Slashdot Mirror
Ecuador Wanted To Make Julian Assange a Diplomat and Send Him To Moscow (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, Ecuador attempted to deputize WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as one of its own diplomats and send him to Russia, according to a Friday report by Reuters. Citing an "Ecuadorian government document," which the news agency did not publish, Assange apparently was briefly granted a "special designation" to act as one of its diplomats, a privilege normally granted to the president for political allies. However, that status was then withdrawn when the United Kingdom objected. The Associated Press reported earlier in the week that newly-leaked documents showed that Assange sought a Russian visa back in 2010. WikiLeaks has vehemently denied that Assange did so.
There is such an active, concerted disinformation campaign surrounding Assange and other government leakers, it's impossible to tell where the lies end and the truth begins. Could be true. Could be yet another smear. Anyone who thinks they know for sure hasn't been paying much attention.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Immunity only applies if the other nation grants it, and usually when a diplomat is involved in a crime (especially Espionage) they will have their status revoked, their Visa cancelled, and at the very least get kicked out of the country.
Or presidents named Clinton
probably just trying to figure out how to get something out of all the money he was costing them. Sometimes you just follow the money.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Expelled diplomats are no longer welcome on the soil of the nation that hosts their embassy. While they can stay in the embassy, they can't leave the embassy without the threat of deportation. In those circumstances, especially since expelling diplomats is usually a public show of national annoyance, the diplomats simply leave of their own accord. Often quite rapidly. The time granted to leave varies, but it can be very short. During that time the expelled diplomats can leave unabaited and unhindered. I imagine that if there's some reason why they didn't meet their deadline but are leaving pretty soon after then they'd face little consequence, but this is not something that can be generalized. There have been times when diplomats have refused to leave, then things get a lot more complicated. It's not unheard of for an embassy to be surrounded by police / military and bar the entry of all staff until the expelled diplomat has been removed. This is not something that happens all too often since this kind of behaviour between national representitives is basically war. After all: it's hard to do you job as a diplomat when your host nation won't send anyone to talk to you, even harder when you're boxed in under threat of violence. That's just bad for the payroll. If the situation is so bad between your embassy and the host nation then it's not going to be too long before that embassy is no longer recognized as legitimate by the host and you'll just get dragged out by force. Again: not good for the payroll. Diplomats overstaying their welcome is very unusual.
The diplomats themselves are often assigned on near permanent basis and spend years in their host nations. It's never good when diplomats get expelled. It's much more than a sign of tension between two nations, those people are actually performing important work in smoothing relations between nations. The expulsion of diplomats is typically responded to with other diplomats being expelled, making political relationships even harder to repair on both sides. Diplomatic expulsion is more than just a sign of tension, it's a whole step forward in the escalation of tension on the national level, and the diplomats themselves are usually caught in the middle... as long as it's not them themselves that have caused whatever incident is being escalated of course.
When all is said and done the diplomats careers often end when they're expelled. If tensions are short lived then it's a waste of resources to expel them in the first place since the inevitable quid pro quo will also rob you, the expelling nation, of your own resources in the other nation. This is why it's not something that happens lightly. As long as they're not bona fide spies (which they're mostly not) then those are the people who you really want to have back in the embassy when the incident has passed... but the fact that they've been expelled means that they're basically guaranteed to never be welcome again.
Wasn't he accused of having sex without a condom after having sex with a condom?
That may legally be rape in some countries, but I wouldn't put it in the same boat as forcible non-consensual sex or sex with a party who cannot consent.
I still think he's a narcissistic asshole, but I don't want to lose sight of facts/reality.
Pretty sure rolling over in the morning and having unprotected sex with a sleeping person that did not want to have unprotected sex with you earlier can be rape, unless you're married, basically in any country with marriage laws... Otherwise, what's the logic, you sinned once, so you deserve it?
You are confusing the USA with Russia, they're the ones with the poisonous assassins. The USA would just turn him over to Fox for a bit of light-hearted torture. A few days watching that would turn him into silly-putty.
OH LoRd What Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda happened...
They could just invite the UK police in to arrest him.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Seems to me I recall Julian Assange publicly trying to use the threat of the disclosure of something Wikileaks had allegedly been given, as a tool to try to escape his current legal predicament(s) when it/they started, years ago. The fact that he'd use information as a tool like that, while pretending that Wikileaks never sits on anything, and publishes whatever they have and believe to be credible, made me think he was just a tool, to put it bluntly. Nothing I've seen or heard from him since has in any way changed my opinion of him, or the organization he 'leads'. The very fact that he had, allegedly, again, information he COULD publish, (presumably it means they vetted it and determined it was credible,) damaging to those trying to extradite and/or prosecute him, and he held it back as a shield, flies in the face of claims made of being journalists.
Journalists, REAL journalists, protect sources, and publish information for the good of the readers, etc., not timed or calibrated for their own maximum personal benefit. Even if the charges against him are totally fake and politically motivated, there's no moral difference between that and a doctor taking a patient hostage. Journalists should have to swear the Hippocratic Oath too, specifically, first to do no harm to their readers/listeners/viewers, and then never deliberately, knowingly, or intentionally to deceive them, nor to be used by anyone else negligently to do so. (Obviously, if a journo is reporting on a pol who IS ALSO a reader, the good of the many SHOULD win out, and as long as the truth is being told, the reader who is the malefactor is exempt from the reporter's proscription against doing harm to that specific person or group.) Obviously the highest call is to the truth, even when it's a hard truth, but just in terms of ethics... yeah.
Perhaps I was misinformed on this point, or I'm confusing Assange with some OTHER news guy being accused of rape or whatever... but I believe my recollection is intact in this case, and if it is, that's a real douchebag kinda move to pull, and NOT what any person describing himself (or herself) as a journalist should be doing.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Then hold up his papers and yell "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!" before getting a bullet in the brainpan?
https://youtu.be/kwC_IaY3BmY
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Who are you going to believe?
The people who released him initially - before the USA went on a fishing expedition to find a way to get him to the USA no matter what.
PS: An Interpol arrest warrant issued for a crime committed in a single country? That's corruption at the highest level.
No sig today...
I will believe the books that Mark Judge wrote about his buddy "Bart O'Kavanaugh".
Or they could persuade McAssange to stick his head down a loaded cannon. Worked for Blackadder.
Because the Russian asset wants to go collect his reward from his masters and live in a country that has no extradition to the U.S.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
So...woman who lied about date and time...twice, had to be re-immunized...twice, spent 10 years following Clinton everywhere to be photographed with him at least 30 times....was paid by the Sciafe Foundation for her time....get it?
As much as I "admire" your transparent attempt at concern trolling.
Bluntly, you're projecting. If you knew you were on the shit list of every Western intelligence agency for exposing their dirty laundry - and on the snatch-and-grab list of every other intelligence agency to find out what you might know - are there any steps you would not take or bluffs you would not make to protect your ass?
Didn't think so.
If Assange was interested in his "personal benefit", there's no shortage of intelligence agencies he could have sold Manning's leaks to, among others. He didn't.
Some other guy who's had an Interpol warrant issued for a requested STD test? Some other guy who's offered to return to Sweden for questioning if they aren't using the allegations as a pretext to hand him over to the United States, only to have those offers ignored?
Do you lick the boots of the deep state black, or do you take them with a bit of sugar?
You do realize "equal opportunity leaker" is a contradiction in terms, yes? Wikileaks is dependent on the information that is leaked to them. If you want them to publish something, stop chugging hatorade supplied by the deep state long enough to leak something to them, or hack somebody so you have said something.
Which they were, indisputably. If Hillary Clinton were anyone else - say Kristian Saucier - she'd be serving a decade for obstruction of justice (destroying evidence while under subpoena) on top of decades in prison for mishandling classified information.
Not only did Hillary collude to win her own primary, she was outright running the DNC after she bought them out. That's just as factual as the Snowden leaks or the Pentagon Papers - bootlicker.
Sleeping? Protected or not, that's just plain rape.