Boycott Arab Gas - Stop Funding Terroism

I'm not a techy but my brother in law is. Actually he's in car construction engineering in a high position for a german car maker.
I remember when we had a discuss many years ago. He told me that trechnically everything is possible.
I think it was GM, which gave an order (ordering a patent) to his engineering unit to create an engine with lowest fuel consumption and approx. 70 horse power.

The result was a 70 horse power engine using only 1,5 litres /60miles

Everything already exists. It's a numbers game of the big players in control, nothing else then that, they don't give a sh*t as long as people buying more and more cars every year. So why bother to change to new assembling techniques and risk losing on shares of the oil industry that would cost them trillions of $$$.

 

You may not have said it, but it was strongly enough implied that ALL middle eastern countries support terrorism and you are quite happy to banish them and their people to poverty for it. Presumably this assumption that they all support terrorists is based on US 'intelligence', the same intelligence that figured Iraq had stockpiles of nuclear bombs and would be attacking America at any moment. I cannot deny there are muslim terrorists, just like you cannot deny there have been American terrorrists, British terrorists and terrorists from pretty much any nationality/religion you can think of. But I have no intention of penalizing innocent bystanders for the wrongs of some of their citizens.

Nothing, and that's why I made a point of saying that driving cars less is a good idea. But your original statement (which made no mention of the environment) seemed to go largely unchallenged.

That's not offensive at all. And nor did I say it was. The original post referred to a ban on middle eastern oil, because of Arab support for terrorists. Don't you stop to consider that the Arabs in the oil industry might consider terrorism 'bad for business', before labelling them the bad guy?

I think you underestimate the purchasing power of a billion citizens. To think they are only wealthy because of the US is deluding yourself. If the US can find enough clean energy supply to not rely on oil imports, then maybe they don't need to compete with China for oil supply and then maybe they can afford to be self sufficient. But do you really expect the world's largest polluters to make such a drastic change? But your environmental standpoint is not what I care about. In fact, I admire your seeming dedication to cleaner, greener energy.

If you wanted to talk environmental issues, you should have used a chain letter about saving the planet, not about Arab terrorists. I don't take any offense with your noble intentions for a greener planet and haven't in any way indicated that I do. What I do take offense with is the lumping together of a whole region as terrorists and the simplistic view that not buying their oil will somehow reduce their hatred of the US.

 

You might want to read the entire thread before condeming all of DP. There were quite a few of use that said specifically:
Drop your dependance on oil because of one of many reasons including cost savings and environmental, not terrorism.

Please don't lump everyone in with one statement which showed you obviously stopped reading around page 2

 

Admittedly I did skim over a lot of the thread, while looking for others' responses. I didn't find any, but now that you mentioned it, I decided to have another look and there were a few people discussing the terror question.

page 2. stuw makes a valid point against the idea of boycotting the middle east. The first one I saw.

page 3

Indicating a belief that all muslims are sympathetic to the terrorist's causes. Kind of follows the general underlying feeling behind most posts in the thread.

page 6, another sensible response from stuw - so far the only person to really try and debate the original topic.

page 9,

So you're right, after nine pages, someone finally said what needed to be said. Is it normal for it to take 85 responses to get to that point? Admittedly I didn't see your response when I read the thread the first time.

page 10,

And so we're back to where we began.

So, after all that, I could only find 2 people who responded that terrorism should not have something to do with this (though neither seemed to particularly care that all of the middle east was being labelled as terrorists). Can you point me to the 'quite a few' that said specifically:
"Drop your dependance on oil because of one of many reasons including cost savings and environmental, not terrorism". I could only find your response.

But thanks for pointing out that there are at least some who disagree with the general view. And apologies for lumping you in.. that was unfair of me.

 

My respect for going back through the thread. I can only speak for myself to say that I usually don't even view political threads. The only reason I got involved in this one is that like dct and a few others, I support and recognize the viability of hybrid and hydro cars. I certianly don't think that boycotting fuel for a few days or trying to pick "non-terrorist" petrol stations will do absolutely anything in the fight againt Terrorism.

I do believe the western world leaves itself open to attack by having such a dependancy. I base that on the fact that Saudi Arabia has publicly stated they installed a fail safe system where if they were attacked they could decimate their own oil system. There is some debate as to whether they actually did that or just said they did as it would have the same effect. Detterence.

That is only linked to Terror because if terrorists were able to gain control of that system, they could bring down the economies of the Western world. That is a side issue though and isn't affected by whether or not we buy gasoline.

For the most part, although Jeremey is a bit over the top for me at times, he does make his point most times in a civil way (and many times makes good points that make me think about things). This forum has had some great debates and it is only through this atmosphere that people can see all sides and maybe change their thinking, even to just understand.

I have only one person on my ignore list but it is not because of their viewpoint, it is because they took to attacking a new member in their intro thread. This person was just a web designer who happened to be from a country that is part of the so called "axis of evil". The attacked person had no agenda to discuss terrorism nor did they even post in any of the debate threads. The member I now ignore choose to attack them and label them evil just for being born where they were. I was a bit dissapointed that Jeremey and GTech didn't give them a hard time for this as it was out of order but other then that things stay to debate.

 

Nothing was said nor implied. Someone just does not like the US apparently. I guess it is bash the US time and reward terrorists time again on the forum. It's been a few days, but I guess that much is expected.

I do not remember any US Intelligence saying anything about stock piles of nuclear bombs. You made that up. No one every said they would be attacking America at any moment. You made that up too. You know what the truth is, you are just angry for some reason, so you resort to making things up.

You may say you have no intention of "penalizing innocent bystanders", but it is your country that is kicking them out, not the US. Think about that for a moment.

Perhaps that is because there was nothing to challenge.

But you said "all" Arabs. I did not say "all" Arabs. There you go making things up in your mind again. I did not label anyone. I said what I said, I meant what I meant, so take it for what it is worth. Only a terrorist would take offense IMHO. If they get offended that is.

Wealthy? Most of their citizens live in absolute squaller. That's wealth? Child labor laws? Nope. The worlds largest polluters? Excuse me? Look at China. At least we do something about it. China has no regulations what so ever because they are considered a developing country.

In any event no one in the US decided to pollute the environment. We did not set out to do anything of the kind. We just happen to have a LARGE country with A LOT of people, and a great many of those people spread out all across the US. Look at your neck of the woods. There are how many people there? 16 million? Most centered around two major cities? When you get as many people as the US and China centered on same land mass, I guess we can call you polluters too.

Who said I wanted to talk environmental issues? I wanted to talk about eliminating terror and dependance on foreign oil. You know that. How on earth can you be offended by that? If you think that I lumped an entire region together you must be saying that the entire region is all the same. I did not say that, you did. I guess you are pretty offensive in that regard.

You are also saying that the "good guy" Arabs, also hate the US? Where is that coming from? I would think they love us. We give them the ability to water sand buy buying their oil. We're not doing them a favor, we're continuing to make them rich, and in many cases, yes supporting terrorists in the process. No, not all, like you said, but a great many.

 

Why do you assume that just because I don't like US policies (or your statements), I would somehow like terrorists? I've never understood rationale like that. Oh well.

Nuclear bombs, the ability to build nuclear bombs, WMDs, whatever it was, they tried to scare the public into thinking that Iraq would use it against them if they didn't attack them right away.

my country? what are you referring to? Detention centres? Our immigration policy? Both are despicable in my opinion. But I am not speaking on behalf of my country, I am speaking as an individual, as are you. I'm sure the current Australian government would agree with you - I find them generally to be willing to go along with whatever comes out of the American right.

yawn, "if you're not for us, you're against us". That's a tired old line, intended only to silence anyone with a different viewpoint.

I did not say chinese people are wealthy. I just said there are a lot of them. They do have one of the fastest growing GDPs Per Capita on the planet. And their GDP PPP is second only to the US.

Re: polution, did you not read the link? Americans (per person, as that is the fair measure) are the world's largest polluters.

As I said, the stats were per person. Regardless of population size, the Americans are the worst (at least according to those stats). Mind you, Australians come in a close second, which is bad news as well.. but we weren't discussing Australians.

I am not offended by the thought of eliminating terror, nor your aims to reduce dependence on foreign oil. What I find offensive is the implication that all of the middle east supports the terrorists and deserves your punishment.

You lumped the entire region together by using that email, which stated plainly

Not "oil that funds terrorists" or "oil from Saudi Arabia" even, just "Middle Eastern Oil".. presumably including Kuwait, the Emirates, Israel and so on.

Where did I say that? here?: "What I do take offense with is the lumping together of a whole region as terrorists and the simplistic view that not buying their oil will somehow reduce their hatred of the US." Read it again.. if you consider the whole region terrorists (as you seem to do by being willing to ban all their oil), I find it simplistic that you would think that starving them would make them (the terrorists, the people you are trying to starve supposedly) hate you less.

So you think they love you? But you also think they support terrorists? I don't get it. What do you actually base this assumption that oil companies are supporting terrorists on in the first place? It must be some pretty solid evidence if you're willing to banish all of the middle east to poverty for it (that is what the email is intending when it says not to buy middle eastern oil right?).

 

Fair enough. I think I was a little bit harsh in my language initially. I'll try to stick to purely discussing the topic at hand from now on, as I do find it an important one.

 

This is one area where I surprise my liberal friends, we shouldn’t have to turn our lights off when we leave a room, keep engines under a certain power/weight ratio, stop from watering the lawn (unless you decided to build a community without an infrastructure to match like you morons out west ).

We (Americans) all love SUV’s and private jets. And there is no reason we should not be able to consume consume consume, we just need to do it more responsibly.

Politicians don’t push different options because people are afraid of change and assume they will be losing something if we do convert to more responsible energy sources.

Of course people in the White House have worked in the oil industry. It’s a profitable industry and we’re capitalists. Those who have money are the ones that make it to the White House. When it comes time for alternative energy to take over Exxon and friends will hop on the bandwagon because their only responsibility is to increase shareholder wealth

Prices are going up, but so are the oil industry’s profits. Its not just supply problems etc causing high prices.

Yes, I discovered that on my way home from Dodgeville a few weeks ago. I filled up <10 miles from the IL border… grr…

Nope, but you’ll get some nice tax revenue. Mmmmm, tax revenue.

This is nice and good and everything, but people forget the emotional attachment we have to cars. Replacing oil (or even just our SUVs) is also not as easy as say, buying RC Cola if Coke got too expensive. Oil will never reach a point (IMO) where it becomes so expensive that the masses rise up and demand an alternative. Look at what is happening now, economic data/polling say that people are putting the same amount of gas in their cars and spending less on other things.

In order for supply/demand to have an affect (again, IMO) an alternative needs to exist and be less expensive.

And this is why automakers have a back up plan. They are all developing some alternative energy vehicles just so they can crush any competition that may arise in the future. Either way, alternative fuel vehicles will make their way to the market. Capitalism, ahhh.

Just wait till 90% of China gets a refrigerator….


I think thats enough for one post.

Now, back to what I suppose to be doing...

 

But, each family will only have one refrigerator. The stats are 'per person', not as a country on the whole.

Added: If all the world polluted like the average American (or Australian), I doubt there would be any icecaps left at all. :?

 

Sorry, that is just not true. During the industrial revolution more pollutants were released into the atomosphere in Europe than the last 100 years in the US alone. Let's just including the Chernoble disaster in this equation. Kinda blows away anything any American or Australian has ever done. Coulpe that with the fact that the reactor is still a ticking time bomb they do not fix because of lack of money.

I consider myself an average American and find the accusation that the "average American" is out polluting. It's kinda hard to compare advanced developed countries like the US and Australia with underdeveloped third world nations where there is about one car per 100 people. It's just not apples to apples.

 

Hey, I'm just quoting the current (well, slightly out of date) statistics. If you don't believe it to be accurate, I would like to know what information you are basing it on. What is so hard about accepting that on average Americans and Australians pollute more than other countries (at the moment, not 100 years ago when no-one really understood what damage they were doing)? I'm not 'accusing' the average American of anything, just stating that it would be hard to imagine them being able to cut back on pollution anytime soon. Though of course, I would love to see it happen and I commend anyone who makes that personal effort.

I personally try to catch public transport as much as possible, buy only 100% green electricity and make sure I use premium unleaded petrol in my car to be as clean as possible (without converting to LPG that is). But I don't do it because I somehow think that I might be supporting terrorists if I use oil (heck, for all I know, there might be some terrorists with shares in the windmill sector). I do it because I want to breath clean air and I want my children to enjoy the same clean air.

 

Don't forget about 78.4% of all statistics are made up.

 

Only people who want to forget this do forget this.

 

Is that one of the 78.4% ?

 

I was referring entirely to chain email being a numbers game, when 10 mil are sent out only a fraction will have any impact.

 

yes by buying oil we are funding terrorists. no matter where the money goes it's destined to end up in the wrong place. I still remember distinctly when the twin towers came down... the uncivilized Palestenians celebrated in the streets.

It's those same fools who are bootlicking or begging the US government to intervene in the dispute with Israel. Agreed, they have oil. Do we, rest of the world, have brains?

Iranians now have nuclear weapons....we now need gas

Folks, can't you see the connection? I hope I'm not giving Bush ideas.

And for the rate at which TEchnology has advanced, something should have replaced petrol. Why isnt this happening?

I heard the South Americans had success with Biogene *fuel from Soya residue or something like that.. correct me if I'm wrong folks!!!

 

Gas does not fund terrorism. Goverments and Herion fund Terrorism. :/

Besides, the issue would be crude oil, not gas, and you would need to eliminate too much in your lifestyle to pull it off.

 

errr, ummm, maybe it is 79.2%

 

I saw the recent "Why Hindus hate Muslims" necro posting, and I wanted to take credit for resurrecting the oldest thread in DigitalPoint P&R. So here it is, back from the dead, MIA's first P&R post from 2005.

On topic of the thread, isn't it ironic that in 10 years, the US is on the verge of independence from middle eastern oil because of fracking, oil is looking like it might go down to 25$/barrel, Obama is trying his best to kill domestic drilling to save the planet from global warming, and the middle east is more infested with terrorists than it ever has been, despite the fact they are receiving fewer American dollars?

What can we say, Muslims just loving killing each other, with or without American money.