Skip to main content

FM
Former Member

Analyze that!

 

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said the leftist government of President Rafael Correa was weighing the request. He did not indicate when a decision might be made.

The move comes less than a week after Britain's Supreme Court rejected Assange's bid to reopen his attempts to block extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning after two women accused him of sexual misconduct during a visit to the country in mid-2010. He denies the allegations.

Assange's legal struggle to stay in Britain has dragged on for the better part of two years, clouding his website's work exposing the world's secrets.

Patino told a news conference that Assange had written to Correa, a U.S.- and European-trained economist who is closer to Venezuela than the United States, saying he was being persecuted and asking for asylum.

He said that Assange, who is Australian, had argued that "the authorities in his country will not defend his minimum guarantees before any government or ignore the obligation to protect a politically persecuted citizen."

Assange said it was impossible for him to return to his homeland because it would not protect him from being extradited to "a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and sedition," Patino said in a reference to the United States.

Assange, 40, claims the U.S. has secretly indicted him for divulging American secrets and will act on the indictment if Sweden succeeds in extraditing him from Britain.

In the letter, he accused Swedish officials of "openly attacking me" and investigating him for political crimes, according to Patino, who did not take questions from reporters.

The foreign minister said his country would consider the asylum request "taking into account the respect for the norms and principles of international law as well as Ecuador's policy of protecting human rights."

Correa has himself been assailed by human rights and press freedom activists for using Ecuador's criminal libel law in sympathetic courts against journalists from the country's biggest newspaper, El Universo, who he says represent oligarchists seeking his ouster. This month, he told his Cabinet ministers not to grant interviews to members of privately owned media.

Correa's government has also been leading a campaign by leftist Latin American nations that critics say aims to weaken the powers of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In November 2010 Ecuador's deputy foreign minister said the country was offering residency to Assange. However, Correa told reporters the following day that neither he nor Patino had approved the offer and that it would need to be studied.

Assange shot to international prominence in 2010 with the release of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents including diplomatic cables and a hard-to-watch video that showed U.S. forces gunning down a crowd of Iraqi civilians and journalists whom they had mistaken for insurgents.

Australian authorities have cooperated with the United States in investigating WikiLeaks' conduct. The Australians have concluded that Assange has broken no Australian law.

Last month, Australian Prime Minister Julie Gillard said her country could not protect Assange, a former computer hacker, from other countries' justice systems.

 

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Originally Posted by Stormborn:

Whatever trick he tries will not permit him to avoid a US prison.

Did he do anything wrong?  He is a non-US citizen who got his hand on some data exposing wrong doings.  He was not a state department employee who violated trust.  How about the things he exposed, does anyone gets held accountable?

 

How does this match up with sending virus to destroy another nation's assets and infrastructure.  When they do the same to us, would we then call it "terrorism" and an act of war?

FM
Originally Posted by baseman:
Originally Posted by Stormborn:

Whatever trick he tries will not permit him to avoid a US prison.

Did he do anything wrong?  He is a non-US citizen who got his hand on some data exposing wrong doings.  He was not a state department employee who violated trust.  How about the things he exposed, does anyone gets held accountable?

 

How does this match up with sending virus to destroy another nation's assets and infrastructure.  When they do the same to us, would we then call it "terrorism" and an act of war?

 He was not a reporter. He took documents clearly classified as secret from a troubled sexually dysfunctional man and published them while bragging about it.

 

This is not the old laws of the pentagon papers. These are post 911 laws covered by the patriot act with wide scope and coverage enough to have him hogtied in a dungeon forever.

 

These laws were not repealed completely by Obama. Presidents seldom give back power given them. Congress has to repeal them. Meanwhile, Assange is toast and I think he deserve it.

FM
Originally Posted by Stormborn:
Originally Posted by baseman:
Originally Posted by Stormborn:

Whatever trick he tries will not permit him to avoid a US prison.

Did he do anything wrong?  He is a non-US citizen who got his hand on some data exposing wrong doings.  He was not a state department employee who violated trust.  How about the things he exposed, does anyone gets held accountable?

 

How does this match up with sending virus to destroy another nation's assets and infrastructure.  When they do the same to us, would we then call it "terrorism" and an act of war?

 He was not a reporter. He took documents clearly classified as secret from a troubled sexually dysfunctional man and published them while bragging about it.

 

This is not the old laws of the pentagon papers. These are post 911 laws covered by the patriot act with wide scope and coverage enough to have him hogtied in a dungeon forever.

 

These laws were not repealed completely by Obama. Presidents seldom give back power given them. Congress has to repeal them. Meanwhile, Assange is toast and I think he deserve it.

Does not matter, nations use prostitutes and other such people to gain access to secret information.  What does being a Reporter have to do with anything.  In today's world, everyone is a reporter, check out CNN's I-Reporters!

 

Storm, so what about all the cyber warfare being conducted by the US, where does this fit in international law?  Remember, the US law is not necessarily international law, this is why Mark Rich was always a free man, except for the USA.

 

That being said, Assange should have been more careful of data containing names.

FM
Originally Posted by baseman:
Originally Posted by Stormborn:
Originally Posted by baseman:
Originally Posted by Stormborn:

Whatever trick he tries will not permit him to avoid a US prison.

Did he do anything wrong?  He is a non-US citizen who got his hand on some data exposing wrong doings.  He was not a state department employee who violated trust.  How about the things he exposed, does anyone gets held accountable?

 

How does this match up with sending virus to destroy another nation's assets and infrastructure.  When they do the same to us, would we then call it "terrorism" and an act of war?

 He was not a reporter. He took documents clearly classified as secret from a troubled sexually dysfunctional man and published them while bragging about it.

 

This is not the old laws of the pentagon papers. These are post 911 laws covered by the patriot act with wide scope and coverage enough to have him hogtied in a dungeon forever.

 

These laws were not repealed completely by Obama. Presidents seldom give back power given them. Congress has to repeal them. Meanwhile, Assange is toast and I think he deserve it.

Does not matter, nations use prostitutes and other such people to gain access to secret information.

 

Storm, so what about all the cyber warfare being conducted by the US, where does this fit in international law?  Remember, the US law is not necessarily international law, this is why Mark Rich was always a free man, except for the USA.

 

That being said, Assange should have been more careful of data containing names.

International law is what any nation at anytime is willing to agree to given its national interest. It is not within the US's national interest to avoid entertaining the idea of cyber war. It is just an added dimension to conventional warfare. The us hid cameras in Xerox machines to get data from the Russian Embassy in the 60's and 70's. 

 

I bet the KGB did as well. One remember the US embassy in Moscow was declared unsecured because of the magnitude of bugs the builders placed in it. Now we simply make sure our chips do not target our vehicles, our chips call home or software do the same (software and hardware are interchangeable in their function here)

 

Note, even our ordinary printers and scanners have steganographic identities so why would one think that our relations in cyber space will differ. Intelligence gathering is no longer cloak and dagger. It is hunt and peck from a keyboard. Not to doi it would be criminally negligent. Everyone else is doing it and the worse are the Chinese. They steal any and everything to aid their hive mentality like the Star Trek 'Borgs.

FM
Originally Posted by Stormborn:
Originally Posted by baseman:
Originally Posted by Stormborn:
Originally Posted by baseman:
Originally Posted by Stormborn:

Whatever trick he tries will not permit him to avoid a US prison.

Did he do anything wrong?  He is a non-US citizen who got his hand on some data exposing wrong doings.  He was not a state department employee who violated trust.  How about the things he exposed, does anyone gets held accountable?

 

How does this match up with sending virus to destroy another nation's assets and infrastructure.  When they do the same to us, would we then call it "terrorism" and an act of war?

 He was not a reporter. He took documents clearly classified as secret from a troubled sexually dysfunctional man and published them while bragging about it.

 

This is not the old laws of the pentagon papers. These are post 911 laws covered by the patriot act with wide scope and coverage enough to have him hogtied in a dungeon forever.

 

These laws were not repealed completely by Obama. Presidents seldom give back power given them. Congress has to repeal them. Meanwhile, Assange is toast and I think he deserve it.

Does not matter, nations use prostitutes and other such people to gain access to secret information.

 

Storm, so what about all the cyber warfare being conducted by the US, where does this fit in international law?  Remember, the US law is not necessarily international law, this is why Mark Rich was always a free man, except for the USA.

 

That being said, Assange should have been more careful of data containing names.

International law is what any nation at anytime is willing to agree to given its national interest. It is not within the US's national interest to avoid entertaining the idea of cyber war. It is just an added dimension to conventional warfare. The us hid cameras in Xerox machines to get data from the Russian Embassy in the 60's and 70's. 

 

I bet the KGB did as well. One remember the US embassy in Moscow was declared unsecured because of the magnitude of bugs the builders placed in it. Now we simply make sure our chips do not target our vehicles, our chips call home or software do the same (software and hardware are interchangeable in their function here)

 

Note, even our ordinary printers and scanners have steganographic identities so why would one think that our relations in cyber space will differ. Intelligence gathering is no longer cloak and dagger. It is hunt and peck from a keyboard. Not to doi it would be criminally negligent. Everyone else is doing it and the worse are the Chinese. They steal any and everything to aid their hive mentality like the Star Trek 'Borgs.

Storm, when you have the power, you can justify anything you do and get people to fall in-line.  It does not change the facts.

 

Now go give your justification to the 10s of thousands of Iraqis who died because their nation had WMDs with the capability to hit the region in 45 mins.  This is also "justifiable".

 

The Chinese will do what the Chinese need to do to advance their nation's cause.  You can say they steal, but who cares.  The US space program got off the ground of "captured" Nazi scientists.

 

As they say, tief tief from tief mek god laff.

FM

I do not see how Latin America can turn to the right. The most radical government so far is the one of Colombia and even there you see a shift to the center.

Originally Posted by Sunil:

Politics in SA countries are notoriously fickle. Should Chavez lose the coming elections or die, the other leftist leaders will  also go. Ecuador could have a rightwing Gov overnight and Assange will be on his way to the US.

FM

Add Reply

×
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×