And yet you, yourself are being intellectually dishonest by trumpeting your opinions as facts and your tinfoil conspiracy theories as truth.
Which one?
you immediately retreated to a "I'm really stupid, please enlighten my ignorance on Sunni-Shiite relations" position which you should have taken in the first place, since it was so God-awful clear from your first post.
And somehow I know more than the entire GOP ticket from the last election. I don't mind saying I was wrong - I misunderstood the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the militant Shia movements. I admitted it after I reread some things. Life goes on.
The Iraqi government is rolling in cash right now due to the petroleum deals(so much so that the US Congress is complaining of how much free money the Iraqis have and how much reconstruction the US is paying for).
They don't have 24 hour electrical service or sewage in much of Iraq. Much of their infrastructure is completely destroyed, and now their literacy rate is dropping like a rock. It's going to cost some money to build it back, and just as Iran did in 53, there will be a movement to stop the theft of oil profits from western countries.
Contrast this to Venezuela, whose oil rigs are falling into disrepair and whose production will plummet due to the lack of technical expertise available to the Venezuelan government bureaucrats after kicking out the Western energy companies and the reduction of reinvestment in new exploration. Nationalization is sexy and all to the global leftists, but it runs up against the hard reality of actually maintaining resource production (see: Zimbabwe after kicking out all the white farmers). Appointing paper pushers to do the job based on their political loyalty is a great way to send your country on a short road to North Koreaville.
Read the fine print. Oil companies are allowed to take 60 to 70 percent until their costs are recouped. Anywhere else in the world it's 40%. Once complete, American and British companies, who did not have to bid for access to Iraqi oil, keep 20% of the profits, which is double the normal rate of 10%. So, Venezuela is still doing better than Iraq. Their output has suffered under Chavez, but not as much as Iraqi output has suffered under the US.
Oil prices have gone down about $100 per barrel as well. That's an important fact to remember.
Also, a quicker way to dictatorship is to try and nationalize any of your industries and harm US and British investors. The CIA and MI6 will be up your ass in a heartbeat.
Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it?
Yes. Do you know why? Because since oil is Iraq's lifeline, they will still sell it.
That's a logical fallacy. Iraqis, given the choice between extermination and dictatorship, will probably choose dictatorship, even if it's installed by the United States.
And it's not control of petroleum that the US is after as a strategic priority, it's the continuing free flow of petroleum to the world market. We don't care who owns the oil. We care that any one person or country isn't threatening to monopolize a large majority of the world's proven reserves, thus allowing them to destabilize the US and world economy, which is highly dependent on energy for transportation.
False. We want to make sure that we maintain control over the worlds proven reserves, in case someone thinks about threatening our empire. Then we have the power to cut them off and throw their society into ch
(a) Iran explicitly recognized Israel for years before changing its mind (b) didn't recognize Palestine until long after the establishment of Israel
When our dictator, the Shah of Iran was in power, sure. Those ties were cut in 1979 as soon as Iranians regained control of their country. That's when they "changed their mind" - when they actually had power to say what they wanted.
(c) Israel is generally recognized, and is a member of the United Nations
Here's a pretty map that shows you the states with no diplomatic ties with Israel. It shows pretty clearly that almost 0 arab states recognize Israel or have diplomatic ties to it. Maybe you can understand pictures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreign_relations_of_Israel_Map.png
(d) Iran implicitly recognizes Israel by dint of UN membership. (The UN charter requires member nations to recognize one another.)
Afghanistan was a member of the UN during the years the Taliban was being ruled. Does that mean the United States recognized the Taliban as legitimate? If not, what security council resolutions can you point to before 9/11 that states the Taliban is not recognized as the government of Afghanistan?
It's the magic I call "understanding that different things are not the same"
You're playing word games to avoid the real issue.
The case in Afghanistan, unlike Iraq or the things you imagine in your head, is not a matter of cowboy diplomacy. It's a case of (nearly) universally-recognized governments cooperating on the sovereign soil of one to suppress a threat to them both. America's presence in Afghanistan is not an invading force.
Alright. We can actually put your theory to the test. When the recognized Afghan government requested Soviet help to crush the islamic fundamentalism movement in Afghanistan in 1979, did Russia invade, according to your definition? Why or why not?
And if you are a service member, I am not trying to insinuate that you don't care or that you're some kind of monster. I had uncles that were in Vietnam, who both went crazy, and one of them eventually killed himself (not entirely due to Vietnam, but I don't think it helped). I have compassion and respect for everyone in the armed forces. I know you are doing the job you trained to do, and in today's world, we probably need a standing army, and one that obeys orders.
I just think the people who have the power to order you around should be brought to justice when they abuse that power.
However, if you're a consultant or private contractor, I hope you understand why you're there, and how much blood is in the ink on your paychecks.
So your argument is we did support the Taliban, but since we technically did not recognize them as the government of Afghanistan, we had the right to invade that country? That's a nearly preposterous argument.
So if Israel is ever invaded by a country that doesn't recognize them as a nation -- let's just say Iran -- is that justifiable? They could just as easily claim that the population of the entire Israel/Palestine territory is being oppressed by the Israeli population, and they are freeing it from that oppression, while preemptively striking Israel since Israel has been threatening to invade Iran for many years now. All of their attacks on Israel would obviously be aided by the local Palestinian population. Under your conditions, that would also be a just war, wouldn't it?
Let me try to calm myself a bit. I can accurately be accused of trolling in a sense, which is to say I'm sensationalistic to get people to at least read something besides the same rhetoric passed to us from major news sites that, in my honest opinion, are completely dishonest.
Of course I can't read that agreement in the ten minutes I took to respond. Let's say the language was clear and even well intentioned. What happens if Iraq wants to again nationalize their oil fields? Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it? We didn't allow it to happen in Iran. We tried to stop it in Venezuela, but the coup failed.
Then there's the problem of word play - something the US Armed Forces are extremely good at. I hear all the time that every last one of our combat forces are withdrawing, but all you have to do it read to the end of the same article to find out that "training forces" will remain, to the tune of 50,000. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that gullible to believe that these "training forces" won't be making regular missions in Iraq if they "think" it will threaten the security of US forces. Furthermore, all US soldiers and related citizens are to be handed over to US forces if they are detained by Iraqi forces. That's not sovereignty.
And as far as the oil companies go, Shell is headquartered in the Netherlands but registered in London. It's largest subsidiary is based in Houston. Multinational corporations are tough to assign to a distinct nationality, but I don't think you'd dispute the fact that nobody besides the "majors" of the oil industry, based primarily out of England and the United States, are the ones who have been given huge no bid contracts and a huge head start in developing oil infrastructure in Iraq. Again, I'm not gullible enough to believe that is just a coincidence. Nobody disputed the history of Britain protecting it's empire for the sake of it's commercial sector. No one disputes the facts surrounding the coup in Iran in 1953, and why people think we're not capable of the same type of behavior is really astonishing.
And as far as your apologist notions, they are a little sickening. We are not debating the lives of characters in some game. Tens and probably hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Millions of Iraqis now live in sewage and desperate poverty or have fled the country. Iraqi women can no longer hold jobs or walk without a chaperone. America has spent over a trillion dollars on the war, not counting interest. All of this was built on CIA forgeries, empty rhetoric about democracy, and a small group of people in the Bush Administration obsessed with invading Iraq at any cost.
Meanwhile, oil companies and private military contractors are making out like bandits. I don't know about you, but I'm quite tired of the same cycle of events.
Since you're there, though, what's the status on the electrical grid? Does even Baghdad have 24 hour service yet, and water and sewer infrastructure in full working order? Where the hell did all of the money go?
So how do you feel about the military bases we still maintain today in Germany and Japan (amongst others?
Besides further evidence of US imperialism? They should be dismantled and our troops sent home. We cannot afford the empire any more.
I just keep learning new facts...and to think I thought BP was British. Silly me.
Were any companies not from America or Britain given no bid contracts?
Beyond that, you're being oddly pedantic. We haven't withdrawn from Iraq. We still have troops helping to maintain order and perform anti-insurgency operations. Why on earth would we withdraw from our bases while we've still got troops on the ground? Am I missing something in your logic here?
Anyone who thinks that we will abandon the billion dollar bases in Iraq is just fooling themselves. They will remain not to protect Iraq's democracy, but to protect our access and control over the oil.
I hold no illusions about my stupidity on the subject of inter-muslim relations. I sort of fish for intriguing posts. Most of what I get is recycled talking points.
I know the initial split between Sunni and Shia seems tiny to me as an outsider, and at least among Christian sects, they can overcome doctrinal minutiae when the chips are down, so to speak. I hate to make this analogy, but I will anyway, and that is the Shia seem sort of Catholic to me while the Sunnis seem Protestant.
Maybe you can answer some questions for me: are the mainstream Shia usually more fundamentalist than the mainstream Sunni? This was why I got the impression that more fundamentalist Sunnis would be joining forces with Shias.
What sort of news sources would you recommend? I can't read Farsi or Arabic, so I guess the best I can do is Al Jazeera.
The WTC was attacked in 93 and in 01, and eight years later, I still see from various sources that Al Qaeda is the most dangerous terrorist organization for the US. Do you disagree or agree?
If you don't consider terrorism a problem, and have no actual respect for democracy and the right of a people to their own self-determination, then yes, it's safe to ignore arguments against ignoring another country's sovereignty.
Uh, the US didn't recognize the Taliban as the leader of Afghanistan.
Then why did we give them 40 million dollars? Did we make an announcement saying, hey, we support the Taliban... no. But giving them 40 million dollars makes them a client of ours.
When I refer to the government of Afghanistan, I mean the real one, not the Taliban pretending he's in charge.
You cannot change the definition of real out of convenience. If you give 40 million dollars to a group of people who claim to run a country in exchange for their help in the drug war, who are you recognizing as the ruler of that country?
Add in the fact that our attacks are, and have always been, assisted by the Afghani Army, and I'd say we were not invading.
That's par for the course in colonial methods, and even matches the methods of straight-up aggression. Ever heard of the Vichy government?
You might as well claim that the US has been an occupied country for over a century. After all, Congress was dissolved by Emperor Norton, and the standing Army they've formed is therefore clearly a rebel force.
Well, at least you don't take yourself seriously. Heaven knows I don't.
To put it more succinctly, we're not required to acknowledge every insane person with a couple of guns that claims leadership of a nation.
Again, we gave 40 million dollars to people who claimed they ruled Afghanistan, who did in fact control the capital city and at least 80% of it's population, and had for years. That's in a country where they make $800 a year per person on average. You can stick your thumbs in your ears and try to tune this fact out with some historical mind experiment, but it doesn't change the facts.
Signed an agreement reaffirming the sovereignty of Iraq
Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?
Asserted Iraqi ownership over *every* military installation in use by US forces
That's absolute horseshit.
At withdrawal, the U.S. will return all the installations and the agreed upon areas allocated for the use of the U.S. combat forces according to two lists (of inventory) to the Iraqi government.
Translation: we keep our permanent military bases.
Handed control of many of the US Operated facilities over to the Iraqis for control (here, here, and here, for example)
Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?
In addition, there are no plans to close the Americans' Camp Victory base complex, which houses more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops, even though Camp Victory is only a 15-minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city's boundary. Iraqi officials, who are nervous about maintaining security as the Americans depart, have agreed to consider Camp Victory as outside the city. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/world/middleeast/09military.html
Additionally, your assertion that "we own" the oil fields now points to an article explaining how the Iraqi Ministry of Oil is negotiating contracts from companies that lost to nationalization when Saddam was in power. I'm not sure how that means "we own" anything. The Iraqi government is contracting with corporations to extract the oil resources. Sounds like Iraq exercising its own sovereignty to me.
Why were they no bid contracts to American oil companies in 2008? And furthermore, if we have no colonial interest in their resources, why haven't we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq? This is the central question. Everything else is political theater.
I didn't say the majority of Saudis were Shia. I should have clarified that I was speaking about the Saudis who live in the oil rich north of the country on the border with Iraq.
According to every source I've seen, a majority of Iraq is Shia, in a 60/40 split. I guess a number of them could be dead or outside the country. Iran is a majority Shia. Al Qaeda may be made up of Sunni arabs, but aren't they trying to overthrow the Sunni leaders of Saudi Arabia and other secular Muslim nations? I imagine they are trying to exploit Shia muslims to complete this objective.
Council of Foreign Relations, 2003:
Saudi-born Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has long called for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family to punish it for allowing U.S. military bases in the kingdom. He broke with the monarchy in 1990 over the Gulf War, when the kingdom invited U.S.-led coalition troops onto Saudi soil to its defend oil fields and to prepare to attack Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in the second Iraq war, U.S. troops pulled out of Saudi Arabia.
Why is al-Qaeda still targeting the kingdom?
For several reasons, experts say. The royal family maintains a close relationship with the United States, which al-Qaeda views as the home of "infidels." Many Saudis see the powerful princes who run the country as corrupt and dissolute. In this view, the royals are leaders of a strict Islamic state who disregard Islam's dictums by drinking alcohol or "frequenting the casinos of Monte Carlo," says Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former FBI counterterrorism analyst. Al Qaeda regards the regime as "insufficiently Islamic and an unacceptable candidate to be the guardian of Mecca and Medina," Islam's holiest sites, Levitt says. And, some experts say, the government is breaking its social contract with Saudi citizens, which gives the royal family control over politics in exchange for lifetime benefits financed by Saudi oil. A growing population and shrinking economy make it more difficult for the government to hold up its end of the deal.
The Taliban was a client of ours until the September 11th attacks. Then we demanded that they hand bin Laden over or we'd bomb them. They demanded evidence. We sent the troops in. The Taliban never invited us, but after we finally ran them out of town, too late to stop their support of Al Qeada, the government we installed invited us to stay. Then we sent ten times as many troops to Iraq, which had nothing to do with terrorism until we split open their borders.
But here's a far more interesting tidbit. I couldn't confirm the date on the LA Times website of this article (May 2001), but it's a pretty enlightening view on how moral relativism in foreign policy is self-destructive.
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.
I totally agree with you, the Iraq war has probably been the biggest single gift Iran and Al Qeada have ever received. There's a crescent of angry and now militant Shia muslims from Saudi Arabia, through the oil-rich part of Iraq, and up to Iran. If Al Qeada continues to enjoy the recruiting bonanza of US forces in this area, there's a good chance bin Laden will get the war he was looking for between the west and the muslim world. All he has to do is pull of another terrorist attack inside the US.
"Nearly always" is your way of acknowledging that a lot of people, including Obama, have a whole lot of egg on their face about Iraq, and that you know damned well there's a big difference between "invader" and "aggressor."
Do you think we're going to abandon our permanent military bases in Iraq? Do you think we're going to allow Iraq to take back control of their own oil resources? You do know that we own them now, don't you?
If we're invaders and not aggressors, we'd just leave the military bases and oil fields to Iraqis, and we would have left after their first election. But we're not going to leave, so stop pretending.
What they need is to have the US and it's pawns to stop threatening to invade, and stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the CIA for undercover operations fomenting another coup in that country. As long as they are being verbally and covertly threatened by the hyperpower that has just invaded the country next door -- the same country that invited Saddam to invade them in the 80s -- the hardliners will continue to rule Iran.
One simple rule that imperial powers tend to forget is that people are nearly always divided against their own government but nearly always united against a foreign invader.
Where I live, commuters drive 100 million miles a day just to go to work and back again. That's just fucking madness.
Living on the Sun must have its advantages...:P
Well, that's not a joke. And I was wrong - only 20 to 30% of those miles are for straight commuting. But in the metro Atlanta area, we drive 100 million miles per day. Next time I can put that number in perspective with a good visual.
The price of gas has changed behavior. Britons rarely consider just driving across their country because of the expense. They don't consider having a 30 mile commute because of the expense. They don't consider buying a 6 liter engine because of the expense. Where I live, commuters drive 100 million miles a day just to go to work and back again. That's just fucking madness.
Communities in areas with realistic gas prices are built accordingly. America can choose to be inconvenienced today or be totally noncompetitive tomorrow if we don't make changes to oil usage. If you want to sentence your children to spending half of their money getting to and from work, that's a choice, but not a very smart one.
The point is not to impress you, but to prove that a solar powered plane can be built. If you have a large capital investment but you don't have to pay for fuel for 20 years, it opens up the transportation market in novel ways.
I imagine the solution will be vehicles that can ride the jetstream. The ticket will be one way, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be effective to circle the globe if the fuel is cheap or free.
While I don't expect a Chomsky fan to have any reasoning abilities found outside of a college sophomore with a chip on his shoulder, I'll respond anyway for other readers.
I'm just starting college, actually. I never went after high school.
1) China and Russia are laughing at us. This act will artificially drive up the price of cheap-carbon based fuel in the US, reducing US demand. Reduced US demand will lower the global price, making oil and coal MORE attractive options for the rest of the world. Their increased use will more than offset any possible reductions we could do, with this bill or any other.
Citation?
2) Folks like you are willing to spend billions of dollars and eviscerate our economy on the trillion dollar scale in a futile and arrogant attempt to turn back the clock. None from your side has ever talked about how we would deal with increased global temperatures, how we might mitigate any rising sea levels, or what the potential upsides to global warming are.
We've spent tens of trillions of dollars investing in arms and killing people for the last fifty years. Do you think that's a better investment?
3) The climate is always changing, even before we started emitting massive amounts of carbon or anything else. Go look up climate history and see that the best reconstructed information we have, in recorded human history and prior, shows the climate has been significantly warmer and significantly cooler than it is now.
So the weather changes, but burning up every drop of biomass stored in the earths crust in 150 years won't make a bit of difference, despite the fact that it's taken hundreds of millions of years to form in the first place.
The term 'global warming' lately has even been replaced with the term 'climate change.' This should tip off any prudent observer that it's all a blatant move to grab money and power. The climate is always changing, and as such, in the 'Climate Change' political environment, will always serve as a convienent excuse to expand taxes and the suffocating regulatory state.
Yes, the scientists have all banded together to RULE THE WORLD by telling us not to kill the planet and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Just like their conspiracy to deny the true fact of creation! Quick, someone call someone, and do something!
The problem isn't carbon emissions, the problem is folks like you who think they're infinately wiser than their fellow man and the free market, and see no problem with grasping all the money and power they can in order to force their good intentions on the rest of us.
The free market isn't wise. It has no self-awareness. It does not care if the human race survives, and is very poor at predicting the future or caring if we're in it.
And here's a shocker: scientists are you fellow man. So are politicians. Not every one of them is an evil person scheming to steal from you. Corporations, however, are legally required to dedicate themselves to scheming and profit. Otherwise their board is sued by the shareholders.
And don't you dare talk to me like I favor large smoke stacks bellowing thick black smoke over American cities, and dumping nasty chemicals into rivers. We solved those problems decades ago and I'm fine with that sort of regulation. Now we've got arrogant do-gooders on a mission with nothing good to do, and we'll all suffer for their hubris if not stopped.
I'll talk to you however I please. Those smokestacks have simply been moved elsewhere, and many American cities still suffer from pollution due to coal fired power plants that are not clean. Why did our jobs and the smokestacks get up and leave? Because dogmatic adherence to the free market - from people like you - led people to believe that buying cheap electronics from Asia instead of paying decent prices for American made products wouldn't hurt anybody. Take a look at any river in China or our manufacturing sector, and you'll see why I have to disagree.
The question is, if the stream is dead and you are dead, how did the market hold you accountable for your actions? Pollution is an act that is hard to rectify once it's completed, and often times is far more expensive to clean up than the money saved during the polluting period. If you want to leave pools of mercury on the ground to increase cancer rates and say the government can't be responsible once the company folds and the CEOs skip off to the Bahamas with a few million dollars, then make that argument, if you can.
If that cheap electricity violates your rights to life and property, you can sue the energy producer. You cannot sue me for wanting it.
I can vote for a candidate who promises to enact a law that says the days of cheap and dirty energy are over. And then he can push the law through congress, so that we can adjust to paying the real costs of energy instead of pretending that it will always be cheap, and pretending the pollution won't be a problem.
No one is saying you can't have a Hummer or a 60" plasma TV. They are saying you're going to have to pay the real cost of owning such things, since environmental destruction now has a greater price than zero.
The common areas? You mean, public property? I'm opposed to the entire non-concept of "public property". The sooner we privatize all property, the sooner we will have a healthier environment for people to live in and prosper.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that you called public property a non-concept. Obviously it's a concept, and one that you even understand. Is this the Emperor method of thinking critically? Just pretend it's not there, and it won't be? You can disagree with the concept, but that doesn't make it disappear.
The argument you're making is that if we made all of our national forests and parks private, then they would somehow not be developed and exploited to the point where humans didn't wipe out the local food chain, except for birds and squirrels. I don't even have to go into detail - just defend this one idea without stepping all over yourself, and feel free to provide some real life examples.
If you assume that people drive cross country every day for work instead of living in communities that are zoned according to energy costs and value mass transit investment instead of spending the money on roads at a ratio of 40 to 1, as we do in the states.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet you, yourself are being intellectually dishonest by trumpeting your opinions as facts and your tinfoil conspiracy theories as truth.
Which one?
you immediately retreated to a "I'm really stupid, please enlighten my ignorance on Sunni-Shiite relations" position which you should have taken in the first place, since it was so God-awful clear from your first post.
And somehow I know more than the entire GOP ticket from the last election. I don't mind saying I was wrong - I misunderstood the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the militant Shia movements. I admitted it after I reread some things. Life goes on.
The Iraqi government is rolling in cash right now due to the petroleum deals(so much so that the US Congress is complaining of how much free money the Iraqis have and how much reconstruction the US is paying for).
They don't have 24 hour electrical service or sewage in much of Iraq. Much of their infrastructure is completely destroyed, and now their literacy rate is dropping like a rock. It's going to cost some money to build it back, and just as Iran did in 53, there will be a movement to stop the theft of oil profits from western countries.
Contrast this to Venezuela, whose oil rigs are falling into disrepair and whose production will plummet due to the lack of technical expertise available to the Venezuelan government bureaucrats after kicking out the Western energy companies and the reduction of reinvestment in new exploration. Nationalization is sexy and all to the global leftists, but it runs up against the hard reality of actually maintaining resource production (see: Zimbabwe after kicking out all the white farmers). Appointing paper pushers to do the job based on their political loyalty is a great way to send your country on a short road to North Koreaville.
Read the fine print. Oil companies are allowed to take 60 to 70 percent until their costs are recouped. Anywhere else in the world it's 40%. Once complete, American and British companies, who did not have to bid for access to Iraqi oil, keep 20% of the profits, which is double the normal rate of 10%. So, Venezuela is still doing better than Iraq. Their output has suffered under Chavez, but not as much as Iraqi output has suffered under the US.
Oil prices have gone down about $100 per barrel as well. That's an important fact to remember.
Also, a quicker way to dictatorship is to try and nationalize any of your industries and harm US and British investors. The CIA and MI6 will be up your ass in a heartbeat.
Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it?
Yes. Do you know why? Because since oil is Iraq's lifeline, they will still sell it.
That's a logical fallacy. Iraqis, given the choice between extermination and dictatorship, will probably choose dictatorship, even if it's installed by the United States.
And it's not control of petroleum that the US is after as a strategic priority, it's the continuing free flow of petroleum to the world market. We don't care who owns the oil. We care that any one person or country isn't threatening to monopolize a large majority of the world's proven reserves, thus allowing them to destabilize the US and world economy, which is highly dependent on energy for transportation.
False. We want to make sure that we maintain control over the worlds proven reserves, in case someone thinks about threatening our empire. Then we have the power to cut them off and throw their society into ch
(a) Iran explicitly recognized Israel for years before changing its mind (b) didn't recognize Palestine until long after the establishment of Israel
When our dictator, the Shah of Iran was in power, sure. Those ties were cut in 1979 as soon as Iranians regained control of their country. That's when they "changed their mind" - when they actually had power to say what they wanted.
(c) Israel is generally recognized, and is a member of the United Nations
Here's a pretty map that shows you the states with no diplomatic ties with Israel. It shows pretty clearly that almost 0 arab states recognize Israel or have diplomatic ties to it. Maybe you can understand pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreign_relations_of_Israel_Map.png
(d) Iran implicitly recognizes Israel by dint of UN membership. (The UN charter requires member nations to recognize one another.)
Afghanistan was a member of the UN during the years the Taliban was being ruled. Does that mean the United States recognized the Taliban as legitimate? If not, what security council resolutions can you point to before 9/11 that states the Taliban is not recognized as the government of Afghanistan?
It's the magic I call "understanding that different things are not the same"
You're playing word games to avoid the real issue.
The case in Afghanistan, unlike Iraq or the things you imagine in your head, is not a matter of cowboy diplomacy. It's a case of (nearly) universally-recognized governments cooperating on the sovereign soil of one to suppress a threat to them both. America's presence in Afghanistan is not an invading force.
Alright. We can actually put your theory to the test. When the recognized Afghan government requested Soviet help to crush the islamic fundamentalism movement in Afghanistan in 1979, did Russia invade, according to your definition? Why or why not?
And if you are a service member, I am not trying to insinuate that you don't care or that you're some kind of monster. I had uncles that were in Vietnam, who both went crazy, and one of them eventually killed himself (not entirely due to Vietnam, but I don't think it helped). I have compassion and respect for everyone in the armed forces. I know you are doing the job you trained to do, and in today's world, we probably need a standing army, and one that obeys orders.
I just think the people who have the power to order you around should be brought to justice when they abuse that power.
However, if you're a consultant or private contractor, I hope you understand why you're there, and how much blood is in the ink on your paychecks.
So your argument is we did support the Taliban, but since we technically did not recognize them as the government of Afghanistan, we had the right to invade that country? That's a nearly preposterous argument.
So if Israel is ever invaded by a country that doesn't recognize them as a nation -- let's just say Iran -- is that justifiable? They could just as easily claim that the population of the entire Israel/Palestine territory is being oppressed by the Israeli population, and they are freeing it from that oppression, while preemptively striking Israel since Israel has been threatening to invade Iran for many years now. All of their attacks on Israel would obviously be aided by the local Palestinian population. Under your conditions, that would also be a just war, wouldn't it?
If not, what magically changed your mind?
Let me try to calm myself a bit. I can accurately be accused of trolling in a sense, which is to say I'm sensationalistic to get people to at least read something besides the same rhetoric passed to us from major news sites that, in my honest opinion, are completely dishonest.
Of course I can't read that agreement in the ten minutes I took to respond. Let's say the language was clear and even well intentioned. What happens if Iraq wants to again nationalize their oil fields? Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it? We didn't allow it to happen in Iran. We tried to stop it in Venezuela, but the coup failed.
Then there's the problem of word play - something the US Armed Forces are extremely good at. I hear all the time that every last one of our combat forces are withdrawing, but all you have to do it read to the end of the same article to find out that "training forces" will remain, to the tune of 50,000. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that gullible to believe that these "training forces" won't be making regular missions in Iraq if they "think" it will threaten the security of US forces. Furthermore, all US soldiers and related citizens are to be handed over to US forces if they are detained by Iraqi forces. That's not sovereignty.
And as far as the oil companies go, Shell is headquartered in the Netherlands but registered in London. It's largest subsidiary is based in Houston. Multinational corporations are tough to assign to a distinct nationality, but I don't think you'd dispute the fact that nobody besides the "majors" of the oil industry, based primarily out of England and the United States, are the ones who have been given huge no bid contracts and a huge head start in developing oil infrastructure in Iraq. Again, I'm not gullible enough to believe that is just a coincidence. Nobody disputed the history of Britain protecting it's empire for the sake of it's commercial sector. No one disputes the facts surrounding the coup in Iran in 1953, and why people think we're not capable of the same type of behavior is really astonishing.
And as far as your apologist notions, they are a little sickening. We are not debating the lives of characters in some game. Tens and probably hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Millions of Iraqis now live in sewage and desperate poverty or have fled the country. Iraqi women can no longer hold jobs or walk without a chaperone. America has spent over a trillion dollars on the war, not counting interest. All of this was built on CIA forgeries, empty rhetoric about democracy, and a small group of people in the Bush Administration obsessed with invading Iraq at any cost.
Meanwhile, oil companies and private military contractors are making out like bandits. I don't know about you, but I'm quite tired of the same cycle of events.
Since you're there, though, what's the status on the electrical grid? Does even Baghdad have 24 hour service yet, and water and sewer infrastructure in full working order? Where the hell did all of the money go?
So how do you feel about the military bases we still maintain today in Germany and Japan (amongst others?
Besides further evidence of US imperialism? They should be dismantled and our troops sent home. We cannot afford the empire any more.
I just keep learning new facts...and to think I thought BP was British. Silly me.
Were any companies not from America or Britain given no bid contracts?
Beyond that, you're being oddly pedantic. We haven't withdrawn from Iraq. We still have troops helping to maintain order and perform anti-insurgency operations. Why on earth would we withdraw from our bases while we've still got troops on the ground? Am I missing something in your logic here?
Anyone who thinks that we will abandon the billion dollar bases in Iraq is just fooling themselves. They will remain not to protect Iraq's democracy, but to protect our access and control over the oil.
I hold no illusions about my stupidity on the subject of inter-muslim relations. I sort of fish for intriguing posts. Most of what I get is recycled talking points.
I know the initial split between Sunni and Shia seems tiny to me as an outsider, and at least among Christian sects, they can overcome doctrinal minutiae when the chips are down, so to speak. I hate to make this analogy, but I will anyway, and that is the Shia seem sort of Catholic to me while the Sunnis seem Protestant.
Maybe you can answer some questions for me: are the mainstream Shia usually more fundamentalist than the mainstream Sunni? This was why I got the impression that more fundamentalist Sunnis would be joining forces with Shias.
What sort of news sources would you recommend? I can't read Farsi or Arabic, so I guess the best I can do is Al Jazeera.
The WTC was attacked in 93 and in 01, and eight years later, I still see from various sources that Al Qaeda is the most dangerous terrorist organization for the US. Do you disagree or agree?
If you don't consider terrorism a problem, and have no actual respect for democracy and the right of a people to their own self-determination, then yes, it's safe to ignore arguments against ignoring another country's sovereignty.
Uh, the US didn't recognize the Taliban as the leader of Afghanistan.
Then why did we give them 40 million dollars? Did we make an announcement saying, hey, we support the Taliban... no. But giving them 40 million dollars makes them a client of ours.
When I refer to the government of Afghanistan, I mean the real one, not the Taliban pretending he's in charge.
You cannot change the definition of real out of convenience. If you give 40 million dollars to a group of people who claim to run a country in exchange for their help in the drug war, who are you recognizing as the ruler of that country?
Add in the fact that our attacks are, and have always been, assisted by the Afghani Army, and I'd say we were not invading.
That's par for the course in colonial methods, and even matches the methods of straight-up aggression. Ever heard of the Vichy government?
You might as well claim that the US has been an occupied country for over a century. After all, Congress was dissolved by Emperor Norton, and the standing Army they've formed is therefore clearly a rebel force.
Well, at least you don't take yourself seriously. Heaven knows I don't.
To put it more succinctly, we're not required to acknowledge every insane person with a couple of guns that claims leadership of a nation.
Again, we gave 40 million dollars to people who claimed they ruled Afghanistan, who did in fact control the capital city and at least 80% of it's population, and had for years. That's in a country where they make $800 a year per person on average. You can stick your thumbs in your ears and try to tune this fact out with some historical mind experiment, but it doesn't change the facts.
Signed an agreement reaffirming the sovereignty of Iraq
Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?
Asserted Iraqi ownership over *every* military installation in use by US forces
That's absolute horseshit.
At withdrawal, the U.S. will return all the installations and the agreed upon areas allocated for the use of the U.S. combat forces according to two lists (of inventory) to the Iraqi government.
Translation: we keep our permanent military bases.
Handed control of many of the US Operated facilities over to the Iraqis for control (here, here, and here, for example)
Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?
Handed security of the "Green Zone" over to Iraqi control
Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?
Removed the vast majority of all combat forces outside of the limits of all major cities
Another lie.
In addition, there are no plans to close the Americans' Camp Victory base complex, which houses more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops, even though Camp Victory is only a 15-minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city's boundary. Iraqi officials, who are nervous about maintaining security as the Americans depart, have agreed to consider Camp Victory as outside the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/world/middleeast/09military.html
Additionally, your assertion that "we own" the oil fields now points to an article explaining how the Iraqi Ministry of Oil is negotiating contracts from companies that lost to nationalization when Saddam was in power. I'm not sure how that means "we own" anything. The Iraqi government is contracting with corporations to extract the oil resources. Sounds like Iraq exercising its own sovereignty to me.
Why were they no bid contracts to American oil companies in 2008? And furthermore, if we have no colonial interest in their resources, why haven't we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq? This is the central question. Everything else is political theater.
I didn't say the majority of Saudis were Shia. I should have clarified that I was speaking about the Saudis who live in the oil rich north of the country on the border with Iraq.
According to every source I've seen, a majority of Iraq is Shia, in a 60/40 split. I guess a number of them could be dead or outside the country. Iran is a majority Shia. Al Qaeda may be made up of Sunni arabs, but aren't they trying to overthrow the Sunni leaders of Saudi Arabia and other secular Muslim nations? I imagine they are trying to exploit Shia muslims to complete this objective.
Council of Foreign Relations, 2003:
Saudi-born Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has long called for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family to punish it for allowing U.S. military bases in the kingdom. He broke with the monarchy in 1990 over the Gulf War, when the kingdom invited U.S.-led coalition troops onto Saudi soil to its defend oil fields and to prepare to attack Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in the second Iraq war, U.S. troops pulled out of Saudi Arabia.
Why is al-Qaeda still targeting the kingdom?
For several reasons, experts say. The royal family maintains a close relationship with the United States, which al-Qaeda views as the home of "infidels." Many Saudis see the powerful princes who run the country as corrupt and dissolute. In this view, the royals are leaders of a strict Islamic state who disregard Islam's dictums by drinking alcohol or "frequenting the casinos of Monte Carlo," says Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former FBI counterterrorism analyst. Al Qaeda regards the regime as "insufficiently Islamic and an unacceptable candidate to be the guardian of Mecca and Medina," Islam's holiest sites, Levitt says. And, some experts say, the government is breaking its social contract with Saudi citizens, which gives the royal family control over politics in exchange for lifetime benefits financed by Saudi oil. A growing population and shrinking economy make it more difficult for the government to hold up its end of the deal.
Did France try to force rob resources from America? Did they send in covert agents to try and influence an election?
No one's arguing that foreign influences do not foment revolutions. I'm making the point that it's wrong, and often ends up backfiring.
The Taliban was a client of ours until the September 11th attacks. Then we demanded that they hand bin Laden over or we'd bomb them. They demanded evidence. We sent the troops in. The Taliban never invited us, but after we finally ran them out of town, too late to stop their support of Al Qeada, the government we installed invited us to stay. Then we sent ten times as many troops to Iraq, which had nothing to do with terrorism until we split open their borders.
But here's a far more interesting tidbit. I couldn't confirm the date on the LA Times website of this article (May 2001), but it's a pretty enlightening view on how moral relativism in foreign policy is self-destructive.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a09.html
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.
I stand corrected.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw
That's pretty much the way the western world works. History only goes as far back as is convenient for the excuses of the next colonial venture.
I totally agree with you, the Iraq war has probably been the biggest single gift Iran and Al Qeada have ever received. There's a crescent of angry and now militant Shia muslims from Saudi Arabia, through the oil-rich part of Iraq, and up to Iran. If Al Qeada continues to enjoy the recruiting bonanza of US forces in this area, there's a good chance bin Laden will get the war he was looking for between the west and the muslim world. All he has to do is pull of another terrorist attack inside the US.
"Nearly always" is your way of acknowledging that a lot of people, including Obama, have a whole lot of egg on their face about Iraq, and that you know damned well there's a big difference between "invader" and "aggressor."
Do you think we're going to abandon our permanent military bases in Iraq? Do you think we're going to allow Iraq to take back control of their own oil resources? You do know that we own them now, don't you?
If we're invaders and not aggressors, we'd just leave the military bases and oil fields to Iraqis, and we would have left after their first election. But we're not going to leave, so stop pretending.
What they need is to have the US and it's pawns to stop threatening to invade, and stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the CIA for undercover operations fomenting another coup in that country. As long as they are being verbally and covertly threatened by the hyperpower that has just invaded the country next door -- the same country that invited Saddam to invade them in the 80s -- the hardliners will continue to rule Iran.
One simple rule that imperial powers tend to forget is that people are nearly always divided against their own government but nearly always united against a foreign invader.
Where I live, commuters drive 100 million miles a day just to go to work and back again. That's just fucking madness.
Living on the Sun must have its advantages... :P
Well, that's not a joke. And I was wrong - only 20 to 30% of those miles are for straight commuting. But in the metro Atlanta area, we drive 100 million miles per day. Next time I can put that number in perspective with a good visual.
The price of gas has changed behavior. Britons rarely consider just driving across their country because of the expense. They don't consider having a 30 mile commute because of the expense. They don't consider buying a 6 liter engine because of the expense. Where I live, commuters drive 100 million miles a day just to go to work and back again. That's just fucking madness.
Communities in areas with realistic gas prices are built accordingly. America can choose to be inconvenienced today or be totally noncompetitive tomorrow if we don't make changes to oil usage. If you want to sentence your children to spending half of their money getting to and from work, that's a choice, but not a very smart one.
The point is not to impress you, but to prove that a solar powered plane can be built. If you have a large capital investment but you don't have to pay for fuel for 20 years, it opens up the transportation market in novel ways.
I imagine the solution will be vehicles that can ride the jetstream. The ticket will be one way, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be effective to circle the globe if the fuel is cheap or free.
While I don't expect a Chomsky fan to have any reasoning abilities found outside of a college sophomore with a chip on his shoulder, I'll respond anyway for other readers.
I'm just starting college, actually. I never went after high school.
1) China and Russia are laughing at us. This act will artificially drive up the price of cheap-carbon based fuel in the US, reducing US demand. Reduced US demand will lower the global price, making oil and coal MORE attractive options for the rest of the world. Their increased use will more than offset any possible reductions we could do, with this bill or any other.
Citation?
2) Folks like you are willing to spend billions of dollars and eviscerate our economy on the trillion dollar scale in a futile and arrogant attempt to turn back the clock. None from your side has ever talked about how we would deal with increased global temperatures, how we might mitigate any rising sea levels, or what the potential upsides to global warming are.
We've spent tens of trillions of dollars investing in arms and killing people for the last fifty years. Do you think that's a better investment?
3) The climate is always changing, even before we started emitting massive amounts of carbon or anything else. Go look up climate history and see that the best reconstructed information we have, in recorded human history and prior, shows the climate has been significantly warmer and significantly cooler than it is now.
So the weather changes, but burning up every drop of biomass stored in the earths crust in 150 years won't make a bit of difference, despite the fact that it's taken hundreds of millions of years to form in the first place.
The term 'global warming' lately has even been replaced with the term 'climate change.' This should tip off any prudent observer that it's all a blatant move to grab money and power. The climate is always changing, and as such, in the 'Climate Change' political environment, will always serve as a convienent excuse to expand taxes and the suffocating regulatory state.
Yes, the scientists have all banded together to RULE THE WORLD by telling us not to kill the planet and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Just like their conspiracy to deny the true fact of creation! Quick, someone call someone, and do something!
The problem isn't carbon emissions, the problem is folks like you who think they're infinately wiser than their fellow man and the free market, and see no problem with grasping all the money and power they can in order to force their good intentions on the rest of us.
The free market isn't wise. It has no self-awareness. It does not care if the human race survives, and is very poor at predicting the future or caring if we're in it.
And here's a shocker: scientists are you fellow man. So are politicians. Not every one of them is an evil person scheming to steal from you. Corporations, however, are legally required to dedicate themselves to scheming and profit. Otherwise their board is sued by the shareholders.
And don't you dare talk to me like I favor large smoke stacks bellowing thick black smoke over American cities, and dumping nasty chemicals into rivers. We solved those problems decades ago and I'm fine with that sort of regulation. Now we've got arrogant do-gooders on a mission with nothing good to do, and we'll all suffer for their hubris if not stopped.
I'll talk to you however I please. Those smokestacks have simply been moved elsewhere, and many American cities still suffer from pollution due to coal fired power plants that are not clean. Why did our jobs and the smokestacks get up and leave? Because dogmatic adherence to the free market - from people like you - led people to believe that buying cheap electronics from Asia instead of paying decent prices for American made products wouldn't hurt anybody. Take a look at any river in China or our manufacturing sector, and you'll see why I have to disagree.
The question is, if the stream is dead and you are dead, how did the market hold you accountable for your actions? Pollution is an act that is hard to rectify once it's completed, and often times is far more expensive to clean up than the money saved during the polluting period. If you want to leave pools of mercury on the ground to increase cancer rates and say the government can't be responsible once the company folds and the CEOs skip off to the Bahamas with a few million dollars, then make that argument, if you can.
If that cheap electricity violates your rights to life and property, you can sue the energy producer. You cannot sue me for wanting it.
I can vote for a candidate who promises to enact a law that says the days of cheap and dirty energy are over. And then he can push the law through congress, so that we can adjust to paying the real costs of energy instead of pretending that it will always be cheap, and pretending the pollution won't be a problem.
No one is saying you can't have a Hummer or a 60" plasma TV. They are saying you're going to have to pay the real cost of owning such things, since environmental destruction now has a greater price than zero.
The common areas? You mean, public property? I'm opposed to the entire non-concept of "public property". The sooner we privatize all property, the sooner we will have a healthier environment for people to live in and prosper.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that you called public property a non-concept. Obviously it's a concept, and one that you even understand. Is this the Emperor method of thinking critically? Just pretend it's not there, and it won't be? You can disagree with the concept, but that doesn't make it disappear.
The argument you're making is that if we made all of our national forests and parks private, then they would somehow not be developed and exploited to the point where humans didn't wipe out the local food chain, except for birds and squirrels. I don't even have to go into detail - just defend this one idea without stepping all over yourself, and feel free to provide some real life examples.
If you assume that people drive cross country every day for work instead of living in communities that are zoned according to energy costs and value mass transit investment instead of spending the money on roads at a ratio of 40 to 1, as we do in the states.
But you're not that stupid, are you?