It's the future Foxy. It's the future!

Misop,

So, when a news media [medium?] declares that "Inch by inch. Step by step. China is stealing the South China Sea..... "

this is somehow pro-China ? Or do you mean, a handful of people, a rent-a-crowd, campaigning for China ?

Ideally, there should be a United Nations armed task-force patrolling those international waters, pending their cession to their closest neighbouring countries - the western Paracels to Vietnam, shoals to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, etc - but this can't happen because China will veto any such initiative in the UN security council.

So what to do ? Perhaps the US, India, Japan, Australia, etc., could mount regular patrols through the international area, perhaps escorting commercial vessels, flying the flags of the UN and the relevant Court which has ruled repeatedly that those areas cannot be seized by China. Is there an internationally-recognised flag of non-aggression that they could fly ?

Otherwise, the world would be in the ridiculous position that any shoals can be claimed by any other country, on spurious 'historical grounds': Australia could claim shoals off the northern tip of New Zealand (since, after all, New Zealand was once part of New South Wales: Hobson, etc.). Norway could claim shoals just off the British coasts. France could claim shoals just off the Channel Islands with far more legal precedent than China's ridiculous claims, say, to the Scarborough Shoals near Manila.

China seems to be deliberately alienating its neighbours - with those in central Asia over the brutal treatment of Uighurs and Kazakhs and other Turkic groups; with Japan and South Korea over strategic islands; with India over Ladakh and Bhutan. One wonders what will be their pretext for going to war ?

Joe

Foxy,

No, I have got out of the habit of watching commercial TV, I haven't watched it for years.

But I can't see the justice of allowing Confucius Institutes to operate freely, while crippling or blocking the establishment of Institutes for our our historical traditions, i.e. the Ramsay Institutes. After all, the works of Spinoza, Hume, Marx, even Noam Chomsky, are all part of our heritage, which students should be exposed to.

Mind you, reading some of the 'great works', or 'the Great Books', must be the most boring way to learn - I've had Plato's 'Republic' on my shelf for decades but can't see myself ever reading it. And I don't have the courage to try Kant (except in the Barry McKenzie sense). Yes, interpretations or exegeses, like Nussbaum's critiques of Aristotle's ideas, or comments by Popper, Berlin, Rorty, Rawls, or Kymlicka, which would bring those arguments more up to date - that would surely make the initiatives of great thinkers more accessible.

And of course, Confucius Institutes should be monitored closely, given that some of the teachings of Confucius were so antithetical to Western traditions, the insistence on obedience to leaders, for example. And surely, it goes without saying, that full histories of empires like China's should be taught generally, warts and all, not left to those Institutes. One wonders what they might teach of the brutal five-hundred-year war between Chinese states from about 500 BC, i.e. from Confucius' time.

Joe

LOUDmouth,

Did you just say " a United Nations armed task-force patrolling those international waters" re South China Sea.

GET REAL ! United Nations is a joke.

What in God's name did they teach at the Melbourne Maoist Pie Making Institute.

And with you being in the pro-China camp I would have thought that you would think that the presence of Chinese operatives in Australia would be the best thing to happen since electricity.

Dear Joe,

The 60 Minutes episode that I'm referring to is:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/uq-defends-free-speech-record-warns-china-shift-could-hurt-economy-20200717-p55d2r.html

It's worth a read.

Foxy,

He won't look at it. He already knows about it. Don't you get it?