Reverend Del said:
I'm inclined to go with Sparrow on the subject of America nuking folks if they don't agree. Not going to happen. Nobody's that suicidal. And yes, even for America that would be suicide.
As for this new IP shenanigan. It'll be interesting to see, certainly. The most interesting will be just how hard they hit the pirates. Because stringent punishments could easily be a good deterrent to most casual pirates.
Well, the thing is that none of this really matters much in a purely domestic sense. The only thing that could come out of it would be a sexxy new set of police powers for the Federal goverment, and very little in the way of results. As an issue media piracy is small potatoes, the big issues are things like the piracy of drugs, clothing, and the like. Pfizers (which ran a major complex down here in Connecticut where I live, even if it's leaving) came up with this little drug called "Viagra" for example which cost them a lot to develop. China has been knocking it off and selling it around the world for a lot cheaper than Pfizers wants to charge, in violation of their patents, costing both them and our goverment a ridiculous amount of money. Likewise Chinese sweatshops churning out things like denim jeans and slapping labels for "Levis" or "Calvin Klein" on them is another big deal. The money from these sales isn't so much from the US Market, but the fact that they sell these things globally at rates that the creators can't compete with due to sweatshop labour, and no need for China to engage in the creative process, R&D, or financing involved.
The issue of "robber economies" (of which China is the biggest) has been an issue for a while now, it's not new, however nobody has wanted to do anything about it because it would require a war. The Democrats with ther agenda certainly are not going to throw the first punch at China and other nations, however they will most certainly going to be more than happy to use piracy as an excuse to try and get more extensive goverment powers to deal with the "crisis" while actually acheiving very little in the long run. Power is power in this case, and I can virtually guarantee we've got people rubbing their hands together in glee over the abillity to get around a lot of the current laws so they can in theory locate and arrest 15 year old music/movie/game pirates which in the end aren't going to amount to much in the overall intellectual properties arena. Loss of a lot of civil liberties, for very little in the way of meaningful results.
As far as a nuclear exchange goes, well right now the US has the abillity to destroy the entire world ten times over. We're also pretty much the only nation currently known to have an effective anti-missle defensive technique. You might remember Russia freaking out a few years ago about some of the interception systems we were showing off because they violated treaties with the USSR before it's collapse that Russia thought should still have been in force. Including the enviromental concerns (nuclear winter, etc...) if the entire world was to turn on the US (no allies) and we fired off our stockpile while they all launched at us, according to the last estimate I read years ago the odds of our long-term survivial as any kind of civilization would be a paltry 10%. Of course that's really good when you consider the odds of the rest of the world surviving are 0%. The defensive strategy here being shooting missles at other missles, including ones from our various subs, and also using planes to intercept them.
Now before you start screaming "American Power Trip" let me tell you that I don't think any of that matters much. The reason being is that we in the US don't currently have the guts to use our military to it's full potential, and the rest of the world knows this. You can have the most awesome gun in the world, and it doesn't matter if nobody believes you'll pull the trigger due to your own morality.
What's more I firmly believe ICBMs are rapidly going to be obselete. Still dangerous mind you, but nothing like they are now. Things like China's anti-satellite lasers (search China, satellite, lasers for more information)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/06/china_satellite_laser/
are rapidly getting to the point where satellite-based targeting, which ICBMs need to be effective, is goint to be impossible in a serious war. Add to this generally rising levels of technology, and it's only a matter of time before other nations get better at the missle interceptions we apparently freaked Russia with, and we're looking at another era of conventional warfare. There will be nothing preventing this anymore, as the peace brought by WMD insured MAD will end.
China is currently involved in building up a military force of unprecedented scale. Some of their weapons like the "Yuan" class submarine have proven themselves capable of "Tagging" American Carriers like "The Kitty Hawke", while old, such a thing was thought to be impossible (tagging meaning that to show off they proved they could have gotten a kill). China is generally not viewed as being an offensive military threat because they don't have the abillity to get their massive population/armies from point A to point B. They are however building the weapons to do this. There is nothing "defensive" about their preparations, and while the media hasn't exactly concealed it, you don't see much continuous coverage of such things, it's mentioned once or twice and then buried.... but it's out there.
Bassically China knows the conflict is inevitable, heck to be entirely honest from some things I've noticed over the years (translated speeches, periodicals, etc... I used to follow them somewhat) they basically have every intention of invading the rest of the world for living space if nothing else. They very much have an attitude of racial and cultural superiority, backed by a desire to avenge their trivialization by the west. Right or wrong in what they are saying, it's a very scary situation.
The bottom line here is that the method that has been ensuring global peace is failing, and it seems like a war is going to be inevitable, above and beyond anything said here.
I've had my eyes on this for years now, and it keeps getting worse. Also I believe that as far as the stated reasons go, in the end the next big war is going to be fought over trade and economics. Though China itself has other motives like wanting more land for it's exploding population to inhabit.
