Finally getting bitten

[Guest guest]

In Orwell's novel 1984 the three main powers were eurasia, oceania, and the east-asians. Of course, Japan was part of the Axis powers in WWII. (I don't think Orwell ever appreciated the depth of the conflicts between the Japanese and Chinese.) But overall there's the Japan-English-Americas as oceania... the european union as eurasia including Hungary, Romania and so forth. And with the Soviets going, my guess is, with the east-asians which in this case now is the Chinese. There are many reasons for a Chinese-Russian alliance, including that they've been somewhat allied for many decades already during the cold war. But now Russian oil and rising Chinese demands for oil make for a very natural alliance, especially if they form an economic block including the former USSR republics north of China, the various 'Stans. Heph environmental1st2003 <no_reply > wrote: "The threats play into the presidential electoral campaign of Hillary Clinton, who has called for restrictive legislation to prevent America being "held hostage to economic decicions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo"."She said foreign control over 44pc of the US national debt had left America

acutely vulnerable."How ironic that Hillary, if elected, will be forced to clean up the mess her husband started with his sweeping free trade deals with China during his term in office.I predicted this would happen when the deals were made, but everyone thought I was just being pessimistic or anti-Democrat. Well, one Clinton made the mess, and now another Clinton can work to clean it up.As for what she said about Tokyo, that shows short-sightedness and inexperience. The Japanese and American exconomies are almost interlinked, and what hurts us hurts them. If the dollar falls on the world market, people will not buy as many Japanese cars and other products, even if they are manufactured in the US. What Clinton fails to see here is that China's plan is to become the dominant economic, political, and military power in Asia, and this ecomic method is the way to do it. You can flatten Japan and South

Korea if you economically flatten the US.People may think that sounds like an extreme thing to say, but what people must never fail to forget is that one of Communism's mandates is to spread Communism as much as it can. And if that statement sounds silly to a person's ears, just look at how the US patiently keeps trying to bring Democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. The people in those two countries don't want it, yet we earnestly keep trying to give it to them. Communism is more insistent. You either become part of the party, or you get sent off to a camp, or you die. TomAdministratorHephaestus Clubfoothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestushttp://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hephaestus.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabeiroi

Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on TV.

[Guest guest]

In Orwell's novel 1984 the three main powers were eurasia, oceania, and the east-asians. Of course, Japan was part of the Axis powers in WWII. (I don't think Orwell ever appreciated the depth of the conflicts between the Japanese and Chinese.) But overall there's the Japan-English-Americas as oceania... the european union as eurasia including Hungary, Romania and so forth. And with the Soviets going, my guess is, with the east-asians which in this case now is the Chinese. There are many reasons for a Chinese-Russian alliance, including that they've been somewhat allied for many decades already during the cold war. But now Russian oil and rising Chinese demands for oil make for a very natural alliance, especially if they form an economic block including the former USSR republics north of China, the various 'Stans. Heph environmental1st2003 <no_reply > wrote: "The threats play into the presidential electoral campaign of Hillary Clinton, who has called for restrictive legislation to prevent America being "held hostage to economic decicions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo"."She said foreign control over 44pc of the US national debt had left America

acutely vulnerable."How ironic that Hillary, if elected, will be forced to clean up the mess her husband started with his sweeping free trade deals with China during his term in office.I predicted this would happen when the deals were made, but everyone thought I was just being pessimistic or anti-Democrat. Well, one Clinton made the mess, and now another Clinton can work to clean it up.As for what she said about Tokyo, that shows short-sightedness and inexperience. The Japanese and American exconomies are almost interlinked, and what hurts us hurts them. If the dollar falls on the world market, people will not buy as many Japanese cars and other products, even if they are manufactured in the US. What Clinton fails to see here is that China's plan is to become the dominant economic, political, and military power in Asia, and this ecomic method is the way to do it. You can flatten Japan and South

Korea if you economically flatten the US.People may think that sounds like an extreme thing to say, but what people must never fail to forget is that one of Communism's mandates is to spread Communism as much as it can. And if that statement sounds silly to a person's ears, just look at how the US patiently keeps trying to bring Democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. The people in those two countries don't want it, yet we earnestly keep trying to give it to them. Communism is more insistent. You either become part of the party, or you get sent off to a camp, or you die. TomAdministratorHephaestus Clubfoothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestushttp://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hephaestus.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabeiroi

Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on TV.

[Guest guest]

Why has the USA government done these things? There are many reasons, but I just point out that right after the Tiananmen Square massacre, perhaps the single most important international relations policy analyst in the USA, Zbigniew Brzezinski (founder of the trilateral commission etcetera ad nauseum) loudly predicted that the Chinese government would collapse within four years. (I thought his prediction was wrong at the time and told people so.) Then suddenly he disappeared from view for about a year at which time he came out saying what a great future of economic prosperity and political stability there was for China- He had been hired at undisclosed amounts as a member of a Chinese group, basically a lobbyist group to influence american opinion. ...very tragic. Heph VISIGOTH@... wrote: In a message dated 8/8/2007 12:46:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes: How ironic that Hillary, if elected, will be forced to clean up the mess her husband started with his sweeping free trade deals with China during his term in office.I predicted this would happen when the deals were made, but everyone thought I was

just being pessimistic or anti-Democrat. Well, one Clinton made the mess, and now another Clinton can work to clean it up. It isn't just the trade deals but the massive debt that 40 years of Congress has run up. That is something on the order of over $10 trillion, yes that is TRillion. The profligate spending by our politicians is what created much of that debt. The next cause if the tax code which penalizes savings and investment and favors debt. You get taxed on interest from saving and profits on investments, but you get to write off mortgages and loans. It should be that you aren't taxed on investments and savings and can't write off mortgages. That would have the effect of encouraging investment and savings, which means more money in the big banks for businesses to do their thing, and people would be much more leery of getting that second mortgage or that great big first one.

Another fault is this, combined with the corporate tax structure. It used to be that a major selling point for a stock was dividends. However, the tax code was changed to penalize dividends, so now they are rather rare or are very small compared to what they used to be. As a result, it is all about the stock price. That has encouraged a lot of industry going overseas, since that increased the profit margins which boosted stock price. Dividends also encouraged people to hang on during tough markets rather than selling at a loss. The last thing I will mention is simply the shortsightedness of our system. The politicians ran up these debts and cut bad trade deals because it wasn't going to hurt until they were out of office. Even if it did, they could turn around and shell out more government money to "help" the people they hurt in the first place. Win, win. Well, China should also

realize that if they do this to us, it is going to tank much a lot of the world economy. If we had any guts, we would also freeze Chinese assets and seize their ships in our ports. We are their biggest importer and if they want to hurt our economy, we can hit right back. We could probably bring enough European nations on line, save for Russia, to get after China too. If we really had our salt, deep behind the scenes we would tell the Chinese that we would bend over backwards to buy all the oil that was bound for China from whomever the source: Russia, Sudan, Iran, whoever, even if the government had to buy it at 10 times the going rate, while behind the scenes again, tell those countries that any tanker headed for China would never make it, The Los Angeles and Virginia class subs and all that you know. China Will hurt itself badly if it does this, but it will hurt us plenty too. Just how badly the dollar will devalue I don't know. Oddly. If

they devalue the dollar, since the Yuan is pegged to it, they will be crashing their own economy. If they decouple it from the dollar, we will be getting what we wanted in the first place. It is just a shame we have made fools of ourselves in Iraq and let the Chinese subs stalk our aircraft carriers. Big signs of weakness. Then again, we could have let the Chinese subs get in that close deliberately to fool them into thinking it would be easy. Well, hopefully cooler heads will prevail on this. Too bad they got the Olympics, although their crackdowns and pollution are causing some nations to threaten to boycott. Wouldn't a Tianamen Square During the Olympics be hysterical though? Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com. Hephaestus

Clubfoothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestushttp://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hephaestus.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabeiroi

Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles.Visit the Auto Green Center.

[Guest guest]

Why has the USA government done these things? There are many reasons, but I just point out that right after the Tiananmen Square massacre, perhaps the single most important international relations policy analyst in the USA, Zbigniew Brzezinski (founder of the trilateral commission etcetera ad nauseum) loudly predicted that the Chinese government would collapse within four years. (I thought his prediction was wrong at the time and told people so.) Then suddenly he disappeared from view for about a year at which time he came out saying what a great future of economic prosperity and political stability there was for China- He had been hired at undisclosed amounts as a member of a Chinese group, basically a lobbyist group to influence american opinion. ...very tragic. Heph VISIGOTH@... wrote: In a message dated 8/8/2007 12:46:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes: How ironic that Hillary, if elected, will be forced to clean up the mess her husband started with his sweeping free trade deals with China during his term in office.I predicted this would happen when the deals were made, but everyone thought I was

just being pessimistic or anti-Democrat. Well, one Clinton made the mess, and now another Clinton can work to clean it up. It isn't just the trade deals but the massive debt that 40 years of Congress has run up. That is something on the order of over $10 trillion, yes that is TRillion. The profligate spending by our politicians is what created much of that debt. The next cause if the tax code which penalizes savings and investment and favors debt. You get taxed on interest from saving and profits on investments, but you get to write off mortgages and loans. It should be that you aren't taxed on investments and savings and can't write off mortgages. That would have the effect of encouraging investment and savings, which means more money in the big banks for businesses to do their thing, and people would be much more leery of getting that second mortgage or that great big first one.

Another fault is this, combined with the corporate tax structure. It used to be that a major selling point for a stock was dividends. However, the tax code was changed to penalize dividends, so now they are rather rare or are very small compared to what they used to be. As a result, it is all about the stock price. That has encouraged a lot of industry going overseas, since that increased the profit margins which boosted stock price. Dividends also encouraged people to hang on during tough markets rather than selling at a loss. The last thing I will mention is simply the shortsightedness of our system. The politicians ran up these debts and cut bad trade deals because it wasn't going to hurt until they were out of office. Even if it did, they could turn around and shell out more government money to "help" the people they hurt in the first place. Win, win. Well, China should also

realize that if they do this to us, it is going to tank much a lot of the world economy. If we had any guts, we would also freeze Chinese assets and seize their ships in our ports. We are their biggest importer and if they want to hurt our economy, we can hit right back. We could probably bring enough European nations on line, save for Russia, to get after China too. If we really had our salt, deep behind the scenes we would tell the Chinese that we would bend over backwards to buy all the oil that was bound for China from whomever the source: Russia, Sudan, Iran, whoever, even if the government had to buy it at 10 times the going rate, while behind the scenes again, tell those countries that any tanker headed for China would never make it, The Los Angeles and Virginia class subs and all that you know. China Will hurt itself badly if it does this, but it will hurt us plenty too. Just how badly the dollar will devalue I don't know. Oddly. If

they devalue the dollar, since the Yuan is pegged to it, they will be crashing their own economy. If they decouple it from the dollar, we will be getting what we wanted in the first place. It is just a shame we have made fools of ourselves in Iraq and let the Chinese subs stalk our aircraft carriers. Big signs of weakness. Then again, we could have let the Chinese subs get in that close deliberately to fool them into thinking it would be easy. Well, hopefully cooler heads will prevail on this. Too bad they got the Olympics, although their crackdowns and pollution are causing some nations to threaten to boycott. Wouldn't a Tianamen Square During the Olympics be hysterical though? Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com. Hephaestus

Clubfoothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestushttp://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hephaestus.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabeiroi

Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles.Visit the Auto Green Center.

[Guest guest]

" So communism and democracy are both trying to spread as much as they

can. "

Yep.

The thing is, I don't think that any country ought to be compelled to

accept democracy if they do not want to....And in a democracy, I have

the right to express that opinion.

If I lived in a communist country, I could not speak negatively about

communism and expect to come out of my speech unscathed.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" So communism and democracy are both trying to spread as much as they

can. "

Yep.

The thing is, I don't think that any country ought to be compelled to

accept democracy if they do not want to....And in a democracy, I have

the right to express that opinion.

If I lived in a communist country, I could not speak negatively about

communism and expect to come out of my speech unscathed.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" There are many reasons for a Chinese-Russian alliance, including that

they've been somewhat allied for many decades already during the cold

war. But now Russian oil and rising Chinese demands for oil make for a

very natural alliance, especially if they form an economic block

including the former USSR republics north of China, the

various 'Stans. "

I would think Russians are more interested in an alliance with China

than China is interested in having an alliance with Russia. When you

consider that China has more than a billion people and Russia has only

a couple hundred million, nothing but good terms prevents China from

simply taking what they want from Russia.

With Russia plotting its flag beaneath the waters in the arctic,

thereby annoying Iceland, Greenland, Canada, the US, and other

countries which border on the arctic circle, one wonders how long it

will take before China does the same thing, both of their own coast

and off the coast of eastern Russia.

They would not do it right away of course.

First, they would monitor international reaction to Russia's claim.

Second, they would watch to see what Russia would do if there was any

kind of a challenge to their claim.

Third, they would take out claims of their own starting with areas off

their own coast.

Fourth, they would stake claims on the east side of Taiwan's coast

since they consider Taiwan theirs anyway.

They would hold off for a while to see who would challenge them and

how that challenge would play out. Were the US to defend Taiwan's

waters, I should be inclined to think that the Chinese might consider

backing off for the short term, but use this " aggression by the US " to

whine that since Russia was allowed to have her claims recognized,

China is entitled to have the same recognition. I could then picture

them seizing waters off Russia's eastern shore for its own.

To my way of thinking, if it is a choice between having it out

militarily with the US or having it out militarily with Russia,

fighting Russia is the way to go. Like the US, Russia has nukes, but

China is adjacent to Russia and this gives China the capability of

sending a land army in if it chooses.

One would call it suicide for China to do such a thing, but China has

enough people that they can throw them into battles the way Stalin

churned troops into the war against Hitler's armies.

Stalin sent his men in weaponless in some cases and the German's would

mow them down row after row. Once tanks began to reach the front, THEN

Stalin had the advantage and proceeded to take Germany and its eastern

neighbors.

China could do the same thing if necessary and MIGHT get away with

avoiding a nuclear exchange.

I very much doubt that China would be willing to BUY oil with its

biggest neighbor over a lengthy period of time. If Russia's claim to

the artic oil fields were allowed to stand, they would have a

hegenmony over Europe's and Asia's oil, especially if the US should

attack Iran, -or, if O'Bama gets into office- Pakistan, or any other

state thought to be harboring terrorists (and these states could

include Libya, Algeria, Sundam, Etheopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. -

all oil producing states).

With China already having an economic noose around the neck of the US,

it is doubtful we could do much if China went to war with Russia.

People believe that if there was a World War III, that would be an

answer to the US's economic problems. But WWII was a time when the US

government had a stockpile of cash and could afford to hire companies

to mass-produce weapons. We are broke now. People are mortgaged to the

hilt so taxing them more would put a lot of people out on the street.

Our government owes other countries so much money that were the US

forced to get companies to maufacture war goods, the ecomony would be

more likely to collapse since the only thing the government could do

to pay for what it buys is flood the market with useless currency,

thereby making the dollar even more worthless than the Chinese would

make it.

I really do not know what will happen, but my thinking is that China

is the one country that we really need to keep an eye on right now.

People keep saying that the US is the last great superpower, but I

have always believed that China is another one, and it is only a

matter of time before they become aggressive.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" There are many reasons for a Chinese-Russian alliance, including that

they've been somewhat allied for many decades already during the cold

war. But now Russian oil and rising Chinese demands for oil make for a

very natural alliance, especially if they form an economic block

including the former USSR republics north of China, the

various 'Stans. "

I would think Russians are more interested in an alliance with China

than China is interested in having an alliance with Russia. When you

consider that China has more than a billion people and Russia has only

a couple hundred million, nothing but good terms prevents China from

simply taking what they want from Russia.

With Russia plotting its flag beaneath the waters in the arctic,

thereby annoying Iceland, Greenland, Canada, the US, and other

countries which border on the arctic circle, one wonders how long it

will take before China does the same thing, both of their own coast

and off the coast of eastern Russia.

They would not do it right away of course.

First, they would monitor international reaction to Russia's claim.

Second, they would watch to see what Russia would do if there was any

kind of a challenge to their claim.

Third, they would take out claims of their own starting with areas off

their own coast.

Fourth, they would stake claims on the east side of Taiwan's coast

since they consider Taiwan theirs anyway.

They would hold off for a while to see who would challenge them and

how that challenge would play out. Were the US to defend Taiwan's

waters, I should be inclined to think that the Chinese might consider

backing off for the short term, but use this " aggression by the US " to

whine that since Russia was allowed to have her claims recognized,

China is entitled to have the same recognition. I could then picture

them seizing waters off Russia's eastern shore for its own.

To my way of thinking, if it is a choice between having it out

militarily with the US or having it out militarily with Russia,

fighting Russia is the way to go. Like the US, Russia has nukes, but

China is adjacent to Russia and this gives China the capability of

sending a land army in if it chooses.

One would call it suicide for China to do such a thing, but China has

enough people that they can throw them into battles the way Stalin

churned troops into the war against Hitler's armies.

Stalin sent his men in weaponless in some cases and the German's would

mow them down row after row. Once tanks began to reach the front, THEN

Stalin had the advantage and proceeded to take Germany and its eastern

neighbors.

China could do the same thing if necessary and MIGHT get away with

avoiding a nuclear exchange.

I very much doubt that China would be willing to BUY oil with its

biggest neighbor over a lengthy period of time. If Russia's claim to

the artic oil fields were allowed to stand, they would have a

hegenmony over Europe's and Asia's oil, especially if the US should

attack Iran, -or, if O'Bama gets into office- Pakistan, or any other

state thought to be harboring terrorists (and these states could

include Libya, Algeria, Sundam, Etheopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. -

all oil producing states).

With China already having an economic noose around the neck of the US,

it is doubtful we could do much if China went to war with Russia.

People believe that if there was a World War III, that would be an

answer to the US's economic problems. But WWII was a time when the US

government had a stockpile of cash and could afford to hire companies

to mass-produce weapons. We are broke now. People are mortgaged to the

hilt so taxing them more would put a lot of people out on the street.

Our government owes other countries so much money that were the US

forced to get companies to maufacture war goods, the ecomony would be

more likely to collapse since the only thing the government could do

to pay for what it buys is flood the market with useless currency,

thereby making the dollar even more worthless than the Chinese would

make it.

I really do not know what will happen, but my thinking is that China

is the one country that we really need to keep an eye on right now.

People keep saying that the US is the last great superpower, but I

have always believed that China is another one, and it is only a

matter of time before they become aggressive.

Tom

Administrator