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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (27831)	1/26/2003 1:35:51 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Ray, cynicism is my middle name. Spotting propaganda is fun. Not very challenging, but fun. For example, the Time Magazine cover story on male child prostitution in Russia [that was a decade ago, but remains my all time favourite]. It wasn't really propaganda. Time was sucked in and presented it as a real story about the terrible conditions in Moscow. What a joke! One glance and it was obviously fake. A month or three later they admitted that they had been conned. A more recent example was the "children thrown overboard by the horrible boat people trying to invade Australia". The photo presented was obviously cropped and the caption obviously bore no relationship to the picture. It was disclosed weeks later that it was in fact an Oz government con job. But sometimes, despite the propaganda, people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. For a decade, I've thought the main purpose of sanctions against Iraq was to keep the price of oil up, to enhance the profits of USA oil companies. The rest is mostly flim flam. Weapons of mass destruction? What a joke. We're living in the most peaceable time of my life, with least risk. We've been up to our ears in WMD all my life, with real risk of them being used, with the USA having been the main user of them [check out Hiroshima for example]. Saddam having a few nerve gas shells is pathetic. Pakistan has nukes and they are major terrorist supporters and created the Taleban who kept Osama in business. There's a bigger threat to worry about if nukes are a problem. But they don't have much oil and they're sort of on the USA side at present. <... hundreds of other similar incidents across the globe were occurring and going unreported. This story is only remarkable in its ordinariness. > Tell me about it! [Said with American accent no less ... I'll be indistinguishable from an American soon]. Good point. Once we've got Iraq in the bag, there are lot more places needing to be tidied up. They won't all need invading. But a spot of imperialism would be an excellent idea. Where to after Iraq? Any suggestions for a constitution for the colonies? Should The Federation set parking fines or just borders? We'd have to be careful about 'signing up' new members, or it'll be Katie bar the door! Taiwan might like to sign up. That'd be one in the eye for China, which is constantly threatening Taiwan with invasion. Take on some of the big boys first! Burma is a bit messy. Plenty of countries in Africa could do with a revamp and territorial integrity but they don't have oil or crucial global interests associated to spend too much money on. Cyprus is still dodgy. Hey, Kashmir would be fun. Afghanistan. Libya - that would top up the till. In which order do you think they should be subsumed into the new United States of Freedom [to replace the UN]? Any favourites to put at the top of the list? I think they'll fall like ten pins. Mqurice