[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Solar Energy



<meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:
 
>This is truly heart breaking.

Your sympathy for these 600,000 dead humans is noted :-)

>It also completely ignores the fact that the Gulf War started not with
>the US attacking Iraq but with Iraq invading Kuweit, a country which didn't
>attack Iraq, threaten it or do it harm in any way.

A country set up for a few shieks by Standard Oil in the 50's...

Yeah yeah yeah, sure. All those people deserved to die. We had to invade Iraq.
And Israel only defends itself from agressors, and we only invaded Grenada
to protect those poor medical students, etc., etc. We seem to say, "Step over 
this line: I dare you," like children. And then we defend ourselves to protect
our country from the hideous menace of a nation like Nicaragua. If your 
neighbor started acting uppity, and browbeating his family, would you kill him,
and install a new person as head of his family, to help ensure neighborhood
tranquility? Could you accomplish that legally? Could you make him so angry
at you that he attacks you, and then "simply defend yourself," waiting in
ambush with ten times the weaponry? Would you perform training exercises
on the sidewalk in front of his house, with guns, and shine spotlights into
his windows at night? Would that be a neighborly thing to do?

>... I perfectly agree that there probably would have been no international
>involvement in the Gulf would Iraq and Kuweit grow only broccoli...

OK then. 

>The international community learned, the hard way, in this century,
>that when somebody starts throwing his weight around too much you'll
>better act or else.

Or else what? Shark repellent works pretty well in Nebraska... I have
no wish to pay for making the world safe for democracy. But this
matter of oil complicates things, doesn't it? Another complication is
people like the US Navy Ensign who told me a few years ago, "In order
to get promoted again, I will have to see combat." We should find
easier ways for him to earn his promotion :-)

I think you are talking about the domino theory, in political vs
economic terms. But it seems to me that this is an impure theory,
which has always had to do with economics and unclearly stated agendas.
Hey, it worked in Vietnam :-) We contained the red menace...

>And no, it wasn't just a war about cheap oil, since would that have been
>the case you would have US Marines landing in Saudi Arabia and Kuweit 
>in 1973, when OPEC raised the prices sky high.

Good point. I'm not sure why that didn't happen. Perhaps we were too
busy with the red menace, or there were some sort of smarmy political
deals going on with the big oil companies making bigger profits, as our
nation secretly supported both sides of the war between Iraq and Iran,
to ensure a political balance in our favor, and controllable oil prices.

>>   I think it's important to point out that a lot of oil is being wasted
>>   heating houses in this country, and that such waste is avoidable,
>>   and that avoiding such waste contributes to world peace. 
>
>Yeah, that's why there was always peace in the world, till people 
>strted using oil.

I'm not sure how that follows. All that I said was that if we didn't use
so much oil to heat houses, i.e. if we were not such oil junkies, there
would be less pressure for war in the middle east. And kicking the oil habit
for house heating isn't that difficult, from a technical point of view. 
We'd see a lot more of that if oil were not so artificially cheap. (Amory
Lovins went on to say in that article that the real cost of oil, including
the Gulf war, was over $2 a gallon, with the difference being paid indirectly
to armies by every US taxpayer.)

>>>Never in history were people paid so much with such small investment
>>>of their own effort.
>>
>>It's their oil, and they have a basic right to set their price.
>
>That's right, and they do.  Nevertheless the fact remains that "Never
>in history were people paid so much with such small investment of 
>their own effort."  There is no contradiction between the two.

I agree. And I'd say they are lucky, or played their cards right. But we seem
to try to sway them a bit, unfairly I think, by murdering them by the 
thousands, as a part of this "competitive market" price-setting process. 

Nick


References: