Can we ward off panic right now? - updated with new graphic

Juan Cole comments:

Iran cannot construct nuclear bombs with uranium enriched only to less than 4%. It needs to be enriched to something like 90% to make a bomb. So all the silly articles on Friday about how iran now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb are just illiterate. Moreover, the report in question actually says that Iran is slowing its enrichment activities.

...

Now that the Likud is back in control of Israel, flanked by even less savory far-right forces, we will unfortunately be bombarded by inflammatory propaganda about how dangerous Iran is. Iran hasn't aggressively invaded another country in at least a century and a half. In contrast, the Likud never met a war of aggression they did not like.

[Emphasis mine]

Professor Cole is drawing on chemist Cheryl Rofer's article:

The concentration of U-235 is 3.49% in the enriched uranium that the Natanz plant is turning out. The IAEA has found no evidence (Download Iran 0902) that any higher enrichment is being produced. 3.49% is not enough to make a bomb. Iran is not in a position to make a bomb, unless there is a bunch of hidden stuff that nobody has found, involving big buildings that can be seen by satellite surveillance.

It would take a reconfiguration of the Natanz facility that the inspectors would notice to produce bomb-grade uranium (concentration of U-235 of 90%). The inspectors also take environmental samples to verify the concentration of U-235. They would have to be kicked out of the facility and their video cameras taken down for Iran to do this.

There are a number of other things in that IAEA report that the media aren't bothering to report, like that the pace of enrichment has slowed. That doesn't support the idea that Iran is racing toward a bomb, so it's not relevant, I guess.

So if you hear someone spouting twaddle, you are now armed with information to stop it.

--the BB

Weary of hysteria

I have been a fan of Simon and Garfunkel since their first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, came out in October 1964 (and I was a freshman at Pomona College). While passing by albums at Costco last week I saw a 3-CD release of their music titled Old Friends.

Listening to music from my past is both comforting and disturbing, but mostly comforting. I had a very strange feeling creep over me, however, when listening through headphones at work to the following song, one I recognized upon hearing but had forgotten:

The sun is burning in the sky
Strands of clouds go slowly drifting by
In the park the lazy breeze
Are joining in the flowers, among the trees
And the sun burns in the sky

Now the sun is in the West
Little kids go home to take their rest
And the couples in the park
Are holdin' hands and waitin' for the dark
And the sun is in the West

Now the sun is sinking low
Children playin' know it's time to go
High above a spot appears
A little blossom blooms and then draws near
And the sun is sinking low

Now the sun has come to Earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash
And the sun has come to Earth

Now the sun has disappeared
All is darkness, anger, pain and fear
Twisted, sightless wrecks of men
Go groping on their knees and cry in pain
And the sun has disappeared

This, my younger friends, is the omnipresent sense of dread that hung over my generation, an awareness that nuclear holocaust could destroy the world and it COULD happen. We had no idea if there would be a future, though we hoped there would be. We were talking about the end of life on this planet, not a minor conflagration here and there.

Now demagogues and asshats (I am not sure one can distinguish the two but I am trying to keep it civil and this is the best I can do) are ranting about the threat of islamofascism [as if we didn't have enough christofascism right here at home to deal with] and trying to drum up hysteria among the general populace in order to

1. garner votes [by being the shrillest and therefore the most aware of the threat???];
2. keep us in a state of constant fear so we can be easily manipulated [cf. Naomi Wolf on this];
3. justify all manner of stupidity and atrocity [Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Iran?];
4. keep us distracted from real problems that actually affect most of us on a daily basis [healthcare, poverty, diminished earning power, bankruptcy, ineffective education, the raping of resources and poisoning of the environment, etc.] and are caused or exacerbated by deliberate policies that need to be changed or reversed. There may be more reasons, but I doubt any of them are good or in the interest of the American People or the rest of the world.

Where is the perspective? We once had thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads aimed at us for decades. That was a threat.

Are terrorists a threat? Absolutely! Does this threat need to be faced, understood, analyzed, and dealt with? Yes! Can you wage a war on a strategy? Well, no. Which is why a "war on terror" is sheer nonsense.

Fearmongers, the Cheney-Bush crime organization chief among them, are trying to convince us, to "catapult the propaganda" to use Bush's words, that we are facing the biggest threat ever.

Bullshit.

As Bill Maher reminds us:

… At the Republican debate last week, Mike Huckabee said Islamofascism is the greatest threat we ever faced. Really? More than the Nazis and the Russians and the Redcoats?

He has a lot to say about putting things back into perspective. Check it out.


Let's return to sanity. Ratchet back the rhetoric of doom. And why don't we start a mass movement of laughing at demagogues when they say stupid things?

Btw, if Jesus told us not to spend time trying to figure out when he's coming back do you think he will be happy with people who try to hasten his return? You really don't want to piss him off, folks.

--the BB