Posts by Angus Robertson
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Steady Angus...my response was simply to your inaccurate statement that the profits go to Holland. It was, and remains nonsense. There is a profit derived by all parties from the transaction.
Simon,
The Dutch exploit low poduction costs in China for profit.
Who is responsible for the emissions? The Kyoto protocol types (european) say it should be the Chinese, the Chinese say it shouldn't. I am in agreement with the Chinese.
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The Chinese factory owners do it for zip? Maybe Angus can point me in the direction of these benevolent folks? I need....
...no don't tell me let me guess.
You have a small ceramics workshop and want to do a large plate run. Do the design and have them Made in China for 20% of the price. You'll fire your staff, recieve carbon credits by shutting your NZ kiln, airfreight the plates back, discount 25% off, double your profit and (here is the best bit) blame the dirty f*%king Chinese for polluting the planet.
PS - we are discussing Kyoto here, an agreement Chinese have no obligations under and based on a framework they will never join, because of its inherent unfairness (see above).
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Gareth,
Hang on, your comment explicitly stated that emissions trading was driving productive enterprise out of Europe?
No, what I said was:
They are "making it" by exporting productive industry to places outside of Europe.
I meant to imply Kyoto is green lipstick on a globalised pig. It imposes some costs on EU production that add to the advantages of low cost labour, lax regulation, non-existant health & safety that drive capitalists to move production to China, India, etc. But no one in their right mind can say it is driving.
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Some EU nations are missing their targets - but what matters to Kyoto is that overall, Europe is making it.
They are "making it" by exporting productive industry to places outside of Europe. Thus increasing the carbon footprint of Europe and hastening climate change. Kyoto is crap.
Kyoto is rightfully doomed, it cannot be implemented in anything like its current form in China or India. Kyoto is greenwash for western carbon junkies, let's find a better way forward that is fair to all the world's people.
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The UK is entering a recession and surveillance costs a bit to operate. Only question is do they make cuts to health spending, welfare or raise taxes.
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Right now, Bosnia is the more successful of the two interventions despite a horrible beginning. One of the problems in Afghanistan is that for many the end result is little better than the problem.
Indeed ethnic cleansing with a hint of genocide as practiced in the Balkans was good methodology for pacifying territory. After the enemy civilians have fled everyone can live in peace. I suspect it is the prefered methodology of the West to stand aside and let this sort of thing happen - Sudan, Congo, Burma. The issue is that emnity may build for a later generation of bloodletting.
Winning in Afghanistan is an attempt to find a way to break the cycle, but maybe no solution exists.
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We, if we means the west, decided to turn a blind eye to those. It was no better than the Bosnian situation.
Yes Simon both were dirty wars that involved massacres of civillians as a norm rather than an exception. In Bosnia the West sent troops to not take sides, but stand by and do nothing. In Afghanistan the West sent troops to intervene and to intervene meant picking somebody's side. The wars were similar, but Western actions were different.
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Bosnia was an international intervention in a civil war. We entered it in 1992 by providing 9 UN military observers after a peace agreement had been signed between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
If we had decided the massacre at Srebrenica and generalised ethnic cleansing were a problem then we would have been involved in fighting a war in Bosnia. We did not, thousands were killed and the ethnic cleansing was made effective.
We entered Afghanistan as part of a full-throated war of invasion in which the established government [Taliban] of Afghanistan - not just the Al Qaeda terrorists were the declared enemy.
Actually we allied with the United Islamic Front that controlled 30% of Afghanistan and attacked the Taliban who were allied with Al Qaeda. "The established government [Taliban] of Afghanistan" was not established, but rather the larger faction in an on-going civil war. The Taliban had by 2001 gained control of approximately 60% of Afghanistan, under its control religious persecution (including mass killings) occured. We could have adopted the Bosnian approach and stood by whilst these persecutions took place, but decided not.
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So do you have any idea why this war is so unreported?
An extension of what Craig says - there are bugger all networks local to in Afghanistan. Our press is good at covering events that occur in the West - fashion shows, celeb weddings, sports and the financials. For foreign affairs it repackages news from foreign networks. Footage of Baghdad would be shown on Al Jezeera or Al Arabiya with an Arab commentary then 5 hours later would be on CNN with an American accent.