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A history of repeated injuries and usurpations

The New American Century is beginning to prove trying. I have remarked here before about the spreading fondness of governments for extraterritoriality, and the cartelisation of states. The global War on Drugs of the last century has been almost entirely driven by the US, but has operated through state cartels. Non-Americans can hold themselves and their countrymen to blame for going along with the moralistic folly.

Now, however, the US is starting to apply its laws in ways that purport to apply in the rest of the world, and to reach into other states and impose those laws on their residents, their citizens, who would have had every reason to believe they were entitled to live according to local custom. I suspect that this is partly a phenomenon of power, that any other state with the power to do so would be similarly tempted. But the US, a state founded on the principle of limited self-governance, should know better. Unfortunately limited self-governance looks more and more tainted with unlimited self-righteousness. As with the War on Drugs, so with the War on Terror – “the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

Last week we had the NatWest three: charged with a ‘crime’ against a British bank in Britain that neither the bank itself nor the normally trigger-happy FSA and Serious Fraud Office had taken any interest in, yet extradited to Texas – “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

This week the chief executive of an internet gambling firm listed on the London Stock Exchange is arrested air-side on ‘racketeering’ charges on his way to Costa Rica The basis appears to be that some Americans choose to gamble online, and for their immorality someone must be punished – that the person is a foreigner operating entirely legally according to the foreign jurisdiction he does business in does not bother the feds, who “subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws.”.

Something is askew when the US federal government purports to operate such an extraterritorial jurisdiction over a Briton, but will not touch gambling in the Native American territories on the fiction that they are independent.. try putting anything but tobacco in your peace-pipe, and see how far being in an Indian Nation exempts you from the mission of government. You probably will not get that far. Nor have I seen signs of a civil war being levied against Nevada and New Jersey. US forces will happily bomb obscure Peruvian and Afghan drug fields over enormous logistical difficulty, and without regard for (foreign) casualties (“…plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people”). Meanwhile Las Vegas – a large, well illuminated target close to several major air-bases is mysteriously still standing.

Forget several property for a moment. To insure any of the rights we have against a global tyranny, we need de facto several jurisdiction: separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. The state does have a value, folks. But we forget at our peril that the key one is to defend us against other states. If they club together against their peoples, or subordinate their power to other states, then states might as well not exist. The limiting cases are places like Congo where neighbouring powers prey at will on the population.

This should mean something:

Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let of hiderance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.

But I do not think it does, much. Even Britain, notionally a Great Power, scarcely pretends to assert its power for the protection of its own people’s interests.

There has to be somewhere to run or all the world ends enslaved to a monopoly of power. Let us have some diversity. Disunited nations would be a good thing. What will it take to get nations to declare their independence of the international system?

28 comments to A history of repeated injuries and usurpations

  • Johnathan Pearce

    A very good point. This of course is the key argument to be made against “world government” – the dream of totalitarians and deluded “idealists” everywhere. The kicker is the ability to have “somewhere to run”. Having the option to get out of a country acts, in a way, as a sort of brake on how brutal some governments can become. If those governments know that their best and brightest citizens will leave, it might – might – check their enthusiasm for oppression. (In the case of some states, alas, like Zimbabwe, that appears not to make much difference.)

  • @Guy: concerning the Natwest Three, if the alleged crime was actually committed, would the victims include Enron shareholders (as well as the Natwest Bank). Also, is not Enron a company registered in a state of the USA and quoted on one of their stock exchanges? If these are the case, is it not reasonable that the USA legal system has, at least shared, jurisdiction?

    Is the alleged crime also a crime in the UK?

    And if two or more nations agree that their legal systems are sufficiently fair, and sufficiently similar in process, that simplified extradition arrangements should apply, reciprocally, what is the problem? [Noting that such lack of reciprocity as there is in the current UK/USA case really only only concerns cases where there is a political/terrorist issue.]

    I have also read that, concerning the Enron fraud and closely associated cases, there is an agreement between the UK and the USA, that the USA should would have jurisdiction. Is that the case?

    Now, I do see agree that extradition should require the alleged crime to be a crime in both particupating states, and also of similar severity of wrongdoing. Though similar punishment does seem to be a general problem, that is perhaps more down to the UK end; also could not this be dealt with in a similar way to not using the death penalty for persons extradited from the UK.

    So, on this particular part of Guy’s posting, I think his case is weak. [That is if the facts are what I currently believe them to be. It’s a complicated issue and I’m very happy to be corrected, if I have the facts wrong.]

    Many of Guy’s other points in this posting are, I think, very good.

    There is the problem of “international crime”, particularly that committed using the Internet. There needs to be something very sensible done concerning a general policy of national jurisdiction, or perhaps a world-wide acceptance of an international criminal code that is commonally agreed. As well as Internet gambling and other Internet “crimes”, we also have the interesting issue of UK citizens conspiring together to arrange unlawful killing (unlawful in the UK at least) of terminally ill persons, in (awfully nasty) foreign countries such as The Netherlands and Switzerland.

    The USA does have some crimes that are not viewed as crimes elsewhere in the world. Perhaps it would be better, at least for the time being and in the case of on-line cassinos, if they limited prosecution to the criminal party that was on USA soil at the time of the crime.

    But is it appropriate for us to view another nation as not allowed to make its own laws? Guy looks (in a way and perhaps purposefully exagerated here a bit) to be complaining that the USA is forcing us to make the laws it wants us to have. Are we justified in insisting the USA does away with its laws that we do not want it to have?

    Returning to the general issue of extradition, surely it comes down mainly to: (i) fair allocation of jurisdiction, (ii) reciprocity of extradition arrangements, (iii) extradition only where the alleged act is criminal in both nations, and (iv) where punishment is determined (at least broadly) according to the least severe applying in the two nations.

    Best regards

  • Dale Amon

    I was following this story in the news and it is was one of the other moralizing, self-righteous idiocies of the current US government that has turned me utterly against the Republicans. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a couple years… and the did not deserve it.

  • And people wonder why there is a rise in so-called ‘anti-americanism’.
    I’m not anti-american, that would imply that I had something against the people of that once great state. I’m willing to give the people the benfit of the doubt, ‘forgive them, they know not what they do’ sort of thing. I cannot forgive their government however. I’m just waiting for them to overreach themselves and for their attempts at world domination to come back and bite them in the ass (or arse, if you’re a brit.) Shame that the U.S. citizenry will have to deal with the inevitable backlash.

  • Julian Taylor

    From The Guardian article:

    The US has also filed a civil complaint to obtain an order requiring BetonSports to stop taking sports bets from the country and to return money held in wagering accounts to account holders in the US.

    Exactly how can they do that? I would hazard that those accounts are held in offshore bank accounts and are thus well outside US jurisdiction so do they force the return of funds by holding onto the CEO of the company until he yells uncle?

    Additionally to this, as pointed out in the article, you have the case where someone like Nigel Payne visits the USA on a monthly basis, owns property in Florida and earns 65% of his revenue from the USA. Are the US authorities now saying that he will also face arrest should he dare to set foot in the USA, let alone (god forbid) what would ever happen if any employee or director of Ladbrokes or William Hill (major UK sports betting corporations) should ever decide to visit Disneyworld?

    It, alarmingly, seems to me as though the extradition of the Natwest 3 was the opening of a new floodgate where the US authorities now realise that they can do whatever they like with British nationals in the surefire knowledge that no UK organisation, government or otherwise will lift one finger in assistance.

  • guy herbert

    My point is that the entitlement of states to make and prosecute laws ought to be limited to what happens in their own territory.

    Extradition is a reasonable answer to the fugitive from justice, where there’s clear agreement as to what consititutes criminal conduct, and it is desirable that a case for a crime committed in one jurisdiction be answered by someone temporarily in another. But extraterritoriality dressed up as extradition is something else.

    Nigel’s fourth criterion for extradition is novel, and though I’m myself not a big fan of the punitive obsessions of many North American and some British commentators, I don’t see how it would work.

    There are a lot of interesting questions in the NatWest three case relating to the nature of the charges, in particular to conspiracy to defraud – but that wasn’t the point of my piece, it was merely an apt example that would be in people’s minds, showing the warping of space so that a Texas court can purport to try British subjects for corporate actions in the UK and the Cayman Islands.

  • Simon Jester

    if the alleged crime was actually committed, would the victims include Enron shareholders

    ?

    Nigel, it’s my understanding that the only victims of the alleged crime (shares sold by NatWest to Enron at a price that was “too low”, then later sold back at a tidy profit) were NatWest shareholders. Enron shareholders actually benefitted from these events.

  • “I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a couple years… and the did not deserve it.”

    I did that for a while in the 1980’s. You had to see my father laughing. Sadly. He was right, of course.

    In the Nixon administration, he told me, “Son, if you think this president is bad, wait’ll you see the next one.” That man was never wrong for the rest of his life.

  • The basis appears to be that some Americans choose to gamble online, and for their immorality someone must be punished…

    I think the complaint against the internet gambling company is not one of abetting illegal gambling but rather one of outright fraud and identity theft perpetrated against the players. It seems that all the primary complaints have nothing to do with the internet but rather involve physical acts undertaken within US territory.

    If what the government alleges is true what we have here is a dishonest bookie not rampaging American moralism. Online betting is common in the US so there must be some reason beyond morality why this particular company was targeted.

  • guy herbert

    Not outright fraud, Shannon Love, but “wire-” and “mail fraud” which are charges at least as dubious as racketeering, covering using any kind of communications medium to commit other crime, and often used to hoick into federal jurisdiction activity that wasn’t otherwise particularly serious or particularly illegal when and where it happened. (See also the Mann Act.)

  • Ted Schuerzinger

    mandrill:

    The ironic thing is that other Western governments are doing thing that aren’t much different. My experience is that a lot of the people who would complain about this are the same people who were braying for Augusto Pinochet to be tried in Spain for things that happened in Chile while he was the head of state, as well as people who can’t stand that the Iraqis are trying Saddam Hussein, not some international court.

  • veryretired

    Well, I must say the irony of being castigated by Europeans of any political stripe for the crimes of ensnaring others in our affairs and attempting to extend our laws beyond our borders is delicious, to say the least.

    Anyway, let’s talk specifics. Shannon pretty much blew your gambling thing out of the water, and falling back on quibbles over what kind of fraud is lame, at best.

    The drug war is a disaster around the world, no argument. However, let’s remember that most countries had drug laws every bit as strict, and some quite a bit more, long before the recent lunacy.

    It would be very good, eventually, if the many different prohibitions against sex, drugs, alcohol, and gambling in the many different societies around the world were repealed, or at least significantly reformed, but let’s not try to fraudulently claim that all these regulations are somehow the fault of the overwheening US.

    But, further, (and comments from trolls aside) let’s remember where all this “internationalism” came from.

    Europe for most of the last two centuries has been a cesspool of lunatic statism, collectivist madness, and agressive military slaughter against most of the rest of the world as well as itself.

    The position the US finds itself in is the direct result of having, for its own security and survival, to resist and overcome fascism, nazism, Japanese fascistic militarism, stalinist socialism, and maoist collectivism.

    In doing so, the US has, against its own interests in many respects, expended an enormous amount of wealth and the lives of thousands of its better citizens, and adopted many of the statist ideas that Europe produces like Carter makes little liver pills.

    The end result is a statist monstrosity that thrashes about in all directions trying to do everything its misguided political theorists have insisted it must do, and bruising friend and foe alike in the process.

    The road to this point has been long and complex, decades of reaction to serious threats both economic and military, and often without any serious support from the very societies which now find it acceptable to complain endlessly that the US has become something intrusive and overbearing, conveniently forgetting that this very same intrusiveness stems from the requirements of international responsibility which led the US to militarily conquer and occupy significant portions of the globe, and then turn these very spaces back over to their rightful owners and go home as fast as possible.

    What other state has had over 3 million troops in Great Britain in its history? If I remember, you complained about us then, also, so we did our business with Adolf and went home. What other society ever would have done the same?

    The new American century is tedious, I’m sure, to anyone who cannot find it in themselves to value a demilitarized and pacifistic Germany and Japan, a segmented and militarily weak Russia, freedom of the skies and seas, over half a century of peace in Europe, (something Europeans rarely accomplished, if ever), and a blossoming world economy which operates on the general pricicples of free trade and open markets, not the strangulation of EU regulations and imperial mercantilism.

    I can understand your discomfort with the excesses of the social-conservative-moralistic mentality, although many of these policies are supported by liberals as well. I oppose them also, and try to find candidates and issues to support who will alleviate some of this statist superstructure. It is a long and daunting process, however, as the toxic nature of many European political ideas has severely polluted the political and social landscape.

    Meanwhile, let me make a comparison with a more prosaic situation so that you can clearly understand how the average US citizen receives the continuous kvetching from our “friends” around the world.

    A house is on fire. Several firetrucks roar up and firefighters jump down and begin to unroll their hoses and make other preparations to combat the fire.

    Suddenly, they see the face of a child in a window on the second floor, and an entry team hurries to get into the burning building and attempt a rescue.

    In the midst of all this, a neighbor walks up to the captain directing the rescue and fire fighting and demands that the truck and ambulance blocking his driveway be moved because his wife wants to go to the hairdresser. Elbowed aside, the man continues to make his demands, becoming more and more shrill and hysterical as the firefighters go about their duties, until the child is safe and the fire is out.

    Finally, as the neighbor stands exhausted and red-faced from his continuous screaming, the fire captain comes over and says” What were you yelling about, again? I was busy.”

    And so we say to you.

  • Sorry veryretired but I think you rather miss the target on this one. Likewise I think Shannon is also quite incorrect.

    The US is indeed the most assertive nation in trying to apply its laws in an extra-territorial manner, with banking regulations being the most extreme example. That is bad enough (and quite unacceptable) when it tries to apply its laws to US passport holders outside of the US, but it is outragious when it does to to non-US nationals elsewhere in the world.

  • Thanks to Simon Jester for his correction of the underlying facts. Enron was not the victim, therefore my logic is wrong in deeming as an appropriate legal jurisdiction for the trial, its home nation.

    On this, it would be useful to have access to the full USA indictment. However, the nearest I have come is this from the BBC.

    I do feel I am tramping around in the dark on this, as it’s not at all clear what has happened. However, the squishy slurps from around my ankles and the strong smell are keeping me very suspicious.

    Anyway, if Enron is not the victim, I would now like to flip them to alleged co-conspirator. This, of course, is also a justification for jurisdiction to be with, or at least shared with, the USA.

    I’m also still in the slurpy smelly dark about what Enron got for the $30million that it paid to its subsidiary when it sold it. I know there might well be other things going on with all those useful off-balancesheet asset-accounting techniques, but I have a feeling I’d like to know what they are. Perhaps Simon knows; if so, please share.

    Best regards

  • guy herbert,

    I don’t understand. Why is fraud committed over the internet not the same as fraud committed face-to-face? Why do you assume that the laws governing an internet transaction should be the ones where the server is resident and not where the client is? In the American Federal system, why shouldn’t the Federal government have jurisdiction over crimes committed with interstate and international communications?

    Perhaps more to the point, where is the evidence that the charges don’t stem from activities that are illegal in both jurisdiction i.e. the US and Costa Rica? I don’t see anything in any of the information provided that says that the offense is letting people gamble online when they physically live in jurisdictions that don’t allow gambling. Instead, the charges seem to about a company deceiving its customers, stealing from them and selling their identities. I think this entire “its all about internet gambling” is a put-up by the defense team in order to obscure the charges of simple mundane fraud and theft.

    Neither do I see any evidence of the US extending its sovereignty over other countries. The physical crimes were committed in the US. At least one side of each interaction that lead to the complaints occurred on US soil AND the guy was nabbed in Fort Worth. As far as I can tell the only international aspect of this is the fact that this guys servers are located in Costa Rica and I don’t think that automatically trumps everything else.

  • Nigel Sedgwick,

    Here is the actual indictiment. Bermingham and the rest are actually not accussed of defrauding Enron or it’s investors but rather of trying to steal from their own company, National Westminster Bank using Enron’s corrupt swap stock as the mechanism. The US claims jurisdiction because the bank has a US branch in Houston, a Financial division in Greenwich Connecticut and one of the scheme partners was Credit Suisse First Boston.

    Looks like a fairly prosaic example of embezzlement. The only item interest is that the extraditions seems to have been carried out under an anti-terrorism treaty which is odd since the normal procedures could have handled it.

  • Perry de Havilland,

    The US is indeed the most assertive nation in trying to apply its laws in an extra-territorial manner, with banking regulations being the most extreme example

    You maybe correct but I don’t think these two cases represent your best evidence. In both cases, at least part of the crimes were committed on US soil utilizing institutions under US regulatory authority.

  • Many thanks Shannon. That’s much clearer now.

    Best regards

  • veryretired

    I’m sorry Perry, but I’ll go with Shannon on this deal—it’s not much more than defense attorney smoke.

    No one wishes more heartily than I that the government of the US had not experienced the cancerous growth of the 20th century, but there are significant factors involved in that expansion that were not merely the result of some alleged “cowboyism” or arrogance.

    We are currently engaged in an international conflict with an opponent which follows no rules of engagement whatsoever, and gets a continuous pass from most everyone, while we are expected to abide by laws and treaties and conventions even when they don’t apply.

    Are any number of mistakes and overeaches being made? Of course.

    Our enemies condemn us as devils when we’re not. Our friends demand that we be angels when we are only very, very human.

    It will take just as long to dismantle this frankenstein state as it took to construct it. It’s not a task for anyone who gets his undies in a twist everytime some minor deal happens, which is exactly the level of seriousness of the issues cited in this post.

    And with that, I’m done with this.

  • guy herbert

    Shannon Love, I don’t understand. Why is fraud committed over the internet not the same as fraud committed face-to-face?

    Fraud as commonly understood – theft by deception, reasonable enquiry met with false representation – isn’t any different according to the means of commission, of course.

    What I’m saying is that ‘wire fraud’ and ‘mail fraud’ are not fraud as commonly understood. The way the conception of fraud is stretched in such cases is to say that any scheme for profit mediated by communications in which some element is unlawful is fraudulent, because the unlawful element may be deemed to have invalidated the scheme. So if it were illegal to take the wager then the gambler having no legal claim to recover his stake or winnings would be held to be defrauded, even were he paid fairly.

    The offence is set up in such a way as to be very easy to prove, since it is not necessary to demonstrate that anyone was actually defrauded, that anything communicated was untrue or misleading. Yet it pulls anything so charged into the federal arena, carries very heavy penalties, and is a classic gateway charge to racketeering, where the burden of proof is shifted to the defense.

    …extraditions seems to have been carried out under an anti-terrorism treaty which is odd since the normal procedures could have handled it.

    Those are now the normal procedures. The pretext for the outrageous new UK Extradition Act was “terrorism”, which seems to be the pretext for every act of government these days, but it covers all extradition to a large number of countries. It’s just the Albanian authorities have no particular interest in ruling outside Albania, and the number of Albanian fugitives in Britain is close to zero, so the question of the justice of rendering someone to Albania without it being established that there would be a case to answer had the complaint arisen in Britain has not come up.

  • guy herbert

    BTW, it even covers Zimbabwe (see here), but a person would be unlikely to be extradited to Zimbabwe because human rights considerations would supervene – just as they would if the US charge were a capital one.

  • Simon Jester

    human rights considerations would supervene … if the US charge were a capital one

    So this treaty to extradite terrorists can be used to extradite bankers – but if it was attempted to be used to extradite (alleged) terrorists on a charge for a capital crime, it would be rejected?

    Barking.

  • Simon Jester wrote:

    So this treaty to extradite terrorists can be used to extradite bankers – …

    Now, if I recollect, that is a whinge from the Tory Party, concerning some extra-parliamentary promise.

    Given that Parliament (including the Tory Party) is stuffed full of lawyers, and lawyers know about contracts, and what is not written (or said) in a contractly binding way does not apply as contract, and that Acts of Parliament are written, passed by 2 Houses and the Queen, …

    Is not the intent of Parliament that which is written? And interpreted by judges, in the case of lack of clarity.

    Best regards

  • How about we take a certain historical phase, alter one word and make it our own?

    “NO JURISDICTION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!”

    When British subjects get to vote in US elections and therefore have some input on US laws, we will stop objecting to evidence-less extradition to a foreign jurisdiction.

  • Albion, I’m not anything of a legal expert.

    However, there is evidence, in emails and faxes, as stated in the indictment kindly provided above by Shannon.

    The USA has, generally, legal procedures not generally worse (and perhaps sometimes better) than those in the UK. In this particular case, a grand jury has authorised the indictment. That is somewhat closer to the common people than the UK’s use of a magistrate.

    There is a question about the process of approval of extradition, which has been going on for years. However, is there any real doubt that there is a case to answer?

    Best regards

  • Simon Jester

    “So this treaty to extradite terrorists can be used to extradite bankers – …”
    Now, if I recollect, that is a whinge from the Tory Party

    Guy cited “terrorism” as the pretext for the act in the post above mine. Also, given Labour’s traditional relationship with the USA, it seems unlikely that their backbenchers would have passed such an act without similar moral blackmail having been inflicted on them.

    Given that Parliament (including the Tory Party) is stuffed full of lawyers

    That would explain the unfailingly high standard of legislation passed, especially in recent years.

  • Nick I

    Finally, as the neighbor stands exhausted and red-faced from his continuous screaming, the fire captain comes over and says” What were you yelling about, again? I was busy.”

    Only to discover that in fact, the man’s wife had gone into labour, he had wished to take her to the hospital, but now she and the baby have died..

  • Panther

    Only to discover that in fact, the man’s wife had gone into labour, he had wished to take her to the hospital, but now she and the baby have died..

    Miscommunication and the pitable irony of having EMT’s right there too help in an emergency, in the hypothetical scenario. If you’ll excuse the expression, If it was a snake, it would of bit me!