Incredible, and maybe even unprecedented, answer by Arnaud Montebourg – former French Minister of Economy – to the question “what method do the Americans use to wage economic warfare against us?”
Here’s the translation:
“They use military tools. First of all, they use all the listening and intelligence systems that they built on after 9/11. They don’t listen to terrorists…well they certainly do and that’s very good…but they listen to foreign companies that compete with theirs.
So it’s very simple, it became clear in 2014 when Snowden revealed that there were 75 million conversations and emails that had been exploited by the NSA on France, on French companies. When Pierucci – a man who should wear the Legion of Honor today because he defended France rather than its interests by agreeing to serve two unjustified years in prison in US jails in the Alstom affair… when Mr. Pierucci was taken into custody in Manhattan by the prosecutors they put under his nose 1 million emails. How did they get 1 million emails? By illegal eavesdropping. 1 million emails: it would have taken a lawyer 3 years to read through them… so he couldn’t defend himself. So those are the military tools.
Second, they have a tool called extraterritorial law. The Americans are using a form of law, which is an imperialist law, which consists in declaring themselves competent for matters which in no way concern them.
Example: Alstom, a contract between Indonesia and a French company. They consider that there was an offense that was committed in this matter 10 years ago and they sue Alstom! The United States is not a victim, no American company was involved in this case. They declare themselves policeman of the world by undermining the sovereign interests. Therefore this is interference. They do it in ALL fields, and especially the economic field.
For example ITAR. ITAR is interesting: the United States has set a list of 22,000 components on which it grants itself the right to authorize or not the export by a foreign power. Example: you buy a varnish to put on the wing of the Rafale [a French fighter plane] which is on the ITAR list because it is not produced in France but in the US or elsewhere… because of this single varnish they allow themselves the right to say: ‘you have the right to export to such and such a country, but not to this one because it is an enemy of the United States of America’. Why should I care if he’s an enemy of the United States of America? The enemies of my allies are not necessarily my enemies! Example: they banned the export of Rafales to Egypt because of ITAR. Is that so, and why? So our urgency should be to produce these 22,000 products in France… Or in Europe, in allied countries which are also victims of ITAR. This is a sovereign policy.
I can also tell you about the American Patriot Act. 2001, September 11, what do they do? When a French company is bought by an American company, the American government has the unilateral power to request all the information on a company controlled by an American company. Absolutely all the information: patents, technologies, people, etc. Without any motivation and without judicial authorization, which means that these are illegal searches.
This is why in the affair of the takeover of the valves which equip our nuclear submarines and power stations – the Segault valves which are manufactured in Mennecy, Essonne – I intervened by saying ‘it is out of question that this business goes under American control’ and it is now a company that is controlled by Canadians. Canadians do not have extraterritorial rights, it is not an issue to work with Canadians. But Americans are different because they are predators. This is the reason why I said ‘it is out of the question that Segault, who equips our nuclear submarines, gives our information to a foreign power’. Because Canadians do not have the right to do so, if they do it is criminal. But for Americans it is the law to do so!”
The host then asks him why we “never respond to the attacks we suffer?”
He has a really powerful answer: “First, because there is a real, internalized weakness. And it also because it has a cost. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin decided to use the resources they had as permanent members of the Security Council in 2003 on the attacks against Iraq by the United States of America, it cost us dearly.
But I think we have to learn to be ourselves. Étienne de La Boétie wrote a very beautiful book on voluntary servitude. He does say that servitude is a matter of habit. We no longer realize that we have lost our liberty. We must find it again and accept the cost of this liberty.”
The host then asks him why we "never respond to the attacks we suffer?"
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) June 4, 2023
He has a really powerful answer:
"First, because there is a real, internalized weakness. And it also because it has a cost. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin decided to use the resources they… pic.twitter.com/cj0wkOxk1E
Full interview here: