apologies if nobody wants more threads,but sorry..anyway boycott's of goods/services whatever could be a very dangerous 2-way path for humankind to be going down (pompous me tut tut-but i'll continue)what was '73 all about? well so far as i know it ran something like; 'arab street' pushes saudi gov to 'do something about' the west's blatant ignoring of the plight of the palestinian ppl after we brit's ran away after zion terrorist's blew up george vth hotel,and we tried to fob the whole problem off to the u.n.(corrupt of course even then)then the israeli's (whole,not just zion)would'nt even stick to those borders,(mind you i think they pretty much did up till the time egypt & syria & some others tried to annihilate them (3 times was'nt it) when they thought 'we' would be too busy worry'in about russians & stuff.so anyway that was pretty much the point in history when america realised they had another really big problem on their hands when the saudis decided 'market forces' may have some influence on the issue-what a supreme use of 'the other sides' biggest weapon'(okay 2nd biggest)suddenly the world's into another crises of cuban-missile proportions,and the rest of the seventies was the lost decade to what the west regards as progress,america could take out Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and their peers in their own land in the 19th century who challenged the free world of market capitalism but they could'nt do a lot about 'them dirdy rag head a-rabs' or at least not without the russians goin' defcon 2 on 'em (if they'd have been forced to make a play southwards through afghanistan in '73 they wouldna' pussyfootted-they'd have learnt their lessons from history and armour-geddenned their way to the arabian gulf if a matter of weeks)but anyway..no something, ican't even remember what happened it seems to me the people in power musta looked into the abyss & our great leaders all seemed to come to some sort of compact & say 'shit that was frrkn scary and we better not do this again,-ever...however here we are again in the same old bloody boat and things are startin' to look really scary again-we the west haven'nt even got the the power to control our media if we had the slightest inclination to 'make exceptions'they can show all the horror in the world,all the crass pathetic actions of brit soldiers losing their sanity for some moments in the hot scary territory of a muslim land circa 2004(my contention-they were there because of oil-but not in the over-simplified world view way most ppl seem to read it) they got there because of a complicated set of circumstances colliding tragically---90 saddam makes play to control ALL THE WORLDS OIL-come on-he was ON THE SAUDI BORDER yeh-ok?-(the royal) 'we' failed to take him out then.2001....03...we find ourselves stumbling into a vengeance mission-but i think the judges of history may perhaps even recognise we were tempted into it all by the devil in his osama disguise us humans ain't half a load of suckers arent we-anyway...back to the russkies(bless 'em)are'nt they just startin' to wake up to the fact just how much power they have still got!i'm willin' to bet they're thoroughly fed up with their amateurish way of trying the west's way,they might just as well default back to the 19th c way-find somebody to play off against somebody else-get all cuddly with opec or something-they're all just a buncha gangsters anyway aren't they(well so i gather from the media )let me ask you..what sort of an earth are the chinese going to inherit-will 80% of the earths energy resources be irradiated for 50,000 years or summat-then again if 85% of humanity has just wiped itself out surely there'll now be 200 years supply instead of 175 or so innit!!