How Iran Plans to Destroy Israel
EHUD YAARI
The mullahs seem dead serious about wanting to destroy Israel, but exactly how they plan to go about it remains studiously cryptic.
Of course, all this may change if Iran decides to allocate resources, derived from the lifting of sanctions and the unfreezing of its financial assets abroad, as a result of a P5+1 nuclear deal, to a major effort to project military power beyond its borders. The S-300 air defense batteries to be supplied from Russia could also greatly improve Iran’s defensive posture, while other deals for offensive weapons systems are being considered, or are at least rumored to be. One such deal is the possible purchase of 250 Sukhoi-30 MKM fighters from Russia and/or J-10s from China, and the purchase of dozens of IL-78 MKI aerial tankers. Yet it is obvious that Iran’s reliance on its long-range missile arsenal will remain for a long time the backbone of its military strategy with regard to Israel.
Dick Cheney’s staggering Iran hypocrisy: Why we need to ignore his sinister war games at all costs
The former vice president is saying whatever he can to torpedo negotiations with Iran. Here’s what he’s not saying
MARCY WHEELER
Before joining the Bush Administration, Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney opposed sanctions against Iran because American businesses would be “cut out of the action” (Halliburton is still one of the biggest likely beneficiaries of the easing of Iran sanctions).
Cheney spent much of the Obama Administration thwarting negotiations with Iran at a much earlier stage in its nuclear program. Had those negotiations happened then, they might have mitigated the concerns he and others now express about the nuclear deal. Indeed, as Poindexter had years earlier, Cheney’s office reportedly worked back channels to undercut the Iranian regime just as negotiations began.
I think we should let Iran have one bomb if they promise to drop it on Detroit.
I’ll vote for Donald Trump if he pledges to have Dick Cheney shot for crimes against humanity.
I daresay that legalized gambling has had a possibly worse effect on American life the past three decades than illegal immigration. Gambling is a marginal activity for marginal people that belongs on the margins — the back rooms and back alleys. It was consigned there for decades because it was understood that it’s not healthy for the public to believe that it’s possible to get something for nothing, that it undermines perhaps the most fundamental principle of human life.
Not wanting to alert Mo, agents allowed all three men to leave the country, but their corn seeds were confiscated. Special Agent Mark E. Betten, a 16-year veteran of the FBI specializing in the investigation of intellectual property theft, had the seeds sent to an independent bio-diagnostic testing laboratory, which confirmed that they were proprietary, genetically modified hybrids. Eventually, their genetic sequencing was matched to seeds under development by Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, and LG Seeds, which, including LG’s parent company, Groupe Limagrain, comprise three of the four largest seed companies in the world. The GPS coordinates were found to correspond with farms in Iowa and Illinois, where those companies were testing the performance of new hybrids.
A few years ago, hydrocarbon exports from the United States were negligible. But by the start of 2013, oil, natural gas, and petrochemicals had become the single largest category of U.S. exports, surpassing agricultural products, transportation equipment, and capital goods. The shift in the U.S. trade balance for petroleum products has been stunning. In 2008, the United States was a net importer of petroleum products, taking in about two million barrels per day; by the end of 2013, it was a net exporter, with an outflow of more than two million barrels per day. By the end of 2014, the United States should overtake Russia as the largest exporter of diesel, jet fuel, and other energy products, and by 2015, it should overtake Saudi Arabia as the largest exporter of petrochemical feedstocks. The U.S. trade balance for oil, which in 2011 was −$354 billion, should flip to +$5 billion by 2020.
By then, the United States will be a net exporter of natural gas, on a scale potentially rivaling both Qatar and Russia, and the consequences will be enormous. The U.S. gas trade balance should shift from −$8 billion in 2013 to +$14 billion by 2020. U.S. pipeline exports to Mexico and eastern Canada are likely to grow by 400 percent, to eight billion cubic feet per day, by 2018, and perhaps to ten billion by 2020. U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) look likely to reach nine billion cubic feet per day by 2020.
The combination of Trump constantly spewing crazy quotes and the strategy actually working turned his campaign into a veritable media supernova, earning the Donald more coverage than all of the other candidates combined.
This led to a situation where the candidates have had to resort to increasingly bizarre tactics in order to win press attention. Add to this the curious dynamic of the first Republican debate, on August 6th, in which only the top 10 poll performers get on the main stage, and the incentive to say outlandish things in search of a poll bump quickly reached a fever pitch. So much for the cautious feeling-out period: For the candidates, it was toss grenades or die.
Zulu Kilo 
WTF? this guy is a special kind of ‘tard.
BTW, I assume the shale oil post is posted purely for comedy reasons.
i thought the kid was channeling val kilmer’s doc holiday (Tomestone), and doing a pretty good job of it, too. love his silent GF’s nose ring.
go devils!
The Crash of 2015: It’s Here
excerpt:
“They have got away with this madness — the Masters, the Pundits, the Shills and the Gamblers — largely because decent people cannot believe anyone could possibly be crazy enough to do what they seem to be doing. Decent people tend not to remember the Housing Bubble Crash, the Dot-Com Crash, the Savings and Loan Crash, the Enron Crash, etc. etc.
Even if they’re gambling, surely it’s still true that the house never loses? Yes, that’s still true. As long as there are customers in the house. Look around. The customers are cashing in their chips and leaving– China, the emerging markets, the junk-bond markets and the US markets– as fast as they can without actually yelling “fire” and trampling each other.
Believe it. They are crazy, and this is the Crash of 2015.”
still, ten years post peak C&C and maintaining a reasonable impression of BAU, gotta hand it to them. Bravo!
eh, stock markets and shit like that have always been a casino. a long long time ago, i can’t remember the exact words, but someone told me, something like, “you can cover up a lot of sins with enough volume”. the problem at the moment is that the losers are overwhelming the winners. which seems inevitable…
the bit about “good” people v. “bad” people, is total bullshit…
http://i.imgur.com/7Pjusf8.gifv
worked with this guy who was going to work one morning on his motorcycle, a big harley. he was going very fast down a mountain highway, no helmut (didn’t matter), and he lost control on the wet, gravely turn, similar to the above, only he hit a low guard rail. the first responders were picking up chucks of his body like so many cuts of meat. at those speeds, even a thick, dull steel railing acts like a sharp knife.
that person in the video was surely killed instantly. not sure his/her head was inside the helmut, however.
this also explains why we are experiencing moron hurricanes in the North Central Pacific than is usually the case.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/09/as-2015-smashes-temperature-records-its-hotter-than-you-think.html
yeah, don’t think the head was in there. could be wrong.
strike!
http://i.imgur.com/9fz72G0.gifv
good grief, that was sad for those motorcyclists. they started to move, but it was way too late.
kinda like modern industrial civilization.
if the driver survived, i hope they got him/her for multiple manslaughter. that was a stupid turn.
there was no blood, so the head wasn’t in there. however, after the helmut came off, the rest of his momentum was expended by his bare head on those bars. not pretty. no doubt fatal.
funny how people are grossed out by bat wings and octopus legs/tentacles. personally, i like octopus sushi and poki. they are very smart animals. haven’t knowlingly tried bat. probably tastes like chicken.
tried cui (guinea pig) once. tasty but greasy and a bit boney.
wonder how our pet dog will taste…
moron blond jokes (just in time for the holiday weekend):
DISNEYLAND
Two blondes were going to Disneyland. They were driving on the Interstate when they saw the sign that said Disneyland LEFT. They started crying and turned around and went home.
FLORIDA OR MOON
Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking, and one blonde says to the other, ‘Which do you think is farther away… Florida or the moon?’ The other blonde turns and says ‘Helloooooo, can you see Florida?’
CAR TROUBLE
A blonde pushes her BMW into a gas station. She tells the
mechanic it died. After he works on it for a few minutes, it is idling smoothly.
She says, ‘What’s the story?’
He replies, ‘Just crap in the carburetor’
She asks, ‘How often do I have to do that?’
SPEEDING TICKET
A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license.
She replied in a huff,
‘I wish you guys would get your act together.
Just yesterday you take my license away, and now today you expect me to show it to you?’
AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE
A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor’s office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.
‘Impossible!’ says the doctor. ‘Show me.’
The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left shoulder and screamed, then she pushed her elbow and screamed even more. She pushed her knee and screamed; likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed. Everywhere she touched made her scream.
The doctor said, ‘You’re not really a redhead, are you?
‘Well, no’ she said, ‘I’m actually a blonde.’
‘I thought so,’ the doctor said, ‘Your finger is broken.’
KNITTING
A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting!
Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, ‘PULL OVER!’
‘NO!’ the blonde yelled back, ‘IT’S A SCARF!’
BLONDE ON TIME
A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were.
The blonde responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex.
Her friend said, ‘Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?’ ‘Helllooooo. . . ,’ answered the blonde. ‘They’re watch dogs’
IN A VACUUM
A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night.
It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on Science & Nature. Her question was, ‘If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?’ She thought for a time and then asked, ‘Is it on or off?’
FINALLY, THE BLONDE JOKE TO END ALL BLONDE JOKES!
In the swim-meet, after the blond came in last competing in the breast-stroke, she complained to the judges that
“all the other girls were using their arms.”
Nice. I can think of a few music-makers they might have influenced.
yeah, great finds dave.
now, for some current events spelling collapse and doom:
Rule 48 = Catch 22 for financials
Note they feature the triple hurricane threat in the North Central Pacific (a first) plus those pesky migrants from the MENA.
those two acrobats, err, dancers, working for cab were nothing short of phenomenal. imagine doing that routine dressed in suits and slick-soled, black dress shoes. wonder how long they kept it up before an injury.
my lower back actually throbs in pain just watching this video:
musta been fun in bed, or wherever.
“dna, a dumb molecule doing biological experiments…” i like that.
this is significant because these sequoias survived previous droughts just fine and lived through the prolonged droughts of the mid-1200s while the anasazi civilization did not. many are over 2000 years old.
http://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/sep/05/california-drought-sequoia-stress-foliage-dieback-trees-park
interesting. do you know why cheetahs are just a bit slower runners than their healthy prey? because if they were as fast or faster, they wouldn’t exist. everything in nature fits like a glove, ‘ceptn’ us.
heres my girl:
Pretty sure cheetahs can outrun any land animal, healthy or not. Predators will generally target the weaker individuals in a population when given a choice, not wanting to spend energy unnecessarily.
nah, there were some large energy gradients that needed to be dissipated. we’re doing exactly what we should be doing. i’d say.
gb, if cheetas were fast enough to run down the healthy adults of their prey population, e.g., gazelles, there would be no need to cull the weaker young and older, unhealthy ones. the health status of the herd would suffer as a result. it may be as you say. what i recall is cheetas are very fast for short distance, but healthy adult gazelles can smoke them, especially for distance. of course, one mistake and they’re dead. OTOH, a cheeta will break off the chase if it goes on for too long, because they can’t afford the energy expenditure for longer odds.
kinda like the ending of THX1138, starring a young robert duvall. he went over budget.
humans have adapted to duration walking and can literally outlast their prey, finally getting to within a kill zone.
They are fast enough to outrun the healthiest of individuals of any prey species. Not every hunt is successful because of other factors: cheetah getting close enough to prey at start, how much energy each individual has, injuries, etc. So why target the healthiest? The herd gets culled because its easier to catch the weaker, slower, the lame…and safer. Its hot, you only have so much energy, and who wants to risk getting injured in a chase unnecessarily? No land animal is faster than a cheetah.
Pretty sure I can beat Usain Bolt in the 200 meter dash if I can have a 100 meter head start.
Pretty sure I could out-hit Yoenis Cespedes too if I can…well never mind.
you’re reminding me of my high school chum who could outrun everyone. he might have been olympic quality. he was exceptionally fast at the 100 m. however, he always puked afterwards, which was just aweful to witness.
he was built for speed, long legs and very skinny. no one would run against him, so he just ran against the clock for speed. i heard he died a few years ago.
no wasted movements…
got me interested, so i checked the wiki. gb is right, cheetas are the fastest land animal. however, there are 9 species of bird (mostly hawks) and 1 fish (black marlin) that are faster. they don’t count because they fly (and may cheat, using gravity as an accelerant?) and of course the fish might as well be an alien species from another planet.
the homekill vid is difficult to view. no embedding allowed, so must go to youtube. there, they want proof you are over 18 age and must register with google to view. no thanks.
I know, over 18 wtf? Didn’t watch it either but what’s the big deal with butchering some critter? After you learn how to clean a fish its all more of the same. First time I gutted a deer I was surprised how easy and intuitive it was. Skinning took some time, but not too much. There are probably kids out in the sticks who can do this stuff easy as riding a bicycle.
huh? i had no such problems. anyhoo, i just thought that the guy was pretty good at taking apart a cow.
you might upset little timmy, who believes milk comes from plastic jugs, and yummy chicken parts come on plastic foam trays, without yucky skin or bones attached, from the supermarket. if pressed as to how the chicken got prepared that way, little timmy might say a big man in an apron like mom’s musta killed it, cause he saw him with a big cart of meat parts in the supermarket.
http://i.imgur.com/90mdBFZ.gifv
looks like he/she survived. lucky to not also get run over.
intersting revelations by gail in this exchange:
Niels Colding says:
September 10, 2015 at 7:13 am
Dear Gail,
it is getting still harder to get oil and coal out of the ground. Can you with your mathematical/statistical capacity figure out how much energy is left to use for the world with low production prices (before 1972 approx, 20 USD/barrel) and how much energy is left to use with high production prices (say 80 USD/barrel)?
With net energy I mean production minus energy invested in production. Therefore, the net energy must be higher with low prices (little energy/money invested) compared to high prices (much energy/much money invested).
Reply
Gail Tverberg says:
September 12, 2015 at 1:47 pm
I am far more worried about how much debt it takes to get oil and coal out of the ground than how much energy it takes to get oil out of the ground.
The amount of oil that will be left in the ground looks like it will be virtually all of it, regardless of whether the oil price is $80 per barrel of $20 per barrel. The problem is that the system is very close to breaking.
The whole idea of net energy, and various amounts that will be available at different prices is badly flawed, in my mind. It sounds like an engineer trying to figure out what the system looks like, when the system is governed by different factors than the engineer really understands. Charlie Hall is currently quite unhappy with me, BTW.
it’s painfuly obvious to me that gail may be correct. if so, we might not have that much BAU fun & games left.
Subject: second opinion
Two campers are hiking in the woods when one is bitten on the rear end by a rattlesnake. “I’ll go into town for a doctor,” the other says. He runs ten miles to a small town and finds the only doctor delivering a baby.
“I can’t leave,” the doctor says. “But here’s what to do. Take a knife, cut a little X where the bite is, suck out the poison and spit it on the ground.”
The guy runs back to his friend, who is in agony. “What did the doctor say?” the victim cries.
“He says you’re gonna die.”
yeah, i sure don’t know. but my kinda guiding principal, as far as the big system picture goes, is something like: “the oil must be burned”.
there will, for sure, be discontinuities along the way. but the infrastructure to run an international money system, of one sort or another, is in place. the infrastructure to extract and burn the oil is in place. “everybody” wants and needs the system to be prolonged. i still see, in my own mind’s eye, a couple of more disconcerting financial discontinuities (crashes), and “recoveries” of some sort or another.
of course, at some point, due to any number of factors, but mostly physical resource limits, the center will not be able to hold. i’m still betting on the first nyc, boston, baltimore famines to take place around 2024. it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of the world’s largest rat’s nest, washington dc, at that point.
by 2034 some, or most, of the dust will have settled. world population will be at about 4 bil. some assholes will try to pick up the pieces and start something again. i guess. i’ll be dead.
and, as always, there’s a 1000 or so wild cards in play at any moment…
drought, all over the place, is shaping up to be a game charger of sorts. i think. what happens, i ask myself, if 50 or so million assholes from california, and the desert sw, never mind mexico and central america, all of a sudden need to be relocated to “somewhere”?
yeah, i still think that “money” and “debt” are the least of our worries. i guess.
https://i.imgur.com/tsjQIYW.gifv
http://www.nationalreview.com/slideshows/europes-refugee-crisis
way too many people.
dave, lots of thoughts in reply (mostly i think you’re correct, you optimist you) but first, a question: how do you think that guy who slipped on the ledge made out?
see what happens when you diss and flip off the monkey.
yeah, i think gail is getting emotional now about her last post’s conclusions. she sees the coming financial collapse as a game-changing, perhaps civilization-ending event. so, she’s thinking like fast eddy now: chaos, riots, mass migrations (in progress from MENA, central america), marshall law, summary executions (kinda started in places like ferguson, MO, and of course the MENA, Ukraine, etc.).
of course the USA will sword rattle until the very end. let’s hope no one takes them seriously. look at Russia now in Syria. they are protecting their assets there from ISIS, and yes, they probably will ultimately annex it like the Crimea. there goes any gas pipelines to EU without Russia involved.
you bring up a good question about CA and the american SW. where will they go? not south, that’s for sure. i’m thinking the Pacific NW (oregon, washinton, BC canada). they could travel east, but they’d have to cross the SW with perhaps no viable roads (blocked, patrolled) even if gas is still available. on foot, they have to go north (see old western movies). some will get away on boats. Alaska would be a destination, perhaps Costa Rica and points south of there. hawaii and south pacific options for the true sailors.
i thought he was a base jumper with a parachute. but i guess not.
The period ahead is going to be a time of renewal and restoration for the population of eastern screech owls. I’ve been hearing this montonic trill in the mornings: http://www.owlpages.com/sounds/Megascops-asio-4.mp3
he had a backpack on. it might have been a parachute, but he didn’t have time to open it because he was surprised by the foot slip. i guess he must have felt a lot of pain for a second or two upon impact. recall that gravity was making his fall accelerate.
the screech owls will do fine. deer will thin out for awhile (food source) then rebound. our warming legacy might cause havoc with the climate for a few centuries before abating. the long-term trend is glaciation cycles. those are controlled by the distribution of the continents.
Fast Eddy says:
OFW, September 14, 2015 at 2:27 pm
[…]
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness. Werner Herzog
Civilization sails prettily like a child’s rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon. AUSTIN O’MALLEY
What man calls civilization always results in deserts. DON MARQUIS
Civilization is fragile and highly ambiguous. To hope in ourselves would be a big gamble. CHRISTIAAN MOSTERT
Civilization is the world with its leg asleep. AUSTIN O’MALLEY
Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed. ROBERT E. HOWARD
Western civilization as we know it is 100% dependent on a never-ending supply of cheap to extract fossil fuels. When these cheap fuels are no longer available, there will be little or no food, and previously civilized billions will tear each other to pieces in a frenzy of unparalleled savagery. FAST EDDY
yeah, it’s almost like they kept increasing resistance until he was forced to fail…maybe, not sure.
yeah, something kinda fishy about this demonstration. 0,021 kwh total means he did all the work in like 1.1 minutes (if i did my math right). my guess is that a guy like that could generate maybe 0.5kw for an hour before failure. i think. not sure. i think it was set up so he had to maintain an output of at least 0.7kw, while rolling resistance was constantly increased, or the whole thing failed. not sure why they set it up like that….
i guess that no matter how you slice or dice it, it come down to a lot of effort for a slice of toast.
reading up on cyclist power outputs a little, i guess that some of the best in the world can maintain maybe 600 watts for about 5 mins….
i guess that some of the best can maintain about 400w for about an hour…so, if you had a single slice toaster, using .4kw, at 1 minute/slice, that guy could produce a bunch of toast and maybe fry and egg or 2 in an hour…for whatever any of that is worth
god, i wasted enough time with that…i’d say.
sorry about that, i just thought it was an interesting example of oil/nat. gas/coal as energy slaves we’ll miss if we have to produce toasted bread with our bodies (using food energy produced with oil/nat. gas/coal).
some wise ass suggested a stick-held piece over a burner or open wood fire. that’s tricky without burning it.
yeah, what’s the accepted conversion factor for the usa, 10 kcal of ff energy for every kcal of food we put in our mouth? something like that.
i think aristotle was right…
“Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain people.” Will Cuffy
i’ve always wondered (and still do) how it will end for 7+ billion humans on a dying planet (for them). it appears the answer is everywhere: it all goes until it can’t and when it stops most all will just lie down and die. sure will be a mess, for awhile.
naw, the west goes first, led by the usa.
regarding the video clip “Tool” above, i’ve always liked the concept of the entire known universe fitting into a mote in little annie’s cat’s left eye, herself warily hiding and peering out of the clothes closet of little annie’s bedroom, located in the back part of an old isolated farm house out on the plains somewhere in kansas. gives perspective.
i always thought that the universe was a tiny scrap of shit stuck to some mangy worm ridden cat’s asshole.
you know, one of those cats that live behind the dumpster behind the 7/11…something like that. i could devise a cosmology around that notion. but it would be pointless, like everything else.
wrong damn clip!
i give up!
on what?
you did fine grasshopper.
so who needs instruments?
gentlemen watch the cord…
nice visuals on that last song, dave.
a very funny old johnny carson episode:
weirdness on steriods explained, sorta:
she’s obviously no steven jones fan. AFAIK, cold fusion is still unproven. still, i like her investigative style, if not her abstracted presentation.
i know, kinda long, too.
jhk knocks one outta the park…
“My new theory of history applies well to the macro situation: people do what they do because it seems like a good idea at the time.”
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/fed-cred-dead/
the fact that yellen did not raise rates after hinting that she would all spring and summer means the economy really is as bad as we suspect.
meanwhile, moron signs of desperation from japan, our mine canary:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-20/japan-dumbs-down-its-universities-at-the-wrong-time?utm_medium=email&utm_source=digg
peep peep!
yeah, whatever. if japanese social scientists ever want to do japanese society any good, they’d be out working in the rice paddies, or something like that. i’d say.
alan greenspan on why the financial crash of 2008 occurred: “we thought there was more [cheap] oil than there apparently is”.
that article was apparently written by a social sciences major. still, i can see a point to a moron rounded education.
art, by s. dali
JHK’s periodic criticisms of the health care industry are valid and true enough, but where is the gratitude to the surgeons, nurses and system that saved his pathetic, sorry self with bypass surgery when his arteries were all larded up from eating butter, red meat, rich desserts and other restaurant food in Saratoga? I don’t see it.
http://i.imgur.com/nIRaNP6.gifv
http://i.imgur.com/WeBIgAd.gifv
JHK’s no fan of the doctors, and vice versa i’m sure. how about that hip replacement that he claimed went wrong with one leg now shorter than the other (for starters) and then blood poisoning effects from trace metals (Cr, Co) wearing off the ball joint as micro-particles. wonder how much he got in that malpractice lawsuit, probably enough to equip his upstate doomstead. it doesn’t have to even be true, just plausible, to win.
http://i.imgur.com/QZuRpU7.gifv