h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

..if it can just be rescinded?

Quite.

What's the general feeling there? From here your present government looks even more toady than Tonys.

I gather that, in serious cases, tit-for-tat rescindments are on the cards. I would be wary right now if I worked at the British embassy in Quito.

Agreed, it seems odd

I hadn't heard of the Act that allowed us to do it - I'd assumed the Venice Accords were still in force - surely revoking an embassy's diplomatic status would have far wider consequences than not going after Assange - suddenly every country would consider they had the right to do the same to us

Regardless of whether we repeal the embassy's diplomatic grounds we'd still be within our rights to arrest Assange on his way to the airport - He'd have to make it to Ecuador to use his asylum - he isn't even in ecuador territory atm, he's just in an embassy, which (before now) requires the country's permission to allow a UK citizen inside

Surely not worth it

That would be the Vienna accords of course, not the Venice accords

He'll be OK so long as he's being transported in a diplomatic bag.

Hasn't that failed before, in similar circumstances in Britain - back in a minute

Hmm, apparently it actually failed before in Britain because it was noticed, and since it hadn't got all the proper all the diplomatic stamps et al it was opened

Under the most recent judgement of the accords there seems some dispute over how to see whats inside a diplomatic bag (crate etc)

It can't be opened or detained - however some say you can use metal detectors/dogs etc etc

Our Foreign minister says he agrees, and yet doesn't use them and argues against the use of them...politics

I understand the law was changed after someone inside the Libyan Embassy shot WPC Yvonne Fletcher. As the law stood, we had to watch powerless as the murderer smirked his way onto a plane and out of the country. Of course, civilised countries had always waived their right to diplomatic immunity when their staff committed serious crimes.

Having said that, I can't see that Assange is worth the bother. Britain doesn't stand to benefit in any way and we need all the S American friends we can get right now with the harpy in Argentina turning up the rhetoric on the Falklands the way she is.

I suspect Britain's hand is being forced by the EU. Assange is wanted on a European Arrest Warrant and I wouldn't be surprised if EU procedures take precedence.

The law that has been written in pertains only to the actual diplomatic territory (the building and grounds and such) - the diplomat, staff and family still would hold their immunity
The law was apparently only put in for two reasons - so if a country started using the embassy as a cover for something illegal and if the country changed government so we could seize it back (say if Afghanistan's government changed to an extreme fundamentalist government)

The EU law does have precedence over ours - hence why we're being so obligated to arrest him, but it doesn't take precedence over international law - therefore we have the interesting discussion

The EAWs can be immensely annoying at times, but I thought Assange's was justified, its just being more of a pain than i'd thought

In response to Post #1, the subject line, 'what does
diplomatic immunity mean?', I feel obliged to mention
that the first occasion of such open-minded and progressive
attitudes was introduced by Genghis Khan.

Yes, the great evil barbarian himself called together
the representatives of the whirleds he had conquered
to discuss peace, free trade and the establishment of
discourse between all the cultures of the Eur-Asian
continent. Christians, Buddhists, Europeans, Arabs,
Jews, Greeks, Koreans, Chinese, Turks, Hindus, Africans.
They met at his home base in Mongolia.

He had conquered the known whirled and called together
representatives of all the nations and religions he had
encountered to establish the Silk Road with commerce and
cultural exchange passing freely across all the lands
between the China Sea and the Mediterranean.

Unhappily, it also proved a conduit for the Black Plague
and the resulting bad press reduced his image as a forward
thinking whirled diplomat to that of a scourge. His efforts
however were not for naught and the idea of enemies sitting
down to talk about positive benefits of cooperation and
non-violent interaction kept resurfacing until the present
happy circumstances where an exemplar of free speech can be
spirited away from a legal embassy in one country and deported
to another where he can legally be extradited to yet another
to face capital charges of treason.


~jwf~

I suspect more pressure is coming from the US rather than the EU.

Anyone have a clue what Sweden's extradition treaty (if any) is like with the US? I seriously hope its better than the US-UK one

Well this may be an unpopular view but I don't really have any sympathy for Assange. The man is clearly some sort of pathological idiot.

What did he think was going to happen when he started releasing secret CIA documents all over the interweb? And would *any* government tolerate that sort of thing. I rather doubt it.

I also wonder how Ecuador has suddenly become some sort of paragon of virtue? Anyone want to guess on their past record on having a 'tradition of protecting those who are vulnerable'?
http://www.hrw.org/americas/ecuador


Basically I lost all sympathy for the guy when he and his wikileaks mob decided that publishing the names and addresses of Afghans collaborating with western forces was in anyones interest. He yeah man, that's really moral isn't it?

I personally doubt his motives and I certainly doubt his sanity.

I have mixed feelings about Assange.

On the negative side, he released some pretty sensitive documents and caused setbacks for diplomacy in many cases.

On the plus side, he made public some Scientology documents that revealed how much of a priority they set on getting as much money as they can get from their adherents. It appears that people who aren't very wealthy cannot hope to rise very high in the ranks of that organization.

The documents released turned out not to do so much damage, either to US security, or even that much to diplomacy (I believe the US DOD admitted that it hadn't been responsible for 1 fatlity)

What i take exception to are the Swedish women? What about them - imagine the uproar if there was no Wikileaks - if the headline ran "Ecuador protecting accused rapist from extradition to trial"

And saying they can't trust Sweden to look after Assange's human rights - if Sweden can't be trusted than where do they want him to go?

Regardless of any extraditional treaty and his own trial in Sweden, they will make their own tests to see whether he can safely be taken to the USA, if the US does ask for his extradition

Is it just me, or is anyone else replaying the end of Lethal Weapon 2 in their head?

B

Is it just me or does he look like that Brevick guy.
Not that I judge a book by its cover.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/07/23/norway-notes/related-or-not/


~jwf~