Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 November 13

= November 13 =

Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite methods of warfare and torture
I am interested into the warfare and torture methods of the ancient Middle Eastern military powers such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians and Hittites etc. basically “biblical military forces” if you will so. Is there literature about this subject? PDF documents or anything of the like? I have taken a look at the different wiki sites. While they do mention some of these methods, they do not go into details and while they refer to reliefs, they don’t actually show them (which is understandable, as many of them are rather gruesome).

Thank you for your answers!--2A02:120B:C3E7:E650:18C8:AAB0:523A:9250 (talk) 01:22, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The Assyrians were notorious for using raw naked military force to sustain their empire, without much attempt to hide the iron fist in any kind of velvet glove, so there was fairly universal rejoicing at the fall of Nineveh. I don't know anything about torture specifically, but as it says in the article, "The Assyrians had, by the accounts of their own records, been brutal rulers even by the standards of the time"... AnonMoos (talk) 02:38, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * War chariots were commonly used by those civilizations. Naval warfare was minimal. SinisterLefty (talk) 05:08, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare: p.81, Toward a Reconstruction of the Assyrian Tactical System.
 * The Campaigns of Sargon II, King of Assyria, 721–705 B.C., by Sarah C. Melville.
 * Alansplodge (talk) 16:25, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

securities acts of 1933 and 1934
SEC press release about a federal jury verdict finding these two Ukrainian guys violated section 27B stroke 6 or whatever of the securities acts of 1933 and 1934. It doesn't say anywhere whether it was a civil or criminal trial! It doesn't say what if anything they want to do to these guys now that they have been found liable! Although (I noticed it just now) the word "liable" rather than "guilty" suggests it was a civil trial. Is it intentional obfuscation? Does it reflect the absence of a long arm of the law reaching all the way to Ukraine? People often complain about the SEC settling cases instead of taking financial miscreants all the way to trial. Do they do these inconsequential(?) cases to keep up appearances while ignoring the big and serious domestic ones? Is this case actually something for them to crow about? I'm confused... 67.164.113.165 (talk) 01:41, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The Securities Act of 1933 (section 17 last updated in 2010) provides for enforcement by civil lawsuit in federal court. This is typical with enforcement by regulatory bodies (as opposed to law enforcement bodies). Rather than put you on criminal trial, the government is literally suing you. If it winds up that the defendants have no assets in the United States and refuse to pay, trying to extract that money from beyond US borders would be an entire process on top of this. In terms of consequentialness, I don't know, you'd have to decide yourself. SEC completes around 100 cases of securities fraud a year (out of 500ish cases total), and from my reading of the most recent annual report, the average SEC case involves $6 million in ill-gotten gains. So this one is significantly larger than average, but there are one or more cases of some kind every year in which the defendants are accused of swindling hundreds of millions. If I were to interpret things, I would say that SEC press releases seem to be largely exhaustive, in the interest in informing the public about a huge fraction of its activities. You'll note that URL is meaningful - this is the 236th press release they've put out this year. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:14, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Aha, I think you're saying the SEC is not an LE agency so it doesn't prosecute people. Ok, makes sense.  But there are criminal securities frauds too (Madoff, Enron, etc.) so I guess those get referred to the DOJ?  Are there stats for those too?  Thanks. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 02:37, 13 November 2019 (UTC)  Btw I had the impression that those Ukrainian guys mostly tricked a bunch of high frequency trading bots.  I'd probably want to give them medals for that, but that's why I'm not in this business ;). 67.164.113.165 (talk) 02:40, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Criminal investigations of financial crimes are usually handled (at a federal level) by the FBI in their "White-collar crime" unit, see here for a description of that particular function of the FBI. It's important to note that the SEC usually charges and takes to trial corporations in civil court; despite corporate personhood corporations are not usually defendants in a criminal case; a corporation cannot be put in jail and is only capable of paying financial penalties anyways; and the standards of proof in a civil case make it easier to extract financial penalties using the civil court system anyways.  Individual actual people (those with brains and heartbeats and the like) can be punished with criminal penalties, so it is much more likely for them to be charged criminally.  This document notes two things about that 1) That there is no inherent legal reason why a corporation cannot be charged criminally and 2) that in reality, they often are not, for some of the reasons I note, as well as many other reasons.  -- Jayron 32 12:51, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

this is the stuff that falls squarely into your area of expertise. I'd love to hear your insights on this question. (For those who don't know, John is a securities lawyer). Eliyohub (talk) 05:01, 14 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can only bring civil enforcement actions, which can either be brought as civil actions in federal court or as administrative proceedings before the SEC itself. This was a civil action in a federal court - specifically, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which hears cases in Manhattan, the Bronx, and a few other New York counties.  Following a full trial, a jury has found for the SEC on every count, which means that the defendants were found to have committed both market manipulation and fraud.  The jury verdict did not address remedies.  The judge has ordered the SEC to file any motion for remedies by December 20, with briefing to be concluded by February 7, so we don't know yet exactly what penalties will be exacted.  The defendants seem to have submitted to U.S. jurisdiction, although it remains to be seen how easily the SEC will collect whatever cash penalty may be assessed.
 * Although the SEC does settle most of its cases, it still litigates quite a few of them. This was a fairly typical case to be fully litigated.  There are various reasons why big American companies, especially financial institutions, tend to settle rather than litigate, including the companies' distaste for being put out of business.  The SEC is very powerful, notwithstanding its lack of criminal enforcement authority.  SEC enforcement actions tend to be more transparent than those of other federal agencies, and the issuance of a press release is, as Someguy1221 noted, far from unusual.
 * Criminal cases are brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, which usually coordinates with the SEC. In such cases, typically both criminal and civil cases are brought.  I don't think the DoJ breaks securities criminal cases out separately from other criminal cases, but maybe there is some statistic I just haven't seen.  The majority of SEC enforcement actions do not have associated criminal cases, even though theoretically securities law violations can be prosecuted as crimes.  This may be because it is harder to prove a criminal case than a civil case; because a criminal case is thought to be inappropriate (e.g., when the securities law violation was only negligent); or because the relevant U.S. Attorney's office has different priorities. John M Baker (talk) 16:04, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I remember avoiding discovery as being another reason for companies to want to settle.  That was also a criticism of the SEC, that by settling too easily instead of taking cases to trial, they lost out on gaining actionable knowledge through discovery and trial testimony.  There is also a sense from some quarters that people engaged in financial misconduct don't give a crap about lawsuits and financial penalties since it's all other people's money anyway, so the only thing that can possibly change their behaviour is a serious prospect of going to jail.  Therefore the DOJ (particularly Eric Holder after the 2008 meltdown) has taken heat for declaring some companies TBTF instead of prosecuting the bigwigs.  So I had wondered whether this case was an instance.  67.164.113.165 (talk) 03:38, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Regarding who pays the penalty, this is the reason the SEC attempts to hold individuals accountable to some degree. According to the same report I linked above, the SEC is suing at least one individual instead of or in addition to a company in over 70% of cases. It could be a financial penalty, or it could be some kind of insurance policy to prevent the person who ran a company from somehow making money off the company going out of business from the penalties. In the case of Theranos, for instance, the founder and CEO was prohibited from receiving any profit from the liquidation of the company (stemming from ownership interest) unless and until the defrauded investors were repaid. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:44, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Convenience links for people wanting to read more: Securities and Exchange Commission, Southern District of New York, lawsuit, civil law (common law). To elaborate on what Mr. Baker said, a criminal case under federal law is prosecuted by a U.S. Attorney's office. They're the people who actually file the charges and show up in court for the prosecution. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are frequently involved in investigating potential federal crimes, but they're not lawyers. Similarly, in state crimes, police or state agencies investigate, but a criminal case is prosecuted by the office of a district attorney ("DA") or sometimes that of the state attorney general or a city attorney. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 04:22, 16 November 2019 (UTC)