What the Heck?! Thread (Closed)

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MwRYum

Major
Doubtful. Not because Governor Tsai cares about Beijing's sensitivities, but because Taiwan Province depends on the Mainland for its economic well being, and Gov. Tsai's top priority is to be reelected.
Mind you, her party elected upon a platform that pretty much reads "F*** China", seeking opportunities that TPP provided to replace Taiwan's economic dependence on China, while moving - or creeping, more like - towards the "Promised Land" of full-fledged independence. So much so the Tsai willing to forsake ROC's claim of SCS and Diaoyutai Islands (reportedly offered on her visit to the US last year), just to get US and Japan to hop onto her war wagon.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
Mind you, her party elected upon a platform that pretty much reads "F*** China", seeking opportunities that TPP provided to replace Taiwan's economic dependence on China, while moving - or creeping, more like - towards the "Promised Land" of full-fledged independence. So much so the Tsai willing to forsake ROC's claim of SCS and Diaoyutai Islands (reportedly offered on her visit to the US last year), just to get US and Japan to hop onto her war wagon.
Oh, you mean politicians promise voters one thing and do another once in office? Shocking! Governor Tsai isn't irrational enough to throw caution into the wind and tell Beijing to piss off, because she knows only too well which way Xi Jinping would piss.
 

MwRYum

Major
Oh, you mean politicians promise voters one thing and do another once in office? Shocking! Governor Tsai isn't irrational enough to throw caution into the wind and tell Beijing to piss off, because she knows only too well which way Xi Jinping would piss.
The problem is, Taiwan's voters don't think that way(instead, more like what I've said), and pretty much goes along the "Yes We Can" slogan line as we speak. So even if Tsai still has some rationale left in her, she doesn't have that much of a choice but to go along that way...how hard Beijing's response would have to be to register a proper response from Taiwan, especially of those hotheaded youth, so pragmatism takes hold again?
 
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Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Guys, theis IS NOT A POLITCAL DIATREBE OR COMMENTARY THREAD!

Blackstone, STOP putting political Flame Bait on the front end of your posts.

PlaWolf, STOP posting political commentary.

SD is not about politics.

THREAD TEMPRARILY CLOSED


WalkingTall3.jpg
 
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SteelBird

Colonel
Since the What's The Heck thread has been closed and not re-open yet, I don't know where to put this, and do not want to stir the Daily Photo thread.

Well, this has gone viral on the web especially Facebook with Ks of comments; however, most of them have politicized and racial discriminating the case. A three-year old Uighur boy strike against the Chengguan to protect his family business.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Since the What's The Heck thread has been closed and not re-open yet, I don't know where to put this, and do not want to stir the Daily Photo thread.

Well, this has gone viral on the web especially Facebook with Ks of comments; however, most of them have politicized and racial discriminating the case. A three-year old Uighur boy strike against the Chengguan to protect his family business.

Too cute!:D
 

solarz

Brigadier
Since the What's The Heck thread has been closed and not re-open yet, I don't know where to put this, and do not want to stir the Daily Photo thread.

Well, this has gone viral on the web especially Facebook with Ks of comments; however, most of them have politicized and racial discriminating the case. A three-year old Uighur boy strike against the Chengguan to protect his family business.

That's a beefy 3-year-old! LOL

If this happened in Canada, the police would have carried the kid off to child protection services.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
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Norwegian F-16 mistakenly shoots up control tower with officers inside, military says
Updated yesterday at 10:07pm

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A Norwegian fighter jet on a training exercise has mistakenly opened fire on a control tower with three officers inside, the military says.

Two F-16s were taking part in a mock attack on the uninhabited island of Tarva off Norway's west coast when one of them opened fire with its M61 Vulcan cannon, which is capable of firing up to 100 rounds a second.

A hail of shells hit the tower in the incident, which happened on the night of April 12, but the officers inside were not injured.

"An investigation has been opened," said Captain Brynjar Stordal, a spokesman for the Norwegian military.

In a similar incident in 2009, F-16s fired in error on the same tower, with at least one round piercing the structure, but again no-one was injured.

AFP

This is a triple WTH story actually.

First WTH is how this sort of thing could be allowed to happen at all.

Second WTH is how this has managed to happen again in near identical circumstances - were no lessons learn the first time round?!

Last WTH is how they managed to get away with no injuries or fatalities both times. Are Norway employing Imperial Storm Troopers to fly their F16s? :p
 

Franklin

Captain
Chinese girls break up with their foreign boyfriends because of political differences.

Yes, Chinese women say, dating foreign guys is “dangerous,” but not in the way Beijing says

A recent Chinese propaganda campaign about national security uses a comic called “Dangerous Love” to warn Chinese women not to date foreigners.

Li, a college graduate who works for the government, meets red-haired, beak-nosed David, who claims he is an academic, at a friend’s gathering. “Honestly, I fell for you the first time I saw you,” the guy confesses, and the two soon begin a relationship. But the romance turns dark when she learns David is, in fact, a foreign agent who ruthlessly uses Li to obtain government documents.

Many Chinese women have shrugged off the spy warning—but say relationships between Chinese women and foreign men are anything but smooth.

It is certainly much more common for Chinese women to date foreign men than in my parents’ generation, thanks to Chinese nationals heading overseas for schools and foreigners flocking to Beijing, Shanghai, and other big cities to learn Mandarin and add Chinese experience to their resumes. The latest data, from a 2010 population census, shows more than 600,000 foreigners dwell in China, and 56% of them are male.

(There appear to be more young Chinese woman/foreign man couples than vice versa, maybe because there are more single foreign men in China, or maybe because of who men and women choose to date.)

But while dating seems to be on the rise, marriage is still unusual — thanks to political differences that are often irreconcilable, according to the women I spoke to, who were all between 21 and 25, prime age to start looking for a husband in China. The real “danger” of love between a Chinese woman and a foreign man is that it doesn’t ultimately go anywhere, the women I talked to said. During a date, he declared “Mao is a dictator.”

The opposing political views of May Xu, 24, who works for a Spanish head hunting firm in Shanghai, and her Spanish ex-boyfriend, who she met at work, were reflected in just one sentence.

During a date, he declared “Mao is a dictator,” Xu recalled.

It was interesting at first for Xu to learn about Spanish culture from her ex-boyfriend, she said, especially after feeling she had nothing to talk about with Chinese guys in her age because “everything is familiar.” But the remark about China’s former leader, Mao Zedong, was too alien, she said. She broke up with him soon afterward.

She’s not happy about the word “dictator,” because that makes Mao the equivalent to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, Xu explained. “In his eyes, Mao was a horrible figure,” she said, “but he doesn’t know our parents’ generation still thinks he was amiable and respectable.”

Many Chinese people in their fifties or sixties still sing “red songs” to pay tribute to Mao, and carry out memorial ceremonies for him annually, so he shouldn’t just identify Mao as a “dictator,” she tried to explain to him. “He couldn’t understand my point,” she said.

A 21-year-old college student in Beijing, who would only like to be identified as Jean, tells me she dated a guy from the US two years ago. The relationship lasted for just six months, because Jean found they “couldn’t communicate” because of their “different standpoints.”

Jean’s ex-boyfriend was nine years older than her, and a graduate student in international relations at another Beijing university. Unlike some other young couples, Jean said, they talked a lot about serious topics, including Chinese politics. “I wondered how he thought as a foreigner,” she said, and her ex wanted to know the same. But these discussions in part ended the relationship.

“He can’t brainwash me.”

Jean said her ex always criticized the Chinese government “with a set of democratic thinking,” and without putting the discussion “in the historical context.” When talking about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which China claims 300,000 were killed by the Japanese army, for instance, her ex said “the Chinese government is not completely innocent.” He went on to challenge the death toll, even after Jean cited official documents, which annoyed her. “He can’t brainwash me,” she said.

“I understand democracy no less than him,” Jean said. “Democracy also has its own problems.”

Sally, 23, who would only like to be known by her English name, dated a German soldier two years ago when she was an exchange student in Germany. She met him at a party, and developed feelings for him after learning he had carried out missions in Afghanistan.

When she told her father about the German, his response was “Be careful, he may be a spy.” She found later there was absolutely nothing to worry about, as the German showed little knowledge about China. “Do you really have just one party?” he asked once. “Do you really have just one party?” he asked once.

Sally ended the relationship, and started a new one with a Swedish citizen who is ethnically Chinese after she moved back to Shanghai. He’s interested in China’s recent history and hopes to discuss it with Sally. But this isn’t a topic Sally feels comfortable talking about.

She said her current boyfriend is “too young, too naive” (a reference to a 2000 press conference in which former Chinese president Jiang Zemin criticized a reporter who asked a tough question) thanks to the “one-sided” China news he learned from western media. Her boyfriend is always reading some “banned stuff” on the internet, she said, and then recklessly talking about it on the street in Shanghai. “This makes me really angry,” she said.

The “banned stuff” includes the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, and violence in Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, topics which are heavily censored by the Great Firewall. To read information about these topics from outside China’s borders, her boyfriend need to use a VPN service.

She agrees with his theory that China’s government policies contributed to those incidents, but not with his policy of publicly complaining about it. “Even if I know what he says is right, what can I do?,” she asked rhetorically. “Can I use my own power to fight against a clique like this?”

Ultimately, what it comes down to is “he thinks we’re stupid, while we think he is,” she said.

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