The Islamic Republic of Iran has released a well-written, well articulated document outlining their rights to use peaceful nuclear energy and their position on weapons of mass destruction.

I have republished it in full at Muslim Message.

Some of the most important points that I noticed include:

“The first is that Iran has vast oil and gas resources and therefore does not need nuclear energy. Although it is true that Iran is rich in oil and gas, these resources are finite and, given the pace of Iran’s economic development, they will be depleted within two to five decades. With a territory of 1,648,000 km2 and a population of about 70 million, projected to be more than 105 million in 2050, Iran has no choice but to seek access to more diversified and secure sources of energy.

“Iran’s quest for nuclear energy picked momentum following a study in 1974 carried out by the prestigious US-based Stanford Research Institute, which predicted Iran’s need for nuclear energy and recommended the building of nuclear plants capable of generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity before 1994. Now, 30 years later, Iran aims at reaching that level by 2020, which may save Iran 190 million barrels of crude oil or $10 billion per year in today’s prices.

“Over the past 250 years, Iran has not waged a single war of aggression against its neighbors, nor has it initiated any hostilities.

“There is also a fundamental ideological objection to weapons of mass destruction, including a religious decree issued by the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran prohibiting the development, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons.

“The Agency’s thorough inspections of Iran have repeatedly confirmed Iran’s assertion that no amount of inspection and scrutiny will ever show the slightest diversion into military activity. The Director-General confirmed in Paragraph 52 of his November 2003 report that “to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons programme.

“At the same time, the EU3 recognized “that this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation” as well as “Iran’s rights under the NPT exercised in conformity with its obligations under the Treaty, without discrimination.”

Iran systematically responded to every acusation and suspiscion. They’ve presented themselves as level-headed, eloquent, respectful, willing to comprimise, and peaceful whereas the US has presented itself as brash, unreasonable, prejudiced and prone to violence.

This round definitely goes to Iran.

RIF is tomorrow. I just got the books, and I wanted to setup this afternoon. I had purchased cheap blue table cloths to cover the tables (you know to make it look nicer), but I forgot them at home. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to setup. I have the whole first period to do it, though.

Apparently, our students watched some type of autopsy presentation today. A girl told me that she held an eyeball. Not my idea of fun.

In other news, I am curious to know of there will be RPMs for KDE (http://www.kde.org) 3.5 for SuSE (http://www.suse.com) ppc. I have yet to see any. I know 10.1 is not near release, and I’d hate to have to upgrade the whole OS everytime I want to get the latest KDE (http://www.kde.org). Of course I could compile from source…ugh.

I admit that I am very excited about the new Intel-based Macs that Apple plans to release next year. There is talk that the newest iBook will be released as early as January 2006 WITH the new Intel architecture.

So, you might ask, am I excited because I want to run OS X on my mega-PC desktop? No, absolutely not. That desktop will run Linux (http://www.linux.org) until it dies. However, I love the functionality of Apple portables (iBook, Powerbook, etc.) Linux (http://www.linux.org) already runs very well on PowerPC architecture. And there are already quite a few distros that ship PPC versions (Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), Debian (http://www.debian.org), Gentoo, SuSE (http://www.suse.com), Mandriva, etc.)

What I see as exciting is the possibility of running SuSE (http://www.suse.com) or Kubuntu on an iBook with realtime binary compatibility. That adds tremendously to the amount of software available and the speed at which software can be installed (minimizing the amount of software that must be compiled for PPC). Also, with losers like Macromedia refusing to make PowerPC versions of Flash, Linux (http://www.linux.org) Mac users will finally be able to see wonderful flash web sites. (OK, that is a blessing and a curse).

At any rate, it’s nothing but good news for the
GNU/Linux (http://www.linux.org) users. Forget what people say about Mactel being bad for Linux (http://www.linux.org). After all, we’re not trying to wipe Apple off the map. We just want everyone to play fair. As far as I’m concerned, with the new Mactel factor, the playing field just leveled. The only potential loser here is Microsoft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft).

One year ago this month, the US and its allies began the brutal campaign against Fallujah, Iraq, where men, women, and children were viciously executed and slaughtered.

“The city was placed ‘under a strict night-time shoot-to-kill curfew’ with ‘anyone spotted in the soldiers’ night vision sights … shot’ (Times, 12 Nov 04); male refugees were prevented from leaving the combat zone; a health centre was bombed killing 60 patients and support staff; and refugees from the city claimed that ‘a large number of people, including children, were killed by American snipers’ and that the US had used cluster bombs and phosphorus weapons in the offensive. ” – Remember Fallujah

One year later, the over 200,000 people who were displaced from their homes and livelihood are still waiting for a ray of hope and relief. May Allah make it easy for them and punish the enemies who perepetrated such injustice against them.

Follow-up from my previous post:

“To many thinkers religion is alien to science. Science simply means a specialized branch of knowledge. In Arabic it is called ‘Ilm. A scientist in Arabic is called an ‘Alim. The west is wrong in separating Science from Religion. The great universal Muslim scientists about thousand years ago were at the forefront of knowledge particularly in the sciences and technology without ever giving up their religion. In fact Islam in general and the Qur’an in particular inspired the Muslim scientists to seek and advance knowledge. Hence they achieved all these without any conflict with religion.”

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