The US/China standoff -- opinions from the rest of the world?
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Lets take a slightly different look at this: Imagine that the US plane had been damaged so badly that it had crashed....that would be 24 dead Americans in addition to the Chinese pilot. As for damage, and the calls for compensation....is that bi-directional?? Is China willing to pay for the damage to the US plane?? Is England "asking for it" when they don't agree to demands by the IRA?? When I was in England many people were offending by my IRA shirt (Intercollegiate Rowing Association). Several tried to pick a fight with me over it!! If the US damands that China stop all its recon/intel missions, wouldn't we expect that China would tell the US that it is a soverign nation and is free to do as it wishes?? They have do so on other issues such as human rights in the past....why should they expect nations to do what they want?? I had a german friend in town a couple weeks ago and we discussed China.....his worry was that China was going to start a new cold war due to George W's policies. My position was that if China wants to do so, its because they want to....I know of no one in the US that up to 3 days ago had any ill will towards China....now thanks to this whole mess, I suspect that people wil turn against China and the US may begin trade sanctions.....is it worth it??? Wouldn't it simply be wiser to say "Here are your people.....the plane stays here -- finders keepers" and move on?? So long as China holds the US crew, I see no good outcome.
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US "MUST" apologize. US "MUST" promise not to send its spy planes to any country. US "MUST" pay for the damages caused by its plane. US aircraft crew "MUST" be punished according to chinese rules.
Why must the Americans constantly stick their nose in other countries affairs? I would think that the Americans should've learned from the Vietnam war that they seem to mis-read and under-estimate China. (Americans thought that the Chinese we're heavily involved but it was more the Russians) Taiwan and China is an internal affair, Americans getting involved will only cause more tension.
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US "MUST" apologize. US "MUST" promise not to send its spy planes to any country. US "MUST" pay for the damages caused by its plane. US aircraft crew "MUST" be punished according to chinese rules.
Why must the Americans constantly stick their nose in other countries affairs? I would think that the Americans should've learned from the Vietnam war that they seem to mis-read and under-estimate China. (Americans thought that the Chinese we're heavily involved but it was more the Russians) Taiwan and China is an internal affair, Americans getting involved will only cause more tension.
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about a million Americans have died as a direct consequence of the asinine political incompetence of the countries of Europe. On the other hand, none of them have died as a consequence of ours. Can somebody please explain to me why we still care what their political opinions are? Or what they think of our foreign policies? Heck, without us, they would all be sending their opinions in German, if they were allowed to send them at all. Thank God the U.S. is finally running the show! Set back and take notes, my English friends, let President Bush show you how its done. Stan Shannon, American.
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I'm an American who has spent a great deal of time overseas for work...at the moment, however, I'm in the US and was curious how people outside the US view the brewing storm over the American "spy" plane which is currently in China. I spoke to a friend last night who is a atmospheric scientist, and his data collection aircraft is basically the same airplane as the one which is now in China. He says that the plane is old, slow, and big....that he would be very surprised if it could hit a fighter unless the fighter pilot was asleep. Should the US aplogize? Should the US cut off trade relations? Should the crew be held in China? Should the plane be returned to the US?
Should the US aplogize? Yes.United States should apologize for bumping the plane into Chinese fighter F-8 Should the US cut off trade relations? Well,U.S is heavily relied on China,and it has given most favored status to China.Putting sanctions on China would adversly effect both China & U.S Should the crew be held in China? They should be tried according to Chinese laws. Should the plane be returned to the US? Well,it should. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Visual Basic programmer. -------------------------------------------------- Share your thoughts..
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Bush only won the election by chance. If the vote of the people had been counted, rather than electoral votes, he'd have lost. If the electoral college votes were distrubuted proportionally rather than in state-sized chunks, he'd have lost. If 9000 voters in Florida had not been (unintentionally) mislead by a poorly designed ballot UI, he'd have lost. None of this is opinion; it is verifiable FACT. And he continues to lose, by assuming that he has a "mandate" and implementing the most heinous right-wing agenda ever promoted by an administration in my lifetime. He's an ignorant puppet of a bunch of has-been Cold Warriors, he's an opportunistic liar, and he is leading this country in precisely the wrong direction. Let's just hope he's out of office before the bombs start to fall and/or the last bit of wilderness is developed. Bush may have won the election "fair and square", but he's clearly not an honorable man. An honorable man would have looked at the circumstances of his election and bowed out.
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I think George W Bush Jr is onto drugs again. First, deciding to sell arms to Taiwan and making China angry, then environment problem, and biggest defaulter on payments to UN. And not to forget, making angry the whole world over missile defence shield. IMHO, he thinks he is king of the world and he can do anything he wants. That chinese Embassy bombing was no accident. With the state-of-the-art technology that they have, Americans expect us to believe that they made a mistake. Bull shit! China should return the crew but keep the plane. Ammar
You should take this in the context of other events. Last month a squad of US solders were killed by frendly fire during a training exercise. In the gulf war 1/4 of the allies killed were killed by frendly fire. War is an unsafe place. Taiwan has long been a US ally, not selling them arms would be a slap in their face. Besides there is always plenty of saber rattling going on across the strait.
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I think George W Bush Jr is onto drugs again. First, deciding to sell arms to Taiwan and making China angry, then environment problem, and biggest defaulter on payments to UN. And not to forget, making angry the whole world over missile defence shield. IMHO, he thinks he is king of the world and he can do anything he wants. That chinese Embassy bombing was no accident. With the state-of-the-art technology that they have, Americans expect us to believe that they made a mistake. Bull shit! China should return the crew but keep the plane. Ammar
Why is it that when the US is at fault, they're infallable and thus whatever it was must have been on purpose, yet when people from other countries talk about America and Americans, they say we're not better than anyone else? Food for thought.
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Why must the Americans constantly stick their nose in other countries affairs? I would think that the Americans should've learned from the Vietnam war that they seem to mis-read and under-estimate China. (Americans thought that the Chinese we're heavily involved but it was more the Russians) Taiwan and China is an internal affair, Americans getting involved will only cause more tension.
You know, we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. If we had a strict policy of isolationism, we'd be criticized for not helping those less fortunate than ourselves, smaller countries, or whatever. Whenever you take a side, there will always be someone on the other side that disagrees with you and will likely be very vocal about it. So simply choosing a side is enough to get negative publicity no matter what you do. Not choosing a side also gains you negative publicity. Further, We do have treaties with other countries to help out. This allows us to protect countries like Saudi Arabia who provide so much of the oil we need. If we didn't, someone like Sadam would come in and take all the oil producing countries and hold the world hostage, again, we'd be criticized for not doing anything about it. It's a tough job, and to sit there and criticize is easy.
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Bush only won the election by chance. If the vote of the people had been counted, rather than electoral votes, he'd have lost. If the electoral college votes were distrubuted proportionally rather than in state-sized chunks, he'd have lost. If 9000 voters in Florida had not been (unintentionally) mislead by a poorly designed ballot UI, he'd have lost. None of this is opinion; it is verifiable FACT. And he continues to lose, by assuming that he has a "mandate" and implementing the most heinous right-wing agenda ever promoted by an administration in my lifetime. He's an ignorant puppet of a bunch of has-been Cold Warriors, he's an opportunistic liar, and he is leading this country in precisely the wrong direction. Let's just hope he's out of office before the bombs start to fall and/or the last bit of wilderness is developed. Bush may have won the election "fair and square", but he's clearly not an honorable man. An honorable man would have looked at the circumstances of his election and bowed out.
Check your facts before spouting off like some ignorant political zealot: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/04/florida.recount.01/index.html?s=2 Josh josh@schroff.com
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"about a million Americans have died as a direct consequence of the asinine political incompetence of the countries of Europe." Now THIS is the sort of thing that inflames anti-American opinion. "On the other hand, none of them have died as a consequence of ours." Ermm, I presume you've heard or the Korean War - it wasn't just America fighting that (UK lost almost 25,000 troops) as well as Australians and other NATO countries. Also, what about Korea, Vietnam, etc, etc. Haven't done too well their have you? :mad: Why should the whole world suffer "global warming", just because America doesn't want to cut down on emissions? Bush complains about 3rd world countries not having to cut emissions, but the USA is the world's largest producer of CO2 per person - more than even 3rd world countries. "Heck, without us, they would all be sending their opinions in German, if they were allowed to send them at all." Maybe - that's not to say we're not grateful for what you've done. But on the other hand, in the American war of independence, a British soldier had George Washington in his sights. Because his back was turned, and because tradition was you wouldn't shoot an enemy in the back, he didn't fire. If he had shot him, the chances are you'd still be British or at least a colony. It's also things like "The Patriot" and "U571" that cause resentment, particularly in the UK. Hollywood completely fabricating stories and alleging that it was USN and not the British who retrieved the first enigma encoding device. Cheers, Peter Pearson
Movies are entertainment. They're modified to make them more entertaining, and since the movies are targeted primarily at American audiences with world distribution second, that is where the focus is. Like anyone in the US would have gone to see a movie about brits? We have identify with the people on screen or we just don't care, much like you brits didn't care that it was americans. You'd love to go see a movie about how the british won the Persian Gulf War, right? Whether it was true or not, it would be great entertainment for most brits. They didn't have to include the bit in the credits giving the official history, but they did. They could have simply said "based on a true story" and that's all that would have been necessary. This is my point about how we're alwasy damned no matter what we do.
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Why must the Americans constantly stick their nose in other countries affairs? I would think that the Americans should've learned from the Vietnam war that they seem to mis-read and under-estimate China. (Americans thought that the Chinese we're heavily involved but it was more the Russians) Taiwan and China is an internal affair, Americans getting involved will only cause more tension.
The US has been traditionally isolationist, with the cold war being an aberration. There is always a strong undercurrent in this country that we should stop trying to be the world's cop, get out of the UN and our other alliances, and let the rest of the world go to hell in its own merry way. Of course, sooner or later the problems of the rest of the world do end up on our shores...
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You should take this in the context of other events. Last month a squad of US solders were killed by frendly fire during a training exercise. In the gulf war 1/4 of the allies killed were killed by frendly fire. War is an unsafe place. Taiwan has long been a US ally, not selling them arms would be a slap in their face. Besides there is always plenty of saber rattling going on across the strait.
"Taiwan has long been a US ally, not selling them arms would be a slap in their face." About supporting allies, when Iraq attacked Kuwait Mr President's daddy went all out to save Kuwait. But when it comes to saving Palestinians citizens, America vetoed the resolution (to send UN unarmed observers to observe Israeli military attacks) in UN. What about Pakistan? No need to mention that America is still pursuing its policy of "will-do-whats-best-for-us-Rest-can-go-to-hell". Pakistan is also an ally since long but when it came to F-16s, Americans not only didnt deliver the planes but kept more than $500 million to themselves. Is there any business-ethics or morals left in this country called US of A government? Ammar PS: By Americans, I dont mean the good citizens of America. I mean the policy makers.
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I'm an American who has spent a great deal of time overseas for work...at the moment, however, I'm in the US and was curious how people outside the US view the brewing storm over the American "spy" plane which is currently in China. I spoke to a friend last night who is a atmospheric scientist, and his data collection aircraft is basically the same airplane as the one which is now in China. He says that the plane is old, slow, and big....that he would be very surprised if it could hit a fighter unless the fighter pilot was asleep. Should the US aplogize? Should the US cut off trade relations? Should the crew be held in China? Should the plane be returned to the US?
Answers as follows: 1/ Yes. If you're spying, you're spying. Sheesh. 2/ No. I'd say that it's probable that China caused the accident, probably on purpose. However, see answer one. You want a war with the biggest army on the planey because they don't like you spying on them ? 3/ Of course not. They should be treated fairly and released in a timely fashion. 4/ I don't know - I'd suggest they will return it once they have learned all they can from it. Christian The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda. To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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I'm an American who has spent a great deal of time overseas for work...at the moment, however, I'm in the US and was curious how people outside the US view the brewing storm over the American "spy" plane which is currently in China. I spoke to a friend last night who is a atmospheric scientist, and his data collection aircraft is basically the same airplane as the one which is now in China. He says that the plane is old, slow, and big....that he would be very surprised if it could hit a fighter unless the fighter pilot was asleep. Should the US aplogize? Should the US cut off trade relations? Should the crew be held in China? Should the plane be returned to the US?
Answers as follows: 1/ Yes. If you're spying, you're spying. Sheesh. 2/ No. I'd say that it's probable that China caused the accident, probably on purpose. However, see answer one. You want a war with the biggest army on the planey because they don't like you spying on them ? 3/ Of course not. They should be treated fairly and released in a timely fashion. 4/ I don't know - I'd suggest they will return it once they have learned all they can from it. Christian The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda. To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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Movies are entertainment. They're modified to make them more entertaining, and since the movies are targeted primarily at American audiences with world distribution second, that is where the focus is. Like anyone in the US would have gone to see a movie about brits? We have identify with the people on screen or we just don't care, much like you brits didn't care that it was americans. You'd love to go see a movie about how the british won the Persian Gulf War, right? Whether it was true or not, it would be great entertainment for most brits. They didn't have to include the bit in the credits giving the official history, but they did. They could have simply said "based on a true story" and that's all that would have been necessary. This is my point about how we're alwasy damned no matter what we do.
I think you'll find that people outside the US are far less likely to be more motivated by a desire to see *our* country depicted as the saviour of the free world yet again, and probably more likely to be interested in a true story remaining the truth. I guess it's collective insecurity after that bad streak you had with wars in the 50's, 60's and 70's.... Why did Rambo make money ? It was a poor film, but it made millions coz you guys got to forget that you got caned by a technologically inferior army. Christian The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda. To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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I agree it's entertainment, but when facts are half used and half changed, it gets silly. Fair point about U571 - I can't actually remember, but I know I was a bit annoyed at the time. As were, I think it is fair to say, quite a few people in this country. Regards, Peter Pearson
I had a close look at an enigma machine on the weekend, damned remarkable piece of gear. It was incredibly advanced encryption for its time, it was only due to a procedural error and a small flaw in design that the code was broken. The procedural error was that the reel settings for the 3 wheels were always sent twice in succession, in plain text at the start of the message. So all someone had to do, once in posession of an enigma machine, was to look for a pattern of 3 characters repeated (and later 5 characters repeated on transition to the 5 reel enigma) The flaw in design was that every 300 messages or so, the enigma would complete a cycle of encryption and 1 character would be encoded the same as the message 300 beforehand. Ie if a 'g' was encoded as an 'a', 300 iterations or so later, the 'g' would again be encoded as an 'a'. That's a fairly simplistic view of it and probably not perfectly correct but it gives an idea of the methods used in cracking the code ;-) Senior Test Engineer GLI Australia www.gli.com.au
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US "MUST" apologize. US "MUST" promise not to send its spy planes to any country. US "MUST" pay for the damages caused by its plane. US aircraft crew "MUST" be punished according to chinese rules.
Since I still consider myself part of the US Military - not only NO! but HELL NO! Has everyone forgotten Tianemen Square and what the Chinese government did to their own people? Every non-American post I have seen here has basically raised China on a pedastel and wants to bash the US. The Chinese aircraft "attacked" an American aircraft in international waters, then held its crew in captivity, denying contact with American embassy personnel. That is illegal according to international law, and certainly not the kind of actions that the American military or government would take Phil Boyd MCP "I took the road less traveled..."
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Bush only won the election by chance. If the vote of the people had been counted, rather than electoral votes, he'd have lost. If the electoral college votes were distrubuted proportionally rather than in state-sized chunks, he'd have lost. If 9000 voters in Florida had not been (unintentionally) mislead by a poorly designed ballot UI, he'd have lost. None of this is opinion; it is verifiable FACT. And he continues to lose, by assuming that he has a "mandate" and implementing the most heinous right-wing agenda ever promoted by an administration in my lifetime. He's an ignorant puppet of a bunch of has-been Cold Warriors, he's an opportunistic liar, and he is leading this country in precisely the wrong direction. Let's just hope he's out of office before the bombs start to fall and/or the last bit of wilderness is developed. Bush may have won the election "fair and square", but he's clearly not an honorable man. An honorable man would have looked at the circumstances of his election and bowed out.
Hmmm - must be a Clinton supporter. Let's see: 1 - Had a sexual affair with an intern while President of the United States, then lied to his wife, and to the American People UNDER OATH about it. Fact - he admitted it to make the inquiry go away. 2 - Stole over $80,000 of property belonging to the American people when he left office, then returned it calling it a mistake. 3 - The Clinton Administration caused over $250,000 damage to the White House and Administration offices when then left at the end of the Clinton debacle. 4 - Pardoned Marc Rich after accepting several thousands of dollars in bribes from Rich's ex-wife. 5 - Pardoned 4 Jewish rabbis convicted of embezzling several thousand dollars from their community in New York to get the town to vote for his wife. Oh yeah - he was really somebody to look up to. And you want to accuse GW of stealing the election? Well - I guess maybe you might have some experience there based on your choices for hero worship.:mad: Phil Boyd MCP "I took the road less traveled..."
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Why must the Americans constantly stick their nose in other countries affairs? I would think that the Americans should've learned from the Vietnam war that they seem to mis-read and under-estimate China. (Americans thought that the Chinese we're heavily involved but it was more the Russians) Taiwan and China is an internal affair, Americans getting involved will only cause more tension.
How are we getting involved? A group of people has gotten together and formed a legitimate democratic government. There are over 165 separate nations on this planet. I know we aren't the only ones that recognize Taiwan as a separate nation (even if we do it in a subdued manner). Are you suggesting that just because the PRC calls it an internal issue that we just shrug our shoulders and say sorry? Phil Boyd MCP "I took the road less traveled..."