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30,000 new targets to be placed in Afghanistan

Started by Cain, December 02, 2009, 11:21:45 AM

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Elder Iptuous

Quote from: Jenne on December 04, 2009, 09:06:47 PM
I don't think it's a matter of locking the barndoor, though they'd probably enjoy the benefits of such a practice.  I'm just talking in the newly-emerging world economy, China will beat out Africa (for sure) and India.
I was under the impression that China was purchasing Africa whole cloth these days...

East Coast Hustle

Quote from: Jenne on December 04, 2009, 09:06:47 PM
Quote from: Rip City Hustle on December 04, 2009, 08:50:59 PM
Quote from: Jenne on December 04, 2009, 07:34:12 PM
Well, I think China may get to the newer, better farming methods ahead of anyone else other than the West, but maybe I'm putting all my eggs in one basket, I don't know.

They can lock all the barn doors they want, those horses are long gone.

I don't think it's a matter of locking the barndoor, though they'd probably enjoy the benefits of such a practice.  I'm just talking in the newly-emerging world economy, China will beat out Africa (for sure) and India.

sure, but it won't stop their country from turning into a polluted sandheap. They'll enjoy those newer better practices for about a decade, after which there will be 1.5 billion hungry Chinese with nuclear weapons looking to annex central Canada.
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

Jenne

Quote from: Iptuous on December 04, 2009, 09:09:42 PM
Quote from: Jenne on December 04, 2009, 09:06:47 PM
I don't think it's a matter of locking the barndoor, though they'd probably enjoy the benefits of such a practice.  I'm just talking in the newly-emerging world economy, China will beat out Africa (for sure) and India.
I was under the impression that China was purchasing Africa whole cloth these days...

Where they can.  But that doesn't mean they won't use it up like a fiefdom rather than building it up into a power in its own right.  Africa's so fucked up, they're happy to have the "help" of 3rd parties from China coming in and buying up stores and selling imports that are hard to get at 4000% mark up.  (I'm exaggerating a wee bit, of course, it's probably more like a 300% mark up).

Jenne

Quote from: Rip City Hustle on December 04, 2009, 09:17:54 PM
Quote from: Jenne on December 04, 2009, 09:06:47 PM
Quote from: Rip City Hustle on December 04, 2009, 08:50:59 PM
Quote from: Jenne on December 04, 2009, 07:34:12 PM
Well, I think China may get to the newer, better farming methods ahead of anyone else other than the West, but maybe I'm putting all my eggs in one basket, I don't know.

They can lock all the barn doors they want, those horses are long gone.

I don't think it's a matter of locking the barndoor, though they'd probably enjoy the benefits of such a practice.  I'm just talking in the newly-emerging world economy, China will beat out Africa (for sure) and India.

sure, but it won't stop their country from turning into a polluted sandheap. They'll enjoy those newer better practices for about a decade, after which there will be 1.5 billion hungry Chinese with nuclear weapons looking to annex central Canada.

Oh, just so much collateral damage to nation of millions like China, ECH.

East Coast Hustle

We're in complete agreement there.

It just worries me that I'm still stuck in or near someplace that will catch their interest.

At least their interest in the islands is strategic and makes it unlikely that they will ever want to hamper or reverse the economic, social, and structural development down there. Hell, they threw several gajillion dollars at Dominica and said "here, we'll build this refinery here, you let us use it so we don't have to fuck around with Russia and Venezuela, and you can have the tens of millions that are left over to build good roads and schools. enjoy."

not a bad deal, if you're a tiny island nation of less than a half-million people and any avenue for development is going to come at the cost of subverting yourself to a powerful would-be hegemon.

In other words, while they're busy leveling DC and Denver and occupying the North American breadbasket, I'll still be able to make a handsome living cooking them conch fritters and rock lobster and making contacts that will allow me to carry on the fine family tradition of smuggling, if I can get off the continent in a timely fashion.

One thing that would improve under Chinese hegemony...those dudes are nothing if not business-minded and reasonable. Not many mandarin (or cantonese) fundamentalists kicking around.
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

Cain

The problem is in any sort of situation where China might be able to orchestrate a rise to hegemony, there is the fear that Chinese nationalists may use the crisis to depose the CCP.

And those guys are scary.  The sort of people who valourize the Nazis and are willing to give public beatdowns to fairly high ranking CCP members in the street are not the sort of people I think anyone can expect to do business with.  The CCP are the ultimate pragmatists, which of course means they are a little corrupt.  Nationalists, on the other hand, tend to be true believers, and often hijack reform movements designed to clean up corruption.

Right now, they're a nusiance.  The Chinese government stoked them up, as a tool against Japan and the USA ("we cannot be held accountable for the actions and opinions of private citizens", hah) and in the last couple of years, they seem to have slipped the leash a little, in one case mounting an independent invasion of a Japanese island. 

Give them 20-30 years and an international crisis, and they might be more popular.

East Coast Hustle

I'll admit, I'm unfamiliar with them. You got any links to reading material? I'd love to know more about it.
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

Cain

I might have to Google around.  One of my professors brought it to my attention in 08, he's a specialist in Great Power conflict and is from Hong Kong, so he generally has a good grip on Chinese political dynamics and trends.  I'm pretty sure the NYT had a mini-series on Chinese nationalism a while ago, and either ABC or NBC did an episode where they interviewed the Chinese Nazi fans.

Jenne

Yeah you do NOT want to get caught on the bad side of someone who can throw you into a Chinese jail.  And that shit goes down to your parents and siblings as well as your children.  Fuck that noise.  At least in American prisons, we don't go after the families and rape them for everything and make sure they only have nothing and sic the neighbors on them to boot.  Tapping their phones and reading their mail (now, our government may do that on the sly, but in China, it's out in the fucking open and accepted as du jour public discipline).

I don't welcome any fucking Chinese hegemony at all.  Regardless of how profitable my own career of ESL instruction and testing has been with that area of the world.  Nope, not at all.  And you want to talk "hivemind"?  Yeah, no individual thought is deemed welcome, necessary or allowable and is punishable by death.  Their whole macroculture is built on being one machine and one culture (despite the fact it's still indigenously diverse and the powers that be can't stamp that out no matter how hard they've tried since The Cultural Revolution in the 60's).

As for the subject in the OP (bad segue), the talking bobbleheads are wagging their chins about The Afghanistan DilemmaTM, and I have to say they're finally coming around to my way of thinking.  That if the people in that country continue to accept the dirty and the muck, that's what they'll reap, continually, no matter how many troops are sent and how many billions are spent.  It takes an INTERNAL sense of injustice AGAINST THEIR OWN to want to change.  And the Afghans are so fucking insular, they have this knee-jerk reaction against going there.

The expats are so clearly full of shit when you go there with them in the West, too.  Something I've been on about for YEARS.  Glad to hear that the excuses everyone's made for decades about this are finally falling by the wayside and given a now-cursory "goes without saying" nod.  Fucking oust your own thorns in the flesh, Afghans, and then you can finally get educated and go somewhere in life other than a grave.

East Coast Hustle

Quote from: Jenne on December 06, 2009, 08:07:30 PM
Yeah you do NOT want to get caught on the bad side of someone who can throw you into a Chinese jail.  And that shit goes down to your parents and siblings as well as your children.  Fuck that noise.  At least in American prisons, we don't go after the families and rape them for everything and make sure they only have nothing and sic the neighbors on them to boot.  Tapping their phones and reading their mail (now, our government may do that on the sly, but in China, it's out in the fucking open and accepted as du jour public discipline).


And you want to talk "hivemind"?  Yeah, no individual thought is deemed welcome, necessary or allowable and is punishable by death.  Their whole macroculture is built on being one machine and one culture (despite the fact it's still indigenously diverse and the powers that be can't stamp that out no matter how hard they've tried since The Cultural Revolution in the 60's).



1) While I don't totally doubt your assessment, I don't think that Chinese internal policies are necessarily applicable to what their foreign and/or potential colonial policies would be (assuming, of course, that we're talking about the current government and not one dominated by the true-believer nationalists).

2) Wut? There's an entire middle and business class of a couple hundred million Chinese who would probably take issue with that. hard to build such a diverse and globally powerful economy with a culture that rejects entrepreneurialism and the free-will and individual thought that necessarily accompanies it.
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Rip City Hustle on December 06, 2009, 10:25:52 PM

2) Wut? There's an entire middle and business class of a couple hundred million Chinese who would probably take issue with that. hard to build such a diverse and globally powerful economy with a culture that rejects entrepreneurialism and the free-will and individual thought that necessarily accompanies it.

Not really.  Not when you have, say, the Red Army as a business partner, with the chosen companies that get to produce.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

East Coast Hustle

OK. Try actually learning about the business and cultural climate in China as opposed to relying on rhetoric.
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

The Good Reverend Roger

http://www.rrojasdatabank.info/china10.htm

QuoteAlthough Chinese armies have been involved in agricultural production throughout Chinese history, the scope of current PLA commercial activities in the overall economic modernization of China is unparalleled. The PLA runs farms, factories, mines, hotels, brothels, paging and telephone companies and airlines, as well as major trading companies.

It is nearly impossible to quantify the total extent of the PLA commercial empire. Western analysts estimate the number of PLA-operated companies at between 20,000 and 30,000.

I only sell 30 mt of ACl to China every month, and I only buy about 20 tons of steel (which I have since learned to never buy from China under any circumstances, ever).  I only videoconference with out Chinese plant every two weeks.  So, no, I know nothing about China but "rhetoric".
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

East Coast Hustle

I'm not denying that the PLA are very active in business, but 20 to 30 thousand is a pretty small fraction of the total amount of chinese companies.

Also, I wonder if there is a distinction made between individual members of the PLA and their business involvements and businesses that are either overtly or covertly run by the PLA as an organization. I mean, if every US Armed Forces veteran with an ownership or senior management position in a business is taken into account, what would our numbers look like comparatively?

also the phrases "nearly impossible to quantify" and "western analysts estimate" are red flags, IMO.
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Rip City Hustle on December 07, 2009, 03:25:42 AM
I'm not denying that the PLA are very active in business, but 20 to 30 thousand is a pretty small fraction of the total amount of chinese companies.

Also, I wonder if there is a distinction made between individual members of the PLA and their business involvements and businesses that are either overtly or covertly run by the PLA as an organization. I mean, if every US Armed Forces veteran with an ownership or senior management position in a business is taken into account, what would our numbers look like comparatively?

also the phrases "nearly impossible to quantify" and "western analysts estimate" are red flags, IMO.

1.  20-30 thousand, but those include a lot of the heavy hitters.  About half the electronics firms we sell to are PLA or part-PLA owned.  Also, just about anything involved in defense is automatically PLA.  Medical companies in particular are riddled with PLA-driven problems... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/06/08/tech/main204060.shtml
  And who owns Long March Pharma?  Give you one guess who a major stockholder is.

2.  Also, those phrases are kind of all that can be said, given that the PLA don't publish their books.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.