Interesting Letter-to-the-Editor

[John Fields]

On 5 Dec 2003 14:52:57 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

---
What invading and occupying a country will do is not guarantee that the
oil from its fields will flow into the US, it guarantees that the income
derived from those fields will not continue to flow into the coffers of
Saddam Hussein and his ilk. You _can_ rest assured about one thing
however, and that is that we _will_ get the oil. We'll buy it, of
course, (like we always do) after we stabilize the country and take out
that rag-tag band of envious troublemakers you so admire, and then
you'll be able to bitch about how unfair it is that we made Iraq rich
instead of sharing the spoils of war with amchair admirals like you.

I was rather fancying myself as an armchair diplomat, until the
reality check cut in.

I'm glad to think that you are going to buy Irak's oil - it shows a
deep-down honesty that reflects well on your character.

I'm not so sure that you have got the money. The U.S. has been running
a large balance of payments deficit since the Regan days, and the
capital inflows (selling the farm) that used to sustain it have dried
up. The current devaluation of the dollar reflects this inconvenient
fact. Your ignorance of this point shows a deep-down cognitive deficit
that reflects badly on your intelligence.

Saddam had takien to selling his oil for euros before you invaded -
some have claimed that this was what motivated the invasion

---
No doubt, and I'm sure that at least a few of those euros paid for time
in a flight simulator.
---

- and I
imagine any independent regime in Irak would prefer to be paid in a
hard currency

---
It doesn't really matter _what_ they'd rather, they'll have to live with
what they get, a good deal of which is going to be trading oil for
services.
---

Wiser heads are aware that guerilla warfare is particularly effective
at disabling complicated infra-structure. Your bloated arsenal of
weapons isn't going to let you pirate overseas oil fields, and only a
half-wit would dream that it was possible.

---
Only someone seriously disturbed would think that we have intentions of
pirating anything, and you seem to forget that we kept this country from
falling into British hands by largely being a rag-tag bunch of guerillas
ourselves, so we know what that's about.

You wouldn't believe it from what the guns nuts post - they think that
just owning a gun converts them into an organised and effective
military force.

---
I don't believe much of anything the gun nuts post, but I do believe
serious guerilla fighters would be much more likely to conduct
themselves in a much more clandestine way. You'd probably never even
know they were around...
---

And I recall that your historical familiarity with the
guerilla tactics of the 1770's, probably based on having watched every
episode of "Swamp Fox", didn't do you much good in Vietnam.

---
I'm not familiar with your "Swamp Fox" reference; an American television
series you found particularly helpful in your study of American History,
perhaps?

IMO, what did us in in Viet Nam was Johnson's unbelievable stupidity of
trying to fight a war of attrition when we should have gone in there
with overwhelming force in the beginning. But that's hindsight, and who
knows what that would have done?
---

Not that it matters much,
since our our abundantly large arsenal of will, wealth, and weapons
_will_ allow us to prevail and then turn that country back over to them,
just like we did Japan.
---

Ooooh! So where are you going to drop the hyper-macho H-bombs then?

---
Bill, that was just stupid, even for you.
---

Ah, yes... One of the tenets of the Sloman Doctrine. "If this, and if
that, then maybe the other." In any case, they were a bunch of Jew
hating bastards to start with and were just waiting for the slightest
excuse to "legitimize" bringing their hate fantasies into reality.

I don't know.

---
Precisely.
---

With any sort of luck, the right sort of propaganda
campaign could have directed their hate fantasies at Saddam Hussein,
who has killed enough Shi'ite Muslims to irritate a fair number of
that branch of Islam, and enough Sunni Kurds to worry the rest.

You probably would have had to muzzle Sharron to get away with it, but
that would hae been effort well-spent.

---
More conjecture and flights of fancy.
---

---
More "If, then maybe." Sloman Doctrine. They'll run out of cannon fodder
soon enough, and in the meantime all they're doing is getting rid of the
weeds.
---

Funny way to describe your own servicemen.

---
Nice return. I should have written "their weeds".
---

There do seem to be quite a
lot of Arabs - rather more cannon fodder than Ho Chi Min had at his
disposal, and he had enough.

---
Yes, but we have way more cannons and a different mindset this time; a
little something about airliners being flown into buildings...
---

These may all seem like trivial advantages from your parochial Texan
perspective, easily cast aside in pursuit of the crucial strategic aim
of getting Dubbya re-elected to a second term, but some of the
body-bags involved may well come home to your neighbourhood.

---
They already have, and as usual it's part of the price we have to pay to
allow curs like you to growl.

Yep. Get yourself into an unnecessary war, pass up any chance to look
like liberation force rather than an occupying army, and then tell the
critics that the consequences of your impetuousness have been incurred
to defend their right to free speech. You are wasted on Hicksville,
Texas, and should join your soul-mates in Hicksville-on-the-Potomac.

---
A war about as unnecessary as mandatory cancer surgery, methinks.

Rather than play the con game you'd laud, I think we'd much prefer to
take the high road, call the shots ourselves, and not have to later
untangle the web you'd have us weave.

As far as our critics are concerned, a "kiss my ass" is all they deserve
even if we choose to reason with them.

Austin, old boy, Austin, and thanks to us your wife learned enough to, I
suspect, increase your standard of living substantially even though your
cultural sensitivity still seems to be quite low.

--
John Fields

 

[Fred Bloggs]

John Fields wrote:

---
I'm not familiar with your "Swamp Fox" reference; an American television
series you found particularly helpful in your study of American History,
perhaps?

http://www.tvacres.com/westerns_s.htm

IMO, what did us in in Viet Nam was Johnson's unbelievable stupidity of
trying to fight a war of attrition when we should have gone in there
with overwhelming force in the beginning. But that's hindsight, and who
knows what that would have done?

Don't be too hard on LBJ- he was mislead by the military and that
hopelessly inept McNamara.

 

[John Fields]

On 5 Dec 2003 15:23:57 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<kk81tvorus6op9jetmdohj5jiib35er1r2@4ax.com>...
On 5 Dec 2003 03:40:43 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

snip

Of course, if you had good contacts in the wine trade, and a somewhat
more selective palate, you'd have a case of Grosset's Polish Hill
Riesling 2003 in the cellar, doing a little quiet maturing.

---
Would that you could follow its example.

If only I could. But I do have my civic responsibilities to consider -
so much nonsense, and so little time to be rude about it.

---
Somehow, you always seem to find the time!-)

--
John Fields

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Fields <jfields@austininstrum
ents.com> wrote (in <ui62tvsp3othvismjlbpfdcugsjsdpjrao@4ax.com&gt about
'Interesting Letter-to-the-Editor', on Sat, 6 Dec 2003:

IMO, what did us in in Viet Nam was Johnson's unbelievable stupidity of
trying to fight a war of attrition when we should have gone in there
with overwhelming force in the beginning. But that's hindsight, and who
knows what that would have done?

It would certainly have provoked China, and the least reaction would
probably have been to invade Taiwan. Rapid escalation.

Lord Macaulay, the historian, wrote of John Hampden (Parliamentarian,
mid-17th century England), 'He knew that the essence of war is violence
and that moderation in war is imbecility.'

The trouble today is twofold:

- we have too many PC imbeciles advocating moderation;
- we have weapons of violence far beyond the imagining of Hampden.

These conflicting pressures have pushed the strategy again towards the
sort of long-term struggle that occurred in Vietnam. Of course, the
opposition in Iraq is far weaker, but it doesn't need to be very
effective to fuel the fire of the critics of the US and UK governments.

'Shock and awe' is the *preferable* strategy; paralyse the enemy with
fear quickly and you minimise casualties on both sides. What was done
was not shock-creating and awe-inspiring enough, early enough.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk
Interested in professional sound reinforcement and distribution? Then go to
http://www.isce.org.uk
PLEASE do NOT copy news posts to me by E-MAIL!

 

[John Fields]

On Sat, 6 Dec 2003 16:39:06 +0000, John Woodgate
<jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Fields <jfields@austininstrum
ents.com> wrote (in <ui62tvsp3othvismjlbpfdcugsjsdpjrao@4ax.com&gt about
'Interesting Letter-to-the-Editor', on Sat, 6 Dec 2003:

IMO, what did us in in Viet Nam was Johnson's unbelievable stupidity of
trying to fight a war of attrition when we should have gone in there
with overwhelming force in the beginning. But that's hindsight, and who
knows what that would have done?

It would certainly have provoked China, and the least reaction would
probably have been to invade Taiwan. Rapid escalation.

Lord Macaulay, the historian, wrote of John Hampden (Parliamentarian,
mid-17th century England), 'He knew that the essence of war is violence
and that moderation in war is imbecility.'

The trouble today is twofold:

- we have too many PC imbeciles advocating moderation;
- we have weapons of violence far beyond the imagining of Hampden.

These conflicting pressures have pushed the strategy again towards the
sort of long-term struggle that occurred in Vietnam. Of course, the
opposition in Iraq is far weaker, but it doesn't need to be very
effective to fuel the fire of the critics of the US and UK governments.

'Shock and awe' is the *preferable* strategy; paralyse the enemy with
fear quickly and you minimise casualties on both sides. What was done
was not shock-creating and awe-inspiring enough, early enough.
---

Agreed, especially early enough. The haranguing in the UN allowed
Saddam to see the noose slowly closing and bought him enough time to
allow him to escape with (as reported by the media) four _truckloads_ of
money worth about $1E9. Not a good thing.

--
John Fields

 

[Sir Charles W. Shults III]

If it were up to me, I probably would have MOABed the perimeter of the city.
In particular, at night when it would have been very visible. The concussions
and light show would have done 90% of the job in the first 20 minutes.

Cheers!

Chip Shults
My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip

 

[Paul Burridge]

On 5 Dec 2003 03:40:43 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman)
wrote:

chardonnays (and we'll have bought up all the Russian River
Chardonnay's with our all-mighty euros).

Sorry, Bill, but the Euro's a crock of shit. Recent example being the
decision the other day to let France and Germany off with their huge
public spending deficits. The forex markets will not forgive so
easily.
--

"I expect history will be kind to me, since I intend to write it."
- Winston Churchill

 

[Bernd Felsche]

Paul Burridge <pb@osiris1.notthisbit.co.uk> writes:

On 5 Dec 2003 03:40:43 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman)
wrote:

chardonnays (and we'll have bought up all the Russian River
Chardonnay's with our all-mighty euros).

Sorry, Bill, but the Euro's a crock of shit. Recent example being the
decision the other day to let France and Germany off with their huge
public spending deficits. The forex markets will not forgive so
easily.

EUR is pretty stable, USD falling... yep.

Now take this thread elsewhere
--
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus!
X against HTML mail | Copy me into your ~/.signature
/ \ and postings | to help me spread!

 

[Bill Sloman]

Paul Burridge <pb@osiris1.notthisbit.co.uk> wrote in message news:<v274tvgke6ap6cuecp5ndn500ghbt7eosd@4ax.com>...

On 5 Dec 2003 03:40:43 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman)
wrote:

chardonnays (and we'll have bought up all the Russian River
Chardonnay's with our all-mighty euros).

Sorry, Bill, but the Euro's a crock of shit. Recent example being the
decision the other day to let France and Germany off with their huge
public spending deficits. The forex markets will not forgive so
easily.

Are you trying to compete for the John S. Dyson Prize for the
terminally ill-informed? The foreign exchange markets seem to have
been infiltrated with Keynesians, who see the 4.2% public spending
deficits as appropriately directed to stimulating depressed economies,
and have been bidding the euro up against the dollar.

Central banks are not run by Keynsians, more's the pity, a fact that
Keynes long ago discussed and deplored. Bankers have their attention
firmly fixed on the currency, not realising that their job is the
control of the (much larger) pool of credit that actually runs the
economy, and they do make a foolish song and dance about ostensibly
inflationary moves to stimulate the economy.

The 3.5% budget deficit in the U.S. is similarly aimed at stimulating
the U.S. economy, but because most of the money is going to the rich,
it isn't going to work nearly as well - the rich aren't under any
compulsion to spend the extra money as soon as they get it, and tend
to hang onto it until they can find some poor struggling
depression-crippled entrepreneur whom they can buy up from the
receiver for ten cents on the dollar. The poor don't have this
freedom, and the extra cash they get goes straight into stimulating
the economy.

The U.S. economy is seeing the benefit of the 33% devaluation against
the euro over the past year, but since the U.S. trade deficit has
risen from $500 billion to $600 billion over the same period, it
doesn't look as if there has been any structural improvement in the
situation - a devaluation ought to improve the balance of trade, by
pricing imports out of the home market, and strengthening exports, but
the U.S. oil consumption - one third of it imported - seems to be
pretty price-insensitive.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message news:<bqr45m$1jcf$1@news.iquest.net>...

In article <7c584d27.0312051452.198b14cd@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:
John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<bc41tvgiosppmmg51a1nm4n8qdmvimtqib@4ax.com>...
On 5 Dec 2003 03:11:26 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<ekvusv8bsg35uhrvaeg992p030qo5h3gqf@4ax.com>...
On 4 Dec 2003 09:19:39 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:


Your economy is starting to look healthier at the moment, now that the
dollar only buys 0.83 eurocents - a 33% devaluation over the past
year. You've still got a massive (and growing) balance of payments
deficit with the rest of the world, which is one problem that the
European "basket cases" don't seem to have to deal with. Your budget
deficit of 3.5% looks better than the 4.2% in Germany and France, to
anybody whose economic education stopped before the lecturer got onto
John Maynard Keynes, but you've still got to tackle that balance of
payments deficit before your oil suppliers turn off the tap.

---
You're a naive child if you think that we would stand for anything like
that happening. We have the weapons we do for a reason, and that reason
isn't because we expect to take 'no' for an answer from our "friends".
---

And Dubbya and his team of naive retards may be silly enough to think
that invading and occupying an oil-field is enough to guarantee that
the oil will flow from the field to the refineries to the tankers that
will take it to the U.S.A., despite the fact that a few rag-tag
terrorists in Irak seem to be able to blow up the pipe-lines there
more or less at will.

---
What invading and occupying a country will do is not guarantee that the
oil from its fields will flow into the US, it guarantees that the income
derived from those fields will not continue to flow into the coffers of
Saddam Hussein and his ilk. You _can_ rest assured about one thing
however, and that is that we _will_ get the oil. We'll buy it, of
course, (like we always do) after we stabilize the country and take out
that rag-tag band of envious troublemakers you so admire, and then
you'll be able to bitch about how unfair it is that we made Iraq rich
instead of sharing the spoils of war with amchair admirals like you.

I was rather fancying myself as an armchair diplomat, until the
reality check cut in.

I'm glad to think that you are going to buy Irak's oil - it shows a
deep-down honesty that reflects well on your character.

We don't really have to buy Iraq's oil, but it is the US style of
doing things.


The current devaluation of the dollar reflects this inconvenient
fact.

The current devaluation of the dollar is the best thing that could
happen for the US (and the worst that could happen for Europe.)


Saddam had taken to selling his oil for euros before you invaded -

The ethical problem that you apparently have: the oil wasn't Saddam's
to give away. It was pretty much owned by the Iraqi people/government.
This is where the lefties tend to convieniently ignore the evils
of the despots that they love.

Don't be like that - you too loved Saddam before that unfortunate
misunderstanding about Kuwait, and your affection for similar despots,
like Musharraf in Pakistan, Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia,
Franco in Spain shows that this is no fleeting emotion.

It is the usurpers like Chiraq's (sic) France that were essentially
funding Saddam (and his dictatorship) by paying HIM the money for
the oil. At least, the money will be better directed (away
from those who you obviously support.)

We know that you are jealous because Chirac's France displaced you in
Saddam's affections, but bear up - the path of true love never ran
smooth. We know that you would have loved to buy Iraki oil from Saddam
with your slightly dodgy dollars, just as you were willing to buy
Iranian oil from the Shah of Persia (another evil despot, much to your
taste) once he'd been democratically installed by a CIA-instigated
miliary coup.

The money that you do spend on Iraki oil won't be spend on fomenting
right-wing coup d'etats in previously democratic countries - Chile is
the most recent example to come to mind - and in that sense it will be
better directed than it might otherwise have been.

------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<ui62tvsp3othvismjlbpfdcugsjsdpjrao@4ax.com>...

On 5 Dec 2003 14:52:57 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:


---
What invading and occupying a country will do is not guarantee that the
oil from its fields will flow into the US, it guarantees that the income
derived from those fields will not continue to flow into the coffers of
Saddam Hussein and his ilk. You _can_ rest assured about one thing
however, and that is that we _will_ get the oil. We'll buy it, of
course, (like we always do) after we stabilize the country and take out
that rag-tag band of envious troublemakers you so admire, and then
you'll be able to bitch about how unfair it is that we made Iraq rich
instead of sharing the spoils of war with amchair admirals like you.

I was rather fancying myself as an armchair diplomat, until the
reality check cut in.

I'm glad to think that you are going to buy Irak's oil - it shows a
deep-down honesty that reflects well on your character.

I'm not so sure that you have got the money. The U.S. has been running
a large balance of payments deficit since the Regan days, and the
capital inflows (selling the farm) that used to sustain it have dried
up. The current devaluation of the dollar reflects this inconvenient
fact. Your ignorance of this point shows a deep-down cognitive deficit
that reflects badly on your intelligence.

Saddam had takien to selling his oil for euros before you invaded -
some have claimed that this was what motivated the invasion

---
No doubt, and I'm sure that at least a few of those euros paid for time
in a flight simulator.
---

You seem to be no better informed than John S. Dyson - those flying
lessons were taking by Saudi citizens and paid for by Saudi dollars,
earned by shipping Saudi oil to the U.S.A. A few of the al Qua'eda
crew may have spent some time in transit in Hamburg (Germany) and
their dollars may have been exchanged for euro's in the process, but
Saddam's oil euros were locked into the UN administered oil-for-food
deal, and not directly accessible for your hypothetical Iraki subsidy
for al Qua'eda.

- and I imagine any independent regime in Irak would prefer to be paid
in a hard currency

---
It doesn't really matter _what_ they'd rather, they'll have to live with
what they get, a good deal of which is going to be trading oil for
services.
---

So much for your disavowals of piracy. "Sure, we'll pay you for the
oil - at one bead per barrel, with a complimentary blanket thrown in
for each complete tanker load".

Wiser heads are aware that guerilla warfare is particularly effective
at disabling complicated infra-structure. Your bloated arsenal of
weapons isn't going to let you pirate overseas oil fields, and only a
half-wit would dream that it was possible.

---
Only someone seriously disturbed would think that we have intentions of
pirating anything, and you seem to forget that we kept this country from
falling into British hands by largely being a rag-tag bunch of guerillas
ourselves, so we know what that's about.

You wouldn't believe it from what the guns nuts post - they think that
just owning a gun converts them into an organised and effective
military force.

---
I don't believe much of anything the gun nuts post, but I do believe
serious guerilla fighters would be much more likely to conduct
themselves in a much more clandestine way. You'd probably never even
know they were around...
---

And I recall that your historical familiarity with the
guerilla tactics of the 1770's, probably based on having watched every
episode of "Swamp Fox", didn't do you much good in Vietnam.

---
I'm not familiar with your "Swamp Fox" reference; an American television
series you found particularly helpful in your study of American History,
perhaps?

http://www.gwd50.k12.sc.us/FrancisMarion.htm

Disney made a mini-TV series about him in the 1950's which got to
Australia whie I was still at school, but not before I'd read most of
the Cambridge series on American history ...

http://www.angelfire.com/music3/EB/APShowcase.html

Leslie Nielson has gone on to higher things in the "Naked Gun" films,
but Disney weren't too behind-hand in exploiting his comic skills -
presumably unintentionally. It was pretty hilarious nonsense if you
knew anything about the subject.

IMO, what did us in in Viet Nam was Johnson's unbelievable stupidity of
trying to fight a war of attrition when we should have gone in there
with overwhelming force in the beginning. But that's hindsight, and who
knows what that would have done?
---

Not that it matters much,
since our our abundantly large arsenal of will, wealth, and weapons
_will_ allow us to prevail and then turn that country back over to them,
just like we did Japan.
---

Ooooh! So where are you going to drop the hyper-macho H-bombs then?

---
Bill, that was just stupid, even for you.
---

Not irrelevant to - nor stupider than - the analogy you were drawing
between Irak and Japan, where you checkmated a much more heirachical
society by capturing the emperor. In Irak you haven't managed to
capture Saddam, and even if you succeeded, it wouldn't have remotely
the same impact - the Ba'ath Party isn't anything like as heirachical
(not having had some forty generations in which to work on it).

Ah, yes... One of the tenets of the Sloman Doctrine. "If this, and if
that, then maybe the other." In any case, they were a bunch of Jew
hating bastards to start with and were just waiting for the slightest
excuse to "legitimize" bringing their hate fantasies into reality.

I don't know.

---
Precisely.
---

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - I know I don't know - which gives me
an advantage over you, becasue you are unaware of the extent of your
ignorance.

With any sort of luck, the right sort of propaganda
campaign could have directed their hate fantasies at Saddam Hussein,
who has killed enough Shi'ite Muslims to irritate a fair number of
that branch of Islam, and enough Sunni Kurds to worry the rest.

You probably would have had to muzzle Sharron to get away with it, but
that would hae been effort well-spent.

---
More conjecture and flights of fancy.
---

I am making it difficult for you, aren't I. Gullible non-thinking must
be *so* much easier.

---
More "If, then maybe." Sloman Doctrine. They'll run out of cannon fodder
soon enough, and in the meantime all they're doing is getting rid of the
weeds.
---

Funny way to describe your own servicemen.

---
Nice return. I should have written "their weeds".
---

There do seem to be quite a
lot of Arabs - rather more cannon fodder than Ho Chi Min had at his
disposal, and he had enough.

---
Yes, but we have way more cannons and a different mindset this time; a
little something about airliners being flown into buildings...
---

A nice little irony there. Dubbya has hijacked al Qua'eda's greatest
success and used it to attack Saddam, who wasn't exactly al Qua'eda's
favourite person.

Why not invoke Pearl Harbour as well? It has got exactly the same
historical relevance to your attack on Irak.

These may all seem like trivial advantages from your parochial Texan
perspective, easily cast aside in pursuit of the crucial strategic aim
of getting Dubbya re-elected to a second term, but some of the
body-bags involved may well come home to your neighbourhood.

---
They already have, and as usual it's part of the price we have to pay to
allow curs like you to growl.

Yep. Get yourself into an unnecessary war, pass up any chance to look
like liberation force rather than an occupying army, and then tell the
critics that the consequences of your impetuousness have been incurred
to defend their right to free speech. You are wasted on Hicksville,
Texas, and should join your soul-mates in Hicksville-on-the-Potomac.

---
A war about as unnecessary as mandatory cancer surgery, methinks.

An argument that you made to the U.N., where it went down like a lead
balloon. An argument based on a number of forged documents, whihc your
intelligence services knew to be forged, and your stupidy services
cited anyway.

Pull the other leg. It's got bells on.

Rather than play the con game you'd laud, I think we'd much prefer to
take the high road, call the shots ourselves, and not have to later
untangle the web you'd have us weave.

As opposed to the web you've woven for yourselves, with your lying
justifications for unnecessarily provocative behaviour.

As far as our critics are concerned, a "kiss my ass" is all they deserve
even if we choose to reason with them.

"Kiss my ass" does seem to be your idea of "reasoning". But then it
does seem to represent the upper limit of your "reasoning" capacity.

Austin, old boy, Austin, and thanks to us your wife learned enough to, I
suspect, increase your standard of living substantially even though your
cultural sensitivity still seems to be quite low.

No thanks to you or the football-loving academic rednecks of Austin. I
subscribe to the "obstacle course" theory of post-graduate education,
and getting a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in her
subject was widely seen as a triumph over a particularly unhelpful
environment.

My wife is rather more diplomatic than I am, but the lecturer for one
of her compulsory courses was more than usually unhelpful, and she
ended up skipping his lectures and his intermediate tests, confident
that she could still ace the final examination, as she did. His
compulsory course ceased to be compulsory in fairly short order ...

She left the town immediately after her Ph.D. examination, and has
been back only once since then, for what should have been a farewell
get-together in honour of her Ph.D. supervisor, when he was moving on
to slightly higher things (a Deanship in Florida ... he's white so he
still gets to vote) but the faculty managed to sabotage it.

------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Paul Burridge]

On 7 Dec 2003 04:18:09 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman)
wrote:

Are you trying to compete for the John S. Dyson Prize for the
terminally ill-informed? The foreign exchange markets seem to have
been infiltrated with Keynesians, who see the 4.2% public spending
deficits as appropriately directed to stimulating depressed economies,
and have been bidding the euro up against the dollar.

Well if you can avoid disparaging the Dollar for one minute and look
at things dispassionately for once, you will have to concede that if,
as you say, the markets are taking the view that F&G largesse is good
for growth, it still doesn't mitigate the fact that they've
essentially torn up the Stability Pact. They've had to run a coach and
horses right through it because it was crippling their economies. Why?
Because the Euro was crystalised at a moment in time when the politics
was right; not the economic fundamentals of the participating
countries' economies which was what *really* mattered. If the markets
are bidding up the Euro, then I take a more cynical view. I believe
it's a short term bet that markets make caused by the belief that the
failure of the Stability Pact will necessitate a rise in Euro interest
rates. That's all, Bill. Not out of confidence in the underlying
economic prospects for F&G or EUrope as a whole. Sorry.
--

"I expect history will be kind to me, since I intend to write it."
- Winston Churchill

 

[John Fields]

On 7 Dec 2003 05:44:34 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<ui62tvsp3othvismjlbpfdcugsjsdpjrao@4ax.com>...
On 5 Dec 2003 14:52:57 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

---
No doubt, and I'm sure that at least a few of those euros paid for time
in a flight simulator.
---

You seem to be no better informed than John S. Dyson - those flying
lessons were taking by Saudi citizens and paid for by Saudi dollars,
earned by shipping Saudi oil to the U.S.A. A few of the al Qua'eda
crew may have spent some time in transit in Hamburg (Germany) and
their dollars may have been exchanged for euro's in the process, but
Saddam's oil euros were locked into the UN administered oil-for-food
deal, and not directly accessible for your hypothetical Iraki subsidy
for al Qua'eda.

---
Since Saddam managed to get away with about a billion dollars in cash
when he escaped, I don't believe that your conjecture about the UN's
effectiveness in locking down funds is warranted. Hypothetical,
perhaps, but Saddam's folks and al Qua'eda getting together to plan
skullduggery is probably just about as likely as our Republicans and
Democrats working out shady deals together, in secret.
---

- and I imagine any independent regime in Irak would prefer to be paid
in a hard currency

---
It doesn't really matter _what_ they'd rather, they'll have to live with
what they get, a good deal of which is going to be trading oil for
services.
---

So much for your disavowals of piracy. "Sure, we'll pay you for the
oil - at one bead per barrel, with a complimentary blanket thrown in
for each complete tanker load".

---
We'll pay what's equitable, even though we don't have to. Just in case
you haven't been following the news, we now OWN Iraq by virtue of the
fact that we invaded the country and overcame any resistance to our
taking it over so now we can, and will, do with it what we choose.
---

---
Bill, that was just stupid, even for you.
---

Not irrelevant to - nor stupider than - the analogy you were drawing
between Irak and Japan, where you checkmated a much more heirachical
society by capturing the emperor. In Irak you haven't managed to
capture Saddam, and even if you succeeded, it wouldn't have remotely
the same impact - the Ba'ath Party isn't anything like as heirachical
(not having had some forty generations in which to work on it).

---
You really are thick or, more likely, disingenuous aren't you?

Here's what I wrote about Japan:


" Only someone seriously disturbed would think that we have intentions
of pirating anything, and you seem to forget that we kept this country
from falling into British hands by largely being a rag-tag bunch of
guerillas ourselves, so we know what that's about. Not that it matters
much, since our our abundantly large arsenal of will, wealth, and
weapons _will_ allow us to prevail and then turn that country back over
to them, just like we did Japan. "

The point being that we will, eventually, turn the country back over to
the Iraqis just as we turned Japan back over to the Japanese. Nothing
even remotely relating to hierarchical structures of government was
mentioned, so I can only assume that you tried that tack to get the wind
back in your sails.
---

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - I know I don't know - which gives me
an advantage over you, becasue you are unaware of the extent of your
ignorance.

---
That's also stupid. With a little more work, 'most anyone who has
progressed to the point where they realize that they know they don't
know will come to the realization that they can never know how much they
don't know. That is, it's impossible to become aware of the total
extent of one's own ignorance. Sounds like you need a little more
work...
---

---
More conjecture and flights of fancy.
---

I am making it difficult for you, aren't I. Gullible non-thinking must
be *so* much easier.

---
Yes, gullible non-thinking would be much easier, but It's not at all
that difficult to see through your smoke screens to the shape-shifter
behind them.
---

A war about as unnecessary as mandatory cancer surgery, methinks.

An argument that you made to the U.N., where it went down like a lead
balloon.

---
And which, of course, allowed the world to see who were friends and who
weren't. You seem to forget that we're a sovereign nation and if we
choose to go to war, for whatever reason, we don't need permission from
anyone. We'll put our intentions on the table and negotiate for a
while, but unless someone can come up with a good reason why we should
allow ourselves to be vanquished, then we are the ones who are
ultimately responsible for our survival and we'll do whatever needs to
be done to make sure that we'll win.
---

Rather than play the con game you'd laud, I think we'd much prefer to
take the high road, call the shots ourselves, and not have to later
untangle the web you'd have us weave.

As opposed to the web you've woven for yourselves, with your lying
justifications for unnecessarily provocative behaviour.

---
Whatever...

Having to untangle a single web woven by friends is infinetely easier
than having to untangle one which adversaries "helped" to weave.
---

As far as our critics are concerned, a "kiss my ass" is all they deserve
even if we choose to reason with them.

"Kiss my ass" does seem to be your idea of "reasoning". But then it
does seem to represent the upper limit of your "reasoning" capacity.

---
It represents the upper limit of our willingness to negotiate, not the
upper limit of our capacity to reason.
---

Austin, old boy, Austin, and thanks to us your wife learned enough to, I
suspect, increase your standard of living substantially even though your
cultural sensitivity still seems to be quite low.

No thanks to you or the football-loving academic rednecks of Austin.

---
Of course not. We've tried to raise it, but to no avail, so thanks
should go to whatever is keeping it down.
---

I subscribe to the "obstacle course" theory of post-graduate education,
and getting a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in her
subject was widely seen as a triumph over a particularly unhelpful
environment.

---
If your know-it-all attitude rubbed off on her at all, I can easily see
why it was more difficult for her than it had to be.
---

My wife is rather more diplomatic than I am,

---
A little to the left of Atilla the Hun, then?^)
---

but the lecturer for one
of her compulsory courses was more than usually unhelpful, and she
ended up skipping his lectures and his intermediate tests, confident
that she could still ace the final examination, as she did. His
compulsory course ceased to be compulsory in fairly short order ...

---
Academia _does_ seem to be populated by more than its fair share of
assholes, and if she succeeded in bringing him down a peg or two, then
good for her!
---

She left the town immediately after her Ph.D. examination, and has
been back only once since then, for what should have been a farewell
get-together in honour of her Ph.D. supervisor, when he was moving on
to slightly higher things (a Deanship in Florida ... he's white so he
still gets to vote) but the faculty managed to sabotage it.

---
Not to open a whole new can of worms, but if you want to talk about
suffrage, let's take a look at the land of your youth, where Aboriginal
suffrage _and_ citizenship was taken away in 1901 and not restored until
1967. Here, on the other hand, equal protection under the law and
suffrage was granted to everyone in 1870.

As for the rest of it, the relevance is???

--
John Fields

 

[Daniel Haude]

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.]
On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 13:23:42 -0600,
John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote
in Msg. <9dv6tvgmnb6t248ki7k2p5lebb00s96cn2@4ax.com>

We'll pay what's equitable, even though we don't have to. Just in case
you haven't been following the news, we now OWN Iraq by virtue of the
fact that we invaded the country and overcame any resistance to our
taking it over so now we can, and will, do with it what we choose.

Any resistance? Last time I checked on average more than two U.S. soldiers
got killed every day in Iraq, about which the American public gets
increasingly grumpy. The invasion has thrown Iraq into chaos and mayhem
and has thus created the world's biggest terrorist boot camp. Maybe they
OWN Iraq, but for that they're paying with sixty lives and several billion
dollars each month, and all they get is a complete, unmanageable, and
unexploitable mess.

We'll see what the US will do with that when the current administration
gets tarred and feathered out of office.

And which, of course, allowed the world to see who were friends and who
weren't. You seem to forget that we're a sovereign nation and if we
choose to go to war, for whatever reason, we don't need permission from
anyone.

Of course you don't, but judging by just how much the slightest criticism
of your actions pisses you off you don't seem to be very confident that
what you're doing is the right thing.

We'll put our intentions on the table and negotiate for a
while, but unless someone can come up with a good reason why we should
allow ourselves to be vanquished,

vanquished by whom?

then we are the ones who are ultimately responsible for our survival
and we'll do whatever needs to be done to make sure that we'll win.

What does the liberation of the Iraqi people (the a posteriori
motivation of the invasion) have to do with your survival?

It represents the upper limit of our willingness to negotiate, not the
upper limit of our capacity to reason.

Then why do you negotiate (or pretend to negotiate) at all?

--Daniel

--
"With me is nothing wrong! And with you?" (from r.a.m.p)

 

[Mark Zenier]

In article <9dv6tvgmnb6t248ki7k2p5lebb00s96cn2@4ax.com>,
John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:

---
Since Saddam managed to get away with about a billion dollars in cash
when he escaped,

They recovered most of it. The last number for the outstanding cash is
132 million. Don't you remember the reports of finding sheds full of
cash in Bagdad, and of stopping trucks full of cash and gold on the way to
the border. The CPA took charge of it. "Walking around money", I guess.

Mark Zenier mzenier@eskimo.com Washington State resident

 

[Bill Sloman]

John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<9dv6tvgmnb6t248ki7k2p5lebb00s96cn2@4ax.com>...

On 7 Dec 2003 05:44:34 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

John Fields <jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote in message news:<ui62tvsp3othvismjlbpfdcugsjsdpjrao@4ax.com>...
On 5 Dec 2003 14:52:57 -0800, bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) wrote:

---
No doubt, and I'm sure that at least a few of those euros paid for time
in a flight simulator.
---

You seem to be no better informed than John S. Dyson - those flying
lessons were taken by Saudi citizens and paid for by Saudi dollars,
earned by shipping Saudi oil to the U.S.A. A few of the al Qua'eda
crew may have spent some time in transit in Hamburg (Germany) and
their dollars may have been exchanged for euro's in the process, but
Saddam's oil euros were locked into the UN administered oil-for-food
deal, and not directly accessible for your hypothetical Iraki subsidy
for al Qua'eda.

---
Since Saddam managed to get away with about a billion dollars in cash
when he escaped, I don't believe that your conjecture about the UN's
effectiveness in locking down funds is warranted.

He did have other sources of income - and since your proposition that
Saddam has "escaped", and that he got away with "billions of euros" is
unsupported by any hard evidence - you haven't got any more idea of
where he is than I do, and even less evidence about the amount of
money he is carrying about with him - this is a poor
counter-arguement, even by you abysmal standards.

Hypothetical,
perhaps, but Saddam's folks and al Qua'eda getting together to plan
skullduggery is probably just about as likely as our Republicans and
Democrats working out shady deals together, in secret.
---

Less likely. Your politicians are a batch of crooks without a moral
fibre between them, much like Saddam, if less murderous, while al
Qua'eda is a bunch of religious fanatics, with moral fibres sticking
out in all directions.

For the record, I prefer your politicians - they serve their purpose
and their vices aren't noticeably destructive.

- and I imagine any independent regime in Irak would prefer to be paid
in a hard currency

---
It doesn't really matter _what_ they'd rather, they'll have to live with
what they get, a good deal of which is going to be trading oil for
services.
---

So much for your disavowals of piracy. "Sure, we'll pay you for the
oil - at one bead per barrel, with a complimentary blanket thrown in
for each complete tanker load".

---
We'll pay what's equitable, even though we don't have to.

Your idea of what's equitable.

Just in case
you haven't been following the news, we now OWN Iraq by virtue of the
fact that we invaded the country and overcame any resistance to our
taking it over so now we can, and will, do with it what we choose.
---

<snipped John's stupid equation of the occupation of Japan with the
occupation of Iraq.>

---
Bill, that was just stupid, even for you.
---

Not irrelevant to - nor stupider than - the analogy you were drawing
between Irak and Japan, where you checkmated a much more heirachical
society by capturing the emperor. In Irak you haven't managed to
capture Saddam, and even if you succeeded, it wouldn't have remotely
the same impact - the Ba'ath Party isn't anything like as heirachical
(not having had some forty generations in which to work on it).

---
You really are thick or, more likely, disingenuous aren't you?

Here's what I wrote about Japan:


" Only someone seriously disturbed would think that we have intentions
of pirating anything, and you seem to forget that we kept this country
from falling into British hands by largely being a rag-tag bunch of
guerillas ourselves, so we know what that's about. Not that it matters
much, since our our abundantly large arsenal of will, wealth, and
weapons _will_ allow us to prevail and then turn that country back over
to them, just like we did Japan. "

The point being that we will, eventually, turn the country back over to
the Iraqis just as we turned Japan back over to the Japanese. Nothing
even remotely relating to hierarchical structures of government was
mentioned, so I can only assume that you tried that tack to get the wind
back in your sails.

You really are thick (or possibly disingenuous). The point about the
heirachical structure of Japanese society was adddressed to the likely
success of your occupation. Your occupation of Japan was relatively
peaceful, without noticable evidence of organised resistance, because
you had control of the king-pin in their rigid heirachy.

You haven't even captured the king-pin in the Iraqi heirachy, and if
you did it would not do you anything like as much good. You are faced
with active and energetic resistance in Iraq, and it is likely to
persist - land borders can be quite porous. Making the sort of changes
to Iraqi society that you were able to engineer in Japan (with the
assistance of the emperor) could be a lot more difficult, and your
eventual exit from the country may look more like your exit from
Vietnam.

---

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - I know I don't know - which gives me
an advantage over you, becasue you are unaware of the extent of your
ignorance.

---
That's also stupid. With a little more work, 'most anyone who has
progressed to the point where they realize that they know they don't
know will come to the realization that they can never know how much they
don't know. That is, it's impossible to become aware of the total
extent of one's own ignorance. Sounds like you need a little more
work...
---

I do know enough not to fall into self-referential black holes, like
your second last sentence.

---
More conjecture and flights of fancy.
---

I am making it difficult for you, aren't I. Gullible non-thinking must
be *so* much easier.

---
Yes, gullible non-thinking would be much easier, but It's not at all
that difficult to see through your smoke screens to the shape-shifter
behind them.
---

Where I come from, that is known as ignoring inconvenient evidence.

A war about as unnecessary as mandatory cancer surgery, methinks.

An argument that you made to the U.N., where it went down like a lead
balloon.

---
And which, of course, allowed the world to see who were friends and who
weren't.

The group you are identifying is your gullible toadies. Your true
friends were trying to save you from theconsequences of your own
fecklessness.

You seem to forget that we're a sovereign nation and if we
choose to go to war, for whatever reason, we don't need permission from
anyone.

Absolutely. But now it seems that you need our help keeping the lid on
the can of worms that you opened up in Iraq, where you invaded against
U.N. advice and without UN sanction ....

We'll put our intentions on the table and negotiate for a
while, but unless someone can come up with a good reason why we should
allow ourselves to be vanquished, then we are the ones who are
ultimately responsible for our survival and we'll do whatever needs to
be done to make sure that we'll win.

And you survival was threatend by Saddam's regime in Iraq? That is the
same lame argument you floated before the invasion, and it is still a
lead balloon.

---

Rather than play the con game you'd laud, I think we'd much prefer to
take the high road, call the shots ourselves, and not have to later
untangle the web you'd have us weave.

As opposed to the web you've woven for yourselves, with your lying
justifications for unnecessarily provocative behaviour.

---
Whatever...

Having to untangle a single web woven by friends is infinetely easier
than having to untangle one which adversaries "helped" to weave.
---

Why? One of the harder knots in the web you have woven is the
perceived anti-Islamic aspect of your invasion. A U.N. sactioned
anti-Saddam liberation, with Arab support, would have looked a lot
less anti-Islamic.

As far as our critics are concerned, a "kiss my ass" is all they deserve
even if we choose to reason with them.

"Kiss my ass" does seem to be your idea of "reasoning". But then it
does seem to represent the upper limit of your "reasoning" capacity.

---
It represents the upper limit of our willingness to negotiate, not the
upper limit of our capacity to reason.
---

So you claim.

Austin, old boy, Austin, and thanks to us your wife learned enough to, I
suspect, increase your standard of living substantially even though your
cultural sensitivity still seems to be quite low.

No thanks to you or the football-loving academic rednecks of Austin.

Not all the academics at the University of Texas at Austin were
football-loving red-necks. My wife's expertise about wine dates back
to to that period of her life (though IIRR at least two of the
relevent academics came from New Zealand).

<snip>

---
Not to open a whole new can of worms, but if you want to talk about
suffrage, let's take a look at the land of your youth, where Aboriginal
suffrage _and_ citizenship was taken away in 1901 and not restored until
1967. Here, on the other hand, equal protection under the law and
suffrage was granted to everyone in 1870.

And it took Martin Luther King to convert the paper equality into
something vaguely approximating real equality. The coloured minority
in Florida wasn't exactly over-represented during the last
presidentail election.

Which is not to say that Australia's history presents the European
invasion as anything beneficial to the aboriginal population. You've
missed a number of decidedly repulsive episodes, including the
genocide of the Tasmanian aborigines, and the revolting little
incident where the skull of the last Tasmanian male aborigine was
stolen from his body before the burial service.

I had my conciousness raised on that particular subject in my youth,
and don't need to be reminded that Australia has its flaws. If I ever
get back there and get to reclaim my right to vote, I'll be active in
trying to correct some of them.

-------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Andy Peters]

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message news:<bqlac3$2pos$1@news.iquest.net>...

In article <7c584d27.0312030857.28ad03ff@posting.google.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org (Bill Sloman) writes:
toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message news:<bqh4dd$1etf$2@news.iquest.net>...
In article <3FCBFB88.22C7@armory.com>,
"R. Steve Walz" <rstevew@armory.com> writes:
John S. Dyson wrote:

It is interesting where the 'socialist meccas' like France and
Germany are also having problems with their budgets, and they
don't even do a competent job of providing for their own defense.
----------------------
They have the industrial output, they simply prefer to spend it
on luxuries as long as they can.

The cost of defense isn't really that great (very few defense
plants per-se in the US.) It is that the LAZY-ASS socialist meccas
choose to suckle off the American teat.

American spending in defence is equal to the sum of the total defence
spending of the next ten nations down the pecking order.

This shows how inadequate an incapable most of the other nations
are. I doubt that any European nation other than Switzerland
or perhaps UK could actually defend themselves on their own
soil.

I guess that a perfectly good question to ask is, "Who's the enemy?"

--a

 

[Andy Peters]

toor@iquest.net (John S. Dyson) wrote in message news:<bqr45m$1jcf$1@news.iquest.net>...

The ethical problem that you apparently have: the oil wasn't Saddam's
to give away. It was pretty much owned by the Iraqi people/government.
This is where the lefties tend to convieniently ignore the evils
of the despots that they love.

However, the despot in question, Saddam, was one of Reagan's lovers.
See, for example, http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/09/30/sproject.irq.regime.change/
and note the photo of one Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with said
despot.

Saddam was a US ally right up until the Kuwait invasion. He got on
Bush The Elder's shitlist because the invasion wasn't blessed by the
White House.

-a

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote (in <7c584d27.0312081103.4e80ddcd@posting.google.com&gt about
'Interesting Letter-to-the-Editor', on Mon, 8 Dec 2003:

That is the
same lame argument you floated before the invasion, and it is still a
lead balloon.

Touch of the mexed mitaphors there, Bill. (;-)
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk
Interested in professional sound reinforcement and distribution? Then go to
http://www.isce.org.uk
PLEASE do NOT copy news posts to me by E-MAIL!

 

[Frank Bemelman]

"John S. Dyson" <toor@iquest.net> schreef in bericht

[snip]

Ignoring a problem will not make it go away.

True, you're the living proof of that.

--
Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'x' and 'invalid' when replying by email)