OK, couple of points/ questions
Re: The war
Someone stated that the war with Iraq is validated because of Iraq holding Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and that oil has nothing to do with it.
OK then, China [which has an even more fantstic human rights record than Iraq] has Nuclear, Chem + Bio weapons as does Russia, France and Britain. IN terms of consistency, if it’s just about potential threats, then the US will be declaring war of these countries next…right? Oh yes, the US has Nukes, Bio and Chem weapons. Mabe they should declare war on themselves??
So that leaves the terrorist threat…hmmmm, and war on Libya, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Israel etc will be declared part of the Axis of evil soon…ya think??.
And don’t forget North Korea, whom I believe recently told Japan and the UN to sod off…they don’t have any oil tho…
Obviously oil isn’t everything, but it’s naieve to assume it doesn’t play a part.
BTW: How does the Monroe doctrine interpret a mad-ass dictator oppressing his own people as a threat to the US?? Is Iraq even in the same hemisphere???
Are the terrorist that they fund and support in the same hemisphere as we are? Sorry, but you have no point here. Will Iraq mobilize its military and invade the US homeland? Of course not, and nobody is suggesting this. Will they arm terrorists with WMD if given the chance to strike in the US? Absolutely, without a doubt. I’m hardly pro-war ever, but I’m much more anti-nuke-in-one-of-our-cities. (Or insert your favorite WMD in place of nuke). We live in a different world these days.
Well said. I think it’s time for the USA to be respected AND feared again. Otherwise they are going to destroy us. I’m glad we have a President with the balls to confront our enemies.
I have two assignments for those of who brave enough to accept them. They are will cause talk! They will cause fire! But you might just be a more aware person for doing this.
Step One: Read the article below:
The Dinosaur War - To Protect Corporate Profits
by Thom Hartmann
I thought of it as dinosaur blood when it dripped on my hand this morning, and it made me wonder how the U.S. war strategy would change if Saddam made a small recalibration in his business practices.
Of course, the gasoline that spilled as I refilled my rental car this morning at the DFW airport - and the refined kerosene that will fuel the plane I’ll fly in today - is far more ancient than even the spectacular Tyrannosaurus Rex bones discovered north of here. They vanished around 65 million years ago, but the fossilized plants and bacteria that made my gasoline are 300 to 400 million years old. By the time dinosaurs ruled the Earth, pretty much all of the oil production of the planet was finished. Strange, when you consider it in those terms, that we’d base a nation’s foreign policy on a limited supply of fossils older than the dinosaurs.
But Saddam Hussein has a goodly supply of those fossils under the soil of Iraq - the second largest supply in the world, and perhaps a supply even larger than Saudi Arabia 's, which has been draining much faster and much longer. And he has hundreds of miles of shared borders with Saudi Arabia , Kuwait , and Iran - where much of the rest of the oil in the region is held.
Which led me to wonder: How would things change if Saddam, tomorrow, were to say, “I’ve decided to put my oil reserves up for auction to the highest corporate bidder, and, like many other oil-producing nations, all I want is a commission from the oil company that wins the auction.”
Once the stampede was over, I’ll bet the U.S. would discover that there are dozens of dictators in the world more vicious than Saddam. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe , for example, has engineered a cynical strategy of racial exploitation that has pushed six million of his citizens into famine today. Burma 's ruling junta has turned that nation into a slave-labor camp, where torture, executions, and terror are daily fare. And in North Korea , the policies of dictator-for-life Kim Jong-II have turned a formerly fertile and prosperous land into a concentration camp where people are forced to eat grass to survive, and anybody who questions the great leader’s brilliance is executed. There is no shortage of “evil” leaders of nations - the list could go on for pages.
Of course, none of these nations have oil.
But if Saddam were to invite in the oil companies who - through the corporate theft of human rights (more on this in a moment) - have captured control of many of the policies of the United States Government, I suspect many things would change even in our thoughts about oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.
We may notice that Iraq is not the nation that nurtures and exports the most virulent and anti-American form of religious intolerance; there were no Iraqi hijackers on 911. Iraq , in fact, was and is hostile to El Quiada. We may discover that Iraq is not the least stable nation in the world that seeks or has nuclear weapons and millions of followers of Osama’s theology (that prize probably goes to Pakistan ).
We may notice that women in Iraq are not required to wear a veil, as they are in other oil-rich Arab nations that we befriend, and that the government, while brutal and repressive, is secular and neither demands nor encourages the types of religious fundamentalism that lead to suicide bombers and 911, as do so many other nations in the region.
We may remember that just a few months ago in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , to quote Human Rights Watch, “soldiers carried out indiscriminate killings of civilians,” including “summary executions, numerous rapes, beatings, and widespread looting.”
We may even return to a policy like we had in 1983 when U.S. Middle East Envoy Donald Rumsfeld opened U.S. relations with Iraq during a friendly meeting with Saddam in Baghdad , when we were buying his oil and selling him anthrax and smallpox and helicopters and jets - as we were many of other nations in the region. We may even stop all this talk of war.
The bottom line is that powerful and oil-dependent corporate interests in America now control so much of both our domestic and foreign policy, because the U.S. government over the past few decades has been almost entirely co-opted - as in taken over - by corporate interests. We’re not having a war of, by, and for the people any more than we have an administration of, by, and for the people. If Saddam didn’t have enough oil to generate a few hundred million dollars a month in profits for the oil industry, we’d be giving him the same treatment we’re giving Mugabe: " Zimbabwe where?"
As has been well documented, if the exemption on SUVs from fleet mileage standards was ended and fleet gas mileage in the U.S. was to increase by a tiny 3 miles per gallon, we’d no longer need to import any oil from the Middle East. But the larger the car, the larger the profit for both the oil and the auto companies - and the auto and oil lobbies pass out millions in Washington, D.C. And now that the airwaves have been sold to corporate interests who will only allow politicians to speak if they pay, political campaigns guzzle cash like SUVs guzzle gas.
If we were to institute a Manhattan Project type program to develop and implement local, small-scale generation of electricity (about a tenth of all electricity generated in the U.S. is lost through transmission over long high-tension lines, and steam generating plants only convert about a third of their heat energy to electricity, wasting the other two-thirds), along with hydrogen technologies, we could clean up our air and free states from the tyranny of out-of-state energy companies manipulating their supplies and prices. If we were to encourage Victory Garden types of local agriculture and homestead farming, making it again patriotic to replace backyards of grass with vegetables (as it was during WWII), we could eliminate our absolute dependence on factory farming systems that now require billions of gallons of oil for production and transportation, that deliver foods laden with oil-derived pesticides, herbicides, and preservatives to our tables, and render our topsoils sterile.
Most important, we would no longer feel forced to permanently occupy the world’s oil-producing regions.
But a government whose policies have been captured by big oil, big auto, and big agriculture - just a few dozen corporations that are each richer than the majority of nations on earth - refuses to consider such rational alternatives. Because these corporations have claimed the constitutional human right of free speech - which includes the right to influence legislation, to influence politicians, and give money to political parties - we, the people, who would benefit from a shift in direction away from oil industry and toward local human values are left out of the decision making loop.
It wasn’t always this way. Before 1886, most states had laws that prevented corporations from meddling in politics. They can’t vote, the logic went, so what are they doing talking to politicians?
Wisconsin, for example, had a law stating: “No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office.” The penalty for any corporate official violating the law and getting cozy with politicians on behalf of the corporation was five years in prison and a substantial fine.
Humans had the right of free speech, and an individual - representing himself and his own opinions - was free to say and do what he wanted. Free speech is a human right. But corporations didn’t have rights - they had privileges. Brought into being by authority of the state in which they’re incorporated, that state determined the privileges its corporations could have and how they could be used.
But, they teach in law school, in 1886 the U.S. Supreme Court changed all that - a decision which leads us directly to today’s war with Iraq. The Court, the textbooks say, in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, recognized corporations as persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, and thus handed them the huge club of human rights that our Founders had given us humans to beat back government should it ever become repressive. Armed with this mighty weapon, corporations claimed free speech, privacy, the right not to speak, and used anti-discrimination statues originally passed to free slaves to throw out “bad boy” laws that favored local businesses over large corporations or companies that had been convicted of felonies.
I recently discovered that in 1886 the Supreme Court ruled no such thing. The “corporations are persons” was a fiction created by the Court’s reporter. He simply wrote it into the headnote of the decision. In fact, it contradicts what the Court itself said. And we’ve found in the National Archives a note in the hand of the Supreme Court Chief Justice of the time to the court’s reporter saying, explicitly, that the Court had not ruled on corporate personhood in the Santa Clara case.
Nonetheless, corporations have claimed the human rights the Founders fought and often died to bequeath to living, breathing humans. And, using those rights, they’ve usurped our government to the point where our domestic policies are now based on what’s best for the corporations with the largest campaign contributions, and our foreign policy has become a necessary extension of that.
As my “what would happen if Saddam auctioned off his oil fields tomorrow and just became another Middle Eastern despot like the rest of them” example demonstrates, we’re not just going to war for oil; we’re going to war for the “security” of profit.
While profit is a fine value for a corporation to hold, it’s not the prime value of humans and it’s definitely not one of the values that drive or preserve democracy.
If we are to save our world from a profit frenzy driven Armageddon, if we are to restore democracy to our American republic, we must first get corporations out of government, so our politicians can once again become statesmen.
Thom Hartmann is the author of “Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights.” Discover the Unequal Protection website at http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequalprotection.shtml
Step Two: You can read his book.
Step Three: For all your conservatives out there. Read Ann Coulter’s new book, “Liberal Lies About the American Right, Slander”. It is well written and documented.
Best of Luck.
A war would be about PREVENTING Saddam from acquiring a nuclear weapon. As your post illustrates very well though surely unintentionally, it is much more difficult to dislodge a crackpot regime once it has obtained nuclear weapons than while it is in the process of obtaining them. Therefore, it is key to strike soon and not give him more time for development.
And, speaking of North Korea, isn’t it great that former President Clinton openned up a trusting dialogue with a crackpot dictator and supplied him with NUCLEAR MATERIAL for the purpose, ahem, of constructing peaceful nuclear powerplants? We got their word they wouldn’t use it for weapons after all… And now a preemptive strike is obviously, by definition, out of the question.
As to the idea of protecting profits, try looking at it this way: In protecting access to a huge part of the world’s oil supply, you are saving American lives. If the cost of heating oil rises, more people will die in the winter time in the cold climates. If the cost of energy for running air conditioners becomes prohibitive, more people will die in the summer. And who will die? The young, the sick, and the old. The Americans least likely to be able to fend for themselves. So think about them instead of thinking of “profits” when you consider why we’re considering fighting to ensure stability in that part of the world. Sure, lower gas prices are nice, but affordable heating and cooling are necesary.
However, if you insist on thinking in terms of “profits,” do realize that if the price of a necessary commodity like oil shoots through the roof, the mini recession that occurred because of the internet bubble’s bursting will seem like the good old days. You will have joblessness, hunger, and depressed economic conditions across the world. Rosy thoughts eh?
On a small, interesting scientific note, there is a new relatively new theory out there that oil does not come from dinosaurs or any sort of fossils at all, but is rather generated via subterranean processes deep in the earth’s core. It seems that they’ve discovered previously dry oil fields filling back up, and some oil fields that are increasing because they are taking in oil faster than we harvest it. Fascinating stuff.
OK, couple of points/ questions
Re: The war
Someone stated that the war with Iraq is validated because of Iraq holding Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and that oil has nothing to do with it.
OK then, China [which has an even more fantstic human rights record than Iraq] has Nuclear, Chem + Bio weapons as does Russia, France and Britain. IN terms of consistency, if it’s just about potential threats, then the US will be declaring war of these countries next…right? Oh yes, the US has Nukes, Bio and Chem weapons. Mabe they should declare war on themselves??
So that leaves the terrorist threat…hmmmm, and war on Libya, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Israel etc will be declared part of the Axis of evil soon…ya think??.
And don’t forget North Korea, whom I believe recently told Japan and the UN to sod off…they don’t have any oil tho…
Obviously oil isn’t everything, but it’s naieve to assume it doesn’t play a part.
BTW: How does the Monroe doctrine interpret a mad-ass dictator oppressing his own people as a threat to the US?? Is Iraq even in the same hemisphere???
The article states that it is well documented that if we raised gas milage a measley 3 miles per gallon we wouldn’t have to import ANY oil. I’ve been looking but I cannot find any documentation of that anywhere. Can you point me to it?
Amen !!!
F–K Liberals !!!
I bet you believe that we didn’t land on the moon, don’t you?
Doggie, I give you a thumbs up for wanting the initial research that a statement is based on. While I have not had time to research Mr. Hartmann (see information below), I though his comments would inform and cause reasoning T-men and T-vixens to stop and consider. What I find funny is that I recieved this article from Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) two weeks ago and that today MSN is running a MSNBC story along the same lines. Ago we must all stop and consider the sources, then check the “facts”. I am sure that any T-person seeking enlightenment would do the same. That is whyI recommended reading Slander by Ann Coulter. She show a true T-spirit. Best of Luck.
Thom Hartmann is the author of “Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights.” Discover the Unequal Protection website at www.thomhartmann.com/ unequalprotection.shtml
Sorry ladies and gents – didn’t mean to send that off without erasing Iscariot’s post, which I was using for reference. Now you get to enjoy it twice. My bad.
Beware of the Illuminati!!
While I am happy that the Republicans have taken control of everything…so to speak, I do feel that they need to change a few things regarding immigration and foreign policy with regards to the UN. And as far as the whole Saddam issue, when did we ever have to beg and plead to take out an evil person? I think we all can agree he is a bad guy we practically have to beg the UN to scratch our heads let alone take him out. This also brings me to why we must deal with the UN differently, the right of a state is to make war with other countries… thats one of the perks to being an independant state… the UN has made it illigal to make war with a another state without their approval. It just seems weird that a tiny non-goverment organization can make laws like that just… ripping away the worlds only superpower’s right to do what it wants.
OlderLifter - Although that was an interesting article - and I agree we are far too dependent on foreign oil - it completely misses the point of possible aggression against Iraq.
The threat posed by Iraq’s current regime isn’t JUST to it’s own people (like your examples). Iraq has proven that it is willing to invade other countries (Kuwait), and to use weapons of mass destruction (chemical/biological warfare against the Kurds). It has also used missiles against more distant nations (remember the SCUDS in Israel?).
I won’t argue that the US is completely consistent in attempting to control regimes that invade other states, but there are examples that don’t have anything to do with oil (our involvement in the Balkans for one).
If we start sending troops into the Burmas and Zimbabwes of the world because of how they treat their own people - where would we draw the line? You want to send troops into North Korea because their economy’s such a mess that people are starving? How about other countries that have had famines? Are you going to send troops into all of them (if not - why? You could argue that they are corrupt regimes because they didn’t plan well enough for the future). How are you going to fix their economies? I don’t think we are good enough at state-building to do any good, and I think we’d just be alienating the people we’re trying to save.
re: Abortion (for those who aren’t sick of this one yet)
Consider the case of a woman who wants to get pregnant to feel the sensation of a life growing within her. However, she doesn’t want to raise a child - so her plan from the beginning is to abort it before birth. To me that seems evil and wrong - I think the act of deciding to get pregnant morally obligates you to doing all you can to raise the resulting child with a chance at a happy life (i.e. feed, love, educate, and protect them to the best of your ability - which might mean putting it up for adoption). After all you decided to bring the child into the world, so you should be responsible.
Deciding to have sex is the same as deciding to get pregnant which is the same as deciding to have a child (unless you have 100% effective contraception - and there aren’t many methods that are 100%). You know there is a chance to get pregnant every time you have sex, so deciding to have sex is the same as deciding to get pregnant. Therefore deciding to have sex morally obligates you to be responsible for the possible resulting child. Therefore that obligation begins at the point of conception.
In the case of pregnancies resultant from rape, there obviously isn’t that same moral obligation - but I agree with Clubber that the fetus is still a human, so there is a certain amount of responsibility (“Am I my brother’s keeper?” - I say yes).
However, I’m seriously conflicted about what should be legislated in this matter. I firmly believe in the right of self-defense (life and health) and many pregnancies are life threatening (and probably most could be considered health-threatening). I also believe that killing a fetus is murder - but I think that in many cases it could be considered self-defense. So, ultimately I think the decision should rest with the mother (not “potential” mother - she is a mother as soon as she becomes pregnant). But I also think children should be educated about the moral implications of abortion (just like they should be educated about all possible life-changing decisions before they are faced with the choice - like the choice to smoke or drink or take drugs).
As to whether that education should be done by the state - I’ll leave for another argument.
You can claim that killing a fetus is murder all you want. People commit murder during war as well, but I’m sure there is “sound reasoning” why people are not tried for murder in a wartime situation. Pro-Life advocates always use the “murder” route as one of their reasons why abortion should be illegal. Pro-choice and proud of it.
No one in their right mind denies the fact that an embryo or fetus is alive… of course they are. Similarly, one cannot deny that pre-fertilized eggs are alive, sperm are alive, cells of the human body are alive no matter where they are found. Each of these things carries human DNA. The question isn’t whether these things are alive or not, the question is whether they are human beings. I am sure that everyone agrees that sperm, ova and human cells are not human beings despite the fact that they are alive and carry the full map of human genetic material (and at least with sperm and ova, have the opportunity to become human beings. Of course one might argue that with genetic cloning, every living cell of the human body has the potential to become a human being). The question is, at what point after a sperm fertilizes an egg is the product called a human being. This is why I say that the debate over abortion and the beginning of human life is definitional, not scientific in nature. The definition for me is viability. When the fetus reaches the stage where it is well-enough developed that it can survive outside the mother’s womb (appeals to the fact that babies and the infirm need care and support to survive is a strawman argument, I am talking about viability), it has reached the point of development where it has become a human being. You may disagree with my definition (as you have a right to do, I never said my definition is necessarily correct, but it is the one that makes the most sense to me after much thinking about the issue), but don’t try to use “science” as a method of disproving my definition, because the issue truly is NOT about what science has proven or disproven except as we use it to support our respective definition. Science does not define what it means to be a human being, or at what point an egg and sperm become human.
This debate on abortion is never going anywhere because no one is stating or agreeing on any premises. I think it’s fairly safe to say that once you have a “human” that after that point the human has rights of its own, distinct and separate from those of the mother. We have no problem imposing 18-21 years of child support duties on parents once children are born, and society is horrified by child abuse and other crimes against children perpetrated by parents and others.
From that, we have a problem of determination – one about which people obviously disagree. This is the problem: When, from the point of conception through birth, does the fetus becomes a human?
Once that point is attained, there can be no more balancing of interests, at least consistent with the norms of our culture and morals. There is no other situation where a single individual can make a unilateral choice to deprive another innocent, non-harm-causing human of his or her life and not face prosecution under the law. The war analogy is faulty – that is a decision of governments and of society. So is a death penalty analogy – besides being the decision of the state, that acted upon one who has been adjudged guilty of harm. Even a self-defense analogy fails – self-defense is available to excuse conduct that would otherwise be punished, and you must establish that it was reasonable for you to decide the other person was indeed attacking you or another with deadly force.
So that is where the disgreement lies. When does a fetus become a human? The problem is, that question is not scientific but rather philosophical and moral. Analogize it to a medical decision as to when a person is dead – is it when the brain is not functioning? When the heart is stopped? When he can’t be sustained except my machines? Some combination? Science gives us those measures, but we decide what they mean.
As such, this debate won’t be “won” or “lost” here – or anywhere else probably. There isn’t a factual right or wrong, only a moral one. Some morals are protected under law, and some are left to individual decisions. We argue about these all the time (e.g. should drugs be legal?), and sometimes we change our minds (e.g. Prohibition). However, those who always quote the proposition that we can’t legislate morality are sadly mistaken – we do all the time, and so does every other government that isn’t simply dictatorial fiat. We dress certain discussions as discussions of “rights,” and we can even discuss things in terms of “utility,” but that does not cover all the examples of our laws, nor does it explain the baseline of cultural mores that determines a lot of what we on the gut level consider right or wrong.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s important to have discussions and to logically come to reasons why we have laws, protections and prohibitions. But we need to acknowledge the baselines. In this case, the baseline is when does the fetus become a human? Once you determine that, you already have your position on the question of abortion – at least if you’re logically consistent.
Nate, no offense intended, but you didn’t exactly refute the point you mentioned. People rob and loot during war and are not prosecuted for it. I’m a burglar and proud of it!
BTY, this has nothing to do with my views. I just like to see point-counterpoint arguments made.
Nate Dogg…No offense but that is the dumbest line of reasoning I have ever heard…I mean the absolute dumbest. No excuse for such poor reasoning skills.
This is basically what you said:
Abortion = Murder
War = killing
killing = Murder
Conclusion: Soldiers not tried for murder during war, so abortion is cool???
Not will to join the argument, just want to point out that you conceded all your points but still ended up with the same conclusion. It was impressive in a bad sort of way.
Well, I could provide a definition of irony</> but it would be lost on some people - as for you Neil Armstrong - I have faith in your ability to find your own way home [whether it be the moon or …]
The point I was trying to make, is that a lot of the US’s rhetoric regarding Iraq is self-serving and contradictory. I was not commenting on Saddam’s insanity or otherwise - I will note tho that no-one [US intelligence or otherwise] has been able to link Iraq to Al Quaeda or Bin Laden etc [other than the odd affirmative muttering]
As for the individual who said that the US should be able to do whatever the hell it wants as it is the only superpower, better pull their head in, that sort of attitude is precisely what causes a lot of the antagonism in the first place [and no, I am not blaming the US for anything]