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posted by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @06:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the group-of-two dept.

China intends to invest $46 billion in infrastructure links to Pakistan:

The focus of spending is on building a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) - a network of roads, railway and pipelines between the long-time allies. They will run some 3,000km (1,865 miles) from Gwadar in Pakistan to China's western Xinjiang region.

The projects will give China direct access to the Indian Ocean and beyond. This marks a major advance in China's plans to boost its economic influence in Central and South Asia, correspondents say, and far exceeds US spending in Pakistan.

[...] Some $15.5bn worth of coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects will come online by 2017 and add 10,400 megawatts of energy to Pakistan's national grid, according to officials. A $44m optical fibre cable between the two countries is also due to be built.

The Great Game lives. Different players, same game. Equally large implications. Diplomacy game geeks, awake! Who are the players, and what's the play?

Related Stories

Politics: China's $1 Trillion Belt and Road Project Includes Military Cooperation With Pakistan 25 comments

China's 'Belt and Road' Plan in Pakistan Takes a Military Turn

When President Trump started the new year by suspending billions of dollars of security aid to Pakistan, one theory was that it would scare the Pakistani military into cooperating better with its American allies.

The reality was that Pakistan already had a replacement sponsor lined up.

Just two weeks later, the Pakistani Air Force and Chinese officials were putting the final touches on a secret proposal to expand Pakistan's building of Chinese military jets, weaponry and other hardware. The confidential plan, reviewed by The New York Times, would also deepen the cooperation between China and Pakistan in space, a frontier the Pentagon recently said Beijing was trying to militarize after decades of playing catch-up.

All those military projects were designated as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion chain of infrastructure development programs stretching across some 70 countries, built and financed by Beijing.

Chinese officials have repeatedly said the Belt and Road is purely an economic project with peaceful intent. But with its plan for Pakistan, China is for the first time explicitly tying a Belt and Road proposal to its military ambitions — and confirming the concerns of a host of nations who suspect the infrastructure initiative is really about helping China project armed might.

Related: China's Xi Jinping Negotiates $46bn Superhighway to Pakistan
China Plans $503 Billion Investment in High-Speed Rail by 2020
Chinese President Xi Jinping Pledges $124 Billion for One Belt, One Road Initiative
Gunmen Attack Chinese Consulate in Pakistan


Original Submission

Politics: China Bans Islam-Related Names in Xinjiang 56 comments

Officials in Xinjiang will deny benefits to children with certain Islamic or Islam-related names:

Many couples fret over choosing the perfect name for their newborn, but for Muslims in western China that decision has now become even more fraught: pick the wrong name and your child will be denied education and government benefits.

Officials in the western region of Xinjiang, home to roughly half of China's 23 million Muslims, have released a list of banned baby names amid an ongoing crackdown on religion, according to a report by US-funded Radio Free Asia.

Names such as Islam, Quran, Saddam and Mecca, as well as references to the star and crescent moon symbol, are all unacceptable to the ruling Communist party and children with those names will be denied household registration, a crucial document that grants access to social services, healthcare and education.

Muhammad, Jihad, Medina, Mujahid, Arafat, Imam, Hajj, and Yultuzay are also banned.

Also at NYT. Reuters story about other restrictions that went into effect on April 1st.

Related: West Facing 'Payback' for Colonialism, says China's State-run Paper
China's Xi Jinping Negotiates $46bn Superhighway to Pakistan
Facebook's Zuckerberg Meets With China's Propaganda Chief, Social Media Mocks Facebook Block


Original Submission

Italy Joins China's Belt and Road Initiative 29 comments

Italy joins China's New Silk Road project

Italy has become the first developed economy to sign up to China's global investment programme which has raised concerns among Italy's Western allies.

A total of 29 deals amounting to €2.5bn ($2.8bn) were signed during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Rome. The project is seen as a new Silk Road which, just like the ancient trade route, aims to link China to Europe. Italy's European Union allies and the United States have expressed concern at China's growing influence.

The new Silk Road has another name - the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - and it involves a wave of Chinese funding for major infrastructure projects around the world, in a bid to speed Chinese goods to markets further afield. Critics see it as also representing a bold bid for geo-political and strategic influence.

Also at Bloomberg and The Washington Post.

Related: China's Xi Jinping Negotiates $46bn Superhighway to Pakistan
China Plans $503 Billion Investment in High-Speed Rail by 2020
Chinese President Xi Jinping Pledges $124 Billion for One Belt, One Road Initiative
China's $1 Trillion Belt and Road Project Includes Military Cooperation With Pakistan


Original Submission

Gunmen Attack Chinese Consulate in Pakistan 26 comments

Karachi attack: China consulate attack leaves four dead

Gunmen have killed at least four people in an attack on the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. Gunshots were heard at about 09:30 local time (04:30 GMT) outside the consulate in the upmarket Clifton area. Police shot dead three attackers.

Separatist militants who oppose Chinese investment projects in western Pakistan say they carried out the attack. [...] All the staff inside the consulate are safe, China said. The government condemned the attack on its mission and the foreign ministry in Beijing called for extra measures to protect Chinese citizens in Pakistan. "At the same time we mourn the deaths of the Pakistani police and think of their families at this time," a spokesman said.

[...] A separatist group, the Balochistan Liberation Army, said it had carried out the attack. It is one of a number of separatist groups operating in the province, which has seen a long-running nationalist insurgency. "We have been seeing the Chinese as an oppressor, along with Pakistani forces," a spokesman for the group told the AFP news agency.

Over the years, construction projects and Chinese workers in Balochistan have been repeatedly targeted by militants. Most recently, a suicide bombing in August injured a number of Chinese engineers. So far, none of the incidents has been large enough in scale to really threaten the viability of Chinese investment in the country. But this is one of the most prominent attacks to date.

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  • (Score: 2) by infodragon on Monday April 20 2015, @07:07PM

    by infodragon (3509) on Monday April 20 2015, @07:07PM (#173240)
    add 10,400 megawatts of energy

    That's more than 1.21 gigawatts!
    --
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    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Monday April 20 2015, @08:09PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 20 2015, @08:09PM (#173260)
      Eh, the speed limit's well below 88mph. Not exciting.
      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @09:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @09:12PM (#173283)

      That's jigawatts! I tried 1.21 gigawatts and I'm still here.

      • (Score: 2) by infodragon on Monday April 20 2015, @09:45PM

        by infodragon (3509) on Monday April 20 2015, @09:45PM (#173295)

        How long before posts slowly start to disappea

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        Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday April 20 2015, @07:12PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday April 20 2015, @07:12PM (#173245)

    How the game is now played: The US invested many times more in bombing Iraq (33M people) than China could ever dream to invest building infrastructure in Pakistan (182M people).
    One of those is better at building influence than the other. According to the Iranians, it might be the former.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 20 2015, @07:20PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday April 20 2015, @07:20PM (#173247) Homepage

      It's because the US and other Western powers have been co-opted by a Zionist fifth-column and are being squeezed dry to defend Israeli interests.

      Thankfully Grand King Baraq Hossein Sotero has been trying to reverse the damage done, but unfortunately he will not succeed because it is racist to criticize Israel.

      When China assumes its seat on the throne of dominance in world affairs, it unlike the others will not be co-opted by Zionist loyalists or susceptible to race-mixing propaganda and political correctness used to divide and pacify its proud society.

      • (Score: 2) by Tork on Monday April 20 2015, @08:34PM

        by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 20 2015, @08:34PM (#173269)
        Heh. I don't know why but every time I scroll past one of your posts my screensaver comes on.
        --
        🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Gravis on Monday April 20 2015, @07:52PM

    by Gravis (4596) on Monday April 20 2015, @07:52PM (#173254)

    the Chinese government announced that it will finance Chinese companies to build $45.6 billion worth of energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan...

    $15.5 billion worth of coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects will add 10,400 megawatts of energy to the national grid of Pakistan

    For those who dont know, china uses the most coal on the planet. Right now they have gotten all good/pure coal and are now excavating low quality coal. It seems to me that it's more likely this is just China taking all the coal they can from Pakistan and shipping it home. Why would Pakistan agree to that? China will gladly bribe Pakistani officials to ignore what they are doing and Pakistan has an even larger corruption problem than China so the officials will take the bribe.

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:07PM (#173259)

      Your post doesn't shit on the US in any way, and actually assigns ulterior motives to a country that is not the US, so you'll have to remove it immediately. This kind of thought is not welcome here.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Monday April 20 2015, @08:26PM

      by fritsd (4586) on Monday April 20 2015, @08:26PM (#173266) Journal

      For those who dont know, china uses the most coal on the planet.

      I dunno.. I don't doubt what you say but I wonder what China's government wants.

      Weird anecdote (has a tech angle though): I came across an article somewhere that said a Chinese app had won a prize for best Android app. It was made by an astronomer from a university in Beijing (can't recall). The app made it possible to use an Android camera phone, and put it outside at night, and, using long-term exposure and probably some rotation of the exposed pictures, *see the stars as if you could go outside your house and look up and actually see the stars*.

      How many kids grow up in Beijing who have never seen the stars, or even the other end of Tiananmen square, because the smog is so thick it can be cut in blocks and sold?

      So, there might be a slow groundswell of environmental awareness in China, "let's not burn all the coal in the world, we need to breathe too!". I've never been there, I can't be sure, but this is my opinion.

      If China has anarchy and revolution, they can't build out the necessary wind, solar and hydro infrastructure to transition their society. So maybe they need coal gasification as an intermediate solution. But I like to believe that they are aware that the environment exists and is something they need to live in, if they want the "Kingdom of the Middle" to endure five more centuries, or even one.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:44AM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:44AM (#173410) Journal

        It's actually not too bad in the "golden autumn." It's the one season in Beijing that's quite clear, and it is genuinely lovely. You can see the stars then. A lot of kids in Beijing are born to parents who are from the countryside, so they usually get to travel back to the home villages during Chinese New Year. Not far outside Beijing city limits the stars are quite visible. Some of the best star gazing I've ever done was while camping on top of the 15th guard tower at the Simatai stretch of the Great Wall. Ironically enough, we had more than enough fuel for our campfire burning the wooden chopsticks and other rubbish left behind by the Chinese day trippers, so your general point about Chinese respect for the environment is pretty accurate.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:45AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <bassbeast1968NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:45AM (#173439) Journal

        Go look at the really cheap plastic shit like bins in your local dollar stores, sure many say "Made in China" but more and more are saying "Product of Malaysia". As The Chinese get tired of their land and air being poisoned and working like slaves for a buck a day? The corps just move on to the next country they can exploit.

        After all as long as the CEOs can live in a Mansion in a clean valley and drink purified water why should they care how much of the third world they poison? BTW if you don't think they'll fuck their own country for a buck go by a superfund site sometime and see how huge a toxic waste dump once beautiful land can become.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:13AM (#173413)

      bribe Pakistani officials

      This is probably the case.

      The long-term consequences for Pakistan will be that China will make a stronghold in the area, and will not get out until all natural resouces have been exhausted, which may take many decades or even hundreds of years. All they want are the resources. They have the dollars to line the politicians' pockets. They have been doing that to Africa, building highways and whatnot in exchange for local resources.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:28AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:28AM (#173432)

        Just like the US did before them and the British before them. Romans are famous for their roads, among a few other things. In many ancient cultures fresh produce, game and even fish was transported for hundreds of kilometers sometimes over mountains for the rulers by runners.

        It's how the imperialist super powers behave. Evolution is a slow grind.

        • (Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:51PM

          by TK (2760) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:51PM (#173523)

          Do we count the Panama Canal as an imperial road?

          --
          The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by captain normal on Monday April 20 2015, @08:48PM

    by captain normal (2205) on Monday April 20 2015, @08:48PM (#173273)

    This highway runs right through Jammu and Kashmir which India considers it's territory. Is China now thumbing it's nose at New Delhi? The whole Pakistani occupation of Kashmir sounds a lot like the recent Russian occupation of Crimea. What with running out the native population and replacing it with peoples of the invading force. Pakistan has already given (sold? Traded?) parts of Kashmir to China.
    Now is India just going to sit still on this, or are the sabers going to come out? How is the US going to react?
    Is this highway, besides importing coal and oil to China, also going to import Islamic jihadists to China?

    --
    The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:39AM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:39AM (#173408) Journal

      import Islamic jihadists to China

      That's an interesting externality to consider, isn't it? The Uighurs on their own are so incredibly outnumbered by the Han and so hapless. Importing a bunch of Taliban-style guys would make being a Han colonist in Xinjiang considerably less fun. Of course, Beijing being Beijing and the Han being Han, it would definitely all end in tears for the Uighurs.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by zeigerpuppy on Monday April 20 2015, @09:48PM

    by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Monday April 20 2015, @09:48PM (#173297)

    The funny thing is that the US still thinks it's a player.
    The game is lost, get used to it.
    The new superpowers have a few things going for them that the US doesn't: they are internally cohesive, don't spend half their budget on "homeland" policing and have innovated technologically on a grand scale (as opposed to sucking at the teet of private contractors).
    It doesn't mean their policies and plans are correct and just in any abstract moral sense, then again neither were America's policies noble when it was in its "might is right" phase. To weather the future however, America and her allies need to stop beating their increasingly empty chests and realize that all empires have their time in the sun.

    • (Score: 2) by Covalent on Monday April 20 2015, @11:38PM

      by Covalent (43) on Monday April 20 2015, @11:38PM (#173326) Journal

      Bah. We've got plenty of muscle left...we're just using it poorly right now. Best thing to do would be to stop spending so much money on "big military". How many bombers do we need when bombs don't help much?

      Spend the money on R&D, space, and massive payoffs, er, I mean diplomacy, to everyone around China, especially India.

      Out tech and out spend....just like wiping out the USSR, only quicker thanks to better tech to spread your propaganda, er, I mean "message of freedom".

      --
      You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:27AM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:27AM (#173400) Journal

      I don't know whom you're thinking of when you describe "new superpowers" as being internally cohesive, because they certainly can't be China or Pakistan or India. The latter two have religious massacres on a regular basis, each of which individually has a death toll larger than the sum total of all that has happened between the Israelis and Palestinians. It's just that they don't have the lobby and media presence in the United States that pro-Israel forces have. As for China, they have so many social fault lines that rive their society it's not even funny--you could take your pick, countryside vs. city, Beijing vs. provinces, north vs. south, Han Chinese vs. Mongols, Uighurs, Tibetans, and everyone else, and on and on. The really fun thing about China is that Beijing has been so good at suppressing the formation of civil society that there is no buffer when Beijing loses control.

      It's de rigeur here in the United States at the moment to think that social division and incipient revolution are an exclusively American thing, and that everyone else in the world is doing great, but they're not. Yes, we are on the cusp of a sea change in this country, but it's not just this country. It's a global phenomenon.

      Hold your loved ones close. Enjoy the moments you have, now. The next 20 years are going to be rough.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @12:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @12:10AM (#173335)

    The players, as I see them:

    Europe

    Yes, people make fun of Europe for being fractious, ill-coordinated, inward-looking, and largely pacifist. Europe is still a huge economic player, with a lot of top notch manufacturing, research and development capacity. At least some parts of Europe are capable of hitting, and hitting quite hard (both UK and France have nukes, for instance, and smallish but highly competent military organisations). Europe mostly counts as a unit, however much they snarl at each other, because if there were any serious assault on any part of Europe, it's a smart bet that the whole subcontinent would unify the response (or almost all of it). They've also done a solid job of creating economic links, so their interests really are shared at some level.

    Europe is showing every sign of being more interested in soft power than hard, and development rather than expansion. However, this provides something of a physical buffer between Asia and the Atlantic, while capping the Mediterranean. Nobody in Europe (well, nobody sane anyway) would consider a long march East, but modern Europe also defines a western limit to any russian dreams of expansion, which brings us to ...

    Russia

    Biggest country in the world. Massive natural resources. A population only half that of the USA - you would think that Russia could go nuts with an internal growth and infrastructure plan to beggar belief. A modern-day counterpart to the USA's homesteading, settlement and expansion plans would turn Russia into a real bear, but right now Tsar Putin (I'm sure he thinks of himself in roughly those terms) is spending more time and energy swinging his dick at the world and trying to impress everybody, while mostly impressing the home crowd (which is good for his tenure) and making the rest of the world nervous (which is bad for foreign relations). That said, Russia is smart enough not to push too hard, because Russia is big enough to be ringed by some very big players indeed.

    This makes me think that Russia is being effectively mismanaged (no surprise given the corruption figures) and will probably slip in the international stakes. Regardless of what happens in the Ukraine, in Georgia, and in the 'stans, Russia's investment of time and energy is probably bigger than any return, once international suspicion and hostility are counted.

    India

    India is basically shambolic. A vast population, usefully huge natural resources, but the kind of poverty and messy politics which really screws up development. In some ways India has the opposite problem of Russia. In Russia, Vladimir gets what he wants. Things happen. Not always smart things, but things happen. India as a nation gives a strong impression of chaos.

    This doesn't mean that India can be discounted. Also a member of the nuclear club, a credible military, and India's intellectual and technical elite are second to none (partly, but only partly because of India's exports and re-imports of technical expertise to the USA and Europe). However, India is spending more time trying to build India, and stare down Pakistan and China over disputed territories, than trying to expand like Russia.

    The interesting part is that India may be finding more of a taste for commercial power, as witness the election of the current government. If this continues, and India's wealth, education and general coordination improves significantly over the next few decades, watch out. We may all be worshipping the almighty Rupee instead of Dollar.

    Africa

    Sorry, a bad joke. Nobody in Africa is big enough to swing a global stick. The closest approximation would be if somehow a caliphate managed to coordinate North Africa, but given the positively toxic politics of Asia Minor and Mediterranean Africa, I don't see that happening any time in the next century.

    China

    China went from a weak hand fifty years ago, to a steel fist in a velvet glove. They spent a long time building the steel, and softening the glove. Now they're a big player. Militarily, they are probably the biggest in their area although India and Russia are credible and redoubtable competitors. China shows no sign of wanting to fight either one of the above, which is smart. China has also realised that simply gobbling up neighbours doesn't make friends, and that while internal media can be censored and internal dissidents bullied (though more about that in a moment), international players on the same scale can't as easily be silenced. This has turned China to the firm pursuit of soft power at range (South America, Africa) and increasing aggression nearby (building a sea border in the South China Sea and elsewhere nearby). There's no reason to particularly believe that conquest at the point of the bayonet is in China's game plan, but that might change with some rapidity if China's commercial interests can be used as proxies and pretexts, the same way that european chartered companies became proxies and pretexts for european meddling in China. Watch this space with care.

    Internal dissent may be China's biggest headache. Not everyone in China is a fan of China. This is a good reason to believe that China may have decided that China is big enough. What would another conquered, but consistently unruly captive population do that China's corporations can't do across borders? If I were to bet, I would anticipate that the chinese may be taking their space programme a lot more seriously than many guess, and may be looking at interplanetary power plays. For example, there are strong cases to be made that Venus would be easier to terraform than Mars, and the chinese leaders (many of whom have engineering backgrounds) would also consider that asteroid bases would be a position of strength for further expansion. This may sound crazy, but the folks who lead China think very big, very long term, and very technocratically. So there are risks? So what? China has a long history of being comfortable with sending people to their deaths in the national (chinese) interest.

    Brazil

    The biggest, most infrastructurally advanced (by some measures) country in South America. Is also a confirmed neutral, wants no real part of international politics beyond maintaining the status quo. A loud voice regionally, but beyond the region not all that significant.

    USA

    The world's policeman is showing many signs of disgust with the role. Still the biggest, toughest, hardest-hitting, most technically advanced, and by some measures the most experienced and hard-nosed military in the world. It is clear that the USA's taste for conquest at this stage is effectively nil. If it weren't, it would have been politically a lot easier to simply take and hold Afghanistan and Iraq, and manage them on a generational basis to do real nation-building - but instead the USA's population insisted (in electoral terms, anyway) on getting out, so conquest, even creation of temporary regional hegemonies, is a thing that the USA doesn't do these days.

    The likeliest role for a while, for the USA, will be as a sort of senior partner in multiple alliances. NATO, the western Pacific (Korea/Japan/Australia/New Zealand/Philippines/various others), the caribbean (not counting Cuba) and of course the NAFTA countries.

    The Big Picture

    Some of the big players are playing monopoly with small players. The Middle East is a case in point, as is Ukraine, but there is no reason to believe that any of the big players are spoiling for war with each other (Russian demonstrations notwithstanding). At this stage everyone is mostly showing interesting in more wealth and technical advancement. Colonialism has largely gone out of fashion, inasmuch as it relies on guns. Now it relies on money and ideology. I anticipate the next couple of decades will be, unless Russia goes berserk or China suddenly becomes acquisitive, a cold war of commercial interests (outside current conflict zones).

    Black Swans

    A few things could change the picture very quickly. Here are two major ones:

    Revolution/Devolution

    Russia, China and the USA all have problems with substantial internal disgruntlement. China has not yet managed to silence Tibet, nor pacify Xinjiang. What isn't commonly known is that at the same time as the protests in Beijing which were famously suppressed, there were popular protests across China. Cynicism in China is strong and constant. Russia's disagreements are a bit more open, but attempts at manufacturing consent in Russia show signs of being constant battles rather than propaganda triumphs. And in the USA, the divide between pro-government, or pro-federal groups and anti-federal, or anti-government groups shows every sign of deepening. A civil war might not be imminent, but there are certainly good reasons to believe that if a nationwide rift were to form, it might end up being permanent. It turns out that what's good for Connecticut and California, doesn't necessarily play well in Kansas.

    But this is all guesswork.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 21 2015, @03:59AM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @03:59AM (#173387) Journal

      Terribly nationalistic thinking there.

      Worldwide, we're facing too big problems: greed and climate change. Climate change has killed civilizations before. We're much more knowledgeable and powerful, but we are most definitely not immune. We can live in peace if everyone chooses to do so. What I find frightening is that a lot of people won't settle, no they want more, more than the other guy. They would launch the nukes, for power and money. Some of our nuttier Christians really do want a war with the Muslims, because they're so sure we'd win and be able to take over and exploit the region. Exterminate all the Muslims then we can do that go forth and multiply thing. Fill the land with the children of Christians, and keep control of all that oil. Some really would rather live in a messed up, ruined world with destroyed civilizations where our total wealth is only 1% of what it is now, as long as they have more than their neighbors.

      If climate changes gets bad, it could push the nuclear powers into desperation. If they get desperate enough, they will think about launching the nukes. If they actually do it, it's game over for our civilization.

      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:57AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <bassbeast1968NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 21 2015, @07:57AM (#173443) Journal

        Dude I'm a socialist atheist and even I know it AIN'T the Xtians strapping bombs onto 14 year olds and having them drive bikes up to banks, that would be the Muslims. You look at every country with Sharia law? Its like turning back the clock 2000 years, with stoning of gays and rape victims, cutting the hands off thieves, say what you want about the Xtians but they haven't been THAT whack-a-doodle for quite a long time.

        While I personally would be happy if you threw ALL the religious books in a fire (since its obvious that humans can't handle fairy tales about sky bullys) you'd be damned lucky if you needed 2 hands to count the number of Xtian terrorist attacks in a whole year, you'd probably run out of fingers and toes counting Muslim suicide bombers in less than 3 weeks, its really no comparison.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:35AM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:35AM (#173404) Journal

      I think that seeing the fault lines in terms of nation-states is missing most of the picture these days. It's outdated. Nevertheless, it's interesting that you didn't mention Japan at all. Unlike China, they are a relatively harmonious society. They can mobilize on a dime, and they have the cash and the tech to do it. They have also traditionally been the counter-weight to China in the region. They might be again. Also, South Korea has really come on strong, and if China starts throwing its weight around it's a safe bet that Korea and Japan would bury the hatchet and pull together with ASEAN to form a united front. The news this week that China's building military air strips on disputed islands is sure to ratchet up tensions.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.