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 #2 (permalink) Tue Jul 03, 2007 15:06 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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Hi Aleaf,
I figure this could turn into a long if not endless discussion but could you please tell me why you think the US might "break the balance of the world"? As I see it, the US very often has helped maintain or restore the "balance of the world" (whatever that might be). Also, comparing countries with animals might be a good idea on the surface. However, if you take a closer look you will find the shortcomings of your analogy.
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Torsten
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| #3 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:03 am The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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I just made my comment out of intuition. I feel if we keep world under balance, big powers should check and constrain each other. But i feel nowadays once the USA makes a decision, no matter other countries agree or not, the decision will turn into reality. For example many countries don't aree the decision of invading Iraq , but the war still happened.There is not a single country having the ability to change his mind.
The USA should learn something from turtles instead of showing his paws and sharp teeth all the time and then I think terrorists attacks will be less in USA.
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| #4 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 8:44 am The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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the middle way is also called the Golden Mean.
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| #5 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:49 am The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| aleaf wrote: |
| We chinese believe the idea of "The middle way" that is we think we are good and bad, weak and strong.I think that is one of the reasons why chinese history lasts so long. |
This idea does not originate with the Chinese. It comes from Buddhism and involves a path of moderation between the extremes of sensual self-indulgence and self-mortification to achieve nirvana. What you are peddling here is a religious concept. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #6 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:40 am The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| aleaf wrote: |
| I just made my comment out of intuition. I feel if we keep world under balance, big powers should check and constrain each other. But i feel nowadays once the USA makes a decision, no matter other countries agree or not, the decision will turn into reality. For example many countries don't aree the decision of invading Iraq , but the war still happened.There is not a single country having the ability to change his mind. |
The US spent six months fooling around in the United Nations, but the problem is that there are many voting members of that body that want the United States to be destroyed. China is one of them. There were also a lot of countries that wanted Saddam Hussein to stay in power because they stood to profit by the end of trade sanctions. Many people in the administrations of the French president Jacques Chirac and of Russian president Vladimir Putin received vouchers for millions of barrels of Iraqi oil, which could be traded on the open market. The head of the UN Oil for Food program is said to have received vouchers worth more than a million dollars. You can read about it in this anti-Bush newspaper, and in many other places:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13313-2004Oct6.html
Also note the beginning of this article:
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Published on October 12, 2004, Washington Times, The (DC){PUBLICATION2}
Saddam bribed China with oil deals, CIA finds
China illegally supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with missile technology and other weaponry and was a major beneficiary of the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a CIA report.
The report by the Iraq Survey Group also stated that China, along with France and Russia, was bribed by Saddam with oil sales and weapons deals into working to end U.N. sanctions. |
If you don't trust the American papers, look here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/18/wfrance18.xml
China received 10 percent of the vouchers that Saddam's government gave away as bribes.
So, many of the countries opposing the US invasion of Iraq did not do so because they wanted "peace", but because they were being paid by Saddam's government and would stand to lose millions of dollars. Note that most of these countries did not oppose Saddam when he gassed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to death. Most of them didn't care about peace.
On to the subject of China itself, China is quite aggressive, which you are not admitting. The Chinese Army sprayed bullets at democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, killing more than 3,000 people. China routinely shoots missiles toward the coast of Taiwan when the Taiwanese are holding free elections. China sent troops to fight in Vietnam and Korea to assist in installing genocidal totalitarian regimes in those countries.
Usually, however, China fights wars by proxy. They simply provide weapons and assistance to countries that will do the dirty work for them. They provide military assistance and weapons to the government of Iran, which has vowed to destroy both Israel and the US with nuclear bombs. They are assisting in the current genocide in Sudan, which is partly a religious genocide and partly a means of clearing people out of oil fields where China has a financial interest. The Chinese are also assisting the genocidal regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Boats owned by the People's Liberation Army have been stopped at the coast of the United States and were filled with military weaponry for sale or distribution to American street gangs and other radical groups.
So to say that China is not aggressive is simply naive. But you have censored news media in China, and even your Internet is censored, as I have demonstrated to you. |
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Lost_Soul
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| #8 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:32 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| lost_soul wrote: |
Looks like Chinese people live like we, Russians, did when Stalin and his "apprentices" reigned our country  I bet if Stalin were alive, we couldnt visit most of the available sites |
There is one major difference, though. Stalin's gulag camps weren't financially profitable, while the Chinese have made their concentration camps (called laogai camps) into profitable businesses. Sometimes political prisoners are even rounded up when a camp is short on labor. They make all kinds of products for export. One Catholic priest was even arrested and forced to work in a concentration camp that made Christmas decorations.
One man who spent 19 years in laogai camps went back posing as a businessman was able to document that prisoners in China are even executed to get their organs for transplant into "medical tourists". You can read about the problem here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4921116.stm
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/dec/05120504.html |
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Jamie (K)
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| #9 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 13:05 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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I am aware of this atrocity, I even posted here on this forum about it.
They made mobile execution CHAMBERS where they carry out an immense number of lethal injections and then right after that THEY rip the dead inmates up to get their INTERNAL ORGANS for grafts |
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Lost_Soul
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| #10 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 14:14 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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1.This idea does not originate with the Chinese. It comes from Buddhism and involves a path of moderation between the extremes of sensual self-indulgence and self-mortification to achieve nirvana. What you are peddling here is a religious concept.
Maybe it is just a coincide, but before buddism was imported into china, Confucius had put forward the idea which had been expressed in a famous Confucius classical<Lun Yu>. I don't know whether the idea i mentioned was the same as you mentioned.
2.there are many voting members of that body that want the United States to be destroyed. China is one of them.
Just the same as the United States wants those countries not obeying the will of USA to be destoried, those countries certainly hope the United States to be destroyed. Anyway the United States wins great profits form oil after the Iraq war, doesn't he?
3.So to say that China is not aggressive is simply naive.
Ridiculous. Have you ever seen china invaded any countries? It seems we the one who has been invaded from time to time in history.especially around 1900(The only history i feel shameful is Yuan Dynasty,But please remember the emperor of that dynasty was not a Han Ren.)
4. As to the reports i just wonder if the communist government did so many ugly actions to the prisoners, do you think the government will let the dark secrets open to the world? How did the journalists get the information?
5.As far as the information i got about 1989 Tian amen event, both public people and soldiers died in it. I don't know much about it. I was in primary school at that time. there was almost no response in the city i am living in which is just next to Beijing. I heard the situation at that time was very serious in Beijing,and i know a college student of my city was called back by his parents. Some of the students were expelled from schools.
Stalin
i don't like him. It was he who supported Mongolia indepndent.
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| #11 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 15:22 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| aleaf wrote: |
2.there are many voting members of that body that want the United States to be destroyed. China is one of them.
Just the same as the United States wants those countries not obeying the will of USA to be destoried, those countries certainly hope the United States to be destroyed. |
Actually no. The United States, under Bush, Clinton, Bush and their predecessors have a policy of trying to pacify various nations and bring them into the world community through free trade. This is because free trade and economic dependence on the rest of the world usually makes countries behave less aggressively toward other countries, and it also makes them treat their own citizens better. And it works much better than war or foreign aid. Trade with China turns out to be problematic right now, however, because China has been exporting contaminated food, dangerously defective tires and other bad products, including toothpaste that killed several people in Central America.
Some countries have policies that are extremely dangerous to their neighbors, however, and they are an immediate threat and have to be dealt with militarily. The US does not do this as lightly as you seem to think, however. Iran has been giving us trouble for decades -- taking our people hostage, supplying and directing terrorist groups that attack our allies or blow up civilians, and other destruction. The US is capable of blowing Iran off the map, but we have not attacked them.
| aleaf wrote: |
| Anyway the United States wins great profits form oil after the Iraq war, doesn't he? |
Only in your imagination. Iraq's oil is put on the world market, and the money is used to aid in the country's reconstruction, to the extent that that is possible right now. We pour far more money into Iraq -- even in civilian aid -- than we get out of it. Iraq's oil facilities are owned by their national government, and they do what they want to with the money.
| aleaf wrote: |
3.So to say that China is not aggressive is simply naive.
Ridiculous. Have you ever seen china invaded any countries? It seems we the one who has been invaded from time to time in history.especially around 1900. (The only history i feel shameful is Yuan Dynasty,But please remember the emperor of that dynasty was not a Han Ren.) |
So you think that bad things come to China when it is not ruled by someone of the Han race? Aren't you kind of racist?
China has invaded many countries in its immediate area:
Vietnam in 208 BC, 1407 and 1979. This doesn't include the Chinese troops fighting during the Vietnam war.
Korea in 598-614, along with the Chinese troops fighting to install the current totalitarian regime that it protects in North Korea today.
Formosa (Taiwan) in 1683.
Tibet in 1720, 1750, 1910 and 1950.
Mongolia in 1693.
Nepal in 1788.
The only problem for your understanding this is that you have been taught by the communists that every country that China has invaded "has always been part of China", which is not true. This is a problem with your education.
In addition to this, as I mentioned, China mainly opposes its enemies by having other people do the fighting. Iranian insurgents in Iraq shoot at Americans with Chinese weapons. China provides military assistance and weapons to fight proxy wars in various places around the world. All the world's military powers do this, and China is no different.
| aleaf wrote: |
| 4. As to the reports i just wonder if the communist government did so many ugly actions to the prisoners, do you think the government will let the dark secrets open to the world? How did the journalists get the information? |
No country can prevent all information from getting out. People who have survived laogai camps have wound up in free countries to tell the tale. Sometimes even the guards get out. One laogai survivor went back posing as a businessman, and he had a video camera hidden in his briefcase. In one place he was posing as a patient needing an organ transplant, and he was told directly by the Chinese hospital personnel that the organs come from prisoners and that people have trouble getting organs in the West "because of human rights".
| aleaf wrote: |
Stalin
i don't like him. It was he who supported Mongolia indepndent. |
Mongolia was a sovereign nation before China took it. In fact, for quite some time it was sovereign over China!  |
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Jamie (K)
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| #12 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 22:17 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| The US is capable of blowing Iran off the map, but we have not attacked them. |
Jamie, it's a relief to hear that the US have no attention to "blow Iran off the map" because I think any country owning nuclear weapons is capable of "blowing any country off the map". So if one country actually starts using those weapons half of our planet might get "blown off the map" in no time.
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| #13 (permalink) Wed Jul 04, 2007 22:33 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| Torsten wrote: |
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| The US is capable of blowing Iran off the map, but we have not attacked them. |
Jamie, it's a relief to hear that the US have no attention to "blow Iran off the map" because I think any country owning nuclear weapons is capable of "blowing any country off the map". So if one country actually starts using those weapons half of our planet might get "blown off the map" in no time. |
That's right. It shows that no trigger-happy nations have gotten nuclear weapons. YET! |
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Jamie (K)
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| #14 (permalink) Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:06 am The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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It is true that there are lots of problems in the US foreign policy, especially the one on Iraq, but we should admit that the life in the USA is much better than in Russia, China and many others. I often here American Muslims saying that the lives of Muslims in the USA are better than those in many Muslim countries.
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| #15 (permalink) Thu Jul 05, 2007 12:37 pm The idea of "the Middle Way" |
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| Ahmadov wrote: |
| It is true that there are lots of problems in the US foreign policy, especially the one on Iraq, but we should admit that the life in the USA is much better than in Russia, China and many others. I often here American Muslims saying that the lives of Muslims in the USA are better than those in many Muslim countries. |
Muslims have many more rights in the US than they have in any Muslim country, and they also have more rights than non-Muslims have in Muslim countries.
Another interesting fact is that more Palestinians have been killed by Arab governments than have been killed by Israel. |
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| Adjusting to Eastern Expectations: China and 'chabuduo' | Funny but respectable |
