Comment Re:No Foul play... (Score 1) 173
I'm guessing he suffered an overdose of lawyers.
I'm guessing he suffered an overdose of lawyers.
Another version of
Don't be silly. You should have had a free personality assessment and e-reading.
The real lesson here is that of $cientologists are going to continue behaving like a political action group, their tax exempt status should be revoked.
This must have something to do with the FLAC player he's been trying to hawk for a few years now. It's his music, and he's free to do what he wants with it, but all the MP3s are available for torrents, so all he's doing is narrowing his revenue stream down.
Scientists can only report their findings. They can't force anyone to do anything. But it isn't helpful to have a legion of fossil fuel astroturfers and paid shills attacking their integrity at every point, nor is it helpful to have these same legions overstating the uncertainty, and making it sound as if industrial emissions are somehow magically inert.
Quantum mechanics and GR have their flaws, and yet no one goes around declaring that electron tunneling and time dilation are part of an evil plot by Communist physicists.
Theories do not need to be complete to have utility.
At least you had the good graces not to attach a name to the fallacies, inaccuracies and outright lies you just posted.
Because humans can happily puke as much as CO2 as they can into the atmosphere, because apparently the chemistry and physics surrounding CO2 IR absorption and emission is all evil Commie lies! You agree with me that all climatologists should be forced to admit they are evil liars, right, and leading ones should be shot for economic crimes!
Let's join together to make every scientist that claims we can fuck ourselves over pay for the pinko evil ways! Let's get those fucking scientists now!!!!
Geology is a Commie Pinko pseudo-science. God-fearing Kochites know that scientists are evil monsters who must be destroyed!!!! Vote GOP and get a government that knows what to do with scientists.
In other words, you don't actually have any other options, beyond "More of the same".
I suspect the situation is a lot more complex than that. Something as critical to the Iranian leadership as nuclear R&D isn't controlled by any elected official in Iran, is squarely the province of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini and the Revolutionary Guard. By all accounts, Khameini, even during his heyday, was considered a lesser figure as compared to that wily old fox Khomeini, and the view I've seen Iranian experts put forth on a number of occasions since the failed 2009 uprising is that Iran is essentially a thinly veiled military dictatorship, with a democratic civilian government with expansive but still limited domestic powers, and absolutely no authority on foreign policy.
The official narrative is that President Hassan Rouhani has been empowered to negotiate a deal. This would seem to make him more a sort of ambassador of the Supreme Leader (and from that we can likely derive the other senior members of the various power structures in Iran; Revolutionary Guard, Guardian Council and the military). Clearly those responsible for Iran's foreign policy, perhaps realizing that long-standing economic problems exacerbated by recent sanctions, are a long-term threat to their hold on power, and the only way to guarantee internal unity and peace is with prosperity.
My feeling is the ultimate game plan is to replicate the way China has become a significant economic power. Keep the trappings of the "ideological" government, in Iran's case the theocratic elements, but allow more openness in economic matters, allowing the "functional" government more sway to pursue domestic and foreign policies that improve Iran's economic position.
So long as Iran was subject not only to harsh sanctions, but also diplomatically isolated from significant Powers like the US, economic problems would continue to drag Iran down.
Then there's the steady collapse of authority in northern Iraq and the now-certain collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. The latter, in particular, essentially leaves Iran isolated, its most significant ally within a year or two, or by some accounts perhaps only months, of collapse. Victory of ISIS also creates significant direct threats to Iran, and ISIS's destruction is of great importance to Iran.
I don't think the Israelis even believe that any more. The people leading the Palestinians simply want to maintain their grip on power, and Israel's Palestinian policy is guaranteed to keep them in power forever. Quite frankly, I think the hawks in Israel and the goons in Palestine basically have a sort of unspoken agreement whereby they continue this war in perpetuity. Politically, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the best way to hang on to power either side has discovered.
And the alternative is?
Yeah. What an utter dolt, getting Iran to sit down with the current Great Powers and hammer out an agreement. What an utter incompetent. He should totally just keep doing what Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II did, because boy oh boy, they should had fantastic fucking success with Iran.
You know, I don't think Obama is the best president ever, not even in the top ten, but it takes a complete fucking retard or partisan lunatic to think that somehow he is some sort of bottom-rung President. But because he's black, because he's a Democrat, and because, well I dunno, because he isn't Ron Fucking Paul, somehow in some peoples' eyes he's the second coming of Satan or something.
Where there's a will, there's a relative.