US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1780

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With a negotiating deadline just two days away, Iranian officials on Sunday backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear agreement, saying they are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of the country.

For months, Iran tentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would not be accessible for use in any future weapons program. But on Sunday Iran’s deputy foreign minister made a surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved giving up a stockpile that Iran has spent years and billions of dollars to amass.

“The export of stocks of enriched uranium is not in our program, and we do not intend sending them abroad,” the official, Abbas Araqchi, told the Iranian media, according to Agence France-Presse. “There is no question of sending the stocks abroad.”

Western officials confirmed that Iran was balking at shipping the fuel out, but insisted that there were other ways of dealing with the material. Chief among those options, they said, was blending it into a more diluted form.

On March 30 2015 13:18 cLutZ wrote:
So silly to try and get this treaty. First, treaties of this kind aren't worth the paper they are written on, and second, you have to have a legitimate threat before and after its signed for it to work.

Who in the West wants to invade Iran? No one. Negotiating power is essentially 0.

On March 30 2015 13:36 Sandvich wrote:

Ground invasions aren't everything, especially when trying to stop development of a bomb. Israel and the US can and probably will bomb Iran's centrifuge sites and labs if they think Iran is getting too close. Also lifting of sanctions is the easing of an everpresent weight on the Iranian economy, something I'm sure Iran would prefer to have lifted.

On March 30 2015 11:25 QuantumTeleportation wrote:
How do you think US allies joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will impact on the US economy?

Most recently, Denmark has applied to join the AIIB.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/29/us-asia-aiib-denmark-idUSKBN0MP04P20150329

And the majority of other EU countries have either applied or have shown great interest.

On March 30 2015 14:15 ticklishmusic wrote:
I don't understand why people so so worried about the AIIB...

On March 30 2015 14:04 cLutZ wrote:


100% True. Those parties can also do that even after the treaty is signed, and the US side will have to invest huge sums of resources (regardless of treaty or not) to audit the capabilities of Iran's nuclear program.

On March 30 2015 20:26 Sandvich wrote:

Still those "huge sums of resources" shouldn't be very large considering there is already an international agency for this purpose. It's also important to remember how expensive the alternative would be in terms of munitions and maintenance of aircraft.

On March 28 2015 11:23 dAPhREAk wrote:
my japanese wife is laughing at the japanese history scholars here.

On March 28 2015 07:01 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Glyphosate is generally regarded as one of the safest herbicides out there. Monsanto bashing is nothing more than a mix of anti-science and irrational liberal fears.

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama's healthcare law that took aim at a bureaucratic board labeled by some Republicans as a "death panel" because it was designed to cut Medicare costs.

The high court left intact a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that threw out the lawsuit.

The court's action in an unsigned order was a victory for Obama administration, which has faced a barrage of legal challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare. The court is currently weighing a separate case challenging health insurance subsidies that are key to Obamacare's implementation. A ruling is due by the end of June.

In the case that the justices rejected on Monday, Arizona-based business owner Nick Coons and Dr. Eric Novack, an orthopedic surgeon, sued in 2011 in litigation backed by a conservative legal group.

On March 31 2015 00:55 always_winter wrote:


Does she have any sisters xD



A rational, pro-science progressive begs to differ. And he has links.

This one talks about how it probably causes cancer

This one talks about how it's polluting our groundwater

This one talks about cows retaining glyphosate in their urine

And this one talks about how it's now in our blood and urine (dat liberal anti-science irrationality, amrite guiz???)

Ask and you shall receive, my friend. Or don't ask and still receive. I'm cool either way.

Never before has the U.S. had so much oil spurting up out of the ground and sloshing into storage tanks around the country. There's so much oil that the U.S. now rivals Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer.

But there has been some concern that the U.S. will run out of places to put it all. Some analysts speculate that could spark another dramatic crash in oil prices.

Everyone in the oil trading business needs information. One thing they want to know these days: How full are oil storage tanks in places like Cushing, Okla.? To find out, ask a professional — someone with eyes on the ground, and in the sky.

Genscape, an oil intelligence service, uses planes, helicopters and satellites to track where and how much oil there is all over the world. The company "does a James Bond approach and flies over the storage field twice a week," says Hillary Stevenson, a manager at the firm.

In the U.S., you can tell how full some oil tanks are by flying over them and looking down. Others require a little more sleuthing, "by using IR or infrared technology cameras and flying over the tanks," Stevenson says.

In Cushing, there are fields of giant storage tanks, some the size of high school football stadiums. Genscape estimates they're about 70 percent full. As the storage tanks get closer to capacity, some analysts say that will drive prices lower.

Nobody knows that for certain and there are lots of scenarios. But as space gets tight, it gets increasingly more expensive to store oil. That should discourage speculators from buying oil and storing it, hoping to sell it later for a profit. If fewer speculators are buying, that means there's less demand and prices fall.

"We're running out of storage capacity in the U.S.," Ed Morse, global head of commodities research at Citigroup, said at an event recently in New York. "And we're seeing the indication of the U.S. reaching tank tops. It's hard to know where the price goes down, but it does go down."

The price of oil has already fallen from $100 a barrel last summer to $45 or $50 lately. Morse said lack of storage space could drive oil down to about $20 a barrel.

A rational, pro-science progressive begs to differ. And he has links.

This one talks about how it probably causes cancer

This one talks about how it's polluting our groundwater

This one talks about cows retaining glyphosate in their urine

And this one talks about how it's now in our blood and urine (dat liberal anti-science irrationality, amrite guiz???)

Ask and you shall receive, my friend. Or don't ask and still receive. I'm cool either way.

Doesn’t just about everything cause cancer if you look hard enough?

The IARC classifies compounds on a scale of decreasing certainty: group 1 is for agents that are definitely carcinogenic to humans; 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans; 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans; 3, not classifiable; and 4, probably not carcinogenic to humans.

Monsanto said in its statement, “IARC has classified numerous everyday items in Category 2 including coffee, cell phones, aloe vera extract and pickled vegetables, as well as professions such as a barber and fry cook.”

But the IARC classified most of these items at the less dangerous 2B level, whereas glyphosate is in the 'probably carcinogenic' 2A category. Of Monsanto's list, only emissions from high-temperature frying and the occupational exposure experienced as a barber are rated as 2A.

On March 31 2015 00:55 always_winter wrote:
A rational, pro-science progressive begs to differ.