
Donald Trump tells NRA gun lobby he's withdrawing from UN arms trade treaty - BLKNSLVR
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-27/donald-trump-tells-nra-hes-withdrawing-from-un-arms-treaty/11051182
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BLKNSLVR
I don't know if the U.S. has any soft power left. Backing out of a UN Arms
Trade Treaty makes the arrest and extradition of the Huawei executive seem
even more transparently political (as if it wasn't already).

Maybe I'm joining these two things together unfairly or illogically, but the
way I see it: The Huawei issue was over selling US-manufactured technology to
Iran, with whom the US has trade sanctions. This declaration by Trump means
that the US wants to be able to sell arms to countries that are on a UN-
sanctioned list. In terms of crimes against humanity, selling arms pretty much
outranks anything else.

I think this is potentially a method to cut-off or at least minimize a revenue
stream for Russia and China (since neither are signatories to the UN Arms
Trade Treaty), but this race to the bottom feels as if it's getting very close
to the end.

And then when I read articles like the following, they just feel brutally and
trivially sarcastic: [https://torrentfreak.com/us-govt-identifies-top-pirate-
sites...](https://torrentfreak.com/us-govt-identifies-top-pirate-sites-and-
other-notorious-markets-190426/)

"We want to sell weapons to any country we please. These websites are allowing
people to download movies and computer games for free, we need to put
political pressure on their respective countries to shut them down!"

It's an odd sense of perspective. Pure trade; capitalism over and above any
other... anything.

