Delerious Lunacy
The U.S. government is beside itself with angst over Iran's stubborn insistence on nuclear proficiency. With good reason, given the country's belligerent rhetoric and its unstable policies with respect to the manner in which it views a neighbour it vows to remove from the landscape. Iran claims to cling to the right of nuclear power for domestic needs, but makes no secret of its aspirations toward arming itself with atomic weaponry.
United Nations sanctions have not realized any success in bringing Iran's president to the table of reasonable discussion. It isn't just the U.S. that is worried about the implications of future Iranian nuclear weaponry, and not just Israel, but European countries as well. Russia, China and North Korea are fairly complacent, since Iran is a friend and a client. Those three countries are ably aiding and assisting Iran's aspirations.
And then comes this idiotic, assylum-derived report that none other than the U.S. Energy Department is actually helping Iran just as much as Russia, China and North Korea. In that the U.S. Energy Department is subsidizing the very two Russian nuclear institutes that are busy building elements of Iran's reactor. How this can have escaped the Americans, since they were given presentations, listing the Iranian Bushehr reactor as a project client is amazing.
Appalling, really. One of the Russian institutes is involved in providing the Bushehr control systems and control room equipment, while the other is providing pumps and ventilation fans. It would seem that a harm-prevention program instituted post-USSR breakdown in fear of nuclear products and scientific know-how falling into the wrong hands led to the situation.
Called the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, the program's purpose was to support impoverished nuclear experts from selling out their expertise to the highest bidder, and so, the U.S. beefs up salaries of scientists and pays institute overhead. With this startling revelation, a lot of heated questions are flying out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Oversights and Investigations subcommittee to those who should have answers.
"What policy logic justifies DOE funding Russian institutes which are providing nuclear technology to Iran?" questioned a letter to the Department of Energy. "How does this advance our nonproliferation goals?" Another comment said "only this administration would complain about proliferation in Iran, as part of President Bush's axis of evil, and then finance it with American taxpayer dollars".
Perhaps what U.S. legislators should also be asking their government is why U.S. tax dollars are being used at this removed time from Russia's economic collapse, when the new Russia is flush with oil money? When Russia has just completed its flashy display of military might, displaying its new long-range bombers, its fleet of warships and fighter jets, its carrier strike groups and airborne early warning aircraft?
An ambitious new re-armament package has been unleashed where Russia plans to spend a whopping $189-billion upgrading its army and navy. Defence spending has quadrupled since 2000 and will rise again by 16.3% in 2008 to $36.8-billion and $45.5-billion by 2010.
Is the U.S. utterly mad? Their internal economic system is a mess, their national debt is staggering, yet they're laying out millions unnecessarily. The economy teeters on the edge of a recession, but costly avuncular gestures that haven't adjusted to today's realities continue.
Benefiting not only a nation that now is comfortably placed to itself fund all its required institutions and scientists, but another, seriously rogue nation whose dangerous, manic antics are upsetting the global community with its religious fervor and illogical and potentially criminal plans for its future.
But have no fear. In its defence, the U.S. Energy Department explains through an unnamed official that "what we're doing is very important to engage these scientists as part of a non-proliferation goal." Each sponsored project, he said, was first approved by the State Department, the Defence Department and U.S. intelligence agencies.
State? Defence? Intelligence?
United Nations sanctions have not realized any success in bringing Iran's president to the table of reasonable discussion. It isn't just the U.S. that is worried about the implications of future Iranian nuclear weaponry, and not just Israel, but European countries as well. Russia, China and North Korea are fairly complacent, since Iran is a friend and a client. Those three countries are ably aiding and assisting Iran's aspirations.
And then comes this idiotic, assylum-derived report that none other than the U.S. Energy Department is actually helping Iran just as much as Russia, China and North Korea. In that the U.S. Energy Department is subsidizing the very two Russian nuclear institutes that are busy building elements of Iran's reactor. How this can have escaped the Americans, since they were given presentations, listing the Iranian Bushehr reactor as a project client is amazing.
Appalling, really. One of the Russian institutes is involved in providing the Bushehr control systems and control room equipment, while the other is providing pumps and ventilation fans. It would seem that a harm-prevention program instituted post-USSR breakdown in fear of nuclear products and scientific know-how falling into the wrong hands led to the situation.
Called the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, the program's purpose was to support impoverished nuclear experts from selling out their expertise to the highest bidder, and so, the U.S. beefs up salaries of scientists and pays institute overhead. With this startling revelation, a lot of heated questions are flying out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Oversights and Investigations subcommittee to those who should have answers.
"What policy logic justifies DOE funding Russian institutes which are providing nuclear technology to Iran?" questioned a letter to the Department of Energy. "How does this advance our nonproliferation goals?" Another comment said "only this administration would complain about proliferation in Iran, as part of President Bush's axis of evil, and then finance it with American taxpayer dollars".
Perhaps what U.S. legislators should also be asking their government is why U.S. tax dollars are being used at this removed time from Russia's economic collapse, when the new Russia is flush with oil money? When Russia has just completed its flashy display of military might, displaying its new long-range bombers, its fleet of warships and fighter jets, its carrier strike groups and airborne early warning aircraft?
An ambitious new re-armament package has been unleashed where Russia plans to spend a whopping $189-billion upgrading its army and navy. Defence spending has quadrupled since 2000 and will rise again by 16.3% in 2008 to $36.8-billion and $45.5-billion by 2010.
Is the U.S. utterly mad? Their internal economic system is a mess, their national debt is staggering, yet they're laying out millions unnecessarily. The economy teeters on the edge of a recession, but costly avuncular gestures that haven't adjusted to today's realities continue.
Benefiting not only a nation that now is comfortably placed to itself fund all its required institutions and scientists, but another, seriously rogue nation whose dangerous, manic antics are upsetting the global community with its religious fervor and illogical and potentially criminal plans for its future.
But have no fear. In its defence, the U.S. Energy Department explains through an unnamed official that "what we're doing is very important to engage these scientists as part of a non-proliferation goal." Each sponsored project, he said, was first approved by the State Department, the Defence Department and U.S. intelligence agencies.
State? Defence? Intelligence?
Labels: Middle East, Realities, Technology, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, February 07, 2008
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