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The Forum > Article Comments > The corporate and economic reasons for war > Comments

The corporate and economic reasons for war : Comments

By Chris Shaw, published 10/11/2006

No dispute ever had to fly the conference table and take to arms. War is the greatest card-trick in history.

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Nice to see an article pointing out the economic rationale for many of our wars.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is all economic reasons, issues of security are still part of the equation, they're just a much smaller part than we are told.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 10 November 2006 9:11:54 AM
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Dear Chris
Most of what you said... as I've intimated before...is quite true.

I feel you are missing some vital aspects of the big picture.

You characterize the 'religion' aspect and them/us as an artificial construct which you basically blame on Corporates Identities who's only goal is 'Profit uber alles'.

When it comes to Islam, such is not the case. Granted, the interests you identify will make use of this spiritual divide and seek to exacerbate it if they see profit in it, but..and its a huge but...
that is just one side of the story.

You need to see this... "Obsession: The Threat of Radical Islam"

Now.. its
-Produced by a Jew
-Shown on Fox news
-Has been shown in a very 'election' timely way.

So, of course, with those credentials it could not possibly have any credibility whatsoever right ?

But look more closely. Look at the actual words spoken by the Islamists...Look at Ahmedinajads mouth..when he utters the words "Islam will rule....all the mountain tops of the world" (then look at his military expansion and war games and Nuclear program)

at another ..saying "We (Muslims) ruled the world before and we will do it again"

or another (Hamza) saying "If you meet a kafir in a Muslim country, you can":
-Take him to the market and sell him
-Kill him.

Or another saying "We will see the Black Stone (Khaba)rule the white house.
Another yelling "Death to America" on US streets protected by US law.

Others saying "We will put our flags in Downing street"
LOOK...at this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E4rMJVHyeg

These words were not put in their mouths by the CIA mate... they come from the Quran, and Islamic history and the very nature of this faith.

Footage was taken from Arab/Islamic news casts.

If you think you have provided us with the one 'key' to human conflict you are seriously mistaken mate.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Friday, 10 November 2006 9:52:48 AM
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To Chris, excellent article, mate, expect more of the same now with the gratifying change in the Americana Congress.

To Boaz, bit disappointed right now with your remarks. In fact, was hoping with the chance now for more Socratic Reasoning in America, that our side at least will give away laying the blame and separating our world into goodies and baddies. Let's hope that GWB will now resist his nasty temptations about an Axis of Evil. Such nasty phrases spoken out loud are not meant to tame but only spoken by idiotic world leaders about nations they know they can crush.
Let us hope what is happening in Iraq, and still predicted yesterday to still last a long time, will teach future headstrong unipolarists a never forgotten historical lesson.
Posted by bushbred, Friday, 10 November 2006 11:49:35 AM
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"Security" of what TurnRightThenLeft?
"Security" for whom?

It most certainly isn't 'security' for the jobs and lives of the sons and daughters of working class families ...which includes, of course, the lower echelons of the so-called 'middle class'!

You must be referring to the 'security' of "America's/Australia's interests" ... whatever the hell that means.

'Ordinary' American or Australian citizens neither start nor profit in any way from the "humanitarian" wars and 'police actions' that are cynically planned and 'managed' by and in the 'interests' of Corporate 'players' and their silent partners - wealthy shareholders/owners of the myriad military-industrial corporations, their sub-contractors and various parasitic 'service providers'.
Posted by Sowat, Friday, 10 November 2006 11:52:41 AM
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I must start by commending BOAZ_David for his response, as I think he has focused in on the only important issue facing us today.

That said, I consider myself an innocent in affairs of finance, as things seem so simple to me, but I must be wrong. I would appreciate correction from the more astute posters.

The first thing I cannot understand is why people hate banks. Banks are only intermediaries, between depositors and borrowers. Depositors are investing their funds for a reasonable return. Is that wrong? Should they not get a return? Should they donate their capital to the government and then commit suicide?

The second thing I cannot understand is why people borrow money to buy luxury consumables. I have always lived by the maxim that the only essential things in this world are bread, water, and elementary shelter to keep off the rain. Everything else is a luxury. You can buy luxuries, but what you do is save the money first, and then buy the luxury with cash. Why do people borrow? You have to borrow to buy some assets, such as housing, but they are assets.

The result of my philosophy is that I have more money than I can spend, and yet I still keep an eye out for ways to save money and to spend as little as possible. Is this wrong? Do I have a duty to waste? I am constantly being bombarded by banks to have my credit limit increased. I agree every time, but don't borrow. I get the feeling that I am committing economic terrorism, by not indulging in this orgy of spending. Am I wrong? Please advise me.
Posted by plerdsus, Friday, 10 November 2006 1:51:41 PM
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Sowat, when I refer to 'security' I am referring to action taken to prevent the threat of armed conflict. Kind of ironic insofar as it's triggering armed conflict, but it's more an issue of hitting first.

As I said... I don't think it's the primary reason. I certainly don't think it's a good one, and I don't believe we're at any real threat from terrorists.

But evidently some do. It's all well and good to characterise the bush administration (in cahoots with faceless economic overlords) as some evil empire out to spread their control.

And it's part right. But ultimately, I still think they believe they are doing the right thing... even if it is horrendously wrong and awfully convenient for their purposes.
If we can learn anything from Iraq it is that powerful people can screw up too.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 10 November 2006 1:59:11 PM
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An excellent article Chris but there is much more that could have been said.
Oil Politics and International Banking have been manipulating the destiny of mankind for generations.

I wonder how many people know that Hitler and the Russian revolution were both financed by Wall Street or that the Federal Reserve Bank of America is privately owned?
How many are aware of the direct link between Middle East Oil and America’s involvement in both World Wars, let alone current events?
How many know that the entry of the US into both wars (as well as Vietnam and several other theatres) were contrived and staged events?
Who knows that Ho Chi Minh was armed by the USA with weapons left over from WW2?
How many have noticed the trend toward private acquisition of energy and water supplies over the last 20 years by the World Bank?
How many are aware of the link between the Balkan war and Armenia, China and natural gas supplies from the Caspian region?
How many know that much of the oil they thought was coming from the Middle East actually comes from the Caspian area via extended pipelines?
How many know about the direct link between the establishment of national centralised banking systems in each country after wars and that these banks are all in turn centrally controlled?
How many know the history of the Rockefeller and Rothschild dynasties and their influence on world history?
How many know that the US (and our) education system was deliberately devised to produce workers and not thinkers?
How many know about plans to control global Internet content?
How many have even heard of the Club of Rome and the Global 2000 report that concluded that the world population must be drastically reduced by war, famine or disease?

The short answer is that not many do. The truth is that not many even care.
In fact, despite all their protestations, all most people really want is a quiet comfortable life.

(Cont)
Posted by wobbles, Friday, 10 November 2006 3:08:45 PM
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(Cont)
Other quotes you could have used were –

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centres has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson." - Roosevelt 1933

"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." Disraeli 1844

"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure." Joseph Kennedy

"Allow me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who writes the laws." – Rothschild 1828

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it..." General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

"The New World Order is a world that has a supernational authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization that would control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that would replace the dollar; a World Development Fund that would make funds available to free and Communist nations alike; and an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World Order." Former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt
Posted by wobbles, Friday, 10 November 2006 3:10:02 PM
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Chris and Brushy
I’ve taken some quotes from the PNAC web site, and found myself amazed at how they ring true, and have been my own exact words without ever having even read them on this site before.
Reasons? simple the old ‘1, 2’.. Human nature and History.

Wobbles. the FED.. ok.. run with this. You really mean ‘Jewish_Banking_Cartel_Conspiracy’ right?
State it clearly then defend it. (Ted Lapkin.. r_u_reading ?)

My Own Assessment.
1/ Iraq Status Quo prior to invasion.

a) Sunni (25% of the population) held power AND... privilege. They benefited unfairly from the nations resources which were not allocated in any way reflecting the population ethnic breakdown.
b) Shia and Kurd. Neglected (deliberately) attacked, gassed, marginalized.

2/ Iraq and PNAC plans for its renewal.

<“In addition, the NEW constitution provides for a distribution of oil revenue along PER-CAPITA lines, preventing either the Kurdish north or Shiite south from hoarding the country's wealth”>

DO YOU SEE THIS ? and do you object to equitable distribution ?

USA guided Iraq=Equity for all Iraqi’s.
SUNNI guided Iraq=Oppression,Greed,Mass killings,

OBSTACLES to a fairly run Iraqi Government: (From PNAC... and common sense)

<“Nevertheless.., the Sunnis face two fundamental choices, neither pleasant. They can accept the new constitution, in which, as a minority, they lose their long-held dominance over Iraq. Or they can continue to reject the constitution and hope that a prolonged insurgency will somehow bring them back to power.”>

YES.. wars ARE about ‘resources’ Chris... grabbing them and keeping them and the suggestion that this is a sin of just the USA is almost a bare faced lie at worst or simple historical naivity at best.

The mind boggles. The “poor hapless Kurds” have in the past brutally massacred Assyrian Christians. (that is why they are so FEW) The Shia have been fighting the Sunni’s since the Abbasyds and Ummayyads (Hatfields and Mcoys of the middle east). Its about “who is the true Muslim” and importantly.. ‘who’ controls the resources.

Clearinghouse.info ? what a joke. Pilger ? Laughable. WHAT are they suggesting as an alternative ? ‘International Socialism’ –insulting !
Posted by BOAZ_David, Friday, 10 November 2006 3:59:41 PM
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Those wicked, wicked bankers! It is enough to make me become a Marxist. Viva Chavez! Viva Morales!

That wars and coups take place for economic reasons is well known. I hadn't seen that angle before on the dismissal and I suppose it is quite plausible. That politicians are beholden to their financial backers is also well known.

That all financiers are in cahoots together in a grand global conspiracy is a bit far fetched. It just goes against the "you can fool some of the people all of the time" principle.
Posted by gusi, Friday, 10 November 2006 4:33:55 PM
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Yes, what you are saying is correct, Boaz, as the prime causes of war, mostly just pure hatred and greed.

But these should be only the causes of small wars, which in our modern situation should be looked into by Willy Brandt's New World Order, only a different name for Immanuel Kant's late 18th century idea for a World Federation of
Nations.

Of course, we had the UN replace the failed pre-WW2 League of Nations. But then since WW2, we have had the growing might of the US-of-A, to which we had been so thankful for the role it has played against dangerous Soviet Russia.

But as regards New World Orders, not long after the end of the Soviets - in the 1990's we began to have statements from a so-called democratic US about a different New World Order, White House neo-cons blatantly declaring that the 21st century will belong to America, and don't you all forget it.

Before 9/11 we then had the US prodding the UN as well as the world about the need for regime change in the ME, especially in Iraq, but the US still allowed to expand its nuclear weaponry - with other nations, especially those in the Middle-East to have an eye kept on them by the UN. Meaning of course, not the UN but the US, which for long now has been operating the UN's buttons and levers.

So behind your little wars, you have the world's most powerful nation, with loyal Britain and Australia to assist it, virtually playing dice with small nation's problems in the UN.

Also, Boaz, we might well ask what has Israel's stock of nuclear weaponry to do with small nation's arguments? Except of course, Iran which with a nuclear Israel nearly next door, should have the right for itself to go militarily nuclear as well.

Finally, with the US Republicans now pretty well neutered,we might have the White House before a World Court, not only to look into America's illegal attack on Iraq, but Israel's unlawful store of nuclear weaponry, the US and UN both implicated.
Posted by bushbred, Friday, 10 November 2006 5:36:14 PM
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Dear Team

How sweet it is. Forgive my hubris, but you have no idea how good it feels to write the article - no restrictions on space - no robot telling you to buzz off. So thanks to Sue and OLO for the opportunity.

This damn thing nearly killed me. Marlene would have divorced me, but she is disabled - it was just a matter of keeping the phone out of her reach :)

I was hoping to start a new train of thought that dispensed with the usual fuzzy logic. Can any others pick up the ball? Sue and OLO don't bite. It's just a matter of having a go and going back to the drawing board if it doesn't come up to scratch.

Go on. Chance your arm at an article. Let's get out of the rut.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Friday, 10 November 2006 8:07:56 PM
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Message to the Congress of the United States
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061109-10.html

... In accordance with [Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C 1622(d))], I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication, stating that the Iran emergency declared in Executive Order 12170 on November 14, 1979, is to continue in effect beyond November 14, 2006.

Our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal, and the process of implementing the January 19, 1981, agreements with Iran is still underway. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue for 1 year the national emergency declared on November 14, 1979, with respect to Iran.

GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
November 9, 2006.

(This is part of the actual text of the message sent)
Posted by David Latimer, Saturday, 11 November 2006 1:10:40 AM
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ROckin', Chris Shaw, that much truth should carry a mental health warning for the sheltered and unwary. Its liberating to read and speak the plain god awful truth, heres hoping you start a new trend in Aus media.
Posted by Liam, Saturday, 11 November 2006 9:23:17 AM
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Chris, just a couple of things, the section in the article 'To divide and conquer - turn up the noise' seemed a little out of place.. some of the article is perhaps a bit too firey and maybe undermines (so to speak) the good clear topic that you raised at the start..

I reckon you might like these links:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/31/news/companies/intro_f500_fortune/index.htm

http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/29/06f2k_worlds-largest-public-companies_land.html

cheers.
Posted by Ev, Saturday, 11 November 2006 10:15:03 AM
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It is well documented the close association between the Managerial elite in some countries and corporate company's linked with the creation of war machines and weaponry.

Business and shares in these company's would not be lucrative without war!
Posted by Suebdootwo, Saturday, 11 November 2006 11:41:02 AM
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I thought this article had alot of merit, however, I also thought that some of the research and articulation could have been alot better.

Wars have long been fought for economic reasons. The US civil war is a prime example of this. However, the Roman sacking of Carthage through to the invasion of Iraq and Afganistan have all had an economic element. Chris Shaw should be congratulated for grabing the bull by the horns.
Posted by ChrisC, Saturday, 11 November 2006 12:09:25 PM
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"The answer is to peel back the layers of corporate secrecy."

Chris I could'nt agree more, but how is this to be achieved unless we have a requirement that wealth and tax records be in the public domain.

Naive as this might sound I feel it is imperative that those of us who laud your insights lobby politicians for just such legislation.

I look forward to your next contribution after a well deserved rest.
Posted by fdixit, Saturday, 11 November 2006 12:21:04 PM
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Okay, I agree about the role of the banks and globalised financial institutions but I took the time to read some of Mr Shaw's refs. I can maintain the rage over the Whitlam dismissal along with the best of them but the references cited were part of an extreme-left conspiracy theory, having little foundation in fact and esigned to get a KGB spy off the hook. When I publish my book you can all pay to read a refutation. I know - I was there! Anyone who approvingly quotes Joan Coxsedge et al is in serious need of psychiatric treatment. Even Gough no longer believes the CIA had any part in his removal by the drunk - ask him. I did and what is more he has written as much in print.

Have you ever wondered why Hitler lost when he had all that support? Money can but power and influence but only up to a point and some bloggers have been more eloquent than I on this issue.
Posted by perikles, Saturday, 11 November 2006 4:12:47 PM
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Chris

This a really varied and thought provoking essay. The War on Terror which should have been directed at the sons of Saudi Arabia was strangely and almost instantly aimed at Iraq instead. Something to do with the vast oil interests of the Bush family, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice (for whom a Chevron oil tanker was named).

But you're very, very, naughty ;-) You've probably hurt the the CIA's feelings. I agree (from what I've read) that there has certainly been a blue blood, northeastern US, banker/lawyer, tradition in the CIA.

As with the Mossadeq covert action program, which was handled by a direct descendant of President "Teddy" Roosevelt, CIA officers often worked in areas that boosted their subsequent private financial interests. As they often worked in war zones from the Golden triangle to Afghanistan this probably lead to grief for many but wealth for a few.

Interesting your links to Christopher Boyce (of Falcon and the Snowman fame). He was obviously too bright for his job in connecction with Pine Gap. I'd just like to brazenly advertise the latest publicly available info on Pine Gap - made on the comments at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5053

Pet
Posted by plantagenet, Saturday, 11 November 2006 5:44:57 PM
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To be sure right now, we should be more on to what the recent dramatic change in US politics will bring, the main causation in Iraq being regarded by the winning Democrats, simply US political incompetence leaving us wondering what the coming meet between Bush, Blair and Howard will bring.

Further, getting back to our main thesis which is about causation, we might say that because the US Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a report a month or so ago had too many US troops guarding the Iraqi oilfilds, economics could have been a major cause of the US blunders in Iraq.

Furthermore, a good volume on European colonialism, really gets going with not only the Portuguese and Spanish hunger for South American bullion, with well-gunned British ships
plundering them across the Atlantic, if that is what we call war, and later with the Brits fighting the French for the northern part of America, over both land and contraband, still a deadly sort of war. Then still forgetting about wars with the Indians and still with Stars and Stripes aloft, America beginning its little so-called freedom campaigns in greater Mexico as well as both sides of the Pacific.

So beginning with the gold and silver bullion wars, we could carry on with our Western graball ages with tobacco and spices, tea and coffee and on or into the black stuff, a record long distance historical oil economy which still dominates by turning most of the wheels of our world.

That is why Vice President plus oilman Dick Cheney is still so important to America's future.
Posted by bushbred, Saturday, 11 November 2006 7:01:06 PM
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“To be controlled in our economic pursuits is to be controlled in everything”

This line of your article is one truth that stands out to me Chris Shaw.

Look at the room you’re sitting in. The materials to make everything in that room were dug, leeched, chopped, mined, traded for from the rich land you live in.
Without money (access to the economy) , you cannot buy food, shelter and soon maybe, the water you need to survive. The Land and the resources it provides like oil etc, IS the economy.

When conquerors take control people are usually denied access to the wealth of the land,(the economy). In fact the first thing that happens to them is they are dispossed of any land they might have. It is the land mankind covets. (economic wealth). That’s what wars are about.

Global companies like all of mankind seek to gain as much access to territorial wealth as they can. And that includes the everyday man in the street who is always trying to figure out how to make his dollar(his share of the economy or territorial wealth) go further.

You can call it consumerism, well paying jobs, land on beachfronts etc. The term goodies and badies doesn’t really apply. All of mankind is guilty of it. Its just that the ones holding the superior weapons and armies at the time usually have the means to acquire and hold more resources.

Of course America is no angel but nor is the rest of the world who are trying to figure out how they can get what America has and like to play guilt and mind games with the West to further that aim. You can talk love and tolerance to these people all you like Chris but if the West falls you will fall right along with it and the people you have saught to appease wont spare you. They’ll be to busy moving into your house and taking your possessions which means more to them than your smiles and talk of tolerance.
Posted by sharkfin, Saturday, 11 November 2006 11:49:28 PM
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As you say Chris, "perspective is all".
Hence, one or two bloggers have pointed out that not all is negative. After all, we wouldn't be sitting here with full stomachs tampering away on complicated electronic devices discussing complex issues and shades of interpretation.
To those sceptical of Chris, I would suggest that if all is not bad, than equally; all is definitely NOT good or at least as good as it could have been. The Iraq and Middle East in general escapades, over four generations, have been cumulatively tragic for millions of Middle Easteners. And what we have we could have had for a fraction of all the waste of resources, wealth and bloodshed, with the emnity now incurred, so that we now never sit back to digest our ill-incurred, even if only through lack of clear conscience.
We have failed to learn, remember or apply the lessons of sense of proportion against excess and we have lost the knack of living comfortably without excess.
Now we are told we have to give up the best of our lives to live in perpetual fear of an ever immanent "terrorism" boogey-man who actually the irresistably provoked individual seeking restitution for injustices done.
As for the nonsense proffered by some above that the Americans have never interfered in this nation's affairs, or those of most other nations on the face of this planet, The writer reels in astonishment!
What do you think the AUSFTA is REALLY about?
What do you think the ramping up of the destruction of public interest media is about?
Can't people still work out what an Anschluss treaty it is?
It is about as fair as the treaty foistered on the Czechoslovakian people in 1938. Howard has sold the Australian inheritence out for the aboriginal equivalent of beads, trinkets and mirrors; re-runs of the "Brady Bunch" on Foxtel
Posted by funguy, Sunday, 12 November 2006 1:10:52 AM
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Quite so sharkfin.

In a nation that shrank from the prospect of a few thousand brown skinned refugees -

- how can the little town of Carisbrook refuse the influx of millions from Melbourne?

Would we even want to? It's a shared fate.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Sunday, 12 November 2006 1:12:02 AM
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Chris

Which few thousand brown skin people did the Australian Immigration Department shrink from?

Was there a citizens referendum on it?
Posted by Suebdootwo, Sunday, 12 November 2006 2:11:17 AM
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Well,we've been Globalised.We lost our autonomy decades ago.With such a small population it was probably a lost cause anyway.

Every worker on average has a gross production of $100,000.00 pa.Our GDP is now almost one thousand billion dollars with 9 million people in the workforce.Why are so many earning less than $30,000 pa and paying tax?The natural resources in this country are not being shared equitably and we are losing industry as big business finds the lowest common denominator of wages and tax regiemes.

Since we have to put in a set of international rules to save our environment,why not have a set of rules whereby multi-nationals have to pay the host country's workers enough to save and tax for infrastructure and education?Now with education and infrastructure improvements,economies become wealthier,thus businesses have more market potential.

We don't play Soccer/football without a set of international rules,why do we try to play the game of ecconomics/business without rules that will create this ficticious level playing field the economic rationalists rave about?Global business does not want competition.It aims to defeat all competitors so margins can be increased.The way we are playing the game at the moment,only the super rich will be able to afford to live well as diminishing energy and resources are spread amongst our planet's burgeoniing population.

Global business may have defeated Union power to large extent,however poverty does not make for harmony and sustainable economics.Just a few simple International rules on how the cake will be divided,will make the world a fairer and happier place.
Posted by Arjay, Sunday, 12 November 2006 11:21:05 AM
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Arjay.... your assessement is correct.

My gut feeling said as much in 1995. I bought 5 acres on which I believe I can be self sustaining. At that time my business was going gangbusters.. around $20,000/month.

One decision by some moron in Scotland, pruned that down to $200 and then nothing, but fortunately I had other strings in my bow by that time.

Our nobility is betraying the common man AGAIN.... just like my forebears in the Scottish Highlands were by the Scottish nobility who sold their land to absentee English nobility landlords for 'sheep grazing pasture' and chased my people away like feral dogs.

I see it over and over again... the Nobility looks after THEMSELVES.

Its interesting now, to see the climatic conditions... and the rise of the Persians (Iran)
just like Daniels 'writing on the wall'

Mene mene Tekel Upharsin

"Measured, found wanting, I am raising up the Persians."

Hmmmmm *wanders off to ponder*
Posted by BOAZ_David, Sunday, 12 November 2006 2:13:26 PM
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I guess full stomachs and iPods really are the price of our conscience.

This is all it takes to look the other way.

The question could be - would you send your son to die in some god-forsaken quarry on the other side of the world, just so that one day some Iraqi can upsize his McHappy Meal for a dollar?

The question should be - are you happy enough to remain in blissful ignorance and unwittingly have every aspect of your life determined by others?
Posted by rache, Sunday, 12 November 2006 8:03:54 PM
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BD,
I don’t think it matters WHO owns the US Federal Reserve Bank, the problem is that it’s privately owned.

Would you like the Murdoch or Packer dynasties for example, to set our interest rates?

This situation has been a problem for US Presidents for a very long time.

Lincoln was the first, and bypassed the foreign banks to issue “greenbacks” to fund the Civil War.
With help from Russia he broke the British naval blockade (implemented on behalf of foreign banks) and the North eventually won, saving a lot of money in interest payments.

After Lincoln’s assassination, the banks were privatised and eventually the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913.

The only other President to take on the Banking system was JFK.

Some interesting background on the US experience can be seen here -

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefederalreserve.htm

Now expand this situation onto a global scale and you begin to see who calls all the shots.

Hatred and greed only fuel wars, they aren't enough to start wars all by themselves, at least not without some sort of external catalyst at work.

"The nobility look after themselves" indeed.
Posted by wobbles, Sunday, 12 November 2006 10:28:13 PM
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Wobbles...

Does it matter that there are European Carp in trout streams or that there are Minnows ? :)

No amount of minnows are going to consume the baby trout...its not their 'culture'.
Culture.. outlook... connections....all matter.
cheers
Posted by BOAZ_David, Monday, 13 November 2006 5:34:13 AM
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Wobbles

Would the external catalyst be anger?
Posted by fdixit, Monday, 13 November 2006 6:33:19 AM
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I can’t recall a single country that went to war on the basis of anger alone. It’s usually done for economic or resource reasons.

Governments go to war, people don’t.

The usual method is for a Government to use whatever propaganda methods it can to demonise the enemy and get the general population on-side well in advance. Usually this requires some false-flag operations as per the Lusitania, Pearl Harbour, Tonkin incident, Reichstag fire and so on.

Civil wars (and riots) however, are typically fought along domestic lines and internal hatreds may come into play in such cases. In these cases the general population doesn’t go to war but the war comes to them.

Even so-called racial conflicts like the Kosovo conflict have another agendas behind them – such an oil and gas pipeline from Armenia direct to China, bypassing the “usual route”. (A stray NATO missile fired into the Chinese Embassy at Belgrade just as the war was ending seemed to resolve this matter as I recall.)

It’s hate that makes it possible for a normally peaceful person to burn innocent women and children without compunction during wartime. This valuable government asset needs to be taught, cultivated and maintained so it can be called on when required but is not a reason to go to war of itself.

Also, carp have been in our waterways for many years and although presenting some local problems were never considered a national crisis.

I'm afraid your analogy sounds a little like the Nazis describing the Jews as swarming vermin.

In any case, no “carp-related” riots occurred during Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke or Keating’s watch so what has changed? (Hint : it's not just the carp)
Posted by wobbles, Monday, 13 November 2006 1:09:46 PM
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Chris has put up a pretty good summation of things so far - but clearly there are those that find that the biblical Paul was wrong - money is not the root of all evil - the root of all evil is found in Islam (BD I mean you - and a few others)

It is not as simple as that -
and I still wait for an answer - if Islam is hell bent on overwhelming us - burying us in burqas etc - what solution do we propose to this end of civilisation as we kow it scenario?

- wining the fictitious war on terror will only sort out the nutters - we then need to deal with the rest of the muslim world who will by fair means or foul - so I am told endlessly in these pages - take over us all - "they' cant be reasoned with I am told "they" are hard wired for world domination - so, again I ask what is the plan?

I dont expect I will get one
Posted by sneekeepete, Monday, 13 November 2006 3:31:48 PM
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hi chris, congratulations on your article, very good. I have been lazy but still plan on submitting something of a similar nature to OLO.

Its amazing how even the most simple geopolitical/economic analysis of the so called war on terror fails to fill our newspapers or television screens.

Powerful men will plot and conspire to maintain their positions of power, and for them, almost any ends justifies the means. However if you talk to people about this, they may ridicule you as a conspiracy theorist. "so your saying a bunch of men, sat in a little room and made all this stuff happen, yeah right"

well I assume they sit in rooms.

It is extremly illogical, because noone actually wants war, but many people seem to jump at the opportunity, the side show of ethnicity and nationalsim playing a vital role of course.

Anyway good on you Chris, I hope theres more to come.
Posted by Carl, Monday, 13 November 2006 5:29:04 PM
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Chris,

I found your article interesting but full of assertions that weren't backed up by evidence. This is true of a lot of theories based around the idea that Iraq was only a War for Oil, purely to make a profit.

Where does such a profit come from? Not from selling the oil, since the cost of the war and reconstruction costs far outweighs any additional profit margin on the oil... and the buyers are paying the normal market price. Not from increased US expenditures, since they have to be paid for in taxes anyway, either now or later. Not from lucrative contracts in Iraq - though there was some corruption involved, the amounts were not large relative to the cost of the war and in any case were paid by the US tax payer.

So unless you can put up some approximate figures, who makes the profit and who pays for it, I'd have to regard this as fiction.
Posted by parallel, Monday, 13 November 2006 6:05:12 PM
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From the Fortune 500 website:

"The FORTUNE 500: A banner year
Despite a world of trouble, the 500 -- led by banking, oil, drugs, and insurance -- roared ahead.

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - War, high fuel prices, monetary uncertainty, a percolating deficit, a new Fed chairman, and, of course, a hurricane that broke a critical levee -- and America's heart. In financial terms, this year had all the ingredients for a sputtering economy at best, a significant downturn at worst.

In spite of the portents of doom, however, America's largest corporations sailed through in extraordinary style, setting records for both revenues and profits."

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/31/news/companies/intro_f500_fortune/index.htm

And near the bottom:

"However bountiful for business, 2005 was a terrible year for many people. That did not go unnoticed by companies in the FORTUNE 500, many of which seemed eager to display their good citizenship."
then
"When the earth rumbled in Pakistan, Boeing (Research) (No. 26) wrote a check for $2 million."

While US$2 million at first seems maybe quite generous, in relation to their profits of US$2.56 billion, it's the equivalent of a person who earns US$50,000 giving a tiny $39..
Posted by Ev, Monday, 13 November 2006 6:15:39 PM
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A few thousand can become tens of thousands and then number 1million.
The point at which democracy fails is the point at which two tribes go head to head over control of a country.
At school we are taught that democracy will ensure peace. Maybe John Howard should include the point at which democracy fails in his new curriculum about the true facts of history.
Posted by sharkfin, Monday, 13 November 2006 6:32:38 PM
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"War is a Racket" was written 73 years ago by US marine major general Smedley Butler.
After retiring from the marines his brain started to work.
He discovered that he had spent most of life killing a lot of people and making a few people very rich.
It is only a small book and well worth the read.
Posted by Peace, Monday, 13 November 2006 6:56:14 PM
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Parallel, go back and read it again.

The financiers get the profit (free lunch) while our grandchildren get to pay the bill. This is done by "externalising" the costs. All successful corporations externalise their costs. That is the ONLY way to take a profit. There is no such thing as profit in the physical (natural) economy.

You are right to question the entropy of the Iraq invasion. The Coalition have been burning good whiskey, but so far we have only extracted a dribble of beer. One of the architects of this collossal idiocy was Paul Wolfowitz, who famously predicted that the war would pay for itself. For his genius, he was promoted to head of the World Bank. Yet another example of the gulf that exists between economic dogma and physical reality.

*
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Monday, 13 November 2006 11:21:54 PM
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Who makes a profit from war or reconstruction?

War is the main way that new markets are opened up or resources are secured.

Lets say America earmarks $1 billion for reconstruction. Where does this money go? To Iraq building companies, factories, hospitals, schools?

No, it goes directly to private US corporations like Bechtel and Haliburton. They take their cut and sub-contract onto smaller companies and so on down the line. By the time the leftovers actually get to Iraq, lots of people have made a profit on the original payment.

In return, some of that profit may even find its way back to the government as political donations.

This is one of the blatant corruption factors that GWB has just been punished for at the polls.

So who makes a profit from armies, even when there is no war? The arms dealers who sell to both sides and other companies such as Lockheed who provide the hardware and massive support infrastructure.
Would you buy shares in an army or shares in a company that supplies an army?

Something else that seems to produce a nett economic loss is a public Hospital.

So who makes a profit from Hospitals? The drug companies for one, who strangely make more from treating sickness than curing it. Once again, the Hospital system produces economic benefits in society indirectly, yet seems to run at a loss.

If there is no nett financial gain from war, who picks up the tab?

The taxpayer – as always.
Posted by rache, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 12:06:25 AM
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It's not only oil, it's water. Maybe I'm becoming paranoid, but take a look at this:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/11/03/1162340050938.html

- and this:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/cocacola-buys-palm-springs-water/2006/07/30/1154198011051.html

- and this:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1463816.htm

Google "coca cola + water" and limit the search to Australia. There are plenty of links.

* * *

I was wondering when things would come to a head over the use of our springwater. This morning, The Age published an article:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/abbotts-crushing-verdict/2006/11/13/1163266481629.html

Is this just a coincidence?

But wait, there's more. Many of the alternate "diet" beverages contain a controversial sweetener called Aspartame, whose acceptance was rammed past the health authorities by mover-and-shaker Donald Rumsfeld:

http://www.newswithviews.com/NWVexclusive/exclusive15.htm

If Tony Abbott has taken on the Giant, he is in for a rough ride. Maybe just this once I'll bury the political hatchet and give him the support he is going to need.

Try Googling "cia + coca cola" to get some idea of the problem (CIA = Culinary Institute of America).

Maybe I am just overloaded from reading about so many spooky corporate conspiracies lately, but maybe this is one we should all keep a close eye on. Happy sleuthing possums.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 6:10:56 AM
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Absolutely. All wars are caused by corporations and globalisation. That is why there were no wars before the advent of corporations and globalisation er..maybe the 'logic' collapses on that point.

Well...the fact that corporations make a profit from and during war proves they encourage and cause war? But by the same logic, the fact that corporations make a profit from and during times of peace, 'proves' they encourage and cause peace.

The US fights in the ME to secure the resources it and its armed forces need? But a mere 10% of US oil supplies comes from the ME and most of that from Saudi Arabia which, depending on the conspiracy du jour, is owned by or owns the US imperialists. So according to this 'analysis' the US is fighting a war to secure resources they neither have nor need. And looking at total energy means that the ME is even less important to the US economy. If the ME stopped supplying the US tomorrow, while there'd be a blip, it would get through just fine.

The causes and reasons for war are many and varied. It is simplicity of the worst kind to decide that all wars can be characterised by one cause. Sure there are wars where the main or only reason was getting a neighbour's resources eg Hitler's attack on the USSR. But on the other hand, there are wars where resources play no part in the decision. Why did Britain and France go to war over Poland in 39? What was at stake other than self-preservation?

In the end there are as many causes for war as there are wars. Each has its own set of causes. And in most cases it comes down to distrust and resultant mistakes. To talk about the Iraq wars without mentioning Kuwait or 9/11 just misses or trivialises the point.

But if you seek a 'solution' to war (and I don't think there is one) then it is democracy. No two democracies have ever fought a war against each other.
Posted by mhaze, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 9:44:39 AM
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mhaze,

theres a perfectly logical, yet far more complicated explanation as to why 'democracies' have never fought each other, and it too has everything to do economics and geopolitics

the only thing resembling democracies are the nations of western europe, the US, Canada, Oz and NZ, Japan.

At the end of WWII all these nations picked, (or were pushed) into choosing a side in the emerging global order, i.e communism or capitalism.

The Marshall plan, while no doubt being beneficial to the millions of people in Europe, was also about solidifying american economic and military supremacy in the region.

democracy, or at least, the veneer of democracy, was an important part of alligning yourself with the West, but the military and economic ties, particuarly between the US and Western Europe were far more important than free and fair elections
Posted by Carl, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 1:21:50 PM
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I think this link will show how globalisation is more likely to start wars than prevent them.

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id

Chris,
I was wondering when people would start to notice that water will be “the next big thing”.

Coca cola recognised years ago that the sales of soft drink products will soon be overtaken by bottled water.

I’ve been watching water supply developments since an incident in 2001 where the World Bank got Bolivia to privatise it’s water supply with catastrophic results but this global trend has been going on since at least 1992.

Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people already lack access to fresh drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for fresh water is expected to rise by 56 percent more than the amount of water that is currently available.
Multinational corporations recognize these trends and are trying to monopolize water supplies around the world. Monsanto, Bechtel, and other global multinationals are seeking control of world water systems and supplies.

By 2014, three private companies will control over 70 percent of Europe and North America’s water supplies. The water supply market in the USA alone is worth in excess of $90 billion per year.

The World Bank has been working actively behind the scenes pressuring governments to privatise their supplies and underwriting the private companies to maintain their profit margins. A 2000 review of IMF loans in 40 countries found that 12 had loan conditions requiring some form of water privatisation. This trend has been increasing ever since.

Why? It can’t be for reasons of efficiency and conservation because the track record of these companies in those areas has been appalling.
It can only be for corporate greed and power.

Should we be transforming a scarce resource such as clean drinking water into a basic saleable commodity?

Remember this when some politician suggests that we must privatise our water supplies and get the private sector to finance a new dam.

This is globalisation at work.
Posted by wobbles, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 1:45:47 PM
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Sorry,

Faulty link.

Try this one.

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=1948
Posted by wobbles, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 1:47:53 PM
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Carl,
So your contention is that democracies tend to clump together, adopt similar outlooks and end up on the same side of the idealogical divide? And thus don't fight each other. That rather was my point.

But to make your case you missed a few other examples of non-belligerent democracies - Sth Korea, Singapore, Thailand, India. Maybe not pristine examples of what a democracy can be but still examples of my point.

To take it one step further - no two nations that have a McDonalds restaurant have ever fought a war against each other. Economic integration breeds peace.
Posted by mhaze, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 4:30:42 PM
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mhaze,

sorry, i didn't articulate my point very well. The reason the nations i mentioned havn't been at war has far more to do with the fact they were militarily and economically alligned than they fact they are democracies.

In fact, in some instances the US has demonstrated a blatant contempt for democracy, in Chile, Iran, Egypt, when these nations planned to nationalise their natural resources, actions endorsed by the majority of the population, they were covertly disrupted by the US and Europe. The fact is, in some parts of the world, democracy is just bad for business.

I've heard the McDonalds theory before and its ridiculously simplistic, and personally, i'd prefer more nations without McDonalds than with them.

Think about it, mhaze, if Australia were to discover massive oil reserves, and we made a democratically endorsed decision to sell it all to China, do you really think America would sit back and say 'oh, we'll leave them alone, because they are a democracy', not bloody likely.
Posted by Carl, Tuesday, 14 November 2006 6:47:02 PM
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Alas, the robot got me. And poor old wobbles had to shoot his last bullet to make a correction. Ah well, "greater love..." as they say.

Mhaze, you said:

"But a mere 10% of US oil supplies comes from the ME and most of that from Saudi Arabia .... according to this 'analysis' the US is fighting a war to secure resources they neither have nor need."

Alas, it's not that simple mhaze. Anyone from the extractive industries will tell you that the abiding obsession is to find and secure tomorrow's supplies.

The mighty Saudi fields are topping out - this from no less a person than Matt Simmons, himself an adviser to the Cheney Energy Task Force. From now on, the Saudis will be pumping ever more dirty water and pooh. This puts a terrific strain on the fields, crude transport and refining, to produce sufficient kero, petroleum and diesel.

Iraqi oil remains the glittering prize - it's champagne.

Try this map of known major reserves:

http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/mainpages/oilworldmap.html

- as you hover the mouse over the fields, the panel at the bottom gives that field's contribution in years remaining, at present world rates of consumption.

It's quite sobering.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Wednesday, 15 November 2006 8:11:49 AM
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OK - I'll fire my second bullet too.

For those with a little bandwidth, here's a new Google video that takes more than the usual trouble to explain how the CIA and National Security Council was set up to be a government within a government. It's quite fascinating, and not a little depressing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7677940272773278216&q=9%2F11+duration%3Along

(Health warning: It's 2 hours long, so break out the Coke and the popcorn)

Cheers
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Wednesday, 15 November 2006 10:03:05 AM
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Carl,
"Think about it, mhaze, if Australia were to discover massive oil reserves, and we made a democratically endorsed decision to sell it all to China, do you really think America would sit back and say 'oh, we'll leave them alone, because they are a democracy', not bloody likely."

1. We wouldn't make a decision to sell to China, we'd make a decision to sell to the highest bidder.
2. The US wouldn't leave us alone because we were a democracy, they'd leave us alone to make that decision because it would be ours to make. Is the US stepping in to stop us selling gas to China? When we were a nett exporter of oil, did the US seek to inhibit us then?

I think you fundamentally misunderstand globalisation
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 15 November 2006 12:37:50 PM
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Dont over complecate war. in happens in all life forms! as a group of humans 150 000 years ago fought another group, for a better territory with food & water etc. As did humans go to battle against another group 10, 000 yr's ago, once again for food and water, to protect themselves, they also took there tools etc, improving thier own lives family and friends, and help with thier survival. As it is still in the modern day, that people go to war to improve thier lives "safety, economically etc." no matter what you may think, fighting & (mass battles) take place in evry species(ants, lions, bacteria) each and evryday from the the beginning of time to the present, to the future, and those who think that human spirituality and soul will overcome these INSTINCTS, are the ones whos own way of life and survival will be most at risk!
Posted by obviously, Wednesday, 15 November 2006 2:18:06 PM
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At the risk of sounding anti-American (and thus un-Australian) and in case you missed it, the United States assisted militarists in overthrowing DEMOCRATIC governments in Greece, Uruguay, Bolivia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Turkey.

The U.S. was also instrumental in the overthrow of popular reformist leaders such as Arbenz in Guatemala, Jagan in Guyana, Mossadegh in Iran, Bosch in the Dominican Republic, Sukarno in Indonesia, Goulart in Brazil, and Allende in Chile.

They have also supported some of the worst butchers in the world: Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, the Shah in Iran, Salazar in Portugal, Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, Zia in Pakistan, Evren in Turkey, Pol Pot in Cambodia, not to mention Hussein in Iraq.

This was done by the USA , not because of a real threat to themselves but to further their own global interests.

They refused our request to provide troops to assist in the East Timor independence efforts because they preferred to maintain their relationship with Indonesia over the option of helping create a new democratic state.

Don't fool yourself - they will always act in their own interests (as they should).

The thousands who died as a result of these events didn’t get the chance to make their own decisions.
Posted by rache, Wednesday, 15 November 2006 3:13:22 PM
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I wrote about this on another forum, but since it seems very relevant to me, i will briefly summarize it here:
As I see, there are three groups of humans on this planet and we somehow belong to one of them. 1st group of people is the richest, wealthiest group with a lot of human, physical and financial resources at their disposal. Additionally, they have institutions serving them, ranging from media to Hollywood and from universities to the bretton woods institutions, not to forget the UN and WTO. Second group of people includes the opinion leaders, politicians, think tanks and intellectuals, writers, celebrities, scientists and so on, who work, for money or for other reasons, for the first group. Researches carried out, opinions being promoted and lifestyles being developed by this group 2 all serve the first group. Third is the group of ordinary people who just follow whatever is going on. This group strives hard to earn bread and butter and to chase the false dreams shown to them by the second group. They die empty-handed and lead a life without much thought about what's going on in the broader world beyond theirs.
I hope I have kept it pretty simple.
Besides, I believe humans are programmed to work under two instincts: the incentive for reward or (dis)incentive for punishment. Since the former has limitations, the later has not. I can go to any limits to fight my (unforeseen) fears. Thats exactly what wars achieve. When the Group 1 feels people are not spending enough under the reward incentive (the law of diminishing marginal utility of course), they get it done through fear- of terrorism, of insecure futures, of Islam or Communism or any other "ism", of abolished civil liberties and so on. Millions of tax dollars are the result.
Posted by Faisal, Thursday, 16 November 2006 7:36:16 AM
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Faisal, that was a great summary. Yes, we "get it".

What a topsy-turvy world we live in. Yet all it takes is a few well chosen words to put it the right way up again. Pity that's a scarce talent.

If you can work it up into an article, we would be glad to add to the comments mate.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 16 November 2006 12:36:52 PM
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Only some of us 'get it' Faisal.

Many of us are too full of fear of losing 'all that we have' to dare to even look at what you have said, let alone actually understand and then try to do anything to improve it.

Perhaps the more we raise awareness of it and what truly drives this 'Human Animal' more people will get it and pass it on until a critical mass is reached somewhere?

Will that stop the economic 'need' for war??

Time alone will tell.

It seems US$400,000,000,000 (Four Hundred Billion) has been spent by America alone on removing Saddam, killing a few thousand (directly over 6 weeks) and trying to install a puppet government and 'keep the peace (lolol) in Iraq in just the last 3 and a half years!

You think George and his family and friends made anything out of that? (or his political puppetmasters?)

How about any of the dead soldiers? or their families? or 250 million Americans?

or many Aussies?

How much more land and water do we have as a result - or more peace?

Have we made more friends? or more enemies from that massive expense?

Only a few of us 'get it'.
Posted by BrainDrain, Thursday, 16 November 2006 2:18:04 PM
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“Where did you dig up that old fossil?”

(Han Solo- Star Wars, episode 4.)

For goodness sake. Before I read this article, and the majority of posts on its associated thread, I thought I had found a magnificent forum devoted to intelligent, rigorous debate. But alas. OLO let some moonbat present an article which appears to have been created by pasting together a collection of conspiracy theories gathered from all over this supposed information resource we call the internet, and fleshed out with a smattering of meaningless metaphors.

I know I'm breaking my own rule of playing the man, not the ball here, and you can rightly criticize me for doing so. My future posts will be more measured, and I will provide evidence to back up my arguments. By all means, take me on. I will keep the discussion going for as long as you want, and I will lend as much support as I can to the few voices of reason appearing on this thread. They have already pointed out gaping flaws in Shaw’s argument. But before I can even think about engaging in a proper discussion I must register in the strongest terms my incredulity that OLO could drop its standards so low.

I am amazed that Chris Shaw could, at the beginning of the article, attempt to disavow concepts of racism, nationalism, or religion, but then echo the arguments of some of the most virulently anti-Semitic conspiracy nuts going around. It was as though Shaw had cut-and-paste, Dan Brown style, from the nearest conspiracy site he could find, and simply omitted the word "Jewish." It is anti-Semitism by stealth. It is delusions such as these that led to the holocaust. It is delusions such as these, thankfully held only by the lunatic fringe in the West, but permeating mainstream discussion throughout the Middle East, which hamstring the hope of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

cont..
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 16 November 2006 6:15:08 PM
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You get the impression Shaw, and many of the posters, could barely keep themselves from mentioning the Illuminati, the Merovingian Dynasty, the Anti-Christ/ UN Secretary General/ EU President, Atlantis, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and my personal favourite, shape shifting aliens occupying the apex of power, often 33rd degree Freemasons, who conspire to perpetuate our enslavement.

Depending on the extent of one’s insanity, one will believe in any number of these little gems. Phrases such as “free thinkers” and an “open mind” are used as excuses for believing in anything.

Seriously, if the cabal of international bankers was anywhere near as powerful as some think, why is the internet dominated by conspiracy websites? Google any great event which happened in history, and you have to filter through the dross of conspiracy sites dedicated to informing you that the Knights Templar did it. Why would they even let the internet, such a powerful tool for disseminating what you believe to be the truth, ever fall into the hands of this supposed third group of people? Perhaps, shivering in their boots, they know that magic number, the critical mass required to overthrow their regime.

Maybe the number is 666? Or is it 616?
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 16 November 2006 6:16:24 PM
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so conspiracies never happen dozer? ever?
Posted by Carl, Thursday, 16 November 2006 7:06:24 PM
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Ah dozer, peddling your smears on this thread too? What a busy little doser you are, claiming to have read all the comments but making not a single response to any of them. Just working to tar Shaw with the 'conspiracy theorist' & antisemitism brushes.. if only you had some evidence.

Accusing CS of antisemitism without a scrap of evidence surely contravenes the OLO Code of Conduct - i look forward to the moderators tanning your lying arse.
Posted by Liam, Thursday, 16 November 2006 7:39:48 PM
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"I know I'm breaking my own rule of playing the man"

- no you're not.

"Atlantis"

- you forgot crop circles.

"It is anti-Semitism by stealth"

- you're showing your bias.

"I will keep the discussion going for as long as you want"

- go right ahead.

"dozer"

- WHO?
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 16 November 2006 10:15:29 PM
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Chris,
You are a very brave man, I sincerely hope you don't go to the shop for a bottle of milk one day, and never make it home, you will have upset some powerful forces here, I hope fortune favors the brave mate.
Regards, Shaun.
Posted by SHONGA, Thursday, 16 November 2006 11:17:02 PM
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Dozer indulges in the same tired refuge of invoking the spectre of anti-Semitism as if it some type of trump card.

If you criticise the US, you’re called “Anti-American”.
If you criticise Australia, you’re “Un-Australian”.
If you criticise Brazil, I guess you would be called “anti-Brazilian”.

Criticise Israel however, and all hell seems to break loose.

You’re not just “anti-Israeli”, you’re somehow mysteriously elevated (or lowered) to the ranks of “Anti-Semite”, as though any political criticism of a nation equates to an attack on an entire religion and all it’s followers around the world – past and present.
It’s as if they are using the collective blood of the millions of Jews killed over the centuries to cleanse themselves of any responsibility for their own actions and to keep themselves beyond reproach.

In any case, I didn’t see any evidence of anti-Semitism or direct attacks on Judaism in these posts. If any inference was felt it’s more likely to be paranoia rather than guilt.

If the main protagonist’s names behind the global Oil and Finance empires weren’t Rockefeller or Rothschild but Smith and Jones, the arguments would be identical.

I’ve also seen where the crazy conclusions that some of these so-called “theories” lead to, but most of the points raised are not theories but hard historical facts.

If there’s been any historical revisionism taking place it’s because many of these items are never mentioned and are deliberately avoided because they don’t fit the neat and tidy model of the world we have been taught.

They can't simply be be dismissed on that basis alone.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the decades it’s that you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys by the colour of the hats they wear.
Posted by rache, Friday, 17 November 2006 12:44:17 AM
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Liam,

As I said on the mining thread, I make a point of reading every single post before I even think about making a comment. As for my lack of evidence and sweeping generalisations, I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of factual and logical errors, I didn’t know where to begin.

So, to respond to but a few:

Carl,

Yes, conspiracies do occur. The US’ involvement in numerous coups during the Cold War is well documented, as was the USSR’s support for numerous Communist insurgencies. The context of the Cold War is vital in understanding how a democratic government could behave in such a manner. The mistake many people make is to draw connections where none exist between everything that happens on the planet, between every war, every company, every coup.

Regarding anti-Semitism,

Criticism of Israeli foreign policy is an entirely different matter. The Jewish people, as a nation, are still “traumatised by the Holocaust,” and exhibit a tendency to “use their suffering as a weapon.” The anti-Semitism label is used a little too frequently in debates over Israel and the Palestinian territories. On the other hand, when faced with States and terrorist organisations which do not recognise your right to exist, belligerence is understandable, however inexcusable. In contrast, Shaw’s article exhibits many ideas and prejudices which can be traced back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (http://ddickerson.igc.org/The_Protocols_of_the_Learned_Elders_of_Zion.pdf)

For example, claims about “the noise foisted upon us” by the media and the “smoke and mirrors,” using our political leaders and everyday events as diversions from the main game, bare a remarkable resemblance to extracts from Protocol 12:

“We shall saddle and bridle it (the press) with a tight curb.” (p53)

“among those making attacks upon us will also be organs established by us, but they will attack exclusively points that we have pre-determined to alter. Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.” (p54)

“If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the goy communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon

cont..
Posted by dozer, Friday, 17 November 2006 6:21:16 PM
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the events of the world through the coloured glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses… what will our position be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world.” (p54)

Shaw’s reference to the troglodytes whose immense wealth and power is entrenched in every aspect of “governments, intelligence, industry, defence- because economic and budgetary matters penetrate and subvert every seen and unseen aspect of public and private life,” echo a passage from Protocol 8:

“We shall surround our government with a whole world of economists. That is the reason why economic sciences form the principal subject of the teaching given to the Jews. Around us again will be a whole constellation of bankers, industrialists, capitalists and- the main thing millionaires, because in substance everything will be settled by the question of figures.” (p42)

The suggestion that this powerful elite are behind all wars, world/ civil/ peacekeeping etc, reflects the subjects and headings for Protocol 7:

“Object of the intensification of armaments. Ferments, discords and hostility all over the world. Checking the opposition of the goyim by wars and by a universal war.” (p40)

I could go on, but 700 words isn’t much.

Shaw’s article, and much of the posts in this thread, reads like an embellished, 21st Century copy of the Protocols, with the notable omission of any reference to the Jews. The Protocols hold a special place in the history of anti-Semitism. They informed the views of Hitler, and despite being proven to be a forgery, they are commonly believed to be genuine throughout the Middle East. Furthermore, they inform the basis, either consciously or unconsciously, of much of the conspiracy literature throughout the West.

The nature of world politics in incredibly complex, with a myriad of competing and overlapping interests between and across states, regions, cultures, ethnicities, religions, corporations, NGO’s, and individuals. The belief that there is some malevolent cabal of individuals who control the mechanisms of world politics is itself an attempt to create a “neat and tidy model of the world.”

Oh, and Shaw, I haven’t heard of you either.
Posted by dozer, Friday, 17 November 2006 6:21:43 PM
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Mr, er - dozer.

Well mate, you certainly managed to squeeze a couple of jokers in there. Ye olde race and religion cards slipped under the door, as it were.

I have never read P of EZ, believe it or not - but there it is. Do you recommend it? I read Chariots of the Gods once, but tended to grow out of that sort of thing as I got older and (hopefully) wiser.

The formula that I suggested is equally applicable anywhere on the planet. The fact that you put such strong emphasis on Israel is your bag. It could, and does apply to any place where there are strategic resources and huge fortunes to be made. Small wonder the Middle East is deafeningly "noisy".

Be assured that I am only interested in the nuts and bolts of it all. Means , method and motive. Know people by the things that they do, not what they say.

As for race and religion, I don't get obsessed by something which for nearly all of us is merely an accident of birth. The planet is far too small for that now.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Friday, 17 November 2006 8:49:04 PM
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Chris,

Sorry, to say that it's the "financiers" who make a profit from the war is just bunk. Why not go all the way and say it is the "merchants of death" like people claimed about World War I? Or the Jews like Hitler thought? Or maybe the Illuminati? Freemasons?

I mean, in the absence of any evidence, all names belong in the pot.

Mind you, I'd agree that plenty of people are making a profit out of this war in one way or another. Suppliers of military needs like weapons, engineering firms, the AWB(!) - all of them are in it for the money after all. So? You still have to show how some or all of them somehow manipulated the US to start the war just to make a few measly millions.

All I can say is if these unidentified "financiers" are so powerful and clever as to make the US go to war and spend half a trillion dollars doing so, it would have been a lot less effort and danger to extract this from the US taxpayer by other means.

As to your claim that profit doesn't exist, that's wrong too. Economics is not a zero sum game: my comfy lifestyle does not depend on others living in poverty.
Posted by parallel, Friday, 17 November 2006 8:53:05 PM
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Fair point parallel.

- and truth to tell, I was hoping that the comments section would push the envelope a bit.

When you dig deep, you find yourself amongst the fortunes of (raech's) Rothschilds and Rockerfellers. Then there are the ancient fortunes of the Crown Heads of Europe and the City of London as well as (dozer's) Zionists. Since the turn of the 20th century, there are the giant corporations like DuPont. Now we have the hedge funds, insurance giants and banks with a collossal reach and influence, as well as the small but powerful johnny-come-latelies like the Bush family.

- so is all this steered subtly and deliberately by a few people?

- or is it built into the system?

Do the rules of the corporate game follow the rules of cancer? Monopolise the blood supply and grow as fast as you can, until the host is dead. Maybe that's where wars come from.

If I had waited until I knew all the answers, I would never have gotten around to writing the article. If I didn't have grandchildren, I wouldn't have had the incentive. If I had a thin skin, I would never have had the cheek.

But there it is - something started. For sure, my kids and grandkids will never swallow the myths that I have consumed so naively for most of my life.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Friday, 17 November 2006 10:53:11 PM
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The relevance of Milton Friedman's death at age 94.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Nobelwinning-eco [...]

How could Friedman have envisioned his economic theories creating the cowby-and-Indian economics that are bringing the world to its knees with growing terrorist activity.

Starting with the S&L debacle under Reaganomics, working its way up to Enron clumsily unzipping its fly in public to the first world still riding ecomomic undercurrents with secretive global KKR style hostile takeovers, Freidman's economics has come to a nexus of terror.

The problem goes back to the early 80s when Thatcher, Reagan and Co laboured over what to do with the developing world to avoid econimic crises in terms of failed states and unrecoverable loans.

Despite the IMB embarking on a program of debt forgiveness and renegotiationism, the root cause of these problems was never addressed properly and was swept under the carpet.

The belief that a new Friedman led Cowboy and Indian approach to third world countries was best practice by helping the west and thus eventually helping the third world emerged.
Unfortunately, like all cowboy and indian stories the indians turn into disgruntled savages and the west duly sends out the cavalry followed in hot pursuit by the good old American pioneer spirit of hostile takeover.
Terrorism and the subsequent war on terror has resulted.

In essence, even Friedman would have to acknowledge that his economics would only work if there was a PREEXISTING level playing field among all world nations. Failure to understand that greed, secrecy and other human frailties preclude any such bootstrapping of this level playing field without constant feedback of progress using mathematical modelling and modern high tech tools, has led to the current failure of Friedman economics. Anyone who thinks differently, and their grandchildren, will still be debating this in 100 years time if they get get to keep their cowboy way
Posted by KAEP, Saturday, 18 November 2006 12:33:58 AM
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kaep,
Simple economic theory that still pervades our world. We should be looking at sustainable economics not growth economics, you still don't get it do you. If thge planet deteriorares the economoc policy can't and won't save our world, only enviromental policy can do that, get that into your thich head. If we don't have a planet, we don't have an economy, it's that simple.

Wev have to live by natures rulrs, not our profit rules, what a rerrible system human have invented, a way of robbing fellow human beings, while similtaneously stuffing the Eath's enviroment. Even the billionaires now recognise that they will not be able to get their decendents off Earth, before the calamody which is why certain media barons have all of a sudden come out in favor of attemots to reverse global warming, how can the ordinary person be so stupid!
Posted by SHONGA, Saturday, 18 November 2006 1:08:16 AM
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Dozer claims "Shaw’s article exhibits many ideas and prejudices which can be traced back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
(http://ddickerson.igc.org/The_Protocols_of_the_Learned_Elders_of_Zion.pdf)
Presumably hoping to smear the author's independent research and thought with the hysteria that particular document holds around the world ('used by Hitler', etc)

For anyone (and i think you are in the majority) who does not truly understand what all THAT fuss is about I would like to offer another link for further reading and research.

http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/toolkit.html

I do not claim to support all the webauthor's views but i do believe his research to be accurate and his intention to ask for honest contradiction of his views with actual fact to be worthy of some trust in the work he has done on this particular issue. Very few of those opposing him allow for any such direct contradiction.

Basically, the thrust is: The Protocols are NOT the origin of most ideas expressed but were held long before any book with that name was published.

To accuse someone of copying the Protocols to thus deny any credibility is akin to saying anyone who copies material from an encyclopaedia concering terrorism must have terrorist sympathies or believes only what the encyclopaedia's author believes.

That 'works' on many uneducated people (sadly - and even on a few who really should know better) and the smear can stick. Read the link and see why you should not believe all smears you hear.

As for 'so someone can make a few measly million?' US$400,000,000,000 was the DIRECT sum ONE country spent on ONE war in a little over 3 years. Consider the INDIRECT ONGOING costs to it, and every other country that their populations will pay for in taxes and not complain about because of the FEAR of attack and (manufactured)'need' for 'defence' engendered by the likes of Howard and Bush who are really little more than puppets having their strings pulled (by whom do you think? and for what reason?)

Not so someone can make a measly few million that's for sure. Doesn't mean such people would not try to.
Posted by BrainDrain, Saturday, 18 November 2006 12:58:40 PM
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Paralllel

Your comfy lifestyle (like mine and the entire 'developed' world's ecomomies) depends upon and was built ENTIRELY from the poverty of the third world and even today could not be maintained without the cheap resources and slave labour conditions we turn a blind eye to.

Does that make me a hypocrite? Damn right it does.

What am i going to do about it? Tell as many as i can what i KNOW to be true and why what we (still all) do is Wrong.

What are you going to do about it?

Economics is a shell game - it hides the truth and deceives those it suckers in.

Those at the top are the winners (and make the rules) while those below lose progressively more and more - ultimately their livesand the lives of their new born babies, because they cannot afford to eat or drink or have to go into a war they did not make to get money to 'live' (or pay for the funerals).
Posted by BrainDrain, Saturday, 18 November 2006 1:12:49 PM
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BrainDrain,

I’m well aware of the texts and ideas from which the Protocols draw inspiration. The link you provided is interesting but there are holes in Myers argument. Here are but a few:

Myers argues that Bernstein (a critic of the Protocols,) attempts to smear his opponent, Goedsche, with hyperbole. Myers claims that Bernstein falsely accuses Goedsche of presenting the Devil as being present in the story “The Jewish Cemetary in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” Myers suggests that the character who Bernstein depicts as the Devil is merely a Levite.

But consider that there are three indications that the character is indeed the Devil. “Son of the accursed” is self explanatory. The term “the Levite” also suggests infernal origins when understood in context- Jews were frequently associated with witchcraft, and as the Levite tribe was the priestly class, the connotations should be obvious. Furthermore, “the Levite” is recorded as saying, “I am myself wandering about all over the world in order that I may unite you,”- consider the similarity to Job 1:7;

The Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the Lord, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."

Anybody with an elementary understanding of Christian theology would recognise this immediately. This is especially embarrassing considering that later he compares the similarity of the Protocols to the works of Joly, Venedy and Marx, with the similarity between the canonical Gospels.

Myers highlights disagreement between two scholars on the Protocols, Bernstein and Cohn. But what does this prove? Disagreement between scientists over aspects of evolution does not disprove the theory, (despite what Creationists would like us to believe.) In fact, the evidence Cohn presents to show how events in French politics, and the Zionist Congress in Basel, “interpreted by anti-Semites as a giant stride toward Jewish world domination,” which made their way into the Protocols, appears compelling.

Myers shows how the role and nature of the participants is inverted- for example, in the Dialogues, Napoleon III is the Machiavellian, preventing the people from

cont..
Posted by dozer, Saturday, 18 November 2006 6:55:53 PM
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installing democracy, while the Protocols presents the shadowy leaders lurking behind the Revolutionaries as Machiavellians. He also contrasts Napoleon’s non-violent means with those of the Protocol conspirators. Again, this fails to prove the Protocol’s authenticity- it could be presented as deliberate inversion of roles, with the usual embellishment of paranoia.

Regarding the Future-orientation of the Protocols; Myers suggests that WWI, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Balfour Declaration and the attempt to make the League of Nations a World Government at the Peace Conference of Versailles, “seemed to bear out predictions in the Protocols.” However, these concepts were not exactly unthinkable at the time of writing. The fact that all these events took place after the writing of the Protocols is not evidence that they resulted from a grand conspiracy. The author of the Protocols makes the same mistake as many of the posters on this thread- to draw a connection between all of these events back to one point.

Thus, your argument that the Protocols were drawing on many of these pre-existing fears is beside the point.

Another mistake is to read history backwards. Rather than seeing 9/11 as the event which provided the US with the political will to deal (however ineptly) with the problem of Saddam Hussein, it is argued (not here, thankfully, yet,) that the US government orchestrated it because it wanted to attack Iraq. Rather than seeing the Cold War as a victory of Free Market Democracy over Totalitarian Communism, it is viewed as an orchestrated event designed to sell more guns.

And one more thing people. Which UN theory are we going by- that the US is pulling all the strings, (bushbred,) or that it is part of the New World Order to create a One World Government (wobbles)? It is tenuously related to the implication in the Protocols that the Jewish (or super-rich bankers of no fixed nationality, Chris) conspiracy is behind both the dominance of big finance and the Bolshevik revolution.

I always thought much of the US’ opposition to the UN was based on the principle of national sovereignty.

Shaw- your arguments later.
Posted by dozer, Saturday, 18 November 2006 6:56:28 PM
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Shonga,

What you still don't get is that you are NOT going to change the way the world works by bad mouthing the top players.

What is necessary is to point out why terrorism is occurring using a solid applied science focus and gain the trust of the Powers that be (PTB). You then need to have a strategy that can take the world from where it is now to some new place that addresses the main issues of Energy security, corruption, global war, global pollution, climate change and especially OVERPOPULATION.

If one can do that, the PTB WILL listen because I can assure you they do not have solutions right now. They are in denial and it is apparent that their final solution is to just let the world collapse into war and make damn sure they are on the winning side. The combined trajectory of all the above problems ensures this is true.

The ONLY strategy large enough to get us out of this jam is to look at the THERMODYNAMICS of civilisation and develop a differential entropy map across all major capital flows across the world.

Such a map (morse mapping) not only gives to the minute static pictures of what is happening in terms of global economic thermodynamics but also yields harmonic time dependent solutions which can be modelled and tracked just like hurricanes are, across the ocean surface.

As time goes by such a map will become more and more trusted. If all nations have internet access to it there will be a common enemy that is well defined for all mankind to witness
Posted by KAEP, Sunday, 19 November 2006 12:23:14 AM
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dozer,

There's a bit of a summary about the history of New World Order at this link -

http://www.constitution.org/col/cuddy_nwo.htm

Your response seems to get a mention in the very first paragraph.
Posted by wobbles, Sunday, 19 November 2006 12:43:44 AM
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Continued,

That will be the beginning of the end of all our problems. The Magic of Apollo was just a meagre foretaste.. Because if 6.5 billion people on this planet finally figure we are all on the same side then the next step, true space expansionism, will become a reality that will solve our insoluble problems for as long as the SUN shines. At least a billion years of free solar energy at densities thousands of times what we now imagine, could sustain civilsation and propel it well beyond this solar system while making our current desire to reproduce ourselves into extinction on Earth a new found blessing. It would create nothing short of an upscaled ENERGY internet right across our Solar System and at a cost and in a timeframe comparable to the way the Internet has developed in the last 20 years. 6.5 billion focussed people CAN DO!

In space you will need all the people you can procreate to assimilate the massive energy fluxes and fill the voids.

And can any of us say this is not mankind's true purpose? What a damn shame if by negative thinking and little mindedness we miss this opportunity. If we let our world collapse in the next 30 years as oil runs dry, it may take 1000 years or more before nature can evolve life to this pinnacle of technological achievement again.
Posted by KAEP, Sunday, 19 November 2006 2:00:38 AM
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dozer,

Sorry to bring it down to this level but I fully believe that the US was at least partially involved in the 9/11 attacks.

I don't see it as a Jewish conspiracy, or a Christian one, nor do I buy the official conspiracy theory about a cave dwelling madman.

Its just politics, and power. And its not unprecendented, maybe on this scale, but the idea of an expansionist state attacking its own people to justify its military ventures, its a pretty old idea. And there is documented evidence that the US has dabbled with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

I could go on with the dozens of strange occurences about that day, but I'll leave it there, for the moment
Posted by Carl, Sunday, 19 November 2006 10:54:52 AM
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KAEP,
Iappreciate what you say, my question is how many timies, how much science? To the best of my limited knowledge the world was first told about climatechange/ global warming in a Warning to the World in 1992, a statement predicting exactly what we now have in weather patterns and warming of the globe, signed by 1,600 emenent scientists.

Just latety we have had the Stein compliled by Britian's Chief Scientist, along with a former Chief economist of the World Bank, well credentialed people, frustration begins to grow as non-action occurs. We should be speaking about "sustainable economies" not "growth economies" for the betterment of the human race.
Posted by SHONGA, Sunday, 19 November 2006 11:37:23 AM
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Mr(?) Dozer,

I am impressed that you are not as sleepy as your nick might imply and that you have read so widely. However, I do not follow your particlar line of 'bull' on this issue.

I am not arguing anything concerning the 'Protocols' (as you chose to do in your earlier post to Chris Shaw, comparing his work to the oft derided piece of fiction to detract value - guilt by association) I merely offered a link to what i consider to be a more thourough and unbiased piece of work on them for those not currently familiar with the book.

My point was to hopefully make everyone aware of the fact that a work of fiction (Protocols) that was in part based upon a previous work of fiction that was in part based on previously held ideas from others literary artists should not be considered as the 'origin' of Mr Shaw's work. Understand? Whatever line of Anti-semitic propaganda you may have felt you detected in the work of Shaw and were able to cast aspersions at or tie links to.

To better illustrate my point. Men have 23 ribs and women have 24. Scientists do not argue this as proof that woman was created from Adam's rib even if some of the whackier religious bretheren do (apologies to all the bretheren out there).

Even if you can find a 'connection' however tenuous, between Shaw and the Protocols I would suggest that says more about your state of mind than it does about Shaw's - but maybe Chris can tell us in his own words if my theory is right or not?

Detractions aside, Is anyone going to argue my main point about the cost of the Illegal Iraq war (Saddam was telling the truth) and who benefitted most and who always does in any war (the ones making and selling the weapons) and who loses (the ones who actually fight and get killed and who's taxes are diverted to the arms corporations)?
Posted by BrainDrain, Sunday, 19 November 2006 7:25:22 PM
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Part 1

I accept dozer's criticism that my attempts to explain how we got here are a bit naive. There are many stepping stones to the present. The ones we choose can only be a reflection of the self. My article was therefore a reflection of my self.

Surely you wouldn't expect any less of me.

I am a gold miner. I dug this hole looking for gold, and was not disappointed. There's plenty of gold here. Take this nuggett from KAEP, which is worth repeating:

"What is necessary is to point out why terrorism is occurring using a solid applied science focus and gain the trust of the Powers that be (PTB). You then need to have a strategy that can take the world from where it is now to some new place that addresses the main issues of energy security, corruption, global war, global pollution, climate change and especially OVERPOPULATION.

If one can do that, the PTB WILL listen because I can assure you they do not have solutions right now. They are in denial and it is apparent that their final solution is to just let the world collapse into war and make damn sure they are on the winning side. The combined trajectory of all the above problems ensures this is true.

The ONLY strategy large enough to get us out of this jam is to look at the THERMODYNAMICS of civilisation and develop a differential entropy map across all major capital flows across the world."
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Monday, 20 November 2006 9:01:01 AM
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Part 2

KAEP has clarified something which many of us only glimpse out of the corner of the eye. The PTB, no matter how rich and influential, have no more brains than the rest of us. Their beloved monetary economy is dissolving into chaos, the more it departs from the natural "economy". They are rushing from lifeboat to lifeboat, in order to find the one which is stocked with the most free lunches.

Maybe it's time to write a new manifesto - The Protocols of Those Who Exist in the Here-and-Now. Let the historians argue over that one.

Thanks to everyone for their contribuitons. I can't remember any thread that was defended so doggedly. It was never in danger of being derailed by propaganda.

We can do it again. Peak oil and 9-11 anyone?

Cheers
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Monday, 20 November 2006 9:01:42 AM
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From 'The Art of War', SUN TZU, c. 500 B.C.

http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html

Excerpt from: I. LAYING PLANS

10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.

11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away.

12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.

Excerpt from: II. WAGING WAR

1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and an hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

From 'The Art of War', SUN TZU, c. 500 B.C.

http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html
Posted by Ev, Monday, 20 November 2006 9:25:01 AM
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Ev

When you actually post information rather than personal criticism and abuse you actually sound remarkably intelligent! : )

(I know - I am not stupid enough, like Red, to think that that does not apply to me as well - i GET that already! Save your breath!)

So.... there you have it folks - Sun Tsu was the 'author' of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion! : ))) The world's first known chinese anti-semite! ; ) Or did Chris Shaw plagiarise Sun Tsu's work? Or just maybe elements of the same Truth are found in many independent unrelated sources? Sheesh.

So now... any ideas for developing KAEP's thought and averting TPTB away from the profits of war and into the profit of Humanity and Peace? Where's the money in it? (more specifically how can more profit be made from it than from war?) How do we get all doctrines to agree? We are the people - we are the power, but who are we going to let lead us... or was that our big mistake in the first place? Can the internet overcome the mistake of letting others decide what we want for us? Are we actually able to decide and agree on what we all want yet?

I'll state it now - I want Peace and prosperity for all mankind.(oh - and Unity under God through accepting our uniqueness and diversity)

Not much to ask - Surely?

next?

C'monnnn I know you all have an opinion - share it and see what we agree on and where and why we differ. if we focus we might just be able to do something positive for a change!
Posted by BrainDrain, Monday, 20 November 2006 10:58:50 AM
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Chis,
Well said mate, thankfully your credentials speak for themselves, so you, and the rest of us who know you are correct cannot just be written off as some mindless rabble. My appreciation to you, for your article, hopefully a few doubters may look at events from your perscective and begin to acknowledge the truth of this article.
Posted by SHONGA, Monday, 20 November 2006 11:45:34 AM
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Mr(?) BrainDrain,

Firstly, the scramble to figure out the source of my nickname is a constant source of amusement. You're the first to pick it, so congratulations. If you had read my second-post a little more closely, you would have realised that I was already starting to make qualifications- I have argued that the Protocols have been an influence, either consciously, or unconsciously, of much Western conspiracy literature. What Shaw, and many others, share with the Protocols is the tendency to connect events into a grand conspiracy. Understand? (I’ll debate Iraq soon.)

Wobbles,

I was still discussing anti-Semitism in the previous post because debunking Myers argument required it. So, do we have a fear of world government/ UN conspiracy theorist? I would love for you to expand.

Shaw,

Further analysis of the language you use in your article shows just how influential the Protocols have been on conspiracy literature.

{"We shall surround our government with a whole world of economists. That is the reason why economic sciences form the principal subject of the teaching given to the Jews. Around us again will be a whole constellation of bankers, industrialists, capitalists and- the main thing millionaires,} {because in substance everything will be settled by the question of figures.”} (p42)

Compared with:

{financiers' cream filling joins the segments: governments, intelligence, industry, defence} - {because economic and budgetary matters penetrate and subvert every seen and unseen aspect of public and private life}

This is but one example of a proposed strategy from the Protocols appearing as a given in your article, with the logic behind such strategy presented as evidence. This is an example of how very little has changed in 100 years. The people whom you quote- what had been reading?

One concession I will make is to stop baiting you with the anti-Semitism tag. It must be said that you and your supporters focus on this slur has helped to avoid some of my other arguments. I have been deliberately provocative because I have been trying to coax out of you some sort of alternative program. (KAEP’s proposal looks good.)

cont..
Posted by dozer, Monday, 20 November 2006 2:04:03 PM
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Are you a Marxist? Are you in favour of world government, an all powerful UN? You appear to despise nationalism. (I fear neither.) Why should nationalism in itself be considered a bad thing? All I seem to get is the usual Marxist paranoia about bankers, interspersed with little gems about cream, Santa and lifeboats. (Honestly I've never seen so many metaphors in the place of real evidence in my life, except for that book written by James Redfield.)

Regarding the rich, you lost me very early on in the piece:
“The financiers with vast wealth and power have a thirst that can never be quenched - an appetite that can never be sated - because their rapaciousness only serves to make them the most insecure people on Earth.”
This statement is presented as a given, with no evidence to back it up. There seems to be an assumption that the little line about “money is the root of all evil” applies universally, and no other evidence is necessary. But consider what some of the richest men on the planet have done with their hard-earned wealth; The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation dedicates billions to enhancing health care, and reducing extreme poverty, and that’s just for starters. Warren Buffet has donated $30, 000, 000, 000 worth of shares (see BrainDrain, I too can use lots of zeros to make a big number look even bigger,) to the foundation. Consider that while the US government gave a small proportion of aid per capita during the Asian Tsunami Disaster, American’s raised enormous sums through private donations. (Misdirection of this funding is another matter.) I’m sure some will argue that this is just a cynical attempt at tax avoidance, but it actually reflects an ideological position which is wary of big government and has a focus on personal responsibility.
Carl, good to see my constant baiting is finally paying off. More on 9/11 in the next issue. Will the rest disown him because he believes in such a silly conspiracy theory? Or will they storm to his defence?
Posted by dozer, Monday, 20 November 2006 2:04:54 PM
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Dozer,

I won’t waste too much time harping about this if you don’t want me too, because I suspect that no matter what information I present to you, you will write it off as conspiracy rubbish.

I’m not sure how many will rush to my defence, but the scepticism of 9/11 is probably more widespread than you realise, 1 poll in the US suggested that around 30% of Americans believe the administration had foreknowledge of the attacks and deliberately allowed it to happen. Many people believe that it was fully orchestrated by the CIA, DoD and usual suspects, I am somewhere in the middle. And we are not fringe loonies either, please look.

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

Consider this at least, the head of the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence Agency was reported as wiring $100,000 to Mohammed Atta on September 10. At the time, he was staying in Washington, and had meetings with Colin Powell, Richard Armitage and George Tenet. Also, a former Pakistani General reported to the media that he was informed military action was planned in Afghanistan in October.

Couple this with the fact 9/11 was the biggest failure of the US air force the country has ever seen. Despite the fact flight 77 had been off course for 43 minutes, and was heading towards the capital, an area you would think would have extremely well protected airspace. Oh, and one of the most heavily protected buildings in the world lost all its surveillance tapes, except the one where you can’t see anything.

I will continue in my next post, if you wish to listen
Posted by Carl, Monday, 20 November 2006 6:09:04 PM
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Posted today on NYTimes: http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/science/spaceandthecosmos/index.html?page=recent&anchor=1

The notion that the US as the world's last superpower can play coyboys and indians with the rest of the free world through iniquitous hostile takeover mechanisms schemed by CEOs earning 10-100 times more than even US elected officials is a throwback to a neo-Feudal based FASCISM. This makes those who want to preserve this insane DUPLICITY of democracy with strings attached and disrespect for the notion that 'all men are equal under God' responsible for the impetus that drives terrorism in the world today.
Thankfully they are a minority of rogue businesspeople and simple minded rabble rousing groupies.

These Rabble Rousers wishing to quell the oppostion to this new fascism by simple mindedly labelling them communists must realise that they are also labelling Lincoln and FDR communists. No amount of revisionist history and flat out lies on their part will ever erase the great strides made for mankind that are enshrined by these men and others like them in the US constitution. By allowing free speech in the first amendment the US constitution is, by the standards of these S&C forum idiots, a communist manifesto.

When America was willing to take my advice and realise that their wastewater effluents could be responsible for hurricanes they took action. Of this I have incontrovertible proof. It has worked bigtime and saved the US at least $100billion and a whole world of grief this year alone.

Thus America knows that I have its best interests at heart.

So too, when America realises that my advice to stop terrorism is put an end to hostile takeovers in foriegn nations and to clip CEO salaries to within an inch of elected officials' salaries to stop domestic corruption, you can be assured those in power are listening. And when they finally get the courage to act I can assure everyone reading this that terrorist strikes against US citizens will come to an abrupt end in exactly the same way as hurricanes striking the US came to an abrupt end this season.

continue..
Posted by KAEP, Tuesday, 21 November 2006 10:15:46 AM
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Continued..

People not in the loop must understand that America is running out of options in Iraq and Afghanistan and thus is running out of options in the war on terror. The stakes are far too high not to rein in rogue US business aspirations and their global fiscal pollution.

This war on terror is NOT a WWII simple US V THEM scenario where the US had mobility, stealth, mass production capacity, fuel reserves, manpower and technological targetting advantages over their enemies, not to mention the full moral support of 95% of the world's populations.

Recent analyses suggest that almost all of those advantages are evaporting now in the face of this fast becoming perpetual war on terror, mainly due to mistrust and fear caused by US duplicity in its global financial dealings. It may take another hurricane free season in 2007 to give America the confidence to act on my warning, but THE STAKES ARE HIGH enough to give it a try.

If forum idiots think they can change the way the war on terror is developing, with G-bombs, A=Bombs and C-Bombs, then they must ask themselves why Kissinger has been enlisted to hand the problem off to America's enemies, and what on Earth is the diplomatic incentive that he is offering Syria and Iran that they might consider helping America when it is clearly in a pickle of their liking. What is he offering to ensure they will not move the war on terror from Iraq back to New York?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/iraq-military-victory-not-possible-kissinger/2006/11/20/1163871308090.html.

Is it possible that a new fiscal-policy day is dawning where the world will no longer doubt its faith in America's good intentionsand cowboys are put into EWCs(Engineered Wildwest Circuses) where they belong?
Posted by KAEP, Tuesday, 21 November 2006 10:20:05 AM
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'dozer
(Dropping the honorific 'Mr'. (you also made a correct half-assumption, I AM male) I first made it to imply respect as I recognise you at least make serious efforts to be informed on issues and read my link. I now recognise that since you chose the abbreviated nick, using it is respect enough)

You made 'concessions' (I do read your posts) but you miss the entire point i was trying to impress upon you and continue to demonise, by association, Chris with the Protocols.

It is an undisputable fact that the protocols are SIGNIFICANTLY based upon the works of Maurice Joly, Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (1864) thirty years before Protocols were published.(one sixth of it word for word).

That the protocols uniquely try to put the source of Evil (and world domination conspiracy) on Jewry is what you are relying upon to damage Shaw's claim when it is 'more true' to claim Joly influenced Shaw's work as he preceded Protocols by a generation and so Shaw must be claiming that Napoleon is the source of world domination, by your 'logic'.

Even that is false, because Joly also 'borrowed' ideas from earlier Authors to produce 'Dialogues' to demonise Napoleon III.

Please, stop using a discredited work of Fiction (Protocols) to try to discredit Shaw's valid personal comments in his argument, or be seen as the negative Anti-Antisemite you seem to be doing your best to prove.

(Can anyone tell me another nation and it's (reverse) diaspora, besides Israel, who creates agencies OPENLY and EXCLUSIVELY to obliterate any and all criticism of it? Or anyone else who has a unique term for the racism directed against it as in 'Anti-semitism'? Was 'anti-apartheid' the universal term, for example, for those who challenged the validity of South Africa's doctrine of white supremacy?)

Do show any fallacies you see in Shaw's argument but I believe the Protocol's are best left buried. Why choose to help raise the dead? If you have a personal crusade with them and feel it strongly enough, write an article expressing your beliefs - like Chris did.
Posted by BrainDrain, Tuesday, 21 November 2006 12:34:33 PM
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BrainDrain,

Nice back-handed complement. I’ve made it clear that I’ve let the Protocols go. When I first entered this thread, I was fishing. The world of conspiracy theorists is turgid and opaque- many present information to prepare people for the next stage- such as an introduction to the Protocols. Thus, before I took on the arguments more directly and reasonably, I wanted to find out Shaw’s underlying assumptions. As Shaw hasn’t answered my more direct questions in the previous post, I still don’t really know. It’s refreshing to see that the arguments here are more nuanced, but I can take them on just as easily.

(As an aside, I’ve always enjoyed the irony of accusing Arabs of anti-Semitism, I think I fell for that one myself.) Regarding sensitivity to criticism, it is worth noting that any questioning of the rate of immigration to Australia has generated a knee-jerk reaction, the immediate cry of “racism.”

Regarding Able Danger, (yes I know, I’m being lazy, just taking something from the top of the link, but hey, I’m just getting started):

Pentagon lawyers forbade the DOD from forwarding possible information naming 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta from contacting the FBI, partly in fear of the fallout from Waco. In scholarly debate, the “Vietnam Syndrome” is presented as reason why, since 1975, the US was hesitant to commit large numbers of troops to an arena if its interests weren’t perceived to be directly threatened- witness the brittleness of its resolve in Somalia, and its refusal to allow its pilots below 15 000 feet in Kosovo. One could argue that a similar syndrome effected a half-hearted approach to terrorist investigations. In particular, there existed extreme sensitivity over DOD intelligence and CIA activity within the US, with the spectre of the Hoover days looming large in the memory.

Here is the Pentagon explanation of why Able Danger didn’t appear in the 9/11 Commission report. http://www.9-11pdp.org/press/2005-08-12_pr.pdf. To paraphrase, no documentary evidence could be provided to support the claims, and the intelligence agent could not provide the context for how a link to Atta could have been made.

cont...
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 22 November 2006 2:43:25 PM
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Even Congressman Curt Weldon, who raised awareness of the issue, has admitted that he is not certain whether Atta’s name was on the link analysis document he had provided to then Deputy NSA Steve Hadley. Weldon’s perception of the size of the 2.5 terabytes of data on Able Danger which was destroyed is exaggerated. Nevertheless, he has made a big deal about being able to uncover more information in 2 weeks with 2 staffers than the 9/11 Commission did with 80 staffers and $15 million.

However, investigations of this matter, and intelligence work in general, require sifting through an enormous amount of information. Just because one piece of information, (or many in relation to the 9/11 Commission) has been overlooked or omitted, it does not automatically constitute evidence of a cover-up. It is generally something much more mundane- a failure to meet a standard of proof. Turf wars also played a huge part in the failure to connect information which in hindsight would have been crucial in stopping the 9/11 attacks. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was an explicit recognition of that fact.

Regarding missing video:

Here’s some footage of flight 77 hitting the Pentagon. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/16/pentagon.video/index.html. If you want to argue that it was a missile which hit the Pentagon, (I know you haven’t said it but I’m covering bases,) here is some footage of what happens to an aeroplane when it hits an immovable object, (and anyway, it’s just really cool.) http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5992186.

Regarding plans for military action in Afghanistan, Richard Clarke recounts in “Against All Enemies” how he had been involved in the drafting of war-plans against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, an effort initiated by the Clinton Administration. (We can discuss Pakistani Intel soon.) It was these plans which formed the basis of the Afghan invasion in October 2003. He also shows that the new Bush Administration, informed by a Realist conception of International Relations which focussed on states, simply did not lend enough urgency to the issue of terrorism before 9/11. This misdirection of energy is reinforced in Woodward’s “Plan of Attack.”
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 22 November 2006 2:51:08 PM
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'dozer,

Sorry that you felt it was a backhanded compliment it truly wasn't intended to be. Just a clear explanation of why i used (Mr?) in case you misread me and why i dropped it.
Your intelligence is obvious but being unfamiliar with your style i was not aware that you were 'fishing' (and that does seem a tad 'sneeky' to me ; ) ) but we are different and that is ok.

As for 9/11 conspiracy's it is as you say: The amount of information available and needed to be trawled through is nigh on mindboggling (and some just plain and provably false) and i prefer my mind as unboggled as possible. Plus the agenda's of various people with information out there (including some who 'fish' : ) or harbour malicious intent under sheep's (doves) clothing) confuse the investigative process further for the likes of me. I do not believe necessarily that the agenda's do not also include neocons and government agencies either protecting their own arses or stabbing other agencies in the back to divert suspicion knocking on their doors.

America seems to have enough conspiracy embedded within it's own government (CIA vs FBI vs NSA etc) to render all foreign enemies superfluous to requirements in my opinion.

By all means reveal more - i and others will read with interest but I won't choose this as a 'fight' - fair enough?

(not unless i see you fishing again! ; ) then, who knows?)

Iraq on the other hand...
(1,000,000,000 is still a gross UNDERrepresentation of a billion (by a factor of some 10^^8) to me and 'a billion' is far too close to 'a million' to be anything like descriptive enough of the true issue. Care to differ?)
Posted by BrainDrain, Wednesday, 22 November 2006 7:14:10 PM
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BrainDrain said: "Ev, When you actually post information rather than personal criticism and abuse you actually sound remarkably intelligent! : )"

I've been posting on this forum for nearly a year now, and I have gone to great lengths to 'keep a civil tongue in my head'. I don't recall abusing anybody, nor attempting to do so. Please show me/tell me what you consider to be abuse. Presumably you are referring to this post in the thread on multiculturalism: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5153#62152
When I read back over my comments, I can't find any abuse there. I didn't even 'shout' (use capitals) at you.

If you would like to reply to this post, please do so on the appropriate thread, thanks.

Chris Shaw:

Someone once came up to me at a party, and asked me (as kind of a tongue-in-cheek 'ice-breaker') something like 'So, what do think about a/the global conspiracy theory?'. I answered simply 'People conspire to make money'.

Often negelected in this topic is that almost everyone who invests their money in banks/financial institutions has little idea about how it sloshes around the globe or what it ultimately gets invested in. Of course there are 'ethical investment' funds for people who are more concerned about this.

While it's easy to criticise 'world leaders' and powerful mega-rich individuals, it is often also 'little people' who are also only interested in how much their shares are gaining/losing.
Posted by Ev, Thursday, 23 November 2006 6:45:01 AM
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Ev,

Since you made the comment here (and because my post limit to the other thread is currently over-stretched) I will make an assumption (valid or otherwise) that this is the 'appropriate' thread to post my reply.

I'm unsure if you read my initial response to you and others on the thread? http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5153#62231

You year long efforts to avoid abuse in your posts are a credit to your sense of fair play.

Personal criticism: 'How conceited and patronising..' (I am, implied) Your personal opinion, perhaps shared by others; my intention (perhaps poorly expressed) was to inform Obviuosly that he was not as clever as he thinks he is and to instill in him an appreciation of the fact that most Olo'ers express opinions based upon far more experience (and i believe, intelligence) than he currently has been able to accumulate (he recently seems to have read at least one book, or website?) and he would've been wise to not dismiss as improperly formulated their opinions and arguments. I concede that, given some of the posts i have read of his and others here, I'm modifying that opinion (slightly up in his case and rapidly down in terms of the overall level of intelligence of a (hopefully small number) few posters).

I now also concede that your comment: 'smug and condescending remarks' describe your own opinion of my words and not of me in toto, and so i was being hasty and perhaps mistaken to take the first three words as personal abuse.

'Who the hell do you think you are?' Shows that (given your confessed efforts to keep a civil tongue in your head for so long) i must have annoyed you immensely with my comments addressed to someone other than yourself? Combined with the overall tone of the first five lines of your rant at my work, and seeing nothing that showed you, in any way, considered what initiated my 'attack' (as you seemed to have felt) on Obviously had any positive value at all, I chose to take your response as personally abusive.

(cont.)
Posted by BrainDrain, Thursday, 23 November 2006 12:14:24 PM
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BrainDrain

Regarding the (Mr?) some posters were making a point of the fact that they hadn’t heard of me. I interpreted the (Mr?) in that light and continued the game. My apologies. I still maintain that the themes, language structure and tone of Shaw’s article and comments justified at the very least a good crack to see if he was a closet Protocol reader. I hope he’s still following the thread.

Another thing about cover-ups. Evidence of a cover up isn’t evidence of complicity. Again, the mundane is more likely- ineptitude.

Moving on to Iraq, neo-cons and WMD, and responding to much that has been said on this thread. (Probably should have done this first but I’ve gone over this so many times it’s getting a little boring. The Protocols was something new to try.)

Ev’s quoting of Sun Tzu regarding the cost of war, and the danger of “stupid haste” and protracted war is well and good. But every military leader in the US has read this too, not to mention Clauswitz, Caesar and Thucidides. It was this line of thinking, by such moderates as Colin Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1991, which stopped the US from going all the way to Baghdad. (Surely if they’d wanted Iraq’s oil, Saddam had provided them with the perfect pretext when he invaded Kuwait?) It was a reluctance to exceed its UN mandate to liberate Kuwait which prevented the US from preventing the massacre of Kurds and Shiia Arabs when they responded to GHWB’s call to rise up against Saddam. Powell again gave this advice to GWB in 2003- “you break it, you bought it.”

The Neo-Conservatives, on the other hand, disagreed strongly with such an approach. Former liberals and Marxists, they combined the Realist school of thought, with its focus on power politics, with Idealism- particularly the Democratic peace theory. (The mistake they is to underestimate the effectiveness of such a policy, the process of Democratisation being historically violent and destabilising. However, this is not to say that such an ideology is a bad thing.)

Cont...
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 23 November 2006 2:58:15 PM
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They perceived victory in the Cold War as vindication of this ideology. (This is a little simplistic, as there were a myriad of factors.) Frustrated during the 1990’s by the Clinton foreign policy, they formed the Project for the New American Century (http://www.newamericancentury.org/) to lobby for their belief that the US’ unrivalled power should be used to spread democracy around the world, by force if necessary, particularly through the removal of Saddam.

Neo-Cons should be viewed as just one stream of thought among many in the US foreign policy establishment, rather than a sinister force trying to hijack government policy. After 9/11, their arguments carried the most weight, the urgency to transform the ME being ever greater in light of the new threat. Democratisation (perhaps naively,) was seen as the solution to Islamist Terrorism.

Regarding WMD, there was a wealth of conflicting information regarding whether he had them. Al Qaeda prisoners and Iraqi ex-pats fed false information. Two former heads of UNSCOM, Richard Butler and Scott Ritter, disagreed on whether Iraq had WMD or didn’t respectively. Most importantly, Iraq had form, both in using WMD and in constantly deceiving weapons inspectors and the UNSC. (See Butler, “Saddam Defiant.”)

Although the evidence, as a whole, was inconclusive either way, Saddam’s behaviour helped convince the US and its allies that it couldn’t be trusted. The mistake was to present the WMD case as “a slam dunk.” Importantly, the final report of the Iraq Survey Group indicated that, although possessing no military WMD capability, Saddam fully intended to reconstitute his WMD arsenal once the worlds’ back was turned. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/index.html) Furthermore, failure to properly prepare for the post-invasion stage allowed the insurgency to gain a seemingly unstoppable momentum.

Unfortunately the Bush Administration has not had the resolve to consistently articulate this argument. Instead, media on both sides present a simplistic picture- either that the war was pursued under false pretences and is a disastrous misdirection of resources, or the FOX line that Saddam did indeed have ‘em.

Again, this demonstrates how there is much more at play in international politics than just corporate interests.
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 23 November 2006 2:59:06 PM
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Ev (cont.)

If you read all of Obviously's posts and mine i feel a little annoyed at your choice of 'argument' in that thread. I cannot believe you are in complete agreement with him, even if you felt sorry for him and angry at me. Just which of my other posts convinced you that I was smug, condescending, conceited and patronising to those who did not appear to deserve it? (frankly IMHO benjamin and his alter-ego 'brother' deserve everything that is coming to them. I don't see you decrying their ultrabigotry - what makes me so deserving in your opinion). Care to show me I'm wrong there?

I don't apologise for making you so angry as that was entirely your own choice.

I don't apologise to Obviously as i've already told him i have favourably reconsidered a little my initial thoughts of him and his words and he has not accused me of the things you so effusively did.

On rereading your post i take less offence at your initial rant to me, and have already expressed an admiration of your later works.

As for your comment to Chris. Partially correct. Problem: most people don't 'conspire' to make money, they refine a majority of their personal effort into it. There are, without question, the megarich and largely 'unseen' individuals who, because of their vast wealth are able to manipulate the weatlh of millions and governments into producing more wealth for themselves, eg. Cartels, Bill Gates with Windows/explorer. Billy might be borderline conspiracy/ just an extreme case of 'private enterprise manufacturing inbuilt profit' but i think you can see the difference between him and a Lockheed(eg) investor hoping to make a fast buck?

'dozer,

Glad we finally understood one another.
You latest posts are cogent and articulate, doesn't mean i altogether share your views ! : >

I shall consider carefully and get back to your comments on Iraq and corporate activity concerning war (the Thread) once my post limit allows!

Thankyou for helping to restore my faith in intelligent life in this country.

Ev - that applies to you too.
Posted by BrainDrain, Thursday, 23 November 2006 7:27:15 PM
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Dozer mate -

You haven't given this thread one fresh thought, nor one fresh perspective. You have simply trotted out a narrative. It shows you read a lot, but all the contributors to this thread read a lot. We have read and weighed this stuff before.

You have managed to portray the PNAC neo-cons as a bunch of buffoons. I wouldn't disagree, but try telling that to the Iraqis. It won't go down well as an excuse.

Despite the Pentagon purse being picked to the tune of $2.3 Trillion dollars by Sept 10th 2001 (and the odd other measly trillion before), the boys finally managed to slash the arse out of the US treasury money bag and the whole country went off to "war" (if that's what you call it when the sides are so unevenly matched).

Paul Wolfowitz himself (your genial World Bank manager) admitted to Vanity Fair that WMD was the best and most plausible excuse at the time.

It's a con. It's a fake. It's a scam.

All the ideologies, the "isms", the labels count for nothing.

One neo-con summed it up nicely:

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors - and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

*
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 23 November 2006 8:23:45 PM
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Banjo,
maybe I missed something seen by others in your posts, but to my mind you are a level-headed, clear-thinking non-racist. I hope I am not wrong.

Rainier,
I believe you stand on my side of the 'line-drawn-in-the-sand' here and are fervently anti-racist. I have to say though, that you occasionally misread posts and blame people for comments they made to others than yourself as being made against you personally, please go back and read some posts carefully and if possible, without believing people like Banjo are opposed to you. Thanks for your posts exposing the race myth.

CJ,
I see where you were going with your comment to Banjo but you might like to say something less open to misunderstanding to explain your problem with (one of) Banjo's posts.

Obviously,
(Oh to be young again)... Did the book you have read and rely (seemingly exclusively) upon have anything to say that the most 'obvious difference' between you and your OWN SISTER is the abscence of a 'Y' chromosome - meaning you have 953 DIFFERENT genes between you and your 'identically' genetic, same 'race', sister (assuming you share the same parents and your mother was faithful and neither of you are genetic mutants (virtually impossible if the latest research is proven to be correct - DNA replication of 3,000,000,000 base amino acid pairs in every single cell of humans is unlikely to ever be completed PERFECTLY.

If you can completely miss something that bleedin OBVIOUS you have NO credibility in the rest of your well constructed but ludicrously simplistic and false arguement. Q.ED : )

You have a fairly decent brain, it seems - try opening it just a little more than you have so far. That is not to say that you MAY have already opened it more than your past might have prevented it from being. Keep on learning and not falling for 'reasonable sounding' prejudice and hatred.

(cont.)
Posted by BrainDrain, Friday, 24 November 2006 3:34:49 PM
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Apologies for wrong thread post previously - is now in correct place.

I wrote this a year ago and sent it to a radio talkshow host. Undoubtedly no-one in OLO has heard anything about it since. It is appropriate to this thread and remains to be contradicted intelligently by anyone who can show it is untrue or displays the potential for some to conspire to influence world politics for their own fiduciary gain and that hence conspiracy’s (such as 9/11) are not ‘real’.

But first, ask yourself this question:

If you were Amoral and a member of a seriously organised crime syndicate involved in an industry with a $130 billion dollar per year turnover, just what lengths would you and your syndicate go to?…

Having watched the ABC's Foreign Correspondent TV program last night (2005), something struck me as being quite remarkable and I'm amazed that it appears no journalist has made the connection and tried to follow the money trail.

I refer to the heroin trade emanating from Afghanistan, you know, that place the Neo-Con led George Bush government so desperately wanted to remove the Taliban from and where John Howard has just sent even more of our SAS troops recently to suppress a Taliban insurgency.

According to the figures shown in the ABC report (which I believe were supplied by US administrators working in Afghanistan to 'control' the supply of Opium to the rest of the world - quite literally) the total amount of opium resin exported from Afghanistan in 2000 was 4600 tonnes (4.6 million kilograms). This was reduced to 135 tonnes in 2001 when the Taliban were paid by Britain and the US to eliminate poppy harvesting and were also promised a greater legitimacy for their Afghani Government in world affairs (The UK and US were preparing to accept the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan before 9/11!).

Now take a close look at the figures and the MONEY involved here. (The US and UK were offering a paltry US$1 000 000 each to the Taliban. (Cont.)
Posted by BrainDrain, Friday, 24 November 2006 7:45:56 PM
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(from previous post)
The Taliban reduced the amount of opium trafficked from 4600 tonnes to 135 tonnes from 2000 to 2001.
(Afghani farmers were paid US$50 kilo for the raw opium. Total income to producers reduced from $230 million to $7 million).

Consider that 90 % of this product found it's way to heroin users and retailers in the UK.
Consider that 10 kgs of opium are needed to make 1kg of heroin (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/heroin/flowers_to_heroin.htm).

This means in One Year the UK heroin trade stood to lose 90% of 4600 - 135 tonnes opium = roughly 400 000 Kilos of pure heroin.
Consider that street heroin is cut to anywhere between 3 and 60 % purity. This equates to a minimum of 800 000 000 grams of street heroin which would be needed to be sourced from another growing source to feed the UK addicts.

Consider that heroin sold on the street for an average of 70 POUNDS per gram in the UK in 2001
(http://www.drugscope.org.uk/druginfo/drugsearch/ds_report_results.asp?file=%5Cwip%5C11%5C3%5C007chapter5.html)

This means in 2001 organised crime stood to LOSE 70x800 million Pounds in turnover!
That is 56 BILLION pounds! In ONE YEAR.

Could it be worth some drug cartel paying 20 martyrs families a million pounds each to pilot planes into the World Trade Centre and then planting the belief in the media that it was the work of Osama Bin Laden in order to give the US a reason to remove the Taliban's control over the drug industry in Afghanistan? (something The US already had made contingency plans to do before the Sept 11 acts!)

Remember that The Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden to a neutral country for trial. The US rejected this and destroyed the Taliban control in that country. While the US puppet-government of Harmid Karzai has been in power and while the US leads an anti-poppy campaign in that country, the opium production has risen from 135 tonnes in 2001 to 4200 tonnes in 2004, almost back to the levels pre-Sept 11. Well done America, so much for the War on Drugs! (source - ABC 'Foreign Correspondent' 23/Aug/2005)
Posted by BrainDrain, Saturday, 25 November 2006 6:23:38 PM
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Good one Braindrain. I'll add a previous posting of my own. (part 1)

Afghan Heroin: The ability to look at something, yet not SEE it.

1. The use of high potency drugs for currency is well known. Drugs are an extremely compact medium of exchange, tradeable pretty well anywhere for any other commodity or currency. Unlike gold, drugs are destroyed by consumption, ensuring a constant demand value.

2. In 2000, Afghanistan produced about 4000 tons of opium. The following year (February 2001) it produced virtually none, by edict of the Taliban Mullahs who said it was anti-Islam. Whether that was sincerity or just market manipulation is hard to say, but it may have produced a spastic colon effect amongst the Wall Street money launderers.

3. Opium production in Afghanistan before and after 9-11; before and after the present crusade:

Year
2000 - 4000 tonnes
2001 - almost nil
2002 - 3400 tonnes
2003 - 3700 tonnes
2004 - 4200 tonnes
2005 - 8000+ tonnes
2006 - 6000+ tonnes

The last two years have been achieved despite adverse growing conditions and at the expense of food production. What acreage of poppy crops does this production represent? The UN survey estimates approximately 165,000 hectares.

4. Where are these crops? Are they in the cracks and crannies of Tora Bora, or are they cultivated in arable fields for all to see?

5. Why don't we simply purchase the poppies (at market value) and make the farmers happy? It's far cheaper than sending ever more troops and equipment. Why do we permit the refinement and export of heroin? How is this achieved under the noses of the most well equipped surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen?
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Saturday, 25 November 2006 7:43:50 PM
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(part 2)

6. Did you ever consider the utter idiocy of rendition flights? A whole fleet of aeroplanes burns tons of fuel carting poor patsies to and fro between "secret" prisons all over the world. Few or none of the prisoners ever end up being charged with anything. So we are asked to believe that this is the result of misguided or over-zealous intelligence agents in the "war on terror".

7. Isn't it far more likely that rendition flights are actually part of the heroin highway? We know that those flights pass through almost every country uninspected and officially "non-existent".

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In his book, "The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade", the basic modus operandi is laid out in plain view. On Lateline a few months ago, Prof McCoy pointed out that Guantanamo is in fact a node in the CIA network, ostensibly to receive the worst of the "bad guys".

Those of us who realise that the incarceration of Australia's David Hicks makes no sense, must look elsewhere for a plausible justification for the Guantanamo facility.

As a US owned "island" of lawlessness i.e. beyond the jurisdiction of US lawmakers, Guantanamo makes perfect sense if it is looked at as a major node in a CIA drug network. Small wonder the Administration twists and turns in it's efforts to hang on to it's hapless "terrorists", against world opinion. The facade must be preserved at all costs.

The rapacious hunger for funds by the US secret service agencies long ago exceeded the limits of their bloated "black budgets". We saw this spectre emerge briefly during the Iran-Contra Affair, only to disappear again under the cloak of secrecy. The principal players retain their positions of authority to this day and there is no reason to suppose that they have not refined their craft under the amorality of the Bush Administration.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Saturday, 25 November 2006 7:45:45 PM
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The Charges Laid Against David Hicks: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/13/1087065029888.html?from=storylhs.

Despite Guantanamo being the place the 'worst of the worst' were being held (according to GW) all 13 British subjects taken there and all 48 Afghani subjects taken there have been returned to their own governments and subsequently released without trial.

Curious that Afghani's who were 'defending' their own country (ruled by the Taliban at the time) and who must have intended to kill any invading coalition soldiers following Sept 11 were let go by George Bush while one of the two Australian's is still awaiting anything like a fair trial after almost 5 years of solitary confinement in a US gaol on non-US soil (otherwise he would be guaranteed fair US Justice). Our government refuses to stand up for the rights of it's citizen's as even the Afghani's have succesfully done - We should hang our heads in shame that Afghani muslims are given preferential and better treatment than Australian's from the US and our own governments.

Unless George has a reason to be friendly with the Afghani's more than the Aussies?, Maybe 130 billion reason's (amongst one other) perhaps? Ordinary Afghani's, not just the Taliban would likely take up Arms if the US tried to prevent them growing their poppys.

Chris,
The point about the US/UK paying the Afghani's $300,000,000 a year to buy their poppy's to wipe out the UK heroin flood rather than the billions it is paying out to cope with and attempt to police the problem is one that demands further debate.
Posted by BrainDrain, Sunday, 26 November 2006 5:54:41 PM
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BrainDrain said:
"Chris,
The point about the US/UK paying the Afghani's $300,000,000 a year to wipe out the UK heroin flood rather than the billions it is paying out is one that demands further debate."

The demand for the horse comes from the riders. Legalize all of these drugs so that they can be grown locally. Then get rid of all income taxes and put government services onto a point-of-sale tax. Stop trying to Puritanically enforce morality while people are uneducated about their own consumption.
Stepping down from the soap box now..

Chris's points about wars for economic reasons are more valid than most people want to admit, since they involve complex views of conspiratorial actions in the world economy. This isn't the same thing as a tinfoil hat 'Conspiracy', it is just the way the economics and competitive activity breed bullies and thieves. The banking system is no more a result of Jewish conspiracy than the corporate factory cows are a result of a Farmer conspiracy. The demands of consumption create opportunities for economy of scale devices. We see the pinnacle in 9/11 and the Iraq war.

One of the first things I learned about world politics 'American Style' was the purpose of the U.S. Navy; to keep the sea lanes open. You might think this is simply a matter of watching the shipping and seas, but it is Physics 101. If you don't know what's on the Periodic Table, you don't know the basics of world politics. Everything else is just posturing, including religion and race. Sure, there are a lot of people who hate and want to kill for religious Blind Faith reasons (true evil), but they wouldn't get very far on a global scale without the transportation, weapons, and cashflow provided by competitive economics and consumerism. Our System of Systems is not only vulnerable to terrorism, it enables and attracts it.
As long as there is no Net Creative purpose to the System, then it will continue to wallow in pointless resource consumption until it consumes anyone who can't let go of Blind Faith.
Posted by auntiegrav, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 1:10:23 PM
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Auntiegrav (cute nick), : )

Point #1
Horses exist independently of Riders. The Rider has a need he perceives the Horse can fill. If horses did not exist there could be no riders of them. This wouldn't prevent the riders from desiring to ride something to get where they are going to faster. The demand would still exist. As would the desire of the horse traders to make money from the riders.

Point #2
Legalising drugs sends a poor message to any who are unsure about trying them for the first time. It is ultimate hypocrisy to legalise them and then say Just say No! Government control of drugs might have some positives (eg. Transferring profit in them from organised (conspiracy) crime) but then the government become the pushers with something to gain from the growth of the illegal drug industry - much like our and the UK/US government is doing in the 'Numbers' racket of Lotto, Horse-racing and internet gambling and the like. Such a Christian activity!

Point #3
While the Banking System has not evolved solely from any 'Jewish Conspiracy' it does not necessarily follow that a number of similarly minded individuals (possibly of a common minority group - the rich perhaps? Those most involved in the system over a number of generations? ) have not conspired to influence or control that system for personal gain. Farmers are lower down on the food chain than the corporate farmers and bankers and so are less likely to be able to form a successful Cow Conspiracy than those fore-mentioned would as independent farmers profits readily show compared to corporate ones.

Governments could make far better use of the money they waste policing drugs by donating their aid money to the poverty-stricken farmers of third world country's to buy and then destroy their poppy crops, either removing the crime gang's source and ability to supply or making it uneconomic to persue in one fell swoop while also ensuring no corruption in those countries could divert the money into the wrong hands, or at least inhibiting such an ability.

cont.
Posted by BrainDrain, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 2:25:12 PM
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Our government's would then be faced with the problem of 'What do we offer those who take drugs to replace their habit?', as the demand would still be there, much as the demand for faster travel exists today without many horses around.

I have a vague feeling we are on much a similar 'wavelength' in the rest of your post, but to be honest? It was too abbreviated and hard for me to fully follow to make intelligent comment on.
Posted by BrainDrain, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 2:26:29 PM
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right on auntiegrav, you have summed up a lot of what I beleive very concisely.

I don't like drugs, I've watched people very close to me deteriorate, as I'm sure many people on this forum have. But a true liberal would not wish to intervene with a persons personal choice. I think the potential billions raised from drugs should be put into addressing social problems and rehab. But obviously, it is a lot more complicated than that.

The purpose of the Navy is very similar to the role of the army and airforce. Except thaty they protect land routes and air space. Its all geopolitcs.

The other important factor of course is the will of the people. We won't agree to so much of our taxes being spent on economic wars if we don't percieve a physical threat also.

Thats where 9/11 fits in very nicely.
Posted by Carl, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 4:50:49 PM
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Leave the door open for a week and the horse bolts. And then the balloon goes up. Ha ha ha… Isn’t it fun presenting common phrases in the form of an argument…

Shaw, buddy,

I could say the same to you. I've heard it all before. Providing an alternative narrative to yours is one step in the debate. You’re yet to provide a solution to our supposed enslavement. Perhaps you have avoided this to avoid the label of Marxist, Utopian, etc? Do you have a natural aversion to “labels?” Again, I seem to be getting a lot of quotes which can be interpreted according to one’s world-view. I struggle to see how the quotes you have provided by Wolfowitz, and the unnamed senior advisor (I’d love to know who said it, it’s quite succinct, really) are evidence of economic motives.

Wolfowitz's is an interesting one which deserves to be quoted in full, and in context:

"Wolfowitz admitted that from the outset, contrary to so many claims from the White House, Iraq's supposed cache of WMD had never been the most important casus belli. It was simply one of several reasons: "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Everyone meaning, presumably, Powell and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Almost unnoticed but huge," he said, is another reason: removing Saddam will allow the U.S. to take its troops out of Saudi Arabia, where their presence has been one of al-Qaeda's biggest grievances."

(See http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030528-depsecdef0222.html, and http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html.)

In a later interview, he provides further contextualization:

"The truth is, we've always had all three of those reasons, (Saddam’s atrocities, WMD, and Terrorism,) and in fact, if you look at Powell's presentation, there have always been all three. There has been a tendency to emphasize the weapons of mass destruction issue. But, as I said in the fuller quote, the real thing that has concerned the President from the beginning and which I think is even the "axis" that's referred to in the "axis of evil" is the

cont..
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 2:28:55 PM
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connection between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction."

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030528-depsecdef0222.html

Thus, Wolfowitz did not confess that there were no WMD. He did not even refer to the WMD argument as a mere “excuse.” This is not a tacit admission that it is a con, a fake, or a scam. (And as I argued previously, the question of WMD and Saddam was a problem which was not just going to go away.) This passage is indicative of the complexity of foreign policy decision making in the US- even within the Republican Administration, contrasting views must find a way to cooperate and reach compromise.

So many of the quotes, strange coincidences and articles I investigate turn up mundane, often boring dead-ends. The way this last comment was misconstrued is just one example of how people will jump on half-truths, distortions, and in this case, lazy journalism, to support their ideas.

I was not suggesting that Neo-Cons are buffoons. Errors made in implementing a set of ideas, or an ideology, do not undermine this point of view. If more care had been taken to prevent Iraq's descent into chaos, Neo-Cons would still exert most influence in Washington.

The comment by the 'senior Bush aid' about creating realities is instructive. It sums up the foreign policy approach taken by powerful nations from the dawn of civilization. Take for example, Thucydides comment in the "Melian Dialogue," from "The Peloponesian War" that "the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept." The Neo-Con vision stems from an understanding of what powerful countries can achieve if they have the political will to follow through. What Neo-Cons have realized is that this power can achieve good when coupled with Democratic Liberalism.

Sure, they stuffed up. But would you have preferred the Iraqis to have continued under the yoke of Saddam Hussein? Interestingly, would you still be making the argument “try telling that to the Iraqis” if the invasion had led quickly and smoothly to the creation of a stable Democracy free of insurgency?

Carl,

"It's all geopolitics." Yep, great.
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 2:30:11 PM
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'dozer,
Informative comments as usual.

"the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept." or "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." is a wisdom of over 2400 years duration (at least).

Here's more Thucydides: "But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet go out to meet it."

"War takes away the easy supply of daily wants,... that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes." Poor fortune = poor character following War's commencement.

His first quote reveals to me the most fundamental error in human thought.

"I have limited power"

Accordingly the mass of humanity, through which all power and wealth derives, considers themselves 'weak', powerless and oppressed by the 'strong' few.

A minority (of even one) has power by recognising that it has and exercising it. As Bryce Courtney so eloquently described.

The weak only suffer what the strong can fool them into believing.

America fooled the world into believing there were Weapons of Mass Destruction because that was the ONLY legitimacy they could muster support for their invasion of Iraq (under the 'auspices' of the UN resolution requiring Saddam to disarm). He had disarmed but the attack was carried out regardless and I was given assurance by John Howard by mail that we were only going in to disarm Saddam, and regime change and promulgation of the War on Terror had nothing to do with our troops invading Iraq. Days before the invasion America assured Saddam that if he disarmed (he HAD) that he would be allowed to 'remain' in power.

How quickly our minds are fooled because we let ourselves become 'weak' and there exist the strong(willed).

It's this which is the True 'Conspiracy' facing mankind which corporations rely upon and encourage in order to increase. Banking Systems and Wars are but the most visible and easily identifiable apparitions of it.

But One, with the Will and a strength of mind can overcome it.
Posted by BrainDrain, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 3:36:26 PM
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dozer,

point taken, my posts have lacked substance.

I just have a lot of trouble understanding you dozer, and other people like you, obviously you are extremley well educated and well versed in the major political philosophies. But you seem incapable of accepting what I think is a pretty obvious reality. The reality being, we are pawns, part of the 'grand chessboard.'

Its taken me some time to reach this conclusion, and I'm sure my views will continue to evolve.

You seem to think the 9/11 cover up can be explained by the US just wanting to cver up their incompetence, but I reject this. If they were genuinely caught off guard on 9/11, surely some senior heads in the military would have rolled. Not one has. I could cop a few unexplainable anomoalies about that day, but there are dozens. Almost everything we have been told about 9/11 is either a distorted truth or an outright lie.

I've gotten to the point where it just amazes me that we have all bought the 9/11 scam. Although, it is possible to manipulate people on a massive scale, I have been recently reading about the cultural revolution in China. A perfect demonstration of the fact that under the right circumnstances, it is possbile to switch the collective brain of a massive population completely off.
Posted by Carl, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 4:49:42 PM
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Just to harp on a bit more about Wolfowitz,

The different strains of thought in the White House Administration were as follows: Some believed that Iraq should be invaded for the sake of upholding international law- given that Saddam had flouted numerous UNSC resolutions (note that it was the lack of cooperation with the council at issue) and was continually playing off division in the international community to make a mockery of the inspections regime. The Neo-Cons had a grander vision, seeing the invasion as the key to transforming the Middle East along Democratic lines. Some were concerned about the connection between Iraq and 9/11, (although this is quite tenuous,) while others were simply concerned about the destabilising impact Iraqi WMD would have on the region.

Wolfowitz points out that the one thing they could all agree on was that they thought Saddam Hussein had WMD. Thus, in an attempt to demonstrate that the WMD issue was all a con, Shaw uses a quote which demonstrates the exact opposite. I find this interesting given that Shaw has said “We have read and weighed this stuff before.” Perhaps he should go over some of that stuff again.

Shaw quotes Wolfowitz earlier in the thread as well, the famous “the war will pay for itself” remark. Let’s look at the whole quote:

“There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” (See: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemental War Regulation, 3/27/03)

Given the context Shaw used, I wasn’t sure whether he was implying that it was another giveaway that the war was all about profit, or just a chance to lampoon. This ambiguity runs through a lot of the posts on this thread- switching between the argument that those in power
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 30 November 2006 2:47:25 PM
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are diabolical genii who have managed to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes, or that they’re just a bunch of idiots.

But Wolfowitz’s argument does not require blind adherence to “economic dogma.” Iraq has abundant resources if only it could hold together. This reasoning explains the importance placed on securing and protecting Iraq’s oil fields during the initial stage of the war, especially given what Saddam did in Kuwait. It was in fact in the interests of ordinary Iraqis to do so. Again, the mistake, and indeed the tragedy, was to underestimate how difficult Iraq would be to govern after the invasion.

BrainDrain,

Again, we’re falling into the pattern of using famous lines to reinforce existing beliefs. I could use the same quotes to show how the coalition of the willing, with the “clearest vision,” and “aware of the danger,” were prepared to put in the hard yards while the rest of the world vacillated. Interestingly, Saddam Hussein’s regime represented the “strong few” oppressing the “weak” majority. The US, stronger than Saddam, was able to overthrow the oppressor.

Back to WMD,

Despite Saddam’s insistence that Iraq had disarmed, his continual obfuscation and apparent playing for time gave the opposite impression.

“The Iran-Iraq war and the ongoing suppression of internal unrest taught Saddam the importance of WMD to the dominance and survival of the Regime. Following the destruction of much of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure during Desert Storm, however, the threats to the Regime remained; especially his perception of the overarching danger from Iran. In order to counter these threats, Saddam continued with his public posture of retaining the WMD capability. This led to a difficult balancing act between the need to disarm to achieve sanctions relief while at the same time retaining a strategic deterrent. The Regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach. Ultimately, foreign (mis)perceptions of these tensions contributed to the destruction of the Regime.”

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rsi-05.htm (p34)

Carl,

Tenet offered his resignation but Bush refused it. Bush’s leadership style is typified by strong loyalty, (to those who remain on song.)

I’ll keep trawling through the 911 anomalies.
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 30 November 2006 2:48:21 PM
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'dozer,

I hope you realise that the 'we're fallling into a pattern' was initiated by your Thucydides quote to support your argument?

I also hope you realise your research is obviously affecting your bias (or the other way 'round, unsure which?) which comes across as believing the US is somehow right (might means right?) to seek to interfere in other nation's politics for it's own agenda (or do you merely accept this as self-evidentiary fact, while holding no personal belief/agenda?)

You quote Wolfowitz, almost exclusively, as some kind of arbiter of truth that we should all admire and respect, frankly i feel he's a self-serving ... well, let's just say i don't trust the man who was one of the architects behind the illegal invasion!

Your efforts to clarify the position over Iraq post-9/11 are profoundly influenced by the American side of the story, an understandable, not desirable, bias, given they speak english and must attempt to account for their actions to the 'democratic' populace, moreso than would Saddam.

You seem to dismiss the main issue. There are/were no WMD's at, or for any detectable time before, the time of Invasion as UN arms inspectors including Richard Butler and Hans Blicks insisted upon telling anyone who would listen!

Anyone with an ounce of intelligence or common-sense could see/know/be able to guess that Saddam needed to be seen as having some power over his 'own' country he ruled without civil war for over 25 years and that was the reason for his attempts at obfuscation/games-playing with the UN, who are widely seen as US puppets in Islamic countries and more than a few non-islamic ones. His valid concerns over the intent of US military in the region can in no way be used to justify the creation of a false belief both within the US and within the wider community that Iraq had any WMD's.

We, and possibly the moderate US decision-makers, were conned by those who stood to gain the most from what was an ill-considered and unjustifiable attack on Iraq, World Peace and credulity.

Deny it if you can?
Posted by BrainDrain, Thursday, 30 November 2006 7:34:48 PM
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Dozer,

firstly, bush is not a leader. Its impossible for us to know exactly how much influence he has on decision making in the White House. Clearly, he is not a curious man, and is certainly not the intellectual mastermind behind US foreign policy. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if he was completly in the dark about the 9/11 conspiracy.

In your trawling, can I suggest you have look at this site

http://911myths.com/

This is one of the more popular sites that defends the official story and ridicules the conspiracy theorists. This website certainly helped affirm my suspicions about 9/11. They do rebuke some of the mroe outlandish claims, but grasp at straws with other things
Posted by Carl, Thursday, 30 November 2006 8:05:06 PM
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Just a couple of quick comments. Another essay may come tomorrow.

BrainDrain,

It was not I who initiated the quotes. My reference to Thucydides was itself a response to one of Shaw's signature libelous use of quotes by an anonymous neo-con. Go back and take a look. I brought up Thucydides to contextualize the comment- I saw a clear reflection of Realist theory (one of the dominant theories in the study of International Relations,) in this comment. I have been attempting, to no avail apparently, to try to help the moonbat from understanding these comments in a different light.

Again, my references to Wolfowitz aren't meant as evidence, (unlike Shaw.) I am using his full quotes to show just how badly Shaw had mangled the meaning of his words.

You're also getting your facts wrong;

Richard Butler, by no means a good friend of the US administration, makes it all too clear, in his book, "Saddam Defiant: The threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Crisis of Global Security," that he thought Saddam did have weapons. He also made it clear that he felt that the international community lacked the political will to do anything about it. Of course, this all changed after 911.

It is interesting that Islamic countries consider the UN to be a puppet of the US. A huge proportion of the resolutions made by the deeply politicized UN Human Rights Commission are directed against Israel. This reflects the fact that most of its members are themselves undemocratic states, many of them Arab or Muslim.

Furthermore, the reason the UNSC would not grant explicit sanction of the US's actions in March 2003 were because two of its veto wielding members, France and Russia, had strong national interests supporting the regime of Saddam Hussein.

What a shame Saddam lost his "own country," huh?

Carl,

Bush has shown intense interest in the fate of AIDS sufferers in Africa. It has been suggested that he is an undiagnosed dyslexic. He has trouble reading, and looks ungainly giving a speech. But he’s not an idiot.
Posted by dozer, Monday, 4 December 2006 3:02:04 PM
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dozer,
As you know how and what everyone including people in the white house think, how about enlightening the rest of us as to what our next foriegn policy decision will be, could you if you don't already know, please get on to your old mate George, or probably Connie may know.

Give us a break, Mr. I know everything!
Posted by SHONGA, Monday, 4 December 2006 3:20:01 PM
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'dozer,

On the fact concerning Richard Butler I can stand corrected (very partially). Butler has said some VERY interesting things on his beliefs and the US's hypocrisy over WMD's and Iraq on this website interview:

http://www.counterpunch.org/davis05172003.html

He also said that when he and his team were thrown out by Saddam he thought there were weapons 'unaccounted for' in 1998.

This DOESN'T equate to 'existing then' (5 years before the invasion) which Hans Blicks DID subsequently deny existed before the war was pushed on us illegally by the US's deceivers, merely that Saddam had not proven to their satisfaction that weapons had been destroyed. Saddam/Iraq would not've been very keen to prove anything to the UN inspectors that declared their weakness to surrounding countries, just like any other country, including the US.

You display an interesting bias...

Human rights violations as recorded by Israel are seemingly solely due to Muslim countries being able to override other nations' UN vetos and not because Israel is one of, if not the, most major, consistent, blantent, and unrepentent violators of human rights in the world for the last 60 years?

The UNSC wouldn't grant Bush the right to invade another country because of France/Russia's self-interests in weapons and other 'trade' to Iraq/Saddam, not because the US had used incorrect and false intelligence to try to fool everyone?

It IS a shame (though you obviously think it's just dandy that the US used force to impose a power vacuum in Iraq when they were only supposed to be 'disarming' Saddam not removing him (ask Johhny!)) that Saddam was deposed, not by the Iraqi's, the only ones who had the right, but by an invading superpower dictating its own will and self-interest at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and those of a few thousand decent soldiers of the coalition. (Not to mention the billion$ the arms manufacturers make out of it or that Iraq's water, sewerage and power are still not up to pre-invasion standards for 20 million Iraqi's not yet butchered).

But as long as you're ok that's all that matters,Right?
Posted by BrainDrain, Monday, 4 December 2006 4:39:18 PM
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BrainDrain,

On bias,

Looking back:

-Shaw quotes Wolfowitz, incorrectly, to argue that the war was a sham.

-I present full quotes, question Shaw's interpretation, and question how he uses evidence to justify his arguments.

-BrainDrain says, "You quote Wolfowitz, almost exclusively, as some kind of arbiter of truth," and "I don't trust the man who was one of the architects behind the illegal invasion!"

Three problems with this last response:

-As stated in my previous post, I was setting the record straight on the correct meaning of his statement. (Arguing that Iraq has abundant resources and could fund its own recovery does not require viewing W as an exclusive arbiter of truth.)

-If you think his word counts for nothing, Shaw should never have quoted him.

-You show your own bias and circular reasoning; Shaw argues that the war is a sham based on what W says, and you argue that what W says is untrustworthy because he planned the sham war. This bias informs your arguments.

I have been attempting to systematically assess your evidence and the assumptions underlying your own evaluations.

On Butler,

“But I think what we are seeing now is the very strong possibility that towards the end, just before the war began, Iraq either began to destroy those weapons or moved them out possibly to Syria.”

Precisely.

Consider that “Saddam’s handling of Iraq’s response to the 9/11 attacks probably reflects a lack of understanding of US politics and may explain why Baghdad failed to appreciate how profoundly US attitudes had changed following September 2001.” (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rsi-05.htm) US policy makers believed that Saddam would understand that nothing less that total cooperation would suffice. Thus, incomplete cooperation, combined with WMD “unaccounted for,” translated into- “he’s got them.” Thus, Saddam’s miscalculation led to his own downfall.

NPT,

The US is indeed undermining its case by developing tactical nukes. Interestingly, the US would actually have the most to gain from global nuclear disarmament, and the hardest stumbling blocks would be smaller states with weaker conventional deterrents.

Shonga,

Did my representation of the facts, contrary to your own, hurt your feelings?
Posted by dozer, Tuesday, 5 December 2006 10:55:02 AM
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dozer,

Thankyou for your systematic assessment it IS appreciated.

(As is your intelligence and efforts to be as fair as you are able)

I have to correct an apparent assumption on your part and an area where we are not on the same 'page'.

I'm not actually supporting or even considering any of Shaw's argument. My focus is on what i know (and can investigate) and your comments. I admit you are more 'on topic' in this sense but i am not arguing circularly with you or Shaw over Wolfowitz even if you believe such a circularity exists. Shaw's original statements are not the basis for my reasoning. We MAY share a common idea but i don't rely upon Shaw for my belief.

Hence, in answer to points 1,2 and 3 of your post:
1 accepted.
2 refuted, Shaw and i are not directly connected by anything other than that I am writing to a post he initiated. He can do whatever he likes in his inital Article, I am stating my opinions based entirley upon your comments.
3 refuted, see 2.

Any post that has your name on it of mine is addressing your claims, not Shaw's. Is that wrong of me?

As for Butler: 'destroyed them or moved them out, possibly to Syria?'

We ARE talking chemical, bacteriologic and Nuclear WMD's here not small munitions and katushka rockets. Are you serious in thinking Butler was making any kind of sense suggesting Saddam would rather give them to Syria than use them against an invasion? Once the war was over can you imagine Iraq saying: 'Please Syr, can we have our bombs back'?
and YES! we ARE talking actual weapons, not weapons technology, you can't disarm a technologic idea, just actual weapons. The Truth is Saddam DID disarm before the invasion and hence the invasion was illegal. EOS.

As for what Saddam should have done. 25 years of Iraqi history shows quite clearly that Saddam did exactly what he always did and it was the US who made the wrong assumptions and are solely responsible for the current situation.
Posted by BrainDrain, Tuesday, 5 December 2006 3:29:53 PM
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dozer,
No certainly not mate, in fact in WW2 people like you were known as ENO's in as much as e' thinks e' knows everything, but knows nothing, and also gives you the s#$&s. You are quoting "dozer facts" we are actually discussing a conspiracy I'd appreciate your thoughts on the subject instead of your ramblings.
Posted by SHONGA, Tuesday, 5 December 2006 4:12:00 PM
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Thank you Shonga, for all his wealth of knowledge dozer seems incapable of digesting a few simple facts.

a)Strategic control of the oilfields in the ME is THE number 1 reason for US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.

b) Keeping Russia and China's in their box is a major reason for the ongoing military presence in this region

c) Without 9/11 the US could never have justified their attacks on those nations

Perhaps dozer would care to explain also how a 42 storey building collapsed in under 7 seconds after around 8 hours of burning, an unprecendented phenomonen. We can ignore the coincidence that WTC7 housed CIA and DoD offices.
Posted by Carl, Tuesday, 5 December 2006 6:09:29 PM
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Carl,
I feel this may be a case of there are none so blind than those who will not see. Poor old dozer. I am embarrassed for him. He is unable to even consider the concept that he may be mistaken, an old saying comes to mind "don't believe everything you read, or see" good advice even in the 21st century, don't you think mate.
Posted by SHONGA, Tuesday, 5 December 2006 6:25:10 PM
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SHONGA

ENO’s, and your suggestion that I am blind, could easily be turned around. Perhaps your apparent compulsion to view both important and mundane events, and the explanations given, as fronts for sinister machinations, results from an ignorant mind searching for simple explanations in a vain quest for empowerment. But I have no proof until you present something solid. I have been presenting ideas, sources, arguments. Engage them specifically, and I shall pay more respect.

BrainDrain,

Thanks for continuing to engage in intelligent discussion. This is an enjoyable duel, but a duel none the less.

You are indeed independence of Shaw, and my accusation of circularity is removed. Instead, I argue that you missed the point and changed the subject when you said I was presenting Wolfowitz as an arbiter of truth. The point was to show how Shaw misrepresented Wolfowitz’s words. To say you don’t believe what Wolfowitz says changes the subject.

Regarding his comments, I would argue:

Iraq indeed possesses abundant resources. If the invasion had led to a swift, peaceful transition to a unified, democratic Iraq, it is reasonable to suggest that much of the rebuilding could have been financed by Iraq’s oil wealth. (In response to Carl, it has been argued that it would have taken a decade for the oil fields to turn a good profit, considering the time taken to get production up to speed and the use of profits for rebuilding. (I understand that your argument goes deeper, and I will search for the link.))

The mistake was to underestimate how easy this would be. Neo-Cons were blinkered against considerations about perceptions of the “Arab street.” Rumsfeld’s attitude toward preparations for the post-invasion period were that he saw an overemphasis on such preparation, and the drafting of contingency plans, in case the s#$& (nice use of the shift key SHONGA, but I would have done it differently; $[-]!+,) did hit the fan, as a tacit admission of failure.

If I was advising the Bush Administration, (SHONGA,) I would urge them to stick to their principles but apply a more nuanced understanding of how
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 6 December 2006 3:00:28 PM
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the rest of the world perceives America.

Regarding Butler’s comments, (hey BrainDrain, he said it, and you sent me the link) he explains that weapons remained “unaccounted for” when Hans Blix made his last reports before the invasion. It was this information, and a continued lack of cooperation with the UNSC, which led the US to invade. Importantly, this was also seen as part of a long pattern, whereby Iraq was frequently able to evade censure by the Security Council- internal division within the UNSC prevented it from enforcing its own resolutions, instead continuing to give Saddam more time and letting him off the hook for repeated violations.

This internal division resulted from very real interests held by France and Russia in the continuity of the Baathist regime, and in fast-tracking the inspections at the expense of rigour. These interests included a combination of financial;

-both French and Russian companies had massive oil contracts with the Baath party, French socialist parties had been financed by the Baath Party since the 70’s, and the Russians were owed $8 Billion by the Iraqi government for military equipment,

and strategic- to challenge, and be seen to challenge the influence of the US, and, importantly, because they did not perceive so great a danger from a WMD armed Iraq. (Note that when I mention financial interests, I do so in the context of a combination of factors, and consider it rash to view financial interests as the primary or only consideration.)

Thus, France and Russia were prepared to allow their own national interests to undermine the chief international institution charged with preventing the proliferation of WMD, (and the chief enforcement body of the NPT.) Iraq’s obfuscation constituted a challenge to the legitimacy of the UN. Inaction would have sent a signal to all other would-be proliferators that they could do so without fear of retaliation.

In short, there were no good choices. The irony was that no WMD were found- as much Saddam’s fault as the US’s. And the threat of a WMD armed Iraq would soon have re-emerged if Saddam remained in power.
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 6 December 2006 3:00:57 PM
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"In short, there were no good choices. The irony was that no WMD were found- as much Saddam’s fault as the US’s. And the threat of a WMD armed Iraq would soon have re-emerged if Saddam remained in power."

Dozer - still sticking to the narrative.

The point is that it was an artificial construct from the get-go. The lies that were propagated to get some action, doomed it from the start.

Powell's UN presentation, Blair's Dossier - lies, all lies.

Hicks incarcerated in the service of a lie.

Ruddock examining the feasibilty of criminalising the truth (sedition laws). How big does a turd have to be before you even smell it?

And the most absurd narrative of our times - the NBMWBC Theory (nineteen brown men with box-cutters) - used to trash the US Constitution and empty the US treasury.

The more absurd the narrative, the more erudite must it's proponents be in it's service. Never has there been such academic boondoggling.

So what are you waiting for?

Nose to the grindstone!
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 7 December 2006 10:25:45 AM
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,'dozer,

I do so hate walking away from duels while my worthy opponent is still firing (wide of the target) and i still have powder left. : )

Point conceded on your use of Wolfowitz quotes. Like all politicians and those who 'serve' them he was capable of telling a truth (Iraq is a rich resource - Sorry - is resource rich). Relying upon his words as an unbiased view of what happened after 9/11 - I don' fink So!

I did read Butler's interview in full before i posted the link for your benefit in understanding Bulter did NOT say Iraq had WMD's, just that weapons were not correctly and fully accounted for under his inspections. (If they don't exist it's hard to prove they've been destroyed If they've been destroyed, they don't exist, but proving it may be impossible).

You appear to be making a mistake in your reading.... Butler was kicked out in 1998. UN inspectors were allowed back in in 2002 and they left just before the invasion began in 2003 (Hans Blicks, Sorry - Blix) in the last two years Inspectors came to the conclusion NO WMD's had been found! (proven to exist) I find Butler's suggestion Saddam 'gave' them to Syria just before the invasion incredibly stupid.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/14/iraq/main540681.shtml

"It is now generally recognized that the principal assertion on which the war in Iraq in 2003 was sold to the US public and Congress and to the UK parliament and on which there was an attempt to sell it to the UN Security Council – the continued presence in Iraq of WMDs – was false.

The fact that UN inspectors had reported from some 700 inspections at some 500 sites that they had found no WMDs and that they expressed doubts about some of the evidence which was advanced, was ignored. And seems still to be ignored."
(Hans Blix 21/10/05)

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. "
Cont.
Posted by BrainDrain, Thursday, 7 December 2006 11:19:56 AM
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"Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power." (It disarmed in 1991 after being beaten in the Iraq-Kuwait/US war).

"To all of the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you.

That trust is well placed."
(GWBush 19/03/03)

As for your point concerning Iraq's continued UNSC resolution violations... What role does the US continue to this day to play in Israel's many violations of UN resolutions concerning the occupied territories and war crimes as recently as the bombing of the UN observation post in Lebanon?

You final statement I am afraid is without foundation as the only reason UN weapons inspectors were removed from Iraq in March 2003 was for their safety which the American invasion would have put at considerable risk. With the inspectors in place and Saddam continuing to be forced to some co-operation, WMD's would have remained unfound or existing in Iraq for as long as the world wished it.

Bush wanted an easy victory against a tin-pot little dictator in some country he knew next to nothing about other than he could whoop it's little muslim Ass. With the promise of massive oil reserve wealth, reconstruction project bonuses, destabilised middle eastern politics (and so ensure his country's continuing reason to financially prop up the failed Israeli 'state)' and the prospect of being seen as the Christian free world's Saviour once successful.

How could the redneck refuse all that?

Look what it has cost. (Iraq mostly, but a few thousand American families have paid the ultimate price as have hundreds of UK and 2 Aussie ones.

Has Bush lost anything but a little 'cred' for the US?

He's personally doing just fine out of it thank you very much.
As are US corporations - which, I believe, brings us back to the start of the Thread?

How's that for circularity? : )
Posted by BrainDrain, Thursday, 7 December 2006 11:20:34 AM
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Carl,

Regarding the collapse of WTC7. There is an argument which runs as follows:

Firstly, the fact that it burned for that long is understandable- as the building was completely evacuated, the two towers had already collapsed, and the main priority was rescuing survivors, the fire was allowed to burn unhindered. But buildings, new or old, aren’t meant to burn for 8 hours straight. Thus it collapsed.

However, there is evidence of more widespread fires in other buildings, burning for similar or longer periods of time.

In response, each situation is different. The FEMA report, which was inconclusive, is not the only investigation into the matter. The NIST report, gleaned from a wide range of expertise, lists a couple of explanations. http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf. I’m no structural engineer so forgive me for using Wikipedia:

“NIST has released video and still photo analysis of Building 7 prior to its collapse that appears to indicate a greater degree of structural damage from falling debris than originally assumed by FEMA. Specifically, a large 10-story gash existed on the south facade, extending a third across the face of the building and approximately a quarter of the way into the interior. A unique aspect of the design of 7 WTC was that each outer structural column was responsible for supporting 186 square meters of floor space, suggesting that the simultaneous removal of a number of columns would lead to a severely compromised structure… news footage shows visible cracking and bowing of the building's east wall immediately prior to the collapse, which started from the penthouse floors”

NIST does not have a closed mind to the possibilty of a “controlled explosion,” but has found no evidence to date.

Chris,

Although I have presented narrative, I have presented evidence to support it, and have frequently analysed this evidence and the evidence of my opponents. You on the other hand have not responded to the serious questions I have raised regarding your methods of evidence gathering and preparation. Perhaps this is why you didn’t even bother to present evidence in your last post, and instead continued your accusation of
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 7 December 2006 3:02:02 PM
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lies, lies, lies. I could use your statement, “The more absurd the narrative, the more erudite must it's proponents be in it's service. Never has there been such academic boondoggling,” to mock the silliness of the idea that the US staged 911. Then again, I would argue that your language is not so much erudite as it is flowery.

BrainDrain,

Firstly, I am fully aware that Butler left in 1998.

Secondly, I read that very same article before I made my last post. (Right near the top of the Google list, and rightly so, and was considering posting it but as I have said a number of times, 700 words ain’t much.) You will notice that Blix makes an important distinction between “in principle cooperation” and “cooperation in substance,” of which the latter was not forthcoming from Iraq. Blix also notes that “many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for.”

The Iraqi government’s SOP was to only ever provide the minimum information, the minimum level of cooperation, as required. Basically, to make it look as though it was cooperating when it was merely stringing the process out as long as possible, knowing that the longer it continued, the more international unity and resolve would wane. An example of this is given by Butler (from Saddam Defiant- don’t have a page number or the book on me but paraphrasing will do.): When questioned about a particular chemical agent, for example VX, the initial response would be that there was never a VX program. When evidence of a VX program was found, the reply would be that yes, there was a program, but no VX was ever produced. When a small quantity of VX was discovered, the response would be that that was all that was produced, and it was never weaponised. You can imagine what happens next- large quantities of VX found, and evidence of weaponisation.

Thus, Iraq’s actions were just more of the same. As I have already said, Saddam’s mistake was to not realize that the US attitude had changed, and was prepared to go outside the UN.
Posted by dozer, Thursday, 7 December 2006 3:02:37 PM
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Nor am I a structural engineer. For this reason I cannot conclusivley say that wtc7 was undoubtedley a controlled demoiltion.

However, this was an unprecedented type of collapse. Dan Rather said what he really thought on that day,

"For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before when a building was deliberately destroyed by well placed dynamite to knock it down." - Dan Rather, CBS News (09/11/01)

The fires in the building were significant, but fire has never caused a building to collapse in this way, never. If it had fallen over and collapsed haphazardly that would be understandable, but it fell in 7 seconds, into a neat pile of rubble. And the scrap metal was quickly cleaned up and not subject to any forensic review.

If this was such an unusual occurence, why did the 9/11 commission report fail to even mention it? And why did Larry Silverstein admit that he decided to 'pull' the building? Surely he would of remembered that his building spontaneously collapsed?

There is no absolute proof of US complicity in the attacks dozer, but look at the cumulative weight of the arguement. They had the means, they had the motive and the official story simply does not add up.
Posted by Carl, Thursday, 7 December 2006 6:26:09 PM
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Here's the point.

1. The official 9-11 narrative is redolent with omissions and clearly, lies. The NBMWBC Theory (official) is as full of holes as a swiss cheese.

2. All the criminality since, was justified by the official theory of 9-11.

3. If the official theory is flawed, then what is the earthly point of this "he said, she said" thread? Who cares what "he said, she said", if it is all in the service of a basic fundamental lie?

Here is a video made for and by the bereaved of 9-11. Note, it does not offer any alternative narrative - just takes a good long stare at the official one. You will see by the video evidence that the sly-boys damn themselves with their own words.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5589099104255077250&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en

1 hr, 24 min. Enjoy!
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 7 December 2006 10:43:50 PM
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Folks,
Some of you were saying that Shaw was too subjective. Have a look at this and enjoy a few more sleepless nights- like me:
http://us.oneworld.net/external/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalissues.org%2FGeopolitics%2FArmsTrade%2FSpending.asp
Regards,
Faisal
Posted by Faisal, Sunday, 17 December 2006 12:27:01 PM
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Lets face it, all that glitters is not Gold. There are huge questions in this 9/11 debate. Would it be beyond the CIA to kill a few thousand innocent people to stir up a western world hatred against nations with oil reserves, especially with the prospect of "peak oil" those of us who say it's possible, will always be opposed by those wanting to protect their own interests.

A conspiracy is not only a possibility, but as time goes on the situation seems to be leaning toward a probability. What rich men will do to retain their wealth and power, we mere mortals cannot conceive.
Posted by SHONGA, Sunday, 17 December 2006 1:41:17 PM
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http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/12/somewhere_a_ban.html
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Monday, 15 January 2007 4:26:15 AM
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Chris as you have proven with your article, many of us follow your theory, all the best mate, Regards, Shaun.
Posted by SHONGA, Monday, 15 January 2007 8:36:53 AM
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G'day Shaun... as well as all fellow travellers. HNY etc.

Seeing as how I'm here, another website in the same vein:

http://www.hermes-press.com/barbaric_annihilation.htm

- the homepage for which is here:

http://www.hermes-press.com/index.html

The neocons and friends seem to pressing on regardless. Sometimes I think they have taken a setback (mid-term elections) - other times they seem too strong to be stopped. But while it lasts, thank god for the Internet mate.

Cheers
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Monday, 15 January 2007 11:33:03 AM
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