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116 comments on The Finance Round-Up: November 16th 2007
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GAIA Host Collective
The suicide bombers ... is not an economic phenomenon.
Lack of access to a court of law where grievances can be addressed leads to asymetric warfare.
Yes. We're fooling ourselves if we think providing for people economically will prevent violence. That's what the Israelis thought. There were a lot of good intentions when they took over the occupied territories. They were going to build infrastructure: roads, water, sewer, electricity - and lift the Palestinians out of poverty. But the Palestinians were strangely ungrateful.
Reminds me of The Life of Brian:
Please excuse my entering the fray on a sour note but, Leanan my dear, I think with that rather Freudian slip showing your argument is reduced to naked balderdash.
Feed the belly and empty the mind and the kingdom will be secure.
But on the other hand true civilizations do not live by Big Macs alone.
( BTW for fun, see Noam Chomsky about what the USA and the Israelis get up to)
I'd respond, but I have no clue what you are trying to say.
See Klee:)
In that case, I think you need to adjust your irony detectors and re-read my posts. ;-)
Fair enough and will adjust, but to be kind on your part, with this life so fraught with care and massive information overload, your irony be not quite so flat ironed. A few more ruffles to warn the dilettante if you would be so kind.
Or speaking more literally, I apologize for the misreading of yours. I was reading the Stoneleigh for the financial and glossing on through when I came to what I considered a jarring political clanger and made that inappropriate comment. Sorry:)
I have several truly uncivilized friends. Thanks for the sound byte!
Gotta have some whoppers and jumbo jacks too for variety.
Robert a Tucson
I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
Yes, After all the Israelis were so kind as to appropriate their land for settlements and prohibit them from ruling themselves.
That was exactly my point. As I stated further up the thread, it's not poverty that creates suicide bombers. It's occupation.
And the only reason we are occupying the Middle East is because of the oil.
Actually, I recently read that 48% of the Israeli population now lives in the part occupied in 1967.
Furthermore, they occupy the more valuable and fertile areas. The Palestinians have been moved to a large number of ghettos that are largely isolated from one another.
I repeat here a famous interview with Golda Meir - who was Israel's Prime Minister from 1969-1974
How exactly can you have "good intentions" when you pretend that a people does not exist?
It is a bit like the British pretending that Australia did not have any inhabitants when they arrived.
Golda Meir was born in Russia and brought up in the USA
The population of Israel is 7 million. Of that, 200,000 Jews live in eastern part of Jerusalem, 200,000 in the rest of the west bank, and about 20,000 on the Golan heights. That's about 7 percent.
So I'm a sappy liberal. Let me give you a slightly more conservative reason for aiding them, particularly with renewable power. If we help them leap-frog the fossil fuel stage of industrialsation there will be more of the limited resources to go around becausewhat little electricity used by them is generated with gasoline or diesel generators. If we can help the poorest villages in India and China get wind turbines, solar concentrators and microhydro they will make progress towards a modern life without building transmission lines and coal plants.
I agree its going to take a lot of money. I've thought of a source, though, by returning to some old-fashioned taxation policy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrat energy plan make noises about a windfall profits tax, and I think the odds of passing one are quite high. My suggestion is to provide exemption the windfall profits based on their investment in sustainable energy or US E&P. How it would work is this: A Windfall Profits tax is calculated by subtracting a predetermined "old oil" price from the world energy price and the difference is payable to the feds as a Windfall Profits Tax. If the government would allow the ol companies to deduct their investment in tertiary recovery, deep production construction costs and Windfarms and Solar facilities from their windfall profits tax liability it would stimulate investment in the areas that benefit our peak energy situation, stimulate US jobs and really speed up the construction of sustainable energy projects. It would also benefit the oil companies by directing them towards a business where they can make a real difference in improving the earth.
Bob Ebersole
FYI Hillary only has the ear of about a third of the Iowa voters, Obama is four points ahead, and Edwards has most of the rest. The odds of the Edwards supporters checking the stats and switching to Obama if Edwards can't make it is very high. The media likes Hillary, but the Democrats willing to slip and slide through snow and ice on 1/3/2008 aren't paying much attention to them.
The 9-11 suicide bombers were not undereducated. They were not poverty-stricken. Dogma can trump economic circumstances.