China takes out satellite with missile
 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/0...ile/index.html

What do we do about these bastards?

They are a strange people. We should be as worried about China as we are Muslim terrorists.

That is pretty frightening. I've never really thought about somebody being able to take out our GPS satellites. That would certainly hamper our ability to wage an effective war. Would China have the balls to do something like this if we weren't bogged down in Iraq?

It's a little unnerving, but it seems like a China has a recent history of flexing it's muscles at the West every 5 or 6 years.

In 1995 and 1996 they were doing missile tests in the Taiwan straits. In 2001 there was the Hainan spy plane incident. Now in 2007 they shoot one of their weather satellites down with a missile. I'll be surprised if they follow up with more provocative actions in the immediate future.

I guess I don't see them as an imminent military threat if only for the reason that they're running over a $100 billion trade surplus with us and they have financed about $400 billion of our national debt. We're their number one trade partner. If your neighbor is your best customer and he owes you a ton of money, it doesn't seem rational to put them in a position where they can't buy your stuff or pay you back.

I think you are correct. Interdependence continues to be a great stabilizer in today's world. Except when when extremist beliefs intercede. The Chinese seem to be very practical communists.

That's an impressive shot, even for the Chinese. I'm still not going to start worrying about them. They may have a lot of people, but they are half our phyical size and you just can't run very fast in a kimono. Oh wait, that's the Japanese, I'm scared as hell of the Chinese. Let's hope they never get an economy.

We need to start some type of a conflict between North Korea and Bejing. Hu Jintao mentioned something about Kim Jong Il's mother wearing combat boots, maybe that will be the catalyst.

I work in a lab full of Chinese people, and I am very afraid. Many of them are very nice, but the cultural differences are vast and beyond my comprehension. For instance, we take umbilical cords from a local hospital to harvest endothelial cells for experiments... and when one of them had a baby, we were going to pick up the cord and grow the cells in the lab...but we found out that the family took the placenta home to cook and eat it. This may be the exception, but I have a hard time understanding this.

I'm especially afraid because of the 60% to 40% male to female ratio in this next generation. What on Earth are those 20 million men going to do???????????? I asked my coworkers, and they said the extra guys would marry Japanese women. But my Chinese friends didn't have an answer when I asked what the Japanese men would do in this case.

Marry Japanese women? LOL.

Maybe Phillipinos.

Japanese despise Chinese. The Chinese are like dogs to them.

They also gave an alternative possibility...these 20 million extra men would simply hire prostitutes. (Apparently prostitution in China is already getting out of control.)

The other interesting thing I've noticed is that the Chinese MDs that work in my lab all claim that communism completely eradicated STDs in China, and that there was no need to study STDs in med school at all. Diseases like syphilis were removed from the textbooks because they "did not even occur in China."

In recent years, with the economic and other reforms that have taken place in China, the diseases reappeared. A lot of these people REALLY believe these things.

And they also generally believe that Mao was a great man, despite a failed collectivization policy that killed no fewer than 20 million people. There is also this phenomenon where they constantly talk of great men and common men. For example: "Mao was a GREAT man, but his parents were just COMMON men." Also: "GREAT men should be able to decide the fate of a nation, but COMMON men should not be allowed to vote because they do not even understand what is best for them." It's a really interesting and unusual way of thinking, and it's beyond my comprehension...even though it does sound a tad bit similar to the electoral college and other views that some of the founding fathers had. Maybe it's also a little like our government knowing what's best for the Iraqis by not pulling the army out of the country even though most Iraqis want us gone, although I'm not trying to get political here.

I'll get political. The Chinese communists sound like Mrs. Clinton.

Not to hijack, but this is not actually all that dissmilar from what our founders believed. The system they devised only put half of one branch of government in the hands of the masses. Neither the Senate, the President nor the Supreme Court were popularly elected. This was not by accident.

Federalist 10 is instructive:

"The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose."