281–290 of 296 posts
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> elevated China's status In 2024 china issued 17% less residence visas than 2019. Maybe. But the trend is down.
What does residence visas have to do with geopolitical power? That’s one tiny variable of many. Should I link you an article about how US immigration hit record lows after the Covid-19 pandemic?
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> In what universe does the UK have grounds to have anything to do with governing a region 6000 miles away from home that it seized during the Opium War? A universe that respects the right of the people who live somewhere to chose the government they want? We've all seen the protestors waving British flags there. Abolishing the right of conquest in the early 20th century was one of the great achievements of humanity,…
We’ve seen protestors in all kinds of countries wave all kinds of flags. We all know pragmatically that that’s not how governments are chosen. The fact that the situation is unfair to HK citizens doesn’t have much relation to the fact that there’s no legitimate reason for the UK to have any involvement at this point in time, unless you’re just plain and simple in favor of imperialism. In that case you’d be making the…
If a majority of legitimate citizens, the people who've lived their whole lives there and made the place what it is, want to join China (and China is willing to accept them), of course they should be allowed to do that. Do you not believe in self-determination? And if you don't believe in self-determination then how can you even object to imperialism in the first place?
> It would hurt the UK more than China.
The second world war hurt the UK more than Germany. But there was a time when the country's integrity was worth something.
> Recognition of Taiwan? What would that change? Western countries already defacto recognize Taiwan and work with them as a close ally. This would be changing vocabulary on some documents and plaques.
Sure, but it's documents and plaques that China apparently cares deeply about.
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The UK government never wanted to keep Hong Kong. (It may have wanted to pantomime trying to keep it to placate some voters). While the UK did have a long history of legal continuity, it's made a lot of dramatic changes in recent years - the switch to the Supreme Court which has then made some legally bizarre decisions, the complete demolition of the House of Lords over a pretty short period, the efforts to entrench…
> efforts to entrench human rights legislation which have simply no precedent in UK constitutional history at all... How so? UK was instrumental in creating the European Court of Human rights? Surely they did not believe at the time that they are just creating it for everyone else?
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>What exactly is the Mauritian connection to the Chagos Archipelago? I can see where this line of questioning is going but what's the connection between Britain and Chagos or the US and Chagos for that matter?
215 years of British sovereignty? The United States of America has had sovereignty of itself for 248 years, should the USA give up it's sovereignty in North America or do you draw the line between somewhere between 215 and 248? At what point do you say, it is what it is?
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A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you realize that your metric for 'crazy' and 'not crazy' is less about gauging the mental state of the person making those decisions, and more about how much/little they upset Western interests.
Invading sovereign nations is pretty crazy. (Said to castigate both western and non-western countries) Sometimes the standards of human decency are global.
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The obvious difference, is that you're comparing sovereignty over a nation/state's mainland, vs sovereignty over a separate colony, thousands of km away from the mainland (and even used only for military purposes, apparently)
Hawaii then, 3,200 km away from the US mainland, home to one of the largest US navel bases and only part of the US for the last 126 years when they annexed it?
But for sure, the locals would've appreciated it if the US didn't colonise Hawaii
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A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you realize that your metric for 'crazy' and 'not crazy' is less about gauging the mental state of the person making those decisions, and more about how much/little they upset Western interests.
Invading sovereign nations is pretty crazy. (Said to castigate both western and non-western countries) Sometimes the standards of human decency are global.
We have a lot of other negative terms for it, but for a very recent example, nobody in the press (even the press hostile to them) doubted Dubya's or Tony Blair's mental state in 2003.
Somebody opposed to us doing it, is, of course, mentally ill. There's no other explanation for it!
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Its more a sort of shakedown of a ex-colonial power
The UK was shaking down the US for this military base. The whole thing stands as a monument to the decline of the British Empire.
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I think this is missing the point of the original question, which is - why would a Mauritian feel "relief" at the return of a geographical territory which is extremely far from itself? The claims of the UK or the US are irrelevant to this reasoning. Indeed, I would like to understand the answer to the above question better, since the only reason I can see is that Mauritius as a colony used to govern the islands, and…
> Do the Chagossians support this claim by the Mauritian government? They've complained about not being part to the discussion, but in practice most of them have Mauritian citizenship now, and it should be easier for them to deal with the Mauritian government to reclaim some of their land. It's a lesser-evil situation.