Littlehawk
>How can you do that when people are terrified of one another, and
>convinced that other large groups of people are "foreigners" and
>therefore, in a sense, not deserving of the same rights one extends
>to one's own people? No one is a foreigner. We are all just one
>humanity.
>To think otherwise is to buy into a dream...well, no, a nightmare.

Yes... exactly. At least that is what Christ taught.. not that you'd believe it listening to some of the hate filled gibberish that "Christian" churches have been spouting. I wonder where in the New Testament Robertson got the idea that assassination was an approved form of discourse? I can't recall a single verse where Christ advocated going armed.
It is weird that the decline in average US living standards has coincided with the rise of so many blasphemous pseudo-christian sects.

I've been to China quite a bit.. first time in 1982.
In the late 90's in Shenzen there were architecture students designing skyscrapers on pcs on kitchen tables and starting construction 2 weeks later. unreal.

Actually the chinese don't worry me much but they are showing the rest of us what it means to compete.
Suddenly the US government has gone all communist with oil companies being "not for sale at any price". Hey tough- that's capitalism. the rich guy gets to buy what he wants.

China has put a massive spanner in the works of the west's entrenched "economy" (i use the quotes as our so-called capitalist economy has spent fifty years riding on the back of energy whose prices were politically controlled-free market..sheesh)

China is sooooo unlikely to start a foreign war. For thousands of years they have coped with running a huge country and every government has obsessed about unrest in China.
They have long been aware of the Rubicon threat and as far as I can see don't particularly want to have to govern 'barbarians'.
Their notions on genetic improvement do give me the willies though. Makes all our stem-cell heart rending seem like yesterday's news.