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lundi, 31 juillet 2017

America Declares Economic War Against Europe

Ex: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org

On Friday night, July 28, US President Donald Trump said that he would sign into law the increased economic sanctions (passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House) against any business that is declared to have "knowingly provided goods or services... for construction, modernisation, or repair of Russia’s energy export pipelines."

Russia is the largest energy-supplier to the world’s largest energy-market, which is Europe, or the EU. The biggest proportion of that trade is in Europe’s main source of energy, which is gas, which is pipelined into Europe from Russia. So: those pipelines are vitally important not only to Russia’s economy but to Europe’s.

President Trump had gotten Congress to agree to limit the application of this provision only to "The President, in coordination with allies of the United States, may impose five or more of the sanctions described in section 235 with respect to a person if the President determines that the person knowingly, on or after the date of the enactment of this Act, makes an investment described in subsection (b) or sells, leases, or provides to the Russian Federation, for the construction of Russian energy export pipelines, goods, services, technology, information, or support."

But the new law still does include "SEC. 232. SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF PIPELINES IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION." That Section punishes "Goods, services, technology, information, or support described in this subsection are goods, services, technology, information, or support that could directly and significantly facilitate the maintenance or expansion of the construction, modernization, or repair of energy export pipelines by the Russian Federation." That includes the crucial Nord Stream pipeline, which is maintained by Russian and German companies to transport gas from Russia to the EU.

US firms have thus now gotten their stooges in Congress to punish European and Russian companies that will be determined by "The President, in coordination with allies of the United States," to be working together in these ways, to get Russia’s gas to Europe’s markets.

North Stream, or Nord Stream, as Wikipedia says:
has an annual capacity of 55 billion cubic metres (1.9 trillion cubic feet), but its capacity is planned to be doubled to 110 billion cubic metres (3.9 trillion cubic feet) by 2019, by laying two additional lines.[5] Due to EU restrictions on Gazprom, only 22.5 billion cubic metres (790 billion cubic feet) of its capacity is actually used.[6] The name occasionally has a wider meaning, including the feeding onshore pipeline in the Russian Federation, and further connections in Western Europe.
So, already, the US oligarchs have greatly reduced the effectiveness of this enormous European and Russian investment, and this is already war by the US oligarchs (and their congressional agents) against both Europe and Russia; but, the new sanctions aim to go even further to absolutely cripple Europe and Russia.

President Trump is to be credited for having weakened this provision to such an extent that it will be virtually meaningless; but, the intention of the oligarchs who control the US, to force Europe to buy from them, and from their allied Saudi, UAE, Kuwaiti, and the other royal fundamentalist Sunni Arab families, is clear.

Other highlights from this new US law are well summarized in the July 28 article from Zero Hedge, "Trump Confirms He Will Sign Russia Sanctions Bill." The biggest concession that Trump made was to allow that this new law, "H.R.3364 - Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," "Codifies existing US sanctions on Russia and requires Congressional review before they are lifted." This is an Executive-Legislative agreement (an agreement between the President and Congress), but the US Constitution doesn’t include any provision allowing an Executive-Legislative agreement to violate the Constitution; and there are a number of provisions in the US Constitution that H.R.3364 might be determined by courts to be violating. This is presuming, of course, that key judges cannot be bought-off.

When a country is being ruled by its oligarchs, anything that the nation’s Constitution says, can be viewed as little more than an impediment, not any outright ban, because the actual Constitution, in any such country, is whatever they want it to be. Just how bad the US government has become, can’t yet be determined, but might become clear fairly soon.

Reprinted with permission from the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet : « Nous vivons dans une société bâillonnée où s’exerce la tyrannie des minorités »

FIGAROVOX/ENTRETIEN – Pour le professeur de droit constitutionnel, certains volets de la loi actuellement en débat à l’Assemblée menacent la liberté d’expression.

  • LE FIGARO. – L’une des mesures adoptées par les députés prévoit d’étendre le principe de l’inéligibilité aux personnes condamnées pour racisme, antisémitisme ou homophobie. Est-ce une bonne chose?

Anne-Marie LE POURHIET. – « Toute personne sceptique qui critique ou émet un jugement de valeur sur des mœurs, des comportements, des cultures ou des croyances est immédiatement considérée comme coupable du délit de «phobie». Cet amendement n’est qu’une nouvelle étape dans la tyrannie des minorités. Non seulement nous vivons dans une société bâillonnée où l’on ne peut déjà plus critiquer un individu ni un groupe sans risquer de se faire traîner en correctionnelle par des associations de militants vindicatifs et sectaires, mais ceux-ci voudraient en outre que les personnes condamnées sur le fondement de lois scélérates extorquées à un législateur complaisant soient interdites d’exercer un mandat public. »

  • Dans l’intitulé de l’amendement, il est affirmé que ces délits «portent atteinte aux valeurs républicaines qu’un élu se doit de partager». Ces «valeurs républicaines» ont-elles un contenu juridique?

« Les «valeurs républicaines» sont aujourd’hui invoquées à tort et à travers pour justifier n’importe quoi. Avoir été condamné pour «propos sexistes» ou bien être hostile au mariage pour tous ou à l’ouverture des frontières sera bientôt considéré comme «antirépublicain»! Il me semble que l’une des valeurs cardinales de la Révolution française est justement la liberté d’expression, qui ne consiste sûrement pas à formuler seulement des opinions bienveillantes!

Les valeurs républicaines, historiquement, ce sont la laïcité, l’unité de la Nation et l’égalité des citoyens devant la loi. Le b.a.-ba de la Révolution française, c’est le refus des droits des groupes et des corporations au profit des droits de l’individu libre de toute appartenance. Le multiculturalisme normatif est directement contraire aux valeurs républicaines et le droit pénal prend le chemin inverse des principes républicains en sanctionnant systématiquement les offenses aux communautés. Cela a commencé en 1972 avec la loi Pleven très mal rédigée, puis le mouvement s’est accéléré à partir des années 1980 avec la multiplication des catégories protégées et surtout l’habilitation des associations militantes à se constituer partie civile pour les délits de presse. On a ainsi privatisé l’action publique et soumis les médias, les intellectuels et les citoyens à la menace permanente de censure et de procès pour délits d’opinion. »

  • L’antiracisme militant établit un continuum entre violence verbale et symbolique et passage à l’acte. N’est-ce pas problématique d’un point de vue juridique?

« C’est insensé. Ce n’est pas parce que je trouve gênante la mendicité de certains Roms sur les trottoirs que je vais me mettre à les agresser. Le Christ peut sans doute dire à ses ouailles «Aimez-vous les uns les autres», mais un législateur républicain et libéral ne peut pas interdire aux citoyens de ne «pas aimer» tel individu, tel groupe, telle religion, tel comportement ou telle culture. On ne peut pas interdire aux gens de porter un jugement de valeur sur les mœurs d’autrui, ni de hiérarchiser les comportements. Chacun a le droit de penser ce qu’il veut et de dire ce qu’il pense. Le problème est que les «groupes d’oppression» (selon l’expression de Philippe Muray) ont obtenu la multiplication de lois pénales tendant à réprimer ce qu’ils appellent des «phobies». On veut nous forcer à apprécier le foulard islamique et le burkini, nous obliger à approuver le mariage gay, nous contraindre à accueillir avec le sourire des milliers de migrants, nous imposer de regarder les Jeux paralympiques et d’admirer le football féminin. Nous sommes sommés de considérer que tout est équivalent (au sens étymologique d’égale valeur) au nom de la «non-discrimination». Et pour être bien sûr que nos assemblées politiques ne comporteront que des moutons dociles bêlant dans le sens du «progrès», on va rendre inéligibles tous les condamnés pour cause de «mal-pensance». »

  • Assiste-t-on à un retour du «politiquement correct»?

« Un «retour»? Cela fait près de trente ans que nous nous enfonçons dans la dictature politiquement correcte. L’arsenal répressif ne cesse de s’alourdir, sans compter la multiplication des officines parallèles chargées de nous mettre au pas (CSA, Défenseur des droits, Commission consultative des droits de l’homme, haute autorité de ci, observatoire de ça…) et les insupportables instances prêchi-prêcha du Conseil de l’Europe. Nous croulons sous les normes de contrôle social et les institutions de censure. Et nous avons même le droit à des pétitions sur les réseaux sociaux tendant, par exemple, à faire retirer l’attribution d’un prix à un auteur au motif qu’il serait contre le mariage gay et donc «homophobe» ou à faire sanctionner une chaîne de télévision pour avoir laissé passer dans un jeu une séquence «stigmatisante pour les malades mentaux»! Le premier réflexe face aux imperfections de la société est l’interdiction. Désormais tout conflit, tout désaccord doit se terminer au tribunal. Au lieu de laisser s’exprimer le pluralisme et la contradiction particulièrement chère aux juristes (audi alteram partem = écoute l’autre partie), l’on ne songe qu’à faire taire la dissidence. »

  • La France devient-elle l’une des démocraties les plus répressives en matière de liberté d’expression?

« Si les États-Unis ont été précurseurs en matière de «politiquement correct», le 1er amendement à la Constitution de Philadelphie et la jurisprudence pointilleuse de la Cour suprême protègent efficacement les citoyens américains contre toute répression pénale de la liberté d’opinion. Chez nous, même le Conseil constitutionnel a renoncé à protéger la liberté d’expression. Hormis le délit de négation des «génocides reconnus par la loi», il a laissé passer toutes les lois liberticides. La liberté et le pluralisme sont en train de disparaître du pays de Voltaire. C’est irrespirable. »

  • Diriez-vous avec Alain Finkielkraut que «l’antiracisme est le communisme du XXIe siècle»?

« Oui! «Tout anticommuniste est un chien», disait Sartre, tout antiprogressiste l’est désormais. Ce qui me frappe surtout, c’est la tétanie dans laquelle est plongé l’ensemble de l’élite politique et médiatique. Plus personne n’ose dire que le roi est nu, c’est le début de la soumission. »

Le Figaro

The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America

irishslavesamerica.jpg

The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America

Slavery in America, typically associated with blacks from Africa, was an enterprise that began with the shipping of more than 300,000 white Britons to the colonies.  This little known history is fascinatingly recounted in White Cargo (New York University Press, 2007).  Drawing on letters, diaries, ship manifests, court documents, and government archives, authors Don Jordan and Michael Walsh detail how thousands of whites endured the hardships of tobacco farming and lived and died in bondage in the New World. 

Following the cultivation in 1613 of an acceptable tobacco crop in Virginia, the need for labor accelerated.  Slavery was viewed as the cheapest and most expedient way of providing the necessary work force.  Due to harsh working conditions, beatings, starvation, and disease, survival rates for slaves rarely exceeded two years.  Thus, the high level of demand was sustained by a continuous flow of white slaves from England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1618 to 1775, who were imported to serve America's colonial masters. 

These white slaves in the New World consisted of street children plucked from London's back alleys, prostitutes, and impoverished migrants searching for a brighter future and willing to sign up for indentured servitude.  Convicts were also persuaded to avoid lengthy sentences and executions on their home soil by enslavement in the British colonies.  The much maligned Irish, viewed as savages worthy of ethnic cleansing and despised for their rejection of Protestantism, also made up a portion of America's first slave population, as did Quakers, Cavaliers, Puritans, Jesuits, and others.

Around 1618 at the start of their colonial slave trade, the English began by seizing and shipping to Virginia impoverished children, even toddlers, from London slums.  Some impoverished parents sought a better life for their offspring and agreed to send them, but most often, the children were sent despite their own protests and those of their families.  At the time, the London authorities represented their actions as an act of charity, a chance for a poor youth to apprentice in America, learn a trade, and avoid starvation at home.  Tragically, once these unfortunate youngsters arrived, 50% of them were dead within a year after being sold to farmers to work the fields.

A few months after the first shipment of children, the first African slaves were shipped to Virginia.  Interestingly, no American market existed for African slaves until late in the 17th century.  Until then, black slave traders typically took their cargo to Bermuda.  England's poor were the colonies' preferred source of slave labor, even though Europeans were more likely than Africans to die an early death in the fields.  Slave owners had a greater interest in keeping African slaves alive because they represented a more significant investment.  Black slaves received better treatment than Europeans on plantations, as they were viewed as valuable, lifelong property rather than indentured servants with a specific term of service.

These indentured servants represented the next wave of laborers.  They were promised land after a period of servitude, but most worked unpaid for up to15 years with few ever owning any land.  Mortality rates were high.  Of the 1,200 who arrived in 1619, more than two thirds perished in the first year from disease, working to death, or Indian raid killings.  In Maryland, out of 5,000 indentured servants who entered the colony between 1670 and 1680, 1,250 died in bondage, 1,300 gained their right to freedom, and only 241 ever became landowners. 

Early in the 17th century, the headright system, a land allocation program to attract new colonists, began in Jamestown, Virginia as an attempt to solve labor shortages.  The program provided acreage to heads of households that funded travel to the colony for destitute individuals to work the land.  It led to the sharp growth of indentured servitude and slavery because the more slaves imported by a colonist, the larger the tracts of land received.  Promises of prosperity and land were used to lure the poor, who were typically enslaved for three to 15 years.  All the while, agents profited handsomely by augmenting their land holdings.  Corruption was rampant in the headright system and included double-counting of individual slaves, land allocations for servants who were dead upon arrival, and per head fees given for those kidnapped off English streets.

Purveyors of slaves often worked in teams of spirits, captains, and office-keepers to kidnap people from English ports for sale in the American labor market.  Spirits lured or kidnapped potential servants and arranged for their transport with ship captains.  Office-keepers maintained a base to run the operation.  They would entertain their prey and get them to sign papers until an awaiting ship became available.  Spirits and their accomplices were occasionally put on trial, but court records show that they got off easily and that the practice was tolerated because it was so profitable.

The indentured servant system of people who voluntarily mortgaged their freedom evolved into slavery.  England essentially dumped its unwanted in the American colonies, where they were treated no better than livestock.  Servants were regularly battered, whipped, and humiliated.  Disease was rampant, food was in short supply, and working and living conditions were grim.  War with local native Indian tribes was common.  Severe punishment made escape unrealistic.  Initially, running away was considered a capital crime, with clemency granted in exchange for an agreement to increase the period of servitude.

In the 1640s, the transportation of the Irish began.  Britain's goal was to obliterate Ireland's Catholics to make room for English planters.  Catholics who refused to attend a Protestant church could be fined.  If they were unable to pay, they could be sold as slaves.  Following the end of the English Civil Wars in 1651, English military and political leader Oliver Cromwell focused his attention on Ireland, where the people had allied with the defeated royalists during the conflict.  Famine was created by the intentional destruction of food stocks.  Those implicated in the rebellion had their land confiscated and were sold into slavery.  Anyone refusing to relocate was threatened with death, including children.

irishslavesUSA.jpg

Scots were also subjected to transportation to the British colonies for religious differences, as England imposed Anglican disciplines on the Church of Scotland as well.  The English army was deployed to break up illegal church assemblies and imprison or deport religious protesters. 

Cruelty to servants was rampant.  Beatings were common, and the perpetrators, buttressed by juries made up of fellow landowners, were rarely punished for abuse or even murder.  In time, efforts were made to improve the lot of servants.  Legislation in 1662 provided for a "competent diet, clothing and lodging" and disciplinary measures not to "exceed the bounds of moderation."  Servants were granted the right to complain, but the cruelty continued. 

Infanticide by unmarried women was common, as they could be severely punished for "fornication."  The mother faced a whipping, fines, and extra years added to her servitude.  Her offspring faced time in bondage as well.  If the mother was the victim of a rape by the master, he faced a fine and the loss of a servant but wasn't subjected to whipping.

Several uprisings in the American colonies awakened slave owners to problems, exposing their vulnerability within the caste-like master-servant social system they had created.  In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, an aristocrat from England who became a Virginia colonist, instigated an insurrection, referred to as Bacon's Rebellion, that changed the course of white slavery. 

Prior to Bacon's Rebellion, much discontentment existed among servants over seemingly empty promises of land following their periods of indenture.  When they were finally freed of their obligations, many found that they couldn't afford the required land surveying fees and the exorbitant poll taxes. 

In 1675, when war broke out with some of the native tribes, Bacon joined the side of the warring settlers and offered freedom to every slave and servant who deserted his master and joined Bacon in battle.  Hundreds enthusiastically joined him in the insurgency.  When Bacon died suddenly, his supporters fled or surrendered; some were recaptured, put in chains, and beaten or hanged.  However, because of the revolt, whites gained rights.  Whippings were forbidden without a formal judicial order. 

By the early 1770s, the convict trade was big business, more profitable than the black slave trade because criminals were cheap.  They could be sold for one third the price of indentured servants.  England's jails were being emptied into America on a significant scale.  Additionally, merchants who traded in convicts from England and Ireland received a subsidy for every miscreant transported to America.  Up to a third of incoming convicts died from dysentery, smallpox, typhoid, and freezing temperatures.  Upon arrival, they were advertised for sale, inspected, and taken away in chains by new masters.

Following the Revolutionary War, the British continued to ship convict labor as "indentured servants" to America.  During that time, seven ships filled with prisoners made the journey, and two successfully landed.  In 1789, convict importation was legally banned across the U.S.  America would no longer be the dumping ground for British criminals.  It took another 30 years before the indentured servant trade ended completely.  

A well written and well researched historical narrative, White Cargo does an excellent job of elucidating a forgotten part of our colonial past by telling the story of thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage before African slaves were transported to the New World.