Worldwide Politics

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What a fantastic waste of $668 million dollars this election was.

Parties in 2019: Lib 157, Cons 121, Bloc 32, NDP 24, Green 3
Parties in 2021 after last night: Lib: 158, Cons 119, Bloc 34, NDP 25, Green 2
 
I think your PM would read this this as "What a fantastic election this was".
 
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Brigantium said:
Just cast my vote in a local authority by election. There were several independent candidates standing, so I wanted to read more about them, beyond the leaflets they've been sticking through the letterbox, seeing as local authority independents have a nasty habit of being oddballs who nobody else would consider electable, or loose canons (no offence intended) thrown out of one of the mainstream parties.

One short and innocuous looking article in the local paper, asking each candidate if a modernist church spire in the area should be preserved, brilliantly captured the mindset of each candidate. Could be summed up as follows:

Candidate 1: local people love this landmark, save it
Candidate 2: it's important for golfers who use it to help line up with the green [note - nearest golf course isn't frequented by the local electorate]
Candidate 3: national preservation orders are important, nationally we are doing.....zzzzzzz
Candidate 4: I don't believe in spending money on anything
Candidate 5: Well, we'll see, but spending money means it's probably a no
Candidate 6: consult local people before making any decisions
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And here I was thinking at least one of the candidates would want to tear it down because it's a modernist church spire... :(
 
Browsing the local papers, I stumble upon translation-coverage of this gem :

www.rfa.org

North Korean sentenced to death after students caught watching Squid Game

Locals say rich parents were able to bribe authorities to spare a student from punishment.
www.rfa.org www.rfa.org

There is not a single source, all hearsay, "from trusted sources".
Let's see what they got.

A man smuggles some movie into the country, sells it to a kid that watches it with his 6 friends. The 'dealer' gets executed, the kid gets life, while his buddies get 20 years hard labour each. School employees penalized too, fired from job and from party.

One of the 6 kids gets away eventually because his parents bribed authorities with $3000.

Complete bollocks, probably did not happen in this shape or form, dubious if anything happened at all.
Radio Free X is USA run propaganda over X.

Look at the size of that article - no single name, place, date, anything.
Insider protection? Sure. They have insiders in NK police that report to capitalists that their compatriot has been executed because he had a piece of capitalism on him.

I post this because I wonder what's the point of placement of this article right now. There's a made up story about a repressive regime that doesn't need made up stories, just truth to the world to see how they are. But still there's a made up story.
 
You are right about two things: 1. Radio Free Asia is funded by the US government and 2. The story isn't verifiable.

However, you also have no proof that the story is made up. It may be - it may not be. All we have is Radio Free Asia's word for it. Personally, I don't see why they would fabricate the story, because they are under the watchful eyes of other media who would gladly take shots at them. However, I've also known long-trusted media to fabricate similar stories.

In this case, we just don't know.
 
There are contextual hints when you focus on the gist of what they've said.

$3000 can't land you freedom in NK. There's no widespread corruption where $3000 can be eaten by few local sheriffs and judges and you'd disappear freely. You are also not able to enjoy grey standard because the government is pretty aware of your income and your position. There's a myriad here to be written about currencies and NK and people and the economy system. It is not easy to bribe anyone in NK with anything other than life prospects.

The teachers and school staff does not have any authority or obligations towards security.
NK faces shortage of people everywhere. They have the population of Chinese city yet they want to be powerful regionally. They simply do not do this Soviet 'cattle' approach because they don't have the luxury of population. The government knows about illicit media and wide consumption of it by the people. They allow it and use it as an instrument of repression so they always have something to charge someone about. But they don't charge their boss or people from their workplace. Soviets did, because they thought they can replace anyone, NK doesn't because they know their biggest weakness.

I personally lean towards that this 'story' has been paid by the movie company.
 
Perun said:
Personally, I don't see why they would fabricate the story
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You don't? I read local paper, they have fixed article/letter count to fill every day. Sometimes what they write about is quite absurd, nonsensical, non-news. I'm sure if what they written wasn't easily verifiable they'd lie, e.g. invent things pretty much every day.

It's just a job, frankly I don't know from where this notion that press is truth at large comes from. Press is press, you write what your publisher wants from you.

It also may serve a real purpose, such as alerting NK to a mole that isn't there.
 
Zare said:
You don't? I read local paper, they have fixed article/letter count to fill every day. Sometimes what they write about is quite absurd, nonsensical, non-news. I'm sure if what they written wasn't easily verifiable they'd lie, e.g. invent things pretty much every day.
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Yes, but this isn't a print paper and they have loads of topics to write about.

Zare said:
I personally lean towards that this 'story' has been paid by the movie company.
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If this is true and it comes out, Radio Free Asia would be in very, very deep trouble, as native advertising needs to be marked as such by US law. I don't think they're that stupid.
 
I don't get why this story seems so hard to believe for some. It's not like NK haven't executed people before for having Western material in their possession. That they hold hundreds of thousands of their people in labour/death camps. That they are literally the most oppressive and totalitarian regime on Earth.

When this was posted on social media yesterday the comments were quickly flooded with pro NK bots/sockpuppet accounts jumping to their defence with pre-scripted posts on how terrible Western propaganda is.

I'd wager the story or at least elements of the story are true. And I don't think it's helpful to be jumping to the defence of the NK regime.
 
Spaldy said:
I don't get why this story seems so hard to believe for some.
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Because when professionalism and ethics rule the outlet, these kind of articles "our insider told us that somewhere someone did someone wrong" do not get published.

For me it isn't hard to believe that someone lost their head over something trivial in NK, and it also isn't hard to believe that RFA is lying to meet their goal.
 
Zare said:
Because when professionalism and ethics rule the outlet, these kind of articles "our insider told us that somewhere someone did someone wrong" do not get published.

For me it isn't hard to believe that someone lost their head over something trivial in NK, and it also isn't hard to believe that RFA is lying to meet their goal.
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Didn't they not kill some yank kid quite recently?
 
I really wouldn't know, I don't follow news from NK or Asia that much. This piece from RFA was translated and covered in my local daily that I consume with my coffee hence the post.
 
Zare said:
I really wouldn't know, I don't follow news from NK or Asia that much. This piece from RFA was translated and covered in my local daily that I consume with my coffee hence the post.
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Some guy on a tour was accused of trying to steal a poster, and was taken off for questioning, when he was released he was in a vegetative state and later died.
 
While bloggers are paid to visit the beautiful landscapes of Xinjiang and spread nothing but positivity, something else has been going on.
= = = = = = =


China committed genocide against Uyghurs, independent tribunal rules

The Uyghur Tribunal cited birth control and sterilisation measures allegedly carried out by the state against the Uyghurs as the primary reason for reaching its conclusion on Thursday.

Sir Geoffrey Nice, a prominent British barrister who chaired the tribunal hearings, said its panel was satisfied China had carried out "a deliberate, systematic and concerted policy" to bring about "long-term reduction of Uyghur and other ethnic minority populations". He added that the panel believed senior officials including the Chinese president Xi Jinping bore "primary responsibility" for the abuses against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.

The tribunal's panel was made up of lawyers and academics. Its findings have no legal force and are not binding on ministers, but its organisers said at the outset they intended to add to the body of evidence around the allegations against China and reach an independent conclusion on the question of genocide. [..]

[..] Reading the tribunal's judgement, Sir Geoffrey said there was "no evidence of mass killings" in Xinjiang, but he said that the alleged efforts to prevent births amounted to genocidal intent. The panel also said it had found evidence of crimes against humanity, torture, and sexual violence against the Uyghur people.

Speaking to the BBC after the judgment, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader and co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said it was time for the UK government to accuse China of genocide.

"The British government said the evidence needed to be assessed by a competent court, well it doesn't get more competent than this," he said.

"The government now needs to stop messing around. The genocide taking place in Xinjiang has got to dominate our relationship with China."

Conservative MP Nus Ghani called the conclusion of the tribunal "groundbreaking".

"This tribunal was set up to the highest legal standards and the evidence that that was put forward today shows that there is enough proof beyond reasonable doubt that there was an intent to commit genocide," she told the BBC.

"What is particularly troubling is the evidence that this genocide is in particular targeted at women, and focused on preventing births." [..]

[..] The issue of whether China's alleged abuses amount to a genocide has divided the international community. The US government has accused China of a genocide against the Uyghurs, and the parliaments of the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and Lithuania have passed resolutions making the same declaration.

But the UK government has declined to accuse China of genocide. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has argued that genocide is a specific term with legal force that should only be determined by a criminal court.

The case for genocide is based on reports that China is taking steps to erase the culture of the Uyghurs and assimilate or diminish the population through programmes of forced relocation and birth control.

In a report published in April, the US-based charity Human Rights Watch concluded that China was responsible for crimes against humanity in Xinjiang - but stopped short of calling the state's actions a genocide.

Amnesty International reached the same conclusion in its own report.

The Uyghur Tribunal was established by Sir Geoffrey at the urging of the World Uyghur Congress, a global activist group. The president of the WUC, Dolkun Isa, told the BBC the tribunal's judgment represented a "historic day" for the Uyghur people.

"Now there is no excuse for the international community to continue its silence on the Uyghur genocide," he said. "It is the legal obligation of all countries who signed the 1948 genocide convention to take legal action."

Reading the judgment on Thursday, Sir Geoffrey said the tribunal had formed in part because no international criminal court had taken up an investigation into the alleged abuses in Xinjiang.

The International Criminal Court announced in December last year that it would not investigate the allegations because China, as a non-member, was outside of its jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice can only take a case that has been approved by the UN Security Council, over which China has veto power.

"Had any other body, domestic or international, determined or sought to determine these issues, the tribunal would have been unnecessary," Sir Geoffrey said. [..]
 
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Hadn't the US allowed China to become so powerful in the last five years, there might have been something that could be done.
 
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