The US has been at war since the end of WW2 both physically and with trade sanctions on any companiy that doesn’t play their game. The EU Iran Cuba Venezuela and others have felt their sting. Isn’t it time there really was a free market and not the pretence of one? (ODT)

The angle taken by the European Union, Germany and Russia can hardly surprise. Themes of energy security are reiterated. The Nord Stream 2 consortium makes the claim that, “Completing the project is essential for European supply security.” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spikily condemned the sanctions measure. “A state with a $22 trillion national debt prohibits creditworthy countries to develop the real sector of their economies!”

For a EU spokesman, this constituted “the imposition of sanctions against EU companies conducting legitimate business.” A German government spokesman suggested that such actions “affect German and other European businesses, and we see the move as meddling in our internal affairs.” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has sees it as an infringement of sovereignty. “It is up to the companies involved in the construction of the pipeline to take the next decisions.”

Nothing is quite so simple. Gas pipeline politics has always been contentious. One state’s sovereign promise is another’s weakening. Concessions made to corporate monopolies are risky, capable of fostering insecurity as much as reassurance. Those who control the tap control a country’s future.

But the imposition of any sanctions regime signals another bout of economic violence. In the international market, where governments operate as ready gangsters for corporate interests, prompted by such motivations as seeking more natural resources, tools of state become handmaidens of economic self-interest. And in all this, the prospect of ecological devastation remains genuine but an aside to the jabbering disagreement of political interests.

via Sanctions, Security and the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline – » The Australian Independent Media Network