OPINION
I’m not given to hyperbole, but the coming week is one of the most important in British history – if not the most important
Published
3 years agoon
If Covid-19 ‘Freedom Day’ on June 21 is postponed, as seems likely, and the public complies with it, Britain will never return to normal. If curbs can’t be lifted when deaths ‘with’ the virus are near zero, when will they ever be?
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Having predicted correctly, before Christmas, the very day (January 4) when Boris Johnson would announce the next lockdown, on January 1, 2021, I tweeted: ‘My inside source says that there will be no significant easing of restrictions until July at the earliest. Govt mentioning Easter as they need to take backbenchers with them & want public compliance.’
The tweet received some abusive replies. “Drivel,” wrote Pete Hayward. “What a load of rubbish,” said Phil Moor. How ludicrous to say restrictions will still be in force deep into 2021!
Now, however, here we are in June, and we are still living under restrictions. And in terms of overseas travel, more restrictions than we had last summer before anyone was vaccinated!
Keeping us masked forever? The Davos set’s dystopian ambitions are very clear
We can talk about the government moving the goalposts, but in truth, they’ve uprooted the goalposts and taken them off the pitch altogether. ‘Three weeks to flatten the curve’ has proved to be the longest three weeks in history. Currently, it’s 63 weeks and counting.
Back in January, we were told by Health Secretary Matt Hancock that once the “most vulnerable” had been vaccinated, our freedoms would be restored. But then we had to vaccinate the over-50s. The over-40s. The over-25s.
Now we’re told that we should delay the June 21 unlocking until everyone has had their second jabs. After that – rest assured – it’ll be ’until the children are vaccinated’. And then ‘we need to wait until everyone has had their booster jabs’.
The much-maligned ‘conspiracy theorists’ who predicted that this thing was never meant to end and that every time restrictions are supposed to end, they’ll find new excuses to keep them (with the latest being ‘variants’), have been proven right. The question everyone needs to be asking is: If restrictions aren’t lifted in high summer when deaths ‘with’ Covid-19 fall to close to zero, as they have done this month, then when will they ever be lifted?
https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1402650399459381259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1402650399459381259%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F526218-uk-freedom-day-restrictions%2F
Deaths in England and Wales have been below the five-year average for 11 of the past 12 weeks. Given that 80% of adults now have COVID antibodies, what possible grounds could there be to delay the full reopening? https://t.co/97J2qNLeuS
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) June 9, 2021
I’m not given to hyperbole, but the coming week will, I believe, be one of the most important – if not the most important – in British history.
Because if Johnson does, as expected, announce a postponement of ‘Freedom Day’ on Monday and there is not a major (and I mean major) public backlash, the delay will not just be for two weeks or even a month. It will be forever.
If people – and businesses – simply ‘take it on the chin‘, even if it means the destruction of their livelihoods and everything they have worked and strived for, then the government will take it as a green light to maintain a level of restrictions throughout the summer, before more lockdowns/increased restrictions are imposed in the autumn, and once again we’ll be told it’s “to protect the NHS”.
Public acquiescence will mean it’ll be full steam ahead for the next phase of the ‘Great Reset’ – which means an extension of domestic vaccine passports (already being used for England’s home games in the Euros football tournament), and a genuine and permanent end to ‘free movement’ for the masses.
If you’re enraged by the sight of Johnson arriving in Cornwall in a large jet for the G7 bash and tweeting about how he was going to ‘Build Back Better’ and ‘greener’, while ordinary Brits are not allowed to go abroad on holiday, well, get used to it, because this is the ‘one rule for us, one rule for you’ future that the Davos set is planning for us.
That the UK political elites had no intention of voluntarily restoring the basic freedoms we all enjoyed prior to March 2020 – and have been pursuing a sinister and very authoritarian anti-human globalist agenda that had nothing to do with fighting a virus – was clear to anyone who paid close attention to what they actually said.
‘It’s lockdown what done it’: Is Boris lauding lockdowns because he’s planning another for October? It certainly looks that way
In April 2020, Home Secretary Priti Patel said, “The fact is we will not go back to how we were in early March – there will be new norms that will inevitably come off the way in which social distancing is dominating our lives and has affected society. We would expect social distancing in every single work area, whether it’s an office or a construction site, and on public transport going forward.”
A couple of weeks later she declared: “I think we all recognise now social distancing is here to stay”, adding, “Our lives are going to be very different”.
On May 22, 2020, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted about a path to ‘a new normal’, not to normal.
This week, we learned the Scottish government is planning to extend ‘emergency’ powers until at least March 2022, with the option of a vote to extend them still further, until the end of September 2022.
We also have lockdown hardliner Susan Michie, a member of both SAGE and ‘Independent SAGE’, saying on television that we’ll have to be wearing masks and socially distanced from our fellow human beings ‘forever’. To add insult to injury, she laughed when she said it too.
In openly admitting there is no plan to return us to the world of early March 2020, a world without anti-social distancing, travel curbs and mandatory face coverings, Patel, Sturgeon et al are only echoing the words of the World Economic Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab, co-author of the book ‘The Great Reset’, who has made it very clear the ‘New Normal‘ is meant to be permanent.
Back to the 1640s: Witch-hunt against ‘Covid denialists’ in UK is just a continuation of previous campaigns against dissenters
“The people assume we are just going back to the good old world which we had and everything will be normal again in how we are used to normal in the old fashioned. This is, let’s say, fiction, it will not happen, the cut which we have now is much too strong in order not to leave traces,” he has said.
The chances of the Great Reset being derailed don’t look good. Furlough – always a very good guide to what the government has planned – has been extended until the end of September. With plans to vaccinate schoolchildren, it’s worth remembering that the Covid-19 vaccines only have emergency approval, and if the ‘emergency’ is declared ‘ended’, what happens then?
However, all is not yet lost.
Opposition to restrictions is growing by the day – and many people who have up to now accepted lockdowns are saying “enough is enough”. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the impresario, has announced he will open his London theatres without social distancing on June 21 come “hell or high water” and said he is prepared to be arrested. There are also reports that the nightclub sector may open its doors on June 21 too, regardless of what Johnson announces on Monday. Such defiance is what we need to see a lot more of – providing that the full reopening does not involve the use of vaccine passports.
Freedom in Britain hasn’t been lost for good just yet, but, make no mistake, it is in terrible danger. The next seven days will prove absolutely crucial.
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OPINION
Disgraced ex-PM Liz Truss seeks to ruin any hopes for normal UK-China ties
Published
2 years agoon
May 18, 2023The former premier’s Taiwan trip is nothing but a provocation for Beijing to lash out at London, sinking any constructive dialogue
Liz Truss will always be remembered as a disastrous prime minister who spent only a month in office and was outlasted by a head of lettuce.
Her disastrous budget plans sent shudders through the UK economy, eliciting criticism from the British people, MPs and foreign leaders alike. Her ideology-driven political decisions found little sympathy with the public, which repaid her with abysmal approval ratings.
You’d think someone like that would have little credibility as a political adviser, but that apparently isn’t the case. Taiwan, which frequently pays washed-up Western right-wing fanatics to come and visit them as a political stunt, invited Liz Truss to Taipei on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Truss then gave a hawkish speech where she called for an end to all cooperation and dialogue with Beijing and the preparation of Russia-style sanctions in the event of a Taiwan conflict. She also repeated her suggestion of an “Economic NATO” – despite a track record that makes her the last person you’d want to listen to for economic advice.
‘Economic NATO’ needed to counter China – Truss
Since her brief stay in Downing Street, she has rebranded herself as a full-time anti-China hawk, and now uses her party position and credentials as a former prime minister to try to undermine her successor’s attempts to carefully edge back towards engagement with China. Truss was always a fantasist, a pro-Brexit zealot who embraced a confrontational stance during her time as foreign secretary.
However, as you can imagine, all you need to do to reinvent yourself these days is to become a China basher. It doesn’t matter how much of a joke you otherwise might be. Hence, the UK media made sure that her stay and words in Taiwan were given widespread coverage without the context of her political failures. The UK government has already distanced itself from her trip – a fact that Beijing should take careful notice of (and no doubt has).
The British Conservative Party has always been rife with that sort of factionalism. While the opposition Labour Party tends to hard-line suppress the more ideological wing of its MPs (hence the purge of the left-wing Corbynite faction), Tory ideologues have long held power as a “disruptive” force on the government itself, undermining its foreign policy. It’s a fracture which emerged during the Margaret Thatcher era, where following the breakdown of the “post-war consensus” of economic pragmatism, ideology gained ascendency in the party and soon manifested into Euroscepticism.
This tug of war lasted 30 years, making it harder for Conservative prime ministers to maintain a working relationship with the EU, and eventually culminating in Brexit itself. Once that was out of the way, these ideologues found a new target: China. While Truss has opportunistically jumped on this bandwagon, former arch-Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith had already made himself the UK’s Sinophobe-in-chief. Their common goal is simply to undermine stable ties with Beijing and provoke conflict by spurring on backbench rebellions, making them a challenge for the government to handle.
Taiwan predicts timeline for conflict with China
Consequently, while Truss may be a national laughingstock thanks to her disastrous tenure as prime minister, this new role she is taking on enables her to cause disruption on this issue. Taiwan, of course, knows this, because its entire foreign policy is premised on trying to undermine the ties of other countries’ relationships with Beijing by spending large amounts of money on inviting figures such as Truss. The timing of the trip was deliberate, coming immediately after the British foreign secretary’s engagement with a senior Chinese official following the coronation of King Charles III.
Taipei hopes that Beijing’s backlash over the Truss visit will target the UK government as a whole and punish the country. China has a record for being abrasive like this, having done so with the Czech Republic in the past and not winning any friends there as a result. If Truss is therefore allowed to dictate the flow of UK-China relations, she wins. Besides her, the UK has never been provocative on Taiwan at a senior level such as with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit last year for the US.
Thus, rather than causing a crisis, China should wait until the upcoming Taiwan elections take place and hope that the more pro-China Kuomintang Party (KMT), which once governed the whole country, will take power and stabilize cross-strait ties again. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thrives off creating crises, as does the US with its military deployments, and amidst it all there is no intention for cool heads to prevail. While Pelosi was a blatant violation and huge provocation of the One China policy and US commitment to it, the Truss trip is an opportunistic PR stunt by a washed-up has-been who almost ran her country into the ground in a month. Ignore, move on and forget.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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OPINION
India facing challenge to steer SCO agenda away from Western-dominated frameworks
Published
2 years agoon
May 17, 2023The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is looking at ways to address the most pressing global issues without being a disruptive influence
The upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit promises to be a watershed moment in the bloc’s history, coming amid unprecedented global challenges and new, emergent tensions.
While the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting, which took place on May 4 and 5, was tasked with preparing the agenda for the July 3-4 summit in New Delhi, there is still much work to do to ensure that India’s chairmanship will be a success.
The West has broken virtually all links with Russia because of the Ukraine conflict. Western sanctions against Russia are unprecedented in scope, carrying significant ramifications also for the developing world, including the economic disruptions caused by the weaponization of the US dollar. The European security architecture is in tatters. For the West to seek Russia’s strategic defeat while the country possesses formidable military and material resources makes no sense. Risking a potential nuclear conflict in particular is totally irresponsible.
The European Union has lost its already limited capacity to play an independent role, especially with Germany losing clout and Brussels appropriating more power. The doors of dialogue and diplomacy are being kept closed as NATO seeks military advantage over Russia, and uses Ukraine as a proxy.
At the other end of Eurasia, US-China tensions are rising over Taiwan, regional maritime disputes, strengthening of US-centered regional alliances and NATO overtures to Japan and South Korea. The US and the EU are warning China against supplying lethal arms to Russia under pain of sanctions, even as they seek China’s support in persuading Russia to end its military intervention in Ukraine, and this in the background of the high-level dialogue between the US and China having virtually broken down.
Can Eurasia’s rising political bloc show a united front against the West’s encroachment?
Both Russia and China, the principal pillars of the SCO, are at loggerheads with the West to different degrees, and the summit agenda will inevitably reflect this reality. The SCO represents a building block of multipolarity within the global system at the political, economic and security levels, a goal reiterated at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
While the other SCO members have robust links to both Russia and China, their connections with India are not as strong, despite mutual goodwill and shared interests. This is largely due to a lack of contiguity and direct access to Central Asia. With Iran and Belarus joining as full members, the SCO will achieve greater Eurasian depth. Both of these countries have been politically and economically targeted by the West. The SCO Foreign Ministers meeting also agreed on May 5 to grant dialogue partner status to Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar and the UAE, in addition to the nine existing dialogue partners. The growing interest demonstrates the appeal of the SCO as a grouping of non-Western countries that provide an alternative platform for nations to pursue their interests outside the Western-dominated international system.
Association with the SCO increases their margin to maneuver, primarily at the political and economic levels. Diplomatic support, hedging against Western sanctions, access to non-Western development banks, benefits from connectivity projects and infrastructure development, cooperation against terrorism, extremism and separatism, are obvious advantages.
India has taken its current presidency of the SCO seriously, organizing and hosting more than 100 meetings and events, including 15 ministerial level meetings. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has also stressed the great importance for India of developing multifaceted cooperation. He introduced the term ‘SECURE’ SCO on the basis of Security, Economic Development, Connectivity, Unity, Respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Environmental protection.
As SCO Chair, India initiated an unprecedented engagement with the organization’s Observers and Dialogue Partners by inviting them to participate in more than 14 socio-cultural events. Many of the events hosted by India occurred for the first time in the framework of the SCO, such as the Millet Food Festival, Film Festival, Cultural Festival, the Tourism Mart, and Conference on Shared Buddhist Heritage.
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Jaishankar noted that as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical upheavals, global supply chains had been disrupted, leading to a serious impact on delivering energy, food, and fertilizers to developing nations. He viewed these challenges as an opportunity for SCO members to address them collaboratively, noting that with more than 40% of the world’s population within the SCO, its collective decisions would surely have a global impact.
Additionally, Jaishankar highlighted the unabated menace of terrorism, and that combating it was one of the original mandates of the SCO. He drew attention to the unfolding situation in Afghanistan where the immediate priorities included providing humanitarian assistance, ensuring a truly inclusive and representative government, combating terrorism and drug trafficking and preserving the rights of women, children and minorities. This was echoed by the Chinese foreign minister.
India expressed its willingness to share its expertise and experience in the field of startups having helped cultivate over 70,000, more than 100 of which were ‘unicorns’. Last year, it proposed the creation of a Startups and Innovation working groups as well as one focused on traditional medicines, and the SCO meeting approved plans to operationalize these initiatives.
India believes that the SCO should look at reform and modernization to keep the organization relevant in a rapidly transforming world, and noted that discussions on these issues had already commenced. It also sought support for its long-standing demand to make English the SCO’s third official language, as this would enable a deeper engagement with English-speaking members and would take the SCO’s work to a global audience.
India also proposed the New Delhi Declaration as an SCO Summit Declaration at the meeting, as well as four other thematic joint statements on cooperation in de-radicalization strategies, promotion of millets, sustainable lifestyles to address climate change and digital transformation. India sought support for a timely finalization of these documents for approval at the SCO Summit.
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According to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, all participating parties considered the SCO as an important platform for joint combat against terrorism, separatism, drug trafficking, as well as cyber crimes. All favored more cooperation in such fields as transportation, energy, finance, investment, trade, the digital economy, regional connectivity, deeper cultural and people-to-people exchanges, environmental protection, climate change, sustainable development, and SCO’s strengthened cooperation with the United Nations and BRICS countries.
The meeting also offered the gathered foreign ministers an opportunity for intense bilateral meetings. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met his Chinese counterpart to discuss the implementation of agreements reached between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in March.
The SCO continues to enlarge its footprint, widen its agenda, and carve out a non-Western space in the international system, but some key points of friction remain between members especially China and India. The two countries are currently embroiled in a border dispute that has yet to be settled. Additionally, India stands in opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative due to India’s concerns about connected sovereignty issues.
The other, less important fault line, is India-Pakistan relations. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bhutto Zardari did not help matters by making indirect jibes at India during his speech at the SCO meeting and further criticism of New Delhi in his interviews to the media. His comments elicited a sharp response by the Indian Foreign Minister, but only after the SCO meeting was completed. Pakistan is currently in the throes of a major internal crisis, which may affect its participation in the SCO summit. However, India-Pakistan differences are not germane to the SCO’s growing stature. Far more important is the Russia-India-China triangle.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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Rome is considering leaving the Belt and Road Initiative in a move which will place virtue signaling to other Western states above its own interests
Italy’s membership of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is up for renewal at the end of this year, and Western media outlets are speculating that Rome may choose to leave the pact.
Italy became the first and only G7 nation to join China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure vision, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) just before a tidal wave of anti-China sentiment was unleashed on the world. Indeed, the country’s leadership was in a very different place then, with Italy being led by Giuseppe Conte of the Five Star Movement, whose populism faulted the Euro-Atlantic establishment for decimating the Italian economy through the 2008 debt crisis and the brutal austerity measures which followed. It is little wonder that Italy had decided to look eastwards.
Even 15 years on from the events of 2008, Italy’s economy still has not fully recovered. It was worth $2.4 trillion at the end of that year, but is only at $2.1 trillion now, and barely growing at all. New and concurrent economic crises have taken a toll. Italy’s current leadership no longer believes all roads lead to Rome, let alone to China’s modern-day Silk Road – rather, they lead to Washington. As pressure on the country has grown, its successive leaders, Mario Draghi and Giorgia Meloni, have sought to reset its foreign policy back to transatlantic-oriented goals, ending its rebellion against the establishment and thus contemplating quitting China’s grand initiative.
Italy may exit ‘New Silk Road’ – FT
Oddly enough, the truth remains that it is the EU and US that stand as the biggest threat to Italy’s prosperity, not China. While dumping the BRI will receive plaudits from the US-dominated commentary circles in these countries, the reality is that they offer no alternative, no plans, and no incentives to make Italy a wealthier country. It is the “sick man” of the G7, an advanced economy that has increasingly lost its competitiveness, but also one that has been thrust into decline by being a southern EU country and a net loser of Eurozone policies.
It is precisely because of the economic upheavals that the country has faced over the past 15 years and widespread political dissatisfaction, that radical and populist politics have gained ground. China was rightfully seen as an alternative, a country that could rapidly expand Italy’s exports and invest in crumbling public infrastructure. However, this has quickly become politically incorrect. Italy’s leaders argue that BRI participation has been a waste of time. However, the reality is that when Eurocrat Mario Draghi came to office, he sought to reset Italy’s foreign policy and began using new “golden powers” to veto and cancel Chinese investments in Italy on a large scale. In 2021 alone, he blocked three Chinese takeovers, including a seed and vegetable producer.
Following Draghi, Giorgia Meloni, despite her outward populism, has been even more prone to pledging Rome’s loyalty to the transatlantic cause, having decided to become vocal in support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and even visit Kiev. At this stage, it is very little surprise that her country is contemplating canceling participation in the BRI, something which can score political points and help dispel doubts about her loyalty to Brussels and Washington. Predictably, the mainstream media narrative readily depicts the BRI in predatory and malign terms, ignoring the obvious empirical truth that it is the EU that has saddled Italy with a national debt larger than its GDP, and not China. Of course, there is no alternative scheme or plan for Italy on offer should it leave the BRI, meaning it is cutting its nose off to spite its face.
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By forfeiting its BRI membership, Italy will undoubtedly lose the opportunity to massively enhance its trade competitiveness, namely by opting out of projects such as Chinese-owned ports and railway links. As an example of this, Greece, to the southeast, has positioned itself as a “gateway to Europe” through Chinese ownership of Pireaus port and its connecting railways, which allows cargo to go up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, into the port and then across Europe. Italy could have competed for a share of this, but it has chosen not to, and it’s not like it will be selling anything additional to the US with its protectionist “America first” policies, is it?
In doing so, Italy has chosen to stop being a leader pursuing its own path in the world to better strengthen its global clout, but instead to be a follower, to play second fiddle to the transatlantic establishment which doesn’t see it as a particularly prominent partner to begin with. Italy joined the BRI precisely because it was sick of being a “rule taker” from Brussels, in a similar vein to what Greece has experienced. Now it appears happy again to hold up the political orthodoxy of the elitist, US-led G7. In doing so, it can kiss goodbye any hopes of becoming a powerful and influential country again anytime soon. Italy is admired mostly for its past, as opposed to what it offers to the world presently, and if its current leadership has its way, that will likely remain the case.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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