Pardon, your liege, may we have egg on our faces?

Updates

  1. Originally published, June 30, 12:17 pm.
  2. June 30, 12:50 pm:
    • Utterly unsurprisingly, the European Union has decided not to open its borders to non-essential travel from the United States.[1]
  3. June 30, 11:14 pm:
    • Senate testimony given by Anthony Fauci and other experts pretty much confirms what we already knew, that the U.S. is going in the wrong direction on the COVID-19 pandemic because people aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do. And the spikes in some states endanger the rest.[2]

In case you missed it, there were more updates last night.


Uyghurs

There is a relatively short new blog post entitled, “Genocide.” I see it’s gotten two hits from China already. Maybe I should start talking about Hong Kong, too.[3]

Associated Press, “China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization,” June 29, 2020, copy in possession of author.

Hong Kong

Clare Jim and Yew Lun Tian, “China passes national security law in turning point for Hong Kong,” Reuters, June 30, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hongkong-security/china-passes-national-security-law-in-turning-point-for-hong-kong-idUSKBN241061


International Criminal Court

The lawyers who want Donald Trump to rescind his sanctions against the International Criminal Court[4] may get to keep their law licenses but not much else. Regarding the Uyghurs and according to John Bolton:

China was also busily repressing ethnic minorities—in Tibet, for example—as it had been doing for decades. Beijing’s repression of the Uighurs also proceeded apace. [Donald] Trump asked me at the 2018 White House Christmas dinner why we were considering sanctioning China because of its treatment of the Uighurs, a non-Han Chinese, largely Muslim people, who lived primarily in China’s northwest Xinjiang Province. Ross had warned me that morning Trump didn’t want sanctions because of the China trade negotiations. The issue of the Uighurs had been wending its way through the NSD process, but it was not yet ready for decision. It only got worse. At the opening dinner of the Osaka G20 meeting, with only interpreters present, Xi [Jinping] explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do. Pottinger told me Trump said something very similar during the 2017 trip to China, which meant we could cross repression of the Uighurs off our list of possible reasons to sanction China, at least as long as trade negotiations continued.[5]

Though he denies having given Xi Jinping a green light to build the concentration camps, Trump has pretty much confirmed that his emphasis was on a trade deal.[6]

Asked why he hadn’t yet enacted Treasury sanctions against Chinese Communist Party officials or entities tied to the camps where the Chinese government detains Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, [Donald] Trump replied, “Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.”[7]

So um, lawyers, the International Criminal Court has some issues, like colonialism and the fact that it functions under a paradigm of justice reduced to law, but understand I’m more in favor of it than I am against it. Trump, on the other hand, cares about trade and doesn’t give a fuck about your concerns or mine. Which means, because you know and I know you can’t do a damn thing about it, your letter amounts to egg on your faces.

Ellen Nakashima and Carol Morello, “Lawyers urge Trump to rescind sanctions and travel bans for International Criminal Court,” Washington Post, June 29, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/lawyers-urge-trump-to-rescind-sanctions-and-travel-bans-for-international-criminal-court/2020/06/29/0ef0c476-ba15-11ea-86d5-3b9b3863273b_story.html


Pandemic

Laurence Norman, “EU to Remain Closed to U.S. Travelers as Borders Open Up,” Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-opens-up-to-some-travelers-but-not-americans-11593524652


  1. [1]Laurence Norman, “EU to Remain Closed to U.S. Travelers as Borders Open Up,” Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-opens-up-to-some-travelers-but-not-americans-11593524652
  2. [2]Meg Wagner et al., “Fauci, Redfield testify on Covid-19 reopening as cases rise,” CNN, June 30, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/webview/politics/live-news/covid-19-school-work-reopening-testimony-06-30-20/h_cc7cf09eae87064e72f75af30984acd3
  3. [3]Clare Jim and Yew Lun Tian, “China passes national security law in turning point for Hong Kong,” Reuters, June 30, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hongkong-security/china-passes-national-security-law-in-turning-point-for-hong-kong-idUSKBN241061
  4. [4]Ellen Nakashima and Carol Morello, “Lawyers urge Trump to rescind sanctions and travel bans for International Criminal Court,” Washington Post, June 29, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/lawyers-urge-trump-to-rescind-sanctions-and-travel-bans-for-international-criminal-court/2020/06/29/0ef0c476-ba15-11ea-86d5-3b9b3863273b_story.html
  5. [5]John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020), 312.
  6. [6]Jonathan Swan, “Exclusive: Trump held off on Xinjiang sanctions for China trade deal,” Axios, June 21, 2020, https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslims-sanctions-d4dc86fc-17f4-42bd-bdbd-c30f4d2ffa21.html
  7. [7]Jonathan Swan, “Exclusive: Trump held off on Xinjiang sanctions for China trade deal,” Axios, June 21, 2020, https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslims-sanctions-d4dc86fc-17f4-42bd-bdbd-c30f4d2ffa21.html

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