As US Threatens Iran Over Enriching Uranium, Bush Promises to Give Enriched Uranium to Saudi Arabia

[bananas]

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/20/as_us_threatens_iran_over_enriching

May 20, 2008

As US Threatens Iran Over Enriching Uranium, Bush Promises to Give Enriched Uranium to Saudi Arabia

<snip>

AMY GOODMAN: We turn from cluster bombs to what could be a major development in nuclear proliferation worldwide: the Bush administration pledging to support Saudi Arabia’s nuclear power program, including supplying enriched uranium for nuclear reactors. The agreement came out of President Bush’s visit to the Saudi kingdom last week, during which Bush also pledged new US assistance in guarding Saudi oil reserves.

<snip>

Harvey Wasserman, what’s going on here?

HARVEY WASSERMAN: You know, I’d like to know the insane asylum in which this policy was concocted. The idea of giving enriched uranium to the Saudis while threatening war with the Iranians for enriching uranium is astonishing. The idea that the Saudis are going to somehow lower the price of oil on the basis of possibly getting nuclear reactors in the future is just almost staggering to think about. It’s something, I guess, we’ve come to expect with the Bush administration.

<snip>

[jpak]

1. SA already has 40-60 Chinese CSS-2 ballistic missiles (2,650 km range)

nuff sed...

[jimshoes]

2. Does any one else think this idea is

ass puckering stupid? The idea that we're threatening to blow a muslim country to smithereens for trying to enrich uranium and then just pretty as you please, giving a neighboring muslim country enriched uranium so they don't have to go through all that expense of enriching some themselves? Only in batshit crazy bushworld.:argh:

[NNadir]

3. Oh my God! Arabs with Uranium! Enriched Uranium! Moslems! Gawd!

Let's rush out and kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Of course, there is an alternate viewpoint which is (gasp) that Arabs are human beings and thus have a right to nuclear energy.

All of humanity has a right to nuclear energy. Arabs are human beings. This may come as a surprise to the dangerous fossil fuel cheering club over at Rocky Mountain Institute - but it would be better for all humanity if Saudi Arabia stopped using fossil fuels.

Frankly the Arab, uranium, nuclear weapon racism has sort of played out, I think. Tell it to Dick Cheney.

[jpak]

4. ummm...if it's nuclear, it sucks

no racism required

[NNadir]

7. Racists are all very, very, very, very, very, very dogmatic thinkers, with narrow minds.

I have seen lots of anti-arab racism connected with uranium in these pages.

Most racists think that they can sum irrefutable bigotry and ignorance into one or two words.

Like fundie anti-nukes they think issues and complex ideas are expressed in one or two words, like the N word, or "sucks."

Mostly racists are simple minded morally void twits. It reminds me of another class of people who I see here, twits to a man and woman.

I support nuclear energy programs in the Middle East. I note that Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (the home of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and nuclear energy advocate Mohammed Elbaradei, head of the IAEA) plan nuclear power stations.

When anti-nuke fundie twits like Amory Lovins and Gerhard Schroeder are awarded Nobel Peace Prizes that will say something - probably that Royal Dutch Shell has bought the Nobel Laureate Prize.

I support all of the nuclear programs in the Middle East, just as I support the Indonesian, Pakistani, Bengali, and Nigerian nuclear programs. I see no reason why Arabs should be forced to quadruple their energy costs to satiate the ignorance and racism of American yuppies with poor educations.

I note that none of these nations are announcing huge solar energy programs. The main reason is that solar doesn't work very well.

[bananas]

5. If you can't defend your position, you make stuff up. nt

[losthills]

6. Why am I not surprised...

[NNadir]

8. I am NOT making stuff up. I am noting that a racist is a racist.

Suppose I wrote a thread saying that Belgians couldn't have plutonium because they're Belgians?

How about an article saying that the Swiss couldn't have nuclear power because they're Swiss?

I note that anti-Arab racists have caused many hundreds of thousands of metric tons of dangerous fossil fuels be dumped on Arabs, mostly because Dick Cheney used the same fucking rhetoric that is used by fundie racist anti-nukes on this website. Uranium + Arab = nuclear weapons.

I note that our fundies seem very oblivious to the fact that there have been zero nuclear wars since 1946, and they couldn't give a rat's ass how many Arabs die in the fossil fuel wars they incite.

Every nuclear plant that is built prevents the use of dangerous fossil fuels. Every nuclear plant that has been shut or prevented by anti-nuke ignorance - racist or otherwise - has caused dangerous fossil fuels to be released into the lung tissue (and other tissues) of the rest of humanity.

Arabs have a right to nuclear energy, as does all of humanity.

It's useless to recite poetry to fundies but quoth John Dunne:

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

One can never be sure exactly what kind of thinking characterizes cult thinking but irrespective of the attitude in cults, the same sun that rises on the Arab world shines on me.

[jpak]

9. and France's exploitation of its former African *colonies'* uranium resources *wasn't* racist

and what about the Navajo uranium miners and Aborigines displaced for Australian uranium mines???

nope - no racism there...if your are really, really, really, really narrow minded....

:rofl:

[losthills]

10. Chanting the word "racist" like some magic mantra

won't make the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons go away.

We have a group of countries in the most volatile region of the world simultaneously embarking on nuclear programs. Why? Because one of them is openly developing nuclear weapons, and it scares the rest of them. It should scare everybody, because if they start lobbing nukes at each other it will affect all of us, in all nations. You support Pakistan's nuclear program? That is mind numbingly clueless. What we are seeing in the mid-east is a mirror of the Pakistan/India arms race, with more fingers on the triggers, in a culture where "suicide bombings" are a regular occurrance. It's a shame that our own government is so caught up in nuclear denialism that they are pouring gasoline on the fires-- as you seem so willing to do-- but we have the opportunity to vote them out in November. Once these countries start packing nuclear heat, it will be too late for voting.

Every country has a "right" to nuclear weapons? No. No country does, including our own, and most Americans are not ready to own our own disgrace for having been the first to use them against others.

But it's "racist" to discuss the implications of these developments? Right, and it's "Anti-Semitic" to criticize Israel, and "Unpatriotic" to question the Bush regime. I don't think you're going to shut down discussion of these issues by chanting your little mantra. It just shows that you don't have any thing rational to contribute....