| To: Thomas M. who wrote (1691) | 8/28/2002 2:06:18 AM | | From: Eashoa' M'sheekha | | | | " however, therein lies the argument of who started it in the first place. "
Was the remainder of that sentence you left out.
To which you assert, " Except that Israel was the aggressor, unquestionably. "
As I said " therein lies the argument of who started it in the first place ".
If a group of people surround my home with bazookas aimed at me, I might just be tempted to take them out as a pre-emptive defense measure, as opposed to waiting for the place to possibly go up in flames.
They may whine and say what they want later after I bring them to their knees,things like " we really weren't going to attack..we were just...uh..uh...showing off our new stuff...ya!..that's the ticket!....showing off our new stuff
to uh...uh,,,scare you!...ya..that's it...scare you...etc..
Sorry Thomas...I don't buy it... neither did Israel.. and they are still here today to tell the story.
That's the crux of the argument for me Thomas.I will not discuss that aspect further.
But to reiterate....peace is the objective for me...not who was right and who was wrong...who started..who didn't...
Just find a merciful solution without war.
Here's a few Canadian links, if you're interested, that shows how divided that argument still is.........
cdn-friends-icej.ca
arts.mcgill.ca
politicalscience.uwaterloo.ca
And this one from Norway :
i-cias.com
I have nothing further to add to this subject.
Regards,
Kc |
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| To: ChinuSFO who started this subject | 8/28/2002 3:41:35 AM | | From: Spytrdr | | | | the strong geopolitical case against Irak...
gl.iit.edu
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<<U.S. Plants Footprint in Shaky Central Asia
[...]
A 'Great Game' Renewed
Central Asia has a long history as a venue for geopolitical intrigue. This was the site for the 19th-century test of strength and influence between Russia and Britain that Rudyard Kipling immortalized as "the great game." Then the area was the buffer zone between an eastward- expanding Russian empire and a nervous Britain that feared the Russians had designs on British India. Russian armies conquered most of Central Asia during the 19th century, stopping only at the Pamir Mountains and the Afghan border.
In the first years of the 21st century, the collapse of Russian imperialism, the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and the world's ever-increasing thirst for oil, have all contributed to a new kind of strategic significance for Central Asia. Geography is still critical. The five former Soviet republics and Afghanistan together constitute a zone of weak states in the middle of a neighborhood that includes Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran and China, whose western-most province, Xinjiang, borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In this setting, what happens in Central Asia can have wide repercussions.
During the 1990s the United States began to quietly build influence in the area. Washington established significant military-to-military relationships with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Soldiers from those countries have been trained by Americans. Uzbekistan alone will receive $43 million in U.S. military aid this year. The militaries of all three have an ongoing relationship with the National Guard of a U.S. state -- Kazakhstan with Arizona, Kyrgyzstan with Montana, Uzbekistan with Louisiana. The countries also participated in NATO's Partnership for Peace program.
"We wanted to extend our influence in the region, and promote American values, too," said Jeffrey Starr, a Pentagon official who was responsible for these relationships during the second Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Oil and gas have enhanced the region's strategic value. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan sit atop vast quantities of both. Geologists keep raising their estimates of Kazakh oil reserves as more becomes known about the oil fields beneath the Caspian Sea. The Energy Department now says Kazakhstan may have as many as 95 billion barrels of oil, or nearly four times Mexico's proven reserves. Chevron, a U.S. company, was the first to make a major commitment to the development of Kazakh oil, and the company -- now Chevron Texaco -- is investing billions of dollars in Kazakhstan.
"We have an enormous economic and energy stake in this country," said a senior U.S. official in Kazakhstan. "It's part of our national energy strategy." By 2015 Kazakhstan and its Caspian neighbors could make up one of the world's most important sources of oil, the official said.>>
washingtonpost.com |
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| To: lorne who wrote (1671) | 8/28/2002 5:42:25 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Re: There a crazies in every culture, heck look at the USA and al gore. :o)
This guys words sound more like they are from the other end of the horse.
Well... expectedly, it didn't take too long for Judeofascists to froth over rabbi Sacks' interview:
jpost.com
Excerpt:
Now aged 54, Sacks assumed his current role in 1991 and could remain in his post until he is 65. He is regarded as an intellectual heavyweight and was considered to be among the brightest postwar students at Cambridge University, where he received the university's highest honors for his doctorate in philosophy.
There is no doubt that Sacks's outburst will resonate among a large section of the community, including Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal envoy to the Middle East, Lord Michael Levy, which embraces a liberal-left approach to Israeli political affairs.
However, it is likely to be frostily received by the heartland of Sacks's constituency, the modern Orthodox United Synagogues center of the community.
"This kind of thing makes me ashamed," one member of the United Synagogues told The Jerusalem Post yesterday. "Whether Sacks really believes what he is saying or not, he should not be using public platforms in this way to sell his books. "Israel has enough problems, especially with the Guardian, without Sacks turning the demonization of Israel into a commercial venture."
The British Likud movement accused Sacks of "moral blindness" and said it was "unfortunate" that he had "allowed himself to be used by people who, at best, cannot be described as friends of Israel." "Some of his comments, as reported in the media, can only act as an encouragement to our enemies to further intransigence and violence against Israel and the Jewish people "By failing to recognize that Israel is acting in the highest traditions of the Jewish people," added a spokesman, "the chief rabbi is displaying a moral blindness."
The religious Betar youth group, among the first to react to Sacks's reported comments, demanded his resignation, calling his remarks "a disservice to Israel, British Jewry, and world Jewry at large... When anti-Semitism in Britain and the world is rising we do not expect our chief rabbi to support the enemies of Israel and their propaganda."
Yitzhak Rath, the spokesman for Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Lau, quoted him as saying, "It's hard to believe that [Sacks] really said what was quoted in his name." He added that Lau would verify Sacks's reported remarks before commenting further.
_______________________________
Who knows? Rabbi Sacks' candid utterances might prompt the Israeli Gestapo to put him on its "blacklist"....
Message 17926685 |
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| To: swiveled-eyed loon who wrote (1591) | 8/28/2002 6:16:13 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Follow-up to my post #1593:
Don't miss the snippet on the trade in steel between Japan and China... and then, think again about the current tariff war between the US and Europe --as I once predicted, China's gonna take the slack out of her "natural" trading partners whereas Europe's gonna get stuck with shiploads of steel....
feer.com
Excerpt:
But although more modest export growth to the U.S. would be economically inconvenient for East Asia, it would not be catastrophic. While the U.S. remains the region's single-biggest export market, it is by no means the only one. Trade within Asia is increasingly important and China in particular is fast emerging as a key trading partner for countries across the region.
"China could become the Brazil of Asia: a continental-size economy with an open domestic market," says Cliff Tan, director of Asia-Pacific economic and market analysis at Citibank in Singapore.
Although China's absolute size as an export market remains small compared to the U.S., the speed at which it is developing is breathtaking. Last year--a year in which global trade contracted by 1% and in which China slapped punitive tariffs on Japanese cars, mobile phones and air-conditioners--Japan's exports to China jumped by 15% in yen terms. According to the Japan External Trade Organization, China has become Japan's second most important export market, up from fourth place the previous year.
And the trend is continuing this year. "Look at Japanese steel exports to China. They've gone completely ballistic," says Jesper Koll, first vice-president at Merrill Lynch in Tokyo. Sure enough, sales of Japanese-made steel to China more than doubled in June compared to the same month last year, the 12th monthly increase in a row.
And it's not just Japanese exporters who are benefiting from soaring Chinese demand. "China is by far the fastest-growing major export market for South-east Asia," says Steve Brice, chief economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. In the year to March, he says, Southeast Asia's seasonally adjusted exports to China grew by 9%. Over the same period the region's shipments to the U.S. dropped by 12%, while exports to Europe fell 18%.
Even so, many economists remain sceptical about China's ability to emerge as an engine of intraregional trade. China's importance, they say, is as a low-cost processing centre assembling imported goods for re-export, more often than not, to the U.S. If U.S. import demand slows, so will China's, they maintain.
That's only partly true. According to Rob Subbaraman and Graham Parry, regional economists at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo, the bulk of China's 10% rise in imports over the first half of this year was fuelled by a 20% surge in demand for goods destined for re-export.
But, significantly, the strongest demand growth for China's exports came not from the U.S. or Europe, but from elsewhere within Asia. China's shipments to the rest of Asia (ex-Japan) rose 21%, they note, stronger than the 19% rise in exports to the U.S. "China is more and more the epicentre of intraregional trade," says Subbaraman.
And that intraregional trade is looking a lot more robust. Although roughly half of imports by countries in the region consist of raw materials and part-processed goods, which are highly dependent on external demand from the U.S. and Europe, around 30% are capital goods and 20% consumer products, both of which rely far more on locally generated demand.
In all, Subbaraman and Parry estimate that between one-third and a half of Asia's intraregional trade is reliant on demand from within the region, meaning that domestic-demand-driven intraregional trade stands ready to act as a powerful buffer to any moderation in export demand from the U.S.
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| To: swiveled-eyed loon who wrote (1684) | 8/28/2002 8:56:21 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Re: In May, President Bush signed the $190 billion 10-year farm bill that will continue to give the nation's biggest farmers $19 billion in subsidies, perpetuating a Depression-era program of direct financial aid to encourage production of grain and cotton. Some critics call that a welfare system, and some of the most important developing nations with big agricultural exports - Brazil, Thailand and South Africa - spoke up loudly, charging the Bush administration with hypocrisy.
Well, there's no point in trying to cast the US's farm welfare as a better case than Europe's.... Both keep subsidizing their respective farmer constituencies shamelessly BUT, at least, the US CAN AFFORD IT!! Here're a few key data most European media NEVER blurt out:
Message 15544861
Get the picture? The EU currently panders to THREE times as many farmers as the US's... on an area that's barely a THIRD the size of the US's. The elephantine size of European agriculture is a LIABILITY to the overall EU competitiveness. While the US brazenly subsidizes its farmers, it STILL has the world's best high-tech industry, it still splurges on Defence contractors more than the EU, Russia and China combined... And the US doesn't fuss over genetically-engineered foodstuffs --the US still has more GM-plant schemes than China.
Gus |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (1699) | 8/28/2002 10:11:15 AM | | From: lorne | | | | French surrender to new language.
Talking back in France.
Immigrants assert their own identity with `reverse speech'
" Within a couple of decades, Verlan has spread from the peripheral housing projects of France's poorest immigrants, heavily populated with Africans and North African Arabs, and gained widespread popularity among young people across France. "
Full story >>>
thestar.com |
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