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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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B.S.Sucks,
Do you have the address, for that Bin Bush photo? I could have plans for it. Went to humor source and got lost.
Email failed to reach you.
Jaybro
It won't always be this bad, but it will get worse, first
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Dave
Mountain climber
Fresno
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Nov 10, 2004 - 01:09pm PT
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In 1986 OBL was in Afghanistan fighting the Russians and had just formed the makings of Al Qaeda. The American military didn't become a major issue until the Gulf War. From the muslims' point of view, they occupied the holy land and never left.
Our military is in the middle east but its being used as a police force. I'm not holding out much hope. I'll lay it on Bush because he squandered an oppotunity in Afganistan by going on a crusade in Iraq.
The existence of israel doesn't have much to do with why they attack us. They attack us because we support israel in favor of the palestinians. Among other things.
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Dave
Mountain climber
Fresno
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Nov 10, 2004 - 05:21pm PT
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didn't deny that. But he doesn't want to destroy us - he wants us out of the middle east. He wants our foreign policy to change. Much like most of the rest of the world does.
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atchafalaya
Trad climber
California
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Nov 10, 2004 - 06:06pm PT
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Fattrad, we already did say that, it cost us 200 billion dollars, 1200 and counting american lives, and alienated us from old allies. Any other ideas?
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handjamdrum
Trad climber
Madison, WI
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Nov 15, 2004 - 11:25pm PT
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right on dave...OSL has stated, in print and in video, that it is America's foreign policy of supporting and maintaining corrupt, tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, not any innate hatred of our freedoms (though he does view us as debaucherous infidels). Part of OBL's argument is that holding up these 'governments' while satiating our need for oil is akin to stealing from the wealth given by Allah to the Muslim people.
fattrad...if you've ever read the Declaration of Independence, the foundation of our country, you would have noticed that the founders of our country took note to mention the importance of minding the opinion of mankind in making decisions that guide our country. Telling the rest of the world to take a flying leap undermines the very thing that makes America great - that opinions matter.
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euphoria
Trad climber
Slippery Rock, PA
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Nov 16, 2004 - 11:20am PT
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My $0.02.
I agree with those who have said it before that Hillary running for President is a dream of the Republican party.....something like it is a Democratic dream to have someone like Strom Thurmond run for President (not, of course, that he could). There are just so many places to pick her apart. A lot of people have an idea set in their mind of her being an insane, power-hungry bitch. My feeling is that anyone who gets to that level of politics (perhaps you can back this up fattrad) is willing to stomp on their opposition. I seriously doubt that anyone can get to be President--or even really be on a working level with the President--by being a nice guy. Unfortunately for Hillary, this mentality in men is called resolute, steadfast, determined, etc. In women, it is called bitchiness.
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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Nov 16, 2004 - 12:47pm PT
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"Our founding fathers probably never envisioned ..."
Cop-out!
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Matt
Trad climber
San Francisco
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Nov 16, 2004 - 01:01pm PT
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true-dat!
all these chicken hawks that say "better over there than over here" and are willing to sacrifice our civil liberties and sound moral principles in the name of our "safety" are demonstrating just how weak their own principles are!
who care if THEY are dying
who cares if THEY are hungry
who cares if THEY have shitty schools
who cares if THEY are getting screwed over
who cares what THEY think
AS LONG AS I GET MINE
look at this wounded guy in the mosque, he is one of THEM (bang)
the irony is that OUR policies are short-sighted and self-serving, and if one thing changed on 9/11 it should have been the idea that we can have our cake and eat it too. we need to pay attention to the things we can fix and help others fix the things we can't. we certainly cannot do anything to make the world truely safer by acting like the lone rogue superpower.
islamic fundamentalists win if they die while fighting you! is your solution going to be that we perpetually take the fight to them? how long will we last at that?
if you never pay attention to those that hate you and their reasons for hating you, they will find a way to get to you, the big oceans don't protect us anymore, welcome to the modern world.
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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Nov 16, 2004 - 05:21pm PT
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"You just don't understand their culture."
How much time have you spent in the middle east, fattrad?
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TheHip
Trad climber
Squamish, BC
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 16, 2004 - 10:18pm PT
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MM, Jody, fattrad etc:
You guys just don't get it. OBL is playing you for fools....he wants nothing more than for the US to 'bring it' to the Middle East with guns blazing. All that does is alienate more Muslims and provide him with more legitimacy amongst moderates.
OBL is a lot more intelligent that most people give him credit for. Personally I think he's insane and should be killed at first opportunity, but he certainly a worthy enemy. The current administration would do a lot better if they took some time to understand his motivations.
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nature
climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Nov 16, 2004 - 10:25pm PT
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s/current administration/american people/
(programming geek thing to swap some words around)
OBL is smarter than bush. I do agree, he is a psycho and should be shot on site, but he's got more figured out than bush. maybe that's one reason why part of america is so scared (though not for reasons they truely understand).
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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Nov 17, 2004 - 01:41pm PT
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I spent six months in the middle east
That's way more than me (i.e. none.) But your claims that all of islamic culture only understands cruelty and strength are bunk. Maybe it's true for the hostage takers ("terrorists", if you will, tho I hate using the hotbutton term of the moment) as it is for most violent types in any culture; but to claim that's the case for the average muslim in the middle east is just bullsh#t. I've seen nothing to indicate that these are anything other than men and women who want to earn a living and raise their children.
and sit on two foreign policy boards.
The very fact that you post here about things that no insider ever could means that you aren't in any kind of a privileged position, so nobody here is impressed with your name dropping and claims to influence. Don't get me wrong. Maybe you are knowledgeable about this stuff, possibly even moreso than most of us, but your arrogance and the aforementioned namedropping makes me extremely unlikely to believe most of it without some extra proof. For now, I smell an unimportant gloryhound who wants others to think he's more important than he is.
The comments regarding Osama desiring US warfare are correct. He hopes it will destabilize the Egyptian, Saudi and Jordanian governments so a pan-Arab caliphate can be established. Our plan is to moderate the religious leaders, democratic vote, women's rights and more equitable distribution of oil wealth.
Wow. The pentagon/state department seems to have a major security leak to have such an insider (i.e. part of the us in "our plan" ) leaking all this useful information to the unwashed masses.
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Matt
Trad climber
San Francisco
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Nov 17, 2004 - 01:55pm PT
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it's well known that their was some neo-con bible on arab culture circulating a few years ago that argued the premise that arabs will only understand force. that's why you heard the talk show types harping that line at the beginning of the war.
instead, they are proving that we americans have no idea what force and war are all about, what death and blood are all about, and how willing they are to face up to those things. that's why they tape all the beheadings- keeps the sanitized war coverage from being the only show in town.
it's much more difficult to put the shoe on the other foot than it is to get upset and angry about white people dying (see this reaction: "oh my god they killed a woman, a really nice woman, and on purpose too! they are sub-human scum...").
actually, while they are different than us, they are fighting the infidel, and one that regularly kills their children, what would you do to save your children? hmmm?
fattrad really believes that you can control the evolution of a society by manuvering with market forces, yet he keeps saying this is a religious war and that we are going to win by moderating the muslims- oh really? hey dood- if you wanted to moderate the arab world you chickenhawk academic genious types should have created a palestinian state (you remember, what clinton worked so tirelessly toward and gW ignored from day 1) instead of starting a bogus war on my nickel. figures you are somehow into policy- no wonder you sound so stupid on these issues.
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Mountain Man
Trad climber
Outer Space
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Nov 17, 2004 - 03:14pm PT
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Go Matt Go!!
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Nibs
Trad climber
Humboldt, CA
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Nov 17, 2004 - 03:54pm PT
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Matt, Forest – no need to take the discussion down a notch. This is one of the less vitriolic political threads. What fattrad noted about moderating religious leaders etc. isn’t a secret, that’s part of the Bush doctrine. You may not know that because the Bush doctrine has never been clearly stated to the American people by this administration for public debate.
I just wanted to add to the discussion that yes, this is a religious war. But it didn’t have to be the Christians vs. the Muslims. There has been an on going religious war in the middle east between secular humanism and Islamic fundamentalism, much like there is in this country between humanists and Christian fundamentalists. Fattrad is correct – this is why OBL want to see the secular Arab governments destabilized – an opportunity for “Taliban” style governments to take their places. The way that Bush invaded Iraq played right into OBL’s hands. The inept conduct this war causes OBL to grow in stature in the Islamic world. Didn’t have to go down this way, and it IS going to get worse before it is better. Look at Bush’s cabinet appointees – the circle is drawing tighter, no honest brokers to tell the president “the emperor has no clothes.” The worst thing IMHO is that the American people have no honest brokers – news for profit - war sells, anger/name-calling sells, whereas honest reasonable debate does not. My only source of optimism is with the moderate Republican Senators, that they will be able to keep the executive branch in check, like the founding fathers intended…
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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Nov 17, 2004 - 03:57pm PT
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Actually, as it happens, I agree that OBL is probably really happy to have the US killing peple and blowing stuff up over there. I just don't think there was anything terribly reveailing about fattrad mentioning it yet again. I'm pretty sure this has been stated several times before here.
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TheHip
Trad climber
Squamish, BC
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 17, 2004 - 10:41pm PT
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fattrad:
What foreign policy boards do you sit on? FOXNews maybe? Or is it something owned by Conrad Black?
A wall between the Israelis and the Palestinans is probably a good idea but not in the current location. Pre-1967 borders are really the only accpetable end-game.
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TheHip
Trad climber
Squamish, BC
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 17, 2004 - 10:43pm PT
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who edited out:
"Let me debunk an American Myth...."
Its a song people...
"...and take my life in my hands"
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 18, 2004 - 02:52am PT
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This thread is already getting long and now I'm going to make it a lot longer. I'm doing so for two reasons. One is to debunk the idea that our war with Iraq is a religious war. It is not. Iraq was one of the most secular Arab nations and is only taking on a religious flavor in the resistance to US occupation.
Two, this war has economic implications that will affect every person reading this thread. Whether it is the US devaluating the dollar to reduce the impact of the deficit, or the fall of the dollar precipitated by the events mentioned in the article I'm posting, the future is a puny American dollar. Investor beware!! Read this article for your own selfish reasons whether you care for politics or not.
Peace
Karl
Published on Monday, November 15, 2004 by FEASTA.org
Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq
by Cóilín Nunan
It will not come as news to anyone that the US dominates the world economically and militarily. But the exact mechanisms by which American hegemony has been established and maintained are perhaps less well understood than they might be. One tool used to great effect has been the dollar, but its efficacy has recently been under threat since Europe introduced the euro.
The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.
But the more dollars there are circulating outside the US, or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The dollars cost the US next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.
Since so many foreign-owned dollars are not spent on American goods and services, the US is able to run a huge trade deficit year after year without apparently any major economic consequences. The most recently published figures, for example, show that in November of last year US imports were worth 48% more than US exports1. No other country can run such a large trade deficit with impunity. The financial media tell us the US is acting as the 'consumer of last resort' and the implication is that we should be thankful, but a more enlightening description of this state of affairs would be to say that it is getting a massive interest-free loan from the rest of the world.
While the US' position may seem inviolable, one should remember that the more you have, the more you have to lose. And recently there have been signs of how, for the first time in a long time, the US may be beginning to lose.
One of the stated economic objectives, and perhaps the primary objective, when setting up the euro was to turn it into a reserve currency to challenge the dollar so that Europe too could get something for nothing.
This however would be a disaster for the US. Not only would they lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but countries switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency. Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more and as increasing numbers of those holding dollars began to spend them, the US would have to start paying its debts by supplying in goods and services to foreign countries, thus reducing American living standards. As countries and businesses converted their dollar assets into euro assets, the US property and stock market bubbles would, without doubt, burst. The Federal Reserve would no longer be able to print more money to reflate the bubble, as it is currently openly considering doing, because, without lots of eager foreigners prepared to mop them up, a serious inflation would result which, in turn, would make foreigners even more reluctant to hold the US currency and thus heighten the crisis.
There is though one major obstacle to this happening: oil. Oil is not just by far the most important commodity traded internationally, it is the lifeblood of all modern industrialised economies. If you don't have oil, you have to buy it. And if you want to buy oil on the international markets, you usually have to have dollars. Until recently all OPEC countries agreed to sell their oil for dollars only. So long as this remained the case, the euro was unlikely to become the major reserve currency: there is not a lot of point in stockpiling euros if every time you need to buy oil you have to change them into dollars.
This arrangement also meant that the US effectively part-controlled the entire world oil market: you could only buy oil if you had dollars, and only one country had the right to print dollars - the US.
If on the other hand OPEC were to decide to accept euros only for its oil (assuming for a moment it were allowed to make this decision), then American economic dominance would be over. Not only would Europe not need as many dollars anymore, but Japan which imports over 80% of its oil from the Middle East would think it wise to convert a large portion of its dollar assets to euro assets (Japan is the major subsidiser of the US because it holds so many dollar investments). The US on the other hand, being the world's largest oil importer would have to run a trade surplus to acquire euros. The conversion from trade deficit to trade surplus would have to be achieved at a time when its property and stock market prices were collapsing and its domestic supplies of oil and gas were contracting. It would be a very painful conversion.
The purely economic arguments for OPEC converting to the euro, at least for a while, seem very strong. The Euro-zone does not run a huge trade deficit nor is it heavily endebted to the rest of the world like the US and interest rates in the Euro-zone are also significantly higher. The Euro-zone has a larger share of world trade than the US and is the Middle East's main trading partner. And nearly everything you can buy for dollars you can also buy for euros - apart, of course, from oil. Furthermore, if OPEC were to convert their dollar assets to euro assets and then require payment for oil in Euros, their assets would immediately increase in value, since oil importing countries would be forced to also convert part of their assets, driving the prices up. For OPEC, backing the euro would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. They could then at some later date move to some other currency, perhaps back to the dollar, and again make huge profits.
But of course it is not a purely economic decision.
So far only one OPEC country has dared switch to the euro: Iraq, in November 2002,3. There is little doubt that this was a deliberate attempt by Saddam to strike back at the US, but in economic terms it has also turned out to have been a huge success: at the time of Iraq's conversion the euro was worth around 83 US cents but it is now worth over $1.05. There may however be other consequences to this decision.
One other OPEC country has been talking publicly about possible conversion to the euro since 1999: Iran2,4, a country which has since been included in the George W. Bush's 'axis of evil'.
A third OPEC country which has recently fallen out with the US government is Venezuela and it too has been showing disloyalty to the dollar. Under Hugo Chavez's rule, Venezuela has established barter deals for trading its oil with 12 Latin American countries as well as Cuba. This means that the US is missing out on its usual subsidy and might help explain the American wish to see the back of Chavez. At the OPEC summit in September 2000, Chavez delivered to the OPEC heads of state the report of the 'International Seminar on the Future of Energy', a conference called by Chavez earlier that year to examine the future supplies of both fossil and renewable energies. One of the two key recommendations of the report was that 'OPEC take advantage of high-tech electronic barter and bi-lateral exchanges of its oil with its developing country customers'5, i.e. OPEC should avoid using both the dollar and the euro for many transactions.
And last April, a senior OPEC representative gave a public speech in Spain during Spain's presidency of the EU during which he made clear that though OPEC had as yet no plans to make oil available for euros, it was an option that was being considered and which could well be of economic benefit to many OPEC countries, particularly those of the Middle East6.
As oil production is now in decline in most oil producing countries, the importance of the remaining large oil producers, particularly those of the Middle East, is going to grow and grow in years to come7.
Iraq, whose oil production has been severely curtailed by sanctions, is one of a very small number of countries which can help ease this looming oil shortage. Europe, like most of the rest of the world, wishes to see a peaceful resolution of the current US-Iraqi tensions and a gradual lifting of the sanctions - this would certainly serve its interests best. But as Iraqi oil is denominated in euros, allowing it to become more widely available at present could loosen the dollar stranglehold and possibly do more damage than good to US economic health.
All of this is bad news for the US economy and the dollar. The fear for Washington will be that not only will the future price of oil not be right, but the currency might not be right either. Which perhaps helps explain why the US is increasingly turning to its second major tool for dominating world affairs: military force.
REFERENCES
1. Anon., 'Trade Deficit Surges to a Record High', Reuters, (January 17, 2003), http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/4970891.htm.
2. Recknagel, Charles, 'Iraq: Baghdad Moves to Euro', Radio Free Europe (November 1, 2000), http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/11/01112000160846.asp.
3. Anon., 'A Look At The World's Economy', CBS Worldwide Inc., (December 22, 2000), http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/12/22/2000/main259203.shtml.
4. Anon., 'Iran may switch to euro for crude sale payments', Alexander Oil and Gas, (September 5, 2002), http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntm23638.htm.
5. Hazel Henderson, 'Globocop v. Venezuela's Chavez: Oil, Globalization and Competing Visions of Development', InterPress Service, (April 2002), http://www.hazelhenderson.com/Globocop%20v.%20Chavez.htm.
6. Javad Yarjani, 'The Choice of Currency for the Denomination of the Oil Bill', (April 14, 2002), http://www.opec.org/NewsInfo/Speeches/sp2002/spAraqueSpainApr14.htm.
7. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Newsletter 26, (February 2003), http://www.asponews.org.
FURTHER READING
William Clark, 'The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth', (January 2003), http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html.
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Mountain Man
Trad climber
Outer Space
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Nov 18, 2004 - 05:16am PT
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Good article, KB, but the conclusion that a falling dollar will inevitably crush the American economy isn't exactly accurate.
The dollar was so strong it was strangling our economy.
The fall of the dollar has made American goods and services increasingly competitive, thus reviving Amrerican businesses and creating jobs. This is a process that will continue for some time.
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