Welcome to Links, my weekly round up of mostly-Scotland-or-UK-related links that caught my eye. If you have a link you’d like me to add, add it to the comments below.
Olive and Mabel play poker
Olive and Mabel have been playing poker. Olive had 5 aces so she may have cheated.
Scottish government publishes indyref2 bill
The Scottish government has published a bill for a 2nd independence referendum to be held during the first half of the next parliament:
The draft bill, published by the Scottish Government on Monday ahead of the Holyrood elections in May, states the timing of another referendum will be for the next Scottish Parliament to decide.
In the foreword of the draft bill, constitution secretary Michael Russell says the referendum should be held “within the first half of the next parliamentary term, when it is safe to do so”.
The draft bill also makes plans for the voter franchise to extend to those who can currently vote at Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections, which will see those aged 16 and 17 given the vote.
Fukuyama contra Apple
Francis Fukuyama isn't a fan of Apple's business practices:
Apple products were deliberately designed to prevent their users from modifying them, down to the use of proprietary fasteners that require special Apple-only tools. I tried to get into an old Mac laptop with my sons a few years ago; we ended up with a lot of useless bent metal trying to force our way in. Apple does not want you to be able to fix your own computer—rather, it wants you to visit the “Genius Bar” at the Apple Store and look over all the new products while you wait for someone to fix your machine in the back room. The “genius” refers not to you, the helpless customer, but to the marketing guy who thought up this system.
Apple is constantly making its users adopt proprietary connectors that you are forced to buy from them. An example is the “lightning” connector that was first introduced on the iPhone 7 and replaced the old 3.5mm headphone jack. Apple claims that this change was made to improve the user experience, but really they just want to force you to buy new headphones or adapters.
Here's a pre-2017 iPhone with headphone jack, below a more moderrn one without:
This is a scam. I'd laugh if there was a new tax of £1000 imposed on all mobile phones without a headphone jacks, as it would piss Apple off and force them to redesign their phones.
You can only get away with this sort of behavior if you hold a near-monopolistic position in the marketplace, and the huge scale of tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon has become a major challenge for our democracy.
These companies all need to be broken up. If the USA won't do it, the EU should.
"But", I hear you say, "these are all American companies. What jurisdiction does the EU have over them?" Simple: they do business in the EU, so the EU can tell them to split themselves up or they will be frozen out of the EU market. Furthermore, none of these companies want a big, powerful EU-based competitor, which they can't touch on its own turf, competing with them on world markets.
And frankly, if Apple, Google, Facebook or Amazon did decide they didn't want to be part of the EU market, that would be good as it would accelerate the emergence of European successors to those companies.
This is the sort of thing indy Scotland should push for once it is back in the EU. (Whether the other EU countries will listen is another matter. But they should because it is certainly in their interest.)
I will also note that while "split up or we'll freeze you out of our market" is a threat the EU could realistically make, it is not a threat the UK could realistically make, for two reasons:
the UK market is a lot smaller than the EU market so the Big Tech companies would be less bothered by being kicked out of it.
the Big Tech companies wouldn't like these threats so they would go to the US government -- which receives vast bribes donations from big corporations -- and tell them to put pressure on the UK. The US government would then threaten to kick the UK out of the US market, and the UK would have to back down.
So, because the UK is smaller than the EU, it has less ability to get its way. As I will never tire of repeating1: In geopolitics, size matters.
Western nations sanction China
The BBC reports that several Western nations have put sanctions on China:
Several Western countries have imposed sanctions on officials in China over rights abuses against the mostly Muslim Uighur minority group. China has detained Uighurs at camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang, where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged. The sanctions were introduced as a coordinated effort by the European Union, UK, US and Canada.
The sanctions so far are largely symbolic sanctions against individuals involved China's concentration camps:
Chen Mingguo, the director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, the local police force
Wang Mingshan, a member of Xinjiang's Communist Party standing committee, who, the EU says, "holds a key political position in charge of overseeing" the detention of Uighurs
Wang Junzheng, party secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a state-owned economic and paramilitary organisation
the former deputy Communist Party head in Xinjiang, Zhu Hailun, who is accused of having held a "key political position" in overseeing the running of the camps
the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau, which is in charge of implementing XPCC policies on security matters, including the management of detention centres
I hope China retaliates by confiscating Western assets in China or by punitive import tariffs on Western goods, since any Chinese retaliation would make counter-retaliation by these countries easier. it's about time everyone realises that whether we like it or not, the West is involved in a 2nd Cold War, and China will likely be a more powerful adversary than the USSR was.
What is the Church of England's religion?
Disrn and Christian Post report on a leaked Church of Englnad report, titled "From Lament to Action: Report of the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce":
The Church of England may institute a quota on black and minority ethnic clergy within its ranks as well as institute anti-racism training
The task force reportedly calls for “programme cohorts” to have a minimum of 30% “UKME participation” to “build up pipeline supply.”
The task force recommends that church-affiliated primary and secondary schools “develop a broad RE curriculum with specific reference to the promotion of racial justice.” The report encourages schools to celebrate Black History Month.
Last June, Welby told BBC Radio 4 that the controversial statues “need to be put in context. Some will have to come down. Some names will have to change,” he added. “The church, goodness me, you just go round Canterbury Cathedral, and there are monuments everywhere or Westminster Abbey. We are looking at all that, and some will have to come down.”
“We have bucket-loads of saints, martyrs, heroes and heroines, buildings acquired and built with dubious money, but no one is unblemished, all have sinned,” the Rev. Andy Bawtree, a vicar at River Parish Church near Dover, was quoted as saying. So “where do you stop?”
The Church of England's religion seems to be more Wokism than Christianity these days.
PRC sanctions Jo Smith Findley
Jo Smith Finley has been sanctioned by the People’s Republic of China:
China's announcement says:
The Chinese side decides to sanction the following nine individuals and four entities on the UK side that maliciously spread lies and disinformation: Tom Tugendhat, Iain Duncan Smith, Neil O'Brien, David Alton, Tim Loughton, Nusrat Ghani, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Nice, Joanne Nicola Smith Finley, China Research Group, Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Uyghur Tribunal, Essex Court Chambers. As of today, the individuals concerned and their immediate family members are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China, their property in China will be frozen, and Chinese citizens and institutions will be prohibited from doing business with them. China reserves the right to take further measures.
Bone Apple Tea
Over at Bone Apple Tea, people get words wrong.
For example they might love the smell of incest:
Or have a bus in emasculate condition:
Boycotting the 2022 Olympics
The Economist wonders whether anyone will boycott China's 2022 winter Olympics, dubbed the "genocide Olympics":
IN 2015, WHEN the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics to Beijing, some people criticised the decision because of China’s human-rights record. [...] few people even imagined that, within two years, China would be building a gulag in Xinjiang to incarcerate more than 1m ethnic Uyghurs because of their religious and cultural beliefs.
Mike Pompeo says:
Allowing China to host the 2022 Winter Olympics would give the communist nation a boost in credibility similar to the 1936 Summer Games in Nazi Germany, according to former Secretary of States Mike Pompeo this week.
“Well, what’s happening in the 1930s is happening in western China today. There are eerie, eerie similarities between the two, and hosting the Olympic Games — as the Germans were able to do in 1936 — gave great credibility to that regime,” Pompeo continued.
In fact, Germany's human rights record in 1936 was a good deal better than China's today.
If the Chinese Olympics are to be boycotted -- something I fully support, as it would embarrass China -- the way to do it would be to hold an alternative event and invite athletes from all over the world to compete.
In the long term it would be best if the Olympics were held in the same place every year. The obvious place would be Greece.
Bezos contra Sanders and Warren
Jeff Bezos has got his attack dogs to go after Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:
It's time to break up Amazon. No, that's not true: it's well past time to break up Amazon.
While UK couldn't do this (because it's too small), the EU could (because being broken up would be less bad for Amazon than losing the EU market permanently), and if the UK was still an EU member, it would quite likely be able to persuade the EU to break up Amazon, since the mood in the EU is going against foreign (chiefly US) big tech firms.
So, time for Scotland to say bye-bye to the failing Westminster regime, and rejoin the EU, which Westminster kicked us out of against our will.
Salmond launches new party
On the subject of saying bye-bye to Westminster, Alex Salmond launches the Alba Party:
Former SNP leader Alex Salmond has announced the creation of a new pro-independence party which will contest the Scottish Parliament election.
The former first minister said he would be among the candidates who will stand for the Alba Party on regional lists. Mr Salmond said the aim was to build "a supermajority for independence" at Holyrood after the election in May.
Scottish parliamentary elections use the AMS voting system. The way AMS works, it's possible to vote tactically and gain increased representation for your side that way (this is arguably a weakness of AMS). Consequently, if a lot of SNP voters switch their list vote from SNP to Alba Party, then the SNP might only lose a few seats but Alba gain lots of seats, thus increasing the total number of pro-independence MSPs.
Will this happen? It might, and it's more likely to happen if a high profile figure such as Salmond is heading the list party.
I'm reminded of Nigel Farage, who was leader of UKIP, left that party, founded his own new party (the Brexit Party) and got more votes than his old party in the subsequent election.
There's another similarity: Farage and Salmond both made a political career out of arguing that their country shouldn't be (as they saw it) dominated by a larger foreign entity.
That's not strictly speaking true. I will tire of repeating it when everyone in the UK government understands and internalises the message. Unfortunately they are slow learners.