Porkins Policy Review

The ongoing persecution of Julian Assange has reached a new level of absurdity today after it was announced that Ecuador had granted the founder of Wikileaks asylum. In the aftermath of Quito granting asylum to Assange the
British government sent this letter to the Ecuadorians

You should be aware that there is a legal basis in the U.K. the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act which would allow us to take action to arrest Mr. Assange in the current premises of the Embassy.
We very much hope not to get this point, but if you cannot resolve the issue of Mr. Assange’s presence on your premises, this route is open to us.
We understand the importance to you of the issues raised by Mr. Assange, and the strong public pressure in country. But we still have to resolve the situation on the ground, here in the U.K., in line with our legal obligations. We have endeavored to develop a joint text, which helps both meet your concerns, and presentational needs.

After sending this letter threatening to storm the Ecuadorian embassy the British government denied that this was a threat. This denial of a threat was followed by the sending of non-threatening police vans to surround the Ecuadorian embassy. Continuing in this vain of non threatening behavior by the British government, William Hague had this to say regarding diplomatic asylum

We will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the United Kingdom, nor is there any legal basis for us to do so. The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum.
It is far from a universally accepted concept: the United Kingdom is not a party to any legal instruments which require us to recognise the grant of diplomatic asylum by a foreign embassy in this country.
Moreover, it is well established that, even for those countries which do recognise diplomatic asylum, it should not be used for the purposes of escaping the regular processes of the courts. And in this case that is clearly what is happening.

So are we really meant to believe that Britain is willing to break diplomatic conventions and storm a foreign embassy (exposing their diplomats to untold dangers overseas) and arrest Julian Assange so he can be brought to Sweden for QUESTIONING( he has never been charged) in a sex crimes case against him? The answer is no. Britain is jumping through all of these hoops at the behest of their American cousins. This has nothing to do with rape allegations. That is merely the justification for extraditing Assange to Sweden do he can be sent to the United States for trial or indefinite detention. If Britain were so forthright with prosecuting sex offenders they would have extradited Pinochet who had countless women raped while he was dictator of Chile. Luckily for Pinochet he commanded a greater deal of respect from the British government. Indeed if Sweden was so concerned with these two women who have accused Assange of rape, why have they turned down multiple invitations to question Assange in London? Because they too are doing the bidding of the Americans.

I know I am rehashing a lot of stuff here, but the point is to really make clear how extraordinarily outrageous this whole affair is. All of this is being done at the behest of our liberal democracy loving president to punish someone for exposing the truth about Americas crimes around the world. England, Sweden, and Australia are all willing to put their own diplomats in danger all because the president and America got embarrassed. This should instill a sense of shame and rage in all Americans. The saddest part of all of this is how blatant it is. No one is even trying to spin this as an extradition meant to uphold the law and bring justice for these alleged rape victims. As Marcy Wheeler so brilliantly points out, this whole diplomatic fiasco is doing exactly what Wikileaks did in the first place. Which was to

expose publicly what has become true but remains largely unacknowledged: the US and its allies find international law and protocols to be quaint. That was obviously true under Bush, with the illegal Iraq war and his disdain for the Geneva Conventions. But Obama, too, continues to do things legally authorized only by the most acrobatic of legal interpretations.