I kind of wonder what the terms are for the gas plant that the Chinese are going to build in West Virginia.
Does Pakistan want China to beat up India still?
I like the idea of an online coal mine. "It's like Facebook, but for mining coal!"
It's like a bitcoin mine, but with benefits for society.
Shit, I forgot the biggest win-winniest win-win!
China would receive 91 per cent of Gwadar port-generated profits over 40 years and the Gwadar Port Authority, controlled by the federal government, the remaining 9 per cent; Balochistan's provincial government would get nothing.
5: My guess (based on very very little knowledge) was that China's secret to getting such a great deal was bribery. Does that seem right?
Bribery is very wrong. You need ethics training again.
7: You're right! I need an ethic training refresher course! I totally forgot that!
I caught a bus to Denver from Raton, NM a couple years ago and in the few minutes between arriving by train and leaving by bus admired the historical character of the downtown.
But the CCP swears that OBOR is totally different from imperialism. It's a gift to the world.
Ah, yes. I haven't been keeping up on my (usually horrible) English-language Chinese acronyms. I was a big fan of SARFT before they changed it, but they probably won't beat the Belt And Road Forum.
And I mean thank god. Exporting debt peonage is one thing but exporting their moronic numerological sloganeering too is so much worse.
It'd be more tolerable if the "road" was the land-based part of it.
Any other left-wing people as annoyed as I am by left-wing friends who have incredibly well-thought-out domestic policies, and then an approach to foreign policy which is a combination of self-loathing and nihilism? Responding to "Russia is trying to destroy our country" and "China is doing ruthless imperialism and wiping out its indigenous people" with "LOL, as if America didn't do those things much worse to other places" is not productive.
Somehow horseshoe theory is real in this case and people theoretically interested in human rights have become so embittered that in reality they practice paleoconservative isolationism and cynical realpolitik.
16: Yes.
What's happening in Xinjiang is unprecedented. Sure, it's not genocide (yet), but I don't think even the Stasi achieved anything like this level of security state.
16: "But Putin's a killer."
"There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country is so innocent?"
Unless I met them here, I don't really know people like that IRL. Or at least, they don't mention it to me.
Exporting debt peonage is one thing but exporting their moronic numerological sloganeering too is so much worse.
I think it was Alex who pointed out that CPC slogans are basically ready made Buzzfeed headlines.
The format long predates the CCP though.
Back as far as history and, probably, on the veldt, people that wrote snappy, numeric list based headlines were more likely to pass on their genes.
As far back as the Han, Chinese people have spent their lives memorizing numbered lists of arbitrary stuff.
The original title of The Art of War was Twelve Ways To Defeat Your Enemy (Number 8 is sneaky).
17.2 I don't know about that, I'm pretty comfortable with calling it genocide.
Sun Tzu said: We may distinguish six kinds of terrain, to wit: (1) Accessible ground; (2) entangling ground; (3) temporizing ground; (4) narrow passes; (5) precipitous heights; (6) positions at a great distance from the enemy.And so on and so forth.
I should maybe read it someday, but that list seems to have neither exhaustive categories nor mutually exclusive ones.
The man says there're six, there're six.
26: I'm comfortable with you being comfortable with calling it genocide. I'm pretty close to my comfort limit myself.
I don't think that's a bad list; it can easily be made mutually exclusive ("accessible ground close to the enemy", etc.) and can be used as a categorization tool to quickly come to useful tactics. Any potential strategy can be analyzed according to the sort of terrain it's useful on.
I do like how a lot of Sun Tzu is pretty abstract stuff that you could arguably apply in a lot of non-pre-gun-fire-military interpersonal conflict, and then he's all like, fuck it, let's talk about what you can do with fire for a chapter.
2. China does beat up India every now and then. Most recently they were (purely out of the goodness of their hearts) building big, wide, well-constructed roads in Bhutan (IIRC) that pointed in the direction of India. Troops from India and China were nose-to-nose for a while, then things calmed down again.
Also, if you look at Chinese maps of their borders, you will find that decent-sized chunks of northern India are claimed by China. This is done following the usual Chinese rules for claiming territory: (1) It has been Chinese forever. Trust us. (2) Someone Chinese sketched it on a map two hundred years ago*. (3) A Chinese person visited it once.
* See "Nine-Dash Line."
In Bhutanese territory claimed by China, without Bhutanese permission. ("In Bhutan" doesn't quite catch the sense of that.)
I am worried about Chinese hegemony in Asia like everyone else, but it would also be amazing if it eventually results in Southeast Asia being fully linked by rail internally as well as externally to East Asia - like, lines running from Yangon to Phnom Penh to Beijing. And maybe even continuing to South Asia at some point.
I worry about Chinese hegemony in Asia in ways no one else has dreamed of.
I'm thinking it is at least theoretically possible to build Southeast Asian rail lines without Chinese hegemony.
Ideally, they could import a labor force from California.
Theoretically, yes. In practice the projects that are underway or in planning stages, including ones that don't cross a Chinese border like Phnom Penh-HCMC, appear to be significantly Chinese-financed.
In practice, Minivet secretly wants to be Ed Harris in Snowpiercer.
The Chinese scamming a 100 year lease on a port in Sri Lanka seem relevant.
not really apropos of anything, I think as an alternative/compromise on all the conservative/right-neoliberal "work requirements"/means-testing etc, we just just make all programs universal, but also hire a squad of layabout/moocher-shamers who go around throwing pies at people who spend too much time playing videogames/ knitting/facebook/gunpolishing/etc.
||
Government employees conducted trials in the 1640s to see whether grain and vegetables would grow. Successful results led to government initiatives designed to supply the requisite peasantry.|>
What were the peasants growing before they got grain and vegetables in the 1640s?
left-wing friends who have incredibly well-thought-out domestic policies, and then an approach to foreign policy which is a combination of self-loathing and nihilism
Hey now.
Certainly nihilism, but I'm not seeing self-loathing.
It's a challenge Mobes. Figure it out.
32. Thanks, Mossy, that's practically the punch line and I blew it. Of course, from the Chinese point of view it wasn't Bhutanese territory, so what's the issue, right?
The Relevant Organs are very good on this, as always.
31 I don't want to be that guy, but your 'a Chinese person visited' reminded me of the bill filed to commence Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1:
That the Cherokees were the occupants and owners of the territory in which they now reside before the first approach of the white men of Europe to the western continent, "deriving their title from the Great Spirit, who is the common father of the human family, and to whom the whole earth belongs." Composing the Cherokee Nation, they and their ancestors have been and are the sole and exclusive masters of this territory, governed by their own laws, usages, and customs.
The bill states the grant, by a charter in 1732, of the country on this continent lying between the Savannah and Alatahama rivers, by George the Second, "monarch of several islands on the eastern coast of the Atlantic," the same country being then in the ownership of several distinct, sovereign, and independent nations of Indians, and amongst them the Cherokee Nation.
The foundation of this charter, the bill states, is asserted to be the right of discovery to the territory granted; a ship manned by the subjects of the king having, "about two centuries and a half before, sailed along the coast of the western hemisphere, from the fifty-sixth to the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude, and looked upon the face of that coast without even landing on any part of it."
This right, as affecting the right of the Indian nation, the bill denies, and asserts that the whole length to which the right of discovery is claimed to extend among European nations is to give to the first discoverer the prior and exclusive right to purchase these lands from the Indian proprietors, against all other European sovereigns, to which principle the Indians have never assented, and which they deny to be a principle of the natural law of nations or obligatory on them.
I'm thinking it is at least theoretically possible to build Southeast Asian rail lines without Chinese hegemony.
IT IS, BUT THE ALTERNATIVE METHOD ALSO HAS CERTAIN DRAWBACKS.
27
And now I know what Borges was parodying.