Can you provide evidence that you are NOT an extraterrestrial alien? Until you can, your request for evidence that something is NOT happening is put on hold. Basically, one can only provide evidence that something IS happening, not that it ISN'T unless it is part of a natural process (e.g., you are NOT getting any younger). As far is proving that Iran is NOT training Al-Qaida (or the Tamil Tigers or the Taliban), it can't be done. It is very much like Saddam and the mythical WMDs that the invasion of Iraq was based on (for "bureaucratic reasons"). Bush gave Saddam a chance to prove that he did NOT have WMDs and Saddam didn't do it. Later in trying to prove that Saddam did have WMDs, the Iraq Survey Group spent about a billion dollars of taxpayer money without finding evidence of WMD. Of course, that still doesn't prove that there were NOT WMD because they didn't look absolutely everywhere and they didn't dig up the entire country to a depth of 10 feet (but they're working on it, one bomb at a time). So there are still people who don't believe that Saddam did NOT have WMD because you basically can't prove that something does NOT exist. The sooner you learn this, the less grief you are going to have.

I'm sorry that you weren't able to understand what I wrote and I regret that you are so sensitive to not being able to prove that you are NOT an extraterrestrial alien that you consider asking for proof to be an attack on you. I only used that as an example to show that in most cases a negative cannot be proved. I won't ask you for the proof because I know there is no proof. It is something that cannot be proved, much like one cannot prove that there is no Easter Bunny or that there is no lost continent of Atlantis or that there are no UFOs. People may claim that because these things cannot be disproved they must be true, but that is a different fallacy.

Basically a negative can be proved only by direct observation or by a physical law (i.e., a generalized direct observation or series of observations). For example, if I say that there is no chocolate in the refrigerator, I can prove it by taking everything out of the refrigerator and showing you that the contents do not include chocolate (presuming of course that there is no secret compartment in the refrigerator containing chocolate). However, if I say there was no chocolate in the refrigerator yesterday, I have no way to prove this since I cannot remove yesterday's contents from the refrigerator. I can only prove it by checking for chocolate at the beginning of the day and then watching the refrigerator constantly for 24 hours to make sure no one puts any chocolate in. Even then, I can only prove it to you if you are willing to take my word for the fact that there was no chocolate there at the beginning of the day and that no one put any in during the entire day. The more I expand the time range for which I make this claim, the more difficult it is to prove. If I claim that there has never been any chocolate in the refrigerator, that is clearly impossible to prove since I cannot possibly have monitored the contents of the refrigerator over the entire lifetime of the appliance.

If what you seek to disprove cannot be directly observed then you have to take someone's word for it. Then it comes down to whether you are willing to take that someone's word as proof. Many, if not most, people aren't.

When something is not subject to direct observation and one is not willing to take someone's word that is not true, one is left with probabilities, or, more generally, likelihoods (since it is difficult to quantify many possible outcomes). Is it more likely to be true than false?

Just out of curiosity, what would you consider acceptable evidence that Iran is not training Al-Qaida? I really would like to know what form you think such evidence would take.

... here it is in pictures:

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/03/24/tomo/

courtesy of Tom Tomorrow.

Saddam decided to sell Iraqi oil for euros rather than dollars

Is that true? does anyone know? fascinating fact if true.
— Jkalos

Yes, it's true. I thought everyone knew that.

http://www.feasta.org/documents/papers/oil1.htm

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/

The dollar only survives because oil prices are denominated in dollars. The dollar will collapse if one of two things happens"

• OPEC decides to price oil in euros
• China decides to dump a major part of its dollar holdings.

If either of these things happens, your next candy bar will cost $50 (but $50 will be a small aluminum coin).

The necessity to pay dollars for oil creates an artificial demand for dollars. Without that demand, the dollar would find its natural level very quickly.