That belongs over in the Conspiracy Theories forum.
I agree with only your last statement. I don't care about what the rest of the world "thinks." Also, we should only ever help our TRUE allies. Let somebody else take care of it. I'm sick of being the world police. I want them to just leave us the hell alone!!! Go cry to someone else for help for once.
You should. Why bother having trade treaties if we don't enforce them? Why bother having tax treaties between nations if we don't enforce them? Why bother having sanctions if we don't enforce them?
It doesn't matter what they think, it matters if they will enforce their part of their agreements. Moving towards a world that operates its treaties and agreements as little more than "ink on paper" will come to no good for anyone.
I'm not terribly worried about Hezbollah retaliating against Israel for two reasons:
1. Israel can handle herself. Look up "Iron Dome", if you like.
2. Hezbollah is rather busy, at the moment. Turns out they are embroiled (who knew) in a civil war in Syria.
And the Turkish authorities would have no reason for fabricating that story, would they?
From what I'm seeing in tge news, it looks like there's going to be an air raid(s) this week. I'm concerned a out what coud go wrong:
1. In the spirit of the Middle Eastern dictator human shields, what if Assad makes some lucky guesses and intentionally places a bunch of chemical stockpiles at targets that we strike? Massive secondary explosions of chemical bombs triggered by the US Military. Add some anti-American middle eastern propaganda and its the Great Satan killing tens of thousands of Arabs in its war on Islam under the hypocritical guise of bringing freedom to Syria in or ther to clear the land of people so we can take their oil without much of a native population to deal with. FYI: the generally accepted perception of the US in that part of the world is regardless of our stated goal, ultimately any and all US military action in the Middle East is motivated by oil.h
2. Inadvertently joining forces with radical extremists that could lead to an Al Qaeda controlled Syruan government. Its pitiful but in Middle Eastern geo-politics there are often no good guys.
3. Doomsday spoil sport reaction that could lead to attacks on friendly countries in the region.
Of course, many things could go wrong and the longer we wait the worse it could be... Wouldn't our satellites catch such a movement of chemical weapons? Lebanon and Jordan are already in deep ****.. The Arab League doesn't seem to be resistant to the idea.. Whatever happens, it will always be ****e vs. Sunni, so we don't want to make the same mistakes we have made in Iraq and more followup than we have given to the other Arab Spring countries..but this is supposed to be just a punishment and lesson for Assad for using chemical weapons on his own people....we will have to wait and see...
Satellites were also supposed to see the wmds in Iraq.
I don't know. It's an insane region of the world.
The "world economy" is going to collapse. We should concentrate on our own country and forget about the Middle East.
MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030 | Popular Science
Forty years after its initial publication, a study called The Limits to Growth is looking depressingly prescient. Commissioned by an international think tank called the Club of Rome, the 1972 report found that if civilization continued on its path toward increasing consumption, the global economy would collapse by 2030. Population losses would ensue, and things would generally fall apart.
The study was — and remains — nothing if not controversial, with economists doubting its predictions and decrying the notion of imposing limits on economic growth. Australian researcher Graham Turner has examined its assumptions in great detail during the past several years, and apparently his latest research falls in line with the report’s predictions, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The world is on track for disaster, the magazine says.
The study, initially completed at MIT, relied on several computer models of economic trends and estimated that if things didn’t change much, and humans continued to consume natural resources apace, the world would run out at some point. Oil will peak (some argue it has) before dropping down the other side of the bell curve, yet demand for food and services would only continue to rise. Turner says real-world data from 1970 to 2000 tracks with the study’s draconian predictions: “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here. We are not on a sustainable trajectory,” he tells Smithsonian.
Is this impossible to fix? No, according to both Turner and the original study. If governments enact stricter policies and technologies can be improved to reduce our environmental footprint, economic growth doesn’t have to become a market white dwarf, marching toward inevitable implosion. But just how to do that is another thing entirely.
I just LOVE the propaganda our government is feeding us with the pictures of the children and babies. Trying to make us feel bad and guilty so we'll get behind Obama's stupid decision to perhaps start World War III. :roll:
You should. Why bother having trade treaties if we don't enforce them? Why bother having tax treaties between nations if we don't enforce them? Why bother having sanctions if we don't enforce them?
It doesn't matter what they think, it matters if they will enforce their part of their agreements. Moving towards a world that operates its treaties and agreements as little more than "ink on paper" will come to no good for anyone.
I just LOVE the propaganda our government is feeding us with the pictures of the children and babies. Trying to make us feel bad and guilty so we'll get behind Obama's stupid decision to perhaps start World War III. :roll:
I don't know, would they?
Remember those stories about Iraqis dumping babies out of incubators in Kuwait? The truth is the first casualty of war. (I forget who I should attribute that to)
Do you think that they are faked? Do you think that they are falsehoods? Do you think that CNN / FOX / MSNBC / CBC et. al. are "the government"?
And how do you argue that a limited intervention in Syria starts WWIII? The Russians aren't about to come into it for Syria (though they may lend them some quiet aid - material, moral support, backing at the UN, etc), and frankly neither is Iran outside of the kinds of forces (IRGC/Qods) that they have already deployed.
:shrug: I was right there on overconsumption leading to devaluation until they went into the peak-oil nonsense. Every single prediction made by that crowd in the last century plus has proven wildly off-base.
In the meantime, the notion that because debt exists we should go ahead and throw global trade to the winds is....
....well, it sort of puts you in the position of the people arguing for the Smoot-Hawley Tarrif. The one that helped kick off the Great Depression.
Apparently you are wrong. Read the article. Experts say these predictions are on par with what is actually going on.
Of course you're free to remain in denial about it if you so choose. Oil supplies are NOT infinite. They WILL run out eventually, especially at the current rate of consumption,
and 3rd-world countries who have joined in the "global economy" who are now increasing their consumption of fossil fuels as well.
Bottom line is we need to start looking out for our own interests.
According to experts this is unsustainable and is going to have painful consequences.
As I'm sure you well know, making comparisons to the happenings of today to those in the 1920s and 1930s is rather dim.
"Evildoers"? Really?
Are we not one of the biggest evildoers of modern history?
If it is our job to punish these evil doers, how shall we deal with ourselves?
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Economic freedom creates economic growth. If you want an example of a nation that has put in place the "let's close off from the world and spend all our resources on ourselves" philosophy, it is named "North Korea".
:lol: "experts" do? Oh, goodness, well, if experts do....
Experts are all over the map Chris. Everyone cites those they like.
Eventually absolutely. In the meantime, however, exploitable reserves have only traveled in one direction over the last hundred years - even as demand has skyrocketed, they have increased .
Yup. China's rate of increase is about to slow, and India's.... maybe. We'll see if they can get a handle on the rupee.
I agree. Many of our interests are located in Syria.
Everything is unsustainable at some point. The United States is unsustainable, as the Earth is going to crash into the sun. The idea that eventually the law of large numbers demands a low-probability high-impact event with the capability of destabilizing the global economy does not justify allowing one to occur or even encouraging it, any more than your own assured eventual death justifies you playing in traffic or refusing to get medical care now.
Not really. The same isolationist streak will have the same result - massive job loss, economic destruction, and large increases in poverty, combined with slower growth hindering recovery until we are smart enough to switch back.
Economic freedom creates economic growth. If you want an example of a nation that has put in place the "let's close off from the world and spend all our resources on ourselves" philosophy, it is named "North Korea".
Bingo. That's a degradation back to a Hobbessian world order, and we will end up in more conflict from it, not less.
And I don't think that will change anytime soon. Hopefully what's going on now is just posturing.