Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Karnewarrior]

Ahmadinejad volunteers to be first Iranian in space.

Bon voyage, I say.

As long as he isn't the first Iranian to make it back to earth.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Ahmadinejad volunteers to be first Iranian in space.

Bon voyage, I say.

I hope he dies. A sick fuck like Ahmadinejad doesn't deserve the honor of spaceflight.

[Owlbread]

I think it's wrong to wish anyone dead, let alone Ahmadinejad.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Doesn't change my mind.

[Zangi]

Japan vs China, Ship to Ship showboating

So... considering that Best Korea has been a bit rowdy lately and now... the thing with China finally trying to project its influence over its sphere.  Do you think its related? 
Or at least, Best Korea thinking on their own that they can be a bit louder now that their big brother is flexing?

[Owlbread]

The situation in the far east with China and Japan is quite perplexing. Neither side is going to come out well from this, although the Japanese will probably do marginally well. It's a lot of sabre rattling that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

[RedKing]

East Asia is a very complex multipolar arena. On one side you've got the old Cold War team of South Korea + Japan + US, but the conservative elements within the Japanese government don't want to bank on the US to protect their interests, especially as they see that the US would actually be reluctant to go toe-to-toe with China now. So they're beefing up the JSDF and looking at China as their main threat rather than North Korea or the Soviets. And the long-simmering bad blood between China and Japan means you're going to get dust-ups like this.

Meanwhile, a rearming Japan doesn't sit well with Seoul, who has never been antagonistic towards Beijing to begin with. Helps that they know that being nice to the PRC means China is more likely to wield its influence to keep Pyongyang on the leash.

There's some major power realignment going on in Asia. Saw recently where Turkey may decide to join the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- a budding Asian alliance of China, Russia and some of the Central Asian republics) and drop its bid for EU membership (and potentially drop its NATO membership as well). China is the dominant player, and Japan is the odd man out.

[Owlbread]

It would make sense for Turkey to pursue that rather than the EU. It allows them to further their pan-Turkic dreams to an extent.

[Sheb]

And also, the EU doesn't seems to want to let them in.

[Dutchling]

I thought Cyprus going to be or being the EU president kinda fucked that up yes.

[Owlbread]

The fact that southern Cyprus is a part of the EU renders the whole "but Turkey isn't European!" defunct.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The fact that continents are a matter of opinion already renders that defunct. North and South America, or just America? Europe, Africa, and Asia, or Eurasia and Africa? Or Afro-Eurasia? If Australia is a continent why isn't Japan or Greenland? Why does Antarctica get to be a continent when most of it is floating ice and not land?

Anyway, I don't see Turkey breaking with NATO, which would be a prerequisite for joining the SCO. Joining the SCO is willingly putting yourself in the Russian-Chinese power struggle, which is a very unpleasant unholy alliance. The only reason Turkey is a dialogue partner is because Erdogan is trying to advance his Islamist agenda, which means getting out of NATO and EU watch. Once the Turkish military kills him all will be well again.

[Owlbread]

I have heard that you can tell a Turk's politics by his moustache. People with small, trimmed toothbrush style moustaches are often Islamists while people with large, bushy moustaches are left-wingers. Mr. Erdogan appears to fall into one of those categories.

Turkey has also been incredibly influential on Europe for centuries. Indeed, a chunk of Turkey is still in Thrace - which last I checked is on the European "Mainland".

[Scoops Novel]

The fact that continents are a matter of opinion already renders that defunct. North and South America, or just America? Europe, Africa, and Asia, or Eurasia and Africa? Or Afro-Eurasia? If Australia is a continent why isn't Japan or Greenland? Why does Antarctica get to be a continent when most of it is floating ice and not land?

Anyway, I don't see Turkey breaking with NATO, which would be a prerequisite for joining the SCO. Joining the SCO is willingly putting yourself in the Russian-Chinese power struggle, which is a very unpleasant unholy alliance. The only reason Turkey is a dialogue partner is because Erdogan is trying to advance his Islamist agenda, which means getting out of NATO and EU watch. Once the Turkish military kills him all will be well again.

Can i get a bit more information on the power struggles mentioned?

[Culise]

The fact that continents are a matter of opinion already renders that defunct. North and South America, or just America? Europe, Africa, and Asia, or Eurasia and Africa? Or Afro-Eurasia? If Australia is a continent why isn't Japan or Greenland? Why does Antarctica get to be a continent when most of it is floating ice and not land?

Anyway, I don't see Turkey breaking with NATO, which would be a prerequisite for joining the SCO. Joining the SCO is willingly putting yourself in the Russian-Chinese power struggle, which is a very unpleasant unholy alliance. The only reason Turkey is a dialogue partner is because Erdogan is trying to advance his Islamist agenda, which means getting out of NATO and EU watch. Once the Turkish military kills him all will be well again.

Honestly, I hope this doesn't happen, because if the Kemalist attitudes behind that mentality do lead to another coup, it'll be the military and the coup leaders that get blamed for the inevitable fallout of Erdogan's attitudes; remember that regardless of anything else, the AKP still enjoys popular support with a plurality of the voting public.  What I hope for is for Erdogan to fail in such a way that it is Islamism that gets discredited.  To be honest, though the military has remained a force for secularism in Turkey, their ability and willingness to interfere in democratic processes in an extra-legal fashion has always struck me as a rather unhealthy capability, and one that has seemed to impair the development of stable structural systems in the Turkish government.  One of the very few things I think that Erdogan did right is making the army answerable to the government, rather than the other way around, even if he largely did it to increase his own power. 

Still, I think it's rather unlikely.  In 1997, they limited themselves to a strongly worded letter (which the then-Prime Minister bowed to, but that's another story), and Erdogan made a very decisive move against them as he has and still continues to arrest (successfully!) a large number of senior officers since 2008.  The fact that the military has actually and repeatedly buckled under rather than sending tanks into Istanbul again, even after the 2010 arrests, suggests strongly that a coup is no longer on the table as a viable alternative.