World War III, Nukes and all - March 2006 - according to Ottawa economics professor

you have to admit that the combination of ahmadinejad and hamas gives israel a pretty good pretext. i'm sure there are people in the white house and in likud who think this is exactly what we should do.

This article seems rather improbable to me. Using nukes against Iran?

Chossudovsky's theory would come true only if a LOT of things he's claiming as fact are indeed fact, or things he's predicting would be falling into the right slots.

I'm not looking forward to what's coming wrt Iran and Hamas, however I'm not betting they will turn out exactly as Chossudovsky maps out here.

(but no, i didn't mean to imply that the article has any credibility. just that it's interesting how left-wing paranoia sounds almost exactly like a dick cheney fever dream.)

In the same way that we laugh at how conservative/religious right paranoia comes off as hilarious to many of us who have a better grasp, left-wing paranoia operates similarly. I think the only thing Cheney is feverishly dreaming out right now is a cheeseburger... which doesn't make me more comfortable, but I wouldn't give the Bush administration nearly as much credit to carry out Lex Luthor-ish plans as much as conspiracy theorists would assume.

no, of course. even the bush administration's constrained by reality to some degree. but obviously the pentagon has provisional plans to hit iran "if necessary," and i bet -- especially with the combined rise of ahmadinejad and hamas -- that there are some people who really wish they could use them.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/28/germany.dirtybomb.reut/index.html

On the flip side, the military is pretty much tapped out in strength. Reinforcements would have to come from some other deployment, otherwise it's off to the nuke storage locker. A lot of the recent talk from BushCo gives plenty of reasons to expect a strike - Rice's choice of words in her "the time for negotiation has passed" speech seems pretty indicative of Something coming up. The next thing I'd look for is news reports of logistics movement - aviation supplies/fuel being moved to Diego Garcia, squadrons shipping out, reports of B-52 and B-2 crews preparing for all-day missions, etc.

Nuclear artillery shells have been around since the 1950s.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-01-19T141037Z_01_L19737317_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-ARMS-FRANCE.xml&archived=False

Still can't help feeling all doomy and "Threads" about the idea though :(

Well, the deterrent effect is different. Back in the day, it was MAD. Now its slightly different, in that the terrorists lack the ability to completely wipe out a large section of the map (nor really would it make sense for them to), whereas the nuclear powers have that capability. So yeah, in some sense, its contained to where ever it is that the terrorism supposedly was derived from (and if you're retaliating with nukes, you better be right!), but that still shouldn't make anyone feel better about the loss of life.

That said, while now it is terrorists who are a large concern (and they're less powerful in terms of resources), the nuclear powers (US, France etc) are starting to get very itchy trigger fingers, and this is making me hell nervous :/

It's all religion's fault!

I, for one, will be avoiding Sheffield.

Where was the conspiracy theory in this article? I think he was talking about an open agreement...

A direct attack on the U.S., though possible, is less likely in the immediate future. Israel is a nearer and easier target, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has given indication of thinking along these lines. The Western observer would immediately think of two possible deterrents. The first is that an attack that wipes out Israel would almost certainly wipe out the Palestinians too. The second is that such an attack would evoke a devastating reprisal from Israel against Iran, since one may surely assume that the Israelis have made the necessary arrangements for a counterstrike even after a nuclear holocaust in Israel.

The first of these possible deterrents might well be of concern to the Palestinians--but not apparently to their fanatical champions in the Iranian government. The second deterrent--the threat of direct retaliation on Iran--is, as noted, already weakened by the suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today, without parallel in other religions, or for that matter in the Islamic past. This complex has become even more important at the present day, because of this new apocalyptic vision.

In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time--Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

I prefer the drollery at the end here:

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, chief Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani put it this way: "We don't see why we should stop the scientific research of our country.

"We understand why this is very sensitive. But they [the West] are categorising countries. Some countries can have access to high nuclear technology, the others are told they can produce fruit juice and pears!"

"Thanks!"

(I'm not helping, am I.)

"In my Cadillac..."

He [Iran's Atomic Energy guy Mohammad Saeedi] said Iran said it would give a "multi-faceted response" to the international incentives proposal, but did not elaborate.

Similar stuff, from others:

Still more mushroom cloud.

(that'd be a hell of a bomb to make a hole bigger than the indian subcontinent.)

Maybe it will be a dirty bomb jack-in-a-box that will say "deez nutz", and all hell will break loose, but otherwise, those of you who lost sleep last night over the Aug 22nd thing may have done it for nothing. Sorry, no apocalypse for you today. (Although the night is still relatively young in the Middle East right now...)

(Really Scary Shit From/Onto Humanity(tm) rarely has a known public release date, though, even if cryptic.)

From The Washington Post, on the public information scrub.

And from me, on an example of why it's really ludicrous.

Point of no return, more likely: When one nuclear weapon goes off on American soil. Then the entire Middle East is a smoking ruin five hours later, pounded into rubble and suspended dust clouds by the arms of the Strategic Command. Plus we get to watch it on TV. And we still have more than enough leftover to threaten the total annihilation of everyone else with nuclear arsenals who might think of launching a
protest. The vast majority of us will survive, not living in DC or NYC, the obvious bulls-eye's if you've only one or two big money shots in your quiver. So if deterrence fails, we can destroy them all appropriately, anyway.

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair-mussed Mr. President, but 100,000 to a million dead, tops! Now, those hajis, they talk a good game but they don't have the know-how of our boys. No insult Mr. Ambassador, but they're mostly just peasants and cart-pushers."

Wouldn't you like to see that in a big daily? Straight talk from General Buck Turgidson!

Besides, even if we did nothing the Israeli's will never let the mad mullahs, as they're called, have a bomb without a serious rabbit-punch surprise attack.

Try a blacker sense of humor.

In the meantime, how 'bout some unintentionally funny worldview from Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker:
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How closely this truth touches the heart of this summer’s various horrors, or near-horrors. The bright young British Muslims, with their innocent-looking sports drinks, seem to have decided on mass murder not because they had exhausted all other possibilities but because, Meursault-like, in the madness of young men, it seemed thrilling and self-defining and glorifying—just as (the President might further reflect) the zeal of the neocon pamphleteers of summers past seems now to have come less from any strategic certainties than from the urge to some kind of muscular self-assertion, as wishfully defined as it was impossible to achieve . . .
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Dig the run on sentence. Were they bright? And what innocent-looking sports drinks, exactly, did they have? I don't recall reading any expert reporting nailing that one with any precision.
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And all this brings us no further than book one on the President’s stack, with Oppenheimer . . . still to be chewed on. Bush may have emerged from his syllabus as little altered as most undergraduates emerge from theirs. Still, it is encouraging to think that he has spent the summer reflecting on the inscrutable origins of human violence and on the unimaginable destructive powers now available through American science. . .
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i got one, darker than you. Try making a better "joke" next time.