June 4 vigil in Taipei: Hundreds of people are gathering at the Liberty Square to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing 35 years ago. Hong Kong remains a strong presence in this year’s rally. pic.twitter.com/5rJ3pOFi5Y
— Amy Chang Chien (@amy_changchien) June 4, 2024
35 years ago, peaceful protests in and around Tiananmen Square ended in tragedy. Some people are trying to erase those events from history and memory. Today we remember. pic.twitter.com/8BHucB7Zyx
— UK in China 🇬🇧 (@ukinchina) June 4, 2024
Police officers ramped up security measures in Hong Kong for the 35th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square https://t.co/RQUvVq8otD pic.twitter.com/FPV9oPMwbc
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 4, 2024
In the latest WSJ China, I write about the memories from June 4, 1989, the poignant shift in the mood among the Chinese youth since then, from hope to despair, and Tiananmen’s impact on my generation. 从来都不需要想起,因为永远都不会忘记🙏 https://t.co/t23bPIfd8b pic.twitter.com/6kqSulbJZV
— Lingling Wei 魏玲灵 (@Lingling_Wei) June 4, 2024
“After Tiananmen, a Past That Didn’t Pass and a Future That Didn’t Come”:
Today, June 4, marks the 35th year since China’s leaders sent in troops to crush the student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing. The Chinese surveillance state made sure it was uneventful—just like any other day.
Underneath the tranquility, however, is a poignant shift in the mood among the youth: The hope of the June 4th generation has given way to the despair of many young Chinese today.
In the spring of 1989, tens of thousands of university students from all over Beijing started gathering in Tiananmen Square, calling for the end of corruption within the Communist Party as well as freedom of the press, freedom of speech and other democratic reforms.
The protesters didn’t want to overthrow the party; they hoped the party would improve its governance. In early June of that year, the demonstrations ended in a brutal crackdown by a leadership fearful of the party’s survival.
Since then, the students’ mobilization that year has served as a constant reminder for Beijing of the need to step up command and control, especially of the minds of the young. While the massacre was followed by economic opening, leaders kept a tight rein on political freedoms. Still, hope for a better future has persisted—that is, until recently.
With the country’s path toward more economic growth, openness and opportunity reversing, a generation of youth now choose not to date, get married, or have children, in a phenomenon dubbed “lying flat.”…
Want to know what totalitarianism looks like in action?
Hong Kong police arrest artist Sanmu Chen for appearing to sign the numbers “8964” in the air on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre.
He made a finger motion and wore a white shirt like the… pic.twitter.com/slR1quKv0r
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) June 4, 2024
After crackdown on Hong Kong, overseas communities carry the torch to keep Tiananmen memories alive https://t.co/7gCouzpyLZ
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 3, 2024
“After crackdown on Hong Kong, overseas communities carry the torch to keep Tiananmen memories alive”:
… As Beijing’s toughened political stance effectively extinguished any large-scale commemorations within its borders, overseas commemorative events have grown increasingly crucial for preserving memories of the Tiananmen crackdown. Over the past few years, a growing number of talks, rallies, exhibitions and plays on the subject have emerged in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and Taiwan.
These activities foster hope and counteract the aggressive efforts to erase reminders of the crackdown, particularly those seen in Hong Kong. In 2021, the city’s police charged three leaders of the group that organized the vigil with subversion under a 2020 sweeping national security law that has all but wiped out public dissent. Later, the group voted to disband. Tiananmen-related statues were also removed from universities…
On Tuesday, the park that used to hold the vigil will be occupied by a carnival held by pro-Beijing groups.
However, attempts to silence commemorative efforts have failed to erase the harrowing memories from the minds of a generation of liberal-minded Chinese in the years after tanks rolled into the heart of Beijing to break up weeks of student-led protests that had spread to other cities and were seen as a threat to Communist Party rule…
To preserve memories of the event, a museum dedicated to the Tiananmen crackdown opened in New York last June. It features exhibits such as a blood-stained shirt and a tent used by student protesters.
A similar museum operated by vigil organizers was shuttered in Hong Kong in 2021.
As of early May, its board chair Wang Dan, also a leading former student leader of the Tiananmen protests, estimated the New York museum attracted about 1,000 people, including Chinese immigrants, U.S. citizens and Hong Kongers. To expand its audience, Wang said he plans to organize temporary exhibitions on university campuses in the U.S., and possibly in other countries over the longer term.
He said overseas memorial events are crucial because mainland Chinese and Hong Kongers can see overseas memorial activities online.
“It can have an effect in mainland China because young people there all know how to use VPNs to circumvent internet censorship,” he said…
On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Incident, we commemorate the students & citizens who bravely marched for change. As #Taiwan deepens our commitment towards human rights, we firmly stand by the belief that the people only truly flourish with freedom & democracy. pic.twitter.com/1kZouffPwS
— 賴清德Lai Ching-te (@ChingteLai) June 4, 2024
Evan Osnos, at the New Yorker — “The Shadow of Tiananmen Falls on Hong Kong”
In the spring of 1989, Chinese students protesting for democracy chose a site with unique symbolic power: Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. For centuries, the area has been marked by a colossal edifice known as tiananmen—the gate of heavenly peace—where leaders held forth. In 1949, Mao Zedong, standing atop the gate, which overlooks the square, declared the founding of the People’s Republic, and, for decades afterward, schoolchildren sang a jingle called “I Love Beijing’s Tiananmen,” in which Chairman Mao will “guide us into the future.”
Today, that lyric sounds grimly like prophecy. On June 4, 1989, the Communist Party turned its tanks and soldiers on the protesters, killing, in the least, hundreds of people (a precise number remains unknown) and deflecting the democratic wave that toppled the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc. As China approaches the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, the incident has been effaced from its official history to such an extent that young people scarcely know the details of the anniversary they are supposed to avoid. (In June, 2022, censors blocked a popular live streamer named Li Jiaqi after he displayed an ice cream in the shape of a tank; it is possible that Li, who was born in 1992, had no idea that it would be a sensitive image.) But, even as Tiananmen has been scrubbed from public memory, its shadow is more visible than ever in the resurgence of authoritarianism in China and abroad, in step with the nation’s expanding realm of influence.
The reach of that philosophy—governance by repression—became manifest on Thursday, when a Hong Kong court, in a landmark trial, convicted fourteen democracy activists on charges of subversion. It’s the largest case yet brought under a national-security law that was imposed by Beijing in 2020; another thirty-one defendants had already pleaded guilty, and two were acquitted for lack of evidence. The trial of the Hong Kong 47, as they’re known, has its roots in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections that same year, when prominent activists held an unofficial primary to choose a slate of pro-democracy candidates, and drew an unexpectedly high turnout—some thirteen per cent of the city’s registered voters. The Hong Kong government postponed the election and later staged predawn raids on people involved, including the legal scholar Benny Tai, the former student leader Joshua Wong, and a number of former lawmakers. Most pleaded guilty, in hopes of having their sentences reduced by up to a third; others, who were convicted, face sentences ranging from three years to life in prison, an astonishing potential punishment that Human Rights Watch described as “blatantly erasing the basic human rights guaranteed in Hong Kong laws.”…
China’s political cosmos is extending in other directions, too. When the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, visited Beijing in May, his counterpart, Xi Jinping, greeted him on a red carpet laid out in Tiananmen Square, cheered by phalanxes of children. Putin was not only obliging himself of a treasured refuge from an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last year and a chance to flatter his economic patrons—since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in 2022, trade between Russia and China has grown at least sixty per cent—he was also acknowledging a tectonic shift in Russia’s view of the world, one that goes far beyond the temporary circumstances of war. Moscow’s élites are sending their children to study in Beijing and Shanghai. (Putin said that his family members were learning Mandarin.) As more Western writers, such as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, refuse to publish their work while the war is raging, Chinese authors are filling part of the literary void, thanks to Chinese-government grants for translation. Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, has written of Russia that “never in its entire history has it been so entwined with China.”…
Indeed, in the same week of the verdict in the Hong Kong 47 case, fresh evidence emerged of how sharply the local legal climate has been transformed. Until recently, Hong Kong had served as a safe place for peaceful commemorations of the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, in vigils and memorials. But, in a sign of how the sensibilities of Beijing have inspired local efforts to demonstrate ideological fealty, the government of Hong Kong enacted its own security law in March—much like a state law working in tandem with federal law. And, this past Tuesday, the government made the first arrests under the new local law—accusing six people, including the well-known activist Chow Hang-tung, of illegal social-media posts, intended, as police put it, to “incite netizens to organize or participate in illegal activities.”
The posts in question seem to make references to the thirty-fifth anniversary of Tiananmen, but the topic is now considered too sensitive in Hong Kong for even the authorities to discuss casually. In the official description of the arrests, the police simply mentioned “an approaching sensitive date.” When reporters asked Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security, Chris Tang, whether the police were referring to June 4th, he replied, “The date itself is not important.” In truth, as a landmark in the history of authoritarian politics, June 4th has rarely been more important.
Never, ever forget the monstrosity that was Tiananmen. 35 years ago today.
Xi Jinping endorsed the massacre as a cadre and his wife sung to the troops who carried it out and turned their guns on the Chinese people.
They will do this again if we don’t stand up to them pic.twitter.com/VFNuXulnTz
— Drew Pavlou ???????????? (@DrewPavlou) June 4, 2024
The man in front of the tank: How journalists smuggled out the iconic Tiananmen Square photo. @jessieyeung8 on the 35th anniversary of Tiananmen Square: https://t.co/wx1Lgjzefy
— CNN Asia Pacific PR (@cnnasiapr) June 4, 2024
The Chinese government is seeking to erase memory of the Tiananmen Massacre throughout China and in Hong Kong.
But 35 years on, the government has been unable to extinguish the flames of remembrance. https://t.co/jwUofibtBi pic.twitter.com/bKUeDbmB2e
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) June 4, 2024
35 years ago in Tiananmen Square, the world witnessed one of the most courageous acts of dissent – and one of the most violent & brutal crackdowns – in modern history.
As we said shortly after the Massacre in 1989, we must remember what happened because Beijing denies history. pic.twitter.com/T2yns3lIxm
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) June 4, 2024
Baud
Is the anniversary more widely recognized this year than in the past? I’m a little surprised, given what short attention span we USians have.
cope
If you have ever been around heavy equipment (large bulldozers in particular, say a D-9 Cat or bigger) that’s in operation, you might have a tiny sense of how much courage The Man In Front Of The Tank had. If I recall correctly (not a given), in video of his defiance, the tank makes a move to go around him and he moves to stay directly in front of it. I can only begin to imagine how he felt at the time.
Belafon
@Baud: Think of all the mattresses China could sell if they would just rebrand it as Chinese Memorial Day.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
I remember being a naive 10-year-old and thinking that the students would win. The man in front of the tank is burned into my brain. I sometimes wonder what our world and China would be like had they prevailed. Everyone writes alternate history about the US Civil War or WWII, but I haven’t yet read something that asks, “what if Tiananmen Square had been a victory?” Maybe I will write it.
It’s hard enough now as an American not to give into despair. I can’t imagine how Chinese young people could’ve avoided that outcome.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@Belafon: or move “Lunar” New Year!
japa21
@Baud: The only way USians have any idea of the word Tiananmen is because some people remember. I bet 75% of USians have no idea what happened there. And at least 27% wish that the BLM protestors had been treated the same way.
Chris
@cope:
Heck, I’d be terrified enough just standing in front of a car. Even a damn Mini could kill you.
Barbara
@Baud: It’s “multiple of 5 year” anniversary. Perhaps that’s why.
Old School
It took me longer than it should have to realize that “8964” was referring to a date.
Nukular Biskits
I was 25 years old, just two years into my career.
I remember this.
sab
YIKES!!!
I had no idea it was 25 years. So many parents bereft.
rikyrah
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun):
Will never forget that image of him.
Chris
@japa21:
Pretty sure Trump came right out and said some version of your last sentence.
cain
India should troll China by having 2 minutes of silence.
Nukular Biskits
@rikyrah:
That’s one of those historic images that are inseparable from the actual event.
Kinda like the iconic photo of the sailor kissing the girl at the end of WWII.
E.
I always associate this with the Exxon Valdez in my mind. My first real experience with history of great import and far beyond my control.
raven
I was in a doc program and had a Chinese colleague who said they deserved what they got.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I was an intel officer working for the Navy (civilian) when this happened. My “beat”, in part, was China, technically the navy. When this was happening, our office wasn’t involved.
The following year I moved jobs for a promotion and went to DIA in the group assigned to the J2 at the Pentagon, still working China Navy. Went to Beijing that year (1990) to help the Defense Attache’s office process a lot of stuff. Very tense time.
Many of the staff there virulently hated Betty Bao Lord, ambassador Winnie Lord’s wife, because of her role behind the scenes encouraging and outright egging the students on. They told me at the time that she made them promises about US support, never defined mind you, that were totally at odds with what the US Embassy and Defense Attache offices were telegraphing at the time.
I worked with one attache who was out on the 5th and described basically street-to-street shootings as the PLA tracked down students, or practically anybody who moved, and shot first and asked-no-questions later.
According to the people I worked with in the attache’s office, the death toll was much, much higher but would never be known.
raven
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Another Dragon Lady
raven
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Another Dragon Lady
Nukular Biskits
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I had no idea that Chinese students were being encourage with promises of US support.
Damn.
Trollhattan
IDK if this is taught in our schools. My kid was born after and perhaps knows little about it.
They chide as “meddling in our internal affairs” anybody who asks a CCP spokesperson about Tiananmen Square. “You should learn to be better world citizens and not repeat your imperialist ways. Next question?”
Heard similar things uttered by a BJP critter just this morning, in an utter coincidence. That thing Moti said? “Bad translation, you do not understand that word.”
MomSense
I had a Chinese friend who was attending grad school and also taking college level political science classes. She was the trial student. The following year the Chinese government sent I think 8 or so students. I volunteered to help her with English language questions and note taking since we were in several classes together and I worked at the dining hall where she ate most of her meals.
She was very careful not to say anything political but I know she read multiple newspapers everyday at the library. I thought she would return the next year but she didn’t and I have always wondered if it was because she was a protester. Anyway, I always think of Sue (her chosen American name) on this anniversary.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Nukular Biskits:
Let me stress, that wasn’t anything official. It was one person’s agenda done totally outside official channels with no blessing of the administration much less her husband. These were personal observations and reflections of people I worked closely with who had been there before, during and after. And cuz she was the ambassador’s wife, little else was said. But in my 11 years doing that, never did I see career military intel officers exhibit that kind of virulence toward one individual as they did toward her.
She hated (hates cuz she still lives) the “Chinese Communists” with a blinding hot passion of a million sons. And as was explained to me, she seized on the student protests as some way to bring down the government so she talked basically out her ass.
My attache peers said that every death was her responsibility. These weren’t screaming liberal types, these were career military officers connected to the PLA alongside the Embassy’s contacts. The attache folks felt things didn’t have to end up like that but Betty Bao Lord was whispering in the ears of a bunch of naive students promising the moon and the stars.
dm
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun):
I remember being a naive 33 year old and thinking the students’ loss would be only temporary, even though, at the time, the Berlin Wall still stood, and many of the other momentous events of ‘89 were yet to come.
Part of that was thinking that market forces would undermine Party authority — the economic changes of the previous years were stunning — and I thought they’d be as corrosive to the established order as they were to the cultural order of the West. But I was wrong about that.
I’m glad that people are keeping the memory of June 4 alive.
Jeffg166
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun): One thing that brought down the USSR was the despair and apathy of its citizens. They simply didn’t care anymore. Both China and Russia are on the same path again. Killed the hopes of the people and you won’t last long.
Omnes Omnibus
1989 was a hell of a year.
Chris
Dangerman
I recall being in Chongqing, not that long afterwards (~96). I finally came to the conclusion the interpreter I was given was more than an interpreter and reasonably sure my room had at least audio surveillance.
China was weird. Hong Kong more weird. Loved Japan immensely.
dm
I don’t know that it’s fair to characterize Xi Jinping as a “cadre”, as one of the tweets does. He was 36 at the time (the same age that Gorbachev was when the Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed) and was a mid-level bureaucrat in the provincial government. I tend to think of the term “cadre” being applied to people who are younger — like the students of the Red Guard. His father was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, and he himself served time for fleeing his assigned place in a rural village for Beijing. So, in a sense, doubly not a “cadre”.
One could easily think he’d have some sympathy with the desires of the students. But it seems the lesson he learned from that was about power, and that the way to protect yourself from adversity was to get power and cling to it.
Chris
@dm:
Depends on how you choose to look at it.
From what I’ve heard, one of the narratives that was quietly going around at the time was that the Tienanmen Square students were exactly like the Red Guards that Mao turned loose in the Cultural Revolution: crazed student anarchists who wanted to burn everything down instead of shutting up and listening to their betters. The CCP couldn’t come straight out and embrace that as the official narrative (they’ve been very careful never to repudiate Mao the way Khrushchev repudiated Stalin), but it’d be no surprise if this was the sort of thing the rich and powerful told each other in private.
moonbat
Fresh out of undergrad myself then. I followed the student protests in Tienanmen avidly. Everything from the mini city within a city they established in the square to the creation of the Goddess of Democracy statue. And, as some have said here already, I dared hoped that they were the vanguard bringing about real change. Chinese exchange students at my alma mater were selling t-shirts painted with Chinese characters naming what the students were fighting for to support the protestors. I got one that read “democracy.”
The crackdown was horrific. The man in front of the tanks — disappeared, never to be seen again — was walking home from getting groceries when he became an eternal symbol of defiance in the face of oppression. I’ll never forget it, but I’m safe and sound thousands of miles away. It pains me that China is trying to wipe it’s nation’s collective memory of those events and “laying flat” is the only form of protest open to the young now. Can’t imagine the level of hopelessness that has to exist for that to be a generation’s life choice.
Bill Arnold
Modi’s BJP loses majority in India election shock, needs allies for gov’t – Defying exit polls, opposition parties stun the BJP in vital states, resetting India’s political landscape. (Yashraj Sharma, 4 Jun 2024)
A coalition government.
rikyrah
Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) posted at 2:58 PM on Mon, Jun 03, 2024:
In a moment when anti-abortion activists claim their laws protect women from domestic abuse, this piece from @kylietcheung is an important reminder of how abortion bans enable abusers
https://t.co/Z2IT4JK04z
(https://x.com/JessicaValenti/status/1797719639587533038?t=nuYXa5Dlyz2z–MXgJf_nA&s=03)
rikyrah
Yep…sounds about right…
scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) posted at 2:01 PM on Tue, Jun 04, 2024:
G7: We support President Biden’s cease fire proposal.
New York Times: Biden “defies” G7 on Gaza.
me: https://t.co/MgVl0z3HZD
(https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/1798067567816511744?t=JP1U5Uo0lb2CR3ahT0Xh1g&s=03)
rikyrah
clap clap clap clap
Steve Benen (@stevebenen) posted at 10:03 AM on Tue, Jun 04, 2024:
The fake elector scandal has racked up indictment totals unseen since Watergate and Iran-Contra:
– Arizona: 18 were indicted
– Georgia: 19 were indicted
– Michigan: 16 were indicted
– Nevada: Six were indicted
– Wisconsin: Three were indicted this morning https://t.co/OdsH8nK4nu
(https://x.com/stevebenen/status/1798007685776097643?t=WeL0lRUBUGJ-fCR06QANNg&s=03)
rikyrah
@Bill Arnold:
clap clap clap
Sounds like an improvement
SomeRandomGuy
(smart_aleck) Okay, these memories convince me – they’re *far* less evil and corrupt than convicting a business man *just* for cooking the books, as part of an unlawful scheme to become chief executive of that nation, tasked with seeing its laws were carried out ‘faithfully’. If Donald Trump goes to prison, the judge will be just as evil as that communist party guy who said ‘if we lose a million Chinese, that’s a small price to pay for a China that is so large’!”
(/smart_aleck)
Random idea to chew on: Religious Bigots have come to a horrifying conclusion. Their racial bigotry about slavery is about to lose power.
There are people – a lot of them – who still believes that African ancestry = the mark of Cain, meaning they were born to be ruled over.
They lost a war, and rather than examine their own behavior, insisted that, no, truly, Black people had to be subjugated!
They finally lost the peace, and insisted that, no, truly, they weren’t trying to subjugate Black people, it’s just, Black people finally had too many rights, and had to have them cut back.
Now… now, they’re lost by the one thing they can’t win over. They just haven’t polluted the gene pool enough to pass on their poison, from the hand that rocks the cradle, as it most literally were.
Baud
@Bill Arnold:
Excellent.
Baud
@rikyrah:
That tweet brought receipts.
Bill Arnold
@rikyrah:
More details here (also aljazeera):
India election results: Big wins, losses and surprises – A tight Varanasi race and BJP’s Maharashtra downfall – here’s how India’s 2024 Lok Sabha polls defied expectations. (Sarah Shamim, 4 Jun 2024)
moonbat
@rikyrah: WOW! NYT’s anti-Biden bias out on full display. How can they defend that story??!! It’s in complete defiance of every fact.
Jeffro
man this RealPage rent-increase fixing scheme is SLIIIIIIIIMY
rents up 56% in just a few years? why, it must be Biden! NOT
Baud
@Jeffro:
Wow.
Captain C
@moonbat:
“We’re right, you’re wrong, and if the facts say otherwise, well, we’re the FTFNYT and we’re right and you can suck it. When’s the next cocktail party with some nice Republicans?”
zhena gogolia
@Baud: rikyrah finds the best tweets!
Baud
@moonbat:
Looking at it again, we don’t have a date for the NYT story. So if it came out before the G7 statement, then they just have egg on their face but not necessarily a malicious spin.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Twitter is best experienced through the BJ filter.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Captain C: “… and whar exclusive Biden interview? We have some important questions about his age and his son’s trial.”
Nukular Biskits
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Oh, I understood that it wasn’t official US policy or actions. Nevertheless, US (and world) history is replete with Americans promising desperate people the moon and then leaving them hanging, sometimes literally.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: Seconded!
Captain C
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Also, “Why haven’t you endorsed Trump yet?”
M31
@Nukular Biskits:
the Kurds :-(
etc.
Jackie
My daughter’s family hosted a 16 yr old Chinese student for a year about six years ago. Needless to say, he was completely unaware of Tiananmen Square and its history. He learned a lot of Chinese history while he was here – knowing most of it was taboo to speak about when he went back home.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Today India’s Constitution and its founding principles won. BJP led NDA alliance is at 286 (272 is the halfway mark) seats but many of its constituents are hostages. It is a coalition built around fear and intimidation. Now that the bubble of inevitability is burst fear may not work. So Modi may or may not become the PM for the third time.
Watch this space.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: . finally, exciting in a good way.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yes, this is great.
I’m halfway through the fourth volume of The Raj Quartet. It is certainly from the British point of view, but it is one of the most searing indictments of colonialism that exists. I keep reading passages out loud to my husband. The sense of tragedy is so beautifully captured.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes and those regional parties that have stood up to Modi still exist while many of those in the coalition have been gobbled up by the BJP.
smith
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Sorry, Dark Brandon has been too busy giving an exclusive interview to Time. Somehow they never got around to the urgent issue of Hunter’s criminality, but we did learn that the Russian military has been “freaking decimated” by Ukraine’s resistance.
And they did ask him to explain why he’s so old:
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Right wingers really aren’t team players.
Baud
@smith:
👍
Martin
Florida about to find out why climate change mitigation is a collective rather than individual action problem.
Army Corps of Engineers wants to restore beaches that have been eroded from past storms, but won’t use public money for private beaches, so it requires that land owners approve easements to make the beaches public. And it can’t be just one here and there because the sand doesn’t stay put, so the feds require substantial lengths of continuous beach to do the sand replacement (the feds have allocated the money). Landowners won’t approve the easements because they’re afraid tourists will take over their private beaches, even if it means the next storm surge will destroy their home.
I think we need to take away federal recovery funds from landowners that won’t allow for basic mitigation efforts. Otherwise you get in a cycle of reconstruction/refusal to mitigate that becomes increasingly expensive and produces no new infrastructure. That’s essentially what private insurers are doing by decamping from these states.
Nukular Biskits
@M31:
Damn good (bad?) example.
Harrison Wesley
Why is the museum opening in NYC? Nobody should be giving the mayor any ideas on how to deal with student protesters.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yep. I think American audience doesn’t know half of how the opposition parties and civil society has faught this authoritarian monster and the things that Modi’s government has done. And why this day feels like a vindication
It was a win for federalism vs centralization. The idea of India vs Hindutva.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s how I felt about 2020, but as we’re learning this year, the battle never ends.
smith
If you want a little lift, and a reminder of what the US can be in the world, watch this clip of WWII veterans arriving in France for the upcoming D-Day commemoration.
https://nitter.poast.org/EmmanuelMacron/status/1798032906784501943#m
Baud
@smith:
People today have the opportunity to fight Nazis without risking life and limb but all they want to do is complain.
Geminid
@M31: The US came through for the Kurds of Iraq after the 1st Gulf War and helped them hold on until Gulf War 2. Now their autonomy in Iraq’s four northern provinces is guaranteed under the Iraqi constitution. A U.S. military mission based at Erbil, capital of the Kurdish Regional Government, helps maintain autonomy for 6 million Kurds.
This is the closest Kurds have come to self-rule since the Ottoman Empire was broken up. The 1920 Treaty of Sievres created a Kurdish state on paper, and modern Kurdish nationalists still display that map. The boundaries of Syria, Turkiye, Iraq and Iran delineate “Western Kurdistan,” “Northern Kurdistan,” etc.
You could say the Treaty of Sievres was Woodrow Wilson’s unkept promise to the Kurds. It was undone by the Turkish National Assembly in Ankara and its charismatic general Mustapha Kemal, in the Turkish War of Independence. That ended with the Turkish border drawn right through the middle of Greater Kurdistan.
Gloria DryGarden
@rikyrah: thank you for this article. Eye opening. Domestic abuse is serious. So is the percentage, 32% of folks unable to get OB/ gyn care, which can be essential and life saving, because of the clinics shutting down, services unavailable. Just another way this situation ripples out and affects more people.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: No it doesn’t. This is like Stalingrad. The war is by no means over. But this dents Modi’s aura of inevitability.
This documentary promo, outlines the struggle succinctly.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The media was even more of a BJP stooge than it is here. But people created YT channels, small groups to counter the lies put out there by Modi’s troll factory and pliant media.
I was a part of such a group, our organizer was doxxed.
We reasoned with our relatives, our elders and near and dear ones. This is a hard fought victory against an enemy who used the power of the state with impunity to silence all dissidence.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I wonder if the Dems basically 50/50 success since 1992 has dampened our grass roots zeal, despite the horrors that were Bush and Trump.
cain
@Martin: Having private beaches in itself is a mistake.
Thank god, Oregon made all their beaches public.
Baud
@cain:
Hawaii too.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: I was pretty upset when USA pulled out of Kurdistan, abandoning allies, leaving them exposed to a bunch of harm. Seemed really stupid to abandon those alliances, and leave people so vulnerable.
wasn’t it connected to the war in Syria?
im not good at histories of wars … but that moment and those events seemed personal for me.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
I like that the bubble of invincibility is over. From what I read, Modi carried the 35 and up crowd, but the younger generation was like “how the fuck does having a Hindu nationalist state” help me find a job.
The other interesting thing was that BPJ surprising lost in the district where the Ram temple was built. I found that really interesting. There was a lot of pageantry around that temple – my wife and my mother-in-law went to visit it and said it was very well done.
I don’t think the new generation of Indians are that religious conscious.
cain
@Baud:
Yeah, that’s a good thing – otherwise, oligarchs will just buy them all up. Fuck them. Glad, Hawaii did the same thing.
Fun story, beaches were made all public by Oregon Republicans.
Gloria DryGarden
Question.
when I am reading here, sometimes the page jumps and scrolls up 10 or 20 comments. Is that happening to others? I’m trying to figure out if it’s my tablet, or this site.
thanks
Baud
@cain:
There was a time that ideological differences were more regional than partisan.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Not really happening to me, but sometimes the page will jump as tweets are loading in the post.
Timill
@Gloria DryGarden: I see that sort of thing (Chrome on a PC laptop) when large tweets take time to load.
Once things have loaded, it’s pretty stable. Until I refresh…
Princess
Thank you for posting this. I remember it like it was yesterday. So much hope, then the guns, firing on their own people. I was in grad school and I had a roommate from mainland China at the time.
Chinese nationals who protest outside the country today better be careful. There are certainly spies keeping an eye on them and taking photographs.
YY_Sima Qian
@A.L. I recommend against platforming anything Drew Pavlou posts. He is a minor Australian political wannabee, a cynical charlatan whose performative anti-CPCism is purely for attention seeking & fundraising scams, & is not overly concerned about veering into inflaming Sinophobia is so doing.
I am surprised that his postings managed to reach your Twitter feed. I had thought him a two bit niche player in the China-related Twitter, I never thought he would get anywhere near the mainstream.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
Algorithms, man.
Trivia Man
I was in Taiwan that night, walking the streets with a date. She had been in Shanghai studying but had recently left for taiwan because it was clear shit was about to get very real. We walked deserted streets and watched the carnage on a tv set in a shop window. The shop was closed and i have no idea what the feed was – live footage as it unfolded. Hard to be certain, but i remember seeing scenes that never made it to a wider audience. Close up – tanks driving over people and leaving paste behind. Chaotic and terrifying to the Taiwanese – no guarantee it wouldn’t lead to invasion.
That was our first date, just celebrated 30 year anniversary.
Baud
@Trivia Man:
Happy anniversary!
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: The US hsd s small military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan between the two Gulf Wars. The US occupied Iraqi Kurdistan during the 2nd Gulf War, but our combat troops left early because the Kurdish Pesh Merga fighters could hold their territory. Since then, the US has informally guaranteed the Kurdish Regional Government’s autonomy and supported it with a small military mission.
President Obama put a small mission into eastern Syria in 2013, to help suppress the Islamic State. It’s still there, and the Kurdish YPG militia is still the mainstay of our anti-Isis coalition.
I don’t think we’ll stay there much longer though. When we leave, the YPG may have to align with Syria’s central government. It sounds like the Assad regime and Syria’s Kurds got along before civil war plunged Syria into chaos, so maybe that will work.
The US has never had a presence in the Turkish and Iranian Kurdish areas. I think there are 10 million Iranian Kurds, and as many as 20 million Kurdish Turkish citizens. Istanbul has over a million Kurdish residents.
Trivia Man
@Nukular Biskits: Kurds have entered the chat
Harrison Wesley
@Geminid: Fun historical note: Saladin, the great warrior against the Crusaders, was a Kurd.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: BJP’s politicization of religion is not something that the locals like in Ayodhya or Varanasi. Modi is not from UP. Many BJP ruled states are being governed by officers from IAS Gujarat cadre. This is quite unpopular. This is also one of the reasons they got a rebuke in Maharashtra
Snooze Hour covered the Indian elections like they were a Presidential election, saying that Modi has won a third term. He hasn’t yet. He is a strong contender for PM but its not a done deal yet.
Trivia Man
@Baud: Silver lining: I never forget the anniversary
YY_Sima Qian
@schrodingers_cat: That is a pretty narrow majority, seems like the BJP will be constrained going forward, as long as the opposition stay united.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Is it like Israel, where there are political parties to Likud’s right. Or is BJP the most right party?
schrodingers_cat
@YY_Sima Qian: You are assuming that the NDA will hold. Modi has used many of the constiutent parties like his personal doormat and wiped his feet on them. This is their opportunity to get out from under his thumb. The question is whether they will take it. Plus there is a contingent of over 50 seats which are unaffliated with either of the major groupings.
Feckless
Not one comment about how HW Bush decided to give the murderous CCP most favored nation trading status after that because he claimed it would bring democracy by engagement.
That policy was an absolute total failure.
But that’s down the memory hole now.
Republican incompetence is the gift that never stops giving.
sab
@Jeffg166: The Russians might be in despair.I don’t think the Chinese are. They have a better government. Not what we in the west might want, but one that does think about the welfare of the governed. Vastly different from what the Russians have.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It is the right most party. There are other organizations within the RSS which are more right wing than the BJP like Bajarang Dal etc.
Many of the NDA constituents are regional parties restricted to one state and cannot win on Hindu votes alone, they are more left leaning.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s good news.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: That’s why it irks me with all this talk of Modi winning a third term like he is a fucking President.
More than 10 ministers in Modi’s cabinets lost their seats.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m confident that if he were on the left side, the media would be talking about his failure to secure a majority.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I think you are right. MSM loves itself some despots. It would be funny if he some of his allies change their mind and don’t support the BJP. Then AP, NYT and Snooze Hour would have egg on their faces.
It was a victory for democracy.
sab
@Trivia Man: Happy anniversary. So sweet.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That would be amazing. Although I would fear the coalition wouldn’t last long and Modi would have an opportunity for a comeback.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The last 2 coalition governments lead by the Congress completed their full terms in the aughts.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Were they as fractured as this one would be?
Jay
@Geminid:
Hafil al-Assad, after Hom’s basically “abandoned” Kurdish Syria, because it was stable, the Kurd’s there had “modern” secular values, were resistant by culture and community to his corruption, (no profit), and he needed his Army and Security forces elsewhere.
So the Syrian Kurds basically in the absence of the Syrian State, built with their neighbors their own autonomy.
Bashar al-Assad is a different animal and while the Syrian Kurds were/are allied with the US against ISIL, they also have conflicts with Turkey and the Syrian/ruZZian forces.
Geminid
@Harrison Wesley: The Kurds speak an Indo-European language, and they claim descent from the Medians of the Persian-Median Empire.
The social media debate between Turks and Kurds can be heated. The Kurds will say they were in Anatolia 1500 years before the Turks showed up (they’re right). The Turks dispute this: “Wrong! ‘Kurt’ means tent. Ya’ll were nomads until Sultan Othman II gave you permission to camp out in the southern mountains.”
Pretty soon a Greek will jump in to holler about Cyprus, and then an Armenian will ask, “When are we gonna send this Turkish trash back to Mongolia?”
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: IDK. The next few weeks should be interesting.
Geminid
@Jay: The question I wonder about is, what happens to Rojava when the U.S. mission leaves eastern Syria? I don’t think we’ll stay much longer. That could depend on the presence of the complementary force we have in Iraq, across the border. Iraq’s parliament says we must leave, but we and the Prime Minister seem to be slow-walking our departure. But US troops can’t stay in Syria if the ones in Iraq leave.
The mission in Erbil will stay regardless.
Gloria DryGarden
@Princess: it’s a really good point. Even outside of china, spies may notice your words and activities. It sounds dreadful to have to keep all one’s thoughts in the silence closet.
I’m reminded of a joke that illustrates it to me.
a man from china, living in the west now, is interviewed about how he likes his life in china. Oh yes, very satisfied, he answers. How about his work there? Oh yes, very satisfied. What about the government ? Oh yes, very satisfied. How about your marriage, how about education.. etc. oh yes very satisfied. Then why have you moved here? “Because here, can say, ‘ not satisfied .’”
or not, as you point out.
I understand this joke I’m repeating is stereotyping, and not nuanced, and I apologize for that. I just find it illustrative of what some peoples lives are like.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: is their language related to Persian? I don’t remember seeing it listed on my language family diagrams. Maybe a whole bunch of smaller groups aren’t included there. Still, 31m+ iraq and Syria populations, it’s not that small a group. Weren’t Kurds promised their own nation, after WWII?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I looked at the constituents of the NDA besides BJP. I would say that the constituents have more in common with the INDIA alliance than the BJP, ideologically speaking.
Gloria DryGarden
@Timill: it’s certainly when I refresh, or release a comment. But also, if I settle to read, sometimes it Jumps back 15+ comments, or jumps farther, then forward. Odd. An older tablet.
Chris
@Feckless:
The number of people who swallowed “market reforms will inevitably bring liberalism and democracy” is absolutely insane. It’s like nobody ever heard of authoritarian capitalism. Kaiserite Germany, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, every jumped up dictator from Santo Domingo to Manila to Islamabad to Athens to Kinshasa that spent the Cold War gorging themselves on Pentagon money…
The people pushing this narrative had an agenda that didn’t give two shits about liberalism or democracy, but way too many people bought it who should have known better.
smith
First primary results are coming in. With 13% counted in NJ, Andy Kim is the projected winner of the Senate primary, with 82%.
Baud
@smith:
👍
He’s a good guy.
dm
I just came across this on Mastodon :
smith
@dm: This of course is what he dreams about when he says he’ll invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with any pesky protesters in his second term.
eclare
@smith:
Thank you, that was moving.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Not after WWII. The Treaty of Sievres (1920) drew a Kurdish nation that covered portions of modern Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Woodrow Wilson liked the idea because he was an idealist.
The British liked it because they wanted control of the Turkish Straits and Istanbul, and needed to cut the future Turkish state down to size. So they gave Turkiye’s western provinces and Thrace to Greece, and control of the southern Mediterranean provinces to Italy. The Straits and Istanbul were to be a special “International Zone” administered by France and Great Britain.
A Turkish national assembly met in Ankara, rejected the treaty and claimed all of Anatolia, the Straits, and Turkish Thrace on the European side. After heavy fighting, Kemal Ataturk and his army made good on these claims, and the Turkish Republic has maintained its current borders ever since.
Chris
@Gloria DryGarden:
I just got back from Europe where an exchange daughter of ours just graduated from a two-year program. Exchange daughter is Chinese by ethnicity but not by nationality. At her university, she got to know the small clique of mainland Chinese students, and apparently the most common traits were the following;
1) They were from very rich families.
2) They were anti-CCP as fuck.
3) They were nationalist as fuck.
4) They were racist as fuck, especially towards diaspora race traitors (i.e. her).
5) Their families sent them abroad in no small part in search of a way out of China – if they did well enough in college and with networking and managed to find a way to stay in the West, then the entire family hopefully had options outside of China should they ever need them.
Naturally, the first thing all of this adds up to is “wow, the very rich really are messed up and dysfunctional everywhere.” But point # 5 was the really interesting one; if even the very rich in that society still look for bolt-holes in the West, that says a lot about how strong the social trust there is.
Jay
@Geminid:
No idea.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: Yes, I disagree w/ Lingling Wei’s characterization that “many” of the PRC’s youth are in despair. What has changed are the strong pro-CPC nationalism from 1999 (US bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade) through the 2010s, & the triumphalism of the late ’10s & the early to mid-Pandemic, that were evident among most of the Chinese youths. In fact, the triumphalism of ’20 – ’21 spread to most of society, as it appeared that the PRC could sustainably keep COVID-19 at bay for some time at least, while it raged in most of the rest of world. The slow motion collapse of the “Dynamic Zero COVID” in ’22, the disconcertingly rapid dismantling of “DZC” at end of ’22, the socioeconomic impact of the increasingly frequent/widespread lockdowns & the exit tsunami, the strong headwind of the [self-imposed] deflation of the real estate bubble, & the slow & uneven economic recover, have all served to puncture the triumphalist bubble. & that is a good thing!
There is a lot more uncertainty wrt how the PRC will develop economically (currently undergoing a tricky shifting of gears) & politically (I don’t think the majority of people are supportive of Xi ruling for life, or the increasing suppression of open expression of non-Party line narratives) going forward. That doesn’t mean the population are anti-CPC or anti-Xi per se. Both retain strong support for the developmental & technological progress that the PRC has seen since 1979, & Xi specifically for the relatively successful anti-poverty campaign, the persistent anti-corruption campaign, the dramatic improvement in physical infrastructure/ease of living/public safety, the noticeable improvement in the quality & responsiveness of local governance. That does not mean most people in China are not nationalistic, they remain enormously proud of the progress the PRC has made, & have little sympathy for Taiwan Independence or democracy in Hong Kong. That also does not mean people in China are not becoming much more skeptical of the US & especially its government. I think US has lost at least a generation of Chinese youths w/ the escalating trade war, tech war & Great Power Competition. The youth are those mostly likely to be using the products of Chinese tech companies under US sanction/restrictions, mostly likely to be working in these companies, & most proud of the PRC’s technological advances.
(BTW, I hate it when reporter use such vague descriptors as “many” like random internet posters. How many? What percentage? I used to like Lingling Wei’s reporting on the PRC’s economy, but now she’s gone for psychoanalysis of the CPC regime & Chinese people as if they are monolithic blocks, & given to self-centered navel gazing, & I don’t find her credible on these topics.)
Harrison Wesley
@Chris: Didn’t Mussolini say that “fascism” could just as easily be called “corporatism?”
Chris
@Harrison Wesley:
Yes. To be fair, I believe this meant “corporatism” in the sense of cooperation between the classes, all interest groups in society working together for mutual benefit (and being forced to by the Duce if need be) rather than “corporatism” as in rule by corporations.
That is still very compatible with private ownership of the means of production, though, and in practice “all classes working together for everyone’s benefit” was a lot more likely to mean “government cracking the workers’ skulls until they do what the bosses want” than anything else.
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: fantastic news!!!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
My mother and stepfather had taken a trip to China to celebrate their first anniversary and saw people streaming towards the square while driving in their tourist bus in Beijing on their way to see the terra cotta army, I think. They left China just before the crackdown since June 4 was their actual anniversary date and they wanted to be home for it. You can see the crowds starting to form on their video from the trip. Awful doesn’t begin to describe what happened.
YY_Sima Qian
It’s also important to remember how the CPC regime has managed to minimize the salience of ’89 in the popular consciousness in the PRC. It is not just due to censorship & erasure. The events, after all, are still well w/in living memory. The regime did in fact address many of the grievances that animated the urban (& it was an urban phenomenon in a country that was still > 80% rural) protest movement: deep interference by the Party bureaucracy in people’s lives, lack of economic freedom for urban workers, lack of respect for intellectuals, high inflation, etc. Corruption, however, got worse in the ’90s & ’00s. If Deng Xiaoping had not done his “Southern Tour” in ’92 to revive economic reforms & opening, the CPC regime might not be around any more, & ’89 would have a very different salience in Chinese consciousness today.
I would not be surprised if the CPC regime & the PRC politics take a different turn again once Xi passes from the scene. I do sense an increasing disquiet in response to the more intense suppression under Xi, that I was not nearly as widely spread as late as ’21. Even if the PRC’s economic gear shifting is successful, & the economic rides a new headwinds from dominance in green tech & advanced manufacturing, I suspect there will be pressure up & down society to loosen the controls, that even if Xi’s successor does not embrace, he might find difficult to manage. After all, Xi’s ascendance w/ the support of the majority of the regime elites is largely in response to the Wild Wild East “Gilded Age” of the Jiang Zemin/Hu Jintao years, when corruption & inequality soared, environmental degradation accelerated, governance capacity at the central level weakened, & the relevance of the CPC regime in people’s lives faded.
Harrison Wesley
@Chris: Hey, trains ran on time, in Germany they got the Autobahn…OK, so there were some unfortunate incidents……
Chris
@Harrison Wesley:
If no one’s left to report that the trains aren’t running on time, then almost tautologically, the trains run on time.
“If a tree falls in the forest” kind of thing…
YY_Sima Qian
Aside from factors unique to the PRC, current dissatisfaction among Chinese youths is also driven by common global dynamics: suppressed real wages, fewer job opportunities, high cost of housing (which the falling real estate price in the PRC is helping), & the relentless pressure of the socio-economic rat race (which is especially salient across E/SE Asia – South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, etc.).
YY_Sima Qian
@Chris: The rich & the mass affluent along coast in the PRC have been more negatively impacted by Xi’s & the CPC regime’s persistent efforts since the early ’10s to accelerate economic development of the hinterlands & rural areas, to keep a lid on corruption, & make society more equalitarian. They are the ones whose net worth suffered the most from the deflation of the real estate bubble, the lackluster performance of the Chinese stock market (due to sudden regulatory assaults against monopolies/oligopolies in ’21) & the crack down on cryptocurrency trading. Not a surprise that these 2nd/3rd gen rich kids would be anti-Xi, but they would probably welcome a return to the anything goes “Gilded Age” of the Jiang/Hu era. So I don’t think it is accurate to characterize them as anti-CPC.
If you see MSM quoting people expressing despair, check if they work in finance/internet platform/for profit education/real estate, are the part of the urban mass affluent or rich, & especially if they live in Shanghai (due to the traumatic months long lock down in Apr. – Jun. ’22). If so, their views are very likely to be anti-Xi expressed as anti-CPC, but they are also unrepresentative of the country as a whole.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: so, after WWI, AND the turkiye government fought to claim all that land and disrupted the Kurdistan thing?
just seeing if I understand. I was never good at history the way it was taught to me, men, their wars, governments and conquests for power and dominance. Trying. These motivations bewilder me.
arent there communities motivated by the collective good? Cooperation? Is everything always about power, competition, and dominance? (Just complaining)
YY_Sima Qian
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That is surprising since Winston Lord had been relatively moderate toward the PRC. Her activities would certainly confirm the paranoid fears of the CPC hardliners (& probably Deng himself) that the CIA & the MI6 are behind the protest movement. I doubt they would have believe that Mrs. Lord was winging it herself.
Gloria DryGarden
@zhena gogolia: my friend from Chennai says, about the British colony times, “India will never be the same”. I can hear in her voice a depth of sorrow and grief for what was, and might have been.
and she says that Winston Churchill is not seen as a hero, quite the opposite.
(I should read this book sometime. We need a side bar for all the books and blogs that get recommended here.)
Harrison Wesley
@Chris:Or like Stalin’s alleged comment that it didn’t matter who voted, it mattered who counted the votes. A lesson that appears to have been learned all too well in some parts of this country.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Well, there wasn’t really much of a Kurdistan then, besides the idea. The impovershed population was organized on tribal lines, and spread across several hundred miles of rugged mountains.
The British wanted the Iraq part and the French wanted the Syrian, and I think they went along with Wilson’s plan in order to humor the President; also, to confine Turkiye to a rump state that couldn’t threaten British interests, especially its hold on the Turkish Straits. That’s probably the most strategic position in the Mediterranean Basin, and the British figured if they didn’t get it the Russians eventually would.
The Turkish War of Independence was a major conflict that’s been overshadowed by the war that preceded it. It basically ended when Kemal’s army ran a 130,000 man Greek Army clean out of Anatolia.
Then Kemal turned his attention to the Straits. Lloyd George and Churchill wanted to fight for them, but the Tories thought it was a bad idea. The British already knew Kemal from when they tried to take the Straits in 1915, and he did a lot to turn the Dardanelles Campaign into a fiasco for the British, Australian and New Zealand forces. So the Tories dumped Lloyd George from his Prime Minister’s post.
The “Chanak Affair” led to an important development in Canadian politics as well. Great Britain was expected to call on Canada to provide troops to defend the Straits. Canadian leaders balked at the prospect and established the principal that Canada would supply troops only of its own free will..