Category Archives: Foreign Policy

The Trump Card: Trade Aggression

Business, Celebrity, China, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Politics, Trade

Watch out Alec Baldwin (or should that be America?), publicity hound Donald Trump is considering a run for office. Trump is motivated by the sense that the nimbus of great power that surrounds the US is dissipating. It hasn’t occurred to him to look closer to home for the cause of America’s economic anemia—at Fanny and the Fed, for example. Trump thus blames OPEC because he has no idea what’s potting, and is not eager to look in his own plate—at the burdens of doing business in the US. OPEC and the Chinese.

Among American opinion makers, Sinophobia is considered an economic theory and is thus sanctioned. Disliking China falls within the realm of economic theorizing. Accordingly, Chinese success is put down to currency manipulation, and not the industry, frugality, and hard work of that people.

The Trump plan to reclaim American power and prestige in the world includes force, of course. Like Baldwin, Trump has never wanted for anything for too long, at least not in recent memory. Strutting around on the world stage; showing those South Koreans and Chinese who’s boss: that’s a perfect complement to the waning testosterone and increasing megalomania that are the ingredients of Trump persona.

O.J.-Like Evidence Could Exonerate Noxious Knox

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Europe, Foreign Policy, Justice, Law

O.J.-LIKE EVIDENCE CONVICTED NOXIOUS (AMANDA) KNOX, which, due to US pressure on the Italians, could well mean that O.J.-like evidence might exonerate her of the murder of Meredith Kercher, the English girl with whom Knox had shared student accommodation in Perugia, Italy. Her throat slit, Meredith had expired in slow agony.

At the time I wrote the following:

Knox, Sollecito and Rudy Guede, a local drifter born in the Ivory Coast and known to Knox, were convicted of the murder and sexual assault of Kercher. CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, on and on—all have united in advocating for Amanda, “An Innocent Abroad.”

Going against the grain of American-style boosterism, Barbie Nadeau of Newsweek stuck with “journalism” to detail the ample evidence against the pair, downplayed or downright suppressed in the American media. For one, “Neither suspect [had] a credible alibi for the night of the murder, and both told a variety of lies about that night.” Knox changed her alibi, not once or twice, but several times. In the process, she accused Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, of the crime. Based on the convincing yarn Knox spun, Lumumba spent time in jail before being released.

After Knox had cast her pal Lumumba aside, she tried to implicate her lover of two weeks, venturing: “I think it is possible Raffaele went to Meredith’s house, raped her, then killed her and then when he got home, while I was sleeping, he pressed my fingerprints on the knife. …

“Theatrics aside,” wrote Newsweek’s Nadeau, “the Amanda Knox trial comes down to forensics. … Among the most damning evidence against Sollecito is his DNA on the metal clasp of the bra that was cut from Kercher after she died.”

Also revealed with Luminol was a bloody footprint at the crime scene that matched Sollecito’s. “Key forensic evidence against Knox includes her footprint in blood in the hallway outside Kercher’s room. There [were] also mixed traces of Knox’s DNA and Kercher’s blood on the fixtures in the bathroom the girls shared. And a knife was found in Sollecito’s apartment with Knox’s DNA on the handle and … Kercher’s DNA in a groove on the blade.”

Like the original “Dream Team,” defense attorneys for Knox, “who at one time admitted to being at home when the murder took place,” alleged contamination (even though the crime scene was sealed off in-between searches), character assassination and insufficient amounts of DNA (it’s the type of DNA that matters, not the amount).

[SNIP]

The latest from Perugia, Italy, via CNN is that the “American … has won a major victory Saturday in her appeal of the murder conviction in the death of her British roommate when an Italian appellate judge granted approval of independent forensic reviews on two key pieces of evidence.”

“Why do you need to review the forensic evidence when this conviction is based on much more than the knife and the bra clasp?” Prosecutor Manuela Comodi argued before the court began deliberating.
She then reminded the court that Knox and Sollecito don’t have an alibi for the night of the killing, adding that there was “ample” evidence of a staged break-in.
Francesco Maresca, an attorney for the Kercher family, said he was “disappointed” with the decision, suggesting that the ruling was political in the face of pressure from the United States.

NoBamas Bearing Presents, Please

Barack Obama, Britain, Celebrity, English, Foreign Policy

The singularity solipsistic Obama and his uncouth wife once gave the Queen of England an iPod filled with images and audio of his Highness’s inaugural and DNC addresses.

From the grandeur of her White House Crib, the FLOTUS is famous for giving Prime Minister Brown a box of 25 DVDs including “ET,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Star Wars,” “a cheap gift which spoke to the giver’s impoverishment. The DVDs were also region-encoded for North America and could not be played in Britain. Brown gave Obama ‘a pen holder carved from the timber of an anti-slave ship.'”

“Sarah Brown lavished books and ball gowns on the Obama girls. Mrs. Obama reciprocated by giving the Brown boys two lousy, plastic, ‘matching models of the helicopter which ferries her husband around.”

MORE in “Gangsta Gifts.”

“Before the DVD and gift-shop gaffes, there was the weightier matter of the bust of Winston Churchill. ‘The valuable bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein had been loaned by the British government to George W. Bush,’ wrote syndicated columnist Diana West. ‘One of President Obama’s first acts as president was to consign that symbol to a box and send it packing.'”

As Daniel Hannan noted, Obama “used the Louisiana oil spill to attack an imaginary company called ‘British Petroleum’ (it has been BP for the past decade, ever since the merger with Amoco gave it as many American as British shareholders). … He managed, on his visit to West Africa, to refer to the struggle for independence, but not to the Royal Navy’s campaign against slavery.”

The return of the Churchill bronze confirmed the suspicion that Obama was anti-Occident. The habit of giving inappropriate, thoughtless presents—as he and his family are deluged with wild effusions of love and lavish gifts—this shows Obama to be, well, a bit of a pig.

Maybe Prince William and Kate Middleton think that inviting the rude American duo to their wedding is infra dig. Or, perhaps it’s as the press has reported, and “President Obama and his wife Michelle will not be invited to Prince William’s wedding next year’ because the ‘royal couple is eager to ask ordinary citizens to attend rather than VIPs.'”

Because Prince William is not yet heir to the throne, his wedding to Kate Middleton is not classed as a ‘state occasion’ – and the couple feel under no pressure to fill the 2,000-strong guest list with heads of state, the Mail understands.

"The 'Lebanonisation' of Iraq"

Foreign Policy, Iraq, Journalism, Propaganda, War

“With a sectarian power-sharing agreement and interfering neighbours, Iraq is looking a lot like Lebanon,” writes Lamis Andoni at Al Jazeera.

Where else? Now that the Left is as invested in all Obama’s wars as the “Right,” sober assessment of regions made more backward and benighted for our interventions is hard to come by in American media. There is nothing new about the silence of collaborators in this country, Left and Right.

ANDONI AGAIN:

“The power-sharing framework agreed in Iraq has so far failed to end the eight month deadlock over the structure of a new cabinet. The stalemate, due to haggling over key posts, is reflective of how post-invasion Iraq has succumbed to ethnic and sectarian rivalry, which, in turn, has further obstructed its economic and political recovery. It is also indicative of how the country has become a playground for different regional and international powers who are competing for influence and the country’s oil resources.”

The agreement reached earlier this month would allow Nuri al-Maliki, the incumbent prime minister, to form a new government – even though the Iraqiya coalition took two more seats than his State of Law alliance in the parliamentary elections.

The accord would establish a Lebanon-style sectarian and ethnic formula – which might prove to be more of a recipe for constant instability than a guarantor of national reconciliation. It is ironic that we are witnessing the ‘Lebanonisation’ of Iraq at the exact moment when this type of power-sharing formula may be causing the ‘Iraqisation’ of Lebanon – as many fear that Lebanon is on the verge of inter-sectarian strife. …

Iraq’s emerging political system is a direct product of the US invasion and Iran’s complicity in both the invasion and the ensuing occupation. And Iran has, so far, come out of it with the strongest hand – as the prime minister is the main authoritative power. Neighbouring ‘Sunni’ Arab countries have also played a role in consolidating divisions within Iraq – either by directly helping the US forces or by failing to help Iraq maintain its unity.”

[SNIP]

Where there was once oppression and order, now there is just chaos and daily danger. What always gets me is the terror on the faces of children trying to survive in “liberated” Iraq.