Iran could launch pre-emptive attack on Israel, says Irani senior commander

Waht we've seen has been an effort to provoke this very outcome. It's a necon dream come true.

"we're gonna bomb you." and "you don't have the right to nukes" over and over again, then act shocked and positivly scandalized when Iran sends an attack. "How dare you bomb us?!" and that will start a full scale war. They will point to civilians killed and injured, and "forget" about the months that they have spent threatning to bomb Iran. I mean.. if someone told me over and over that they were going to kill me, they don't have any right to be suprised when I punch them in the face.

The sabre-rattling has gone both ways.

Iran has said the world would be a better place without Israel. That it was a cancer that needed to be removed.

Israel has said that Iran can not be allowed to get nuclear weapons. That red lines must be drawn.

And on and on and on.

Would Israel or Iran be any less criminal than Bush if they did it?


No. I don't want to see Israel or Iran attack each other. Diplomacy works best.

"Saddam has WMD's, and we have to attack him and find them before they use it against us or one of our allies."

Now Iran is being threatened (and are threatening back), so, according to the Bush doctrine, each side would not just have the right, but the obligation to use any and all means to thwart the attack.
" did not begin the hostilities, but will end them, and on our terms."

How was that? Did I capture Bush's wonderful eloquence?

Scary analogy.

The destabilization of the Middle-East, is all about profits for a few. If you are scared, you are playing right into their hands.

What do you mean exactly?

We will defend our allies, in case of attack. We will not back them in a pre-emptive strike.

Someone wants to pick a fight, we won't back their play.

The reason I say this is, does Moscow really want to gamble with 160+ million lives? Even Mitt Romney wouldn't dare to blow up the whole planet(although nuking Iran wouldn't be out of the question!).

I don't doubt that an Iranian war will be many times worse than Iraq, but do you really think Moscow would be willing to gamble 160 million lives? C'mon, Putin may be Russia's Romney but he's not quite a Hitlerian madman, either.

starts to sound really good, at this point.

None of the sides have anything to offer...

without impoverishing all of us, let me know.

for starters...

1.) make our own energy
2.) local grown foods
3.) local manufactured objects

That ought to help at least a little bit... (to the tune of a few trillion...)

Also, I'm kind of tired of having this country spend a sizable fraction of the US treasury, to prop up either corrupt regimes, certain possibly theocratic states, or to continue our addiction to oil. Not smart.

How? And how quickly?

Are you actually trying to say that we'd lose more money, in not backing Israel's play, then if we backed out?
Are you actually trying to say we should keep buying foreign oil?

That's idiotic!

look...
-we already know how to make light sweet crude, from pond scum.
-we are already moving towards local food systems.
-as a member of the Maker community, we are already rebuilding the local JIT manufacturing system.

How seamlessly? You didn't even notice...

without anyone suffering. Will I be able to keep my job. Will I have income to pay my bills. Will food, water, electricity not be interrupted.

Please stay on topic.

I was staying on topic. I was just refusing your framing.

Please try to avoid back or white fallacies.

This is what you said you would do:



You really think such a change is actually possible? Why?

Been to a farmer's market?
Been to a Maker faire? (There's San Mateo, Austin, Detroit, Chicago, and NYC. There's also local groups in many cities)
How about those folks putting up solar power systems?

These already exist, and are growing.

for giggles and grins, try this one:

-one acre of pond scum can create 10,000 gallons of light sweet crude (or bio-diesel) per year
-use half the available land footprint for growing the above
-on average, 1 car needs some 2 fill ups of 10 gallons per week
-that translates out into 1000 gallons per year
-THAT translates out into 10 cars per acre, sustainable

If we have 200 million cars in the USA, then we need a line of pond scum farms 27 miles wide, stretching from LA to NYC.

That would save us something like 200 million cars X 50 weeks X 2 fillups X 10 gallons X 3 dollars per gallon= 600 billion dollars. (I'm assuming we'll charge 1 dollar per gallon).

Not a huge amount, but it's something. Also, that money stays within the American economy.

Here's another:
a 3D printer costs around 1000 dollars, and can print up in plastic anything you can design. I can even print out the electronics (chips included) using a combination of said printer, and a home-made chip masker. A buddy of mine describes himself as a "ghetto-smith." (Meaning that he lives in the 'hood, and does iron work, steel work, welding, and forging.)

My wife and I just bought the majority of our weekly food needs from a farmer's market. It's all local.

So... YES, I think this change is possible, and already happening.

Do try to keep up.

on a commercially viable basis from algae ponds? (I know, the rewards are screwed up and that's not a real measure compared to what it could be if we were truly more sustainable, but you have to start with something to measure...).

And if they are, is it just going to be few monopolies doing all this? It doesn't look like the necessary infrastructure can be afforded by most people.

I've read a bit of this, and think algae use is a great idea, especially if it can be done by people with just a modicum of skill. I get a chance at a few more acres I may well try to figure out what strains of algae I can grow. But everything I read suggests that the technology isn't there yet...

Most everything I have read says there is not enough arable land left to provide food, and no chance in hell that enough people will take on the work. It is a screamingly wide chasm between comfortably shopping at the local farmer's market and actually doing the work to get it there. Heck, as I mentioned in a post above, apples are rotting on trees (pretty good supply this year) because they can't get enough pickers. Why would those same people run to a farm to start hoeing weeds between the tomatoes and garlic?

Not that we should work toward some of this stuff, but we have 300+ million people who you are going to have to convince that they now have to spend a full 10-12 hours a week cooking, instead of working, since all their food would no longer be coming in a cardboard box. You are also going to have to help them understand why bread is now $8 to $10/loaf, after we remove all the subsidies that we are living with today. One can say that's silly, but the only reason farmer's market prices are where they are is because they are competing with lower-cost-subsidized crap.

I know a fair number of farmer's market participants, and I haven't found one that makes enough to pay for a place to live, health insurance, school for the parents and kids. That is going to be a real barrier.

We have 40+ million people on food stamps and unemployed, more every day. People who think there are such better ways sure don't seem to be making much of an impact on them, and they don't have nearly as much to lose as the rest of the serfs.

I used one of the early 3D printers years ago when working in computer-aided design, quite the technology. But it is completely dependent on the world being the way it is right now, with the precious metals that come only from China, with the materials and outputs dependent on petroleum sources. I have seen nothing that indicates they can exist apart from that, so all that will have to be kept in place.

Although I think the concept is good there are several very real barriers, the biggest one being the re-training of 300+ million people to take responsibility and make a better country, which seems more like a fairy tale than a plan. Except on a limited and very regional basis I no longer think change is possible until the nation is laying in smoldering ruins, because people are just too used to living with their comfortable fat lives.

1.) Most of my work is to continue to live a "comfortable fat life." If I wanted to live in a "lesser economically developed country," I'd hop a plane... Instead, I'd rather keep the lights on, in the cities. (If someone wants to live in a low tech hovel, on a low tech farm... well, I guess we all have our own kinkiness... but if someone tries to force ME to live on one, they'll be dealing with a heavily armed geek posse.

2.) the "precious metals" for a 3D printer can be reclaimed from waste, and from the old mines in our country...

3.) As to the question about farming... using the old WWII victory gardens as a model, I get 1400 square feet of usable land per person. That means we need something like a line 18 miles wide, from LA to NYC... for all food. (As to running out of arable land, perhaps we should take a page from the "unconventional growers" in the USA, who talk of "hydro")

3a.) for harvesting crops, we could easily use automation.

Ruby on Rails link to the database..."

As far as living in a less economically developed country, just wait on. We have disappeared several million jobs, and our "recovery" is replacing millions of mid-wage jobs with lower wage jobs and more working poor, a trend that is continuing unabated. If we don't invest hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars into training people and educating them for our research needs in energy, agriculture, etc, our current slide downwards (being hidden by QE3, interest-free loans to the wealthy, temporary food stamps and unemployment) is going to become much more apparent over the next couple decades. Barring a few miracle discoveries that suddenly change everything without a bunch of people getting out of their lazyboys we are in the process of moving ours into a much less economically developed country.


As you noted, however, you don't just need 18 wide across the country - you need water, delivered to the plants when they need it, and a climate that will grow the stuff (we get about 3-4 months of growing season in our area, much longer in the South). Not only are there are already people living in it, there is not enough water in that space, or any other to do what we are doing today.

Raised-bed intensive growing (like I do my garlic, tomatoes, etc) is not an answer - that would take far more work than picking up dinner at the local market, and we simply don't have enough people that would be willing to do that. They will, instead, buy cheap produce from China and South America as long as the oil to fly it over continues. Because the alternative, horror of horrors, might be picking up a shovel and getting some callouses. I would guess 95% of the country would rather give in to their masters than do such a wicked thing...

One answer as you suggested might be like Will Allen's place - http://www.growingpower.org/ . But that would require us to train people to like Tilapia as much as we trained them to desire beef.

I read his book the other day, and near the end even he admits that the operation isn't breaking even. Land costs too much, the expenses are too high, it's far too time-consuming for most people who do much of anything else.

And that's the problem with the whole comfortable life. It's highly dependent on the support systems we have now. Burning all those extra lights in all those over-built homes, dropping into the car for a spin without having to be limited to a 40 mile circle as we are today with the a more-or-less affordable lead acid batteries, (you can spend a bit more and get more range, but their lifespan is no greater, from what I can tell).

If we want change before it all burns to the ground, we might have to change our definition of comfortable life to make it sustainable. That ain't gonna be easy in a country full of fat people.

ALL of those problems you've mentioned can be easily solved (in fact, i've done so... repeatedly).

As to the heavily armed geek posse... I was thinking more in terms of lasers, DIY gyrocs, and tasers. "Step back...or die."

As long as I can build DIY solar furnaces, I can set somebody up with heat, power, and oil.

Low tech is something to move AWAY from.

There seems to be a certain amount of disdain for comfort. Why? Why is it more noble to work the land, as opposed to keeping a city running?

people is being done by a huge army of low-paid and slave labor, provided by subsidized corporations and dependent on increasingly expensive and hard to recover oil. Getting a few millions of pounds of Tilapia out of the tanks, or trillions of lettuce leaves - whatever, someone will have to do the work that's not doing it today, which is very likely to impact their comfort. Mechanization can, will almost certainly replace some, but that dis-employs millions more people. They won't be comfortable.

Further, despite the shiny articles in Popular Science, there is no reasonable replacement for the huge demands of cities, transportation, heat, cooling, light, etc for nuclear, petroleum, coal-based power, (a case can be made, but it will disappear millions of productive jobs and replace them with perhaps 30% of that number). New solutions are out there, but we need larger, hugely larger, numbers of research people to be finding those solutions. Except we have been under-funding that to provide extra comfort to the wealthy for a number of years. That is very likely to lead to a decrease in our comfort level regardless of our noble intent.

It's not that I am against comfort. But fat-ass America has a lesson coming. The nation has lived increasingly on debt for 40+ years, while wealthy people and their friends in the government have stolen everything they can lay their hands that would otherwise have provided human resource development to the entire friggin' nation. Did it with the consent of the credit-card class. Still doing it today, too. Today we are measuring recovery in terms of how much new debt we are generating, such as with service jobs, not employing new people or production)

How the hell such a nation can avoid having its comfort impacted I simply can't imagine.

The USA needs about 5 terawatts of power.

assume 8% efficiency per solar cell
assume .3 watts per square inch =
assume 75% throughput for "the system"

That means we get 72 megawatts per square mile of roofed cell.
that means we get 5 terawatts for a line 25 miles wide, running from LA to NYC.

Also... the "Fat-ass america has a lesson coming" sounds more like the motive, as opposed to the usa having a power problem.

than we realize. New jobs that are just replacements of living wage jobs with people who now become the working poor. A housing recovery dependent on helping the very rich. Virtually our whole life has been securitized for the profit of the wealthy, and many, many people are not just oblivious, they actively avoid looking at their own reality. (Perhaps because they know the answer will scare them to death?).

I like the idea of the solar cells you proposed, although it would have to be in addition to our current electrical infrastructure to insure 24x7 service. Also, since the infrastructure is built for AC, there will have to be conversion to AC to make those distances possible, maybe at each home. Fridges and freezers and lights work ok on DC, but tens of millions of outside AC units along with billions in industrial equipment won't (well, some could, but they would be much larger, I think). And there might be a need for millions of homes to have battery back up.

The point being that just doing those things would take a massive investment in research and infrastructure. We have spent the last 40+ years growing debt, STUDIOUSLY avoiding investing in ourselves and the country. I can't wait to hear someone try to get such a solar project going, given that the investment would be such a small thing compared to the need. I would bet even that littel bit can't get done for decades.

There is no way to sustain all of this. And all the solutions people seem to be proposing will wipe out at least 60% of the jobs of people providing the food, power, etc now, the thing that always happens with modernizing, probably the way it should be. That's assuming the 40% left will be re-trained, and we haven't really done that very well, nor have we employed the 30 million that are waiting now. Better food exists in the stores if people would just prepare it, but most don't have the time, many really don't have the skills, so the carts are loaded with boxes.

And what are we doing to change or get ready for what is likely going to be calamity?

"By 2030, as many as 13 states could have obesity rates above 60 percent, and all 50 states could be above 44 percent, according to the report."

Here.

We aren't having the great conversation about how we create a society that provides much of anything based on low-wage service jobs and a few on the top, nothing in the middle - that is, the economy we have been growing for the past 4 years. Not exactly putting in sidewalks and making sure everyone has a victory garden (I'm still thinking about starting another nonprofit that would construct those and teach their use for a couple years).

So as far as motive, I think it would be good for us to be less comfortable, and less fat, though I don't take a judgmental stance on it. It's more that I think way too many people are going to be in a really bad place when the lights go out.

I just think people have become far more comfortable in their debt-shelled bubble than we realize. New jobs that are just replacements of living wage jobs with people who now become the working poor. A housing recovery dependent on helping the very rich. Virtually our whole life has been securitized for the profit of the wealthy, and many, many people are not just oblivious, they actively avoid looking at their own reality. (Perhaps because they know the answer will scare them to death?).

I like the idea of the solar cells you proposed, although it would have to be in addition to our current electrical infrastructure to insure 24x7 service. Also, since the infrastructure is built for AC, there will have to be conversion to AC to make those distances possible, maybe at each home. Fridges and freezers and lights work ok on DC, but tens of millions of outside AC units along with billions in industrial equipment won't (well, some could, but they would be much larger, I think). And there might be a need for millions of homes to have battery back up.

TO make the problem even more interesting, most AC equipment prefers true sine wave AC, instead of just building a square wave inverter (some stuff doesn't mind square wave, but you can kill a stereo in a DAY, using solely square wave...)
In order to really make the system work in a robust manner, I was thinking of sets of micro-grids, with solar derived bio-diesel back up, to handle non-sunlight/peak use times.

The point being that just doing those things would take a massive investment in research and infrastructure. We have spent the last 40+ years growing debt, STUDIOUSLY avoiding investing in ourselves and the country. I can't wait to hear someone try to get such a solar project going, given that the investment would be such a small thing compared to the need. I would bet even that littel bit can't get done for decades.

The thing is, we already have the needed technology to fix these problems.

There is no way to sustain all of this. And all the solutions people seem to be proposing will wipe out at least 60% of the jobs of people providing the food, power, etc now, the thing that always happens with modernizing, probably the way it should be. That's assuming the 40% left will be re-trained, and we haven't really done that very well, nor have we employed the 30 million that are waiting now. Better food exists in the stores if people would just prepare it, but most don't have the time, many really don't have the skills, so the carts are loaded with boxes.

I disagree. Simply changing our power inputs to solar and wind frees up a HUGE amount of money. If we HAVE to lose jobs, then why not create a machine service lifestyle?

And what are we doing to change or get ready for what is likely going to be calamity?

"By 2030, as many as 13 states could have obesity rates above 60 percent, and all 50 states could be above 44 percent, according to the report."

changing things to a lower fat diet solves a few of these problems...

But the corps make SO much money as it is, and I am not sure they see the profit in making it different. And that's the ONLY thing they care about.

I understand the square wave inverter problem. Maybe power could be provided with local AND long distance sources, depending on the load. Regardless, it is still HUGE investment, lots of training and construction to get it out there, and we are still shedding public employees, are still inflated and strangled by debt, with little in the way of modern production facilities to do all this. We will see what the future brings. And it will dis-employ a LOT of people, who will not be happy, so perhaps we need to have a national conversation about how we live in an economy where we serve coffee and sell insurance to each other. Or perhaps the research fairy will smile on us again and give us something new to create jobs without destroying the earth.

The big fight will be over that "freed up money", because it is in the pockets of the wealthy and corporations. They will see this as taking it away from them (we really should move to a citizens-owned coop and get rid of the profit in the process) and I suspect they would rather see us all dead before that happens. Not really, perhaps, but they won't let go gently. And since they seem to control a good portion of the decisions being made, we are going to have to fight them AND their lackeys who wield political power. and greedy capitalists make the worst Republicans look about as threatening as PeeWee Herman. So a big battle over political power too. And force won't do it.

La Boetie told us a long time ago that the way to beat the tyrants is not to confront them, but to remove their support so they fall on their own. To win his way, (and it might be the only one) means enough people realize how they are owned and determine to change it. But that is gonna take a huge training and consciousness raising effort, make the 60's look like a church social. It could be worked at on an individual and regional basis, trying to drive down the costs and make it competitive. Regardless, So this could be done on a regiI see this as being possible on a limited or regional basis, however, unless we have some big calamity that really causes change, those who hold power and money likely won't let go until there is real blood out there.

So maybe the answer becomes small groups getting these asserts on their own, slowly but surely puling more away. With persistence they could win, and perhaps with a lot less dead people.

with local power, the whole "corps have money" thing is irrelevant.

the hybrid of local and long distance CAN work, but that means a much more complicated intertie point. (At the very least, you'd have to keep matching power conditions - voltage and amperage leads, phase, and the match-ups thereof). We COULD develop an economy of long distance power, on bio-diesel and hydrogen...

I tend to get nervous when someone starts talking about "telling people how much they are owned." I'd rather just set things up, and then move on. Uprisings are not my cup of tea (seen three...trust me, they're not fun.)

Ms. Tubman knew what she was talking about.

And it's not really "telling" people they are owned, rather creating an event where they discover it themselves. Maybe along the lines of Highlander Folk School, with Myles Horton getting the black and white miners to cooperate in the 30's, 40's (?).

Because we are owned. A look at who gets the income and who has the resources makes it easy to see.

The problem is those resources, capital, are what is needed to implement much of this, and they own not only the income and assets but the lawmakers that funnel it to them.

It could be done on a smaller scale, but if the planet burns down while we are waiting what's the point? If we don't act fast enough to save the good the bad may simply destroy it. We have to run a counterinsurgency campaign, I think, because they are in control only because many people are part of their web...the arms, legs, and eyes that La Boetie talked about, the thing that actually gives them power. And the only reason they would turn away from them is when they find it despicable that are undermining their own future. I think La Botie is talking about people changing their minds AND beginning to own the means of production - i.e. their own solar panels, perhaps - when he advises that we must remove their support.

Otherwise, they hold the means of change in their claws, and it is gonna be a real fight to get it, which they stand a better than even chance of winning, or even just delaying, I think.

1.) build those CO2 eating balloons I was talking about earlier...
2.) get folks into building local power grids

As to the rest of it...

I'll skip the uprisings, thank you.

Just because someone feels wronged doesn't automatically translate to violence, unless you equate taking over a school board or a few million people informing their politician that they are now working for them with an uprising. If they are working together, they can figure out much more productive things to do than run around in the street - which is what I equate uprisings with.

Besides, the first time someone is convinced to work on a local power grid or CO2 eating balloon, they have started down a path of a new consciousness whether they realize it or not. But if they do that the way things are done today without change they will use debt to accomplish it, which will be securitized. The grasping, greedy claws of the wealthy and powerful still control.

The people would remain as serfs, but perhaps without global warming. I don't see that as any improvement.

If they retain control, they will achieve much the same result as an uprising. but without so much debris on the streets .

1.) "education" (read: here's how you were f$#cked over" as opposed to "here's some learning and thinking tools, so you can choose your own path")
2.) organize the newly educated to point against something
3.) scapegoat time.

As to consciousness changing, I'll keep mine the way it is, thank you.

as to the rest... The solar furnaces are pretty cheap. No debt needed, if you scrounge in the right places.

Myles Horton at Highlander described nearly exactly that.

It's dishonest to say one doesn't have an agenda, but yeah, I understand what you are saying. We can see it around us in the world, eh?

later

Can joe and jennifer blow get an acreage, dig a couple of one-acre ponds, and produce enough algae to make the bio-diesel for their vw rabbit for the year without too much skill? Maybe need to use a microscope to identify their algae, or maybe not, but perhaps not need much more than junior college maybe even high school auto shop to accomplish it...

I have always thought that would be the most disruptive of technologies...and a great way to take the awesome power and tragedy of petroleum back into the people's hands where it belongs...

There is a guy in an algae fuel forum that wrote a book, marketing seems to say that individual production is possible but last I checked it was near $200, and as bad as I want to read it, I have to wait to see if the library will ever buy it

There was a book from the mid 90's that talked about how to make bio-diesel from pond scum... I'll have to remember the name. (it's in my private stacks...somewhere...) that I verified.

10,000 gallons an acre works out to something like 4,000 linear feet needed per VW bus. (You can stack these things...)

No microscope needed. What you are going for is the "scum" on the water.

Moving to energy self-sufficiency will mean millions of people will lose their jobs and have to pick up different ones in the emerging sectors. They will need help from the public to get by.

Any other questions? Is that a reason not to do it?

over the next 50 t0 100 years as technology advances. Not in the near term though.

why the hell would we want to continue using oil to move our economy?

Do you find all of these wars to be quick and seamless?

the reason we would want to continue is that it works better than any present alternative.

And I might point out there is considerable suffering even as we now pay very rich people $40 billion a month on an open-ended model so their assets won't go any lower, while an increasing millions of people are without jobs and on food stamps.

I think isolationism is silly, but to argue that continuing to live as a kingdom of serfs giving their lives so people like Rmoney can maintain his lifestyle is more desirable than the hardship that comes along with any struggle for freedom seems like an argument that would be made by cowards.

but it transitioning our economy without a lot of thought, planing, and public acceptance is a recipe for disaster. It could cause enormous suffering. Which is why I ask for details when offered platitudes.

We can make our own fuel...
We can make our own food...
We can make our own equipment...

As for planning, how about open source planning? This would allow for very responsive local planning.

How steps do you think are between out current economy and your "details"?

Who will lead this change? Who will pay for this change? Will there be a national referendum so the people have a voice?

It's already being done. No need for a Federal level referendum. Those interested are getting involved. (A solar furnace doesn't cost that much... it really depends on your sense of style...)

Who's leading the change? People like me, and the guys running co-housing farms in Pioneer valley, and those setting up shop in Boston, and Maine, and Philadelphia, and Detroit, and Atlanta,...

On reflection, I think what bothers certain people about the Maker Movement, is the same thing that bothers them about Occupy... No central leadership core. We're all open source.

and somehow conflate that into a national movement that will fundamentally change the economy. It is nonsense.

Millions of people depend on global markets for their jobs. The idea that the Maker Movement will replace those jobs at the same levels of salaries and benefits in nonsense.

1.) If it's nonsense, please fell free to show your proof. I have showed how we can make the change to local oil, power, food, and manufactured goods. Please feel free to show refuting proof...

2.) You don't have to replace the whole system, to make the needed changes.

3.) you seem threatened by this topic... why is that? You keep saying my ideas are nonsense, yet you show no proof. Why is that?

will quietly go away. Considering how many people those businesses employ it is a ridiculous assumption. How are you going to stop companies from participating in the global economy? We sell billions of dollars worth of goods to the entire world - are you really going to stop exports? What about imports - what if I want a Japanese tv or a German car?

I was right. You're feeling threatened.

1.) The US economy is deeply dependent on foreign oil. The more folks we get "clean," the more money we have on hand.
1a.) in the event of an oil shock, not unlike that of 1973, we'd have a "Plan B" in place, already functioning.

2.) Did anybody say it's all or nothing? If YOU want a german car, fine. Have at it. I'm pushing to remove our dependencies.

You really need to look at the dependency issues at hand. How many troops d you want to sacrifice, to get cheap foreign oil?

As to a previous coment at a "tiny" fraction: 600 billion is about 4% of the economy. That's small, but not "tiny." Oil and Gas are also the bedrock of our economic chain.

3.) if you can print up plastic stuff out of ABS, why buy the finished product from Walmart? you could keep the money yourself!

that will go over real big.

Is that the best you've got?

Seriously?

WHEN did I say that I want to "abolish most manufacturing jobs?" The quick sketch idea I've put forth, involving 3D printers would mean MORE local manufacturing jobs. Most of the current products people are buying, come from China. That's another loss of money for the USA, and a loss of potential jobs.

Shame on you, for trying to keep Americans from working!

I expected better from a person posting on DU.

Hack's strawman arguments need work, as his last post was just not up to par.

EDIT: and my spelling could use another cup of coffee...

is that he doesn't believe global climate change or the poisoning of our biosphere are pressing matters; that we should kick back and allow 'market forces' to dictate the required changes to how we produce and use energy and so forth.

Lol.

agrarian future as our answer need to remember that we used to be that way, and the first chance that people got to leave the farm, they ran as fast as they could for the exits.

They should also learn from the experience of apple orchards here in Washington State which are having to let fruit die on the tree because they can't get enough pickers, what with our insistence on deporting people here illegally. It seems that people aren't lining up for lower-paying shit jobs in the fields, when they can get the same at McDonalds.

Then again, what we are doing now is not sustainable, and the end is coming, whether we have a thoughtful conversation and a plan or not.

And given that we have walked away from our responsibility to develop human resources in the name of profit, I suspect that we are going to add to the millions of people just in this country who are living with disaster every single day simply because of our attention to short-term profit and ignorance about investing in people and the country.

it's just that it is taking a more grass-roots, boot-strapped operational tone, instead of a big showy political plank...

My neighbors and I already have a deal: I share food and power with them, and they help me build more projects.

Oh, my!

Defending one's nation with war is a necessary evil, but starting one is not.

This is also a ridiculous article, quoting a ridiculous comment. Yes, Iran "could launch a preemptive attack." It won't.

to a war that could easily engulf the region

start making our own fuel, and deal with the refugees...

Another Israeli foreign Policy invention sold to the world. God I'm sick of this bull shit.

This is an Iranian official making this statement - not an Israeli one.

Just saying..

I don't know if it is their invention though. If you consider 1837 not too long ago to factor into contemporary law, then England was the first to use it in on our time...against the United States(Guess what? The US didn't like it).

http://www.uni-miskolc.hu/~wwwdrint/20042rouillard1.htm

If that was what the Israelis perceived as fact then good by Iran.

This is just hypothetical.

but they wont

Any nation would launch a preemptive attack if it is clear that an enemy is about to attack it and preemption would be a military advantage. Isreal did that not too long ago.

This isn't anything to get worked up about.

spells at Israel until everyone takes 10d6 damage, but they won't.

Neither is going to fire the first shot unless they're absolutely sure they have enough people backing them to win. They're just going to keep waving their dicks at one another while the rest of us roll our eyes.

After all, where would all his money machines go?

How stupid is that? Of course they say that in hopes that the US will put pressure on Israel to not attack them.