the propaganda war starts up, page-30

ctindale

Thank you for your reply. I do not want to get into some sort of slanging match on China.

Some thoughts and observations follow.

I started with a bit of a one-eyed feeling sorry view of Asians when I was a teenager, but over time learned that they have all the scope for being aggressive and murderous as any other groups of people. One should never assume that because some people as individuals are well behaved that this will be the case when they are in groups, particularly in large groups, and have acquired the means of aggression. Its just that we were technologically advanced that enabled the west to invade Asian countries. At other times Asians have invaded European lands (eg Mongols and Huns) for hundreds of years.

The West's invasion of Asia was quite a long time ago (with the exception of Vietnam, which really was about stopping the Reds, not about colonialism). I do not feel in the least responsible for what has happened in past generations (let the dead buy the dead). Yes the right side won in Vietnam, and its clear that the Vietnamese were more about fighting a war of liberation than really interested in ideology. In fact after the war they marched all the Chinese they had back into China, and defeated the Chinese in a war in the late 1970s.

The Iraqies can not drink their own oil. They have to sell it overseas. They will sell it at the highest price so the US did not have to invade them to get access to additinal oil, they could buy it (or buy oil elsewhere which would have been available as others were buying from Iraq). It is therefore misleading to say that US invaded iraq for its oil. I think they invaded Iraq because of a misquided idea that they could change the ideology in the region, and the invasion did have an impact in forcing Libya (wrong spelling?) to stop developing nuclear weapons and opening itself up. There was also a considerable cost in maintaining troops and planes in Saudi Arabia to protect them and stopping the Iragies from killing the Kurds.

You said

"Tibet aside you cant run a country with 1.2B people the same way you run Australia and certainly not the way you run the USA. Can you imagine if every Chinaman had the right to bear arms. :

This is a bit of a cop out. I am not suggesting that people in China or Australia should carry arms as they do in the US. I do think that China is too large for one country, but that is not my fault or anyone else. It's a decision by the Chinese how they live. My contention is that if they live in a certain way we do not treat them as if they are living in another way (ie like the west or Japan). In many ways I think China should be several countries, but not beholden to any other people. It's up to them. On the other hand the idea that the Han can just move wherever they want to because they have deliberately chosen to have a large population (Mao had a policy of population expansion and believed a war with the west involving the loss of 100 million chinese was an acceptable price), is simply old style world imperialism being played to silly accepting western ears.

I do hope your right about the availability of energy, but I still think it will be much more costly than what we have faced. But who knows.

You also said

"I agree with everything you've put down the Chinese actions with respect to Tibet are not excusable, but lecturing them with the wests track history of exploitation is a complete waste of time. "

If lecturing them about exploitation of others is a wsste of time that there is no hope for any one other than the Chinese on this planet as they will just decide to carry out Mao's expansionist plans. Like every one else, including the Japanese, they need to learn to live in peace with others, and not just pay lip service as they are doing in their Olymic slogan.

Now lets just end this here as time is scarce.

Good luck with your goldies, and others. Been missing your excellent analysis while you have been "involved" in Opes Prime.

Loki