And how did they redirect the ill effect? It would be interesting if you could explain that one to me.
I'm no expert in micro and macro economics but I think that if you
only have one major export in your country (oil), and can no longer
sell it or any other goods on the world market you can not keep much let
alone all of you economic power.
I'm not an economist either, but I'm pretty sure you can make deals under the table with members of the U.N., and that you can levy oppressive taxes and cut social programs to ease your transition from multibillionnairehood (and unquestionable ability to arm yourself) to multimillionnairehood (and questionable ability to arm yourself).
The point is that a government can bleed its people dry and survive on the proceeds, not indefinitely, but certainly long enough to sponsor an extensive retaliatory propaganda campaign.
Also why blame the wealthy for keeping their wealth?
All depends on where they get it. If they scrimped and saved their own pennies, power to them... I'm a capitalist. If they stole it from the people they governed, that's a different story.
North Korea has to keep most of it's population starving to death just to have half a dozen atomic warheads.
So it's possible, if you keep your population in starvation and in chains... I believe that.
Spending that kind of money is not something one man can do.
I 'm not sure how much personal wealth you think Saddam had but
to do that he would need more then Bill Gates.
I have no idea how much he had, but he had enough to build them *before* the sanctions, so he had enough to keep what was left over *during* the sanctions.
Also, he had not just his personal wealth to support his weapons program, but also the national wealth, which he controlled unilaterally.
Also, he certainly had a lot of personal wealth. The fact that we weren't sure how much exactly, combined with the fact that he was certainly *willing* to stockpile weapons, combined with the expected cost of assuming incorrectly that he *wasn't* stockpiling weapons, maybe, just maybe, is cause for suspcion.
I'm pretty sure Americans put at least *some* effort into not killing babies, whereas the other two parties (Islamist suicide bombers today and armies in WWII) put no effort into it. In at least one of those cases, the relevant strategic authority commands its troops to target women and children.
Ummm no it isn't,
Who is "it", and what isn't it doing? Do you think that the leaders of Islamist terrorist organizations do not advocate the killing of women and children?
but if you want to mention WWII, the fire bombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Nagesaki and Hiroshima killed more babies then ALL Islamic suicide bombings in history combined.
That's a straw man argument, and an improper use of statistics. Those attacks killed more people in general, so of course they killed more of any given subtype of people, assuming similar distributions.
My point was if you lived like that and watched coca cola come in and buy ALL the water near your village to make pop for the wealthy, and you watch your fields dry up and die, you would most likly harbour some resentment to the nation they came from.
That's a good and true point. And my point is, if you live your middle-class life and one day watch a group of people fly airplanes into your city, or blow up your subway, or take control of your theatre or your school by gun, or decapitate members of your community, and then watch their countrymen cheering on T.V., and listen to their leaders calling for your death and the death of your family and friends, as well as a hundred million people you never met but are kind of in the same situation as you, you would most likely harbour some resentment to the culture they came from.
Terrorism works. Terrorism have sufficiently scared people close to me that they are willing to say, "It's okay that my government uses torture against suspected terrorists, as long as I'm safe." So if you're going to say, "Americans are strongarming the Middle East, what do you expect?" then my response is, "The avowed agenda of terrorists is the death of every last living American... what do you expect?"
My poor friend you are miss guided, it was a very small minority,
what confuses people is that the minorty is the most vocal and most
news worthy and there for is what you see on the TV and in the papers.
My poor friend, I never said it was a majority. I said it was
a) represented in several countries, and
b) supported by the Islamic leadership.
Do you deny this?
If you think it's really significant that it was just a minority, I suppose I could look around for inhuman behavior practiced by a majority of Muslims in Muslim nations, and not get very far before stumbling on the treatment of women. I won't, though, because I think we should try to keep this debate focused.
Suffice it to say, it's a visible and vocal and violent minority, and to my knowledge, it has not been condemned by the majority (though I won't be so bold as to claim that silence is consent, at the very least it is certainly silence). If you can provide evidence to dissuade me of this latter belief, I would of course be grateful.
Do you think the world belives that all Christians think Hugo Chavez
should assasinated because we all heard Rev. Pat Robinson say that?
No we don't, but it was news worthy so we all heard it for weeks.
Is Rev. Pat Robinson a representative of nine major Christian fundamentalist nations? If not, I suggest you have a look at a
letter from ambassadors of nine Muslim nations, which contains a veiled threat against anybody who publishes the cartoons, alongside a call on the Danish government to punish the artists and newspaper. I'd say that's pretty mainstream.
I think you missed the point that I used dictatorship in jest so I will
say it a bit clearer "It was in jest and I am well aware that none of them
are dictatorships".
Yep, I guess I missed that. Sorry.
GWB has the power over the FDA and there for can have the price of drugs lowered.
So, I don't know any more about the FDA than I do about economics; probably less. You're saying that Bush can say, "I demand that drugs be cheaper," and the FDA is compelled by law to comply without question?
BTW I think you ment democratic societies, not republics, not all
not all republics are the same the USSR was a republic.
I hesitate to refer to as democracies countries with representative governments. When I say (probably erroneously) "republics" I mean, "nations with representative governments that distribute power in such a way as to be at least partially, if indirectly, in the hands of the governed."
My personal, probably unsupportable, opinion is that the city-states of ancient Greece, Athens in particular, were democracies, but that not many governments since then have been.
-Erasmus
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