(Mind you I lost some friends by maintaining skepticism over OBL)
I know what you mean. I lost some right wing friends before the Iraqi ware, because it didn't make sense and they were so certain it did. Of course, all the reasons they trumpted for going to war, are none of the reasons the use for having gone after the fact.
People who can't stand others who think differently, aren't worth having as friends. Fricking cult members.
Yes, that is the way things are now. These things have a tendancy to escalate over time. What I fear is coming, is a time when extradition treaties will simply be "you hand over the people who broke our laws, and we'll hand over the people who broke your laws."
As we ever more move towards having governments doing less our will, and more the will of the money powers in their respective countries, this seems more and more like a feasible reality. The time, IMO, to stop it is now, before it gets there. Of course, I'm under no delusions about being able to stop it now. As far as my government is concerned, I'm a warm, tax generating cog in the system. It would rather me know what it thinks is my place, than me know what our constitution says is my place.
And as more and more people accept their place as told to them by the political powers, the constitution loses more and more of its power. I'm digressing a bit here, but I believe these things are all tied in together on some level.
Certainly just 10 years ago, I think people would have been angry at the federal government for extraditing some guy who cracked video games. Now most people just don't care. They've accepted their new place.
Yeah, many do believe that. It's because of their own hostility towards those countries.
My opinion is, the US as a whole and in general, is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the key things of it is hypervigilance. I speak from personal experience now... To those who do not understand it, it seems like paranoia. But it isn't exactly the same as say, paranoid schitzophrenia where the persons mind just completley manufactures plots against them. It's fear of being hurt again, hyper defensiveness because of the trauma that people haven't taken the time to come to terms with yet on a real level. It's from this, that the "paranoia" comes, but it's rooted in real fear of real things, that have been magnified by emotions that haven't been dealt with.
When you're in this mindset, you view everything suspiciously, especially those who question your deciscions and what you do. Your fear rules you, your fear of being victimized again. I believe that the "crimes against humanity" comitted by soldiers in times of war is a result of this. Take Abu Graib, many of the soldiers involved are said to have been really "normal" people. What happens when you are exposed to trauma's, like seeing your friends killed, dead bodies lining the streets, etc... You begin to justify behaviors that you would normally find repulsive, in the name of stopping the things that have traumatized you. Because it is fear based, your deciscions are alot less logical and reasonable.
I don't know how to make people see this. I see it because I've been through it on a personal level. To many it sounds like psycho babel, but it isn't. It's a real phenomenon, that many veterans and abuse/rape victims have experienced. It is actually a normal human response. I think it might actually be a normal animal response to, as I have adopted an abused dog from a rescue, and I see signs of it in her.
Makes more sense and seems more likely to actually be useful and make money than any number of failed dot bombs.
The problem with starting it out as widely distributed is the marketability of such a system. If you walk into a university or corporation trying to sell them the idea of 2000 machines run by people around the States, they'll picture half of them as being 14 year olds with modem connections.
That might be overstating it a bit, but the way I see it, even if you have 1000 people with two machines each with high speed net connections, with each machine spec documented, I suspect it will still sound sketchy. And then there's the question of the apps... Many decent apps are already there for "traditional" clusters and your target market may well be people who already have apps written for their own smaller clustters, so it would be a much easier sell if they didn't have to port anything to a distributed environment.
If they wanted US dollars for oil, then why are Asian countries' foreign reserves in US dollars skyrocketing?
If you've read all my posts on this thread, I mentioned that there are other complexities with some trading partners. Asian trading partners enjoy an extremely interdependent relationship with us economically speaking. They need a strong dollar to keep their own economies going.
If you don't think Chavez' regime in Venezuela is worth demonizing, they you need serious help. Nationalizing oil interests, and converting the vast majority of oil revenue into bread and circuses is not a strategic plan for long term viability of oil exports.
No, I think you need seriously help. First of all, he was recently re-elected in a closely monitored election, which he won by a good majority. Second off, It is none of your business, nor mine, how the Venezuelan people choose to govern themselves, and frankly, I find it repugnant and arrogant of you and everyone who thinks like you, that you presume to judge another nation and it's democratically elected leader as deserving of demonization because you take issue with their domestic policies. I'll put money down that you know little about Venezuela and probably got your info from the same sources who "informed" you that Iraq had WMD.
Oh, but when foreigners demonize us for our domestic policies, you probably don't like that do you? Yeah, but I need serious help. Right.
the physical location of the criminal being the only important factor is absurd in many situations.
Consider the absurdity of bypassing traditional concepts of national jurisdiction. That person will be tried as an American, according to American law. Yet, he is not an American, never set foot in America(from what I've read), and did not commit the crime for which he is being prosecuted in America. It's bad precedent IMO. Bad and absurd, and could lead to legitimization of nonsense like this: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JP ost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1090294696522&p=1006688 055060
Now, I'm not a holocaust denier and as such, don't feel personally threatened by this in the slightest. But this is the most absurd example I know of with an authorative link available to demonstrate why I believe the way I do. We have to cling to the concepts of national borders and national jurisdictions with all our might, else, the rights we enjoy get trampled on by foreign powers thanks to the entangling alliances our politicians get our countries into.
Right now, America is doing the trampling, but tomorrow, it will be someone trampling on us.
I am dutch and can smoke whatever I want....Do we all 6.3 billion have to abide to the law of a mere 300 million?
Maybe when the lawyers get done mangling our laws all to hell, I can smoke pot while browsing Dutch websites and argue as my defense that I was physically manipulating bytes in Amsterdam at the time and thus should fall under Dutch law.
Think of how difficult it would be for Australia to prosecute an Australian for bank fraud committed against citizens in a foreign country, though-- they would have no power to compel witnesses, to subpoena most of the relevent evidence, etc. Not to mention that most prosecutors would care a lot more about cases where their direct constituents are the victim, rather than foreigners. It would be virtually impossible to prove a case under such circumstances.
Now that's a really good point I didn't think about. Mainly the witnesses and subpoena part. I still don't like the principle of it though. Technology might be able to address these issues in the coming years, but it's not quite there yet(I'm thinking video conferencing, etc...). Although to subpoena evidence in an international fraud case would seem easy enough, the non-electronic aspect of it would have to be shipped.
He committed a crime against me, in my territory and I deserve to have him tried in a court that follows my laws.
Well you've already judged him guilty so that's pretty much that.
And how many people judged Saddam Hussein guilty of having WMD?
Obviously, as in any other case, the judge would have to have had no personal involvement in the attacks. It's a judge's duty by law to be impartial
Yeah, I'm sure any given federal US judge is going to be impartial to Bin Laden. We would breed even more hatred if we attempted to try him in this country. It would be better if he was killed in a fight.
over any international court, which these days would almost necessarily be comprised primarily of countries not friendly to us and in many cases openly sympathetic to bin Laden's cause.
None of the countries you named here: France, Libya, China, Germany, Turkey, Spain, Canada and Greece
are openly sympathetic to bin Laden's cause. The one suspect on the list for me would be Libya, but they have made substantial disavowals of terrorism with real deeds. Do you really think France, Germany, Turkey, Spain, Canada, and Greece are hostile to us? China, maybe.
Thanks for the link... I was thinking more of actually setting up a cluster in one location as a business co-op. It would have far greater capabilities, but at far greater costs. It was just an idea. I don't think it's feasible to get 1000 people to put up a system and a very small amount of money per person to see it happen.
Yeah, I understand that a bit, I wasn't trying to put it down by saying "only" 500 nodes. It's just, pooling resources, a relatively small number of people could put together triple that number with relatively little out of pocket cost to each person. The interconnect speed wouldn't be as high, unless you got each person to purchase a blade, but dual gigabit interconnects on 1000 systems would still be a setup worthy of more than a few "interesting" problems. The trouble would be having a place to house it all, power, geography of system owners, etc... It was just an idea to throw out there.
You know, that only has ~500 nodes right? How many people out there are either out of work, or sick of doing what they're doing? Maybe we ought to get about 1000 of us nerds together in some kind of co-op, cluster our machines then rent it out? My main box is dual opterons and I already have 6 dual P-pro 200s clustered...
Yeah, I know, the logistics of it, the devil would be in every detail... Neat to think about though.
By this logic, arguably the US wouldn't be able to try Osama Bin Laden if he was captured, despite the fact that he allegedly facilitated and conspired in the murder of 3000 people in the US. And the country whose laws he was under at the time wasn't particularly interested in trying him either.
Don't you think, in the interest of fairness and justice, that Osama should be tried by an international court instead? Trying him in the US would be like letting the victim of an alleged crime be the judge of the accused.
Likewise, if someone committed bank fraud from Australia against the US, it would hardly be the Australian authorities investigating it, nor would anyone in Australia be damaged-- so it wouldn't exactly be very interesting to Australian prosecutors. Hence we have extradition treaties for this type of thing.
That's a good point. Except I find it hard to believe that Australia's legal system allows for its citizens to commit bank fraud on foreigners. I would think, in the interest of international good will, that they would prosecute people commiting such crimes. It makes more sense, in my opinion, than extradition treaties which ship people to other countries to be tried for crimes not comitted there. Extradition treaties, *IMO*, should be limited towards handing over people wanted for crimes comitted in foreign countries.
This really isn't as tricky as lawyers make it out to be. In fact, it's because of BSing lawyers that this is even complex. Who comittted the crime? The person, or the bits? Now, where was the person when he comitted the crime?
Yeah, I know fscking lawyers and politicians will argue otherwise, but really, this is truly the most logical way of looking at it.
Why should someone who commits crimes against someone in another country not be held liable for those crimes simply because of geographic boundaires?
I'm not going to touch the definition of crime bit with regards to warez, but I think if you commit a crime, you should be tried by the laws of the country you were in at the time you commited it.
I remember that. Yep. That was nice, but I really didn't get jazzed about sound until I got into mod files, played Star Control II and discovered the Gravis Ultra Sound, not neccesarily in that order but around the same time. Ah, the good old days. Then gravis hosed their windows95 drivers among other big mistakes and that was the end of that.
The parent posters theory on the other hand which states this is the only reason the US went to war is demonstrateably false though. I mean look at all the political brownie points they tried to score. That alone is a second reason.
I didn't state this was the ONLY reason. I believe it was the major reason. You mention the political brownie points they tried to score, I'm not clear who you mean by this? The current administration? The US trying to score brownie points by invading Iraq against world opinion? Please explain, it would help me understand your viewpoint better.
Versus other commodities that are traded in a variety of currencies.
What I meant here was, every barrell of oil on the commodities market, was purchased with dollars. So if your local pricing is in Euro's, your price already reflects a dollar exchange rate. You can not buy oil, as of right now, from any oil producing nation with anything but dollars. Compare this to coffee, gold, grains, etc...
I love your sarcasm, but kneejerk's like him won't see your point. The sad thing is, I'm not even left. There was a time in this country when being politically right meant something about your political principles of A) Limited government B) fiscal responsibility C) fostering rugged independence among individuals.
But thanks to snap happy knee jerk republican drones like that, it simply means anyone who does not believe everything the current administration says. It's a disgrace to everything real conservatives have worked for for the past 50 years.
What exactly is crazy about it? It's not like I'm saying that a secret world government is working with aliens...
Asia's foreign exchange reserves totally swamp any one oil producing country's oil revenues.
How does this contradict anything I said? Think about this... Why does Asia hold dollars and not Euro's? Why does any industrialized nation choose to hold dollars, despite our debt, despite our deficits, despite the worldwide illwill towards America? Answer: They need oil and oil is priced only in dollars. This is a simple answer, there are other complexities involved with certain trading partners, but by and large, this is the answer.
Furthermore, oil is traded on markets.
Yes, in dollars. Versus other commodities that are traded in a variety of currencies. No dollar, no oil.
Saddam era Iraq would have needed a handful of other countrys togo along with him in a game of brinksmanship to try to tweak the oil market enough to change its ways.
Yes, I never at any point claimed Iraq could do much on its own. What we feared, what we always fear, was the "domino effect". Iran and Venezuela were both toying with the idea of pricing their oil in something other than dollars. While you can no doubt conjure up enough islamo fascist demons to demonstrate why we would target Iran, why did we suddenly villainize Venezuela? You'll see as we go forward, any oil producing country that talks about selling oil in anything but dollars will be quickly villainized. We can't allow it if US hegemony is to continue.
Pricing oil in Euros was a political tactic, but not one that would ever succeed
Definetly not with one country doing it, but if a substantial number of oil producing countries were to do it, it would succeed. There is nothing crazy in what I'm saying at all. I think you're thinking I'm saying that if Iraq continued to do that by itself it would have toppled us. I wasn't saying that. If a substantial number of oil producing countries began pricing their oil in Euro's, there would be a large number of countries who would reduce their dollar reserves and increase their Euro reserves. This would greatly impact the value of the dollar and would substantially reduce our ability to sway other nations.
Somebody mod parent funny. From the article: Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
I guess I shouldn't be laughing so hard that this answer is under the frequently asked questions section on the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory website, but I really can't help myself.
Nice try... Face the facts, you guys are stuck with us. The second you try to buddy up with the Europeans, GW will proclaim you a rogue state, that you are harboring terrorists, and that you are stockpiling WMD. Within a few months, we will bomb you, occupy you, and proclaim you liberated.
On a serious note(yes, I was joking), you don't realize this yet, but it's the Euro that gives the EU the strength to stand up to us(speaking US centric here). Alot of people don't seem aware of this, but Iraq was a proxy war against the Euro. Saddam began selling oil in Euros back in '99 and because of the strength of the Euro, this proved lucrative for Iraq. Other Oil producing nations were talking about doing it as a result. That would have threatened the dollars standing as the world reserve currency, and thus, Americas ability to live the good life on credit. As long as oil is priced in dollars, everyone needs our dollars and they need our dollars to be valuable, so they work towards making them valuable.
I know this whole thread is somewhat offtopic, but it really sucks that so few people seem to grasp the signifigance of all this. If you wanted to stand up to the US for real, you would need to embrace the EUs currency. The power of the US is rooted in the power of the dollar. Thems the facts. If the world rejected the US dollar as its reserve currency, and oil was suddenly priced in non-dollars, our ability to make war would be cut out from underneath us and our economy would collapse.
Research fiat banking and the history of it and you'll begin to understand why this is.
Slashdot Mirror
(Mind you I lost some friends by maintaining skepticism over OBL)
I know what you mean. I lost some right wing friends before the Iraqi ware, because it didn't make sense and they were so certain it did. Of course, all the reasons they trumpted for going to war, are none of the reasons the use for having gone after the fact.
People who can't stand others who think differently, aren't worth having as friends. Fricking cult members.
Yes, that is the way things are now. These things have a tendancy to escalate over time. What I fear is coming, is a time when extradition treaties will simply be "you hand over the people who broke our laws, and we'll hand over the people who broke your laws."
As we ever more move towards having governments doing less our will, and more the will of the money powers in their respective countries, this seems more and more like a feasible reality. The time, IMO, to stop it is now, before it gets there. Of course, I'm under no delusions about being able to stop it now. As far as my government is concerned, I'm a warm, tax generating cog in the system. It would rather me know what it thinks is my place, than me know what our constitution says is my place.
And as more and more people accept their place as told to them by the political powers, the constitution loses more and more of its power. I'm digressing a bit here, but I believe these things are all tied in together on some level.
Certainly just 10 years ago, I think people would have been angry at the federal government for extraditing some guy who cracked video games. Now most people just don't care. They've accepted their new place.
Yeah, many do believe that. It's because of their own hostility towards those countries.
My opinion is, the US as a whole and in general, is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the key things of it is hypervigilance. I speak from personal experience now... To those who do not understand it, it seems like paranoia. But it isn't exactly the same as say, paranoid schitzophrenia where the persons mind just completley manufactures plots against them. It's fear of being hurt again, hyper defensiveness because of the trauma that people haven't taken the time to come to terms with yet on a real level. It's from this, that the "paranoia" comes, but it's rooted in real fear of real things, that have been magnified by emotions that haven't been dealt with.
When you're in this mindset, you view everything suspiciously, especially those who question your deciscions and what you do. Your fear rules you, your fear of being victimized again. I believe that the "crimes against humanity" comitted by soldiers in times of war is a result of this. Take Abu Graib, many of the soldiers involved are said to have been really "normal" people. What happens when you are exposed to trauma's, like seeing your friends killed, dead bodies lining the streets, etc... You begin to justify behaviors that you would normally find repulsive, in the name of stopping the things that have traumatized you. Because it is fear based, your deciscions are alot less logical and reasonable.
I don't know how to make people see this. I see it because I've been through it on a personal level. To many it sounds like psycho babel, but it isn't. It's a real phenomenon, that many veterans and abuse/rape victims have experienced. It is actually a normal human response. I think it might actually be a normal animal response to, as I have adopted an abused dog from a rescue, and I see signs of it in her.
Anyway, this is my opinion.
Makes more sense and seems more likely to actually be useful and make money than any number of failed dot bombs.
The problem with starting it out as widely distributed is the marketability of such a system. If you walk into a university or corporation trying to sell them the idea of 2000 machines run by people around the States, they'll picture half of them as being 14 year olds with modem connections.
That might be overstating it a bit, but the way I see it, even if you have 1000 people with two machines each with high speed net connections, with each machine spec documented, I suspect it will still sound sketchy. And then there's the question of the apps... Many decent apps are already there for "traditional" clusters and your target market may well be people who already have apps written for their own smaller clustters, so it would be a much easier sell if they didn't have to port anything to a distributed environment.
If they wanted US dollars for oil, then why are Asian countries' foreign reserves in US dollars skyrocketing?
If you've read all my posts on this thread, I mentioned that there are other complexities with some trading partners. Asian trading partners enjoy an extremely interdependent relationship with us economically speaking. They need a strong dollar to keep their own economies going.
If you don't think Chavez' regime in Venezuela is worth demonizing, they you need serious help. Nationalizing oil interests, and converting the vast majority of oil revenue into bread and circuses is not a strategic plan for long term viability of oil exports.
No, I think you need seriously help. First of all, he was recently re-elected in a closely monitored election, which he won by a good majority. Second off, It is none of your business, nor mine, how the Venezuelan people choose to govern themselves, and frankly, I find it repugnant and arrogant of you and everyone who thinks like you, that you presume to judge another nation and it's democratically elected leader as deserving of demonization because you take issue with their domestic policies. I'll put money down that you know little about Venezuela and probably got your info from the same sources who "informed" you that Iraq had WMD.
Oh, but when foreigners demonize us for our domestic policies, you probably don't like that do you? Yeah, but I need serious help. Right.
the physical location of the criminal being the only important factor is absurd in many situations.
P ost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1090294696522&p=1006688 055060
Consider the absurdity of bypassing traditional concepts of national jurisdiction. That person will be tried as an American, according to American law. Yet, he is not an American, never set foot in America(from what I've read), and did not commit the crime for which he is being prosecuted in America. It's bad precedent IMO. Bad and absurd, and could lead to legitimization of nonsense like this:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=J
Now, I'm not a holocaust denier and as such, don't feel personally threatened by this in the slightest. But this is the most absurd example I know of with an authorative link available to demonstrate why I believe the way I do. We have to cling to the concepts of national borders and national jurisdictions with all our might, else, the rights we enjoy get trampled on by foreign powers thanks to the entangling alliances our politicians get our countries into.
Right now, America is doing the trampling, but tomorrow, it will be someone trampling on us.
I am dutch and can smoke whatever I want. ...Do we all 6.3 billion have to abide to the law of a mere 300 million?
Maybe when the lawyers get done mangling our laws all to hell, I can smoke pot while browsing Dutch websites and argue as my defense that I was physically manipulating bytes in Amsterdam at the time and thus should fall under Dutch law.
Think of how difficult it would be for Australia to prosecute an Australian for bank fraud committed against citizens in a foreign country, though-- they would have no power to compel witnesses, to subpoena most of the relevent evidence, etc. Not to mention that most prosecutors would care a lot more about cases where their direct constituents are the victim, rather than foreigners. It would be virtually impossible to prove a case under such circumstances.
Now that's a really good point I didn't think about. Mainly the witnesses and subpoena part. I still don't like the principle of it though. Technology might be able to address these issues in the coming years, but it's not quite there yet(I'm thinking video conferencing, etc...). Although to subpoena evidence in an international fraud case would seem easy enough, the non-electronic aspect of it would have to be shipped.
He committed a crime against me, in my territory and I deserve to have him tried in a court that follows my laws.
Well you've already judged him guilty so that's pretty much that.
And how many people judged Saddam Hussein guilty of having WMD?
Obviously, as in any other case, the judge would have to have had no personal involvement in the attacks. It's a judge's duty by law to be impartial
Yeah, I'm sure any given federal US judge is going to be impartial to Bin Laden. We would breed even more hatred if we attempted to try him in this country. It would be better if he was killed in a fight.
over any international court, which these days would almost necessarily be comprised primarily of countries not friendly to us and in many cases openly sympathetic to bin Laden's cause.
None of the countries you named here:
France, Libya, China, Germany, Turkey, Spain, Canada and Greece
are openly sympathetic to bin Laden's cause. The one suspect on the list for me would be Libya, but they have made substantial disavowals of terrorism with real deeds. Do you really think France, Germany, Turkey, Spain, Canada, and Greece are hostile to us? China, maybe.
Thanks for the link... I was thinking more of actually setting up a cluster in one location as a business co-op. It would have far greater capabilities, but at far greater costs. It was just an idea. I don't think it's feasible to get 1000 people to put up a system and a very small amount of money per person to see it happen.
Yeah, I understand that a bit, I wasn't trying to put it down by saying "only" 500 nodes. It's just, pooling resources, a relatively small number of people could put together triple that number with relatively little out of pocket cost to each person. The interconnect speed wouldn't be as high, unless you got each person to purchase a blade, but dual gigabit interconnects on 1000 systems would still be a setup worthy of more than a few "interesting" problems. The trouble would be having a place to house it all, power, geography of system owners, etc... It was just an idea to throw out there.
You know, that only has ~500 nodes right? How many people out there are either out of work, or sick of doing what they're doing? Maybe we ought to get about 1000 of us nerds together in some kind of co-op, cluster our machines then rent it out? My main box is dual opterons and I already have 6 dual P-pro 200s clustered...
Yeah, I know, the logistics of it, the devil would be in every detail... Neat to think about though.
I don't think it was the parent posters intent to compare the warez guy to Osama, he was just countering my viewpoint on extradition.
By this logic, arguably the US wouldn't be able to try Osama Bin Laden if he was captured, despite the fact that he allegedly facilitated and conspired in the murder of 3000 people in the US. And the country whose laws he was under at the time wasn't particularly interested in trying him either.
Don't you think, in the interest of fairness and justice, that Osama should be tried by an international court instead? Trying him in the US would be like letting the victim of an alleged crime be the judge of the accused.
Likewise, if someone committed bank fraud from Australia against the US, it would hardly be the Australian authorities investigating it, nor would anyone in Australia be damaged-- so it wouldn't exactly be very interesting to Australian prosecutors. Hence we have extradition treaties for this type of thing.
That's a good point. Except I find it hard to believe that Australia's legal system allows for its citizens to commit bank fraud on foreigners. I would think, in the interest of international good will, that they would prosecute people commiting such crimes. It makes more sense, in my opinion, than extradition treaties which ship people to other countries to be tried for crimes not comitted there. Extradition treaties, *IMO*, should be limited towards handing over people wanted for crimes comitted in foreign countries.
Where did the crime occur though?
This really isn't as tricky as lawyers make it out to be. In fact, it's because of BSing lawyers that this is even complex. Who comittted the crime? The person, or the bits? Now, where was the person when he comitted the crime?
Yeah, I know fscking lawyers and politicians will argue otherwise, but really, this is truly the most logical way of looking at it.
Why should someone who commits crimes against someone in another country not be held liable for those crimes simply because of geographic boundaires?
I'm not going to touch the definition of crime bit with regards to warez, but I think if you commit a crime, you should be tried by the laws of the country you were in at the time you commited it.
I remember that. Yep. That was nice, but I really didn't get jazzed about sound until I got into mod files, played Star Control II and discovered the Gravis Ultra Sound, not neccesarily in that order but around the same time. Ah, the good old days. Then gravis hosed their windows95 drivers among other big mistakes and that was the end of that.
The parent posters theory on the other hand which states this is the only reason the US went to war is demonstrateably false though. I mean look at all the political brownie points they tried to score. That alone is a second reason.
I didn't state this was the ONLY reason. I believe it was the major reason. You mention the political brownie points they tried to score, I'm not clear who you mean by this? The current administration? The US trying to score brownie points by invading Iraq against world opinion? Please explain, it would help me understand your viewpoint better.
I should correct something...
Versus other commodities that are traded in a variety of currencies.
What I meant here was, every barrell of oil on the commodities market, was purchased with dollars. So if your local pricing is in Euro's, your price already reflects a dollar exchange rate. You can not buy oil, as of right now, from any oil producing nation with anything but dollars. Compare this to coffee, gold, grains, etc...
I love your sarcasm, but kneejerk's like him won't see your point. The sad thing is, I'm not even left. There was a time in this country when being politically right meant something about your political principles of A) Limited government B) fiscal responsibility C) fostering rugged independence among individuals.
But thanks to snap happy knee jerk republican drones like that, it simply means anyone who does not believe everything the current administration says. It's a disgrace to everything real conservatives have worked for for the past 50 years.
YES! And then the reparations begin. Can you start with Winnipeg?
;)
I'll see what I can do, but I suspect we'll hit areas in Quebec first since they speak french.
What about what I said logically indicates that I am left? Can you explain that?
Do you really believe this crazy talk?
What exactly is crazy about it? It's not like I'm saying that a secret world government is working with aliens...
Asia's foreign exchange reserves totally swamp any one oil producing country's oil revenues.
How does this contradict anything I said? Think about this... Why does Asia hold dollars and not Euro's? Why does any industrialized nation choose to hold dollars, despite our debt, despite our deficits, despite the worldwide illwill towards America? Answer: They need oil and oil is priced only in dollars. This is a simple answer, there are other complexities involved with certain trading partners, but by and large, this is the answer.
Furthermore, oil is traded on markets.
Yes, in dollars. Versus other commodities that are traded in a variety of currencies. No dollar, no oil.
Saddam era Iraq would have needed a handful of other countrys togo along with him in a game of brinksmanship to try to tweak the oil market enough to change its ways.
Yes, I never at any point claimed Iraq could do much on its own. What we feared, what we always fear, was the "domino effect". Iran and Venezuela were both toying with the idea of pricing their oil in something other than dollars. While you can no doubt conjure up enough islamo fascist demons to demonstrate why we would target Iran, why did we suddenly villainize Venezuela? You'll see as we go forward, any oil producing country that talks about selling oil in anything but dollars will be quickly villainized. We can't allow it if US hegemony is to continue. Pricing oil in Euros was a political tactic, but not one that would ever succeed
Definetly not with one country doing it, but if a substantial number of oil producing countries were to do it, it would succeed. There is nothing crazy in what I'm saying at all. I think you're thinking I'm saying that if Iraq continued to do that by itself it would have toppled us. I wasn't saying that. If a substantial number of oil producing countries began pricing their oil in Euro's, there would be a large number of countries who would reduce their dollar reserves and increase their Euro reserves. This would greatly impact the value of the dollar and would substantially reduce our ability to sway other nations.
Somebody mod parent funny. From the article:
Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
I guess I shouldn't be laughing so hard that this answer is under the frequently asked questions section on the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory website, but I really can't help myself.
Nice try... Face the facts, you guys are stuck with us. The second you try to buddy up with the Europeans, GW will proclaim you a rogue state, that you are harboring terrorists, and that you are stockpiling WMD. Within a few months, we will bomb you, occupy you, and proclaim you liberated.
On a serious note(yes, I was joking), you don't realize this yet, but it's the Euro that gives the EU the strength to stand up to us(speaking US centric here). Alot of people don't seem aware of this, but Iraq was a proxy war against the Euro. Saddam began selling oil in Euros back in '99 and because of the strength of the Euro, this proved lucrative for Iraq. Other Oil producing nations were talking about doing it as a result. That would have threatened the dollars standing as the world reserve currency, and thus, Americas ability to live the good life on credit. As long as oil is priced in dollars, everyone needs our dollars and they need our dollars to be valuable, so they work towards making them valuable.
I know this whole thread is somewhat offtopic, but it really sucks that so few people seem to grasp the signifigance of all this. If you wanted to stand up to the US for real, you would need to embrace the EUs currency. The power of the US is rooted in the power of the dollar. Thems the facts. If the world rejected the US dollar as its reserve currency, and oil was suddenly priced in non-dollars, our ability to make war would be cut out from underneath us and our economy would collapse.
Research fiat banking and the history of it and you'll begin to understand why this is.