Hey! Let’s break some laws!

You may have heard, you may have not… but Australia is the brand new, next of kin…

WE ARE THE NEWEST STATE OF AMERICA!!!

Yay! Woohoo! Let out the streamers, add a Southern Cross star to the box of stars in the flag, call Uncle Sam and tell him to put another shrimp on the barbie because we all say that here and hey, that’s what you’d expect out of us. Plus, we all drink Fosters. And we all walk around with knives. Real knives. Not those wimpy ass knives. And ass. I meant “arse” but I have to spell it “ass” because we no longer have the English way of spelling. We have the American way of spelling. So lets get rid of the extra “u” in colour and flavour, the “a” in encyclopaedia and paedophile, and hey, why not remove that bonus “i” in aluminium because… we’re part of America!

Well, we’re not, but you’d never know it based on what’s happening legally. Or what happened. It’s out of our control and yet it’s one of the most foolish and insane things I’ve ever heard of or seen. It jumps all over that Australian adage of “fair go” and turns it over to the American one “sue the pants off of whoever the heck you darn well please, we’ll worry about the law later.”

That is the new one in case you weren’t informed, America.

“Land of the free” got exchanged for “Sue the pants off of whoever the heck you darn well please, we’ll worry about the law later” a few years ago. If you didn’t get the memo, file a lawsuit against the memo-issuer. I’m sure someone will care. Try Virginia. They seem to be filled with stupid and useless laws that for some reason matter in Australia.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like America. I lived in California and Texas, and although Modesto (in California) is an amazingly boring shithole, I can see why George Lucas escaped it. And Dallas (Texas) rocks, as does New Orleans (Louisiana), San Antonio (Texas), Santa Fe (New Mexico), San Francisco (California), Sacramento (California), Boston (Massachusetts), and Burlington (Vermont) which were some of the places I went. So there. I like America. I even approve of some of the things it stands for… or at least what its fore-fathers designated it to stand for…

Those poor, tired, huddled masses… yearning for something else…

I bet that something else wasn’t pissing all over your neighbours just because you feel your legal system is more important than theirs.

Shit. I used the extra “u” in neighbours. You don’t think anyone was watching, do you? I’d hate to piss off an American, corrupt them mentally, and then have them file a lawsuit in their country which could be seen as a reason for extradition in my own country for a crime I didn’t commit in my country.

Does it sound a bit odd, that? Because really… that’s what’s going on right now.

Google “Hew Raymond Griffiths”. Better yet, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths]click this nifty Wiki link for him![/url]

Now, Mr. Griffiths is being charged and treated as a criminal under the US legal system… which is strange because he’s not someone forced to abide by it. He’s an Australian citizen, not an American one. Though we may have a Free-Trade agreement with America, that doesn’t automatically mean our laws are going to start shifting to become the same. We’re separate nations with separate laws. But by extraditing an Australian to Virginia to claim he has committed a crime under jurisdiction of American law, you open up this idea that America’s laws are king to everyone else’s.

Which really isn’t all that fair. I mean yes, Griffiths did piracy… but he did it in Australia. If international copyright still holds true, then the companies going after him could have used their Australian representatives and fought the case together with the Australian government with Australia.

Further, in being forced to have his trial in Virginia, he won’t be being sentenced among a jury of his peers. At all. He doesn’t even belong under the US legal system. He does when he’s over there on vacation, yes. But he’s not there on vacation. He wasn’t even there when he committed his crime. His crime affects companies in America, but those companies also exist in Australia… and that crime is still a crime in Australia. He could’ve been charged here.

But now, look what you’ve done America. You’ve gone and [url=http://blogs.smh.com.au/thedailytruth/archives/2007/05/one_giant_leap_for_australia.html]created a controversy[/url].

I mean sure, Australian media groups are hesitant to mention it in the news, what with this creating a legal precedent and all and the idea that now if they offend anyone, they might inadvertently break an American law they didn’t realise they were under a jurisdiction of and be extradited for crimes they once again weren’t aware they were under any obligation to follow.

Yes, these are fun times.

So, I have come up with two fun things for this blog entry that relate… well… to this blog entry.

[b]Number 1: Give the Free-Trade Agreement A Slogan![/b]

The Free-Trade Agreement or FTA is supposed to be our wonderful front door for dealing economically with the United States. I mean, shit, I’m all for Americans sending over cookie dough ice cream, Billy Blanks DVD’s, and cheap shit that you buy from Fry’s. That’s great. In return, you can take all the Foster’s you want… no one’s going to drink that here… it’s shit but you seem to think we drink it so… drink Foster’s! Be like us! Throw another shrimp on the– I’m never saying that again.

Anyway, the FTA is our economic connection to the United States, but it seems that even with a little give and take, there’s always going to be one side that has no problem taking more than its giving. Sounds like the first time I got laid, to be honest. So we have to give way to some legal barriers to help the FTA work.

And one of those legal barriers in this case seems to be… your right to be a citizen under the law of your own country.

That’s right… toss it out the window. It doesn’t matter anymore.

So, let’s give a slogan to the FTA since other nations are considering it:

[b]The FTA: Throwing your country’s legal rights out the window because we said so.[/b]

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. You’ve still got the law of your nation to abide by so it’s not as cut and dry and it seems. So, I’ll change it a bit.

[b]The FTA: Shitting all over your legal system.[/b]

See now that makes sense. Well… sort of. It’s not really the FTA. It’s an infringement of our law by the United States by means of the FTA. So I’ll change it one last time…

[b]The FTA: Allowing the United States to shit all over your laws since 2006![/b]

There. It’s fun. Basic. It even has an exclamation point and and one of those sort-of “established in” years on it to make it seem authentic. As authentic as political invasions and stupid legal issues can ever get… which brings me to my next fun thing to do…

[b]Number 2: Let’s break some stupid-arse laws![/b]

I know, the spelling thing isn’t a legal battle for me… yet… but I can’t give up my right in spelling something the way it’s meant to be spelled… I didn’t give it up when my English teacher Mrs. Pace tried penalising me at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Dallas, Texas for using the Australian / English spelling instead of the American way… and I don’t plan on starting now.

So, let’s break some laws people!

It’s not very hard. I’m not even encouraging you to download software, steal, or torture cute and innocent animals.

All you have to do is have sex.

Sorry, I probably haven’t made myself very clear about this legal battle with Hew Raymond Griffiths is being fought under with because really, that’s what we’re still talking about.

You see, US legal prosecutors filed the case in Virginia because the state of Virginia has the toughest (and probably most insane) laws America has ever seen. Why, some of their laws even make the old and now-repealed Texan anti-sodomy law seem quite generous. Virginians must be… very, very, very, very, very evil people. I don’t mean it on the whole, mind you. I don’t plan to or mean to stereotype or even class an entire group of people in a state with how seriously fucked up their laws are… it’s not your fault how antiquated these laws are… not unless you voted for them.

So, let’s break some laws people because these are some examples of how tough Virginian law is:

[b]* If one is not married, it is illegal for him to have sexual relations.
* You may not have oral or anal sex.
* Not only is it illegal to have sex with the lights on, one may not have sex in any position other than missionary.
* It is illegal to tickle women.[/b]

Those are just [url=http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/virginia/]some of Virginia’s laws[/url]. I wonder if these were caused by Virginians sick of people thinking they were Vaginaians and as a result became sexual recluses.

So anyway, based on Mr. Griffiths being able to be charged and extradited for committing a crime while not in America but still affecting America, all you really have to do is get a blow job, piss someone off morally or at least corrupt their fragile little mind, and then have them file the lawsuit in Virginia. Don’t worry, your government won’t protect you and it really won’t matter because hey, after this precedent, what’s to stop the American lawyers from saying “well it worked back in ’07 so it should work now”.

Further, this is another stupid Virginian law:

[b]Driving while not wearing shoes is prohibited.[/b]

Aussies do this all the time. We’re a vacationing culture and it’s a pretty normal thing to drive without your shoes on.

Just… next time you do it, don’t film it and stick it on YouTube. You might be charged and extradited for committing a crime that isn’t a crime where you’re from, but hey, who cares! It’s not like your legal system is worth anything in comparison to the USA’s!

Point is on all of this, [b]no one legal system has more authority than the other.[/b] Not the USA’s, Australia’s, England’s… no one. The Australian legal system is a separate entity from the American one and because a crime occurs that affects the American legal system, it doesn’t mean that the American legal system has the right to infringe upon the Australian one and set a precedent that can have long lasting repercussions on what constitutes “legal” and “illegal” for citizens of our nation.

American politics are fine… they just don’t belong in someone else’s nation, and they certainly shouldn’t override the authority of that nation entirely as with what has happened here.

Further, how would people feel if the shoe was on the other foot. It might be fine for many a person to read this and go “well yeah, America is the world leader so we should get the right to do whatever we want!” which is actually a reaction I expect out of some people. It was certainly one of the perspectives I had to live with in going to school with some Americans. I mean, yeah, there are some totally ignorant people. But there are going to be ignorant people no matter where you go. We’ve got ignorant Australians. I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

But for people who might be offended that America’s law isn’t being taken as the law around the world, you need to think about how it would feel if you were in our place.

How would you feel if I told you that you had committed a crime in Australia and now we were going to extradite you to Australia where you would face trial in for your crimes. You might not have done the crime here but that wouldn’t matter. You wouldn’t be facing a jury of your peers and it certainly wouldn’t be fair. Australian lock-up certainly wouldn’t be a vacation. Gun owners: owning one is illegal here. You’d be criminals under our government. Same sort of logic applies.

It’s not a fair thing that’s happening no matter where you slice it. A crime has been committed but not within America, and while it happened on the Internet, the Internet is no longer an Americans-only affair from when it first started. As a result, actions taking place there aren’t necessarily governed by America making this crime, while one that does affect America, something that needs to be dealt with within Australia.

Precedents can be a bitch and this one is a bad sign for future legal rights.

“So where the bloody hell are ya?” should be changed to “So why the bloody hell am I being charged in the wrong country!”