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Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

arabnews.com

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Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#181

Post by nashashmi »

energy123 wrote: post #56
nashashmi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is quite a distortion of the facts to push an agenda. Desalination technology can solve their problems completely, but they armed proxies that attacked the two countries in the region (Saudi Arabia and Israel) that can help them. They also imprisoned the one qualified guy in their country who blew the whistle on their water mismanagement (e.g. farming water intensive crops in a desert), Dr. Madani. You could rea…

Neither a distortion of facts nor is there an agenda. Maybe a counter agenda.

Tehran is far from the ocean for desalination. They are closer to Caspian Sea. But that comes crossing mountains.

Tehran itself is very dry.

And comparing spending on military exercises to infrastructure tells me you have a political agenda to support the dismantling of Iran. These are not friendly motives.

Iran has tried to make agreements with the western world for a long time. But the west has snaked Iran into isolation. Isolation has led Iran to exercise military excursions to develop influence in the region.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#182

Post by tgma »

tavavex wrote: post #177
tgma wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, one can debate this ad nauseam. I would even concede that on average , BBC is perhaps more reliable than Arab News. However, if your standard is ArabNews not OK because Saudi government funds it, but BBC OK, you might just as well say it in plain English that you simply don't like the opinion of the Saudi government but on board with the UK's (which is a stance that by the way I mostly share, but refuse to prea…

This equation is extremely reductionist in ways that end up giving the Saudi government's stance as much merit as possible, while denying it to the UK every step of the way. The implication of what you're saying is that the structure of the government and the precise way in which it owns a state media outlet doesn't really matter, if there's any ownership then it's a propaganda mouthpiece regardless of all other circ…

> This equation is extremely reductionist in ways that end up giving the Saudi government's stance as much merit as possible

What I posit is absolutely symmetric, so you are just making this up.

I don't understand why the way the government body is elected (or not) is material in any shape or form here. If you are British, sure, perhaps you get a say. I am not and I don't really care what the majority of UK (or rather whoever counts the votes) thinks. As far as I am concerned, it's just another foreign entity who has their interests that are at times unaligned with me. Heck, the bigger and more perceived to be legitimate, they have more power, to the degree they had the audacity and effectiveness to interfere with my country's elections. I don't think ArabNews has such capacity.

FWIW, BBC runs a World Service targeting people abroad in their languages. Is that just out of goodness of their hearts? Gimmie a break. A state funded media is always propaganda by charter, sometimes with an ancillary news division. Propaganda does not equate to lies all the time. The best form or propaganda, and the most effective, would in fact not obviously lie most of the times, but be biased when it matters. UK is hardly alone in this. US also has similar apparatus under VOA or NPR or PBS.

P.S. I think we are getting out of the core topic. I am not debating reliability of the media per se. What I objected to is the advocacy to always link to someone's preferred media, as opposed to preferred story (either due to the quality of that particular story, website, or original sourcing).

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#183

Post by nashashmi »

myth_drannon wrote: post #143
rjzzleep wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that's the only person that talks about the oligarchs excess farming? It's being talked about nonstop. The government just doesn't do anything about it. Iran has desalination facilities(75 in 2022 to be exact). But not enough and obviously only by the water. Iran has way less energy production than Saudi Arabia, which per capita would put it at a 4th or so. That's with the fact that Iran is a massively indu…

Iran has civil nuclear reactors built by Russia and Israel didn't touch them.

You miss the point. Sanctions are preventing Iran from building infrastructure

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#184

Post by myth_drannon »

nashashmi wrote: post #183
myth_drannon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran has civil nuclear reactors built by Russia and Israel didn't touch them.

You miss the point. Sanctions are preventing Iran from building infrastructure

Maybe, but they were not building it before the sanctions. Now I wonder if this disaster will be the main plea for lifting the sanctions, "millions will die in the next week!" or something similar to what was happening with pro-Palestinian propaganda. Come to think of it I wonder if the recent burst of news from Iran is just an attempt to lift sanctions and there is no severe draught... Just something common to happen from time to time.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#185

Post by tavavex »

tgma wrote: post #182
tavavex wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This equation is extremely reductionist in ways that end up giving the Saudi government's stance as much merit as possible, while denying it to the UK every step of the way. The implication of what you're saying is that the structure of the government and the precise way in which it owns a state media outlet doesn't really matter, if there's any ownership then it's a propaganda mouthpiece regardless of all other circ…

> This equation is extremely reductionist in ways that end up giving the Saudi government's stance as much merit as possible What I posit is absolutely symmetric, so you are just making this up. I don't understand why the way the government body is elected (or not) is material in any shape or form here. If you are British, sure, perhaps you get a say. I am not and I don't really care what the majority of UK (or rathe…

> What I posit is absolutely symmetric, so you are just making this up.

What I said was followed by three paragraphs of me discussing why exactly I posited what I did.

> I don't understand why the way the government body is elected

Who talked about elections? I certainly never brought elections up. What I did bring up, though, is that the Saudi Arabian government dictates directly what is allowed to be a media outlet and who is allowed to be a journalist. They have ways of influencing national discourse that the UK just never had. It's not about how they're ruled (though it is also a side factor), it's that they're a far more overbearing and authoritarian state. This is what the "structure of the government" referred to - now that I read it back, I realize it could've been confused for something else.

Running international services of course has a national interest for the government (in addition to a business interest for the company). I never said that the BBC's existence wasn't good for the UK or that it was completely unbiased and independent, in fact I made sure to not paint them as unequivocally good anywhere - merely far better than what they do in Saudi Arabia. Ultimately I never was arguing about the start of the conversation (choosing preferred media vs. preferred story), but the framing of different national media outlets as completely equivalent things, just with different flavors of which party line they follow.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#186

Post by slumberlust »

kcplate wrote: post #167
Forgeties79 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a better argument for golf courses than “think of the jobs”?

Sure. It’s a recreation that many people get joy from doing… Just because it may not be “your thing”…doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.

I enjoy playing golf and also realize how wasteful it is. Id support repurposing the spaces near me for parks/zoning usage.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#187

Post by _heimdall »

mattmaroon wrote: post #126
_heimdall wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really feasible if a state can only pull it off with large federal funding efforts? It seems like a problem those in the area will just have to deal with given that they're knowingly walking down that path. If you can't fund desalinization or other options, won't take federal funding, and choose not to region or conserve water then you collectively made your own bed.

I don't really know what they're talking about, states almost never refuse federal funding for anything.

Louisiana refused federal highway funding for long enough that their highway system went to shit. They refused due to a federal mandate that the drinking age be raised to 21.

It isn't common, but states have absolutely forwent federal funding to stand their ground, and in my opinion they should do it more often. Its a huge weakness in our federal system that states are so dependent on federal funding for long lived programs.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#188

Post by lithocarpus »

zamadatix wrote: post #135
lithocarpus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? All this time the chemtrail people I know have been talking about weather control, I hadn't heard of mind control being part of it. My take has been yeah I know cloud seeding and solar geoenhineering is real, ergo some amount of chemtrails are "real" in that they are deliberate particulate being sprayed and not just water. While the thing the chemtrail people claim that seems dubious is the scale and other nu…

The chemtrail conspiracies have always been a catch all for any idea except "it's a contrail or non-hidden spraying of some sort". To quote the 20 year old snapshot of the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chemtrail_conspir... : > The term "chemtrail" should not be confused with other forms of aerial dumping (e.g. crop dusting, cloud seeding, aerial firefighting, although the principle is m…

So sprayed metal particles from airplanes for weather modification are only "chemtrails" if it's done covertly.

Language sure is interesting.

I guess there's also a spectrum of what covert means. If a government does this but only announces it in places where only a few people hear about it from the official source, I guess that still counts as public and so not chemtrails.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#189

Post by nandomrumber »

tavavex wrote: post #185
tgma wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This equation is extremely reductionist in ways that end up giving the Saudi government's stance as much merit as possible What I posit is absolutely symmetric, so you are just making this up. I don't understand why the way the government body is elected (or not) is material in any shape or form here. If you are British, sure, perhaps you get a say. I am not and I don't really care what the majority of UK (or rathe…

> What I posit is absolutely symmetric, so you are just making this up. What I said was followed by three paragraphs of me discussing why exactly I posited what I did. > I don't understand why the way the government body is elected Who talked about elections? I certainly never brought elections up. What I did bring up, though, is that the Saudi Arabian government dictates directly what is allowed to be a media outlet…

The BBC / UK version is potentially worse, because in the UK they have a situation where elected officials don’t actually run the country.

The BBC is independent in so far as an institution of unelected officials effectively run the country: bureaucrats.

Re: Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites

#190

Post by Forgeties79 »

kcplate wrote: post #167
Forgeties79 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a better argument for golf courses than “think of the jobs”?

Sure. It’s a recreation that many people get joy from doing… Just because it may not be “your thing”…doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.

I have absolutely enjoyed my time on the golf course, but much like recreational cruise ships I’ll be perfectly content with them gone too. Just because I enjoy something doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate how wasteful it is and would oppose ending or at least reducing it.
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