Quotulatiousness

November 4, 2012

Invasive Albion disorder: only 10% of countries have never been invaded by Britain

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Asia, Books, Britain, Europe, History, Pacific — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:21

In the Telegraph, Jasper Copping explains why all those taunts about “perfidious Albion” are at least 90% deserved:

Every schoolboy used to know that at the height of the empire, almost a quarter of the atlas was coloured pink, showing the extent of British rule.

But that oft recited fact dramatically understates the remarkable global reach achieved by this country.

A new study has found that at various times the British have invaded almost 90 per cent of the countries around the globe.

The analysis of the histories of the almost 200 countries in the world found only 22 which have never experienced an invasion by the British.

Among this select group of nations are far-off destinations such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some slightly closer to home, such as Luxembourg.

The analysis is contained in a new book, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To.

Stuart Laycock, the author, has worked his way around the globe, through each country alphabetically, researching its history to establish whether, at any point, they have experienced an incursion by Britain.

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

November 3, 2012

Remembering the ill-starred Darien expedition

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

History Today notes that the Darien Colony was founded by Scottish would-be colonists in what is now Panama on November 3, 1698:

On July 12th, 1698 five ships carrying 1,200 eager colonists left the Port of Leith in Scotland to a rapturous send-off. Most of the ill-fated emigrants did not know where they were going and did not find out until the sealed orders were opened at Madeira, but they were brimming with enthusiasm anyway.

A voyage of three months took them across the Atlantic to a harbour on the mangrove-studded Caribbean coast of Panama. On November 3rd, they took formal possession of their new territory, confidently naming it Caledonia and laying the foundations of the settlement of New Edinburgh. But it all went horribly wrong. Hundreds died of fever and dysentery before the colony was abandoned.

[. . .]

Scotland blamed the whole fiasco on the English. Paterson himself was bankrupt, but still believed in his scheme and tried vainly to revive it. Meanwhile, the Darien disaster seems to have persuaded hard-headed Scotsmen that their country could not prosper by itself, but needed access to England’s empire, and it helped to pave the way for the Act of Union between the two countries in 1707. Under the Act the investors in the Darien scheme were quietly compensated for their losses at taxpayers’ expense.

October 25, 2012

Follow-up – Argentine flagship’s crew to fly home after three week delay

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

I originally found this story at the beginning of the month, and after all this time, the bulk of the Argentinian crew finally fly home. BBC News has the update:

Almost 300 sailors left on an Air France plane chartered by the Argentine government.

A skeleton crew is staying on board the three-masted Libertad to maintain it.

The tall ship was prevented from leaving Ghana after a local court ruled in favour of a US fund.

The fund, NML Capital, argued it was owed $370m (£231m) by Argentina’s government as a result of its debt default a decade ago.

[. . .]

An earlier plan for the sailors to fly back on an Argentine plane was scrapped because of fears that the aircraft might itself be impounded as part of the debt dispute.

On Tuesday, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner condemned the Libertad’s seizure and made it clear there would be no negotiations with creditors.


Photo by Martín Otero, 7 April, 2007

October 12, 2012

McParland: How about Nobels for Canada, Switzerland, and Costa Rica!

Filed under: Americas, Europe — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner follows a pattern that Kelly McParland thinks he’s identified:

I’m pretty sure the Nobel peace prize committee just bought itself a regular spot on Saturday Night Live. How could it award a peace prize to Europe – yes, all of Europe — based on the fact that it’s not at war with itself, and not become a target of satire?

[. . .]

Today, the notion of Italy invading Spain, or the Dutch royal family seizing the British throne, is unimaginable. Austria, once one of the world’s great powers, is now a small Alpine nation that’s a threat to nobody. Obviously this is a good thing; being friends is better than being enemies. But is that reason to give it a peace prize? Canada has never started a war with anyone, anywhere, so where’s our prize? Switzerland washed its hands of war a century ago and remained neutral through both world wars. Costa Rica doesn’t even have an army. How about a peace prize for that?

This whole peace prize thing is getting weirder by the year anyway. In 2009 it went to Barack Obama, for reasons even Obama couldn’t explain. Since then his administration has been picking off terrorists with drones with gay abandon. In 2007 it went to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, because why? Because alternative energy is peaceful? Because you can’t stoke a nuclear weapon with solar power? Beats me. You get the feeling the committee finds itself facing a deadline, can’t make a decision, and someone says, “The hell with it, let’s just pick a name out of the hat.” This year some scamp had scribbled “European Union” on a piece of paper and slipped it in with the others, and that’s the slip they drew.

Maybe it’s more complicated than that. But you wouldn’t know it from this year’s winner.

October 11, 2012

Venezuela’s man on a white horse

Filed under: Americas, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

In sp!ked, Brendan O’Neill says that the western leftist affection for Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez illustrates its intellectual disarray:

For an insight into the collapsed standards, declining intellectual rigour and desperate opportunism of the modern Western left, look no further than its fawning over Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. In the past, much of the left — both the radical sections and even some of the stuffy Stalinist crowd — was highly critical of the Bonapartist antics of populist Latin American leaders. They critiqued the way these leaders mobilised the masses to give their narrow, bourgeois, largely state-orientated policies a gloss of legitimacy or the appearance of revolutionism. But now, so isolated is the Western left, so bereft is it of a domestic constituency or anything approaching a political plan, that it sees in Chavez’s twenty-first-century Bonapartism something ‘genuinely progressive’.

This week, Chavez won a fourth term as president of Venezuela. He did not repeat his landslide victory of 2006, instead winning a safe but not-especially-astounding 54 per cent of the vote (on a turnout of 81 per cent). His supporters among Western radicals immediately went into hyperbolic hyperdrive, talking about the ‘revolution’ that Chavez has led in Venezuela and commending him for ‘challenging imperial domination’. Chavez’s posturing against US influence in Latin America and his implementation of social-assistance programmes for the Venezuelan poor are variously described as ‘radical’, ‘progressive’ and part of his broader ‘profoundly revolutionary struggle’. He is compared to Simon Bolivar, the nineteenth-century political leader who liberated much of the Latin American continent from Spanish rule, or to Che Guevara, the more recent Argentine radical beloved of t-shirt sellers in hipster communities across the West.

Yet these accolades for Chavez tell us far more about the state of mind, and deep, existential needs, of the disarrayed left than they do about any revolution taking place in Venezuela. Because in truth, Chavez has far more in common with the populist style of the nationalist leadership pioneered in Latin America by Juan Peron, whom the left castigated for his exploitation of the masses, than he does with yesteryear’s revolutionaries. Juan Peron was an Argentine military leader who, after playing a role in the army’s 1943 seizing of power from the corrupt regime of Ramon Castillo, was elected president of Argentina in 1946, 1951 and briefly again in the 1970s. His rule — which came to be known as Peronism and was influential among populist left-wing leaders in Latin America — consisted of a combination of anti-Western actions, concessions to the working classes and the poor in the form of higher wages and trade union recognition, and populist demagogy. Through this process, Peron was able to build up an impressive mass base of support for his pursuit of nationalist capitalist development in Argentina.

October 7, 2012

Flagship of Argentinian Navy seized for unpaid government debt in Ghana

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:38

If I were you, I’d avoid investing in any Argentinian business (or businesses which have significant operations in Argentina), as the government is doing everything it can to prevent the flight of capital. Some of the debt holders are getting quite creative about finding ways to put pressure on Argentina to pay its debts:

If pirating didn’t work out, Capt. Jack Sparrow would perhaps have made a savvy hedge fund manager.

A New York hedge fund boss is being dubbed a real pirate of the Caribbean after seizing the flagship of the Argentinian navy in an attempt to settle some of the country’s huge debt.

Billionaire Paul Singer took control of the tall ship the A.R.A. Libertad with a court order in Ghana this week.

The triple-mast frigate, which stopped in the African country as it trained naval cadets, is valued at $10 million and is the ceremonial flagship of the Argentine fleet.


Photo by Martín Otero, 7 April, 2007

September 13, 2012

Submarines for the drug trade

Filed under: Americas, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:26

The drug gangs in south and central America are becoming quite sophisticated in their attempts to get their products to the eager US consumer. One of the more technological developments is the drug-running submarine:

Despite losing nearly a hundred of these vessels to U.S. and South American naval forces (and dozens more to accidents and bad weather) the drug gangs have apparently concluded that the subs are the cheapest and most reliable way to ship the drugs. It’s currently estimated that over 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States leaves South America via these submarines or semi-submersible boats.

Most of these craft are still “semi-submersible” type vessels. These are 10-20 meter (31-62 foot) fiberglass boats, powered by a diesel engine, with a very low freeboard, and a small “conning tower” providing the crew (of 4-5), and engine, with fresh air and permitting the crew to navigate. A boat of this type was, since they first appeared in the early 1990s, thought to be the only practical kind of submarine for drug smuggling. But in the last decade the drug gangs have developed real submarines, capable of carrying 5-10 tons of cocaine that cost a lot more and don’t require a highly trained crew. These subs borrow a lot of technology and ideas from the growing number of recreational submarines being built.

[. . .]

The submarines that have been captured have, on closer examination, turned out to be more sophisticated than first thought. The outer hulls are made of strong, lightweight Kevlar/carbon fiber that is sturdy enough to keep the sub intact but very difficult to detect with most sensors. The hulls cannot survive deep dives but these boats don’t have to go deep to get the job done. The diesel-electric power supply, diving and surfacing system, and navigational systems of captured subs was often in working order. It was believed that some of those who built these boats probably had experience building recreational subs. The sub builders also had impressive knowledge of the latest materials used to build exotic boats. It had already become clear that something extraordinary was happening in these improvised jungle shipyards.

Ecuadoran police found the first real diesel-electric cocaine carrying submarine two years ago. It was nearly completed and ready to go into a nearby river, near the Colombian border, and move out into the Pacific Ocean. The 23.5 meter (73 foot) long, three meter (nine feet) in diameter boat was capable of submerging. The locally built boat had a periscope, conning tower, and was air conditioned. It had commercial fish sonar mounted up front so that it could navigate safely while underwater. There was a toilet on board but no galley (kitchen) or bunks. Submarine experts believed that a five man crew could work shifts to take care of navigation and steering the boat. The boat could submerge to about 16 meters (50 feet). At that depth the batteries and oxygen on board allowed the sub to travel up 38 kilometers in one hour, or at a speed of 9 kilometers an hour for 5-6 hours. This would be sufficient to escape any coastal patrol boats that spotted the sub while it moved along on the surface (its normal travel mode). The boat could also submerge to avoid very bad weather. The sub carried sufficient diesel fuel to make a trip from Ecuador to Mexico. There was a cargo space that could hold up to seven tons of cocaine.

August 21, 2012

The 21st century equivalent to the enclosure movement

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Asia, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:07

Joseph R. Stromberg reviews The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth, by Fred Pearce.

The Land Grabbers is a wonderful primer on the newest manifestations of an ancient form of plunder: the seizure of other people’s resources and destruction of their livelihoods. The author, Fred Pearce, is a well-established British environmental journalist. Here he surveys the ongoing alienation of allegedly “unused” or “underused” land in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Australia, and elsewhere at the hands of international corporations, both private and state-owned. Politicians in the affected countries are key partners in operations that resemble the late-19th-century scramble for control of Africa. The land grabs aim at enriching privileged companies and their political allies, usually at the expense of those already on the land. States, companies, and their frequent close friend, the World Bank, see no reason to respect sitting owners and resource users, whatever their rights under customary law and (sometimes) postcolonial statutes. Pastoral nomads get even less respect. In Tanzania, for example, governments and safari capitalists have reduced the traditional grazing lands of the Maasai herdsmen to a fraction of what they were. And in Ethiopia, the government’s “villagization” policy, Pearce writes, resettles peasant farmers “in the manner of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot,” clearing the way for deals with foreign capital.

Where agriculture is concerned, the effort goes forth under an ideology that claims that only industrial-scale farming, modeled on subsidized American agribusiness, can feed the world. The ideologues in question include John Beddington, chief UK government scientist; Paul Collier, former research head at the World Bank; and Richard Ferguson of the investment company Renaissance Capital, who hopes to see “industrial-sized farms of a million hectares.” To realize that vision, smallholders, hunters, gatherers, and pastoralists must get out of the way and submit themselves to wage-labor, wherever they find it. The ideology goes hand in hand with the form of globalization that relies on the power of the United States and some associated countries to dictate the contours of world trade. While the U.S. has toppled states seen as hostile to American business interests (as in Guatemala in 1954), today’s methods are often more subtle. They include USAID programs, American domination of World Bank policies, and a web of treaty obligations, especially international investment agreements.

Pearce is an environmentalist, but his book is not especially ideological. He’s more interested in presenting data. Wherever possible he has figures for acreage (or hectares) and tells us who did what to whom and where. He also faults wealthy environmental idealists and NGOs, noting that their parks and preserves can displace local people and their property, just like commercial hunting preserves, sugar plantations, logging operations, and the rest can.

July 11, 2012

Mexicans not willing to suffer increasing death toll to support American war on drugs

Filed under: Americas, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:03

Jacob Sullum on the recent election result as a sign of repudiation for American drug policy:

Early last year, when the death toll from Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on the cartels stood at 35,000 or so, Michele Leonhart, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told reporters in Cancun “the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs.” The results of last week’s presidential election, in which the candidate of Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) finished a distant third, suggest Mexican voters are no longer buying that counterintuitive argument, if they ever did.

Even if “the fight against drugs” were winnable, it would be an outrageous imposition. Why should Mexicans tolerate murder and mayhem on an appalling scale (more than 50,000 deaths since Calderon launched his assault in December 2006), not to mention the rampant corruption associated with prohibition, all in the name of stopping Americans from obtaining psychoactive substances that their government has arbitrarily decreed they should not consume? That sort of arrogant expectation is becoming increasingly untenable.

Mexico’s incoming president, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has promised continued cooperation with U.S. drug warriors. But during the campaign, he and the other two leading candidates all said controlling violence, as opposed to seizing drugs or arresting traffickers, would be their top law enforcement priority. Pena Nieto has reiterated that commitment since the election, saying his success should be measured by the homicide rate.

July 8, 2012

Argentina to force domestic banks to loan money at a loss

Filed under: Americas, Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:21

As the financial situation in Argentina gets more dire, the government is stepping in to make things even worse:

[President Cristina] Fernandez, a center-leftist, is embracing increasingly unorthodox economic policies as she seeks to sustain activity, which analysts say is vulnerable to insufficient credit.

“We’re going to tell the 20 principal banks… they have the obligation to lend for production and for investment,” Fernandez said in a televised speech.

“The central bank’s going to establish the conditions,” she said, adding that state-run banks should not have to shoulder the entire responsibility for business loans.

She said the loans would carry a maximum interest rate of the Badlar reference rate, which was 11.9pc per year for private banks in June, plus 400 basis points. The minimum loan period would be three years.

Officially, inflation in Argentina is running around 25%, so forcing banks to loan money out at half the rate of inflation seems like asking them to dig their own economic graves.

H/T to Tim Worstall for the link.

July 2, 2012

Meet the new boss … of Mexico

Filed under: Americas, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:47

After more than a decade in opposition, Mexico’s equivalent of the Natural Governing Party* has returned to power:

Mexico’s old rulers claimed victory in a presidential election on Sunday, ending 12 years in opposition after a campaign dominated by a sputtering economy and rampant drug violence.

After pledging to restore order and ramp up economic growth, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had a clear lead over his rivals in exit polls and a “quick count” conducted by electoral authorities.

Although his main rival said it was too early to concede defeat, the 45-year-old Pena Nieto delivered a late-night victory speech to cheering supporters, and a senior electoral official said the PRI candidate’s lead was “irreversible”.

“Mexicans have given our party another chance. We are going to honor it with results,” a visibly moved Pena Nieto told followers packed inside the PRI headquarters in Mexico City.

* For non-Canadians, the joke about the “Natural Governing Party” is that the Liberal Party of Canada had been effectively the permanent government in Canada for most of the 20th century, with only a few isolated interruptions by the Progressive Conservatives (aka the Forward-Backward party).

Update: The Economist has more:

The return of the PRI is not welcomed by everyone. The party ran Mexico for seven uninterrupted decades until it was ousted from the presidency in 2000. Back then few expected that the “perfect dictatorship”, as the PRI regime was dubbed by the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, would return to power just 12 years later. But the television-friendly Mr Peña ran a professional campaign and faced weak opposition from the fiery Mr López Obrador and from Ms Vázquez, whose poor result is in part a verdict on Mr Calderón’s disappointing six-year term in office.

Many have predicted that a close result would lead to a challenge by Mr López Obrador, who lost the 2006 election by less than 1% and mounted a months-long blockade of Mexico City’s main thoroughfare to protest that result, which he claimed (with thin evidence) was fraudulent. This year’s race looks to be nothing like as close as that of 2006. But if Monday’s final results show a narrower gap, Mr López Obrador’s committed followers could yet take to the streets again.

Election day provided some ammunition for a challenge, with evidence of cheating by some parties and cock-ups by the electoral authorities—though the scale of both was unclear. There were reports of voters in poor areas being offered upwards of 500 pesos ($38) to hand over their voting cards, which prevented them from casting their votes and perhaps enabled someone else to cast them instead. The PRI featured most often in such reports. A ban on political advertising after the end of the campaign on Wednesday was flouted by the Green Party, a formal ally of the PRI. The Greens illegally sent text-messages and recorded phone calls to many people (including your correspondent) on the day of the election, urging them to vote for their candidates.

June 14, 2012

Thirty years after

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:08

A ceremony in Port Stanley today, marking the 30th anniversary of the end of occupation during the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina:

The anniversary of the liberation of the islands after 74 days of Argentine occupation was marked at a service of thanksgiving at Christ Church Cathedral in the Falklands capital.

Veterans of the 1982 war then led a military parade to the Liberation Monument for an act of remembrance.

The names of the 255 UK servicemen and three Falklands civilians who died in the war were recited at Liberation Monument. An estimated 650 Argentines were also killed during the conflict.

Wreaths were laid at the monument and the national anthem was played.

The BBC’s defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt, in Port Stanley, said it was a day of high emotion for veterans who had come back to see the battlefields where many of their friends and comrades laid down their lives.

For islanders, it was a vital ceremony to mark their liberation and to express the undying gratitude they felt for the servicemen and women who came 8,000 miles to help them.

In his statement, Mr Cameron said the anniversary was “an opportunity to remember all those who lost their lives in the conflict and to look forward to what the future holds for the Falklands”.

April 21, 2012

Argentina: Canada without the boring politics and grey politicians

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:58

Robert Fulford sees lots of similarities between Argentina and Canada, except the one difference that makes all the difference:

In some ways it’s much like Canada, a huge one-time colony with a talented population and endless natural resources — arable land, oil and gas and much else.

Except it is not like Canada. It doesn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work is that it lacks a reliable, careful government, not subject to sudden bouts of hysteria. Argentina has few of the boring politicians who irritate people like Sid.

Public life in Argentina expresses itself through spasms of showmanship, braggadocio, paranoia and demagoguery. It’s the land of the eternal crisis, where a military coup is never unthinkable.

Argentina’s many economic failures, generation after generation, are self-created, politically induced. In all the world there’s no more obvious example of a nation that has squandered, through flawed governance, the riches provided by nature.

This week Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentina, and the widow of the last president, announced she’s grabbing YPF, the country’s biggest energy company, taking it from Spain’s Repsol. Cristina, as she’s usually called in Argentina, thinks she can run YPF better than the Spanish. Of course the Spanish are furious and will sue as well as blacken Argentina’s name wherever possible. What Cristina has announced is a brazen, heedless act, with nothing to recommend it but high-handed nationalist fury.

Yet Cristina believes that when you encounter economic trouble, the best course is to strike out against something foreign. At the moment she’s also making anti-British noises, agitating to annex the Falklands Islands, which Argentina seized in 1982 and had to give back when it lost the war with the U.K. Somehow the Falklands (called the Malvinas in Argentina) are linked with the oil-company seizure as nationalist issues. A T-shirt has appeared on Cristina’s supporters: “The Malvinas are Argentine, so is YPF.”

April 17, 2012

Argentina’s latest economic lesson

Filed under: Americas, Economics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:50

Jan Boucek explains why Argentina is providing a helpful example to other countries on what not to do in economic policy:

This week, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced the seizure of Spanish oil company Repsol’s stake in Argentine oil company YPF to give the government 51% control. Spain is outraged and has recalled its ambassador. […]

Ms Fernandez justified her move on the grounds that YPF has failed to invest sufficiently to prevent Argentina from importing ever greater quantities of fuel. The fact that Argentine oil reserves have been dwindling means the sector needs greater and increasingly sophisticated investment to reach more complex structures, just like in the North Sea. Expropriation isn’t going to attract that kind of high-risk investment.

[. . .]

The YPF seizure continues Argentina’s cavalier attitude towards other people’s money shown back in 2008 when Ms Fernandez grabbed some $24 billion of private pension funds and used central bank reserves to meet debt payments. More recently, the country has been in a spat with the IMF over the quality of its statistics. Argentina claims inflation is running at somewhere between 5% and 11% but private independent estimates put the number at somewhere around 25%. The Economist is refusing to publish official Argentine inflation data.

Update: Well, regardless of the state of the economy, President Fernandez de Kirchner has a friend in the White House! President Obama has indicated his support for the Argentinian claim to … the ¿Maldives?

President Obama erred during a speech at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, when attempting to call the disputed archipelago by its Spanish name.

Instead of saying Malvinas, however, Mr Obama referred to the islands as the Maldives, a group of 26 atolls off that lie off the South coast of India.

The Maldives were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965 and the site of a UK airbase for nearly 20 years.

April 14, 2012

Colombia tries to butter up Obama with “quickie” SOPA rules

Filed under: Americas, Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:26

Colombia buckles under intense US lobbying to introduce SOPA-like copyright rules in time for President Obama’s visit:

President Obama is heading to Colombia this weekend for a summit, and we’d been hearing stories that US officials had been putting tremendous pressure on Colombian officials to pass new, ridiculously draconian copyright laws ahead of that visit. So that’s exactly what the Colombian government did — using an “emergency procedure” to rush through a bad bill that is quite extreme.

Earlier this year, Colombia tried to pass basically the same bill, which was called LesLleras, after Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras (who proposed it). That bill was so extreme that it resulted in SOPA-like protests, following significant concerns raised by the public as well as copyright and free speech experts. So, this time around, the government just claimed it was an emergency and rushed the bill through, despite all of its problems. They seemed to think that the public wouldn’t notice — but they’re wrong.

As is typical of idiotic trade agreements pushed via the USTR — who only seems to listen to Hollywood on these issues — the copyright bill includes all sorts of draconian enforcement techniques and expansions of existing copyright law, and removal of free speech rights. But what it does not include are any exceptions to copyright law — the very important tools that even the US Supreme Court admits are the “safety valves” that stop copyright law from being abusive, oppressive and contrary to freedom of speech

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