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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

I think that because the UK speaks english, they’ve come to believe they somehow have similar levels of extraterritorial power as the US. Just a general symptom of way too many people consuming US media/political content.

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That hyperbole is about the scale of the US military budget. The UK is nowhere close to the US in terms of its belief in "extraterritorial power". You are taking one instance and wildly just making things up

Doing business in the US is existential for most multinationals, so they do have extraterritorial reach - hence the US taxation system, US banking regulatory system, WTO, etc. Not so for the UK, especially post-brexit.

The difference, of course, is that the US actually has extraterritorial power. The idea that you would compare the UK's perception of their power to the US's perception of its power seems to be the kind of mistake the person you're replying to is referring to.

Standing next the the US when it does things (or rather to the left and two steps behind the US) is not being like the US.

https://youtu.be/lJatJ-Hi2_s?t=66

more recent: https://youtu.be/Hyn_VHtSU48?t=35

The extraterritorial power of the US has no legal basis on the jurisdictions it's exerted.

What legal basis do you think it could possibly have? There is no world government telling countries what they can and cannot do to each other.

There are treaties and international conventions, as well as the ICC and other supranational bodies that prosecute abuses by nation states and individuals responsible for the actions.

But, largely, that was my point - it's entirely illegal, and a "might makes right" situation.

They probably made the mistake of assuming they had a reciprocal relationship.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-visa-polic...

there is no ‘right to enter America’ and fwiw i seem to recall that the UK has a bad habit of banning American musicians for the content of their songs.

Like the US's bad habit of banning British musicians for the content of their songs? https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/30/uk/bob-vylan-uk-band-glas...

seems like a reciprocal relationship to me. i'd also say the recent US stances are an aberration whereas the history of UK immigration policy is a better reflection of core governing principles.

>recent

>aberration

McCarthyism would like a word

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Limelight_and_...

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