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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Laundering Reputations: China and its Uighurs
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Laundering Reputations: China and its Uighurs
It’s time to talk about the Uighurs again. Despite a harrowing Panorama programme and this header, last December no-one was much bothered, beyond some token expressions of concern. What a difference 7 months, a Made in China pandemic, a security law obliterating HK’s freedoms and news of Huawei’s active involvement in the security apparatus used for Uighur persecution make. 25 years after the Srebrenica massacre by Serbs of 8,000 Muslim Bosnian men and boys – the inevitable murderous conclusion of a campaign of ethnic cleansing and hate – the West has noticed China’s brutality to another little known Muslim community. There are Holocaust and Bosnia echoes with recent revelations of organ-harvesting, prisoners’ hair sold, rape of women and blindfolded prisoners being loaded into trains. Now there is to be a Parliamentary debate on sanctions against China over this (following the indefatigable Maajid Nawaz’s campaign).
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@Nigel_Foremain and @williamglenn for instance are both EU Nationalists.
Headline - 19
7 days - 9 - lots of backdating
Yesterday - 1
A Uighur-board.
And linked with Mr Johnson's imperial progress.
The other interpretation I considered (also being a cynic) is that it is to try and bounce the Scottish Gmt into following the English one (e.g. to make money for tourist-business-owning ScoTories - I can think of one hotelier). But I think yours is probably correct. Though muddying the waters as to who is responsible for what has a long and disreputable pedigree amongst Unionists in Scotland since 1997.
(Ducks and takes cover)
The rules of which are
1) Our principle are our soul. Set in stone. Unmovable. Unchangeable. Rooted in moral philosophy and the Enlightenment.
2) If you don't like those principles, we have others we can sell you.
See Landmine College, Oxford and Qaddafi & LSE.
I'm afraid that pass was sold a long time ago, when countries like Libya or Saudia Arabia were allowed to get on the Council.
The HRC should really change its name to the UN Anti-Israel Council, as since the creation of the Council in 2006, it has resolved almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined.
We have a long and illustrious record of burnishing the reputations of the world's sleaziest people.
What people are perceiving as their nation: the UK/Scotland/Europe/England that they're nationalistically supporting varies but there is a heck of a lot of nationalism here.
The number of true internationalists here is quite limited.
Orwell pointed out that the same mental structures applied to at various sizes of community. The loyalty to Wessex had been (partially) transferred to England, then to Britain etc. He saw (and showed) that the various supra-nationalisms are just a continuation of the same thing.
As interesting example, the other day - the idea that pubs should keep a record of their customers.
Denounced as stupid, ridiculous etc when it was thought to be the idea of the UK government alone.
When it was pointed out that this was exactly what was happening ion certain other countries - instantly some voices were stilled.
Orwell would have smiled at that, I think.
I encountered a small example of this sort of thing when I was an MP. Someone representing an Azerbaijani group approached me to ask if I'd be willing to take an interest in affairs of the region - not necessarily to raise them in the Commons ("or not at first") but to take an intelligent view. They would be more than happy to help fund my next reelection campaign, since they felt that MPs who were even remotely interested were so rare. Where should they send the money, please?
Even though I'm a bit naive about these things, that struck me as dodgy, so I declined. And of course if I'd asked my constituency party to take the money it would then have been an offence to mention Azerbaijan in the Commons without declaring the interest. But the fact that it's not actually an offence to accept foreign money in return for "taking an interest" strikes me as even more dubious now than it did then. The USA doesn't allow foreign contributions to political parties - perhaps we should emulate that?
Not taking no for an answer, their representative pressed the case by saying that Azerbaijan was very important in confronting the remnants of communism and he felt sure I'd be sympathetic as a strong supporter of the Western alliance. He looked a bit puzzled when I laughed - possibly he should have researched my background a bit. Presumably he was trying everyone he could find - I did wonder if he got any other takers.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=346wCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=scottish+independence&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjImuDkvOPqAhWGT8AKHVKrDa44HhDoATAIegQIBxAC#v=onepage&q=scottish independence&f=false
- yfou can get at least some of the relevant bit here
Internationalism is fine in a world which is rapidly leaning towards a free, open and liberal society. It isn't.
BTW there is an opening for SKS in these areas. He is a genuinely moderate left centrist (I think) without Boris's authoritarian instincts. There are lots of possibilities for SKS to please liberals and UK patriots at the same time in the area of relations with brutal foreign powers.
Their policy - like the rest - is to respond to requests from law enforcers and Courts.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-law-enforcement-support#16
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1286294242562846720?s=20
- It approaches the topic relatively dispassionately
- He skewers the nationalistic mental process, in a way that makes you look at yourself.
- It has aged very well
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1286294947755433986?s=20
Actually we need to be a bit worried by the Chinese insistence that they have never been conquered, just been subject to civil wars. Those who you might think did, like Gengis Khan, were obviously Chinese all along.
There is a trade-off between ethics in these policy areas and self-interest. Drop your ethics, boost your status and bank balance being the default formulation of the relationship between the two.
And I would draw the following distinction which I think is key -
(1) Where the self-interest is national - i.e. it is the UK's status and bank balance being boosted - there are genuinely difficult decisions to be made. China falls into this category. You need to strike a balance between sacrificing your ethics entirely, thus losing self-respect, and an unacceptable level of impoverishment arising from being too ethical. How best to do this is above my pay grade. I'd err on the high ethics and impoverishment side myself but that's probably because I can afford to take my share of a big hit to national GDP. Not sure this applies to everybody. In fact I'm sure it doesn't. Many people cannot afford to take such a hit - and many who could are not prepared to.
(2) It's an easier question to answer where the self-interest is primarily that of a relatively small number of well-connected individuals. In this case it is imo obvious that the practice - of swapping ethics for cash and influence - should be stamped out. Of course this is difficult to do in practice precisely because the individuals who benefit are well-connected. Nevertheless it should be the goal. There should be zero tolerance for this form of ethics mongering.
So, we need an informed and intelligent balance for (1) and a ruthless clampdown on (2).
I wonder what the chances of either are under a Boris Johnson administration. Do we see anything like this occurring? No comment.
In your simplistic mind someone who believes Brexit to be pointless, juvenile and damaging, as I do, must be a "Europhile". I have never been such. It is perfectly rational to think leaving an organisation is dumb without blindly loving that organisation. Bit too complex for a headbanging-nationalistic-keyboard-warrior-sixth-form-common-room-bore-contrarian such as yourself I know, but there we are. If you eventually become part of the grown up world you might start to understand, but no-one on here is holding their breath.
To take one example from the header: Anyone can buy [London property] if they have the money. Up to a point, Ms Cyclefree. First they have to work around the fact that the estate agents, solicitors, and banks involved have to comply with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and other laws. These are pretty draconian nowadays.
In any case, all of this has virtually no connection with the appalling treatment of the Uighurs. There's a bit of a non-sequitur here.
https://twitter.com/erikgeddes/status/1286277902330454016?s=20
https://twitter.com/mnrrntt/status/1286299216403468290?s=20
The balkans have been a reference point throughout, but we need to remember that the west's conduct there during the 1990s has been far from the exemplar of humanitarian liberal intervensionism often made out, as an uncomplicated good before Iraq.
Not only was the response to crimes in Bosnia woefully, fatally slow, but the EU failed to acknowledge that historical geostrategic factors had influenced the early German and Austrian recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, accelerating a fatal unravelling of Yugoslavia that was by no means guaranteed.
The EU and NATO followed up their woefully slow response to the plight of the Bosnian muslims as result of serb forces in that area, with a one-eyed response to post-conflict Kosovo - where former war criminals were hailed for good governance, and evidence of the KLA having harvested the organs of kosovan Serbs, as happened in reverse elsewhere, was never investigated, and has effectively been covered up, again for geostrategic reasons ; the trail led right to the top of the Kosovar administration.
The Balkans bears important lessons, but it's also a hideously complex place.
Not that I'm bitter.
But for your original point, well...
Their communities were founded on fishing
Whilst I agree entirely with both the sentiment and the practical suggestion of this sentence, I am afraid that as far as the UN Human Rights Council is concerned that ship sailed long ago.
Current members of the Council include Libya, Afghanistan, the DRC and Venezuela. Recent members included Saudi Arabia and Egypt. 18 of the current members have the death penalty.
The Advisory Committee is headed by a Saudi and includes 4 members from countries that still have the death penalty and actively use it.
I don;t see why it is so important to the EU, where it is a drop in ocean economically.
And as for playing politics, Sturgeon has not stopped usuing covid for her own agenda
Everyone else doesn’t give two hoots.
If Boris 'betrays' those fishermen (persons?) he can forget leading the tories into the next election and I would doubt the tories would form the next government.
We want those waters. We want to tell Frenchman and Spaniards they cannot fish there even if we don;t want to fish there ourselves. Are we right to want that at the expense of much else? I don;t know, but I know its true.
Fishing really is that big.
The waiters spread word of what they overheard - apparently the EU delegation was carving up the Icelandic fishing rights among themselves, as if they owned the place.
That's so absurdly ridiculous it cannot even be taken seriously as an attempt to troll.
It's also worth remembering that our actual ability to limit non-UK fishermen from UK waters is rather more limited than one would think. Take two examples. Let's say that we only allow UK domiciled entities (i.e. British resident people plus UK companies) to own fishing licenses. Well, how do you stop a Canadian or Spanish company starting UK Fishing Boats Ltd and using that to bid on licenses?
And there's another issue. People lease boats all the time. John Smith in Aberdeen leases a boat from Joe Spaniard - which is fine, Brit with license, Brit with leased Spanish boat. But what if he enters into a wet least with Joe Spaniard. Now, while John Smith is ultimately responsible, the fishing vessel and its crew are all Spanish; the boat may never even unload fish in the UK.
Prohibiting both these cases is very hard under any traditional free trade agreement - especially as the UK's services industries will be incredibly keen to stop other people using these kind of measures to protect domestic industries. (And what's good for the goose is good for the gander.) And do we protect British law or accounting (exports $40bn+/year) or British sea fishing (exports perhaps 1% of that number)?
I only foresee the UK capitulating. It's what Johnson did last time.
Edited extra bit: not to mention the definitive Han Dynasty ran for four centuries ending in 200 AD.
https://twitter.com/SuzJamieson/status/1286282170252824576?s=20
Any attempt to strip Canadian firms of licenses legally got (mostly by buying the from UK fishermen) is going to (a) go down really badly in Ottowa if we want a deal with the Canadians, and (b) open the UK up to legal challenges.
Ultimately, we have been massive proponents of getting rid of NTBs. We want British professional services firms to be able to get Canadian banking and law licenses. We will not be able to get people to lower their barriers to us, if we're putting up barriers to their favoured industries.
This time it'll be different, some of the saddest words in the English language.
Moronic from this Labour MP.
The war on drugs has failed, decriminalise/legalise and tax the shit out of these non-dangerous drugs.
What I will say is that Johnson's original deal was a capitulation, so he'll either go for No Deal or we'll end up with what the EU basically want. And if it's the former we will end up with the latter anyway.
Indeed for my part I am quite certain that there is a spike in popularity for any drug which has the appeal of being illegal but without the threat of prison time. If we can keep that to Nox with its relatively limited effects, much better that than many other things.
Overall drug use in the population is falling!
Even so, betray those no existent fishermen at your political peril. We want those waters, even though we may not know what to do with them.
So there is actually little point trying to get them back, it's best just to trade them away for something that is actually useful.
Quotas are.
Some guy from the Fishing lobby claimed the French have a 60% quota for the British bit of the celtic sea, for example.
Just imagine if Spain Italy Greece and Portugal joined, and the northerners dreamt up a Common Citrus Fruit Policy and said hand over your lemon groves because we’ve not got any.
It was a total injustice 50 years ago, that may be close to being at least partially righted, and despite its minuscule economic value the whole issue has become far more totemic than Barnier wanted I’m sure. Maybe they should’ve been a bit more circumspect about screwing us over on this in the 70’s in the first place? What goes around and all that.
It will be interesting to see how Fishing is treated in the Deal.
Mrs Thatcher said you can't buck the market. And the reality is that the Canadians, French, Koreans and Spanish have invested in large, high-tech vessels that catch fish more cheaply.
It will therefore always make economic sense for a British fisherman with a small boat to find a way to make sure his fish are caught by someone with a more efficient boat. That can happen via selling his quota, or him wet leasing capacity.
My belief has been - and remains - that there is no complete Brexit (including deal) which pleases all Leavers. Brexit as an abstract concept was a fantastic way to keep Johnson's coalition together but as soon as it is defined in some final way, people are going to get pissed off.
I just cannot see a way that Johnson gets a deal that keeps everyone happy. People are going to get screwed, it's just playing the numbers at this point.
The problem with figures is that you can usually use them to prove whatever point you want to prove...
I’ve already extensively explained (with no counter argument I might add) how 98% British born, and White, Blyth Valley, is going to see no benefit to the “points based immigration system”. All their existing problems currently blamed on phantom immigration still remains, unless tackled in other ways.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/47gyy-jeremy039s-legal-fund