Originally posted by merlin:

Then somehow this whole wars for gas and the poor “innocent” tyrant countries angainst other countries we still have not gotten our main goal out of all this bull. In case you havent noticed or left your computers, due to the fact some of your posts are nearly as long as a world war 2 book, go to the gas stations!!! Our whole idea of keeping gas prices failed.

Not that there are not enough conspiracy theories in this thread, but some U.S. official has boosted in his memoire that during the heat of the cold war (1980s I assume ?), one of the secret “weapons” the U.S. used against the Soviet Union was to deliberately keep the oil price down on the international market, so Russians could not get enough money from their oil exportation.

That was then, when two superpowers existed and you can argue that the U.S. manipulation of international oil market had at least some ideological background to it. Now, all the major oil fields are in American’s hands (forget about Saudi Arabia, OPEC and the ilks, they are run by big American energy companies) without the opposition from another superpower, but with all the uninbibited greed of American crony capitalism behind it, does anyone really expect the gas price will come down soon ? I do not. In fact, I consider it would be lucky if gas price can even stay. And this is the ugly truth behind the world’s #1 advocate of “free market” ! 😡

Now, something about aviation and Serbia: Serbians started digging out some unexplored U.S. bombs under the Chinese embassy. I wonder who will eventually get those ? 😀

7 of them ?

7 carrier combat groups ? 😮 Can they handle them ? I mean the prostitutes ?

In fact no one will know for sure how many will actually be there and when. If any country can detect the whereabouts of all the carrier groups, that is very bad news for U.S. navy. Even if China can detect the actual numbers and positions of the carrier groups (they probably cannot) that come into the Taiwan theater, I doubt they will make any anouncements about that.

I am wondering what if 5-7 carriers groups actually come to the Taiwan theater, but China just does not do anything. All the carrier groups will just loiter around there forever ? That will be very expensive economically, hard to sustain logistically, not to mention the psychological and physical toll on the personnals.

Please remove the ARJ

GoldenDragon, can you please kindly remove the red ARJ thing ? It is a heart-breaking sight. It reminds me of the sad status of the Chinese automobile industry: after 20 years of foreign cooperation, it is getting nowhere.

The ARJ 21 program will be like the products of Chinese auto industry: it will be an assembled foreign piece, not really a showcase of Chinese ingenuity. I have commended on the PDF (which is half-dead now, due to web-hosting problems, I guess) that the Chinese auto industry (the passenger car industry, to be exact) never really takes off, not because the Chinese are stupid. On the contrary, it is because they are too smart. Too many Chinese just want to make a quick profit. They simply moved the whole assembly line into China, and they never thought of mastering the technologies or making innovations of their own. I can understant that: why bother ? It is too time consuming. I will set up the production line as soon as possible, make couple of cars, deposit some quick profits into foreign banks, and I will immigrate out of this damn place to a foreign paradise at the earliest opportunity!

Now back to the ARJ thing: at the inspiration of your picture, I googled the internet for “Chinese ARJ”. And guess what: what I saw was absolutely nightmarish. It is like the nightmare of Chinese auto industry again: every subsystems, from the engine to the electrical system to the fire distinguish system, will be foreign made. Do I have to mention avionics ? So please take the thing off, so I can sleep better.