Actually you can. One of the ways is to use Keepvid, which provides the YouTube video as a FLV file to download. Once you’ve downloaded it, you can either watch it using a FLV player, or convert it to AVI or MPEG format (which I suspect most people will want to do).

To convert it in Windows, you need to get hold of a program like Riva and follow the instructions here.

Mac users should use iSquint, as it’s free and it does the job well enough.

Because for a couple decades Taiwan was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek’s idiotic dictatorship, which refused to accept that “their” China had moved on. Nevertheless, as I said Kai-shek is dead, and what’s relevant is the here and now.

As for China’s legal case for owning Taiwan, I have seen it and to be quite blunt it is utter bull****. They know this, which is why they resort to bluster and threats to keep Taiwan in line, rather than making any sort of legal case before the UN or ICJ.

It also matters not that there has been no ceasefire, because Taiwan was not Chinese land (even though Chiang Kai-shek and others were Chinese citizens). I’m sure you recognise the fact that the mere presence of one’s citizens in another country does not grant you the right to claim that land as your own as a result.

As for your last point, well I’m pretty damned certain the United States has no desire to be drawn into an unnecessary war with China. So not only does the Taiwanese government not want to declare independence for fear of being brutally attacked, but the US and other governments pressure it to maintain the status quo so as to avoid a major war. Once again, both policies are the prudent course to take, considering the circumstances.

It all boils down to China though, and its immature desire to grab hold of Taiwan in order to avenge some past “wrong” when Chiang Kai-shek evaded Mao’s grasp and fled there. It’s time China acted like a responsible modern state, and seeking revenge in that manner is not the way responsible states behave.

Ironically, if China wasn’t so pigheaded, and actually left Taiwan to live in peace while allowing the Taiwanese unfettered access into the Chinese market, the Chinese economy would benefit greatly from the injection of Taiwanese capital and ingenuity. But I’m sure no such rational outcome would have occurred to those currently in charge of China, and obsessed with some illusory notion of “face” and revenge.

Nonsense, the civil war was over long ago, and Mao won. This is just China’s attempt to assert its imperial ambitions over an independent state to which it has no legal claim. Taiwan renounced any claims to China long ago (Chiang Kai-shek is long dead) and is perfectly willing to live in peace with China. It’s about time China started acting like a responsible nation and let Taiwan live in peace as well.

Seeing as though this thread has been revived, I might as well mention Denel’s new Bateleur which is being designed from the outset for maritime patrol. Using a Ku-band satellite datalink, it should have a range in excess of 3500km.

I will only respond shortly due to lack of time.

1. I do not defend Hezbollah. I clearly said they got what they deserve.

Yet your posts are filled with claims of how Hezbollah’s actions were legitimate and Israel is to blame. If that isn’t defending, what is?

2. The same way Israelis got what they deserve. I don’t support their point of view making all others responsible for the mess and trying to come out clean.

While I do not deny that Israel is not always an innocent party, in this specific case I don’t see how they “deserve” anything. Lest we forget, Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago, even though it did not have to. Hezbollah was supposed to be fighting for “Lebanese independence” (their own claim until 2000), so why haven’t they helped build an independent Lebanon over the past six years? Oh yes, it’s because they’re really Syria and Iran’s puppet.

3. I don’t give a damn about historical claims of Israeli nation for the land. What happened 1000 years ago does not interest me at all, the claims are completely laughable and off any reality. Israelis are intrudors in the area, and very unwelcome neighbors, that is a fact. But they wanted it at all costs, now they face the consequences and I don’t feel sorry for them.

I don’t believe I mentioned Israel’s historic claims as being any justification. I pointed out only that A) Jewish groups had remained in the area since the Roman expulsion and B) That the European Jewish immigrants arrived and settled legally. It was the Arab backlash against the new immigrants that is distasteful, not the immigration itself. To point out the hypocrisy of your statement though, allow me to reword it: “[Blacks] are intruders in the area, and very unwelcome neighbours, that is a fact.” – See how enormously prejudicial and backwards that sort of sentiment is? 20% of Israel’s population are Arabs, legally endowed with equal rights to Jews. Tell me, how long would a Jewish community last in Palestine?

4. Hezbollah is acknowledged as a terrorist organization by mere 3 countries (USA, UK, ISR), that represents roughly 370 mil people. The governments of the rest of 6 bn people (approx. 95%) on this planet see it different. You are with your point of view in overwhelming minority, admit it.. The numbers say it clearly – it is not me who is having ‘weird’ or ‘biased’ opinion, it is you, PII, IluvF4E and others.

Well, actually that’s the USA, UK, Israel, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. Indeed, the European Parliament’s MEPs also voted in March last year for Hezbollah to be labelled a terrorist group in what was unfortunately a non-binding resolution.

Further, an interesting development occurred at the recent Arab League meeting to discuss the violence in Lebanon. Rather than support Hezbollah’s actions, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain all condemned Hezbollah for its attack, calling it “unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible”. Now, when even Saudi Arabia and the PA condemn a group for its acts of violence, you just know its crossed the line…

Whether Hezbollah is termed a terrorist organisation or not is really irrelevant at this juncture. What matters is that they were clearly in the wrong, and that the Lebanese government was unimaginably irresponsible for allowing them to continue operating and attacking Israel.

5. There are no guilty and not-guilty in this game.. Israeli playing innocent victims does not work on me. Solving a simple POW situation with a retaliation strike with hundreds of dead is a barbaric act that is becoming more and more similar to the acts of the ones they once hated and feared most – Nazis.

Your hypocrisy clearly knows no bounds. Israel conducts six days of intensive bombing against a dispersed enemy sheltered amongst a civilian population and yet less than 200 civilians are dead as a result. That is an achievement few, if any, other countries can match, and it’s a testiment to the accuracy of the IDF’s weapons and the professionalism of its forces. And in response you compare their actions to those of the Nazis, the fascists who blitzed through Europe with no regard to civilian life and whilst committing blatant genocide of the Jews? That’s sick man.

As I said above, Israel’s not always right, no country is. But in this specific instance, it was on the receiving end of an entirely unprovoked attack and it had little option but to strike back. You speak of a POW exchange as if it’s an easy option, but that’s sheer nonsense. Hezbollah’s demands were ridiculous, and could never be met. In order to get those two men back, Israel would have had to release thousands of imprisoned militants, allowing them to flood back over the border and bolster Hezbollah’s ranks with their experience. And then what, peace? Nonsense, Hezbollah would just have attacked the IDF and kidnapped soldiers again, and again, and again. No, something had to be done, and seeing as though neither the United Nations nor Lebanon gave a damn, the only responsible action left to Israel was to take care of Hezbollah itself.

Barbarian, just because there may or may not be Palestinians within Hezbollah (not true, most of their fighters are young Lebanese Shi’ites), does not give them any sort of legitimate reason for attacking Israel over the Blue Line. They are based in Lebanon, they are a Lebanese group, and Lebanon is neither occupied nor oppressed. Case closed.

Oh, and by the way, I did not say that Arabs were the only people who fought and went to war with each other. If you read more closely, you’ll see that I said both that war was a more popular activity back then, and that many other peoples engaged in violent behaviour as well. Indeed, it was almost universal.

Flex, your biases are showing, and it’s not very flattering…

Your continued defence of Hezbollah is, I admit, puzzling. Let’s recap this: Hezbollah is a Lebanese group based in Southern Lebanon, an area which is not occupied or oppressed by anyone (except Hezbollah), and which has not seen a single Israeli soldier in over six years. Yet despite this, Hezbollah has continually fired rockets over the international border at Israeli villages and towns, and has even attempted to take IDF soldiers hostage on a previous occasion. It has constantly attacked Israel with no provocation and absolutely zero justification, and in response Israel has done just about nothing. Finally, Hezbollah crossed the line – literally and figuratively – and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a clear act of war. It was only after this, the latest in a string of provocations dating back six years, that Israel decided to respond in force and attack Hezbollah directly. Yet you say Israel is the aggressor? Please explain how that works…

As for your claim that Israel caused all the violence in the region, it is nothing less than sheer poppycock. The Arabs had been fighting each other since time immemorial, and when they weren’t fighting each other they were fighting the Persians, or the Turks, or whoever else was in convenient range. But hey, back in the day war was a popular activity, what with TV not having been invented yet.

So it’s not exactly as if the Jews parachuted in on some noble savages and suddenly caused them to learn new concepts such as hate, war and other such pleasant stuff. The Arabs, like so many other peoples around the world, were already warlike, were already hateful, and had already adopted the fairly militant and expansionary religion of Islam (itself being the reason for the Arab conquering of the region from 700AD onwards).

So now, let’s look at how the State of Israel came to be, shall we? Basically, in the 1880s, noting the increasing levels of anti-semitism throughout Europe and casting a prescient eye towards the future, a number of Jewish intellectuals realised that the Jewish race was fragile and vulnerable and that the only way to ensure safety was for the Jewish people to recreate their ancient state in a modern form. Thus was Zionism born, the movement towards a Jewish state, or at least a place where Jews could be safe.

From about 1882 onwards, European Jews began to escape persecution in Europe by heading to Palestine, to join about 25-30 000 Jews already there (in communities which had remained after the Roman expulsion. However, due to the natural cultural ramifications, European Jews began to set up their own communities, built on land purchased from the Ottoman landowners. Indeed, this was one of the main pillars of the Zionist movement – that all land must be purchased, not taken.

Over the next few decades, such small-scale immigration continued, gradually increasing the numbers of Jews in the region. As a result of this, and the economic boom which would naturally follow such an immigration of skilled people, the area also saw a significant number of Arab immigrants. However, for some reason (likely religious), the Arabs began to take an exception to there being so many Jews living in what they believed should be Muslim land. So they began attacking the Jews, in pogroms such as the Hebron Massacre. The Jews, naturally, retaliated, and before long it was an all out brawl with both sides attacking each other indiscriminately.

The British, by now the holders of the mandate for Palestine, decided something needed to be done, so they tried taking the side of one of the combatants, the Arabs (done so in order to appease those in their other colonies in the Middle East). This didn’t work, the Jewish groups just directed their attention at the British. Eventually, Britain wiped its hands of the matter and handed the mandate over to the UN. The UN, in turn, pondered the question of two peoples, both with entirely legitimate rights to ther land, being seemingly inable to live with each other. So they did the logical thing and partitioned the place, giving the best arable land to the Arabs (nice pun there).

All in all, it was a fair deal. The Arab attacks on the Jews had been entirely unwarranted, being essentially similar to the sort of backwards anti-immigrant mentality most of us hate seeing in Europe, but it would have been unfair to turn the entire region into a Jewish country. Except, despite the objective fairness of this deal, the surrounding Arab nations utterly rejected it, and attempted to invade and destroy the newly-formed Jewish state. And so it continues.

So, in the end, this all started with a little bit of intolerance. Before you applaud the Arab resistance to Jewish immigrants, I suggest you take a minute to think about the fact that in doing so, you should objectively also cheer those backward brutes in Europe who wish to stop men with brown skins from entering the hallowed continent (not speaking about all Europeans, naturally, merely a misguided few).