Steven. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I often have better things to do with my time than read through a string of insults being exchanged. If I'm busy at a conference or visiting a tech expo it might be a number of hours before I catch up on messages.The SW15 forum is only one message service (I have to have my US EU, NZ, etc inputs to consider) and if in the meantime, say, ten posts trading insults have been made on a thread, that wastes time and obfuscates the serious points. Other times I might be travelling on a train and have plenty of time to read and respond - that's just life as they say! It's obviously putting off a lot of people from posting, and one would suspect advertisers who sponsor the forum, so I guess the forum has a limited lifespan :-(The only way the Iranian situation will be resolved fully is by negotiations - Trump seems to recognise that now and is mentioning further talks. It is a concern that Iran has accumulated significant amounts of enriched uranium. However, we were told by President Trump the US bombing had destroyed centrifuge facilities and stocks of uranium. Was he giving us false information? Actually, he makes so many statements that are often factually incorrect or obviously ridiculous I often ignore them.Given the detrimental impact on the Iranian programme from the Stuxnet virus a while ago, one would expect the bombing of the centrifuges to be more devastating than that computer malware. Personally, I doubt the Iranians were that close to creating a viable bomb after destruction of their facilities, unless they have external assistance (in which case, I'd guess they'd eventually get a working device). Is there any evidence they had a test plan? We know the N Koreans do because their testing has been monitored. Atomic theory is fairly straightforward but the engineering aspects of constructing a viable device seem to be more complex and require testing (usually underground) that would show up in monitoring seismic activity and radioactive material in the atmosphere. I can see justification can be made for bombing of nuclear processing plants but targeting educational and health institutions seems completely unnecessary and potentially a breach of international law? Of course, the US could put troops on the ground to search the Iranian facilities - the only way of being absolutely certain - but would that be acceptable to his US voters?As they say: jaw, jaw is better than war, war?On a slightly different point: it's interesting, as an atheist, I never thought I'd feel sympathetic towards the Pope but at least he's following his religious convictions; it's amusing hearing him being lectured on theology by recent convert VP , J D Vance! Reminds me of a western Muslim convert I worked with who was more hard-line on drinking alcohol than some colleagues who were Muslims of immigrant families who took the view it was only drinking to excess that was banned :-)Bye for a while, got a life to live ...
Michael Ixer ● 1d