From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Jan 22 2007 - 13:09:55 EST
Yoshie referenced an interesting bit on A-list, about Iran's president Ahmadinejad's alleged statement to the effect that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map". If you haven't seen it, it's worthwhile having a look at. In reality, as I had previously intuited for myself, Ahmadinejad did not say that at all, in Farsi. What he said was "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise" http://democracyrising.us/content/view/736/164/ Karl Marx commented once sarcastically (sorry, I have forgotten the locus) that the modern press was capable of disseminating "in a thrice, more lies than ever before in history". There was a time that I thought this was a bit of a rhetorical exaggeration, particularly because people are normally very resistant to messages they cannot reconcile at all with their own experience, thus limiting the amount of lying that will wash, but especially since the "weapons of mass destruction" hoax I am starting to think now Marx really had a point... The thing I'm still not clear about is why, if Iran has so much oil and gas, the government wants to generate electricity using nuclear power - wouldn't it be much cheaper to use petrofuels? There's an article about it e.g. here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5235732.stm The suggestion is that it's a long-term strategic decision, e.g. in 80 years or so the oil would run out etc. and that you could make more money meantime from other uses of oil and gas. But of course a lot can happen in 80 years. Jurriaan
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