A hard question concerning the Iran/WMD crisis

Originally posted by Rochade
Hi,
this one drives me for the past few days.
Please go back with to 1947 and the beginning of the Cold War.
Everybody knows that there were two forces the Soviet Union and the USA yada yada yada.
There were two political systems which seem impossible to coexist.
Then both armed up. And after years of caution and slow approach the two forces finally c ...[text shortened]... be a peacefull coexistence between another two fractions(religions).
Please discuss with me.

I seriosly wonder myself if the world's oppinion of the United States would be much different if they had found WMD.
I really suspect there would still be critics of the motives of the USA.

Originally posted by aspviper666
I seriosly wonder myself if the world's oppinion of the United States would be much different if they had found WMD.
I really suspect there would still be critics of the motives of the USA.

MHO - Yes and no.
Yes because your people lied to the world in front of the UN.
Still your strike wouldn´t be a result of an UN Decision but you
would be understood as there would have been a threat.

No because it still would be no UN Decision. And I am likely
to believe that my country (Germany) would have contributed
in an UN Mission although the people want no war.

Originally posted by Rochade
MHO - Yes and no.
Yes because your people lied to the world in front of the UN.
Still your strike wouldn´t be a result of an UN Decision but you
would be understood as there would have been a threat.

No because it still would be no UN Decision. And I am likely
to believe that my country (Germany) would have contributed
in an UN Mission although the people want no war.

Actually at the time "My People" were not in power at the time.
I also feel that The U.N. France and Germany would not have taken part in anything as they had 12 years of non compliance from Saddam to do something about it.
This does not mean I am in favour of an invasion of Iraq.
But the "powers that be' made the decision ,not "MY perople."

Originally posted by aspviper666
I seriosly wonder myself if the world's oppinion of the United States would be much different if they had found WMD.
I really suspect there would still be critics of the motives of the USA.

It would have been highly suspect if the US had walked in and found WMD, when the weapons inspectors had just spent years scouring the place for them and finding nothing.

Originally posted by Rochade
Hi,
this one drives me for the past few days.
Please go back with to 1947 and the beginning of the Cold War.
Everybody knows that there were two forces the Soviet Union and the USA yada yada yada.
There were two political systems which seem impossible to coexist.
Then both armed up. And after years of caution and slow approach the two forces finally c ...[text shortened]... be a peacefull coexistence between another two fractions(religions).
Please discuss with me.

Rochade: " ... the two forces finally can coexist peacefully."

You forget that the Sowjet-Union collapsed. A whole empire and its ideology, communism, collapsed.

Russia now is something completely different from the Sowjet-Union then. The Cold War was a confrontation between liberal capitalist democracy and freedom on one hand and totalitarian anti-democratic communism on the other.


Rochade: "The fraction of modern western or should we say christan states has an enormous volume for destruction including WMD.

I wouldn't want to call the Western countries "Christian countries". I'm sure the French would vehemently oppose such a label, but also in general it is incorrect.

It is not about Christianity against Islam, same as it wasn't Christianity against communism during the Cold war. It is not even about Christianity and Political Islam. It is about Islamo-fascist anti-democratic forces against liberal capitalistic democratic forces.

Bush is not exporting Christianity to Iraq and Afghanistan but liberal democracy, liberal freedom and the liberal form of capitalism. He wants the same for Iran and the whole of the Middle East and eventually for the whole world.

Originally posted by ivanhoe
It is about Islamo-fascist anti-democratic forces against liberal capitalistic democratic forces.

Hold on a minute...

Are you suggesting the west is "Democratic"?
Or do you mean "Corporative"?

And did you know that Palestine and Iraq were the most secular countries in the middle-east? Until Israel and the West got involved?

And did you know that Iran was turning quite liberal...until the West got involved?

Well...

Originally posted by Rochade
....Please go back with to 1947 and the beginning of the Cold War.
Everybody knows that there were two forces the Soviet Union and the USA yada yada yada......

firstly let me recommend you read a book by daniel yergin called "THE PRIZE" a pulitzer prize winning novel that was turned into a highly acclaimed pbs tv documentary series. it looks at the development of the oil industry from its roots to its now dominant position in world affairs.

initially the development of 'rock oil', a naturally occuring oil that bubbled up out of the earth in parts of america was primarily as an illuminant. so for much of the latter half of the 19th century oil companies that sprung up like standard oil were flogging parafin for street lighting and cooking, much like it is still used in west adaptive, developing nations.

then with farady and alexander graham bell came electricity, cities adopted the cleaner light with great enthusiam and at about the turn of the 20th century oil as a commodity was falling through the floor. standard oil which had been the subject of antitrust investigation(because it had become a self serving monopoly) looked like it would sink without a trace and be on the receiving end of its own bad karma......

what has this to do with anything you might well ask?

britain mid 19th century has a queen. queen victoria. one of the worlds last great powerfull monarchs who influenced events directly, instead of as today where most of the surviving royal monarchs of europe coexist within the establishment in a more ceremonial role. well, we all know that queen vic's grand design was to have a unified europe(an obsession that had preocupied most european royal houses at one time or another for at least a millenia. some of this grand designs illustrious failures included louis xiv, the sun king, napolean bonaparte, queen vic herself(by placing one of her children(or grandchildren) into every royal house of europe), kaizer bill her grandson and adolf hitler.

why the history? because oil as an industry is saved by the automobile and the emergence of mass culture as the industrial revolution kicks into high gear at the start of the 20th century. to signal the start of the cold war in 1947 as if it were an odd occurence(considering that the soviets fought on the side of the allies makes this seem so) but ignores the fact the the bourgeois economies of europe tried their best to stamp out the communists after the red revolution of 1917. they blockaded them stripped them of their markets etc because not only had lennin and his gang murdered one of queen vic's favourite grandaughters in the form of czar nicholas IInd's wife, queen alexandra of russia, the ideas propogated by marxist lenninsim caused the establishment to shudder as they saw the real possibility of their way of life crumble to the ground.

the point is you can't reduce all of this quickly and compactly into a sound bite or a black or white statement. as yergin points out in his book as the need for oil as a commodity increases, due largely to its consumption as an auto fuel, countries become keen to exploit it in a strategic sense because of its innate profitability, but also because it becomes the essential life blood for any 20th century large scale military conflict and or the imperialist expansion aims of capitalism.

if you look at where the axis powers advanced to during the second world war, you can see a very obvious push for the oil fields of north africa and saudi arabia as well as the oil of south east asia. more than one critique of the second world war will affirm that the failure of the axis powers especially germany, was a running out of fuel. the mighty german fighting machine literally ground to a halt as its fuel supply and its access to fuel was successfully curtailed by the allies.

did the cold war then kick off somehow unexpectedly in an attitude of ingratitude on behalf of both parties? the answer lies more in the fact that sworn enemies the soviets and the west became allies only because of a mutual enemy(any enemy of yours is my friend) but as soon as ww2 ended the hostilities between the communist/soviet system and the western capitalist system resumed in full swing. the two were in opposition because of a very fundamental difference in opinion that arose out of karl marx's interpretation of the meaning of Capital. the bourgeois in marx's opinion exploited the worker because they never allowed the worker to fully share in the profits of their labour but instead turned the act of labour into a commodity with a fixed price. the bourgoeis profited at the expense of the worker, which in marx's opinion was an unconscionable act.

so you have the US which enshrined the rights to property and adopted the adam smith model of the "propensity of humanity to truck and barter" and also the concept which opposed marx's view (that a product's intrinsic worth was tied into the time taken by labour to produce that product), that the real price of a commodity was really the price another person was willing to pay for that item.(nike pair of shoes for example, cents to produce in labour cost but hundreds in retail because of brand image).

this aspect of the former cold war opposition between two social systems is not the only cause of dissent between the two but the contrary ideas between labour and the rights of workers are significant.

so after all that, you could say, so what! well this brief overview is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of ideas, forces, ideologies, fears(real and imagined) that gripped the world from 1947 onward. add into the mix the establishment of israel in 1948 into a region of palestine controlled by the british. after centuries of being hounded out of europe by one pogrom after the next and after having 6million of their number brutally murdered in the name of 1000 years of god sanctioned reich, you can understand why the world was only too glad to give the jews access to the world that they had been driven out from in 70AD, when after the sacking of jerusalem by the roman empire, the great diaspora had begun.

after having said all that, the rest of the developments in the middle east from the 50's onwards are directly as a result of the competing forces and dynamics mentioned here as well as many others that would take many posts at least as long as this one to detail.

in some respect our biggest problem today is that because our mass consciousness no longer tolerates violence and war as the first option in conflict, we tend to judge the worlds players with this contemporary worldview in hindsight. the result is that we then can casually remark and say, then that happened, yada yada yada, as if we, because now in our own mindset are finally over it, all the force vectors of ideology and reaction that have shaped the world to now should suddenly dissapear and everyone should universally start acting in a civil manner.

I will be the first person to applaud that day. Pessimism although labelled as optimism for realists by some cynics does not achieve anything. as a counterpoint, slavery in the manner as practiced during the age of discovery no longer exists, at least not to the worldwide extent it did during the period of the golden triangle. given time and enough consensus amongst the populations of the world, we will reach a point when the forces of history will have played itself out and the only thing that would repeat itself would be the march of peacefull civilization.

Originally posted by kmax87
firstly let me recommend you read a book by daniel yergin called "THE PRIZE" a pulitzer prize winning novel that was turned into a highly acclaimed pbs tv documentary series. it looks at the development of the oil industry from its roots to its now dominant position in world affairs.

initially the development of 'rock oil', a naturally occuring oil that bu ...[text shortened]... nly thing that would repeat itself would be the march of peacefull civilization.

Excellent lecture .. certainly very interesting but Im not sure you answered Rochade's question.

Ivanhoe answered part of the question .. communism is a failed eccomonic, social and political system .. period .. no ifs and buts. Its the reason why millions of people risked their lives to escape from it and move to capitalist / democratic societies. Nobody defects to communist societies. Because of the manner in which communism gets into power ie by a bloody coup, without the consent of the population, nobody in their right mind will TRUST such a government.

This is the issue ..TRUST. The US never TRUSTED the USSR, neither will it TRUST any Mid East state (except Israel) with nucluer arms. The reasons are similar .. they are not a responsible government, they are unable to handle their own affairs , their population moves the large numbers to the west to escape their tyrany and persecution, and they often make stupid threats eg Iranian president saying he will wipe Israel off the map. This idiot of a president knows that Israel is capable (without resorting to nuclear weapons) of destroying his entire airforce without loss.

Is there any movement of population from the west to North Korea, Iran, China, Cuba etc etc ???? Why ?

Originally posted by Rajk999
... Nobody defects to communist societies. Because of the manner in which communism gets into power ie by a bloody coup, without the consent of the population, nobody in their right mind will TRUST such a government...

without getting too pedantic, western governments dont exactly make it easy for its citizens to freely go backwards and forwards to communists/socialist systems to find out for themselves. a lot of cubans were and are still very glad that their country is no longer the casino playground of western mob ruled corrupt capitalism and that their mothers and sisters and daughters are not bonded into prostitution.

communism failed because the west were also not going to let it establish itself and compete in an open international market. the notion that capitalism won out because it was intrinsically better, denies that communism as a bloc was always the smaller of the trading alliances with less of a hold on world resources, and its demise from the world stage was as a result of a thorough exercise of predjudicial policies including long running trade sanctions on behalf of the west.(along the lines of never giving a sucker an even break) and imoho why should any system that dictates the framework of your belief be given your loyalty, or allowed to prosper!

In terms of wmd, the cold war was fought on the principle of MAD(mutually assured destruction) with every major city in opposite pairs across the west and eastern empires bookmarked with icbm's ready to launch.

foreign policy still operates on a gun boat diplomacy and the attitude of a supreme force(held in the hands of people whose generational record of upholding human rights is the threshold of acceptance to the club), being the only real detterent to war is the only model of stability entertained by the powers that be. any softening of the hard line, is dismissed as a Chamberlain policy of appeasement and the results of that attempt at pacifist negotiation allowed the pandora's box of nazism to disrupt the world not just for the second world war, but create divisions and sub groups of power blocs that still compete today.

Originally posted by kmax87
without getting too pedantic, western governments dont exactly make it easy for its citizens to freely go backwards and forwards to communists/socialist systems to find out for themselves. a lot of cubans were and are still very glad that their country is no longer the casino playground of western mob ruled corrupt capitalism and that their mothers and sister ...[text shortened]... second world war, but create divisions and sub groups of power blocs that still compete today.

Again despite your eloqence you are not correct in para 1 and 2, although 3 and 4 seem accurate.

para 1 : I know for a fact that many US citizens go to China, and Cuba (not sure of NK). I have been to Cuba many times and have several friends there. Havana is rife with prostitution .. because of the very high demand for the $US dollar. The average salary for a govt worker is $8.00 per month and for a doctor $25 per month. They get a few things free from the govt but they just barely get by. They supplement that with tips from, and sex with tourists. The rest of the country is poor and dillapidated as well. There is no freedom of movement within the country .. Havana residents cannot go into the countryside and vice versa. Doesnt the fact that Cubans risk life and limb trying to get out of that hellhole tell you somthing ? Think ... !!

Para 2 : You can say that your son failed his exam because his friend refused to help him with his homework. But any idiot will see through that lame-ass excuse. So dont say it ! Comunisim failed because the govt understimated the power of the 'profit motive', which is an essential ingredient in all economies. Ignore it and you are doomed. That garbage about resources is just that .. garbage. The USSR, China, Cuba, NK were unable to form a powerful trading bloc becuase they could not understand one simple fact about people ..You cannot enslave peoples minds, withdraw freedom of expression, withdraw religious freedom, withdraw the ability of movement and expect them to produce.

I enjoy reading your stuff .. write some more. eg explain this sentence further .. " why should any system that dictates the framework of your belief be given your loyalty, or allowed to prosper! "

Originally posted by Rajk999
...Again despite your eloqence you are not correct in para 1 and 2, although 3 and 4 seem accurate.... "

I'll pay your comments about para2, the old son failing because his friend didn't do his homework is a good debunk except that in a lot of significant ways the US and USSR were on par in the 50's, if you ever needed proof that the soviet system of communism had some intrinsic strengths of its own. I've just google'd and come with this article written by tom kemp from hull university.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/kemp/1958/xx/sovietrade.htm

he explains that the ability of soviet industry to rapidly deploy was a factor that led to the west shutting them down by denying them strategic materials etc. my whole point is that the two systems never went head to head in the international market in a "fair" contest. The US and GB signed off pacts to ensure that the USSR were cut off from markets other than those they could create themselves. The USSR were eager enough to trade with the west and during the second world war they did, but when it was over the US through NATO and the UN quickly closed ranks on the USSR to make sure that they their growth was restricted. Inadvertantly that forced the USSR to forge ties with China and NK, such that the much feared process of communist conversion of adjoining countries, known as domino theory whereby successive countries would topple to the charms of communism, caused the US to go into a red alert(pun intended) and launch itself into south east asia to ensure that the red menace did not spread. Why was the west so fearful of these countries capitulating to communism. if life under soviet style rule was so odius, then surely the free market could have decided that, but the US and the rest of europe never took that chance and basically put every obstacle they could in the way of the USSR influencing anyone. the 50's 60's 70's and 80's saw wars fought with the sole purpose of stopping or slowing down the spread of communism/socialism.

the command system or centrally planned economies of the soviets were particularly effective in churning out commodities though they sometimes did have problems overproducing things that they had no demand for and they were economically on par with the US during most of the 50's and part of the 60's. the russians did launch the first satellite and then the first man into space. my point is that its a bit like arguing over which formula one car is better, but then are forced to watch a one horse race because the regulators favour one particular team or they enact a conspiracy of denying any competitor to the number one team of specialist materials as well as leaning on certain suppliers etc to make sure that the competition is nobbled.

As far as Cuba goes I'm sure that now or at least maybe in the last 10 years or so what you say about people making the most of grabbing every yankee dollar is true, but at the time of Castro coming into power, the US didn't exactly say, hey, the will of the people in Cuba has spoken in this grass roots support of this revolutionary Castro. hell no, they blockaded his butt and forced him to trade with the soviets. the thought of a popular supported socialist country off the coast of florida was probably a bit too much to bear, so in this case as well, it wasnt as if the US said, hey you guys will hate the system you are under, and its a self evident truth that a system that denies people the freedom's of belief and political expression are doomed to fail. no siree bob, they never once entertained Cuba the opportunity to show that its system was intrinsically inferior. they systematically just closed it down. end of story. if anything, that Cuba still goes on, is a testament to people who are in some significant way still unbowed to the forces of capitalism and they will, if for no other reason than respect for Castro and the dream of an equal society that he gave them, wait a few years after his passing before they let the homogenization begin.

why i reject communism is for the same reason that the french revolution failed. in making the state the highest authority and not giving people room to express their own personal spiritual beliefs you create a monster that can only be controlled by a despot. stalin is a perfect example of a man with a heavy hand who in terms of state sponsored murder of undesirables,(in the eyes of the soviet state at least) made hitler look less evil and even vaguely well balanced when compared to his autocratic style. Khrushchev who followed tried to a policy of de-Stalinization, but ultimately the system of communism only seems to work when a heavy hand operates it. why else would someone be compelled to become a bootmaker when their heart was set on becoming a musician.......

so far this has little to do with the topic except that the US and its allies are applying the same standards to iran in terms of determining its access to their closed nuclear club. because the cornerstones of US liberty are the rights to bear arms, free speech and free association, they will dog anyone who would have access to their level of destructive power and not conform to their model of acceptable civil society. The US's argument seems to be that they have never deployed nuclear weapons other than to end the second world war and that considering that they developed the technology, that they through the marshall plan refinanced the rebuilding of europe and japan after the second world war, that only they have enough stake in the globe to be entrusted with weapons that could see its demise. i dont know if I can agree with that but as far as I can see that seems to be the most probable core mindset in operation at the moment.

Originally posted by Rochade
Hi,
this one drives me for the past few days.
Please go back with to 1947 and the beginning of the Cold War.
Everybody knows that there were two forces the Soviet Union and the USA yada yada yada.
There were two political systems which seem impossible to coexist.
Then both armed up. And after years of caution and slow approach the two forces finally c ...[text shortened]... be a peacefull coexistence between another two fractions(religions).
Please discuss with me.

Here's a hypothetical question.

What if the real energy crisis isn't just that we are running out
of oil but that oil is about to become obsolete?

Wouldn't controlling a technology have the same effect as
controlling a fuel supply?

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
Here's a hypothetical question.

What if the real energy crisis isn't just that we are running out
of oil but that oil is about to become obsolete?

Wouldn't controlling a technology have the same effect as
controlling a fuel supply?

this ones right up my favourite conspiracy. OPEC is lobbying the western policymakers as much as US oil to not let the hydrogen economy install itself as this would mean and end to their way of life.

hydrogen does not have to be deployed in fuel cells either.(there is a concern that there is not enough platinum or some such rare metal required in the cell membrane for this to remain a pie in the sky technology, but people are forgetting that BMW has been running a fleet of V12's since the late 70's on the happy bang up gas, and the only significant detractions to using it stem from the fact of being able to pack in enough H2 on board so that you are not re-fueling every other block.

So the concern that some people express that it cant happen because it will junk every facet of the transport industry as we know it should realise that deployed on board a reciprocating engine the whole infrastructure of auto dealerships, spare parts, repair shops, refueling service stations etc can go on totally unchanged as all one would have to do would be to retro fit gas tanks much like LPG or LNG into every car. h2o exhaust. bring it on!!!!!