal and political lives. Such approach certainly marred German policy under his leadership, most notably in his dismissal of his cautious chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, while he had a strikingly poor relationship with his mother.

Posted by: b | Oct 20 2004 20:10 utc | 47

most esteemed comrade slothrop
yes. these ‘people’ have been bought off by rupertmurdochs worldview which is as sinister as it is profitable
in each country he has laid his dirty hands he has corrupted at every level he has been involved in – i have no question that in the ‘junk bonds’ period he was involved in criminal activity in the same way that that group of capital accumulators were.
he has mocked through his own act & through his properties the idea of being a citizen. he was once an australian – sold that citizenship to lord it over the english & to become pals with thatcher – he sold his english citizenship to join the big boys in the united states – each time done with a cynicism that is so strong i sense the stench from here. no doubt when it is necessary he will become a chinese citizen
there is not a leader in the countries he operates who is not in his pocket & they act before him & his dominion like the caricatural gangsters they are. murdoch has taught them to say nothing but to do as he wants. & they do. without fail.
blair, this buffoon on a string being pulled from one side of the atlantic to another is merely a creation of this man & he is the natural heir to thatcher. that is what rupert wanted & that is what rupert has got
i’ve never had much time for that pumped up pomposity of verbiage called the bbc – but whatever it might have been – once so long ago – it is nothing now but a branch office of newscorp. there is no qualitative difference between what they do & what newscorp wants
they have not only made a mockery of civic duty but they have destroyed the language we use here – if i hear humint or sigint one more time i will shove it up the commentators ass.
how i detest those lackies employed by murdoch who are so eager to please their master that they write shit that we will smell in high heaven. there is not one, not one of them that is anything but a scibbler with too much drink in them. their detestable commentaries are just so much pap, so much propoganda to fill the whole in the wall where useless words go
they have neither dignity nor posess any remnanjts of human decency. foxnews is the most blmatant example of their indecency & their taste for political pornography. the obscenities that they pile one after the other
let there be no doubt – i may doubt & question the people – but this man & his minions hate them – & hate them with a fervour that has been practiced for fifty years & his hatred of the people is evident for all to see in what his lackies write & speak
the execrable bill o’reilly is the perfect example of a murdoch employee – a bully, a thug a man without any real power, i would suggest a man without any real substance even with his oft repeated harvard education & his ‘journalism’ ‘prizes’ – but this unworthy piece of shit is not worth the spit on martha gellhorns shoes. but the rest of murdochs employees can believe if they want that they are not bill’o reilly but that is exactly who they are. wothless men with worthless minds who write worthless words
perhaps they are the natural expression of the bullshit pretence of ‘objective journalism so thazt we can now see what they are – employees, if you like, lackies. that is what they were in the days of beaverbrook & hearst & that is what they are today, employees & lackies
but what harm they have done is incalculable – in every country in every land he has touched – he destroyed working class communities in australia england & america – he has made of the middle class a piss & shit filled buckets of fear & panic
he has turned them on to whatever thrill he wants to offer whether it is reality tv, elections, pornography or ‘talent’ contests. he has paraded their weaknesses before them – their envy, their insecurity, their fear & he has made a profit form them – no doubt laughing at them & at his lackies
fortunately there is nothing semitic about the man & he is a real representative of the callousness, the coldness – the absence of care australians cultivate to live in their island prison
he is not only an enemy of democracy – he is the enemy of all decent humane people – he has profited from the suffering of the ‘other’ & he has sold that suffering as a tool to make the middle classes shit in their pants. he has exactly that goebellian strategy of exuding a force that makes people too scared to offer opposition & what opposition has this man murdoch face. not much. commission after commission. enquiry after enquiry he has shown he own politics & politicians in a sense poor don corleone only imaagined
how i detest this man with the purest hatred i possess because he diminishes that which is sacred in ordinary peoples lives – their participation. their participation. he has made spectateurs of them all & he has done it at the lowest cost imaginable so we are not confused with what he thinks of us. he does it with the production values of a kitsch bordello from some whorehousetown in his own imagination
what murdoch wants is another four years of his lackey’s service & that is why bush will win this election – murdoch always gets what he wants. what are we people but poor abstraction in his calculation – not worth a second thought. do not forget that. we are not worth a breath or a second thought to this man. this monster
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 20 2004 21:56 utc | 49

One of the relatively convincing reasons for
choosing to vote for Kerry (rather than
a truly antiwar candidate like Nader) is the
fact that the next president will very likely nominate more than one Supreme Court justice.
The senatorial confirmations are likely to be highly contested, partisan, and acrimonious, especially if the Republicans retain control of the Senate. Nomination of
a centrist may reduce the partisan bloodletting, but it’s clear that such turf-battles are now a permanent feature of the American political landscape. One
interesting proposal for a solution to this
problem is

this Virginia Law review note which is both interesting in itself, and also a refreshing sign that traditional (but rational) Republicans and Democrats can still cooperate on issues of national importance. (The authors belong, I believe, to different parties.)

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 21 2004 7:31 utc | 51

@ gylangirl
I wasn’t aware of being in syzygy with the astrologists, since I’m a non-believer in astromancy. Still, I’ve always agreed with a friend who claimed that no university should allow any department whose theoretical foundations were
any less secure than those of Renaissance Astrology: he felt that sociology, political science, economics, and psychology might all be subject to such ostracism.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 21 2004 10:37 utc | 53

Kid’s vote.
“An unusual opinion poll that has correctly predicted the winner of the last four presidential elections has given Democratic challenger Kerry 57 percent against 43 percent for Bush, according to results released on Wednesday.”

Posted by: beq | Oct 21 2004 11:12 utc | 55

This is NOT a Joke
would to god this were one of Bernhard’s little spoofs. it is not. it could, with a BushCo victory (or maybe even in any case) become deadly, terrifyingly serious.
STOCKHOLM – Bush Plans to Screen Whole U.S. Population for Mental Illness’, read the headline in the ‘British Medical Journal’ (BMJ) and the project, with increasingly controversial drug treatment at its core, is underway as you read this.
Structures to put the scheme in place have been developed under a so-called “Federal Action Agenda,” announced in Washington on Jun. 9, and include mandatory mental health screening, which the plan recommends be linked with “treatment and supports”.
read it, please — read it and pass it on, and get the Reality Based Community talking about this incredibly dangerous Bush Regime plan. this is not Tin Foil Land here folks, this is InterPresse reporting on sourced comments, this is on the congressional record. please read it?

Posted by: DeAnander | Oct 21 2004 17:54 utc | 57

Need to throw up?
BBC Gaza girl death officer cleared

“We saw her from a distance of 70m. She was fired at … from the outpost. She fled and was wounded,” a soldier said.
While Iman was lying, wounded or dead, about 70m from the Israeli guard post, the platoon commander approached her and fired two bullets from close range at her head, the soldiers said.
He then went back a second time, put his weapon on the automatic setting and – ignoring their objections on the walkie-talkie – emptied his entire magazine into her body.
…
“The investigation did not find that the company or the company commander had acted unethically,” an army statement said.
“The investigation concluded that the behaviour of the company commander from an ethical point of view does not warrant his removal from his position.”
But the investigation criticised the officer’s leadership abilities.

Are these general zionist ethics?

Posted by: b | Oct 21 2004 18:25 utc | 59

Newspaper articles on the “New Freedom” often state that the American Psychiatric Association supports it. This is not quite correct. They are inadverently referring to the American Psychological Association, wildly keen:
APA – Psychology
The American Psychiatric Association has had serious doubts:
The American Psychiatric Association released its own blueprint for the nations mental health care system in April titled ‘A Vision for the Mental Health System.’ The APA’s plan called for an investment in mental health care services that is equivalent to the level of disability caused by mental disorders, an end to behavioral health carveouts, and better integration between psychiatry and primary care. The report was released in the hopes of influencing the Commission’s work.
Psychiatric Times
The psychiatrists have nevertheless given prudent, confused, critical, thus ambiguous, endorsement … (see the same link – and read between the lines.)
See also: Testimony of Darrel A. Regier, M.D., M.P.H.: On Behalf of the American Psychiatric Association For The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
Regier testimony
Conclusion: if lost up the creek without even part of a paddle, bumbling about blind, prefer an (accredited) psychiatrist over a psychologist.
Original Gvmt. Report:
President’s New Freedom: Commission on Mental Health — Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America.
Gvmt. Report – Mental Health Commission

Posted by: Blackie | Oct 21 2004 19:24 utc | 61

@Annie:
You really didn’t need to do that, IMHO.
ITE, Bernhard and Pat are probably going to turn it into German & Russian acronyms,24/7, by the looks of it.
Ought to be the most interesting zoo since Hannibal acquired elephants, and simultaneously discovered the Tower of Babel.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Oct 21 2004 23:44 utc | 63

Nice reading:The Baghdad Blogger goes to Washington: day one

Posted by: Fran | Oct 22 2004 6:35 utc | 65

Listening a couple of nights ago to a local, super-hawkish radio show, in which the argument was made that OBL and al Qaeda are now small potatoes while Iran is the REAL security crisis of the decade, I was reminded that certain things have to take place before any possible strikes against that country. Just like the more or less predictable rundown of events to OIF, there must be a similar drill followed for Iran.
Where are we in the rundown?
Buying Nuclear Fuel Said to Interest Iran
Updated: Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 – 3:21 PM
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran is interested in buying nuclear fuel from the West, one of the incentives expected to be offered in a European package aimed at persuading Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment, a top nuclear scientist said Tuesday.
Britain, France and Germany are expected to offer Iran a number of incentives, including nuclear fuel, in an attempt to head off a confrontation between Tehran and the U.N. nuclear agency over the country’s nuclear program.
The Europeans are trying to convince Iran to abandon uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce fuel for nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The United States contends Iran has secret plans to build atomic weapons and wants the matter referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could lead to sanctions.
“We may purchase fuel from the West and develop its technology. We have not rejected the West’s fuel proposal, but not losing our right to the technology is the point,” Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was quoted as saying by state-run Tehran television.
Iran has been under enormous international pressure to abandon its nuclear program. On Monday, the country’s top nuclear negotiator said Iran was prepared to temporarily suspend some nuclear activities though it would not relinquish its right to enrich uranium.
The foreign ministers of Britain and Germany urged Iran Tuesday to indefinitely suspend its nuclear program and avoid a showdown next month with the U.N. nuclear agency.
“Iran has yet to give us the confidence we need about its intentions,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters in London with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “We cannot go on indefinitely, but Iran could still give us that confidence by introducing an indefinite suspension of its enrichment and processing activities.”[…]
[Iran is going to have to give up its uranium enrichment activities, as the British and German Foreign Ministers said, “indefinitely.” Declining to do so will move the matter up to the UNSC next month. Iran has stated that it will not forfeit its right to uranium enrichment and that, if it is dragged to the Security Council, it will throw out UN nuclear inspectors. But throwing out the nuclear inspectors – or the recall of inspectors by the UN – is the last significant event to look for prior to major breaking news.
Iran’s between a rock and a hard place; it wants to join the nuclear club, but the IAEA membership that has thus far protected its nuclear program development is not going to amount to a hill of beans without its formal abandonment of uranium enrichment. Thus it’s a game of chicken. Iran only has to correctly guage whether the threat to them is real. This is not, after all, about sanctions, but about the grounds for sanctions – the formal violations – that the Security Council will have to put in writing.
Some may hope but I don’t think anyone expects Iran to accept enriched fuel in exchange for giving up its own fuel development indefinitely. The only way out for both parties that I can see is for European negotiators to grant Iran the right to fuel development in principle, with a formal agreement on Iran’s part not to exercise that right for the time being – kicking the whole thing a little further down the road. A couple more weeks and we’ll see.]

Posted by: Pat | Oct 22 2004 7:06 utc | 67

@ DeAnander

STOCKHOLM – Bush Plans to Screen Whole U.S. Population for Mental Illness’, read the headline in the ‘British Medical Journal’ (BMJ) and the project, with increasingly controversial drug treatment at its core, is underway as you read this.
Structures to put the scheme in place have been developed under a so-called “Federal Action Agenda,” announced in Washington on Jun. 9, and include mandatory mental health screening, which the plan recommends be linked with “treatment and supports”.

I saw something interesting on the Italian news this morning, apparently the government wants to give pyschiatric tests to judges. You might be on to something here. I know this sounds dangerously paranoid but if you were able to control the shrinks (psychiatrists) you could pretty control the whole show. If someone gave you a hard time you could put it in your report that they had some ailment and that would pretty much put them out of contention.
The whole deal discussed in your linked article is probably just the frosting on the cake. I mean if you can makes lots of money all the while controlling the populace to an unprecedented degree…..why not?

Posted by: Dan of Steele | Oct 22 2004 11:05 utc | 69

This link talk about CBS 60 min show. The one who was talking about skull&bone.
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/06-19-04.asp

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 3 2004 23:51 utc | 71