Tag Archives: foreign policy

International Censorship

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France wants to enforce a “right to be forgotten” law (recently enacted by the EU that allows persons to demand publicly available information about them to be erased from links in search engine results) inside other nations than the EU membership—inside the United States, for instance.  Google, et al., is demurring, and France has taken the matter to the EU’s highest administrative court, the Court of Justice.

The case will help determine how far EU regulators can go in enforcing the bloc’s strict new privacy law….

It has wider implications than that. It will set a legal precedent, explicitly for the EU to reach inside the United States and censor our Internet, and that won’t be limited to EU privacy sensibilities, or EU views on censorship.

It’s broader, still. It will set a precedent for the PRC, which can intercept messaging images and erase them from the message before the intended recipient gets the message, to be exercised inside the US.

The Court of Justice ruling—likely to be in favor of France—will need to be explicitly rejected by us, with strong cyber consequences taken against the EU on its every attempt to enforce this first step at rank censorship against us.

The Fruits of Timidity

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Rebel forces in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday announced that they plan to hold a referendum calling for the creation of a new state known as Malorossiya, which translates as “Little Russia.”

In a statement published on the rebel-aligned Donetsk News Agency, rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that the new state would aspire to include not only the areas under insurgent control, but also the rest of Ukraine.

This wouldn’t be occurring now, had our government and those of Europe hadn’t been so meek in the face of Russian aggression in the two eastern oblasts and then without a whimper accepting Russian partition of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea.

Maybe now, the lot of us will stop bleating about the Minsk accord and remind Russia of its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum.  Maybe now the lot of us will start selling/leasing/granting Ukraine the weapons and supplies it needs to defend itself and to take back from Russia the three oblasts.

The PRC and Northern Korea

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The People’s Republic of China trade relations with northern Korea appear to be robust and growing, despite efforts by President Donald Trump to get PRC President Xi Jinping to do more to curb his dog.  Imports from northern Korea have actually fallen 13.2% in the first six months of this year compared to the first six months of last year, but exports have risen 29.1%, for a net increase in trade over 10%.

Huang Songping, representing the PRC’s customs agency, said

As neighbors, China and North Korea maintain normal business and trade exchanges[.]

That’s a pretty clear statement of how interested the PRC is in helping put an end to northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program, contra PRC chit chat and Trump’s efforts to use diplomatic measures involving the PRC to end to it.

Now it’s time to move on without the PRC’s involvement—other than expanded sanctions on PRC companies and persons who do business with the gangland.  Other measures, both diplomatic and military, do not need to include the PRC.

A Good Move

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…if risky from a security perspective.  After all, such installations can make lucrative targets for intelligence gathering.

The US State Department says it’s prepared to approve the sale of Patriot missile defense systems to Romania. The purchase is a further signal that Bucharest is concerned about the Kremlin’s role in the Black Sea area.

Aside from strengthening Romania, it’s also a good spot for us to gather intelligence.

Brussels Misunderstands

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This time on the matter of the deal with Iran that codifies its legal capacity develop nuclear weapons.

European diplomats say they are increasingly concerned the Trump administration will stretch out its review of the Iranian nuclear deal, undermining the agreement by curbing the economic benefits designed to ensure Iran’s compliance.

This is at the heart of their misunderstanding.  Regardless of the intent professed by those who negotiated this thing, those economic benefits do not at all “ensure Iran’s compliance.”  What they do do is fund Iran’s nuclear weapons development program and backfill its funding of its terrorist minions in the Middle East and proxies in Europe and the US.

What Brussels is carefully ignoring is that those economic benefits already have contributed to the funding for Iran’s missile development program (which tests are violations of a number of UN levies, as well as “understandings” underlying this Executive Agreement), Iran’s increased activities against our Navy in the Arabian Gulf, and Iran’s increased support for the Yemeni thugs.

This has been, all along, a deal whose payoff has been strictly one-way.