Free «Governmental Crime» Essay

Governmental crime is a concept in criminal law that is applied to denote any kind of action which constitutes acts of resistance, exploitation and oppression. Criminal legislation of most countries seriously considers governmental crime and punishes crimes in this category especially severely. Even the Napoleonic Code of 1810 (amended in 1832) devotes 25 articles to crimes against state security, setting the death penalty in 16 of them. Pre-revolutionary Russian legislation included the Criminal Law of 1903 that constituted governmental crime as attacks on the emperor and the imperial house, rebellion and treason, political community, and political propaganda. At that time opposition to tsarism was declared a serious crime. After the revolution of 1917, which made the proletariat a ruling class even harsher methods of criminal repression against capitalists and nobility were implemented since they posed a threat to the rule of the communists . The era of communism was characterized by the struggle of the communists to preserve the history of the doomed communist system and the onset of the terror and repressions in all spheres: economic, political and ideological, so that all advanced and progressive ideas were brutally suppressed. As a result, Bolsheviks committed a series of terrorist reprisals against progressive leaders, often regardless of the commission of any acts – both by trial, built on provocations, and by extra-judicial killings and torture. Overall, communist criminal law and practice were striving to put people convicted due to governmental crime in the intolerable conditions (Chambliss, 1989).

Governments may enforce radical laws to protect existing regimes. It is suffice to recall shackling of Communists in handcuffs in the U.S., penal regime in American prisons, violent persecution in the national-liberation movement in the colonies and dependencies. Consequently, some people do not believe in the existence of a world government, while others find it a good or bad idea. Some people believe that modern governments are agents of the world government and work to establish its domination. This seems one of the biggest crimes, which is not subject to punishment though. Clearly, the events of recent decades suggest that there is a plan of world domination which is being enforced very well. Historically, the creation of a single world empire was attempted by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, etc. What people see today is one more attempt to overrule the world. While it may be admitted that the global nature of the objective world problems requires a single global approach and flexible solutions, taking into account a human nature, in the light of numerous governmental crimes, it is highly undesirable that one single body be in charge of all people.

While world domination by a single government is not supported by the majority of citizens today, a range of rich and powerful people, such as George Soros, for example, argue that further development of history is impossible without a single world government, world parliament, and world's armed forces and police. Similarly, Gavriil Popov considers global birth control, use of new biotechnology, nuclear arms control and nuclear stations necessary. Yet, creation of the world government and its activity is among the biggest governmental crimes. Here a shadow government of “Bilderberg” should be mentioned, which is a closed informal annual conference attended by 130 members - representatives of the American and European elite. Leaders of this organization are committed to creating a supranational body that has the right to violate the sovereignty of any country, not excluding the United States and in the long term to use military force against the contumacious. What is more, the thought is promoted that the resources of the planet Earth will not be sufficient for all its inhabitants. For example, only to ensure the growing U.S. interests, all the resources of the planet Earth are required. Therefore, one of the goals of the secret world government is to create a society of the “golden billion” (Kauzlarich & Kramer, 1993). This “golden billion” includes 24 countries – representatives of the “most deserving and developed” nations. Other nations respectively serve the role of “black production”: including mining and entire infrastructure (Chambliss, 1989). This “useful part” counts for about one and a half billion people. The rest of the population (over 4 billion) is among the “excessive” and are systematically destroyed by alcohol, drugs and revolution.

Another governmental crime is supporting the interests of large corporations instead of acting with the aim to benefit ordinary citizens. Today the world's oil and coal resources are estimated at over $ 200 trillion. Dependence on oil and gas guarantees profits to corporations. Therefore, they spend a lot of money to create obstacles to the development of alternative energy sources. If new energy technologies were used freely throughout the world, the change would be revolutionary. This threatens the power and wealth of all-powerful corporations. 500 leading multinational companies, operating virtually in all countries of the world, cover more than one third of export manufacturing sector, three quarters of world trade in commodities, 4/5 of new technologies sale, and provide jobs for tens of millions of people. To illustrate, Rockefeller Petroleum Corporation was set in 1870 (Kauzlarich & Kramer, 1993). Today, oil is not only fuel and polymers, but also the basis of herbicides in agriculture. This allows the use of herbicides to control the production of food. Not only energy, but food is controlled by the same banking families and their corporations (Kauzlarich & Kramer, 1993). Medicine is also controlled by these corporations. They also prevent the development of new treatments. Billions of dollars are spent to prevented newly invented medicines that offer treatments from a variety of diseases from being patented. So people even do not hear about them.

On the other hand, government secretly acts to protect the interests of major pharmaceutical companies. The health care system is designed in such a way that medical education is mainly funded by the pharmaceutical companies. Therefore, they have a motive to produce and sell as many drugs as possible. This is a very effective and quick way to make money for a physician when he prescribes a particular drug. Not only medicine, but also education is under the control of corporations. For instance, the Rockefeller family has established a national education corporation.

The other aspect is finance. The crisis of 2008 was created by bankers: they profited from it and even got help from the government. In 2008, we witnessed the most ambitious release of “fake” money in history (Kauzlarich & Kramer, 1993). Similarly, the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States began after major bankers withdrew their money from the stock market. When the market crashed, they bought shares at low prices which cost a lot of money before (Kauzlarich & Kramer, 1993).

Biological self-regulation of the world was decided to be tweaked by the policy of reducing population. The U.S. government was incriminated in experiments with toxic substances on their own citizens more than 30 times. Genetically modified maize contains a gene that disrupts sperm of men, leading to infertility. Sterilization of women and girls lies in the process of vaccination as an additive to vaccines. This is the so-called struggle with the problem of overpopulation.

Nobody thinks of people, but of oil. Management of oil prices is a means of economic warfare against enemies. Generally, war never ended. It only changed its form, being based on the conditions of the best achieved results. Along with oil and profit, ideology is the basis for breaking out a war. The ideologues of fascism and communism believed that the rights of one group are more important than the rights of an individual. In the interests of this (the majority) government started the war. Among the major governmental crimes, we can mention the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution (Kittrie, 1975). Today it is well-known that in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was financed by Twin vows of Rothschild banking family, Schiff and Voorburg . Similarly, in 1933, the European banking group Rothschild promoted Adolf Hitler as a Chancellor of Germany (Kittrie, 1975). Those Rothschilds indirectly made financial contributions to the construction of the German war machine, which contributed to the outbreak of World War II. Hence, the mechanism of the global governmental crimes includes:

1) The global financial system, which is saturated and continues being flooded with a commodity to world currencies – U.S. dollar.

2) The financial policy of “empty” dollars being traded on stock exchanges to create excitement. The latter is artificially created by producing high visibility of shares profitability. This scheme is played within the concept of financial capitalism.

3) Income derived from the sale of money without obtaining a new product is taken by the banks that are ahead of the game providing loans, in particular, by a way of mortgage.

4) The resulting gap in bank accounts is covered by the state in the form of “anti-crisis”, of course, at the expense of taxpayers (Kittrie, 1975).

5) All wars of aggression carried out by NATO forces, on the initiative of the United States and other powers, were unleashed by the will of the global criminal oligarchic power: the war against Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001 to present), Iraq (2003), South Ossetia (2008) (Kramer, 1985).

Governmental crime is closely connected to the notions of power abuse and rights abuse since without the latter there would be no crimes. Article 17 of Council of Europe Convention on “Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms” describes the definition of abuse of power. It follows that a state, a group of persons or a person may not engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of the rights and freedoms recognized in the Convention, or in their limitation to a greater extent than it is provided in it. In the development of these standards in Article 18 of the Convention it is stated that the permissible restrictions on rights and freedoms “should not be used for purposes other than those for which they were prescribed” (Kramer, 1985). As one can see, people’s rights can be easily violated by the actions and decisions of public bodies. In other words, the limitations of the rights may well be allowed by state agencies through the use of administrative resources (Kramer, 1985).

The disposition of rules on abuse of law is generic for the offense which can be defined as the abuse of power. There is no doubt that the intervention of the state in the exercise of the right may occur through the use of power mechanism. Our attention is drawn to the peculiarities of the legislative and judicial branches. In relation to the acts of abuse of judicial power there is an international legal practice. Thus, in accordance with the UN Declaration “On Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power”, the concept of “abuse of judicial power” includes “a substantial impairment of the fundamental rights of citizens as a result of acts or omissions that do not yet constitute violations of national criminal laws but are a violation of internationally recognized norms relating to human rights” (Kramer & Michalowski, 1990). This description of the abuse of judicial power suggests the possible existence of two forms of crime in this area. Firstly, these are abuses that do not entail criminal liability. And, secondly, abuse is a crime recognized by the national law.

Each of the foregoing forms has a number of subspecies. For example, the abuse can come in the form of disruption of the judiciary margin of appreciation or undue interference in the implementation of the law. In addition, the consequences of abuse of judicial power are subject to criminal liability, when it is a violation of the rights of citizens and organizations. An additional consequence may be damage caused to the authority and impartiality of the judiciary itself. The most capacious concept of “judicial power” is disclosed in the above-mentioned decision of the European Court of Justice in the case “Sunday Times” against the United Kingdom. It says that the judiciary covers machinery of justice, a branch of the government, as well as the judges in the performance of their duties (Kramer & Michalowski, 1990).

Undoubtedly, abuse of power is a type of misconduct. Objectively abuses include commitment of actions by officials that may have been committed only by their official position and who had the effect of a clear violation of the right of establishment or enterprise, or causing damage to property, disorderly conduct or violating legally protected rights and interests of individual citizens (Tunnell, 1993). Abuses are described as acts of misconduct, while abuse is also a generic term for any willful misconduct: embezzlement, forgery, bribery, etc. are always a kind of abuse of power because, with all of the above generic features, it power endows these criminals with some special features (Kramer & Michalowski, 1990). Therefore, abuse of power, as a separate crime, is considered provided in its pure form in criminal law, i.e., when there is no evidence of other misconduct.

This construction of power abuse allows for flexibility and efficiency of the judiciary against malfeasance, covering all of the various types, and without any court anecdotal signs that would be the case if the Penal Code provided only specific types of delinquency not giving them generic. This path was followed by and legislation of the German and French codes which do not include abuse of power, but rather some of its forms (bribery, illegal sentencing, etc.) (Kramer & Michalowski, 1990). These codes largely promote impunity and irresponsibility of officials and bureaucrats. Only after the World War II war the draft penal code was formulated to include the notion of abuse of power as a generic concept, and as a special kind of misconduct (for example, in Switzerland and Czechoslovakia).

Hence, the abuse of power covers the following signs:

- Systematic character;

- Elements of mercenary or other personal interest;

- Severe consequences or a deliberate threat known by an officer (Kramer & Michalowski, 1990).

The abuse of power involves the use of imprisonment for a term not less than six months. In the cases which are thought to be less serious the abuse of power entails the use of one of the following measures of social protection: hard labor for up to 1 month, dismissal from an office, deprivation for up to 2 years of responsible positions, an implied obligation to compensate the harm to public reprimand. In addition, the state should guarantee the protection of the rights of the victims of the abuse of power. This warranty shall apply to the rights and interests of citizens, disturbed by the abuse of justice as well. Another possibility would be to interpret the constitutional provisions in favor of universally recognized human rights and freedoms rather than the judiciary in a way that will exclude the denial or disparage of other rights. As already indicated, the abuse of power is a broad concept that should be recognized as a general term that encompasses the abuse of power or authority and inaction (that is the intentional non-use) of power or authority. Indeed, one can deliberately exercise power for evil only by exceeding it or, conversely, not using it. Finally, abuse of power must be included as a special crime in the Criminal Code.