[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ere's a few facts for you.

[Guest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smiley', 'L')OL You've got a strange perspective on history. Would you suggest that Germany and Russia supported the same country? They didn't built that wall because they liked each other so much

[nigel]

Smiley - try reading the link - USSR figures included East Germany - I can't be bothered to find the latest figures for you but the Germans were well in there and - AMAZINGLY - the USA was NOT the largest arms supplier by a long way. The Germans were selling - well not exactly Zyklon B - but nasty kit. The French sold them the nuclear power 'bits and bobs' - which the Israelis later zapped. You seem to be impressed with pictures - try hunting down Chirac and Saddam and tell me what you think of those stylish glasses! BTB this might give you a little insight into the current French/Israeli - FrenchGerman/USA tiffs.

Guest is right - everyone sells to everyone - remember the cold war battlefield was economic and political - hence cold. Huge efforts were made to wean countries off the other's side. Egypt was particularly brilliant at taking toys from both. Pakistan, even now, feeds off USA and China. India is playing the game for all its worth too.

Superh.. As I thought I had made plain - having a computer track or intercept automatically is quite different from a human actually 1. noticing and then 2. doing something about it and 3. telling the right person who 4. does something etc. Today, of course, they'll be on alert with 'planes. But take shipping - each large ship on the high seas is tracked but you can bet your pay that when one blows up a petro cracking plant and plays havoc with the USA's gas for a few months we'll be reading that the man tracking it was off behind the shed, dozed off, his computer was down or whatever - and you'll pop up screaming conspiracy!

[smiley]

Nigel I understand your point. I readily admit that my a lot of european countries have been providing questionable materials and systems to Iraq. It has been proven and the companies in question have been punished.

But in the case of Germany the accusations are pointless and very very biased.

One of the accusations is that Bayer supplied mobile biological labs. This was based on the information of an Iraqi informant. No evidence of the sale or even the existence of these labs have been found.

The only serious accusation is the presence of european nuclear technology in Iraq.

http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/building-bomb.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')raq's centrifuges are based on German designs and were built with German help. Iraq somehow got German blueprints in the 1980's. By 1988 it was already running experimental models.

[nigel]

smiley - I asume you're German? Well I have to say I can only repeat what I have read and that is the the Americans were well down the line of suppliers to Saddam in recent years. -Russia, France, Germany topped the list by a long way. Have a look at this...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EB05Ak02.html

If you hunt around you'll find more but this is bad enough.

[smiley]

No I'm not German, but I've got a few friends working for the alleged companies. They are pretty angry that their companies are accused of participating in mass murder. Since 45 they are quite sensitive to these kind of things in Germany.

About that article of yours. It's the same old same old. The major part consists of baseless claims about the WMD program, the mobile labs, the long range missiles, the nearly finished atomic bomb. These allegations have proven to be untrue.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he list in Iraq's 1998/current chemical weapons declaration contains 31 "major suppliers", 14 from Germany. The 1996/current nuclear suppliers list has 62 company names on it, 33 from Germany.

[tkn317071]

Is it true that war games involving hijacked planes and planes being used as missles were planned for the morning of 9-11-01?

[nigel]

Smiley - I totally accept that black propaganda is - and always has been rife over the issue of arms to Iraq. In today's world most arms -indeed all - industries are inter-related so you are bound to find a widget from wherever in the kit somewhere.

But no matter what kit was sold, the money is always the key to these things and if you follow that I am persuaded that you'll find that the U$A had lost its favoured access to Iraq long ago - surprise - and the Ivan$, Frog$ and Kraut$ had move in big time. This is real life. Modern day Germans are still struggling to deal with 50,000,000 reasons for guilt and this colours everything they do. This is the single most rational explanation for their current subservience to France. The French seem to have made them think that if they do what the French want then they won't start another war. This is bonkers but the Germans have psychologically hog-tied themselves to their father's guilt.

Business on the other hand is business. No one has accused the Germans of mass murder in Iraq as far as I know but this kind of absurd over-reaction and obvious lie serves to cover them from the more unpleasant and obvious truth about the depth of their business with Saddam. Goebbels used this kind of approach to good effect - and now every politician in the world practices THE BIG LIE. Bush and the Al Quaeda/Saddam link - Blair and the WMD 45 minute threat to Cyprus - being but 2 recent examples.

I just googled for German arms sales to Iraq and gave you one link. If you have the time why not search all the combinations? It's overall trade that's key not merely pseudo-mobile labs and nuclear kit. Because a company pleads it only supplied, say, the metal containers for Zyklon B makes it no less a supplier does it?

As for punishing companies -

[Denny]

This is an interesting article from The Observer, a London publication. It shows how President Bush's thoughts and actions are at odds with the government and military experts. See The Observer, Feb. 2004

Some excerpts:
"The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.' "

"American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible. "

"'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war."

"Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. (I guess that was not prophetic, after all)

"Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added."

[Jack]

Public denial of a problem is not equivalent to private denial of the problem.

Most of us have, at one point or another, tried to point out the issues of Peak Oil to others; and, to a considerable extent, we have failed. The message has been rejected.

Suppose the President, along with a dozen or so other global leaders - Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin, and others - go on television and carefully explain that Peak is here, and go into the implications thereof. Suppose further that the public accepts the message. What then? Would the ensuing panic improve the chances of a transition to something else? Or would it merely destroy any slim opportunity that might exist to soften the blow?

I suspect our leaders have a low opinion of the masses. Maybe they're not so far off base.

[Carlhole]

http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=26231

[marek]

You can also get it here

http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/pubs/Abrupt_Climate_Change_Scenario.pdf

[marek]

By the way the above-mentioned link to NASA'a Orbiting Carbon Observatory (http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/) is interesting in itself.

[gg3]

I read the report early this year.

First of all, the writing quality overall is pretty poor; it reads like a rough draft that needed serious editing. Frankly I was tempted to rewrite the darn thing and send it back to the people who originally wrote it!

Second, the above point in no way contradicts or diminishes the value of the report's conclusions.

Third, this has to be taken in context. The Pentagon has to develop a wide range of possible scenarios that bear on national defense, and anticipate the measures needed to prepare for and respond to each of them. The next step is to rate these on a scale of probability and consequence. After that, the next step is to formulate reasonable defensive strategies based on the addressing the most probable and the most severe-consequence scenarios.

The ideal case is that the defensive strategies will be multi-purpose, i.e. each element in the overall strategy will effectively counteract a number of possible threats.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have things such as a ballistic missile defense, which is high-cost, fraught with technical problems, and designed to cope with a narrow range of types of threats. Though, it's entirely possible that it's also intended to cope with threats that are not made public, and/or that it's being used as a cover for other defensive measures that are much more effective against much more likely threats.

Somewhere in that spectrum, somewhere five to ten years ago, came a Pentagon scenario paper about terrorists flying hijacked airplanes into buildings. This was originally considered so low-probability that the necessary defensive steps were considered too costly and intrusive to be politically acceptable. I seriously doubt few of us would have judged any differently five years ago.

[skateari]

link

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Pentagon is spending £70 billion on a programme to build heavily-armed robots for the battlefield in the hope that future wars will be fought without the loss of its soldiers' lives.

The scheme, known as Future Combat Systems, is the largest military contract in American history and will help to drive the defence budget up by almost 20 per cent to just over £265 billion in five years' time.

Much of the cash will be spent computerising the military, but the ultimate aim is to take members of the armed forces out of harm's way. They [humans] would be replaced by robots capable of hunting and killing America's enemies.

Gordon Johnson, of the US joint forces research centre, told the New York Times: "The American military will have these kinds of robots. It's not a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'."

The Swords robots come in several versions, carrying either a machine gun, grenade launcher or a light anti-tank weapon.

It is controlled by a soldier from a distance of up to 1,000 yards.

"We were sitting there firing single rounds and smacking bull's-eyes," said Staff Sergeant Santiago Tordillos, who helped to design and test the robot. "We were completely amazed."

That human involvement has proved critical in convincing military lawyers that machines can be used on the battlefield. More advanced machines which can decide whether to kill would also be legal, said Mr Johnson.

"The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," he said.

[BabyPeanut]

http://peakoil.com/fortopic4742.html

http://peakoil.com/fortopic4547.html

http://peakoil.com/fortopic4478.html

http://peakoil.com/post55330.html#55330

http://peakoil.com/post59387.html#59387

[BabyPeanut]

http://www.darpa.mil/tto/PROGRAMS/fcs.html

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/ ... flash.html

http://www.peogcs.army.mil/future.cfm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... nd/fcs.htm

[Geology_Guy]

I think they got the robot's name wrong- shouldn't they be called "Terminators"?

[lowem]

... and one of them will get struck by lightning one day, become self-aware, and keep calling himself "Johnny 5".

He will then remove his laser weapon, replace it with a 500 GB memory module and read books really, really fast.

Finally together with his human friends, he will defeat some baddies and become the first robotic U.S. citizen.

[lowem]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Geology_Guy', 'I') think they got the robot's name wrong- shouldn't they be called "Terminators"?