 | A Tale of Profit and Loss - The Future of Air Travel – Part 2 | The Oil Drum | The Derivation of "Logistic-shaped" Discovery |  |
359 comments on DrumBeat: June 26, 2008
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Show without comments | PDF version
359 comments on DrumBeat: June 26, 2008
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- What "Lower Consumption" Means
- Tricking and Treating the Future
- Meeting Energy Decline Part-Way - Potatoes?
TOD:Europe
- EROWI - energy return of water invested
- An interview with Stoneleigh - the case for deflation
- The Future of European Transport: iTREN-2030
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Saturday 7th November 2009
- The Bullroarer - Friday 30th October 2009
- Details of Solar Flagships Released
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“Of all races in an advanced stage of civilization, the American is the least accessible to long views… Always and everywhere in a hurry to get rich, he does not give a thought to remote consequences; he sees only present advantages… He does not remember, he does not feel, he lives in a materialist dream.”
—Moiseide Ostrogorski (1902, 302-303)
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
"People will wonder why every new recession is a little worse than the previous one"
Richard Heinberg in "the end of suburbia".
BTW, I see an upbeat in war retoric towards Iran.
"President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece
"THE US military chief is to meet his Israeli counterpart in Tel Aviv this week in a move that gives new impetus to speculation about a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Tensions were further heightened by a suggestion from former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton that the US and Israel could attack Iraq's fledgling program between the time a new president was nominated in November and the date the incumbent, George W. Bush, left office in January. "
(That should not read Iraq, but maybe they copy-pasted from early 2003)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23917181-2703,00.html
"The trip has been scheduled for some time but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/24/eveningnews/main4206201.shtml
My, oh my! Let's hope George Dubya isn't too caught up in the 2008 holiday spirit. What a nice Hanukkah present to the Israelis and office warming Christmas gift to a new administration. Then again, if the general public is miffed over the dearth of sugar plums and play stations and SUVs under the yule tree b/c of struggles to pay fuel and transportation costs (if they have a place to live at all?) then what a wonderful light display to keep everyone festive and amused.
All cynicism aside, though, I don't think the US will attack Iran despite Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, the neo-cons ambitions, or Israeli anxieties. Yes, George Dubya may want to be remembered as a courageous war president who faced down America's enemies, but I suspect even he knows that this action would be a deadly genie for everybody, including Americans. Posterity is likely looming larger in the President's sights these days.
I hope, here, reason will prevail.
The US doesn't have to bomb Iran, Isreal has said they will. Just a matter of timing .
If Israel bombs Iran, Iran will launch various attacks conventional and unconventional near and far. At that point the US will have to bomb Iran.
Israel is a state of the US isn't it? I mean they will be bombing Iran with US Funded US built planes what the difference?
So by that logic, Iraq and Afghanistan are states of the US. We gave them weapons too.
If they were a state they would pay taxes. Israel is a very great net liability to the US.
I believe they pay us through intelligence information!
they are a co dependent state. we give them a billion of arm's and financial aid. while they keep the arab world divided so we can get cheap oil.
It is painfully obvious that what is about to happen on the macropolitical scene is of Biblical proportions. I am not one to blame any particular individual, like all of these demagogues on talk radio blaming everyone from the current Chief Executive to Rosie ODonnell; No, we are all to blame on this one. The grace period on payments for our profligate lifestyles is just about up and the only thing that will help us through this unprecedented period of time will be faith and hope. Faith that God will see us through it, and hope in the coming Kingdom of God that every human being will hear about before the end comes. It will not be by might or power that we will justify ourselves - that mistake is a constant axiom of history - it will be by the Spirit of God, if I may be aloud to say so.
"...Faith that God will see us through it,..."
IMO thats what got us into this mess, what allowed us to rape the planet, allowed us to forsake nature, indeed provided the mandate to over power, subdue, conquer nature.
Placing faith in God in light of what's about to come down will guarantee that the wrong paths will be followed.
Strip yourselves naked (metaphorically) and succumb to NATURE or NATURE will take care of you, but not in a nice way.
It's not nice to fool Mother Nature
Cheers!
Cool it on the rant, souperman2. For you, faith (trust) in humanity and reason may offer the best path to solutions ahead. Fair enough. Please bear in mind, however, that faith in God and the use of reason are not always estranged bedfellows. Some of the best minds in human history have been attached to very devote people. Intelligence and religious expression need not be seen as mutually exclusive.
Collectively, whether religiously minded or disengaged, we've all had a share in enjoying the benefits of the fossil fuel age. The pending fall-out from our over-indulgence and cavalier attitude towards nature could very well be severe. But how best we will be able to face that severity, even in a worse case scenario, will depend upon how well we treat one other. Our personal survival could well depend upon neighbourly values, order and decency. The best in human beings: love, gentleness, kindness, self-control, generosity, honesty, may in the end prove to be invaluable. Many people see these things as divine gifts.
Secularists, regardless of background, do not have a monopoly on virtue. Atheists can be as obdurate, narrow-minded, and zealous in their treatment of others and as blinded to wise decision-making as anyone else. It doesn't matter if you're an Osama Bin Laden, an Ian Paisley, a Stalin, or a Robespierre, the result is the same. Fanaticism can show itself in many forms and in many guises.
Meanwhile there are devote people everywhere who are keenly aware that humanity has much to answer for in its stewardship of creation.
My final thought. All the power to you as you place your hope in the faculty of reason and common sense. But to others, if faith in God will see you through this, then all the power to you too. Respect is a good first step in building and bridging those relationships that we many come to count on.
Right on, Souperman2.
Zadoc seems an excellent guy and a smart poster, but since he has asked you to cool your rant, I'll ask you not to. Thus do i refute the up and down arrows.
Human delusional thinking and ability to rationalize anything that feels good has laid waste to the planet, and this continues apace. Airing one's delusions makes them fair game for comment.
And if you want anyone to listen to you about anything, first, they have to respect you. A belief that telling someone they are delusional is somehow going to help, is considerably more delusional than the very beliefs you are attacking.
At the very least the delusion that treating someone's belief as 'fair game' is likely to somehow influence those beliefs can much more easily be shown to be a delusion than the beliefs attacked, and is therefore less rational.
I stand by my up-arrow :-)
EDIT: 'cos I'm revising for an exam tomorrow on Science Communication, here's the slide that just popped up:
Fundamental truths. How does attacking someone's beliefs, even if you can prove they are delusional, achieve anything, other than build a tighter and smaller in-group with those who already vigorously agree with you?
If humanity is delusional, why follow?
Did I say follow humanity, or follow God?
I think you missed the point.The Bible teaches to deny yourself and that the greatest is the one who serves others.Does that sound like feel good rationalizing.
Thats alright greenish, God will give you a chance to put your money where your mouth is, if you really care about the earth and the well being of humanity - when TSHTF you will have a choice - conform or be cast out.
Better to be cast out, believe me.
"... IMO thats what got us into this mess..." i.e. Religion.
Believe it or not souperman, If you are referring to man made religions I would agree with you to a point - secular humanism is a religion likewise - people who put their faith in men.
I do not adhear to either one however, for in truth both are very similar to one another. They both have a misguided faith in men. Yeshua (Jesus) was perhaps the most anti-religious human being to ever walk the earth. If you carefully read the accounts in the Gospels He consistantly went against the prevailing man made systems that were in place, because in reality, these systems are always at odds with the truth.Religions of every kind, be it Christian, Judaism, Islam, Buddism et. al. may start of with knoble intentions but always invariably morph into man made systems that glorify men and follow mans principals and not God's.Humanism likewise follows this axiom of history.Communism, though atheistic, was a cult based upon the personality of one individual - first Lenin, then Stalin.Shall we even mention the Nationalist Socialist movement in pre war Germany.We should not deceive ourselves into thinking that we ourselves are immune to this kind of deception.
You could say however, that I myself am in this category by putting my complete fath in Yeshua (Jesus) and what He taught.And honestly you would be correct.But as Bob Dylan once said "you gotta serve somebody."
Now the American form of Christianity is perhaps the most misguided of all, but they, in reality, are not faithful Christians, but faithful Capitalists.Again, whether it is Capitalism, Socialism, Communism or any other so called civilized order of government, they are all man made and in the end will not work in bringing true egalitarianism to the world(which is the goal God has established by bringing Yeshua into the world).Read Zbigniew Brzezinski's new book "The Choice", and this eminent statesman will bring you too the same conclusion. Unfortunately, he leaves you hanging with a fatalistic point of view concerning the future if you wish to ever see true egalitarianism.
Ones politics IS ones religion.
One thing that you will never hear on your television, or radio, or any other form of religious or secular outlets is a scripture found in the Book of Revelation chapter 12 - "...God will destroy those who destroy the earth..."
When I read these words they convict me, for I know that, realistically, I have played a part in the systematic disorder of the balance God has established in creation by my own consumerism.And no green movement of any kind - unless it means going back to the horse and plow (producing, not consuming) - will ever work.
There is only one way "...Do unto others as you would have them do unto you..."
"...earn your bread by the sweat of YOUR brow..."
If everyone lived by these rules, the world would be a much better place wouldn't you say?
God is very fair with mankind, and He will provide a way out for individuals who seek the truth.To find the answer, however, you have to read the Bible for yourself. No one can seek God and truth for you but you yourself.
While I am squarely in the atheist camp, I used to be in the believer camp and understand how it "feels" to those who remain committed to their beliefs.
To my fellow atheists I say:
Forgive them for they know not what they are
and they have no free will over it anyway.
It does no good to preach truth to those who were born and raised in the lie. Their brains cannot absorb the noises that you make. So why waste your time?
Do you actually believe that your fellow species mates are "rational" and can be changed by speaking rationally to them? If so, you are the irrational one. All of human history, the wars, the overpopulating, the rise and fall of grand civilizations points to one conclusion:
We are no more rational than yeast.
So if some yeast mates in our petri dish choose to believe in the great Yeast-oh-whoa, or whatever name their deity goes by (and the miracle of the unleavened yeast), then I say, God bless them. Let them go on in their stated state of mind. Converting them won't really change the outcome. Yeast will be yeast. Just as beast will be beast. They are all merely trying to be fruitful, to multiply and to gain dominion over the Earth. Why agitate our petri dish with some more of this useless noise? Let it go.
Our last energies should be focused on how to survive without the spice, not on how to convert them that can't help themselves anyway.
Good advice and well-said.
But as a matter of aesthetics, kowtowing to the insane leaves much to be desired. Those with imaginary friends are free to listen to the voices, but if they inject them into conversation, they DO become fair game for comment.
I'll meet folks halfway, though: don't tell me about your deities and I won't say you're delusional. Can't say fairer than that.
Yep. It's been cooking for a long time, but the window in which it can happen is narrowing. Fallon the unwilling was replaced by Petraeus the willing. Plus many other pieces have been put into place.
This will throw all our linear and not-so-linear projections into the wastebasket. Chaos and disaster. Which some apparently believe they can find advantage in. Woe betide us.
Interview with Ray McGovern:
http://www.radiodujour.com/people/mcgovern_ray/mp3/20080625_alexjones_ra...
Yes, unfortunately Congress is in the process of abdicating it's Constitutional right to declare war.
Right now their are 208 cosponsors on HR 362 that calls for a blockade of exported petroleum to Iran. This is a brilliant measure to put pressure on the Iranian regime. What could go wrong?
The bill also calls for boarding ships departing from Iran. This is it. The bill passes through the House and the Senate tag along bill SR 580 passes. Bush forms a blockade. The clock begins to tick. Iran runs the blockade- shots are fired. Bush orders a bombing. Not only did Bush not start the war but Congress is the one that called for the action. The missiles fly from Iran and destroy the sitting duck fleet in the Gulf. Now anyone that opposes this war is Un-American.
Game, set, match Cheney---- unless the American people can stop these bills from going through.
I think BushCo. waited too long to move against Iran. Anything aggressive done between now and the elections will be viewed as a 100% political maneuver to help McCain's campaign. The US mood will not go as before with Iraq guaranteed and would only help Obama. I don't think for a millisecond that Obama couldn't turn any of that into a win for him. He's a pretty savvy framer in his own right.
Yes Bush's approval rating going down to 23% does make the possibility of an attack on Iran less likely BUT not outside of the realm of possibility.
This is a stealth plan---HR 362-- read the bill and marvel at the evil genius of it made by a very desperate group of individuals who have billions of dollars riding on an invasion of Iran.
Cheney can not be counted out yet. As long as he is in power he will hatch plans to bomb Iran. This current bill in the House and Senate is absolutely masterful.
The American people are absolutely against invading Iran but they want to put pressure on the country. Therefore HR 362 will go through. AIPAC doesn't waste so much time and energy on frivolous bills. This is important to them and they have sunk a lot of effort into this.
Explaining the logic of the bill involves going over a lot of history that is old hat for TOD readers but oh well---
While FDR was on vacation Dean Acheson passed the law that made it difficult for the Japanese to buy petroleum.
The law did not declare war on Japan. It did not authorize force. It did not even call for an embargo on Japan.
But the result was that the U.S. that provided 80% of Japan’s petroleum disallowed the Japanese from purchasing oil from the U.S. Thus Japan needed to invade the Dutch West Indies or pull out of China. In order to protect themselves from an American countermeasure they destroyed the fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The neocons know their history. They know that Iran doesn’t refine their own oil. They know that once we stop petroleum shipments the clock is ticking for Iran. They either run the blockade or their military is inoperable and their economy is destroyed. They will commit force first which will allow the U.S. to “defend itself.”
That is the brilliance of the bill. Of course the bill does not authorize force. The authorization will be given by Iran.
Or... Iran experiences enough unrest to shake off the control the Mullahs have over the troubled country (Iran is barely 60% Persian, and the Mullahs have antagonized most of the minorities there for a long time),
Or... Iran's junta decides to stop funding its puppet militias in Iraq & Lebanon, and retreats from antagonizing the US.
You mean the al-Maliki government? I guess we'll have to step up funding if Iran cuts back.
No, I refer to al-Maliki's competition.
Apuleius
After all we know about the run-up to Iraq you think that there is anything the Iranians could do to appease Bush. As McClellan has said: once he decides to do something he doesn't listen to anybody.
This is not about nukes or militias this is about controlling the Persian Gulf after we have gone over the peak.
As much as I enjoy reading West Texas I know that the neocons are not going to allow the ELM to play itself out. They are not going to be caught looking stupid and incompetent after the peak. We will blame the Mullahs for the gas lines not the incompetency of Bush/Cheney.
It's more like the CGM--- the Chaos Gulf Model. Create war in the Gulf- cut off the Chinese and play a game of last man standing.
"cut off the Chinese and play a game of last man standing."
I'll one up you. New virulent strain of Bird Flu cycles through Asia and the third world and we rapidly deploy a vaccine to ourselves and allies. Too bad we did not have the ability to make more and share. Theres some demand destruction.
The al-Maliki coalition is comprised of the most pro-Iranian forces in the country. His competition is anti-Iranian (Sunnis) or neutral towards Iran (Sadr). The latest version of the neocons "big lie" is that Iran is opposing the al-Maliki government. Bush has in effect handed Iraq (at least the non-Kurdish part) to Iran on a silver platter. That's why US troops can never leave. That's why the neocons are so adamant about attacking Iran: they've done nothing since day 1 that didn't benefit Iran.
And what makes the irony meter go entirely off the scale is that Chalabi (who sat behind Laura Bush at the 2nd inaugural and who was telling the neocons the US would be welcomed as liberators with flowers in the streets) was an Iranian agent all along. In effect Iran suckered the US into taking out Saddam for them -- not that the neocons needed a lot of encouragement. But then that's the source of the old saw, "you can't cheat an honest man".
None of the Shia factions in Iraq harbors overt pro-Iran sentiment. The Iranian regime has been racist towards its Arab minority, and all the Iraqi Shia know this. Iranian militia sponsorship has been purely for reasons of expedience, to make sure nobody in Iraq gets a monopoly on the use of force. Hence their back&forth on that with the different factions.
Al-Maliki rules at the pleasure of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which has changed its name recently to hide its ideology better from its new American allies. SCIRI was formed in Iran, and organized Iraqi exiles to fight for Iran in its defensive war against Saddam Hussein. These exiles now form the Badr militia that murders opponents of the current government. SCIRI is taking money from both Iran and Bush to pretend to deliver their agendas, and stealing money from the Iraqi people. People are rising up against such a treacherous government and taking aid from anyone they can.
America is the imperialist. Do you understand? We were the bad guy in Vietnam. We are the bad guy in Iraq. We will be the bad guy in Iran. We are starting wars that would not have happened without us. Saddam Hussein attacked Iran years ago thinking his buddies in Washington would approve. He attacked Kuwait after clearing it with the US ambassador.
Do you think everything would be great in the world if we had gone to war in 1979 to keep the Shah in charge? I say the world would be better if we had not overthrown Mossadegh in 1954. The only way to begin to make up for our past crimes is to stop committing new ones.
Bases in 120 countries is an empire. We are imperialists.
The competing Shia militias were brewed out of the same batch, for the same reasons.
As for being the "bad guys" in Vietnam, I went to school with ex-boat-people. They know full well who the bad guys were and who the worse guys were. It takes a will-to-believe to make America the big bugaboo here.
You went to school with the boat people. You didn't go to school with the Viet Minh fighters who rose against the horrible French tyranny (slave labor in the 1930s) and defeated it against overwhelming odds, only to have half their victory stolen by US conniving at Geneva. You may hate it, but the Communists beat white Christian capitalists, and their corrupt Catholic puppets were given half the country on the expectation of a referendum in 1956 that the US told the Catholics to cancel. The CIA found Ngo Dihn Diem in a monastery in California and put him to work organizing Catholic land barons fleeing the north to steal land in the south - they weren't even from there! Diem then murdered perhaps two hundred thousand of these brave Viet Minh rebels because he knew they were plotting against him. That's more than all the people murdered by Communist re-education camps. But it's dwarfed by the 1 to 2 million Vietnamese killed mostly by US forces and US taxpayer-financed forces in the war to prop up a fake government that hated it own citizens.
But the Reds murdered rich, honkie-dressing folks. Our boys murdered poor people who couldn't stand it anymore. Will we repeat this pattern of bigotry and mass murder everywhere on Earth where we now must steal oil? Our leaders want everyone who says NO to American corporations to be branded a terrorist and exterminated. Their way will cost us 3/4 of a trillion dollars next year, and rising.
200,000 dead in Guatemala
500,000 dead in Indonesia (1965-66)
Hundreds of thousands more dead in Indonesia (East Timor)
A million dead in Iraq.
These people all died because they got in the way of American power. Like the starving people of Sadr City who denounce the new oil deal. Explain to me why they deserved it.
Well said.
They deserved it because they were not superior beings equal to us Ayria-mericans. It pains me because I love this country, but we in the USA are not all that much different than the citizens of Nazi Germany. Our leaders play on our fear of the stranger and on our need to feel that we are superior. We, for our part, all too willingly rush forward to suck on that self-gratifying teat.
One scene I keep seeing over and again in my head is from Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11": an Iraqi mother who has lost her child to an American bomb looks up to the sky and begs god (her god) to explain to her why she deserved this? What did she do that was deserving of this horrible punishment?
The answer: She was born not American.
"Rich honkie dressing folks:" you mean Viet-Kulaks, perhaps?
No. The boat people came from all walks of life. They were not necessarily rich, nor Catholic, nor French-influenced. Simply people written off by the communist regime for any of a wide number of reasons. And being written off in Vietnam is a permanent, inherited status, as shown by those wealthy Catholic Montagnards.
In order to protect themselves from an American countermeasure they destroyed the fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Even there! Read Day of Deceit by Stinnett, based on FOIA material. They were set up (not that the Japanese regime were nice guys by any stretch), just as they are trying to do to the Iranians. Stinnett, a veteran of that front, doesn't criticize FDR for having done it (only way to get us in the war on the Eastern front) -- only for having hung Kimmel and Short out to dry.
Unfortunately, FDR's maneuver is the model for these guys (and undoubtedly he wasn't the first).
Japan was engaged in an aggressive war just as much as Germany was. It was certainly justifiable to go to war to prevent such brutuality. I wish it could have just been done more plainly. The US could have just declared war against Japan, saying they were engaged in a war of aggression and were responsible for torture and executions and other war crimes (which is completely true) and the US would come to the defense of Korea, China, etc. No subterfuge needed, and they would have still had the extra fleet!
I am more ambivalent about our right to go to war against Japan.
America caused the Great Depression. The GOP Congress in 1930 passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff act which wrecked Japan's economy. FDR was a free-trader, but by the time he got into power the trade war could not be stopped. Japanese fascists argued that the West betrayed Japan, and the lost trade must be replaced by a brutal empire in China. Because of US neutrality laws and our weak military, FDR had very few options to punish Japan for its vast crimes. But the trade sanctions he chose were a mistake. Japan's erratic policies were a result of its very fragile resource base; without our oil Japan had to chose between total collapse and all-out war. Never, ever try to force a military government to back down in the eyes of its own people. The generals, like their current counterparts in Burma and North Korea, justified their rule by their ability to be strong, so they couldn't back down. A better option would have been to arm China, which was against the law then, and America had no real weapons industry before 1940. China's ruler Chiang Kai-Shek was a mass murderer in his own right.
We needed better options, but our ignorance about Japan and how it would and could respond was large. Economic sanctions have been proven again and again to backfire, yet after Vietnam and Iraq I think any civilized person would consider invasion to be insane. The problem is, the more options you give a president, the more damage you do to the Constitution. Besides, we know perfectly well that America is very hypocritical in which aggressors it chooses to punish, and which it chooses to cover up for. Ask the generals of Indonesia (East Timor, etc), or Saddam Hussein (Iran, 1980).
While, I would agree that the US has done some bad things and some dumb things in the early 20th century, that doesn't let Japan off the hook. Moral principles need to be applied equally to different parties.
As many people say (and I would generally agree) the US has largely created its own problem with regards to oil supply. They used up most of their own (and polluted the world in doing so) and now are dependant on others. They are taking virtually no steps to conserve and switch to alternative energies and social arrangements necessary to maintain order and at least some minimum living standard. The US has become arrogant and assumes everyone's oil is theirs even though it happens to be under "their" sand. The US has no right to anyone else's oil. They need to balance their books.
So, if we are to be consistent, we must say essentially the same thing about Japan. They didn't *have* to go on an imperialist rampage of murder, torture and occupation in order to get "their" resources. They could have also chosen to live within their means.
Now, in both cases, it would be nice if all the countries in the world would agree to trade fairly and help each other out, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
Also, note that I'm talking here about a country deciding to add tariffs to some of its exports, or deciding it doesn't like some other country and doesn't want to trade with them. Any country certainly has that right, even though it might not usually be a smart thing to do. Setting up blockades is completely different and would be properly viewed as an act of war.
I really really have a lot of respect for s390. However, I think this goes too far (not the the US doesn't deserve a significant part of the blame), but there clearly were a lot of other players whose ignorance and greed set up the depression, and the militarist/fascist response to it. No doubt our blunders, and our insulting racism helped the militarists gain power in Japan. I also admire Japan, and her people. But at the same time, I find them a bit scary. We've seen them go off the rails once, and their particular determination of seeing a path taken through to its logical end -no matter the cost, -or even the value of the end, nearly destroyed her in 1945.
H.R. 362: 10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds Science and Math Scholarship Act
Title I - Science Scholarships
Title II - Mathematics and Science Education Improvement
But the scariest part is Section 207 -
Replaces the term "master teacher" with the term "teacher leader" each time it appears in the Act.
Or even worse, Section 209 -
Requires the Director to report to Congress within two years on the extent to which IHEs are donating used laboratory equipment to elementary and secondary schools.
Boarding ships was the sticky point in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest we ever got to Armageddon. Thank God we had grownups in charge back then.
I agree. Looking back at the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world went to the brink and only stepped back because Kennedy put McNamara in charge of the blockade and was willing to bargain away the Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
But as you know this is the opposite situation. This is a blockade to start a war.
The plan was most likely hatched when Bush visited Israel. After his meeting with Olmert both men were all smiles and Olmert came out of their meeting confident that the U.S. would confront Iran.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126416
Later Nancy Pelosi met with Olmert and they discussed the plan. Pelosi has denied that the request for a blockade was made by Olmert.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN21431390
After Pelosi came back AIPAC launched their hundreds of lobbyists to push bill HR 362 and SR 580
http://www.ajc.org/c.ijITI2PHKoG/b.1122051/k.8A96/Action_Center/siteapps...
The campaign has been very successful keeping under the media radar and gathering 208 cosponsors in the House.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/25/1838/11009
Once the bill passes, then the arch-duke will lie dead and events will quicken.
Thanks for your perspective neoconned.
You are a true patriot and I applaud your efforts.
I would venture to speculate that if we had GWB/Cheney in the White House then we would not be here to talk about it now.
Can anyone find a credible link to this HR 362? The Library of Congress is showing this as invalid.
This is what I found on house.gov:
H.R.362 : To authorize science scholarships for educating mathematics and science teachers, and for other purposes.
I did not find anything relevant to the topic on HR 362 with a quick look, but this:
http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SourceMaterialsCongressionalAction/SRe...
sounds like what neoconned is talking about.
Thanks, I found it here too.
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.CON.RES.362:
Don't know why I couldn't find it going through the House bill search system, "Thomas". Found this through a Kos diary.