@toomas_ilves

Democracies could have, *should* have delivered despotism and military-expansionism a short, sharp shock of a coup de grâce in #1989.

But no. Business (with dictators) uber alles.

So now we have both #CCP #china and (as always) neo-imperial #russia trying to destroy liberal and progressive democratic order globally.

And this time we also have #climatechange, #plastic and other #pollutioncrises to deal with.

Isn't it time for all democracies to pull together and *only* deal with #dictatorships to the minimum extent where it objectively benefits humanity instead of empowering repressive authoritarians?

Let's see how powerful the old men of CCP are with zero foreign funding, technology and aid,,,

☝️ "The Russia-Ukraine war is not merely a humanitarian calamity, a monstrous collection of crimes against humanity, a gross violation of solemn agreements and international law. It is also a watershed, in which much will be determined about the future of the international system. It could lead to a very dark place, not different in kind from that of the 1930s and 1940s, if the dictators get their way. But if the liberal democracies unite and display the resolve, enterprise, and military capacity that they have shown before, that outcome can still be avoided."

#zeitenwende #HandelOhneWandel #WTO #freetrade #globalism

@andrewstroehlein "...and the EU is expected to relaunch its human rights dialogue with China..." and "These bilateral meetings have been a recurring exercise in pointlessness for decades."

Intimately related to this: #EU dialogues and the minor issue of occupied Tibet

I recall reading a convincing magazine piece written around early 2000s by a #Tibetan exile about the #EuropeanUnion's — or specifically the EuropeanParliament's efforts in the 1970s and 1980s at convincing the Tibetan Government-in-exile (#TGIE) to give up struggle for free and *independent* #Tibet in favour of "#autonomy* under the #Chinese #CCP #dictatorship.

The EU's efforts bore fruit and so-called "Middle Way" became TGIE's new policy. The Dalai Lama received the #Nobel Peace Prize in autumn 1989, only months after Tiananmen massacre.

The Tibetans, quite justifiably, expected the EU to stand behind the TGIE's demand for the restoration of Tibetans' indigenous rights and freedoms in Tibet.

What happened instead, now that the wee issue of *occupied* TIbet had been erased from the political map, was that European businesses beelined to ship what industrial base they could muster to the "People's Republic of #China. Business uber alles! #HandelOhneWandel!

And Tibet? <crickets...>

FWIW, it's a veritable dystopia. Has been since the PLA invaded in 1950.

The writer of that article appeared somewhat bitter by this most unexpected of turns — the EU apparently losing the TGIE's phone number and the subsequent CCP-appeasement-through-trade policy.

#history #prc #freedomstruggle #selfdetermination #humanrights

@designative

☝️ Calling the pro-democracy #HongKongprotests "often-violent" without basic qualifiers (i.e. that is was the increasingly militarized regime forces forcing the citizens to take ever greater defensive measures) is essentially echoing the #CCP-imposed #Hongkong regime's #propaganda.

Should the #Chinese #dictatorship be even considered in terms of #tourism?

I suppose #business people must keep businessing. But must others normalize the #repressive regime?

Call of hands: Who here enjoys holidaying in a #PrisonOfNations?

#timemagazine #HandelOhneWandel #indifference #whitewashing

It's such a brutally basic question.

Would you buy plastic nazi trinkets? Cheap nazi electronics?

Would you watch nazi satellite "news"? Play computer games by nazis?

Would you use nazi apps that can access all your private data? (their own networks being only accessible to the nazi party)

Would you send nazis your industrial base and your bankers to finance it?

From the point of view of #Tibetans, #Uighurs, #SouthMongolians, #Hongkongers and most of their current neighbours worried about pesky "#lebensraum issues", the Chinese dictatorship are like nazis, just without the _express_ corporeal extermination programme.

Yet nearly everyone merrily does business with them. Even the Jewish state... They have full WTO access to abuse as they will. Those they trust with passports go on foreign holiday tours. Unlike those denied *exit*...

Kindly explain to me why.

It's not 1945. They overthrew their republic in 1949 and went on to commit atrocities they've erased from their subjects' memory, and apparently from the memory of most free people as well. They key thought driving them forward is "biding time and hiding strength" until they can erase *#democracy* — the one thing that they fear and hate more than anything. They're buying off developing country elites at a pace that would make the East India Company blush.

I suppose Lenin's lightbulb moment of "selling capitalists the rope with which to hang them" didn't go the waste after all.

#CCP #PRC #China #chinazi #dictatorship #zeitenwende #HandelOhneWandel #greed

@dwnews_bot

"Is EU losing the fight for human rights in Asia?"

The health of #democracy and #HumanRights in #SoutheastAsia is inversely related to the power of the giant neighbouring #dictatorship which the world's democracies — lead by their bankers and industrialists — have been feeding for the last several decades.

Also, blatant #hypocrisy is seldom a winning strategy anywhere. If values and principles are up for sale, the rest is merely about haggling over price.

#HandelOhneWandel #appeasement #CCP #China #MoralProstitution

@mhmck "We said "Never again!" after the Holocaust but... Russians commit genocide..."

Also see: #PRC, 'People's Republic of China', 1949-

Didn't putin embark on his imperial re-conquests *exactly* because certain other expansionist dictatorship had already done it, consequence-free?

#Holocaust #UnitedNations #genocide #NeverAgain #HandelOhneWandel #russia #china

@jakluge

We should all be so pleased that at least by some metric Germany has 'outperformed' in 2022 (and all the decades of deep collaboration with various dictatorships).

#Germany #Deutschland #stockmarket #HandelOhneWandel #FreeTheLeopards

@Gesfandiari

Great. But just #Iran?

What about technology exports and business with all the other #dictatorships?

Especially the ones engaging in #genocide? Which, incidentally, are the same ones helping the #Iranian #regime cling to power?

Maybe it's *finally* time to stop collaborating with the entire network of despots?

#HandelOhneWandel #Germany #Zeitenwende #tragicomedy

@apmassaro3 @minna_alander

Post- #1989 #Germany could so easily have been a major driver for good; instead they went full "Handel Über Alles OHNE Wandel". Not just the govt but practically all the Germans I've met (overseas) and tried introducing human rights into discussion. Conscientious Germans have some task ahead.

Perma-chancellor #Schrölzkel or #Schrömerlz's "new #Zeitenwendey thingy" insists on the continued Support Through Business for the Chinese dictatorship despite its entire history and well-documented global objectives to remove democracy as an existential threat to its rule and expansion. No biggie, if you ask the political and industrialist elite of Germany.

Slava Ukraini! But are Tibetans and Uighurs etc. just too far from Europe to be worth supporting? #Iran's mullahs and other strongmen mushrooming everywhere also rely on #china and #russia for support.

#UnitedFront #UFWD #UnitedNations #veto #HandelOhneWandel