Russia has already been swinging their dicks in the UK direction over this, because they have harbored "enemies of the state" from them. If not an outright war, the UK will fuck up their diplomatic powers significantly.
>> ^messenger:

With Ecuador? In the UK? That'd be even shorter than the Anglo-Zanzibar War, and we'd have streaming footage of the whole thing. That'd be cool.>> ^gwiz665:
UK's gonna start a war if they do.

>> ^messenger:

With Ecuador? In the UK? That'd be even shorter than the Anglo-Zanzibar War, and we'd have streaming footage of the whole thing. That'd be cool.>> ^gwiz665:
UK's gonna start a war if they do.



Sure. Then the south american nations decide that the falklands is no longer british territory either.

Or how about ANY of our embassies ANYWHERE in the world? It'd be extremely uncool and we'd be lucky not to have to suffer consequences for it.

Last time we made an international gesture when opinion was split, we ended up with the fucking iraq war. The fact that we're on the verge of doing someone else's dirty work again so soon makes me feel fucking sick. Just what type of fucking clowns are in charge here?

With Ecuador? In the UK? That'd be even shorter than the Anglo-Zanzibar War, and we'd have streaming footage of the whole thing. That'd be cool.>> ^gwiz665:

UK's gonna start a war if they do.

Former ambassador Craig Murray commented on the threat of a raid at the embassy:

Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during the decades of the Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from each other’s embassies. Murder in Samarkand relates in detail my attempts in the British Embassy to help Uzbek dissidents. This terrible breach of international law will result in British Embassies being subject to raids and harassment worldwide.

The government’s calculation is that, unlike Ecuador, Britain is a strong enough power to deter such intrusions. This is yet another symptom of the “might is right” principle in international relations, in the era of the neo-conservative abandonment of the idea of the rule of international law.

The British Government bases its argument on domestic British legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot counter its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw from them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed on it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it – which would leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.

1. The Swedish government handed Mohammed al-Zari and Ahmed Agiza over to the Egyptians after they "obtained promises from the Egyptian authorities that the men would not be tortured or subjected to the death penalty, and would be given fair trials". Even Human Rights Watch conceded that this was done merely to "cover itself", knowing full well that these two would be tortured.

So yes, the Swedes are more than capable of sending Assange to the States.

2. According to Fair Trials International, Swedish law permits a level of secrecy for trials such as this that everyone should be concerned about. No public hearings and extended isolation, to name the key aspects.

3. As previously said, if Swedish authorities assured either Assange or the Ecuadorians that he wouldn't be handed over to the US, he'd be in Sweden already. It is entirely within their power to bring an end to this farce or to reveal Assange to be full of shit, should he still not comply even after acceptable guarantees were provided. But they chose not to make these assurances. And the stakes are too high for Assange to accept anything less, given the consequences he faces should he ever enter the US.

On a personal note: if it was me, I wouldn't believe any assurances by any country that took part in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program -- including my own country in the case of Khalid El-Masri.>> ^Babymech:

There is no way that any Swedish politician or authority would support Assange's extradition to the US. Nothing you ridiculous conspiracy theorists have come up with so far has indicated that they would. Maybe the US would kidnap him (?) but that could happen in London or Ecuador or wherever. Meanwhile, you delightful people think that alleged rapists should not have to collaborate with authorities investigating the charges as long as they're famous enough, and that the women making these claims should not have the basic rights that any other Swedish citizens normally would. Tasteful.

There is no way that any Swedish politician or authority would support Assange's extradition to the US. Nothing you ridiculous conspiracy theorists have come up with so far has indicated that they would. Maybe the US would kidnap him (?) but that could happen in London or Ecuador or wherever. Meanwhile, you delightful people think that alleged rapists should not have to collaborate with authorities investigating the charges as long as they're famous enough, and that the women making these claims should not have the basic rights that any other Swedish citizens normally would. Tasteful.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'tyt, young turks, cenk uygur, wikileaks' to 'tyt, young turks, cenk uygur, wikileaks, ecuador' - edited by RhesusMonk

It would be interesting to see if the authorities dared to arrest Assange if he was declared a diplomatic courier under Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Of if they dared to search a vehicle with diplomatic plates under the assumption that Assange is transported within.

We haven't had any decent cloak and dagger entertainment since the Iron Curtain went down. Better get some popcorn. >> ^Hybrid:

He still has to physically get out of the UK >> ^radx:
Small country, big cojones -- asylum granted.

He still has to physically get out of the UK >> ^radx:

Small country, big cojones -- asylum granted.

Small country, big cojones -- asylum granted.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Good coverage by The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/16/julian-assange-ecuador-embassy-asylum-live

>> ^kymbos:

@jimnms - link for your last para?
Meanwhile, I think you're missing the point: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/america-is-a-violent-coun
try/
Over to you and your next move: the 'data must be wrong' argument.


Here's your source, and it didn't come out of my ass like Bill's shit.

What point I'm missing? Your linked article doesn't mention guns anywhere, it shows that America is more violent than other advanced countries, which is even more of reason to carry a gun for self defense. I think you're the one missing the point.

Ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by persons not carrying handguns. This is one reason why the mere brandishing of a gun by a potential victim of violence often is a sufficient response to a would-be attacker. In most cases where a gun is used in self-defense, it is not fired. Can the average citizen be trusted to judge accurately when he or she is in jeopardy?...

A nationwide study by Don Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high." [source]

Of course, it is not surprising that where there are more guns, there tends to be more gun-related deaths, but northern Latin America (Brazil in particular) breaks from this trend in a major way. The area has a massive homicide by firearm rate, with some of the lowest rates of gun ownership in the world and the highest homicides by firearm count...

Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador combine for more homicides by firearm than Mexico, the United States, South Africa, the Philippines, Honduras, Guatemala, India, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, Argentina and Jamaica put together. That is every other country with over 1,000 homicides by firearm. You would imagine that gun control would be very lax in the area, but as the top chart here illustrates, that is not the case. Brazil, for example, has roughly 255 million fewer guns (and about 115 million fewer people) than the United States and a much more strict and effective set of firearm regulations. So, while it is true that where there are guns, there is gun violence, that is clearly not the only determining factor. [source]

Very well stated. The devil's bell (which it's called in Ecuador and which name I like more than the others) has strong mythology about it, but it is apparently so difficult to extract the Datura from it, that most people I talked to about it just sort of laughed me off. I've spent more than two months traveling in both Ecuador and Colombia, six of those weeks studying with a leading northern Andean ethnographer. When you're on the road, it's a lot of fun to talk about these kinds of extreme phenomena, but for the most part, it's touristy b.s. The plant is much more famous for the hallucinogenic tea that can be made from the flowers themselves, which is also fatal if prepared incorrectly. Btw, Datura is the same compound that produces the infamous Vodou zombies in Haiti, made famous by Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis's "The Serpent and the Rainbow."

Vice loves to sensationalize this kind of thing, and I'm frankly a little annoyed at the characterization of the current political atmosphere in Colombia. Even the U.S. State Department's travel.state.gov, which is notoriously over-sensitive, has only qualified warnings about the dangers of traveling in rural areas. Colombia is a lot safer than the introduction to this story has painted it. Total disservice to the country and culture that gave this journalist his story. But Vice likes to dirty it up to sell mags to hipsters.

Still, totally entertaining and somewhat informative. Nice find.>> ^legacy0100:

lol I don't know about this one. Vice reporters are often a bit naive at times...
Still this was very well Directed. Had great atmosphere and pacing. Very good.

When a widespread tsunami warning is issued this is what the list looks like after an 8.9 130 km off the coast of Japan:


Japan, Russia, Marcus Is., N. Marianas, Guam, Wake Is., Taiwan, Yap, Philippines, Marshall Is., Belau, Midway Is., Pohnpei, Chuuk, Kosrae, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Johnston Is., Solomon Is., Kiribati, Howland-baker, Hawaii, Tuvalu, Palmyra Is., Vanuatu, Tokelau, Jarvis Is., Wallis-futuna, Samoa, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, New Caledonia, Tonga, Mexico, Kermadec is, Fr. Polynesia, Pitcairn, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Antarctica, Panama, Honduras, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru

Here is some insane raw footage of water moving through Miyagi Prefecture-There is another clip with a raging fire moving with the rush of water which may be part of the fire from a turbine a Nuclear Power facility.

It's actually pointless to introduce the solar energy input into the equation at all Crake. The sun has shone and will shine for far longer than human beings will ever manage to survive on this planet. When I and many others look at agricultural reform we look at those aspects of the food production chain that humans can control and can change. The 'facilitation' you talk about is the entire crux of the modern day agricultural dilemma. There are an infinite number of ways that facilitation could happen, and the concern and debate is whether or not the road industry has chosen for us is the one that will bare the most fruit. Clearly it has not. The reasons, myriad, I don't want to write a thesis on the sift.

And I agree, when you start looking at government crop subsidies the energy calculation does lose its relevance. Why? Because you have jumped a 100 steps up a chain that was problematic at its root. The agricultural subsidy issue is a whole other Pandora's box.

Again, it's not the Haber process itself that is unsustainable, it is the entire industrial agricultural framework. The Haber process's dependence on natural gas is problematic, and even with future technological developments aside, it's a reductionist solution that undermines the multitude of complimentary farming techniques that could naturally introduce nitrogen into the soil. It's the kind of simplified agricultural solution that corporate agribusiness monopolies love, and it's this mutual reinforcement that causes concern. Again, the Haber process is a small piece of huge puzzle, we digress.

And with regards to future developments, let me illustrate why future developments are almost irrelevant to many of the problems at hand. In India for example there is a 500 year old tradition of aquaculture, for shrimp specifically. Most of the farms are small, local and sustainably run using various aquaculture farming methods (if you are interested you could read up on the Bheri system of aquaculture, just one of the many traditional systems).

This 'third world' farming technique as some might call it is just as profitable and has yields just as large as the more intensive commercial and industrial aquaculture methods. It has stood the test of time and it also forms the back bone of India's shrimp export economy, the largest in the world.

Industrial shrimp farming has had dismal success around the world. Taiwan, China, Mexico, Ecuador, all these countries have had huge issues keeping commercial shrimp farming sustainable. Wherever commercial shrimp farming has been tried, it has failed to a large degree, usually due to major disease outbreaks. That's why the call it the 'rape and run' industry.

Isn't it strange that the more industrial shrimp farms are introduced in India (due to government subsidies and incentives), the more 'environmental issues' they have to deal with that just didn't exist with the 'traditional third world systems' . . . mangrove destruction, drinking water pollution (from antibiotics and pesticides add to the shrimp ponds to minimize disease) , salinization of groundwater, etc.

Now you might argue with me that the solution to this problem potentially lies with future developments . . . a better antibiotic maybe, perhaps genetically engineering shrimp to be more resistant to disease and pollution, etc, or maybe the solution lies in adopting farming techniques that have been slowly perfected for the last 500 years and are proven to work, where the only interventions that could be made were natural ones and success was determined by how well you could maintain a balanced relationship with your local ecosystem. It is these farming systems and the mindset that they embody that I would like to see the world adopt, improve upon and gravitate towards.

Pinning your hopes for improvement on future developments and technology is totally misguided, especially when the core of the modern industrial agricultural foundation is so rotten. I have nothing against technology, but I'm not going to let the problems, born of brutish and unsophisticated industrial thinking, be overlooked by a corporate apologist futurist mindset. I'm not implying that's how you feel about the issue, but that the stance that many people have. There is an utter lack of holistic thinking in the industrial agricultural world (and everywhere else pretty much) and the direction it is leading us in is potentially frightening.