In the UK we've got people who were convicted of homosexuality which was an offence in living memory. They have now had the convictions scrubbed because we now recognise that this was completely wrong. Nelson Mandela was once deemed a terrorist, as were many ex-IRA members, and are now seen as legitimate leaders, voices to be listened to.
I suspect Assange's treatment by governments regarding Wikileaks will be viewed the same way in the long run.
"Assange is safer extradited to Sweden than he is staying in the UK because both Sweden and the UK would have to agree to a further extradition."
No, this is precisely where the problem lies. Both Sweden and Britain have claimed this to be the case in the past, but this is precisely what Ecuador tried to confirm and get a guarantee on, and this is precisely what both Sweden and Britain refused to give a guarantee on.
My original post was a little light on detail as I only intended it as a brief summary, Ecuador was much more specific in it's guarantees such that the guarantees it sought were perfectly realistic and reasonable and would not block cases such as your example and only block extradition to the US over Wikileaks as a follow on extradition from the UK to Sweden extradition.
That's why this was such a major factor in Ecuador's decision, it was perfectly feasible to give the guarantee Ecuador requested if this wasn't about Wikileaks at all, but Britain and Sweden would not give them.
I agree that any impact I suffer is probably fairly small, but there is impact all the same.
As I say, Sony is one of the biggest forces in the RIAA lobbying to take away internet freedoms, lobbying to allow for site blocking, pushing court cases here in the UK to block sites like The Pirate Bay.
The cost to me isn't necessarily explicitly and directly financial, the cost may not even be tangible in some cases (I never used The Pirate Bay anyway), but there is a cost to my freedom to choose to visit now blocked sites for example. There is a cost to my freedom of choice as a consumer when Sony acts in a cartel like manner blocking certain musical acts being succesful. There is a cost to me as a taxpayer if my taxes are being used to help fund the creation of Sony's legislation, for the courts to cater to Sony's crusades and so on.
We have no interest in him yet we're willing to make the totally unprecedented move that defies all international convention and precedence on the issue of embassies of revoking the Ecuadorian right to an embassy in our country?
You're right about one thing though, he's not our problem, but if he's not our problem, why are we going to the level of creating a diplomatic shit-storm that undoes every bit of good-will towards the UK from the international community that the likes of the royal wedding and the olympics have built up? Why are we willing to have our embassies shut down across the globe in retaliation by Ecuador and it's allies over someone who is not our problem? Why don't we just let Ecuador fly him to Ecuador and let Sweden/Ecuador sort it out through their own channels?
"The UK *MUST* extradite him or their laws mean nothing."
No we mustn't, historical precedence, and international convention says that political asylum takes precedence. How can we possibly preach to countries like Iran over things such as holding British sailors or US citizens prisoner if we do this sort of thing? At that point we've lost the moral high ground on this and many similar issues and no one should or will listen to us ever again on them.
"The laws on embassies mean we *CAN* legally revoke embassy status from the building itself."
That's what government claims. No one else seems to be convinced. Even if we can the cost of doing so is so massive there has to be a question of why, unless the government is seeing absolutely massive pressure/threats from elsewhere - i.e. the US government. The cost of doing this is so large relative to just letting Assange go to Ecuardor that it makes no sense without some other massive external factor (i.e. the US).
"Even the Vienna convention says we can just expel all the diplomats (so long as we don't harm them, etc.) "at any time, and for any reason"."
Yes, but the actual process of expelling a diplomat means you have to give them chance to pack up and go, and again, the cost of doing so is so mind bogglingly large for Britain's reputation that it doesn't make any sense to do this.
You're using the word "must" an awful lot where you should actually have typed "in my opinion should" because there is no real grounding for your claim of must.
"He deliberately and knowingly breached UK bail and will have to stand up in court for that at some point, no matter what."
Again, this is rather forceful language - "no matter what"? are you sure about that? are you sure that he wont manage to get to Ecuador and 30 years down the line when global geopolitics have changed and anything Assange has done wrong is forgotten the charges are dropped? It's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened across the globe many hundreds of times before in geopolitics.
Unless you can tell the future and know something the rest of us don't you should stick to stating things as opinion rather than demanding that what you say is the absolute truth and nothing else could possibly be the case, as that just makes you look like some zealous preacher, you may think it somehow adds strength to your argument, but it really doesn't, it just makes you look like an unobjective wingnut.
"Why would the UK or Sweden "guarantee" that he won't be extradited? If the US has not requested it, and a court has not ruled, then no guarantee could be made."
The UK specifically because it was extraditing him for the claimed rape and has claimed Sweden couldn't then pass him on to a 3rd country without the UK's agreement. It was a bit more explicit than the way I simply worded it, such that the UK wouldn't give a guarantee that Sweden couldn't then just pass him on to the US, which is contrary to what UK officials have claimed in the past about the case.
In the case of Sweden, the guarantee sought was that Sweden wouldn't just pass him on to the US without a separate extradition agreement from the UK. Again, Sweden wouldn't do this, and again, despite the fact Swedish officials have claimed they would need to do this to pass him onto the UK.
Effectively all Ecuador was after is a solid guarantee that the standards of justice in protecting Assange from extradition to the US that both British and Swedish officials had claimed would protect Assange, really would protect him. Neither country was willing to put their money where their mouth is and actually back up their previous claims with a solid guarantee.
So it ties in with your last sentence basically, that it's not so much that both countries wouldn't give some arbitrary guarantee that Assange was safe from US extradition, but instead that both countries wouldn't give a guarantee that Assange would in fact be protected by the proper legal mechanisms both countries previously claimed would protect him. In other words, what was said by officials about protection for Assange from further extradition to the US was in fact likely just a facade.
That was only part of it, they also tried to get the UK to do the same and guarantee there was no potential for Assange to then be moved onto the US after Sweden too but they wouldn't.
They also made it clear Sweden can and has in the past interviewed people in foreign embassies and so Sweden does have the legal capability to do this.
They asked the US to also confirm whether there were any plans to try and get Assange over Wikileaks and the US wouldn't comment on that either.
It was all in all really interesting, because the statement basically drove a bulldozer through all the anti-Assange arguments that have been made here on Slashdot over the last year or so. All the stuff about how there were protections against Assange being moved on from Sweden to the US preventing that being possible, and all the crap about how Sweden supposedly doesn't allow in it's law for questioning via video link or in foreign countries hence the need for extradition turns out to be complete and utter crap.
Oh dear, Dave Schroeder the self-confessed "Information Warfare Officer in the United States Navy Fleet Cyber Command/US Tenth Fleet." from his own homepage was just waiting to pounce on first post for this one.
Well, anyway, I actually listened to the statement by Ecuador's spokesman live today and it was pretty interesting. The reason Ecuador took so long over this decision is that they have been trying to avoid it. What this involved was trying to find out whether Assange really was under some kind of threat. As such they:
- Asked Britain to guarantee that there was no possibility of Assange being extradited to the US. Britain refused to give this guarantee.
- Asked Sweden to guarantee that Assange would not be further extradited to the US after the rape case was dealt with. Sweden refused to give this guarantee.
- Asked Sweden if they would be willing to interview Assange in the Ecuardorian embassy over the accusations, noting that contrary to much FUD posted on Slashdot, this is in fact something Sweden can do, and has done in the past hence debunking the argument that Sweden's legal system does not allow this.
- Asked the US whether there was any existing or planned legal proceedings ongoing against Assange, and any current or potential future plans to extradite him over Wikileaks. The US refused to respond to this.
Given these 3 points, Ecuador decided that on the balance of probabilities, Assange was indeed at risk because they could not get any kind of guarantee from any of the parties involved that this was nothing to do with Wikileaks. As such they granted him asylum.
Or if you cut away the bullshit, the responses, or lack of, from Britain, Sweden, and America when Ecuador tried to resolve this without having to give Assange asylum and hence now deal with the tricky situation of how to get him the hell out of the UK all but confirm that this whole thing is indeed about Wikileaks.
Still, keep on trying to just slag off Ecuador as a bit of misdirection from the actual story here Dave if that's what makes you a happy guy.
"And how Dare people who do not have the same political priorities and views of you not alter their lives to match you views. "Freedom for speech just as long as you are saying what I want to hear!!!""
That's a rather ass-backwards way of reading the discussion. I simply made the point that I suffer when he funds Sony, so why should I care when he suffers for funding Sony?
I didn't say I expect him to change, I'm just saying don't expect sympathy when not changing comes back to bite you. It's a two way street.
Extrapolating that into a comment about freedom of speech doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
I guess it depends what country you are in. In the UK I think the repeated displays of ineptitude by Sony in holding your data secure would be grounds enough to be able to cancel your account and demand a refund for any content you would hence no longer have access to. The small claims court here is quite effective at dealing with those sorts of cases and the time/cost for using it is pretty low (£20 IIRC which you can claim back if you win). Many other countries have a similar thing.
Sure, and I want to live my life without Sony lobbying governments to fuck up the internet, but thanks to people like you giving them money I can't.
Besides, it's not as if Sony has a great track record of keeping your data safe so why do you keep putting it in their hands in the first place? Honestly, if a company can't notice 50gb of sensitive data flying out of it's network it has to have a pretty high degree of incompetence.
Actually I intended it largely tongue in cheek. Perhaps the humour would be particularly non-obvious to a non-British audience who don't have to suffer such headlines each time it comes up in the likes of The Daily Fail and other borderline far right FUD publications, so apologies for that.
I've no idea what the fuck you're really on about, but if you're asking why I'm not keen on gTLDs then here are a few reasons:
- It destroys the hierarchical structure of DNS
- It forces companies and individuals to pay many millions of dollars to protect their trademark, and for what benefit?
- ICANN is meant to be non-profit, yet it's just created a billion dollar income stream. What does it intend to do with it? Why should international companies be forced to pay this to a US organisation?
- Only large organisations can afford to participate, TLDs should be created based on merit, not on money. Why should someone like Coca-cola be allowed multiple new TLDs and say, possibly even Slashdot not even be able to afford the expense of one.
Note that I'm not arguing against new top level domains, though I don't understand why we can't stick to the international ones for international organisations, and the national ones for national organisations. Is it because many of the best domains are purchased? why not just let individual countries decide how domain squatters should be dealt with - i.e. use it or lose it.
Really, the whole thing is just an expensive waste of money that provides no benefit except to ICANN and the beneficiaries of it's new windfall, it screws the little guy, and it destroys any kind of sane domain name hierarchy. It corporatises domains that may become important - i.e. what if someone like Apple were to get hold of.mobile and then deny every other mobile manufacturer usage? What if Barclays gets hold of.bank and fucked everyone else? and so on.
Ironically the only people other than ICANN and friends and the lucky few who get to exploit the system who will benefit are the lawyers, as they find plenty of employment suing over new TLDs and arguing over who should have the right to have what subdomain under what TLD, and non-job managers and administrators who get to create pointless meetings about what new TLD to blow money on what new domain strategy to pursue. Certainly they're of zero benefit to the little guy, and certainly they're of zero benefit to the people who actually do useful stuff in the world.
Thank you for at least explaining your irrationality on this issue. At least now I know why in our long discussion yesterday you were unwilling to look objectively at this issue.
For what it's worth though, this is rather cheap:
"You'll need to do more than eat your words. What is the proper way to apologize for smearing rape victims?"
What happened to you is awful, but it doesn't mean that everyone who is accused of rape is guilty. With that attitude you'll do little to help others who suffered what you did and will only help to foster an environment where people sympathise with the accused if they claim lack of guilt.
Response to rape has to be measured, we should do everything we can to help genuine victims, but your anger should be directed at those who use claims of rape as a tool to attack others, as it is they who cause a culture of doubt when other genuine victims come forward. The problem in this particular case is that there is still a fair bit of potential that this is exactly what is happening here - note that Assange hasn't been deemed guilty yet, only that Sweden's extraidition warrant has been deemed legally valid in UK courts.
Consider this: consider that some evidence comes forth that this is a setup, that rape is simply being used as a tool to defame Assange. Do you think should another case like this come up again people will give a fuck what you have to say on the issue? What if in that case the person was guilty of rape and they get away with it scott free? Honestly, the best thing you can do is step away from the issue. One of my friends suffered what you did, but she turned it into something positive by working rationally to raise rape awareness and yet she gets that there are issues of illegitimate rape claims being used as a weapon, and understands that supporting fraudulent claims works counter to her cause. Right now you simply have no idea whether the claim against Assange is legitimate or not.
Simple: Because once again, not all cases are equal.
You're assuming that all cases have equal probability of being overturned, obviously this is outright false as some cases have more merit than others. Once again, as per the stats you provided, of cases that have merit, 55% get overturned. It's almost certainly the case that Assange's case would be one of those heard by the ECHR.
This is statistics 101, we're not talking about rolling a dice where each side has equal probability here.
That doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means it's not the best.
It's still more effective than the vast majority of other systems in the world though arguably including the US' in that we have a longer life expectancy, lower levels of infant mortality, waste less time in our lives dealing with red tape surrounding it, and pay less for it all to boot. Sure other countries do even better again in these sorts of metrics, but the NHS is still right near the top of the scale in terms of global healthcare.
I'm British and I'm accidently sickened by this news, and I actually think our country deserves international condemnation over this but your rant is just stupid and wrong.
"Before exiting Heathrow Airport, you will be recorded on more CCTV camera's than while driving from San Francisco to New York."
That doesn't even make any sense, the distance between a plane and the exit to Heathrow isn't large enough for this to be true, unless you believe for some reason they have multiple CCTV cameras covering exactly the same spots taking the exact same redundant images for absolutely no reason at all. Hint: they don't. The UK has a CCTV problem, but your example is 100% bullshit, if you'd really actually been to Heathrow you'd know this.
"The UK prohibits MP's of other European countries access because of their political views."
Sure, the UK has refused entry to Geert Wilders, the Dutch far right extremist politicians which is presumably who you're referring to, but that's because the UK was dealing with a resurgent BNP at the time and we frankly didn't want to strengthen the far right platform. You realise however that countries like the US ban even simple holiday makers for jokes they've made on Twitter which the US authorities finds offensive? many European countries also ban extremists and so forth too. Hell, even Canada threatened to refuse me entry once for no other reason than the customs officer was a jackass and "wasn't convinced" I was telling the truth about my life after he'd randomly interrogated me for 3 hours and I've not even got so much as a speeding fine on my record, work a respectable job, and have a decent education. Our country is still one of the more accomodating in this respect, whilst some high profile preaches have been dealt with here and there the UK still for example allows people in supporting groups like "Muslims against crusades" to join in protests with British muslims - something few other countries would tolerate. I don't think the UK really needs to improve much in this area, it's still one of the most tolerant even now, there are much more pressing problems. We do need to make sure we don't allow the downwards trajectory towards less tolerance to continue though and absolutely we should still work to reverse it.
"The health system exceeds Mao's finest expectations when it comes to communist equality for all, especially the lack of quality."
This is just stupid and wrong. The NHS works, it's one of the best systems in the world and used as a model for many other countries who want a progressive health system. If you think the NHS is somehow a communist issue, then presumably you think that the US having public police and fire services makes the US police and fire services communist too. In most civilised nations, healthcare is treated as an essential basic service just like policing, fire, and the military are. Sucks for you if you don't come from such a civilised society where people can focus on being productive, rather than having to worry as to whether they'll be made bankrupt for no other reason than they got ill.
"The school systems is terribly broken."
I somewhat agree with this, it is pretty shit, but relative to the rest of the world it's still in the top 15 or so, so whilst it could do with a lot of improvement, it could also be a fuckton worse.
"The police have a license to kill (remember the poor Brazilian guy in London?)."
Well yeah, the police kinda do have a license to kill. Have you ever heard of an armed police unit anywhere in the world that is told "Well, here are your guns, but don't actually shoot anyone". A few examples of malpractice like Menezes do not equal an endemic issue with police murdering people. The British police record on this sort of thing is orders of magnitude better than in most of the world partly due to the fact a small handful of units have firearms so the scope for it happening accidently, or intentionally, is low. Compare this to say, America, where the police shoot multiple people every
It seems you still can't grasp the distinction between frivolous appeals to the ECHR by criminals clutching at straws and genuine appeals, and still have failed to comprehend that in the case of genuine appeals, Britain doesn't have a very good track record at all.
It seems you still fail to get that the ratio of non-frivolous to frivolous appeals in Turkey/Russia is much higher compared to the UK, but that this has no bearing on the success rate of non-frivolous appeals.
Neither of these points are hard to grasp, and I do not believe you are stupid enough to fail to grasp them. I believe you are simply ignoring these points because they weaken your previous assertion that the Assange court case was without fault, despite the fact you cannot actually be sure of that, and it's not simply about 100% perfection as you're trying to suggest. It's about the UK judiciary not having a particularly perfect record in political cases, of which this is certainly one.
Note that I haven't even argued one way or the other whether the Assange case was mishandled or not, I've merely been making the point that there is certainly a feasible possibility that it hasn't, and that hence your assertion that it almost definitely has, does not have quite the solid grounding you have been making out it does- in other words, you've been trying to claim something you have no evidence for, and that the links you have posted do not provide the evidence you imply they do. To put it bluntly, you've been rather at best mistaken to be so assertive in your beliefs, and at worst, been outright dishonest in your posts.
But anyway, if you can't show a basic understanding of what I've been saying which, again, as I say, really isn't difficult to understand if you're willing to be somewhat open minded and consider that the case against Assange may not actually have been handled perfectly as you believe, then I think we're done here as obviously it means you believe only what you want to believe, and a more objective look at the possibilities is not something you are interested in, that is, you have no interest in being objective.
My argument is that your original implication that the UK courts are infallible is clearly false. Your figures prove this.
Your figures also show that of those case that are deemed credible enough for a hearing, over half of them succede in overturning the British court's decision. As I pointed out, this has the implication that if Assange's case was one of those deemed credible, which it almost certainly is due to the fact that:
a) There is large scope for political interest in the case
b) The case touches on points for which no precedence exists, and for which parts of the law are extremely ambiguous (by this I'm referring to the EAW scheme)
Again, looking at other historical cases that have been deemed appropriate for an ECHR hearing, Assange's case would be typical of the type of case that gets heard, note that this is in part, because ECHR admission is in part, decided on based on public interest/government interest. As there is clearly a lot of interest in the Assange case, this would add a lot of weight to his case getting a hearing.
You are still abusing the statistics in that you're still trying to lump in appeals for which there is no merit with appeals for which there is merit. Again, this simply shows that you have made up your mind, are not interested in examining the situation objectively, and are just trying to publicly convince everyone that your predetermined conclusion is correct, using evidence which has no relevance to the correctness of your conclusion. If that makes you feel better then fine, but it doesn't mean your argument actually has any merit in practice.
Your comments about Russia and Turkey are perfectly valid, but also entirely irrelevant. It doesn't really matter that Turkey and Russia are worse than the UK, the point remains that the UK courts are still fallible. To put the issues in the Russia/Turkey cases into context, the whole reason they have more is because Russia/Turkey is failing in even non-controversial cases. For example, Russia has a lot of people being framed for crimes due to their competitors giving payments to corrupt police officers. This isn't, as far as anyone is aware, an issue in the UK and so there is a lot higher confidence in the outcome of more run of the mill cases with no political relevance in British courts than in Russian courts, hence the disparity. This doesn't however mean that the British courts are able to maintain the same level of objectivity when there is political interference in cases (if there is) than when there definitely isn't, this is why the disparity between the relative level of admitted cases between Turkey/Russia and the UK is entirely irrelevant- you're comparing countries with different situations and different issues. Relatively widespread judicial corruption in Russia, does not mean judicial corruption is non-existent in the UK.
I guess there's not really much point arguing you as the data you've provided perfectly proves my point and yet you seem to have completely missed that, but here goes.
As I stated, it occurs a few times a year, your numbers show that it occurs actually more frequently than once a month which tallies well with what I said (in fact, I thought it was less frequent than that, so if anything it strengthens my point from a few times a year, to more than once a month on average). Quite how you can suggest that once a month isn't a rare occurance I really don't know. Perhaps we have different standards on that, rare, for me, would be maybe once every few years, not more than once a month.
I suppose you could be trying to argue that the ratio of defeats is quite low, and hence imply that the odds are that the ruling in Assange's case is valid, but that's not a strong argument, as it ignores so many factors, the obvious one being that the number of applications is bound to be high, anyone wanting a reduced sentence even when genuinely guilty is bound to give it a go as they have really nothing to lose. In this case though there is a more fundamental point and that is the potential for there being a political conspiracy component to the case- the absolute vast majority of the cases would have no reasonble scope for this, but Assange's case clearly does.
If you could eliminate from those figures all frivolous ECHR appeals, then the number would be a little bit more informative. If you could break down the number to give the percentage of cases where there was scope for a real or alleged political motivated outcome to the British court's decision then it would be even more informative. As it stands though it's really meaningless and proves my point - that you implied suggestion that the UK justice system is infallible, which was the fudnamental presmise of your existing argument, is clearly false. Presumably those deemed inadmissable would likely be the afformentioned frivolous cases, and in that case the percentage finding violation of non-frivolous cases would jump to 55%, which obviously doesn't look as good, but perhaps you can think of a valid argument as to why non-frivolous cases would be dismissed as inadmissable too, hence invalidating this figure. If this figure is correct, and you consider looking at similarly admitted cases, that Assange's case would be admissable, then it implies there's a more than 50% chance that the judgement against Assange is in fact invalid, but this is of course speculation, without further analysis of what was and wasn't admitted we can't say this with any degree of certainty. Either way though, the fact that most admitted cases result in a ruling against the British courts doesn't really do much to backup your argument.
But regardless, try again if you want, all the evidence you've provided so far does not prove what you're trying to imply it proves. In this case the data you've provided tallies rather well with what I said, whilst failing to do anything to prove the point you're trying to make - that you believe the ruling against Assange is unquestionably legitimate. That still isn't even close to proven.
Providing evidence to back up your argument is only a valid discussion tactic if the evidence actually backs up your argument. Thus far everything you've provided does not, despite your implied suggestions to the contrary.
You were quick to criticise suggesting that people who have not read the judgement and imply they're not informed enough to make the comments they're making, but frankly it appears you've not really thought this through particularly well yourself. You're taking away a conclusion from the facts that those facts do not result in, this suggests you're not exactly being very objective about this and are merely trying to backup your own predetermined conclusion.
That and The Pirate Bay raid was carried out at the request of US authorities, and The Pirate Bay trial was presided over by a judge who is a member of a music lobbying organisation and personal friend of the prosecutor in that case.
There's an awful lot of evidence that shows Sweden as being far from the bastion of justice and freedom that it used to be famous as.
Because it would be politically untenable and it would be the death knell for the UK's extradition treaty with the US.
It's already undergone years and years of flak because of cases like McKinnon's, and O'Dwyer's. Adding Assange into the mix would force the British government's had to cancel the treaty and let Assange go free. The British people simply would not tolerate another high profile unfair extradition like this, the treaty is already at breaking point in the public's eyes, and it's only a matter of time until parliament has to do something about it anyway, Assange's case would just force them to do something about it immediately and stop delaying.
You seem very focussed on the judgement, and have claimed once already that because two courts were involved in the decision it's somehow less likely that the decision is biased.
Might I remind you how, on many, many occasions cases that have been escalated through a number of levels of court in the UK resulting in the same decision at each level have then been overturned when challenged in the inherently much more objective court - the European Court of Human Rights? The ECHR was created precisely because after the war, and as a result of what happened to German jews etc., there needed to be a place where people could hold their own government and judiciary to account if they believed they were a victim of injustice in their own country. The fact that the ECHR has overturned a number of UK court decisions, and tend to do so a few times a year, suggests that injustice via UK courts is not a particularly rare occurance.
Of course, if you're from the UK you may have also noticed a number of MPs complaining about the ECHR. It's not suprising that these are the same MPs who have little care for true justice, and are often the first to throw it out the window in favour of populist ideologies. The same ones who often have a rather authoritarian and sometimes even fascist ideology on many issues. In other words, the MPs who complain about the ECHR are the same MPs who see little problem with a bent court system. The same MPs who would gladly be happy with a justice system that they can control to give them favourable outcomes when it suits them, even if against the letter of the law.
What makes you so absolutely certain that Assange's case isn't one of these many cases? Your argument that things are being done properly in the UK justice system is based on the demonstrably false premise that the UK justice system is infallible. Many cases each year prove that this is absolutely not the case.
It's pretty clear the British courts do get things wrong, even when pursued through multiple levels of the court system, it's pretty clear there are a number of MPs happy with the idea of political interference in the courts being an acceptable thing. So again, why are you so certain this doesn't happen? why are you so sure the courts have got it right? I see nothing particularly damning in the judgement and if anything, note a number of places where the judge recognises points at which the Swedish authorities have failed to do things correctly, and yet, the judge still ultimately gives them what they want. Perhaps you're right, perhaps the judgement is valid - but that's certainly not the foregone conclusion you're making it out to be, and the link you keep posting absolutely does not make it so.
"Obviously, a definition of what counts as "people", "property" and "permission" need to go along with that single law but it's fairly intuitive."
It's never simple.
In the UK we banned smoking in enclosed public places some years back, and now there is talk of strengthening the ban further. The argument by smokers has always been "But it's my body, I should have the right to do what I want" and this is the classic libertarian argument. What it completely and utterly ignores though is that people like me have to walk past smokers in the park and inhale as they smoke when they walk past us. What the fuck happened to my right to breathe fresh air free of carcinogens in public parklands and so forth? Whose right is more important? the smokers or the passer by's? If it's the smokers, do I also then have the freedom to walk around with a canister of harmful gas like chlorine and spray it at smokers when I pass them? if not, why not in this circumstance? Where do you draw the line and why? What makes your drawn line more important than anyone elses? How do we come to a conclusion on this?
The answer to the last one is rather simple, we decide via a form of governance, because there are many millions of these sorts of grey areas.
"Knowing all that, how on earth do you get the idea that following these ideas can end up with the "rich" stuffing poor people into meat grinders for their amusement?"
It's quite simple. The rich have the resources to claim more than anyone else, to the point where everyone else has to make use of the rich's resources to get/do what they want/need to do. How do you get to the hospital if you can't pass over the land of the rich guy who has bought up everything around your house? how do you get food and so on? Ultimately you have to bow down to the rich guy's whims, do whatever he wants, because otherwise you can simply no longer survive.
Slashdot Mirror
War criminals are, if anything, an exception.
In the UK we've got people who were convicted of homosexuality which was an offence in living memory. They have now had the convictions scrubbed because we now recognise that this was completely wrong. Nelson Mandela was once deemed a terrorist, as were many ex-IRA members, and are now seen as legitimate leaders, voices to be listened to.
I suspect Assange's treatment by governments regarding Wikileaks will be viewed the same way in the long run.
"Assange is safer extradited to Sweden than he is staying in the UK because both Sweden and the UK would have to agree to a further extradition."
No, this is precisely where the problem lies. Both Sweden and Britain have claimed this to be the case in the past, but this is precisely what Ecuador tried to confirm and get a guarantee on, and this is precisely what both Sweden and Britain refused to give a guarantee on.
My original post was a little light on detail as I only intended it as a brief summary, Ecuador was much more specific in it's guarantees such that the guarantees it sought were perfectly realistic and reasonable and would not block cases such as your example and only block extradition to the US over Wikileaks as a follow on extradition from the UK to Sweden extradition.
That's why this was such a major factor in Ecuador's decision, it was perfectly feasible to give the guarantee Ecuador requested if this wasn't about Wikileaks at all, but Britain and Sweden would not give them.
I agree that any impact I suffer is probably fairly small, but there is impact all the same.
As I say, Sony is one of the biggest forces in the RIAA lobbying to take away internet freedoms, lobbying to allow for site blocking, pushing court cases here in the UK to block sites like The Pirate Bay.
The cost to me isn't necessarily explicitly and directly financial, the cost may not even be tangible in some cases (I never used The Pirate Bay anyway), but there is a cost to my freedom to choose to visit now blocked sites for example. There is a cost to my freedom of choice as a consumer when Sony acts in a cartel like manner blocking certain musical acts being succesful. There is a cost to me as a taxpayer if my taxes are being used to help fund the creation of Sony's legislation, for the courts to cater to Sony's crusades and so on.
"The UK have no interest in him."
We have no interest in him yet we're willing to make the totally unprecedented move that defies all international convention and precedence on the issue of embassies of revoking the Ecuadorian right to an embassy in our country?
You're right about one thing though, he's not our problem, but if he's not our problem, why are we going to the level of creating a diplomatic shit-storm that undoes every bit of good-will towards the UK from the international community that the likes of the royal wedding and the olympics have built up? Why are we willing to have our embassies shut down across the globe in retaliation by Ecuador and it's allies over someone who is not our problem? Why don't we just let Ecuador fly him to Ecuador and let Sweden/Ecuador sort it out through their own channels?
"The UK *MUST* extradite him or their laws mean nothing."
No we mustn't, historical precedence, and international convention says that political asylum takes precedence. How can we possibly preach to countries like Iran over things such as holding British sailors or US citizens prisoner if we do this sort of thing? At that point we've lost the moral high ground on this and many similar issues and no one should or will listen to us ever again on them.
"The laws on embassies mean we *CAN* legally revoke embassy status from the building itself."
That's what government claims. No one else seems to be convinced. Even if we can the cost of doing so is so massive there has to be a question of why, unless the government is seeing absolutely massive pressure/threats from elsewhere - i.e. the US government. The cost of doing this is so large relative to just letting Assange go to Ecuardor that it makes no sense without some other massive external factor (i.e. the US).
"Even the Vienna convention says we can just expel all the diplomats (so long as we don't harm them, etc.) "at any time, and for any reason"."
Yes, but the actual process of expelling a diplomat means you have to give them chance to pack up and go, and again, the cost of doing so is so mind bogglingly large for Britain's reputation that it doesn't make any sense to do this.
You're using the word "must" an awful lot where you should actually have typed "in my opinion should" because there is no real grounding for your claim of must.
"He deliberately and knowingly breached UK bail and will have to stand up in court for that at some point, no matter what."
Again, this is rather forceful language - "no matter what"? are you sure about that? are you sure that he wont manage to get to Ecuador and 30 years down the line when global geopolitics have changed and anything Assange has done wrong is forgotten the charges are dropped? It's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened across the globe many hundreds of times before in geopolitics.
Unless you can tell the future and know something the rest of us don't you should stick to stating things as opinion rather than demanding that what you say is the absolute truth and nothing else could possibly be the case, as that just makes you look like some zealous preacher, you may think it somehow adds strength to your argument, but it really doesn't, it just makes you look like an unobjective wingnut.
"Why would the UK or Sweden "guarantee" that he won't be extradited? If the US has not requested it, and a court has not ruled, then no guarantee could be made."
The UK specifically because it was extraditing him for the claimed rape and has claimed Sweden couldn't then pass him on to a 3rd country without the UK's agreement. It was a bit more explicit than the way I simply worded it, such that the UK wouldn't give a guarantee that Sweden couldn't then just pass him on to the US, which is contrary to what UK officials have claimed in the past about the case.
In the case of Sweden, the guarantee sought was that Sweden wouldn't just pass him on to the US without a separate extradition agreement from the UK. Again, Sweden wouldn't do this, and again, despite the fact Swedish officials have claimed they would need to do this to pass him onto the UK.
Effectively all Ecuador was after is a solid guarantee that the standards of justice in protecting Assange from extradition to the US that both British and Swedish officials had claimed would protect Assange, really would protect him. Neither country was willing to put their money where their mouth is and actually back up their previous claims with a solid guarantee.
So it ties in with your last sentence basically, that it's not so much that both countries wouldn't give some arbitrary guarantee that Assange was safe from US extradition, but instead that both countries wouldn't give a guarantee that Assange would in fact be protected by the proper legal mechanisms both countries previously claimed would protect him. In other words, what was said by officials about protection for Assange from further extradition to the US was in fact likely just a facade.
That was only part of it, they also tried to get the UK to do the same and guarantee there was no potential for Assange to then be moved onto the US after Sweden too but they wouldn't.
They also made it clear Sweden can and has in the past interviewed people in foreign embassies and so Sweden does have the legal capability to do this.
They asked the US to also confirm whether there were any plans to try and get Assange over Wikileaks and the US wouldn't comment on that either.
It was all in all really interesting, because the statement basically drove a bulldozer through all the anti-Assange arguments that have been made here on Slashdot over the last year or so. All the stuff about how there were protections against Assange being moved on from Sweden to the US preventing that being possible, and all the crap about how Sweden supposedly doesn't allow in it's law for questioning via video link or in foreign countries hence the need for extradition turns out to be complete and utter crap.
Oh dear, Dave Schroeder the self-confessed "Information Warfare Officer in the United States Navy Fleet Cyber Command/US Tenth Fleet." from his own homepage was just waiting to pounce on first post for this one.
Well, anyway, I actually listened to the statement by Ecuador's spokesman live today and it was pretty interesting. The reason Ecuador took so long over this decision is that they have been trying to avoid it. What this involved was trying to find out whether Assange really was under some kind of threat. As such they:
- Asked Britain to guarantee that there was no possibility of Assange being extradited to the US. Britain refused to give this guarantee.
- Asked Sweden to guarantee that Assange would not be further extradited to the US after the rape case was dealt with. Sweden refused to give this guarantee.
- Asked Sweden if they would be willing to interview Assange in the Ecuardorian embassy over the accusations, noting that contrary to much FUD posted on Slashdot, this is in fact something Sweden can do, and has done in the past hence debunking the argument that Sweden's legal system does not allow this.
- Asked the US whether there was any existing or planned legal proceedings ongoing against Assange, and any current or potential future plans to extradite him over Wikileaks. The US refused to respond to this.
Given these 3 points, Ecuador decided that on the balance of probabilities, Assange was indeed at risk because they could not get any kind of guarantee from any of the parties involved that this was nothing to do with Wikileaks. As such they granted him asylum.
Or if you cut away the bullshit, the responses, or lack of, from Britain, Sweden, and America when Ecuador tried to resolve this without having to give Assange asylum and hence now deal with the tricky situation of how to get him the hell out of the UK all but confirm that this whole thing is indeed about Wikileaks.
Still, keep on trying to just slag off Ecuador as a bit of misdirection from the actual story here Dave if that's what makes you a happy guy.
"And how Dare people who do not have the same political priorities and views of you not alter their lives to match you views. "Freedom for speech just as long as you are saying what I want to hear!!!""
That's a rather ass-backwards way of reading the discussion. I simply made the point that I suffer when he funds Sony, so why should I care when he suffers for funding Sony?
I didn't say I expect him to change, I'm just saying don't expect sympathy when not changing comes back to bite you. It's a two way street.
Extrapolating that into a comment about freedom of speech doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
I guess it depends what country you are in. In the UK I think the repeated displays of ineptitude by Sony in holding your data secure would be grounds enough to be able to cancel your account and demand a refund for any content you would hence no longer have access to. The small claims court here is quite effective at dealing with those sorts of cases and the time/cost for using it is pretty low (£20 IIRC which you can claim back if you win). Many other countries have a similar thing.
Sure, and I want to live my life without Sony lobbying governments to fuck up the internet, but thanks to people like you giving them money I can't.
Besides, it's not as if Sony has a great track record of keeping your data safe so why do you keep putting it in their hands in the first place? Honestly, if a company can't notice 50gb of sensitive data flying out of it's network it has to have a pretty high degree of incompetence.
Actually I intended it largely tongue in cheek. Perhaps the humour would be particularly non-obvious to a non-British audience who don't have to suffer such headlines each time it comes up in the likes of The Daily Fail and other borderline far right FUD publications, so apologies for that.
I've no idea what the fuck you're really on about, but if you're asking why I'm not keen on gTLDs then here are a few reasons:
- It destroys the hierarchical structure of DNS
- It forces companies and individuals to pay many millions of dollars to protect their trademark, and for what benefit?
- ICANN is meant to be non-profit, yet it's just created a billion dollar income stream. What does it intend to do with it? Why should international companies be forced to pay this to a US organisation?
- Only large organisations can afford to participate, TLDs should be created based on merit, not on money. Why should someone like Coca-cola be allowed multiple new TLDs and say, possibly even Slashdot not even be able to afford the expense of one.
Note that I'm not arguing against new top level domains, though I don't understand why we can't stick to the international ones for international organisations, and the national ones for national organisations. Is it because many of the best domains are purchased? why not just let individual countries decide how domain squatters should be dealt with - i.e. use it or lose it.
Really, the whole thing is just an expensive waste of money that provides no benefit except to ICANN and the beneficiaries of it's new windfall, it screws the little guy, and it destroys any kind of sane domain name hierarchy. It corporatises domains that may become important - i.e. what if someone like Apple were to get hold of .mobile and then deny every other mobile manufacturer usage? What if Barclays gets hold of .bank and fucked everyone else? and so on.
Ironically the only people other than ICANN and friends and the lucky few who get to exploit the system who will benefit are the lawyers, as they find plenty of employment suing over new TLDs and arguing over who should have the right to have what subdomain under what TLD, and non-job managers and administrators who get to create pointless meetings about what new TLD to blow money on what new domain strategy to pursue. Certainly they're of zero benefit to the little guy, and certainly they're of zero benefit to the people who actually do useful stuff in the world.
That's okay, they can use the aid money the UK pays them every year for that sort of thing.
If the UN was in charge of the internet we almost certainly wouldn't have had the stupid gTLD idea go through in the first place.
Thank you for at least explaining your irrationality on this issue. At least now I know why in our long discussion yesterday you were unwilling to look objectively at this issue.
For what it's worth though, this is rather cheap:
"You'll need to do more than eat your words. What is the proper way to apologize for smearing rape victims?"
What happened to you is awful, but it doesn't mean that everyone who is accused of rape is guilty. With that attitude you'll do little to help others who suffered what you did and will only help to foster an environment where people sympathise with the accused if they claim lack of guilt.
Response to rape has to be measured, we should do everything we can to help genuine victims, but your anger should be directed at those who use claims of rape as a tool to attack others, as it is they who cause a culture of doubt when other genuine victims come forward. The problem in this particular case is that there is still a fair bit of potential that this is exactly what is happening here - note that Assange hasn't been deemed guilty yet, only that Sweden's extraidition warrant has been deemed legally valid in UK courts.
Consider this: consider that some evidence comes forth that this is a setup, that rape is simply being used as a tool to defame Assange. Do you think should another case like this come up again people will give a fuck what you have to say on the issue? What if in that case the person was guilty of rape and they get away with it scott free? Honestly, the best thing you can do is step away from the issue. One of my friends suffered what you did, but she turned it into something positive by working rationally to raise rape awareness and yet she gets that there are issues of illegitimate rape claims being used as a weapon, and understands that supporting fraudulent claims works counter to her cause. Right now you simply have no idea whether the claim against Assange is legitimate or not.
Simple: Because once again, not all cases are equal.
You're assuming that all cases have equal probability of being overturned, obviously this is outright false as some cases have more merit than others. Once again, as per the stats you provided, of cases that have merit, 55% get overturned. It's almost certainly the case that Assange's case would be one of those heard by the ECHR.
This is statistics 101, we're not talking about rolling a dice where each side has equal probability here.
That doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means it's not the best.
It's still more effective than the vast majority of other systems in the world though arguably including the US' in that we have a longer life expectancy, lower levels of infant mortality, waste less time in our lives dealing with red tape surrounding it, and pay less for it all to boot. Sure other countries do even better again in these sorts of metrics, but the NHS is still right near the top of the scale in terms of global healthcare.
I'm British and I'm accidently sickened by this news, and I actually think our country deserves international condemnation over this but your rant is just stupid and wrong.
"Before exiting Heathrow Airport, you will be recorded on more CCTV camera's than while driving from San Francisco to New York."
That doesn't even make any sense, the distance between a plane and the exit to Heathrow isn't large enough for this to be true, unless you believe for some reason they have multiple CCTV cameras covering exactly the same spots taking the exact same redundant images for absolutely no reason at all. Hint: they don't. The UK has a CCTV problem, but your example is 100% bullshit, if you'd really actually been to Heathrow you'd know this.
"The UK prohibits MP's of other European countries access because of their political views."
Sure, the UK has refused entry to Geert Wilders, the Dutch far right extremist politicians which is presumably who you're referring to, but that's because the UK was dealing with a resurgent BNP at the time and we frankly didn't want to strengthen the far right platform. You realise however that countries like the US ban even simple holiday makers for jokes they've made on Twitter which the US authorities finds offensive? many European countries also ban extremists and so forth too. Hell, even Canada threatened to refuse me entry once for no other reason than the customs officer was a jackass and "wasn't convinced" I was telling the truth about my life after he'd randomly interrogated me for 3 hours and I've not even got so much as a speeding fine on my record, work a respectable job, and have a decent education. Our country is still one of the more accomodating in this respect, whilst some high profile preaches have been dealt with here and there the UK still for example allows people in supporting groups like "Muslims against crusades" to join in protests with British muslims - something few other countries would tolerate. I don't think the UK really needs to improve much in this area, it's still one of the most tolerant even now, there are much more pressing problems. We do need to make sure we don't allow the downwards trajectory towards less tolerance to continue though and absolutely we should still work to reverse it.
"The health system exceeds Mao's finest expectations when it comes to communist equality for all, especially the lack of quality."
This is just stupid and wrong. The NHS works, it's one of the best systems in the world and used as a model for many other countries who want a progressive health system. If you think the NHS is somehow a communist issue, then presumably you think that the US having public police and fire services makes the US police and fire services communist too. In most civilised nations, healthcare is treated as an essential basic service just like policing, fire, and the military are. Sucks for you if you don't come from such a civilised society where people can focus on being productive, rather than having to worry as to whether they'll be made bankrupt for no other reason than they got ill.
"The school systems is terribly broken."
I somewhat agree with this, it is pretty shit, but relative to the rest of the world it's still in the top 15 or so, so whilst it could do with a lot of improvement, it could also be a fuckton worse.
"The police have a license to kill (remember the poor Brazilian guy in London?)."
Well yeah, the police kinda do have a license to kill. Have you ever heard of an armed police unit anywhere in the world that is told "Well, here are your guns, but don't actually shoot anyone". A few examples of malpractice like Menezes do not equal an endemic issue with police murdering people. The British police record on this sort of thing is orders of magnitude better than in most of the world partly due to the fact a small handful of units have firearms so the scope for it happening accidently, or intentionally, is low. Compare this to say, America, where the police shoot multiple people every
It seems you still can't grasp the distinction between frivolous appeals to the ECHR by criminals clutching at straws and genuine appeals, and still have failed to comprehend that in the case of genuine appeals, Britain doesn't have a very good track record at all.
It seems you still fail to get that the ratio of non-frivolous to frivolous appeals in Turkey/Russia is much higher compared to the UK, but that this has no bearing on the success rate of non-frivolous appeals.
Neither of these points are hard to grasp, and I do not believe you are stupid enough to fail to grasp them. I believe you are simply ignoring these points because they weaken your previous assertion that the Assange court case was without fault, despite the fact you cannot actually be sure of that, and it's not simply about 100% perfection as you're trying to suggest. It's about the UK judiciary not having a particularly perfect record in political cases, of which this is certainly one.
Note that I haven't even argued one way or the other whether the Assange case was mishandled or not, I've merely been making the point that there is certainly a feasible possibility that it hasn't, and that hence your assertion that it almost definitely has, does not have quite the solid grounding you have been making out it does- in other words, you've been trying to claim something you have no evidence for, and that the links you have posted do not provide the evidence you imply they do. To put it bluntly, you've been rather at best mistaken to be so assertive in your beliefs, and at worst, been outright dishonest in your posts.
But anyway, if you can't show a basic understanding of what I've been saying which, again, as I say, really isn't difficult to understand if you're willing to be somewhat open minded and consider that the case against Assange may not actually have been handled perfectly as you believe, then I think we're done here as obviously it means you believe only what you want to believe, and a more objective look at the possibilities is not something you are interested in, that is, you have no interest in being objective.
My argument is that your original implication that the UK courts are infallible is clearly false. Your figures prove this.
Your figures also show that of those case that are deemed credible enough for a hearing, over half of them succede in overturning the British court's decision. As I pointed out, this has the implication that if Assange's case was one of those deemed credible, which it almost certainly is due to the fact that:
a) There is large scope for political interest in the case
b) The case touches on points for which no precedence exists, and for which parts of the law are extremely ambiguous (by this I'm referring to the EAW scheme)
Again, looking at other historical cases that have been deemed appropriate for an ECHR hearing, Assange's case would be typical of the type of case that gets heard, note that this is in part, because ECHR admission is in part, decided on based on public interest/government interest. As there is clearly a lot of interest in the Assange case, this would add a lot of weight to his case getting a hearing.
You are still abusing the statistics in that you're still trying to lump in appeals for which there is no merit with appeals for which there is merit. Again, this simply shows that you have made up your mind, are not interested in examining the situation objectively, and are just trying to publicly convince everyone that your predetermined conclusion is correct, using evidence which has no relevance to the correctness of your conclusion. If that makes you feel better then fine, but it doesn't mean your argument actually has any merit in practice.
Your comments about Russia and Turkey are perfectly valid, but also entirely irrelevant. It doesn't really matter that Turkey and Russia are worse than the UK, the point remains that the UK courts are still fallible. To put the issues in the Russia/Turkey cases into context, the whole reason they have more is because Russia/Turkey is failing in even non-controversial cases. For example, Russia has a lot of people being framed for crimes due to their competitors giving payments to corrupt police officers. This isn't, as far as anyone is aware, an issue in the UK and so there is a lot higher confidence in the outcome of more run of the mill cases with no political relevance in British courts than in Russian courts, hence the disparity. This doesn't however mean that the British courts are able to maintain the same level of objectivity when there is political interference in cases (if there is) than when there definitely isn't, this is why the disparity between the relative level of admitted cases between Turkey/Russia and the UK is entirely irrelevant- you're comparing countries with different situations and different issues. Relatively widespread judicial corruption in Russia, does not mean judicial corruption is non-existent in the UK.
I guess there's not really much point arguing you as the data you've provided perfectly proves my point and yet you seem to have completely missed that, but here goes.
As I stated, it occurs a few times a year, your numbers show that it occurs actually more frequently than once a month which tallies well with what I said (in fact, I thought it was less frequent than that, so if anything it strengthens my point from a few times a year, to more than once a month on average). Quite how you can suggest that once a month isn't a rare occurance I really don't know. Perhaps we have different standards on that, rare, for me, would be maybe once every few years, not more than once a month.
I suppose you could be trying to argue that the ratio of defeats is quite low, and hence imply that the odds are that the ruling in Assange's case is valid, but that's not a strong argument, as it ignores so many factors, the obvious one being that the number of applications is bound to be high, anyone wanting a reduced sentence even when genuinely guilty is bound to give it a go as they have really nothing to lose. In this case though there is a more fundamental point and that is the potential for there being a political conspiracy component to the case- the absolute vast majority of the cases would have no reasonble scope for this, but Assange's case clearly does.
If you could eliminate from those figures all frivolous ECHR appeals, then the number would be a little bit more informative. If you could break down the number to give the percentage of cases where there was scope for a real or alleged political motivated outcome to the British court's decision then it would be even more informative. As it stands though it's really meaningless and proves my point - that you implied suggestion that the UK justice system is infallible, which was the fudnamental presmise of your existing argument, is clearly false. Presumably those deemed inadmissable would likely be the afformentioned frivolous cases, and in that case the percentage finding violation of non-frivolous cases would jump to 55%, which obviously doesn't look as good, but perhaps you can think of a valid argument as to why non-frivolous cases would be dismissed as inadmissable too, hence invalidating this figure. If this figure is correct, and you consider looking at similarly admitted cases, that Assange's case would be admissable, then it implies there's a more than 50% chance that the judgement against Assange is in fact invalid, but this is of course speculation, without further analysis of what was and wasn't admitted we can't say this with any degree of certainty. Either way though, the fact that most admitted cases result in a ruling against the British courts doesn't really do much to backup your argument.
But regardless, try again if you want, all the evidence you've provided so far does not prove what you're trying to imply it proves. In this case the data you've provided tallies rather well with what I said, whilst failing to do anything to prove the point you're trying to make - that you believe the ruling against Assange is unquestionably legitimate. That still isn't even close to proven.
Providing evidence to back up your argument is only a valid discussion tactic if the evidence actually backs up your argument. Thus far everything you've provided does not, despite your implied suggestions to the contrary.
You were quick to criticise suggesting that people who have not read the judgement and imply they're not informed enough to make the comments they're making, but frankly it appears you've not really thought this through particularly well yourself. You're taking away a conclusion from the facts that those facts do not result in, this suggests you're not exactly being very objective about this and are merely trying to backup your own predetermined conclusion.
That and The Pirate Bay raid was carried out at the request of US authorities, and The Pirate Bay trial was presided over by a judge who is a member of a music lobbying organisation and personal friend of the prosecutor in that case.
There's an awful lot of evidence that shows Sweden as being far from the bastion of justice and freedom that it used to be famous as.
Because it would be politically untenable and it would be the death knell for the UK's extradition treaty with the US.
It's already undergone years and years of flak because of cases like McKinnon's, and O'Dwyer's. Adding Assange into the mix would force the British government's had to cancel the treaty and let Assange go free. The British people simply would not tolerate another high profile unfair extradition like this, the treaty is already at breaking point in the public's eyes, and it's only a matter of time until parliament has to do something about it anyway, Assange's case would just force them to do something about it immediately and stop delaying.
You seem very focussed on the judgement, and have claimed once already that because two courts were involved in the decision it's somehow less likely that the decision is biased.
Might I remind you how, on many, many occasions cases that have been escalated through a number of levels of court in the UK resulting in the same decision at each level have then been overturned when challenged in the inherently much more objective court - the European Court of Human Rights? The ECHR was created precisely because after the war, and as a result of what happened to German jews etc., there needed to be a place where people could hold their own government and judiciary to account if they believed they were a victim of injustice in their own country. The fact that the ECHR has overturned a number of UK court decisions, and tend to do so a few times a year, suggests that injustice via UK courts is not a particularly rare occurance.
Of course, if you're from the UK you may have also noticed a number of MPs complaining about the ECHR. It's not suprising that these are the same MPs who have little care for true justice, and are often the first to throw it out the window in favour of populist ideologies. The same ones who often have a rather authoritarian and sometimes even fascist ideology on many issues. In other words, the MPs who complain about the ECHR are the same MPs who see little problem with a bent court system. The same MPs who would gladly be happy with a justice system that they can control to give them favourable outcomes when it suits them, even if against the letter of the law.
What makes you so absolutely certain that Assange's case isn't one of these many cases? Your argument that things are being done properly in the UK justice system is based on the demonstrably false premise that the UK justice system is infallible. Many cases each year prove that this is absolutely not the case.
It's pretty clear the British courts do get things wrong, even when pursued through multiple levels of the court system, it's pretty clear there are a number of MPs happy with the idea of political interference in the courts being an acceptable thing. So again, why are you so certain this doesn't happen? why are you so sure the courts have got it right? I see nothing particularly damning in the judgement and if anything, note a number of places where the judge recognises points at which the Swedish authorities have failed to do things correctly, and yet, the judge still ultimately gives them what they want. Perhaps you're right, perhaps the judgement is valid - but that's certainly not the foregone conclusion you're making it out to be, and the link you keep posting absolutely does not make it so.
"Obviously, a definition of what counts as "people", "property" and "permission" need to go along with that single law but it's fairly intuitive."
It's never simple.
In the UK we banned smoking in enclosed public places some years back, and now there is talk of strengthening the ban further. The argument by smokers has always been "But it's my body, I should have the right to do what I want" and this is the classic libertarian argument. What it completely and utterly ignores though is that people like me have to walk past smokers in the park and inhale as they smoke when they walk past us. What the fuck happened to my right to breathe fresh air free of carcinogens in public parklands and so forth? Whose right is more important? the smokers or the passer by's? If it's the smokers, do I also then have the freedom to walk around with a canister of harmful gas like chlorine and spray it at smokers when I pass them? if not, why not in this circumstance? Where do you draw the line and why? What makes your drawn line more important than anyone elses? How do we come to a conclusion on this?
The answer to the last one is rather simple, we decide via a form of governance, because there are many millions of these sorts of grey areas.
"Knowing all that, how on earth do you get the idea that following these ideas can end up with the "rich" stuffing poor people into meat grinders for their amusement?"
It's quite simple. The rich have the resources to claim more than anyone else, to the point where everyone else has to make use of the rich's resources to get/do what they want/need to do. How do you get to the hospital if you can't pass over the land of the rich guy who has bought up everything around your house? how do you get food and so on? Ultimately you have to bow down to the rich guy's whims, do whatever he wants, because otherwise you can simply no longer survive.