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Yellow Cake Blues [Dan Collins]

Western powers believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, triggering an international race to prevent it from importing more, The Times has learnt.

Diplomatic sources believe that Iran’s stockpile of yellow cake uranium, produced from uranium ore, is close to running out and could be exhausted within months. Countries including Britain, the US, France and Germany have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran.

Before Christmas, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sent out a confidential request for its diplomats in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil, all major uranium producers, to lobby governments not to sell uranium products, specifically yellow cake, to Iran.

Iran’s stock of yellow cake, acquired from South Africa in the 1970s under the Shah’s original civil nuclear power programme, has almost run out. Iran is developing its own uranium mines, but does not have enough ore to support a sustained nuclear programme.

At soroslapdog’s suggestion, I propose Mr. & Mrs. 24 Hours, starring Joe and Valerie.

46 Replies to “Yellow Cake Blues [Dan Collins]”

  1. soroslapdog says:

    A job for Joe Wilson.

  2. happyfeet says:

    David Albright, founder of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said that Iran now had enough of this gasified uranium, stored in canisters weighing 10-14 tonnes each, to produce as many as 35 bombs, but it may run out of yellow cake to keep feeding the plant by the end of the year.

    game over

  3. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    I’m sure everything will be better once Barky has a nice chat with them.

  4. Benedick says:

    Send in Hans Blix.

  5. Sdferr says:

    The western world has seen this Iranian victory coming for twelve years or more and has done everything it could to usher it in. Why? Political cowardice (everywhere) is about as close as I can come to an answer. It’s overbroad but I think it fits.

  6. geoffb says:

    Only 35 bombs, no problem eh?

  7. Techie says:

    Now, it seems WHEN Iran gets The Bomb, it’s probably Game Over in the Mid-East.

    Iranians = Persians = Not-Arabs. The Arab states would be terrified of a nuclear Iran, and would probably pay any petro-dollar price to get nukes of their own? Sanctions? Hah, we’re going to get the world, especially Europe to embargo the Mid-East for Nuclear Proliferation violations? That’s funny.

    If you think Mid-East crises are fun now, wait till Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and who knows else has The Bomb.

    Go get ’em Agent 00Plame.

  8. MAJ (P) John says:

    Leon Panetta will stop this. Or Hillary. Whomever.

  9. my money’s on Hillary and her “smart power”. so smart she had NO IDEA Bill was fooling around.

  10. soroslapdog says:

    Is “smart” power named after Maxwell Smart?

  11. geoffb says:

    Can’t be. Maxwell Smart always did solve the problem, by accident, but it did get solved.

  12. alppuccino says:

    Iran will listen to Barack. Everyone must listen to Barack. Attention must be paid.

  13. geoffb says:

    This administration is however making use of the “would you believe…” bit though.

  14. parsnip says:

    Wow, only 4 days on the job and Obama’s already neutralized the threat from Iran!

    Is there anything he can’t do?

  15. Iran will listen to Barack

    as he crackles

  16. Sticky B says:

    Ya see, dumbasses? If you just elect the right guy, problems take care of themselves. BHO ascends = Iran runs out of gas on the side of the road on the way to the big debutante ball. It’s some kinda cosmic shit so don’t try to explain or understand. Of course happyfeet (#2) had to go and find out that they had a spare can of gas in the trunk. Couldn’t you just shut the fuck up and let us be happy in our ignorance, happyfeet? Like the other 52% of us get to be?

  17. alppuccino says:

    Is there anything he can’t do?

    Answer questions.

    Talk without a teleprompter.

    Get Michelle to wear something tasteful.

  18. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    Explain why the validation system was turned off on his donation web site.

    Tell us why he sat in a racist church “every Sunday” for twenty years.

    Share his thesis topic with us.

    Fill us in on the details of his associations with Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko.

  19. alppuccino says:

    Bowl.

    Golf.

    Play defense.

  20. alppuccino says:

    Pass up a 3-pointer.

    Be seen in the same room with Alfred E. Newman.

    Find ear muffs that fit.

  21. alppuccino says:

    Play Edgar Winter in ABC’s made-for-TV-movie: The Edgar Winter Story

    Go down in history as one of the good presidents.

    Recognize humor

  22. the other Ken says:

    Answer a simple question about Bill Lynn.

  23. parsnip says:

    Still just Carrot Top and Pauly Shore?

    Wat Up?

  24. Rob Crawford says:

    Ya see, dumbasses? If you just elect the right guy, problems take care of themselves. BHO ascends = Iran runs out of gas on the side of the road on the way to the big debutante ball.

    It’s not that they’re SOL, it’s that they only have material for 35 nukes.

  25. alppuccino says:

    You’re familiar with Carrot Top and Pauly Shore parsnip? That’s sad, in a pathetic, lonely, ugly introvert kind of way. Really sad.

  26. happyfeet says:

    Pauly Shore, he was so sad when his porn star friend died. I saw him on the tv and he was crying and he looked very lost and he was in pain and no one was comforting him. Carrot Top I don’t know about.

  27. parsnip says:

    Perhaps the new Work Projects Administration will train some right wingers how to be funny?

  28. soroslapdog says:

    Perhaps the new Work Projects Administration will plow under next years parsnip crop to satisfy Gaia.

  29. alppuccino says:

    Wait parsnip, shouldn’t you have at least one funny comment on your resume before you’re able to judge the humor of others?

    The answer: Obama

  30. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    Write a publishable academic paper.
    Come up with an original thought.
    Hold a real job.
    Uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all its enemies, foreign and domestic.

  31. AKA Pablo says:

    The old politics that divide us no longer apply. You’re on notice, Mahmoud, so shape up.

  32. Phil says:

    Parsnip, again, we are new to this and I never did get my Leftist memo about what I’m supposed to do as the loyal opposition. You know, things like:

    Constantly and continuously compare the President to Adolf Hitler

    Make films depicting the fictional assassination of the President

    Contend that the President deliberately allowed a terrorist attack on his own country for political gain

    Have my Senate leadership declare a war that is occurring in real time to be “lost” without regard for the troops in the field, their families back at home or the welfare of the nation at large

    Put an ad in the New York Times suggesting that the President’s top general is a traitor for accepting the job of top military commander during a war

    You’ll have to pardon our sarcastic comments about Baracky. Totally inappropriate and uncalled for, especially during this amazing era of Change I Can Believe In. I promise to cease all sarcasm…in 4 years when Baracky gets land-slided harder than Jimmay did in ’80.

  33. Techie says:

    Publish in his own Law Review.

  34. ThomasD says:

    Let his wife find an honest job.

  35. disown Rev. Wright

    oh wait…

  36. Bob Reed says:

    Iran now had enough of this gasified uranium, stored in canisters weighing 10-14 tonnes each, to produce as many as 35 bombs…”

    That’s enough bombs to terrorize the middle east, and perhaps part of south-eastern Europe…

    Or, God forbid, smuggle one into the US…

    I thought O! said he wasn’t going to allow them to get a nuclear bomb..?

    I guess that promise has already expired…

  37. Sdferr says:

    I thought O! said he wasn’t going to allow them to get a nuclear bomb..?

    This is the worst species of the various lies he might tell, I think, Bob, if it is or does prove to be a lie. Baldly lying to your people, your allies and even your adversaries about your strategic intent is the stuff of disaster, I think. It may mean that he’s lying to himself and that ain’t good. I have to point out though, that on this score, Pres. Bush hasn’t done much better.

  38. happyfeet says:

    It’s important to remember though that lots and lots of liberal CIA nancy boys put thwarting Bush’s foreign policy aims well ahead of national security concerns. There’s only so much you can do when the CIA is teh gay.

  39. Bob Reed says:

    Sdferr,

    O! running our foreign policy is surely the stuff of disaster…

    Bosh should have struck the Iranians, with our bunker busting, penetrator, nukes-from subs-and when the Iranians whined about the radiation traces said something like, “Well what would you expect after an accident at a nuclear weapons facility”…

    Plausable.Deniability.Rawks…

  40. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    A really nasty plausible deniability scenario would involve “dusting” the Iranian nuke sites with radioisotopes, preferably ones derived from ex-Soviet material acquired on the black market, so the isotope signatures don’t point back to the parties with actual responsibility.

    I’m not advocating that, mind you. As I said, very nasty.

  41. Sdferr says:

    “The arming of Iran with nuclear weapons may portend an irreversible process, because these regimes assume a kind of immortality,” he says, arguing that the threat of a nuclear Iran poses a much graver danger to the world than the current economic crisis. “[This] will pose an existential threat to Israel directly, but also could give a nuclear umbrella to these terrorist bases.”

    How to stop that from happening? Mr. Netanyahu mentions that he has met with Barack Obama both in Israel and Washington, and that the question of Iran “loomed large in both conversations.” I ask: Did Mr. Obama seem to him appropriately sober-minded about the subject? “Very much so, very much so,” Mr. Netanyahu stresses. “He [Mr. Obama] spoke of his plans to engage Iran in order to impress upon them that they have to stop the nuclear program. What I said to him was, what counts is not the method but the goal.”

    It’s easy to believe that Mr. Netanyahu, of all people, must be wishing President Obama well: If diplomacy with Iran fails and the U.S. does not resort to military force, it would almost certainly fall to Mr. Netanyahu to decide whether Israel will go it alone in a strike. (In a separate interview earlier that day, a senior military official assured me that a successful strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is well within Israel’s capabilities.)

    I think it would be a terrible mistake to put this burden on Israel alone. But I have no belief that Obama will step up to the challenge. None.

  42. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    Sdferr, I do, however, have faith that Israel will take care of the problem if Obama doesn’t.

    They shouldn’t have to, you’re right. But they will.

  43. Sdferr says:

    Something bad is happening to me these days, SBP. After that Turki al-Saud column addressed to Pres. Obama the other day, with the unsatisfactory end to the Hamas provocations in Gaza, with Obama’s capitulation on the question of Guantanamo and military tribunals, with the story of the Yemeni released by the Bush admin back to Saudi Arabia and that joke of a jihadi-rehabilitation program, thence on to Yemen to head up the Yemeni al Qaeda group and with a myriad of like stories issuing from the Mid-East I have begun to fall into the grip of an irrational belief that the US (and it’s allies, for whom I have no hope whatsoever, but granting them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of comity) ought to march into SA and kill them all. Wipe the place clean of the lot. Raze their stinking nation and let the survivors start over. Now I know that these thoughts are insane, which is what bothers me about them. And yet I have the sense that nothing less will do.

  44. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    I’m not ready to advocate going full-bore Roman Empire, Sdferr, but I fear that it wouldn’t take too many large-scale terrorist attacks to make that happen.

    And I don’t see Barky’s policies helping in that regard.

  45. Bob Reed says:

    Ooooh yeah SBP,
    Great idea with the radioisotpoes…

    I was counting on any signatures discerned during the insuing UN investigation to be muddled sufficiently in the mish-ka-mosh of nuclear material as to mask our involvement…

    But you idea, I like!

    And I’m close to being with Sdferr on this one; it’s nearly Roman empire time, especially if they start releasing all the retrained reformed jihadisa that O! is gonna send to them…

  46. […] WESTERN POWERS believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, […]

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