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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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February 04, 2003
I'll trade you Manuel Noriega for Rupert Murdoch
Fifteen years ago today, 1988 Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega was indicted on drug charges. The US military went into Panama, deposed the government of which Manuel Noriega was head, and brought him to America to charge with helping distribute narcotics in violation of US law.
This has always struck me as incredibly and totally lawless. The US government makes laws for what you can and can't do in the United States. They do not have authority to make laws for Panama. In Panama, it was legal for their president to help distribute drugs, him being the government and all. If not, it would be a matter for the Panamanian justice system, such as it is, to abjudicate. You may regard this as somehow unjust, that Noriega would have gotten away with bad stuff because he had corrupt strongman control over the local legal system. Nonetheless, playing with drugs in Panama does not fall under the jurisdiction of American law or courts.
Sovereignty and jurisdiction are serious matters. Noriega was not in America to have been breaking American laws. You might arrest people caught smuggling in the US, but Congress does not have the right to make drug laws for any country on the globe.
If the US government can go snatch Noriega for violating American laws, then why wouldn't Iran have a right to send people crashing in to arrest, say, Rupert Murdoch and haul him off to face pornography charges stemming from satellite dishes beaming "The Shield" and "Married with Children" reruns down on Iran? The actual practical bad effects of illicit sex such as is sometimes being promoted by Fox programming are arguably greater than the bad effects of any drugs.
Either that, or you draw in some boundaries, and recognize some sovereignty, even towards governments we don't like. If you send people to come murder us or play footsie with those what do, then it's on. If we just don't like the way you run things in your own country though, that's most generally not our business to dictate.
posted by Al at 2/04/2003 01:23:00 PM
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