Anything Else

Scott Adams asks "I don't understand the theory that we attacked Iraq for oil. Can one of you geniuses explain that to the rest of us?"

Here it goes. It started last century. Wikipedia: Dollar Diplomacy is a name used to allege a United States policy of using its economic power to exert influence over other countries.

If a country starts publishing its currency, the currency gets deflated.

Not if other countries want to hoard it. We know every country hoards US dollars. India has some $130 billion dollars in cash reserves. NRI's have deposited another $30 Billion dollars. These figures have doubled in last 2-3 years. China has 5 times this much dollars in cash reserves. Most of international trade happens in dollars.

Why would anyone want to do it? Why is keeping dollars safe? Because of Oils. If you have dollars, it can be used to buy oil.

Every country needs and is going to need oil.

US benefits, and makes sure oil countries only trade in dollar by doing what they did to Iraq, a country which tried to go from dollars to euros.

I remembered reading all this in some article I read long time back. I got the following someplace too:

Since the USA is inflating its money supply to cover huge trade and consumer debt,

the USA must export the inflation-depreciated US Dollars to foreign investors

or suffer declining USA living standards.

Since the USA no longer manufactures anything (except military weapons) that foreigners might want to buy, why should foreign investors hold US Dollars?

If the US Dollar were the only reserve currency on Earth, foreigners would have nothing else to buy. However, since 2000 the Euro has been a possible alternative reserve currency.

How can the USA force foreigners be forced to buy US Dollars?

Either:

• by the USA controlling all oil sales and forcing them to be made in US Dollars; or
• or by the USA using direct military force against any foreigner who makes alternative investments.

Until the year 2000, the USA saw to it that all oil sales on Earth were made in US Dollars. Then, in 2000, Iraq changed its oil sales from US Dollars to Euros.

Since the Euro has increased in value from about US$ 0.86 in 2000 to almost US$ 1.10 in 2003, Iraq has made money by switching to Euros, and other countries, including Venezuela and Iran, have begun to contemplate switching.

In order to stop the profitable trend to the Euro, the USA has fallen back onto covert action against the Venezuela government (according to an article by W. Clark: "... the Bush administration quickly endorsed the failed military-led coup of Hugo Chavez in April 2002. Although the coup collapsed after 2 days, various reports suggest the CIA ... approved and may have been actively involved ...".), direct military force against Iraq, and preliminary threats of military force against Iran.

I have absolutely no idea how reliable or unreliable that site is, but a page on berkley.edu says:

The Unstated US Goal of Preserving Dollar Hegemony Over the Global Oil Market

Dominance of Middle Eastern oil will mean in effect maintaining dollar hegemony over the world oil economy. Given its present strategies, the US is constrained to demand no less. As I explain in this extract from my book, Drugs, Oil, and War (pp. 41-42, 53-54), the present value of the US dollar, unjustified on purely economic grounds, is maintained by political arrangements, one of the chief of which is to ensure that all OPEC oil purchases will continue to be denominated in US dollars. (This commitment of OPEC to dollar oil sales was secured in the 1970s by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia, before the two countries began to drift apart over Israel and other issues.) <8>

The chief reason why dollars are more than pieces of green paper is that countries all over the world need them for purchases, principally of oil. This requires them in addition to maintain dollar reserves to protect their own currency; and these reserves, when invested, help maintain the current high levels of the US securities markets.

As conspiracy theory-ish as it might sound like, I do not hear/can not think of many/any arguments against this argument [please enlighten me if you know of any].

Is Scott being naive by ignoring this argument? Does he not know the Reason he can sustain the standard of living he has right now? Are Americans trying to hide this little fact from becoming well known as that might cost them what they value most, the (unearned) American life style?

Last year around diwali I was trying to book tickets and I did not get it for 4-5 days. I assumed that it is because it is rush period which it was. Then I finally got the ticket and reached home couple of days before diwali. Almost. I sleep in the trains, even if its a 30 hr journey, and I knew I would reach my destination at around 6 in the evening, so was sleeping, train stopped and everyone went out, it was varansi and I stayed in the train for an hour or so dozing off. Went down and realized the train has halted for good. Further enquiry at station told me that that was the first train that was allowed after 4-5 days when trains were completely stopped. I had absolutely no idea, and mind you I check rediff.com and timesofindia.com almost every half an hr [rss feeds]. Why were the trains stopped? Because of ongoing curfew in Mau. I had to go to Azamgarh, tried to take a bus, entire route that went through Mau was blocked. Entire week I tried to learn more whats happening, are the trains running, will I be able to go back on the train I book ticket on etc, I did not find a single mention of Mau in the news channels.

I heard about killings. I heard from my dad, who had heard from other sources. I heard from one of my servants, who claims he has escaped personally from a train, walked some 20kms in farms, and came back to his village, he says most in the train died. Later on trains were stopped. I heard it from nearly everywhere, and yet no mention of these in ToI or Dainik Jagran that I used to get there, dainik atleast used to mention the curfew, ToI had no news whatsoever.

AC(DC) says:

We've had this discussion. First you said that a websearch wouldn't result in anything because it has been censored.

I predicted that websearch also should not result in anything as I had not seen any coverage. I was wrong and there were some mention of such.

Then when the websearch actually yielded stuff, you assumed that to be the truth and said that the mainstream media wasn't reporting it, or was reporting the "censored" version.

That is actually an assumption you are making. I was reading the coverage on web to do further research in what happened, and I could not find anything interesting. A news here and there about wide scale riots, many others about denial. I hard a total of 1 story about some/few BJP MP walking out of parliament during my 5 day stay in a place where nearly everyone on the street is telling me that people are getting butchered less than 100 Km from where I am staying. I do not know which to believe, it was not purely rumor as trains and buses were stopped, but what it was? ToI and TV News failed me on that.

BTW there is an interesting trick, I call it bracketing. You do this, take the person whose view you are going to argue against, and bracket that view to a category that you can easily criticize. Oh you researched on the web, no oh you read stuff on the web, no no no.. oh you assumed you found on the web to be true, yeah that is the perfect statement. You bracket me in the category of people who "assume the stuff they find on the web to be true" and obviously your work is done, no further labour required in equating them to morons. Art of conversational terrorism. What you said *anything* in the favour of religion, you must be the strongest supporter of all religios beliefs, let me criticize you taking the weakest argument made by any religion supporter.

Finally:

Agreed, that the MSM doesn't report everything, but there might be factors like economics, and incompetence rather than a grand-mega conspiracy theory. Or are you just going to contradict yourself here?

I guess you are referring to the grand-mega conspiracy theory I was talking about [as of now]. [Neither is she]. If someone comes and takes any of what I have said in the first two para as evidence I have no problems with that, I stand by it, not all is known on what happened and it should be investigated.

Namit is furious at the "indifference" of Indian consulate in Armenia over the death of some Indian student who was denied basic first aid, and dean apparently stopped others from helping him out. Read more here. This reminded me of an essay Ayesha was writing, and hasn't finished due to her exams:

Indifference versus incompetence

A lot of people are accusing our past & current governments of indifference to the plight of common man. Consider the plight of religious victims, the delay in investigations and trials thereafter which seem to never end and not even a handful of convictions to those who killed numerous and more importantly murdered India. I don't think it's entirely fair. Moreover, I don't think it's useful.

It comes back to the same old razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." And it becomes clearer with every passing day that incompetence is more than adequate to explain our government's inability to react quickly enough to circumstances across our country.

"Indifference" is a charge that defies empirical data, because we can never truly know the hearts of others. "Incompetence," however, can be quantified: So let's keep our eye on the ball. There's no benefit to anyone by getting personal, and by claiming that "the government doesn't care about poor people or is dead set against a particular religion." It's much more useful to make it crystal clear that the government has been just plain negligent, and that their negligence led directly to the deaths of thousands of people -- because a negligent government is something that, with enough support, we can change.

Incompetent journalists, criminally negligent journalists or liars who are complicit in the mass deception of the Indian people; there are no other ways whatsoever to describe the men and women who comprise the news institutions of India. From the hired face you see every day on the CNN's of India and aaj tak to the journalism interns. Every person currently employed in the corporate media today has some soul searching to do.

The members of today's news media warrant outrage from the people of the world who have fallen victim to their despicable practices. With each new day brings new crimes while a false sense of reality is passed to Indian people via our media. In olden times when street justice was the norm we would be dragging our beloved anchormen and women into the streets and having a public execution, for these people have been the empowering force behind the most despicable and
dangerous Indian administration in history.

NOTE: I use this word: Lie. Not mislead, not mistake, misspoke, neglected to inform, omitted, left out, misrepresent, factually incorrect etc. Part of the definition of a lie is to leave a false impression. These people lie to us.

I (we) should be angry. There has been too much writing and discussion about the state of the media. The good people who are trying to address the problems with the media have been dignified, intellectualized, soft spokened and IGNORED. IT IS TIME TO GET LOUD! It is time to get angry! It is time to stop the madness! With dignity and fairness the media critics and watchdogs tried to alert the public of the information being withheld by our news media. Dignified and standard methods of communication can not defeat the hugeness of false reality that emanates from our TVs, and news papers.

With dignity Media wrote about many events. They did their own investigations, held hearings and they exposed the complicity of our ruling government and its administration in those events. They wrote with dignity until their fingers hurt. They spoke with dignity until their voices gave out. They filmed documentaries until they ran out of film. They were ignored, suppressed, murdered in the literal sense. The Congress administration has devastated this nation and the world. Everything that is Indian is being destroyed while the media continue to sell catch phrases and concepts to public like "democracy" and "security"; empty words that in most cases have described the opposite of what is actually taking place. This is the stuff that ignites revolutions! Where are all the revolutionaries? Where is the outrage? Where is the anger? From the environmental terrorism and no way that our government is sensitive to this topic and failure of the dignified commissions to bring about any major changes this in itself will kill more people than all terrorist combined have issues like these go unmentioned by the media. The fact is that the not many Indian public can believe there is a reality other than the one presented on their television, news papers and radios. This, in essence, gives the broadcast media the power to control perceived reality. They abuse this power.

In response to this article the Government supporters are going to talk about the liberal media and they will sarcastically start to bring up menacing entities that control the media. I don't care who controls the media. It is a secondary issue. As long as you know that the deception is taking place you can counter it. As long as you know that there is a pickpocket in the crowd you can protect yourself. It is a bonus if you can identify him/her. It is a double bonus if you can
arrest and convict him/her. Suffice to know you are being lied to. Protect yourself Get angry.
One thing that we do know is who is lying to us. They splash their names all over your life. They lied about virtually every aspect of the Mau Attacks (just for your information Mau is a very small town some where in UP where over 100s of Hindus literally got butchered by Muslim fanatics who entered the trains and killed almost all the passengers) and I am sure lots of people would try to justify this as an act done by media to avert greater harm or probably media
was ordered to do so by our very prestigious government . But what about our right to know, what
about solace to the victims and their families and what about their unanswered sense of vengeance or the most required pressure on judiciary and our lethargic police system to wake up and find these gruesome murderers who are roaming free in our society, our government which promises us safety and media which can ensure this, are betraying us on our face, isn't this outrageous.

Enough is enough!

I am asking you to get angry. Get furious. When you turn on your TV and find that the top story
is one that you used to have to read about in a supermarket tabloid, ask yourself what news is NOT being reported. Then try to figure out how the on screen pretend journalist keeps a straight face as they try to pretend that a domestic crime is national news and worth deep thoughtful journalistic discussion.

We have to educate the public about the people who lie to them every day. You should be furious. You should feel rage. You should do something. At least spread the word!

Emphasis mine.

Was just reading Rashmi on the recently in news Narmada Bachao Andolan, found this bit interesting:

Aamir's appeal is "rehabilitate them properly". Which is what the Supreme Court has decreed. It is what the NBA of 2006 is also asking for, although in the past it opposed big dams on principle. Now perhaps this opposition was based on sound reasons but as far as the thirsty people of 4 Gujarat and city dwellers like me were concerned, NBA appeared to be 'anti progress'.

And therefore, as time went by, Medha Patkar got embedded into our consciousness as a 'troublemaker'. What she was making trouble about - exactly - was never completely clear. Again it could be the complexity of the issue or my lack of receptiveness or the inability of NBA to communicate it effectively.

I keep on saying to people, if you are supporting a cause, your biggest enemy might just be the other supporters of the cause. Democracy is a bullshit, there is no power in numbers, people are not fools, truth prevails. If one of the supporters of the cause you are supporting becomes too vocal, many things happen, that supporter may become the representative, just because they are vocal, and if they are assholes, they will go down and put a permanent spot on your cause. You lose with you enemy hundread times, and you still can go on with fight, your supports supporting you all the more, you lose once with your brother, your whole support base splits up. Other things happen too, for example, what is Medha Patekar but for NBA? All the attention she is getting. Who would not want to hear "मेधा तेज़तर्रार, साहसी और सहनशील आंदोलनकारी रही हैं।" about them. Every movement has supporters, some religious like one of my room mates, supporters know movements require money, who do they give money to but the champions? She might like the attention if she is not taking direct advantage of the money. I have nothing against her, no proofs, but I do know it is hard to not make it a personal cause, and get into the situation where someone's point of view must prevail, and there is very little guiding this personal point of view to be in sync with the larger cause they are championing. There are other problems, if a cause has a champion, other sympaths sit down thinking the champion is doing their job. The original champion might consider an ego issue to see a new champion emerge, and possible doubt the original champions modus operandi. There is more that happens. If I support a cause, and see the champion making mistakes, and if I try to tell them they are wrong, I will have to use public media. If the enemy of the cause know that I am publicly critisizing the champion of the cause depite being a support of a cause, the enemy will use this against the cause. Then again if champion makes a mistake, lets say in their argument, enemy will use it against the whole cause.

Veda says passion is the biggest enemy of truth. A selfless, egoless, passionless persuit to the truth is the only way to get it. As soon as a person gets associated with the truth, you can say goodbye to the truth.

Consider this, I have been hearing about Narmada movement since years, if not decades. Medha Patekar has been there since the beginning(?), and yet, the biggest thing they are supporting: "rehabilitate them properly", becomes shadowed compared to Medha Patekar. Enviorenment concern is a concern, but unless some env scientist shows me a report specifically giving some estimates about the how long before the dam will break down, or what would be the enviorenmental impact of this if all the affected are suitably rehabilitated; how can one consider it credible.

No one has the right on land, government can take your land whenever they deem fit (in India), and all you are entitled to is suitable compensation, possible rehab. Supreme court is with NBA on this. Every supporter I know of NBA says that is the bottom line. And yet the strongest theme, that would have gotten the strongest support, and silenced all the opponents had been compromised by enviorenmental cause and other bullshit. I am sorry, I am with the peoples right, but hoarish tendency of trying to accumulate as many sympathy points as possible, that Medha Pathkar deemed the way to go about this issue, has diluted thier stand in front of Indian population at large, lead to lot of confusion, and is the reason all the people to suffer if they did. If the champions is incompetent, the cause can slip away.

I am not a "leftist" [quoting Rashmi: by leftist type I mean people who raise question marks but do not provide alternative solutions], so here is the solution, not for or against NBA, but for how to fight incase you are for the NBA: find out the number of people who would be affected. As per www.narmada.org sardar sarovar dam alone would displace 1 million people. Scrap the current narmada.org site main page, go out and varify the credibility of this figure, and get people to acknowledge it. Put the names of the people if possible. Make sure everyone talking in favor NBA is either talking about "the number of people displaced and demanding govt to either do proper rehab for them or scrap the dam" or is considered the enemy of your cause. Medha Patekar: Be serious, do the homework, or sit at home and enjoy the movies, a half hearted effort out of sympathy only hurts.

Checkit out in full size.

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Am more than delighted with it. Barring a minor glitch the installation was breezy, everything worked: hibernation, battery monitor, laptop special keys for sound control, touchpad. The neatest linux I have come across. You were right ashweta :-)

In other news Bootcamp lets you run WindowXP on Apple hardware, official Apple product. Very smart move. Very.

She has been having a Ask Me Anything Day, provides the answers, here is mine:

Sometimes I get really cool idea, and I can talk for hours about them with people in person, but the moment I sit down on the computer, I become completely blank, will hardly write one or two sentence and realize this is all I had to say. What do I do, how do I begin. Have written 30 page letters full lenght page love letters to girlfriends before, tho. Any suggestions? (Amit)

30 page letters....! Shit, give some pointers to Saurabh, will you?

Here's my theory: all cool ideas can be expressed in one sentence. Explanations are only necessary if there is a disagreement or a failure to understand it - i.e. a failure to see how the idea is applicable in life.

Example: the God question, above. The idea that I have is simple - God doesn't exist. What else is there to say about it? Nothing, unless somebody says, "no, dude, God exists, look, He created the universe, isn't that proof?" Then you explain why that can't be. Or somebody'll say, "So what if God doesn't exist?", to which you can launch into a rant about how it's important for people to stop believing in God, because trusting in fiction does a lot of harm.

All the movies you've seen, the books you've read, have a one-sentence idea behind them. The movie or the book is an attempt to get the audience to understand the idea by showing how it's applicable to real people. The understanding only happens when the idea is repeatedly tested by antagonistic people and situations, and is shown to be true. (Think of it this way: a movie without any conflict would suck.)

So the next time you want to write, play Devil's Advocate to your idea. Think what the nay-sayers would say. Then blast them to smithereens. It's crazy fun.

Interesting. Soon after asking her this question I realize one of the biggest problem in writing for me is who am I writing it for. That girlfriend letter thing, I can write quite much as I knew how she thinks, but when I am writing for this blog for example, I am not too sure. But she is right about the devils advocacy bit, that can give some opportunities to write.

So why do I have like a million blogs? Well I was aiming for a gazillion, but fell short by a few I guess :-P.

And Nandini, please do yourself a favor and use labelr :-)

Schneier explails with an example:

There's a helicopter shuttle that runs from Lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport. It's basically a luxury item: for $139 you can avoid the drive to the airport. But, of course, security screeners are required for passengers, and that's causing some concern:

At the request of U.S. Helicopter's executives, the federal Transportation Security Administration set up a checkpoint, with X-ray and bomb-detection machines, to screen passengers and their luggage at the heliport.

The security agency is spending $560,000 this year to operate the checkpoint with a staff of eight screeners and is considering adding a checkpoint at the heliport at the east end of 34th Street. The agency's involvement has drawn criticism from some elected officials.

"The bottom line here is that there are not enough screeners to go around," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. "The fact that we are taking screeners that are needed at airports to satisfy a luxury market on the government's dime is a problem."

This is not a security problem; it's an economics problem. And it's a good illustration of the concept of "externalities." An externality is an effect of a decision not borne by the decision-maker. In this example, U.S. Helicopter made a business decision to offer this service at a certain price. And customers will make a decision about whether or not the service is worth the money. But there is more to the cost than the $139. The cost of that checkpoint is an externality to both U.S. Helicopter and its customers, because the $560,000 spent on the security checkpoint is paid for by taxpayers. Taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the true cost of the helicopter trip.

The only way to solve this is for the government to bill the airline passengers for the cost of security screening. It wouldn't be much per ticket, maybe $15. And it would be much less at major airports, because the economies of scale are so much greater.

The article even points out that customers would gladly pay the extra $15 because of another externality: the people who decide whether or not to take the helicopter trip are not the people actually paying for it.

Bobby Weiss, a self-employed stock trader and real estate broker who was U.S. Helicopter's first paying customer yesterday, said he would pay $300 for a round trip to Kennedy, and he expected most corporate executives would, too.

"It's $300, but so what? It goes on the expense account," said Mr. Weiss, adding that he had no qualms about the diversion of federal resources to smooth the path of highfliers. "Maybe a richer guy may save a little time at the expense of a poorer guy who spends a little more time in line."

What Mr. Weiss is saying is that the costs -- both the direct cost and the cost of the security checkpoint -- are externalities to him, so he really doesn't care. Exactly.