[extropy-chat] China/Iran developing mutual defense deal.

[Rik van Riel]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Bret Kulakovich wrote:

> Well it is easy to see that this is quid-pro-quo over Taiwan, given the 
> plans of the US.

I doubt that.  The Chinese are strengthening economic and
political ties everywhere they can, as are many of the
other large countries that were excluded from the US-EU
trading axis in the past.

China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
Iran, several African countries and a number of Asian
countries are all negotiating better trade terms with
each other and strengthening political ties.

> Next up: Opec dissolves.

I suspect the focus is more on WTO than OPEC.  In the
past the WTO has been used to set unfair trade terms
on less powerful countries, using divide and conquer
strategies.

Today the more influential of the disadvantaged countries
are now negotiating directly with each other, outside of
WTO meetings, and deciding on methods to reduce the
influence of the US and EU on their international trade.

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan