Category Archives: Government

Britain, Government, History, Politics, Russia, Society

Corbyn: ‘I’m the victim of a McCarthyite witch-hunt’

CORBYN’S STANCE OVER UK NERVE AGENT ATTACK

The leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has suggested he is the victim of a “McCarthyite” witch-hunt as he faces a growing backlash over his refusal to blame Russia for the Salisbury spy poisoning.

Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry – a key Corbyn ally – and shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith broke ranks to accept it was beyond doubt that Moscow was responsible.

But instead of backing down, the Labour leader defied his critics by warning the Prime Minister not to “rush way ahead of the evidence” in the “fevered” atmosphere of Westminster.

In a move that will fuel backbench anger over his weak stance, Mr Corbyn urged the Government to take “a calm, measured” approach and said we should not “resign ourselves to a new Cold War”.

He suggested the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq showed government claims that Russia was behind the attack may be wrong.

In an article for The Guardian, he wrote: “To rush way ahead of the evidence being gathered by the police, in a fevered parliamentary atmosphere, serves neither justice nor our national security.

“Labour is of course no supporter of the Putin regime, its conservative authoritarianism, abuse of human rights or political and economic corruption, “he wrote. “That does not mean we should resign ourselves to a new ‘Cold War’ of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent.”

Senator Joseph McCarthy became infamous in the 1950s for carrying out an anti-Communist “witch-hunt” at the start of the Cold War.

Mr Corbyn backed Mrs May’s decision to expel 23 diplomats from Britain, but called for diplomacy.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson branded the Labour leader a “conspiracy theorist” for his continued refusal to fully accept Russia was behind the attack.

He said: “The scientists at Porton Down are the very best in the world. Their knowledge, their expertise so clearly points to one direction and you really do have to be a conspiracy theorist of the wildest kind to believe that there is anything other than fact about the statement that Russia has done this.”

Shadow defence secretary Miss Griffith told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: “We very much accept what the Prime Minister said, this is a very sophisticated nerve agent, and that Russia is responsible for this attack.”

Mrs Thornberry said: “The Russian government has been given every opportunity to provide any credible, alternative explanation as to how its nerve agents came to be used in this attack, but they have not even tried to do so.”

It is understood around 30 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion tabled by Labour backbencher John Woodcock “unequivocally” accepting the “Russian state’s culpability”.

 

SENATOR Joseph McCarthy lent his name to the so-called “witch-hunts” that were carried out against suspected Soviet sympathisers living in America.

The Senator for Wisconsin fuelled the “Red Scare” in 1950 by claiming he had a list of 205 Communists manipulating government policy. More than 2,000 government employees were sacked with little proof and Hollywood writers, directors and actors were blacklisted.

In 1954, he outraged President Eisenhower when he investigated Communist influence in the army.

He lost his public standing after military hearings were broadcast on state media. Lawyer Joseph Welch asked him: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Three years after the hearings he died of liver failure.

 

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Britain, Government, NBC Warfare, Russia, Society, United Nations, United States

Britain expels 23 Russian spies in biggest reprisal since Cold War

BRITAIN

MOSCOW has vowed revenge against Britain after Theresa May ordered the biggest purge of Russian spies since the Cold War.

In a barely-veiled threat, the Kremlin said its response to what it described as a “hostile” package of measures announced by the Prime Minister “would not be long in coming”.

The United States has vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the UK in its response to Russian involvement in the Salisbury chemical attack.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “If we don’t take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used. They could be used here in New York, or in cities of any country that sits on this council. This is a defining moment.”

Britain’s deputy UN ambassador Jonathan Allen accused Russia of deploying “a weapon so horrific it is banned from use in war”.

In a forceful statement to MPs, Mrs May said the Kremlin would be made to pay for its role in the Salisbury attack.

She confirmed that Moscow had failed to meet a deadline to explain how the Russian-produced military nerve agent Novichok came to be used in the attempt to murder former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

She said Russia had “treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance”. She added: “There is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable for the attempted murder.”

The PM outlined a series of tough sanctions, including the expulsion of 23 suspected spies posing as diplomats as well as the threat of financial sanctions against Russian oligarchs and cronies of President Putin with assets in London.

The expulsion of diplomats is the biggest since 1985 and is designed to “fundamentally degrade Russian intelligence capability in the UK for years to come”.

High-level diplomatic relations will be scrapped, with an invitation to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to visit the UK revoked.

Mrs May also suggested that covert reprisals would be undertaken – in an apparent hint at cyber attacks aimed at damaging the Russian state’s propaganda machine.

British sources said Mrs May was willing to unveil even tougher sanctions if the Kremlin hit back.

A senior government official said: “We are responding in a way that is robust, it gives us the ability to respond if the Russians escalate but it is also in line with the rule of law, all of which is in stark contrast to the way the Russian state has behaved both in this instance and wider areas of policy. Further options remain on the table.” The official said that if the measures fail to produce a change in behaviour from the Kremlin… “we will look again.”

But Moscow has warned that the UK would face reprisals for the “groundless anti-Russian campaign.” The Prime Minister told MPs that the UK “does not stand alone in confronting Russian aggression”, with messages of support already received from key allies such as the US, France, Germany and NATO.

She added: “This was not just an act of attempted murder in Salisbury, nor just an act against the UK. It is an affront to the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons, and it is an affront to the rules-based system on which we and our international partners depend.”

Veteran Conservative MP Kenneth Clarke said the “bizarre and dreadful” use of a nerve agent appeared to be “a deliberate choice by the Russian government to put their signature on a particular killing so that other defectors are left in no doubt that it is the Russian government”.

Mrs May confirmed that Prince William and Prince Harry will join ministers in boycotting this summers football World Cup in Russia, but Government sources say that, although she called on the FA “to consider their position”, she will not order the England team to withdraw as there is no sign that other countries would join a walkout.

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said: “The Russia World Cup risks vindicating the Putin regime. We should look at postponing the World Cup and hosting it in another country.”

Revised Foreign Office travel advice for Russia has warned of an upsurge in “anti-British sentiment or harassment” in a country plagued by violent football hooliganism. A Whitehall source said the estimated 2,000 fans who have bought tickets were likely to be issued with “very robust” travel advice.

 

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China, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Essay: The West can no longer be complacent with China

CHINA

WHEN Xi Jinping was a child, his father – then, a high-ranking government minister – fell out of favour with the founder of the People’s Republic, Chairman Mao.

As part of his family’s humiliation, Xi, as an eight-year-old, was paraded on a school stage in a metal dunce’s cap. The audience raised their arms and shouted, “Down with Xi Jinping!” Even Xi’s mother was forced to join in the chanting.

Later, Xi was sent to be “reformed” in an impoverished, rural commune.

Earlier this week, in an extraordinary reversal of fate, that humiliated schoolboy was affirmed as the most powerful man in China since Mao when the People’s Congress in Beijing rubber-stamped a constitutional amendment. In effect, it abolishes the legal limit of two terms on China’s presidency. Xi is now the country’s leader in perpetuity – or as some might have it, dictator.

With cunning ruthlessness, he worked his way through the ranks of the party that treated his family so abhorrently, from local to national politics, and saw off rivals while establishing political and popular support with his war on corruption. And as a former peasant who toiled hard labour in the fields, his “man of the people” credentials have done him no harm.

He has already decreed that his own name and ideas are written into the nation’s constitution, as “Xi Jinping Thought” – an honour he shares only with Mao. We in the complacent West would do well to wake up to the vaulting ambition of the leader of the world’s most populous state. The lingering question now is whether power will go to his head.

We have become used to expansionist threats and sabre-rattling from countries such as Russia and North Korea, but we don’t really expect it from China, which is traditionally insular and inward-looking. It is, after all, the country that built a Great Wall around its borders to keep out foreign influences.

Xi is intent, however, on reversing that centuries-old trend. China has established itself as a global player in trade, is massively expanding its military and now wants global political influence to match. In some ways, this can benefit the West. For example, Xi has put pressure on North Korea’s unstable leader, Kim Jong-un, to halt his erratic missile tests and even to roll back Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. Donald Trump’s boastful remarks recently of a diplomatic breakthrough (with arms talks to come), would have been impossible without Xi’s influence.

If the world becomes a safer place in the short-term as a result of this new willingness on China’s part to play the role of a global power-broker, we should all sigh a sense of huge relief. But as this week’s declaration reveals, Xi isn’t interested in the short-term. His plans are for the much longer-term. He certainly has had several opportunities to get the measure of Trump: First at a meeting last April in Florida at the President’s Mar-a-Lago resort, later at the G20 talks in Hamburg, and then again when the two met in Beijing last November. Whilst they did seem to hit it off on strategic issues, the relationship between them is a strange one. Neither will feel comfortable in a partnership of equals.

President Trump has already asserted his independence by announcing serious trade restrictions on Chinese steel and other imports. Yet, China is not only a major trading partner of the US, but a colossal underwriter of American debt. The government in Washington could not function without borrowing hundreds of billions, financed largely by Chinese loans. If China withdraws that support, in direct retribution for Trump’s trade blockade, what will happen to the US economy?

And, if Xi stops applying pressure on North Korea, what happens to Trump’s much vaunted peace talks? The Chinese President has manoeuvred himself, not just into one commanding position, but into a whole array of them.

It is not only America that is suddenly uncomfortably aware of Chinese strength. India, too, is eyeing its immense neighbour with unease after Xi sent China’s new navy into the Indian Ocean. This none-too-subtle display was prompted by a dispute over international policies concerning the Maldives. China, which has committed huge investment into developing its naval fleet, knows the world will take notice of a fleet of modern battleships. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, Xi has been the driving force for a new Silk Road linking China’s factories to Western Europe via Putin’s Russia, making Moscow the willing junior partner of Beijing.

All this confirms Xi Jinping as the most powerful and ambitious man in Chinese politics since the death of Chairman Mao more than 40 years ago – with one significant difference. Mao wanted to break completely with China’s cultural past – the hallmark of the bourgeoise – Xi has a different strategy and wants to celebrate it.

XI is determined to restore the country’s links to its heritage and arts by fostering a new creed of nationalism in place of Communism. Chinese artworks and treasures, which were scattered to the winds during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, are being brought back from the West by Chinese multimillionaires who see themselves as nationalist champions. Xi’s own wife, Peng Liyuan, a singer who entertained the troops after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, is at the forefront of this movement.

From the arts to geopolitics, trade wars to nuclear peace talks, Xi seems to have thought of everything. His carefully constructed powerbase may have one weak point: If he is president for life, then the ambitions of the country’s rising stars below him could be thwarted. That would risk political stagnation and infighting.

But for now, the West cannot risk complacency, especially now that China is controlled by the Thoughts of President Xi. If Mao gave China independence, and former leader Deng Xiaoping rebuilt the economy, then Xi is dedicated to making it a force to be reckoned with once more.

 

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