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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,330 posts, read 54,400,252 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by janelle144
I guess people want the world to blow up, yep that will fix things. I think it's smarter to let those who are in charge control things and know what things we can do to make things better not worse.
Are 'they' scheduled to start making things better anytime soon?
You may not care for the source, and I don't care for how often Christians cry wolf wrongfully these days, but I don't consider this article wrongful or in any way xenophobic.
...Saudi's constitute only 1 percent of the worlds muslims, they pay 90 percent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam. Others estimate that, on an annual basis, Saudia Arabia spends three times as much in exporting it's Wahhabi philosophy as did the Soviets in propagating Communism during the height of the cold war. From the Netherlands and Bosnia, to Algeria and Tunisia, to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to Somalia and Nigeria, nationals of these countries have reported that for the past twenty to thirty years local Islamic traditions are being transformed and radicalized under intensifying Saudi influence.
Is it me or not because frankly Wikileaks has proven to be nothing more than source of pointing out the obvious.
[still waiting for some serious meat and potatoes revelations...]
What's obvious? Barrack HUSSIEN Obama is implied a terrorist muslim plant in RW histrionics. He's a 'traitor' for minding protocols and ceremonial detail during diplomatic visitations. Yet these same individuals hold high our former president and his family with near incestuous relations with Saudi nationals to the point where they operate with impunity. The republican party policy has done nothing less than kiss their royal hinnies with multi billions of dollars worth of foreign aid and multi billions in arms sales.
They had a name for something like that back in pre civil war days. 'Doughface'- Northerners who sympathized with slave owners. Republicans defend big biz no matter how evil doing they are. Even the contractors selling to those who declare themselves our enemies in their state approved school textbooks. Cheney thinks he's smarter? He'll defend his party and his corporate interest in Haliburton, America be damned.
Quote:
U.S. Arms Sales.
The United States has long been Saudi Arabia’s leading arms supplier. During the eight-year period from 1997 through 2004, U.S. arms ordered by Saudi
Arabia amounted to $7.3 billion while U.S. arms delivered to Saudi Arabia amounted to $22.9 billion, reflecting earlier orders. An upsurge in Saudi arms purchases from the United States in the early 1990s was due in large measure to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and its aftermath. The largest recent sale was a $9 billion contract for 72 F-15S advanced fighter aircraft, signed in May 1993. Saudi arms purchase figures include not only lethal equipment but also significant amounts of support services and construction.
I do recall how very angry everyone was post 9-11. Forget the fact that most of those terrorists on those planes were saudi nationals. Forget that to this very day all the money bankrolling these losers is coming from Saudi Arabia. AND Kuwait-- remember those folks we saved in the first Gulf war??? They're feeding terrorists.
Folks still mad at terrorists are still looking in the wrong direction and I'd like to know why. I'd like to know why Republicans have gone so far out of their way to defend and protect Saudi Arabia to perpetuate the fighting in Afghanistan.
I'd like to know why conservative Arabs of moneyed class are having a fight with conservative americans of moneyed class at the expense of the entire planet.
What I remember, was American being mad at the Saudi's for about a month, then everything focused on Afghanistan. Oddly enough, within 6-8 months, nearly the entire focus was then shifted to Iraq with amazing speed. It was the greatest shell game of shifting national anger and focusing elsewhere I've ever seen. It has shown me the true awesome power of media and the dissemination of information ever perpetrated upon the human race. A PR coup so to speak.
Americans are faced with a bit of a conundrum, we are in fact addicts of oil and petroleum, our entire society is based upon it and I mean ENTIRELY. What does one do when you find out your dealer is double crossing you, and not just any dealer, but the biggest dealer there is who also happens to sit at the holiest of holy sites for a culture of people far more fundamentally committed to a set of beliefs than even we are.
Yeah, I get frustrated when I see todays self described conservatives taking an antithetical position to the very definition of what it is to be "conservative" but as frustrated as I am with them, I'm just as frustrated with Liberals who don't display a similar level of disdain for the Democrats that don't do much towards solving this issue either.
Every President since like what, Nixon or at least since Carter have stood before the American people and said, "We have to reduce our dependence on oil" and none of them have taken the bold steps required to make this actually happen. It is going to have to be a generational commitment, not something we can flip a switch and change in 10 or even 20 years.
Meanwhile in order to ignore the deeper truth that we are oil junkies and in order to sate our need for this product, we are going to have to intervene and become even more aggressive towards others. So to distract us from this, we focus on the culture war and the war of religions, or as several books have coined it, "War between civilizations".
Viewing it in this lens of perception we don't have to focus on that ugly dirty little secret which drives us truly. Culture and religion can be branded and sold and people holding these kinds of beliefs so strongly will blind themselves to all other reasons and that is all you really need.
I'm sure Cheney won't be interested in fighting such a war. As during the Vietnam War, when he should have gone, he'll have "other priorities."
yeah making sure it is everyone else's kids in danger so he can make a fortune... Martha Stewart gets nabbed for not losing a couple hundred k . Cheney makes a couple hundred million ff a no bid appointment with a companuy he has stock options in and no one blinks... For real?
I'm all in favor of providing him air fare to Nigeria. bet they would know what to do with him...
Tn I made most of my money in the oil industry and I can attest to everything you're saying first hand. The reason they aren't investing in expanded facilities and general infrastructure is because it's a dying industry. They've already been divesting the downstream market the past 15yrs, and you'll begin to see less 'big name' gas stations unless it's a franchise that's legally baffled off from the seeming 'parent' company. In reality none of those gas brands are any different beyond the proprietary detergent used which <allegedly> justifies the franchise fees. That is until BP makes a mess and motorists punish the franchise operator for what the franchise dealer did.
Those strategic reserves were a very wise decision back in the day and we cannot afford to squander it on SUV's. There are far too many things dependent on petrochemical derivatives to justify necessity for a considerable time, but unless we get this big hurdle out of the way- transportation-- we're squandering too much of a precious commodity needlessly. We cannot continue consuming the volumes we have been. If we get it solved here, it will be a massive sales opportunity in emerging markets striving for modernity.
BTW-- if you think I've let dems off the hook I'll be happy to beat them about the head for failing to challenge republican policy. It suits their hawkish side so they collude with conservative hawks. I'm neither hawk nor dove, prefer to let circumstances dictate response, but I see that far too much of our military might has also been squandered by unintelligent or absent applications of diplomacy. There's no question in my mind that libertarians are 100% correct- this concept of global empire must die or we will be dying with it. Unsustainable. The UN needs to serve it's function once and for all. Get out of Germany. Get out of Italy. Get out of Guam. Get out of Saudi Arabia. Let others fight their own battles rather than using our troops as mercenaries for hire. "Put the Coast back in Coast Guard." That was a tongue in cheek joke between my Captain and I that wasn't as funny (3 month patrols are a PITA) as it was serious (ridiculous missions are a bigger PITA).
Religion & Nation, warped identities-- beneath all this false pride betrays a profound insecurity and a nation/ religion out of touch with it's respective true identities distracted from it's own porch trying to control others. I'm glad to see the constitution party asserted some principles, but unfortunately, in trying to sell it to the masses, they fell into the trap of pandering to the same irrational special interests bees buzzing in GOP's bonnet. Power grab BS that I'll guess is the real thing that turned you off to libertarians. RTL, religious fundies, and circling on the peripheral are anarchists waiting for an opportunity. They ran roughshod over Independence party too, but I think they've since been told their place post-Buchanan.
Seems we're overdue for another Lincoln. Who will volunteer to be shot?
Tn I made most of my money in the oil industry and I can attest to everything you're saying first hand. The reason they aren't investing in expanded facilities and general infrastructure is because it's a dying industry. They've already been divesting the downstream market the past 15yrs, and you'll begin to see less 'big name' gas stations unless it's a franchise that's legally baffled off from the seeming 'parent' company. In reality none of those gas brands are any different beyond the proprietary detergent used which <allegedly> justifies the franchise fees. That is until BP makes a mess and motorists punish the franchise operator for what the franchise dealer did.
Those strategic reserves were a very wise decision back in the day and we cannot afford to squander it on SUV's. There are far too many things dependent on petrochemical derivatives to justify necessity for a considerable time, but unless we get this big hurdle out of the way- transportation-- we're squandering too much of a precious commodity needlessly. We cannot continue consuming the volumes we have been. If we get it solved here, it will be a massive sales opportunity in emerging markets striving for modernity.
BTW-- if you think I've let dems off the hook I'll be happy to beat them about the head for failing to challenge republican policy. It suits their hawkish side so they collude with conservative hawks. I'm neither hawk nor dove, prefer to let circumstances dictate response, but I see that far too much of our military might has also been squandered by unintelligent or absent applications of diplomacy. There's no question in my mind that libertarians are 100% correct- this concept of global empire must die or we will be dying with it. Unsustainable. The UN needs to serve it's function once and for all. Get out of Germany. Get out of Italy. Get out of Guam. Get out of Saudi Arabia. Let others fight their own battles rather than using our troops as mercenaries for hire. "Put the Coast back in Coast Guard." That was a tongue in cheek joke between my Captain and I that wasn't as funny (3 month patrols are a PITA) as it was serious (ridiculous missions are a bigger PITA).
Religion & Nation, warped identities-- beneath all this false pride betrays a profound insecurity and a nation/ religion out of touch with it's respective true identities distracted from it's own porch trying to control others. I'm glad to see the constitution party asserted some principles, but unfortunately, in trying to sell it to the masses, they fell into the trap of pandering to the same irrational special interests bees buzzing in GOP's bonnet. Power grab BS that I'll guess is the real thing that turned you off to libertarians. RTL, religious fundies, and circling on the peripheral are anarchists waiting for an opportunity. They ran roughshod over Independence party too, but I think they've since been told their place post-Buchanan.
Seems we're overdue for another Lincoln. Who will volunteer to be shot?
I really do not disagree with anything you've said here and to the point I chide either Republicans or Democrats it is in the broader context that they are either in denial, lacking courage to make serious and likely career killing choices, or they are ignorant. I have to believe it is one of the two former rather than the latter as I shudder to think if it is.
For the life of me I wonder why haven't those few honest foreign policy conservatives also made the case on this issue. As much as so many carry on about the poor being dependent upon a welfare system and how people need to be more self reliant, and I agree with this, but we ignore the 800lb gorilla in the room that is our utter dependence upon petroleum.
The food we eat, the clothes we wear, our furniture, plastics, fiberglass, cars we drive to the planes we fly to the cheeseburger and corn on the cob we just ate. Each and every bit of it is wholly dependent upon a single resource which is more often than not owned by people who either despise us outright, or are wary because they know that this giant nation will take what it needs if it has to. Where are the voices bringing attention to this dependency, oddly enough, mostly from the left. Its perplexing our social views and business views are often so flip flopped.
Although you say false pride, I think it is honest pride of a woefully ignorant thing, dependence. It will at some point bring disastrous results if it isn't addressed sooner rather than later.
Which brings up another question for another thread perhaps, and that is "do companies and corporations owe any loyalty to the nation that host them"? At what point should someone draw the line where a privately owned corporation lobbies government for favorable legislation to its interest which are detrimental to the interests of the people?
Which brings up another question for another thread perhaps, and that is "do companies and corporations owe any loyalty to the nation that host them"? At what point should someone draw the line where a privately owned corporation lobbies government for favorable legislation to its interest which are detrimental to the interests of the people?
As long as government is heavily influenced by corporates that line will never be drawn. When we have corporate lobbyists writing up bills and assisting law makers in writing up bills that line will never exist. The influence will make sure of that and that's the reason they are so heavily entrenched in DC.
That was one promise I had hoped Obama would have kept..throwing the lobbyists out of DC and not letting our government be run by the corporates.
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