Many analysts believe that the real reason for the upcoming US war on Iraq is the Bush administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) movement toward the euro as an oil transaction currency standard (Iraq has already made the switch). As long as oil is traded predominantly in US dollars, it's easier for the US to maintain economic control over world oil reserves.
Following are links to a number of stories on this subject:
Backgrounder: OPEC Speech: The Choice of Currency For The Denomination of the Oil Bill
Backgrounder: U.N. To Let Iraq Sell Oil For Euros, Not Dollars
Analysis: The Geopolitics of Oil
Analysis: Iraq – Oil And Its Currency Impact
Analysis: Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq
We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.
Posted by: Erasmus on January 19, 2004 12:26 AM