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"Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War"

It's no wonder the Iranians are deeply upset by the sanctions. Surely some people do realise that economic sanctions will likely kill an awful lot of the poorest people in Iran and the sanctions are in themselves, a declaration of war. Theses sanctions worked so very well in Iraq with estimations of up to 1.7 million civilian deaths as a direct result of these sanctions by 1995. http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq17.html.
Like with Iraq, there is no direct evidence of a reason for war and we have already seen the political posturing and powers that be, who already have Iraqi blood on their hands are still lying to us with articles such as this http://www.adl.org/main_International_Affairs/ahmadinejad_words.htm.

For people who don't see how sanctions can kill so many people (taken from UNICEF report 1995 (sorry original link to the report is no longer working ) “Sanctions are inhibiting the importation of spare parts, chemicals, reagents, and the means of transportation required to provide water and sanitation services to the civilian population of Iraq... What has become increasingly clear is that no significant movement towards food security can be achieved so long as the embargo remains in place. All vital contributors to food availability - agricultural production, importation of foodstuffs, economic stability and income generation, are dependent on Iraq’s ability to purchase and import those items vital to the survival of the civilian population.”

i agree with 1 and 3, but you need to read this: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/Headlines/Confounding-Patriotism-and-Bigotry-in-Post-9-11-America

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/secret-airlift-of-nuclear-mate
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/tuwaitha.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/37640.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2856647.stm
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans36.html

That should get you started. Learn to use a search engine AC.

This is all very ironic, as I mention here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005991.html

So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html

So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?

Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430

Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1

Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317

So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?

Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".

Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html

As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.

More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g

I'm one of those guys.

To be honest I see it only as a propaganda war between China and the west, no more, no less. China's point of view (not just the Chinese government's view or a nobody cared dissident's view, but an average Chinese view) is intentionally suppressed in the west and there's no such thing as fairness and balanced report. To fight this propaganda war, controlling the media is the necessary sin. If it's now being done too harshly and awkwardly, China's skill of manipulating the media needs to be improved. But not until China's media can penetrate your people as deeply as yours penetrates ours, you don't get the free ride.

Also I don't buy those free speech lectures. Time and time again it's been proved hypocritical and even ill-intentioned, or useless to say the least.

I'm one of those students who protested in China in Spring 1989. We broadcast the programs of the "Voice of America" and BBC throughout the campus, cheering on all kinds of rumors, e.g., widow of the former Premier Chou En-lai supported students, a certain army company rebelled, blah blah. Those days are long gone and I regretted my naivety the same as Patrick French retrospected his Free Tibet days (check his book Tibet, Tibet.)

Also check today's news on the Olympic torch relay in London. We Chinese people in London reported overwhelmingly supports from the Chinese community. A friend on the Trafalgar Square said he's never seen that many five-star red flags outside China, yet thousands of pro-China demonstrators barely get any mentioning in the news. The same happened for the pro-China demonstration held earlier in Toronto, Vancouver, and Frankfurt. 2 weeks ago an application of a pro-China demonstration in London at the Westminster police was outrightly denied citing the lack of police forces, yet the pro-Tibetan protesters were allowed every day in front of the China Embassy London. The Toronto demonstration only got approved as a pro-China concert (otherwise an up to 4 weeks' delay), on a private land, where no political slogans and speeches were allowed. At the same time a pro-Tibetan activist managed to break into the Chinese consulate in the open daylight, drag down the national flag from the consulate property (by law it's on China territory). Anyway, for those of you living in the bay area, check out the torch relay by yourself on April 9th starting from 8AM and see if overseas Chinese are all brain-washed.

For those of you that are genuinely concerned about the progress and human rights in China and Tibet, maybe start by reading the book "Tibet, Tibet" by Patrick French, a former Free Tibet activist. Then, bear with us. We're moving along, though not as fast as you had expected, but we'll be there eventually. In the end it's our country not yours, right? Environmentalists, isn't it familiar to you that intervening the natural course seldom bring in any good result?

For those of yours who just want to do good and the right thing, check the Media Monitors Network article "Not you! You!!!"http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/50965, then please put more (or at least the same amount of) energy to the places where your government do not have strategic interests, and to places your kind of doing good is not controversial and actually wanted. Thank you.

On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the US against us. "Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying "don't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America."
http://www.mediamonitors.net/khodr49.html

2) Remove a dictator who was ignoring UN sanctions
3) Help stop genocide

Israel is in defiance of more UN resolutions than any other nation on this planet, and it is a well known fact that they have constructed more nuclear bombs than any other nation in their region (without getting any sort of ok from the UN for doing this of course).
Where is the call to go to war to disarm Israel?

First, to clarify my point, I don't quite agree witht hese sources, but it shows the western-centric bias that only "those guys" do terrorism, and that our allies can do no harm, or do valid military strikes. Our terrorism, isn't their terrorism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3772609.stm
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq22.html
http://www.musalman.com/palestine/index.html

I don't support these views, but they support my point.

And how is what is happening in Iraq even CLOSE to terrorism? People fighting against us ARE NOT TERRORISTS, that is a misuse of the term. Its a war, they are fighting for their counbtry and beleifs. In WWII, were the germans terrorists? Were the Viet Cong terrorists in Vietnam? No, they were enemies in a conflict. The same goes for Iraq. To say otherwise admits a VERY racist view, "they are arab, they are fighting us, they are terrorits" whereas in the case of WWII, "they are white, they are fighting us, they are not terrorists". What is the only difference in those statements? It underlines my point, "terrorist" is empty rhetoric.

...we shouldn't be proud of Africa using Linux...

Ahhh... I see from where you are coming; I understand.

"We" as in the Linux community should be happy that others regardless of who they are (race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc.) have chosen to migrate to Linux and to be a part of our community. I see your point, now, and I agree with you. Saying that the Linux community should not be proud of Iran's adoption of Linux is not what I was trying to say. My apologies for not making that abundantly clear.

What I was saying is that to a lot of people here in the U.S. whom I would like to see take a serious look at Linux will not consider Iran's adoption as being significant because of thier own views of Iran. For those people, I would use other examples of Linux adoption. Being prejudice ultimately does not make good business sense. Business leaders can cause their businesses to lose a lot of petential revenue to prejudice. I would like to think that prejudice is not a part of my nation's society - even among the educated and successful, but I'd be smoking pot to believe otherwise (humor).

Lastly, I forgot to mention this earlier (and not that you asked), but as for my ethnic background ... my background is largely Melungeon. The Melungeons were/are hybrid people of various ethnic backgrounds including Arab, Native American Indian, Caucasion, African, and others. http://www.melungeon.org/?BISKIT=3947677513&CONTEX T=cat&cat=10005 I use "were" because there was an attempt of ethnic cleansing through the years of my people. Only recently has there been at least some modest awareness of them. http://www.mediamonitors.net/brentkennedy1.html Anyway, I am a bit of a melding pot, myself, of ethnic backgrounds. So, for me to be racist against Arabs would be for me to be prejudice against my own ancestry. That would be like a person who is part black hating black people. I actually laughed a little bit at the racism comment... the humor was if Curtman only knew... :-P

Some unbiased pointers:

Research Guide to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Israel Shamir

uncovering media myths about the middle east

As far as John Walker Lindh, yes a traitor, and yes the death penalty...

Since the Taliban was not our enemy when Lindh joined up with them to fight the Northern Alliance (in fact, U.S. relations with the Taiban were quite cozy until a few years ago), claims that he is a traitor have no basis in reason. He never took any action against the United States.

ps. if we had all nukes, we would not be in Iraq.

When Iraq tried to build a nuclear power plant, Israel bombed them.

Quite apart from the fact that uranium mining is hardly enviromentally friendly, apart from the unsolved problems of waste disposal, apart from the risk of meltdown (I think the "pebble bed" reactor design just about negates that one), there are serious security concerns about having a bunch of fissionables moving about. Some people don't want other people to have 'em, due to (reasonable or not) concerns about diversion to weapons programs. Others see fission reactors as a good terrorist target due to the possibility of fallout contamination.

Resources should be directed towards effiency improvements and renewables. Rather than building nukes, get hybrid cars (preferably fueled by methanol rather than gasoline) and ground-source heatpumps to the masses. Work on fusion, but also figure out better ways to use that huge fusion reactor Nature has so kindly provided us, only 93 million miles away.

With the ongoing cold war between India and Pakistan, the Indian military might well have shot first, and asked questions later, causing a small nuclear war, and a much greater loss of life than the initial meteorite.


Actually, it wouldn't have been that easy. As of January 2003, India has a formal nuclear command structure under civilian control, with a Nuclear Command Authority comprising of a Political Council (chaired by the Prime Minister and an environmental board) and an Executive council (chaired by the National Security Advisor and a scientific board). The advisory committee would comprise of the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Forces Command.

So IMHO, its not that easy to launch a deterrent without validating the origin of the said event :) Do rememeber that despite the tension in the region, India is a largely peaceful democracy.

Perhaps you should read this

On the other hand it would be pretty cool if you could jury-rig a means of watching the Iraq-US battle via satellite or find a way to make a de facto spy satellite out of it...

If only you had thought of it last year, you could have bought exclusive rights to all of the commercial imaging satellites that would have a view of Iraq... Just like during Afghanistan, the U.S. has bought it all up. Not only to keep those bad ol' enemies we'd be fighting from knowing our movements, but to keep potentially nasty questions to a minimum (who wants to see the U.S. accused of war crimes?). Secrecy is good for America!

You must be living in a fantasy world, or are just being fucking naive.

There's a reason why the US wants to exempt its citizens from international justice system. The crimes committed by the US military forces are plentiful, yet there seems very little accountability to be going on in the US.

What else can we expect from a nation born in revolution but denies others the same beginnings, as this article so eloquently submits.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html provides some basic information, if you should care to look farther before posting YOUR knee-jerk reaction.

Ryan

PS: They're my rights and I'm going to defend them. Too many have been taken away in just the past year. Do the research.

As of 2/13/01, number of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the new Intifada: 368

Number of Palestinians killed under the age of fifteen: 56

Number of Palestinians killed over the age of fifty: 20

Number of Palestinians murdered by Israeli security forces AFTER being captured, or simply shot at close range without any provocation whatsoever: 32

Number of Palestinians murdered by Israeli settlers: 22

Number of Palestinians who died because they were not allowed to get medical treatment: 8

Percent of Palestinians killed who were NOT involved in demonstrations or clashes: 44%

Ratio of Palestinian civilians killed to members of the Palestinian security forces killed: 9 to 1

Number of Palestinians who were officially targeted for assassination by the Israeli Army: 10

Number of innocent bystanders who were killed during these assassinations: 5

Number of human beings who were either killed or injured by "terrorist acts masterminded" by the most recent Palestinian to be assassinated by
the Israeli Army: 0

Number of journalists either shot at or beaten up by Israeli soldiers of settlers: 44

Percent of Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances hit by live ammunition: 68%

Number of cases in which Palestinian ambulances were not allowed to go through a road block: 109

Number of Olive trees and Fruit trees uprooted: 25,000