Season's fleeting

Just to let everyone know, Lotus will be back from hiatus just after the beginning of the year.

I've got a lot of thinking to do about a lot of things over the next few months, and this blog is one of them. Not if to do it, but how. My frustration all along has been the sense that it's not a productive use of my energies because my audience is so small. I have no expectation of being (and truth be told, no desire to be) one of the Big Blogs or even one of the middling blogs with daily hits measured in four and even five figures. But a couple hundred hits, maybe?

Anyway, one thing I'm going to do in an attempt to increase traffic is to sign up with some of those ubiquitous bookmarking services. That, and get over my resistance to blatant self-promotion. There may be other changes, I dunno yet. More as (and if) it develops.

And if anyone has any helpful suggestions, proposals, whatever, I'm all ears. Well, eyes, technically, since I'll be reading it but you know what I mean.

For the moment, happy holidays and my best wishes for peace and joy for you and yours.

Footnote: A trivia question to which I suspect several of you know the answer: Why is December called December?

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition is in

No, I'm not back yet but I did want to note for the record that this did not come as a complete surprise to some of us.

Almost exactly three years ago, I responded to a poll question about "Iran's nuclear arsenal" by demanding to know "WHAT nuclear arsenal?" and noting that Iran denied an intention to go nuclear and that the EU was unsure on tne point.

Earlier that same day, I had noted the Bush administration's attempts to drive war panic over Iran, in the course of which I said regarding Iran's supposed "refusal to cooperate,"

I can and do entertain the possibility that Iran is being deceptive in its dealings and about its intentions. But I also entertain the notion that Iran, like most nations, like most people, may just really dislike the feeling of being bullied and is behaving more out of misplaced pride than a desire to manipulate and mislead the world community. ...

I don't dismiss the possibility of aggressive intent on Iran's part ... I do think other explanations are more likely.

The following June, I said that

Iran might - might, I say - be taking steps toward developing nuclear weapons....

One of the bases for the charge that Iran is conducting a covert nuclear weapons program - traces of weapons-grade uranium on centrifuges - has very likely been refuted....

That, of course, does not completely exonerate Iran, but it does make the case for any sort of sanctions against it much weaker.

And in March and April of this year, I said that I thought that it was more likely than not that Iran was going after nuclear weapons but that "the question isn't closed" and "I'm not convinced."

That is, for the past three years I've been pretty consistent in maintaining that while Iran "more likely than not" was trying to develop nuclear weapons, I was not convinced of it and if it was, it was more likely to be done out of a sense of its regional importance and feeling threatened rather than as a means of aggression. So while I can't claim to have flat-out said Iran wasn't looking for nukes, I can claim to have not been taken in by the WHS* and their fear-mongering.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths