David,

You are just burying yourself deeper in la la land. The only support you have had is from a poster who doesn't trust his own country; a person who repeatedly presents himself as a theoretical (he wouldn't have what takes to be the real thing) Fifth Columnist. "Realistically, if I was China the country I would be least likely to trust apart from the United States would be Australia", this idiot says". He's lucky the country seems to be saying he is disloyal to doesn't monitor social media as his Chinese mates do. Or, perhaps they do these days, there being so many Australia-haters taking advantage of the country these days.

If you and you Lefty mates have your way, it will be the Chinese doing the monitoring and knocking on your doors.

As Hasbeen says, people like you are the problem, part of the threat to be dealt with if we are to remain a free, democratic country.

Dear Yuyutsu,

If you answer this post I will not respond further. What Chamberlain did, and it isn't appreciated, was to save England. He recognised that England was woefully unprepared for war in 1938 and bought time. With the time he bought he encouraged war preparation especially the production of Spitfires which were superior to the German Messerschmidts. English pilots in their Spitfires won the Battle of Britain in 1940. It is likely that if Hitler had gone to war with England earlier it would have all up for England. As it was the Battle of Britain was a turning point in WW2, and appeasement was the correct policy.

Dear hasbeen & ttbn,

I don't trust China. In fact I don't trust any country. Any trust I have is accompanied by the condition that the trust must be shown to be deserved. In other words "trust but verify".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify

"The phrase became internationally known in English when used by President Ronald Reagan on several occasions in the context of nuclear disarmament discussions with the Soviet Union."

That was a philosophy of that leftist, Ronald Reagan.

If you think I'm a danger I wouldn't trust you to recognise a real danger.

All I am advocating is to try to make deals where we have a mutual interest. I think we have a mutual interest in avoiding war. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons all we need is one person going nutty and setting them off. That is a real danger. You can bury your heads in the sand and not recognise that danger.

Dear David,

Your argument in favour of appeasement is reasonable and certainly not heretical.

We sit here in a war council: so long as we all agree on the goals, which I think we do, we should indeed listen to each other and weigh all the different tactics carefully.

Indeed, during this period of British appeasement, Jewish children were able to escape Germany on trains: http://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kindertransport-1938-40

Is this still the case? Will we, by keeping our tone down for a while (while continuing frantically to obtain more arms, training and allies), playing "peacemakers", still be able to buy time and rescue at least the people of Hong-Kong? I don't know the answer, but so long as we can save those lives, appeasement could remain a possible temporary option. I bow out and leave this question to the strategic experts.

It strikes me as extraordinary that after perhaps a million years of species evolution, Homo Sapiens seems not to have developed beyond base instincts, Id and Ego predominating, clinging to tribal structures and orientation and fear of the neighbours, afraid to look over one's shoulder, or to take an eye off 'the other'.

Not all of humanity however, but the peacemakers are outnumbered and outgunned by the fearful - the power-mongers who dare not admit to fear, who browbeat and con the masses into compliance with their psychosis, their paranoia, of ever present danger.

US BLM, doctrine of the Second Amendment, with 'ordinary citizens' roaming the streets with automatic assault weapons.
Just blinking marvelous, eh.

Peace can only be a long way off, and it will likely take the ilk of a 'super Reagan' to even start the ball rolling.

In perhaps another million years, with a great deal of luck and forbearance, a universal ethic of 'cooperation' may replace the prevailing ethic of 'competition' and distrust - if global annihilation does not precede and preclude this.
Until then, dog-eat-dog remains the state of play, and with it, this unfortunately precipitous existence, and future, of humankind.

We must cling to our patch of turf, be kind to one-another, develop friendships with our geographic neighbours (and with the bullies), maintain optimism that 'tomorrow will be a new day', pray (as best we can) that sanity will prevail, and use whatever little influence we may muster to induce change in the global ethos toward 'peace in our time'.

May the lion lay down with the lamb - before it's too late?
Hoping. (But, I don't see it happening in my limited lifetime.)

Dear Saltpetre,

This world is not meant to evolve and become a peaceful place, this is not it's purpose - rather, this world can be likened to a school.

We use this world to study and grow, then we graduate and leave and new, younger and uneducated students come in our place to learn more or less the same lessons. The school keeps standing, it does not evolve (or if you like to be more precise, it goes through cycles according to the school years/terms) - the students evolve and that is what counts!

Had schools evolved into universities, then who would be teaching the younger generation of souls entering this world?