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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (307612)	10/25/2006 8:13:45 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571704

Ouch.

To: Road Walker who wrote (307612)	10/25/2006 9:54:43 AM
From: Taro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571704

When the Soviet/Europe main gas pipe line plans first came up the US warned Europe against thus creating a serious dependency on the Russians. Ignoring that Europe under the lead of Germany ignored that and went ahead anyway, because "only 10-15% max of the energy needs would be supplied that way". This pipeline next made it possible for the Greens and Socialists under Schroeder to decide on a firm plan for closing down all German nuke plants over a limited time. The result being, that under German "leadership" this dependency was self created and self financed and only last winter did the Russians test the waters, when cutting off the supplies for a couple of days "due to the Ukrainian situation". Wunderbar! Taro

To: Road Walker who wrote (307612)	10/26/2006 1:32:03 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571704

It certainly true that many oil producing countries our not very free (this isn't limited to oil, countries with economies based largely on a single natural resource are frequently not very free), and I even think its likely that there is to an extent a causal relationship, not just corelation due to other factors; but I don't know that there is any solid evidence for Friedman's "First Law of Petropolitics”, that higher prices for oil reduce freedom. Most or all of the unfree oil producing countries where also unfree when prices where lower. Friedman does have a good point though about how higher oil and gas prices give Russia more influence and power.