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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (34944)	7/24/2002 6:59:46 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Jacob Snyder; If it were even conceivable that wind energy could make power cheaper than oil there would be a hell of a lot more of it at least somewhere in the world. Instead, arguments about how much it costs delve into the spiritual realm of "all" costs and the like. It would be easier for me to convince you of my counting system for figuring out how many angels fit on the head of a pin than to figure out what "all" means. Re: "Ethnic cleansing is a nasty phrase." Correct. Re: "It implies much more than an exchange of populations; it implies massacres, organized mass rapes, etc. " What do you think is required to make an old woman leave her home, candy and roses? If you have a technique for making civilians move that doesn't involve something like Andrew Bell-Fialkoff's definition of ethnic cleansing, let's hear it: "ethnic cleansing can be understood expulsion of an `undesirable' population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these." Before you come up with this cool new technique, I'd like to note that in the US and Japan, forcing completely peaceful and unwarlike populations to move, in order to do such emminently useful stuff as build a highway, airport, dam or railroad is frequently accompanied by massive applications of government sponsored force, complete with riots and the whole nine yards. *Does anyone really plan on doing ethnic cleansing in the Middle East without violence, when we haven't figured out how to do it in the Middle West?* Re: "We cannot stop the spread of knowledge about how to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction." This is very true. Europe knows this and dumped Israel. As soon as the truth sinks in, in the US we'll disengage from the Middle East as well. If it's a matter of only taking the occasional destruction of a major landmark with 3000 dead, then we can accept a war against terror. *When it turns into weekly atomic "suicide" bombings the US will disengage.* The terrorists know this. That's why they're working as hard as they can to get those bombs. The authorities can't keep a drug problem out of the borders of this country, when nukes become commonplace they're not going to keep those out either. (Or do you trust the Federal government to make you safe?) -- Carl