The US invade the UK? The only term I've ever put forward for this concept is "Yeah, good luck to them" with enough sarcasm to stop a watch moving.
It was an example of what Nexxo was on about. How would we feel if another country invaded us because a group of people from our country attacked them? It is more or less what our armed forces are doing to other countries.
I see your point matey, but the thing is... we invaded Iraq for no real reason like that? The guys who commited '9/11' are supposed to be Afghan's right?
The guys who committed 9/11 are not Afgan's as far as i know. (runs off to check) Just checked, most of them were from Saudi and as far as i can see none of them were from Afghanistan. Besides even if they are what then gives us the right to invade a whole country based on 1 group of people?
If that country was stopping 90% of the world's food resources being exported then sure, I'd invade and slaughter the entire government who did this to show the rest of the world that trying to do such things is pointless. Invasions will forever have "justification" thrown around for every and a day mate, The only true justification would be world wide domination and the reason would be "The unity of humanity". +shrugs+ Until that point, Invasions aren't usually justifiable... unless the above comments about food stocks being used.
No, they were supposed to be based in Afghanistan. Most of them I believe were Saudi. After 9-11 we demanded the Afghan government hand them over and they replied "We don't even know where they are. Turns out that was probably true. http://www.link4u.com/taliban.htm
Sorry, at work so was literally just going back into work mode. Say <country a> held back food stocks because they were going to <country b> and <country a> believes their divine being is telling them <country b> is evil. If this directly affected <country b>, <country c> and <country d> to the point where human's may die. Then <country a> would be liable to get their asses invaded. Thats really the only reason, only resources that would potentially kill thousands are worth fighting over, oil is not one of them. I do struggle to put this view into words, so sorry if that lacks sense. Hilariously you could actually put my theory into logic and show that the US opens itself up to invasion if you used this!
Ah i get ya, doesn't it depend where the food stocks come from if country a grew them and/or brought them isn't it down to them who they sell/pass them on to? Shouldn't country b sort it out? Maybe instead of countries c and d invading they might wanna give country b food? It would be alot cheaper.
Dude, seriously?! Oil may not be worth fighting over in your opinion, but it definitely could potentially kill thousands, if not millions. The entire global economy is intrinsically linked to oil. If oil could not be secured to placate the millions of westerners and BRICs and next 11 economies, there would be uproar. Imagine it for a second.... I'm not justifying war over oil. I believe it's wrong. But millions of people around the world would cease to be there taxpaying, law-abiding, calm, cattle-like selves overnight without oil. No government can afford that and so they wage war to push their own agendas and ensure that the masses are subdued and continue to consent to being governed. Don't be so naive as to believe that war is ever worthwhile.
The problem with platitudes is that they sound so self-evident that they do not get questioned. Are they serving the UK? Are they dying for us? Last time I checked the reasons for people joining the army are pretty complex and not just driven by a desire to serve the country (they could join the NHS, fire service, police force or social services for that). Last time I checked we got pulled into this conflict for American interests. Soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq are certainly not there for me, or for the million or so UK protesters against the war. I don't want them there; I want them safe at home. Theirs may not be to question why but it is the duty of us, the public for who they are ostensibly risking their lives, to question most rigourously how our soldiers are deployed and why. We have that duty of care to them. The poppy means nothing if we do not do that. There is such a concept of responsibility and accountability (and this links to your previous post, so please read on). In the cancer services it can happen that a patient dies as a direct consequence of the treatment that attempts to save their life from cancer. Although such events are regarded as unfortunate and an inevitable risk, the doctor or surgeon is still held accountable for it. The Hippocratic oath says: "I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone..." If you are not reasonably certain you can cure the patient without harming or killing him in the process, it is better not to do anything. If the doctor or surgeon cannot demonstrate that they carefully weighed up all the risks and took the least harmful approach possible, they are in trouble. Never mind the intent. At best our intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan can be described as negligent. Let's look at the Hippocratic oath again: "...Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves..." Or, the present-day version: Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God. There was no rebuilding plan after the invasion. There was no consideration of the long-term consequences. There is no consideration of how civilians would be affected by the conflict, as there was no consideration of how they would be affected by the support of Saddam, the embargoes of Iraq or the support of the Taliban in the 90's. By the same standards a doctor would be struck off and prosecuted. And with respect to our foreign policies in general the following bit bears consideration: I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
War technically should never be justifiable. But human-nature being the spiteful one it is, will always try and cause it. I was just using oil as an example mate, especially with the last ten years as it's a resource everyone is well aware of that is now heavily in decline. Change that to Uranium or something if that helps? Like I said, bad at explaining in writing, in person I can explain in quite well -_- Although the thought of that much havoc and chaos is appealing to my destructive tendancies today >.<
Funny you should mention uranium. The US is heavily at work trying to sell nuclear energy technology and support to developing countries, thus creating a dependency base on it for the world's energy resources. At the same time a company selling nuclear powerplant computer hardware to Iran has stumbled across the Stuxnet virus, a very sophisticated program that specifically targets computer systems used in the nuclear industry --most specifically the Iranian nuclear industry-- and obviously written by someone with considerable technical knowledge of such systems. Now where might such a virus come from?...
I remember reading about that actually Nexxo, one of the lads I game with, his father works in Nuclear Enginnering or something in the US and said it was a virus with some serious power behind it (Excuse the really tactless pun there...) when we were discussing it on Teamspeak one evening. Sooner we find a nice, massive, free, power source. The better with that one. Oh wait... +looks at the sun behind the clouds+ That seems quite a nice idea >.< Never understood why we can't build like a HUGE solar collector in orbit... the shadow would cool/deflect sunrays and cooling the atmosphere slightly and we'd have aload of power aswell... sweet! Sorry, Utopian mind again...
Why can't we build a massive solar array in space that simultaneously cools the atmosphere? Physics. But I do agree that we should be spending a lot more money on research into alternative energy. The sooner we begin to wean ourselves from fossil fuels the better.
Physics? What part? Fairly certain a basis of small thrusters to counteract the gravity of the moon and Earth would affect this? I'm fairly curious now!
There are a ton of second- and third-order effects that come into play when you build giant structures designed to remain in a constant, fixed orbit. Longeron shadowing, orbital mechanics, gravity gradients, and a host of other principles would need to be sorted out. Attach something the wrong way and the entire complex could begin tumbling out of control. Momentum would end up ripping the thing apart. Plus, an orbiting solar array large enough to feed a significant amount of energy would become too unwieldy to efficiently manage in the harsh environment of space. Then there's the problem of getting the power back down to Earth in an efficient manner.
...i.e. in a way that won't microwave our asses from orbit. It's one way of solving the problem of the human condition though.
errrr...... can i just name a few... the vikings and the romans being some of the main ones? and im pretty sure we benifited like feck out of the roman invasion... clean water, sanitation, travel etc.. This will be good for them.. they just dont know it yet
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? I'm also a bit hazy, but I thought that the Brits themselves only started to benefit from what the Romans did to their country once the Roman empire crumbled and they left, till then the main people that benefited the Roman occupation was the Romans for about 400 odd years
