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Senate Asian Geopolitics

Discussion in 'Community' started by Lord Vivec, Feb 11, 2014.

  1. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
    This is the huff article, what was tweeted is in bold. This is nothing but sabre rattling at best. I'm going with DP, so what.

    Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, wrote a frightening Twitter post in response to a fake news article stating that Israel would attack Pakistan with nuclear weapons.

    “Israeli def min threatens nuclear retaliation presuming pak role in Syria against Daesh,” Asif wrote on Twitter Friday, referring to the Islamic State. “Israel forgets Pakistan is a Nuclear state too.”
     
    Adam of Nuchtern likes this.
  2. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001
    Yeah, so what? No one's suggesting he's going to launch a first strike -- just that, if attacked, they'd retaliate and wipe them off the map.

    Or, you know, the current state of any nuclear state in the world.
     
    Adam of Nuchtern likes this.
  3. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
    If only they had emoticons in Pakistan
     
  4. Ghost

    Ghost Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Oct 13, 2003
    So it only matters if it actually comes to nuclear strike? It doesn't matter that a DM was led by a fake news article to openly declare this to Israel?
     
  5. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001
    Are you thinking this is a Jewish/Muslim thing or something? The same guy (a civilian, btw, so not someone with a military background) said virtually the same thing about India ("we'll nuke them if provoked") about 3 months ago. I don't recall outrage in this thread?
     
  6. Ghost

    Ghost Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Oct 13, 2003
    No...?

    And I didn't hear about that 3 months ago.

    And this isn't outrage.


    Do I have to spell it out even more?

    Fake news is influencing the Defense Minister to make public nuclear threats.

    It's extremely concerning that someone would make this threat, and it could have consequences.

    It's even more concerning that the trigger for it is FAKE news because apparently high-ranking officials in defense ministries in nuclear-armed governments don't know any better.
     
  7. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
    slo newz week
     
  8. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    They'll get to that soon enough. They're still stuck in the "write great as 'gr8'" phase right now. Believe me.
    Yes, you're going to need to spell it out. I don't see how it is a threat. "We will retaliate with nukes if they use nukes against us" is standing policy. How is that a threat? That is literally what they're there for.
     
  9. Point Given

    Point Given Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 12, 2006
    I see Ghost's point, in that it's a bit disturbing that the Defense Minister was suckered by the fake news and felt the need to tweet. But in the end, he didn't tweet anything about a first strike nuclear attack.
     
    Ghost likes this.
  10. Violent Violet Menace

    Violent Violet Menace Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Aug 11, 2004
    Misinformation has been used for decades, perhaps even centuries, against foreign leaders. The only difference is that in this environment, the misinformation may come from civilian individuals too with agendas different and separate from governments.
     
  11. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Being contrarian, even restatements of long standing policy can be off putting or viewed as hostile/controversial. For instance, Ahmadinejad largely echoed long standing policy on Israel, but the international community was still rightly taken aback that someone went out of their way to emphasize it. And while MAD is as old as these weapons, no one would ever imagine the U.K. Foreign Ministry volunteering how mentally prepared they are to wipe out the US. There's rightly a difference between having an option of last resort and bragging to everyone how you are ready to make use of it.
     
    Ghost likes this.
  12. Violent Violet Menace

    Violent Violet Menace Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Aug 11, 2004
    He was responding to a threat falsely attributed to Israel. In other words, he wouldn't have spoken if he didn't mistakenly believe that Israel had already done that which you described. His words were a response to provocation.
     
  13. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001

    Weren't people more concerned with Ahmadinejad and Israel because he was a Holocaust denier who hosted Holocaust denier conferences?
     
  14. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    Wocky.....people were taken aback at him restating policy on Israel because of how bad the policy was itself. It's not "normal" like MAD is.
     
    Violent Violet Menace likes this.
  15. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Annihilating countries with nuclear warfare is pretty "bad" too, all things considered. That besides, there are many other examples of the same. While Republican reaction was wholly overblown, people did notice when Obama explicitly referenced the "1967 borders" in regards to the basis for two-state Israeli/Palestinian solution. This, even though that has literally been the US position for the entirety of that conflict, and no one would say it's especially abnormal, eccentric, or inappropriate.

    VVM: I understand he was responding to provocation. But there were still a range of possible responses. He could've denounced Israel's hyper-aggressiveness and called them the real danger to regional peace, maybe fitting it into a larger argument about the other ways in which they flout international laws (eg illegal settlements). Perhaps he asks for someone to repudiate their comments. He could even have ignored it, as many actors do in response to North Korea's routinely hyperbolic statements. That he chose such an aggressive posture is telling.

    Is this the end of the world? Not at all. But it's not nothing.
     
  16. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001
    Relevant, but remember how I said folks in Hong Kong were already protesting the full reunification of HKSAR and China -- even though there's another, like, 31 years left before that can fully happen?

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/there-absolutely-no-space-hong-kong-independence-china-reiterates-1598784

    http://thediplomat.com/2016/12/china-gives-stern-warning-to-taiwan-hong-kong-independence-advocates/

    Also, specifically in the second one, is why having a new POTUS who understands none of this (though the article is repeating the line that Taiwan called him, rather than vice versa) is exceedingly dangerous...
     
  17. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    Who in Hong Kong is even advocating for independence? The Communist Party is just making up this garbage to smear pro-democracy advocates because, well...they can't have funny ideas about "self determination" spreading out from Hong Kong out to the rest of the country now, can they?
     
  18. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001

    Um, there have been protests going on every single time I've been there for the last 2-3 years?
     
  19. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    As far as I've heard, they're protesting Beijing's attempts to install their own rulers over Hong Kong, and not calling for secession.
     
  20. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001

    That... has not been my read on it, but it's also definitely possible it's like protests here -- where there's one group who protests something, and another group comes and tries to get in and protest something else with a larger group.

    There have definitely been some anti-merging sentiments (HKSAR -> China) that I've seen though.
     
  21. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001
    http://gizmodo.com/alibaba-ceo-warns-that-if-trade-stops-war-starts-1792017425

    So, honestly -- this could go anywhere on the forums... US Politics, here, even the European Ultranationalists thread. But something Ender Sai and I have been harping on, plus something that was explicitly indicated (inexpertly) on The West Wing -- "free trade stops wars."



    It's not as simplistic as that, of course, but Jack Ma knows a hell of a lot more than most people do about both trade and China. And note that he's criticizing the US pulling out of the TPP which would only have hurt China regionally because multilateral free trade deals are important globally, and eventually may have led to more bilateral or multilateral deals involving China specifically, in all likelihood.
     
    Ender Sai likes this.
  22. DANNASUK

    DANNASUK Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2012

    Breaching the Treaty with Britain, that granted Hong Kong autonomy for 99 years.
     
  23. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2001

    Hmmmmmm, my understanding on the xfer of Hong Kong back from the UK to a SAR of China was a 50-year agreement, so it'd be allowed to be folded back into China-proper in 2047? Is that wrong?
     
  24. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Sorry Alpha-Red, are you suggesting the pro-democracy groups are... being smeared by fake pro-democracy protests? Have you ever been to Hong Kong?
     
  25. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    Not recently, no. Well, I was still a little kid the last time I did go and I didn't understand anything about the place, so maybe it doesn't really count as having visited. But do I actually have to have been there in person in order to get a sense for what's going on? If the pro-democracy activists are calling for the preservation of democracy, and the central government in Beijing is claiming that they're calling for independence as a way to discredit the activists, then what the central government is saying counts as a smear doesn't it?