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China test-fires intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for first time in decades (www.bbc.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

China has said it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) carrying a dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean.

The ICMB was launched at 08:44 local time (04:44 GMT) on Wednesday and "fell into expected sea areas", Beijing's defence ministry said, adding that the test launch was "routine" and part of its "annual training".

The type of missile and its flight path remained unclear, but Chinese state media said Beijing had "informed the countries concerned in advance".

Analysts said Beijing's description of the test as "routine" was surprising because the last such test happened in 1980.

China's nuclear weapon tests usually take place domestically and it previously test-fired ICBMs west into the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't personally believe everything's so bad as it looks. There's a lot to be mad about, for sure, but it's worth remembering that fear and anger are some of the best-selling emotions the news has to offer. Doubly so if it's about China. But none of that means that things are substantially worse than they used to be. Some of it is that things weren't as good as we thought, some of it is that things are being made to look worse than they are.

Either way, we didn't start the fire.

Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!" Joel replied: "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 — I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful." The friend replied: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties." Joel retorted: "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?" Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

@[email protected] wrote:

than they used to be

Than they used to be, when? In the '50s or '60s, when the arms race was in full swing? Yes, I think that is true. But if we compare it with the last 2-3 decades, I do think however that things are gloomier. Firstly, the greater powers were more focused on cooperation rather than confrontation, and they focused more on maintaining the peace rather than creating their own spheres of influence.

I don't think even the '70s or '80s were like that from a geopolitical standpoint.