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Down goes Mosul.
- Thread starter Darkside-Six
- Start date
BURN THE WITCH!!! Seriously though, I agree we are being wasteful with a lot of our petroleum products. I am 4th generation oil and gas, its my heritage and way of life. We need to realize that its a finite resource and once its gone its gone. My cabin has a solar setup and my grandpa heated his home with geothermal. I am not giving up my v-8 powered cars, trucks and boats without a fight though.
Screw oil and petroleum man. Give me some methanol, or maybe even some nitromethane(though Ive heard its a bit more finicky to tune).
Fancy electric cars are cool and all, for a daily driver. But when you gotta have the fastest door-slammer on the planet in the 1/8mi, methanol is where its at! (Thats with no nitro allowed though...)
Proline Racing shall rule the world bitchez:
WORLD RECORD!!! Turbo PX Camaro Goes 221mph to the 1/8th Mile! El General Racing Team - YouTube
Fancy electric cars are cool and all, for a daily driver. But when you gotta have the fastest door-slammer on the planet in the 1/8mi, methanol is where its at! (Thats with no nitro allowed though...)
Proline Racing shall rule the world bitchez:
WORLD RECORD!!! Turbo PX Camaro Goes 221mph to the 1/8th Mile! El General Racing Team - YouTube
Musk is an exceptionally bright and driven individual but his success is also build on freeing other brilliant minds from corporate drudgery - notably Tom Mueller and Franz von Holzhausen.
Which is another proof that there is plenty of untapped potential in this country.
Haha a cornsucker would run the 1/8. Call me when you can make it to a 1/4 mile track.
Honestly, I would like to reserve a couple ten thousand gallons of AVGAS for my airplane as electric does not work that well in the air (yet). But developing alternatives does not just make sense from a conservation standpoint but it also insures technological leadership on the global scene. Our greedy financiers already sold way too many promising battery and solar technologies to China because they (the friggin bankers) could not make a buck quickly enough.
Unfortunately, cars like the PRIUS gave electric the stigma of slow and lame.
The physical reality however is that nothing has more brutal acceleration than an electric motor. It has the maximum torque at the lowest rpm (stall).
Even for an engineer this is hard to get by just looking at some formula. You need to feel this in person. I got this awakening when I build an electric drift trike with my nephew. The relatively puny 800 Watt (~ ONE horsepower) motor made the jaws of some Harley dudes drop when they rode the thing. We had to re-program the motor controller so that it would not eat tires that quickly.
A recent test drive in a Tesla was no different. You drop the hammer and the thing just lurches forward - instantaneously. I can guarantee you that the controller in there also limits what you could get into the wheels but not onto the road.
Steam Engine < Internal Combustion Engine < Electric Motor
when it comes to efficiency and power per weight. Nothing new, but apparently for some industries a hard to swallow reality.
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I agree electric cars are the answer for many of our citizens, but I work and live off the grid. I have a diesel truck and a diesel welder I use to make my living. I wouldn't mind an electric ATV for out at the cabin. As far as ethanol in our gasoline goes its a joke. Using corn makes no sense, all it has managed to do is drive up the prices on a lot of other things. Biomass for ethanol makes the most sense. Personally I go out of my way to buy ethanol free 91 octane gas.
Yessir, and call me when youre making north of 3500hp without nitro and have a doorslammer thats putting down trap speeds so high the NHRA wont allow them(their Pro Mods are limited to 88mm turbos last I checked) and every other sanctioning body deems them unsafe to run on most 1/4mi tracks due to not enough shut-down room.
Hence ADRL allows them to run but only in 1/8mi(Pro Extreme class, no engine/fuel rules run what you brung doorslammers). Theres a few 1/4mi holdouts, like Mr Dave Hance`s Shakedown Nat`ls, but like I said, most drivers/promoters are of the opinion that running 260+ mph in a doorslammer is taking your life in your own hands without a funny car cage. Not to mention, running 230+ mph in a 3350lb drag radial car is DEFINITELY taking your life in your own hands. You may not care about dying, but the track owners would like to avoid a lawsuit.
Agree, Ethanol, Flex fuel, etc. are boondoggles of the highest degree. Designed to appease the environmental consciousness and wallets of some constituents without requiring the big corporate sponsors to significantly upgrade their technology.
Technically it is actually worse than a boondoggle (i.e a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or the nation) because now we have a substance in the gasoline that is hygroscopic (attracts water), corrosive to certain metals, and detrimental to some plastics in fuel systems.
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I love 1/4mi races and I wish they would do more of them and allow the Pro Mods, D/R cars, and OL10.5 cars to run. Unfortunately the NHRA wont allow it(not without a hurdle of rules) and every other sanctioning body is scared of someone dying. I agree 1/4mi is where its at. But I cant make the NHRA or ADRL change their ways. And thats where the action is.
What do you drive/race? Or just a broke spectator like me?
I am just teasing you, I was extremely impressed by the GM 2.2l when they first started making them put out. I am in the process of building a 81 z28. Bodywork is almost done and when I have time I am stuffing a lq9 6.0l in it. I am a big fan of the 6.0l engine, I am planning on replacing the one in my truck with an atk lq4. Definitely not broke but I never have time to go home and work on my toys.
I did. Pretty impressive fellow ;-) Aren't teslas the ones that were catching fire? ;-)
I understand the need to seek alternatives but we are no where near close to making it practical. Everyone that swears by electric cars has a pretty picture in their koolaid drunken heads because they are so dense that they can't see the smog coming from the other end of the extension cord!
My experience with rechargeable batteries is if you don't use them, they go tits up;-( The thought of being forced to take a Sunday drive just to keep the damned thing working is enough to push me away.
An aside, I was lucky enough to check out the Gator Nationals in Denver when I was in 'smithing school. I don't care if electric motors can throw you back in the seat. Nothing can replace the sound, smell and feel of petroleum generated horsepower;-)
You really should stop getting your history from Hannity. Iran became loony tunes because the USA wouldn't stay out of its internal politics. It had a democratically elected leader that the CIA toppled and placed the Shah. He was an asshole and used gestapo like tactics against the population, then he got too big for his boots and so CIA toppled him and placed..... Ayatollah...
Saudi is the way it is because the 'royal' family is wholly US supported who in turn are despotic towards their own population in order to persist their imbalance of wealth and power. The point it is, the 'order' that you seem to attribute to dictators is not a desire of the population, it's an function of intervention and enablement because that region has oil and the flow of it is better ensured when there are predictable or at least fewer 'heads of state' to deal with.
Well that is the "official" story, but the actual truth that you can find if you look is that the USA at the time was actively doing a lot of things to provoke the Japanese into an attack (such as oil boycott which is the biggest reason given by the Japanese for the attack.) and the attack at pearl harbor was not exactly a total surprise to the British. The government wanted in on WWII but had to wait till they had an excuse.
Much as in WWI the government was elected to keep the USA out of the war, but was actively trying to get the country into the war and using their own constitution busting version of the patriot act to suppress dissent. As well as purposely using civilian ships to transport large amounts of military equipment to England hoping the Germans would be stupid enough to take the bait.
Then if you go back just a bit further in history, (which nobody ever seems to do), the Japanese were perfectly happy doing their own thing and refusing to be a part of the outside world or let the outside world come to them... and guess what country had to decide to send warships to tell them they had to "engage" with the outside world..... Well they got engagement in spades!
If you look at the current mess in the sandbox closely, you'll see that the western powers keep lighting the fuse and starting things that the next generation has to deal with.
At least we can claim it wasn't us that started the mess, it was the British & we just kind of got involved too & then made things worse.
Every so often somebody gets it right once in awhile, like after WWII the US realized that the rise of Hitler and WWII was a direct result of how the allies treated Germany after they lost WWI, so they spent tons of time and money to build Germany back up into a prosperous ally and applied the same idea to Japan, both with very good results.
Then of course on the next rounds idiots totally messed things up again.
If your plan is endless war against everybody around the globe that hates you and wants to get some revenge, you will have never ending war as unlike short attention spanned Americans, much of the rest of the world holds grudges and hatreds for generations & are happy to wait for a chance to kill you to avenge their great uncle etc.
Now for the current problems in Iraq, if you want to understand it, look back a couple decades at Yugoslavia, a country that was entirely artificial put together by victors at the end of the war where a bunch of people that hated each other were held together by a brutal dictator. Dictator dies... brutal civil war till everyone finally agrees on going back to a bunch of little ethnic countries and then there is relative peace.
Iraq was drawn up by the British & was (like most of the middle east), not designed to be stable, because nobody in the west wanted strong powerful peaceful Arab states, it only worked as long as a brutal dictator held everybody together in fear. You'll notice as soon as we killed Saddam (who used to be our bestest buddy), everybody took a pause to be happy and thank us and then promptly got to killing each other and any Americans who were in the way. Had we immediately broken up Iraq into 3 countries (Kurdistan, Sunni land and, Shite world), we would not have spent a decade fighting over there to accomplish what is now being undone in about a month. Much like when India got independence, Gandhi wanted 1 big country, but it was impossible, so you got India and Pakistan, then Pakistan split into Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The problem with Electric cars is the huge cost of the batteries and that is really hard to overcome.
I'd love to have a Tesla, but simply can't afford it and the saving in gas costs won't pay for the difference over the expected lifespan.
Not to mention that once there are too many electric or fuel efficient cars on the road, the government will roll out some huge new double taxation scheme and then you'll probably be paying more than before.
To get off fossil fuels, you need to stop trying to work against people's inertia and work with it.
First of all, you need electricity, and until Fusion is a reality, the best option (in places without easy access to hybro electric or thermo electric) is the latest fission based power plants, (sorry to all the tree huggers but you are so wrong, atom power is what will save your trees). The latest cutting edge designs are vastly different from the old 1970s designs most often seen. And if people will actually do it rather than just figure out ways to say no, the waste products can be recycled several times till there is almost nothing left.
Then you need a storage / distribution network, and while batteries are good, I still think Hydrogen fuel cells that produce electricity would be better.
Then the Oil companies can change to running the nuclear power plants and producing hydrogen from seawater & then shipping it to the gas stations as normal and everyone from the big money boys, to the government, to the gas stations pretty much get the same money as before, but with a lot less geopolitical problems and the public pretty much continues as normal.
Then we throw money into trying to make fusion work (possibly stop trying to get hotter and hotter only & try hot with lots of pressure) and getting better electric storage devices (along with promising sideline things like 3D printed algae matrixes that generate the gas you want etc.)
Somethings will still need oil based fuels for awhile, and that would be easy to do with domestic production & when that runs out, use nuclear power to make gas out of atmospheric carbon.
Sadly due to greed, stupidity, short sightedness (I mean we can't even just spend what we get in, we have to indebt our future generations to pay for government spending now), politics, control & power mongering, none of this will happen till oil actually is all used up... So I say use up all the oil as fast as possible then change will come..
When the just say no to everything tree huggers themselves (not some poor developing countries kept in the dark ages) are freezing to death or dying of heatstroke, can't drive to their latest hippie fests & can't get their "eco food" from half way around the world, I bet they will change their tune about building some advanced nuclear based power plants.... or they will perish & those that agree will survive and build them.
I love to drive surplus M915 series army trucks with the Cummins C series and just put a freshly rebuilt 400hp Detroit Diesel in my boat. Nothing says "eff you EPA" as thrillingly as these engines.
That being said, let me clear up some misconceptions.
AFAIK, Tesla still uses the 18650 cylindrical batteries from Sony. These have been around safely for decades in Makita power tools and other consumer devices. I use the same cells in my cave diving lights and trust me I do not mickey mouse with stuff when there are tons of rock between me and fresh, unlimited air.
In less life critical applications I have used more dicey Lithium Ion cells and yes, I had some "thermal events". However the main danger is really the insane currents these battery packs can deliver. If you ever dropped a wrench on the terminals of a car battery, you know where this is heading.
Also, none of the modern Lithium Ion batteries has a memory effect and all commercial installations have a battery management system (BMS) that prevents under or overcharging. These systems are as fool proof as you can possibly make them.
The Tesla, and to a large extend even the SpaceX rockets, are extremely clever implementations of proven technologies. There is no Pixie dust or other wanna-be magic involved; these guys just know how to optimize the known. This is the reason why Daimler Benz is buying the drive train and power storage technology from Tesla and Musk did not face embarrassing fleet groundings like Boeing.
Even with all his moxy, Musk has a fundamental understanding and respect of physical laws whereas the leaders of some big companies often have just a big-boss attitude but no technical clue. The debacle with the Dreamliner batteries was an entirely preventable engineering/management blunder that unfortunately tarnished the underlying battery technology. Musk spread the battery out over the entire floor of the car and Boeing crammed the cells in a small, insulated box. The results were entirely predictable to anyone who paid some attention in high school physics.
Anyway, If I would need a $80k vehicle tomorrow, it would buy a Tesla and not a BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche. (Disclaimer: I am not just playing a German engineer on the interwebs, I am one)
Please try to get to test drive a Tesla S and let me know what you think.
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Thats a big mother load of prime Texas bullcrap...
To try to explain in layman terms (as you can find enough sources on the net - about history of Yugo from Austro-Hungarian empire onwards or Napoleon if you prefer) only problem with Yugo was incorporating Serbs into it as Slovenian and Croat catholic pussies were quite happy with their slave like status and would happily serve any master offered to them (as you can see from recent "independent" years - serfs to the bone and beyond). Catholic poison caused both nations to choose Germany/Italy in 1940 and brutal civil war was being waged with one side siding with occupying forces against other (later 1942/43 taken over by communists and finally consolidated in latter years of WWII) side fighting for freedom and independence from old masters. Serbs on the other hand were from the onset of war against German occupiers (Draže Mihailović) but also there communists managed to get upper hand and eliminated "competition". After the war even though communists (better word is socialists as communism in Yugo was nothing like communism in USSR and other satellite countries) won they NEVER (though UDBA - Yugo CIA/KGB tried a lot) managed to eliminate catholic (aka nazi aka Ukraine in recent weeks/months) opposition which in the last days of cold war with help of the foreign secret services (especially Germany's BND and Vatican) managed to destabilize the country and it was split up (ethnic lines did not equal administrative and hell had broken loose) and exactly the same thing is going on in Ukraine (and will happen here soon as EU is very much on the same path as Yugoslavia was). Yugoslavia was held together by an idea, aspirations of people (all minus the catholic vermin) to achieve better standard of living and for a while (also with cunning playing of a middle man between west/east) it has managed to achieve reasonable good standard of living however socialism per se is killer of spirit and promotes substandard to rise to the top instead to flow into gutter, combined with external pressures and mix of nations with different prosperity and standard of living (cough cough EU...) it went sour fast in the eighties.
I've said it countless times here for me knowing what happened here can only stand in awe and anger (not really sadness as there is plenty of information available and i consider it a crime not to know whats going on in this day and age) at idiocy and ignorance displayed by US and other EU nations who (people not politicians) are unable to recognize all the signs in large enough numbers to be able to change the path of their nations. Years ago people who found themselves in shitty system (communism, nazism, fascism, dictatorship etc..) technology available to wannabe rules was not so advanced as today and if you (and as a consequence we all) slip into this new era of control and oppression there are going to be dark ages ahead with light MAYBE back after quite a few generations not to mention the price in blood.
Largely true.
The scary part is that one of your conclusions could be reworded like this:
America was held together by an idea, aspirations of people to achieve better standard of living and for a while (also with playing the world police role) it has managed to achieve reasonable good standard of living however socialism per se is killer of spirit and promotes substandard to rise to the top instead to flow into gutter, combined with external pressures and mix of nations with different prosperity and standard of living it went sour fast ...
I think you sort of prove my point, it is obvious that you don't much like the Catholics & my guess is you would not want to have your country ruled by a unity government that included a large number of Catholics in the parliament.
When Tito died it seemed pretty quickly civil war erupted and how much the different groups hated one another (enough commentary on the people that love / hate the piebold flag to fill a bookcase for example).
Regardless of the exact reasons, it seemed that calm & peace only really took hold once everybody had their own little corner.
I guess you could try going around to all the little states there are now and suggest they get back together into one big country with one government & see how they like the idea, but my guess is the answer is going to be a big no. (And probably quite a few would punctuate their no with bullets for extra emphasis).
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The Tesla car on fire that you see in the video clips is usually the one where the driver hit a big piece of steel debris in the middle of the road at highway speed
What is not often said is that 1. Nobody got hurt, everybody got out of the car just fine and 2. they got a replacement Tesla
Now compare that to when your gasoline powered sports car has a pipe hit the gas tank at highway speeds... probably not going to end as nicely for the owner.
Tesla did fix the problem by not lowering the car to the ground as much and also putting a better more expensive battery guard plate underneath.
The Tesla cars also have very sophisticated battery management systems & take care of the batteries well, but yes it is possible that if you park the car near charge depleted and leave it not plugged in for 6 months or so, you might ruin the battery pack & would have to swap it out (which aside from the cost is not that hard to do, as they have a 2 minute demo of it being done at a charge station prototype), but if you don't plan on driving a car at least every month or two & don't plan on plugging it in for months at a time, an electric car is probably not for you. But for most, just leave it plugged into the wall (even a household socket) and it will maintain the battery pretty well.
In addition if you have a car worth 80K, perhaps park it in the garage when not in use?
Tito died 1980 war started 1991... As to the "big state" i don't think it will work again and neither does(will) EU however i and others have no problems traveling anywhere on the ex Yugo territory (perhaps Kosovo but i have no desire to visit that shit hole) and we do so constantly and we shoot (paper mostly though lots of people hunt (animals)) and we get drunk and we look at boobs and most of the old ones (me included) tend to agree life was better back than, true in store we had one sugar, one flour, one everything and with lots of stuff unavailable and had to buy it in Italy or Austria but that one was of better quality and what is more importantly it was OURS.
As to the Catholics i meant local (historical and present) manifestation of it as you are very well aware that color of religion is largely dictated by nature of people practicing. All mass motivators (communism, religion etc...) sound nice in theory but their manifestation in practice is what counts and ultimately leads to you know what...
Sorry for off topic this thread went from events in Iraq to electric cars to Yugo history and rants about stuff we're all unable to change alone...
The question/issue I have yet to see raised, even by FOX, is that we are about to do the same exact thing in Afgh, but worse.
"We" have decided to leave Afgh on an arbitrary deadline, which has actually been pushed forward. We're doing this in the middle of the first "democratic" transfer of power in a very long time. The culture of instability and tribalism in Afgh is far worse than it was in Iraq. Yet, we're about to walk away after having funded, trained, and equipped the next insurgency.
In my opinion, having been in Afgh for the last 4+ years, it won't take them nearly as long as Iraq to devolve into civil war and chaos. Think days or weeks, months at the longest, compared to years.
I'd simply like our government to address why the hell they think that our withdrawal from Afgh will be, in any way, different than our withdrawal from Iraq.
"We" have decided to leave Afgh on an arbitrary deadline, which has actually been pushed forward. We're doing this in the middle of the first "democratic" transfer of power in a very long time. The culture of instability and tribalism in Afgh is far worse than it was in Iraq. Yet, we're about to walk away after having funded, trained, and equipped the next insurgency.
In my opinion, having been in Afgh for the last 4+ years, it won't take them nearly as long as Iraq to devolve into civil war and chaos. Think days or weeks, months at the longest, compared to years.
I'd simply like our government to address why the hell they think that our withdrawal from Afgh will be, in any way, different than our withdrawal from Iraq.
If someone wants to buy me a Mission RS superbike, I'll gladly take to the track for some testing and let you know my layman real-world experience to settle this gas v. electric once and for all.
I see a three state division coming in Iraq. Afghanistan they just need to leave a few guys to call in b-52 strikes as needed.
And oil and elec? Electricity is going to win it has to. It won't be battery technology that does it. It will be small electro-generating devices that end up doing it. NASA already uses fuel cell technology. As is, it won't solve anything but something will come up sooner or later that will.
We went to the moon in ten years time and much of the tech that put us there is all around you. Everything from the integrated circuit to latex has been affected. When the oil barons are finally stopped from putting up walls to alt energy. America will once again do the what seems to be impossible. We are good at that.
And oil and elec? Electricity is going to win it has to. It won't be battery technology that does it. It will be small electro-generating devices that end up doing it. NASA already uses fuel cell technology. As is, it won't solve anything but something will come up sooner or later that will.
We went to the moon in ten years time and much of the tech that put us there is all around you. Everything from the integrated circuit to latex has been affected. When the oil barons are finally stopped from putting up walls to alt energy. America will once again do the what seems to be impossible. We are good at that.
Lets see, from "Down goes Mosul", to "Alternative Energy Sources" and "Drag Racing", think this topic may get the "Drift of the Year Award"!
I am neither smart enough or educated enough, to understand "World Politics" in its totality.
What I do understand:
There has been a fight between Muslim and Non-Muslim/Infidels going back for thousands of years, and that history still drives actions today.
There are multiple motivators in the current conflicts; historical, financial, ideological, and pure Evil.
No matter what we do, someone somewhere is going to want to fight, this planet has never gone a day without a fight/war somewhere.
We will never end all of the fighting, no matter what anyone may think.
Mainstream America never sees the stuff posted on media outlets like Live Leak. People do not sit in their living rooms at night and watch the Cartels beheading people with chainsaws, and watching the Muslim Extremists sawing peoples heads off with dull knives. That "Pure Evil & Hatred" exists in this world, and if we do not address it, we will be dealing with it on our own soil way more than we want (we already have and are). Unfortunately most Americans have a historical perspective that comes from the nightly news and may only last for days or months. Those people have no true understanding of what has transpired in the past, what is really out there, the motivations behind it, and what could ultimately be coming to the their backyards.
As I see it:
Option 1 - when the evil pops up, we knock it back down as quickly and definitively as we can. We don't give it a chance to grow and develop into something that can ultimately be a major threat to the US or our Allies. This means significant resources abroad, many messy conflicts, most which will never come to a true end, but will ultimately have to be "managed" to a point that threats are kept in check. We have tried this, but we don't seem to get that we can just "fix something" and leave. As bad as it sucks for the people who will have to do it, and as bad as it sucks for the tax payers who will have to fund it, we ultimately will have to keep a presence in areas to insure stability, or we will have to show back up every 5-10 years to restore it after everything goes to $#!@ when we leave.
Option 2 - Build a "Castle" and defend it. The US Border and any Ports of Entry will become a line in the sand that will not be crossed. Our Military Forces will go from fighting abroad to maintaining and defending our borders. The world outside of our borders may burn, but we will not let the fire reach the continental US.
Both options have Pros & Cons, both will work to a limited extent, but ultimately neither is 100% full proof. IMHO, the only option that is full proof, is running both options in concert with each other. Is either going to happen in my lifetime, doubt it, not unless we have another major blood bath on American Soil.
Final Thoughts:
Reality
Potential Reality
Solutions?
I am neither smart enough or educated enough, to understand "World Politics" in its totality.
What I do understand:
There has been a fight between Muslim and Non-Muslim/Infidels going back for thousands of years, and that history still drives actions today.
There are multiple motivators in the current conflicts; historical, financial, ideological, and pure Evil.
No matter what we do, someone somewhere is going to want to fight, this planet has never gone a day without a fight/war somewhere.
We will never end all of the fighting, no matter what anyone may think.
Mainstream America never sees the stuff posted on media outlets like Live Leak. People do not sit in their living rooms at night and watch the Cartels beheading people with chainsaws, and watching the Muslim Extremists sawing peoples heads off with dull knives. That "Pure Evil & Hatred" exists in this world, and if we do not address it, we will be dealing with it on our own soil way more than we want (we already have and are). Unfortunately most Americans have a historical perspective that comes from the nightly news and may only last for days or months. Those people have no true understanding of what has transpired in the past, what is really out there, the motivations behind it, and what could ultimately be coming to the their backyards.
As I see it:
Option 1 - when the evil pops up, we knock it back down as quickly and definitively as we can. We don't give it a chance to grow and develop into something that can ultimately be a major threat to the US or our Allies. This means significant resources abroad, many messy conflicts, most which will never come to a true end, but will ultimately have to be "managed" to a point that threats are kept in check. We have tried this, but we don't seem to get that we can just "fix something" and leave. As bad as it sucks for the people who will have to do it, and as bad as it sucks for the tax payers who will have to fund it, we ultimately will have to keep a presence in areas to insure stability, or we will have to show back up every 5-10 years to restore it after everything goes to $#!@ when we leave.
Option 2 - Build a "Castle" and defend it. The US Border and any Ports of Entry will become a line in the sand that will not be crossed. Our Military Forces will go from fighting abroad to maintaining and defending our borders. The world outside of our borders may burn, but we will not let the fire reach the continental US.
Both options have Pros & Cons, both will work to a limited extent, but ultimately neither is 100% full proof. IMHO, the only option that is full proof, is running both options in concert with each other. Is either going to happen in my lifetime, doubt it, not unless we have another major blood bath on American Soil.
Final Thoughts:
Reality
Potential Reality
Solutions?
Dang; reading through this topic ends up leaving me terrifically disoriented. As such my views are fragmentary.
The Persians and the Turks share a common enemy, the Kurds. When they come in with numbers, I have little doubt that they will go directly to the North and settle old scores pretty much once and for all. After that, I expect Iran will be in the driver's seat, splitting Iraq in two with the Turks.
As with all issues that have an economic basis, the alternative energy question will always follow the customers, who are currently more than content with a petroleum based economy. Stupid, of course, because the genuine value of petroleum is in the synthetics business, which will also go the way of the dinosaurs once the oil is gone. How will humanity claim its place out in the stars if plastics, etc. become extinct along with gasoline?
Short thinking leads to our stagnation and extinction as a species. The more genuine value of a petroleum society is the standard of technology that permits bootstrapping our society into a permanent condition as a spacefaring civilization. It's a temporary opportunity and must not be wasted. Think about it.
World powers and their inevitable world wars create jumble maps like the Middle East, Yugoslavia, and Southeast Asia; whose borders have little to do with the indigenous inhabitants, and serve purposes that suit the powers, and not the inhabitants. Small wonder that they seethe, crumble, and fester.
Were it me in charge, I would leave those waters to find their own levels. In the Middle East, much of the reasons we are so universally despised is because we don't let this happen. Oil is 'just barely cheap enough' precisely because it is a commodity whose price is established as a means to undermine our own domestic oil supply's development. The system mandates that the Middle East's oil supply is the one being depleted. Ours OTOH is largely held in reserve. That's got a smidgen of appeal to me. If the only thing that's being lost is money, it's a bargain. It's when we start paying in lives that the costs become prohibitive, and that's where we have all been since WWII, maybe earlier.
As for civil wars and Jihads; haters gonna hate. I say wandering into that crossfire ain't smart, period.
I think that the quip about WWIII being in play for a decade may be somewhat timely but I think it's really been going since around the days of Nasser and company. Like that last one, it's only going to reach a conclusion once someone grows a pair and goes postal with the nukes. The concept, unthinkable to some, is simply a recognition that doing the same thing (intervention, nation building, etc,) over and over again in the forlorn hope that someday we'll get it right is really the worse choice.
I mean, what's the point of being a nuclear power if we're all so terrified of employing our most effective means to preempt the endless carnage? Worked on Japan, and it's not a thing uniquely Japanese that promoted fanaticism into a crux where war was being transformed into a holocaust.
Truman made the right decision. What we need is another Truman, right about now. Nobody pissed in our Wheaties again until the DC boxers were exchanged for panties for all the world to see and snicker about.
The only lasting solution to fanaticism is the thing the B-2 has invented to deliver. When the B-2's took to the air, that's when the USSR saw the (BRIGHT) light coming down the tunnel.
Greg
The Persians and the Turks share a common enemy, the Kurds. When they come in with numbers, I have little doubt that they will go directly to the North and settle old scores pretty much once and for all. After that, I expect Iran will be in the driver's seat, splitting Iraq in two with the Turks.
As with all issues that have an economic basis, the alternative energy question will always follow the customers, who are currently more than content with a petroleum based economy. Stupid, of course, because the genuine value of petroleum is in the synthetics business, which will also go the way of the dinosaurs once the oil is gone. How will humanity claim its place out in the stars if plastics, etc. become extinct along with gasoline?
Short thinking leads to our stagnation and extinction as a species. The more genuine value of a petroleum society is the standard of technology that permits bootstrapping our society into a permanent condition as a spacefaring civilization. It's a temporary opportunity and must not be wasted. Think about it.
World powers and their inevitable world wars create jumble maps like the Middle East, Yugoslavia, and Southeast Asia; whose borders have little to do with the indigenous inhabitants, and serve purposes that suit the powers, and not the inhabitants. Small wonder that they seethe, crumble, and fester.
Were it me in charge, I would leave those waters to find their own levels. In the Middle East, much of the reasons we are so universally despised is because we don't let this happen. Oil is 'just barely cheap enough' precisely because it is a commodity whose price is established as a means to undermine our own domestic oil supply's development. The system mandates that the Middle East's oil supply is the one being depleted. Ours OTOH is largely held in reserve. That's got a smidgen of appeal to me. If the only thing that's being lost is money, it's a bargain. It's when we start paying in lives that the costs become prohibitive, and that's where we have all been since WWII, maybe earlier.
As for civil wars and Jihads; haters gonna hate. I say wandering into that crossfire ain't smart, period.
I think that the quip about WWIII being in play for a decade may be somewhat timely but I think it's really been going since around the days of Nasser and company. Like that last one, it's only going to reach a conclusion once someone grows a pair and goes postal with the nukes. The concept, unthinkable to some, is simply a recognition that doing the same thing (intervention, nation building, etc,) over and over again in the forlorn hope that someday we'll get it right is really the worse choice.
I mean, what's the point of being a nuclear power if we're all so terrified of employing our most effective means to preempt the endless carnage? Worked on Japan, and it's not a thing uniquely Japanese that promoted fanaticism into a crux where war was being transformed into a holocaust.
Truman made the right decision. What we need is another Truman, right about now. Nobody pissed in our Wheaties again until the DC boxers were exchanged for panties for all the world to see and snicker about.
The only lasting solution to fanaticism is the thing the B-2 has invented to deliver. When the B-2's took to the air, that's when the USSR saw the (BRIGHT) light coming down the tunnel.
Greg
"There is very little first-hand intelligence from Iraq or Syria; the majority of foreign fighters have traveled via Turkey. Authorities in France believe some 800 French nationals have travelled to Syria, or intend to. Analysts believe as many as 100 American citizens have made the trek. One additional concern: most Europeans are able to travel to the U.S. without visas.
French and German citizens have carried out suicide bombings in Syria this year. So has at least one American. Last month, 22-year old Moner Mohammad Abusalha from Florida became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, after joining ISIS rival and al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
I don't think the public realizes the seriousness of the problem. The penny hasn't dropped. But Syria is a game-changer
Richard Walton, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command
UK police say they made 40 arrests for Syria-related offences in the first three months of this year, almost double the number of the entire previous year.
Richard Walton, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, warned last year there were signs these recruits could be turned around to launch attacks in the UK. "I don't think the public realizes the seriousness of the problem," he said. "The penny hasn't dropped. But Syria is a game-changer."
FBI Director James Comey said last month: "There's going to be a diaspora out of Syria at some point, and we are determined not to let lines be drawn from Syria today to a future 9/11."
Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Center for Near East Policy, estimates that almost 3,000 European citizens have travelled to fight in Syria."
'Foreign Legion' in Iraq and Syria may bring jihad to West - CNN.com
Heres where he isnt full of shit. Power vacuum. The US, Britain and France were so gung ho for non soviet countries that we basically begged the country to go to war to fill that position. Think of it like this. I can stand here and say im the country of Jeff. No one gives a fuck. What i really need is for the UN to reconize me as the country of jeff or im just a looney with a death wish. Once we more or less put out the blanket call that we would recognize a non communist country and let them be members of the UN we green lighted the wars. All this shit about 500 year old hatreds and all that stuff im sure is relevant, but its really more of a rallying cry to the stupid than it is policy. Something to get the little people to pick up guns. The leaders could give a shit. One thing, and only one thing made that war happen. The chance for power. We (rest of world) facilitated that.
I dont have the wise old experience of most of you vets and otherwise elders to myself. But from the video I just saw, I say sign me up now, Ill give em my best shot. Im not gonna post the direct link, but if you want to see those evil snakes in action go here:
SHTF School | Real Life Survival Experiences
The first post "Survival Among Humans", he puts a link to the video after describing most people wouldnt be able to watch it without being horrified(SPOILER: these guys guys are killing folks left and right). Say what you want, Im a pawn in the grand scheme just like most. But if it means potentially stopping these cowards where theyre at, Ill go right NOW. I think I have a pretty good idea of what happens if they take control of a whole country. I mean come on, these idiots are just riding around blowing peoples` brains all over the street!
SHTF School | Real Life Survival Experiences
The first post "Survival Among Humans", he puts a link to the video after describing most people wouldnt be able to watch it without being horrified(SPOILER: these guys guys are killing folks left and right). Say what you want, Im a pawn in the grand scheme just like most. But if it means potentially stopping these cowards where theyre at, Ill go right NOW. I think I have a pretty good idea of what happens if they take control of a whole country. I mean come on, these idiots are just riding around blowing peoples` brains all over the street!
usmc02xx: Definitely agree about leaders not giving a shit but at the same time what is leadership but using different techniques to command and drive (herd if you will) people in the direction you want. You see religious zealots and you want to rule them well you sell yourself as prime religious zealot and use that to make them do what you want. Yes if people were smart enough and able to put themselves into 3rd persons POV or knew worlds history and what makes men tick much suffering could be averted but alas this is not the way we're made.
What US did (in Iraq) is stirred the shit up (Iran tinkering, Iran/Iraq war, assuring Iraq it could take Kuwait without problems from US side etc...) and when the smell started to bother instead of shutting lid down or using water hose to remove it stepped right in and now the smell sure aint better and whats far worse US boot now smells too and US keeps stomping with that smelly boot everywhere over the rug...
How to solve that today? I have absolutely no fucking clue perhaps first we should solve our own problems and deal with our own inbred bastards in power and zombies from Walmart and get our own societies out of dysfunction and into working order - perhaps all other problems might solve themselves or at least become solvable if that were to happen.
What US did (in Iraq) is stirred the shit up (Iran tinkering, Iran/Iraq war, assuring Iraq it could take Kuwait without problems from US side etc...) and when the smell started to bother instead of shutting lid down or using water hose to remove it stepped right in and now the smell sure aint better and whats far worse US boot now smells too and US keeps stomping with that smelly boot everywhere over the rug...
How to solve that today? I have absolutely no fucking clue perhaps first we should solve our own problems and deal with our own inbred bastards in power and zombies from Walmart and get our own societies out of dysfunction and into working order - perhaps all other problems might solve themselves or at least become solvable if that were to happen.
I concur, this thread should recieve the greatest drift record... what a series of discombobulated thoughts...
Here it goes, let me add to the cannon fodder of malaised thought:
I admire the Slovenian isolationism, great idea... Iraq and most of the middle east should be a glass parking lot, or at least glowing for some significant amount of time... electric superbikes and/or cars are gay, unless draped with hot nude or bikini-clad females... and obviously, based on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, there are three possible shapes that the Universe may take: open, closed, and flat. I believe that it most definitely is open, proven by the open-mindedness of the illustrious moderators of SH. Oh, and by the way, the ultimate fate of our universe, is a Big Freeze. Boom, that just happened!
Here it goes, let me add to the cannon fodder of malaised thought:
I admire the Slovenian isolationism, great idea... Iraq and most of the middle east should be a glass parking lot, or at least glowing for some significant amount of time... electric superbikes and/or cars are gay, unless draped with hot nude or bikini-clad females... and obviously, based on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, there are three possible shapes that the Universe may take: open, closed, and flat. I believe that it most definitely is open, proven by the open-mindedness of the illustrious moderators of SH. Oh, and by the way, the ultimate fate of our universe, is a Big Freeze. Boom, that just happened!
Im just an armchair quarterback but the biggest issues with both wars was never defining the mission and what constitutes victory.
In Afghanistan our simple objectve should have been "We are coming to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden and those that made 9/11 possible. We will stay until he is surrendered or killed/captured. While we are here we as a sideshow provide security/build schools perform other good works as they support our primary mission. Once our primary mission is met we are returning with our pound of flesh and the country of Afghanistan can either choose Govt by the people or a return to the stone age. Not our concern either way. We are friends in your effort to promote the freedom of the individual but incapable of forcing rational government on those that wont accept it".
In Iraq we had numerous justification for taking out Saddam due to violations of the UN secured Desert Storm peace agreement. We should have said A.) the UN either enforces it sanctions and takes out Saddam as called for or B.) We expose the UN for the sham organization it is, we withdraw from the organization and we allow Saddam to maintain the status quo and the UN can handle the situation it is without the sack to handle.
Without a clear cut mission how can it ever be determined what constitutes victory? Our soldiers fought magnificently in a war designed to never end.
In Afghanistan our simple objectve should have been "We are coming to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden and those that made 9/11 possible. We will stay until he is surrendered or killed/captured. While we are here we as a sideshow provide security/build schools perform other good works as they support our primary mission. Once our primary mission is met we are returning with our pound of flesh and the country of Afghanistan can either choose Govt by the people or a return to the stone age. Not our concern either way. We are friends in your effort to promote the freedom of the individual but incapable of forcing rational government on those that wont accept it".
In Iraq we had numerous justification for taking out Saddam due to violations of the UN secured Desert Storm peace agreement. We should have said A.) the UN either enforces it sanctions and takes out Saddam as called for or B.) We expose the UN for the sham organization it is, we withdraw from the organization and we allow Saddam to maintain the status quo and the UN can handle the situation it is without the sack to handle.
Without a clear cut mission how can it ever be determined what constitutes victory? Our soldiers fought magnificently in a war designed to never end.
Don't let the media fool ya. Most of them weapons were giving to ISIS when we funded them to cause trouble in Syria. They were the group we kept calling freedom fighter and were killing little girls and cutting their hearts out and beheading an stuff. Theres a video somewhere of the guy biting the childs heart. All this we're witnessing is a rise of a great middle eastern army. One that will go against Isriael in the near future.
No, you don't have our experience. It takes a snake to know a snake. Thats exactly what the powers behind all this want, is to get you all stirred up and involved in their scheme.Ask Gunfighter. You can cut a head off the Hydra and it just grows back two more. You have to find and destroy its heart. But the heart has hidden itself well, and protected itself well, in a web of lies. When you can figure out where the head is, well that will be a start to destroying it. Trouble is, you cannot beat it by playing its game by its rules.
When you stop and look at it objectively, with out an emotional attachment, one has to somewhat admire their dedication to what they believe. The willingness to strap explosives to yourself and blow yourself up. WOW. Darwin but impressive dedication. To be willing to just execute 1500 people to achieve your ends. Sick, but in a sick way, admirable. It brought to my mind the scene at the end of Apocalypse Now where Kurtz tells Willard about his SOF unit vaccinating a bunch of Vietnamese children and being called back to the village. The VC had come and cut off all the little arms. They were RUTHLESS in their dedication to expel the foreigner and everything of him. Or the story from Herodotus in which the Greeks trying to invade Sicily were beaten. They wer'nt just sent home, or even made prisoners. They were executed to the last man. 30,000 men disemboweled on one day. RUTHLESS. Do we have the courage to be that, even with ourselves. Are you willing to recognize in yourself that which is willing to play their game?
From another view, they want to accomplish even more than Hitler. They are just as evil and sick and that sickness must be eliminated from the earth if we are to survive. But remember, from my post above, you've got to find the heart to end it. Until you destroy the heart you are just making the problem worse by buying into its game.
Good looking out Darkside-Six, but remember the media isn't I're friend. I don't know how much you know or care about prophecy but whats happening now as well as the past has already been written. If you don't believe in that type of stuff, I ask you to research the name ISIS, and not what they say it stands for but in the meaning of the God Isis. Research her meaning and ways and I know theirs something else their as well when it comes to astrology. The powers that be are using all this drama and us as a huge sacrifice like always, to gain more control over us. Hell its so complicated I want even try to explain, I just hope I can make someone see whats really going on out there. But I'm just tring to explain the symbology of it. I know symbolism.
I hope I aint no snake. However Ive killed enough timber rattlers in the woods of my stomping grounds, South Ga, that Im pretty sure I can recognize the bad ones quick.
As far as the heart/head/core/etc, I think we can all be in agreement about one thing. The heart of all of these people is Militant Islam. Theyre not "terrorists" that just magically appeared out of nowhere as the politically correct version of events would have you believe. No matter what name theyre called by, their motivation is the same. They say you cant fight an idea. However, thats exactly what we did in regards to fascism in WW2 and Communism in the Cold War. Not only did we bathe in the blood of the fascist/commie enemies in those wars, we fought it at home. Where we couldnt legally kill/arrest them, we humiliated and made it a taboo to even come close to associating with it. To yall with a more strategic mindset, and even better, a good understanding of the Islamic world, could we not do the exact same thing to Militant Islam? Am I wrong here? And notice Im not calling a genocide of all Muslims, but specifically those going after our necks. The ones who interpret the Koran as saying: "kill every person who is not Muslim".
I am a snake. Or at least used to be one and ran with them. Thats why I can say with certainty that the heart of the problem lies deeper than militant Islam. Consider, it keeps popping up as Nazism, Communism, etc. Militant Islam is just another head.
I guess your refereeing to religion. What I'm talking about isn't any religion whatsoever. Its life. Whats happening, just like I pointed it out while in service. People I said it to then didn't listen but as time keeps rolling along I'm getting their attention. And Forgetful Coyote, your right, and I like your quote at the bottom. Always trying to remember who said that. Heres one " All men dream, but not equally, for those that dream in the night awake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dreams with open eyes to make it happen."
As stated in my PM apologies, I mis read your post. would be interested in hearing what you have to say.
So what are you getting at Maggot? Your post reminds me of "Sympathy for the Devil": "I shouted out `who killed the Kennedy`s?` When after all it was you and me". You get my drift?
As far as being a snake, I never killed or shot at anyone, but I used to think it was cool to hang out with the bad kids. I dont mean the usual playground bullies; like I said in an earlier post my bud from high school recently got killed in the process of robbing a drug dealer. Fortunately I came to my senses long before that incident. Though not without my fair share of boo-boos. I can still pick out the players when needed though.
When it comes to eradicating human evil in its most general sense, the only possibility I could see is extinction of the human race. And obviously thats not something even my most basic primitive instincts is inclined to achieve.
As far as being a snake, I never killed or shot at anyone, but I used to think it was cool to hang out with the bad kids. I dont mean the usual playground bullies; like I said in an earlier post my bud from high school recently got killed in the process of robbing a drug dealer. Fortunately I came to my senses long before that incident. Though not without my fair share of boo-boos. I can still pick out the players when needed though.
When it comes to eradicating human evil in its most general sense, the only possibility I could see is extinction of the human race. And obviously thats not something even my most basic primitive instincts is inclined to achieve.
Something like that. I think that the basic depravity that we are seeing, lives at some level, in each of us. Most of us subdue it and use our energy to do creative things. Some break, or are twisted, and we see these things. It's certainly not limited to the militant Islamics, look at the Crusades, The Inquisition. They are just the chief purveyors currently. Frankly, I think that if we dont do something to change the course of the US, it could become the most tyrannical entity that ever existed. I hope not, but time will tell.
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