China All Up In Djibouti and a ‘Lula-Bye’ in Brazil

A ‘Lula-Bye’ Being Sung in Brazil?: Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as “Lula”), was found guilty of corruption and money laundering on Wednesday and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. His conviction tarnishes the legacy of one of Brazil’s and Latin America’s most influential politicians, a charismatic leader who led a period of economic growth in Brazil that lifted millions out of poverty in a nation with one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality. But after Brazil’s economic fortunes turned, da Silva’s leftist Workers’ Party lost the presidency last year when his handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached. da Silva has called the charges against him a “farce.”

Despite multiple corruption allegations against him, da Silva was planning to run for president next year and was widely considered a leading contender. The judge who issued Wednesday’s verdict said that under Brazilian law, da Silva would be ineligible to run for office for 19 years. Legal scholars interpreted the ruling to mean that da Silva could still run for president while the case is being appealed. His conviction is the latest in a series issued by Brazil’s judiciary, which has “declared war on the country’s entrenched culture of corruption.” Brazil’s current president, Michel Temer, was formally charged last month with corruption.

Massive Iceberg Breaks Off From Western Antarctica: According to a UK-based research team, Project MIDAS, an iceberg weighing more than one trillion tons has broken away from western Antarctica. According to NASA’s Aqua MODIS satellite, the iceberg broke off between Monday and Wednesday. The lead investigator of the MIDAS project told CNN that his team believes the iceberg is intact and said: “This is part of the normal behavior of ice shelves. What makes this unusual is the size.” The iceberg has a volume “twice that of Lake Erie in North America and is more than three times the size of the greater London area.” Calving is a natural occurrence, but scientists have been studying what role climate change may have played in expediting this particular rift.

China All Up In Djibouti: For the two people out there who still doubt that China has made a long-term strategic decision to challenge US power worldwide on the economic, political, and military battlefields, hear this: Its intentions in the Horn of Africa have now been declared loud and clear. China has deployed naval ships carrying troops to Djibouti to establish a permanent overseas military base in the small African nation. Djibouti is bordered by Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and is strategically located between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The US has maintained and operated a military installation there for many years to run operations, both overt and covert, in the region.

China’s interest in Africa is not new. Unhampered by those pesky prerequisites such as human rights or good governance, the Chinese government has managed to put one million of its nationals on the continent and to buy goodwill through building infrastructure–roads, bridges, highways, and rail lines. This is, of course, under the auspices of ‘humanitarian aid’ and security, a thinly-veiled attempt to disguise the goal of physical and political access to Africa’s raw materials.

While infiltrating Africa in this manner has worked for the last decade or more, the permanent military installation in Djibouti is a big step for China. Its ostensible function is to support Chinese naval warships that patrol the sea lanes for anti-piracy and humanitarian operations. Another way to interpret this move is that it’s a major and logical step for power projection at sea in a strategically essential part of the world. Kinda sounds like the US Navy, only Chinese.

Trump’s Pick for FBI Director Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee:Donald Trump’s pick to replace James Comey as FBI Director is Christopher Wray, who as of last month was still working as new Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s personal attorney for the “Bridgegate” investigation. On Wednesday, Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and said he rejected the president’s characterization of the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the US election as a “witch hunt.” Wray told the Senate committee that he would “never allow the FBI’s work to be driven by anything other than the facts, the law, and the impartial pursuit of justice” and that he was “very committed to supporting” the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Wray was asked about the emails belonging to Donald Trump, Jr. that were released this week regarding a meeting with a Russian lawyer. Wray said he was unfamiliar with the emails (Oh, COME ON. My dog has read those emails!) Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proceeded to read the text of the emails to him and asked if Trump, Jr. “should have taken that meeting.” Wray responded: “I would think you’d want to consult with some good legal advisers before you did that. Any threat or effort to interfere with our elections from any nation state or non-state actor is the kind of thing the FBI would want to know.” Democratic senators, who have grilled other Trump nominees in similar confirmation hearings, indicated that Wray would probably be confirmed for the position.

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