[e-gold-list] Re: e-gold pleads guilty of money laundering charges

[Jim Davidson]

Dear Pete,  


> I wouldn't know -- plea bargains are illegal here.

That is probably a sensible thing.  Then again the UK under
the current Labor gov't has gone in for many weeks of
detention without anything like due process, so it is not
all good.

> the lines, as an American!

It doesn't hurt to call up the principals and chat, either.

> Yes -- one of the worrying things is the rise of victimless crimes.  E-
> gold seems to be accused of not registering as a money transmitter, for 
> example.  Something has gone wrong when you can go to jail for not 
> filling out a piece of paper.

The wonder of it is that Omnipay applied to be a licensed money
transmitter on more than one occasion and were flat refused a
license, just as you say, on the grounds that e-gold was not
money.  It is an extremely perverted system and nothing like
justice is available here.

It would be one thing if one made an act of omission, or of
commission, and there were some intent.  It is quite another
when you can't be free whether you omit or commit, whether you
comply or refuse.  It is just a vicious mess.

> Wow...  Obviously I'm remembering the story wrong, then.  I thought the 
> argument was that e-gold didn't have to register as a money transmitter, 
> because it dealt only with gold, and to the government gold is not money.

It isn't so much the gold as the buying and selling.  It is the
making a market in both directions which creates the issue with
the Treasury rules.  Obviously, there are plenty of reasons to
think these rules aren't constitutional, but the gov't has a lot
of power to beat up on people who would dare to oppose them, so
there is no question that we have difficulty evaluating whether
unjust laws are also unconstitutional, as the jackbooted scum
simply kick human faces over and over again forever.  Nobody
has the resources to oppose the government.

> What if it isn't jewellery that you deal with?  What if I started "e-
> blackgold" which would allow people to buy goods in exchange for oil 
> futures, for example?  In fact, all sorts of commodities could be used as 
> money.  All you need is something that has a liquid market, so you know 
> the value of your holding.  How is the government going to distinguish 
> between barter and money transmission?

I don't think this gov't cares to make any distinctions.  It is not
a learned crowd that surrounds GW Bush.  It is a vicious crowd of
brutal thugs who can lie with a straight face about water boarding
not being torture, in spite of the fact that this gov't is the
successor in direct line to the gov't that convicted and executed
a Japanese officer for waterboarding American POWs in WW2.

Yes, if you make a market in both directions for black gold, you
are transmitting money, in the eyes of the gov't of the USA. It
doesn't have to be logical.  It doesn't have to make sense. In
fact, if it starts to make sense, you should probably get your
mind checked out, or take a long hot bath or something.

The war on terror has nothing to do with terrorists, it has to do
with Americans.  The war on some drugs has nothing to do with
foreign drug merchants, it has to do with Americans.  These are
both wars on the American people.  In a country that treated its
written constitution with some pride, let alone anything like
actual reverence, the people involved in prosecuting these wars
on the American people would be tried and executed for treason.

It is, in fact, treason to make war on the United States, or to
give aid and comfort to its enemies.  I wrote rather extensively
about the nature of this treason here:

http://www.reasontofreedom.com/blog/jim_davidson/cheney_commits_treason.html

"The Bush and Cheney regime is levying war against the American people. 
The Bush and Cheney "covert" operations in Iran are giving military and 
financial aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States - enemies 
the Bush/Cheney administration itself has identified. Their own state 
department says these guys are terrorists, and they say the country is 
in a war on terror."

> You're probably right, and sadly I don't think innovation will be 
> happening here in Britain either.  We didn't buy into the online gambling 
> ban, but apart from that we have similar levels of paranoia about money 
> laundering.

I suspect that Russia and Malaysia may have scored quite the
coup with this USA self-inflicted injury.

The other obvious thing to recognise is that there is far more
technological prowess on the side of anti-gov't than on the side
of gov't.  Encryption is completely out of control. The Internet
is completely out of control.  And, both are key to the limping
survival of the economy, so neither can be shut down.  Take
together, with the protocols George Hara has written about for
audit work, and with the existing digital bearer instruments,
the technologists win.  The gov't won't be able to control private
exchange of value from person to person.

They'll hate it, they'll kill a lot of us because of it, but
it is inevitable.  They have made way too many enemies by
being persistently against freedom.

> Good luck!  I seem to remember that there were people with substantial 
> balances in 1MDC, so I hope you do get them back.  Even if 1MDC had 
> committed a crime, the people who deposited funds with them hadn't (in 
> general at least).

I have already been contacted by more people.  It is going to
be fun!

> That's right, and I wonder how safe e-gold is, as the American company 
> which is caught in the middle.  Using e-gold to finance trade with Cuba 
> would be another (contrived) example.  Perfectly legal for me, but it 
> might be illegal for e-gold to help me.

I think the perverse nature of the American legal system is that it
is illegal to do anything, and it is also illegal to do nothing. There
is no way to know what your legal obligations are, and even if, as
with OmniPay and Doug Jackson, you go to great lengths to comply with
the laws, apply for the necessary licenses, and do your part in the
war against crime - against actual theft of property or actual assault
on persons - as Doug clearly has done - you still get screwed.  The
government hates innovation, the government hates freedom, the gov't
hates American values like private property and individual liberty.

The people who run the USA government are the worst sort of
authoritarian slime. They are socialists.  They are fascists.
They are totalitarians.  All of us are criminals to them.  They
will kidnap us, torture us, rape us, murder us, and tell each
other that we had it coming.

Worst of all, the American people, judging by the popularity of
thug television shows, are great admirers of law and order. Almost
German in their desire for "arbeit macht frei" levels of abuse.

http://ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle476-20080713-02.html

"The simple fact of the matter is that police officers make a living 
beating people up and killing them—or threatening to do so."

"see for yourself how many of these thug shows are on TV these days. 
There's at least a couple every night. If you add forensic programs like 
CSI and Bones (both of which I confess to liking very much) and pile on 
endless reruns of authoritarian garbage like COPS, they utterly dominate 
the mass medium, displacing better shows. "

Regards,

Jim

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