# Conversation and Fun > Just Conversation >  New bomb gets new targets

## rinselberg

[youtube]BK2tUKDV9M8[/youtube]

and.. new targets for bomb


> TEHRAN - The Iranian government approved a plan Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion in defiance of U.N. demands it halt the program.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34193321...deastn_africa/

----------


## ksquared

You lie!!!! 

Oh, not you Rinselberg. That article you posted. Who would believe that a country like Iran would dare to defy the United Nations. That any country would defy the UN for that matter.

Plus havent we bent over backwards reaching out to those nice folks in Iran now that the big bad Bush is no longer at the helm. Weve even told Israel what they need to do in order to appease, whoops, I mean "make peace" with their neighbors (hey you with the skull caps and tassels stop building your homes and move yourselves somewheres else.)

----------


## Spexvet

> You lie!!!! 
> 
> Oh, not you Rinselberg. That article you posted. Who would believe that a country like Iran would dare to defy the United Nations. That any country would defy the UN for that matter.
> 
> Plus havent we bent over backwards reaching out to those nice folks in Iran now that the big bad Bush is no longer at the helm. Weve even told Israel what they need to do in order to appease, whoops, I mean "make peace" with their neighbors (hey you with the skull caps and tassels stop building your homes and move yourselves somewheres else.)


Great post, filled with [strike]lies[/strike] inaccuracies and misconceptions.

----------


## rinselberg

> Great post, filled with [strike]lies[/strike] inaccuracies and misconceptions.


Inaccuracies and misconceptions, such as..? I posted that Iran would get back in step after Obama and his "mature diplomacy" replaced that misguided, warmongering cowboy GWB. Oh wait a minute, it wasn't _me_ that posted that way ...

----------


## braheem24

> Weve even told Israel what they need to do in order to appease, whoops, I mean "make peace" with their neighbors (hey you with the skull caps and tassels stop building your homes and move yourselves somewheres else.)


Apparently building homes only on land that's actually yours is too tough a concept for some to grasp.

God forbid we take it one step further and ask them to stop spying on us and selling our military intelligance to China or we'll cut them off from the 3 billion we GIVE them a year.

----------


## Robert Martellaro

> and.. New targets for bomb


I've read that we'll only have about twenty bombs ready by the end of 2010, and that's on a fast track. 

Another possibility is kinetic energy projectiles, either land or space based. Probably not feasible in the near term. But drop enough metal mass at 5km/sec on the same spot and you will have a pretty deep hole in the ground.

However, we'll need to know where all of the production facilities are located if we're going to prevent them from going nuclear. I don't believe we have that information, or ever will, which means that we can slow them down, but we can't stop them from going nuclear, unless we can change Iran's government. It's going to be a fine line between strong economic/military pressure and all out war, with the latter being the only way to eliminate their nuclear threat, if all else fails. 

Or, we can let them go nuclear. But then Iraq and Saudi Arabia does the same, then Syria, with about 20+ other countries to follow, specifically South Korea, another unresolved situation with silmilar consequences.

----------


## rbaker

Hey, lets get back to that 30,000 pound mother of a bomb. Do you think that it uses freeform technology or is it just another marketing gimmick?

----------


## rinselberg

> Apparently building homes only on land that's actually yours is too tough a concept for some to grasp.
> 
> God forbid we take it one step further and ask them to stop spying on us and selling our military intelligance to China or we'll cut them off from the 3 billion we GIVE them a year.


Could it be that the Palestinians have never been able to recognize a fair agreement when it's offered to them, either by the UN (1947) or much more recently by Israel?

----------


## DragonLensmanWV

> I've read that we'll only have about twenty bombs ready by the end of 2010, and that's on a fast track. 
> 
> Another possibility is kinetic energy projectiles, either land or space based. Probably not feasible in the near term. But drop enough metal mass at 5km/sec on the same spot and you will have a pretty deep hole in the ground.
> 
> However, we'll need to know where all of the production facilities are located if we're going to prevent them from going nuclear. I don't believe we have that information, or ever will, which means that we can slow them down, but we can't stop them from going nuclear, unless we can change Iran's government. It's going to be a fine line between strong economic/military pressure and all out war, with the latter being the only way to eliminate their nuclear threat, if all else fails. 
> 
> Or, we can let them go nuclear. But then Iraq and Saudi Arabia does the same, then Syria, with about 20+ other countries to follow, specifically South Korea, another unresolved situation with silmilar consequences.



What we need are some of Larry Niven's Fist Of God bombs.

----------


## braheem24

> Could it be that the Palestinians have never been able to recognize a fair agreement when it's offered to them, either by the UN (1947) or much more recently by Israel?


Post a picture of the land offered, the water supplies and the percent population to percent land values. 
Otherwise...

Swiss cheese and non-contiguous land is not an offer.

45% land for 80% of the population is not an offer.

Water supplies re-routed to supply Israeli only lands is not an offer.

Building "protection walls" miles into land that's not yours is not an offer.

Building homes on land that's occupied for your "civilian population" population is not an offer.

Arming your civilian population with machine guns to live on occupied lands hoping the world will look the othere way is not an offer.

Giving your civilian population tax breaks to live on occupied lands is not an offer.

Filling occupied lands with nutsos that think it's their divine right to live on land they've never seen, inherited or purchased is not an offer.

----------


## Robert Martellaro

> What we need are some of Larry Niven's Fist Of God bombs.


One of my favorite "hard science" fiction authors. He collaborated with Jerry E. Pournelle, who originated the concept Project Thor.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/mega.html

Also see Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

----------


## rinselberg

> Post a picture of the land offered, the water supplies and the percent population to percent land values. 
> Otherwise...
> 
> Swiss cheese and non-contiguous land is not an offer.
> 
> 45% land for 80% of the population is not an offer.
> 
> Water supplies re-routed to supply Israeli only lands is not an offer.
> 
> ...


I think that these problems or unfair conditions that you cite (above) are what comes of the Palestinians not having accepted previous offers that were far more equitable, going all the way back to the original plan from the UN in 1947, down to the recent years when Ehud Barak and then Ehud Olmert were the Israeli prime ministers. Both Barak and Olmert (I believe) made very fair offers to the Palestinians in return for a final status agreement. Equitable offers--not the kind of unfair offers that you have cited above.

----------


## braheem24

Below is an image of Jewish residents pre-1948



In 1948 U.N. mandated...

31% of the population receives 57% of the land.

The other 69% of the population live on 43% of the land.

The 69% of the population that received the 43% of the land happened to also be the part of the population who fought alongside England and the U.S. to defeat Hitler and the Turks to free the land in question from the Ottoman Empire.





The 2000 Camp David talks produced the offer below:  Notice the map is hebrew but you dont need to be Israeli to see the Palestinian offer is 7 pieces of land.

----------


## rinselberg

> The 69% of the population that received the 43% of the land happened to also be the part of the population who fought alongside England and the U.S. to defeat Hitler and the Turks to free the land in question from the Ottoman Empire.


In other words, you are saying that the Arab Palestinians helped to defeat Hitler and the Nazis. OK. As did 30,000 Jews from Palestine--don't exclude that figure. I got it from Wikipedia.

I would remark that under the 1948 United Nations partition (as is evident from the maps that you posted) the Jews received a lot of land towards the south, south of Beersheba, adjoining Egypt. I believe that land was mostly unirrigated desert in 1948--it's worth remarking, I think. Because the _desirability_ of allocated land depends on more than just the _amount_ of allocated land.

I think that there was an expectation on the part of the United Nations in 1948 that the neighboring Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan and Syria) would absorb some of the Arab Palestinians who would find it necessary or at least desirable to relocate out of Palestine.

There's no such thing as perfect justice. You are saying that the Arab Palestinians have been getting a "raw deal". I'm not so sure about that. Even in view of the evidence of your maps.

_I'm_ not the one who is going to settle the Arab-Israeli dispute; as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld famously said: "_That_ is above my pay grade." My views have been influenced by a number of sources, including comments from Dennis Ross (you're familar with that name?) who strikes me as an intelligent, fair-minded and "stand up" kind of guy. And so I come to about the very end of my thoughts.

Thank you for your discussion, which has been interesting. It's no fun to start a new thread and not have anyone else post onto it. So your participation here is most welcome by me.

----------


## braheem24

> In other words, you are saying that the Arab Palestinians helped to defeat Hitler and the Nazis. OK. As did 30,000 Jews from Palestine--don't exclude that figure. I got it from Wikipedia.


 they made up less then 12% of the population during WWI.  nonetheless good job.





> I would remark that under the 1948 United Nations partition (as is evident from the maps that you posted) the Jews received a lot of land towards the south, south of Beersheba, adjoining Egypt. I believe that land was mostly unirrigated desert in 1948--it's worth remarking, I think. Because the _desirability_ of allocated land depends on more than just the _amount_ of allocated land.


See map below:







> My views have been influenced by a number of sources, including comments from Dennis Ross (you're familar with that name?) who strikes me as an intelligent, fair-minded and "stand up" kind of guy.


I prefer using someone not palestinian or in Dennis Ross' case Jewish to give me un-prejudiced insight. 

Here's a quote from Wiki

"In their 2006 paper _The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy_, John Mearsheimer, political science professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, named Ross as a member of the "Israeli lobby" in the United States.[11] Ross in turn criticized the academics behind the paper.[11] Professor of political science Norman Finkelstein, in an article published in 2007 in Journal of Palestine Studies, held that all the concessions at Camp David came from the Palestinian side and none from the Israeli side.[12] In 2008, _Time_ reported that a former colleague of Ross, former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer published a think-tank monograph containing anonymous complaints from Arab and American negotiators saying Ross was seen as biased towards Israel and not "an honest broker".[13]" 

Like you, I try not to get it from one source but have always liked Robin Wright for her middle east coverage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Wright_(author)




> Thank you for your discussion, which has been interesting. It's no fun to start a new thread and not have anyone else post onto it. So your participation here is most welcome by me.


Thanks for the thread, now someone please get the nutjob out of office in Iran.

----------


## Spexvet

Here's an interesting (seemingly) unbiased perspective. It states that post-WWI "Palestine" was made up of both Israel and Jordan, and that Jordan (then called TransJordan Palestine) was was created to be an Arab/Muslim homeland, leaving the portion of Palestine west of the Jordan River to be the Jewish homeland (Israel).




> Corresponding geographically to today's Kingdom of Jordan, the *Emirate of Transjordan* was an autonomous political subdivision of the Middle East split off from the territory to be allocated to the British Mandate of Palestine in April 1921 and was administered separately from the British Mandate of Palestine by the British, which was not fully operational until the full ratification of the Treaty of San Remo in September 1923, under the nominal auspices of the League of Nations until its independence in 1946. 
> "Transjordan" was a word coined to express the idea that the lands so described were "across the Jordan", i.e. on the far (eastern) side of the Jordan River. On the western side of the Jordan River was Palestine which contained many places of historical and religious signifance to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 
> Under the Ottoman empire, Transjordan did not correspond precisely to a political division, though most of it belonged to the Vilayet of SyriaThe Syrian Arab Republic is a country in Southwest Asia, bordering (from south to north) on Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. The border with Israel is subject to dispute, pending the resolution of outstanding conflicts over possession of the Gola and a small southern section came from the Vilayet of HejazHejaz (also Hijaz Hedjaz is a region in the northwest of present-day Saudi Arabia; its main city is Jeddah, but it is probably better-known for the holy city of Mecca. As a region, The Hijaz as it is often referred to, because of being the site of Islam's. The inhabitants of northern Jordan had traditionally associated with Syria, those of southern Jordan with the Arabian Peninsula, and those of western Jordan with the administrative districts west of the Jordan River. Historically the territory had formed part of various empires; among these are the Jewish, Assyrian . Assyrians are the indigenous people of north Iraq members of the Assyrian Church of th, Achaemenid, Macedonian ( Seleucid), Nabataean, Ptolemaic, Roman, Sassanid, Muslim, Crusader, and Ottoman empires. 
> The territory covered by Transjordan resulted from a compromise between the competing promises in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and Sykes-Picot Agreement. 
> *Previously a part of the territory covered by the planned* *League of Nations mandate** for* *Palestine**, Transjordan was created as a separate administrative entity on* *April 11**,* *1921** to provide a throne* of sorts (albeit one under British control) for the Hashemite Emir Abdullah, elder son of Britain's wartime Arab ally Sharif Hussein of Mecca. *The move also excluded the land east of the Jordan from Britain's wartime undertaking in the* *Balfour Declaration** (2 November 1917) to support the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine.* 
> Britain recognized Transjordan as a state on May 15, 1923 and gradually relinquished control, limiting its oversight to financial, military and foreign policy matters. In March 1946, under the Treaty of London , Transjordan became a kingdom and on May 25, 1946, the parliament of Transjordan proclaimed the emir king, and formally changed the name of the country from the Emirate of Transjordan to the _Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan_. In December 1948, Abdullah took the title King of Jordan, and he officially changed the country's name to the _Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan_ in April 1949. *The following year he annexed the West Bank.* The coinage, _Cisjordan_, meant to apply specifically to the West Bank at that time, has not since caught on, outside Jordanian circles.


Also interesting that the west bank originally belonged to Israel.

Here's a more biased take.




> *Now notice the TOTAL area of Israel and Jordan. This was referred to as "Palestine"and mandated under British administration following World War I (see next map below). How convenient that today's Arab propagandists forget that land east of the Jordan River was also part of "Palestine" and is, in fact, the Arab-Palestinian State!* 
> 
> 
> * From 1517-1917 Turkey's Ottoman Empire controlled a vast Arab empire, a portion of which is today Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. During World War I (1914-1918), Turkey supported Germany. When Germany was defeated, so were the Turks. In 1916 control of the southern portion of their Ottoman Empire was "mandated" to France and Britain under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence. Lebanon and Syria were assigned (mandated) to France... and "Palestine" (today's Jordan, Israel and "West Bank") was mandated to Great Britain. Because no other peoples had ever established a national homeland in "Palestine" since the Jews had done it 2,000 years before, the British "looked favorably" upon the creation of a Jewish National Homeland throughout ALL of Palestine. The Jews had already begun mass immigration into Palestine in the 1880's in an effort to rid the land of swamps and malaria and prepare for the rebirth of Israel. This Jewish effort to revitalize the land attracted an equally large immigration of Arabs from neighboring areas who were drawn by employment opportunities and healthier living conditions. There was never any attempt to "rid" the area of what few indigenous Arabs there were or those Arab masses that immigrated into this area along with the Jews!* 
> 
> 
> * In 1923, the British divided the "Palestine" portion of the Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts. Jews would be permitted only west of the Jordan river. In effect, the British had "chopped off" 75% of the originally proposed Jewish Palestinian homeland to form an Arab Palestinian nation called Trans-Jordan (meaning "across the Jordan River"). This territory east of the Jordan River was given to Emir Abdullah (from Hejaz, now Saudi Arabia) who was not even an Arab-"Palestinian!" This portion of Palestine was renamed Trans-Jordan. Trans-Jordan would again be renamed "Jordan" in 1946. In other words, the eastern 3/4 of Palestine would be renamed TWICE, in effect, erasing all connection to the name "Palestine!" However, the bottom line is that the Palestinian Arabs had THEIR "Arab Palestinian" homeland. The remaining 25% of Palestine (now WEST of the Jordan River) was to be the Jewish Palestinian homeland.*

----------


## braheem24

*In the Trans-Jordan period: Between 1919-1923 Jewish 35,000 Jewish Immigrants moved into Palestine making up 12% of the population and 3% of the land ownership.*



While Trans-jordan throws a nice curve ball into the argument and turns a black and white issue a little more gray, it does not explain how 12% of the population or 3% of the land owners ended up with 57% of the land.








...

----------


## finefocus

> One of my favorite "hard science" fiction authors. He collaborated with Jerry E. Pournelle, who originated the concept Project Thor.
> 
> http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/mega.html
> 
> Also see Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".


 Wasn't _The Mote In God's Eye_ also one of theirs?

----------


## DragonLensmanWV

> Wasn't _The Mote In God's Eye_ also one of theirs?



Yes. Pesky durn Motie engineers. You think HUMAN engineers are bad.....:D


Actually I meant Godfist (from the days of the Thrint -durn it can't remember the name of the story)  not Fist Of God, which is a huge feature on Ringworld where it got punctured.
And how do they get some of their names anyway, throw syllables into a blender and stop when six of them are crammed together? Hallrloprillalar? Seriously?

----------


## Spexvet

> *In the Trans-Jordan period: Between 1919-1923 Jewish 35,000 Jewish Immigrants moved into Palestine making up 12% of the population and 3% of the land ownership.*
> 
> 
> 
> While Trans-jordan throws a nice curve ball into the argument and turns a black and white issue a little more gray, it does not explain how 12% of the population or 3% of the land owners ended up with 57% of the land.  ...


Money/weapons?

----------


## Spexvet

> Wasn't _The Mote In God's Eye_ also one of theirs?


 Yes, and its sequel The Gripping Hand. My favorite Niven/Pournelle was Lucifer's Hammer.

----------

