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klldbbydth

Listed below are comments made by klldbbydth between Monday, 27th April 2009 and Friday, 22nd May 2009.

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Will the Chasers go to war on Rudd? 11:58am on 22 May 2009 The Chaser is political satire. Its audience, by definition, consists of persons interested in politics. The show is meaningless to someone with no interest in politics. This being the case, I rather doubt that the show had much affect on anything. They did embarrass Howard, but I don't see how a fancy summit could save him when the biggest new law of his last term in government, Workchoices, put so many swing voters offside. On the other hand, I know countless people who enjoyed seeing him made fun of simply because he was a politician, but still voted for him because they are conservatives and they would have voted for the Coalition even if it was led by a pineapple. By the same token, going overseas, Bush Jnr was famously susceptible to satire, but that is because he was an idiot. He went down in a cloud of ignominy because he was an idiot, not because he was easy to make fun of. Reagan and Clinton were also easy targets but are apparently beloved, because they were not disastrous leaders.
Costing the Earth? 05:54am on 05 May 2009 This whole 'anything we do on our own will make no difference' is that it applies to every country in the world. And if every country in the world takes that attitude, nothing changes and our civilisation ends up crashing into the ground. Brilliant. In any case, the reality is that we only have finite energy resources, so we might as well start providing economic incentives for diversification and efficiency, greenhouse effect or no.
Fortress Australia 06:27am on 04 May 2009 'What they mean is that if you know Chinese, then you will have recourse to the Chinese speaking world which is... a very vibrant world unto itself'

I know Chinese and have been to China and the first thing that hit me walking down the street is how many people there are openly xenophobic.

'I suspect that the parents of overseas Chinese felt some guilt about leaving the motherland and attempted to install some fervent nationalism into their children.'

In my experience it's the bourgeois lot who take on this nationalist mentality, as has been the case in societies everywhere. The blokes who dig holes in the street and sweep the floors are too busy with other things to get hot under the collar over the contents of a south Pacific country's defence documents.

'The white paper is realy Rudd government's response to the "Turnball Threat" rather than the "China Threat".'

These things take years to research and draft. Moreover, they are essentially the product of the military, the intelligence agencies and the Defence Department bureaucracy - not the Department of PM and Cabinet, which is the production line for knee jerk populist ideas. A defence white paper can't be cooked up to suit the 24 hour news cycle.

'How about sincerely making-up for the sins of your forefathers since you have "renounced history"?'

No, because even if I did want to move to Britain I can't get a visa or citizenship on that basis. Herein lies the problem with your claim that 21 million people have to move back to their respective ancestral countries to prove that they don't subscribe to imperialism. We'll just have to put up with having cordial relations with all of our neighbours, although some countries in the region can't even manage that apparently.

'The reason they don't have colonial possessions anymore has nothing to do with their altruism. Their hands were forced on this, they could not have held on to these lands even if they have wanted to.'

I didn't say it was a matter of altruism, because it doesn't matter. Like everything else you say, this is an irrelevant distraction. The point is that the countries which have to deal with China's military expansion are not ex-colonial powers, they are ex-colonies like Vietnam, Taiwan and the Phillipines, so you can forget all this nonsense about China re-asserting itself against the imperialists.

'Therefore, the system of government is no indicator of whether a country is peaceful or not.'

Yes, it is. America might bomb people all the time, but it has never gone to war with another Western democracy. In fact, to my knowledge no Western democracy has ever done so.
Fortress Australia 2:34pm on 03 May 2009 Well I was born in Perth and being a foetus I didn't have much choice in the matter, so I think I'll stay here thank you very much.

'Infact whatever clashes China has with its neighbors in the last 60 years is actually China trying to reassert its territorial integrity after the last 100 to 200 years of the imperialistic powers slicing, grabbing and pillaging and dismembering its territory.'

Oh jeez the old infinite virtue of the oppressed argument. In case you hadn't noticed, Britain, France et al don't have any colonial possessions in Asia anymore. The countries against whom China it 're-asserting its territorial integrity' are other post-colonial sovereign countries, so the fact that China got hard done by in the Opium Wars offers no justification for such behaviour as the Spratly Islands have often borne witness to.
Fortress Australia 1:57pm on 03 May 2009 'OK, since you have renounce your history,if you are white Australian, go back to Britain/Europe and give back the land to the Aborigines. If you are white American, go back to Europe and give back the land to the native Indians. That's a good test of your sincerity. Afterwords, just words are cheap.'

No, that's just nonsensical and irrelevant. Aside from the fact that what you assert would lead to everyone endlessly migrating and 7 billion ultimately ending up in a valley in Africa, what we're talking about here is defence and security. My point was that we don't make stupid claims to sovereignty over our neighbours, whereas some other nations still do immature things like fire ballistic missiles over them during their elections. You, on the other hand, just seem to be using this discussion as a pulpit to bash other countries.

'for not being stereotype'

You're a non-anglophone (yes, still, sorry) ultra-nationlist who comes to Australia, harps on about ancient history and irrelevant grudges, gets bristled at any criticism of your country of birth and doesn't understand the culture, as evidenced by elitist comments like 'I contribute to the country much more than many of you are on the benefits'. A stereotype is exactly what you are.

'What I have a problem with is Chinese nationalists who are masquerading as good Australian citizens.'

They're good for a laugh though aren't they?
Fortress Australia 11:53am on 03 May 2009 'those who will lead China and take positions of responsibility within the Chinese government will most likely consist of Chinese who have studied and worked abroad'

Well that's too bad because having lived and studied in China as well as having dealt with overseas Chinese, it's my experience that among the Chinese who have studied and worked abroad the proportion of nationalists and xenophobes is unfortunately no lower. Those who do subscribe to such thinking just manage to seem more culturally open because they are clothed in the Western branded nonsense. Only the ones who decide to become permanent residents seem to end up mellowing out, maybe because they realise the joys of ceasing to give a goddamn about wars or perceived insults that happened decades or even centuries ago - in my experience one of the biggest flaws in the identity of so many old world countries.

'the area of modern day Xizang was NOT regarded as foreign'

It was not regarded as foreign, therefore it was not foreign and could be subjugated. That's an interesting take on things. Sounds like another way of saying 'might makes right'.

'But if you want to continue with the unrelenting and disproportionate bashing of China and of its political system'

This isn't a discussion about political systems generally, it is a discussion about security in the Asian-Pacific region. As has been amply pointed out, China's closed off secretive political system leaves everyone guessing about what its intentions are. Why would anyone bring up Singapore, of all countries?

'tell me which nation in the world today is not built upon expansion and occupation?'

As has been pointed out above, in the realm of security it's not a question of which nations are built on expansion and occupation, which is all of them, it is a question of which nations have recognised and then renounced this history, and which ones continue to entertain nonsensical claims to the territory of their neighbours based on historical grudges and national chauvinism.
Fortress Australia 04:53am on 03 May 2009 I'd also like to point out that the Chinese government can blame itself for what it regards as hysteria amongst its neighbours. If it really wants to change the way its military expansion is perceived, the first thing it can do is stop keeping the real size of the PLA's budget a state secret.
Fortress Australia 04:01am on 03 May 2009 'But unlike some countries, China does not obtain oil from the barrel of a gun'

Actually there are Chinese troops in Sudan guarding the oil infrastructure it uses right now. Oil infrastructure it has gained access to by selling weapons to the genocidal government.
Fortress Australia 03:55am on 03 May 2009 It doesn't really matter if China would never invade Australia. Because China and India have been spending so much on arms so have all their neighbours. Our whole region has been engaged in an arms race for a decade now, in some years eclipsing the Middle East as the biggest arms market. It would be totally stupid to pretend that Australia's defence needs can remain unchanged in the face of a huge arms build up across the whole continent.
The revitalisation of Anzac Day 09:55am on 27 Apr 2009 'Understand that as people we are not much different in attitude to those soldiers'

Oh really? That's interesting, because if I had come to see my grandfather on Anzac Day three quarters cut and then proclaimed that I was giving all due respect to the occasion because diggers are larrikins and I was just being a larrikin, he would have given me one in the chin.

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