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China's Island-Building In Pictures
An anonymous reader writes: The South China Sea is just small enough to have high strategic value for military operations and just large enough to make territorial claims difficult. For over a year now, the world has been aware that China is using its vast resources to try and change that. Instead of fighting for claims on existing islands or arguing about how far their sovereignty should extend, they simply decided to build new islands. "The islands are too small to support large military units but will enable sustained Chinese air and sea patrols of the area. The United States has reported spotting Chinese mobile artillery vehicles in the region, and the islands could allow China to exercise more control over fishing in the region." The NY Times has a fascinating piece showing clear satellite imagery of the new islands, illustrating how a fleet a dredgers have dumped enormous amounts of sand on top of existing reefs. "Several reefs have been destroyed outright to serve as a foundation for new islands, and the process also causes extensive damage to the surrounding marine ecosystem." We can also see clear evidence of airstrips, cement plants, and other structures as the islands become capable of supporting them.
Who cares why china is building islands and increasing instability in an already unstable area? Let's give them another Olympics!!!!
Looking forward to the next war. Should make a killing.
You mean they are Terra Forming the Earth? Creating islands in the ocean? Isn't that quite a feat considering the harsh ocean conditions? Maybe we can learn something that could be used for power generation instead of just leaping straight to jingoism?
The NYT article didn't really explain this bit: "The Chinese were relative latecomers to island building in the Spratly archipelago" So this tactic isn't new or unique to China.
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They being the mainland Chinese?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You get the 12 mile military and 200 mile fishing limits for your land per international law. However, this must be land above the water. You cannot find land under the surface, dump tons of dirt on it, and claim those rights, per same law.
This doesn't mean you can't create the islands, but you can't do the 12 mile/200 mile thing. China thinks it can.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We have lots of bombe in our arsenal past their use by date and the last time we had a chance to dispose of them was Gulf War I. I think we should inform the Chinese we have decided to dispose of them in the South China Sea in conjunction with war games and to prepare within 72 hours to make sure they have no assets or personnel near the stated disposal site.
Just for safety of course.
Well, let's see...
That's from one quick search (obviously not needed for the Chernobyl item). And beyond those, the contrast in the level of pollution between democratic, capitalist West Germany and authoritarian, Marxist East Germany at the time of unification is well-documented, the subject of many studies and articles. It's about as close to a lab comparison as you could ask for.
Are there, and have there been, environmental problems in the free world? Certainly. But the idea that they're worse than in undemocratic countries is ludicrous, especially since the Marxist countries had their problems even with the benefit of hindsight, since most of them industrialized long after the free world had.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Do they erode fairly quickly, requiring continuous replenishment of their fill or can they build them with good long-term stability?
Because the "west" never :
Buried nuclear waste in cardboard boxes : http://www.digitup.org/onsite....
Or had a river actually catch fire : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
or had a much smaller nuclear accident : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
or have at least 8 known lost nuclear weapons: http://mentalfloss.com/article...
or buried tons of toxic chemicals then built houses on the dump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> Ralph Nader (hardly a Republican)
Oh please. He went hard center in 1996 during his first Presidential campaign then went even further CONservative in 2004 after quitting the Green Party. He even campaigned in swing states in 2000 intentionally to take votes from Gore which enabled Bush to win. He is the reason for Bush. It is his fault. He is the ultimate CONservative hero. He was a great man in the sixties when he took on Detroits murder of tens of thousands of us per year, but since then he has become a Bush Republican.
Calling these things 'unsinkable aircraft carriers' shows just what a daft idea this is, militarily.
In a no-holds-barred fight, they have a HUGE bullseye painted on them, and will be easy to take out. The general idea of naval power is to project power, and being able to hide this capability in plain sight in a huge ocean is what makes a movable aircraft carrier a better idea. You wouldn't use one of these to fight an actual war.
Fixed fortifications are monuments to human stupidity. I could see this being like the Maginot Line or the Atlantic Wall.t
The only reason why they would do this, is so that they can call it sovereign territory, and to game international border rules to their own benefit.
If you had googled Chernobyl you might have found out that its radioactive release has been surpassed by a nuclear power plant in not-very-communist Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
Oh please. That was done by the Democrat-run City of Niagara Falls, New York. That has nothing to do with the current Republican rulers of the US. I know because I went to the 99th Street School built on the dump. It was socialists that drove for the construction of a school on top of toxic waste. My father was very active in the local party for decades. You can't blame the Republicans for that. If the Republicans were involved then Niagara Falls wouldn't have stolen the land from the Hooker Company. A Republican would have made sure the corporation got a lot of money for the land. Also, they would have also probably made us drink the toxic waste rather than simply ignoring it like our teachers did.
You are all cows. Cows say . ! ! cows ! say the cows. YOU COWS!!
That's what really worries me. Without prospects for marriage, what are billions of horny Chinamen going to do to vent their frustration?
Um, marry someone who is not Chinese? It already happens in Vietnam and Thailand. Some even marry white American girls after moving to the US [pauses for the sound of conservative Americans' heads exploding].
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I know that there are all sorts of geopolitical angles to this, but I find I'm able to look past those and find the whole thing really cool. We can actually build new land out at sea, and then people live there. That's just cool. I started scrolling on google maps to find other reefs in international waters that could be built up into new islands, where I could fantasize about building my lawless compound of evil.
I'd develop enough of a ballistic missile capability to turn those islets back into coral reefs in a matter of days.
Because the "west" never : ...
If you add up all the fatalities from all those "disasters", you get this number: 0.
while Trump yammers about Mexico. I see so much about Trump in the news while this island building has been major activity for some time, all part of plan to "extend" territorial boundaries of China. Glad to know we got our priorities properly set.
mfwright@batnet.com
At least he's not a DUMBocrat. Because if he was a DUMBocrat, that would be even worse. Notice how I snuck in some cool stuff when I write because of how clever I am.
Let us not forget Coal has a lovely track record as well in this country.
Let us also not forget bikini atoll and all the test sites in Nevada that we've rendered into nuclear wastelands as well.
We also have Treasure Island and many other nuclear wastelands.
The funny point is that once you kill coral by dumping tons of sand on it, the island will not raise anymore with oceans. They are going to need a lot of sand to keep the island afloat.
I Googled and came up with this comparison of total radiation released:
Fukushima: 900 PBq
Chernobyl: 5,200 PBq
Also maximum radiation detected for Fukushima was 72.9 Sv/h, while for Chernobyl it was 300.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Oh please. That was done by the Democrat-run City of Niagara Falls, New York. That has nothing to do with the current Republican rulers of the US.
Uh, GP didn't mention republicrats/demicans. GP specifically referenced "the west", not a political party.
If I were a librul, I'd feel sad for you. If I were a cuntservative, I'd donate to your political campaign. Fortunately, I'm neither. You might want to follow my example and pull your head out of your ass.
My suspicion is that China's island-building brinkmanship is intended simply to stoke the fires of nationalism while the Chinese economy teeters on the verge of collapse. What better way to mis-direct the discontent at home than perceived enemies abroad (us against the world or at least our nearby neighbors)? That or the Party is making the landgrab while it still.
That's what really worries me. Without prospects for marriage, what are billions of horny Chinamen going to do to vent their frustration?
Um, marry someone who is not Chinese? It already happens in Vietnam and Thailand. Some even marry white American girls after moving to the US [pauses for the sound of conservative Americans' heads exploding].
Why would conservative American heads explode?
You're right about Vietnam and Thailand though. Those countries are already exporting wives to Taiwan to the point where a huge fraction of recent marriages in Taiwan involve at least one foreigner. Once China becomes wealthy and that wealth is widely distributed (if they can make that happen) I'm sure they'll start importing women from southeast Asia. They'll likely increase their imports from Russia too.
As for Chinese marrying Americans - for some reason there seems to be a lot of racial preferences among American women that keep that from happening in large numbers. I remember reading a study that men are generally willing to date women of any race but that women tend to have a strong preference for marrying within their race - the big exception being women of Asian ancestry who are frequently willing to marry white men. So you tend to see a lot of AF/WM couples but very few WF/AM couples. But hopefully women will stop being so racially biased and we'll see more interracial marriages in the future. Perhaps as more Chinese men get rich while females will be more open to dating them.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Um, marry someone who is not Chinese? It already happens in Vietnam and Thailand. Some even marry white American girls after moving to the US [pauses for the sound of conservative Americans' heads exploding].
What kind of numbers are we talking? Will the world actually absorb 50M excess Chinese men?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Also, Fukushima is only rendering about 500sq miles uninhabitable for (currently optimistically estimated) 25 years while Chernobyl is about 900sq miles for over 25 years so far. It won't return to average radiation levels for over 20,000 years. You can live there now... if you don't want to have children and accept a higher risk of cancer. About 600 elderly live there now. The animals in the area have mutations, stillbirths, etc. But, those that survive handle the radiation better as time goes on and thrive from the lack of human predation and habitat destruction.
The Chernobyl radiation area 's sort of butterfly shaped tho and due to wind pattern there is a second 'wing' / exclusion area which is also uninhabitable of similar size- so about 1800sq miles total.
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There is always this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
True, it was in India, but from a western subsidiary outsourcing for cheap labor.
I think the "fatalities" was > 0 in that case.
to tell China what they can and can not do in their own turf, nor entitled to accuse anyone of sable-rattling, given your current and your past. Accept the fact that the world is changing, and that the only thing you will be able to control is your own borders, and if you start more wars and invasions, you will lose in the end. The world is waking up to the fact that it is YOU who is the real danger in this world, not the Russians, not the Chinese, and not the "terrorists".
Is the west often bad? Yes. Were the communist nations consistently worse? Also yes.
Destruction of the environment is not a "democracy" thing. It's a human thing; "we need this now, we'll worry about consequences later". And it's worse when those responsible can hide it--which in turn is easier under a repressive government.
Japan being a high-tech nation with a much smaller land area, they're going to genetically engineer a bioconcentrator that will mop up the cesium in their exclusion zone long before the 25 years is up.
Nature points the way: http://pelagiaresearchlibrary....
Muslim countries let 25% of the population have 95% of the women. Not sure about numbers though.
I'd like to explain one important factor that American women need to consider which American men usually don't: the US is strongly patrilocal. That is, the wife typically moves from her family/social connections and into her husband's social and familiar circle. I'd like to think that's changing, but I don't see it.
For an American man, it's not a problem for his wife to be from a different culture -- he often gets to maintain his social connections regardless, and she's the one who has to adapt. It's easier to forge new relationships with people who have similar backgrounds, and this is something women have to do routinely regardless of social standing. So it makes sense that they'd prefer men who can make that social transition easier. And for women who are lacking some of the social skills that women are assumed to have naturally, the loss of these hooks can be profoundly disabling.
I see a number of errors in your claim. Fukushima has the potential to be 25 to 30x radio-nucleotide release greater than Chernobyl.
1st item, the single Chernobyl reactor(Unit 4) while somewhat higher power output core, was ~1/2 of combined power rating of the melted Fukushima cores(unit's 1,2,3)
2nd) Chernobyl unit 4 was newly constructed, and it's core burntime was still in it's infancy.. (~2yrs), It may or may not have undergone it's first refueling swap-out (~1/3 of the core). Meanwhile Fukushima involved 30+ year old reactors(Unit's 1,2, and 3), with 3 fully mature cores, upwards of 5 years of burn-time per core near the start of the next refueling cycle (I.E. ~Worse case for radio-nucleotides) .
3rd, Fukushima is far from over. all indications point to a melt through below the plant, into an subterranean river flow, which will end up carrying the contents of those melted cores into the pacific ocean.
3rd) Iodine-131 is still being detected onsite. I.E. fission is still occurring, thus Fukushima is still of moving target. Note: At relatively low neutron flux levels indicate that the fission yield of I-131 will be maximized(~6x greater)
4th) Unlike fallout on land, where isotope mobility is somewhat limited, the Pacific ocean is far more efficient in respect towards bio-concentration of radio isotopes up the food chain.
Be prepared to write off the food chain for Northern Pacific ocean for the next hundred years or so. It's being subjected to equivalent fallout of ALL Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons ever detonated (worldwide 1945-1980) by just this one incident.
Watch Radioactive Wolves of Chernobyl. You may enjoy it. I even dug you out a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
r/asianmasculinity user detected.
http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/stories/chinese-mans-life-with-beautiful-ukrainian-wife-envied.html
Yes.
That is because asian males have tiny penises and are universally considered the ugliest men. Whereas asian women are generally considered attractive.
Yes.
[citation needed]
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Top troll.
Increased rates of interracial marriage will occur between Chinese men and non-Chinese brides. Here's an example of the trend taking place: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/cambodia-is-chinas-newest-market-for-foreign-brides
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/chinese-workers-in-africa-who-marry-locals-face-puzzled-reception-at-home/240662/
Not all 50 million guys will make it of course, though China's gene pool is certainly going to become rapidly more diverse in the near future.
...now that they're lifting the one-child-per-family law, they're expecting a huge population explosion! They're also leveling mountains to create more city space: http://www.newser.com/story/18... http://www.newser.com/story/18...
They are NOT building new islands... Rather they are building military infrastructures on existing islands that are center of ownership disputes.
If you read asian news... You'd see that China singly declares ownership of lots of islands in this ocean region... single handedly announced 30 days of no-fishing for all countries around the area... which caused lots of people to starve because they don't have the ability to stand up against Chinese Navy.
They have now deployed military presence and airports all over the ocean region... US is challenging their airspace ownership by moving both Navy and AirForce patrol into the region. They repeatedly got asked by the Chinese to leave as it was their airspace, but US replied simply "This is international airspace".
I'd like to see the Chinese having a ball big enough to open fire first....