A little rusty, but by George they’ve still got it.

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No, we’re not in Jamaica 1655, Gibraltar 1705 or even the Falkands 1982. This time it’s the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the takeover is taking place as you read.

Chris Bryant of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced Friday the enforcement of a Royal Order that will, for a period of at least two years, dissolve the democratically elected House of Assembly, grant what are essentially dictatorial powers to the Crown-appointed Governor and suspend portions of the Constitution, including the right of Islanders to a jury in criminal proceedings.

I suppose “takeover” is actually a bit harsh; it’s really more like a “take back”.  Under the British thumb for the last 300-odd years (with the occasional invasion by pirates, Spaniards and Frenchmen), Turks and Caicos just recently attained the lofty status of a dependent “territory”, and was only granted a limited constitution in 1976, replaced by a somewhat more expansive Constitutional Order in 2006.

The constitution established a limited democracy for the 36,000 person community, giving them the right to elect an emasculated local House of Assembly. Well, in reality, only 13,000 of these are “Belongers” – descendants primarily of the English colonists and their slaves – with the right to vote, and only 7,000 are actually registered to vote. But a step towards self-determination nonetheless.

The constitution also guaranteed the Islanders certain inalienable rights, such as the right to life, liberty and security of the person; freedom of conscience, expression and assembly; and protection against invasions of privacy and deprivation of one’s property without compensation.

No commonwealth democracy is without its Platonic guardians, however – and the constitution gave the fledgling Island democracy very little breathing space.  The official head of state remained Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, represented by her appointed Governor (currently His Excellency Mr. Gordon Wetherall).  The Governor in turn was empowered to appoint the entire judiciary and all public officers, including: the Attorney General, the Secretary of Finance, the Deputy Governor, the Chief Auditor and the Commissioner of Police. The Governor’s seal of approval was also required for any law to be introduced by local parliamentarians, and, most importantly, the Queen reserved for herself the power “to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Turks and Caicos Islands”.

Don't let that goofy smile fool you: Gordon Wetherall is the new dictator of Turks and Caicos.

Peace order and good government also apparently meant that the Queen could abrogate the entire constitution itself and restore direct British hegemony over all facets of political life on the Islands, as she did last week.  The reason for such drastic remedy? A two year commission of inquiry (parts I, II, and III) recently concluded by the venerable retired justice Sir Robin Auld has reported — wait for it — widespread and systemic corruption at multiple levels of government!

This from a territory whose former premier, Norman Saunders, was caught accepting bribes from Colombian narco-cartels to look the other way while drug-runners used the islands as a refueling station. The bribery has not stopped there – although the archipelago may no longer be a cocaine conduit, officials have apparently been accepting ‘political contributions’ from land developers in return for selling off prime beach real estate in closed auctions for outrageously low prices. This, of course, is not so great for the British Crown, which happens to “own” a lot of the land being virtually given away at no profit to England.

The UK clearly has a substantial political interest in stepping into Providenciales to “clean up public life”. Leaving aside the Crown’s financial interest in its colonial possessions and the substantial investment by British citizens in development in the Islands (which may or may not be the primary reasons for the takeover), it would not sit well for the reputation of the Kingdom for a territory under its oversight to seem overtly corrupt or go into severe debt or poverty.

True, the intervention of the British in a state nearing independence belies a neo-colonialist and highly paternalist attitude more appropriate to the 19^th century, but maybe, in the long run, an intervention at this stage could actually be good for the Turks and Caicos residents in that it could arrest the development of a political culture of corruption. Many of the problems that occurred in former colonial territories that were rapidly abandoned during the Cold War and essentially hijacked by armed and thoroughly corrupt megalomaniacs may be avoided by a slow and measured withdrawal. Aside from a few abortive attempts to annex the Islands into Canada, there does not seem to have been much of an impetus for armed rebellion by the residents. Maybe its just as well that the Brits take their time to exit right.

Disagreeable or not, the political motives for the takeover are at least understandable and not really that surprising.  What is far more troubling, however, is the cavalier manner in which the British courts have given their blessing to this colonial adventure.  In April of this year, former premier of Turks and Caicos Michael Misick had challenged the proposed Order in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales before a two-judge panel. Their decision, denying his appeal on all counts, can be found here.

Don't even THINK of trying that Convention nonsense on Her.

Misick objected to the dissolution of the democratically elected legislature of Turks and Caicos, stating that it was contrary to the “right of peoples to self-determination”, which the court acknowledged is “one of the essential principles of contemporary international law”. Ah but wait, say the British judges – that right may be protected in England, but our Queen has not deigned to incorporate it into Turks and Caicos domestic law.

Misick pointed to the European Convention of Human Rights, which both the UK and Turks and Caicos are signatories to. Article 3, Protocol 1 states: “The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.” Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights has interpreted this to mean “once the wishes of the people have been freely and democratically expressed, no subsequent amendment to the organisation of the electoral system may call that choice into question, except in the presence of compelling grounds for the democratic order.”

Nice try, say the judges. Apparently, the Foreign Office assured the court after the hearing (see: behind closed doors) that it would immediately submit a reservation to the Convention – meaning that England would basically strike Turks and Caicos off the list of signatories to the Convention. So sure, although Turks and Caicos’s right to a free and fair election is technically protected by the Convention, the Queen has the power to remove that protection, opening the way for her to flagrantly abuse that right. Temporarily, of course.

Which brings me to perhaps the most unneccesary and offensive (and remarkably unreported) abuse of rights in this entire affair: the suspension of the right to a jury trial.  Again, the political reason for this is clear.  If the British are going to make sure Turks and Caicos is run the way they like it when they give back the reigns of power in a couple years, they need to get those impertinent politicians out of the House and into the jails.  Meaning they need convictions.  And with only 7,000 to 10,000 Belongers capable of serving on a jury, staunch political patronage systems and clan loyalties, and the necessity for a unanimous verdict, there is just too much of a risk that political targets like Misick will walk away free and more popular than before.

The solution is clear: fly in some hanging judges from England, suspend the right to a jury and success is all but guaranteed.

Trial no jury: Samurai Justice

This can’t be right.  No one is disputing that there would be a high risk of impartial juries or even outright jury-tampering.  And it is just as likely that there are a lot of corrupt politicians in Turks and Caicos who deserve to be punished.  But couldn’t some other, less authoritarian approach be taken? Say, like flying a jury in from England or other British territories? Or perhaps allowing non-Belongers to serve on the jury?

Apparently these suggestions were not made to the High Court, which enthusiastically approved of the government’s plan to deprive the Islanders of a fundamental right.  They justified this in two ways. First: precedent, meaning “we did it before so we can do it again.” Well, it was wrong when the Diplock courts did it and it is wrong now. Besides, those cases dealt with terrorism, where jurors’ lives were threatened.  Second, the court pointed to other countries who have rejected the jury trial. Oh, like Japan maybe.  Japan, coincidentally, has a 99.8% conviction rate.  Very good.

The court, citing Wikipedia (!), relativized the belief in the jury system, comparing the view of the US to that of other countries who consider it “bizarre and risky for issues of liberty to be entrusted to untrained laymen.” Right. Let’s not forget why the US considers the jury system to be such a fundamental element of a free trial. You see, two hundred years ago, the US was ruled by a colonial master who ensured that his accusations were always followed by convictions.  For the U.S., the jury is the final protection against the tyrannical State: which, for the American revolutionnaires as for Michael Misick, was and is embodied in the Queen herself.  It is precisely in situations like this one that the jury trial is most crucial.

Yes, I’ll take it all in unmarked 20s please.

Unless Congolese authorities file an appeal by Monday August 17, 2009, Swiss banks holding 7.7 million Swiss Francs ($6.68 million) belonging to late dictator Mobutu Sese Soko will transfer the funds back to his family members in the Congo.

“Marshal” Mobutu, the former Congolese general who seized the reins of  power in a bloody coup in 1965, is widely believed to be responsible for the mass murder and torture of untold thousands of Africans within and outside his kingdom of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).  Mobutu is thought to have stolen some 5 billion in state funds before his regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila’s rebels in 1997; the term ‘kleptocracy’ was invented specifically to describe his reign.  Some of  Mobutu’s heirs who are due to receive the Swiss proceeds had stood by his side while he carried out his terrible pillage, and many continue to exert considerable influence (and corruption) in modern-day Congolese politics.

Why, then, is the Swiss Federal Council forcing its banks to return the Mobutu clan’s ill-gotten gold to the robbers rather than to the robbed?

The answer lies in that battleground where international law skirmishes with the careful champions of national sovereignty and where – amidst the standards and smoke of corrupt political operators and zealous NGOs – the welfare of the many now trembles before, now tramples upon the righteous shields of the privileged few.

When Mobutu fell in 1997, and rumours of his massive theft solidified into truths overnight, banks offshore and in Switzerland were placed under a great deal of pressure to locate and seize his hidden fortunes. Despite Mobutu’s sophisticated attempts to disguise his funds using such shadowy vehicles as Hungarian shell companies directed by French principals, Swiss banks were eventually able to identify several million francs that could be traced to Mobutu.  These funds were immediately frozen until criminal charges could be filed against the dictator in the DRC or until a Congolese court ordered that the funds be turned over to the people from whom they were stolen.

More than eleven years and many extensions of the freezing order later, no charges have been filed in the DRC, and no Congolese court has passed any sort of judgment against Mobutu.  The Federal Criminal Court of the Swiss Federation, in a decision dated July 14, 2009, thus had no choice but to declare that the Swiss banks could no longer legally hold on to Mobutu’s funds under the Swiss statute of limitations.  Since the dictator passed away shortly after his ouster in 1997, the Court ordered that the money be returned to Mobutu’s family.

Now, before we go attacking Swiss courts for releasing tainted money into criminal hands, it’s important to remember the essential role that statutes of limitations play in protecting individuals’ rights to due process.  Essentially, the banks had been holding onto Mobutu’s money for 10 years without any finding of wrongdoing by a court of law.  Clearly, if the case involved anyone else, we would have been excoriating them for not ordering the release sooner.  It seems like the confiscation of 7 million dollars requires at least a trial, if not a fair one.

Mobutu’s case, however, involves a highly connected political family able to completely obstruct any Congolese effort to recover the funds.  And therein lies the true problem.

Swiss courts have been extremely innovative in returning funds secreted away by deposed dictators to their rightful owners where political resistance or corruption in the victimized state might otherwise prevent recovery.  In the case of Ferdinand Marcos, restitution proceedings took almost 17 years but Swiss courts permitted the freeze to continue because the government of the Philippines was actively pressing its case.  In the case of deposed Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, Swiss courts ordered the partial release of funds to Nigeria before criminal charges had been proven, and accepted a settlement between Abacha’s family and the Nigerian authorities for the monitored release of the remainder.  In a monumental decision of February 2009, the Swiss goverment ordered that $6 million be paid to Haitian NGOs from the frozen bank accounts of former dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier.  In that case, even though criminal charges were never proven in  Haiti, the Swiss Federal Criminal Tribunal found that there was sufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Duvalier family that the burden of proof was reversed – unless the family could prove that they were innocent, the money would be returned to Haiti.

In Mobutu’s case, however, the political influence of his family is apparently so great that it has been able to block even the feeblest attempts by the DRC to recover the funds from the Swiss.  Besides the deep and extensive network that the family has been able to cultivate in the Congo, Mobutu’s son Nzanga is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture.

As stark evidence of this, despite repeated requests by the Swiss government for intervention of the Congolese authorities, it was finally a Swiss university professor, acting under the rubric of a “citizen’s appeal”, who initiated July’s last-ditch effort to keep the funds from being returned to Nzanga & Co.  He attempted to do what had been accomplished in the Duvalier case: convince the court that Mobutu family had been operating as a criminal network, thereby both keeping the action alive (criminal charges are not subject to statutes of limitations) and forcing the Mobutu family to prove that they had obtained the funds legitimately.  Ultimately, without even a shred of support from the DRC, the action failed.

Largely in response to the Mobutu case, the Swiss Federal Commission has tasked the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs with formulating a new law that will allow Swiss courts to essentially circumvent national courts of “failed states” to return stolen funds to the victims of corruption.

Expanding on the “Gutzwiller Postulat” adopted by Swiss Parliament in June 2007, the legislation will have to deal with such delicate issues as what qualifies as a “failed state”; what inferences the court can make when there are problems collecting evidence that wrongdoing took place; which law should be applied to the offending acts (Swiss, national, or some cobbling-together of international law); and where the funds are to be sent when the victimized nation refuses to accept payment.

Switzerland must venture carefully lest it tread on the national sovereignty of countries with accounts in its banks. Imagine, for instance, a Swiss court froze the bank accounts of West Virginia Justice Brent Benjamin for accepting political donations from one of the parties to Caperton v. Massey Energy, a case that he was adjudicating, even though such conduct was legal in the US.  Obviously this would not happen – say what you will, the US is hardly a “failed state” – but it highlights the danger of legal paternalism masquerading as justice.  And there are many countries that, while economically or militarily powerful, are, when it comes to their court systems, pretty close to failures. Just ask the family of former Supreme Court Justice Aza Gazgireyeva.

But these are treacherous waters, and are best left to be navigated by politically elected and accountable leaders.

As for the Mobutu saga, Kinshasa is apparently carefully considering whether to appeal.  But after almost 12 years of inaction, it seems doubtful the DRC will finally weigh in now. Particularly because, as Information Minister Lambert Mende has indicated, “certain circumstances” would make any challenge “difficult.”

Trying to violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but those pesky courts keep getting in the way?  Don’t despair! A recent decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court has set out an easy to follow blueprint that even the beginner bigot can understand:

Step 1: Organize a parent company based in some neutral foreign country like Switzerland.

Step 2: Obtain a contract to perform a government activity like, say, running a school, providing police or security services, or organizing an international sporting event.

Step 3: Create a Canadian subsidiary that will actually perform the contract.

Step 4: Make sure that under the agreement between the foreign parent and the Canadian subsidiary, the foreign parent calls all the shots and the Canadian subsidiary only carries out orders.

Step 5: So long as the foreign parent commands it, your Canadian subsidiary can now engage in blatant discrimination based on such categories as race, sex, ethnicity and age, and the Canadian justice system will be powerless to stop it.

This apparently was the reasoning followed by Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon in Sagen v. Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.  Fifteen elite women ski jumpers sought a declaration that VANOC was discriminating against women by organizing a men’s ski jumping event but refusing to hold a parallel women’s event.  The International Olympic Committee in Switzerland (IOC) requires that sports meet certain universality requirements in order to qualify as Olympic events, such as the number of countries where the sport is practiced and the number of medalled international competitions held each year.  Neither men’s nor women’s ski-jumping meet these requirements, but men’s ski-jumping continues to be an event because it was grandfathered into the Games as a “traditional” sport.

Many of the women ski jumpers have competed against – and beaten – their male counterparts in co-ed international competitions.  But while these same male skiers may now compete as Olympians, the women jumpers who defeated them have been left out in the cold.

Justice Fenlon found that organizing the Olympics qualifies as a government activity, and that therefore VANOC is, in theory, required to abide by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  She also found that holding a men’s ski jumping event without also holding a women’s event, solely because men’s ski-jumping is a “tradition” and women’s is not, constitutes substantive sexual discrimination under the Charter.  However, in a grotesque twist of legal logic, Fenlon then decided that VANOC is not in breach of the Charter because it does not have the power to add women’s ski jumping to the roster; it only has the power, contractually, to organize the events that the IOC tells it to organize.  The IOC made the decision not to hold a women’s ski-jumping event, so the IOC was in violation of the Charter, not VANOC.  Since the IOC is located in Switzerland, it is not subject to the Canadian Charter.

The court has thus advanced the ludicrous hypothesis that an organization performing government activities in Canada may discriminate against Canadians so long as the decision to discriminate was made abroad and the entity in Canada is only seen as “implementing” the foreign decision.  Say, for example, a Canadian subsidiary obtains a garbage collection contract in downtown Toronto.  All management decisions are, however, made by its US parent.  The US parent company instructs the Canadian subsidiary that it is only allowed to pick up trash from white males, leaving everyone else deprived of the service. Is this discrimination? Certainly. Should it matter for Charter purposes that the source of the decision was in the US rather than Canada? Of course not.

What counts is that there is an entity actually carrying out discriminatory activity within Canada. And although the courts may not be able to compel such entity to offer a benefit to everyone, they can instead prevent it from offering it to anyone at all – thus eliminating the discrimination.

So, while Fenlon obviously could not force VANOC to organize an event without the permission of the IOC, Fenlon could have told VANOC: you are not allowed to organize a men’s ski-jump event unless you are also organizing a women’s ski-jump event. If you can’t provide an opportunity to women, you can’t provide one to men either.

Similarly, in the above analogy: you can’t pick and choose whose trash you are going to take.  Either you collect from everyone, or we won’t let you collect at all.

Photo: Douglas C. Pizac/The Associated Press.

PM Putinevsky, ca. 1250

Oh ho this is so typically Russian. Faced with widescale factory layoffs, the residents of Pikalevo have been protesting, blocking a federal highway for 6 hours and attracting the attention of the capital. Putin rides into town, forces the kulak speculators to re-open the factory and saves the day – when he has been a part of (indeed, responsible for) this mess all along. Deripaska I’m sure is more than happy to be scapegoated, so long as it keeps him in the government’s good graces (and pocket).  Will be interesting to see, though, whether the protests start to happen on a large scale; running one factory on a loss is one thing, but can this really be sustained across all of Russia? It’s a good thing for Putin not all industrial towns are on major federal highways…

The populace’s belief that somehow Putin could be ignorant of or at least not involved in the corruption and economic mismanagement that have been rampant since 1993 does not surprise me either, given the history of Russian king-worship. The revolution did not rid Russia of its Holy Tsar nonsense – or if it did the relief was only temporary – by 1930 the Cult of Personality was definitely back in full swing.

Interesting anecdote (among many, I am sure): the first targets of Stalin’s 1930s purges were the old guard bolsheviks, as they were the greatest threat to his legitimacy. Letters and diaries have been uncovered from these unfortunates whichindicate that – often right up until the end – they believed that Stalin played no part in their arrests. In their minds, the purges must have been the work of corrupt or over-zealous secret police, or they were victims of some petty political intrigue, or there was some administrative error – something, anything but the stark truth that their great leader was behind it all. The most poignant example of this delusion: letters to Stalin from the very victims of his wrath, informing him of the injustice being carried out in his name.

Oh, and I would discuss the obvious legal issues here but I don’t see the point. This is Russia, after all.

Justice for Omagh, of a sort. Photograph: Peter Morrison/AP

Last month, the North Ireland High Court in Belfast passed down a judgment in civil court ordering four members of the Real IRA to pay £1.6 million in damages to relatives of the victims of the 1998 Omagh bombing.    It may come as no surprise to those familiar with the Kobe Bryant and OJ Simpson cases that despite the liability of the four defendants in civil court, however, more than 10 years after the bombing only one has been convicted on criminal charges, and his conviction has been overturned pending appeal.  Indeed, as the Economist reported,  the defendants in the Omagh civil suit unsuccessfully tried to convert the case into criminal proceedings, presumably so that they could again avoid punishment.

Courts require a much higher standard of proof to render a conviction in a criminal trial than to award damages in a civil suit. A civil suit is a private dispute between two parties. All that is at issue is whether one wrongfully harmed the other, or whether the other had a right to act as he did and responsibility for the harm lies elsewhere. Civil proceedings are essentially a contest between the two opponents; each claiming that they were right and the other wrong. In order to prevail, the party with the burden of proof need only convince the court that he is more right, on a preponderance of the evidence, than his adversary (if justice could be analogized to mathematics, the probability that the prevailing party’s argument is correct must be 50% +1).

Criminal proceedings are vastly different. While a civil suit involves two individual and equal opponents, each asserting and making accusations against the other, in a criminal trial the accused stands alone with all society rallied against him, manifested in the body of the public prosecutor.  The trial is not concerned with the harm to the victim, or even the harm to society; only the guilt of the accused matters. Whereas civil damages aim only to compensate the victim for the intrusion into her rights, and are thus concerned only with the effects of the perpetrators actions, criminal proceedings judge the actions themselves.   A conviction is a declaration that the criminal has committed a fundamental wrong, and must be punished, chastised, broken. To avoid abuses of power and to maintain the legitimacy of punishment, this coercive power of the state thus can only be exerted where the guilt of the accused has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

In cases such as the Omagh bombing, where a criminal conviction is nearly impossible to obtain due to the unreliability or scarcity of evidence, victims may still be vindicated through the civil courts. But this vindication is personal to the individual victims.  It does not prove that the perpetrators have committed any crime against society, nor does it inflict punishment upon them. Justice – in the broader sense of maintaining the integrity of our legal and social order – has not been served.

Some jurisdictions have, however, permitted the awarding of “punitive” or “exemplary” damages. These are damages that a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit can collect over and above the amount necessary to compensate them for the harm they have actually suffered.  The purpose of punitive damages is, as the name suggests, not to restore the victim to his original condition, but to punish the perpetrator for his misbehavior.  The exorbitant amount of punitive damages (often ten times the amount of the harm inflicted) also acts as a deterrent for potential future wrongdoers, while the potential for a windfall recovery encourages plaintiffs to sue early and sue often.

Most importantly, since these damages are available as part of a civil action, they may be awarded against a defendant without requiring the plaintiff to meet the high standard of proof that would normally be required to mete out punishment in a criminal action.  Thus, even where the prosecutor’s office has insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction, or where the accused may not technically have committed a defined crime, access to punitive damages will still allow private citizens to exact their pound of flesh in the name of the public good.

Many legal systems see this type of system as nothing better than vigilante justice designed to circumvent the fundamental protections afforded to the accused.  Punitive damages are rarely, if ever, available in civil law countries (including continental Europe and most of the world outside the US and the Commonwealth).  In common law jurisdictions like Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom, punitive damages are available, but only  in certain limited circumstances. As Judge Morgan found last month, the Omagh case was not one of them (plaintiffs, however, announced that they would appeal this aspect of his decision).

In the United States, punitive damages are widely available and often awarded, particularly in cases where plaintiff seeks compensation for activities that could be classified as criminal.  Whatever objections one may have to the notion of punishment in civil actions, such actions have, surprisingly, been particularly effective in combating a certain type of domestic terrorist activity with an unfortunately long history in the United States: violent white-supremacist hate organizations.

Tom Metzger: WAR

A series of civil actions were launched in the 1980s and 1990s in response to attacks on minority groups and individuals carried out by henchmen of such organizations as the White Aryan Resistance and the various affiliates of the Klu Klux Klan.  The heinousness of the acts, the guarantee of racially balanced jury trials and the availability of punitive damages resulted in millions of damages being awarded in each case.  Through another advance in American jurisprudence, the damages became attributable not just to the individual perpetrators of the violence, but the organizations that sponsored them.  As a result of these judgments, a substantial number of violent hate organizations have been bankrupted and thus effectively shut down – a feat the police and government authorities were unable or politically unwilling to achieve.

Richard Butler: Aryan Nations

More recent examples of civil actions being launched against hate groups have produced a result perhaps even more compelling than bankruptcy: humiliation and de-legitimization.  In July 1998, Victoria Keenan and her son John were shot at and run off the road by guards of the Aryan Nations compound in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  They brought a lawsuit against the guards, the Aryan Nations, and its leader Richard Butler, eventually obtaining a $6.3 million award ($5.5 of which was in punitive damages). Unable to pay the award, Butler was forced to sell the 20 acre Aryan Nations  compound to the Keenan family, who then sold the compound to a philanthropist who intended to convert the property to serve the public. In a fitting irony, on the former grounds of the virulently hateful paramilitary church and the annual meeting place of the most violent white supremacist now stands the Human Rights Education Institute.   The Aryan Nations, for its part, was barely able to survive the loss, and it effectively collapsed upon the death of Butler four years later.

Matthew Hale: WCOTC

In 2000, the TE-TA-MA Truth Foundation, a religious group owning the copyright to “Church of the Creator”, launched a civil action against the neo-nazi and white supremacist organization the “World Church of the Creator” alleging trademark infringement for the use of the Foundation’s name.  TE-TE-MA prevailed in 2003, with District Court Judge Lefkow ordering that the WCOTC immediately cease and desist from using COTC in any of its publications or media. Federal authorities immediately seized the bulk of the WCOTC’s printed literature. The order was not only seen as an insult to the WCOTC, it also threatened its financial viability; the WCOTC was dependent on its reputation and its printed publications to propagate its creed. Matt Hale, the cult leader of the WCOTC was outraged. Hale continued to openly defy the judge’s order and secretly ordered his chief of security to assassinate judge Lefkow. His security chief defected to the FBI, however, and Hale was arrested and sentenced to 40 years for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.   After the twin shocks of the copyright order and Hale’s arrest, the WCOTC (renamed the Creativity Movement) has withered to the point of disappearing.