4 posts tagged “un charter”

I entered Hong Kong as many of us old colonials would: with a British passport (air hair lair, what) and a falling-apart Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card (PIC).
   I did have a few problems with the latter, because it was issued in 1995, and it did not have much of the information that the new ones now contain, like your thumbprint, a photograph without a Melrose Place hairstyle and samples of my DNA contained in hermetically sealed vials of sweat, or whatever these newfangled things they have nowadays on identity cards.
   (In fact, I had problems with my British passport, notably at Waterloo Station where the passport controller insisted I was not British and had to queue up with foreigners. It was ironic that she was black and was herself practising apartheid. I had been British for longer than she had, thank you very much. The matter was ultimately raised with the PM after correspondence with the British High Commissioner, the Foreign Secretary, and the Shadow Foreign Secretary was ignored. I was going to expose all this and had some Fleet Street friends willing to aid and abet in the cause of true patriotism, but then HRH Princess Margaret went and inconveniently died on us.
   Since then, armed with this correspondence, I have not had any problems entering the United Kingdom on a British passport. I was under the impression we overseas British had the same Queen whose ‘Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance’. Funnily enough, this is respected in France and Germany, even the US where we are allies on the War on Terror, but not Britain herself. But I digress.)
   I was still let through because the PIC number matched what was noted on my passport, though the controller, a very charming lady by the name of Y. T. Chan, advised I should get the PIC changed ASAP.
   Fast forward to today. We are very law-abiding, we British, so I began checking. There’s nothing at the British High Commission site about the PIC, but the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region website does have an application form and some notes.
   The problem, as I discovered, is that Britons like me cannot get a new PIC without applying for a HKSAR passport at the same time, which entails becoming a Communist.
   And I know from experience that my definition of ‘Chinese citizen’ somehow differs from that of the Politburo politician and the Beijing bureaucrat.
   My father did not escape from the Commies in 1949 just so his son could get into bed with the Reds.
   My mother did not insist on emigrating in 1976 to avoid the perceived peril of 1997 just so her son could get into bed with the Reds.
   I am proudly Chinese. I am proud of my culture. I am proud of my heritage. But I do not believe that the chaps who came to occupy my family’s land in ’49 have much of a right to it.
   Or the chaps that overran Beijing.
   Not while the Chinese people lack self-determination, a basic requirement under the UN Charter if China wishes to call itself a state.
   Some of my family members are technically, if not willingly, communists, but it doesn’t mean I have to join them.
   All I want is to retain my nationality as a British subject and get a PIC to which I believe I am rightly entitled by my domicil of origin.
   Back in 1995, this was perfectly feasible and I was under the assumption that the Reds would continue respecting the status quo ante when it came to administrative matters like this for an uninterrupted 50 years. And since when have Hong Kongers gone and pissed off Beijing? Well, apart from every June 4?
   We have contributed quite nicely to the Pekingese capitalist public purse, and the sayings of the old Chinese profit.
   I do hope, one day, there will be a united China, possibly a commonwealth of independent states. I also hope to see self-determination by the Chinese people exercised in my lifetime. But I have zero affinity with communist régimes, anywhere in the world, and certainly won’t be looking at changing my allegiance from HM the Queen, even if modern Britain is in a mess and it gave us Gary Glitter and selected nonces. There are some of us who are proud to be old colonials, who remember what it used to mean to be British, even if it is couched in some idealist, double-decker-bus-and-cobbled-street world where John Steed could poke a baddie with his brolley—and without us colonials kowtowing to any body, thank you very much.
   And quite simply, I agree more even with a faded modern Blairbrown-shaded Britain subservient to some Brussels Bonaparte than with a totalitarian régime that did its best to try to knock some of my family off, or shove them into jail on no charge.
   There is quite a price to be paid for loyalty to Her Britannic Majesty, but there you have it. It is a choice I quite publicly make.
   Tomorrow: a visit to the High Commission to see what HM Government can do. If they even care. Let’s hope they do, more so than after the Waterloo incident.

I say that my work at JY&A Consulting is developing plain-English strategies for our clients. So, I thought I’d give the Iraq war a shot and write my recollections in summary form. The Saddam Hussein voice should be read in a South Park style. Steve Bridges plays George W. Bush, with Rory Bremner as Tony Blair. Special guest appearance by Rupert Murdoch.

Saddam Hussein: I gotta gas those Kurds. Let’s let off some WMDs. Where did I put that invitation to those terrorists?
Saddam’s sons-in-law: Saddam has WMDs. A lot of them.
UN: Under the ceasefire, you can’t have them. We’re sending inspectors in.
Inspectors: We found some but there’s more based on what he had before, and we can’t figure out where they are.
UN: Say, Saddam, you need to tell us where some of this stuff has gone to.
Saddam Hussein: Here’s a big-ass report. Chew on that.
UN: Dude, this isn’t complete. In fact, it looks like you have pulled it out of your ass.

Security Council president: Let’s have a vote on a resolution. Who says that we should punish Saddam Hussein if he doesn’t front up on info about his potential for WMDs, where he’s disposed of some of the ones the inspectors can’t find any more, and sort out the money he owes Kuwait?
Security Council members: Yes, we should!
Security Council president: Cool, 15 to 0. Wow, that’s better than that time Saddam invaded Kuwait.

UN: Well, Saddam, here’s resolution 1441. You’ll be in serious trouble if you don’t comply.
Saddam Hussein: Hey, don’t worry about it.

Iraqi ambassador to UN: Here’s the new report.
UN: This is just as stupid as the earlier stuff you handed in. Didn’t you read the questions?
Iraqi ambassador to UN: Yeah, but what are you going to do? Dumbasses.

USA: Right, that means we have to punish this guy under resolution 1441.
France: You need to get one more resolution for military action before you do that.
USA: And if we do, what will do you?
France: We’d veto it.
USA: Basically you are saying that no matter what resolution the international community has voted on, you don’t think we should enforce it?
France: In a word, no. But it’s because of the UN Charter that we have to all agree on military action before we do anything.
USA: Screw you, peacenik.
France: Screw you, warmonger.

George W. Bush: Tony, the French are being assholes. If we don’t enforce this, we’ll look dumb, the UN will look impotent, and Saddam Hussein could continue building up an arsenal. Whatever the case, we don’t know what that smug sonofabitch is doing.
Tony Blair: I agree, George. We either enforce the law, or we say that laws don’t matter. I couldn’t run a country like that.
Gordon Brown: I don’t know if he can run a country. I would do a better job and I have the same initials as the American guy.
John Howard: Count me in.
Jacques Chirac: I hate Americans. But I did meet that Saddam in 1975. Nice guy. We had dinner together.
Jiang Zemin: I like Americans. When they are at war, their economy will be in trouble and they will have to buy more stuff from us!

George W. Bush: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress, we have to go to war to enforce international law. Who’s with me?
Majority of Congress: We are.
Minority of Congress: We like French food.

Saddam Hussein: Looks like I’m f***ed. Get me Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Information Minister!
France: Told you so, the Americans are warmongers.
Liberal media: Don’t worry, we’ll do what we can with slanted reporting to make the troops feel bad. And we’ll give that Information Minister dude a lot of air time.
Rupert Murdoch: Not on my watch. I can set Bill O’Reilly on you.

   Now, I know I have missed out some facts to get it into summary format, and the Commander-in-Chief has been edited for fluency, but consider how long the last post was!

Whether you support the war in Iraq or you don’t—and here in New Zealand we have the luxury to criticize the United States—David Horowitz’s recollection (video found originally on Humbled Infidel’s blog) of why the US went in certainly correlates with my own. It’s why I have always held back attacking President George W. Bush, because faced with what he had in front of him, I cannot honestly say I would not have done the same thing. As Horowitz reveals, neither would Al Gore, who supported Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech in 2002.
   The end of this video (cut short) goes into the rationale for war surrounding UN Security Council resolution 1441, which PM Tony Blair managed to sell to Parliament—but which, I always felt, the US was less successful at doing. There are legal arguments there based on the UN Charter but it was always about 1441. 
   This is one of the problems I tend to have with the US Democratic Party, for all my own left-leaning tendencies. Right now, for example, constituents are begging the super-delegates that they should not select who will best beat Sen. John McCain and the Republicans, but who represents their position. The fact this question has even arisen is disturbing: as representatives of the people of course one should represent the citizens. The minute you do not, you do not have a democracy: it is a quest for power among élites ignoring the citizenry, the sort of thing people were getting away from when the US was founded. 
   I am not saying that the GOP wouldn’t look after its own, but given that they have fielded men like Sen. Bob Dole—who from a marketing perspective was a tough sell against President Clinton—it seems that it might be more willing to represent its base than look at seizing power. The 42nd president gifted them the Monica Lewinsky situation, which hurt the Democrats. I would say that they never forgave the GOP or Kenneth Starr who were steadfast in their condemnation and investigation. That power-hungriness from the Democrats is very apparent in the way the Bush administration has been undermined in the last eight years.

   I say if one opposes the war, then there are ways to do it without resorting to revisionism. I might not agree with our PM, Helen Clark, on her courses of action, but at least she took a position based on the facts before her and said ‘No’ to going in to Iraq. She has never gone and revised history, and simply held firm on her principles. She has good support for it because most New Zealanders opposed the war and carried out her job (on that occasion) as a servant and representative of the people.
   The consequences of Resolution 1441 were always clear but the means of acting upon them were less so because of the way the UN Charter is written, and that ambiguity effectively gave some countries a chance of opting out. Our PM took it, as did the leaders of many other nations. It is respectful, even if she later made a gaffe about how she did not think a Gore presidency would have gone to war. (As Horowitz reminds us, that is probably an incorrect position.) They believed that an extra resolution was needed before war; the US, UK, Australia and others did not.
   The Democratic Party and the anti-war movement probably think that this is all too tough to sell to the public, so they engage in other tactics, shaming US troops or the administration and pressuring those who have short memories to join their cause. I am not saying that what they have uncovered is all untrue—of course I accept there are dodgy dealings surrounding the war and I even accept some misconduct—but they’d earn my respect if they didn’t flip-flop or cover up the truth. Sen. Clinton, who voted for the war, who voted for the increase in expenditure alongside Sen. John Kerry, is one of those very high-profile politicians who has changed depending on the trade winds of public opinion.
   Of course a senator or a future president must be representative but she must also stand on truth. ‘I was wrong to have supported the war because …’ would have been a good start. ‘Now the American people are telling me that it is time to withdraw our troops.
   ‘My support was founded on the belief that resolution 1441 was inviolable. It was not, and we have carried out the due punishment needed on Saddam Hussein’s régime.’
   There are millions of ways to spin it, especially ways to do it without demoralizing the young men and women serving in Iraq—and I am not even a politician.
   This would also mean she’d have to go against her husband’s attacks on Kosovo, which also did not have that additional Security Council resolution but was a preemptive strike by the US. George W. Bush is not alone, just that the media give him more grief over it.
   But a mea culpa is not flip-flopping and it is not pandering. It is being honest, something the Beltway sees very rarely.
   What concerns me, however, is that the road to war is a serious matter. It should not be so easily bent because the decision should be founded on principle—and if those principles existed after resolution 1441 was broken then they exist today. Congress voted for the war, with bipartisan support. There needs to be a far bigger shift for any US representative to say no to the war now—so what is it?
   A poor entry strategy, a poor exit strategy, the belief that the US’s only task was to oust Saddam Hussein, the belief that the parameters of the original declaration of war have been fulfilled—what? Certainly Sen. Clinton needs to tell us.
   She has said that she would not have voted for the war if she knew there were no WMDs. But as Horowitz points out, the existence of WMDs was not the basis for war. Did Sen. Clinton “misspeak” again?
   There is a popular notion that that was what resolution 1441 was all about and we all remember Sec. Powell’s Powerpoint presentations to the UN.
   But unless Sen. Clinton has misremembered this incident as well, resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002 was about Iraq’s non-compliance with conditions laid down by the international community over disarmament, which included WMDs, but they were not the core issue.
   When Iraq lied about what it did with its WMDs, which the international community confirmed it had as late as 1998, the US took a hard line.
   Iraq itself never offered an explanation on the discrepancy between its claims and tests by the inspectors.
   That was one legal justification for the US and the UK, and, skipping over a few issues, the war began.
   I sure wish the US politicians would just tell the truth about the vote at that time because they should have a better understanding of it, having been there—rather than let people like me catch them out.
   This is another reason to not dislike Bush: he said he would stay the course, so he did. The majority of Americans voted for him in 2004 (regardless of whether one is counting the electoral college or the popular vote) and knew this full well. And while I think some of his spending has sent that US deficit soaring, he has stayed firm on his belief in his tax cuts. He seems content because he thinks he is protecting the Constitution and that he needs to continue his strategy. Maybe that is the Bush world-view. (He saw how his Dad got burned on the ‘No new taxes’ and learned from it. He saw how his Dad lost the support of the right wing of the GOP and learned from it. And he saw how he was criticized for being too smart when he ran for Congress—which is where the folksy public image comes from. Welcome to Bushland.)
   Had the war successfully concluded people would praise him on his steadfastness.
   For if a leader bends based on the trade winds, then will she bend based on pressure from other sovereign nations? If Saudi Arabia put pressure to bear on the US, would Sen. Clinton cave in? If a communist nation put pressure on Sen. Obama, would he? Or, for that matter, how far will Sen. McCain bend to foreign pressure? 
   We cannot turn back the clock now and see how the message could have been better communicated to the US. We should know, from the Horowitz video, why the US went in and understand who is now lying to the American public: that is important. For all his failings in everything from the Patriot Act (which I am no fan of, and it has restricted the movement of people who could benefit the US) to the Alberto González judicial appointments, I do not think it was President Bush. I have never called him a bare-faced liar.
   The next presidential election is a chance to address those failings. The economy can be fixed but what is in dire need of repair are the values to which not only Americans want moral leadership, but most of us in the western world. Get the values right, get the truth right, and the rest will follow.
   At the end of the day I care not if the president is a Democrat or a Republican, and I have no say in it anyway, as long as our common values are restored and preserved, and the leader is truthful. And that the decision for staying the course or withdrawing is also founded on truth.

Being Chinese, I was always raised with the idea that Tibet is not an independent country, something backed up by a history book I remember at college that showed world maps going back many centuries. Certainly by the time the Mongols invaded, China, Tibet and Mongolia were governed as a single empire. However, I believe in the right of self-determination of all peoples, and if the Tibetans believe they should not be subject to the Communist Party, then so be it. That right is no less than the one held by East Timorese or any other group that has wanted to break from a larger nation.
   Many years ago, I understand that Chiang Kai-shek asked if HH the Dalai Lama would fight with him against the Communists and revolt, but that was declined. It remains a historical “could-have-been”.
   On the other side, I have heard from a Communist official who believes that the Dalai Lama is actually the largest landowner in Tibet and his control over the country means that he can impose his will on the peasants there. But remember that Beijing has spun whatever it has liked.
   Wikipedia, interestingly, features both the Tibetan and Red Chinese positions as well as a section on the lack of foreign recognition of Tibet. It also has a map from 1914 that is not unlike the ones I saw at college:

 
   While Wikipedia is not a definitive source, or, as I found while working on Autocade, an accurate source (there are preciously few error-free pages, but I am a lazy ass and want to run facts via Google first, then, grudgingly, get up and go to my reference books) the Tibetan sovereignty article does appear to have both sides recorded accurately.
   That last section reads:

No country publicly accepts Tibet as an independent state ^[32], in spite of several instances of government officials appealing to their superiors to do so ^[33]. Treaties signed by Britain and Russia in the early years of the twentieth century ^[34] and others signed by Nepal and India in the 1950s ^[35], recognized Tibet's political subordination to China. The Americans presented their view on 15 May 1943:

“

For its part, the Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that...the Chinese constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of these claims. [36]

”

No sovereign states, including India, have extended recognition to the Tibetan Government-in-exile.^[37] This lack of legal recognition of independence has forced even some strong supporters of the refugees to admit that:

“	...even today international legal experts sympathetic to the Dalai Lama's cause find it difficult to argue that Tibet ever technically established its independence of the Chinese Empire, imperial, or republican. [38]

   Whatever the case, violence and murder against civilians and the denial of self-determination are what matter right now.
   There must be a better way. The PRC–ROC standoff will probably never be resolved, which is why there has never been an Armistice and why some countries stay on the fence. One writer suggested China be a Commonwealth. It could work, wth representation for Tibetan, Communist and Republican. A solution that has little connection with the past may be one released from politicking, working for the future.