Right, and the problem there was nationalism rather than socialism, and the Nazis weren't particularly socialist anyway. The US has far more nationalism nowadays and that's a major part the problem.
Just as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) also known more commonly as North Korea isn't actually democratic. By your logic we could point out how democracy is flawed because North Korea has it in it's full name and is guilty of many atrocities, but obviously that makes no sense. What a country has in it's name, and what it actually practices are two completely distinct things.
Socialism and capitalism aren't mutually exclusive. As for whether socialism works, well, I'd say Germany is a good example that it does, but the EU in general is mostly socialist and economically larger than the US whilst having lower average levels of crime, better measures of personal happiness, higher levels of adult numeracy and literacy, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates, greater political respect globally, and so forth.
Unless of course you're doing as many right-wing Americans do and confusing socialism with communism as is often the case with the American right in which case you're correct, communism has never really been shown to work.
I don't think anyone whether from America or not complaining about US style-capitalism is suggesting a massive lurch from the fairly far right to the complete opposite on the far left that is communism, they're probably just saying that America has taken capitalism a little too far to the point that it's detrimental not just to the country, but to it's citizens as well, and that a healthy injection of socialism as countries like those in Europe have would probably improve things.
Certainly the answer for America is absolutely not to lurch even more to the right, because at that point it's really entering the realm of fascism. I know the left-right scale is fairly imperfect, but it does illustrate the relative position of these ideologies quite well. Effectively from left to right you have Communism, then Socialism, then Capitalism, then Fascism. A healthy balance of the middle two is best, too far into either one is unhealthy and moving into communism or fascism is just catastrophic. This isn't to say European nations always get it right, far from it - Greece went too far with it's socialism for example relative to the amount of money it had available as a nation, much as America has gone too far with it's capitalism to the detriment of many of it's citizens being left unable too meaningfully contribute to and participate enjoyably in society.
The thing is, when put objectively, the vast majority of Americans even seem to agree that capitalism has pushed inequality in the US much too far, and would actually prefer a more socialist society:
"Some people do have iPhones and iPads. Some people drive expensive cars. A lot of people drive Hondas and Toyotas and get Android phones with dual core 1 GB ram for $1 with a $100 gift card back on 2 year contract."
Well put, a lot of the arguments I see from Apple fanboys is that "Most people seem to think the iPhone is the best", or "Apple obviously does X right because the majority of people have iPhones".
The whole argument is based on fantasy, Apple's global smartphone marketshare is 17%, their phone marketshare (including non-smartphones) is about 2%. The idea that Apple has any kind of majority backing their product is completely and utterly false. The same goes for Apple computers too - the fact is, the real fact is, that the vast majority of people don't choose Apple, they choose Android, they choose Windows, so the idea that Apple's way is the right way based on some kind of consensus simply isn't true. The only place it holds true is tablets, but even that early lead advantage is slipping away quarter on quarter now that there are decent alternatives out there.
The reality is that most people aren't interested in fancy stuff like you say, some are sure, but most just want a product that gets the job done and doesn't cost an extortionate amount regardless of what fucking shape or colour it is, or how much they can brag they spent on it.
Sure, sorry, I wasn't clear - what I meant when I suggested you can't do it continuously is that you can't do 16hr days 5 days a week and not burn out, my intention was to suggest that you can do 16hr days, but only so long as you do maybe 1, 2, maybe 3 of them at most and then get time off to compensate and ensure you still only do your 40hr week.
Anything more than a 40hr week and IMO for most people you see a drastic reduction in productivity and it helps no one - the employee doesn't get any more done, and the employee gets less free time and time to spend with their family and so are less happy.
Honestly, I think for me I'm most productive at around a 35hr week. Doing that I'm happy, get plenty more done in a shorter time, and both me and the employer win, but it's rare in the UK to see this kind of working week, even though it's fairly common on the continent.
I've done more than my fair share of 45hr weeks and they're really just pointless as anything other than a rare event once every now and then. People need things like sunshine, friends, family, or even just time playing games or whatever they like to do, and if they're cooped up in the office for even 9 hour days they'll be wasting their time, and their employer's tmie. Again, you only have to look at some European countries who have a much shorter working week than the UK, but are much more productive to see evidence of this.
If you've worked 36 hour shifts that really is too much. I find I can do 16 hours even two days running without any particular increase in errors, but anything more than that and it deteriorates real fast. Note that if I'm doing this I always do this as working from home days, as cutting out the commute not only saves me 2 hours of my day, but does leave me much less tired to start with, not to mention I'm more productive in my own environment anyway with no one hassling me.
"I'm not sure on the timeline, but I didn't think that Julian was a criminal at the time Ecuador initially extended the offer for asylum."
Of course not as he's not even been charged.
The only thing that makes him a criminal now is breaching the UK's bail conditions when he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, but that's it. He's certainly not been found guilty, let alone charged of breaking any other laws surrounding this whol situation.
Absolutely, a 16hr coding day can be productive, but you better be damn sure the coder has the day off afterwards, and possibly even beforehand.
I've done a few stints like this near crunch time where I've maybe done a 12hr day followed by 2 16hr days, but then I've fully made sure I get the following 2 working days off to give a 4 day weekend or whatever.
Effectively you can frontload (or backload) work like this with 16hr days, but what you can't do is make it a permanent thing and expect a permanent productivity boost - on the contrary, you'll see completely the opposite.
I don't think so, the US is fairly different to many other entities, the US was founded on violence and (at the time, perfectly justified) paranoia of the state.
If you compare this to other British colonies, that gained independence more peacefully over time, you find a completely different attitude. Nations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand - their states are a lot less paranoid about national government, and they're far less protective over the idea that everyone and his dog should have a gun etc.
I think on one hand the early Americans were justified in having a revolution, but on the other, it meant that their nation was created in anger, and hence built on less than ideal foundations, whilst again, countries like Canada, New Zealand etc., had the benefit of building their nations in less haste, and hence were able to do so more objectively, more sensibly, and with less tension and conflict.
It's a pattern born out across a number of territories the British empire (and other empires for that matter) was forced to give up through violence, rather than gave up willingly as the empire waned. The problem with violence is that the strongest get to decide what's next, and they're not necessarily the smartest - coupled with other factors, such as the need to get some kind of statehood in place ASAP to prevent any attempts to re-capture a colony means there is little time to make sure things are done right. Again however, as I say, the sad thing is, sometimes violence is the only option (i.e. Libya), I just don't hold much hope for the future health of their nation as a result, though one might argue it's still at least far better than it was, which is something at least. I suspect Tunisia and Egypt's revolutions that were somewhat less violent with little or no threat of a return of the old power allowing them to take their time, will actually allow them to flourish into much stronger nations in the long run however.
I agree with you, and this is why the massive push in the UK for reform of the ECHR and a referendum on the EU scares the shit out of me. The idea of a modern British government with unchecked power is disturbing.
The problem is born out by the sorts of things the Tories talk about repatriating like the working time directive which prevents EU citizens having to work more than 48hrs a week if they don't want to whilst giving them the opt-out if they do. Why get rid of that? we already work longer hours than the rest of Europe despite being less productive than those like France and Germany who work less so what is it meant to achieve? Why are the Europhobes so focussed on the laws that fuck the average joe over rather than the real actual problem laws like the EAW that apparently forgot to make sure you can only extradite someone on actual solid charges rather than for simple questioning.
Honestly, the EU and ECHR are the only things preventing the UK looking even more like America, and the level of pressure to pull out of them is scary as fuck. If it happens I suspect the UK will see serious brain drain, which has the danger of descending even further towards the far right in a pit of ignorance.
Even people like David Cameron know it, hence why despite all the anti-EU rhetoric, he's thus far resisted his own parties calls for a referendum. The problem is politicians use the EU as a focal point to rally the ignorant and xenophobic masses to their cause, only now, they've used this tactic so much and so often, that said masses actually want action on it, which was never really the politicians plan when all they wanted was a populist rally point against which they never originally truly intended to act.
Of course, Murdoch has a lot to answer for, his press has largely driven this shit too as it benefits him massively if the UK becomes even more ignorant, even more far right, and even more pro-US and less pro-EU, as much of the rest of the EU is sane enough to defy Murdoch's advances into their markets.
There's no doubt the EU and ECHR are effective checks and balances that lead to sensible moderation and protect the average joe. If I've learnt anything over the years it's that unchecked power (that our FPTP) system is never good, and divided power whilst imperfect, is always better, as it forces compromise, and prevents extremist views ever getting anywhere. This is why Canada was doing so well until Harper got a majority, it's why Germany is so succesful. Sure our current coalition is far from perfect, but it's been better than a Tory majority would've been for example, where they wanted tuition fees of £12k instead of £9k, and where the 50% tax level would've gone long before now, the changes to the NHS would've been far more damaging and brutal, etc.
What a complete failure to engage in even basic thinking. Ignoring the fact the ECHR and ICC have nothing whatsoever to do with the UN, were created in 1953 and 1998 respectively and so were closer to the Korean and Yugoslav wars than World War II, despite that being a major factor for the ECHR, you seem to have completely glossed over the fact I clearly pointed out that the power of these courts is limited to human rights abuses.
So unless there is a belief that the "losers" were any more likely to commit additional human rights abuses than the "winners", then your conspiracy theory makes no sense, which is often the case for conspiracy theories in general.
If you think that the abuses that led to the creation of these entities weren't deemed appalling at the time, and that that is because you also believe that no organisation can exist purely for altruistic purposes then it must be a really really sad world you live in. You probably think you're a realist, but you're not, a realist would recognise that enough people find things like the holocaust and the Srebrenica massacre shocking enough that something should genuinely be done to limit the impact of this sort of thing ever happening again.
Do you know why the ICC and for Europe, the European Court of Human Rights were created?
They were created because of the lessons of World War II, the realisation that citizens can't always count on their state to protect them. The recognition that sometimes citizens of a country need to be able to go to a third party to secure justice against the most appalling of crimes. It stemmed from the fact it was clear that groups such as the Jews in Germany in World War II couldn't count on their state to protect them - on the contrary, it was out to get them and they had no recourse for justice or protection.
If your country isn't willing to give you the assurance of protection against the most awful crimes known to humanity - a guarantee that it will not turn around and persecute you or your family for some arbitrary reason such as you skin colour, sexuality, or religion - then there is something deeply unsettling and backwards about your country.
The things the ICC can investigate are extremely limited in scope, so the suggestion that it is somehow a threat to sovereingty is laughable unless your government plans to carry out one of the most dispicable war crimes like rape, or a massacre of civilians. There is no danger of it's power spreading beyond this limited set of things it can deal with because the agreement you sign when you become an adherent to the ICC would then be void without you re-signing up to it.
So really, the only reason not to be party to the ICC, is if you actually intend to commit warcrimes. As the US has had some of it's troops do exactly this over the last 10 years then it would seem this is the more plausible reason for the US not being interested in it, rather than because of some fear of loss of sovereingty. The fact the US doesn't properly deal with war crimes committed by it's troops properly in it's own courts is further testament that it's about allowing US citizens to get away with war crimes, rather than a loss of sovereingty- if it was a sovereignty issue it could at least claim they don't need the ICC because they deal with it properly themselves, but they don't.
Just one final point, I see this attitude from some Americans quite often:
"We will fix our problems in our own way."
That's fine, but please bear in mind, that if your own way involves causing problems for non-US citizens and other countries, then please be aware that you lose all right to complain when something like 9/11 comes back to bite you, because things like 9/11 are an inevitable result of you "doing things your own way", such as fucking up Afghanistan to screw the soviets over and then subsequently abandoning it.
What sickens me most is that the BBC, a supposedly objective and publicly funded broadcaster still continues to quote him despite having been told for months by hundreds of people that the guy is unobjective and trustworthy.
It gives me the impression Oracle hasn't been too honest about this, it gives the impression someone at the BBC (and possibly other media outlets) are being paid off too. But if Oracle pays Florian, and Florian then uses some of those funds to pay off someone at the BBC I guess Oracle wouldn't have to disclose that?
There's simply no excuse whatsoever for the BBC to be continuing to use Florian as a source when they're well aware he's a completely untrustworthy source. Someone at the BBC is being given a reason to breach the BBC's responsibility to be objective that much is certain.
The scenarios are stupid because you're simply over-egging one scenario, whilst downplaying the defence in another. In the first case your assertion of the level of technical expertise required to bypass filtering solutions realistically available to schools is extremely over the top, it's far more trivial than that for students.
In your second scenario you completely bypass the point I made in my last post- that you have the perfectly valid defence of pointing out to the court that you carried out an education program and made students fully aware that with internet access came responsibility, and that parents were also given the option to opt their kids out of internet access, and also given resources to further educate their kids about the "dangers" of the internet.
It's pretty clear cut - you either trust them, in which case leave them to get on with it, or you don't. in which case, supervise them.
You pointed out yourself that if you turn off access the kids will just use 3G, so the point is that if they want access to content you don't want them to access it's tough shit, they'll access it anyway.
Even if the kids know that a teacher may walk in, or that they may be monitoring net access is enough to scare most kids into behaving, but if you don't want to actually supervise or monitor them then the solutions really do boil down to either just turn it off, or let them access it and trust them to behave, or simply don't care if they don't behave- there's still no real evidence that kids accessing say, porn, causes any actual harm anyway.
I sympathise with what you're saying, a large aspect of it is about arse covering because yes, I recognise IT is nearly always the scapegoat even for what are ultimately non-IT problems.
But I think you misunderstand how things actually work in practice in school, sure it may just be one kid that figures out how to evade the blocks in place, but it doesn't matter because when one kid knows, the whole school knows, and it's not just one kid, it's a few kids per school, and because of the viral nature of block evasion in schools, because every kid wants to evade the block, it means that blocking is still roughly around 0% effective. The parents don't care therefore whether your tried to block it or not, they'll still bitch, and moan at you because little timmy saw the same thing little timmy suckled on for the first few months of his life.
Note that I had this experience in over a hundred schools, some who even went further with additional blocks, and this was before even the time of smartphones, so preventing kids getting information to evade blocks, or using smartphones outright, either tethered to school systems or standalone, is now going to be an impossible task.
The parents will come knocking regardless and they don't give a shit about how hard IT tried, little Timmy still saw a pair of tits in an environment where Mrs Innocent never thought Timmy would see tits.
So again, the onus really has to be on the teachers, sure a kid might be looking at something whilst the teacher has his/her back turned, fine, who cares? If no one knows it's no different to them looking at it on their smartphones (which they will be), if a parent does find out, then just go through the process of asking the kids who it was and discipline them. If teachers are scared about liability then simply make an effort to tell kids they're not allowed to look at this stuff on the school network, hell, even send a letter to parents saying you've educated them as such but that the parents may want to have additional discussions with their kids about it themselves to push the responsibility back on them.
If anything, putting in place a complete ineffective blocking system just tells the parents that yeah their kids should be safe because "they don't need to educate their kids about that sort of stuff as it's blocked", and yeah they can blame the school when the blocks are inevitably bypassed, because the school was incompetent in putting blocks in place that didn't really work after all.
At the end of the day parents who don't want to take responsibility for parenting will blame the school regardless, so it's better that the school goes out of it's way to make it clear that it's job is to teach, and that if they want the school to act as a babysitting service too, then the only option to prevent the kid seeing anything is to ban him from the net at school and stick him in solitary confinement so the other kids don't show him anything they've bought in in their backpacks or on their phone. Suggest home schooling to them at this point, because the shared schooling system can't possibly provide what they're asking.
"Now can you do me a favor and answer a question for me?"
Sure.
"What about the initial post in this thread pointing out that Ecuador has a terrible record on human rights, free speech, and free press was so offensive to you?"
There's nothing offensive about it, however I take issue with it in that:
1) It was misdirection, it didn't discuss the topic at hand, it was an attempt to change the discussion about Ecuador's track record, rather than whether what Ecuador did was/wasn't valid in the particular case of Assange.
2) You can put together an even more disturbing post by selecting human rights abuses by the US, or UK. For example, over the last 10 years alone:
- The US has carried out torture - The US has kidnapped foreign citizens - The US has held people for the best part of a decade without trial - The US has carried out summary executions - The US has carried out military action on foreign soil without their permission - The US has allowed people to walk free who raped and/or killed civilians intentionally (i.e. murder) - The US has explicitly targetted civilian homes without concern for collateral damage - The US has spied against it's own citizens without warrant
The list can go on and on still further, but this illustrates the point - if you do as you did, with Ecuador, and take some particular elements of bad press, and present only those, you build a rather awful picture. The same can be done with the US and UK, and in their cases the list is much larger and looks far worse. At this point it therefore begs the question as to why even bother attack Ecuador at all over this? When comparing such lists, Ecuador looks positively saint-like in comparison.
I'm not suprised about the issues in Ecuador, hell, I was even aware of them, but fundamentally Ecuador has at least not arbitrarily killed foreigners or violated their territorial integrity. The US and UK has. This therefore begs the question as to what exactly was the point of your original post? sure Ecuador has human rights issues caused by poor governance, all countries have some, but importantly the US/UK have more, so in this context, Assange going somewhere like Ecuador isn't as hypocritical as you suggest - certainly he as an individual has far more freedom in Ecuador than he has in the West, and certainly for all Correa has done, it pales in comparison to what British and American leaders have done - at least he hasn't been responsible for wars that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and I'm not even one of these anti-war types. I largely support the Afghan invasion, I think we screwed it up, but I think the reasons for it were fair and valid. I support the support of rebels in Libya and Syria where many wouldn't, though I don't support what happened in Iraq, it was entirely unjustified. So despite the fact I did and in some cases still do support many of the West's direct or indirect military involvements, I still think we have a lot more to answer for than Correa does.
If you're wondering why so many disagree with you it's because you're simply too much in favour of the US, you're simply too patriotic, too nationalistic, you seem incapable of moderation. No one likes nationalistic zealots (except other nationalists), whether they're from the right or left hand side of the spectrum - the fact is, most people prefer moderation, and they'll bitch and disagree with each other over small differences, but as long as they're moderate they'll at least respect each others right to have that opinion. When people swing too far one way or the other though, like you do, that's when the majority of people - the moderates - will take issue with you. You simply need to step back and both consider and accept that your country gets it wrong on a lot of things, that it's not perfect, that it has a lot of work to do. Assange's crime with Wikileaks was highlighting and exposing that - I'm not suprised you don't like it, as it is presumably your and your colleagues jobs to prevent exactly this sort of thing happening, but it did, and this bit of transparency was a net positive for the world, even if it did embarass your paymasters and those all the way up the chain to Obama himself.
Not until he's charged no, but as the Swedes wont even do that and yet still want him on their soil, then what case is there to answer?
"By the way, a British judge has already ruled that the allegations, if true, would constitute rape under English law."
Yes, the word "if" is such a problem though isn't it?
"That is why the UK is trying to extradite him."
Well, that's what the government says and you think. Many people aren't as convinced, including the government of Ecuador.
"If it is not a crime, why is Assange so nervous about the possibility of the US asking Sweden to extradite him? Sweden would just turn around and say "no, it's not a crime, go away USA"."
Sure, just like Sweden would turn around to the US and tell them that there's no grounds to raid The Pirate Bay's hosts and seize their servers.
Oh wait, they did exactly that at the request of the US, even though there was no basis to do so under Swedish law and hence had to return the servers after the US had stolen off them the information they wanted didn't they?
Hint: The exact same thing recently happened in New Zealand with MegaUpload too. O'Dwyer in the UK is also being extradited to the US despite breaking no UK law.
Suggesting countries - even those supposedly at the top of the transparency index - will just tell the US to go away if their citizens haven't committed a crime is fucking laughable and shows you have no idea about this sort of thing. There are numerous cases where exactly that has happened because of the sheer weight of US pressure. Note how BAE got fined for corruption over a Saudi jet deal and Boeing not for the exact same sort of things? Note how Barclays was outed and hammered over the Libor scandal whilst American banks equal guilty have as yet been untouched? These are the sort of things that happen to any business you have in the world's largest single-country economy if you don't play ball with them - good luck with your economy if you're a smaller country like New Zealand or Sweden when your largest companies get fucked like that.
This is also why American economic decline, and Chinese economic growth can only be a good thing for the world right now to counter this sort of threat. Honestly, I wish it wasn't this way, I wish America was still a net positive for the world, but it's lost it's way and seems unwilling to reverse course.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but "propaganda" is not my day job, night job, or any job. Furthermore, my posts and opinions here and elsewhere are my own."
Well that is exactly what information warfare is so I'm intrigued, if that isn't what you do at any point why do you mention it on your website? are you some kind of military wannabe who never actually made the grade and so tells people that you are something you are not simply to make yourself feel better or what?
I used to work in public sector in the UK, I was always annoyed at how many non-jobs there were around and wondered how people could genuinely get through life without actually providing any benefit to society.
So you'll have to excuse me if I'm rather amused to see that the US Navy not only pays people to spread FUD, but continues to do so despite the fact the people they pay to do this are so utterly bad at it that even a bunch of average joes on an internet discussion forum can see right through it.
If ever there was a complete and utter waste of tax payers money, Dave Schroeder is it.
Correct. This is one of the points Ecuador drove a bulldozer through in their statement as to why they decided to offer asylum. They pointed out that many nations, including Sweden themselves have done exactly this in other cases in the past, so it is perfectly possible.
It doesn't work anyway. I worked supporting schools for some years and we ran a WAN that they connected through to the internet (around 150 schools connecting via 10mbps links to a central pipe) and the fact is you just can't do anything about kids accessing what they shouldn't.
They're far more resourceful, far more motivated, and have far more time than your IT staff. Like the music industry trying to clamp down on piracy, IT staff trying to clamp down on kids whilst still keeping the internet somehow useful is a lost cause. The kids know any number of proxy sites, they'll find any number, sites you didn't even know existed as a long time IT professional, and hell, even if you do lock down the internet completely (and make it largely useless in the process) kids are only going to bring in porn mags and CDs/memory sticks with porn and such on anyway.
The best solution is entirely with the teachers. It's with the teachers to catch kids browsing things they shouldn't, and to punish them and make an example that doing what you shouldn't in school hours will get you in deep shit. Anything else is doomed to fail, and even this method isn't going to stop every kid, but it'll be far more effective than any kind of technological solution will be. If we're talking about really young kids and you want to protect their precious little eyes then internet access should be treated the same way as it would be by a "good" parent - supervise them whilst they're using it.
"The totally unprecedented move which defies international convention is the Ecuador government's decision to grant asylum to a person accused of several crimes, one being a breach of bail; and the other one being rape. The Vienna Convention and international law do not allow embassies to be used for this purpose."
Well actually, that's exactly what they allow, if the country granting asylum genuinely believes the person in question is a target of charges that are politically motivated, which Ecuador clearly does. If however you know better and you have some evidence that no one else does that proves without a doubt that the charges aren't politically motivated then I'm sure the world would be grateful if you release it so this mess can be tidied up. If of course you don't have such evidence then what you actually meant to say was that "I don't think the charges are politically motivated and in that case the Vienna convention wouldn't cover this" isn't it?
"Because that would be conspiring to allow a person facing allegations of criminal conduct to escape justice, and as such would severely damage the UK's international reputation."
No it wouldn't. It's not the UK's problem, not in the slightest. It's between Sweden and Ecuador to decide if he's really guilty of such crimes or if he's actually just a target of politically motivated charges. Even if we don't just let him go to Ecuador we could still find a politically neutral country to hand him to and let Ecuador/Sweden fight over him. Somewhere like Brazil would be an ideal candidate, the Swedes could even interview/charge him there and let such a neutral country as Brazil or similar decide whether based on the evidence the charges are legitimate. The UK hasn't and wont negotiate this kind of deal though, the UK, for some god unknown reason is desperate to just ship him off to Sweden without question. There's something basically strange about that in itself, why would the UK not want to appear at least a little bit objective in this? It wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't been here before - Lockerby was similar in that the Megrahi couldn't get a fair trial in the UK/US as we were too close to it all, so it was done in a 3rd country - some argued it was still a whitewash, but at least we tried to ensure some objectivity. Why so desperate to avoid that in this case? Using a 3rd party would not allow Assange to escape justice, it'd ensure that the charges against him are, on the balance of things, legitimate, so the only reason for a nation to want to avoid that scenario is if they aren't actually legitimate.
"It's nothing to do with global geopolitics. It's a rape accusation. I am not sure how you think this is supposed to work."
Again, you're making the assumption it's a legitimate rape accusation - that's where the fundamental question lies, we simply don't know whether it is, and Assange, Ecuador, and many others believe it is not. That doesn't mean I'm not saying it's legitimate, but it means the concerns are obviously large enough to er on the side of caution that they may not be, and that they may just be politically motivated.
"Can you outline the conditions generally where the police should be denied the right to question people over suspicion of involvement in crime ?"
You're just making stuff up now. The Swedish authorities have had numerous opportunities to question him but have turned them all down - their priority has been to get him to their country more so than to question him. That's one of the fundamental reason Ecuador says they have enough suspicion about the charges to grant him asylum. If the Swedish police had just met Assange and his supporters half way and questioned him in the UK when he was on bail, or in the Ecuadorian embassy like they had every option to do, and then charged him, and demanded his extradition over the charges, Assange would have a lot less supporters - including me - but they haven't even charged him, simply questioning here is no big deal so why refuse to do it when again, as Ecuador po
That's one of the unfortunate downsides of relying on an article. It'll only tell you what they want to tell you. I'm actually amazed at how much of the live announcement has been left out of the British press (and presumably others) including the publicly funded BBC, it's quite disturbing, or quite sloppy.
As I said originally I listened to the original announcement by Ecuador live, they also released some docs at the same time - try going straight to the source and make your own mind up.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, and the problem there was nationalism rather than socialism, and the Nazis weren't particularly socialist anyway. The US has far more nationalism nowadays and that's a major part the problem.
Just as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) also known more commonly as North Korea isn't actually democratic. By your logic we could point out how democracy is flawed because North Korea has it in it's full name and is guilty of many atrocities, but obviously that makes no sense. What a country has in it's name, and what it actually practices are two completely distinct things.
Socialism and capitalism aren't mutually exclusive. As for whether socialism works, well, I'd say Germany is a good example that it does, but the EU in general is mostly socialist and economically larger than the US whilst having lower average levels of crime, better measures of personal happiness, higher levels of adult numeracy and literacy, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates, greater political respect globally, and so forth.
Unless of course you're doing as many right-wing Americans do and confusing socialism with communism as is often the case with the American right in which case you're correct, communism has never really been shown to work.
I don't think anyone whether from America or not complaining about US style-capitalism is suggesting a massive lurch from the fairly far right to the complete opposite on the far left that is communism, they're probably just saying that America has taken capitalism a little too far to the point that it's detrimental not just to the country, but to it's citizens as well, and that a healthy injection of socialism as countries like those in Europe have would probably improve things.
Certainly the answer for America is absolutely not to lurch even more to the right, because at that point it's really entering the realm of fascism. I know the left-right scale is fairly imperfect, but it does illustrate the relative position of these ideologies quite well. Effectively from left to right you have Communism, then Socialism, then Capitalism, then Fascism. A healthy balance of the middle two is best, too far into either one is unhealthy and moving into communism or fascism is just catastrophic. This isn't to say European nations always get it right, far from it - Greece went too far with it's socialism for example relative to the amount of money it had available as a nation, much as America has gone too far with it's capitalism to the detriment of many of it's citizens being left unable too meaningfully contribute to and participate enjoyably in society.
The thing is, when put objectively, the vast majority of Americans even seem to agree that capitalism has pushed inequality in the US much too far, and would actually prefer a more socialist society:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19284017
But of course, what people say in an objective study, and what they vote for in a more emotion filled ballot box, are two different things.
"Some people do have iPhones and iPads. Some people drive expensive cars. A lot of people drive Hondas and Toyotas and get Android phones with dual core 1 GB ram for $1 with a $100 gift card back on 2 year contract."
Well put, a lot of the arguments I see from Apple fanboys is that "Most people seem to think the iPhone is the best", or "Apple obviously does X right because the majority of people have iPhones".
The whole argument is based on fantasy, Apple's global smartphone marketshare is 17%, their phone marketshare (including non-smartphones) is about 2%. The idea that Apple has any kind of majority backing their product is completely and utterly false. The same goes for Apple computers too - the fact is, the real fact is, that the vast majority of people don't choose Apple, they choose Android, they choose Windows, so the idea that Apple's way is the right way based on some kind of consensus simply isn't true. The only place it holds true is tablets, but even that early lead advantage is slipping away quarter on quarter now that there are decent alternatives out there.
The reality is that most people aren't interested in fancy stuff like you say, some are sure, but most just want a product that gets the job done and doesn't cost an extortionate amount regardless of what fucking shape or colour it is, or how much they can brag they spent on it.
Sure, sorry, I wasn't clear - what I meant when I suggested you can't do it continuously is that you can't do 16hr days 5 days a week and not burn out, my intention was to suggest that you can do 16hr days, but only so long as you do maybe 1, 2, maybe 3 of them at most and then get time off to compensate and ensure you still only do your 40hr week.
Anything more than a 40hr week and IMO for most people you see a drastic reduction in productivity and it helps no one - the employee doesn't get any more done, and the employee gets less free time and time to spend with their family and so are less happy.
Honestly, I think for me I'm most productive at around a 35hr week. Doing that I'm happy, get plenty more done in a shorter time, and both me and the employer win, but it's rare in the UK to see this kind of working week, even though it's fairly common on the continent.
I've done more than my fair share of 45hr weeks and they're really just pointless as anything other than a rare event once every now and then. People need things like sunshine, friends, family, or even just time playing games or whatever they like to do, and if they're cooped up in the office for even 9 hour days they'll be wasting their time, and their employer's tmie. Again, you only have to look at some European countries who have a much shorter working week than the UK, but are much more productive to see evidence of this.
If you've worked 36 hour shifts that really is too much. I find I can do 16 hours even two days running without any particular increase in errors, but anything more than that and it deteriorates real fast. Note that if I'm doing this I always do this as working from home days, as cutting out the commute not only saves me 2 hours of my day, but does leave me much less tired to start with, not to mention I'm more productive in my own environment anyway with no one hassling me.
"I'm not sure on the timeline, but I didn't think that Julian was a criminal at the time Ecuador initially extended the offer for asylum."
Of course not as he's not even been charged.
The only thing that makes him a criminal now is breaching the UK's bail conditions when he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, but that's it. He's certainly not been found guilty, let alone charged of breaking any other laws surrounding this whol situation.
Absolutely, a 16hr coding day can be productive, but you better be damn sure the coder has the day off afterwards, and possibly even beforehand.
I've done a few stints like this near crunch time where I've maybe done a 12hr day followed by 2 16hr days, but then I've fully made sure I get the following 2 working days off to give a 4 day weekend or whatever.
Effectively you can frontload (or backload) work like this with 16hr days, but what you can't do is make it a permanent thing and expect a permanent productivity boost - on the contrary, you'll see completely the opposite.
The biggest use of the HOSTS file is blocking ads.*
*If you're an APK 'tard.
FTFY.
In the real world the hosts file has many sensible and legitimate uses, blocking ads is not one of them.
"They buy ale from their pubs in pints"
Are there countries that don't? Even in nations I've visited that are thoroughly on the metric scale, they still do beer in pints.
I don't think so, the US is fairly different to many other entities, the US was founded on violence and (at the time, perfectly justified) paranoia of the state.
If you compare this to other British colonies, that gained independence more peacefully over time, you find a completely different attitude. Nations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand - their states are a lot less paranoid about national government, and they're far less protective over the idea that everyone and his dog should have a gun etc.
I think on one hand the early Americans were justified in having a revolution, but on the other, it meant that their nation was created in anger, and hence built on less than ideal foundations, whilst again, countries like Canada, New Zealand etc., had the benefit of building their nations in less haste, and hence were able to do so more objectively, more sensibly, and with less tension and conflict.
It's a pattern born out across a number of territories the British empire (and other empires for that matter) was forced to give up through violence, rather than gave up willingly as the empire waned. The problem with violence is that the strongest get to decide what's next, and they're not necessarily the smartest - coupled with other factors, such as the need to get some kind of statehood in place ASAP to prevent any attempts to re-capture a colony means there is little time to make sure things are done right. Again however, as I say, the sad thing is, sometimes violence is the only option (i.e. Libya), I just don't hold much hope for the future health of their nation as a result, though one might argue it's still at least far better than it was, which is something at least. I suspect Tunisia and Egypt's revolutions that were somewhat less violent with little or no threat of a return of the old power allowing them to take their time, will actually allow them to flourish into much stronger nations in the long run however.
I agree with you, and this is why the massive push in the UK for reform of the ECHR and a referendum on the EU scares the shit out of me. The idea of a modern British government with unchecked power is disturbing.
The problem is born out by the sorts of things the Tories talk about repatriating like the working time directive which prevents EU citizens having to work more than 48hrs a week if they don't want to whilst giving them the opt-out if they do. Why get rid of that? we already work longer hours than the rest of Europe despite being less productive than those like France and Germany who work less so what is it meant to achieve? Why are the Europhobes so focussed on the laws that fuck the average joe over rather than the real actual problem laws like the EAW that apparently forgot to make sure you can only extradite someone on actual solid charges rather than for simple questioning.
Honestly, the EU and ECHR are the only things preventing the UK looking even more like America, and the level of pressure to pull out of them is scary as fuck. If it happens I suspect the UK will see serious brain drain, which has the danger of descending even further towards the far right in a pit of ignorance.
Even people like David Cameron know it, hence why despite all the anti-EU rhetoric, he's thus far resisted his own parties calls for a referendum. The problem is politicians use the EU as a focal point to rally the ignorant and xenophobic masses to their cause, only now, they've used this tactic so much and so often, that said masses actually want action on it, which was never really the politicians plan when all they wanted was a populist rally point against which they never originally truly intended to act.
Of course, Murdoch has a lot to answer for, his press has largely driven this shit too as it benefits him massively if the UK becomes even more ignorant, even more far right, and even more pro-US and less pro-EU, as much of the rest of the EU is sane enough to defy Murdoch's advances into their markets.
There's no doubt the EU and ECHR are effective checks and balances that lead to sensible moderation and protect the average joe. If I've learnt anything over the years it's that unchecked power (that our FPTP) system is never good, and divided power whilst imperfect, is always better, as it forces compromise, and prevents extremist views ever getting anywhere. This is why Canada was doing so well until Harper got a majority, it's why Germany is so succesful. Sure our current coalition is far from perfect, but it's been better than a Tory majority would've been for example, where they wanted tuition fees of £12k instead of £9k, and where the 50% tax level would've gone long before now, the changes to the NHS would've been far more damaging and brutal, etc.
What a complete failure to engage in even basic thinking. Ignoring the fact the ECHR and ICC have nothing whatsoever to do with the UN, were created in 1953 and 1998 respectively and so were closer to the Korean and Yugoslav wars than World War II, despite that being a major factor for the ECHR, you seem to have completely glossed over the fact I clearly pointed out that the power of these courts is limited to human rights abuses.
So unless there is a belief that the "losers" were any more likely to commit additional human rights abuses than the "winners", then your conspiracy theory makes no sense, which is often the case for conspiracy theories in general.
If you think that the abuses that led to the creation of these entities weren't deemed appalling at the time, and that that is because you also believe that no organisation can exist purely for altruistic purposes then it must be a really really sad world you live in. You probably think you're a realist, but you're not, a realist would recognise that enough people find things like the holocaust and the Srebrenica massacre shocking enough that something should genuinely be done to limit the impact of this sort of thing ever happening again.
Do you know why the ICC and for Europe, the European Court of Human Rights were created?
They were created because of the lessons of World War II, the realisation that citizens can't always count on their state to protect them. The recognition that sometimes citizens of a country need to be able to go to a third party to secure justice against the most appalling of crimes. It stemmed from the fact it was clear that groups such as the Jews in Germany in World War II couldn't count on their state to protect them - on the contrary, it was out to get them and they had no recourse for justice or protection.
If your country isn't willing to give you the assurance of protection against the most awful crimes known to humanity - a guarantee that it will not turn around and persecute you or your family for some arbitrary reason such as you skin colour, sexuality, or religion - then there is something deeply unsettling and backwards about your country.
The things the ICC can investigate are extremely limited in scope, so the suggestion that it is somehow a threat to sovereingty is laughable unless your government plans to carry out one of the most dispicable war crimes like rape, or a massacre of civilians. There is no danger of it's power spreading beyond this limited set of things it can deal with because the agreement you sign when you become an adherent to the ICC would then be void without you re-signing up to it.
So really, the only reason not to be party to the ICC, is if you actually intend to commit warcrimes. As the US has had some of it's troops do exactly this over the last 10 years then it would seem this is the more plausible reason for the US not being interested in it, rather than because of some fear of loss of sovereingty. The fact the US doesn't properly deal with war crimes committed by it's troops properly in it's own courts is further testament that it's about allowing US citizens to get away with war crimes, rather than a loss of sovereingty- if it was a sovereignty issue it could at least claim they don't need the ICC because they deal with it properly themselves, but they don't.
Just one final point, I see this attitude from some Americans quite often:
"We will fix our problems in our own way."
That's fine, but please bear in mind, that if your own way involves causing problems for non-US citizens and other countries, then please be aware that you lose all right to complain when something like 9/11 comes back to bite you, because things like 9/11 are an inevitable result of you "doing things your own way", such as fucking up Afghanistan to screw the soviets over and then subsequently abandoning it.
What sickens me most is that the BBC, a supposedly objective and publicly funded broadcaster still continues to quote him despite having been told for months by hundreds of people that the guy is unobjective and trustworthy.
It gives me the impression Oracle hasn't been too honest about this, it gives the impression someone at the BBC (and possibly other media outlets) are being paid off too. But if Oracle pays Florian, and Florian then uses some of those funds to pay off someone at the BBC I guess Oracle wouldn't have to disclose that?
There's simply no excuse whatsoever for the BBC to be continuing to use Florian as a source when they're well aware he's a completely untrustworthy source. Someone at the BBC is being given a reason to breach the BBC's responsibility to be objective that much is certain.
The scenarios are stupid because you're simply over-egging one scenario, whilst downplaying the defence in another. In the first case your assertion of the level of technical expertise required to bypass filtering solutions realistically available to schools is extremely over the top, it's far more trivial than that for students.
In your second scenario you completely bypass the point I made in my last post- that you have the perfectly valid defence of pointing out to the court that you carried out an education program and made students fully aware that with internet access came responsibility, and that parents were also given the option to opt their kids out of internet access, and also given resources to further educate their kids about the "dangers" of the internet.
Then simply trust the kids.
It's pretty clear cut - you either trust them, in which case leave them to get on with it, or you don't. in which case, supervise them.
You pointed out yourself that if you turn off access the kids will just use 3G, so the point is that if they want access to content you don't want them to access it's tough shit, they'll access it anyway.
Even if the kids know that a teacher may walk in, or that they may be monitoring net access is enough to scare most kids into behaving, but if you don't want to actually supervise or monitor them then the solutions really do boil down to either just turn it off, or let them access it and trust them to behave, or simply don't care if they don't behave- there's still no real evidence that kids accessing say, porn, causes any actual harm anyway.
I sympathise with what you're saying, a large aspect of it is about arse covering because yes, I recognise IT is nearly always the scapegoat even for what are ultimately non-IT problems.
But I think you misunderstand how things actually work in practice in school, sure it may just be one kid that figures out how to evade the blocks in place, but it doesn't matter because when one kid knows, the whole school knows, and it's not just one kid, it's a few kids per school, and because of the viral nature of block evasion in schools, because every kid wants to evade the block, it means that blocking is still roughly around 0% effective. The parents don't care therefore whether your tried to block it or not, they'll still bitch, and moan at you because little timmy saw the same thing little timmy suckled on for the first few months of his life.
Note that I had this experience in over a hundred schools, some who even went further with additional blocks, and this was before even the time of smartphones, so preventing kids getting information to evade blocks, or using smartphones outright, either tethered to school systems or standalone, is now going to be an impossible task.
The parents will come knocking regardless and they don't give a shit about how hard IT tried, little Timmy still saw a pair of tits in an environment where Mrs Innocent never thought Timmy would see tits.
So again, the onus really has to be on the teachers, sure a kid might be looking at something whilst the teacher has his/her back turned, fine, who cares? If no one knows it's no different to them looking at it on their smartphones (which they will be), if a parent does find out, then just go through the process of asking the kids who it was and discipline them. If teachers are scared about liability then simply make an effort to tell kids they're not allowed to look at this stuff on the school network, hell, even send a letter to parents saying you've educated them as such but that the parents may want to have additional discussions with their kids about it themselves to push the responsibility back on them.
If anything, putting in place a complete ineffective blocking system just tells the parents that yeah their kids should be safe because "they don't need to educate their kids about that sort of stuff as it's blocked", and yeah they can blame the school when the blocks are inevitably bypassed, because the school was incompetent in putting blocks in place that didn't really work after all.
At the end of the day parents who don't want to take responsibility for parenting will blame the school regardless, so it's better that the school goes out of it's way to make it clear that it's job is to teach, and that if they want the school to act as a babysitting service too, then the only option to prevent the kid seeing anything is to ban him from the net at school and stick him in solitary confinement so the other kids don't show him anything they've bought in in their backpacks or on their phone. Suggest home schooling to them at this point, because the shared schooling system can't possibly provide what they're asking.
"Now can you do me a favor and answer a question for me?"
Sure.
"What about the initial post in this thread pointing out that Ecuador has a terrible record on human rights, free speech, and free press was so offensive to you?"
There's nothing offensive about it, however I take issue with it in that:
1) It was misdirection, it didn't discuss the topic at hand, it was an attempt to change the discussion about Ecuador's track record, rather than whether what Ecuador did was/wasn't valid in the particular case of Assange.
2) You can put together an even more disturbing post by selecting human rights abuses by the US, or UK. For example, over the last 10 years alone:
- The US has carried out torture
- The US has kidnapped foreign citizens
- The US has held people for the best part of a decade without trial
- The US has carried out summary executions
- The US has carried out military action on foreign soil without their permission
- The US has allowed people to walk free who raped and/or killed civilians intentionally (i.e. murder)
- The US has explicitly targetted civilian homes without concern for collateral damage
- The US has spied against it's own citizens without warrant
The list can go on and on still further, but this illustrates the point - if you do as you did, with Ecuador, and take some particular elements of bad press, and present only those, you build a rather awful picture. The same can be done with the US and UK, and in their cases the list is much larger and looks far worse. At this point it therefore begs the question as to why even bother attack Ecuador at all over this? When comparing such lists, Ecuador looks positively saint-like in comparison.
I'm not suprised about the issues in Ecuador, hell, I was even aware of them, but fundamentally Ecuador has at least not arbitrarily killed foreigners or violated their territorial integrity. The US and UK has. This therefore begs the question as to what exactly was the point of your original post? sure Ecuador has human rights issues caused by poor governance, all countries have some, but importantly the US/UK have more, so in this context, Assange going somewhere like Ecuador isn't as hypocritical as you suggest - certainly he as an individual has far more freedom in Ecuador than he has in the West, and certainly for all Correa has done, it pales in comparison to what British and American leaders have done - at least he hasn't been responsible for wars that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and I'm not even one of these anti-war types. I largely support the Afghan invasion, I think we screwed it up, but I think the reasons for it were fair and valid. I support the support of rebels in Libya and Syria where many wouldn't, though I don't support what happened in Iraq, it was entirely unjustified. So despite the fact I did and in some cases still do support many of the West's direct or indirect military involvements, I still think we have a lot more to answer for than Correa does.
If you're wondering why so many disagree with you it's because you're simply too much in favour of the US, you're simply too patriotic, too nationalistic, you seem incapable of moderation. No one likes nationalistic zealots (except other nationalists), whether they're from the right or left hand side of the spectrum - the fact is, most people prefer moderation, and they'll bitch and disagree with each other over small differences, but as long as they're moderate they'll at least respect each others right to have that opinion. When people swing too far one way or the other though, like you do, that's when the majority of people - the moderates - will take issue with you. You simply need to step back and both consider and accept that your country gets it wrong on a lot of things, that it's not perfect, that it has a lot of work to do. Assange's crime with Wikileaks was highlighting and exposing that - I'm not suprised you don't like it, as it is presumably your and your colleagues jobs to prevent exactly this sort of thing happening, but it did, and this bit of transparency was a net positive for the world, even if it did embarass your paymasters and those all the way up the chain to Obama himself.
"Isn't that for the court in Sweden to decide?"
Not until he's charged no, but as the Swedes wont even do that and yet still want him on their soil, then what case is there to answer?
"By the way, a British judge has already ruled that the allegations, if true, would constitute rape under English law."
Yes, the word "if" is such a problem though isn't it?
"That is why the UK is trying to extradite him."
Well, that's what the government says and you think. Many people aren't as convinced, including the government of Ecuador.
"If it is not a crime, why is Assange so nervous about the possibility of the US asking Sweden to extradite him? Sweden would just turn around and say "no, it's not a crime, go away USA"."
Sure, just like Sweden would turn around to the US and tell them that there's no grounds to raid The Pirate Bay's hosts and seize their servers.
Oh wait, they did exactly that at the request of the US, even though there was no basis to do so under Swedish law and hence had to return the servers after the US had stolen off them the information they wanted didn't they?
Hint: The exact same thing recently happened in New Zealand with MegaUpload too. O'Dwyer in the UK is also being extradited to the US despite breaking no UK law.
Suggesting countries - even those supposedly at the top of the transparency index - will just tell the US to go away if their citizens haven't committed a crime is fucking laughable and shows you have no idea about this sort of thing. There are numerous cases where exactly that has happened because of the sheer weight of US pressure. Note how BAE got fined for corruption over a Saudi jet deal and Boeing not for the exact same sort of things? Note how Barclays was outed and hammered over the Libor scandal whilst American banks equal guilty have as yet been untouched? These are the sort of things that happen to any business you have in the world's largest single-country economy if you don't play ball with them - good luck with your economy if you're a smaller country like New Zealand or Sweden when your largest companies get fucked like that.
This is also why American economic decline, and Chinese economic growth can only be a good thing for the world right now to counter this sort of threat. Honestly, I wish it wasn't this way, I wish America was still a net positive for the world, but it's lost it's way and seems unwilling to reverse course.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but "propaganda" is not my day job, night job, or any job. Furthermore, my posts and opinions here and elsewhere are my own."
Well that is exactly what information warfare is so I'm intrigued, if that isn't what you do at any point why do you mention it on your website? are you some kind of military wannabe who never actually made the grade and so tells people that you are something you are not simply to make yourself feel better or what?
I used to work in public sector in the UK, I was always annoyed at how many non-jobs there were around and wondered how people could genuinely get through life without actually providing any benefit to society.
So you'll have to excuse me if I'm rather amused to see that the US Navy not only pays people to spread FUD, but continues to do so despite the fact the people they pay to do this are so utterly bad at it that even a bunch of average joes on an internet discussion forum can see right through it.
If ever there was a complete and utter waste of tax payers money, Dave Schroeder is it.
Correct. This is one of the points Ecuador drove a bulldozer through in their statement as to why they decided to offer asylum. They pointed out that many nations, including Sweden themselves have done exactly this in other cases in the past, so it is perfectly possible.
It doesn't work anyway. I worked supporting schools for some years and we ran a WAN that they connected through to the internet (around 150 schools connecting via 10mbps links to a central pipe) and the fact is you just can't do anything about kids accessing what they shouldn't.
They're far more resourceful, far more motivated, and have far more time than your IT staff. Like the music industry trying to clamp down on piracy, IT staff trying to clamp down on kids whilst still keeping the internet somehow useful is a lost cause. The kids know any number of proxy sites, they'll find any number, sites you didn't even know existed as a long time IT professional, and hell, even if you do lock down the internet completely (and make it largely useless in the process) kids are only going to bring in porn mags and CDs/memory sticks with porn and such on anyway.
The best solution is entirely with the teachers. It's with the teachers to catch kids browsing things they shouldn't, and to punish them and make an example that doing what you shouldn't in school hours will get you in deep shit. Anything else is doomed to fail, and even this method isn't going to stop every kid, but it'll be far more effective than any kind of technological solution will be. If we're talking about really young kids and you want to protect their precious little eyes then internet access should be treated the same way as it would be by a "good" parent - supervise them whilst they're using it.
"The totally unprecedented move which defies international convention is the Ecuador government's decision to grant asylum to a person accused of several crimes, one being a breach of bail; and the other one being rape. The Vienna Convention and international law do not allow embassies to be used for this purpose."
Well actually, that's exactly what they allow, if the country granting asylum genuinely believes the person in question is a target of charges that are politically motivated, which Ecuador clearly does. If however you know better and you have some evidence that no one else does that proves without a doubt that the charges aren't politically motivated then I'm sure the world would be grateful if you release it so this mess can be tidied up. If of course you don't have such evidence then what you actually meant to say was that "I don't think the charges are politically motivated and in that case the Vienna convention wouldn't cover this" isn't it?
"Because that would be conspiring to allow a person facing allegations of criminal conduct to escape justice, and as such would severely damage the UK's international reputation."
No it wouldn't. It's not the UK's problem, not in the slightest. It's between Sweden and Ecuador to decide if he's really guilty of such crimes or if he's actually just a target of politically motivated charges. Even if we don't just let him go to Ecuador we could still find a politically neutral country to hand him to and let Ecuador/Sweden fight over him. Somewhere like Brazil would be an ideal candidate, the Swedes could even interview/charge him there and let such a neutral country as Brazil or similar decide whether based on the evidence the charges are legitimate. The UK hasn't and wont negotiate this kind of deal though, the UK, for some god unknown reason is desperate to just ship him off to Sweden without question. There's something basically strange about that in itself, why would the UK not want to appear at least a little bit objective in this? It wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't been here before - Lockerby was similar in that the Megrahi couldn't get a fair trial in the UK/US as we were too close to it all, so it was done in a 3rd country - some argued it was still a whitewash, but at least we tried to ensure some objectivity. Why so desperate to avoid that in this case? Using a 3rd party would not allow Assange to escape justice, it'd ensure that the charges against him are, on the balance of things, legitimate, so the only reason for a nation to want to avoid that scenario is if they aren't actually legitimate.
"It's nothing to do with global geopolitics. It's a rape accusation. I am not sure how you think this is supposed to work."
Again, you're making the assumption it's a legitimate rape accusation - that's where the fundamental question lies, we simply don't know whether it is, and Assange, Ecuador, and many others believe it is not. That doesn't mean I'm not saying it's legitimate, but it means the concerns are obviously large enough to er on the side of caution that they may not be, and that they may just be politically motivated.
"Can you outline the conditions generally where the police should be denied the right to question people over suspicion of involvement in crime ?"
You're just making stuff up now. The Swedish authorities have had numerous opportunities to question him but have turned them all down - their priority has been to get him to their country more so than to question him. That's one of the fundamental reason Ecuador says they have enough suspicion about the charges to grant him asylum. If the Swedish police had just met Assange and his supporters half way and questioned him in the UK when he was on bail, or in the Ecuadorian embassy like they had every option to do, and then charged him, and demanded his extradition over the charges, Assange would have a lot less supporters - including me - but they haven't even charged him, simply questioning here is no big deal so why refuse to do it when again, as Ecuador po
That's one of the unfortunate downsides of relying on an article. It'll only tell you what they want to tell you. I'm actually amazed at how much of the live announcement has been left out of the British press (and presumably others) including the publicly funded BBC, it's quite disturbing, or quite sloppy.
As I said originally I listened to the original announcement by Ecuador live, they also released some docs at the same time - try going straight to the source and make your own mind up.