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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Bad China?

I have to admit that a part of me actually admires the potential that lies within China. It's just too bad that it's all falling under the control of the Communist Party. A few decades ago these guys noticed that in order to feed China's huge population you have to set the markets free. As the markets are left for Chinese individuals the party still holds the control of everything else. Now this is all common knowledge and it seems that nobody is willing to speculate for how long the party can still have a control over the people.

But what is coming even increasingly more obvious is the threat China poses to other free countries. A Cold War between China & the US should not even be considered (China wouldn't run out of resources the way the USSR did) - yet the Taiwan question could indeed lead to unforseen consequences. Only a couple of weeks ago China placed more pressure on Taiwan. If Taiwan makes a wrong kind a of step toward independency it'll face China's military might. The rest of the world condemns these actions but at the same time does absolutely nothing to prevent them - on the contrary. The EU is actually thinking of lifting the arms embargo on China. The only country which seems to be concerned by this is the US.

Lifting the arms embargo would benefit western economies - most likely even American weapon manufacturers. Yet it's the US who sees the problem with the whole situation although the rest of the world believes that the US only does what's good for its economy (and keeping the arms embargo is not). Then why is the EU considering lifting the embargo? China is still violating human rights and has done very little since -89 to improve the situation. China is today a bigger threat to Taiwan than it was back then and arming China at this point indicates only plain stupidity. If we kept the embargo they'd surely get the weapons they want sooner or later but at least 1)it'd take more time and 2)we wouldn't be the ones arming them. By keeping the embargo we would send a clear message to them that they are still a threat to democracy & human rights. It's the EU which is being a hypocrit here and the US is once again the only country acting for democracy & human rights.

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Friday, March 11, 2005

Italians forcing Berlusconi to fund jihadists?

Edit: Added a link section (on your right - below archives) and made it possible for non-registered (at blogspot.com) users to post comments.

Here we have the case of Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian kidnap victim who was released some days ago and then made the claim that she might have been targeted by American troops on purpose.
So - first she was sent to Iraq by a communist newspaper Il manifesto to report how bad the Americans are. Then she was kidnapped and gathered our sympathy by appearing on tv begging for her life and now she's free and saying how great the kidnappers were and how the American troops might have wanted to kill her. Mission accomplished - Il manifesto got the anti-American report they wanted.
Has she got any rational reason to claim that the Americans intended to kill her? The fact that the US government doesn't negotiate with kidnappers is no news to anyone and doesn't really even imply that the military would be ready to take harsh actions to prevent other governments from negotiating with kidnappers. Also - how would the shooting benefit the military in strategic terms?

It's really too early to make any final conclusions. I'm sure that we all want to hear more from the American troops who were involved in the shooting and if they even knew that the car was carrying the reporter (and contrary to Sgrena's claim - the car had NOT gone through any checkpoints before the shooting). What is sure is that if the Italian government did pay the ransom, they did the wrong thing and sent a wrong message to future kidnappers. Also we have no real reason to believe that Sgrena was targeted on purpose - there's neither evidence nor motive to back up any such claims.

Well now that the kidnappers have gotten their millions they'll surely try to get some more by kidnapping more lying journalists. And if the Italian government did pay these kidnappers they made it clear that one journalist is more important than those many American troops who will die as victims of these jihadists who have been funded by the Italian government.

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