Do you realize that 1/3rd of the student body is not US citizens so they have already given up their right to vote in the next election by enrolling at NYU as very few countries have absentee voting for students studying abroad. Looked at from that perspective 2/3rd does not seem that big a deal. Moreover students have a whole separate level of politics called student union elections where they can make their voices and opinions heard. They probably feel their time is better spent on the level of politics where they can make a difference than just turning up and voting for the Repulicrats or the Democraticans (frankly there is more difference in the policies of 2 communist party candidates standing for internal elections in China than between a Repulicrat and a Democratican of today)
Just what kind of company do you work for if it lets a bug which can disable key features to go out of System Test much less User Acceptance tests. Bugs in well tested software are found in production only in 2 cases - either its a once in a year scenario which didnt get tested or its due to a new feature which has interacted in an unexpected way with the existing production system. Neither case requires an emergency patch. In the first case you take your time to provide a patch and in the second case you rollback the feature upgrade which caused the problem and then take your time to provide a proper upgrade.
Since when is the right to property a fundamental right? Its an artificially created right and it has to be balanced with some checks and measures. I mean if the poor dont have anything worth stealing or protecting but still have to pay taxes to support a police force and a judiciary they are basically subsidising a private security infrastructure for the rich. If you dont want any balance abolish police and let everyone hire Blackwater for their safety. The poor wont be any worse off as in any case the police hardly ever investigate a poor mans murder but the rich would go bankrupt paying Blackwater fees. Its a public good when you want the poor to subsidize your safety force but a subsidy when the poor want something to safesuard their lives namely preventive healthcare.
Actually given the rise of the Indian stock market this week Mukesh Ambani - the owner of Reliance is now the worlds richest man worth something like 65 billion dollars. Of course the Indian stock market tends to fluctuate so he may go back to being 7th richest. Reminds me of when a few years back Wipro shares were very high and Azeem Premji was the worlds 3rd richest man for a while. Now he is not in the top 20.
Did u go to math class? Crusades were when Christianity was 1200 years old. Islam is around 1300 years old right now and is at the same age as when the Christians were doing crazy things like sending children on crusades (kind of like using children as suicide bombers nowadays). So yeah 1200 and 1300 differ by 100 but not enough to invalidate the point
The Pilgrims would have established a Saudi like state if they could but the fact is there were already other colonies in North America. Especially influential was the Dutch colony of New York which shared the Dutch attitude of tolerance and also had a large Jewish population who were definitely interested in freedom of religion. It is the influence of New York which has created a liberal USA otherwise USA might have gone the way of Latin America where the Catholic Church and the elites worked hand in hand to oppress the poor. Dont give too much credit to English colonists- if they could they would have women in burqas (or as Christians call it habits) but they couldnt due to the influence of the Dutch. (Segway When the constitution was being written there was talk of having a national language but it was finally dropped as based on population the national language would have been Dutch while most of the framers were English speaking so they decided to not have an official language and instead work unofficially to spread English)
Nah the problem is Islam is the latest major religion. Every religion is bull shit and when it is new it is made up of fanatics after all converts are always more fanatical . e.g. When Christianity was young there were all the crusades and wars of religion. Now that most Christians are actually practicing atheists the Christian world has become rational. The same will happen to the Muslim world when people stop believing and just pay lip service. But by then probably we will have a new crazy religion- Scientology, Bahai or maybe a whole new piece of shit. I say religion is bull shit but if you still must have one adopt one of the really old ones like Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism or maybe even the Egyptian religion of the pharaohs. At least these religions have had time to get rid of their fanaticism
Chinese are definitely getting richer. You only have to visit any Chinese city to find that out. Sure not everyone is getting rich equally but we have a name for everyone having the same amount of wealth- its called communism and whatever China is it is definitely not communist, hell its more capitalist than the US they dont even allow trade unions. And once people get rich they tend to demand other kinds of rights and get them too. For example look at the Blacks and Women in the USA. Till just a few years back they couldnt vote in the US nor could the poor who could not afford poll taxes. But they were allowed economic freedom by the rich white New England and California nobility and once they had enough economic power they used that as a base to demand political power too and got it. I dont think China will be any different. The references to slave labor are somewhat disingenous and hypocritical. What China does is use prisoners for working in factories without pay but so does the US- a lot of made in USA products would not be as cheap if they were not being produced by prison labor who get paid cents a day. And USA imprisons a far larger proportion of its population than China does (though thats probably because China executes a lot more than it incarcerates ). So slave labor apart there is cheap labor in China where people from the countryside move to the cities and work cheaply by city standards as it is still better than the village but they dont do it for long as they move on to better opportunities. Now till now there has been a continuing pool of villagers to replenish the workforce but now as development is finally reaching the western provinces the pool is drying out and salaries are rising in China. Salaries in Chinese factories have risen at 2 or 3 times the rate in US factories over the last 10 years and its simple math that the salaries and living standards will catch up. The joker in the pack is the 1 child policy which will speed up this phase for China and they will take a far shorter time than US took to make the transition.
You think China and Japan dont know this? They never expect to be paid back for all th treasury bonds they buy. They consider subsidizing the US consumer as a cost of doing business with the global cop. The huge military enforcing Pax Americana on the world needs to be paid for and as it maintains worldwide peace it is paid for by worldwide contributions via the use of the US dollar as a reserve currency. It was the same during the cold war except there were two economic block - those who used dollar as the trading currency and those who used ruble as the trading currency ergo the cold war was never about communism as otherwise communist countries like China and Yugoslavia would not have been on the American side as they were and capitalist countries like India would not have been on the Russian side. The US won that economic war and now the USD is the trade currency everywhere and as long the American military maintains Pax Americana, Americans can afford to consume all the luxuries they want and pay for it with worthless pieces of paper. This is very similar to the situation under the British empire where Britain exported very little but imported a lot from its colonies but could afford to do so as the colonies were not allowed to trade outside the pound sterling system. The brilliance of this is America has turned the entire world into its economic colony without having to deal with the negative repurcussions of holding political colonies. The only way this Golden Age of American consumerism could come to an end is if America loses in Iraq. If the world stops fearing the American military Pax Americana and the Dollar economy breaks down just like Pax Brittania and the Sterling economy ended after WW2. The bottomline is if Americans want to continue their luxurious lives victory in Iraq is necessary.
Its sustainable because US debt is backed not only by the largest economy in the world but by the strongest miltary. When the time comes for debtors to come calling they would have to deal with the fact that maybe the US just refuses to pay and then proceeds to bring democracy to your country (Iraq style). Looking at it that way the debtors would gladly not call in debt and in fact issue more worthless debt just as a price for survival. Basically when you owe the bank a million dollars you are in trouble , when you owe the bank a trillion dollars and you happen to be the mob the bank is in trouble. This free lunch is the reward Americans get for winning WW2 and establishing the USD as the international trade currency.
The problem with that reasoning is that you assume Chinese labor standards and living standards are static and will remain static. As more and more Chinese are getting rich from running export factories there is a trickledown effect and Chinese are becoming richer. Further they have a strict 1 child policy so their population will start falling soon and the shortage of labor will be at an exponential rate. So this phenomenon of cheap Chinese imports is a temporary one and soon there wont be any differences in cost of labor between US and China. This is good as then companies can compete based on innovation rather than exploiting cheap labor while at the same time a toilet cleaner in the US wont be getting paid more than a Phd Rocket Scientist in China (as it is now)
I will give you that modern medicine has a much better idea of human anatomy which has made possible a lot of surgery but that is surgery. Doctors are generally doctors of medicine or doctors of surgery. As far as medicines are concerned they are just compounds - they are found in nature or can be artificially manufactured but the chemical formula does not change only the level of purity changes. Further some natural plant extracts seem to work better than pure pharmaceuticals as often the extract will have secondary chemicals besides the main active ingredient and these can boost the effectiveness of the active ingredient.
Head On is not Homeopathic its Ayurvedic - which is the Ancient Indian system of medicine which basically uses a lot of plant oils and extracts as medicines. These are pretty much proven to work the best proof being most modern medicines which are not Antibiotics are just hyper purified versions or artificially synthesized versions of these plant based compounds. The one thing which modern medicine has achieved which ancient medicine did not is figure out that disgusting looking fungus can be good for you (that pretty much what antibiotics are)
The point is if the last war in Afghanistan had finished in a victory for state forces instead of American trained terrorists than terrorism would not have the credibility it has today as a successfull tactic. Nowadays people think it worked in Afghanistan and it worked in Kosovo so why not try it in Iraq,Palestine and Chechnya. Morality be damned its results that count. At the beginning of WW2 people would have been horrified at the thought of carpet bombing civilians but by the end of the war the American airforce had turned it into a norm. I am pretty sure the 8th Air Force was viewed by the world in the same way we view Al Qaeda today. But the fact is the standards for combat are always changing (there was a time when armies met on open fields and ambush was considered dishonorable) and its the victors who write the history. If Al Qaeda is able to win using terrorist tactics against Israel and America(kind of ironic as these tactics were developed by US special forces and Zionist revolutionaries), Al Qaeda will write the history and George Bush and Ariel Sharon will have reputations like Hitler in the history books (incidentally Churchill committed far worse atrocities during WW2 than Hitler e.g. the artificial Bengal famine of 42 but Hitler lost so everyone hates him and Churchill is a Hero Go Figure). George Bush is right when he says a War is going on but its not a war on terrorism - terrorism is just another tactic in this war- its a war between civilizations - the Judeo-Christian west and the Islamic Middle East/Africa. In this war any tactic will be used - from Hollywood movies showing Muslims as the bad guys to Al Qaeda movies showing Christians as the Thanksgiving Turkey. This war is going to be long and brutal. I am just glad I am Hindu. I am content to sit on the sidelines and watch the Muslims and Christians wipe each other out and when its all over we can pick up the pieces and build a new world order. Just kidding. Its actually pretty sad as both these civilizations have contributed a lot but this war was destined to happen the day Israel was created and now we are entering the endgame.
If only the Russians had developed this in the 80s they would have won in Afghanistan(by using these to clear the cave complexes) and Afghanistan would be a nice quite developed nation based on exports of oil, dry fruits and buddhist religious tourism instead of being the cradle of vicious terrorism. A Soviet victory in Afghanistan would have also meant Osama would be just another failed mujahiddin with no following and the Africa bombings, 9/11, Spain bombings and all the other shit would not have happened. Sigh if only communism was still alive the world would be so much a nicer place. Its not communism per se but the balance of power which ensured a relatively peacefull period of time in the late 20th century.
The US war in the Pacific was not a moral war. It was totally provoked by the US. If not what were US Air force and Army pilots doing flying Chinese air force planes and bombing Japanese bases long before Pearl Harbor and why did the US cut off oil supplies to Japan in time of war. Japan had a commercial agreement with the US but the US stopped selling them oil when they needed it most - when they were at war with China. Not only did they stop selling oil they put a blockade preventing oil supplies from Indonesia to come through to Japan. How would US react if Iran blocked the straits of Hormuz during the start of the Gulf war campaign? It would be considered an act of war. The pacific war was basically saying - its ok for white men to have colonies but not ok for yellow men to have colonies.
Oil is just carbon and hydrogen - the carbon comes from CO2 and the Hydrogen from H2O aka water for those raised in American public schools with no budget for chemistry. So yeah they can keep getting oil indefintely without depleting the soil - the oil is just acting as a carrier of solar energy from the sun stored by the plant
I'll show you mine if you show me yours or is that I wont show yours if you dont show mine to the world. Sounds like a bunch of preteens. Okay America is just 200 years old so its like a kid as far as nations go but what is France's excuse?
Or US Marines will refuse to get off the landing craft as they dont have enough Ipods to go around. So they will be airlifted by Ospreys half of which will crash killing half the invasion force. At this point the psychoanalysts will recommend a night out on the town (Paris preferably) to deal with their PTSD. At which point the marines would discover how worthless their dollars are that they cant even buy cigarettes. Around this point in time the marines would realize they are all Germans anyway (German is the largest ethnic group in the US) and ask for German/EU citizenship. And then they will go join the Shrimp Industry - Bubba Gump Shrimp anyone?
What the Russian scientists dont realize is that its not a mineral but leftover radiation shielding from the alien craft that crashed at Tunguska. No wonder they keep finding wierd minerals (more than 10 new ones a year) out there. The crash debris from an interstellar craft would have all kinds of novel materials and alloys.
In this episode Jack Ryan works for the Russian nuclear agency and is worried about the safety of American nuclear warheads so he comes to the US to inspect B 52s. Meanwhile someone explodes a nuke in Moscow and everyone thinks its the Americans as they have a hardliner president. The rest of the plot can remain the same and we have a new blockbuster. Or not. Americans are too chauvinistic to appreciate they are just as big doofuses as the Russians so while movies showing the russian nukes are in danger of getting lost work in Hollywood the same would not work for US nukes even though the Russians have actually never lost a nuke yet while the Americans just lost it again today. I say again for everyone knows they lost nuke material three times- Russia, France and Israel all got their nukes from lost American material.
My point is people do intolerant stuff all the time but at the same time expect others to be tolerant. Kind of a double standard. BTW my country India developed its bomb in 1974. In reaction to that the US set up the NPT and said everybody who had bombs till 1973 can have them but not after that - clearly targeted at India but India said fuck off and went ahead with development. Now the US is begging to be allowed to sell reactors in the US and is jumping through all kinds of loops to create exceptions to the NPT for India. Point is even after the exceptions India will probably develop its own reactors or buy them from the French Chinese or Russian who actually know how to build reactors - the US has not built one in 30 years. Too bad:(
So if everyone in the world doesnt agree that only 5 countries should have nuclear weapons I suppose the US should just let them be instead of going postal and bombing a country and putting sanctions on two more. I guess the US is uncivilized
Slashdot Mirror
Do you realize that 1/3rd of the student body is not US citizens so they have already given up their right to vote in the next election by enrolling at NYU as very few countries have absentee voting for students studying abroad. Looked at from that perspective 2/3rd does not seem that big a deal. Moreover students have a whole separate level of politics called student union elections where they can make their voices and opinions heard. They probably feel their time is better spent on the level of politics where they can make a difference than just turning up and voting for the Repulicrats or the Democraticans (frankly there is more difference in the policies of 2 communist party candidates standing for internal elections in China than between a Repulicrat and a Democratican of today)
Just what kind of company do you work for if it lets a bug which can disable key features to go out of System Test much less User Acceptance tests. Bugs in well tested software are found in production only in 2 cases - either its a once in a year scenario which didnt get tested or its due to a new feature which has interacted in an unexpected way with the existing production system. Neither case requires an emergency patch. In the first case you take your time to provide a patch and in the second case you rollback the feature upgrade which caused the problem and then take your time to provide a proper upgrade.
Since when is the right to property a fundamental right? Its an artificially created right and it has to be balanced with some checks and measures. I mean if the poor dont have anything worth stealing or protecting but still have to pay taxes to support a police force and a judiciary they are basically subsidising a private security infrastructure for the rich. If you dont want any balance abolish police and let everyone hire Blackwater for their safety. The poor wont be any worse off as in any case the police hardly ever investigate a poor mans murder but the rich would go bankrupt paying Blackwater fees. Its a public good when you want the poor to subsidize your safety force but a subsidy when the poor want something to safesuard their lives namely preventive healthcare.
Actually given the rise of the Indian stock market this week Mukesh Ambani - the owner of Reliance is now the worlds richest man worth something like 65 billion dollars. Of course the Indian stock market tends to fluctuate so he may go back to being 7th richest. Reminds me of when a few years back Wipro shares were very high and Azeem Premji was the worlds 3rd richest man for a while. Now he is not in the top 20.
Did u go to math class? Crusades were when Christianity was 1200 years old. Islam is around 1300 years old right now and is at the same age as when the Christians were doing crazy things like sending children on crusades (kind of like using children as suicide bombers nowadays). So yeah 1200 and 1300 differ by 100 but not enough to invalidate the point
The Pilgrims would have established a Saudi like state if they could but the fact is there were already other colonies in North America. Especially influential was the Dutch colony of New York which shared the Dutch attitude of tolerance and also had a large Jewish population who were definitely interested in freedom of religion. It is the influence of New York which has created a liberal USA otherwise USA might have gone the way of Latin America where the Catholic Church and the elites worked hand in hand to oppress the poor. Dont give too much credit to English colonists- if they could they would have women in burqas (or as Christians call it habits) but they couldnt due to the influence of the Dutch. (Segway When the constitution was being written there was talk of having a national language but it was finally dropped as based on population the national language would have been Dutch while most of the framers were English speaking so they decided to not have an official language and instead work unofficially to spread English)
Nah the problem is Islam is the latest major religion. Every religion is bull shit and when it is new it is made up of fanatics after all converts are always more fanatical . e.g. When Christianity was young there were all the crusades and wars of religion. Now that most Christians are actually practicing atheists the Christian world has become rational. The same will happen to the Muslim world when people stop believing and just pay lip service. But by then probably we will have a new crazy religion- Scientology, Bahai or maybe a whole new piece of shit. I say religion is bull shit but if you still must have one adopt one of the really old ones like Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism or maybe even the Egyptian religion of the pharaohs. At least these religions have had time to get rid of their fanaticism
Chinese are definitely getting richer. You only have to visit any Chinese city to find that out. Sure not everyone is getting rich equally but we have a name for everyone having the same amount of wealth- its called communism and whatever China is it is definitely not communist, hell its more capitalist than the US they dont even allow trade unions.
And once people get rich they tend to demand other kinds of rights and get them too. For example look at the Blacks and Women in the USA. Till just a few years back they couldnt vote in the US nor could the poor who could not afford poll taxes. But they were allowed economic freedom by the rich white New England and California nobility and once they had enough economic power they used that as a base to demand political power too and got it. I dont think China will be any different. The references to slave labor are somewhat disingenous and hypocritical. What China does is use prisoners for working in factories without pay but so does the US- a lot of made in USA products would not be as cheap if they were not being produced by prison labor who get paid cents a day. And USA imprisons a far larger proportion of its population than China does (though thats probably because China executes a lot more than it incarcerates ). So slave labor apart there is cheap labor in China where people from the countryside move to the cities and work cheaply by city standards as it is still better than the village but they dont do it for long as they move on to better opportunities. Now till now there has been a continuing pool of villagers to replenish the workforce but now as development is finally reaching the western provinces the pool is drying out and salaries are rising in China. Salaries in Chinese factories have risen at 2 or 3 times the rate in US factories over the last 10 years and its simple math that the salaries and living standards will catch up. The joker in the pack is the 1 child policy which will speed up this phase for China and they will take a far shorter time than US took to make the transition.
You think China and Japan dont know this? They never expect to be paid back for all th treasury bonds they buy. They consider subsidizing the US consumer as a cost of doing business with the global cop. The huge military enforcing Pax Americana on the world needs to be paid for and as it maintains worldwide peace it is paid for by worldwide contributions via the use of the US dollar as a reserve currency. It was the same during the cold war except there were two economic block - those who used dollar as the trading currency and those who used ruble as the trading currency ergo the cold war was never about communism as otherwise communist countries like China and Yugoslavia would not have been on the American side as they were and capitalist countries like India would not have been on the Russian side. The US won that economic war and now the USD is the trade currency everywhere and as long the American military maintains Pax Americana, Americans can afford to consume all the luxuries they want and pay for it with worthless pieces of paper. This is very similar to the situation under the British empire where Britain exported very little but imported a lot from its colonies but could afford to do so as the colonies were not allowed to trade outside the pound sterling system. The brilliance of this is America has turned the entire world into its economic colony without having to deal with the negative repurcussions of holding political colonies. The only way this Golden Age of American consumerism could come to an end is if America loses in Iraq. If the world stops fearing the American military Pax Americana and the Dollar economy breaks down just like Pax Brittania and the Sterling economy ended after WW2. The bottomline is if Americans want to continue their luxurious lives victory in Iraq is necessary.
Its sustainable because US debt is backed not only by the largest economy in the world but by the strongest miltary. When the time comes for debtors to come calling they would have to deal with the fact that maybe the US just refuses to pay and then proceeds to bring democracy to your country (Iraq style). Looking at it that way the debtors would gladly not call in debt and in fact issue more worthless debt just as a price for survival. Basically when you owe the bank a million dollars you are in trouble , when you owe the bank a trillion dollars and you happen to be the mob the bank is in trouble. This free lunch is the reward Americans get for winning WW2 and establishing the USD as the international trade currency.
The problem with that reasoning is that you assume Chinese labor standards and living standards are static and will remain static. As more and more Chinese are getting rich from running export factories there is a trickledown effect and Chinese are becoming richer. Further they have a strict 1 child policy so their population will start falling soon and the shortage of labor will be at an exponential rate. So this phenomenon of cheap Chinese imports is a temporary one and soon there wont be any differences in cost of labor between US and China. This is good as then companies can compete based on innovation rather than exploiting cheap labor while at the same time a toilet cleaner in the US wont be getting paid more than a Phd Rocket Scientist in China (as it is now)
I will give you that modern medicine has a much better idea of human anatomy which has made possible a lot of surgery but that is surgery. Doctors are generally doctors of medicine or doctors of surgery. As far as medicines are concerned they are just compounds - they are found in nature or can be artificially manufactured but the chemical formula does not change only the level of purity changes. Further some natural plant extracts seem to work better than pure pharmaceuticals as often the extract will have secondary chemicals besides the main active ingredient and these can boost the effectiveness of the active ingredient.
Head On is not Homeopathic its Ayurvedic - which is the Ancient Indian system of medicine which basically uses a lot of plant oils and extracts as medicines. These are pretty much proven to work the best proof being most modern medicines which are not Antibiotics are just hyper purified versions or artificially synthesized versions of these plant based compounds. The one thing which modern medicine has achieved which ancient medicine did not is figure out that disgusting looking fungus can be good for you (that pretty much what antibiotics are)
The point is if the last war in Afghanistan had finished in a victory for state forces instead of American trained terrorists than terrorism would not have the credibility it has today as a successfull tactic. Nowadays people think it worked in Afghanistan and it worked in Kosovo so why not try it in Iraq,Palestine and Chechnya. Morality be damned its results that count. At the beginning of WW2 people would have been horrified at the thought of carpet bombing civilians but by the end of the war the American airforce had turned it into a norm. I am pretty sure the 8th Air Force was viewed by the world in the same way we view Al Qaeda today. But the fact is the standards for combat are always changing (there was a time when armies met on open fields and ambush was considered dishonorable) and its the victors who write the history. If Al Qaeda is able to win using terrorist tactics against Israel and America(kind of ironic as these tactics were developed by US special forces and Zionist revolutionaries), Al Qaeda will write the history and George Bush and Ariel Sharon will have reputations like Hitler in the history books (incidentally Churchill committed far worse atrocities during WW2 than Hitler e.g. the artificial Bengal famine of 42 but Hitler lost so everyone hates him and Churchill is a Hero Go Figure). George Bush is right when he says a War is going on but its not a war on terrorism - terrorism is just another tactic in this war- its a war between civilizations - the Judeo-Christian west and the Islamic Middle East/Africa. In this war any tactic will be used - from Hollywood movies showing Muslims as the bad guys to Al Qaeda movies showing Christians as the Thanksgiving Turkey. This war is going to be long and brutal. I am just glad I am Hindu. I am content to sit on the sidelines and watch the Muslims and Christians wipe each other out and when its all over we can pick up the pieces and build a new world order. Just kidding.
Its actually pretty sad as both these civilizations have contributed a lot but this war was destined to happen the day Israel was created and now we are entering the endgame.
If only the Russians had developed this in the 80s they would have won in Afghanistan(by using these to clear the cave complexes) and Afghanistan would be a nice quite developed nation based on exports of oil, dry fruits and buddhist religious tourism instead of being the cradle of vicious terrorism. A Soviet victory in Afghanistan would have also meant Osama would be just another failed mujahiddin with no following and the Africa bombings, 9/11, Spain bombings and all the other shit would not have happened. Sigh if only communism was still alive the world would be so much a nicer place. Its not communism per se but the balance of power which ensured a relatively peacefull period of time in the late 20th century.
Pardon me didnt you mean making George Bush's critics (ala Valerie Plame) look bad?
The US war in the Pacific was not a moral war. It was totally provoked by the US. If not what were US Air force and Army pilots doing flying Chinese air force planes and bombing Japanese bases long before Pearl Harbor and why did the US cut off oil supplies to Japan in time of war. Japan had a commercial agreement with the US but the US stopped selling them oil when they needed it most - when they were at war with China. Not only did they stop selling oil they put a blockade preventing oil supplies from Indonesia to come through to Japan. How would US react if Iran blocked the straits of Hormuz during the start of the Gulf war campaign? It would be considered an act of war. The pacific war was basically saying - its ok for white men to have colonies but not ok for yellow men to have colonies.
Oil is just carbon and hydrogen - the carbon comes from CO2 and the Hydrogen from H2O aka water for those raised in American public schools with no budget for chemistry. So yeah they can keep getting oil indefintely without depleting the soil - the oil is just acting as a carrier of solar energy from the sun stored by the plant
I'll show you mine if you show me yours or is that I wont show yours if you dont show mine to the world. Sounds like a bunch of preteens. Okay America is just 200 years old so its like a kid as far as nations go but what is France's excuse?
One New republic. Twice invaded and saved by France. For sale to the highest bidding oil company
Or US Marines will refuse to get off the landing craft as they dont have enough Ipods to go around. So they will be airlifted by Ospreys half of which will crash killing half the invasion force. At this point the psychoanalysts will recommend a night out on the town (Paris preferably) to deal with their PTSD. At which point the marines would discover how worthless their dollars are that they cant even buy cigarettes. Around this point in time the marines would realize they are all Germans anyway (German is the largest ethnic group in the US) and ask for German/EU citizenship. And then they will go join the Shrimp Industry - Bubba Gump Shrimp anyone?
What the Russian scientists dont realize is that its not a mineral but leftover radiation shielding from the alien craft that crashed at Tunguska. No wonder they keep finding wierd minerals (more than 10 new ones a year) out there. The crash debris from an interstellar craft would have all kinds of novel materials and alloys.
In this episode Jack Ryan works for the Russian nuclear agency and is worried about the safety of American nuclear warheads so he comes to the US to inspect B 52s. Meanwhile someone explodes a nuke in Moscow and everyone thinks its the Americans as they have a hardliner president. The rest of the plot can remain the same and we have a new blockbuster. Or not. Americans are too chauvinistic to appreciate they are just as big doofuses as the Russians so while movies showing the russian nukes are in danger of getting lost work in Hollywood the same would not work for US nukes even though the Russians have actually never lost a nuke yet while the Americans just lost it again today. I say again for everyone knows they lost nuke material three times- Russia, France and Israel all got their nukes from lost American material.
My point is people do intolerant stuff all the time but at the same time expect others to be tolerant. Kind of a double standard. BTW my country India developed its bomb in 1974. In reaction to that the US set up the NPT and said everybody who had bombs till 1973 can have them but not after that - clearly targeted at India but India said fuck off and went ahead with development. Now the US is begging to be allowed to sell reactors in the US and is jumping through all kinds of loops to create exceptions to the NPT for India. Point is even after the exceptions India will probably develop its own reactors or buy them from the French Chinese or Russian who actually know how to build reactors - the US has not built one in 30 years. Too bad :(
So if everyone in the world doesnt agree that only 5 countries should have nuclear weapons I suppose the US should just let them be instead of going postal and bombing a country and putting sanctions on two more. I guess the US is uncivilized