Trumpster,

Have you forgot about 'Pig Iron' Bob Menzies, your beloved founder of the Liberal Party, and indirect murderer of Australians. 'Pig Iron' Bob sold pig iron to Japan, which was then used to make bombs to kill Australians. The Japanese began the mass murder of the Chinese in 1937, the Americans didn't place their trade embargo until 1940, when Japan attacked French Indo-China.Maybe your folk hero Menzies was like your latest folk hero Trump, its all part of the deal!

Putin has played Trump for the fool he is!

mhaze,

I never said you wanted to cut China off. I said you keep presenting that as the only alternative to “sell them anything they want.”

That’s the false choice. And your own words confirm it: “make the strategic decision to sell them anything they want.”

That isn’t strategy, that’s abdication.

You can’t call China the gravest threat to world peace and in the same breath advocate giving them a blank cheque. Strategy is about managing risk, not feeding it without conditions.

As for your “misrepresentation” line? That’s yet more projection.

I’ve said from the start that nobody here is arguing for an embargo. My point has always been that the real challenge lies in the middle ground: calibrating what we sell, how much, and under what conditions.

That’s the grown-up debate. You’re the one stuck insisting it’s either cut them off or give them everything.

And now you’ve doubled down on the second extreme, calling it “strategic.” It isn’t. It’s capitulation dressed up as policy.

When you call surrender a strategy, don’t be surprised if people notice the dodge.

- Projection
- Shifting goalposts
- Semantic nitpicking
- Straw-manning
- re-framing yours or the other's argument
- False-choice framing
- Appeal to authority

When you are going to learn that your bag of tricks don't work on me?

"You can’t call China the gravest threat to world peace"

Well its lucky I didn't say that then. Just something else you made up.

Now you're talking about black cheques,...more fantasy.

mhaze,

Your own words were: “Treat them as the threat to world peace they are.” That’s exactly what I quoted.

If you now want to pretend you never said it, that only adds “revisionism” to the list of tricks.

And the “blank cheque” point wasn’t fantasy, it was a plain description of your line: “make the strategic decision to sell them anything they want.” Selling anything they want is the definition of a blank cheque.

You can deny your words or dress them up, but it doesn’t change the contradiction: calling a nation a threat and simultaneously advocating “give them anything they ask for” is not strategy.

"Your own words were: “Treat them as the threat to world peace they are.” That’s exactly what I quoted."

And then added the word 'gravest'. Which is neither what I said nor what I think.

"Selling anything they want is the definition of a blank cheque."

If you say so. But again, this is merely your unargued assertion. You say it and think that's the same as it being true. Sad.

If they want our coal, sell it to them. If they want our iron ore, sell it to them. Sell as much as they want. Uranium too. Beef,. Lobsters. Grain. Cotton. All for sale in whatever quantity they want.

So, again, just critiques. No substance to your posts. So what is it you DON'T want to sell to China? You keep avoiding that question

Trumpster,

You said; "threat to world peace they (China) are". If they are not the greatest threat to world peace, then who in your opinion is? America, Australia, maybe you believe its Tuvalu. From your first couple of one word answers I was thinking, you don't know anything about China, you've since confirmed that fact.