War with China over Taiwan. Inevitable?

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This topic contains 45 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by  PopeBeanie 3 years, 3 months ago.

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 46 total)
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  • #39545

    The Intel manufacturing site in Ireland is less than 30 minutes from my house. (just sayin’)

    #39548

    _Robert_
    Participant

    The Intel manufacturing site in Ireland is less than 30 minutes from my house. (just sayin’)

    Analog Devices develops devices in Limerick, I think. I had to call there several times.

    #39549

    When I was in college, Analog Devices was a company that took a number of students on 6 month work placements as part of their degree course. It was one of those placements that every Computer Studies student tried to get as it was a very good experience and the money was great compared to what most students could earn over the summer or part-time.

    Apart from Intel, I am very close to eBay’s HQ, IBM (here for years), Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Just as well I work in IT too (one of my jobs)!

    #39554

    Unseen
    Participant

    Any chance we can get off Israel and back to Taiwan? Israel would make a dandy thread all on its own.

    #39555

    jakelafort
    Participant

    Yeah Unseen i was poised to respond until i noticed your words. Fine by me.

     

    [PopeBeanie edit here: I’ve moved the off-topic posts to topic “Israel vs Middle East“.]

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  PopeBeanie. Reason: [as 'PopeBeanie edit' in the post]
    #39567

    Unseen
    Participant

    Unseen, Fret not, we haven’t forgotten either you or Taiwan. I just thought Israel could be part of a solution to Taiwan’s woes and it just went off from there. Taiwan and the rest of the world has just recently seen what happened when Red China finished shutting down Hong Kong. That in itself is motivation to put on a mean game face with Emperor Xi and his CCP/PLA minions. Taiwan’s takeover by Beijing would mean another Asian Tiger declawed, defanged, and gelded and maybe skinned and put on the wall. Red China isn’t as big on naval power or amphibious transport as other superpowers. Maybe this is a Yin where Taiwan could place it’s Yang along with airpower.

    (sigh)

    So you think Taiwan can eventually stand on its own long term, or are you proposing another hopeless stand with no exit strategy as we had in Afghanistan?

    My tea leaves are telling me that Taiwan is a lost cause now or thousands of lost lives later.

    #39582

    Davis
    Moderator

    Jake, I do not know a place on Earth that would welcome an influx of immigrants which would come to double their population, all imposed by a foreign power who funds and arms these immigrants who rapidly change the face of society, forcing people to give up their lands and homes and make concession after concession. Somehow, this is pretty much an insane thing to have expected of anywhere else on Earth during the mid-20th century…but was entirely reasonable in a small area of Palestine…and ignore the repercussions of this absolutely insane injustice because those immigrants where brutalised for centuries on another continent. The context is IRRELEVANT if it means the endless brutalisation of occupied people with no end in sight. The story of the world is marginalised people marginalising others and thinking this is justified because of their own marginalisation. It is insane to excuse it for a second.

    Just as it was barbarous for Europeans to colonise, destroy and take away land from people on multiple continents, and STILL to this day not resolve these problems (as happens in America, Canada, Australia and NZ), it was outrageous to to the same thing in Palestine. It is absolutely barbaric to maintain this injustice for decades, excusing the horrific systemic discrimination, mistreatment and racism (both religious and ethnic) just because that nation is a slightly more democratic one surrounded my less so ones and those who displaced the locals were also chronically mistreated. Now that it has been done and established, I accept the right of the nation to exist, I abhor increasing anti-semitism in the Western world and agree much more should be done to deal with it including STRONG hate speech laws and generous funding for programs that help lessen the impact of anti-Semitism. But I won’t abstain from criticising outrageous human abuse in Israel and Palestine (just as I do not abstain from mentioning it in both Western countries and failed states) just because it is complex and involves multiple layers of marginalised people. Many policies and laws in Israel can be exceptionally barbaric, cruel and inexcusable…and none of their more admirable traits which are mostly enjoyed by privileged white people of the correct religion, should distract from that.

    #39583

    TheEncogitationer
    Participant

    Unseen,

    Here’s something else to consider: Red China is building entire cities capable of housing and emplying tens of millions per city, rivaling or even dwarfing U.S. Metropolises like N.Y.C., Chicago, and L.A….And yet in a nation of 1.5 billion people, no one lives in these cities.  They are massive ghost cities!

    Clearly, there is a construction bubble going on in Red China, and when that bubble busts–not if, but when–Red China may not have the resources to mount any kind of offensive abroad, against Taiwan or anyone else.

    Couple that with dealing with keeping a restless Uighur population in concentration camps and attempting to ply influence in Africa and the Middle East, and Red China, too, like us, can get overextended and tapped out.  Again, must wait and see.

    #39584

    Unseen
    Participant

    @Enco

    A big economy makes big mistakes, but is big enough and resourceful enough to make lemonade.  You talk as if they have no plan to fix the problem. You also talk as if the problem is very widespread.

    Relax, China’s “Ghost Cities” are not that scary

    Remember back in 2007, when Facebook was new, hip and cool? It used to be a place for intelligent discussion among University students and young professionals. Then our parents joined.

    There is one thing from that era that remains a staple on business pages in 2017: the “China Ghost City” news story, meant to scare investors. Our parents and grandparents on Facebook are easy clickbait targets for these articles.

    They love to share the ghoulish stories about China’s ghost city problem, many of which originate via a Youtube video from around ten years ago, about the city of Ordos in China’s Inner Mongolia. It is actually an older city with over 2 million people, but the government built a big new district called Kangbashi, with lavish buildings, which remained empty for some time due to a slump in coal prices.

    Imagine if the Chinese media put out news articles with pictures of empty houses in Detroit and the headline, “America’s Ghost City Problem”.

    #39585

    jakelafort
    Participant

    @unseen, if i understand the implications of your question and the answer it suggests then superficially it is NY or Copenhagen and the Jews were mistaken in their perception.

    But that is a superficial answer. First one must understand the issue of a homeland from the perspective of Jews having just escaped the holocaust. Primarily filled with fear and the near certainty that if the Germans had prevailed in WW2 there would be three jews on the planet or even fewer and a world that was either neutral or happy with the final solution.

    So a home is a place of their own where they don’t have to count on the vagaries of fate to shine on their bagels and lox. It is also a beacon when Jews in various nations are subject to discrimination or persecution to have a place where they can emigrate. This has indeed happened and likely will continue to be the case.

    It is also true that antisemitism is on the rise in Europe and it is not clear that the answer to the aforementioned question won’t at some point clearly be in Israel. Fascism always makes life for Jews perilous.

    @davis, the way you describe the formation of Israel is untrue. What influx imposed by a foreign power who funds and arms these immigrants? First there were both Arabs and Jews living in Palestine all of those years. Not all Jews were part of the diaspora. Unless you want to characterize the axis powers as the ones imposing by virtue of the attempt to exterminate Jews then i have no clue what you are referring to. And the funding was by the USA after Golda Meir flew to NY city during a brief armistice.

    It is critical to understand the history. Think about it. The Arabs who were there NEVER had a nation. Before it was a British mandate it was part of the Ottoman empire. And before that many other peoples controlled Palestine. Here was the opportunity-the golden opp to have their own nation. Enter the UN partition. Some land for Palestinians. Some for Jews. Jews are jumping up and down celebrating their good fortune. The Arabs in a coalition of 4 or 5 nations and led by a British general attacked the Jews very shortly after the UN partition. They goddamn nearly had the Jews starved, out of ammunition and defeated. The aggressors were the Arabs not the Jews. The Palestinians ought to have had the same reaction as the Jews-something like finally these centuries of occupation by foreign powers and now we got our own little home. But they wanted it ALL. Then in the following decades Israel was attacked again and again. The PLO and surrounding nations wanted Israel to cease and for Jews to be exterminated. It is a widespread sentiment today. It is a fundamental part of their culture. If you are not familiar and you probably are look up what Arabs are taught in schools about Jews. Then contemplate what chance there is for amicable relations between Jews and Arabs. Had the Palestinians and surrounding Arabs been content like the Jews were none of this shit would have happened. And when you lose in war and you roll the dice with statehood that is put in your lap you pay the consequences. There is little doubt in my mind that a final solution would have been imposed had the Arabs defeated the Jews. It is also instructive to examine the treatment of Palestinians in other countries. They have at times been slaughtered. Nor do you see Arabic countries opening their arms to have Palestinian immigrants escape their brutal conditions.

    That is a terrible comparison you make in equating Europeans colonizing with Jews and Palestinians. Europeans had no justification. None. NAKED MIGHT MAKES RIGHT They were more more powerful so they utilized their power to acquire land and resources and enslave native peoples. Those innocent indigenous people were wholesale exterminated and worked to death and raped and fucked over in so many ways and in so many places. If that wasn’t enough they had Christianity shoved down their throat. (BTW another good article in Sunday School about another 751 unmarked graves of First Americans in Canada…it was nice to see some of the Catholic churches were burned.) Jews on the other hand were coming back to their original home. Jews always had a presence there. Jews were escaping persecution as opposed to imposing it. Jews were happy to live in peace beside their Palestinian neighbors but the Palestinians rejected the compromise that the Jews accepted.

    You gotta go a long fucking way to catch up with the brutality of Christians and Europeans. I am not defending Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. But i understand it. And it has to be understood in context and in relation to world history. There is such a tendency to see people once exploited become the exploiters when the power is reversed. If you look at Africa there is just terrible governance, endless tribal warfare and ethnic cleansing. Basically humans are a brutal species. It is that way almost wherever you look. I am not saying Jews are angels. I am saying the world imposes a double standard on Israel. Where is the outrage for genocide and human rights deprivation in other parts of the world as it is in Israel?

    #39586

    Unseen
    Participant

    @jake

    There is now a separate Israel vs. Middle East discussion. I think your post above was intended for that discussion and not the one about War with China over Taiwan.

    Am I wrong?

    #39587

    jakelafort
    Participant

    Unseen, i don’t know if there is. You and Davis and Enco are posting here about Israel. I know Pope said something about creating another area for Israel but i did not see it and apparently you did not either. But here is something about the topic.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/10/09/1044772875/south-china-sea-territory-disputes-intensify-u-s-china-tensions

    #39588

    Unseen
    Participant

    Unseen, i don’t know if there is. You and Davis and Enco are posting here about Israel. I know Pope said something about creating another area for Israel but i did not see it and apparently you did not either. But here is something about the topic. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/09/1044772875/south-china-sea-territory-disputes-intensify-u-s-china-tensions

    In a post above I tried to get us back on topic (“Any chance we can get off Israel and back to Taiwan? Israel would make a dandy thread all on its own.”). I think the possibility of war over Taiwan is about as important a topic as there is and Pope Beanie actually started such a thread, maybe in response to my plea.

    #39589

    jakelafort
    Participant

    Yes Unseen and in keeping with your request i did not answer Davis.

    I am not downplaying the significance of Taiwan and China.

    #39590

    PopeBeanie
    Moderator

    I think the possibility of war over Taiwan is about as important a topic as there is and Pope Beanie actually started such a thread, maybe in response to my plea.

    Yes, but I neglected to make a new post here that links to where I moved those posts.

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