Quotulatiousness

August 1, 2018

British Labour Party continues to sideline pro-Brexit MPs

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Fraser Myers on the most recent pro-Brexit Labour MP deselected by local party activists:

Labour Party activists have passed votes of no confidence in two of Labour’s Brexit-backing MPs, and called for their deselection. Frank Field and Kate Hoey were censured by their local parties for voting with the government against an amendment that would have kept the UK in a customs union with the EU after Brexit. If passed, it would have killed off any prospect of Britain having an independent trade policy after Brexit, and would have kept us under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Recognising this as a betrayal of the Leave vote, Labour Brexiteers had no other choice but to vote with the government to defeat the amendment. Now, for defending the democratic choice of 17.4million voters, Field and Hoey stand accused of ‘betraying’ the Labour movement and ‘siding with the reactionary Tory establishment’.

This sends a disastrous message to voters and pits Labour against the Leave vote, the largest democratic mandate in British history. Labour’s better-than-expected result at the 2017 General Election depended on retaining Brexit-voting seats. Two thirds of Labour MPs represent Leave-backing constituencies, with some of the largest Leave votes in Labour-held seats. Labour needs to win 64 seats at the next election to form a majority government, 42 of which are dotted around blue-collar, Leave-voting England. To attack the few Labour MPs who are on the side of the Leave majority is an astonishing act of self-harm for a party that claims to represent ordinary people.

While some Blairite MPs have long feared the prospect of deselection campaigns launched by the Corbyn-backing Momentum, the no-confidence motion against Kate Hoey was initiated by members of the Blairite pressure group, Progress. And rather than stand up for Hoey, a defender of Corbyn’s leadership, Momentum sided with its erstwhile rivals against the Brexiteer MP. As Owen Jones revealingly writes in the Guardian: ‘Self-professed Blairites, soft lefties and Corbynites were united in this vote.’ While the Blairite and Corbynite wings of the party claim to agree on very little, they appear to be united in their contempt for the electorate and for democracy.

These activists seem to forget that Labour has a long history of Euroscepticism. Labour’s much-celebrated postwar prime minister, Clement Attlee, and the architect of the NHS, Nye Bevan, were against Britain joining the EU’s predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC). When the left-winger Michael Foot led Labour into the 1983 General Election, the party’s manifesto pledged to withdraw Britain from the EEC. Tony Benn – Corbyn’s hero – opposed the anti-democratic tendencies of the EU all his life. Would Benn, Foot and Bevan face a similar fate to Hoey and Field in Labour today?

July 31, 2018

The anti-Brexit propaganda machine of “Project Fear”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Brendan O’Neill on the never-ending whinge by the Remoaners emphasizing the potential negatives of Brexit:

I can’t remember a time when the elitist politics of fear has been as cynically wielded as it has been over the past week. It wasn’t even this bad when schoolkids of my generation were made to watch The Day After, a nuclear-disaster movie in which a wholesome American family slowly die from radiation after the Soviets go mental and bomb the US. Also, at least that dread-laden propaganda was only designed to make us fear the Ruskies – the even more unhinged Project Fear of elitist Remoaners is an attempt to make us fear ourselves and our friends and family and our collective electoral stupidity that has allegedly propelled Britain to the brink of ‘self-immolation’, in the words of the increasingly bizarre figure of David Lammy, the Member of Parliament for Brussels.

Every day the fearful propaganda intensifies. One wakes wondering what unearthly horror our vote against the EU 25 months ago might now have unleashed. Gonorrhoea is the latest. If we leave the EU with No Deal, Britain will apparently become a 15th-century-style hotbed of such sexual malaise. ‘Brexit could lead to spread of infectious diseases such as super-gonorrhoea’, says a headline in the London Evening Standard, which was once a newspaper but is now a score-settling sheet for its current editor: arch Remainer and former chancellor George Osborne, who we turfed out of office with our vote for Brexit. Medical officials fear that a shortage of medicine in the event of No Deal will mean we won’t be able to treat knob rot. It’s almost Biblical. ‘Defy me and your genitals shall wither.’ Up next: plagues of locusts? Floods?

Yes, floods. Brexit could ‘water down [the UK’s] environment laws’, says a piece in the Guardian, complete with a photo of a flooded English village. We could see more ‘severe flash floods’ if we leave the EU without boosting eco-laws. Perhaps we should build arks, get some animals on board? If you don’t drown, you might be poisoned. If there’s No Deal, Britain will become a ‘dumping ground for chemicals’, claim green groups. There won’t be much food, either. Remoaners are stoking up fears of food shortages if we change our trade arrangements with the EU. Because we will struggle to import ingredients and therefore won’t be able to make bread and other essentials. Why won’t be able to do this? They never say. They just know starvation is on the cards.

In the words of chief Remoaner Alastair Campbell, ‘No deal Brexit means no food Brexit and no medicines Brexit…’. Imagine being Alastair Campbell. Imagine giving the green light to the destruction of a foreign country and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the name of delivering democracy, only to decide 15 years later that you don’t believe in democracy after all and so you devote your entire life to overthrowing the largest democratic vote in British history. Scientists should study Mr Campbell to discover how such a human being manages to sleep at night. Also, no one is saying there will be ‘no food’ after Brexit. Campbell is lying now as surely as he was when he said Saddam could bomb Britain in 45 minutes.

June 8, 2018

The British political scene has all the horrific fascination of a slow-motion car crash

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh says that anyone who claims to be shocked and appalled at the Ontario political mess need only glance across the pond to put things into proper perspective:

The one thing everyone seems to agree upon about Ontario’s provincial election is that it has been all kind of horrid, strange and exhausting; if there is another thing they agree upon, it is that Ontario politics will probably continue to be horrid, strange and exhausting for a while even when it’s over. I have one word for these people: Brexit. Try following U.K. politics for a while in the era of British secession from the European Union. You will scurry, shrieking, back to Queen’s Park soon enough.

The Brexit drama is a mesmerizing blend of jargon and impotence, frustration and confusion; it is a vivisection of democracy from which Britain cannot avert its gaze. In Ontario you still have distinguishable political parties: in Britain now, familiar entities have been altogether dissolved into underlying tendencies, shades and conspiracies. So-and-so is a “soft Brexiter.” How soft? Oh, not as soft as Mr. Whatnot, but distinctly softer than Miss How-Do-You-Do. Mysterious verbal puzzles — do you favour the “single market” or the “internal market”? — become theatres of struggle.

A bonus of Brexit-watching for us is that, over the past six months or so, you have often been able to get the brief neurochemical pop that Canadians all receive when Canada is mentioned abroad. The Canada-EU free-trade deal CETA, which you may remember being signed in October 2016 after some obscure trouble with Walloons, has turned out to be an important anchoring concept in the Brexit debate. CETA is the European Union’s most liberal and comprehensive trade deal with an offshore non-member — and that is just what Britain voted to become.

Advocates of a “hard” Brexit, with no judicial, bureaucratic or fiscal ties to the continent, began pointing to CETA as a readymade model for Britain-EU relations almost before the ink was dry. Problem: CETA broadly allows free movement of goods between Canada and Europe, but services are not included. Britain doesn’t make much physical stuff anymore, and it quit digging coal; it depends especially heavily on providing financial services to the world.

May 21, 2018

The five tribes of the Scottish Nationalist Party

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Stephen Daisley explains the five main groupings within the overall SNP and why they aren’t getting along:

Fractiousness is nothing new in Scottish Nationalism. For most of its history, the only thing SNP members could agree on was the merit of a good rammy. Gradualists declared sovereignty would come in increments; while fundamentalists insisted independence yesterday would still be independence too late. Conference was an annual pitched battle where each faction schemed, cajoled and manoeuvred against the other. The gradualists came to dominate the leadership and party machine, but the fundies consoled themselves that the members were really with them.

After 11 years in government, a lost independence referendum and an explosion in membership, the battle lines in Scottish nationalism have been redrawn into five main camps. These are the Deciders, the New Establishment, the Separatist Spoilers, the Social Media Chauvinists and the Reluctant Reformers.

At the top sit the Deciders – First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, husband Peter Murrell and select advisers. This is the most exclusive club and it runs the party (and the country) almost singlehandedly. Consultation outwith the clique is rare and once a course of action has been decided, the chances of an outsider successfully challenging it are next to none. The Deciders decide; everyone else exists to nod along and applaud as instructed.

The New Establishment is the nomenklatura of SNP Scotland; dutiful courtiers, stenographers and political enforcers for the Nationalist elite. Among them are financially canny third sector executives, on-message opinion formers and the professional class who were conscientious Labour until the polls told their conscience to back the other horse.

The New Establishment rates itself highly and bristles when shown insufficient deference – a daily hazard when the rest of the movement sees them as useful idiots.

One such impatient class is the Separatist Spoilers. Many have arrived at the doors of the SNP megachurch after September 2014, emptying their pockets into the collection box and singing the hymns one syllable behind everyone else.

Others will be regular attendees and even elders, who are heartened by the new congregants and their fervour, even if they are a little brash, a bit Central Belt, a touch too socially and culturally Labour.

What unites the Separatist Spoilers is unwavering devotion to the catechism of independence. Separation is their chiefest joy. Nothing – no biased BBC reporting, no Unionist-infiltrated GERS office, no ‘facts’ from the London-based IFS – will dissuade them from the path of righteousness.

They are spoilers insofar as the ruination of Scotland’s schools, hospitals, and economy are deemed a price worth paying for her freedom.

Beyond these lie the Social Media Chauvinists, who combine belligerent nationalism with online invective and intimidation. The category is not limited to obscure keyboard warriors; it includes elected Nationalists for whom abusing the enemy – they do not see mere opponents – is intrinsic to their politics.

Social Media Chauvinists whip up cybernat pile-ons, keep the worst of the grassroots ginned up and target journalists and critics sceptical of the regime. They have constructed their own reality from an echo chamber of antagonistic bloggers and unhinged conspiracy theorists. Their indoor voice is a howl and paranoia their idea of equanimity; they are often to be found in a tizz over British-branded foodstuffs and unpatriotic weather maps.

[…]

Most pitiful of all are the Reluctant Reformers. They are no less committed to independence but accept the constraints of economics and public opinion. They are willing to make a go of devolution but alarmed by how quickly colleagues tire of discussing the attainment gap and NHS performance. Opponents are to be engaged with and compromise found in the common interest. Reluctant Reformers are in tune with SNP voters but treacherously off-key to the rest of the movement.

Separatist Spoilers hate the New Establishment; Reluctant Reformers hate the Social Media Chauvinists; everybody hates the Deciders.

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

May 1, 2018

Sikh separatists (and even terrorists) are being protected by the federal government

Filed under: Cancon, Government, India, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There’s no reason that Canadian Sikhs can’t agitate for their fellow Sikhs in India to create a separate country in the Punjab, but that freedom must not include active support for terrorists. The Canadian government is looking particularly bad on this front, and it isn’t just because of Justin Trudeau’s farcical adventures on his recent trip to India. None of the major federal parties want to appear to be anti-Sikh, as Sikh voters cluster in several key swing ridings around the country, and any criticism of the terrorists is spun as an attack on all Sikhs. At Quillette Terry Milewski details the government’s unwillingness to deal with the problem:

The Sikh faith, created in what is now northern India by the 15th-century Guru Nanak, remains obscure to many in the West. Turbaned Sikh men are sometimes confused with Muslims, and some have been assaulted by confused thugs following Islamist terrorist attacks. Like the United States, Britain and other Western countries, Canada has been home to emigrant Sikhs for generations—the vast majority of them living peaceably in their adopted homeland.

In the 1980s, however, a powerful spasm of separatist militancy shook India and spread to the Sikh diaspora. In June, 1984, two months before the Madison Square Garden convention, Prime Minister Gandhi and her government set out to end a killing spree by Sikh militants who had turned the Sikhs’ holiest site — the Golden Temple at Amritsar — into an armed camp. The Indian army wrecked the temple complex and took many lives. Revenge came on October 31, 1984, when Gandhi was gunned down in her garden by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Hindu mobs immediately took revenge for the revenge, slaughtering thousands of Sikhs in hellish reprisals that were aggravated by official complicity. The police looked the other way. The horrors of 1984 won’t be forgotten by either side.

Soon, Canada and its Sikh community were dragged into the thick of the struggle. In June of 1985, Parmar’s Babbar Khalsa placed suitcase bombs on two planes leaving Vancouver. One brought down Flight 182, a massacre that remained, until 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of aviation. The second bomb, intended to destroy another Air India plane simultaneously, exploded on the ground at Narita Airport in Japan, killing two baggage handlers. The reverberations from the attack were so profound in Canada that even today, 33 years later, a striking emblem of the Khalistani dream survives: a large “martyr” poster honouring Talwinder Parmar, sword in hand, permanently fixed to the exterior of an important Sikh gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. Tens of thousands gather beneath it each spring for an annual Sikh parade. In American terms, the poster is equivalent to a public veneration of Osama Bin Laden.

[…]

Today, the parents who lost their children [on Air India Flight 182] are old, the orphaned children have their own children and the Sikh struggle for independence is moribund in India. Last year, in fact, Sikh voters overwhelmingly supported a united India and were key to the election of the Congress Party — the party of Indira Gandhi — to govern the Sikh homeland of Punjab. Support for Congress was especially strong in majority-Sikh districts. And Punjab’s Chief Minister is a strongly pro-unity Sikh, Amarinder Singh, who has alleged separatist influence in the Canadian government.

Harjit Sajjan, a Sikh who is Canada’s Minister of National Defence, firmly denied the claim. And on Justin Trudeau’s visit to India this year, Singh agreed to a photo-op including Sajjan. But the Chief Minister let it be known that he’d handed over a list of Canadians he suspects of fundraising for Punjab’s few remaining separatist Sikh militants.

The listed suspects amount to a tiny subculture among Canada’s 450,000 Sikhs, the vast bulk of whom seek no return to the bloody 1980s and 1990s, when the battle for Khalistan took some 20,000 lives in India, most of them Sikh. But the hardliners are a well-organized political force, still raising the cry of “Khalistan Zindabad!” — long live Khalistan — in some Canadian gurdwaras where “martyred” Sikh assassins are memorialized as models for the young. These include the two bodyguards who machine-gunned Indira Gandhi. Khalistani fervour is alive on social media and a 2018 tweet from “George” (@PCPO_Brampton) declared: “Indira’s assassins are HEROES. Sikhs should glorify them.”

The endurance of such attitudes in Canada reflects the weak record of its justice system in deterring violence. For years, it seemed, Canadian courts were where terrorism cases went to die.

April 15, 2018

Rise of the Nations I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1918 1 of 2

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost
Published on 14 Apr 2018

After the War to End All Wars, there’s more of two things. More nations and more wars. Wars of independence, civil wars, ethnic wars, ideological wars and just plain old wars. In the first Prelude to the Between 2 Wars series, covering the years 1919-1939 from WWI to WWII chronologically, we look at the rise of nationalism out of the ruins of The Great War. Indy Neidell and Spartacus take you on a historical journey through 20 years of dawn, light, and dusk back into the darkness of war.

Join the TimeGhost Army on : http://timeghost.tv
Or on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson & Indy Neidell
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Camera and Edit by: Spartacus Olsson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

From the comments:

TimeGhost
20 hours ago (edited)

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU COMMENT (AVOIDS REPEATING FEEDBACK): The first episode of Between 2 Wars focuses on what happened after The Great War. Out of respect for those of you that are anxiously waiting for the TGW series finale later this year, we’ve avoided any references to WWI as far as possible. This episode is a prologue to future episodes that go into more detail of the actual events starting in 1919. The episode focuses in broad strokes on the rise of nationalism and the conflict that this creates, as well as the situation in Germany and Russia at the end of 1918. Here some notes on feedback we have already received:

1. We will avoid text and pictures at the same time when Indy speaks in the future.

2. There is an error in the map on the Balkan peninsula, we missed to turn off the country layer for modern Macedonia, this country does not exist at the time as it is part of Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece in 1919. Our apologies. [Iceland is also labelled as “Island”.]

3. Some borders are drawn as the modern countries (e.g. Finland) although this is not correct at the time. This is a conscious decision to avoid an impossible dilemma. As pointed out in the video borders are in a state of flux in 1919, or even more often; just recently created. In cases where there is border contention that is not relevant to the current events of the video we have to choose between the following scenarios: A) Draw the border as one or the other side saw it – leads to controversy that we would like to avoid. B) Draw the contended area in as contended – doing that for one place leads to us having to do that for the rest of the world, we don’t have the capacity for that. C) Accept that we can’t solve this as the basis is not an exact fact base, but political problems that are way out of our program scope. We have tried other solutions, but C was the only one that worked (B would be the right thing to do, but we just can’t afford to invest the time it requires).

4. Some borders are not exactly right even when they are drawn for the events we speak of. This is due to 3. as well, but also because borders shift even within the year we speak of so that it becomes impossible to choose exactly the right line. We try our best to hit the least erroneous approximation, but it won’t always be perfect.

April 8, 2018

Brexit: Why Britain Left the European Union

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

PragerU
Published on 12 Mar 2018

Is the European Union good for Europe? Or would Europeans be better off without it? Nigel Farage, a leader of the United Kingdom’s Brexit movement, shares his view.

Script:

If one big government is bad, imagine how much worse two big governments would be. But that’s what people living in Europe have had to deal with: their own nation’s bloated government and the super-national government of Europe, now known as the European Union. Bureaucracy times two! How’s that for a horror show?

Well, actually, you’ve no idea. It’s worse than you think. Believe me — I know, because for seventeen years, I’ve represented South East England as a member of the European Parliament, the EU’s legislative body. I was also leader of the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, where I lead Britain’s efforts to leave the European Union. To their everlasting credit, that’s just what happened on June the 23rd, 2016: The United Kingdom left the European Union. The world knows it as “Brexit.”

Brexit is a statement of national sovereignty. Don’t misunderstand me: I like nations. I like borders. I like the people that live within those borders making their own laws. But I don’t like it when faceless bureaucrats make laws for nations they don’t even live in.

But that’s what they do in the European Union.

Imagine a Belgian telling a Brit how much he can charge his customers — or the reverse. The EU bureaucrats do this in a myriad of different ways, all day, every day. It is a conspiracy of the elites.

Who are those elites? Well, they’re a bunch of self-important, overpaid, social engineers with useless college degrees who have never done a proper day’s work in their lives and have no connection with ordinary, decent people. I’ll take the good sense of an Italian farmer or a French baker over the arid intellectualism of an EU bureaucrat any day.

And I say these things not as an anti-European; I love Europe! It’s a fantastic, exciting, great continent: different peoples, languages, and cultures. But these peoples, with their languages and cultures, have effectively been hijacked by a giant, ever-expanding bureaucracy: the European Union.

People will say, “but isn’t there a parliament, a European parliament, that represents the people of Europe?” Well, yes, but this body has got no real power; it can’t make its own laws. Rather, the power resides with the European Commission. They’re unelected and they can’t be removed, and that’s how absurd the whole thing is.

The European Parliament meets in Brussels. At least, that’s what I thought when I was elected there. But once a month, do you know what happens? They load the contents of our offices and papers into big, plastic trunks, and they put those trunks on lorries, and they drive them nearly 400 miles down Europe’s motorways to a French city called Strasbourg where, for four days, the contents of our offices, and our papers, are put into a new office, and the parliament then sits there. Twelve times a year this back-and-forth happens, and this from an organization who say they want to reduce their level of carbon footprint! This, from an organization whose accounts have not been given a clean bill of health by the auditors for the last twenty years!

This…a parliament? It’s more like a traveling circus.

For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/brexit-why-britain-left-european-union

March 2, 2018

Sean Gabb on the ever-more-likely “hard Brexit” option

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Sean Gabb hasn’t read the full text of the draft treaty of withdrawal from the European Union, but does offer some general points that do not depend on the details in that document:

I wish the Referendum had not been called. Nobody in or near power had so much as the vaguest idea of how to leave the European Union. Nearly two years on, nobody still knows what to do or how to do it. The politicians are all incompetent or dishonest, or both. The politicians in charge called an election, and were so sure of winning it that they effectively lost it. The politicians most likely to replace them are probably more incompetent, and certainly more dishonest. The other European powers and the European powers have now had time to recover from their initial shock, and are behaving like that spurned and vindictive wife. Though I repeat that I have not read it, I have no doubt their draft treaty is the modern equivalent of the Versailles Diktat. They are pushing this on us because they want to deter any other member state from trying to leave. I also suspect they are pushing it because, for the past three centuries, they have been repeatedly stuffed by us, and they now want to do some stuffing of their own.

If we accept the draft treaty, or anything like it, we shall have exchanged an equal membership of the European Union for satellite status. We shall have limited control over our internal regulations. We shall have limited control over our borders. We shall have consented to a unification of Ireland on the most humiliating terms. If, unable to negotiate better terms, our leaders tell us that we should stay in after all, that will involve still more humiliation. What little authority we ever had to negotiate opt-outs from inconvenient regulations will have evaporated. We shall be forced to join the Euro and the Schengen Agreement. Any future British “No!” will be met with pitying smiles and firm insistence. I will say nothing about the prospects for civil disorder in this country.

On the bright side, the draft treaty – if as bad as I am told it is – makes everything much simpler that it was. The Tory ultras strike me as no less corrupt and dishonest than everyone else. I think little of the people concerned. But their plan, such as it is, has become the only plan on offer.

Whether she is profoundly stupid is beside the point. Our main problem with Theresa May is that she appears to be unable to make up her mind. Well, I think it was Abba Eban who said that, when everything else has been tried and seen to fail, people will often do the right thing. Here for what they are worth, are my proposals for Mrs May:

  1. Reject the draft treaty without further discussion;
  2. Propose a free trade treaty to cover goods and services, and call for a joint committee to examine how all present and future European regulations can be imposed and verified in this country for those things alone that are exported into the European Union;
  3. Tell the Irish that they can avoid a hard border with Ulster by joining us outside the European Union;
  4. Put up whatever cash may be needed in the short term to keep Ulster from economic collapse;
  5. Tell the Americans that, if they want any kind of future alliance, they should give us their full backing, and be prepared to make an emergency free trade agreement;
  6. Tell everyone to plan for an economic shock next April, and make collective preparations for dealing with it.

By this point, it seems it’d be a major concession on the part of the EU negotiators to agree not to hold the formal signing of the agreement in that railway carriage at Compiègne.

February 26, 2018

India’s largest newspaper on Justin Trudeau’s “disaster visit”

Filed under: Cancon, India, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Paul Wells linked to this story in the world’s largest circulation English language newspaper, The Times of India:

Justin Trudeau and family during India visit
Image via NDTV, originally tweeted by @vijayrupanibjp

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s visit was a disaster that has little parallel in India’s recent diplomatic history. But as the Canadian prime minister returned home on Saturday after almost a week of recurrent diplomatic missteps, ironically, it may have provided the opportunity to reset relations between Canada and India.

On Saturday, Indian government officials were angry at suggestions by Canadian officials that India was responsible for Khalistani terrorist Jaspal Atwal getting a visa to India and used his presence to embarrass Trudeau.

Trudeau, in his meeting with prime minister Narendra Modi, also complained that his visit had been shadowed by a single issue. Atwal got a visa because he was taken off the blacklist some years ago. But he was part of a number of Trudeau’s own events that did not involve the Indian government at all.

A prime ministerial visit to a foreign country for a week with a thin official component is always fraught with danger. In addition, moving the official meetings to the very end of the trip indicated that the government meetings were an after-thought. Most foreign leaders who throw in other events almost always front-load the official meetings, and then go on to business or tourism events.

Here, it was clear from the start that Trudeau came to India to score with his Sikh constituency back home — four out of the six cabinet ministers who travelled with him were Sikh, as were an overwhelming number of MPs who also travelled with him. Until the media barrage in India forced the Canadian side to change tack, Trudeau was not even ready to meet Amarinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab. Even the Canadian high commissioner’s official reception was a celebration of Punjab with the prime minister himself waltzing in on bhangra beats.

February 23, 2018

“…the Trudeaus playing ‘Mr Dressup and Family’ in exotic locations on the taxpayers’ dime isn’t the problem”

Filed under: Cancon, India, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The press is having a hard time presenting Justin Trudeau’s India trip in a positive light, which clearly pains the teeny-bopper Trudeau fan club that composes a large part of the Canadian media. Ted Campbell sees the trip as a series of wasted opportunities to begin healing the breach between India and Canada:

I’ve taken my time in commenting on the prime minister’s trip to India. To say that I’m very disappointed is to put it mildly … I’m disappointed and a little embarrassed to be a Canadian. But the Trudeaus playing “Mr Dressup and Family” in exotic locations on the taxpayers’ dime isn’t the problem. We have, in fact, a serious problem as far as India is concerned and we, Canada, one of India’s oldest and firmest friends is in danger of being seen as an adversary. That’s a problem and it is, in my mind, a HUGE problem for Canada.

As Vishnu Prakash, former Indian envoy to Canada, told Indian news site The Print on Monday, ““Over the years, the Canadian political establishment, across the spectrum (whether it is the NDP, Conservatives or Liberals) has been mollycoddling Khalistani elements. Under the Trudeau government, this has increased. He had himself appeared on a Khalistani platform in Toronto in April last year.” It, the “mollycoddling Khalistani elements,” has been going on since at least the 1980s, back when Indira Ghandi’s government cracked down (1984) and nearly provoked a civil war and even in 1985 when Air India flight 182 was bombed, almost certainly an attack organized by Canadians, in Canada, as retaliation. Then the governments of the day spent 20 years and over $100 million on an investigation that retired Supreme Court Justice John Major described as a “cascading series of errors” by the government, writ large, including, especially, the RCMP and CSIS. India was not impressed.

India was less impressed when Canadian political parties began to actively court the Canadian the entire Indo-Canadian community but failed to condemn Sikh separatism. Canadians, including Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau have “explained,” correctly, that people are allowed to support unpopular causes here in Canada, so long as they don’t break our laws, but India, not unreasonably, given Canada’s own history of separatist violence, would like something more. But the Sikh vote is active and “efficient” and all parties want it and that seems, to India, anyway, to mean turning a blind eye to the (disputed) fact assertion that the Khalistan independence movement is centred in and funded from Canada … Prime Minister Trudeau made thing worse, according to The Hindu, when “On April 30, [2017] Mr. Trudeau addressed a parade for ‘Khalsa Day’, which included floats glorifying Sikh militant leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Amreek Singh and former General Shahbeg Singh who were killed in the siege of the Golden Temple and Operation Bluestar in June 1984.” That act appears to have crossed a line, leading to what the whole world is now interpreting as a major diplomatic snub […]

The big issue is not the rather gentlemanly snub of Justin Trudeau by India’s highest officials; our prime minister appears more interested in having an all expenses paid vacation with his family than in doing the nation’s business in any event; the real issue is the Canadian political actions that made it politically necessary for Prime Minister Modi to administer that snub at all.

What Canada needs to do now is repair relations with India, and that may require Prime Minister Trudeau to look very, very closely at any ties any of his ministers may have with the Khalistan independence movement, he says there are none, and either making them sever all ties with separatists or severing them from the Liberal cabinet, caucus and even the Party. Andrew Scheer needs to do the same with the Conservatives and Jagmeet Singh needs to speak out for national unity ~ if it’s good for Canada then it’s good for India, too. On this issue, at least, politics should indeed, stop at the water’s edge.

Of course, when you allow things like this to happen, diplomacy becomes a much trickier profession than normal:

In Britain, the Daily Mail published the comments from a lot of Indians who have been offended by Trudeau’s choices of clothing on the visit so far:

Justin Trudeau has been ridiculed on social media by Indians for his ‘tacky’ and over the top outfit choices while on his first visit to their nation as Prime Minister.

While many praised his clothing during the first two days of his trip, patience was wearing thin by the time he attended a Bollywood gala on Tuesday night, before the tide turned against him on Wednesday.

Ministers, authors, journalists and ordinary Indians lined up to mock him on Wednesday, saying his wardrobe was ‘fake and annoying’.

Perhaps taking note of the criticism, the Canadian leader donned a suit on Thursday as he visited Jama Masjid, one of India’s largest mosques.

Leading the criticism was Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, who tweeted on Wednesday saying Trudeau’s preening was ‘all just a bit much.’

‘We Indians do not dress like this every day sir, not even in Bollywood.’

Bhaavna Arora, a bestselling Indian author, also chimed in, accusing Trudeau of wearing ‘fancy dress’ and saying she found it ‘fake and annoying’.

Shekhar Gupta, founder of Indian newspaper The Print also mocked the Canadian Prime Minister, accusing him of ‘running a week-long “election campaign” in India in fancy dress.’

February 20, 2018

The EU transition period proposals “are the sort of terms which might be imposed by a victorious power in war on a defeated enemy”

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Martin Howe on the way the European Union “negotiators” are treating the transition period for the UK as a re-run of the Versailles Treaty, with the UK substituted for the Kaiser’s Imperial Germany:

The European Union’s proposals for the UK’s transition period make grim reading. They are the sort of terms which might be imposed by a victorious power in war on a defeated enemy. They are not terms which any self-respecting independent and sovereign country could possibly agree to, even for an allegedly limited period.

Apparently, we must agree to implement every new EU law while having no say or vote; and we shall not be allowed to conclude trade agreements, even to roll over existing agreements which the EU has with other countries so that they continue to apply to us, without the EU’s permission. We must abide by the rulings of a foreign court on which there will no longer be any British representation.

Apparently, an outrageous and demeaning proposal by the Commission that the UK should be subject to extra-judicial sanctions under which the EU could suspend market access rights is now to be “re-worded”. But that would still leave the UK extremely vulnerable to damaging new rules being imposed on us during the transition period by processed in which we would have no vote and no voice. As reported in the Telegraph last week, the EU has plans to use these powers in order to launch regulatory “raids” on financial institutions on British territory and to make rules which will damage the competitiveness of the UK’s financial services industry.

But quite apart from the totally unacceptable terms for the transition period itself which are being proposed by the EU, the EU is seeking to use the transition period deal as a lever to secure damaging long term commitments from the UK. The most damaging of these is the EU’s attempt to lever the Irish border issue in order to force the UK to act as a long term captive market for EU goods exports by pressing for legally binding text that would force us into a long term obligation to comply with EU tariffs and regulations on standards of goods, on the specious ground that it is impossible to have an open border without all tariffs and regulations being the same.

There should be no doubt that being required to follow either EU tariffs or EU standards on goods would be a total disaster for the UK. It would make it difficult or impossible to conduct an independent trade policy, and to negotiate trade agreements with non-EU countries. How could we expect any significant trading partner to be willing to enter into an agreement with us, if we tell them that we cannot grant mutual recognition to their own goods standards because our own are permanently regulated by the EU? And how can subordinating the UK to the vassal status of taking rules on which we have no vote possibly be compatible with the British people’s vote to take back control of our laws and our courts?

January 6, 2018

The EU and its many separatist movements

Filed under: Europe — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Theodore Dalrymple explores an odd thing in Europe which has often puzzled me: that movements to separate linguistic or economically distinct regions from their parent country are almost all equally eager to remain part of the EU:

[…] But having said all this, we still have not explained why nationalist centrifugalists, if I may so call them, are so eager to form an alliance with EU centripetalists, who wish to efface the very thing the nationalists claim to be seeking. Several hypotheses are possible, and none susceptible of final proof.

The first is that that these nationalists are not even aware of the contradiction. Few of us are logical calculating machines who work out the full implications of our beliefs, let alone always act in our own best interests. I am only too aware that I have no consistent doctrine of life, morality, or politics, that I am not even consistent from day to day or moment to moment, and am, on the whole, quite untroubled by this. Entirely consistent men are apt to be spine-chilling.

Second, nationalist dislike of immediate neighbors, whether the explanation for it be reasonable or unreasonable, may loom so large that it overcomes logical thought. Jumping out of frying pans into fires is a well-known human phenomenon.

There is a third explanation, which is that the leaders of the nationalist parties or separatist groups want there to be more places at the top table — vacancies that they would then fill. They might even rise to the dizzying heights of the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, who has long bestridden the world, or Europe at any rate, like a colossus. This he could never have done without the existence of the EU. In other words, personal ambition and the megalomania of petty potentates.

But what should be the attitude of leaders of the European Union toward the potential fracturing of the EU member states as they are at present constituted? In the short term, EU leaders have to pretend to support the current arrangements, because for the moment power is concentrated in the hands of the leaders of those member states. If the power in Madrid or London begins, however, to seep away, the path to a Europe not of the nations but of (as Professor Guérot puts it) “the regions” is cleared. Then, as she says, the citizens of Europe “will elect their president by direct universal suffrage. Finished with the system of checks and balances … ”

I can’t wait for all those terrible checks and balances to be swept away. And, while we are at it, why should this process be confined to Europe? Is Professor Guérot a closet nationalist — even a racist? If Europeans can, why can’t the entire population of the world, elect their president (of a Republic of the World) by direct universal suffrage?

The language of most separatist leaders draws on the airy — and usually not defined in detail — concept of independence, being in charge of their own destiny, Maîtres Chez Nous, out from under those foreign rulers in [London|Madrid|Rome], etc. Yet the very next most important issue always seems to be jumping right back into a different form of foreign rulership. Almost as if the whole “independence” thing was merely a vehicle to getting better parking spots in Brussels.

December 29, 2017

Autopsy of the “Remain” campaign – but the rules only apply to the little people!

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of this:

The Remain campaign flouted Electoral Commission rules so it could overspend by up to £7.5 million during the referendum, a Guido investigation can reveal. Over the next few days Guido will be looking at how the various Remain groups coordinated their messaging, campaign plans, data, materials and donations, causing them to overspend by more than double the legal limit. Sorry Electoral Commission HQ, you’re going to have to come back early from your Christmas holidays…

The Electoral Commission rules are clear: if one campaign “coordinates [its] activity with another campaigner”, then they are “highly likely to be working together”. This definition of “working together” is important, because the Electoral Commission also says: “the lead campaign group must count all of the spending of all the campaigners it works together with towards its own limit”. Guess what… they didn’t.

Two books provide detailed accounts of a number of Remain campaigns coordinating plans and working together in the weeks leading up to the referendum. Tim Shipman’s All Out War reveals “[Craig] Oliver led an early-morning conference call for the media teams at 6.15am. At 7.30am there was a second conference call, in which Stronger In would tell Labour In, Conservatives IN and the Liberal Democrats about their plans for the day”. This clearly counts as “coordinating” and “working together” under the Electoral Commission’s definition.

December 24, 2017

Post-Brexit Britain as “a Venezuela without the oil or the tropical climate”

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Theodore Dalrymple on the possible downsides of a hard Brexit:

Important (for good or evil) as Brexit may be to the future of Britain, it is not without its importance for the European Union. Indeed, it was always essential for the Union that Britain’s departure should be an economic disaster for Britain: for if it were not, why have a union at all?

It was therefore entirely predictable that the Union should drive a hard bargain with Britain, even a bargain economically harmful to itself, provided only that it was worse for Britain: for the self-preservation of the European political class is at stake. In the European Union politics always trumps economics.

In Britain too, political considerations were uppermost in the minds of those who voted for Brexit. They saw in the European Union a Yugoslavia in the making, led by a megalomaniac class without effective checks or balances. But now they are increasingly apprehensive of the economic costs of Brexit.

And the economic auguries for Britain are indeed poor, though not only, or even principally, because of the European Union’s hostility. The fact is that Britain is unlikely to be able to take any advantage of life outside the European straitjacket because its own political class is itself in favour of straitjackets that are no better, and quite possibly worse than, the European ones. The present Prime Minister, Theresa May, is very much a statist, indistinguishable from European social democrats, and the leader of the opposition, Mr Corbyn, who might well be the next Prime Minister, is an unapologetic admirer of Hugo Chavez. It is hardly to be expected that foreign investors will place much trust or confidence in an isolated country whose next government might very well weaken property rights, impose capital controls and increase corporate taxation in favour of supposed social justice. It would not take very long to turn Britain into a northern Venezuela: a Venezuela without the oil or the tropical climate.

Moreover, Britain already has many weaknesses and few strengths. It has a huge and persistent trade imbalance, because it does not produce enough of what the world wants and cannot easily be made to do so; it has a large national debt, about the same size as that of France, but without a highly functioning infrastructure such as France’s to show for it; its household debt is among the highest in the world. For many years, its economic policy might as well have been presided over by Mr Madoff; its social policy has been to smash up all forms of social solidarity or support for the vulnerable that do not pass through the state. The destruction of the little platoons has been very thorough: most large ‘charities’ in Britain are now dependent on government rather than on private funding, and hence are in effect departments of state.

November 1, 2017

Spain versus Catalonia

Filed under: Europe, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Black on the situation in Catalonia after the abortive declaration of independence:

L’Estelada Blava, the “blue-starred flag” of the Catalonian independence movement
(Via Wikimedia)

An excessive focus on history can obscure the real dynamic informing the Catalonia autonomous community’s push for independence from Spain. It makes it look as if what we’re seeing now is a revival of a longstanding strain of Catalan nationalism, drawing on its 12th-century legacy as a principality, fired up by the divided union of Aragon and Catalonia during the early modern era, and burnished with the left-wing romance of Catalonia’s stand-alone, red-and-black resistance to General Franco during the 1930s. It makes it look, ultimately, as if Catalonia is not only an entity distinct from the rest of Spain, it is also a victim of, if not Spain, than certainly the Spanish state.

Not that matters have been helped by the Spanish government’s brutal, anti-democratic response to Catalonia’s independence referendum, as unconstitutional and therefore illegal as it was. It merely reinforced the impression that this is a conflict between an oppressive state and an oppressed people. After all, such is the defensiveness and weakness of the Spanish political class, we saw armed units of Guardia Civil assaulting Catalan voters, forcibly shutting polling stations and confiscating ballot boxes, and now we see charges of rebellion and sedition being laid at the doors of the leading pro-independence Catalan politicians, which has even prompted the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to flee to Brussels. This really does look like a conflict rooted in some longstanding desire of the Spanish state to bend the Catalans to its will.

But to think that misses the real catalyst for the Spanish crisis, which lies less in Madrid or Barcelona, than in the European Union’s HQ in Brussels. That’s because, in the EU’s flight, manned by Western Europe’s political classes, from the democratic accountability of national peoples, in its demonisation of the very idea of national sovereignty as a species of 1930s-style nationalism, indeed in its essential anti-national elitism, it has created a transnational, technocratic set of institutions that necessarily weakens national state structures, depriving nations of numerous lawmaking powers, border controls and economic independence. Admittedly, the Spanish nation state has never been particularly strong. In common with the rest of Europe, its party-political system is in disarray, with its two traditional behemoths, the Socialist and Popular parties, hollowed out, and populist rivals exploding on to the scene. And, specific to Spain, the state has failed properly to cohere itself as a state, with suppressed regional antagonisms re-emerging in the post-Franco era. But the EU has not only exacerbated the internal weaknesses of the Spanish state; it has also fundamentally undermined even the possibility of a functioning nation state.

[…]

Yes, the cultural distinction between Catalonia and the rest of Spain has come to the fore in recent decades, with the red-yellow-and-blue Estelada a familiar sight hanging from buildings, and Catalan a familiar sound on the streets. But it’s clear that the driving force is less cultural difference, no matter how divisive, than the experience of EU-driven austerity as an unnecessary drain on an economically rich region. This is why support for Catalan independence has only risen dramatically since the economic crisis. As the Financial Times puts it: ‘After decades during which Catalan support for independence hovered between 15 and 20 per cent, secessionist sentiment started climbing rapidly in 2009. By 2011, according to the closely followed survey by the Catalan Centre for Opinion Studies (CEO), support for independence was above 30 per cent. Two years later, it reached an all-time high of 48.5 per cent.’

This is not a uniquely Spanish phenomenon, either. In other EU member states, the same dynamic is at work, with richer regions or areas with a sufficiently distinct cultural identity seeking to unfasten themselves from the rest of their respective nations. You can see it in the desire for greater economic autonomy of the rich Lombardy and Veneto regions in northern Italy. And you can see it again in Belgium, with the wealthy northern region of Flanders continually seeking to decouple itself from the de-industrialised, relatively impoverished southern region of Wallonia.

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