Royal Wedding

I really don't get all this hype about the wedding. I would understand that people  would watch it, that makes some sense, as they're public figures and would probably become quite influential in the future, but it's been going on for the past 4 months. It seems nothing else is going on in the world except for this wedding.


This is mad, because some of the biggest changes in the century (short as it is for now) might be happening right now. The Middle Eastern Arab Spring is far from over. In Syria, people are being killed on a daily basis fighting for the same rights we take for granted every single day. In Libya, the rebels have managed to retake parts of a city that has been under siege for the past two months.
All I hear about, however, is this wedding. 


If you think all is but gloom and doom in the world and you think the Royal Wedding would be a distraction, why not read about Israel being the first country in the world to launch a nationwide electric grid for cars ?
Or as much as you might hate Lady Gaga, you can read about her donating $1 million to charity?

Instead you are overexcited about a wedding of people who are taking your money away if you pay taxes in Britain for an overindulged ceremony which will last several hours and not achieve anything more than spending millions of dollars for some hand-waving like the Queen.

End rant!

The Conspiracy Thread I

I spy, I spy, with my little eye something beginning with C.


Conspiracies Around The World
It's not something unique or extraordinary. People believe in conspiracies all around the world. Some of the more famous ones include:
- Pyramids are made by aliens, and the evidence therefore has been buried by the world governments.
- Aliens landed in Roswell, the US buried that story too.
- The Elders of Zion are a group of Jew who control world politics and economics, who amongst other things made up the Holocaust to benefit all Jews
- The Bilderberg group are an elitist group of rich or powerful or highly intelligent people who control the world and economics and choose who fights which wars.
- The moon landing in 1969 was faked by the US to give the US people a boost in morale and make the Russian Sovyet Union take morale hit.
- Obama is a Muslim terrorist who was not born in the US and who is leading the US to ruin (or the Anti-Christ)


And there are many more, but I would just go with one of the more prominent ones in the past two years for this thread. This would be about Obama being a lawful POTUS (President of the United States).


Let's Start At The Beginning
There are those who claim Obama is not from the US. This is because amongst several other reasons he was raised in Indonesia for several years, because his middle name is of Arabic-sounding origin and because his father is Muslim. Except for the fact that none of the above makes it illegal for him to be President, many people believe this to be enough and if they do not they have tried digging deeper and making unfounded stories about him.
One of them is about Obama being Muslim himself and as such is getting associated with Muslim extremists and terrorists. This claim is not only unfounded but completely 'racist'. Lumping all Muslims into one big melting pot of terrorist is moronic to say the least. The second part of this assessment is the part of Obama himself being Muslim. This is also wrong, especially since he himself has been a regular churchgoer for the past two decades and a half.


Birthers
Birthers is the new label on people who claim Obama was not born in the US. This issue was raised during his presidential campaign a few years ago and was put to rest in the mainstream media until recently when Trump decided to race headlong against Obama as a birther. He claimed, like others that since Obama had failed to produce his birth certificate he was not eligible to be POTUS and should not be allowed to run for a second a time. This was due to Obama not releasing his birth certificate. I do not know why Obama did not wish to release his birth certificate, but he finally did.
News Article About It...


This should put at ease most rational people who had started believing the nonsense about him not being born in the US.


Apart From That
The US Constitution does not even require a person to be born in the US to be eligible as a candidate for the US Presidency. According to the US Constitution you just need to be a "Natural-born US Citizen".
The word 'born' in there might be somewhat misleading as the only conditions for being a "Natural-born US Citizen" are the following : (Source : Constitutional Topic)

• Anyone born inside the United States *
• Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person's status as a citizen of the tribe
• Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
• Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
• Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
• Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
• Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
• A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.

_{* There is an exception in the law — the person must be "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. This would exempt the child of a diplomat, for example, from this provision.}




So basically, even if Obama was not born in the US, but his mother was and had lived in the US for at least five years, then Barack would have been a "Natural-born US Citizen" and as such would have been allowed to become POTUS.


And yes, being a citizen/national or a natural-born citizen is not the same according to the US constitution and law.


In The End
I just hope this isn't what makes Obama lose his presidency. These conspiracy theories can be quite hurtful sometimes and stupid at other times.If Obama loses his presidency, it should be because he's not competent enough to lead the US people, not because of phony accusations about his birth or because of Islamophobia.


You might also notice that I am not one to believe in most conspiracies and one reason for that is that I do not understand why I should just believe one of them and not all of them. All of them give have some kind of complete fallacy to justify their 'truths' that it just does not make any sense.


Addendum
According the the New York Times, many people are also doubtful about Trump's origins with more than the majority of people who were polled saying there was a probability that Trump is not a US citizen. I wonder if he would get more or less slack than Obama. Of course his, middle name isn't Hussein, so probably, no one would care about him.
Article About Trump

Link to The Conspiracy Thread II

Fighting for Freedom & Democracy, But Only Elsewhere!

The picture says it all. Are Western countries actually fighting for freedom and democracy when they wage wars in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya?

Well, probably not....

Of course, we have to paint someone or something as bad, so we can keep going and beat them up to get what we want. The US attacked countless countries during the Cold War because they were claiming all of the domino's might fall down if just one does. The war in Korea is just one example of a fight for the good of the West and its values. A 60-year long war, isn't that great ?

In the past 10 years several wars have been fought by or with the aid of many different countries - as they were in the past 50 or a hundred years too. The last few big examples would be Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya. 

Some people think that things have changed a lot since 1989 and the official end to the Cold War, when Russia and the US buried the hatchet (mostly due to the collapse of the old Russian union known as the USSR), but I don't think much has actually. Several parallels:

- When the US wants something, then Russia is against it and vice-versa. Example: When Kosovo was filing for independence - with a pro-Western government - then all of Western Europe (EU) and the US were supporting Kosovo's independence. Russia, was against it. Example 2: When Abkhazia, a Georgian province wanted to become independent - with a pro-Russian government - Russia supported Abkhazia, but the Western countries did not.

- When the NATO (Western) countries and the Arab League signed off on helping the Libyans, the Russians and the Chinese were against it and are now voicing concerns of French soldiers actually going to Libya.

Do Western Countries Actually Bring Democracy ?

Iraq has been in a state of war for approximately 8 years now and apart for the fake WMD the other idea was to finally bring down an oppressive dictator and make Iraq into a new democracy in the Middle Eastern (or Persian) region. One that might counteract all of the other dictatorships in the other countries in the region. Instead, what we got was several hundreds of thousands of deaths, a corrupt startling of a democracy like some of the early African democracies, and a country where almost nowhere is safe.

Afghanistan is in a similar state.

Apparently you can't just make a country into a democracy. It just doesn't work. The European democracies have had a few centuries to actually become what they are now. It didn't just happen overnight, but one thing is that they became democracies over time and by the will of the people, which makes a lot of sense, especially since democracy literally means : "The rule of the people" in Greek. Democracy does not mean : "The imposed rule of foreign countries". 

It is unfair and unwise to try and impose another view on people who are not ready for such thoughts yet. An example that might not appeal to all of you, but in several sci-fi shows, more advanced civilizations do not want to share their technology with more primitive societies and this is usually because that can too easily lead in someone using the technology for their own good and make life miserable for the others.

In real life most examples of more advanced civilizations meeting less advanced civilizations have resulted in dramatic consequences too:

- Europeans going to Africa resulted in millions killed or enslaved.

- Europeans going to the Americas resulted in millions killed from superior firepower (and disease).

There would certainly be other examples too, but those are the ones that pop into my head right now.

Should We Just Leave Them Alone Then ?

It begs the question then, doesn't it ? Are we supposed to let a madman and his family run over civilians with tanks in the case of Libya ? As these enlightened and free people that we are, it does not make sense for  us not to intervene ? But might it be better not to ? 

By intervening we have made Libya into a war which might kill tens of thousands of people or more in the end. By intervening in Iraq and Afghanistan we have already made a war which has killed several hundred thousands of people.

It seems like coming in with our superiority complex makes it worse at every turn. Living inside a democratic country is very nice, but being forced to be democratic defeats the purpose, doesn't it ?

Well, too many questions to answer right now, but worth thinking about...

Another Oil Bust ?!

Are we heading for another crash ? From June through to August 2008 oil reached a peak level of about $140 per barrel. We are currently at $127 per barrel. Guess what happened after the peak - you can cheat by looking at the graph - it crashed to $30 per barrel.

What basically happened was that all of a sudden everyone realized that oil was too expensive and more and more people reduced their usage, this meant that there was a shock in demand and since all of a sudden demand plunged, so did the prices.

An increase in oil prices affects everyone and by everyone, I actually mean everyone ! This includes people who don't drive cars. Why ? Because increased oil/petroleum prices mean an increase in food prices, an increase petroleum products (i.e. plastic bags/bottles, synthetic clothing, frozen food packaging) prices, an increase in transportation costs, ... People who drive just have another headache.

An example would be for a working person who has to drive to work every day and then takes trips on the weekends. If for example he used to pay an average of $80 a week on filling his car when prices were $60-80 a barrel he would now have to pay an average of $160 a week on filling his car. This means that per month the person has about $300 less to spend. That's massive for the average Joe who only earns $1500-2500 a month. This however is only part of it, since all of his food would have increased in price too.

Of course, what does Joe do ? He decides not to go on his weekend trips anymore and decides to carpool to work with his friends, so instead of spending $300 a week, his spending goes back to its original or less. This, and the same thing happening for every company or person in the world that decide they're paying too much leads to massive plunge in demand, which in turn makes oil prices crash again.

What will happen exactly I don't know, but I don't expect oil prices to go up much past $160 or maybe 170 per barrel, before they crash again. This of course is very speculative of me and I might be totally wrong, but I know I would not want to pay triple prices at the fuel tank every week and I'm pretty sure most people agree with me.

I'm not sure what the effects of another oil bust might be, but I guess we'll see.

Libya for Dummies ( Part III ) - Mini-update

Part I and II can be found here:

Libya for Dummies ( Part I )

Libya for Dummies ( Part II )

Gold
One of the comments has brought something to my attention about Muammar Gadhafi, the leader of Libya. Unlike most people in the world, Gadhafi literally has tonnes of gold. I'm talking about a real gold stash somewhere in Libya. The estimate is that he has a little more than 140 tonnes of gold treasure. What is also extraordinary is that the price of gold is nearing $1500 per ounce.
Just for sakes of simplifying calculations and therefore this post, I am going to say that an ounce is 50 grams instead of the 28 grams. This would also give an underestimate of what the gold would be worth on the market, but since Gadhafi would have to rely on black market dealers, I think, his gold would have a somewhat lower value.
So let's get on to estimate the value of his trove. So it's $3000 per 100 grams. 1 ton is 1000kg and 1kg is 1000 grams. This means that his gold is worth more than $4.2 billion. That's an amount that most people would not ever even see exchange hands in their entire lifetimes.


Oil? Bah! Who needs it?!
What this means is that Gadhafi can finance his mercenaries and army for a much longer period than I had ever thought. No matter what happens to the oil in the country, $4+ billion can buy many weapons, and it can pay for an army for a long time. Of course having the oil ports wouldn't hurt him, but even without them, he can afford to keep this war going for a very long time.


Ultimatums Are Bad
Lately, most Western countries have been calling for the immediate surrender of step-down of Gadhafi. I believe that in the situation we're in, not leaving any other options on the table will lead to nothing more than a long and bloody war. Gadhafi has now started to implement cluster munitions inside populated areas. Cluster munitions are munitions that explode and then release smaller munitions which then go in all directions.
I believe that negotiations is the step forward, even though he is a mad man, the worst thing you can do with a crazy person is drive them into a corner, because all that would happen is them flying into a rage and doing even crazier things.
The next step might be a very dangerous one as NATO tries to squeeze Gadhafi like a lemon. Acid might spill into their and the Libyans' eyes and it will hurt badly. Gadhafi might go on a rampage to discourage NATO's air-strikes. This might become very ugly.
Sadly, the Libyans are between Scylla and Chyrabdis or a rock and a hard place. The difference between Scylla & Chyrabdis and the rock & hard place is that Scylla & Chyrabdis are terrible monsters that would kill anyone who comes near them, while the rock just keeps you immobile.
The Libyan rebels are stuck between keeping their fight and slowly losing their resolve or stopping now and accept the loss of their fight. Both cases would result in Gadhafi finding ways to make everyone pay for his troubles, many, many deaths.
The rebels were highly motivated before, but when the tide turned and Gadhafi had brought its armored column against them they started losing morale quickly, a prolonged fight usually makes the militia lose heart before the regulars do.


Need to Negotiate
They need to ask for a cease-fire, someone neutral needs to make both parties go to the table and discuss a cease-fire. Even if it ends up like the cease-fire in the Korea's it would probably be better than them to keep on the fight for months or years. Several thousands of people have died already. How many more should have to die ?


Except for That
Gadhafi has been bombarding Misrata from within and from without, killing civilians as well as active rebels. NATO has promised more airstrikes and the rebels have apparently begun receiving weapon shipments and have been closing in on the next oil port.
Them getting weapons probably means that at least some companies are profiting from this. Isn't there an upside to everything ?


Oh well. Good night everyone. Have a think about this.
Part IV is now available.