[quote] "The intelligence is practically non-existent," one exasperated American intelligence source said. Most of the intelligence being used to support the idea of a link between al-Qa'eda and Saddam Hussein comes from Kurdish groups who are the bitter enemies of Ansar al-Islam, he said. <hr></blockquote>
Haha. I love this. This article spends its time criticizing the Bush Administration for unspecific and non-detailed evidence. Well, this article does the exact same thing. I love the way the author put it, "one exasperated American intelligence source." That is a classic.
The fact that George Tenet is there behind Powell says something as well. It says that the man at the head of the CIA, who probably knows more than the individual CIA intelligent sources, agrees with what the Administration is putting forth. I don't know about you guys, but I am more inclined to trust Colin Powell than the British intelligence community.
[quote] But if Mr Powell tries to prove the link between Iraq and al-Qa'eda, the whole thing could fall apart. France, Russia and China all have their own al-Qa'eda problems: France with Algerian terrorists; Russia with Chechens; and China with Muslim separatists in its north-west Xinjiang province. <hr></blockquote>
I don't understand the reasoning here. Why would the fact that these countries have difficulties with Al-Qaeda be reason for them to (a) doubt that Al-Qaeda members are hiding in Iraq, or (b) to be unable to support war in Iraq. It doesn't make sense.
[quote] According to British and American intelligence sources "new" material General Powell intends to present to the UN Security Council comes from Iraqi opposition groups and is not regarded as credible. <hr></blockquote>
Oh, yeah, the same opposition forces who have that wonderful earth-imaging satelite network right? Gee, I can only hope for the day when the US can have as much technical know-how, and manufacturing prowess as the Iraqi opposition groups.
Definitely scrutinize what they say. Definitely. But don't post articles that only post half the truth to prove your point.
My American government prof. said the most intelligent, and most plainly obvious thing this afternoon regarding the repot. He said "Don't take what other people say about what Powell said as evidence to support or not your position. READ his actual speech, and get your support from there."
The American Government is the full of the stupidest people in the whole country. Bush is one of them! Clinton was a lot smarter, but as corrupt as hell, and Bush's father was crazy. I wish they would all just go away! lol God this country is going down hill fast. Bush is so concerned with F-ing iraq but has anyone noticed that the NASD is at 1301.5. The economy is shot! The predictions at Value Line show it going back up but it never does. It's not going to unless they fix it. It's not magic you know.
Oh and you want to know who killed the astronauts in the columbia accident. The American government did. They give NASA only 14.5 billion a year. Then the government tells them what to spend there money on. So NASA can't use that 14.5 Billion for what they need to. Did you know the American Government loses more that 14.5 Billion yearly! Well they do. If they stopped being so socialist they could support the things that really mattered. Like NASA and science and the economy and Americans in general. No wonder only 40% of the US votes!
an article from one of the few people who know what is going on:
February 04, 2003
The Space Shuttle: Another Government Failure
By Paul Craig Roberts
Would you take seven family members on a cross country trip in a 22-year old car that had clocked several hundred thousand miles? The car would be too unreliable, you say? It would experience brake failure on a mountain road or overheat in a scorching dessert. You wouldn?t risk it?
The U.S. government would. That?s how we lost the space shuttle Columbia and seven astronauts. Columbia had been around the world many times and had undergone the stresses and strains of 27 escapes from the earth?s gravitational pull and 27 re-entries of earth?s atmosphere traveling at 25 times the speed of sound. That is too much wear and tear for a vehicle with no margin for error and 2.5 million parts.
NASA is having to conduct a space program on a shoestring. That?s why we lost the astronauts. That?s why the U.S., on the verge of war, suffered a tremendous blow to its prestige when Columbia broke apart upon reentry.
Space isn?t important enough for the policymakers in Washington. It is not a program politicians can use to buy votes. Better to pour the money, as President Bush proposed in his state of the union address, [SOTU address text video audio] Â*into a rat hole of sexual promiscuity by going to war against AIDS in Africa.Â*
A truth-teller could say that the war against AIDS consists of keeping infected people alive longer with expensive drugs so that they can continue to be sexually active and further spread the disease. According to UN projections, sub-Saharan Africa will experience 55 million AIDS deaths between 2000 and 2020. Africa?s graveyards are already full. The dead are being buried vertically.
AIDS is entirely a result of sexual behavior. It is insanity to make U.S. taxpayers responsible for other people?s sexual behavior - in the meantime starving NASA and killing highly trained astronauts.
The government?s job is to set priorities and to treat scarce resources with respect. Assuming responsibility for Iraq, the Middle East, and AIDS in Africa is the way to go broke fast.
Investigators and congressional committees will search into the cause of the Columbia disaster in order to distract the public?s attention from the obvious: NASA?s $14.5 billion budget is not enough money to do its job. The priority placed on NASA by the government?s budgeteers is so low that our president and elected representatives had rather spend money subsidizing sexual promiscuity in Africa.
During Columbia?s last launch it was observed that insulation on the external fuel tank broke loose, striking Columbia?s left wing. Why didn?t Columbia dock at the space station before reentry in order to check for damage?
The answer to this question shows the damage budget constraints have done to NASA. The astronauts aboard Columbia were not trained for space station docking. Columbia lacked the adapter collar necessary for linkup to the station. The astronauts were not sufficiently trained in spacewalk to examine the ship even if they had been trained to dock it.
If this isn?t operation on a shoestring budget, what is?
NASA is not merely underfunded. According to the Budget of the U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2003, ?the integrity of NASA?s merit-based research is seriously eroded by the practice of congressionally directed spending known as earmarks. NASA has suffered from a surge in both the number and cost of earmarks.? Earmarks have risen from 20 in 1997 to 120 in 2002.
Many earmarks have nothing to do with NASA?s mission: ?For example, the Congress earmarked NASA?s current budget to fund corporate jets, college dormitories, libraries, and museums.?
According to the government accounting office, waste and fraud in the federal budget is larger than NASA?s budget. In May of last year the Office of Management and Budget announced that the federal government had doled out $20 billion in health, housing and food benefits to people not entitled to them. Erroneous Medicare payments alone were almost the size of NASA?s budget.
When it comes to waste, the GAO barely scratches the surface. The federal education budget is several times larger than NASA?s. What?s to show for it? According to a recently released report, a 1955 high school education is the equivalent of a university education today. In 1955 there was no federal aid to education.
Science has more to offer us than war. Let?s spend $100 billion on regime change in the Middle East after attending to the safety and survival of the brave men and women we send into space.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow?s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
SDW, I looked up these 'poll numbers' and can't believe that you would actually post results from internet polls, especially ones that say all results are 'unscientific'.
That really explains the Fox News poll doesn't it?
Let's wait and see some actual poll results before we start saying that the 'American Public overwhelmingly supports war'.
I'm wondering, will it be hypocritical for all the people who incessantly chant "It's about the oil" all of the time, to not sell their cars after the Iraq thing goes down? If we aren't benefitting from Iraqi oil now, surely we will be afterward (even if it is some fractional percent in the beginning that is getting into your tank). In short, do they just like whining about the source of their oil or will they actually take "action" knowing that US supplies will be "tainted" with ill-gotten Iraqi oil? I wanna see some people selling cars (or shaddap already)!
Man, that was quick! What happened to the padlock?
I agree about the France thing. It's ironic for anyone who uses the "war for oil slogan", because it is equally relevant that some are in the "no war for oil camp".
It'll be a day or two before we see scientific polls... Thats a good point to make when you post something, i agree.
But I will say this about internet polls. For the most part, they show what the majority will be in actual scientific polls, but their margins are always much larger than the scientific ones tend to be. Just something i have noticed.
I have a feeling that most Americans will be "convinced" to "marginally convinced" from Colin Powell's presentation.
As for the other countries who spoke at the UN today. Realize that ALL of the statements that the ambassadors to the UN from countries (such as france, russia, etc) read were written before the evidence was presented. What will be telling is what these governments say over the next week.
But what does that say about us as a people and our values when it's ok to take another countries' natural resources by force. While using the excuse of removing their weapons of mass destruction. Geez if you want to find a country with those you could stick a pin in a map. It's just that this one has something we want. Not honurable at all. Kind of like something Saddam would do.
I locked the thread initially but reopened it with the tag at the top of SDW's original post.
The thread is very misleading without pointing out these are internet threads. He made it sound like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News were reporting these as actual poll results which is not the case.
So discussion can continue but keep this in mind when discussing these 'numbers' (which have changed somewhat as well).
It was actually the Fox News 'Poll' that got me thinking about it. How could it be so far off from the other polls? Bias couldn't make up 20% and I realized that it was an internet poll. I guess we know who's visiting FoxNews.com and who isn't.
<strong>But what does that say about us as a people and our values when it's ok to take another countries' natural resources by force. While using the excuse of removing their weapons of mass destruction. Geez if you want to find a country with those you could stick a pin in a map. It's just that this one has something we want. Not honurable at all. Kind of like something Saddam would do.
However which way you wish to arrange it in your head matters only to you. Question is, are you going to sell your car?
The day you hear the report that the US is filling up its oil tankers in Iraq w/o any sort of compensation to the nation of Iraq is when you can talk about "taking natural resources by force". Until then you are just blowing hot air.
However which way you wish to arrange it in your head matters only to you. Question is, are you going to sell your car?
The day you hear the report that the US is filling up its oil tankers in Iraq w/o any sort of compensation to the nation of Iraq is when you can talk about "taking natural resources by force". Until then you are just blowing hot air.
Oh so they're inviting us over now eh? If what you're suggesting was true then we'd set up new government with out our interference. And let them sell the oil to us at their price. How much you want to bet that doesn't happen? At least not in our lifetime.
<strong>Come on. You lose. The argument is over. Support for war is overwhelming. Look at the damn numbers. Just look.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Look at the numbers of an internet poll is a horrible argument. It's quite frankly idiotic. Anyway, since when is the opinion of the majority infallible? If a majority of Americans say gay people should be beaten with two by fours wrapped in barbed wire, does that make it somehow acceptable? No.
Feh. I don't expect much, but I still expected better than this from you.
I would simply like to point out that the title does simply state that "The american public now overwhelmingly supports war." It doesn't say that makes it a legitimate reason for war. It is still up for debate whether or not it is true that there is "overwhelming" support. I would agree that probably a majority of American's support "military action," but I don't think that includes looting the oil fields.
Anyway, It's not really fair to make your comparison to gay bashing since that's the point this thread seems intended to originally make.
I would simply like to point out that the title does simply state that "The american public now overwhelmingly supports war." It doesn't say that makes it a legitimate reason for war. It is still up for debate whether or not it is true that there is "overwhelming" support. I would agree that probably a majority of American's support "military action," but I don't think that includes looting the oil fields.
Anyway, It's not really fair to make your comparison to gay bashing since that's the point this thread seems intended to originally make.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not comparing it to gay bashing. I'm drawing a parallel. By using his same logic, whatever the majority supports is perfectly acceptable.
SDW said "Come on. You lose. The argument is over. Support for war is overwhelming. Look at the damn numbers. Just look."
No, the argument isn't over--even if the polls were reliable.
Look, I haven't really decided whether or not I support this war yet. I've been swaying back and forth between both camps over the last few weeks. However, SDW's argument is absolutely retarded and I felt the need to point that out.
Actually, my point was that you WEREN'T using parallel logic. You compared two things that have no logical relationship.
You said
"Anyway, since when is the opinion of the majority infallible? "
That wasn't the point of the original statement. Just because the majority has an opinion, and that is stated doesn't mean that it is assumed that it is "infallible."
I feel much like BR on this, I've been swaying back and forth between both sides. I don't think weapons inspections are working, and I don't think they ever will. It's too easy to anticipate them and move weapons around. It is obvious to me that Saddam has many weapons hidden away and I've figured this for years. Whether he's connected to terrorists, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least. I think the Bush administration has a good case against Saddam, and I think Saddam should definately be removed from power.
But...I don't agree with war. I don't agree with launching a few thousand warheads into the capital, hoping they solely hit their intended targets. I don't agree with possibly killing 500,000 to 1 million innocent civilians just because they are unfortunate enough to be living under Saddam's rules. I don't think the U.S. should lead an attack without global support, thus opening the door for any country to attack a country should it feel like it, in the future.
But I also don't have an alternative plan and while I disagree with this coming down to war, I don't see any other viable solution. So I'm stumped. Being a Canadian though, I support my fellow Americans in whatever is decided by the public. I just hope there isn't too much bloodshed over there, and I hope that there isn't too much terrorist activity in the U.S. and Canada.
We Canadians and Americans may not agree on a lot of things, but we are neigbors, and whatever happens to one of us, does greatly affect the other. I personally don't want to see a nuclear cloud rising out of New York, because I know I, and every single person I know and love, will be dead within a few hours.
I guess we'll see what we'll see....
As for the oil issue, many of you know where I stand. I realized debating the issue was useless. There are far too many skeptics here.
As for OBJRA10 and Splinemodel and maybe a few others. You might find this of interest:
"SG: It's not very big at all! I picked it up - you can pick it up with one hand. Took it out actually on a sidewalk. This device gathered, very passively, less than one watt of power from the environment - I won't say how it was done, I'm not allowed to at this point - and the machine started up. It generated hundreds of watts of power in usable form, actually running, and we were astonished to see this. We hooked this up ourselves, so it was no mystery about it. We even selected the things to hook up to this thing. It ran a 300-watt light bulb, a 100-watt light bulb, a stereo and an oscillating fan with an electric motor, all at the same time with literally no artificial manmade input of power."
"SG: There were no hidden power sources. As I said, it could be picked up and taken outside and put on the sidewalk, and there it ran! And this is something obviously which could be put in every home, in every car and every industry and would enable the world to leave the era of want and war and enter an era of abundance and peace for as long as we want to create it."
"GN: Tuesday, George Bush in his State of the Union address was pushing for the use of hydrogen fuel in cars, which is something I've been jumping up and down for, for years now. But, one of the problems today with the hydrogen fuel is to generate the kind of electricity in order to generate the hydrogen.
SG: That's right.
GN: And that has been a serious problem, so my two-fold question - my question two-fold is will your zero point energy concept - would that work directly in automobiles or could you use it to create the electricity to make the hydrogen for the cars?
SG: Well, the answer is both. In other words, you already have two hundred million cars on the road in America, and six hundred and some million in the world. Those are using oil and gas. The ideal thing to do initially - because most people are not going to yank the engine out of their car and buy a multi-thousand dollar engine.
GN: No, they can't afford it.
SG: So what you want to do is use this free energy to have a way of cracking the hydrogen off of water and then have that hydrogen run the cars. I have just met with an inventor who has a fuel injector that you can screw into where your spark plug goes and the car will run on hydrogen. So this technology would allow that to be feasible what the President called for. So the existing internal combustion cars and trucks could be converted to clean burning hydrogen until such time that all the cars that are made come out with a purely electric propulsion system that would be running off of this generator. So I think that, you know, this can be done. Again, we intend to get this information, when we have the final scientific reports in a few months, to the President and to his inner circle. We certainly can get access to that. And I think that this would be an important thing for the National Security Council, the aspect of it that deals with economic security and energy issues, to know about because there's no question. I mean, whether you're on the left or the right, or whatever, everyone acknowledges today that it is in the long term, and even short term interest of the United States to wean ourselves off of this addictive black gold known as oil. And I think that the sooner that can be done, the sooner we can move on to a new and more hopeful phase in our history."
"GN: Zero Point energy results from the principals of quantum mechanics, which has to do with the physics of subatomic phenomena. Would you explain that for us so that most of us can understand just what we're talking about here?
SG: Well, as I understand it, if you look at the space around us, not outer space, just the space in the room where you're sitting. That space and the structure of space and the actually fundamental level at which matter and energy is fluxing out of some very potent field of energy. That's in some type of a sort of homeostasis. And what these technologies do is that it sort of perturbs the homeostasis enough to tap into that baseline energy or that energy that's in the quantum vacuum, some would call it, that's around us, that matter and energy are sort of fluxing in and out of and can tap into it and it's almost like pulling energy out of a reservoir of energy that's there all the time but isn't in a form that can actually be used.
What these systems do is tap into that energy and in the case of the device that we saw, actually converts it into usable controlled energy on demand, which was the astonishing thing. I have to admit I have seen some other "over unity" systems where there's more energy coming out than put in, but it was in a form that was not electric power that was easily usable or convertible and therefore wasn't really immediately practical and in some cases people were estimating upwards of fifteen million dollars to get it into a form and an access form that this brilliant inventor had in this very simple system that you could literally pick up with one hand and carry out on a sidewalk and turn things on with.
So I think that there's such an enormous body of information on this. If you look, there's a new almost thousand page book that Dr. Tom Bearden has put out that's almost encyclopedic in the information on this and he sent me a copy of it. I'm very grateful to him for that and I encourage people to get it if they have the stomach to go through the details.
But I think that many people, as I said, Dr. Gene Mallove, Tom Valone, and many people, have studied this and have written about the fact that this has happened and have done sort of an ethnography of this where they've studied where there have been a whole culture of scientists over the last hundred years who have in fact discovered this and have invented devices that worked like this, but they have all met some terrible fate out of, of course, the big special interests and cartels that would like to keep us all metered to the public utility companies and to the gas pumps and while that's certainly understandable, it's no big surprise that people of vast economic and power and geopolitical interests would do such things. We're at the point now that it cannot go forward any further without jeopardizing the entirety of the human future."
"GN: Now realistically, Steven, if you had no obstacles, and you're going to have some, but if you didn't have any, when do you think you might be able to get something like this to market, or at least to a practical test phase?
SG: A practical test phase - we're shooting for two to three months, and out to then a manufacturable prototype after the test phase, perhaps a year or so, and then after that to market. We hope that by the first quarter or mid-2004 these can be made available. Now, of course, we don't know what we're going to encounter and when you get into these sorts of engineering issues you may run into all kinds of disappointments and so I'm speculating here, but this is our intention and we intend to be able to do that."
"And remember, there are many applications for this. Imagine if you had a power up system for satellites so that you didn't have them failing in their power or having solar panels that had micro-meteorites damaging them, you could extend the life of satellites and save an enormous amount of money. If you had these things, these sort of power systems eventually could be in every appliance so that every appliance wouldn't even need to be plugged in. Eventually you could have construction so homes wouldn't even have wiring. Every lamp and every appliance could have its own power source.
This thing is efficient and miniaturizable, if there is such a word - so that you could do this and you would be able to have everything that is made have its own power source and it would completely change the way architecture and construction takes place. Of course the list just goes on and on, but our goal is to be able to do this at least in a generation one stable, usable system, certainly within a year to year and a half. I would like to think sooner, but knowing how things happen in the world, I think it could very well be that long or a bit longer.
I would caution we don't want to take too much longer. We are going to be very aggressively capitalizing this, putting the funds into this, so that that can be done and we can collapse the timeframe because, frankly, Tom Bearden and I were discussing this one time just before we were meeting with members of, doing a briefing for, the staff of the senate environment committee. He said that if these new technologies don't begin to roll off of the conveyor belt like sausages by the first quarter, or some time around that, of 2004, given the fact that the biosphere is being so strained, given the geopolitical tensions, we may simply just be out of time."
_______________________________________________
Listen to the interview people. I expect the same people to say the same crap I've already heard...This can't be true, this is a hoax, this is this, this is that.
But we will see, won't we? Very soon, I might add. I admit there are some crazy people in the world, but I doubt there is anyone crazy enough to broadcast this on a radio program (Coast To Coast AM) that has millions upon millions of listeners (and that can be multiplied by a hundred, after interviews on every network available, in the next year) and give specific dates of when to expect this, if it is just a hoax.
This is one man I put a great deal of faith into. Now everyone line up to bite my head off.
Comments
War is usually started within the last through first quarter of the Moon.
My bet is Sunday evening on the 3rd of March.
Haha. I love this. This article spends its time criticizing the Bush Administration for unspecific and non-detailed evidence. Well, this article does the exact same thing. I love the way the author put it, "one exasperated American intelligence source." That is a classic.
The fact that George Tenet is there behind Powell says something as well. It says that the man at the head of the CIA, who probably knows more than the individual CIA intelligent sources, agrees with what the Administration is putting forth. I don't know about you guys, but I am more inclined to trust Colin Powell than the British intelligence community.
[quote] But if Mr Powell tries to prove the link between Iraq and al-Qa'eda, the whole thing could fall apart. France, Russia and China all have their own al-Qa'eda problems: France with Algerian terrorists; Russia with Chechens; and China with Muslim separatists in its north-west Xinjiang province. <hr></blockquote>
I don't understand the reasoning here. Why would the fact that these countries have difficulties with Al-Qaeda be reason for them to (a) doubt that Al-Qaeda members are hiding in Iraq, or (b) to be unable to support war in Iraq. It doesn't make sense.
[quote] According to British and American intelligence sources "new" material General Powell intends to present to the UN Security Council comes from Iraqi opposition groups and is not regarded as credible. <hr></blockquote>
Oh, yeah, the same opposition forces who have that wonderful earth-imaging satelite network right? Gee, I can only hope for the day when the US can have as much technical know-how, and manufacturing prowess as the Iraqi opposition groups.
Definitely scrutinize what they say. Definitely. But don't post articles that only post half the truth to prove your point.
My American government prof. said the most intelligent, and most plainly obvious thing this afternoon regarding the repot. He said "Don't take what other people say about what Powell said as evidence to support or not your position. READ his actual speech, and get your support from there."
" Come on. You lose. The argument is over. Support for war is overwhelming. Look at the damn numbers. Just look. "
God you are such a child. That doesn't make it right. This is about controling oil and nothing else.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
Oh and you want to know who killed the astronauts in the columbia accident. The American government did. They give NASA only 14.5 billion a year. Then the government tells them what to spend there money on. So NASA can't use that 14.5 Billion for what they need to. Did you know the American Government loses more that 14.5 Billion yearly! Well they do. If they stopped being so socialist they could support the things that really mattered. Like NASA and science and the economy and Americans in general. No wonder only 40% of the US votes!
an article from one of the few people who know what is going on:
February 04, 2003
The Space Shuttle: Another Government Failure
By Paul Craig Roberts
Would you take seven family members on a cross country trip in a 22-year old car that had clocked several hundred thousand miles? The car would be too unreliable, you say? It would experience brake failure on a mountain road or overheat in a scorching dessert. You wouldn?t risk it?
The U.S. government would. That?s how we lost the space shuttle Columbia and seven astronauts. Columbia had been around the world many times and had undergone the stresses and strains of 27 escapes from the earth?s gravitational pull and 27 re-entries of earth?s atmosphere traveling at 25 times the speed of sound. That is too much wear and tear for a vehicle with no margin for error and 2.5 million parts.
NASA is having to conduct a space program on a shoestring. That?s why we lost the astronauts. That?s why the U.S., on the verge of war, suffered a tremendous blow to its prestige when Columbia broke apart upon reentry.
Space isn?t important enough for the policymakers in Washington. It is not a program politicians can use to buy votes. Better to pour the money, as President Bush proposed in his state of the union address, [SOTU address text video audio] Â*into a rat hole of sexual promiscuity by going to war against AIDS in Africa.Â*
A truth-teller could say that the war against AIDS consists of keeping infected people alive longer with expensive drugs so that they can continue to be sexually active and further spread the disease. According to UN projections, sub-Saharan Africa will experience 55 million AIDS deaths between 2000 and 2020. Africa?s graveyards are already full. The dead are being buried vertically.
AIDS is entirely a result of sexual behavior. It is insanity to make U.S. taxpayers responsible for other people?s sexual behavior - in the meantime starving NASA and killing highly trained astronauts.
The government?s job is to set priorities and to treat scarce resources with respect. Assuming responsibility for Iraq, the Middle East, and AIDS in Africa is the way to go broke fast.
Investigators and congressional committees will search into the cause of the Columbia disaster in order to distract the public?s attention from the obvious: NASA?s $14.5 billion budget is not enough money to do its job. The priority placed on NASA by the government?s budgeteers is so low that our president and elected representatives had rather spend money subsidizing sexual promiscuity in Africa.
During Columbia?s last launch it was observed that insulation on the external fuel tank broke loose, striking Columbia?s left wing. Why didn?t Columbia dock at the space station before reentry in order to check for damage?
The answer to this question shows the damage budget constraints have done to NASA. The astronauts aboard Columbia were not trained for space station docking. Columbia lacked the adapter collar necessary for linkup to the station. The astronauts were not sufficiently trained in spacewalk to examine the ship even if they had been trained to dock it.
If this isn?t operation on a shoestring budget, what is?
NASA is not merely underfunded. According to the Budget of the U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2003, ?the integrity of NASA?s merit-based research is seriously eroded by the practice of congressionally directed spending known as earmarks. NASA has suffered from a surge in both the number and cost of earmarks.? Earmarks have risen from 20 in 1997 to 120 in 2002.
Many earmarks have nothing to do with NASA?s mission: ?For example, the Congress earmarked NASA?s current budget to fund corporate jets, college dormitories, libraries, and museums.?
According to the government accounting office, waste and fraud in the federal budget is larger than NASA?s budget. In May of last year the Office of Management and Budget announced that the federal government had doled out $20 billion in health, housing and food benefits to people not entitled to them. Erroneous Medicare payments alone were almost the size of NASA?s budget.
When it comes to waste, the GAO barely scratches the surface. The federal education budget is several times larger than NASA?s. What?s to show for it? According to a recently released report, a 1955 high school education is the equivalent of a university education today. In 1955 there was no federal aid to education.
Science has more to offer us than war. Let?s spend $100 billion on regime change in the Middle East after attending to the safety and survival of the brave men and women we send into space.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow?s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
That really explains the Fox News poll doesn't it?
Let's wait and see some actual poll results before we start saying that the 'American Public overwhelmingly supports war'.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: Fran441 ]</p>
I agree about the France thing. It's ironic for anyone who uses the "war for oil slogan", because it is equally relevant that some are in the "no war for oil camp".
But I will say this about internet polls. For the most part, they show what the majority will be in actual scientific polls, but their margins are always much larger than the scientific ones tend to be. Just something i have noticed.
I have a feeling that most Americans will be "convinced" to "marginally convinced" from Colin Powell's presentation.
As for the other countries who spoke at the UN today. Realize that ALL of the statements that the ambassadors to the UN from countries (such as france, russia, etc) read were written before the evidence was presented. What will be telling is what these governments say over the next week.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: chweave1 ]</p>
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
The thread is very misleading without pointing out these are internet threads. He made it sound like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News were reporting these as actual poll results which is not the case.
So discussion can continue but keep this in mind when discussing these 'numbers' (which have changed somewhat as well).
It was actually the Fox News 'Poll' that got me thinking about it. How could it be so far off from the other polls? Bias couldn't make up 20% and I realized that it was an internet poll. I guess we know who's visiting FoxNews.com and who isn't.
<strong>But what does that say about us as a people and our values when it's ok to take another countries' natural resources by force. While using the excuse of removing their weapons of mass destruction. Geez if you want to find a country with those you could stick a pin in a map. It's just that this one has something we want. Not honurable at all. Kind of like something Saddam would do.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: jimmac ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
However which way you wish to arrange it in your head matters only to you. Question is, are you going to sell your car?
The day you hear the report that the US is filling up its oil tankers in Iraq w/o any sort of compensation to the nation of Iraq is when you can talk about "taking natural resources by force". Until then you are just blowing hot air.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: Randycat99 ]</p>
<strong>
However which way you wish to arrange it in your head matters only to you. Question is, are you going to sell your car?
The day you hear the report that the US is filling up its oil tankers in Iraq w/o any sort of compensation to the nation of Iraq is when you can talk about "taking natural resources by force". Until then you are just blowing hot air.
[ 02-05-2003: Message edited by: Randycat99 ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh so they're inviting us over now eh? If what you're suggesting was true then we'd set up new government with out our interference. And let them sell the oil to us at their price. How much you want to bet that doesn't happen? At least not in our lifetime.
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
<strong>Come on. You lose. The argument is over. Support for war is overwhelming. Look at the damn numbers. Just look.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Look at the numbers of an internet poll is a horrible argument. It's quite frankly idiotic. Anyway, since when is the opinion of the majority infallible? If a majority of Americans say gay people should be beaten with two by fours wrapped in barbed wire, does that make it somehow acceptable? No.
Feh. I don't expect much, but I still expected better than this from you.
I would simply like to point out that the title does simply state that "The american public now overwhelmingly supports war." It doesn't say that makes it a legitimate reason for war. It is still up for debate whether or not it is true that there is "overwhelming" support. I would agree that probably a majority of American's support "military action," but I don't think that includes looting the oil fields.
Anyway, It's not really fair to make your comparison to gay bashing since that's the point this thread seems intended to originally make.
<strong>BR,
I would simply like to point out that the title does simply state that "The american public now overwhelmingly supports war." It doesn't say that makes it a legitimate reason for war. It is still up for debate whether or not it is true that there is "overwhelming" support. I would agree that probably a majority of American's support "military action," but I don't think that includes looting the oil fields.
Anyway, It's not really fair to make your comparison to gay bashing since that's the point this thread seems intended to originally make.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not comparing it to gay bashing. I'm drawing a parallel. By using his same logic, whatever the majority supports is perfectly acceptable.
SDW said "Come on. You lose. The argument is over. Support for war is overwhelming. Look at the damn numbers. Just look."
No, the argument isn't over--even if the polls were reliable.
Look, I haven't really decided whether or not I support this war yet. I've been swaying back and forth between both camps over the last few weeks. However, SDW's argument is absolutely retarded and I felt the need to point that out.
You said
"Anyway, since when is the opinion of the majority infallible? "
That wasn't the point of the original statement. Just because the majority has an opinion, and that is stated doesn't mean that it is assumed that it is "infallible."
<strong>
You said
"Anyway, since when is the opinion of the majority infallible? "
That wasn't the point of the original statement. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes it was.
The result of the poll and the posting of the results in this thread are two separate things that *you* seem to be confusing.
It was a clear attempt to claim moral superiority from numbers.
But...I don't agree with war. I don't agree with launching a few thousand warheads into the capital, hoping they solely hit their intended targets. I don't agree with possibly killing 500,000 to 1 million innocent civilians just because they are unfortunate enough to be living under Saddam's rules. I don't think the U.S. should lead an attack without global support, thus opening the door for any country to attack a country should it feel like it, in the future.
But I also don't have an alternative plan and while I disagree with this coming down to war, I don't see any other viable solution. So I'm stumped. Being a Canadian though, I support my fellow Americans in whatever is decided by the public. I just hope there isn't too much bloodshed over there, and I hope that there isn't too much terrorist activity in the U.S. and Canada.
We Canadians and Americans may not agree on a lot of things, but we are neigbors, and whatever happens to one of us, does greatly affect the other. I personally don't want to see a nuclear cloud rising out of New York, because I know I, and every single person I know and love, will be dead within a few hours.
I guess we'll see what we'll see....
As for the oil issue, many of you know where I stand. I realized debating the issue was useless. There are far too many skeptics here.
As for OBJRA10 and Splinemodel and maybe a few others. You might find this of interest:
<a href="http://www.disclosureproject.org"; target="_blank">Click the first link under "The Latest: News & Updates"</a>
Quotes from the interview:
"SG: It's not very big at all! I picked it up - you can pick it up with one hand. Took it out actually on a sidewalk. This device gathered, very passively, less than one watt of power from the environment - I won't say how it was done, I'm not allowed to at this point - and the machine started up. It generated hundreds of watts of power in usable form, actually running, and we were astonished to see this. We hooked this up ourselves, so it was no mystery about it. We even selected the things to hook up to this thing. It ran a 300-watt light bulb, a 100-watt light bulb, a stereo and an oscillating fan with an electric motor, all at the same time with literally no artificial manmade input of power."
"SG: There were no hidden power sources. As I said, it could be picked up and taken outside and put on the sidewalk, and there it ran! And this is something obviously which could be put in every home, in every car and every industry and would enable the world to leave the era of want and war and enter an era of abundance and peace for as long as we want to create it."
"GN: Tuesday, George Bush in his State of the Union address was pushing for the use of hydrogen fuel in cars, which is something I've been jumping up and down for, for years now. But, one of the problems today with the hydrogen fuel is to generate the kind of electricity in order to generate the hydrogen.
SG: That's right.
GN: And that has been a serious problem, so my two-fold question - my question two-fold is will your zero point energy concept - would that work directly in automobiles or could you use it to create the electricity to make the hydrogen for the cars?
SG: Well, the answer is both. In other words, you already have two hundred million cars on the road in America, and six hundred and some million in the world. Those are using oil and gas. The ideal thing to do initially - because most people are not going to yank the engine out of their car and buy a multi-thousand dollar engine.
GN: No, they can't afford it.
SG: So what you want to do is use this free energy to have a way of cracking the hydrogen off of water and then have that hydrogen run the cars. I have just met with an inventor who has a fuel injector that you can screw into where your spark plug goes and the car will run on hydrogen. So this technology would allow that to be feasible what the President called for. So the existing internal combustion cars and trucks could be converted to clean burning hydrogen until such time that all the cars that are made come out with a purely electric propulsion system that would be running off of this generator. So I think that, you know, this can be done. Again, we intend to get this information, when we have the final scientific reports in a few months, to the President and to his inner circle. We certainly can get access to that. And I think that this would be an important thing for the National Security Council, the aspect of it that deals with economic security and energy issues, to know about because there's no question. I mean, whether you're on the left or the right, or whatever, everyone acknowledges today that it is in the long term, and even short term interest of the United States to wean ourselves off of this addictive black gold known as oil. And I think that the sooner that can be done, the sooner we can move on to a new and more hopeful phase in our history."
"GN: Zero Point energy results from the principals of quantum mechanics, which has to do with the physics of subatomic phenomena. Would you explain that for us so that most of us can understand just what we're talking about here?
SG: Well, as I understand it, if you look at the space around us, not outer space, just the space in the room where you're sitting. That space and the structure of space and the actually fundamental level at which matter and energy is fluxing out of some very potent field of energy. That's in some type of a sort of homeostasis. And what these technologies do is that it sort of perturbs the homeostasis enough to tap into that baseline energy or that energy that's in the quantum vacuum, some would call it, that's around us, that matter and energy are sort of fluxing in and out of and can tap into it and it's almost like pulling energy out of a reservoir of energy that's there all the time but isn't in a form that can actually be used.
What these systems do is tap into that energy and in the case of the device that we saw, actually converts it into usable controlled energy on demand, which was the astonishing thing. I have to admit I have seen some other "over unity" systems where there's more energy coming out than put in, but it was in a form that was not electric power that was easily usable or convertible and therefore wasn't really immediately practical and in some cases people were estimating upwards of fifteen million dollars to get it into a form and an access form that this brilliant inventor had in this very simple system that you could literally pick up with one hand and carry out on a sidewalk and turn things on with.
So I think that there's such an enormous body of information on this. If you look, there's a new almost thousand page book that Dr. Tom Bearden has put out that's almost encyclopedic in the information on this and he sent me a copy of it. I'm very grateful to him for that and I encourage people to get it if they have the stomach to go through the details.
But I think that many people, as I said, Dr. Gene Mallove, Tom Valone, and many people, have studied this and have written about the fact that this has happened and have done sort of an ethnography of this where they've studied where there have been a whole culture of scientists over the last hundred years who have in fact discovered this and have invented devices that worked like this, but they have all met some terrible fate out of, of course, the big special interests and cartels that would like to keep us all metered to the public utility companies and to the gas pumps and while that's certainly understandable, it's no big surprise that people of vast economic and power and geopolitical interests would do such things. We're at the point now that it cannot go forward any further without jeopardizing the entirety of the human future."
"GN: Now realistically, Steven, if you had no obstacles, and you're going to have some, but if you didn't have any, when do you think you might be able to get something like this to market, or at least to a practical test phase?
SG: A practical test phase - we're shooting for two to three months, and out to then a manufacturable prototype after the test phase, perhaps a year or so, and then after that to market. We hope that by the first quarter or mid-2004 these can be made available. Now, of course, we don't know what we're going to encounter and when you get into these sorts of engineering issues you may run into all kinds of disappointments and so I'm speculating here, but this is our intention and we intend to be able to do that."
"And remember, there are many applications for this. Imagine if you had a power up system for satellites so that you didn't have them failing in their power or having solar panels that had micro-meteorites damaging them, you could extend the life of satellites and save an enormous amount of money. If you had these things, these sort of power systems eventually could be in every appliance so that every appliance wouldn't even need to be plugged in. Eventually you could have construction so homes wouldn't even have wiring. Every lamp and every appliance could have its own power source.
This thing is efficient and miniaturizable, if there is such a word - so that you could do this and you would be able to have everything that is made have its own power source and it would completely change the way architecture and construction takes place. Of course the list just goes on and on, but our goal is to be able to do this at least in a generation one stable, usable system, certainly within a year to year and a half. I would like to think sooner, but knowing how things happen in the world, I think it could very well be that long or a bit longer.
I would caution we don't want to take too much longer. We are going to be very aggressively capitalizing this, putting the funds into this, so that that can be done and we can collapse the timeframe because, frankly, Tom Bearden and I were discussing this one time just before we were meeting with members of, doing a briefing for, the staff of the senate environment committee. He said that if these new technologies don't begin to roll off of the conveyor belt like sausages by the first quarter, or some time around that, of 2004, given the fact that the biosphere is being so strained, given the geopolitical tensions, we may simply just be out of time."
_______________________________________________
Listen to the interview people. I expect the same people to say the same crap I've already heard...This can't be true, this is a hoax, this is this, this is that.
But we will see, won't we? Very soon, I might add. I admit there are some crazy people in the world, but I doubt there is anyone crazy enough to broadcast this on a radio program (Coast To Coast AM) that has millions upon millions of listeners (and that can be multiplied by a hundred, after interviews on every network available, in the next year) and give specific dates of when to expect this, if it is just a hoax.
This is one man I put a great deal of faith into. Now everyone line up to bite my head off.
P.S. I won't be around till next week to respond.
[ 02-06-2003: Message edited by: lucys_trip ]</p>
Kind of says it all for me.
t.fall