Why did americans believe that they had the right to claim texas?
After the Tejanos (Mexicans) had claimed their independence from Spain Sam Houston took over as first president. After a while Texas ASKED the US to annex them into the US. Jackson, and Van Buren didnt want to do it because it was cause an unbalance between salve and free states. When Tyler took over he started the process to Annex Texas. After him Polk finished the process after the people of the north said that once the British are out of the Oregon Country they would agree to annex Texas as a slave State. Since when the British were out, they would be able to Annex the Oregon country as a free state and the balance would be restored.
What is the right that China claims by which they can invade and occupy Tibet? It can't simply be "We can. If you don't like it, do something about it."
PRC claims Tibet is part of China since Yuan dynasty.There are several challenges to that claim:China had never ruled Tibet directly before PRC.Ming dynasty considered Tibet to be ‘external barbarians’(外藩) in their official writings. Such ‘external barbarians’ include the Middle East, just to show you how absurd it is to consider external barbarians as part of China.Yuan and Qing which ruled Tibet indirectly were not Han Chinese regimes, and Han Chinese regimes can’t claim sovereignty over Tibet based on non-Han Chinese regimes. It is like India claims sovereignty over Burma because both are part of British Empire in the past.Most Chinese writing during Republic of China period considered Tibet to be part of China starting from the Qing dynasty, which is different from PRC historiography.Tibet was de facto independent between 1912–1950.Each of the above point can be a long post in itself, but you can Google and find out more yourself.The root of the dispute about Tibet is ‘sovereignty between equal nations’ is a foreign concept to China. In the old ‘Celestial Empire’ system of China, no country could be on equal footing with China. All international relationship was seen as a tribute to the Son of Heaven. When Tibetan Empire dealt with Tang dynasty, even though two Tang princesses were married to Tibet, the relationship was called ‘uncle-cousin relationship’, with China being the senior of the relationship as ‘uncle’, even after Tibet won more battles between them. When the Macartney Embassy came to China, the Qing emperor was disappointed that the British Empire was not coming to pay tribute to him, and rejected all British demands for diplomatic relationship. Qianlong Emperor was not alone; his successors still refused to treat European countries as equals until the Opium War forced the emperor to do so, and that was seen as a great insult to the empire and done with extreme displeasure.When Qing dynasty finally tried to adapt to the global order of equal, sovereign states, it had to define the boundary of China and decide which of its former tribute states were part of China. Had Younghusband Expedition to Tibet not happened, the Qing dynasty and later governments may not be so eager to incorporate Tibet into China. Had British India supported Tibet Independence and followed through, China might have recognized the independence of Tibet after losing a battle for Tibet. But history didn’t happen that way.
Do you think Americans have more of a right to claim the world s limited resources than people from poor countries?
No countries do not have more right to claim limited resources, but people and corporations located in rich countries have the advantage. For one thing, they can outbid poor countries for limited resources that are transportable. That doesn't apply to every resource, like water generally stays close to where it is sourced. However, for many other resources the people willing to pay get more resources. The poor countries take advantage of this by selling to the higher bidder, but it's the landowners in those countries who benefit not the poor generally. The way I see it, it isn't really a rich country/poor country issue. Some people in poor countries get rich off of local resources, like diamonds or oil located in relatively poor countries. Exploitation and wealth are linked because we all link wealth with the privilege of getting more.
Why do all major religions claim to be the truth? They can’t all be right at the same time.
They all take the information given to them by one trusted source (usually, but not always parents) and then use the security of that trust to accept that the one particular version of the "truth" they've been given, is the actual truth.In the vast majority of cases they don't eve scrutinise their own holy texts properly, let alone consider reading anything that any other religion has to offer. An example of this is Evangelical Christians who have a sometimes pathological hatred of the gay community, based on lines from Leviticus. However, the same chapter of the bible also strictly forbids wearing clothing of mixed fabrics, and EVER shaving or cutting your hair, which many of those gay-haters are not even aware of. So if they can't even be bothered to read their own holy book, how likely is it that a group of Southern Baptists are suddenly going to seek out Hindu sacred texts, just to see if they offer a better deal?And of course the same applies to Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, or for that matter ancient Romans , Greeks etc who followed now-long-forgotten contempory gods.The fact is that no religion ever permits followers to say "we think we could be correct but we're not really sure", they all condemn "false gods" or whatever description they give. Some more forcibly than others of course, but they all talk about "truth" very assertively, when any objective analysis shows that it is impossible to justify those claims due to lack of evidence. Those who aggressively claim to "know" about God, when it is impossible to know are simply snakeoil salesmen in my view. They could be correct, but the statistical probability that they are is incredibly low.