America - The World's
Bully
By Larry Romanoff, February 28, 2023
Contents
Iranian Oil & The US Banking System
The Swiss Banking System
The Japanese Yen and The Plaza Accord
The RMB Exchange Rate
International Financing
The Financial Rating Agencies
Bank Card Payment Systems
Russian Art
Europe's Galileo GPS System
What's Yours is Mine
Canada’s Softwood Lumber Industry
Canada's Northwest Passage
Rice Marketing, American Style
US Military Bases in Okinawa
I Can Sue You, But You Can't Sue Me
Accounting Standards and Procedures
French Embassy in Belgrade
Airline passenger information
US-UK Extradition Treaty
If You're Not With us, You're Against us
Extra-territorialism
America - The World's Bully
In an article in the Dallas Morning News, Robert Jensen wrote, "In
the debate about US war, the question often pops up: Should the United States
be the world's policeman? This is a case where the answer doesn't matter,
because it is the wrong question. The United States isn't offering to be the
world's cop; US officials are acting as the world's bully. The role of police
is to uphold the law, but police don't boast that they will respect only those
laws they decide to respect. All this talk about being the world's policeman
helps obscure a simple reality: US policy-makers routinely ignore international
law and act as rogues".
America has always been a bully, realising its expansionist and commercial
achievements by force or threats of force. When settlers first arrived in the
Americas, they began by exterminating the indigenous populations, and continued
to take whatever they wanted from that time on. The US fabricated excuses for
wars with Mexico and Spain, and claimed half of Mexico, including what are now
the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico. From
Spain, they took Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Philippines, Guam and the Caroline
Islands. "Americans appear convinced that they have a God-given right, a
destiny granted to them by their God, to simply take by threat or force whatever
it is they desire." This accurately describes US foreign policy since the
days of the founding of the Republic, with no change for 200 years. Even worse,
the Americans have always been afraid to attack strong nations, typically
attacking only those with no ability to defend themselves, or states like Iraq
which were weakened by decades of sanctions.
A majority of the world's people regard America as a bully. In an
international poll conducted in 2013, 20 nations representing two-thirds of the
world's population were strongly anti-American. The majority of the population
in 15 of 19 nations saw the US as constantly bullying nations with military
threats and the majority of people in 17 of 19 nations saw the US as totally
ignoring international law. As one American wrote, "America wants to
run the world. America will decide who lives and who dies, who rules and who is
ruled, which regimes shall stand and which shall be changed. Not surprisingly,
a lot of people aren't too happy about this. The US is an international bully
who cares only about its 'national interest' and couldn't care less who gets
hurt in the process. We are viewed as arrogant, selfish bullies."
Another American offered this gem: "everyone you trash on the way up
will be waiting for you on the way down". And they will indeed. When
airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11, people
in many countries cheered and in some nations were dancing in the streets. Many
felt "it's about time someone gave the US a taste of their own
medicine". The American media totally censored all such sentiments.
News reporters claim it is not unusual today for Americans to be booed at
conferences of many kinds. In a major international conference in Australia,
China's President Xi Jinping was heavily applauded while US President Obama
received only loud boos and jeering. A journalist with the state TV network in
South Africa spoke for many when he said of the US: "I think a lot of
people just see a greedy bully". When ABC News consulted
journalists around the world about the way the United States is perceived, the
theme repeatedly stated was that the US is concerned only by its own narrow
interests and has no consideration for other nations. US State Department
officials were sufficiently concerned about growing anti-American sentiment
worldwide that they held a private conference to discuss the topic, but it was
clear the Americans wanted only to manage public perception, with no intention
of changing their underlying behavior.
The range of circumstances where the Americans threaten and bully other
nations is virtually all-encompassing. US accounting "standards"
are the only sensible ones, so the entire world should be bullied into adopting
them. The US judicial and legal systems, the unregulated and destructive
financial system, US-designed regulations in food additives and labeling, are
all increasingly being forced upon the world. The US government has been
bullying and threatening nations in Europe and Asia for decades now to accept
US-produced GM seed. Aggressive American IP standards, unacceptable to many
other nations in their format and details, form a major portion of the
recently-proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, and were a clear attempt to bully
Pacific nations into accepting a colonial master's control of this entire vital
area with no concern for the standards of other nations, intended only to
enshrine into treaties the vast tapestry of American violations of the IP of
others.
All of these areas are part of a widespread attempt to forcibly impose
American so-called standards upon the world. The US comprises only about 4% of
the world's population, but increasingly American products, standards,
regulations, systems, so-called "values", and ways of doing
things, are being forced onto the remaining 96% of the world that does not want
them, using diplomatic and financial pressure and even threats of military
force. And, as we will see, the Americans are not at all reluctant to bully other
nations into do their bullying for them.
America has no 'friends' in the common usage of that word, and will
bully and threaten friends and enemies equally. There is no safety in being a 'friend'
of the US, as Canada, the UK, Germany and Japan and many other non-Western
nations have learned. The only operating concept is what the Americans define
as their "national interest". We have not yet had an instance
of the US launching a military invasion against a Western so-called friend, but
that is only because bullying has so far been sufficient. It may not always be
so.
Iranian Oil & The US Banking System
In 2012, US President Obama signed into law a new provision that the US
must cut off a country’s financial institutions from the American banking system
if that country continues to purchase crude oil from Iran. Some countries were
offered a waiver from these measures because they had, as a result of prior
American bullying, "significantly reduced" their oil purchases from
Iran. The US has no hesitation in dictating to the nations of the world a list
of the countries with which they are "permitted" to do business.
One recent example relates to the sudden frenzied attacks in 2013 and 2014
by the US Justice Department on foreign banks operating in the US, on the
pretext of financing terrorism or encouraging "tax evasion". These
banks may or may not have assisted American citizens in avoiding tax but there
was absolutely no evidence of involvement in financing terrorism. The truth was
rather different and, while the US media refused to touch the issue, it was
only foreign banks that were being targeted while Citibank and Goldman Sachs
were outstandingly conspicuous by their absence in this frenzy, and indeed many
politicians and others questioned the peculiar selection of banking victims.
The truth emerged, though again the US government and media totally censored
the facts, when documents were discovered to prove that US officials, working
through the New York prosecutor's office, had begun moves to cancel Standard
Chartered's US business license, an act which would have been potentially fatal
to the bank's survival. The reason was Iran, specifically that the US
government, following its instructions from Israel and the Jewish lobby, wanted
to financially isolate and bankrupt Iran in preparation for another
US-sponsored revolution, an agenda some foreign banks, including Standard
Chartered, did not share.
To give you an appreciation of how reporters spin events and the media
create history that never existed, both parties covering up government crimes
in the process, we can consider the article The Financial Times' Andrew Hill
wrote on the Standard Chartered issue. At the time, he was writing on the
apology given by Apple's Tim Cook to China for violating laws and cheating
customers, acts Hill dismissed as a clever non-apology. Hill began his
commentary with this statement:
"For a better example of contrition in the face of government
pressure, take a look at the abject statement of apology the Chairman of
Standard Chartered had to write after making remarks relating to the bank's
breaches of US sanctions rules that he admitted were "both legally and
factually incorrect".
Hill then printed the abject apology in full, in which the bank official
admitted to willfully avoiding US financial sanctions on Iran. The conclusion
we are to draw from Hill's article is that the Chairman of Standard Chartered
sincerely apologised for deliberate great wrongs of the bank while Tim Cook
apologised insincerely for no wrongs committed by Apple. However, the truth was
rather different. Tim Cook did indeed apologise insincerely for genuine wrongs
and illegal acts committed by Apple, while the bank apologised very sincerely
(and fearfully, I would add) for having done nothing wrong. Why would the bank
do that? Well, here is the story behind the story, the part the Financial
Times and Andrew Hill did not want to tell you:
Benjamin Lawsky, the Jew at the head of America’s
New York Financial Services division claimed that when warned to cease
dealings with Iran, a Standard Chartered executive replied: "You
f---ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're
not going to deal with Iranians." That was when Lawsky decided,
entirely outside the law, to revoke the bank's business license, and it was
only from extensive pleadings at the highest government levels that the bank was
saved. And, of course, by the "abject apology" issued by the
bank's Chairman. This is a perfect example of how freely the Americans will
bully anyone, with no regard whatever for law or justice, or even reason. But
it is also a perfect example of how the public are duped by the media, with
government crimes, atrocities, bullying, all manner of illegal acts buried in
articles containing false statements or false impressions while omitting the
crucial details. And, in so many cases, blaming the victim. According to Hill
and the Financial Times, Apple was angelic while Standard Chartered was
bad, but the truth was entirely the opposite of the spin. And I would repeat
yet again that the only value in freedom of speech depends on having control of
the microphone.
One happy postscript to these events resulted from a UK courtroom. The
Americans weren't satisfied with their own leverage in bullying Iran with
financial sanctions, but bullied the UK government to adopt the same illegal
tactics. In the event, the Iranians sued the UK government in the European
Court of Justice, claiming that sanctions employed against them by the UK
were 'wrongly imposed', and the court agreed, leaving the UK facing a
potential bill of $4bn in damages for being the Americans' poodle once too
often. A few more of these, and the British might learn their lesson and begin
ignoring the Americans - who absolutely will not pay their court bill for them.
But then the Americans had to pay their own damages for this one illegality
since Iran also sued the US government. In the Autumn of 2016, it was revealed
that Iran had succeeded in its lawsuit against the US for the illegal
confiscation and freezing of Iranian bank assets in the US, with reports that
planeloads of cash totaling nearly $2 billion had been flown to Iran from the
US in settlement of Iran's claims. Officials of the Treasury Department
attempted to put the best light on these refunds, stating they were "necessitated
by the effectiveness of U.S. and international sanctions regimes over the last
several years in isolating Iran from the international financial system".
In other words, our great success in stealing your money made it necessary for
us to return it. Does that make sense to you? No, me neither, but then this is
America and things are different here. However, the real issue was that Obama
and other White House officials admitted they were on the verge of losing the
lawsuit and would have been liable for as much as $10 billion to Iran because
of accrued interest, so they panicked and filled airplanes with cash in the
hopes of appeasing Iran.
The US also applied so-called "sanctions" against Iran for
blocking seditious US broadcasts into the country, freezing or confiscating all
of Iran's assets in Western countries, obviously with the compliance of its
Western allies. But in their vindictiveness the Americans extend a much longer
reach that includes any nations, persons or corporations dealing with Iran. The
US threatened to apply financial sanctions against China for purchasing Iranian
oil, including cutting off access to the US financial system by the Chinese
government and all Chinese corporations, and levied fines against a Chinese
bank for having transactions with Iran. Any corporations anywhere in the world
that do business with Iran are automatically targeted for
"punishment", as are their respective governments. If an African
firm engages in commerce with Iran, the US will attempt to seize that firm's
assets anywhere in the world, in complete violation of all laws, and will
threaten economic sanctions against that firm's government as well. If any of
these firms have operations, staff or assets in the US, the Americans will
simply seize the assets and file criminal charges against the staff on some
fabricated basis of 'trading with the enemy'. If assets exist in other
Western nations, the US will bully those countries to freeze or seize all
assets, simply on the basis that the US wants to starve Iran into submission
and expects compliant assistance from the rest of the world.
In fact, the US tried for years to force foreign banks to assist in its
efforts to throttle Iran's economy, but the banks were loath to abandon
profitable business solely for US political objectives and with no benefit to
them. Finally, the US government abandoned all pretense at playing by any rules
or following any suggestion of law, by arbitrarily levying billions of dollars
in "fines" for those banks refusing to sever all ties with
Iran. Lloyds Bank was fined almost US$350 million, and Deutsche Bank
and one or two others paid US$620 million, to be followed by a long list of
others. A Chinese bank was included with a so-called "fine" of
about US$150 million, followed by threats that all Chinese firms especially
including the major Chinese oil companies would be barred from any access to
the US banking system. And in fact, the US government made many prior attempts
in secret to bully its banks into refusing to deal with Chinese companies.
The Swiss Banking System
For decades, the US has refused to accept rules or laws of any nation that
didn't correspond to the American best interest or didn't permit Americans full
access to whatever they wanted. One of these areas was Switzerland's banking
system and related laws that were founded on privacy and security. The US
without success bullied Switzerland and its banks for years, demanding access
to account information, and finally discovered an approach that worked. Under a
pretense of (a) seeking those avoiding US income taxes and (b)
locating those who fund "terrorism", the Americans began a
coordinated prosecutorial and judicial offensive, targeting Swiss banks
resident in the US, levying huge fines and threatening their entire investment
base in the US. Under the onslaught, and to shield the remainder of its 300 or
so banks from US prosecution, the Swiss government was finally forced to amend
its secrecy laws to permit US government agencies full access to account data.
Those who believe the US has an "independent judiciary" might
care to re-think that position.
The Japanese Yen and The Plaza Accord
By the 1980s, Japan had become a severe concern to US commerce, having
entered most US industrial sectors with higher quality, better design and
engineering and often more attractive prices. Many major US corporations were
losing market share and hemorrhaging red ink with no sign of relief, and the US
was running high trade deficits as well. After years of exerting mostly
unsuccessful bullying pressure on Japan for export restraints, the US turned
its attention to prying open what it viewed as a closed Japanese market.
Largely failing here as well, the US then directed its focus on forcing Japan
to renovate its economy on a macro level, including extortionate attempts to
affect Japanese domestic savings and investment balances. Failing in these
efforts as well, the US eventually found an ideal solution: The Americans
forced Japan to accept a revaluation of the Japanese Yen - the famous "Plaza
Accord" - as a result of which the Yen nearly tripled in only a few
years, crippling Japan's economy - a condition from which it has never
recovered.
The RMB Exchange Rate
As with Japan, when the US found itself hopelessly outclassed by China's
manufacturing efficiency and prices and, experiencing increasing trade deficits
with China, it mounted an almost overwhelming campaign of pressure and
propaganda in attempts to force China to revalue the RMB upward, by at least
25% to 40%. US politicians and officials from the President and State
Department to the US Embassies and MNCs, AmCham and many other American groups
all jumped onto this same wagon and rode it for years. The US media continued
an incessant onslaught of carping criticism of China's currency policies,
noting in detail all manner of economic and political threats the US government
held in hand to force China to effectively commit economic suicide in order to
preserve US economic supremacy. The volume and strength of the pressure was
truly astonishing, as was its consistency and duration. It continued without
letup for years, with a concerted and coordinated effort by all US newspapers,
columnists, reporters and others, all working to pressure China into relenting.
Possibly the worst of this emanated from the Jew Paul Krugman, the fake Nobel
Economics prize winner, the NYT’s “Renminbi Rambo”. Among his many
flagrantly dishonest articles, Krugman claimed at one point that China was
executing “the greatest currency manipulation in history”, or words to
that effect – while the US was engaged in its QE1, 2 and 3, which was in
reality “the greatest currency manipulation in history”.
It is a great tribute to the strength and maturity of China's Central
Government that it did not capitulate to the Americans in this years-long
dishonest and repugnant bullying crusade to derail China's economy and
development. And in the end, the Americans were forced by circumstances to
admit that China's RMB had never been substantially over-valued. A continued
effort would have served only to further discredit US politicians and officials
as it did so many American economists like Krugman - one of the more foolishly
vocal proponents of this insane policy.
International Financing
In 2016, Russia planned to issue about $3 billion in foreign bonds, its
first international issue in several years, and invited a flock of European and
Chinese banks to bid on the bonds. But at the time, the Jews controlling the
White House were irritated at Russia for frustrating their recent attempts to
take over the government of the Ukraine and Russia's Crimean military base.
Therefore, the State Department servants went immediately to work, warning
American banks against participating in Russia's "politically risky"
bond deal, with implied threats that failure to comply could be dangerous to
their health. But the commissions on $3 billion are much more than nothing, and
the American banks were reported to be "weighing their options"
in spite of the threats. Of course, the US attempted to put pressure on the
European banks as well, with the same veiled threats to their financial health
in the US market if they dared disobey the Imperial Master. The State
Department also issued an additional warning of "reputational"
risks to any bank daring to return "to business as usual with
Russia".
A bit earlier, in 2014, all foreign banks were ordered! to cooperate with
the US Treasury department - in any way demanded, even if that cooperation were
against the laws of their own country - to help identify foreigners with large
amounts of cash. The pretense was that some of these individuals might owe
taxes to the US, but there was no documentation to support that claim, nor
would such evidence be presented due to concerns of "privacy and
national security". The US Treasury was simply on a fishing trip, for
reasons unclear at the time. For the foreign banks, failure to comply - with
actions that were in most cases clearly illegal - would result in an arbitrary
30% withholding tax on all their banking profits in the US. A French official
said, "That’s shocking, how can they do that?" One foreign
banker said, "There is no reciprocity, it's a one-way street. It really
is financial imperialism on the part of the USA". The US simply passed
a law stating that about 100,000 foreign financial institutions in more than
100 countries were "required to report" to the US Treasury
whatever information was requested. But of course, as with virtually all
actions by the Americans, this one is also a one-way street; the US has very
firm laws that prohibit US banks from providing any information to foreign
governments, even on their own foreign citizens.
Perhaps the best example was in 2015 when Britain (and almost everybody
else) rushed to sign up as founding members of the new China-sponsored Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In the event, every country of
consequence signed up - except for the Americans, who would self-immolate
before joining anything where China was leading, leaving the US out in the
cold. The Americans, in a public statement that must surely have had thousands
of government officials all over the world rolling on the floor in laughter,
raised concerns about whether this China-led body "would meet the
standards of the World Bank". From the UK Guardian: "The
US administration made clear in no uncertain terms its displeasure about
Osborne’s decision to join the AIIB. A US official told the Financial Times:
"We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China,
which is not the best way to engage a rising power." Naturally, the
American way of dealing with "a rising power" is to attempt to
destroy it, but here are the British eager to join the club. The US also
fretted that China might have some control over the bank's activities, a
reasonable assumption since China was making by far the largest investment, but
the Americans failed to mention the control stranglehold they have on the World
Bank. For those who don't know, the World Bank's regulations require an 85%
majority to permit changes, but the US holds a 17% stake, meaning it has an
absolute veto and full control, in spite of the fact that its financial
contribution is limited. The Americans did launch a frantic worldwide campaign
(that included veiled threats) to discourage all countries from participating,
but to no avail. In the end, the best they could do was make pathetic, miffed
noises about how this new institution should "incorporate the high
standards of the World Bank", a vain hope since the World Bank's only
standard is the bleeding of underdeveloped countries.
The Financial Rating Agencies
Another favorite US method of bullying nations financially to ensure
compliance with the Imperial Prerogative is by using the American securities
rating agencies like Moody's as tools of extortion, to the point where
these rating agencies have lost all reliability in their field and are seen
primarily as extortion tools of the US State Department to ensure American
political domination. Moody's, Fitch, and Standard & Poor,
most often coordinate their activities, often to the chagrin of weaker nations.
One of their methods, whenever a country - friend or foe - dares disobey the
imperial hegemon - that country will suddenly discover its securities have
suddenly fallen several categories in the financial rankings, and downgraded
from positive or stable to negative, thereby increasing their financing costs -
often from US banks, by significant margins. Since these three firms control
about 95% of the international ratings markets, their influence is substantial,
even though their methods and ethics have become increasingly questionable.
To say these firms operate with a double standard is to badly underestimate
the frauds involved. When Enron and other US firms were only days from
bankruptcy, their ratings were still high, serving only to eviscerate all the
trusting small investors who believed what they were told. Prior to the 2008
financial collapse, Moody's rated the weakest and most dangerous American firms
and securities at the highest levels, maintaining those ratings right through
the collapse. More recently, Moody's rated Greece at a level that was truly
laughable, given that Greece was a financial basket case, at the time possibly
only weeks from bankruptcy and an exit from the Euro. Yet in early 2016,
Moody's suddenly downgraded China's debt ratings while reducing its category
from stable to negative - at the same time having done precisely the opposite
for Greece, apparently claiming that country's economy was much more stable and
reliable than was China's. However, in this case, Moody's wasted their time.
China's Finance Minister shrugged off both Moody's and their ratings, stating
that "We don't care much about the ratings", and noting that
both the international and domestic financial markets ignored Moody's
completely. The impetus for the change in rankings was the insistence of the
Jews controlling the White House to force China to carry out huge economic
reforms that would both benefit American (and Jewish) firms and destroy China's
economy, such measures including the disposition of the assets of all Chinese
state-owned companies to US firms, and a permanent closure of much of China's
development infrastructure including steel mills, aluminum smelters and more.
When China once again refused to commit economic suicide to please the
Americans, they employed Moody's as a tool in the hope of damaging China's
international financial reputation and greatly increasing China's financing
costs. Fortunately, they failed.
Moody's is also not beyond serious criminal extortion, accompanied by the
full protection of the US State Department. At one point, according to an
article in Huanqiu, "Moody’s once bullied a German insurance giant,
Hannover Re, by offering free rating services and seeking future paid services.
When Hannover Re refused, Moody’s rated the company anyway and kept the rating
very low for two years in a row. As Hannover Re continued refusing to pay,
Moody’s suddenly downgraded Hannover Re to the lowest rating, causing a massive
stock dump and forcing the company to sign a contract with Moody’s and accept
its rating services."
Bank Card Payment Systems
The issue here is that China has developed a national system to facilitate
the use of bank-issued debit and credit cards, unsurprisingly a system designed
to reflect China's standards. Also unsurprisingly, China's UnionPay network was
designed to operate according to these national requirements. These standards
govern the methods and the electronic language by which these cards function,
including the encryption methods and proprietary standards as well as the rapid
development of chip-enhanced smart cards which are much safer for consumers
than are the magnetic-strip cards used in the US. Naturally, the Americans are
displeased that China should be so bold as to dare to define the standards to
be used within its own banking system, and are demanding that China "open
up" its clearing service market to American banks, meaning that China
should abandon its clearing systems in their entirety and adopt the American
version.
In an article in late 2014, Caixin, the China mouthpiece of the US Chamber
of Commerce (AmCham), wrote a long article ostensibly by staff reporters
Li Xiaoxiao and Zhang Yuzhe, indirectly condemning China for this apparent
anti-world progress attitude and gleefully suggesting China might experience
"the sting of a legal slap from the WTO". Caixin whines that
while China's standards are used by UnionPay, they are "incompatible"
with those of VISA and MasterCard, which is of course contrary to the will of
God and therefore an abomination. According to Caixin, "Critics of the
standards have accused the government of using the standards as technical
barriers designed to protect UnionPay's market position", quietly
forgetting that precisely the same environment exists in the US where American
standards are in fact "technical barriers" that function primarily to
protect US businesses from competition.
One (probably non-existent) "VISA technician" who
naturally "asked to remain anonymous", said "Ideally
there should be one unified standard", without noting that this
'standard' should of course be the American one, the systems of all other
nations being replaced with the American system to facilitate their financial
colonisation. Another (probably fictitious) source, this one at MasterCard,
apparently said "When various interests have different interests, the
government needs to find a balance", again without noting that this 'balance'
would be the adoption of the US system. According to Caixin, "another
source at MasterCard who also asked not to be named, said industry standards in
every country should treat all companies with impartiality". Caixin
tells us that "MasterCard officials have no problem with the Chinese
government's interest in developing standards of its own", but what
isn't fair is that the Chinese standards match what UnionPay uses instead of what
VISA and MasterCard use. Therefore, by using its own standards and systems,
China is "giving Chinese competitors a clear advantage", and
of course this isn't "fair". Unspoken in all of this is of
course the clear fact that any foreign company wanting to enter the US must
entirely adopt the American systems. The US would never consider revamping its
banking or any other systems or regulations to ease the entry of foreign firms.
None of these media commenters care to point out that if you want to do
business in the US, you do it their way or not at all, but this rule is
apparently automatically voided when the Americans want to come to your
country.
In real life, there is nothing either sinister or unfair about China's
actions with respect to bank cards, nor are preference or protection being
given to either UnionPay or other Chinese firms. Li Xiaofeng, a central bank
official, said "Any company that issues bank cards denominated in yuan
should be required to follow China's standards for the industry. Opening up the
clearing service market does not mean we have to give up self-developed,
proprietary standards or cater to foreign bank card companies by using their
standards. All foreign and domestic card organizations will be treated the same
(in China). There will be no separate standards for foreign companies".
An official at China's central bank said, "Every country has its own
clearing system, and China should have its own. It does not have to follow the
standards of Visa and MasterCard." But according to our AmCham
apologist Caixin, "non-Chinese bank card companies are hitting bumps"
while trying to expand their international reach into China, because they must
adapt to China's systems and base their clearing facilities inside the country
- the same requirements as exist in the US, though we don't hear Caixin sobbing
for the fate of Chinese companies trying to operate in America. It would be
appropriate to wonder why not. And in fact, UnionPay has been treated unfairly
outside China. In one case, Visa ordered all merchants using its POS card
machines outside China to stop routing transactions through UnionPay, meaning
that all Visa and MasterCard cards issued in China must be cleared in US
dollars rather than yuan.
Europe's Galileo GPS System
GPS was very much a war-based technology. The original US GPS was designed
as a two-tier military system that would provide high-precision location
signals to US military users, and be made available at a degraded capacity for
civilian and foreign military use. It was designed with the capability to limit
signal strength or completely block transmission while still supplying precise
signals to the US military, and also with a clever feature whereby GPS position
information could be made significantly inaccurate at will, thereby eliminating
its value to anyone but the US military. Therefore, in 1999, the European Union
devised plans for an independent European system - Galileo - a new generation
of technology, far more precise and accurate than the American technology and
that would be not be subject to the vagaries of US military and political
control. The EU's position was that Galileo was a neutral technology, not
military, and would be made available equally to all nations and users. EU
officials fought hard against American demands to change their original plans
for the system.
The Americans' prime concern was to maintain GPS capability while denying
it to other nations but Galileo would have rendered this impossible. It would
not only have been better than the US system in all respects, but the US would
have lost not only global dominance but the invaluable battlefield advantage of
denying GPS signals to the enemy. Being determined to "level the
playing field" by having sole military control of all GPS signals in
the world, and faced with European refusal to budge, the Americans informed
the EU that if they launched any GPS satellites under the Galileo system, the
US would shoot them all down. And, the Europeans, cowardly and unwilling to
call the bully's bluff, capitulated, and agreed to a different modulation and
frequency that would permit the US total control over both systems. It will
forever be a shameful blot on the European escutcheon that they so weakly
submitted to the Americans and killed one of the most socially useful projects
of the century, solely to maintain American military supremacy. When completed,
Galileo was two generations old and essentially useless. Not long after the EU
capitulation to Washington, China severed its relationship with Galileo and
decided to build its own Beidou GPS system which the Americans cannot control.
Russian Art
Russia has a collection of ancient Jewish religious literature that once
belonged to a now-deceased rabbi with no heirs, and that has been in Russia's
possession for more than 100 years. But an unrelated Jewish organisation in the
US wanted this collection and filed suit in a US court for its possession. The
American court was happy to oblige, issuing a judgment that ordered Russia to
surrender the literature forthwith, and further ordering Russia to pay this
Jewish organisation $50,000 a day until the collection is received in the US. Russia
has failed to comply, this failure of course providing justification for the
Americans to 'legally' seize Russian assets in the US at the same rate of
$50,000 a day.
Of course, the US has no legal jurisdiction whatever over Russia, but laws
have never been of much concern to the Americans. The Magnitsky Act passed by
Congress authorised US authorities to arrest and seize the assets of any
Russian they place on a "We Don't Like Him" list, without recourse to
a court or indeed any law at all.
Bank Deposits in Cyprus
One example of this supra-national arrogance was in evidence during the
financial crisis in Cyprus, where the international Jewish bankers seized
billions in assets owned by the Russian state and Russian citizens, on a flimsy
and illegal basis and without recourse. Cyprus was a favorite country for
Russians to hold bank deposits, for various reasons, and this was one of the
most astonishing asset seizures in history. The Cyprus government was indebted
to a level where it was simply unable to repay its loans but instead of
negotiating a compromise, the Jewish bankers, determined to obtain their pound of
flesh, forced the government of Cyprus to cover its debt by raiding the
personal bank accounts of its citizens, depleting them in amounts ranging from
30% to 80%. The bankers then used that agreement to further push the Cyprus
government to raid all the bank accounts held in Cyprus by the Russian state
and by Russian citizens, illegally seizing billions of dollars of Russian
funds, and without recourse.
What's Yours is Mine
In a surprising number of situations, the US government will simply ignore
applicable law and seize any assets as either a negotiating tool or as
extra-judicial punishment where it has no legal basis to resort to the courts.
Several branches of the US government commonly resort to this seizure action to
force cooperation, which is often successful since after the seizure, a
defendant has no available assets to pay for legal counsel and risks total loss
and imprisonment. Perhaps more damning, and certainly dirtier, the US
government will often attempt to escape direct liability for its criminal
activity by forcing American banks and foreign banks in the US to do their
dirty work of this illegal sequestration or seizure. Many banks have complained
of extortionate threats by various elements of the White House, compelling them
to freeze or seize foreign-owned assets under the pretense of unspecified
commercial justification. One might expect these actions would occasionally
place the banks in a vulnerable legal position, but things are different in
America: for one, no lawyers will accept these cases, especially not after
receiving visits from either the Treasury Department or the FBI, and in any
case the 'independent' US judiciary will almost inevitably refuse to
hear any cases involving seizures of foreign assets. This is called 'rule of
law' in America.
One bullying tactic the US government increasingly displays in frightening
amount is the extra-judicial seizure of the US assets of any company or nation
it doesn't like, without resort to criminal or civil judgments where such asset
seizures might be legal. The US increasingly uses this pre-emptive illegal
negotiating tool, (euphemistically called “sanctions”), often claiming with no
substantiating evidence that the owner supports terrorism or "illegally"
does business with countries the US doesn't like. The US also bullies other
nations into doing the same. When targeting a nation for regime change, the US
will seize all that government's assets in the US (and anywhere else)
and provide them to the nation's US-supported "insurgent group"
which it magically recognises as "the real government".
Venezuela was one recent example where the US simply seized all that nation’s
reserves on deposit, and other national assets, and pretended to give them to
their choice of Venezuela’s fake “President”, a man not elected and not
accepted by his own country. According to the US State Department, the effort
to locate and freeze these assets is done with the intention of "draining
the financial lifeblood" of individuals, companies or small nations that meet
with Imperial disapproval. Many countries, like Canada and the UK, have been
bullied into US-drafted legislation that directs them to freeze assets "upon
the request of a foreign state" (read US). Both Canada and the UK tell
us that "for reasons of privacy and commercial confidentiality",
they cannot provide details.
This is actually a much larger issue than appears above. The American
Empire may be lacking in scruples, but certainly not in imagination or shame.
In one recent case, the UK Guardian was compelled to sadly report that
"A 'Deeply concerned' Obama imposed sanctions on Venezuelan
officials" - by ordering the seizure of all assets in the US and
anywhere else of a list of officials and legislators in Venezuela. Their sin?
Officials of the Venezuelan government, with open defiance, were frustrating
American attempts to destabilise and overthrow their government. They brazenly
arrested US-sponsored agents and CIA operatives who were causing violence and
political unrest. Even more recklessly, Venezuela dared to reveal the names of
those individuals and document publicly their connections to the CIA and the
State Department. Since most of this extraterritorial criminality and offense
of sovereignty operated out of the US Embassy in Caracas on diplomatic
passports, Venezuela also demanded the US reduce its diplomatic staff in the
country by more than 80%, and gave the Americans only two weeks to comply. That
was brave of them. In retaliation, the US State Department immediately (1)
issued a travel ban on all officials of the government of Venezuela, forbidding
them even to travel to the US to appear at UN meetings which are normally
sacrosanct and protected from such cheap political interference; (2)
Ordered the seizure of all assets held in the US - and elsewhere - by any and
all officials and members of the government of Venezuela, whether personal,
corporate or government. The official reason issued from the White House
through Jacob Lew, Obama's Jewish treasury secretary, was that Venezuela was "squandering
financial resources by chasing American criminals", wasting money
"that could be invested in the Venezuelan people". More than
this, these actions of Venezuelan officials "undermine public trust in
democratic institutions" and were of course "a violation of
the human rights to which Venezuelan citizens are entitled". No idea
how, since Venezuela was 'violating' only Americans. If you need a
translation, this means the US has a right to freely
interfere in the internal governmental and political affairs of any nation, to
the extent of inciting violence and overthrowing the government, and any such
victim government frustrating this Imperial interference is, at least according
to the Americans, violating the human rights of its own citizens. And the Americans, protectors of the Venezuelan people by divine
appointment, were compelled to take action by illegally seizing the total
personal assets of every person in the Venezuelan government and preventing
them from purchasing a ticket on any airline anywhere in the world. American
rule of law at its finest.
Following from the above, the US frequently resorts to rather childish and
petty obstruction in the cause of its Imperial majesty. It will often refuse
entry to the US for individuals travelling from disfavored nations to attend
sessions of the United Nations or other such international obligations. The US
frequently bullies many other nations to refuse travel visas for foreign
officials from nations that transgress Imperial Directives, in all cases attempting
to create a worldwide net of punishment. This is not a minor point. The State
Department will use the facilities of the CIA to identify not only government
officials but the members of their families, all relatives, and even personal
friends, subjecting all to the same travel bans as well as credit card,
banking, and other restrictions. The US media are generally aware of these
practices but the topic is heavily censored and will appear nowhere. This is
one of the prime sources of content for the Americans'
"no-fly" list, and why they refuse to release any
information of the names on that list; the international political fallout
would be fatal. Americans (and others) seem to believe the no-fly list contains
only the names of American citizens who are potential terrorists presenting a
danger to the flying public. You needn't be very smart to realise this cannot
possibly be true. Credible reports suggest that list contains more than one
million names - rather more than the number of terrorists in the US, who
probably number between three and five on any given day, and all of which are
resident in the White House.
The US has bullied many countries into refusing to host websites that are
politically disagreeable to American ideology or that disclose embarrassing
information. It bullied companies in all Western nations to refuse payment
mechanisms that fund these websites, and pressured financial firms like PayPal,
VISA and Mastercard to refuse to process payments.
The Americans bullied the UK government into demanding the Guardian newspaper
destroy all its hard drives containing information leaked by Edward Snowden,
and delivered open political and military threats to all nations likely to
consider granting him asylum. In an almost surreal demonstration of aggressive
stupidity, authoritative sources documented that US Vice-President Kerry issued
a threat to Central and South American nations that if any of them did grant
Snowden asylum, the US federal courts would file charges of drug trafficking
against that nation's consular officials in the US, and further that all
petroleum deliveries to their nation would be halted. It bullied the Austrian
government to force the emergency landing of a diplomatic aircraft in which it
believed Snowden to be a passenger, in a blatant violation of all international
law. In March of 2015, Glenn Greenwald wrote of the then-continuing saga of
Edward Snowden, relating that at the time Germany's Vice-Chancellor was asked
publicly why Germany didn't permit Snowden (who is dearly loved in Germany for
revealing the extensive NSA espionage in their country) to obtain political
asylum in Germany. According to international law, the act of granting asylum
would automatically negate Snowden's status as a fugitive from US justice,
leaving him safe. But the Vice-Chancellor replied that the US had threatened
Germany with various retaliations if they dared do such a thing. Germany backed
down. The US has done this many times, mostly to nations that are seen as
friends.
Canada’s Softwood Lumber Industry
There is another, and rather more disturbing, category of US bullying, that
consists of deliberately attacking a nation's companies to punish their
government for refusing to comply with American colonial demands on virtually
any issue. We have read of the US-engineered financial devastation of Canada's
softwood lumber industry, where the real issue was government-levied charges
for timber rights. When offering lumber harvesting rights to an area of forest,
the US government operates an auction where lumber companies bid for those
rights. Canada follows a different pattern and levies an independently-decided
flat fee. Because of this, the US charges are higher than those in Canada,
raising US lumber costs and rendering the US lumber industry less competitive.
When the US failed in its attempts to force Canada to adopt the American
auction system, the Americans arbitrarily levied the massive and illegal
"import duties" against the Canadian lumber firms, in fact punishing
the firms for their government's refusal to comply with American political
demands. Moreover, the duties were paid not to the US government but to the
American lumber companies, in fact and reality to "reimburse"
them for their loss of profits "caused" by Canada having a
different lumber fee system. Of course, all these actions were illegal as
determined by the WTO and other trade organisations, and the WTO ruled that the
US must refund to Canada more than $5 billion in fees. But the Americans
refused, stating they would “negotiate” the refund with Canada. The
Americans simply ignore any law that proves inconvenient.
Canada's Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage is a sea route through the Arctic Ocean connecting
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans along the northern coast of Canada through
internal waterways among Canadian Arctic islands. Transit through this passage
could save thousands of miles of travel for ships that are too large to transit
the Panama Canal and must travel around the Southern tip of South America. The
Canadian government, and all other nations, have always considered this passage
and its waterways and islands as part of Canada's internal waters, but the US
has recently refused to accept Canada's position, claiming the passage is an
international waterway. A few years ago, Canada was outraged to discover that
the US had sent its nuclear submarines through Canada's Northern waters, even
being so bold as to publish photos of the USS Charlotte surfaced at the North
Pole. The American version of events is that Canada's claims can be ignored
unless Canada is prepared to invest heavily to defend its waters with military
hardware. If you need a translation, this means "Our warships will
continue to violate your territory and sovereignty at will, unless and until
you can build up a military infrastructure powerful enough to stop us."
With friends like this, Canada doesn't need enemies.
Rice Marketing, American Style
I once saw part of an agreement presented to Japan by the US government for
the purchase of 100,000 tons of American rice. In itself, this might not be
unusual, but the contract had a provision prohibiting Japan from re-selling
this rice on the open market. You didn't need much of an imagination to connect
the dots. The Japanese do not like American rice. They don't care for the smell
and they don't like the taste. They won't buy it, and they won't eat it. On a
prior occasion the US bullied Japan into purchasing a similar amount of
American rice and, since it was worthless to the Japanese, they just quietly
sold it off on the world markets - effectively competing with the US on their
own product. This time the Americans were a bit smarter, inserting the
prohibition against resale. Since the Japanese wouldn't eat it, they could toss
it into the ocean or feed it to the pigs, but the Americans would have their
sale. State-sponsored marketing at its finest.
I have seen literally hundreds of examples of US trade bullying that cover
most of the spectrum of human existence, many involving American-style
marketing, but most of which fail to reach the eyes and ears of the media. The
rice is actually a minor item compared to most. The US has bullied Japan on
everything from aircraft purchases to banking - and not only Japan; the US
bullies every nation. Without these gangster tactics, American exports might
well fall to zero.
US Military Bases in Okinawa
Japan has been bullied into accepting 50 military bases and about 50,000 US
troops on Okinawa, which have been a constant source of friction for decades.
Okinawa has threatened to secede more than once, because of the devastation to
the islands. The residents also deeply resent the high crime rate of US troops
and their immunity to local laws. More than one Japanese Prime Minister has
come to power with a promise to mitigate the situation and remove some of the
US bases, but in each case, he discovered himself quietly removed from power a
short time later. Bullying at its finest, with little apparent concern for 'democracy'
or the will of the people, either.
The Japanese government has for years faced bitter complaints from the
residents of the destructive effect of these bases to their environment and way
of life. The problems have involved extreme noise pollution, contamination,
huge areas littered with unexploded munitions from years of live-fire artillery
practice, and the many complaints of rapes and murders by American servicemen.
The problems are exacerbated by the base agreement that renders Americans
immune to local laws, which means effective police action is almost never taken
and that Okinawa officials have no more power to affect these matters than does
the Japanese government itself.
I Can Sue You, But You Can't Sue Me
At the time of writing, the European Union was negotiating an understanding
with the US about the NSA's surveillance, in part about stopping the spying but
in part about the US complying with EU law and enabling legal redress in the US
courts for Europeans whose rights may have been infringed. Viviane Reding, the
EU's justice and rights commissioner stressed that US concessions on legal
redress were central to Brussels' demands because Americans can go to the
European courts if they feel their rights are infringed, but Europeans cannot
do this in America. "For two years I have asked for reciprocity,"
said Reding. "I couldn't get that. It needs a change of US legislation
and the administration has always told me they couldn't get that through."
The US has bullied all European nations to permit American citizens to use
European courts for redress against European companies or governments, but has
steadfastly refused to grant European citizens the right to sue American firms
or the US government in America. Once again, as President Obama so clearly
stated, "So long as the playing field is level, America will always win."
Accounting Standards and Procedures
China has had a long-running dispute with the US over access to audit
documents, where US regulators have been looking to forcibly export their
accounting standards and regulations worldwide, the temperature escalating
considerably in early 2014 when a US judge ruled that the Chinese sections of
the Big Four accounting firms should be suspended from practicing in the United
States, as punishment for lack of cooperation. In effect, the judge is bullying
the Chinese accounting firms into compliance by threatening to remove their
ability to sign off US audit reports, thereby eliminating their value to their
clients and imposing potentially destructive losses of income, with the added
pressure of causing grave difficulty for clients.
It is true that several Chinese companies listed on US stock exchanges have
been embroiled in accounting scandals, and we cannot fault the SEC for wanting
to delist troubled firms, but nations can have widely divergent laws and
accounting regulations which require diplomatic rather than legal solutions.
What is standard in one country may be unacceptable in another and, while the
Americans are the leaders in vocal protestations about openness and
transparency when it pleases them, they are also the leaders in invoking
privacy or national security concerns in limiting precisely such transparency
when it becomes inconvenient. It is absolutely true that if China demanded
these documents whose release were illegal in the US, the Americans would tell
China to go fly a kite. In particular with this accounting dispute is the SECs
demand for working papers that are confidential under Chinese law, and with
good reason. The information contained in those working papers involves rather
more than supporting lists of numbers; full access to this content could be
virtually priceless to a competitor and, hypocritical protestations
notwithstanding, this book contains ample evidence that the US government has
never held itself above such cheap tricks to aid the commercial success of its
large firms. The SEC didn't disclose the names of the firms in which it had an
interest, but court documents revealed the nature of the businesses involved
which, for example, included a Chinese solar panel manufacturer. The US
government has made no secret of its intention to never yield solar cell
supremacy to China, and access to the full range of audit work papers from
Chinese manufacturers would be invaluable to an American firm.
Paul Gillis, yet another unbiased American Professor at Peking University,
wrote "Ultimately, the only way this gets settled is if China agrees
that companies that list in the US are subject to all US securities laws".
Maybe, but the question is not about US-listed companies being subject to all
US laws, but about the US forcing their standards on other nations without
regard for their position. And it must be said that this process should work in
reverse; all US companies listed in or operating in China must then be subject
to all Chinese law, but unfortunately they often decline, citing their primary
obligation to American law. Gillis added, "For those companies that are
too sensitive for that, like some large SOEs, China should pull their US
listings". In this case, I concur. Chinese firms should resist the
temptation to list on US exchanges so long as Imperial Obeisance is part of the
listing fee. There is no advantage to China to be bullied into colonisation.
Why go where you're not wanted?
French Embassy in Belgrade
When President Reagan launched his 1986 bombing raid on Libya, France
refused the use of its airspace to what was clearly an unjustified aggression,
and forced the Americans to take a much longer route from airfields in the UK.
When the US planes reached Libya, they made a point of dropping bombs so close
to the French Embassy that the building was damaged, all windows blown out and
all communications disabled. Just a friendly reminder. The US did the same with
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade as punishment for a lack of enthusiasm for the
destruction of Yugoslavia.
Airline passenger information
In its bid to own and control all information about every living person on
earth, and under the pretense of looking for terrorists, the US demanded that
all European nations provide data about passengers on flights originating in the
European Union - which was against all European and international law. After a
decade of bullying and refusals, the European Union finally relented and passed
new laws to permit this invasion of privacy of their citizens. The US now
receives 19 pieces of information on each passenger, including name,
citizenship, passport, contact information, payment details, credit-card
numbers, travel agency, itinerary and baggage information, and can retain them
for up to 15 years.
And there's more. Any airline flight passing over - or near - the US, even
if not destined for America, must still hand over that same volume of
information on every passenger or be refused transit through US-controlled
airspace. It is also a certainty that compliant nations like Canada and
Australia already provide this information without the knowledge of their
citizens. The US is in the process of solidifying a database containing all
details of all passengers flying every day on every airline in the world - and
coordinating it with all data otherwise collected by the NSA, the CIA, Google,
Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, mobile phones and more.
Even worse for some nations with servile Right-Wing governments like Canada
and the UK, the US will have the power to determine the status of purely
domestic passengers as well. This infringement on their sovereignty gives the
United States unprecedented power about who can board planes, through a program
that was never even discussed with, much less approved, by the Canadian or UK
governments and which transfers the authority of screening passengers from
domestic airlines directly to the US Department of Homeland Security. Canadian
airlines were already checking their flight manifests against the US no-fly
list, but now transfer all travelers' personal information to US Homeland
Security 72 hours before takeoff. The no-fly list is compiled by the FBI and
contains the names of unknown hundreds of thousands of people the US government
says should be denied flight privileges, in almost no cases due to concerns of
terrorism. The US refuses to disclose either the names or the causes for
inclusion on this list, as always claiming reasons of "national
security." The danger now is that unknown persons in the DHS or other
US agencies can maliciously place on their list anyone from any country, and
prevent that person from ever boarding an airline again, even to fly within or
leave his own country. In practice, it has proven virtually impossible to get
one's name removed from that list even in cases of simple error.
US-UK Extradition Treaty
In the recent past, the UK was bullied by the Americans into executing an
extradition treaty in which it agreed to extradite anyone from that country
simply on the request of the US, with no evidence or documentation necessary,
an agreement which had the direct effect of extending US legal jurisdiction
into the UK. However, extradition in the reverse direction was much more
complicated, requiring documented evidence of crimes. It seems that American
lawyers drafted the agreement and simply forced their UK poodles to sign it.
The UK is now experiencing deep regrets over the treaty, and wants to renege;
the US objects. This will increasingly involve all nations, with or without
extradition agreements which in any case are increasingly ignored. It is not
comforting that US Justice Department's Richard Downing recently warned that
desired individuals (he claimed "international cyber-criminals") are
becoming more difficult to grab, claiming that "extradition
difficulties and evidence-gathering are obstacles" to stopping them,
"particularly in less technically-advanced countries". What
that means, is that the US will soon openly ignore all
international rule of law and simply send in agents to surreptitiously kidnap
and export anyone in any nation. All the signs point in
this direction, and the US has no reputation for backing off such policies once
implemented.
If You're Not With us, You're Against us
When the US doesn't like someone, you aren't permitted to like them either.
When the US put Iran onto its list of countries slated for "regime
change", nobody was permitted to do business with Iran. Nobody. American firms and citizens of course
would be fined and imprisoned since they were within easy reach. US firms
operating outside the US were subject to the same restrictions. But the US also
bullied European nations and corporations into avoiding Iran, threatening to
seize their assets in the US and to file criminal charges against their US
subsidiaries or preventing access to the US market for their products. With China, the US went an extra step and threatened to shut down all
Chinese banks operating in the US and deny access to any
part of the US financial system if China continued to buy oil from Iran. Of
course, all these actions violate international law, but US legislators gave
themselves permission to do so.
The US also imposed "sanctions" against several energy
companies, including a Chinese firm, for selling refined petroleum products to
Iran, and brought a criminal action against Chinese firm ZTE for selling
telecom hardware to Iran. Even more, US government officials bullied an
American law firm for defending ZTE in the US court, claiming the US firm
valued money more than the "legitimate security concerns of the US
government", and demanded the law firm drop ZTE as a client, leaving
us with a position where rapists, murderers, bank robbers and even US bankers
and politicians are entitled to legal representation when charged with an
offense, but Chinese firms have no such right. Of course, the US has no direct jurisdiction over Chinese companies, but
will exploit any possible weakness to bully the firms into submission. And in
practice, the more seriously the American government violates the legal rights
of foreign companies or governments, the more intense the pressure they will
place on lawyers to refrain from defending these cases. And, it appears, the
more intense the pressures on the judges and courts to refuse to hear the
cases. We can think back to Citibank's gold robbery in China, and the concerted
efforts by the White House, the Treasury, the US FED, and the courts, to ensure
Citibank would never be called to account for its crimes. This is the same
quality of fascist fear that existed during the McCarthy era, with a helpless
public subjected to lawlessness, intimidation and extortion.
The Americans are notorious for gathering the support of allies in their
constant petty political squabbles with other nations and also to support their
bullying efforts against other nations. From a fear that China was taking over
the world of communications and internet infrastructure, the US government,
largely through Gary Locke, who was US Commerce Minister before being sent to
China as US Ambassador, bullied the American Internet firms and ISPs to do no
business with Huawei and ZTE. The American government also bullied Australia
into rejecting Huawei's participation in the country's new Internet
infrastructure, and exerted extreme political pressure on South Korea to avoid
Huawei. The US bullied the European Union in the same way, threatening various
reprisals if the Europeans disobeyed. When the US government banned all
products from Chinese electronics firm Huawei, the Australian government
concurrently announced a ban on Huawei participating in its proposed $36
billion high-speed Internet network, claiming a responsibility to "protect
its integrity" from Chinese cyber-attacks. Australia reported
considerable US political pressure to make this decision, as did many European
nations. But they don't stop there. When the Americans cannot compete with China,
which today is almost all of the time, they turn their attention to spitefully
damaging China's international position and commercial products in any nation
where they can exert diplomatic or military pressure to bully the local
government. In Europe in 2016, the US bullied local governments and paid labor
unions to conduct an anti-China street protest, hoping to have 5,000 people
demonstrating against Chinese steel simply because Chinese firms can produce at
lower cost.
They did the same with solar (photo-voltaic) panels, bullying all US firms
to reject Chinese products and levying punitive tariffs on imports, then
proceeded to bully the Europeans into doing the same, again threatening
reprisals if the Europeans failed to obey, in a pathetic and juvenile attempt
to damage China's worldwide supremacy in solar energy. The US levied enormous
and unconscionable duties of nearly 350% on Chinese solar panels, in clear
violation of all international rules, then bullied the EU and other Western
nations to do the same. Almost inevitably the Americans will attempt to bully
all the Western countries, and many undeveloped nations as well, to initiate
similar tariffs, in clearly deliberate attempts to completely destroy
industries in other nations that are more efficient than American firms. They
have done the same for decades in attempting to control the exports to China of
any technology by any country in the world. Exports to China of even simple PC
micro-processors were banned for many years. The products or materials needn't
be for military use in China, the Americans have simply been determined to keep
China in the high-tech dark by any means possible. US restrictions on high-tech
exports to China are "strict and extensive", and have
exacerbated trade imbalances between China and the US. They also damage China's
trade relations with other nations because the US State Department exerts
substantial diplomatic and even military pressure (or threats) on the Europeans
and other nations to follow the US lead.
In December of 2015, US President Obama publicly scolded Australian Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull for his government's agreement to lease to a Chinese
firm the usage of part of the Australian port of Darwin, without first
obtaining permission from the US government! The Australian media were replete
with reports of the country's Prime Minister being berated by US President
Obama for not having obtained prior permission from the Imperial Master before
doing business with China. Then in late 2016, Australia's government suddenly
decided to block the sale of the country's largest energy grid to a group of
Chinese firms, a blatant protectionist move that would certainly harm relations
between the two countries, this decision closely following the refusal of
another purchase by a Chinese consortium to purchase the country’s largest
agricultural land owner, cattle company Kidman & Co. These actions were not
entirely a surprise since there was hell to pay a year earlier when Australia
granted the Chinese lease on port Darwin. The US Ambassador to Australia John
Berry said "The US fully respects the process and decisions on foreign
investment made by the Australian government", while simultaneously
informing that same Australian government that the decision-making process was
based entirely on obtaining prior US approval. Berry also noted that "national
security" must always be taken into account in cases of foreign direct
investment, without specifying the precise security risks to Australia in the
selling of a cattle ranch. Nor did he bother stating precisely how or why it
was any of the Americans' damned business what Australia did.
Similarly, in the middle of 2016, British PM Theresa May suddenly announced
a delay in the signing of a contract to commence construction of the Hinkley
Point nuclear reactor project, the announcement coming on the very evening
prior to the signing, with widespread complaints of American pressure to remove
China from the project on the imaginary basis of Britain's 'national
security'. The Americans were miffed because the prior UK government had
made serious efforts to solicit Chinese investment in the British economy and,
to the great dismay of the White House, agreed at the same time to join the
Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. To the chagrin of the
Americans, the nuclear project was eventually approved, but they at least had
the satisfaction of upsetting China and knowing they could bully the UK Prime
Minister. A bit earlier, the Dutch company Philips had agreed to sell its lighting
components business to a Chinese firm, but the Americans exerted enormous
political pressure to block the sale because Philips had some R&D
operations and a large portfolio of patents in a US company, which the
Americans did not want China to obtain. Philips could probably have pulled
those operations out of the US and then proceeded with the sale, but the US
would have retaliated in dozens of other ways and shut Philips products out of
the US market. Both the Europeans and the Chinese are expressing strong
resentment against this blatantly political interference that has as its only
purpose an American determination to control access to technology by other
countries. In other words, the Americans have assumed the authority to tell a
Dutch company it cannot sell technology to a Chinese company, resorting to
bullying threats of losing access to the American market.
All the tales we hear about the US promoting fair trade or a level playing
field are fairy stories for children; the reality is very different. Whenever
the Americans find themselves falling behind in some area of technology, as
they do with increasing frequency, they not only bully their own companies to
avoid competitive foreign goods, but will mount a campaign to bully the rest of
the world into doing the same. This process occurs equally as often to prevent
other nations from challenging American dominance in any field or to prevent
other nations from progressing. The US bullied all Western nations into levying
extremely high duties on Chinese solar panels, not because American companies
were competitive but to prevent China from taking the lead in a high-technology
area. It often occurs as well with minor political disputes where the Americans
will try to enlist the cooperation of all other nations to bully and punish
Venezuela or Peru for disobedience to the imperial master. Typical of the "If
you aren't with us, you're against us" pathology, any nation wanting
to be part of the American camp must accept most portions of US foreign policy
which includes a huge commercial element. Bullying all other nations to accept
Monsanto's Frankenstein GM seed is another similar category.
Extra-territorialism
The concept of extra-territorialism, extending one's reach beyond one's own
borders, is a specialty of the Americans, sometimes leaving the rest of the
world marveling at their capacity for self-delusion. In one case that truly
staggers the imagination with the depth of American arrogance was an occasion
when the US government disagreed with a decision made by a Scottish court. In
that case, several US senators contacted the Scottish government to demand the
arrangement of sessions where American senators would fly to Scotland to
interrogate the Scottish court as to the reasons for its decision. In another
celebrated case involving Conrad Black, the former head of the Hollinger
newspaper empire, the US court's main victory was to convict Black for an
action that occurred in Canada and would have been well outside US
jurisdiction. US military vessels will stop and search any ships in
international waters, on any pretense, in complete disregard of international
law and where they have no jurisdiction.
In another similar case, the US White House arranged to have a US court
file criminal indictments against a Chinese businesswoman for allegedly doing
business with and having financial ties to North Korea, as well as announcing
"sanctions" against her and the trading company for doing
business with a country the Americans have placed on their black list. The
Chinese Foreign Ministry voiced its disapproval of the US attempting to use its
domestic laws "to impose 'long-arm jurisdiction' over Chinese entities
or individuals", but the Americans pay no notice and do this with
increasing regularity. In this case, the White House is experiencing difficulty
in destroying North Korea without China's assistance, these 'long-arm'
actions intended to increase pressure on China to cooperate with US ambitions
to destabilise North Korea, by attacking innocent Chinese citizens. In this
case, the Americans claimed, with no evidence whatever, that this woman had
"masked hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions" to
help develop North Korea's ballistic-missile capabilities. Of course, the
greatest problem the US has with North Korea is in the fact that Pyongyang has
working nuclear missiles that very effectively prevent their launching another
Korean war, and they want China to pressure the North Koreans to surrender
their missiles in exchange for nothing. Those missiles are the only thing that
has prevented Korea from being obliterated, as Iraq and Libya discovered. Given
that the Americans are cowards and will never attack a country that can defend
itself, many more nations need nuclear missiles, and quickly.
The US uses all its political, diplomatic and military muscle to browbeat
other countries into accepting worldwide jurisdiction for all US laws. US
lawyers have told me with gleeful approval that their government is rushing to
set precedents for many moves of this kind in an attempt to establish US law as
the prevailing jurisdictional force in all countries. Increasingly, US courts
are affirming their jurisdiction over events and people outside the US, and the
US government will then use its muscle to force extradition and to seize
foreign assets in the US or force foreign government allies to do the same.
There is no legal justification or precedent for most of these actions that
appear based only on a disregard for any inconvenient law, domestic or foreign.
It is simply an attitude of "if we want you, we'll get you".
Through widespread bullying and an illegal assumption of powers, the US is
extending worldwide not only its legal jurisdiction but the capriciousness of
its civil courts and the virtually total lack of protection of rights due to
the Patriot Act and other legislation. This is so true today that many parties
resort to the US courts for claims totally unconnected with the US in any way
but where US courts will claim jurisdiction and grant judgments in areas where
they have no legal jurisdiction. All this is an attempt to forcibly export
American laws and jurisdiction into all nations, to function as the world's
court and legal system.
As well, the US has a disturbing tendency to feel free to simply enter any
sovereign nation to execute the forcible seizure any person of interest to
them, without experiencing the inconveniences of local laws. In too many
instances the Americans act as the bounty hunters did in their own land in the
past, in a time when there were no laws and success was the only judge of
propriety. In fact, more than 20 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that it
was perfectly lawful for Americans to kidnap citizens on foreign soil and
"deport" them anywhere, even in situations where the US had an
extradition treaty. However, as the BBC pointed out, "the accepted
route for bringing to court suspects who are living outside of the jurisdiction
of the requesting state is extradition, not kidnapping", a distinction
the Americans appear not to appreciate. At the time of writing, court judgments
are outstanding in Germany and Italy against many Americans, many of them
employed by the CIA, for kidnapping and other crimes committed on European
soil. The US of course refuses to extradite its own citizens to other nations,
especially in circumstances where the crimes they committed were ordered and
planned by the US government itself. If these actions don't fit the definition
of 'rogue state', I can't imagine what would.
In March of 2014, US courts ordered the Government of Argentina to pay
US$185 million to a British company, BG Group, for forgone profits arising from
the country's economic crisis in 2001. The Argentinian government changed the
basis of its gas prices from US dollars to Argentinian pesos and froze gas
prices during the crisis, in an attempt to bring stability to its economy.
According to the Americans, no foreign government has the right to take any
actions that might affect the profits of an American multinational company, regardless
of circumstances. In this case, the US government has absolutely no
jurisdiction over the actions of a foreign government, nor any responsibility
for the losses of a foreign company, but the US courts simply assumed
jurisdiction, claimed to have arbitrated the dispute according to Argentinian
law, and left the matter with an American court to assess damages. If Argentina
refuses to comply, the US will simply confiscate any of Argentina's assets in
the US. This issue was appealed to the US Supreme Court which determined that
"the arbitrators' determinations were lawful".
In another case, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation of
Rolls-Royce following allegations that its executives bribed officials in
Indonesia to win aircraft engine contracts. Rolls-Royce is a foreign company,
not an American one, and the US has no jurisdiction over that company's actions
that occurred entirely in another foreign country. These events or actions are
entirely outside not only US jurisdiction, but outside of US concern; it is not
America's business to oversee or control what Rolls-Royce does in Indonesia,
but the Americans disagree. According to US law, the paying of bribes to
foreign officials is illegal, and the US Department of Justice will now investigate
whether a British company is in violation of US law. Rolls-Royce will be forced
to pay the entire costs of this probe and investigation and could potentially
be fined many hundreds of millions of dollars by US courts, as well as other
penalties, criminal prosecution, commercial litigation by GE, Boeing and other
American aviation firms, and restrictions on future business contracts within
the US. What better way to eliminate the main competitor for US manufacturers
of aircraft engines? And of course, all US aviation companies are renowned for
the bribes and other considerations they have paid for decades in precisely the
same context. The only new development is that the US government now pays the
bribes on behalf of these firms, sometimes disguised as military aid and
sometimes not disguised at all.
The US is presuming to dictate to foreign governments the content of their
commercial rules, laws and regulations, demanding they adopt US practices.
Those nations refusing to comply with the Imperial Master, like the UK, will
find their multinational corporations, like Rolls-Royce, financially crippled
or bankrupt. Those nations - virtually all, in the case of banking - refusing
to adopt US regulations and permit free US extraterritorial reach, will find their
banks financially crippled or bankrupt. When Canada refused to adopt the US
standard for forest leases, the US acted to financially cripple or bankrupt all
Canadian forest industry firms. When China refused to cease its commerce with
Iran, the US trumped up a charge to financially cripple a Chinese bank in the
US. When China took action to stabilise its OTC vitamin market, the US
immediately fabricated charges and levied outrageous and illegal fines intended
to bankrupt a Chinese medical firm. When China refused a wholesale adoption of
US accounting methods and standards, the US attacked the Big Four accounting
firms, exposing them to financially crippling sanctions.
These events are not isolated instances of inappropriate actions on the
parts of the companies themselves, but of their national governments in
refusing to be forcibly colonised by the US. All US extraterritorial actions
are related and stem from the same cause - world domination and colonisation - a blatant attempt to forcibly impose US regulations on all the world's
nations and achieve the surrender of national sovereignty to the European
Zionists behind the US. This
is the case with all the rhetoric on IP protection, banking, accounting
standards, takeover regulations, the TPP, and all examples listed above. There
are hundreds more. It is a pattern that has been playing out for years and is
becoming more viciously intense each year.
Evidence is especially clear within China, with enormous pressure exerted by
the US State Department, diplomatic staff, AmCham, US multinationals and many
more players, in clear attempts to force China's entire legal, commercial - and
political - standards into the US mold.
I could provide hundreds of examples of the US government attempting to
universalise all of its commercial and legal practices, acting to forcibly
impose them on other nations with scant regard for law or ethics. All the
claims about the US playing fair, following a rule of law, wanting a level
playing field, are fabricated propaganda without a shred of truth. The US
government is in every sense the world's bully, an essentially lawless
organisation bent only on domination. In actions that are not only irrational
but often illegal, American courts often presume imaginary jurisdiction in
extending their reach to levy fines on companies in any nation, for actions
that did not occur in the US and which were legal in the countries where they
occurred.
With Canada's software lumber, what was being protected was the
"right" of American firms to make a desired level of profit, and when
Canada's government refused to amend its domestic commercial policies to
correspond, the US used its power to plunder the Canadian firms and forward the
funds to the US lumber companies. In order to pretend to a "rule of law"
in these situations, the US government often uses its courts to levy the
"fines" or other political punishment, thereby claiming all was done
according to the law. Unfortunately for many firms and governments, US
financial awards are not only irrational but often illegal, the American courts
presuming imaginary jurisdiction in extending their reach to levy fines on
companies in any nation, for actions that did not occur in the US and which
were legal in the countries where they occurred.
This is precisely the same pattern the US followed with its pressure
program on international banking, done under the pretense of searching for
American tax evaders. But tax evasion was never the issue; the real intent was
to extend the extra-territorial reach of US financial legislation into all
nations. After years of effort, the US finally broke Switzerland's banking
secrecy provisions and obtained "legal" right to all Swiss banking
records by attacking Swiss banks with resident US operations and fining them
hundreds of millions of dollars each on the fabricated pretense of their
foreign branches or head offices conspiring to defraud the IRS. Since the
foreign governments resisted to the end the US pressure to adopt American
methods, laws and "rules of the game", the US government extorted
billions of dollars from their US operations disguised as legal penalties. The
message was clear: either all nations adopt US financial regulations and permit
an American reach directly into their financial system - over-riding each
country's national sovereignty - or the US government would bankrupt every
foreign bank operating in the US.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former high-level US Treasury official and
widely-read author, wrote an article stating that the US Government is the most
complete criminal organization in human history. Listen to Dr. Roberts:
“Unique among the countries on earth, the US government insists that its
laws and dictates take precedence over the sovereignty of nations. Washington
asserts the power of US courts over foreign nationals and claims
extra-territorial jurisdiction of US courts over foreign activities of which
Washington or American interest groups disapprove. Perhaps the worst results of
Washington's disregard for the sovereignty of countries are the power
Washington has exercised over foreign nationals solely on the basis of
terrorism charges devoid of any evidence.
Consider a few examples. Washington first forced the Swiss government to
violate its own banking laws. Then Washington forced Switzerland to repeal its
bank secrecy laws. Allegedly, Switzerland is a democracy, but the country's
laws are determined in Washington by people not elected by the Swiss to represent
them. Consider the "soccer scandal" that Washington concocted,
apparently for the purpose of embarrassing Russia. The soccer organization's
home is Switzerland, but this did not stop Washington from sending FBI agents
into Switzerland to arrest Swiss citizens. Try to imagine Switzerland sending
Swiss federal agents into the US to arrest Americans. Consider the $9 billion
fine that Washington imposed on a French bank for failure to fully comply with
Washington's sanctions against Iran. This assertion of Washington's control
over a foreign financial institution is even more audaciously illegal in view
of the fact that the sanctions Washington imposed on Iran and requires other
sovereign countries to obey are themselves strictly illegal. Indeed, in this
case we have a case of triple illegality as the sanctions were imposed on the
basis of concocted and fabricated charges that were lies. Or consider that
Washington asserted its authority over the contract between a French
shipbuilder and the Russian government and forced the French company to violate
a contract at the expense of billions of dollars to the French company and a
large number of jobs to the French economy. This was a part of Washington
teaching the Russians a lesson for not following Washington's orders in Crimea.
Try to imagine a world in which every country asserted the
extra-territoriality of its law. The planet would be in permanent chaos with
world GDP expended in legal and military battles. Neo-conned Washington claims
that as History chose America to exercise its hegemony over the world, no other
law is relevant. Only Washington's will counts. Law itself is not even needed
as Washington often substitutes orders for laws as when Richard Armitage,
Deputy Secretary of State (an unelected position) told the President of
Pakistan to do as he is told or "we will bomb you into the stone
age." [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm]. Try to image the Presidents of Russia or China giving such an order to a
sovereign nation. In fact, Washington did bomb large areas of Pakistan,
murdering thousands of women, children, and village elders. Washington's
justification was the assertion of the extra-territoriality of US military
actions in other countries with which Washington is not at war.”
I would add here the observation that Americans are almost never aware of
these or any similar events. They have no access to this information because
the US media are heavily censored for political content. Americans are
subjected on a daily basis to a literal flood of fabricated stories and
misinformation about nations the US government and its puppet-handlers want to
disparage, but nowhere will we ever find the truths about the behavior of the
US government, its agencies, and its MNCs in other countries. The censorship is
virtually total on these matters and, to paraphrase Howard Zinn, if the media
and history books delete all such events, Americans have no way of knowing what
they don't know.
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more
than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries,
as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a
retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive
positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export
business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University,
presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr.
Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books
generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors
to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
Copyright
© Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai, 2023
