THE USA, that bastion of the Western freedoms so to speak, has just shown its true nature. Trump’s ban on trading with Iran and his trade war with China has just affected the Chinese communications company ZTE.
US firms have been forbidden to export chips which the Chinese company uses in its phones. It has in effect made the company inoperable.
The EU and the UK Government have stated they will uphold the international treaty with Iran. But for how long? The Trumpian writ extends now de facto and de jure directly to all global companies. It aims to obstruct them from trading in the US and with the US if they – and by implication their governments – continue to trade with Iran!
There are also historic “extradition” treaties with Her Majesty’s government where business persons here have been extradited in the past to the US for violating agreements or, to be more exact, diktats emanating from the US.
The Pax Americana is now extending its “writ” worldwide after the latest and most serious capricious diktat by Donald Trump, who is about to come on a visit to the UK, no doubt hoping to cement the special relationship and make mutual trade deals post-Brexit with Global Britain!
In a former era, USSR diktats ran across the whole of the Eastern Warsaw Pact countries. Soviet officials would arrive and take individuals and senior politicians to Moscow to enforce solidarity. Imre Nagy from Hungary and Alexander Dubcek from the then Czechoslovakia were given “assisted” passage to Moscow in this way. Nagy never returned.
So here is Donald Trump “coming” now to ensure the West falls into line with the latest US diktat. Pax Americana is revealed as a form of global hegemony by and for the US. Post-Brexit Global UK will have to fall into line. The special relationship, much trumpeted by Westminster politicians previously, has been truly “trumped” this time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was extolling Donald Trump recently and stated he should be given the reddest of red carpet welcomes on his visit! We must hope the UK media ask Rees-Mogg for an update. Or is our most favoured ally “now coming for us”?
John Edgar
Kilmaurs
MAGGIE Jamieson is absolutely right in what she says in her letter (Foreign Secretary’s TV turn was a national disgrace, May 10), but it is surely time that we go further.
Is it not time that we as a nation had the backbone to say that we do not want to be considered as having a “special relationship” with a country which tries to exert its influence through bully-boy tactics on any other nation in the world which it perceives as not doing what it would like them to do, and backs this up with not-so-veiled threats as to the consequences that this might bring?
We should make it clear to all concerned that we will always deal with all nations in the world at a much higher moral level than that shown by the United States over the last 50 years.
This nonsense of a special relationship is completely valueless and we should make it absolutely clear that we will not support the type of actions being implied by the present incumbent of the White House.
George M Mitchell
Dunblane
MAY I state clearly that I do not want or welcome Bryan Auchterlonie and his ilk (Letters, May 10) telling me what is good for me.
It’s my life and I am supposed to have the freedom within fair and just law to live it as I see fit.
The minimum unit pricing of alcohol law is an anachronistic, unfair and unjust measure using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Like using a screwdriver because no chisel was available.
Sure, the Scottish Parliament didn’t have the power to use the tax structure to target all alcohol pricing, where the cash raised could have been used to target those with an alcohol problem through education and support.
So pensioners like me are being asked to pay more, as are those on low and fixed incomes. Cheers to the rich MSPs who can afford to avoid the effects of this measure and cock a snook at those of us who can’t. A sure sign they’ve lost touch with the poorer members of our society.
All this proves is our desperate need for a second revising chamber in parliament to curb the political excesses of MSPs’ arrogance.
Bad law lets down our country, and disincentivises increasing the powers of those politicians who inflict it.
I know where my vote will not be going in forthcoming elections etc.
Such political arrogance should not be encouraged.
To MSPs: it’s my life, butt out. We haven’t asked for your nanny state, and comprehensively reject it.
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
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