Posted on 01/19/2007 6:05:32 AM PST by Rb ver. 2.0
Britain has joined the US, Japan and Australia's condemnation of China after the communist country destroyed a satellite in space using a ballistic missile.
The British embassy in Beijing said it had raised the test, the first of its kind for 20 years, with the Chinese foreign ministry noting that the Government believed it was “inconsistent” with China’s opposition to the development of space weapons.
A spokesman refused to elaborate on the form the protest took or on the Chinese government’s response.
Later, a Downing Street spokesman said: "We are concerned about the impact of debris in space and we expressed that concern.
"We don't believe that this does contravene international law
"What we are concerned about however is lack of consultation and we believe that this development of this technology and the manner in which this test was conducted is inconsistent with the spirit of China's statements to the UN and other bodies on the military use of space."
The Chinese authorities have not confirmed a US report that it blew up one of its own aged weather satellites last Thursday with a ballistic missile fired from the Xichang space centre in Sichuan province.
There is stony silence on the subject in the Chinese media today as concern grows in the US and in the region about the prospect of an arms race in space.
If the test is confirmed, China will become the third country after the United States and the former Soviet Union to shoot down an object in space, indicating the Asian power could target satellites operated by other nations.
The United States, Japan, Australia and a host of other countries voiced concern on Friday .
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, said his government had asked China for confirmation, and for an explanation of what its intentions were.
“We are concerned about it firstly from the point of view of peaceful use of space, and secondly from the safety perspective,” Mr Shiozaki said.
Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the American National Security Council, said the US “believes China’s development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of co-operation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area”.
Alexander Downer, Australia's foreign minister, said his country did not want to see “some sort of spread, if you like, of an arms race into outer space”.
Taro Aso, the Japanese foreign minister, said the Chinese had sought to reassure Japan its intentions in space were of no threat to anyone.
“China consistently uses space only for peaceful purposes,” Mr Aso quoted the Chinese foreign ministry as saying.
The comments fit with the ruling Communist Party’s mantra in recent years that the nation’s rise as a world superpower should not be feared.
China joined the exclusive club of top space nations in 2003 when it sent up its first manned mission, joining the United States and Russia.
China spends 500 million dollars a year on its space programmes, according to official figures, while NASA’s proposed budget for 2007 is nearly 17 billion dollars.
But the United States has consistently deflected Chinese advances for closer cooperation on the two nations’ space programmes because of concerns about the involvement of China’s military.
A Chinese government defence paper released last month said that its defence expenditure had grown by more than 15 percent every year since 1990.
I think it has more to do with his job. And I also think she is in school. Social services, I believe. It seems someone helped her at a really bad time in her life, so she is going to pay it forward and help someone else. :o]
Well, time to head out on the long trail home...
I'm off early tonight. The move has me at odds with myself. It's anybody's guess when I will no longer have an ISP here, but hopefully, Monday will find my computer up and running again!
I'll check with you all tomorrow!
I go away for a few days, and I have trouble finding the thread!
But I managed to find my way back... for a few minutes...
And it looks like I managed to come back when the thread was quiet.
Time to go back to the Tax Table.
That all depends.
Care to enlighten us about your wild misadventures?
Home now.
I went through that yesterday (or was it the day before)? 5 days since I'd been here, and as the (now former) Traditional Anglican Ping List pinger starting 9 threads/day, the history backlog builds up fast.
Yesterday I wanted to find a posting made sometime after 11/20/2004 -- and stuff more than two years or so (+/- 1+) does not come up in search anymore. Realized it was going to take me hours to step back that far, but fortunately found a way to jump back quickly.
Do tell!
That's okay. I have very few SF movies in my collection, mostly because they're tend to be so awful. Especially after I've read the book.
One exception is When Worlds Collide. I've watched that more times than anything else in the collection.
I read the books ... " ... Decillions of tons of mass colliding ..."
I'd never heard of decillions before.
"Mr. President! Two Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq today!"
1. Click on "Pings" (or "Posts to you") in the upper right corner. This takes you to the "My Comments" page.
2. At the bottom of the left-hand column, click on "Show more results ... ".
3. Now look at the URL in the Location Bar (or whatever your browser calls it).
Mine says (right now: "http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/my/comments?more=161817317"
Take note of that number and the date on the first article. [161817317: 2/21/2007]
I believe that number is an ever-increasing index, in this case it is an index to the first article in the left0-hand column. In any event, what you are about to do is to begin a bit of a search backwards and forwards to try to home in on an article posted soon after the one you seek.
4. Reduce the number in the Location Bar by some amount. This takes a bit of guesswork; if you reduce it too much --so that it points to an article that precedes your first posting (by too much?)-- you'll get a page with an empty left-hand column. I've been on long enough that halving it (roughly: 81817317) works. Write down the new number and date. [81817317, 1/21/2005]
5. Increase that number if you want to go to a more recent date, decrease it to get to an older date. How much? Trial and error. Write down the new number and date.
If you keep this list sorted by number (or date!) --this is easier in a text editor or spreadsheet than on paper-- you'll soon find that you're narrowing the range between the number that most nearly precedes your target date and the number that most nearly follows it.
6. Until you think you have a number and date sufficiently close but later than your targeted posting, go to step #5.
7. (At this point the article in the top of the left-hand column should be more recent than your target.) If the article does not appear in the left-hand column, click on "Show more results ..." at the end of the column.
8. Verify that the number in the location bar is greater than the number associated with the most recent date preceding your target date.
If it is greater, go to step 7.
If it is lesser or equal... something is wrong -- the thread got pulled, your target date is wrong, you missed it when scanning the left-hand column... something.
Not too difficult (can you tell I'm an engineer?).
I had a difficult problem with this because the source material I had posted was dated 11/20/2004, but I didn't know quite when I posted it to FR. It was aggravated because it was in late 2004 that my rate of posting threads (and responses) increased manyfold because I'd just taken on the Anglican ping list; little tricks like linear interpretation didn't work.
As it turned out, I moved my "start" date (the "most recent" end of the bracket, when I went from step 6 to step 7) forward in increments until I found the article -- posted in early 1/2005. The whole process from figuring this scheme out to having the URL of the posting took about 15 minutes, FAR better than stepping back through my voluminous posting history.
Original thread: 6/30/2004
I took us to second thread: 12/30/2004
161819620 -- 2/20/2007: try 80000000
80000000 -- 1/04/2005: maybe not soon enough, try 60000000
60000000 -- 6/19/2004: too far back, try 70000000
70000000 -- 10/05/2004: I see 10/02 "why do you guys keep banning me? (Zot! Because we can) (Juwish modz totally rewl!)", I'm here, try 65000000
65000000 -- 8/21/2004: See the same; I'm already on the UT. Try 62500000
62500000 -- 7/22/2004: I don't see the title of the original UT, go back to 65000000 (it's only a month to be searched)
65000000: see the thread, click on "Show more results ..."
64935952: see the thread (8/20), click on "Show more results ..."
64803838: see the thread (8/19), click on "Show more results ..."
64669916: do not see the thread (8/17), click on "Show more results ..." (just to be sure)
64489320: do not see the thread (8/17 -- 8/13), I think I overshot
[browser BACK]
[browser BACK]
why do you guys keep banning me? (Zot! Because we can) (Juwish modz totally rewl!)
Posted by The Scourge of Yazid to Tax-chick; freedom44; sionnsar; a_Turk; BlackVeil; Jet Jaguar; Darksheare; Dead Corpse
On Smoky Backroom 08/18/2004 5:25:08 AM PDT · 13,107 of 65,546
Okay, The Scourge of Yazid pinged me to what would become the UT.
And on 8/18/2004 I joined the thread with:
To: The Scourge of YazidInteresting...
That's my (poor) understanding also.
13k posts???? Isn't that some kind of record?
13,139 posted on 08/18/2004 7:44:51 AM PDT by sionnsar (Iran Azadi ||| Resource for Traditional Anglicans: trad-anglican.faithweb.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13107 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Good night all.
Interesting indeed. I hadn't tried that technique.
You beat me here though, I'm pretty sure. I believe this was my first post on the UT.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1163131/posts?page=21087#21087
09/15/2004
Ashes on head: check
Gave up something for Lent: check
A sentient sandwich?
A Bandersnatch goes a long way.
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