<Drumbeat: October 9, 2009 The Oil Drum Drumbeat: October 10, 2009>

256 comments on What Peaked at the Same Time as Oil Prices? Lots of things.

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WisdomfromPakistan on October 9, 2009 - 5:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Gone are the days when america was capable of starting wars.

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oldfarmermac on October 9, 2009 - 11:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The more problems a powerful country has ,the more likely it is to start a war.

If you had any real understanding of international politics and history you would be thanking Allah this very minute that it is the US that is a super power and has armies on the ground in your part of the world.

If the Germans or the Japanese or the English of a century ago were there with modern day weapons you would all be in Paradise already.

If we weren't there you would be occupied right now by the Russians or the Chinese and they would not be building many schools or repairing many water and sewer lines.

The Russians didn't leave because you drove them out-they could haver killed all of you as easy as swatting a fly-Stalin killed over twenty million of his own people.

The Russians did not want the rest of the world -meaning the great satan America mostly-to see just how rotten and brutal communism is/was.Your lives were spared because Russia wanted trade with the west more than she wanted your country and feared not only the loss of trade but war with us.

You have remarked before that you "make software".If you are a programmer you must have some technical education.You should add to it by reading some western history.

While your best and brightest young men are studying religious texts , our mern and women are createing and discovering new knowledge such as the internet which enables me to communicate with you.

My country men are mostly "people of the book"-in a broader sense-not Jewish but Protestants, followers of a religion with Jewish roots that holds Abraham to be next to God second only to Jesus.They believe in Heaven just as you believe in Paradise.

If we fight to the finish they also will fight believing God is on thier side-just as you do.

Maybe we can still avoid a true war -one that kills by the thousands every single day, day after day for months or years.If it happens our men will die by the dozen.Yours will die by the tens of thousands until none are left to fight.

Our own newspapers and television call the conflict war- but really it is not -no more than a six year old boy is a man.

Oil is a curse-things would be better if there was no oil in your part of the world.You will have no peace until it is gone.

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sampson on October 10, 2009 - 12:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It is very ironic and quite sad.Though these religions claim that they follow the Bible i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - none of them actually do as God commanded and share the same ideology.
Why?
People who are not familiar with the Bible will often ask the proverbial question - What is God really like?What are His characteristics?The Bible states unequivocally that Jesus was the Son of God - God manifested in the flesh.Therefore, the lineaments that pertain to God would be seen in Jesus.What He taught is how He actually lived out His life to the point of death.His life is an example for those who would follow Him in truth.
First and foremost He said judge not least you be judged.Do unto others as you would have them do unto you - if someone strikes you upon the cheek turn to him the other, bless those who curse you and pray for those who despitefully use you.
These teachings were absolutely astonishing for their time, for the Jewish people were acquainted with the Torah which predicated an 'eye for an eye'.
It became axiomatic, however, that no man actually carried the righteousness and the understanding of right and wrong to pass judgment with equity and follow the Torah.
This is why God revealed Himself in this manner.
When Jesus was arrested and brought to the unfair kangaroo-court that He was subjected to He did not accuse or revile back at His accusers.He did not lift a hand against those who were striking him, infact, in the historiographical account of His life He never lifted a finger to hurt anyone.
This is why it is so ironic and the greatest oximoron of history that those who claim to follow Him and respect His teachings i.e. Catholics, Protestants, Muslims are some of the most violent people in recorded history.They were no more 'civilised' than the so called 'barbarians' they were trying to convert.

No...God is not concerned with our own religious theological points or our erudition of what we consider to be true - He is only concerned with real equity and tuth.
Remember, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.
We as Americans cannot pontificate and say that we were 'different' than the Japanese or the Germans.Imagine if Hitler had dropped a fission weapon on a city populated with women children and the elderly!?Would we perhaps look upon him as being infinitely more egregious than we already do?
Can we not see past ourselves and admit that we are just as inclined to share the very same Manichean tendencies that the Germans succumbed to? Maybe we also should be looking at history differently.

The Bible predicates clearly Jesus would not commit himself to any man (and by extension any religion) because He knew what was in the heart of man;He gives a good example to the term existentialism, and those who would follow what He actually taught would be wise to do the same.

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oldfarmermac on October 11, 2009 - 5:18am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sampson,

We have not been put to the test in the way The japanese and the Germans have in the last century or so , but our imperialism is of a different stripe than that practiced by other countries-it's much milder, to say the least possible thing about it-for instance we actually pay for oil, and at the going rate, no less.

And insofar as the atom bombs dropped on Japan are concerned , that has been blown entirely out of proportion by people looking for an opportunity to bash either America or nuclear technology in general.

Any one who has trouble understanding this is invited to read any legit book on the history of the air war with Germany-we sent over whole fleets of planes and burned entire cities to the ground as a matter of day to day policy.

Nobody was interested in invading Japan and it is perfectly obvious that they would never have surrendered without a lot of further bloodshed if the atom bombs had not been used-most credible observers of the time put the "otherwise" deaths several times higher, which would have of course included many thousands of our own men.

And insofar as bloody religions are concerned, man is a bloody species, period-there are no noble savages, now, and there never have been any in the past-once we get to be fairly numerous, we start fighting for the space and resources we need to reproduce.

If there had never been a Jewish people to serve as the foundation stock of the "people of the book" some other dominant religion or philosophy would have occupied the void thus created and been just as bloody.

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Dryki on October 11, 2009 - 10:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

our imperialism is of a different stripe than that practiced by other countries-it's much milder,

Give me an effing break. If we don't have a Kipling shooting elephants it's only because 1) our soldiers are number than hakes and 2) there are next to no elephants left. Our colonialism is in no way milder; it is total.

cfm, the growlery, gray, me

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jmullee on October 12, 2009 - 7:18am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Bible states unequivocally that Jesus was the Son of God - God manifested in the flesh

Just to tweak your tail ;) -
I was reading recently about the Nicene creed was changed in 381 AD, to include a definition of jesus as being goad and the son of god, or something like that.
The previous version (nicene creed version 0.9) had jesus as a seperate person... the eastern churches (including the russian orthodox) kept the old version.

One of the main innovations in christianity was that one could convert, rather than have to be born into it, unlike the preceding judaism, which was - and still is, more-or-less - restricted to an ethnic group.

I could also suggest that the notion of making reference to a text as the authority, as opposed to making reference to a cleric as authority, was actually an innovation of the middle-east around 630 AD.

In the western world, the cleric had final authority - until, beginning around 1400 AD there began movements to replace the ultimate authority of the ecclesiastical heirarchy, with the ultimate authority of the conscience of the reader of the holy text.

This was of course the appearance of protestantism, helped enormously by the spread of printing technology around about the same place and time.

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Syndroma on October 12, 2009 - 11:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I was reading recently about the Nicene creed was changed in 381 AD, to include a definition of jesus as being goad and the son of god, or something like that.
The previous version (nicene creed version 0.9) had jesus as a seperate person... the eastern churches (including the russian orthodox) kept the old version.

You got it all wrong. Read about Ecumenical councils and don't mistake Eastern Orthodox for Oriental Orthodox. Also, Filioque clause was introduced much later than 381 AD.

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Paleocon on October 9, 2009 - 11:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I guess if I lived next to Afghanistan's Taliban and insurgents plus US troops, 1B Indians who are historic enemies, 1B Chinese who might need more space, and the Iranians who are finding themselves cornered between a rock and hard place, I might hope for the best too.

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256 comments on What Peaked at the Same Time as Oil Prices? Lots of things.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

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