James Madison Quotes

Churchill was then First Lord of the Admiralty. The German sinking of the Lusitania indeed did provoke America into the war.

The Khedive of Egypt trying to raise more money, at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had agreed to sell one of the two great Alexandrian obelisks (“Cleopatra’s Needles”)—one was paid for by British troops (who had defeated Napoleon in Egypt) It stands today at London’s Thames Embankment. The other was sold to New York World Publisher William Hurlburt, who together with Railroad Baron William Vanderbilt, the New York City political and social establishment and the intellectuals of America had obtained the permission of the Central Park designers for one of the few external structures therein. Gorringe was hired by the American ad hoc group to see to the transfer, then thought to be a massively difficult feat of engineering. With cooperation of Engineers the world over, including Brooklyn Bridge Designers Roebling—who built a special crane system and sent it to Egypt—the technology was accomplished but the politics and bureaucracy endangered the project on almost all fronts. At one extreme, were some local NY Merchants who, in effect, didn’t want to risk moving a structure of this weight—220 ton, 69 feet tall—through the streets of New York containing then the world’s most sophisticated infrastructure to the International Law of the Seas and the existence of marine insurance cartels who in consort attempted to extort totally unreasonable shipping insurance fees. But American law did not allow a U. S. Flag vessel to operate without insurance. The Egyptians sold the project an older ship and registered it and passed special legislation allowing it to operate for this single purpose without insurance, however, at the last minute, the Egyptian Government did not want their foreign debt holders to know that the nation was selling such a treasure—any nation, attempting to protect the economic right of it’s creditors might have the ship seized at sea and hauled into a local bankruptcy court. Gorringe and most American politicians took the view that there was no then practical and legal route open, so they shipped under no flag at all thereby flouting American and International Law. Of course, the real lasting legal issue of who had the rights to buy and sell such national treasures which had originally been erected flanking the Cairo Temple of the Sun by Egyptian Pharaoh Tuthmosis III (1504 BC-1450 BC) and then moved to Alexandria by the occupying Romans seeking to deify Caesar—never really then was in dispute as it would be today, and may well be contested tomorrow like the British Museum Elgin Marbles.

The highest court in New York.

France and England were at war. Each country seized American ships that were trading with their enemy. Many Americans clamored for war which President Jefferson wished to avoid. He got Congress to pass the Embargo Act which prohibited trading with either of the warring countries. However, some American traders did not obey the law and traded anyway. Napoleon needed money badly so instead of paying the captains of the ships for the goods, he just seized the goods and sold the ships. The U. S. Ambassador to France confronted Napoleon who demonstrated an ability to twist logic and morality that is rare.

In international law, a blockade is an act of war by the brocading country against the country that is blockaded—not against 3rd parties that may have to obey the blockade. For example before the War of 1812, France and England were at war and each blockaded the other’s ports. The United States was affected by the blockade in that our ships could not go in or out of blockaded ports with goods. However nether country was at war with us. All neutral nations must respect a blockade or the blockading nation is entitled to use force to enforce the blockade, but that is not an act of war. In 2011, Gaza was at war with Israel, and Israel blockaded Gaza. A Turkish ship tried to bring goods to Gaza and Israel seized the ship by force and brought it into a near natural port (Egypt). Israel was entitled to enforce its Gaza blockade, but they were not at war with Turkey. However if Israel, blockaded a country where there was not an existing war, the blockade itself would be an act of war.

Two of the major issues of the War of 1812 were the right of American ships to trade in Europe. The British were at war with France and boycotted all ports controlled by the French. They would seize American ships bound for or having traded with French areas. In addition, many American merchant seamen had formerly served in the British Navy and British warships would stop American merchant ships and remove “suspected” deserters and force them into British military naval service. Captain Lawrence was mortally wounded in this battle. See {625136}.

We are so used to hearing the freedom seeking reasons for the American Revolution that we overlook the more selfish and venal motives. This quotation shows that the large merchants of the colonies had banded together in an illegal conspiracy trust and monopoly and managed to keep many British competitive products out of the colonies. The British, for equally venal reasons, began to enforce the laws in favor of free trade. Many large American merchants were getting huge profits (and American consumers paying more) from their protectionist illegal monopoly. A Revolution would de facto assure that monopoly for many years to come, so they became supporters—patriots—of the American Revolution. As the Revolution drew closer, the Americans made efforts to protect the protectionism and monopoly of some of the richest Americans. See {636861}.

Estonia had moved a Russian Soviet era monument to WWII dead Soviet Soldiers from a prime location in the center of their capital to a location outside of town. Russian-speaking Estonians were outraged and fomented violent demonstrations and riots that almost paralyzed the city. At the same time 85,000 Estonian computers were hijacked and used to implement a denial of service attack on some of the major government sites including the main bank, blocking all those webservers from serving normal customers on the Internet. The Prime Minister and other Estonian officials accused the Russians of the cyber-attack and likened it to a blockade which is an act of war under international law. What complicates cyberattacks is that there might have been some Russian nationalists who, with no knowledge of the government could have implemented a denial of service attack where so many accesses to servers are engineered that the servers crash. The perpetrators may have been instigated by the Russian government or not. They could have been any place in the world when they did it.

Referring to NAFTA, CAFTA and other international trade agreements

Father of President George W. Bush

The assumption being that Canadian national health insurance would make the process of surrogate motherhood less expensive if the mother were Canadian.

Referring to NAFTA and free trade with Mexico: