Yeah. I wonder how many people start their political careers ya know gonna CHANGE THE SYSTEM and then their souls get immediately crushed and put through a meat grinder

Unfortunately, that's everyone.

Iran officially opened its first nuclear fuel production plant this week if you havent caught that already.

and there aint a whole lot anyone can or is gonna do about it

also watch/read these

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7991282.stm

Game Theory is so bizarre. How can you accommodate the effectiveness of people's interests, factor in given conditions, and produce a mathematical outcome? Sounds like magic to me. But I hope the results are right. It's not a bad thing for the Iran government to use nuclear energy for civilian purposes, and NOT build a bomb (as the Game Theory projects). But I think the Game Theory doesn't give enough credit to the power of the rising Ayatollahs and the deeply rooted religious mindset in the area. Proponents of the Game Theory claim that history doesn't affect this outcome much. That's according to our increasingly liberal society though, where history doesn't play much of a role (as demonstrated by that Iowan legislator link and how our generation doesn't care about gay marriage). Contrarily, history in the middle-east is a huge factor in their society, and in many cases the 'historical' religious forces actually stepped in to check and reverse liberal ideals, according to John Laffin's book "Holy War" (a terribly biased source, but it makes some sense). What scares me is the Islamic concept of jihad (religious war). According to the Q'uran, Mohammad in his conquest split the world into two categories, Dar-al Islam (the lands of Islam) and Dar-al Harb (the lands of war), and it's basically Islam's duty to dominate the opposing faction. Even if Iran's nuclear program is strictly for civilian use, during times of war (I distrust the area's stability) they will surely use that as an asset to their power. This might sound pretty terrible, and I trolled about this earlier in some other thread, but I sincerely hope that this nuclear program will add a sense of luxury to the Iranian civilians' interests, and that this sense of luxury will mitigate the rising powers of their religious belligerence.

I will, but the concept's pretty interesting.

Yeah, Laffin's book is trash and I need to read more sources on the subject. I don't think I give Iran enough credit anyway; a friend of mine's an Iranian immigrant and he and his family is surprisingly progressive (contrary to the usual stereotype). They are pretty conservative but they're not DEATH TO AMERIKA or anything like that. They probably represent a good portion of Iran's population.