thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 13^th, 2026 at 11:18am:


The point is, you said I was wrong. I wasn't. You keep telling lies, then insisting they are beside the point. The CCP is not trustworthy. They say something, but mean something entirely different, and you never know when they are going to reveal what they really mean. Just like their little pinks. But at the end of the day, you simply can not trust them.

If the CCP puts their foot on your throat until you are almost dead, when they remove their foot your health will trend upwards at a miraculous rate. It doesn't mean you will live forever. It merely means they have taken their foot off your throat. You may even thanks them for removing their foot. But you would have to be a moron to trust them while they gloat about how helpful they have been.

Now, back to the point. The median Chinese income is still less than half of what our unemployment benefits are. Do you agree with this now?

I responded to the covid post in the covid thread.

Revelations from Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney delivered to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

Quote:


https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-speech-davos-rules-based-order-9.7053350

Ouch!

Just as Trump degrades the UN, so does China, by making its own law of the sea and diplomatic rules.

Philippine Sen. Risa Hontiveros said in a speech Monday that Chinese diplomats have violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations when they publicly censured and tried to restrain Filipino officials’ views and criticisms in their own country. In a criticism of Hontiveros, the Chinese diplomatic mission in Manila recently said it has no intention of silencing anybody in the country, but it would respond to any attempt to “smear” China and its leaders.  Greenland's parliament (Trump Organisation Inc) is silent and the Philippines Senate (Pentagon, Republican) is learning Chinese.

Frank wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2026 at 3:52pm:


Er Frank ...isn't this a TDS-inspired satire?

chimera wrote Today at 2:08pm:


Yes.

But I would suggest China's behaviour in the SCS is caused by US meddling in China's affairs eg selling arms to Taiwan (while the UN agrees Taiwan is part of China).

To reclaim Taiwan from US-backed Taiwanese 'individual freedom/rights' ideologues, China needs military bases in the SCS, to counter US bases in Japan (and Okinawa), and the Philippines, all bordering the SCS. 


Which gets us back to the failure to establish international law, namely, your delusional natural  'individual rights/freedom' nonsense, which many philosophers have rightly rejected:

(google)

Jeremy Bentham: The most prominent critic, who famously described natural rights as "nonsense upon stilts". Bentham, a utilitarian, argued that rights are solely creations of law, and that talk of rights inherent in nature is an "anarchical fallacy" that undermines legal order.

So true, look at the breakdown of the socalled rules-based system today - which Carney is bemoaning.

Edmund Burke: A conservative thinker who opposed the abstract, a priori reasoning behind natural rights (as expressed in the French Revolution). He believed that rights are not inherent, but rather inherited and derived from social evolution, tradition, and established law, calling natural rights a "digest of anarchy".

and

Karl Marx: Criticized natural rights as "bourgeois ideology," arguing they are not universal but rather designed to protect the interests of private property owners in a capitalist society.

and

Thomas Hobbes: While often associated with early modern rights discussions, Hobbes argued that in the "state of nature," there are no moral rights, only a chaotic "war of all against all" where individuals have a right to everything, including others' bodies, making life "nasty, brutish, and short". He argued that rights must be surrendered to a sovereign (the state) to create order, making him an opponent of the idea of inalienable rights.

...to name a few.

Quote:


Yes ...well your debating 'technique', namely,  looking for the contradictions in opposing veiwpoints isn't really advanced by such narratives (eg  your comment re  Frank's 'amusing' narrative).

While you - like FD who has run away, ashamed of his mental incompetence to discuss the concept of international law - refuse to forgo your belief in non-existent 'individual natural rights', a wide-spread delusion which is why delegates present at the founding of  the UN were unable to establish effective international law at the start of the age of MAD, despite the fact most of them were prepared to subsume national sovereignty to the UN, to achieve a peaceful world based on concepts of universal justice, morality and fairness,  as opposed to law based on individual self-interest... aka 'individual rights', and in the case of individual nations - might is right