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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 4461854 times)

wierd

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26400 on: December 07, 2018, 11:54:42 am »

Propagandists spin-doctor things to fit a per-conceived worldview? Say it ain't so!

/s
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smjjames

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26401 on: December 07, 2018, 11:56:03 am »

Sounds like Philsbury was engaging in exactly what he was arguing against by calling the Deng strategy as 'prepare for revenge'.

Also, the first example of title translation could be contrued as just a really liberal (or maybe literal) translation (bordering on artistic license), but the second one is just horribly blatant.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2018, 12:05:12 pm by smjjames »
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MrRoboto75

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26402 on: December 07, 2018, 02:27:06 pm »

Philsbury



What a doughboy.
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Folly

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26403 on: December 07, 2018, 04:30:17 pm »

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/us/ron-helus-california-highway-patrol-thousand-oaks-shooting/index.html

Remember when the Thousand Oaks shooting happened and the good guy with a gun, the sheriff's sergeant, died trying to stop it? Turns out he was killed by another good guy with a gun.
I'm looking forward to the gun lobby proclaiming that we now need neutral guys with guns to stop the good guys with guns who are trying to stop bad guys with guns. The answer is always more guns!
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Teneb

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26404 on: December 07, 2018, 05:25:46 pm »

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/us/ron-helus-california-highway-patrol-thousand-oaks-shooting/index.html

Remember when the Thousand Oaks shooting happened and the good guy with a gun, the sheriff's sergeant, died trying to stop it? Turns out he was killed by another good guy with a gun.
I'm looking forward to the gun lobby proclaiming that we now need neutral guys with guns to stop the good guys with guns who are trying to stop bad guys with guns. The answer is always more guns!
We need a good gun with a guy. It's the only way.
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Kagus

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26405 on: December 07, 2018, 05:40:48 pm »

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/us/ron-helus-california-highway-patrol-thousand-oaks-shooting/index.html

Remember when the Thousand Oaks shooting happened and the good guy with a gun, the sheriff's sergeant, died trying to stop it? Turns out he was killed by another good guy with a gun.
I'm looking forward to the gun lobby proclaiming that we now need neutral guys with guns to stop the good guys with guns who are trying to stop bad guys with guns. The answer is always more guns!
We need a good gun with a guy. It's the only way.
Icarus in Black?

WealthyRadish

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26406 on: December 07, 2018, 05:51:54 pm »

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2169899/ambiguity-chinese-words-sparks-charges-distortion-us-china
Interesting article surrounding how American editors are deliberately mistranslating Chinese political tracts & military manuals to generate casus belli against China.

Quote from: tl;dr
Pillsbury argued in his 2015 book that China’s hawks used the intricacies of the Chinese language to conceal a century long “strategic deception” plan aimed at overtaking the US as the top superpower.
For instance, Pillsbury wrote, China officially translated former leader Deng Xiaoping’s description of his tao guang yang hui foreign policy strategy as “bide your time, build your capability”. The translation disguised the idiomatic subtleties of what Pillsbury called the real intention of Deng’s strategy: “prepare for revenge”.
There was reason to be concerned that the US had few “China experts” who actually spoke Chinese, Pillsbury wrote.
The title should be translated as War Beyond Limits, rather than Unrestricted Warfare,” he wrote in the preface to a new edition of the book. The original Chinese title sought to sum up the book’s endeavour to describe a strategy of warfare that would break down traditional boundaries, but still adhere to certain restrictions, Qiao said.
Qiao also complained that a subtitle added later, War and Strategy in the Globalisation Era, was reworded into China’s Master Plan to Destroy America in an English edition of the book.

This is the boring part of the campaign, but there's not much else to do except power through on speed 5 when setting up a good fascist USA run.
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Powder Miner

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26407 on: December 08, 2018, 09:24:31 am »

People trying to outright manufacture casus belli against China would be idiotic; it’s like running into a brick wall at 7 mph to try to knock it down: it’s not going to happen and it will possibly backfire on you personally.

Probably less casus belli and more attempting to sway opinion on China for the purposes of affecting domestic pressures on foreign policy outside of war and/or to help certain people stay in power.
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Frumple

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26408 on: December 08, 2018, 09:30:49 am »

It would be idiotic. Counterpoint, have you seen the current administration? Idiotic, non-functional, backfiring bullshit is not exactly outside its members' purview :-\
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Powder Miner

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26409 on: December 08, 2018, 09:38:26 am »

The administration has been full of a lot of moderating voices, even the ones Trup tries to select for pure loyalty to him. The fact of the matter is that most people that high up in government are actually pretty smart and exercise that in order to perform the basic things of self-preservation that Trump doesn’t. Additionally, war isn’t a press button and go affair; it takes a lot of work and a lot of planning and even if Trump got a full genocidal murderboner he wouldn’t be able to even get close to a war. It’s simply not a case of “Trump says, the executive branch does.”

It’s for the same reasons I didn’t take the worries of war with North Korea seriously that I don’t take the ones about war with China or Iran seriously. People overhype their perception of Trump and the administration to a degree where reality stops having any effect on it. I struggle to saybthis in a way that doesn’t sound like LIBERALS OFF THEIR ROCKER VOTE TRUMP NOW but it gets to the point that Trump stops actually being a person living within the constraints of reality and more of a concept of the worst possible, or impossible things.

I suppose you could have someone in the administration making half-baked casus belli attempts but nothing will come of them; bluntly, China has more important things to worry about than some idiot mistranslating titles.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2018, 09:40:18 am by Powder Miner »
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Loud Whispers

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26410 on: December 08, 2018, 09:41:25 am »

One of those important concerns is a naval war with America

Powder Miner

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26411 on: December 08, 2018, 09:42:53 am »

China won’t start a naval war with America because they have far more to lose than they have to gain and they would absolutely not have the capacity to prosecute it in any meaningful capacity.

America won’t start a naval war with China because they have nearly nothing to gain from it, and a lot to lose economically.

I really wouldn’t overestimate the geopolitical impact of the Chinese Navy; they have a role in nearby sea conflicts but pose no threat to American interests or operations.
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Starver

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26412 on: December 08, 2018, 09:45:04 am »

Reviewing the latest rants on Twitter (one yesterday spread across eight or so ellipsised in continuation, shortly before someone with actual decorum reminded us that it was an anniversary of Pearl Harbour), I agree that the guy at the top is certainly like that. But then he makes up for that by hiring in the Best Peopke. Like Tillerson, who he would never fire (oh wait, he did and now he's insulting them) or UN Ambassadors (who have weird ideas about Pearl Harbour and D-Day).

It was the Be Best of times, it was the worst of times. Bigly!
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Powder Miner

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26413 on: December 08, 2018, 09:50:13 am »

The thing is that almost no matter how many people Trump fires his pool of candidates doesn’t come from the same conditions he does. Trump was elected into his position by people wowed at his lack of a political career. His pool of cabinet picks have political careers or experienced positions in organizations larger more experienced and more clinical than Trump’s, such as Exxon.. By necessity they have a better grasp on what the hell they’re doing than he does. The reason he keeps firing people is because he can’t find a cabinet of people as singularly incompetent as he is.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26414 on: December 08, 2018, 10:29:15 am »

China won’t start a naval war with America because they have far more to lose than they have to gain and they would absolutely not have the capacity to prosecute it in any meaningful capacity.
America won’t start a naval war with China because they have nearly nothing to gain from it, and a lot to lose economically.
I really wouldn’t overestimate the geopolitical impact of the Chinese Navy; they have a role in nearby sea conflicts but pose no threat to American interests or operations.
China's consolidation of the South China Seas has seen Chinese diesel submarines gain the capacity to enter the Pacific from Chinese ports without detection by American units, this in turn allows China to station nuclear capable submarines on the American west coast; it's probably already been done in some capacity. The greater China's naval capacities increase, the further America loses the capability to challenge China anywhere in the world with military force. Conversely, once it is certain that the South China Seas will be covered in radar towers and submarine listening arrays, American or US-allied ships will find it increasingly impossible to station military units in the South China Seas without China's permission. Despite the UN ruling China's claim as illegal and the island bases as illegal, who's to say after 50 years of effective control it won't be long before what is actual will become what is legal? Consider for example US planes being ordered to leave or Chinese warships playing chicken.

Here is a useful excerpt from China's studies of the Falklands War, the last naval war in contemporary history:
The Chinese have concluded, according to the SSI, that Argentina failed to conduct an "accurate pre-conflict strategic assessment." Indeed, the junta underestimated British resolve. Chinese war planners intend to avoid that mistake. However, the Argentines were tasked with "preventing an outside power from interfering in a territorial dispute" -- a direct analog to Taiwan, in Beijing's estimate.
The Chinese believe Argentina failed to attack Britain's biggest weakness: its long sea and air supply line. The Argentines did not dramatically reinforce their ground units on the islands, nor did they upgrade island airfields to handle high-performance jets. Their aerial refueling capabilities were limited. As a result, Britain's jump jet carriers provided just enough air power to give the fleet a protective "bubble."
China intends to pierce any adversary's protective "bubble." Beijing has ballistic missiles designed to suppress Taiwan's airfields and conceivably U.S. bases on Guam. China intends to triple its arsenal of land-based maritime strike aircraft; robust air refueling capabilities increases their range. China is building more diesel and nuclear submarines, to attack supply ships and -- yes -- super-carriers. Trust that any Chinese invasion force successfully seizing an island will receive heavy ground, air and air defense reinforcements with alacrity. And never say never.
China is not Argentina.

It is also far more likely than you'd think, though neither US nor China would desire war, Xi Jinping's aggressive expansion in the South China Seas & his insistence that China will not withdraw from a single inch of their reef bases means a collision of some sort with the US is unavoidable. Much as in the Great War, no one wanted it, but everyone was forced into it. If there is to be a US-China naval war, it will be because a series of events and contingencies forced the two powers into conflict, not because either willed it. Likewise the lessons they learned from the Falklands was not on how to conduct an expedition against the USA, but rather how to deny any American expedition to China.

Quote
A centerpiece of this strategy is an arsenal of high-speed ballistic missiles designed to strike moving ships. The latest versions, the DF-21D and, since 2016, the DF-26, are popularly known as “carrier killers,” since they can threaten the most powerful vessels in the American fleet long before they get close to China.
The DF-26, which made its debut in a military parade in Beijing in 2015 and was tested in the Bohai Sea last year, has a range that would allow it to menace ships and bases as far away as Guam, according to the latest Pentagon report on the Chinese military, released this month. These missiles are almost impossible to detect and intercept, and are directed at moving targets by an increasingly sophisticated Chinese network of radar and satellites.
China announced in April that the DF-26 had entered service. State television showed rocket launchers carrying 22 of them, though the number deployed now is unknown. A brigade equipped with them is reported to be based in Henan Province, in central China.
Such missiles pose a particular challenge to American commanders because neutralizing them might require an attack deep inside Chinese territory, which would be a major escalation.
The American Navy has never faced such a threat before, the Congressional Research Office warned in a report in May, adding that some analysts consider the missiles “game changing.”

[...]
To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.
These missiles sting more than excocets, while the reefs have been turned into fortified airbases for fighter craft in accordance with their military manuals on how Argentina lost the Falklands War. It would be foolish to expect that the Chinese would conduct the war the same way the Americans would.

In an excoriating assessment of China’s increasingly muscular posture in the region, Harry Harris said Beijing’s “intent is crystal clear” to dominate the South China Sea and that its military might could soon rival American power “across almost every domain”.
Harris, soon to retire as the head of US Pacific Command in Hawaii, told the House armed services committee, the US and its allies should be wary of Beijing’s military expansionism in the region, and condemned China’s foreign influence operations, predatory economic behaviour and coercion of regional neighbours.
“China’s intent is crystal clear. We ignore it at our peril,” he said. “I’m concerned China will now work to undermine the international rules-based order.”
The US motive is clear, and this goes beyond Trump's China rivalry & even Obama's Pacific Pivot, with the US State Department providing a clear and consistent warning that as time goes on, the strength disparity between China and the USA will only decrease. If a naval war then is inevitable, the best time to strike is yesterday, the second best today, and in future never. Xi Jinping cannot stop consolidating the SCS without being seen to back down against US naval power in front of the Chinese people. Too much focus is on the individual personality of US Presidents, when whether it was Obama, Clinton or Trump, the state department would have advised them all the same. It's the perfect spicy meatball
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