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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (7829)	7/27/2006 12:35:44 AM
From: RJA_	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217699

Hi Seeker. Some comments on your post: >>It isn't only the ayatollahs and Al Qaeda that want the US out of the middle east. It is almost all Arabs and almost all Iranians, whether they like the regime that rules them or not. Seems reasonable. >>If the US left Iraq to itself and really retreated from the Middle East the whole crisis would evaporate. Eventually the US will have to leave Iraq IMHO. Just how that occurs remains to be seen. >>Come on, no backward dictatorship like that of Iran will be able to develop nuclear weapons and send them to the US. Uh, beg to differ on this. Building wepon not really that hard. I understand plans for same are on internet. The theory is common knowledge -- critical mass achieved by bullet and receptor technique or implosion. Whats difficult is obtaining or making wepons grade U235 or Pultonium. The centrifuge method is used for this. Time + lots and lots of centrifuges. The Iranians have very smart folks, lots of them educated here. They also have lots and lots of money (oil revenue). I immagine that you point that gushing Niagra of money at something and it gets done, sooner or later. >>The smartest young people emigrate. Perhaps, but see money above. >>How long could Russia drive up the price of oil? A cessation of oil from the middle east would at last force everybody's attention on ethanol, coal, biomass etc. Sure, but it would take us 10 years to get shale oil in serious production. Thats a long time and a lot of hardship. Meantime, a drop in the price kills the project. >>You'd see an undreamed of attention to conservation. Sure, but there are lots of folks who have no other transp alternative than an automobile. Food production, plastics, synthetics, avaition, all dependent on oil. Hard to conserve there. >>Once, I remember well, Japan attacked and then to my amazement Hitler a few days later declared war. The US was simply not ready by a long shot. Hundreds of ships were sunk in the first year of the war. Britain's invention of radar and its perfection in the US finally saved the day and the Allies started to sink the submarines faster than the Nazis could make them. Civilian production of cars etc. shut down completely. Everybody concentrated on what the forces needed. Sure, I have seen one of my dads old ration books. This was not voluntary. This was mandated. But such things can be done in wartime. It would make no sense to cut or eliminate automobile production during this crisis. It will happen on its own as the folks who have ignored fuel economy (GM, Ford, Chrysler) are trounced by those who have not (Toyota, Honda, VW). >>I'm not saying that Sunnis and Shias would become friends. But their battles would decline in intensity and anyway be moved to page 23 in Western newspapers. Russia, atheist or Christian, doesn't want one more nuclear power on its border. You would think not. However, that is not shown in their behavior at present. They are actually enabling this. Look at the case of N. Korea. Why does China continue to protect them? You would think the Chinese wouldn't be so eager to have nuclear armed crazies on their border either. Go figure.