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Xlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
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The Connection
#2947572 - 07/31/04 05:56 AM (19 years, 8 months ago) |
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House of Bush, House of Saud: The Hidden Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties by Craig Unger
Since 9/11, the world has taken a very different turn. The reason is the United States, the key player the Bush administration. This book seeks to throw light on the nature of that administration and, above all, its relationship with Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter in the world, possessing an estimated 25% of all known oil reserves. House of Bush, House of Saud is a title that suggests a conspiracy, but this book does not belong to the conspiracy genre. Rather, it meticulously seeks to plot the relationship between Bushes senior and junior - together with their associates - and the elite Saudi families. Sometimes the link seems a little tenuous, resting on a narrative connection, but for the most part this is a very powerful, well-researched and sober book that leaves the reader both enlightened and more than a little disturbed. You will certainly view the Bush administration - and, indeed, American policy-making - through a rather different prism in future.
The US-Saudi relationship blossomed in the context of two crucial wars, both of which the US fought by proxy: the Iran-Iraq war and the Afghan war. The American administration was deeply concerned about the impact of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran - previously the US's most powerful ally, Israel apart, in the Middle East. It used Saddam, in strategy well detailed by Unger, as a means by which to counter the Iranian regime, secretly supplying him, for a decade or more, with weapons and cash. The Saudis - who effectively replaced Iran as America's regional ally - were intimately involved in the intricacies of American policy, even coming to the aid of the Americans by secretly funding - at the Reagan administration's request - the Contras in Nicaragua after Congress had blocked presidential support.
The Saudis became enthusiastically involved in the American-inspired covert funding of, and support for, the mujahideen war against the newly installed Soviet-backed government. Strangely, 10 years before the end of the cold war, the conflict was to prefigure the future course of events, on the one hand the collapse of the Soviet Union and on the other hand the emergence of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. The Afghan war was to be the Soviet Union's Vietnam while for Bin Laden, a member of one of Saudi Arabia's elite families, who were intimately connected with the House of Saud, Afghanistan became the Islamic equivalent of the Spanish civil war, a mobilising cause across the Muslim world, especially the fundamentalist part, and above all in Saudi Arabia: indeed, the House of Saud found the mujahideen crusade a useful way of asserting its own militant Islamic credentials and appeasing domestic opinion. So al-Qaida was forged in the crucible of the Afghan war.
The Saudis never enjoyed the same kind of intimacy and ease with the Clinton administration as they did with the Bush administrations. The connections, cultivated over a quarter of a century, are complex and multifarious, emanating outwards from Houston, centred on oil, embracing both the public and private sector activities of the House of Bush, lubricated and driven by money and power. Unger estimates that $1.476bn has made its way over time from the Saudis to the House of Bush, and its allied companies and institutions. He writes: "It could safely be said that never before in history had a presidential candidate - much less a presidential candidate and his father, a former president - been so closely tied financially and personally to the ruling family of another foreign power. Never before had a president's fortunes and public policies been so deeply entwined with another nation."
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1272661,00.html
-------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
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Vvellum
Stranger
Registered: 05/24/04
Posts: 10,920
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Re: The Connection [Re: Xlea321]
#2948260 - 07/31/04 11:31 AM (19 years, 8 months ago) |
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We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we only have three percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for fifty-three percent of what we consume?
I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation ? not the Saudi royal family.
And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future -- so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East. - JFK, nomination speech.
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole
Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 10 months
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Re: The Connection [Re: Vvellum]
#2949233 - 07/31/04 03:22 PM (19 years, 8 months ago) |
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What technology exactly, what fuels exactly, and what cars exactly. And who is to develop these wondrous things? Surely not the demon big business
What does it mean for our economy when we rely on other nations for our oil? It means we better fucking safeguard their willingness to sell it to us. By whatever means necessary.
Let's not drill in ANWAR until the Arabs run out. Bleed the greedy fucks dry and then discard them like the scum they are. And let's not forget to fund the superconducting supercollider and anything else that gives us a chance at a real alternative source. Wind, hydro, geo, thermal are nowhere near enough and they can't be used for vehicles directly. We need the oil to make plastic
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Vvellum
Stranger
Registered: 05/24/04
Posts: 10,920
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Quote:
What technology exactly, what fuels exactly, and what cars exactly. And who is to develop these wondrous things? Surely not the demon big business
The technology is pretty much developed. Look into hydrogen power (where I live the city buses run on hydrogen) and kinetic/electric power for cars. Fuel cells are the future - let's start a massive Moon Landing-esque endeavor to get them going.
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What does it mean for our economy when we rely on other nations for our oil? It means we better fucking safeguard their willingness to sell it to us. By whatever means necessary.
Okay, Emperor. Is Pax Americana on schedule?
Quote:
Let's not drill in ANWAR until the Arabs run out.
ANWAR is not a solution; it is a bandaid. According to the U.S. Geological Service, 3.2 billion barrels is can be had from ANWAR. The United States consumes 7.2 billion barrels each year. Wow, a whole 6 months.
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole
Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 10 months
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Re: The Connection [Re: Vvellum]
#2949331 - 07/31/04 03:47 PM (19 years, 8 months ago) |
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The technology is NOT developed and everything you mentioned gets it's power from the burning of fossil fuels. Hydrogen power is a joke, it takes more energy to separate the hydrogen than the recombination produces. It's slightly cleaner because the electric plants burn cleaner per erg than the cars and buses do, but it still takes fossil fuels. Our only hope, really, as a society, is to develop nuclear fusion. Cutting off the superconducting supercollider was really dumb. And I do blame the republican congress for that.
You are exactly right (who would have thought I would ever say that to you) about ANWAR. I don't want to touch it because I look at it as a savings account. And we will need oil to make plastics always, even with fusion
Pax Americana will run it's course. I doubt it will last as long as Pax Romana, things move much faster now, and I'm not sure there will be anything after. But, like Mel Brooks said,"It's good to be the king."
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whiterasta
Day careobserver
Registered: 04/09/02
Posts: 1,780
Loc: Oregon
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Balderdash! Hemp can provide fuel and plastic! Technology is online right now which converts ANY biomass into oil and hemp resins are a plethora of unique hydrocarbons which to make plastics out of. Oil produced from biomass does not add to the CO2 buildup and attendant greenhouse effect.The technology exists and is ready for our government to give up it's addiction to oil money. WR
-------------------- To old for this place
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