Spot the loophole

[Karmashock]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4871000.stm

Australia is planning to sell uranium to china under the condition that the uranium is not used for nuclear weapons.

Now, I have no problem with Australia selling uranium to China even if it explictly for the nuclear weapons program. I don't care... China has enough that it doesn't matter one way or the other.


However, I find this term in the treaty to be insulting to any intellegent person.

All china has to do is divert the Australian material to power generation and use the NEW excess in their domestic supply to pump up their weapons program.


The net effect is that the Australian material might as well have just gone right into the weapons program directly. There is no net difference.


This condition is a feel good emotional piece of fluff that would only fool morons and chronic drug addicts.


Again, I don't care how much urainum China gets or where it comes from... I'm purely reacting to a treaty condition that is included to delude intellectual infants.

[Devon]

Hands up everyone who has brought a product from china this year?

Gosh, thats alot of hands.

The effect is that the money you spent on products that are taxed by the goverment, might as well have just gone right into the weapons program directly.

But hey, not going to kick up a fuss about it.

[RazielDemon]

That's like saying that when you give a third world country food aid you're just increasing their total available assets, and they can then use the surpluss to buy weapons.... why not just pump money into their arms dealing right away?


Whenever you trade or give anyone anything, you're increasing their resources and thus options, potentialy increasing their capacity to do 'bad things' as it were... not a lot you can do about it except for token agreements that 'this [insert object or currency here] shalt not be used to kill people'.

[Karmashock]

Hands up everyone who has brought a product from china this year?

Gosh, thats alot of hands.

The effect is that the money you spent on products that are taxed by the goverment, might as well have just gone right into the weapons program directly.

But hey, not going to kick up a fuss about it.
I'll give you another example.


In california, the people made a law that the lottery money has to go to the education department. Now, the education department gets lots of money and I'm not saying they don't get enough.

But the way the state deals with that, is that they just give the education department LESS descretionary money and who cares about the lottery money? On net balance the lottery money doesn't actually go to the education department because it just gets that amount diverted from it's normal budget through discretionary accounts.


Same deal.