Chinese imperialism and future Australian sovereignty

[swoop42]

Buy ourselves a nuke or 50 and the delivery systems to land them in Beijing.

Problem solved.

P.S-Why do people always believe that we would need to rely on the USA for help should an invasion seem possible?

Surely the ties to mother England are even stronger?

Fighting and dying beside her citizens in two world wars should count for something.

[HAL]

How much does it cost?

[sixpoints]

Lets hope China is never as warlike as our glorious Mother England. I bring you a world map showing the only countries Britain has NOT invaded (rest of the world is old school British pink).

Who left those white patches ? Lazy bastards.

Sweden?
How did they escape?
I demand an immediate Pommy invasion of Sweden. The Poms can fill their mortars with those friggen annoying Ikea Allen keys and send them back with interest.

[David]

Buy ourselves a nuke or 50 and the delivery systems to land them in Beijing.

Problem solved.

I think some of you aren't seeing the big picture here. Chinese invasion is possible, but the far, far more likely threat is economic dependency followed by political dependency. To be frank, we're already well on the way there.

[pietillidie]

[1061]

Buy ourselves a nuke or 50 and the delivery systems to land them in Beijing.

Problem solved.

P.S-Why do people always believe that we would need to rely on the USA for help should an invasion seem possible?

Surely the ties to mother England are even stronger?

Fighting and dying beside her citizens in two world wars should count for something.

[David]

Power only looks "progressive" because it's wealthy, and wealth buys it the prosperity needed to be liberal. That of course doesn't mean it holds any new moral insight into the world whatsoever, which ought not surprise given we're all the same species, powerful or not. It's a circular logic which constantly deceives, though by now we surely have enough recorded instances of others indulging in the same thing to see beyond it.

It's the same old story; wealth is a top bloke - until the economy tightens.

Doesn't culture play a role at all, though? I would contend that two countries with exactly the same average GDP (or whatever other measurement you like) could have vastly different governments and social structures. You might argue that they'll still have more or less the same amount of "progressiveness", but I don't think that's necessarily true. Different ideologies can produce much more or less oppressive societies.

Another point is that progress doesn't just happen organically. Power is not naturally benevolent. Wealth may create the conditions where progress is possible, but people still need to fight for it. That's essentially what I was arguing in the opening post: cultural change is coming. It may be better, it may be worse, but we need to be prepared to fight for the liberties that are most at risk.

I'm interested to hear more about your claim that power "doesn't hold any new moral insight". Isn't that demonstrably untrue? How does this square with your claim that "progressiveness" is a privilege of wealthy societies?

[pietillidie]

Power only looks "progressive" because it's wealthy, and wealth buys it the prosperity needed to be liberal. That of course doesn't mean it holds any new moral insight into the world whatsoever, which ought not surprise given we're all the same species, powerful or not. It's a circular logic which constantly deceives, though by now we surely have enough recorded instances of others indulging in the same thing to see beyond it.

It's the same old story; wealth is a top bloke - until the economy tightens.

Doesn't culture play a role at all, though? I would contend that two countries with exactly the same average GDP (or whatever other measurement you like) could have vastly different governments and social structures. You might argue that they'll still have more or less the same amount of "progressiveness", but I don't think that's necessarily true. Different ideologies can produce much more or less oppressive societies.

Another point is that progress doesn't just happen organically. Power is not naturally benevolent. Wealth may create the conditions where progress is possible, but people still need to fight for it. That's essentially what I was arguing in the opening post: cultural change is coming. It may be better, it may be worse, but we need to be prepared to fight for the liberties that are most at risk.

I'm interested to hear more about your claim that power "doesn't hold any new moral insight". Isn't that demonstrably untrue? How does this square with your claim that "progressiveness" is a privilege of wealthy societies?

I actually agree with you; it's not about financial wealth. I see progressiveness as a by-product of "wealth", and "wealth" not simply as "financial capital" but as "total facility". "Facility" involves other sorts of things like fortuitous natural bounty, fortuitous geopolitical stability, the fortuitous avoidance of diease and natural disaster, and so on. Give people enough facility for long enough and they'll break the shackles.

Culture is a just a dumb mass inertia. It's a follower of all those contingencies.

This is very much from Chomsky; in the end the only fundamental hope is that the innate actually does shine bright. Give people facility and ultimately they will be more creative than destructive, dysfunction not withstanding.

[HAL]

Some people think the mind works like a technology "Case Based Reasoning" or CBR.

[David]

[pietillidie]

[David]

[Mugwump]

"Give people enough facility for long enough and they'll break the shackles". is essentially a theological argument. As long as they have not broken the shackles, then they haven't, apparently, got enough facility. It's like Russell's celestial teapot : always out there, even if you never find it. Yet many societies have had comparable facility and achieved very different outcomes because they chose different forms of power politics.

I have read before Chomsky's comment on bee and ant "cognition". I think the categorical absurdity of the statement tells one all one needs to know about Chomsky. He got lucky busting the absurd behaviourist paradigm of language development, and since then he's been a chiseller on behalf of any totalitarian, genocidal or fascist ideology as long as it opposed Western interests. Milosevic ? Faurisson, the Holocaust-denier ? He can be found defending the interests of any anti-democrat, anywhere, anytime. Fortunately he lives in a country which believes in his right to do that.

[pietillidie]

[HAL]

Do you want another one?