Reports are emerging that the Geneva talks were preceded by many secret meetings between representatives of the Obama administration and the Iranian government, facilitated by the Sultan of Oman, of which the Europeans and Israel were informed only in late September of this year. (Here is a fact sheet on the deal put out by the White House.)
Philip Weiss has a quick roundup of the reactions do far to the deal just reached between Iran and the P5+1 nations. We can expect to hear a lot about the reaction of people in the US. As one wag suggested, the media will give a lot of attention to what president John McCain, vice resident Sarah Palin and secretary of state Lindsey Graham have to say, because their opinions are of course the most important on any issue.
For some light relief on this topic, here are clips from two weeks ago on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on the prospects two weeks ago, that proved premature, that the Iran talks may actually produce something
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(These clips aired on November 12, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
We can expect to hear a lot about the reaction of people in the US.
But how many of those reactions are from colnago80 alone?
My reaction is that 10 years from now, President Osama will be remembered as the second coming of Neville Chamberlain.
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In case you can’t give up your free healthcare and move to America, you can watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at thecomedynetwork.ca”
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😀
“President Osama”
Laddies and gentlewomen, no comment necessary.
“President Osama will be remembered as the second coming of Neville Chamberlain.”
Yeah, right because Iran is the new Nazi state, is fully equipped with atomic weapons to threaten defenseless non nuclear Israel the current prime minister is the incarnation of Adolph. Do you really not realize how ridiculous you sound?
colnago80 is a prime candidate for presidency of the tea-party
I will give my initial trust to President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry but I don’t believe it is unjustified to be concerned this new agreement explicitly recognizes some amount of enrichment is allowable.
I very much condemn Netanyahu’s interference in domestic politics throughout this, although I do believe it was reasonable for him to discuss his objections all along the way.
I do not find Philip Weiss a credible source. He’s got plenty of axes to grind and he loves grinding them.
Obama is a weakling, Kerry is a habitual liar, so the recent revelations can’t really come as a surprise to the Israelis.
But I wonder if the Iranians could really be stupid enough to risk Israel going apeshit on them. After all, even the most influential arab states would support a pre-emptive strike on Iran for comprehensible reasons.
The second coming of Neville Chamberlain…
Sounds good to me. As well as being a far better peacetime PM than Churchill (Paid holidays were enforced by him, as well as better working conditions), Britain could no more stand up to Hitler 1938 than half the countries which were steamrolled by Nazi Germany. Chamberlain sacrificed his political face in order to give Britain another 12 months to prepare. He then stood aside to promote national unity in a time of war.
We’d be far better off as a planet if more of our leaders were Chamberlains than Churchills.
One could write several thousand words refuting this nonsense but the following would suffice.
You blather the usual apology for Chamberlain namely that he gave himself an extra 12 months to prepare for an European war. Well, who made the better use of the time, Chamberlain or Frankenberger? The result in 1940 tells the whole story.
This notion that Britain and France were more unprepared for war then Germany is utter rubbish. Aside from everything else, this overlooks the fact that Czechoslovakia, in 1938, had the most modern military establishment in Europe. Their army, unlike Germany’s, was fully mechanized with the most modern tanks in the world and the the most modern arms production facility, the Skoda Works. The Panzer divisions that won the Battle of France in 1940 by contrast, barely existed. In addition, the mountainous terrain in Czechoslovakia was far better suited for defense then the plains of Poland. Further, the Molotov/von Ribbentrop pact had not yet been signed so that Frankenberger could not be sure that the former Soviet Union would not intervene in the event of a stalemate (as a matter of fact, the capitulation of Chamberlain at Munich was the catalyst that convinced Stalin that the Western powers, Britain and France, weren’t serious about containing Germany, which led to his agreeing to the treaty). Britain and France would have been much better off going to war in 1938 allied with Czechoslovakia then in 1939 allied with Poland. The Polish armed forces were totally unmechanized, depending on horsed cavalry for mobility which were virtually useless against the Panzers.
The fact is that the German General Staff was well aware of Germany’s deficiencies, unlike the muck da mucks in Britain and France, and were appalled at Frankenberger’s recklessness to the extent that they were planning a coup to remove him from power. Of course, the coup died aborning when Chamberlain chose appeasement at Munich.
By agreeing to the Munich agreement, Chamberlain shot himself in the foot by eventually turning over the Skoda Works to Germany without firing a shot. A high percentage of the tanks that won the Battle of France were manufactured at the Skoda Works or were manufactured in Germany along Czech designs.
IMHO, Frankenberger was bluffing at Munich, banking on Chamberlain and company being terrified by Germany’s illusionary invincibility. Had Chamberlain stood up to him, I think that Frankenberger would have backed down and waited for a more propitious opportunity later on after Germany had more fully rearmed.
Actually, Bibi’s attempts at interference in US politics backfired, IMHO, only pissing off the administration. I do believe that his objections did result in a better agreement but angering President Osame by lobbying Congress was not necessary. Despite their misgivings, the Congress was not about to try an prevent an agreement. This was compounded by sending Naftali Bennett to personally lobby Congress, which was guaranteed to infuriate the administration as Bennett is an opponent of the administration’s 2 state policy.
@ Voidhawk : You cannot be possibly be serious surely!?
Being a life long liberal Democrat and a vigorous opponent of religious interference in politics, the Hun’s anointment of me as president of the teabaggers is highly unlikely.
After some ueber-hawk republican fool gets us into another unwinnable war in the middle east I predict President Obama (that is his title BTW) will be fondly remembered as the man who tried to keep us out of it. Just as I fondly remember Jean Chretien as the man who kept my country out of Irak (well and his delicious quebecer accent). Naturally the Israelis and the Saudis (who agree on nothing else) desperately want the USA to fight a war with Iran on their behalf while they hold our coats. How dare President Obama not give them this war? They somehow imagine it’s their right to have it at no cost to themselves. Who is the POTUS to deny them?
About Chamberlain; what voidhawk said. If in doubt just look up relative military strength of Germany and Britain in 1938 -- especially frontline fighter aircraft and pilots.
My reaction to the Iran deal FWIW?
I don’t know -- time will tell.
But I do know that Iran has been secretive and duplicitious before building nuclear reactors secretly and that it cannot be trusted so I hope they are very serious indeed about verifying and checking and monitoring and willing to tear this up if Iran breaks its side of it.
Just why does a nation with so much oil seem so keen to build nuclear reactors anyhow I wonder? If they want to shift to renewables, good on’em but then why not focus on say solar or thorium if it must be nuclear?
I’ve got a lot of questions, a lot of doubts and, sadly, not much time to spare. I hope this works out but there are serious question marks here which we shouldn’t overlook because the consequences of failure are horrific for everyone.
Apparently, you totally discount any contribution by France and Czechoslovakia. The
Battle of France was won by the Panzers, not the Luftwaffe.
So Chiroptera, *your* reaction is not to think about the wider implications of this yourself but rather to wonder what another commenter you seem to dislike is going to be? How sad.
Colnago80 is entitled to his opinion, I’m entitled to mine, we’re allowed to express and explain and argue for what we think and why -- as are you.
So what’s your view on the actual topic here?
Think we can trust the Ayatollahs of the Iranian theocracy to keep their word?
Think Israel’s concerns should just be entirely dismissed without being given any thought and consideration?
Think this makes the world a safer place?
The battle of France was won by the French. They just won for the wrong side.
PS. Anyone else see Iran following the precedent of North Korea and behaving similarly here?
Hopefully that won’t be the case but I suspect it may well be the example ran is following. If so, who will adopt that tactic next? Zimbabwe? Syria -- or fragments thereof?
This then does not seem to bode well for non-proliferation or stopping WMDs.
colnago80 : I hope that was just an unfortunate typo.
I disagree with much of what President Obama has done and especially on foreign policy ( & space exploration) but I don’t think that calling him “Osama” is helpful to your case at all.
D’oh! 5.2 wasn’t to go here but at the end after comment 10.
@ Kraut : Are you intending to use an offensive anti-German slur in your username?
The only reason this agreement got done is that the corrupt Israel lobby AIPAC was kept out of the picture….look at the names of the negotiators from the US side…
An article of possible interest here :
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/11/24/right_to_enrich_uranium_tehran_washington_have_different_interpretations.html
on Slate considering the deal and differing interpretations.
“Being a life long liberal Democrat”
It shows.
“Predictably, the very restricted circle of those against even the idea of Geneva completely freaked out. That starts with neo-cons and assorted Republicans who have backed every demented horse in recent geopolitical history, from the embryo of al-Qaeda in 1980s Afghanistan to the Contras in Nicaragua, from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq “exiled” in Iraq to Bandar Bush’s goons let loose in Syria.”
“And then there’s that sociopath posing as Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. Imagine his reaction when he read those finally unfrozen reports about months of secret US-Iranian negotiations in Oman. [1] The bottom line: Bibi was totally frozen out of the New Great Game in Eurasia by the Obama administration.
In the US, dangerous nut jobs are bound to crank up the hysteria, calling for Israel to bomb Iran. [2] As if a nuclear-armed-to-the-teeth nation -- which never signed the NPT and does not allow IAEA inspections -- could attack a non-nuclear nation, which has signed the NPT and allows a rash of intrusive inspections. That will make it even more explicit to the whole planet that the rogue state here is Israel.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-251113.html
The danger now: Israel doing something very foolish.
No, I recall from previous comments that kraut originates from germany. the ethnic slurs are colnago’s
huh? My recollection is that the blitzkrieg strategy required strong air support for the armored divisions to avoid failure and huge losses. I thought a strong airforce was eventually considered a vital defense.
But the point is moot anyway; the fact that blitzkrieg took most (?) allied strategists by surprise means that hindsight calculations about comparative might are pretty pointless.
So says the Hun.
Churchill had it right, the Huns are either at your feet or at your throat.
?
Spelling Nazi here, Germany should be capitalized.
For a change, there is a considerable amount of truth in the Pennsylvania poopdeck’s comment. Britain and France assumed that the German strategy would be a reprise of the WW1 Schlieffen Plan and thus sent virtually all their armored units north into Belgium, leaving 2nd rate divisions guarding the Meuse crossings at Sedan, under the notion that the Ardennes was impenetrable by tanks. Turned out to be a fatal error as the Panzer divisions easily passed through the Ardennes, crossed the Meuse at Sedan, and pushed on westward against weak opposition. This strategy cut the British/French lines of communication with the forces in Belgium which were forced to precipitously retreat to Dunkiirk.
The Hun greatly overestimates Bibi who talks big and carries a twig. Bibi lacks the balls to launch an attack agains Iran using nuclear tipped cruise missiles fired from Israel’s Dolphin class submarines. By the way, Angela Merkel lies when she claims that they can’t be modified to fire cruise missiles. They can and have been.
“Bibi lacks the balls to launch an attack agains Iran using nuclear tipped cruise missiles fired from Israel’s Dolphin class submarines.”
Anyone who so blithely advocates nuclear attack has absolutely no clue what war means and belongs to the category “psychopath” with no ethical concerns regarding the misery he so unconcernedly advocates to have inflicted.
Only someone who thinks war is fought remotely by drone, and has not seen the pictures
“Bibi” having those balls would likely loose them with those of a considerable part of the jewish population, when the Russians as a partner of Iran might want to test “Bibi’s” mettle after such an attack.
The attitude of machismo displayed by a nincompoop here is at even with those criminals of the Nazi party who led Germany into the losing venture called WW2.
“Only someone who thinks war is fought remotely by drone, and has not seen the pictures”.. of Germany after the war, of Stalingrad, of Tokio, Hiroshima and Nagasaki or listened to the survivors of the latter two nuclear attacks can be idiotic enough to speak for the use of nuclear weapons, not even mentioning the effect that would have on Israel if it would get away unscathed from such an unprovoked and unjustified attack by a nuclear power against a non nuclear power.
If you think Israel is isolated at present…you have seen nothing yet.
Since the Jericho III missile has sufficient range to reach Moscow and Leningrad, I doubt that Putin is stupid enough to attack Israel. He ain’t about to trade Tel Aviv for Moscow and Leningrad to support Iran, who will probably stir up trouble in places like Chechnya eventually.
Hey, to make an omelet,a few eggs must be broken.
The only words to say to a psychopath like you: I hope it is your “”eggs” (don’t forget, balls as in testes in German means “eier”) that will get busted somewhere somehow.
Such a pathetic big mouth arsehole with 0 sense of sarcasm that proves my point by posting bollocks is beyond pathetic.
If anyone really thinks that only balls are missing to attack a non aggressor non nuclear state because one is afraid of what might be after they themselves have broken the rules of non proliferation has simply not thought through the consequences of such action.
Hiroshima only was about 20 kT, a baby compared to today’s nukes.
But..why feed psychopathic trolls who think they have a grasp on history, a grasp sourced from cheaply available books, not lived in the reality of a destroyed country with relatives missing from war in each family, cripples that are reduced to begging in house entrances, ruins whose wooden beams still smolder inside floors years after the bombing stopped, ruins surrounding the slowly being rebuild houses, the dad in whose body grenade splinters wander around to be extracted when they come close to the surface -- minor stuff, lucky to have survived. Several uncles were not so lucky and never returned from the Russian battlefield.
I was lucky to be born after the war, a few years after the bombing stopped, but still remember the damage and destruction in Frankfurt that was carpet bombed, where it was the early 1970’s when the last ruin was finally officially cleaned away, where the memory of those who experienced the phosphorous bombs still lingered in stories told to the children who wondered how this destruction came about, the fear for years of any airplane overhead approaching the Frankfurt airport…sure, minor stuff only for those who did not have to live through the utter misery of war. Break a few eggs…
If anyone really thinks that only balls are missing to attack a non aggressor non nuclear state because one is afraid of what might be after they themselves have broken the rules of non proliferation has simply not thought through the consequences of such action.
A non-aggressor state? I find it amazing that the Hun ignores the Iranian support for the Syrian Government, Hizbollah, and Hamas.
But..why feed psychopathic trolls who think they have a grasp on history, a grasp sourced from cheaply available books, not lived in the reality of a destroyed country with relatives missing from war in each family, cripples that are reduced to begging in house entrances, ruins whose wooden beams still smolder inside floors years after the bombing stopped, ruins surrounding the slowly being rebuild houses, the dad in whose body grenade splinters wander around to be extracted when they come close to the surface – minor stuff, lucky to have survived. Several uncles were not so lucky and never returned from the Russian battlefield.
The Huns lost any right to sympathy at Auschwitz, Berger-Belson, Dachau, Buchenwald, etc. The Huns sowed the wind when they invaded Poland and they reaped the whirlwind in bombed out cities and Russian atrocities against civilians in East Prussia and Silesia. The Huns are fortunate that, due to Frankenberger’s military incompetence, Germany surrendered in the Spring of 1945, before the nuclear weapons that did for Hiroshima and Nagasaki were available to be used against Berlin and Hamburg. If the Hun thinks that things were grim in Germany in the Spring of 1945, they would have been a lot grimmer if Frankenberger, who was certifiable by 1944, his brain having been damaged by tertiary syphilis and Parkinson’s by that time, had shown some military competence and staved off defeat until the Fall of 1945. To quote Roosevelt in a speech given shortly after Pearl Harbor, “Frankenberger, Mussolini, and Tojo have been asking for it for a long time and now they’re going to get it”.
General Eisenhower took a number of his top subordinate military commanders on a tour one of the concentration camps as he wanted them to see what we were fighting against.
The Hun says war is hell. General Sherman beat him to it by 150 years.