Trade Show Video Features Iranian Tech, Talk of Stuxnet Retaliation 131
dcblogs writes "Iran recently held a security trade show and conference, attended by high-ranking police and military officials. A video by an Iranian news outlet shows some of the products, from crossbows to unidentified systems, and includes an interview with Iran's police chief, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ahmadi-Moqadam: 'It's true that the U.S. made Stuxnet virus did some damage to our facilities but we were able to get them all up and running in no time. However, those who attack should expect retaliation and we haven't gone there just yet.'"
FLiBe (Score:5, Interesting)
Iran would be a great place to showcase Fluoride Lithium Beryllium reactors, which produce crap-tons of power from unenriched fuel, even Thorium, while producing Uranium-232, which is almost impossible to use in nuclear weapons.
propaganda for black ops and terrorists (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, mod me down as a flame bait if you can't bother to look at the arguments. This is nothing more than propaganda and not news.
Without serious information on what they would in fact do as a retaliation, I think we should regard this as cultural bluff and not an actual threat to western society. The only one that benefits from hyping things like this, are press agencies and people that work in the black ops part of government and defence contractors.
Terrorism has killed less people than traffic accidents, common flu and if you take a long time average over the last 100 years, I think even lightning strikes may come close to causing the same amount of deaths. However, the amount of draconian measurements taken and money spent on "fighting terrorism" is way bigger than for any of these. Given the fact that no objective measurable proof exists or is published, the best way to deal with terrorists is to not give in to them and keep on living your life the way you want to. That means not paying attention to them, or changing your habits. If you do that, they get what they want and they will have won.
Re:Keep nuclear tech out of the hands of the unsta (Score:3, Interesting)
teh same respect as a secular democratic government that hasn't threatened to wipe anybody off the map.
What 'secular democratic government' are you referring to? There's none I can think of relevant to this conversation, and you'd need to find a hell of a lot more fingers and toes to be able to count the times Israel or the US has threatened a nation or it's government. Hell, they've attacked more in the past 50 years than Iran has done in its entire history.
Iran didn't threaten anyone. It was a fairly mundane statement which amounted to the words 'regime change', and didn't even infer that Iran was going to do it.But folks like you lap up the propaganda... ah well.
Re:Keep nuclear tech out of the hands of the unsta (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that the ones with nuclear power get to decide who's stable and mature. And that is nobody but them. And if they are becoming stable and mature, they just stirr things up a little to keep them on a leash. That's modern latin american history.
I live in Argentina. We had nuclear development, weapons factories, aircraft design... all of that was decimated by the US starting in the 60s under the excuse of "communism". One of our generals had to go and explain himself to the US congress (remember that the US doesn't recognize foreign sovereignity), about why Argentina was developing a long range missile.
Today Argentina is a mess, economically and socially. But it wasn't like that before US interventionism in latin america.
Re:Keep nuclear tech out of the hands of the unsta (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, you can't believe the translations of Ahmadinejad's remarks. He says one thing and the published translation is very often a complete lie. On a number of occasions, he said that the Zionist government of Israel should be abolished (regime change) and this was immediately translated as "Israel should be destroyed".
By the way, Ahmadinejad' is kind of a nut case, but he is hardly the supreme dictator of Iran. He has very little real power. They keep electing him because his major talent is pissing off the US and Israel.
Tattoos (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Keep nuclear tech out of the hands of the unsta (Score:5, Interesting)
My very point of view as well.
I ran should have the right to 'talk back' to the localized powers that be. When someone refers to Israel as a sane democratic state, the first thing that comes to mind is how Palestinians have been forcefully removed from their homes over the past 70 years. When we talk about Peace talks, Israel has always been the first party to flip the middle finger at negotiations. Then later on return to the UN tables to ask for Peace once more without any intention on following through. Bill Clinton stated it very clearly when he was President, and even recently when the subject matter came back up.
When you have a people who are willing to go ahead and sign their land away only to be equally recognized as such by Jews. Only to be told. "fuck off", we will remove you from the OUR land. Gaza strip anyone? A bit of recent history where Jews have been actively sabotaging all efforts at doing anything fairly.
But I digress, In regards to Iran what other nation is surrounding Iran with ever increasing military assets, and is in a continued war mongering path to enact war on a moments notice if Israel decides to fire first? .USA. The most updated military layout map I saw from CNN was a little over six months ago. American military bases surround Iran, thanks to our involvement in the Middle East. Do we see any military assets of Iran surrounding USA today? Does Iran have assets in foreign countries surrounding America with the active Political threat of attacking USA with WMDs? No and No.
Does Iran have a nutty neighbor who violates just as much of any UN laws that are enforced/sanctioned against Iran? Yes. Does this neighbor actively garner support from its allies to "war with us if we goto war with Iran?", Yes. So I would say Iran has every right to build up its defenses when it has active aggressors who are publicly announcing they will go to war with them.
As for Nuclear power. Why wouldn't we as a world power, allow them access to Nuclear energy when we could provide them access to those resources that wouldn't result in weapons grade materials. Why prevent a country from using cleaner energies, and rely less on foreign resources. Isn't that what the United States has been bitching about for the past 50 years? Getting away from the foreign dependency of resources.
Iran doesn't necessarily have a unstable government. They just happen to have a government that has a higher authority of Clerics who can dictate the rules of how government acts towards its society. The government is strong in Iran. It was able to subdue the rising power of the Green Party, which was attempting to change the way the Iran government was heading. Even the United States wanted to help out in defeating the oppression Iran was having against Green Party supporters. USA couldn't intervene because of our foreign policy towards Iran. If USA were to have helped influence the Green Party in Iran, the Religious Clerics would have used that movement to give themselves more power to oppress. Instead the green part lost the elections, and the Iranian government has held steady to its power. Howe is that an unstable government?
American's used the same excuse when we went back to Iraq to remove Saddam. "Saddam allowed Terrorists to roam his country", when in fact Saddam was a ruthless dictator who would never allow any rebel type group to succeed in Iraq, it could impose a risky behavior of rebellion. Allow a small group of rebels to use your land to fight a foreign country, and you open your country to all sorts of hell in retaliation. Saddam wasn't a dumb person.
What we have here is a nation full of one sided story telling. If I truly wanted to visit Iran as an American, Iran would allow me to visit. If I were to go on a pilgrimage to visit holy cities located within Iran's borders I would be al