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The PRC government is the best thing that has happened to China in the past 2 centuri

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  1. #141

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    How could I possibly be losing an argument when all you have to say is go to another thread? Or no things are not this way with no supporting facts...

    Funny that you think we see America as evil. I simply see America as no better than others. It's simply a very powerful country that has established somewhat of an empire and is trying to defend it as best as they can. Just like the Soviet, the British, the Spanish, the Ottoman etc...

    The problem stems by the fact that you seem to think that America is better than others and is acting on higher principles...

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  2. #142

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    Quote Originally Posted by HongKongFoot:
    The nuke was an evil but a necessary evil. It stopped the war and saved the lives of many a soldier. The average Chinese thinks nuking Japan was just, and if had to be done over, its still a righteous thing to do.

    Should nuke the whole coast of Somalia IMHO.
    I used to say these kinds of things to shock people when I was a teenager, I grew out of it and became an adult
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  3. #143

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    Quote Originally Posted by Renotommy:
    Will the world be a more peaceful place if the USA goes back to its "isolationism" as it did before WWII?
    No. It will not be more peaceful That policy was wrong then and at the opposite end of the spectrum from where it is now.

    They need to find the middle ground and need to think differently and get better priorities in place or they will find themselves going forward economically only in spite of their national government. They need to learn to be better friends around the world by doing less lecturing and more listening and realizing that they and China must work together better.

    This paper from the post I put up a bit back is good as to the role the USA can and could play.

    http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/247.pdf

    She is right when she distinguishes between rogue leaders and true American values:

    "The many millions who make up the United States add up to more than their government's foreign policy. Americans have a strong tradition of activism against wrong and oppressive ways of life - campaigns for civil rights for women, African Americans and other minorities all emerged from the US, as did the environmental protection movement. The strength of these movements is testimony that when the American people act decisively, the US can be an enormous force for good. It is not impossible that Americans will draw on this tradition to reshape US foreign policy.

    Around the world, people recognise American freedoms, which is why the longest queues for visas are always outside the US embassy. In the past 20 years immigration to the US has nearly doubled, with the biggest increases among non-white, non Judaeo-Christian immigrants. In 2000, more than one in ten people in America was foreign-born.

    Jennifer Rankin 'Is the US a rogue state?'
    http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/247.pdf

  4. #144

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    Quote Originally Posted by Football16:
    My point is that national self righteousness and this belief that looks at the world only through one's own value systems is at the heart of what is wrong with foreign policies that fail to respect and understand the reality that other governments and nations find themselves in.

    The OP has a point. China has a long and storied history for thousands of years and has suffered immensely from without and within. Their national government (not the corrupt ones) at the top are doing the right things and internationally not acting like bullies.

    Rightly or wrongly the PRC government believe that one of the risks to prosperity is social stability and many of their policies offend the sensibilities of those who see it from the western perspective only. We fail to see a balance. We fail to understand their reality.

    When foreign officials hector China about freedom and letting people go apparently Deng Xiaoping responded by saying to some high ranking Americans 'how many do you want? - A hundred million?'

    One thing that seems evident to me is that China will never acknowledge problems like Tiananmen Square as long as some involved in government are still around. In time it will happen but let's face it even western nations only acknowledge problems many years later. My country interned all Japanese in BC - citizens of Canada - and seized and never returned all their properties - homes, cars, fishing boats, assets for fear they'd rise up and fight us during WW 2. I had never heard of that in education until first year university and I was born and raised there.
    Well, is this the Football we all know and love? At last a post I can respond to.

    You'll get no argument from me regarding the blindness of unthinking patriotism or the tendency of people to force others to view issues through their moral lens. It is however, the central problem of morality, philosophy, and government that i.) there has to be some kind of moral standard of right and wrong, but ii.) people are never going to agree on what that standard should be.

    It is important to always hold one's country to a higher standard and to unflinchingly view your nation's faults. However - as we've seen on this thread - for it to work, it has to done in context. To flippantly compare George W. Bush - like him or hate him, a constitutionally elected president who left office peacefully and whose power was always in any case constrained by Congress and the Judiciary and, yes (you disagree with me here but for later) international law - with Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Hu Jintao, or any other dictator is moral madness.

    That said - and THIS is the conversation we should have been having all along - the essential problem with China is the government's perceived need for stability (and its citizens well-founded fear of chaos). The government will push the stability argument to its greatest extent, far more than necessary, in my view.

    In addition, the current PRC government values economic growth. The question is, can the PRC have economic growth AND a degree of political liberalism without falling back into the Warlord Era? I would argue "yes". A counter argument to this is to say that it is already happening - for example, notwithstanding Green Dam, the internet can't be held back, and the opening of society is inevitable. I hope they are right.

    There is a vast space between "the CCP is great" and "let's nuke the PRC". Discussing a government's pros and cons is necessary for a modern society to make any progress at all. China is I think heading down a gradual path to openness, but fulsomely praising the CCP, like the OP did, in a Xinhua-like editorial, doesn't advance the cause, since a society cannot advance without considering where they are failing. Which brings me back to my first comment, that all societies need to be self critical.

    [parenthetical, off topic comment: when I was growing up in Callifornia, I was probably typical, and I was made very well aware of the injustices perpetrated on the Japanese American community during WWII. When I was older, coincidentally, many of my friends had second hand experience (through their parents) of it - and many had fathers who could see the big picture, and fought for the US government anyway during WWII. One can be aware of the injustices of a country, and believe in it, at the same time. So it is with the US, and so it should be with the PRC].
    Last edited by Freetrader; 16-07-2010 at 05:04 PM.
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  5. #145

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    Quote Originally Posted by gilleshk:
    In February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations General Assembly, continuing US efforts to gain UN authorization for an invasion. Powell presented evidence alleging that Iraq was actively producing chemical and biological weapons and had ties to al-Qaeda. As a follow-up to Powell’s presentation, the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Japan, and Spain proposed a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, but NATO members like Canada, France, and Germany, together with Russia, strongly urged continued diplomacy. Facing a losing vote as well as a likely veto from France and Russia, the US, UK, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Japan, and Australia eventually withdrew their resolution.[54][55]
    So your answer is to quote wikipedia to me rather than accept the FACTS????? W.A.D.

    The FACT is the war went on under 1441. That voted the security council ( which is mandated by the General Assembly on all matter relating to the security and safety of nation states ) at 15:0. Unanimous - no exceptions. Subsequently the coalition of the weak willed tried to distance themselves by spinning the meaning - or lack of it - because diplo speak is easy to do just that. However the plethora of subsequent tabled and passed resolutions accepts the legitimacy of the action. The easy answer would have been for a resolution condemning it but guess what ........... never happened. Why, because that would have mean for a lot of bluff blusterers having other examine the skeletons in THEIR closet.

    FFS just get some education before trying to flog a dead horse and I point out I am no war monger supporter etc etc. I just find this insulting to history.

    Any chance of this thread getting back on track ????
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  6. #146

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    Quote Originally Posted by Freetrader:
    To flippantly compare George W. Bush - like him or hate him, a constitutionally elected president who left office peacefully and whose power was always in any case constrained by Congress and the Judiciary and, yes (you disagree with me here but for later) international law - with Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Hu Jintao, or any other dictator is moral madness.
    Just because a leader is elected doesn't necessarily make him better. There's also a difference between absolute dictators like Hussein and chosen leaders like Jintao. He may not have been voted on in the same process as in the US but he is far from an absolute dictator. The US presidential election can be somewhat of a joke with the billions of dollars spent, you only have two viable choices, the reorganizations of districts to favor parties and the intimidation practices that prevent people from voting etc...

    Let's not forget that the US under Bush has been establishing free speech zones which are dangerously close to curtailing freedom. Fortunately, there are organizations that have been challenging those excesses in courts.

    Having Congress,the senate and a free press forces the US to at the very least stay reasonably honest with itself. The fact that we are able to know and criticize the many transgressions is a tribute to that freedom.

    That's something that China needs to continue to grow in China...

  7. #147

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    What is this balls about a US "isolationist policy"? Can someone pin this one down to some years. Was is it in the early 20th Century (Cuba, Philippines, supporting the Japanese beating up Russians and Koreans)?


  8. #148

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    Quote Originally Posted by Boris:
    So your answer is to quote wikipedia to me rather than accept the FACTS????? W.A.D.

    The FACT is the war went on under 1441. That voted the security council ( which is mandated by the General Assembly on all matter relating to the security and safety of nation states ) at 15:0. Unanimous - no exceptions. Subsequently the coalition of the weak willed tried to distance themselves by spinning the meaning - or lack of it - because diplo speak is easy to do just that. However the plethora of subsequent tabled and passed resolutions accepts the legitimacy of the action. The easy answer would have been for a resolution condemning it but guess what ........... never happened. Why, because that would have mean for a lot of bluff blusterers having other examine the skeletons in THEIR closet.

    FFS just get some education before trying to flog a dead horse and I point out I am no war monger supporter etc etc. I just find this insulting to history.

    Any chance of this thread getting back on track ????
    You are playing little semantics game when you know full well that the US action wasn't done under the UN umbrella. You also know that a resolution condemning US action couldn't go through the security council for the same reason that the US one wouldn't go through.

    And now several years down the road and billions of dollars later, the "weak willed" are looking intelligent and the US(and its UK lapdog) has egg all over its face and is desperately trying to get out as gracefully as it can...

  9. #149

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    Quote Originally Posted by HongKongFoot:
    Yes it would be by far better to allow the Japanese to continue to use babies for bayonet practice, conduct chemical experiments on prisoners, take women from China, Korea, and SE Asia to use as comfort women, etc, etc

    That's your rational and misguided adult minded thought.
    Yes I know in your simple world, there's black and there's white... Someday perhaps you might find that there are shades of grey in between...

    The Hiroshima bomb was a necessary evil, the whole debate in centered around the Nagasaki one but perhaps you were not even aware that there were two?

    Have you visited the Hiroshima museum with all the political letters of the time? It makes for very interesting reading but perhaps there would be too many big words and complicated ideas that you would find very challenging...

  10. #150

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    Quote Originally Posted by gilleshk:
    You are playing little semantics game when you know full well that the US action wasn't done under the UN umbrella. You also know that a resolution condemning US action couldn't go through the security council for the same reason that the US one wouldn't go through.

    And now several years down the road and billions of dollars later, the "weak willed" are looking intelligent and the US(and its UK lapdog) has egg all over its face and is desperately trying to get out as gracefully as it can...
    a great success this war, a great success.

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