Before oil became an important resource to the Western World, we didn't give two shits about anyone in the Middle East.
I think everyone can agree that oil became important as it displaced coal as the primary energy source for vehicles, navies, and all the new military tech that depended on it. So let's set the change date at 1900.
British military interventions in the Middle East before 1900:
First Anglo-Afghan War (1839) Anglo-Persian War (1856) Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878)
These were part of the "Great Game" of trying to control central Asia so Britain could protect India from Russia. Before 1900, the United States had never had troops in the Middle East, excepting a few skirmishes mostly involving the protection of our commercial fleet. Most US colonial activity was directed at the rest of the mainland (wars with Mexico), Florida, Hawaii, Central and South America, and imperialism in Japan, Hawaii, China, the Philippines and other parts of the Pacific.
WWI established the West as the colonial owner of the Middle East, and the US and Britain have had troops stationed there ever since. Western powers also established political lines in the Middle East that still haunt us today, as the spoils of war from defeating the Ottoman Empire. The first deployment after the Ottoman Empire entered the war was to protect the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline - later to become Anglo-Iranian and finally British Petroleum in 1953.
The war ended with the British occupying the territory that was to become Iraq, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. With the Ottoman Empire destroyed, Russia paralysed by foreign intervention and civil war, and French influence limited somewhat by their minor military role in the Middle East, Britain's military success made her the dominant power in the region. The resulting settlement, which fostered an instability that continues to be a source of conflict today, generated much controversy at the time and has continued to do so ever since
So, no, we didn't give a shit about that particular region of the world until they had something we wanted. Unless you have resources that we want, or you present a security threat by proximity, we don't care what happens to you. Just ask any citizen of Africa.
Don't give me any of that recycled, dumbed down bullshit you hand to everyone else. You're either too unethical to care or too dumb to know that you're full of shit.
Palestinian has always meant people who lived in Palestine. There are Palestinians who are not Muslim or Arab. Here's an article from 1903 about establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and bringing Zionism to Jerusalem. Here's a link to 1200 newspaper references to "palestinian refugee" before 1966. Here's a link to an article written in 1868 that refers to the land of Palestine.
What "provocative actions in Lebanon"? Monitoring Hezbollah's violations of the UN resolution that prevents it from operating in south Lebanon?
In June 2005, an Israel Defence Force paratroop unit operating near the Shebaa Farms engaged three Lebanese it identified as Hezbollah special force members, killing one. Videotapes recovered by the paratroopers contained footage of the three recording detailed accounts of the area and "fooling around". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War
Keep in mind, this is fooling around on land that Israel took by force in 1967. There's a reason it's still disputed.
Israel handles its water problems by efficient irrigation and water desalination (which in both it is a world leader) much better than any country in the region, and willingly shares its knowledge and expertise. Trying to blame it for the world's problems is nothing new.
Israel has fucked up it's water supply. Do you know who I learned that from? The Israeli government.
...current cumulative deficit in Israel's renewable water resources amounts to approximately 2 billion cubic meters, an amount equal to the annual consumption of the State. The deficit has also lead to the qualitative deterioration of potable aquifer water resources that have, in part, become either of brackish quality or otherwise become polluted......policy for the water sector, particularly in the past decade, combined with the absence of adequate action facing the impending water shortage situation, has contributed to the severity of the present crisis...
The agricultural sector has suffered most because of the crisis. Due to the shortage, water allocations to the sector had to be reduced drastically causing a reduction in the agricultural productivity.
The current crisis has led to the realization that a master plan for policy, institutional and operational changes is required to stabilize the situation and to improve Israel's water balance with a long-term perspective.
That report was from 2002. Recently the Jerusalem Post had this to say: "We are witnessing an incomprehensible ongoing failure to conserve existing resources."
I can't remember the last time Israel threatened to vaporize everyone in the middle east, europe or the US and Canada. But Iran has
Bullshit. Where's your citation?
Pakistan has openly threatened to nuke India on several occasions
Pakistan is a US ally. Why are they trusted with nuclear weapons?
considering arab nations have launched 6-8 wars of extermination against it in the last 70 years.
1967 - Israel launches a surprise attack on Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. They take the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
1967-70 - Egypt attacks Israeli positions in the Sinai.
1973 - Egypt and Syra launch a surprise attack on Israel in the Golan Heights and the Sinai.
1982 - Israel invades Lebanon in reprisal for an assassination attempt on Israel's ambassador to the UK
2006 - Israel invades Lebanon again in reprisal for the kidnap of Israeli soldiers.
Since Israel's inception in 1948, it has been using military force to conquer new territory and keep it under their control. Why they are surprised when states and displaced refugees want their land back is beyond me.
If Israel has the right to reconquer the entirety of Palestine after 1900 years of absence, then I suppose all Americans should be prepared to voluntarily give up their homes if China decides to fund Native American military forces to take back the United States. Both ethnic groups were nearly wiped out by genocide. Both have been historically persecuted. Somehow I think you'd be less enthusiastic about Chinese manufactured jets and tanks rolling across the country with Lakota and Cherokee pilots.
The reason the West is so hostile to the possibility of a nuclear Iran is that the only peaceful doctrine nuclear weapons allow, MAD, assumes rational actors on all sides. In Iran that rationality might well be subservient to theology.
Both Pakistan and Israel are western allies with direct US funding for their military. Both have nuclear weapons. Both are filled with religious nutcases. Both have refused to sign the NPT.
Vilifying Iran is a sideshow to the real issue of nuclear proliferation. If the West wants to be taken seriously for nuclear disarmament, it should bring Israel, Pakistan, and India to the table to make the Middle East nuclear free. Iran is doing what any reasonable state would do after seeing what happened to Iraq versus North Korea and Pakistan: If you want to avoid a US invasion, the first step is to get nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
Iran has been threatening Israel since 1979 and has been attacking Israel and Israelis since 1982. Hell Hezbollah is backed, funded and armed by Iran.
I caught one of Hezbollah's gifts to Israel in 1994 when a 122mm rocket exploded in the north of Israel, so I'm really getting a kick out of your trying to paint everything as Israel's fault.
When Israel wins a war with outside help from the US, they want to keep the land they conquer without any concessions. When Israel loses a war and their foe has received outside help (however minimal), they decry interference in their affairs. They are like children who just want to get their way.
I say arm the Palestinians with the same weapons as the Israelis have. Then you won't have to complain about homemade rockets and suicide bombers, and I guarantee you peace would seem like a much more achievable goal for Israeli hawks once they have to deal with people with the means to fight back.
I am constantly reminded by that bit in the Battle of Algiers:
REPORTER: Isn't it cowardly to have bombs carried in baskets to public places by Muslim women? LARBI BEN M'HIDI: Is it any less cowardly to bomb villages from planes with napalm? Give us your planes, and we'll give you our baskets.
What's more ridiculous is people who think the State of Israel can do no wrong, or that Israeli interests are the same thing as American interests.
The virus was targeted towards Iranian PLCs. The date is supporting evidence of that, but may be a coincidence anyway.
What's not a coincidence is that Israel has been threatening to attack Iran, but still refuses to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty as Iran has and subject themselves to inspections. Israel doesn't want to play by anyone's rules but their own, and creating this virus falls well within the threats they have made over the past five years.
Because no one hates an honestly earned dollar more than the wealthy, greedy aristocrats that run Wall St. That's why they hate unions. That's why they hate regulations. That's why they hate the minimum wage. They sincerely believe that they are entitled to million dollar bonuses, and everyone else is meaningless.
Their worst nightmare is having to go out and earn their keep. They want to continue gaming the financial casino, and having the middle class cover their bets when they lose. But since they've already gotten away with it and have the money, in the eyes of many Americans they're not crooks, but just good at business.
The reality is that they're just a crime family with better lobbyists that deal in bullshit ponzi schemes instead of drugs.
If you text/web and drive, you are a fucking idiot and no better than the idiots who drive under the influence.
I don't care what you do in your home or on your property. I don't care what you do with any other consenting adult or adults. But when you're on the road, you are putting more people than yourself at risk with stupid behavior.
The fine should be $1,500 - no exceptions - and 150 hours of community service. Then we'll see how important it is to update your Facebook status.
Triple core ARM setup with HD video playback Symmetrical rectangular ABS plastic frame with shatterproof glass - docking port/HDMI on the bottom - USB3 on left and right - evenly spaced screw beds around the sides for accessory bodies/attachments - VESA plate for the back PixelQi display (indoor/outdoor/e-ink) Stylus or touch input Front and rear 3 to 5MP cameras - allow slack for the rear camera connection so the lens can be integrated into a larger body Built in stereo mic Built in stereo speakers Mini PCI slot instead of built in 3G GPS with compass Accelerometers
Keep things squared off and let the consumer decide if they want to buy cheap silicone to round it off. That makes it easier for vendors to design bodies to add laser scanners or extended batteries or label printers or whatever.
I'll suggest the Cuban Missile Crisis to get your list started.
I'll give you that. The intelligence community can spot Russia moving giant missile deployments 90 miles off of our border in 1961. Forget, conveniently, that the Soviets did so after we placed nuclear missile installations in England, Italy, and Turkey within range of Moscow. How about the intelligence decisions that led to us overthrowing or invading every marxist leaning country from 1950 to 1990? Yeah, Vietnam and Nicaragua still have me quaking in my boots.
We invaded a virtually unarmed Iraq in retribution for 9/11 -- I mean, to remove WMD -- I mean, to remove Saddam Hussein for Freedom and Liberty and end his reign of terror, but the torturing and murdering has already started again in the same prisons. The Shi'ites aren't going to stop killing the Sunnis until sometime in 2050 if they are trying to get even, and not only will we have bank rolled both sides of the atrocity, but we also managed to give Iran - another failed intelligence project - the whole region on a golden platter.
So, yes, American Intelligence is an oxymoron. This whole case is absolute proof of it. There are 100 copies already out there. They are redacting and re-releasing the book, so you can see what they took out, and that'll make it pretty easy to see what they think should be classified, right? In the grand scheme of things, drawing attention to this book is a side show. When you are hard core fucking up every intelligence decision, and a book comes out explaining how bureaucracy and intelligence failures are hurting the war effort, censoring it after approving it is just proving the point.
And the 250,000 is nothing. It's literally one minute of spending in Iraq and Afghanistan according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The real issue is that the whole intelligence enchilada is filled with dogshit and spray painted gold. The point of intelligence used to be gathering information and taking steps to reduce animosity and prevent war, not pretending like you can slap a saddle on a tiger and end up where you'd like. Intelligence has been mutated into Homeland Security, and that's just a blank check to bankrupt our government while they piss on the Constitution and tell us it's raining.
Did you know that the dictionary definition of condescension is reading dictionary definitions as if they contained any wisdom?
I'm addressing politics within American culture that are nonsensical. Taking those arguments to their logical end is a good way to find out if they are valuable or not. I can imagine you stopped reading Swift once you discovered that he supported infanticide and cannibalism.
Of course I know that Stalinism isn't Communism. I know that fascism isn't democracy. But sometimes you have to use the other side's definition to get the point across, even if you risk confusing people who know a lot of facts, but don't have common sense enough to know how to apply them.
Some body at the pentagon "Oh, shit, this has classified intel in it. Call up the publisher... "The question we should be asking is not "Should the pentagon be burning books?", it's "Should the pentagon have (so much) classified information?"
The Defense Department’s handling of Colonel Shaffer’s account of his experiences in Afghanistan in 2003 appears to have been bungled from the beginning. The Army reviewed the manuscript, negotiated modest changes and approved it for publication in January.
Then, in July, the Defense Intelligence Agency saw a copy, showed it to the N.S.A. and other agencies, and decided that some 250 passages contained classified information. But advance copies were already out to potential reviewers and the Military Book Club, and the first 10,000 copies were in a warehouse. Those are the copies the Pentagon is arranging to buy and pulp.
So the Army cleared it, but then the nebulous "Homeland Security" apparatus decided that the Army didn't do a good job. Keep in mind, this is the same intelligence community that missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, missed the WTC bombing in '93, missed the attacks in Kenya, missed the attacks on the Cole, missed 9/11, missed WMD in Iraq... do I really have to continue?
There's a fucking secret army of contract killers that aren't part of the government, a vast secret police that has virtually abolished every thing we pretended was civil liberties and due process, but in newspeak, that's called patriotism.
Paying your fair share of taxes while our nation is engaged in two wars which supposedly are an existential threat to our way of life... well, that's fucking communism.
Oh and as to not arming robots? Too late really. We have been doing it for ever 100 years now. The Torpedo is a Robot. The first ones where really steampunk killing robots. Suicidal ones to be sure but still robots.
This is not the root issue of using a robot. The root issue is that technologically advanced societies have been pushing the button from further and further away. The further away they are, the less incentive they have to make sure that their target is valid.
First, you've got hand to hand combat. You're not going to engage unless you absolutely have to, and can deal with listening to someone gurgle and plead while they bleed out. Then you can move on to ranged weapons. In the early days, you had to get pretty close to hit someone with a musket, but you still at least had to watch people die. Then we got cannon. Rifles. Machine guns. Artillery. Airplanes. Satellite guided bombs. With each advance in military technology, you are taking less risk to your own life when you take the lives of others. That's why there are 6,000 dead "coalition" troops and several hundred thousand dead Afghans and Iraqis. It's not a war, it's a shooting gallery with political implications. If it were a war, like it was with the Japanese and the Nazis, there would be a front somewhere. The chances of Iraqis or Afghans crossing continents and oceans are not virtually zero, they are exactly zero.
Now we're at the point where some militaries have the majority of their apparatus safely tucked away in a megabase or in the air or even back in their home country. Ninety nine percent of the military are good guys who sign up thinking they will be fighting for their country. For the military to work, when the guy with the most penises on their shoulder says "Kill" the command must be passed down until a trigger is pulled somewhere. But for that guy at the very end, it's still a human decision that can be overridden by natural desires to protect human life. He can make up something about the target being obscured. He can stop it if he really thinks it's not achieving an objective. He knows intuitively that he will pay a high price for taking this life, because he has to take that memory home with him.
When the top brass are over your shoulder, you'd better click the button and blow up the house.
And soon the top brass won't even need to issue a command. They will order the command, and the quasi-sentient robots (not some half assed definition that fits your argument) will kill, and the grunts will simply arrive to ID the body parts.
The real problem with this technology is that there is no pushback for human life. If a politician wants it, and he can find someone in the military who will perform it, you can bet your ass that millions of innocent people will die as a result. The more humans you remove from the end of the equation, the less humane the result will be.
I agree with much of what you said, but the point is that decrying the moral state of Iran is nonsense when our top allies are just as, if not far more, immoral. Since Saudi Arabia is a client state, we arm them and turn a blind eye to their anti-democratic totalitarianism and theocratic injustices. Since Iran isn't a client state that has submitted to US authority, they are critiqued for the very same transgressions. That's my point.
Indeed, there is a country with a religious police, which outlaws practicing any religion but Islam, regularly executes citizens for moral crimes, and is a monarchal theocracy that does not hold elections and is accused of widespread human rights violations. They are about to close an arms deal worth 60 billion dollars to buy a fleet of the world's most advanced jet fighters and helicopters and related equipment. Their mosques preach violence against the west, and indeed, they send foreign fighters to Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Yemen to train for militant jihad.
That country is Saudi Arabia. And their supplier is the United States.
Iran, on the other hand, has a broken democracy, does in fact protect the right of religions to practice (but not to proselytize), and even has 30,000 practicing Jews and 300,000 practicing Christians with hundreds of churches and synagogues openly operating. Though they are subject persecution by the government, they are guaranteed a small number of seats in their representative government. The Ba'hai faith are widely seen as more persecuted than Jews or Christians, since they are officially outlawed.
Saudi Arabia for some reason has better public relations than Iran, but something tells me there's a reason for that.
Judging from history, our bizarre ethos of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" has come back to bite us many times. Maybe there will come a day when, after some terrorist act committed by Saudi citizens, our foreign policy will change to a more reasoned stance when dealing with the complexities of Middle Eastern politics.
With all the fads, witch-hunts, and random behavior that come with democracy.
Oh, I'm sorry, are you aware of a system of government that isn't composed of people?
If those patents should be socially owned, why don't we vote to take away your computer and make it socially owned.
Slippery slope arguments only work for people who are scared of inclines.
Umm, yes. That's why I'm against the wars of America and Britan, against China, Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and virtually every other government on the face of the planet. I'm against all of em'.
Primates wage war. Tribes war incessantly, for millennia, over trivialities. However, homo sapiens have come up with a system of Law that has provided many countries with the longest stretches of peace in their history. It's called Democracy. You should check it out sometime.
All energy from the earth, besides geothermal energy, is some form of solar energy. Using finite intermediaries of solar energy is very useful in many situations, like in emergency vehicles in case of grid outages, aviation, and so on.
Using them for short-haul commuting, or even long-haul transportation that is better served by EVs with built-in gas electric generators, is monumentally stupid and wasteful, and that is what 90% of people use fuel for. The DoE has already said that existing off-peak power generation in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and West Coast could cover all of their electricity for commuting vehicles.
And why electricity instead of fossil fuels? Because there are dozens of ways to generate electricity. Nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind, tide, hydro dams... and the only way to produce fossil fuels is to kill a bunch of organisms and wait a few hundred million years. They will not be replenished any time soon, and those are worldwide numbers. US peak oil was reached in 1970, peak coal was reached in the mid 1990s, and peak gas is due any day now.
Furthermore, it's far easier to transport electric power than any form of fossil fuels, and we already have a standardized worldwide grid based on proven technology.
You may as well be arguing for whale oil lamps, talking about how expensive electricity is, and how much easier it is to kill whales and process their fat. Improvements in technology take investment and development, and are well worth the cost of entry, especially when you discover that your current technology is ultimately unsustainable.
In a real economic system, we'd say, keep what you create.
In your "real" economic system, corporations wouldn't have to bribe and lobby their way out of things like being punished for ruining the environment, or exploiting workers, or fucking people over with loopholes in contracts, or by grabbing cash out of the bank vaults and fleeing the country. They'd just do it in broad daylight, without fear of consequences at all.
European public transport proves without a shadow of a doubt that it is progress. They use less than half the oil we do per capita. If you half ass investment in public transportation, it's a waste of money, just like if you started letting roads and bridges collapse, cars would stop being useful at a certain point.
And why shouldn't your vehicle be taxed? Who's going to pay for roads? Do you live inside of a Disney cartoon?
Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production).
What he meant by read a book was try to gain some nuanced understanding of the subject matter. Perhaps the best you can muster is the depth of a dictionary, but I still have faith that you can do better.
It is socialism, because it is the sharing of risk and privatization of reward.
How did you confuse Socialism with American Plutocracy?
Socialism is sharing of risk and sharing of reward. Let's all invest our tax money into public transport, and if it works, we'll all have better transportation infrastructure. Let's all invest our tax money into public health, and if it works, we'll all be healthier. And so forth.
Hell, the American economic system is basically, "Let's create an aristocracy, and hope they don't screw us over." It's appropriately named "trickle down economics," and they keep telling me it's raining.
This is not true. If solar power efficiency improvements maintain, car companies will be able to sell many customers the vehicle and the panels necessary to power it, and wrap it all up in one long term loan.
I honestly hope Google will form a subsidiary and begin constructing geothermal plants as well. The real fear for fossil fuel companies is these mainly passive methods at generating electricity will become widespread to the point that the value of oil collapses, due to all of the energy necessary to dig it out and process it.
You assume Socialism is ownership of governments by corporations. That's not Socialism, that's Fascism.
Modern Socialism is the ownership of governments by people, and the belief that progressive tax structures, government funded investments in infrastructure, proactive measures to help the poor instead of reactive measures to jail them, and forced transparency of markets represents the best balance of individual and communal rights. Not to mention the enormous benefits it provides for the economy.
If America were a democracy, we could vote to invalidate EV patents, since the value of those patents being socially owned would carry more benefits for society at large than it does as private property. That, in effect, is socialism at work. We wouldn't necessarily invalidate all patents, since that may not benefit society as a whole. Perhaps shorter or more restrictive patents represent the best balance in that case.
I'm sure in that former situation you would decry imperial governments stealing property that doesn't belong to them, but that's okay. I understand that it's because your viewpoint isn't based on any coherent set of values.
Agreed with most of your points. The other elephant in the room that the pro-EV movement never owns up to is that the EV1 had a variable cost of over $100,000, and a fully-amortized cost of nearly $1 million per car.
Only if you lump R&D and other one time outlays into the cost of the small run of those cars. If you stopped production of any modern vehicle at a few thousand units, you'd end up with similar costs. Doing it for a car with several groundbreaking technologies is comparing apples to astronauts.
Electrics (and to a lesser extent, hybrids) do cost more, and when talking to an EV advocate, it's never really clear if they expect the car companies to lose money on the sales, or if they expect government subsidies to make up for the difference.
We expect the government to incentivize the production of more efficient forms of transportation that are sustainable. This is no different than suggesting that the government invest in roads and railways. Transportation infrastructure is one the pillars of industrialized society.
The transition to 21st century forms of energy cannot be led by corporations like the transition to oil economies because new forms of energy cannot be easily capitalized. Searching and exploiting new sources of fossil fuels is intense and enormously profitable work. Setting up passive technologies that harvest solar or geothermal energy sources can be done at much lower cost, once the technologies are developed.
There is nothing more desirable for me than to one day own a home or apartment that gathers all the energy I need -- even for transportation -- from the sunlight that falls on it. And there is nothing more terrifying for energy companies.
That's a particularly lopsided view of the "oil conspiracy." The reality is that oil companies represent the single largest caucus of industry money with a single purpose: sell more oil. They brought those resources to bear against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in order to end the public's mandate for zero emissions vehicles, even the smallest amount, which killed electric car development in it's infancy. I remember seeing electric RAV4s and EV1s and Ford Ranger EVs buzzing around in the late 90s in rural Georgia. The technology developed by GM was mothballed by Exxon Mobil, who bought and buried the battery technology. Toyota continued to develop theirs, and now they have top selling hybrid car in the world.
The red herring offered consistently is, why wouldn't GM want to lead the way in electric car development? Two reasons: one, EV technology was receiving zero subsidy after CARB was bought and sold, yet gasoline in the United States is sold at a fraction of the price due to massive subsidies by the US government. The second is that electric motors are hideously reliable, as evidenced by hydroelectric dams that have been in operation for over one hundred years. If a material for infinitely durable shoes was developed by Nike, do you think they would be dumb enough to manufacture and sell it?
It's tough to continue netting billions if you make your product cheaper and more efficient, without being able to drop the price enough to sell it to more consumers. So, as one would naturally expect, you fight any newer technology with every tool you have, while simultaneously buying up the competition and burying new technology. An oil company actively reducing the value of their trillions of dollars of oil infrastructure is like Microsoft funding R&D for open source software. It just doesn't happen.
Eventually the new technology will win, if there is some other industry that will see gains, or if the government steps in to make sure the economy isn't artificially shackled to old technology because of monopolistic business practices. It's fashionable to call that Socialism, but everyone else calls it progress.
Slashdot Mirror
Before oil became an important resource to the Western World, we didn't give two shits about anyone in the Middle East.
I think everyone can agree that oil became important as it displaced coal as the primary energy source for vehicles, navies, and all the new military tech that depended on it. So let's set the change date at 1900.
British military interventions in the Middle East before 1900:
First Anglo-Afghan War (1839)
Anglo-Persian War (1856)
Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878)
These were part of the "Great Game" of trying to control central Asia so Britain could protect India from Russia. Before 1900, the United States had never had troops in the Middle East, excepting a few skirmishes mostly involving the protection of our commercial fleet. Most US colonial activity was directed at the rest of the mainland (wars with Mexico), Florida, Hawaii, Central and South America, and imperialism in Japan, Hawaii, China, the Philippines and other parts of the Pacific.
WWI established the West as the colonial owner of the Middle East, and the US and Britain have had troops stationed there ever since. Western powers also established political lines in the Middle East that still haunt us today, as the spoils of war from defeating the Ottoman Empire. The first deployment after the Ottoman Empire entered the war was to protect the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline - later to become Anglo-Iranian and finally British Petroleum in 1953.
Here's a snippet from a BBC piece:
So, no, we didn't give a shit about that particular region of the world until they had something we wanted. Unless you have resources that we want, or you present a security threat by proximity, we don't care what happens to you. Just ask any citizen of Africa.
Don't give me any of that recycled, dumbed down bullshit you hand to everyone else. You're either too unethical to care or too dumb to know that you're full of shit.
Palestinian has always meant people who lived in Palestine. There are Palestinians who are not Muslim or Arab. Here's an article from 1903 about establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and bringing Zionism to Jerusalem. Here's a link to 1200 newspaper references to "palestinian refugee" before 1966. Here's a link to an article written in 1868 that refers to the land of Palestine.
What "provocative actions in Lebanon"? Monitoring Hezbollah's violations of the UN resolution that prevents it from operating in south Lebanon?
In June 2005, an Israel Defence Force paratroop unit operating near the Shebaa Farms engaged three Lebanese it identified as Hezbollah special force members, killing one. Videotapes recovered by the paratroopers contained footage of the three recording detailed accounts of the area and "fooling around".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War
Keep in mind, this is fooling around on land that Israel took by force in 1967. There's a reason it's still disputed.
Israel handles its water problems by efficient irrigation and water desalination (which in both it is a world leader) much better than any country in the region, and willingly shares its knowledge and expertise. Trying to blame it for the world's problems is nothing new.
Israel has fucked up it's water supply. Do you know who I learned that from? The Israeli government.
The agricultural sector has suffered most because of the crisis. Due to the shortage, water allocations to the sector had to be reduced drastically causing a reduction in the agricultural productivity.
The current crisis has led to the realization that a master plan for policy, institutional and operational changes is required to stabilize the situation and to improve Israel's water balance with a long-term perspective.
That report was from 2002. Recently the Jerusalem Post had this to say: "We are witnessing an incomprehensible ongoing failure to conserve existing resources."
I can't remember the last time Israel threatened to vaporize everyone in the middle east, europe or the US and Canada. But Iran has
Bullshit. Where's your citation?
Pakistan has openly threatened to nuke India on several occasions
Pakistan is a US ally. Why are they trusted with nuclear weapons?
considering arab nations have launched 6-8 wars of extermination against it in the last 70 years.
1967 - Israel launches a surprise attack on Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. They take the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
1967-70 - Egypt attacks Israeli positions in the Sinai.
1973 - Egypt and Syra launch a surprise attack on Israel in the Golan Heights and the Sinai.
1982 - Israel invades Lebanon in reprisal for an assassination attempt on Israel's ambassador to the UK
2006 - Israel invades Lebanon again in reprisal for the kidnap of Israeli soldiers.
Since Israel's inception in 1948, it has been using military force to conquer new territory and keep it under their control. Why they are surprised when states and displaced refugees want their land back is beyond me.
If Israel has the right to reconquer the entirety of Palestine after 1900 years of absence, then I suppose all Americans should be prepared to voluntarily give up their homes if China decides to fund Native American military forces to take back the United States. Both ethnic groups were nearly wiped out by genocide. Both have been historically persecuted. Somehow I think you'd be less enthusiastic about Chinese manufactured jets and tanks rolling across the country with Lakota and Cherokee pilots.
The reason the West is so hostile to the possibility of a nuclear Iran is that the only peaceful doctrine nuclear weapons allow, MAD, assumes rational actors on all sides. In Iran that rationality might well be subservient to theology.
Both Pakistan and Israel are western allies with direct US funding for their military. Both have nuclear weapons. Both are filled with religious nutcases. Both have refused to sign the NPT.
Vilifying Iran is a sideshow to the real issue of nuclear proliferation. If the West wants to be taken seriously for nuclear disarmament, it should bring Israel, Pakistan, and India to the table to make the Middle East nuclear free. Iran is doing what any reasonable state would do after seeing what happened to Iraq versus North Korea and Pakistan: If you want to avoid a US invasion, the first step is to get nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
Iran has been threatening Israel since 1979 and has been attacking Israel and Israelis since 1982. Hell Hezbollah is backed, funded and armed by Iran.
I caught one of Hezbollah's gifts to Israel in 1994 when a 122mm rocket exploded in the north of Israel, so I'm really getting a kick out of your trying to paint everything as Israel's fault.
When Israel wins a war with outside help from the US, they want to keep the land they conquer without any concessions. When Israel loses a war and their foe has received outside help (however minimal), they decry interference in their affairs. They are like children who just want to get their way.
I say arm the Palestinians with the same weapons as the Israelis have. Then you won't have to complain about homemade rockets and suicide bombers, and I guarantee you peace would seem like a much more achievable goal for Israeli hawks once they have to deal with people with the means to fight back.
I am constantly reminded by that bit in the Battle of Algiers:
REPORTER: Isn't it cowardly to have bombs carried in baskets to public places by Muslim women?
LARBI BEN M'HIDI: Is it any less cowardly to bomb villages from planes with napalm? Give us your planes, and we'll give you our baskets.
Ridiculous.
What's more ridiculous is people who think the State of Israel can do no wrong, or that Israeli interests are the same thing as American interests.
The virus was targeted towards Iranian PLCs. The date is supporting evidence of that, but may be a coincidence anyway.
What's not a coincidence is that Israel has been threatening to attack Iran, but still refuses to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty as Iran has and subject themselves to inspections. Israel doesn't want to play by anyone's rules but their own, and creating this virus falls well within the threats they have made over the past five years.
Because no one hates an honestly earned dollar more than the wealthy, greedy aristocrats that run Wall St. That's why they hate unions. That's why they hate regulations. That's why they hate the minimum wage. They sincerely believe that they are entitled to million dollar bonuses, and everyone else is meaningless.
Their worst nightmare is having to go out and earn their keep. They want to continue gaming the financial casino, and having the middle class cover their bets when they lose. But since they've already gotten away with it and have the money, in the eyes of many Americans they're not crooks, but just good at business.
The reality is that they're just a crime family with better lobbyists that deal in bullshit ponzi schemes instead of drugs.
If you text/web and drive, you are a fucking idiot and no better than the idiots who drive under the influence.
I don't care what you do in your home or on your property. I don't care what you do with any other consenting adult or adults. But when you're on the road, you are putting more people than yourself at risk with stupid behavior.
The fine should be $1,500 - no exceptions - and 150 hours of community service. Then we'll see how important it is to update your Facebook status.
Triple core ARM setup with HD video playback
Symmetrical rectangular ABS plastic frame with shatterproof glass
- docking port/HDMI on the bottom
- USB3 on left and right
- evenly spaced screw beds around the sides for accessory bodies/attachments
- VESA plate for the back
PixelQi display (indoor/outdoor/e-ink)
Stylus or touch input
Front and rear 3 to 5MP cameras
- allow slack for the rear camera connection so the lens can be integrated into a larger body
Built in stereo mic
Built in stereo speakers
Mini PCI slot instead of built in 3G
GPS with compass
Accelerometers
Keep things squared off and let the consumer decide if they want to buy cheap silicone to round it off. That makes it easier for vendors to design bodies to add laser scanners or extended batteries or label printers or whatever.
I'll suggest the Cuban Missile Crisis to get your list started.
I'll give you that. The intelligence community can spot Russia moving giant missile deployments 90 miles off of our border in 1961. Forget, conveniently, that the Soviets did so after we placed nuclear missile installations in England, Italy, and Turkey within range of Moscow. How about the intelligence decisions that led to us overthrowing or invading every marxist leaning country from 1950 to 1990? Yeah, Vietnam and Nicaragua still have me quaking in my boots.
We invaded a virtually unarmed Iraq in retribution for 9/11 -- I mean, to remove WMD -- I mean, to remove Saddam Hussein for Freedom and Liberty and end his reign of terror, but the torturing and murdering has already started again in the same prisons. The Shi'ites aren't going to stop killing the Sunnis until sometime in 2050 if they are trying to get even, and not only will we have bank rolled both sides of the atrocity, but we also managed to give Iran - another failed intelligence project - the whole region on a golden platter.
So, yes, American Intelligence is an oxymoron. This whole case is absolute proof of it. There are 100 copies already out there. They are redacting and re-releasing the book, so you can see what they took out, and that'll make it pretty easy to see what they think should be classified, right? In the grand scheme of things, drawing attention to this book is a side show. When you are hard core fucking up every intelligence decision, and a book comes out explaining how bureaucracy and intelligence failures are hurting the war effort, censoring it after approving it is just proving the point.
And the 250,000 is nothing. It's literally one minute of spending in Iraq and Afghanistan according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The real issue is that the whole intelligence enchilada is filled with dogshit and spray painted gold. The point of intelligence used to be gathering information and taking steps to reduce animosity and prevent war, not pretending like you can slap a saddle on a tiger and end up where you'd like. Intelligence has been mutated into Homeland Security, and that's just a blank check to bankrupt our government while they piss on the Constitution and tell us it's raining.
Did you know that the dictionary definition of condescension is reading dictionary definitions as if they contained any wisdom?
I'm addressing politics within American culture that are nonsensical. Taking those arguments to their logical end is a good way to find out if they are valuable or not. I can imagine you stopped reading Swift once you discovered that he supported infanticide and cannibalism.
Of course I know that Stalinism isn't Communism. I know that fascism isn't democracy. But sometimes you have to use the other side's definition to get the point across, even if you risk confusing people who know a lot of facts, but don't have common sense enough to know how to apply them.
Some body at the pentagon "Oh, shit, this has classified intel in it. Call up the publisher... "The question we should be asking is not "Should the pentagon be burning books?", it's "Should the pentagon have (so much) classified information?"
According to the NYT article,
The Defense Department’s handling of Colonel Shaffer’s account of his experiences in Afghanistan in 2003 appears to have been bungled from the beginning. The Army reviewed the manuscript, negotiated modest changes and approved it for publication in January.
Then, in July, the Defense Intelligence Agency saw a copy, showed it to the N.S.A. and other agencies, and decided that some 250 passages contained classified information. But advance copies were already out to potential reviewers and the Military Book Club, and the first 10,000 copies were in a warehouse. Those are the copies the Pentagon is arranging to buy and pulp.
So the Army cleared it, but then the nebulous "Homeland Security" apparatus decided that the Army didn't do a good job. Keep in mind, this is the same intelligence community that missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, missed the WTC bombing in '93, missed the attacks in Kenya, missed the attacks on the Cole, missed 9/11, missed WMD in Iraq... do I really have to continue?
There's a fucking secret army of contract killers that aren't part of the government, a vast secret police that has virtually abolished every thing we pretended was civil liberties and due process, but in newspeak, that's called patriotism.
Paying your fair share of taxes while our nation is engaged in two wars which supposedly are an existential threat to our way of life... well, that's fucking communism.
It's enough to drive a person insane.
Oh and as to not arming robots? Too late really. We have been doing it for ever 100 years now.
The Torpedo is a Robot. The first ones where really steampunk killing robots. Suicidal ones to be sure but still robots.
This is not the root issue of using a robot. The root issue is that technologically advanced societies have been pushing the button from further and further away. The further away they are, the less incentive they have to make sure that their target is valid.
First, you've got hand to hand combat. You're not going to engage unless you absolutely have to, and can deal with listening to someone gurgle and plead while they bleed out. Then you can move on to ranged weapons. In the early days, you had to get pretty close to hit someone with a musket, but you still at least had to watch people die. Then we got cannon. Rifles. Machine guns. Artillery. Airplanes. Satellite guided bombs. With each advance in military technology, you are taking less risk to your own life when you take the lives of others. That's why there are 6,000 dead "coalition" troops and several hundred thousand dead Afghans and Iraqis. It's not a war, it's a shooting gallery with political implications. If it were a war, like it was with the Japanese and the Nazis, there would be a front somewhere. The chances of Iraqis or Afghans crossing continents and oceans are not virtually zero, they are exactly zero.
Now we're at the point where some militaries have the majority of their apparatus safely tucked away in a megabase or in the air or even back in their home country. Ninety nine percent of the military are good guys who sign up thinking they will be fighting for their country. For the military to work, when the guy with the most penises on their shoulder says "Kill" the command must be passed down until a trigger is pulled somewhere. But for that guy at the very end, it's still a human decision that can be overridden by natural desires to protect human life. He can make up something about the target being obscured. He can stop it if he really thinks it's not achieving an objective. He knows intuitively that he will pay a high price for taking this life, because he has to take that memory home with him.
When the top brass are over your shoulder, you'd better click the button and blow up the house.
And soon the top brass won't even need to issue a command. They will order the command, and the quasi-sentient robots (not some half assed definition that fits your argument) will kill, and the grunts will simply arrive to ID the body parts.
The real problem with this technology is that there is no pushback for human life. If a politician wants it, and he can find someone in the military who will perform it, you can bet your ass that millions of innocent people will die as a result. The more humans you remove from the end of the equation, the less humane the result will be.
I agree with much of what you said, but the point is that decrying the moral state of Iran is nonsense when our top allies are just as, if not far more, immoral. Since Saudi Arabia is a client state, we arm them and turn a blind eye to their anti-democratic totalitarianism and theocratic injustices. Since Iran isn't a client state that has submitted to US authority, they are critiqued for the very same transgressions. That's my point.
Crack coming out in 3...
Oh, there it is.
Indeed, there is a country with a religious police, which outlaws practicing any religion but Islam, regularly executes citizens for moral crimes, and is a monarchal theocracy that does not hold elections and is accused of widespread human rights violations. They are about to close an arms deal worth 60 billion dollars to buy a fleet of the world's most advanced jet fighters and helicopters and related equipment. Their mosques preach violence against the west, and indeed, they send foreign fighters to Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Yemen to train for militant jihad.
That country is Saudi Arabia. And their supplier is the United States.
Iran, on the other hand, has a broken democracy, does in fact protect the right of religions to practice (but not to proselytize), and even has 30,000 practicing Jews and 300,000 practicing Christians with hundreds of churches and synagogues openly operating. Though they are subject persecution by the government, they are guaranteed a small number of seats in their representative government. The Ba'hai faith are widely seen as more persecuted than Jews or Christians, since they are officially outlawed.
Saudi Arabia for some reason has better public relations than Iran, but something tells me there's a reason for that.
Judging from history, our bizarre ethos of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" has come back to bite us many times. Maybe there will come a day when, after some terrorist act committed by Saudi citizens, our foreign policy will change to a more reasoned stance when dealing with the complexities of Middle Eastern politics.
Oh wait, I forgot. Never forget... to forget.
With all the fads, witch-hunts, and random behavior that come with democracy.
Oh, I'm sorry, are you aware of a system of government that isn't composed of people?
If those patents should be socially owned, why don't we vote to take away your computer and make it socially owned.
Slippery slope arguments only work for people who are scared of inclines.
Umm, yes. That's why I'm against the wars of America and Britan, against China, Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and virtually every other government on the face of the planet. I'm against all of em'.
Primates wage war. Tribes war incessantly, for millennia, over trivialities. However, homo sapiens have come up with a system of Law that has provided many countries with the longest stretches of peace in their history. It's called Democracy. You should check it out sometime.
All energy from the earth, besides geothermal energy, is some form of solar energy. Using finite intermediaries of solar energy is very useful in many situations, like in emergency vehicles in case of grid outages, aviation, and so on.
Using them for short-haul commuting, or even long-haul transportation that is better served by EVs with built-in gas electric generators, is monumentally stupid and wasteful, and that is what 90% of people use fuel for. The DoE has already said that existing off-peak power generation in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and West Coast could cover all of their electricity for commuting vehicles.
And why electricity instead of fossil fuels? Because there are dozens of ways to generate electricity. Nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind, tide, hydro dams... and the only way to produce fossil fuels is to kill a bunch of organisms and wait a few hundred million years. They will not be replenished any time soon, and those are worldwide numbers. US peak oil was reached in 1970, peak coal was reached in the mid 1990s, and peak gas is due any day now.
Furthermore, it's far easier to transport electric power than any form of fossil fuels, and we already have a standardized worldwide grid based on proven technology.
You may as well be arguing for whale oil lamps, talking about how expensive electricity is, and how much easier it is to kill whales and process their fat. Improvements in technology take investment and development, and are well worth the cost of entry, especially when you discover that your current technology is ultimately unsustainable.
In a real economic system, we'd say, keep what you create.
In your "real" economic system, corporations wouldn't have to bribe and lobby their way out of things like being punished for ruining the environment, or exploiting workers, or fucking people over with loopholes in contracts, or by grabbing cash out of the bank vaults and fleeing the country. They'd just do it in broad daylight, without fear of consequences at all.
European public transport proves without a shadow of a doubt that it is progress. They use less than half the oil we do per capita. If you half ass investment in public transportation, it's a waste of money, just like if you started letting roads and bridges collapse, cars would stop being useful at a certain point.
And why shouldn't your vehicle be taxed? Who's going to pay for roads? Do you live inside of a Disney cartoon?
Oh my Gods. Are you trying to represent three centuries of political thought with a dictionary definition?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production).
What he meant by read a book was try to gain some nuanced understanding of the subject matter. Perhaps the best you can muster is the depth of a dictionary, but I still have faith that you can do better.
It is socialism, because it is the sharing of risk and privatization of reward.
How did you confuse Socialism with American Plutocracy?
Socialism is sharing of risk and sharing of reward. Let's all invest our tax money into public transport, and if it works, we'll all have better transportation infrastructure. Let's all invest our tax money into public health, and if it works, we'll all be healthier. And so forth.
Hell, the American economic system is basically, "Let's create an aristocracy, and hope they don't screw us over." It's appropriately named "trickle down economics," and they keep telling me it's raining.
I'm not buying it.
This is not true. If solar power efficiency improvements maintain, car companies will be able to sell many customers the vehicle and the panels necessary to power it, and wrap it all up in one long term loan.
I honestly hope Google will form a subsidiary and begin constructing geothermal plants as well. The real fear for fossil fuel companies is these mainly passive methods at generating electricity will become widespread to the point that the value of oil collapses, due to all of the energy necessary to dig it out and process it.
You assume Socialism is ownership of governments by corporations. That's not Socialism, that's Fascism.
Modern Socialism is the ownership of governments by people, and the belief that progressive tax structures, government funded investments in infrastructure, proactive measures to help the poor instead of reactive measures to jail them, and forced transparency of markets represents the best balance of individual and communal rights. Not to mention the enormous benefits it provides for the economy.
If America were a democracy, we could vote to invalidate EV patents, since the value of those patents being socially owned would carry more benefits for society at large than it does as private property. That, in effect, is socialism at work. We wouldn't necessarily invalidate all patents, since that may not benefit society as a whole. Perhaps shorter or more restrictive patents represent the best balance in that case.
I'm sure in that former situation you would decry imperial governments stealing property that doesn't belong to them, but that's okay. I understand that it's because your viewpoint isn't based on any coherent set of values.
Agreed with most of your points. The other elephant in the room that the pro-EV movement never owns up to is that the EV1 had a variable cost of over $100,000, and a fully-amortized cost of nearly $1 million per car.
Only if you lump R&D and other one time outlays into the cost of the small run of those cars. If you stopped production of any modern vehicle at a few thousand units, you'd end up with similar costs. Doing it for a car with several groundbreaking technologies is comparing apples to astronauts.
Electrics (and to a lesser extent, hybrids) do cost more, and when talking to an EV advocate, it's never really clear if they expect the car companies to lose money on the sales, or if they expect government subsidies to make up for the difference.
We expect the government to incentivize the production of more efficient forms of transportation that are sustainable. This is no different than suggesting that the government invest in roads and railways. Transportation infrastructure is one the pillars of industrialized society.
The transition to 21st century forms of energy cannot be led by corporations like the transition to oil economies because new forms of energy cannot be easily capitalized. Searching and exploiting new sources of fossil fuels is intense and enormously profitable work. Setting up passive technologies that harvest solar or geothermal energy sources can be done at much lower cost, once the technologies are developed.
There is nothing more desirable for me than to one day own a home or apartment that gathers all the energy I need -- even for transportation -- from the sunlight that falls on it. And there is nothing more terrifying for energy companies.
That's a particularly lopsided view of the "oil conspiracy." The reality is that oil companies represent the single largest caucus of industry money with a single purpose: sell more oil. They brought those resources to bear against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in order to end the public's mandate for zero emissions vehicles, even the smallest amount, which killed electric car development in it's infancy. I remember seeing electric RAV4s and EV1s and Ford Ranger EVs buzzing around in the late 90s in rural Georgia. The technology developed by GM was mothballed by Exxon Mobil, who bought and buried the battery technology. Toyota continued to develop theirs, and now they have top selling hybrid car in the world.
The red herring offered consistently is, why wouldn't GM want to lead the way in electric car development? Two reasons: one, EV technology was receiving zero subsidy after CARB was bought and sold, yet gasoline in the United States is sold at a fraction of the price due to massive subsidies by the US government. The second is that electric motors are hideously reliable, as evidenced by hydroelectric dams that have been in operation for over one hundred years. If a material for infinitely durable shoes was developed by Nike, do you think they would be dumb enough to manufacture and sell it?
It's tough to continue netting billions if you make your product cheaper and more efficient, without being able to drop the price enough to sell it to more consumers. So, as one would naturally expect, you fight any newer technology with every tool you have, while simultaneously buying up the competition and burying new technology. An oil company actively reducing the value of their trillions of dollars of oil infrastructure is like Microsoft funding R&D for open source software. It just doesn't happen.
Eventually the new technology will win, if there is some other industry that will see gains, or if the government steps in to make sure the economy isn't artificially shackled to old technology because of monopolistic business practices. It's fashionable to call that Socialism, but everyone else calls it progress.