Posts by Xander

88

Bush just wants the oil!!!

by dubla in

i posted this on another thread, but i thought a new thread might help get the ball rolling: .

i have a simple question for all those that believe this war is solely about oil: .

what exactly do you believe bush is going to do with the oil fields after the war?.

Xander

as any iraqi control of the oil will be deemed "puppet" by you.....smart prediction.

You miss the point. Whether the Iraqis 'control' the oil fields or not is meaningless, what matters is where the MONEY from the oil goes.

I maintain it will not be going to Iraq.

I'm 100% sure, after this was and its aftermath is finished, the 'Iraqi people' will be receiving less than half the profit from their own oil wells. I'm sure the amount they see will be more like 10-25% TOPS, with the rest going to the 'US and friends' club.

U.N. will take over 40 BILLION dollars from the oil production of the country to help reconstruct IRAQ

WTF do you get this from?

What say do you think the UN will even HAVE in this, given the US has totally blown them off and told them we were going to invade Iraq how we want, when we want?

I'd be AMAZED if, after occupying Baghdad and taking control of Iraq, if the US just flew all the troops home and let the UN take over.

LOLOL - yeah, RIGHT.

90

RubyTuesday = LuckyLucy?!?!?

by Xander in

jw
friends

consistently posting from the same ip:rubytuesdaykfjsehb6sqepf7dh (14-mar-03)faxe3xhp8mrulk+o (29-jul-02)lucklucykfjsehb6sqepf7dh (14-mar-03)faxe3xhp8mrulk+o (29-jul-02).

joined within half-hour of each other:rubytuesdaysince

09-jul-02 09:07. anyone else think this is more than just coincedence?

Xander

Actually, that's ALMOST true...it's not that the hashed IP could come up the same, but that the IP address is the same.

It would still be possible to see where the person was 'calling' from, as it were, down to the PC, even given identical IPs in a corporate workgroup environment. An IP packet is more than just the TCP/IP address, and, in the case of a workgroup environment, it would contain information as to which computer is requesting the packet (obviously, it must, or how would the router know where to send the returning data).

In any case, the evidence against a problem here is more than just the consistently same IP - the weird posting habits are telling, too. And that, once 'called' on this, neither has replied to the board since.

36

Pentagon Threatens to Kill Independent Reporters in Iraq

by ashitaka in

pentagon threatens.

to kill independent.

reporters in iraq

Xander

I must admit I have a certain amount of admiration for someone who has the courage to stand in front of a bulldozer or tank in support of their views, but if that person gets run over he has no one to blame but himself.

Remember that Tienanmen happened first, and is well known the world around (except here, apparently, where no one can even be bothered to spell it properly!).

I suppose this person could easily have thought that an Israeli citizen would have more human compassion than the communist Chinese military when ordered to suppress dissent. Obviously, in this case, they were wrong. The communist Chinese had more humanity than the Israelis in the respective cases. Who would have thought?

88

Bush just wants the oil!!!

by dubla in

i posted this on another thread, but i thought a new thread might help get the ball rolling: .

i have a simple question for all those that believe this war is solely about oil: .

what exactly do you believe bush is going to do with the oil fields after the war?.

Xander

That's almost certainly EXACTLY what will happen. Probably in this order:

1) Occupy Iraq (well, that's a given) to 'assist in disarmament until entire nation has been rendered harmless'. This will obviously take an 'undetermined amount of time'.

2) US takes management of countries national resources (oil) for the duration to make sure profit from them does not go to funding further military development. Perhaps even an Iraqi puppet organization is created for this purpose - to make it appear this is for the Iraqi people.

3) This puppet organization will start ceding more and more control over oil operations to their consulting partners - say Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, maybe the Harken oil company, perhaps Halliburton oil company, or could be Chevron oil company, for example. All oil companies with very strong ties to the current administration.

4) Eventually, the US forces 'pull out' and the world releases a collective sigh as the US has obviously not followed through with everyones fears and taken over the world oil reserves by military control. The new Iraqi government, of course, does not object to the coalition of US oil companies controlling 100% of Iraqi oil by now.

Thus, everyone wins. Except, you know, EVERONE. The Bush family (and US by proxy) is in control of Iraqi oil, but no US military presence remains to offend those who only look at the surface of issues (*cough*entire US population*cough*).

45

'American Gone Mad' - a British author's view on the current situation

by Xander in

interesting read:subject: america's madness - john le carre .

the united states of america has gone mad .

john le carre .

Xander

Interesting read:

Subject: America's Madness - John Le Carre

The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer's pocket? At what cost - because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people - in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall - just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another's, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody" was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy." But it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.

If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day - think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us - to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair's best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?

Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect's sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

"But will we win, Daddy?"

"Of course, child. It will all be over while you're still in bed."

"Why?"

"Because otherwise Mr Bush's voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him."

"But will people be killed, Daddy?"

"Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people."

"Can I watch it on television?"

"Only if Mr Bush says you can."

"And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?"

"Hush child, and go to sleep."

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also Patriotic". It was gone by the time he'd finished shopping.

13

Strong Circumstantial Evidence My Foot!

by Englishman in

jw
friends

just noticed this in the "pay attention book".

it's about what sort of evidence a jc can accept:.

there must be two or three eyewitnesses, not just persons .

Xander

That is kinda stupid when you think about it.

Two people of the opposite sex spending a night in the same building qualifies as 'strong circumstantial evidence' that they had sex?

LOLOL - too bad the JWs claim neutrality when it suits them. The UN should have, as part of the WT's job as an NGO, requested a JC be sent to Iraq to find the WMDs. LOLOL. Wouldn't have NEARLY as much ambiguity in the reports, then, now would we?

This one is just as rich:

or in the same house with a known homosexual

I mean, c'MON, what if I'M not gay? Spending a night in the same building as a 'known homosexual' (LOLOL - the unknown ones are harmless, I guess, LOLOL) could be 'strong circumstantial evidence'?!? LOLOL - damn those nefarious homosexuals and their diabolical ways - able to convert any straight man with only a single night's stay!

Crazyness.

90

RubyTuesday = LuckyLucy?!?!?

by Xander in

jw
friends

consistently posting from the same ip:rubytuesdaykfjsehb6sqepf7dh (14-mar-03)faxe3xhp8mrulk+o (29-jul-02)lucklucykfjsehb6sqepf7dh (14-mar-03)faxe3xhp8mrulk+o (29-jul-02).

joined within half-hour of each other:rubytuesdaysince

09-jul-02 09:07. anyone else think this is more than just coincedence?

Xander

I'm not sure anyone on this thread CAN (cept Simon, and he don't like deleting people).

In any case, why are you so defensive?

They ARE posting from the same PC.

Period.

If they are NOT the same person, it would be a simple matter to just post and explain why they are using the same computer.

41

What bothers/worries you most about the war ?

by m0nk3y in

there seems to be quite a few concerned people out the regarding this war in iraq and for good reason.

so what exaclty is bothering you about it, does it involve the very real fact that alot of innocent blood could/will be shed ?

are you fearing this could all be a part of bible/wts prophecy ?

Xander

has caused a once united country to be divided

And, which country would that be? Last I checked, the US has never, EVER been 'united' by ANYTHING. (Which actually serves as a pretty good argument for a confederate system of states rather than a central federal government)

41

What bothers/worries you most about the war ?

by m0nk3y in

there seems to be quite a few concerned people out the regarding this war in iraq and for good reason.

so what exaclty is bothering you about it, does it involve the very real fact that alot of innocent blood could/will be shed ?

are you fearing this could all be a part of bible/wts prophecy ?

Xander

The Texas war for independence, Mexican American War, Boxer Rebellion, Spanish American War, any number of little actions in Latin America form the late 1800's through Panama, Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, and likely a few other places. I'm quite sure that most Native Americans didn't think of themselves as the aggressor through most of the 19th Century.

Well, as a case by case basis:

Texas War of Independance? huh? US wasn't involved there at all? Texas declared independance, we recognized it.

Mexican-American War was just an extension of the Texas war of independance. US annexed Texas (granted, an aggressive act), but Texas approved the annexation. Mexico didn't, and invaded.

Boxer rebellion. Huh? What the hell are you talking about? A certain cultlike group of native chinese decide to try and execute everyone in the country not pure-blood chinese (including US diplomats). Sounds like defensive action to me!

Spanish-American War. Sorry, but remember the Maine? Everybody then sure did!

As far as the Native Americans go, the only argument I could make there was that there was no single, recognized, sovereign nation that was being violated in an act of American agression like the current situation. Not that it makes what happened excusable (indeed, I maintain to this day the world would be a better place if the colonists had stopped at the Appalachians), but it IS a different situation.

41

What bothers/worries you most about the war ?

by m0nk3y in

there seems to be quite a few concerned people out the regarding this war in iraq and for good reason.

so what exaclty is bothering you about it, does it involve the very real fact that alot of innocent blood could/will be shed ?

are you fearing this could all be a part of bible/wts prophecy ?

Xander

What bothers ME about this war is that it will be the first war in US history with the US as the agressor. Previously, we've only fought defensively. Now, the warharks argue "But, but, but, their weapons are too powerful, we can't wait until someone PROVES they are an agressor, we must simply strike everyone who even looks like they MIGHT someday attack us, first!"

This position I find intolerable.

And, the current administration, as hard as they try, can't come up with any reason even remotely better than that to justify the war. They MIGHT someday be a threat to us. So, we must attack them NOW. Bush even said as much in his speech last night.