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@mstaggerlee,
Yeah, I remember the lottery, the year before my eligibility I came up #364, the next year they abandoned the system. I couldn't count on my luck two years in a row...
...I'll raise a toast to your friend, an uncounted Vietnam War casualty. Uncounted but not forgotten.
@Maxrot,
No, you don't seem kookier than a civil-war re-enactor, and it's fun to debate the finer points of forgotten/ignored history.
Yours in looking backward, and forward,
Zero G.
@Robert S - Remember the Draft Lottery? My birthday came up above # 300 in each and every draft lottery. No matter, really - I was (and still am) asthmatic, thus 4F.
A college buddy, though,who had started the last 4 football games at DE as a freshman, had his birthday come up at #4. He, unfortunately, did NOT opt for Canada.
He committed suicide instead - ate his dad's gun over spring break.
An Excerpt from:
Oil and the origins of the
‘War to make the world safe for Democracy’
By F. William Engdahl, 22 June, 2007
A revolution in Naval Power
In 1882, petroleum had little commercial interest. The development of the internal combustion engine had not yet revolutionized world industry. One man understood the military -strategic implications of petroleum for future control of the world seas, however.
In a public address in September 1882, Britain's Admiral Lord Fisher, then Captain Jack Fisher, argued to anyone in the British establishment who would listen, that Britain must convert its naval fleet from bulky coal-fired propulsion to the new oil fuel. Fisher and a few other far-sighted individuals began to argue for adoption of the new fuel. He insisted that oil-power would allow Britain to maintain decisive strategic advantage in future control of the seas.
Fisher argued the qualitative superiority of petroleum over coal as a fuel. A battleship powered by diesel motor burning petroleum issued no tell-tale smoke, while a coal ship's emission was visible up to 10 kilometers away. It required 4 to 9 hours for a coal-fired ship's motor to reach full power, an oil motor required a mere 30 minutes and could reach peak power within 5 minutes. To provide oil fuel for a battle ship required the work of 12 men for 12 hours. The same equivalent of energy for a coal ship required the work of 500 men and 5 days. For equal horsepower propulsion, the oil -fired ship required 1/3 the engine weight, and almost one-quarter the daily tonnage of fuel, a critical factor for a fleet whether commercial or military. The radius of action of an oil-powered fleet was up to four times as great as that of the comprable coal ship.[13]
In 1885 a German engineer, Gottleib Daimler, had developed the world's first workable petroleum motor to drive a road vehicle. The economic potentials of the petroleum era were beginning to be more broadly realized by some beyond Admiral Fisher and his circle.
By 1904 Fisher had been named Britain’s First Sea Lord, the supreme naval commander, and immediately set to implement his plan to convert the British navy from coal to oil. One month into his post, in November 1904, a committee was established on his initiative to “consider and make recommendations as to how the British Navy shall secure its oil supplies.” At that time it was believed the British Isles, rich in coal, held not a drop of oil.
The thought of abandoning the security of domestic British coal fuel in favor of reliance on foreign oil was a strategy embedded in risk. The Fisher Committee had been dissolved in 1906 without resolution of the oil issue on the election of a Liberal government pledged to work for arms control. By 1912, as the Germans began a major Dreadnought-class naval construction program, Prime Minister Asquith convinced Admiral Fisher to come out of retirement to head a new Royal Commission on Oil and the Oil Engine in July 1912.
Two months later on Fisher’s recommendation, the first British battleship using only oil fuel, the Queen Elizabeth, was begun. Fisher pushed the risky oil program through with one argument: “In war speed is everything.” Winston Churchill had by then replaced Fisher as First Lord of the Admiralty and was a strong advocate of Fisher’s oil conversion. Churchill stated in regard to the Commission finding, “We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the oil which we require.” [14]
From that point, oil conversion of the British fleet dictated national security priority to secure large oil reserves outside Britain. In 1913 less than 2% of world oil production was produced within the British Empire.[15]
By the first decade of the 20th Century securing long-term foreign petroleum security had become an essential factor for British grand strategy and its geopolitics. By 1909, a British company, Anglo-Persian Oil Company held rights to oil exploration in a 60-year concession from the Persian Shah at Maidan-i-Naphtun near the border to Mesopotamia. That decision to secure its oil led England into a fatal quagmire of war which in the end finished the British Empire as the world hegemon by Versailles in 1918, though it would take a second World War and several decades before that reality was clear to all.
No problem in looking back. It illustrates how societal forces and events can have impacts on the future. We can always learn.
It was important for me as my Grandfather was at Galipoli in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.. pulled out with the rest to France where he was wounded three times; tough bugger; obviously made it home as here I am. Some day I want to go there and trace the route. Not glorifyling; it was of course a waste of so many..
Cheers,
Rick
Comedian Lewis Black tries to make sense of the contradictory poll numbers from the latest Pew Poll (video):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#36654767
@mstaggerlee,
I DO understand the difference. I just chose to respect more those who reject illegal orders to participate in illegal wars, such as Lt. Watada.
I just missed the Vietnam draft by a year...I was planning on JAIL rather than Canada, but thankfully was spared the choice.
One of the countries most outspoken advocates for veterans, by the way, is the author of the old "fish" cheer...Country Joe McDonald, and as he says at every opportunity, to those returning, and I echo, "Welcome Home."
@Gene, I thought it was "Be flyful and multi-ply"
@Robert S.
The need for the British navy to have coal, doesn't seem to lead to their desire for war with Germany. The expansion of the German Navy, however was enough of a threat, that Britain alienated Germany more and more on the lead up to the war so much so that having a pseudo alliance with it historical enemy France was acceptable to England. You're absolutely right that there was more than any single cause that brought about WWI, but looking in hindsight at how important mechanization was to the war is sort of believing too much in the premonition of the military and political leadership of the pre-war Europe. Soldiers in France marched to war in bright blue and red uniforms (because they were used to the fog of war from gun powder), some Calvary troops carried lances, waves of soldiers were thrown into machine gun fire, etc..
Sorry, I'm going on and on about WWI, I study it a lot in my free time, and am probably seeming kookier than a Civil War re-enacter.
The PR thing was run by the Creel Commission. It was too effective and had to be pulled back lest people go out and kill those of German descent.
@ Gene;
'be multiple and fruit flly'
Great movie; love David Cronenberg's movies.. ;-)
(Brundle-fly in 'The Fly'; Trivia; the chambers were modeled after Ducati heads / cylinders.. )
BTW - did anyone catch Jesse Ventura on Bill Maher's show last weekend? Jesse asked why the US government isn't prosecuting the Catholic Church under the RICO statutes, and proceeded to make a fairly creditable case for such prosecution -
1) They had knowledge regarding the commission of several felonies.
2) They DENIED that they had such knowledge, and that the felonies were committed at all.
3) They ACTIVELY participated in a covering up said felonies (by moving the guilty parties to new parishes).
If that doesn't sound EXACTLY like what the RICO laws were written for, I don't know what does.
@Gene Savory,
Too true, alas.
@harry ashburn,
At least the Pentagon and the Fed, in theory, may be audited by Congress, successfully or otherwise, whereas the Intelligence community budget is a legal black box beyond scrutinity. It cannot even be attempted. The notion of civilian control is not an issue at all, at all...
I thought it was "be multiple and fruit fly."
We've abstraced ourselves from the concept that labor is wealth.
@Robert S. - Randi was an Air Force mechanic in the first Gulf War - hence her devotion to the troops, the veterans, and their families. That devotion, however, does NOT extend to the Pentagon, and certainly not to the privateer firms like CACI & Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves this week)..
You do, of course, understand the difference between supporting our soldiers and supporting the war that they've been shipped off to, right? I'll admit that it took me QUITE a while to "get" that - essentially that period known as the Viet Nam war.
I'd open an account in a California State Bank.
Even less likely than auditing the Fed is auditing the pentagon.
@Maxrot,
I would agree that WWI turned out to be to no one's best interests, and that the causes were more than singular. But, the conversion of the British Navy from coal to oil was certainly a major factor. WWI was also the first major conflict that used trucks as well as animal carts as transport.
You might be interested in:
Oil and the origins of the
‘War to make the world safe for Democracy’
By F. William Engdahl, 22 June, 2007
@maxrot, I didnt have high hopes to begin with, my main disappointment is seeing the continuance of building the national security state and executive power.
@harry, my expectations for Obama were never so altruistic that I thought "Real Change" was on the horizon. The Audacity of my Hope went so far as to believe that the course might be altered slightly, and in that I have not been disappointed.
"Looking forward" is permission for today's co-conspirators today's and yesterday's thieves.
I guess it turned out to be true that one President's ceiling is the next President's floor. even Obama.
@Rick I see. Here in Texas we have "Tex-Mex" i.e. "Donde estan mis tenny shoes?" Also, they used to call Texans (or caucasian US settlers) "Texicans!"
@Robert S. that is an interesting fact about your Uncle, however, prior to WWI, Germany wasn't all that more anti-Semitic than the rest of Europe. Which isn't saying that Germany wasn't rife with Antisemitism then, in fact most of Western Civilization was guilty of it too.
I wasn't putting the veterans that joined the Freikorp/NDASP on the same philosophical level as the ones that joined the Communist/Socialist groups, in fact many of the street fights and local government clashes were between the two extremes. However, both sides were militant. I just don't see America in that much turmoil, heck we're not even to the point we were in the Great Depression, when a government coup was threatening.
I would also have to disagree with WWI being the first war over oil, it wasn't until the advent of the tank that Oil became all important to warfare. The roots of it really goes back to the Franco-Prussian war and the Kaiser's inept handling of diplomacy that allowed France to maneuver treaties with Russia, and Britain along with secret agreements with lesser European States so much so that they could have their war of revenge and reclaim Alsace/Loraine. I have to agree with a scholar who said it best, "WWI was not in the interest of any of the countries that got involved."