It's been very interesting to watch all the pro-Tibet; anti-China human rights protests during the Olympic torch relay. People are obviously using this as a method of raising awareness of China's appalling human rights records.

I'm just curious though.

Assuming in 2012,the UK :

- will still be participating in the illegal occupation of Iraq (some UK soldiers have already been accused of using torture on Iraqis. )
- will still refuse to keep a body count of victiims (as invading armies are meant to do)
- they invaded the country based on a bag of lies to steal Iraqi oil
- they have failed miserably to keep Iraq safe resulting in the deaths so far of about 2.5% of the entire Iraqi population (more than were killed by Saddam).

Yes the UK is a democracy within its own territory and supports human rights within its own territory. But their participation in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq (against the will of the people) means that they are not a million miles away from the situation of China in Tibet.

If the anti-China protests are justified wouldn't similar protests against the UK in 2012 be justifiied?

Is that true?? Bloody hell! :shock:

Well they US/UK refuse to keep a record of casualties (as they are required as the invading army under the Geneva Conventions) so it's hard to know exactly how many have died.

But since the illegal invasion and occupation began various NGO's have estimated that roughly 600,000 people have been killed. There are about 23 million people in Iraq so that's about 2.5%.

Granted that includes Iraqis killed by other Iraqis but as the US/UK deposed Saddam and promised security the ultimate responsibility lies with them for not having any plan whatsoever other than to get rid of Saddam.

More Iraqis have died since 'liberation' than were killed by Saddam directly (although we're not counting the 1,000,000 Iraqis who died in the 1990's as a direct result of the genocidal UN sanctions which prevented even essential medical supplies reaching Iraq)

Is Britain worthy of holding the Olympics? I mean if China is being criticised for Darfur and Tibet then the UK surely realises that they are in a similar situation with regard to the Olympics.

This debate is old news, and the figures on Iraqi deaths are notoriously unreliable.

The Olympics are an expensive waste of money, and I'm sure there'll be people protesting on the streets about the UK hosting the Olympics. Not that it makes any difference. A million people marched against the planned invasion of Iraq but Tony Blair decidd that only God and history could judge his actions, and ploughed on regardless.

The fact that Labour were voted back in after Iraq is a sign of the continuing slow death of Western democracy.

Speaking of China, Americans must be breathing a sigh of relief that they have competition as the most reviled nation on Earth. Wonder if in a few years' time when China's economy outperforms the US if people will look back in rose-tinted spectacles at the time of US dominance. If you think things are bad now, just wait until China is the world's superpower and you're bowing prostrate to a government than doesn't even pretend to support human rights.

Western liberal self-flagellation is so passe. Or at least it soon will be when our economies and influence in the world stagnate and the Chinese are ruling the roost.

:shock:
that's literally a genocide, then. such despair, who can blame them if they hate the guts of all western world.

It's all a dirty little game.. I also hate the fact that people are demonstrating for Tibet.. I mean.. First do something about the Kosovo, Belarus, Palestina, Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc

I know! That's good work, lads!

:shock:

Meh, who can lay the blame at the troops out there? Surely the fault lies with the democratically elected governments of the nations who decided to invade by lying to their electorate and legislatures of the threat posed by Saddam and going in with no exit strategy planned.

How can any trooper keep a population safe when faced with an emeny who will send women suffering from down's syndrome into a market with bombs strapped to them?

Nobody blames the troops (but bear in mind that no troop should feel obliged to go to Iraq. There is such a thing as being a conscientious objector.)

Britain and the US are making Iraq far more unsafe by being in that country than if they left.

it's all about milking the cow, only the milk is oil. i took part in the london demonstation for the war against iraq back in 2003 and i sincerely thought the british were against the will of their government. how wrong i was. however i love the british, i now think they'd rather be considered as america's puppies than an active part of the european community. it's no coincidence that, apart from the uk, the only members of the european union to suck up to america's world politics are helpless ex communist european countries.

I took part in the anti-war demonstrations in Amsterdam in 2003 but the Netherlands also sent troops into Iraq to steal oil.

The Iraq war has shown how meaningless western democracy actually is. The 'democratically' elected governments of Spain/UK/Nethelands went against the will of their people to steal from and murder thousands of Iraqis. George Bush of course was not a democratically elected leader so his behaviour is less shocking as people who are appointed to office by the courts as he was are obviously going to ignore the people.

Preach it, sista!

I took part in the demonstrations in London and was so disgusted with Labour and the Tories that I actually voted LibDem in the following General Election. Western democracy isn't really democracy, it's just elected dictatorships.

One of the funniest things in the anti-war demos was when a guy near me shouted out "Down with this sort of thing" and someone replied "Careful now!" :D God bless Father Ted.

if only russia still posed a serious threat to america, world politics would have been way too different.

When is the next UK election, and do you think Labour will remain in the majority?

Not looking likely at the moment. If an election were held today the Tories would win and the Tories are fully supportive of the illegal occupation of Iraq.

This effectively means that despite the fact that there is almost universal opposition to the illegal occupation of Iraq by the UK electorate that the political establishment chooses to ignore the wishes of the electorate.

IN any case the system of voting in the UK is among the most primitive of any so-called democracy in the world. The 1st past the post system used by the UK/US/Various Third World Countries can only be described as democracy by the generously inclined.

How do they expect to win by running on supporting the Iraq War? Isn't this just a no-brainier for them? How come the lib Dems never see to win?

Forget Russia, the next superpower is China. Things are happening to the Chinese economy so quickly that a new word has been invented to describe it, "supercycle". It's unprecedented in world history. As I said in an earlier post in this thread, if you think the world is in a bad shape now with the US as the dominant power, just wait until the Chinese are the most powerful country in the world. The Chinese government doesn't even pretend to give a fuck about human rights, and any pressure the West is currently able to put on crappy regimes in countries in return for investment and trading will vanish, as the Chinese are more than willing to invest and trade with dictatorships without giving a shit about how the people in those countries are treated.

Things are going to get a lot worse.

Modern democracy, including propotional representation, can only be desribed as democracy by the deluded. Europe is run by an unaccountable bureacracy. Most politicians in Europe don't care about democracy, they just care about being part of the political class, an increasingly out of touch elite who tax their electorates to ensure their own financial security.

True but the way that the US and UK don't even put on the pretence of being democracies shows their lack of any interest in the subject.

As for China - well it's totally absurd to pretend that the so-called democratic west gives a flying f*ck about human rights either.


- colonialism
- World War 1
- World War 2
- Genocide of Jews in Europe
- the USA built through the use of slavery
- Genocide of Native Americans
- Genocide of Aborigines in Australia
- 3 million Irish people starved to death or forced to emigrate due to starvation while Ireland remained a net EXPORTER of food during the Famine
- Genocide of the Armenians in Turkey

These were all as a result of actions (or lack thereof) by the so-called developed West.

And as China quite rightly points out they treat the Tibetans far better than the Native Americans were treated by the whites.

At least with China they are blatant about their lack of interest in human rights. Unlike the West which cares as much as China but keeps babbling on as if it does.

Uh, the Native American event has been over for centuries. This is happening currently. It's not okay now. It's like saying that it's okay to have slavery today in another country because other countries did in the past. It's not.