Assange's options: How could he escape the UK?
Summary: Despite Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange's successful asylum bid, he picked the worst embassy to try and escape from. Here's why, and how he could possibly evade the U.K. authorities.
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The London embassy: What belongs to Ecuador?
The Ecuadorian embassy in London is based in the lavish Knightsbridge, London. The embassy is, however, only the size of a large apartment on the ground floor of the building. The rest of the building is made up of apartments and other embassies, such as Colombia.
And that's it. It ultimately has four walls and a door. Even the front door and the hallway -- not to mention the all-important elevator -- is still considered U.K. soil.
For all intents and purposes, that is a little slither of Ecuadorian soil in the United Kingdom, and U.K. authorities cannot go inside unless it asks the ambassador kindly and she agrees, or revokes the diplomatic status of the embassy citing U.K. law. Both are unlikely, but entirely possible.
For Julian Assange to leave the Ecuadorian embassy without being arrested would require skill, luck, and sheer hard work and diplomacy. Or it may include a helicopter. Here are his options.
Image credit: Charlie Osborne/ZDNet.
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Talkback
Now THIS is what I call a legit article.
http://www.zdnet.com/traitor-baiter-assange-is-no-hero-and-neither-is-deadbeat-ecuador-7000002840/
;)
;)
Females... That's it!!!! You are a genius!!!
Diplomatic bag?
It's OK; I've mailed him a policemans uniform.
ok
Ummm....
There is also the semi-secret (everyone seems to know about) US grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia that has been "investigating" connections between Assange and Bradley. That's been going on for well more than a year, which likely means they are at or near the indictment stage. While Obama and his crew have been running things laughably better than Bush and his people ever did, they have been very hawkish (timid, confused news reporting and Republican rubbish aside) and more than a little too harsh on whistleblowers. That eye-rollingly foolish business with Thomas Drake, even though it was a carryover from the Bush days, should never have gone as far as it did before being finally dropped, and even then only under pressure. The DC area newspapers are shadows of what they use to be, including the Washington Post and especially the Baltimore Sun, so there is very little of the snoopy reporter stuff going on anymore to at least help mitigate excessive "Big Brother" government misbehavior. This Assange grand jury stuff really needs much more "exposure," but unfortunately this being an election year, all serious inquiries and discussions are for all practical purposes off the table until after the Presidential election. On the other hand, this is not that far off (although Assange better hope that Obama stays President -- Romney's team already includes people who would very likely push for Assange to be made an example of to Anonymous and other hackivists.)
As far as "Team GB" goes, they so far have been taking the low-brow, brutish "let's get on with it" middleman route. They may, however, become more susceptible to a diplomatic solution if they keep coming off overly cloddish and incompetent, especially if there might be political ramifications for their Prime Minister, David Cameron, from all this. They are actually in the best position to quietly negotiate with both Sweden and the US for a face-saving end to the mess.
Now, as far as a more exciting solution to Assange's little predicament, I can think of a few off-hand, but I'm not telling. However, they are not completely unobvious....
Where should we send
What?
Sorry BC
Now, do I completely put the blame on Assange? No. Why? Becuase if you are going to say something you don't want the whole world to see, NEVER ever put that information on the internet. Not even a private email. There is always someone looking. The most you can do is make things as secure as possible.
Really, that's all there was?
In any case you might want to fire up Google and do some more searching on what other info Wikileaks revealed that should not have been unknown in the first place. Take, oh, say Iraq civilian causalities. Remember all those "controversies" over how many civilians were actually killed during the war? There were counts ranging from that of the Iraq Body Count (~50k in 2007, and which was based on news and NGO reports) to higher numbers from that of statistically based, scientific surveys like that from John Hopkins (~600k) and even higher one from a polling firm, ORBS (> 1 million). The US military claimed that it didn't keep counts, and generally referred to the IBC numbers. But there was at least one report that indicated that they did keep some type of count, and the Pentagon did very quietly via (without notice --seriously: it was posted on an military site and the news media did not notice it for months) released a partial count in July of 2010, but that appeared to be only due in anticipation of a big Wikileaks release later in October that included much more info about Iraqi civilian causalities. Google up the BBC article "Wikileaks: Iraq war logs increase pressure for openness" by Paul Reynolds for more detailed info. (By the way, the John Hopkins/Lancet count is probably the most accurate overall.)
We really don't have the journalism quality and strength we use to have to ferret out lies, deceit and misbehavior in government, and that's a situation that appears to be still steadily getting worse. People like Assange and organizations like Wikileaks and Anonymous are basically filling, however irregularly and unevenly, a large gap that has opened in what use to be called the "free press." I personally would much rather see journalistic standards tightened and a resurgence of investigative reports on serious issues, but....I would also love to see the return of full size Ring Dings. Not gonna happen. So for the time being at least, Assange, for all his faults, is not a villain and is indeed what we kind of need right now, whether you like it or not.
Thanks, Just
Or...he could just surrender himself to UK authorities
RE: Or...he could just surrender himself to UK authorities
gary
Yep
Sweden is not Swiss
re: Yep
Why?
Why?