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| 5/24 |
| 2003/3/23 [Politics/Foreign/Asia, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:27807 Activity:very high |
3/22 What are you all you Bush defenders going to do when it turns
out that he lied to us all to drag into an unjust war?
http://csua.org/u/b66
\_ I don't care what reason we gave in '03. It should've gone like
this in '91. His father is the one who committed the crime. The
son is fixing it 12 years later. Works for me.
\_ Oh wow, so now any country can invade any other country
based on a crime committed sometime in its history.
\_ No. Any country can and always has been able to invade
another country based solely on the ability to do so. What
planet have you been living on where someone else's permission
was required?
\_ Removing Saddam is justified by any measure. However, if
Bush lied to do so, then fuck him, I say. Fuck him right
out of office.
\_ Gee, who do you think is a more likely liar, Bush or Hussein?
\_ Probably both.
\_ whether it's justified or not, the more important concerns
are of sovereignty and international law
\_ LOSERS of wars don't have sovereignty, dumbass.
\_ Oh, I see, law of the jungle eh?
\_ On *this* planet, between nations, yes. If I go into
your house and shoot your ass there are police and the
rest of the legal system to apprehend and punish me in
some way. If my country invades your country and
yours is too weak to stop it, then your country is a
footnote in history. There are more dead countries,
kingdoms, empires, etc in the history books than
currently exist on the planet. When this changes you
can let us know.
\_ the bush administration has decided abiding by
international law and the UN is for SUCKAH PUNKS.
this may lead to a few misunderstandings with
a few other countries in the very near future.
\_ What is international law? People keep using that
word without really thinking about what it might mean.
Is it backed by some principle, or is it just arrived
at by consensus of participating countries? I, for one,
wouldn't want a consensus of mostly nasty countries
determining what my country could or could not do.
\_ I really love when the lefties get upset that the US
is in violation of Kyoto, the land mine ban and a few
other treaties we never ratified or even signed in
some cases and then pretend we're in violation of some
mythical "international law".
\_ Most ppl get upset that the US failed to ratify
treaties that seem to be in the interest of
humanity at large for short-sighted business
reasons. Find me a reasonable rationale for
failing to ratify Kyoto, landmine, and chemical
weapons treaties.
\_ Kyoto: it's based on junk science and doesn't
put real limits on China, India and other 3rd
world nations that can easily out pollute us in
a few short years. Landmines: they'd want us to
pull up the mines in the DMZ between N/S Korea.
Chemical weapons: we've got a shitload of the
stuff and destroy it as fast as the plants will
run. What's your problem with that? Most "ppl"
run at the mouth based on ignorance and don't
have a clue what they're talking about beyond
what NPR told them to think.
\_ You usually do not invade a sovereign nation under
international law. The legal basis for invading
Iraq depends on UN resolutions after the war in
1991 started by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Here is
an Economist article about its legality:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1648347
\_ Why not? What if the country is nasty? Are you
willing to let people under a nasty regime suffer
because of the principle of sovereign immunity?
I think people's lives and happiness are more
important.
\_ If every country felt this way, there would be
no end to the wars. Think about it for a
second: the Christian countries would all
want to invade everyone else to "save" them.
The Muslim countries the same. All in the name
of "happiness." [formatd. again for you.]
\_ No end to wars? There will always be wars
so long as there are limited resources,
people disagree with each other, or religion
still exists. I think it's cute that you
believe wars will somehow magically end if
every country was just happily isolationist.
Are you a GO PAT! GO! follower?
\_ watch out! more imaginary missles incoming!
\_ laugh as he continues to keep FERC from stopping his energy
company buddies from raping California.
\_ Oh really?
Daniel Weintraub: New energy lessons from the last
crisis in California
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/5932213p-6893078c.html |
| 5/24 |
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| csua.org/u/b66 -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030323/ts_nm/iraq_scuds_dc_2 Advanced Document Not Found The document you requested is not found. |
| www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1648347 A delicate balance Mar 20th 2003 From The Economist print edition Is an attack on Iraq legal? To read it, please log in, or pick a payment or subscription option, on the right. Buy your gift subscription now and get 25% off our normal subscription rate. |
| www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/5932213p-6893078c.html In January of 2001, the lights were flickering, two giant utilities were edging toward insolvency and the wholesale price of electricity was spiking seemingly to infinity. The electricity mess may be forgotten, but it's not gone. The financial hangover from those days still plagues the state's economy, where businesses and residents alike will be paying at least 10 years for the energy consumed over the space of a few months. So as California's leaders struggle with their latest crisis, this might be a good time to review the brief history of the last one, when decisions made in haste or never made at all had consequences far beyond the intentions of policymakers. And it happens that a new study published last week provides the perfect complement to such a review. Christopher Weare, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, has produced as lucid an account of the state's electricity crisis as I have seen anywhere. Weare begins with some sobering numbers that put the crisis in perspective, ranking it as one of the greatest economic disasters in history. But readers looking for a whodunit might not be satisfied with Weare's tale. No single culprit, he says, brought California to its knees. And no silver bullet can prevent the whole thing from happening again. Policymakers, he says, built a lousy system, and private energy companies seeking to maximize their profits took advantage of it. Unfortunate weather patterns and an explosion along a key natural gas line contributed to the problem. A turf war among regulators kept government agencies from helping and might have led them to make things worse. Some of his specific conclusions: * There was a real shortage. While there was no surge in California's energy usage, the state's demand crept up throughout the 1990s and supply didn't keep pace. And a rapid growth in demand for electricity in neighboring states deprived California of much of the imported electricity on which it had become dependent. While that's been widely recognized for some time, Weare also opines that the lack of contracts discouraged the construction of new power plants because private generators couldn't be assured they would have buyers for their electricity. Manipulation of the natural gas market might have been responsible for part of the price increase, but a real spike in demand and a true shortage were probably more important. The average price of a pollution permit more than doubled in the summer of 2000, and in some cases the permits spiked at 30 times what had been the going rate. Because the cap was in place only in California, it encouraged generators to sell their electricity elsewhere. And because it did not apply to emergency purchases, it led sellers to hold back their supplies until the last minute. Finally, when the price of natural gas and pollution permits spiked, the electricity price cap was probably lower than the marginal cost of producing electricity, effectively shutting down the market when supplies were needed most. Weare also punctures several myths, including the idea that California's environmental sensitivities suppressed the construction of new plants. And he offers several solid recommendations for policymakers to pursue, including incentives for electricity users to shift their demand to times when energy is cheaper. But his most important contribution to the discussion is something that's as applicable to the latest crisis as it was to the last one: There are no easy answers, and the path of least resistance is often the worst road to take. The Sacramento Bee - Get the whole story every day - 39 SUBSCRIBE NOW! |