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25
Aug
2019
Hong Kong is a thriving hub of international business. Kashmir is a backwater, even by Indian standards.
Hong Kong has world-class communications. Kashmir has frequent power failures. Internet communication, iffy at any time, has been shut down completely by Indian forces. So have telephones. And the post office -- you can’t even send out a scenic postcard!
In Hong Kong, almost everyone speaks English, the result of 156 years of British rule. In Kashmir, only the educated class speaks English.
And Hong Kong is home to about 300,000 Canadians -- many sent as children to Canadian high schools in the 1980s to provide an escape plan for their parents in case the handover to China went badly. According to Global Affairs Canada, Kashmir has just 12 Canadian residents.
Therefore it’s natural, even inevitable, that our media would concentrate on Hong Kong and ignore Kashmir.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Nuclear weapons, Kashmir, Hong Kong
7
2017
The question came at the end of a security conference in Australia. An academic in the audience for Admiral Scott Swift’s public address in Canberra asked a hypothetical question: “If… you were to receive an order from the commander in chief, the president of the United States, to make a nuclear attack on China, would you do it?"
Swift’s answer was an unequivocal yes.
Then he amplified: “Every member of the U.S. military has sworn an oath…to obey the officers and the president of the United States as the commander in chief appointed over us."
“Admiral Swift answered the question the only way a serving military officer could,” explained Rory Medcalf, the program’s host. “It would have been a lot more controversial if he had said no, he would not obey the commander in chief.”
Okay, now let’s switch locales. Imagine a similar question directed at one of Kim Jong Un’s generals in Pyongyang, North Korea: “If you were to receive an order from your Supreme Commander to launch a nuclear attack on the United States of America, would you do it?"
Can you imagine that general saying no?
Tags: Serenity prayer, Nuclear weapons, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, ICBMs