Bush and his new world government. Be very afraid.

The arrogance of the out-of-control American government knows no bounds. While gambling is legal, in one form or another, in most US states the theocrats in the Bush administration have been pushing through antigambling legislation in regards to the internet and doing so with businesses that are not located in the United States.

Recently two executives with internet payment service NETeller made the mistake of changing planes in the United States. They were arrested because their company, or more precisely, their former company, had taken payments from US citizens to pay for on-line gambling.

It used to be that when you changed planes on an international flight you were not considered within US territory. But the Bush authoritarians changed the rules requiring every person changing planes to go through passport control so that the US could get fingerprints on everyone and assert it’s sovereignty. The two NETeller officials were arrested because their former company transferred funds at the request of American clients.

Now the US federal thugs have issued subpoenas to major European banks demanding they turn over all “business records, correspondence, and e-mails related to internet gambling transactions.” The Register reports this “raises the possibility of widespread American criminal charges against everyone who has ever been involved with the online gaming industry, even if in a peripheral way.”

The US government is now acting like a global government entitled to make law for the entire world. It has unilaterally, and hypocritically, said that internet gambling is a “massive criminal enterprise” and on that premise they are assert extraterritorial rights to destroy legitimate businesses. The US is acting like a bully, rogue nation and it needs to be reigned it. The US is the biggest threat to the sovereignty of other nations currently in existence. And unless other nations get the guts to stand up to these bullies it will get worse and worse.

How long will it be before the anti-law criminals in the US Justice Department start arguing that once they arrest these criminals that they can hold them indefinitely in a concentration camp at Guantanimo while refusing them access to an attorney. The US Attorney General has just made it clear that he believes that the selective violation of writ of habeas corpus is constitutional.

The Register reports: “Since indictments may remain sealed under American law, anyone in a decision-making capacity with any investment bank that has involved itself” with gambling “should be particularly careful about traveling in any American jurisdiction, including places such as the American Virgin Islands or American Samoa that are involved with offshore banking.”

The federal thugs are not just after gambling. They are after the financial affairs of every American citizen in their obsessive drive to assert absolute control. After the former officers of NETeller were arrested the company “ceased accepting payments from American citizens”. And this is a another goal. The US Fed do not want financial transactions involving Americans unless they can trace them, track them, record, and tax them. This is why it is nigh unto impossible for Americans to open bank accounts in Europe anymore. Even the Swiss are terrified to open accounts for Americans because of US laws which threaten the banks with the confiscation of all assets they hold in the United States.

Even more incredibly the US thugs issued a press release stating that NETeller knew that these transactions could be “illegal under current or future US law”. Get that! It might be illegal under future laws!

The Bush doctrine is that there are no limits to the power of the US federal government. It has thrown out Constitutional protections of the individual. It has consistently asserted the right to put under federal jurisdiction matters which are reserved to the domain of the states. It has asserted its right to dominate and control the internal affairs of other nations. And now it says that American style Puritanical laws can be imposed on the rest of the world.

Conservatives have long warned that if the world doesn’t stand up to a bully the bully will get worse and worse. Will they now admit that the US federal government is a bully?