Poetlister wrote:That is a different issue - is Taiwan an independent country? In fact, the US does not recognise Taiwan and has no embassy there. I'm not sure if anyone recognises Taiwan. Of course, many of the countries making a fuss, such as that pillar of democracy and human rights Iran, don't recognise Israel and have no embassy there anyway.
Firstly, Taiwan, aka the Republic of China (ROC) is a
de facto independent country. There are 20 countries (including the Vatican) that maintain formal relations with the ROC, listed in the
Political status of Taiwan (T-H-L) article. Most of them are small, and many of them probably recognize it because it's important to their shipping industries. (The list is about halfway down the article; the paragraph just above the list is full of typographical and grammatical errors btw, which is probably just how the Communist Chinese like it.)
Secondly, just because it's a different scenario doesn't mean the situation there isn't germane to the one in Jerusalem. What's happening is that a country with nuclear weapons that's also in a long-running war with some of its own people is using its newly-minted "close relations" with a Republican administration in Washington to throw its weight around, all in an effort to further demoralize the people it's been at war with. This is almost
exactly what happened in 1971, when the Communist Chinese got the Nixon Administration to withdraw their support for ROC membership in the UN and, concurrently, its recognition of the ROC as an independent nation.
Long story short, the issue isn't one of semantics or "recognition" or the formal definition of the word "capital." The issue here is whether or not people want to participate in further attempts to demoralize the Palestinians. Mind you, I'm not going to ignore the harsh realities involved and say that Jerusalem (be it the Eastern section or any other) would be more Western-tourist-friendly under Palestinian control; obviously it would not, but let's not pretend that this is all some sort of "formality"; this is deliberate, ruthless, and nasty international politics, and it's utterly stupid for the USA to be involved in it at all, which is why Trump did what he did. He's just an utterly stupid person. Simple as that.
smiley.
I don't mean to burst any bubbles here, but if "evidence" includes eyewitness accounts, then the first country to do this was almost certainly the United States, under the Bush II Administration, as early as 2005-06. Israel probably got into the game around the same time, but that wasn't exposed until 2008 or so, and by 2009-10 they were publicly training people in how to manipulate WP and stories about it were circulating in the Israeli media. I suspect the Russians and Chinese were already doing it by then as well, only with less success — probably because they have better uses for their fluent English speakers (leaving only the poor-to-mediocre talent available for WP manipulation), and the agendas they've pushed have always been much harder to disguise.
