Israel to attack Iran

[AstroPax]

I defer to your expertise, but do you really think they have the assets to get around the difficulties I mentioned militarily and diplomatically?

They might not have any choice if they truly believe that Iran is an imminent nuclear threat.

There is a very good chance that they will act now, before the end of the year, while the current US administration is still in place, because if Senator Obama is elected POTUS, then Israel may perceive that they will not receive the same degree of "backup/support" as they will certainly receive from the current Bush administration.

Nor would I be surprised if the US was involved in a joint operation with Israel.

What about the Arab reaction? Well, Iran is Persian, and Saudi Arabia is not too happy with the Iranian attempts of late to exercise influence in the region. Iran is acting too "Persian-like". So Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations would turn a blind eye to military action against Iran.

Feb 2007. Report: 3 Gulf states agree to IAF overflights en route to Iran:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/830309.html

-Astro

[AstroPax]

Is it not about god but money?

Neither. It's about Nukes. Plain and simple.

-Astro

[Gripen]

Interesting article.

Got some thoughts on it and will contribute when I am sober.

[misfit toy]

SAY LA VIE. <,'))))")))))><

[Dexter Rutecki]

Feb 2007. Report: 3 Gulf states agree to IAF overflights en route to Iran:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/830309.html

-Astro

Now that is pretty interesting. It would be more interesting if the three states weren't Oman, UAE, and Qatar (is that the third one? I don't remember). But still, it's notable. The article is extremely brief and undocumented, but it is from Ha'Aretz so it's probably reliable (if it were The Jerusalem Post I might be suspicious).
Would Turkey be more wary of Iranian anger than those three states? Turkey is Israel's most frequent (and often only) ally among the Muslim states so without knowing anything else I'd assume they'd be willing, also. It also would be convenient, I think, for Jordan to look the other way, if necessary.

I would also take issue with some of the assumptions being made about how this could only be done while Bush is in office. If anything, Obama might feel more pressure to be supportive in order to dispel perceptions that he doesn't back Israel, and McCain is supposed to be a true idealist who would not stand in the way of any justified military actions. So I don't necessarily buy this 'it must be done before Bush leaves' thinking. Of course, if Israel sees it that way then that thinking would be correct regardless of what the reality will be with a new administration.

Besides, don't you remember that McCain's favorite song is 'Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran...'



Man, that guy IS kind of wacked out.

[Big Balls]

I've always loved Thomas Friedman (him and Fareed Zakaria).


By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 8, 2008
Tefen Industrial Park, Israel

Question: What do America’s premier investor, Warren Buffett, and Iran’s toxic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have in common? Answer: They’ve both made a bet about Israel’s future.

Ahmadinejad declared on Monday that Israel “has reached its final phase and will soon be wiped out from the geographic scene.”

By coincidence, I heard the Iranian leader’s statement on Israel Radio just as I was leaving the headquarters of Iscar, Israel’s famous precision tool company, headquartered in the Western Galilee, near the Lebanon border. Iscar is known for many things, most of all for being the first enterprise that Buffett bought overseas for his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett paid $4 billion for 80 percent of Iscar and the deal just happened to close a few days before Hezbollah, a key part of Iran’s holding company, attacked Israel in July 2006, triggering a monthlong war. I asked Iscar’s chairman, Eitan Wertheimer, what was Buffett’s reaction when he found out that he had just paid $4 billion for an Israeli company and a few days later Hezbollah rockets were landing outside its parking lot.

Buffett just brushed it off with a wave, recalled Wertheimer: “He said, ‘I’m not interested in the next quarter. I’m interested in the next 20 years.’ ” Wertheimer repaid that confidence by telling half his employees to stay home during the war and using the other half to keep the factory from not missing a day of work and setting a production record for the month. It helps when many of your “employees” are robots that move around the buildings, beeping humans out of the way.

So who would you put your money on? Buffett or Ahmadinejad? I’d short Ahmadinejad and go long Warren Buffett.

Why? From outside, Israel looks as if it’s in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java.

The day I visited the Iscar campus, one of its theaters was filled with industrialists from the Czech Republic, who were getting a lecture — in Czech — from Iscar experts. The Czechs came all the way to the Israel-Lebanon border region to learn about the latest innovations in precision tool-making. Wertheimer is famous for staying close to his customers and the latest technologies. “If you sleep on the floor,” he likes to say, “you never have to worry about falling out of bed.”

That kind of hunger explains why, in the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion.

Boaz Golany, who heads engineering at the Technion, Israel’s M.I.T., told me: “In the last eight months, we have had delegations from I.B.M., General Motors, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart visiting our campus. They are all looking to develop R & D centers in Israel.”

Ahmadinejad professes not to care about such things. He was — to put it in American baseball terms — born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. Because oil prices have gone up to nearly $140 a barrel, he feels relaxed predicting that Israel will disappear, while Iran maintains a welfare state — with more than 10 percent unemployment.

Iran has invented nothing of importance since the Islamic Revolution, which is a shame. Historically, Iranians have been a dynamic and inventive people — one only need look at the richness of Persian civilization to see that. But the Islamic regime there today does not trust its people and will not empower them as individuals.

Of course, oil wealth can buy all the software and nuclear technology you want, or can’t develop yourself. This is not an argument that we shouldn’t worry about Iran. Ahmadinejad should, though.

Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs.

So who will be here in 20 years? I’m with Buffett: I’ll bet on the people who bet on their people — not the people who bet on dead dinosaurs.

[ass-to-mouth]

Is there even a difference, to most of the world?

No not really. Israel wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the American taxpayer and the billions and billions of dollars in "aid" we have given them over the years.

[AstroPax]

Israel wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the American taxpayer and the billions and billions of dollars in "aid" we have given them over the years.

So what's your point? A lot of countries wouldn't exist as we know them today if not for the United States, including most of Europe, the UK, the Philippines, South Korea, etc., etc., etc.

-Astro

[Jer]

Besides, don't you remember that McCain's favorite song is 'Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran...'

Probably not. Most normal people don't remember insignificant stuff like that. the only ones who really keep track of that kind of thing are obsessed libzombies like yourself.

So what's your point? A lot of countries wouldn't exist as we know them today if not for the United States, including most of Europe, the UK, the Philippines, South Korea, etc., etc., etc.

-Astro

I think his point was that he's an anti-semite. They're taking over the world, you know (the Jews, not the anti-semites).

[Gripen]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNew...080621?sp=true

Article on possible strike and doubts concerning its efficacy.

[snowful]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNew...080621?sp=true

Article on possible strike and doubts concerning its efficacy.

A quote from the article:
"What I'm hearing from many in Washington is that if the job is going to be done, Israel does not really have the capability to do it," Gardiner said.

Believe Washington. Those boys and girls are batting a thousand.

[spook]

thomas friedman is the worst kind of talentless hack mouthpiece. not only is he an idiot, he's a horrible writer and obliterated any respect for the pulitzer i can ever have. three? that is utter insanity.

but here's a funny review of one of his many idiotic books, the world is flat.

FLATHEAD
The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman.

By Matt Taibbi


I think it was about five months ago that Press editor Alex Zaitchik whispered to me in the office hallway that Thomas Friedman had a new book coming out. All he knew about it was the title, but that was enough; he approached me with the chilled demeanor of a British spy who has just discovered that Hitler was secretly buying up the world’s manganese supply. Who knew what it meant—but one had to assume the worst

"It's going to be called The Flattening," he whispered. Then he stood there, eyebrows raised, staring at me, waiting to see the effect of the news when it landed. I said nothing.

It turned out Alex had bad information; the book that ultimately came out would be called The World Is Flat. It didn't matter. Either version suggested the same horrifying possibility. Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be like letting a chimpanzee loose in the NORAD control room; even the best-case scenario is an image that could keep you awake well into your 50s.

So I tried not to think about it. But when I heard the book was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:

I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins.

Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one.

This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

On an ideological level, Friedman's new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World Is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country. It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans. Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we're not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we're not in Kansas anymore.) That's the whole plot right there. If the underlying message is all that interests you, read no further, because that's all there is.

It's impossible to divorce The World Is Flat from its rhetorical approach. It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today." That it's Friedman's own colleague at the New York Times (Walter Russell Mead) calling him this, on the back of Friedman's own book, is immaterial. Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case.

Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential, and it's absolutely perfect, a stroke of genius, that he's choosing to argue that the world is flat. The only thing that would have been better would be if he had chosen to argue that the moon was made of cheese.

And that's basically what he's doing here. The internet is speeding up business communications, and global labor markets are more fluid than ever. Therefore, the moon is made of cheese. That is the rhetorical gist of The World Is Flat. It's brilliant. Only an America-hater could fail to appreciate it.

Start with the title.

The book's genesis is conversation Friedman has with Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys. Nilekani causally mutters to Friedman: "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." To you and me, an innocent throwaway phrase—the level playing field being, after all, one of the most oft-repeated stock ideas in the history of human interaction. Not to Friedman. Ten minutes after his talk with Nilekani, he is pitching a tent in his company van on the road back from the Infosys campus in Bangalore:

As I left the Infosys campus that evening along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: "The playing field is being leveled."

What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened... Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!

This is like three pages into the book, and already the premise is totally fucked. Nilekani said level, not flat. The two concepts are completely different. Level is a qualitative idea that implies equality and competitive balance; flat is a physical, geographic concept that Friedman, remember, is openly contrasting—ironically, as it were—with Columbus's discovery that the world is round.

Except for one thing. The significance of Columbus's discovery was that on a round earth, humanity is more interconnected than on a flat one. On a round earth, the two most distant points are closer together than they are on a flat earth. But Friedman is going to spend the next 470 pages turning the "flat world" into a metaphor for global interconnectedness. Furthermore, he is specifically going to use the word round to describe the old, geographically isolated, unconnected world.

"Let me... share with you some of the encounters that led me to conclude that the world is no longer round," he says. He will literally travel backward in time, against the current of human knowledge.

To recap: Friedman, imagining himself Columbus, journeys toward India. Columbus, he notes, traveled in three ships; Friedman "had Lufthansa business class." When he reaches India—Bangalore to be specific—he immediately plays golf. His caddy, he notes with interest, wears a cap with the 3M logo. Surrounding the golf course are billboards for Texas Instruments and Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut billboard reads: "Gigabites of Taste." Because he sees a Pizza Hut ad on the way to a golf course, something that could never happen in America, Friedman concludes: "No, this definitely wasn't Kansas."
....
cont.
.....

And boy, does it take off. Predictably, Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end—and I'm not joking here—we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce. Moreover, Friedman's book is the first I have encountered, anywhere, in which the reader needs a calculator to figure the value of the author's metaphors.

.....

cont.
....

Let's speak Friedmanese for a moment and examine just a few of the notches on these antlers (Friedman, incidentally, measures the flattening of the world in notches, i.e. "The flattening process had to go another notch"; I'm not sure where the notches go in the flat plane, but there they are.) Flattener #1 is actually two flatteners, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the spread of the Windows operating system. In a Friedman book, the reader naturally seizes up in dread the instant a suggestive word like "Windows" is introduced; you wince, knowing what's coming, the same way you do when Leslie Nielsen orders a Black Russian. And Friedman doesn't disappoint. His description of the early 90s:

The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever been—but the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.

How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened?

Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?

http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

[gh444]

Thanks for the interesting thread.


Oh and Friedman is the stupid......a bad journalist who thinks he's an economist, yet he is the suck at both. Amazing that he's been as successful as he has. The much better writer on much of the same subjects is Krugman.

[TyWebb]

thomas friedman is the worst kind of talentless hack mouthpiece. not only is he an idiot, he's a horrible writer and obliterated any respect for the pulitzer i can ever have. three? that is utter insanity.

but here's a funny review of one of his many idiotic books, the world is flat.

That is a hilariously accurate review. Just the other day a colleague asked what I thought of the book as he was just getting around to reading it..I told him that if you'd spent the last 10 years in a cave that lacked phone, internet or cable service, you'd find it interesting...maybe even surprising.

[doughboyshredder]

No not really. Israel wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the American taxpayer and the billions and billions of dollars in "aid" we have given them over the years.

Can you say "end of days".

There is a clear connection between the religious beliefs of the fundamentalists in this nation and the support of Israel that has been garnered.

[doughboyshredder]

Probably not. Most normal people don't remember insignificant stuff like that. the only ones who really keep track of that kind of thing are obsessed libzombies like yourself.



I think his point was that he's an anti-semite. They're taking over the world, you know (the Jews, not the anti-semites).

You are a fucking idiot sometimes.

[St. Jerry]

If Israel is going to do it, the window of opportunity is now while there is still an anti-Iran, pro-war, US administration in power.

The Israeli viewpoint is likely that Obama (if elected) will look less favorably on providing support and/or bailing the Israelis out if things don't go well than would GWB & the neo-cons. So, if you're Israel, strike while you still have a favorable US administration in power.

More news on this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4206201.shtml

[Platinum Pete]

What about the Arab reaction? Well, Iran is Persian, and Saudi Arabia is not too happy with the Iranian attempts of late to exercise influence in the region. Iran is acting too "Persian-like". So Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations would turn a blind eye to military action against Iran.

The Afgans were not Arabs and the Saudis sure helped them out, a lot of Saudi cash is n Pakistan as well - Islam trumps all.

[Gripen]

The Afgans were not Arabs and the Saudis sure helped them out, a lot of Saudi cash is n Pakistan as well - Islam trumps all.

Iran and Saudi Arabia do not have very good relations, read about the Iran-Iraq war. Also Islam does not trump all in the Persian Gulf, the UAE and the Gulf States do not have rosy relations with Iran after it "invaded" and occupied the Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb islands.

The Afghans were helped in great deal because of who they were fighting. The Israelis also helped them

[summit]

"Islam trumps all" except when it's Muslims vs other Muslims.

The Arabs greatly fear a nuclear Iran.

Iran has a short list of true friends:
1. Syria
2. ?

To Russia they are a customer and a pawn.
To China they are a supplier and a pawn.
To DPRK, they are a customer and a supplier.

[skideeppow]

Uh yeah!!! Doesn't matter too much since I only have 11 days left. Then a break for awhile and hopefully the job I have lined up will come through. It is in this neck of the woods.



If you want to put your life in the hands of some private sitting at a computer screen at 3am go for it. Otherwise ask the Soviet Union how hard it is to penetrate supposedly impenetrable airspace.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...rticle&id=2681

I knew this would be the link to the german flying there, i remember that so well

[snowful]

4 pages in and still no bombs dropping or missiles flying.

booooooooring

[Toadman]

"Islam trumps all" except when it's Muslims vs other Muslims.

Shi'a/Sunni, what's the big deal. Bush didn't seem to know or care.