Sentient

The most sentient was the alligators. > > >

Alligators are cute!

China has basically been trying to flex it's muscles for awhile now, like how the USSR put down the people in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. Apparently some Russians still find it a shame that their big, mighty Russia has been cut up, and China seems to feel the same way, they want to control as much territory as possible and will crack down on anybody who says otherwise.

Exactly, so how is there only one sentient being in that list.

Yea, no. First of all, should China launch an ICBM, air raid, bombs, ANYTHING, NATO allies would be well informed. The United States alone has many anti-ICBM rockets on standby, the bomb shelter in the Rocky Mountains which flow between Canada and the US, Long-Ranged-Missile-Systems, many trained Naval and airbaise personelle. You stack that ontop of many other NATO forces, and the Communist alliance is screwed. We also must think economically. Should China nuke the major powers of the world, they lose much of their economical foundation and therefore, are screwed.

Now, the separation part. Look what happened with Serbia and the newly founded Kosovo. NATO specifically allowed such a country to stand free from Serbian officials. It may take 10 years, but sooner or later, added on with the worldwide protests, some country will be forced to take action.

Media coverage may be censored in China, but supporters are always finding ways to leak out info. What you claim as "Black Media" will be exposed eventually.

The nuking thing is a "Well, our countries screwed, let's fuck up everyone else." The problem with anti-icbm's n' such is that... well... they fail on occasion. ANd if you launch your whole arsenal... at once...

The numbers on wikipedia.com say they have 200, but do you believe that?

The Serb-Kosovo matter is a different issue. The UN had to send troops into Serbia because the Serbian leader was committing genocide against Kosovo. The Tibet-China issue is just a matter of how much religious freedoms they have.

But the issue is about whether China is going to compromise on this simple matter of principal or not. It's not about whether Tibet is really suffering or not. And it's DEFINITELY not about whether Tibet is really a threat to China in any realistic way. Nor is it even about what defines valid human rights, since religious freedom is arguable at best. It's about them knowingly, deliberately violating something that a group of people take very seriously.

The fact that China clearly thinks it's alright to have that attitude simply because they can forcefully get away with it indicates they're just reserving their "right" to get to do more of this shit in the future. That's the implied issue behind all of this. At least, that's how I see it.


They just do not want to move in to the twenty first century no matter what.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Apr 14 2008, 12:07 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Tibetans really aren't treated any differently from any other ethnic group in China. China's government, as an totalitarian oligarchy basically restricts any threats to their power - whether it's a religious group, figure, or organization. Arguably, Tibetans probably have more civil rights than most minorities in China due to their semi-autonomous status...but that's not saying much since civil rights in China isn't up to standards.

Maybe people should focus on civil rights for all of the people in China and not just Tibetans.

But civil rights directly confronts the issue of what China perceives to be its right: Deliberately violating the rights of others in the name of whatever set of rules they damn well please.

That I guess leads to a dead-end debate on which is the "correct" system: One that yields to the people, or one that makes the people yield to it. Might as well just make our opinions then and walk away, because that debate ain't going anywhere fast.



I still say we ought to just surprise nuke them and get WW3 over with now rather than later.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Apr 14 2008, 11:33 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Well, different countries have different amounts of civil rights. Some countries ban guns...which in the US is considered a fundamental constitutional right.
China doesn't deliberately violate civil rights because they never had much civil rights in the first place. Again, China has been doing the same thing it's been doing for decades...it's just gotten a lot more media attention due to the Olympics.

Well sure. If no one has rights to begin with there's nothing to violate.

Problem is, Tibet was not theirs until, what, 50 years ago? Tibet had already had a claim to their own "rights" by then (religious freedom, in this case), which China has decided to ignore.



This is not the kind of stuff you can really get away with as a world power in this day and age. It insults everyone's intelligence.

(Except perhaps the idiots who don't have any...)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 15 2008, 1:02 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Well that's actually one of the debated topics. Tibet declared its independence from China during the political chaos of the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, when generals and warlords took control in what can be comparable to Iraq. When Tibet did declare its independence, only a single country - the UK, acknowledged it as legitimate, since the Republic of China (now known as Taiwan) still claimed sovereignty over Tibet. After the PRC communists won the civil war in 1949, they reinvaded Tibet...which wasn't denounced by western nations.

As for getting away with this stuff...I doubt Tibet can support its own population since the Tibetans now number over 6 million and receives food imports and subsidies from mainland China. (prior to the CCP invasion, the Tibetan population was around 1.2 million)


50 years ago isn't that long, but it's still a huge generation gap...ie Japan is still arguing with Russia over the islands north of Konshu lost 50 years ago during WW2.

50 years isn't long if we're looking at it in terms of full history. But in recent history, that is the last few hundred years, it could be said that more has changed with our civilizations overall than in the last several thousand years. It's all relative.

But the issue isn't about sovereignty or elapsed duration thereof. No one argues China is going to have its way with Tibet here. The argument is that what they're doing with it is not something a world power ought to be doing. It's a simple but crucial matter of principal here.


Bleh. Not like I can do anything about it. Except rant.

Actually. If this topic goes far enough, people might actually care...

*SEN RALLY ISSUED*

Yeh, the last 400ish years for China has really been sucking...governmental decline, invaded by like 10 European nations, opium trade, opium wars, 50 years of civil war,
attacked & invaded by Japan in two major wars, taken over by communists, communist crap-olution, great leap backwards, etc

Pressure them for more civil rights with the Olympics. As people get wealthier, then given enough time, they'll probably end up like Russia and become more democratic.

That's a theory, but a country that can find a way to control its people to that degree and have that kind of attitude WHILE being a world power... doesn't bode well, methinks. I get the impression they still think they're living in the past here, so it'd be foolish to rule out them having the capacity to do that. Especially as an oligarchy.

If they decided to start a war just with what they have now, they'd be well equipped to begin a massive propaganda campaign, bitch slap their innumerable citizens to do their bidding, and then march them pretty much wherever they like. With their population alone, they'd have so many troops that they could simply zergling rush their way to victory. And of course, thanks to us, their industry would be formidable enough to back such an action.


Attitudes are important when predicting peoples' actions. And it stands to reason they'll have learned from Russia's mistakes during the cold war, so if they did Round 2 at any point, they'd probably make sure to go all the way this time.

It's highly unlikely China is willing to ruin their 20 years of economic process by going to war over Taiwan (which I believe is what you're referring to, and not Tibet). And the Korean War proved that numbers doesn't mean much if you don't have the technology and firepower to back it up. That's why they're downsizing their army in order to modernize it. And their army really isn't THAT big...North Korea has an army 50% the size of mainland PR-China's with only ~2% of their population in comparison.

Any war between major powers in the future will be an economic war.

Maybe. But economy can be converted for direct war use, though. While I'll admit it's unlikely to happen, an uncompromising attitude can create conditions to invoke direct war, if things get out of hand. I think that if world economic, environmental, political, and other conditions worsen enough over time, that kind of scenario wouldn't be out of the question.

And I'm not referring to either Taiwan or Tibet. I'm referring to a possible future outcome of being a self-important prick on the world stage itself.

lol, well technically they haven't done anything that shouts 'I'm a self important prick' yet...