In the draconian sanctions imposed by the US Congress against Russia and now signed by Trump, there are some paradoxical side effects for the so-called leaders of the United Europe under German hegemony. First, if Angela Merkel, Juncker and Mogherini hoped to have a global ally in the Congress as hostile to Donald Trump, the protectionist of American First, now have to find that, on the contrary, "Congress's anger crisis fights at bursts out against European allies", especially Germany and France, which companies that are building North Stream 2 are being severely penalized. Even more than "American First" by The Donald, US parliamentarians - notoriously obedient to American economic lobbies which paying them - want Germany to buy liquefied gas from schists Made in USA, scaled at an incomparably more expensive cost.
by Maurizio Blondet
Otherwise sanctions. And they will be serious and severe, as demonstrated by the billions of dollars in fines that Deutsche Bank will have to pay to US, and another ten European banks (Swiss, German, Dutch) who have been pursued for doing business - in their respective countries perfectly legal - with countries branded by Washington as "terrorists" and hit with sanctions - as Iran - or charged with "corruption".
US, in fact, "are totally committed to the mission of enforcing universal morality", wrote journalist Diana Johnstone, and created agencies such as the Foreign Assistance Office, with a budget of $ 30 million and 200 investigators that tirelessly - often with the help of their intelligence agencies who are able to hear communications around the world - seek business practices "corrupt" or that "distort the competition" made by European companies to punish them: by fines, by excluding them from the US Stock Exchange (with a collapse of reputation and shares) or forbidding to export or operate in the Federation. The French Alstom (which manufactures high-speed trains) in 2014, investigated by these US bureaucratic bodies, has freed itself from the charge by selling its electric division to General Electric instead to another competitor, what has swayed the moralists of Washington. BNP Paribas in the same year had to pay $ 9 billion to the Americans because it transferred payments to countries hit by US sanctions: legal in French law but since the transfers were in dollars, it fell under American law. A law where if you use dollars to pay for an Iranian rug, you become a "US person" subject to that law and you have to hire American lawyers who advise you to plead guilty to plead a fine - the bargain plea - to avoid even worse penalties.
Obviously, there is no minimum reciprocity. No US company can be persecuted for its corrupt commercial practices, or industrial espionage (facilitated by CIA or NSA hearings) in Europe.
Now Paris and Brussels, in the face of the worst and most recent sanctions against Russia, but in reality against German and French companies, have pleaded for the "extraterritoriality of American law", venturing international lawsuits you're not well aware behind what international court. A little later, after years in which European leaders accepted and bend to the legal arrogance of the Protective Superpower.
It is no longer even fair to speak of "extraterritoriality". No: here is the new "global universal law", parody of the Roman law, which the United States imposes on the whole world because they are the Empire of the Good, while the rest of the world is divided between "corrupt" "terrorists" and "rogue states". Berlin, Paris, Brussels (and Rome have no say) have accepted this "universality" without reciprocity, all unilateral acts, have paid the billionaires fines, participating in punitive dispatches against the insubordinates with the Universal US Law. In short, they accepted the "American legal philosophy" as a universal value, if so we can call the law of the West and the guns applied to the planet. And now they discover, like the German Foreign Ministry, that "the United States uses sanctions as a tool to serve the interests of the US industry"? Or as a Parisian parliamentary commission denounces, "the use of the law to serve the aims of the economic and political imperative in order to achieve strategic advantages"?
It's not known whether to cry or to laugh, in the face of this laziness, lowliness and lack of European leadership. This leadership now finds that she has been taken to lasso as a castrated calf while she believed she was an ally. And with well-tied hocks, the German calf: in fact, it cannot take retaliation measures, even commercially of any kind, nor make them vote for "her" EU: in fact, unanimity is needed, and having entered her "EU" Poland, the Baltic States and Sweden - in full anti-Russian paroxysm, wanting to regulate old hates with Moscow and filled with weapons from the Pentagon - unanimity if a thing that one can only dream of it. On the other hand, what sanctions do you want to oppose, when you have developed a German economy that is based for 50% of GDP on exports - in short, it depends largely on exports to the US, which are still the largest global consumer. You are in their hands, which can cause you a bad depression without buying your BMWs anymore.
Checkmate. Inflicted by the Americans, which are not chess champions particularly sagacious and smart. Our so-called leaders are even players more sluggish than Trump, more dumb than the fanatic warmongers at the Congress. It's almost incredible. Humiliating and shameful.
Can they do worse? For sure they can. The Pentagon is about to provide heavy weaponry, and anti-tank to the Kiev government; wants to "help him" to recapture the Donbass, reopening warfare: it has already allocated $ 410 million to modernize the Ukrainian arms industry (tripling him more than a year before), he spent 40 million in commandos training. In short he wants the war in Europe. Almost near the borders of Germany.
"Bringing more weapons into an area that is already packed with weapons and ammunitions is a nightmare for mediators in Germany and France and now it is impossible to get a permanent ceasefire..." Deutschlandfunk complained
All in all, but remembering that those "mediators of France and Germany" who would have to gain a ceasefire along the Donbass frontline, have instead until now - for sure following orders by their governments - shaking hands with shame with the Kiev militias. The "OSCE observers" have never observed the violations of the law. Merkel has always pretended to blame Putin - against who she has also applied the well-known sanctions.
Now, the only thing that the so-called European leaders should do is recognize US in Ukraine as enemy, and Moscow as her friend. To denounce, to prevent by all means the rearming of the coup regime now on the ropes. They will not, of course. What will happen, they will have to learn from what the Americans did in Syria.
And they do not even have to look for plotter sites or read reports by some counter-intelligence agency. Just passing through the New York Times article on August 2th, Under Trump, a Hollowed-Out Force in Syria Quickly Lost C.I.A. Backing,
where you can read:
"It was the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, to recommend to President Trump the closure of the four-year operation to arm Syrian rebels."
"Critics in the Congress [very few - Note of the author] have denounced for years the costs and the reports that the armaments provided by the CIA were in the hands of rebels linked to Al Qaeda."
"In 2012, David Petraeus, then head of the CIA, was the first to propose an underground program to arm the rebels. A presidential decree authorizing the CIA to arm small rebel groups [was signed by Obama]. John Brennan, Obama's last-named CIA director, has remained a vigorous defender of the deal. "
A giant, criminal operation, failed and closed. Heavy armaments "finished in Al Qaeda's hands", which was probably the true purpose of the project, and the introduction in Syria of at least 20,000 trained guerrillas, who became the nerve of ISIS. Costed at least a billion dollars, maybe 4 (but what does it matter? FED prints them and the world accepts them in payment). It cost hundreds of thousands of killed in Syria and millions of refugees in neighboring countries.
Now the Pentagon wants to repeat the operation, and openly, in Ukraine. Without obviously asking for an opinion from the "European allies", blaming their "nightmares". Because they do not oppose it. After the next four years, the New York Times will explain to us that the operation was "wrong", confirming the high morality of the Superpower. About which Churchill, let's remember, said: "Occasionally, American friends experience the need to do a bidet to their conscience. The fact is that, later they make drink the water to us. "
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Original article by Maurizio Blondet:
http://www.maurizioblondet.it/congresso-usa-dato-scacco-matto-alleuropa-merkel/
Translation by Costantino Ceoldo - Pravdafreelance