Big job: Sunak greets Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson outside Number 10 Downing Street. The survey underscores the challenge Sunak’s
government has in reviving economic growth with a labour force that has shrunk since the pandemic. — Reuters
LONDON: The United Kingdom (UK) has fallen six places in the global economic competitiveness rankings because business leaders have lost confidence in the country, due in part to “government incompetence”.
The annual World Competitiveness Ranking from the International Institute for Management Development saw the UK plunge from 23rd to 29th out of 64 countries.
In a separate analysis, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warned that years of underinvestment are holding back growth and harming ambitions to build up green industries.
It estimated the nation would have received an extra £560bil (US$720bil or RM3.3 trillion) in real terms had investment from private firms and the government stayed at the Group of Seven average since 2005.
“The UK is experiencing a debilitating case of investment phobia, and the government’s aversion to investing to seize future opportunities is stopping us from getting out of the growth doom loop we find ourselves in,” said George Dibb, associate director for the economy at IPPR.
The figures underscore the challenge Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has in reviving economic growth with a labour force that has shrunk since the pandemic.
Political leaders from all parties are concerned about the UK’s stagnating productivity and sticky levels of inflation, which have undermined the confidence of investors both in stocks and in businesses.
In the competitiveness rank, the UK lost ground on all the key indicators, which is a worrying sign for the government, which wants to attract investment to boost growth.
Respondents said the country had become more bureaucratic, the government less efficient, and the workforce less productive.
Denmark held on to the top spot in 2023, and Ireland jumped nine places to second. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Singapore completed the top five.
“The dramatic drop in the survey indicators suggests a systemic pessimism about the future,” Arturo Bris, lead researcher on the rankings and director of the IMD World Competitiveness Centre, said in an interview. “The deterioration in business sentiment says executives are losing confidence in the country.”
More than 6,400 senior executives from across the world were interviewed for the report. Just 3% of respondents said the competency of the government made the UK an attractive destination for investment.
“Government incompetence, poor workplace culture, and restrictive immigration laws were among several reasons why the UK fared badly,” the report said.
The report also found that the UK is becoming increasingly bureaucratic, despite the government’s pledge to use “Brexit freedoms” to cut regulation. The UK fell 12 places in the bureaucracy sub-ranking from 15th to 27th, while France climbed from 44th to 41st, Bris said.
France remained less attractive than the UK, dropping five places to 33rd in the rankings. Germany fell seven places to 22nd.
The survey was conducted between February and May but reflected the political chaos of 2022, a year in which the UK got through three prime ministers and four chancellors.
The struggling economy, with inflation higher and the labour market tighter than other leading industrial nations, will have also affected sentiment badly, Bris said. — Bloomberg
British Prime Minister Liz Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before global economic forces effectively
destroyed her government.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Whatever you may think of them, the British used to enjoy the reputation of a solid, well-run and responsible nation.
A centuries-old history of peaceful political change, with none of the coups, revolutions or civil wars that seem to have afflicted most other countries worldwide. A robust parliamentary system of government in which just two political parties take their turns in holding power based on electoral procedures that produce clear-cut results and solid governments with none of the unpredictable and often unstable coalition-making that afflicts most of the rest of Europe.
To be sure, the country’s politicians have always been of variable quality. But the United Kingdom’s civil service was highly rated for its professionalism and integrity, and so was its legal system, still considered an advantage and often touted as a national asset by many countries around the world.
That’s why Britain’s sudden descent into crisis looks so surprising. In just a few weeks, the credibility of some of the most critical institutions in British national life, including the prime minister, the Treasury, the Bank of England, the ruling Conservative Party, and the nation’s asset management industry, were all torn to shreds.
The country’s currency has sunk to its lowest levels in half a century, and the risk premium international investors demand to lend money to Britain is among the highest in the industrialised world.
For the first time in modern history, the British government was forced to bow to the pressure of global financial markets and withdraw a budget it had introduced only two weeks beforehand. And in another highly unusual move, the International Monetary Fund issued a rebuke to Britain using language otherwise reserved for those who manage the economies of poor and vulnerable developing nations.
Truss versus lettuce
Consequently, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who assumed office only last month, had to ditch her policies before these were even tried, and the speculation in London is that her days are numbered.
The influential Economist newspaper had pointed out that, if one ignores the extended period of official mourning for Queen Elizabeth II – a period during which all politics were suspended – Ms Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before the forces of the global economy effectively destroyed her government. That, The Economist suggested, is more or less the supermarket “shelf-life of the lettuce”.
Liz Truss may never recover from this cruel jibe: a British tabloid newspaper is currently offering its readers a live video stream of a lettuce head and a photograph of the Prime Minister, accompanied by the question, “which wet lettuce will last longer?”
Britain as a whole is now the butt of international jokes. Politicians in Italy – a country that will soon get its 70th government in almost as many years – have suggested that one of their retired prime ministers may be sent to London to try his hand at managing the British because he can’t do any worse than Britain’s politicians.
Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister of Greece, a country that a decade ago had to be bailed out from national bankruptcy by global financial institutions, told Ms Truss’ government tongue-in-cheek that if they “need experience in dealing with the International Monetary Fund, we’re here to help”.
While the attention is on the UK experience, other economies and major currencies are also currently experiencing global pressure. The British pound may be down around 18 per cent to 20 per cent, but the euro is about 15 per cent weaker, and the Chinese renminbi dropped by an average of 11 per cent against the US dollar. The Bank of Japan recently spent an estimated US$21 billion (S$30 billion) trying to prop up the yen, to no avail.
However, credibility is everything in politics, finance and economics, and the UK government finally managed to lose all of these. Britain’s previously admired institutional framework and its hard-won reputation of certainty in financial policy went down the pan over the past two weeks.
And financial volatility is accompanied by political volatility. Between 1990 and 2010 – two decades – Britain was ruled by only three prime ministers. But from 2010 to now - just over one decade - the country has already known four additional prime ministers and may yet be ready for a fifth. Furthermore, no less than four politicians have served as finance ministers since January this year. These are chaotic politics Italian-style, minus the sun-drenched beaches or the delicious pasta.
‘Cakeism’ and Brexit
How did Britain get to this sorry state? A mixture of immediate failures by the Truss administration, magnified by a much more entrenched malaise.
Ms Truss won power by resorting to the oldest trick in politics: a promise that voters can have their cake and eat it. She vowed to cut taxes and increase spending, all based on borrowing from financial markets. And she dismissed the arguments of armies of economists who pointed out that hers was not an economic policy but a fantasy.
The more she faced criticism, the more she doubled down on her promises; her pledge to cut taxes became a test of wills, which she was determined to win. So, her ill-fated budget slashed taxes much further than anyone expected and sidelined Britain’s financial regulator and the country’s civil servants.
Ms Truss quickly discovered that one should not attempt to offer a spending bonanza against the backdrop of sharply rising inflation and interest rates, a punishing global energy crisis, as well as a British current account deficit which ballooned to an unprecedented 8 per cent of gross domestic product, and all without providing any indication of how Britain intends to deal with its public finances. The Prime Minister not only ran into a flat rejection by the financial markets, she unleashed a financial rout that could only be addressed by withdrawing her entire budget.
The problem of Ms Truss was not necessarily just the financial figures she peddled but the fact that her ill-conceived budget became totemic for a more comprehensive loss of British political and economic credibility, which has been cumulative over several years.
The chief culprit is Brexit, as the British withdrawal from the European Union is popularly known. The damage that Brexit inflicted on the British economy - in terms of lower growth rates, lower exports and slashed inward investment – is by now well-documented.
But a much more severe impact on British credibility has been the conduct of the country’s political elite during this divorce process from the rest of Europe. The campaign to withdraw from the EU was conducted with lies; those who supported Brexit produced made-up figures about how Britain’s trade with the rest of the world would, supposedly, more than compensate for the loss of duty-free access to European markets.
And anyone who dared contradict the Brexiters by providing actual economic facts and figures was dismissed as part of so-called “project fear”, an alleged plot by the “establishment” to keep Britain shackled to Europe.
The tactic worked not only in pulling Britain out of the EU; it also spawned an entirely new class of British politicians who believe that all they need to do is to ram their policies through regardless of what the economic realities may be and if the facts don’t accord with their views, present “alternative facts”.
During the campaign that propelled her to power, Ms Truss refused to engage in any serious discussion with the critics of her economic policy, just as Mr Boris Johnson, her predecessor as prime minister, declined to explain how Britain would thrive outside the EU. Both politicians operated on the assumption that make-believe economics can become real economics.
And the reason people like them can come to power is to be found in another negative development of British politics.
More On This Topic
Who chooses the party leader?
For many decades, the Conservatives and Labour – the country’s two major historic parties – were mass movements, counting millions of members. But the election of the party leaders who could then become prime ministers was left in the hands of the few, usually just the MPs in either party.
Over the past 15 years, however, mass party membership disappeared: Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for instance, has far more paid-up members than all the political parties combined.
Yet, curiously, the choice of who gets elected as party leader was taken from MPs and given to the parties’ entire membership. The result is that an unrepresentative group of party members – in the case of the ruling Conservatives, only around 160,000 people out of a total population of 68 million – decides who would rule Britain.
If it were left to the MPs alone, Ms Truss would have got nowhere near the Downing Street residence of British prime ministers. But she won on a platform of economic fantasies sold to people who wanted to believe in the enduring myth of having something for nothing.
Ultimately, it was left to the global financial markets to confront Britain with the rude awakening it deserves by presenting the country and its daydreaming politicians with the invoice for their mismanagement.
It’s improbable that Ms Truss will ever recover from its current debacle; the only question is whether the humiliation the UK has just experienced at the hands of global financial markets will bring to an end the age of untruthful politics that has so devalued the country’s administration.
But it won’t be easy to get out of this rut. King Charles III best summed up the national mood when he recently welcomed Prime Minister Truss to an audience with “dear, oh dear!
CGTN Exclusive: UK's secret betrayal, repatriation of Chinese sailors after WWII
CGTN digs into a dark chapter of the #UK's wartime history, where racial prejudice in some of the highest echelons of government resulted in broken families, lost heritage and a fight to make British authorities apologize for a shameful past. The Chinese sailors, who once braved the stormy seas and battlefronts of the North Atlantic to keep Allied forces supplied during the Second World War, were forcibly repatriated when the war ended. Hundreds of men vanished overnight, leaving behind wives, partners and children without any explanation of where they had gone and why. CGTN speaks to sons, daughters and grandchildren of the sailors about the tragedy in the documentary "The Secret Betrayal."
Julie Tanny's father Charles Tanny Photo: Courtesy of Julie Tanny
Editor's Note: `
Among the victims of the CIA's MK Ultra project is the family of Julie Tanny (Tanny), whose father was coercively brainwashed as part of the Montreal Experiments in Canada back in the 1950s. The experiments were funded by the Canadian government and covertly in part by the CIA. She is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against five defendants - the US government, the Canadian government, the McGill University health center, the Royal Victoria Hospital, and McGill University, as her family was irreparably destroyed by the program. She shared her story with the Global Times (GT) in a recent interview. ` GT: You father underwent brainwashing treatment for three months in 1957 by Dr. Ewen Cameron. Why did he go? ` Tanny: My father had what's called trigeminal neuralgia, which is a pain in the side of the face that goes into the jaw. Apparently, it's excruciating because I actually know somebody who has it and just recovered from it. `
They believed at the time that it was psychosomatic. So they sent him to a psychiatrist. My father was very against it, but he did whatever he had to do to get rid of the pain because he just couldn't function. `
The doctor that he went to see was working with Dr. Cameron on this program in the hospital, which we didn't know. He put my father into the programs. We don't know what they wanted to do with him, but we do know that his treatment was different in that my father was not a psychiatric patient. That's what made him different from all the other ones. ` GT: What "treatment" did he undergo? ` Tanny: What they did was as soon as he was admitted to the hospital, they immediately put him on insulin. My father was not a diabetic. I know that the insulin put him in a coma. It was part of the sleep treatment where they put him to sleep, and after it he was interviewed by the psychiatrist, then they would take clips of some of the things he said and run them on a tape, 24-7 under his pillow. It would be going around nonstop in his head, brainwashing him basically. But what they would do was they would give him shock treatments, but not the regular shock treatments they give today. These are called Page-Russells. It was a machine invented by a Mr. Page and Mr. Russell. It was about 75 times the strength of a regular shock treatment. It was designed to wipe out the brain. And the tape was to replace it with different thoughts. `
I don't really know what they were trying to do, but I know in my father's case, they said they had written notes like "this is as far as we can take him" or "we have to put him back in because he still has ties to his former life." It's hard to know, but whatever they were trying to do, it wasn't good. ` GT: How did you know these details? Did your father share what they did to him with you or did you acquire the information through other means? ` Tanny: No. What happened was I was about 5 years old at the time, so I definitely remember what he was like before and what he was like after - it was two different people. My father was very engaged and very hands-on with us. All his free time was spent with his children. And after he came home, he didn't even know who we were. When we were at my mother's for dinner in 1978, when it came on the news that Mrs. Orlikow, who was the wife of a member of parliament in Winnipeg, was suing the CIA and we were all sitting around watching the news and my mother turned to my brother and said, go to the hospital and get dad's records tomorrow. ` And I was like, what are you talking about? Because no one ever told us what happened to my father or why he changed so much. The problem with that was my father had a massive stroke in 1977 and was left unable to communicate. He couldn't speak, he couldn't write, he couldn't read. `
And once I had found out about really what happened to him in 1978, it was too late to have that conversation with him. So it was never talked about. Never. Even after we found out. ` GT: How severely did this affect you and your family? `
Tanny: I think that we started off as a very happy family with the father who was always busy, building a skating rink in the backyard and taking us to the ice rink in the park across the street, and taking us to the amusement park every now and then. `
And all that, everything ended when he came back from the hospital. He came back very angry - physically violent. I asked my brother, what was it like to grow up in our house? And he said empty. ` GT: What prompted your fight for justice? ` Tanny:A lot of things happened to push us to do this. First of all, when my father had his stroke, the doctors couldn't find a reason; he didn't have a blood clot or high blood pressure. What happened to him was he had an artery that collapsed. And recent studies or pretty recent studies have shown that these particular shock treatments that my father had create heart attacks and stroke. ` My mother had to work till the day she died to support herself. And when my mother passed away, there was nothing. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer very shortly after my father died. I don't know what she would have lived on had she lived longer. And I guess it's also what we should have inherited and didn't. So there are a lot of factors. ` I know that in 1992, my mother received $100,000 from the federal government, but it cost, we figured out, my mother over $2 million in cash to have helped to take care of my father. ` So what was $100,000? When a temporary short-term head of the CIA read about what had happened, he insisted that the CIA found all the victims and compensated them properly and told them this twice. And the CIA both times admitted that they should and they will, but of course they never did. And then there's just the justice of it. It's amazing to me that they've never compensated people. They've never bothered to look at the damage [such experiment] did to families. ` GT: You and the other victims formed the group Survivors Allies Against Government Abuse in 2017. How many families are involved in the group? ` Tanny: I've never counted how many families are members, but I can tell you, as far as family members are concerned, it's got to be over 500. But there's also a lot I believe that have not come forward yet, because I'm always meeting more people. ` GT: You are the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit. Do you think a class action lawsuit can exert more pressure than individual lawsuits? ` Tanny: Definitely. First of all, I always believe their strength and numbers. But also to do this, there are very few lawyers, if any, who were willing to take on the work for one client. There's so much work to be done. We were very lucky to get the lawyers that we got. ` GT: What difficulties have you met during the process of executing your lawsuit? ` Tanny: I think the first thing is the government. When Justin Trudeau came into office, one of the first things he did was create these privacy acts so that nobody could get access to any kind of information, so that nobody could sue the government. `
So, when people are trying to find medical records, he makes it very difficult because they found 1 million different ways to deny people records under really ridiculous circumstances. `
Like we know it wasn't just Dr. Cameron, it was everybody who worked at the hospital - the nurses, all the doctors. So the idea that he would have to be the lead doctor on all these cases is ridiculous. We used to go to McGill University and do research and we found out a lot of information through that research. But once we filed, they hid everything. We would get mountains of files before we filed. And once we filed the lawsuit, you go and you get a file about this thick (1 cm). It's just their way of protecting themselves, I guess. `
So for me, we've had the records for a very long time. I wouldn't read them, but we had them. But there are a lot of people who have not yet been given that information. It's difficult for them. ` GT: Are there still such experiments in Canada or the US, as far as you know? ` Tanny:We have a website and we've done things. So people have seen what we're doing. I get so many emails from people who say they're being experimented on. I guess today there're different ways of mind control that are a lot more progressive than what they did in the past. It's hard to know. I wouldn't be at all surprised. Governments are governments. I don't think all that much has changed. Our world has become all about power and control. `
So do I think there's that going on? Sure, but not anything like the primitive way they tried in the 50s. But I do get a lot of emails.
`
"They've taken away enough from me. I don't remember my birth name. I am not in contact with my children. It's a very degrading, devastating reality," said 72-year-old Maryam Ruhullah, an MK Ultra victim who now lives in Grand Prairie, Texas. `
MK Ultra is the code name of a human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the US and its notorious spy agency the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It started on April 13, 1953 and lasted for 20 years. `
It was the height of the Cold War, and the US designed covert operation, among which was MK Ultra, aimed at developing tools that could be used against Soviet bloc enemies to control human behavior with drugs and other psychological manipulators. `
Psychedelic drugs, paralytics, and electroshock therapy, all heinous and inhumane techniques, were clandestinely but routinely used on humans. They included citizens from the US and other countries who were unwitting test subjects, an encapsulation of immense human rights violations. `
Many experiments were conducted in Fort Detrick as a key base of operations. Many people died as a result of these experiments. Those who survived had their memories forcibly erased, forgetting their names and having their personalities irrevocably altered, and faced threats to their lives, living in fear for the remainder of their days. More than 40 years on, the physical, mental, emotional, social horrors, and injuries are still with her, Ruhullah told the Global Times. ` US mind control scheme `
The psychosis induction of Ruhullah started when she was 5 or 6 while attending a parade in London. She was then brought to the US where CIA operatives would continuously use a recording played over tape recorder to embed in her mind what they wanted her to become in her own memory. `
"I remember one time I had been given electric shock treatments and was returned to a room. When I regained a little bit of consciousness, I heard one of the hospital staff say something to the effect of: Why do they do this to her? Why are they giving her so many shock treatments?" said Ruhullah. `
Ruhullah believed that what happened to her was political because of her Iranian heritage. She was then relocated, taken away, and lived and was educated in Russia afterward. At 19, she married an American and moved to the US. Seven years later, a member of US law enforcement agency entered her house and told her she had to be put in protective custody. Although she greatly protested, she was forced to go. She was not able to contact her husband or her son who was about 6 years old at that time. It was the second time that she would be an unwilling participant in a mind control program. ` Ruhullah said she has been living somebody else's lie. `
"You remain physically drained, because there's something that drains your spirit. You cannot hold a conversation with anyone regarding a situation, because everyone that is allowed in your life goes along with the lie, either out of total indifference and complacency, or because they build an allegiance to the government that they have to continue this lie or something would happen to them." `
The CIA mind control schemes did not just remain on US soil but were extended to US allied countries including Denmark, Australia, and Canada. `
In December 2021, a Danish documentary titled The Search for Myself was released, leveling claims against the CIA that in the early 1960s it had financially aided experiments on 311 Danish children, a good number of whom were orphans or adopted. The filmmaker, Per Wennick, himself was one of them.
`
Wennick told Radio Denmark that as one of the kids forced to participate in the experiment, he had electrodes placed on his arms, legs, and chest around his heart. The children were also subjected to loud and high-pitched sounds, which was "very uncomfortable." `
According to Australian media reports, the US once took the experiments to Australia in the 1960s that involved Sydney University psychology students. `
What took place in the Danish documentary and Australian media reports was just the tip of the iceberg. Between 1950 and 1964, experiments funded by the Canadian government and covertly in part by the CIA as part of MK Ultra were conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University in Canada and were led by Scottish psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron. `
None of the Canadian patients provided consent or knew that they were being used for clandestine research purposes. So far, neither the CIA nor the Canadian government has apologized for either's role in these experiments which ruined hundreds of families. `
Julie Tanny's family is one of them. In 1957 when she was 5 years old, her father went to see a doctor as he had trigeminal neuralgia, while the doctor, who worked in cahoots with Dr. Cameron, put him into one of the many brainwashing programs. `
Tanny told the Global Times that her father was put to sleep first, then he was forced to listen to clips of some of the things he had said on a continual 24-hour loop underneath his pillow while he slept as part of the brainwashing process. Then he would be subjected to shock treatments administered using a machine called the Page-Russells, which emitted voltages about 75 times the strength of a regular shock treatment, and the aim was to wipe out his memory. `
Such experiments were administered on Tanny's father for three months, and he was discharged because he "still has ties to his former life." He returned home, but the happy family was soon destroyed. `
Photo: VCG ` Typical US democracy style `
Colin A. Ross, a US-based psychiatrist, wrote a book titled The C.I.A. Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists, after reading a collection of 15,000-page files from the CIA reading room. As a psychiatrist, he believes the CIA mind control programs were very abusive to innate human nature. `
Moreover, Ross calls into question the medical ethics of said CIA doctors. `
"You have to create psychiatric disorder on purpose, which is completely the opposite of the purpose of psychiatry. And the patient, the subject doesn't give informed consent. They don't have legal representation. So it completely violates all medical ethics," said Ross. `
Despite mounting public backlash and condemnation, the CIA is yet to officially apologize for the actions it took during the Cold War and after. The CIA's mind control projects are still relevant today because they provide a horrific historical narrative of intelligence misconduct in a country that keeps touting human rights and freedom. `
"The problem I have with the United States, while I'm a US citizen, is that they tend to point the finger; accuse other countries around the world of human rights violations, but they don't take responsibility for their own. So I think it's hypocritical and it's all part of geopolitical maneuvering and so on," said Ross. `
"This is the typical style of US democracy - violating human rights and committing crimes at will and then being forced to acknowledge it decades later," Aleksandr Kolpakidi, a Russian intelligence historian, told the Global Times. `
Tanny said she gets many emails from people who say they are currently being experimented on, and she believes mind control experiments are still ongoing, albeit not quite as primitive as those performed in the 1950s. `
"I guess today there're different ways of mind control that are a lot more progressive than what they did in the past. It's hard to know. I wouldn't be at all surprised. Governments are governments. I don't think all that much has changed. Our world has become all about power and control," said Tanny. `
CIA mind control myth. Graphic: Deng Zijun/GT `
CIA mind control myth. Graphic: Deng Zijun/GT ` Seeking justice `
The CIA MK Ultra program was brought to the public's attention in 1975, and victims and their families in Canada started to fight for the responsible parties to be brought to justice and be held accountable for the lifelong pain and suffering. `
A 1980 lawsuit which dragged on for eight years made nine Canadians receive only $67,000 each from the US Department of Justice. `
Tanny's father died in 1992, the same day his wife, Tanny's mother, received compensation worth $100,000 by the Canadian government. He was among the 77 victims who received such compensation. `
But for Tanny, this was just a drop in the bucket in comparison to the whooping $2 million it took her mother to take care of her father. And her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer very shortly after the death of her father. `
In 2017, she and other victims formed the group Survivors Allies Against Government Abuse to exert more pressure on the defendants, and she keeps meeting new people who are victims of such mind control programs. Tanny has filed a request for a class-action lawsuit against the US and Canadian governments, the McGill University health center, the McGill University, and the Allan Memorial Institute, hoping this will extend compensation to family members and other victims. `
Tanny told the Global Times that they will be in court against the US government on April 26. `
Ruhullah said that she hopes the world will remember the immense suffering of MK Ultra victims by setting aside a special day. `
"I know after apartheid, they had a reconciliation council. We don't have anything like that, be it MK Ultra, be it slavery, be it the genocide of the Native Americans, in order for the individuals and the country to heal. There needs to be acknowledgment, there needs to be apologies, there needs to be compensation, and there needs to be a genuine reconciliation," said Ruhullah.
Trustworthy friends; good brothers; sincere
partners. These phrases are frequently found in Chinese President Xi Jinping's phone conversations, letters, messages and talks with leaders of various countries.
This is not just formulaic politeness, but the truth. Over the last seven-plus decades, the number of countries having diplomatic relations with China has increased from 18 in the early days of the People's Republic of China to 181 today.
.Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau.
Illustration credit: Wuheqilin)
It's a topsy-turvy world out there. The world cries out for leaders who can steady the ship of state. Instead, we have a parade of fools like Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau. ` Boris is, undoubtedly, a gift to the entertainment world, but he doesn't belong in government. Previously, he has parlayed his non-seriousness into his personal brand, from which he can wriggle out of any scandal. But this time, with "partygate", the party is over. Like a kite dancing in the hurricane, he is crashing to earth. No one can trust a single word coming out of his mouth. With zero interest in the mundane business of government, he only comes to life at parties or in front of the camera. `
Every time, when he opens his mouth, only hot air comes out. This time, not even his unruly, carefully curated, tousled hair can save him. Clueless about how to govern, and callous to the sufferings of others, he ordered the evacuation of pets over endangered people in the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul. Who knows what lurks in his dark heart? To him, life is just a game, to be played by his rules. He is the living embodiment of Etonian entitlement. `
In foreign affairs, he is a one-trick pony, his sole role being a docile US stooge. He follows at his master's heels into potential armed conflict where Britain has no business to be. He has forgotten the shame that has been visited upon Tony Blair in Iraq and looks likely to repeat that folly. Having decoupled from the EU, Britain's most important partner, unfriended China, the world's major rising power, and betrayed France, he now faces a country that demands its pound of flesh. What kind of drug-addled leader would send his country's newest aircraft carrier out to the South China Sea, looking for trouble, in a region that has long ceased to be Britain's sphere of influence, endlessly burning precious dollars his country can't afford—all for the sake of reliving Britain's imperial past? `
Boris, you were born two centuries too late! `
Without an ounce of common sense, or an iota of strategic sense, the best that can be said about Boris is that he is never dull. He is unprepared to govern, and unfit to lead. Woe betide any nation that picks Boris as helmsman. He has no clue where Britain is heading, only that he wants to go back to the past. But Winston Churchill he is not, with no idea about the future, no heart for the present and only an obsession with the past. I nominate Boris the geopolitical clown of the world, an expensive joke that Britain can ill-afford, good for boozy parties, but not for party politics.
`Sitting one notch below Boris in the totem pole of fools is Canada's Justin Trudeau. Despite his lineage, his CV is alarmingly thin. Trading on his name, this former bar-room bouncer has become top leader. For once Trump was right, calling the Canadian prime minister "weak and stupid", allowing his country to be played like a pawn and dragged into a prolonged tug-of-war with China over Huawei's CFO, whereas his father had studiously cultivated China as an ally. Under Justin, Canada has become the 51st state of the US, with none of the rights, and all of the complications of union. Under his father, neutral Canada refused to live in the pocket of the US, and had a moderating influence on its neighbor's China policies. With his son's total tilt towards the US, not a scintilla of that influence remains. It's gone with the Trumpian hurricane. Foolishly, Trudeau signed up for 5-Eyes to contain China, sending Canadian naval vessels to the most combustible region in the world, the South China Sea. The US has an agenda on containing China which Canada ostensibly doesn't share. No good can come out of this. If you go looking for trouble, you will find it, sooner or later. All it takes is an accidental cannon and you will find Canadian ships at the bottom of the ocean. And for what? `
Trudeau's one weapon is his good looks. But looks don't amount to a hill of beans in building relationships. Yes, his looks can charm the pants off the wives of foreign leaders, cuckolding buffoons like Trump. Maybe that's why Trump has a visceral dislike of Trudeau. But the world needs global leaders with brains, not political 'gigolos' with brawn. `
Where Boris is funny, Trudeau is weak. Despite being a former bouncer, Justin is seen by Trump as a soft bullying target. Both Boris and Justin share a disinterest in the future, devoid of vision, of strategic awareness, of long-term planning. Both gravitate to photo ops. For this duo, style trumps substance. They are exemplary shallow leaders. `
What about the leader Down Under? Oh well, this one takes the cake for suicidal stupidity. One word sums up Scott Morrison: pig-headedness. Previously, Australia enjoyed a comfortable relationship with China, its largest trading partner, a relationship that had been enormously beneficial to both. But, without provocation, Morrison decides to buy into US accusations of China's abuse of human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. As a Hong Konger, I can tell him he is dead wrong about my city. Hong Kong is a misgoverned place, yes. But that is because Beijing has given local leaders too long a leash for 23 years, letting US-funded activists run amok: It was a total abuse of freedom, not lack of freedom. For nine months, chaos and violence raged. They are Hong Kong's Trump-like rioters. `
As for Xinjiang, it is imported terror. The US response to 911 attacks was to invade Iraq on false pretenses, killing over a million innocent civilians. Where was Australia's moral outrage then? China did not invade any country, only rounded up perpetrators for reeducation and job-training, then released them back into the community. Morrison swallowed CIA propaganda whole. Then he doubled down and demanded a US-inspired push to investigate China as the source of the coronavirus. By upping the ante, Morrison has derailed Sino-Australian relations, to the detriment of both. Worse, he is committing billions to building nuclear submarines to counter China's military rise. `
Didn't he know that China must arm itself to fend off aggressive US containment? What has China done to earn Australian enmity? The militarization of the South China Sea islands is a matter of life-and-death struggle against US encirclement. In the history of the world, have you ever heard of one country, trying non-stop for 70 years to encircle another country? Should China fold its arms and wait for strangulation? What would Morrison do if Australia were in China's shoes? Australia would be entitled to the right of self-defense. `
With trade dollars dwindling, with billions siphoned off into building unneeded nuclear submarines for a non-existent conflict, where is mad Morrison taking Australia? China and Australia have never been at war. If war breaks out between them, Morrison can take full credit. `
The Taiwan affair had long been a sleepy affair, until America nudges Taiwan separatists into poking the dragon's eye. As a Pacific country, Australia should do its part to cool the tempers, not fan the flames. So far, what has Australia gained from being a US pawn? Increasingly, Morrison looks like Australia's Iraq-tainted Tony Blair. Instead of reaping the benefits of the Pacific Century, Australia is swaggering its way into a major needless conflict. I cannot think of an act of geopolitical stupidity more stupendous and suicidal than this. `
Western reporters have baselessly and reflexively called President Xi of China "authoritarian", misjudging him on how he handled the Hong Kong and Xinjiang unrest. They are too blind and biased to see that US judgments are nothing more than anti-China propaganda. Do you deny a sovereign nation's right to quell imported riots?
Bye-bye Boris, so long Morrison, au revoir Trudeau. You have been proven unfit for office. As for Trump, this serial liar has been caught spouting over twenty thousand falsehoods during his four years in office, with over a thousand lawsuits under his belt. He may be out of office, but not out of the picture. With over 70 million Americans voting for a narcissistic madman, why are Australia, Britain and Canada still licking America's boots? `
By his competence in coping with Covid-19 alone, China's leader, hands down, deserves an avalanche of accolades. No other leader has acted so decisively in "leveling up", which Boris boasted but never delivered, smashing up monopolies and ending oppressive profit-making after-school tutoring, promoting "housing for living, not for speculating", while lifting 800 million out of poverty and building the world's biggest network of high-speed trains. If you go by achievements, there is only one clear winner in good government. If you call massive and unceremonious sacking of corrupt officials and keeping streets midnight-safe "authoritarian", then give me "authoritarian" any day. With so many failed states littering the globe, only one leader thinks long-term and promotes "common prosperity"---and he lives and leads in China.Learn Common prosperity plan to build a fairer society in China
South-East Asian Nations cautions over AUKUS Pact | WION USA Direct | Latest World English News
https://youtu.be/69ilKe8KFAg
ASEAN: Concerned Over AUKUS Alliance! QUAD Sidelined?
https://youtu.be/ezOKGzAHLGo
Power Crunch Is Just the First Step!
The entry of the new trilateral defence pact in the asia-pacific region has divided South-East Asian countries and negated the quest for a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality.
AUSTRALIA’S moniker of “deputy sheriff” is back in circulation again with last week’s announcement of the Aukus trilateral military alliance involving the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
The agreement, under which the US and the UK would provide Australia the technology to build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, was declared in a joint virtual press conference by US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian PM Scott Morrison on Sept 15.
The three Anglo Saxon nations declared that the new deal is meant to protect and defend shared interests in the Indo-pacific amid “regional security concerns which had grown significantly”.
The epithet “deputy sheriff of the US” first gained infamy 22 years ago when then Australian PM John Howard used it in an interview to describe the country’s projected role in regional peacekeeping.
In an interview with The Bulletin magazine, he defined Australia as a medium-sized, economically strong regional power, “acting in a deputy role to the US in maintaining peace”.
He also said Australia had a responsibility within its region to do things “above and beyond”, bringing into play its unique characteristics as a Western country in Asia.
The remarks led to both ridicule at home and diplomatic backlash from regional leaders who rebuked
Australia for taking orders from the United States while being geographically closer to Asia. History repeats itself often, and Australia’s partnership in Aukus has brought the focus back on that lackey image.
Besides drawing indignation from China, which condemned the deal as “extremely irresponsible, narrowminded and severely damaging regional peace”, Aukus – the abbreviation representing the initials of the three countries – has also ruffled feathers within Asean and divided the 10-member grouping.
Based on the reactions over the past few days, two camps have emerged. Malaysia and Indonesia are clearly opposed to it on the grounds that it would unsettle the region. Thailand, a traditional US ally which has a close economic relationship with China, is also of the view that the security pact would undermine stability.
On the opposite side, the Philippines has taken a totally contrary stand. It has declared support, with its foreign minister Teodoro Locsin arguing that Aukus would address the imbalance in the forces available to the Asean member states and that the enhancement of Australia’s military capacity would be beneficial in the long term.
Vietnam, which recently hosted US vice-president Kamala Harris, has not commented on the pact although its spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang offered this ambiguous response: “All countries strive for the same goal.”
Meanwhile, Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has stated that the city state is “not unduly anxious” about the new strategic alliance because of its longstanding relationship with the three countries.
The four other countries in the grouping have been largely silent on the issue.
Malaysia was swift and forthright in making its position clear. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob warned that Aukus would spark a nuclear arms race and provoke other powers to act more aggressively in the region, especially in the South China Sea.
In his phone call to Morrison, he also raised the importance of abiding by existing positions on nuclearpowered submarines operating in Malaysia’s waters, including rules under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) and the Southeast Asian Nuclear-weapon-free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ).
The questions being asked now are: How will China react to Aukus? Will it intensify the arms technology race in the region by increasing military expenditure for its navy or create more missile launch facilities, also known as underground missile silos, for the storage and launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS)?
That is what is being predicted by the hawks in the US military establishment, who have been consistently exaggerating China’s supposed military threat.
Among the talk is that China would boost the number of missile silos to 100 over the next two decades. For the record, the US already has at least 450 such facilities.
It is no secret that China has been building up its navy although it is still a long way from matching the marine power of the United States or the United Kingdom with just two aircraft carriers and a third still under construction. In comparison, the United States has 11 aircraft carriers and the United Kingdom two, but only one has been commissioned.
The US has 72 submarines – all nuclear-powered – compared with China’s 56, out of which only six are nuclear-powered.
With the entry of this newfangled military pact, Asean nations are now caught in a quandary. The quest for a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality in South-east Asia (Zopfan) declared on Nov 27, 1971, when the world was in the midst of a Cold War between the US and its Western allies and the USSR, looks like a distant dream today.
Zopfan was mainly aimed at preventing the world’s big powers from competing for influence and military prowess in the region.
The concept was inspired by the UN’S principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, abstention from threat or use of force, peaceful settlement of international disputes, equal rights and self-determination, and non-interference in the affairs of member states.
But as Dr Laura Southgate, a specialist in South-east Asian regional security and international relations, highlighted in a recent article in The Diplomat, Aukus has clearly exposed Asean’s lack of cohesion.
As she put it, driven by different threat perceptions and geo-strategic interests, it had become very difficult for Asean member nations to speak with one voice, although many states hope to maintain a balance between China and the US and its allies.
Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this observation by Niccolò Machiavelli: “Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.” The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
Boris is, undoubtedly, a gift to the entertainment world, but he doesn't belong in government. Previously, he has parlayed his non-seriousness into his personal brand, from which he can wriggle out of any scandal. But this time, with "partygate", the party is over. Like a kite dancing in the hurricane, he is crashing to earth. No one can trust a single word coming out of his mouth. With zero interest in the mundane business of government, he only comes to life at parties or in front of the camera.
