Telegraph Censorship - John Bolton - NI-EU-UK - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

All general discussion about politics that doesn't belong in any of the other forums.

Moderator: PoFo Political Circus Mods

#15233759
Telegraph wrote:Joe Biden’s clueless support for Ireland weakens the West

America’s real interests are the exact opposite to the views of EU high priests and their US acolytes

JOHN BOLTON
16 June 2022 • 6:00am
John Bolton

US President Joe Biden

What position should America take in the Northern Ireland dispute between the UK and the EU? President Joe Biden and key Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi think the answer is easy. They unreservedly accept both the EU claim that the Northern Ireland Protocol is essentially inviolable, and Ireland’s posture that unilateral British changes to the Protocol could mortally wound the Good Friday Agreement.

Why, exactly, is the Protocol so important to Biden, and how should Boris Johnson react? Presumably, Britain and Ireland can look out for their own national interests and seek US involvement if they mutually agree. And while Northern Ireland should not be used to relitigate the Brexit decision, that is precisely what the EU overlords, through their Irish surrogate, are attempting. But aside from London and Dublin, the two parties of real interest, this issue is almost solely a matter of theological importance for the international Left in its assault on the legitimacy of even democratically based national sovereignty.

How distant this is from hard reality. The Protocol is essentially a trade issue, pragmatically resolvable as such issues normally are, but for the EU’s insistence on communitaire theology and its determination to punish the one country that has flatly told it to go pound sand. EU high priests and their US acolytes conjure visions of hell if the UK abrogates any part of the Protocol as a “violation of international law.”

This is surely the easiest argument to refute, but a very important one for America, whose real interests are completely opposite to Biden’s views. The most fundamental point is whether national law prevails over international law when the two conflict. In the United States, the number of politicians prepared to say that the Constitution and laws enacted thereunder are subordinate to international law is between few and none, for good reason.

American and British constitutional law is well-settled that treaties can be modified or vitiated by subsequent legislation; no legislature can control the acts of its successors. Ultimately, the only legitimacy for governmental acts is the consent of the governed, which is why reversing prior legislative action is easily understood. Treaties or other international accords stand in no better place than domestic legislation.

Moreover, if you want an “international law” justification, the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus (roughly, “as things now stand”) permits a sovereign state to reject prior commitments on the basis of changed circumstances. Many if not most international agreements have withdrawal clauses, but even without one, a state cannot be bound under a deal when the parties’ fundamental expectations were based on erroneous understandings at the time or later.

This logic is crucial to democratic, constitutional sovereignty. Consider merely one aspect of a Bill introduced in Parliament on Monday, eliminating the role of EU judges in disputes involving the Protocol. Since the central issue is trade between parts of the UK, allowing external judges any say whatever is astonishing and illegitimate, like allowing Canada to dictate terms of trade between Alaska and the Lower Forty-Eight. In all post-Brexit matters, people should get used to the idea that London owes Brussels no subservience. Manumission has been achieved.

Unfortunately, for some US political leaders, the Good Friday Agreement involves not international theology but theological theology. Ironically, however, repudiating the Protocol makes preserving the Agreement more likely; quashing the EU’s harmful meddling will reduce the tensions it has improvidently raised. Dublin may prefer benefiting from EU leverage, but it is delusional to think that striving to weaken British internal unity is productive. The real question is whether the UK favours preserving its own cohesion or the EU’s.

Where are the true US national interests here, especially considering the ongoing and increasingly difficult Ukraine war? What Washington really needs strategically and politically is a strong UK, helping to lead the Nato alliance both in the immediate crisis and longer term, and in reinvigorating the special relationship on a global basis after years of tensions. With all due respect, Ireland is not a Nato member. Even as Finland and Sweden apply for Nato membership, Ireland remains mute. That is certainly Ireland’s choice; so are the consequences.

Instead, the White House recently lectured Downing Street that a dispute between London and Brussels risked upsetting Western unity over Ukraine, a claim as absurd as its predicate that the West today is really unified on Ukraine policy. The truth is that Biden-Pelosi Democrats never liked Brexit. In their world, the EU is still the wave of the future, stemming from Woodrow Wilson’s post-isolationist vision that “we are in the great drift of humanity which is to determine the politics of every country in the world”.

America isn’t drifting anywhere, and neither should Britain. And just to make the politics clear, Biden’s administration is coming ever-more unstuck. With November’s congressional elections looming, Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker is dwindling rapidly, and with it her influence. By contrast, London has both the momentum and the right, which is why Brussels is increasingly frantic.

John Bolton is a former US National Security Adviser


I commented:

Breaching international treaties and especially between western states weakens the West by definition.

N.I. voted to remain and like Scotland openly supported staying in the single market and it did.

The majority of its legislature prefers the Protocol, which makes this case ridiculous from a national domestic perspective just as well as from an international point of view.

CENSORED

Image

Now replaced with:

Openly advocating for western countries to spit on the treaties they signed with each other.

Arguing that doing so "strengthens the west", with a straight face.

Falsely pretending the consent of the governed exists for this action in N.I.

Wow and all this coming from the person that brought us "Saddam has WMD's".

To also be censored momentarily.

As DT censorship has been happening all the more frequently, I will be using this thread as a repository.
#15233761
John Bolton hates the EU almost as much as he hates the UN. This is why the Torygraph published his article, and also why it then censored anyone who tried to point out the absurdity of its arguments.
#15233788
annatar1914 wrote:Bolton once again shows what a completely despicable human being he really is. He only loves Israel and the United States, and I'm not even sure about that.

I wonder if Bolton's able to love or he's only able to belong, and he either belongs or hates.
#15255913
Matthew Lynn Telegraph wrote:The French have much to laugh about at the moment. Their football team will probably cruise past England with ease at the World Cup in the coming weeks. Their economy is growing faster than ours, with lower inflation. And if the Brexit-hating commentariat is to be believed, Paris is now a bigger financial centre than London. Or is it?

It is true that the Paris stock market has just overtaken London’s as Europe’s largest, at least by total value. But this measure is mostly nonsense, since the extra value largely comes down to the success of one exceptional company – Bernard Arnault’s luxury goods empire, LVMH – which has benefited in the short term from an absurdly strong dollar. Its singular performance does not speak for the rounded status of Paris as a financial centre. Indeed, on virtually every metric that matters, London is still well ahead of any European city.

Nevertheless, the Parisian smokescreen was enough to unite every hardcore Remoaner on social media in a moment of pure bliss. “The Luftwaffe set fire to the London Stock Exchange in 1940 and then blasted it with the shockwave of a supersonic missile in 1945 and still did less damage to it than we did,” tweeted the respected historian Dan Snow, who would probably benefit from some business lessons.


This was surely the moment the anti-Brexit crowd had been waiting for years to arrive. They had been disappointed that, after all the Project Fear warnings of 2016-19, the City hadn’t in fact been devastated by our departure from the European Union, and we didn’t see the bankers, hedge fund managers and insurance brokers decamping for Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Rather, we have seen them increase their presence here. So who can blame the poor EU fanatics for grasping at an iota of vindication? You could even say that President Macron showed admirable self-restraint in not tweeting out one of those laughing memes.

In all fairness to Mr Macron, the French stock market has been blessed with a great company, akin to the Apple of Europe. Bernard Arnault, as its head, briefly reclaimed his place as the world’s richest man last year before losing it again to Elon Musk. His brands, which include Moët & Chandon, Louis Vuitton and Dior, have been so successful that the company’s share price has doubled in five years.

Moreover, there is some symbolism, however empty, in London losing its historic position as the Continent’s largest stock market – the first time that has happened since it started crunching the numbers back in 2003 – and this should make us think again about our neglectful attitude to stock market listings. While Paris’s LVMH is worth €350 billion (£305.5 billion), overtaking the value of Meta (formerly Facebook), our biggest listed company is the oil and gas giant Shell, with a value of £165 billion. And even though Shell got a slight boost from the rising oil price, it is hardly a growth business.

We could easily have made up for that, but instead chose to do nothing as some of our best new businesses, such as Cazoo and Soho House, listed their shares elsewhere. Soon even the giant chip-maker ARM, a strategic asset, could be allowed to list abroad.

It is despite all this, and thanks to London’s historic reserve of talent and capital, that it remains Europe’s pre-eminent hub for share dealing, currency trading, funds under management and almost any other metric. According to the Global Financial Centres Index, the City remains in second place behind New York (Paris ranks in 11th place in case you were wondering).

But we are about to let relatively benign complacency turn into failure. In the six years since Brexit, we have done nothing to make the City more attractive, preferring instead to impose crazy governance codes on entrepreneurs. We have worried more about diversity targets and green virtue-signalling than growth, while making the tax system as unattractive as possible.

So while it is a Remoaner fever-dream to say that Paris is winning, we are facing credible threats from real competitors, whether New York, Singapore, Shanghai, or even Beijing. One day, if these hubs are allowed to nibble enough business from the Square Mile, the likes of Dan Snow might be able to gloat with some justification.


Deleted Comments:

Image
Image
Reposted:
Image
#15261309
More censorship from the Telegraph today and yesterday.

This is about the Parthenon Marbles and some inconvenient facts:

Article by Lord David Frost, arch-Brexiteer calling for the repatriation of the Marbles and receiving a lot of scorn from his Telegraph readers for it.

David Frost wrote:Britain should give the Elgin Marbles to Greece
The Government ought to offer the friezes in return for a new Anglo-Greek cultural partnership

Fireworks explode over the Acropolis during New Year celebrations in Athens
Reuniting the Parthenon friezes with the Acropolis would be a magnificent celebration of our common Western heritage

Here’s something I don’t say very often. I agree with George Osborne and I disagree with the admirable David Abulafia. Admittedly, not on mainstream politics, but on the Elgin Marbles, which are back in the news as we learn that the British Museum, under Osborne’s chairmanship, is in a “secret dialogue” with Greece on this long-running dispute.

I guess we all know the background: that Lord Elgin removed half of the Parthenon friezes to Britain in the early 19th century, probably with the agreement of the Ottoman authorities. They were subsequently purchased for the British Museum, which is now the legal owner. The Greek government has never accepted the legality of their removal and has campaigned vigorously for their return to the Acropolis Museum.

Despite the admittedly slightly murky nature of Elgin’s actions, I think our legal case is good. But I have never been so convinced by the moral, artistic and cultural arguments. I believe the Parthenon Marbles constitute a special situation to which we should try to find a special solution.

The Parthenon friezes are one of the supreme expressions of ancient Greek, hence Western, art. They were created for a specific building and a specific cultural and religious context. In contrast to much ancient sculpture, we know exactly what that context was and what the work of art was intended to signify. They aren’t just random museum exhibits. For as long as they are not seen as a whole, they are less than the sum of their parts.

I learnt Greek in Greece and have lived in Cyprus. I have no doubt been influenced by that experience, but it has also enabled me to see the argument from the Greek perspective. For us, the marbles are just one, albeit very important, exhibit in our national museums. For Greece, they are part of their national identity and a national cultural cause.

I don’t mean that every Greek citizen wakes up every morning asking themselves, “When will the Parthenon Marbles come back?”, but rather that a very significant part of modern Greek national identity, the modern Greek state, is built on continuity with ancient Greece and its heritage. The Acropolis and its buildings are the most visible and symbolic part of that, so I understand why it’s so important to Greece to bring that part of its scattered heritage home today.

So I can see why Osborne is trying to find a new way through. But, given how political an issue this is, I don’t think it is right to leave this entirely to him and the museum, still less that their discussions should be “secret”.

The 1963 British Museum Act rightly prohibits the museum from alienating its collections – a protection that is all the more needed today, when so many museum curators have a post-colonial chip on their shoulder and seem inclined to give away or close off exhibits for the most feeble and spurious of reasons.

However, the museum can agree a loan deal. Any such deal acceptable to the Greeks would have to be very far-reaching – and whether its terms would be acceptable to us is a national interest question for this country, too. So the Government has to be involved.

My view is that it is time for a grand gesture. Only the Government can make it. It is to offer to return the marbles as a one-off gift from this country to Greece, as part of a new wider Anglo-Greek partnership.

That partnership could have three components. First, a museum partnership: high-quality reproductions of the marbles in London plus an agreement by Greece to loan some of its most famous works of art, temporarily, in return, maybe to museums beyond London, too.

Second, a wider cultural partnership: a bilateral foundation, perhaps largely financed by the many wealthy private citizens with an interest in this question, to take academic and scholarly collaboration to a new level; and an agreement to relax or eliminate restrictions (the barriers are much stronger on the Greek side than ours) on language teaching, cultural work, and artistic performance by each others’ citizens.

Third, a joint campaign to return to Greece those parts of the marbles in other museums globally – for it should not be forgotten that, although the British Museum has most, it does not have them all.

Such a partnership would have to set aside for good the rights and wrongs of the original acquisition and the marbles’ subsequent treatment by either country. It would also have to be clear it was not a precedent for “restitution” demands for anything else.

It’s easy to see what Greece would gain from this. What would we gain?

We would resolve this dispute while getting something significant in return. We would demonstrate that we mean it when we say that the marbles are part of our common Western inheritance, something that can create partnership with Greece, not division. But we would also show something about the kind of country we are and aspire to be – a country which can look beyond “what we have, we hold” and can think about our reputation, our scholarship, and our culture. Let’s rise to the occasion, and make a deal.


Yesterday:

Image
Image


Today:
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
#15275838
Telegraph Censorship at it once again:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... es-can-le/

Hannan argues that the EU is moving to the right and so why should Britain not move from the right to the right?

LOL

noemon wrote:

Nick Matheson
26 MIN AGO
Message Actions
AWAITING MODERATION If Britain followed European trends, Labour should have been elected twice and now would be the Tories turn to rule. This would have been much less of disaster than the current situation. Our roads and public services would be in a much better shape, Brexit would never have happened and we would still be one of the top economies in the world and growing instead of the worst performer in the OECD. But Britain prevented Labour and Corbyn by using and abusing the entire establishment including the Guardian and Independent, raging dirty politics as well as micromanaging and redrawing constituencies.
In other words, the Tories engaged in all strategy to prevent Labour, leaving the country devastated in the process.
In all western countries, the right and left interchange is a good thing. The left expands public investment while the right constricts it, allowing for a golden equilibrium to form.
Here, public investment has become a pejorative, while our entire infrastructure is crumbling worse than in the third-world.
Reposted for getting deleted, even though it breaks no rules whatsoever.
This censorship is getting frustrating in here.
Attachments
Screenshot 2023-06-03 at 19.27.49.png
Screenshot 2023-06-03 at 18.52.08.png

People tend to forget that the French now have a s[…]

Neither is an option too. Neither have your inte[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

@JohnRawls There is no ethnic cleansing going o[…]

They are building a Russian Type nuclear reactor..[…]