The United States Legal System Oversteps Its Bounds
The recent arrest of the chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, of Chinese tech giant Huawei is a classic example of the United States legal system overstepping its bounds. The CFO was released on bail in Canada, setting her up for a lengthy legal fight over extradition to the United States. However, her arrest should never have happened in the first place.
The U.S. legal system frequently thinks it has jurisdiction over the entire world. News flash: it does not! One reason our government might have the impression that it does is a result of its overwhelming military presence in many countries throughout the world. The thinking likely carries over into business, economics, and legalities. While the U.S. Constitution and federal laws certainly should apply to people and businesses in America and to U.S. citizens and businesses abroad, applicability in all other circumstances is zero, maybe less.
Another classic example of the U.S. legal system overstepping its bounds concerns Julian Assange. His plight has been flying under the mainstream media radar for quite some time. It is somewhat widely known that he has been domiciled in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012. What is not so widely known is that the American government has been secretly and illegally pursuing him, and charges against him have been brought recently by federal prosecutors. Such charges were inadvertently revealed in the pleadings of a completely unrelated case, likely due to a cut-and-paste error.
While the specific crimes for which he is being charged are as yet unknown, it is suspected that espionage, treason, or other related and contrived charges are possible. Once again, anything for which he can be charged lies completely outside U.S. jurisdiction. If he was a U.S. citizen or was on U.S. soil and committed any crime, then jurisdiction would apply. If and when he is extradited here, certainly the rules will then apply, but this would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, fulfilled, of course, by federal bullies.
Even if Assange was an American citizen or was on U.S. soil when he was a party to any of the acts for which prosecutors will likely criminally charge him, the fact that federal prosecutors want to prosecute him at all is a flagrant violation of the first amendment. He is a member of the press—nothing more, nothing less. As far as we know and as has been widely speculated, all of the information that is published by WikiLeaks is provided by external sources. Therefore, any laws pertaining to espionage and whatnot would not apply to him or anyone else at the nonprofit but may, of course, apply to any of its sources. Rest assured that the U.S. “justice” system will try to spin, warp, and distort the truth in order to get them to apply anyway because that is how the criminals who run the system operate.
Remember that the press is the only business in America that is specifically protected under the Constitution. Besides being illegal, prosecuting Assange would set a bad precedent. All journalists, foreign and domestic, could soon be targeted…..if the powers that be in our country simply do not like them. This should be alarming to any journalist or future journalists, all of whom should be staunchly supportive of Assange, regardless of any political affiliation.
Just as the legal system as a whole does not like Assange, it does not like Wanzhou. Not only are the American government’s acts in the Huawei case illegal, they are stupid. China effectively owns a good portion of the American economy, like it or not, and is reacting is a predictable way by detaining Canadian citizens and boycotting American products from companies like Apple and others—Kudos to China.
What is becoming more and more readily apparent is that breaking criminal laws in the United States or even the appearance of doing so can lead to prosecution, but if you are politically connected or are part of the government, then it is OK. Committing a crime is perfectly fine and will not lead to prosecution. While the aforementioned cases are two particular major examples, similar selective, illegal, and immoral enforcement of laws, sometimes imaginary ones, occurs throughout the nation in all U.S. courts on a daily basis. It is not just journalists and business people who should be alarmed; ordinary citizens can and do also fall victim to the corrupt American legal system and should vehemently oppose the prosecution of these two people and others like them by our out-of-control government.
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