University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog

Lord of War in tug-of-war

The world's most famous arms dealer Viktor Bout has been fighting extradition since his 2008 arrest in Thailand.   Washington wants him, Russia wants him and Washington thought they had him when a Thai court ordered him to be extradited a week ago.  However, due to some "legal complications" he remains in Thailand.

The U.S. had lodged two new additional charges of money laundering and fraud as an insurance policy in case Bout got off and now Bout wants those charges to come to court.  Those charges might not be heard for a few months and as a result, the extradition order will expire and  that lengthy process will start again.

From a 2006 Foreign Policy article, Merchant of Death:

In many ways, Viktor Bout is a prototypical, modern-day, multinational entrepreneur. He is smart, savvy, and ambitious. He’s good with numbers, speaks several languages, and knows how to seize opportunities when they arise. According to those who’ve met him, he’s polite, professional, and unassuming.  Bout has no known political agenda. He loves his family. He’s fed the poor. And through his hard work, he’s become extraordinarily wealthy. During the past decade, Bout’s business acumen has earned him hundreds of millions of dollars. What, exactly, does he do? Former colleagues describe him as a postman, able to deliver any package virtually anywhere in the world.

Not yet 40 years old, the Russian national also happens to be the world’s most notorious arms trafficker. He, more than almost anyone else, has succeeded in exploiting the anarchy of globalization to get goods—usually illicit goods—to market. He’s a wanted man, desired by those who require a small military arsenal and pursued by law enforcement agencies who want to bring him down. Globe-trotting weapons merchants have long flooded the Third World with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and warehouses of bullets and land-mines. But unlike his rivals, who tend to carve out small regional territories, Bout’s planes have dropped off his tell-tale military-green crates from jungle landing strips in the Congo to bleak hillside runways in Afghanistan. He has developed a worldwide network of logistics, maneuvering through a maze of brokers, transportation companies, financiers, and weapons manufacturers—both illicit and legitimate—to deliver everything from fresh-cut flowers, frozen poultry, and U.N. peacekeepers to assault rifles and surface-to-air missiles across four continents.

From a great 2003 New York Times magazine profile on Bout :

''Bout was brilliant,'' Gayle Smith [from the National Security Council] said recently. ''Had he been dealing in legal commodities, he would have been considered one of the world's greatest businessmen. He's a fascinating but destructive character. We were trying to bring peace, and Bout was bringing war.''

The 2005 film "Lord of War" was loosely based on Bout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTK8torOylM&feature=player_embedded

The New Yorker on the Kochtopus

The New Yorker is running a profile - depending on your point of view it's either a 'hit piece' or a 'must read expose' - of the billionaire Koch brothers and their funding of numerous libertarian organizations.

The Koch response to the lengthy New Yorker article here - http://www.kochind.com/kochfacts/default.aspx

The author - Jane Mayer - appeared on Maddow tonight:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

French Roma living in limbo

Free market in body organs

The conclusion from my article in the Edmonton Journal today - Encourage free market in body organs:

If there's a recipient who wants to pay for an organ and a living donor who is willing to sell their organ why prevent it? Is it ethical to play God and forcefully condemn donors to poverty and potential recipients to death?

A person's autonomy should be respected. It doesn't matter whether the donation is motivated by charity, financial desperation or unmitigated greed and whether the selling of organs offend the moral sensibilities of the religious, medical or Canadian community, organ donation is a personal choice.

So, let people work out the ethical implications of selling their body parts and increase the supply by allowing a free market in organs.

Read the rest here.

Re-think Alberta? Anti-oilsands group launches British campaign

Corporate Ethics International has launched their controversial advertising campaign in Britain  targeting Alberta-bound tourists telling them to think twice about a trip to our province. 

Chinese man refuses to budge

Via The Daily Mail:

Overlooking a giant pit and with one side of it crumbling away, this building looks fit for demolition - but it is home sweet home for one man.

The dilapidated house stand out on the otherwise bare construction site because Zhu Baogang refuses to give in to real estate developers and sell the property.

...

The phenomenon of those who refuse to make way for development has led them to become known as 'nail households' - a pun which refers to nails that are stuck in wood and cannot be pounded down with a hammer.

 

Obiter and do what I say, do what I do?

This is for the judge, lawyer, and law student portion of our readership. The rest of you can safely ignore this. It won't ameliorate the consequences of anyone's friggatriskaidekaphobia. It may, however, provide some of you with more than your preferred daily dose of sarcasm.

Some years ago, an Ontario trial judge (who later became an Ontario Court of Appeal judge) wrote:  "With respect to her first basis for distinguishing ... [a prior Ontario Court of Appeal decision] ... it may be true that, in a highly technical sense, the view of the Court of Appeal ... [on an issue of law] ...  may not have been essential for the ...  [prior decision] ....  but to act on that technical analysis would be to ignore reality."  (Woloszczuk v. Onyszczak (1976),  14 O.R. (2d) 732 at 739,  1976 CarswellOnt 274 at para. 15.) 

It might be bad for one's professional future, too, particularly if one is a trial judge hoping to move up the pecking order.

But what if the problem is Supreme Court of Canada statements of law that are (1) arguably obiter and (2) clearly inconsistent with prior Supreme Court of Canada decisions which aren't even arguably obiter? What if the trial judge's own Court of Appeal has continued to apply the older cases?

Whose hand does the trial judge then bite?

"I enjoy crushing bastards"

Julian Assange of Wikileaks refuses to back down, says he will publish the remaining 15,000 Aghan war documents within the month.

Leviathan loses, for now

Attorney General of Ontario v. CDN. $46,078.46, 2010 ONSC 3819

[30]  For one government agency to distribute to another property it did not own, without notice to the purported owner of the property or without the sanction of a court order, may strike those agencies as an efficient, uncluttered way in which to collect tax.  But the AGO should understand that such conduct, absent adequate explanatory evidence, will raise questions in the mind of a court about the propriety and legality of such conduct.  Does some statutory basis exist to justify such conduct?  I cannot tell, again because the materials are silent on the point.

There's better - or worse - depending on one's viewpoint. 

Are tithes subject to creditor action?

This case has me wondering.

Another (perhaps unanswerable) question - if a tithe payment can be recovered by a creditor, is it because it was a fraudulent preference of [ahem] one creditor over another, or because it was fraudulent conveyance made to defeat creditors? 

Eminent Domain's back door

Via David Beito

New blog

My classmate who already blogs has a new one called MENA Lawyer. (both blogrolled).

Non Sequitur