Yep. Don't want to look like the Chinese when we hand over a prisoner (student Otto Warmbier) who dies when he hits US soil.
UK Foreign Office offers Assange a doctor if he leaves Ecuador embassy
A UK Foreign Office minister has offered cupboard-dwelling WikiLeaker Julian Assange access to medical attention if he leaves Ecuador's London embassy. Sir Alan Duncan told Parliament this afternoon that the British government is "increasingly concerned" about Assange's health. "It is our wish that this can be brought to an …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 27th June 2018 00:55 GMT Teiwaz
The US cannot call Assange a traitor, for that is someone who betrays their own country
Americans never had much a grasp on English, it gets warped into a strange parody as soon as it's plane touches the tarmac. Sounds similar and communication is possible at a basic level, but a lot of words mean completely different things.
Their grasp on the emotive, even if it makes little sense, is spot on though.
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Wednesday 27th June 2018 15:39 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Remember the Great Vowel Shift
In my days it was called a core dump...
Fair enough, Old Timer. Just don't ask any of us young folk to inspect your logs.
[I don't know who I'm kidding here with this us young folk? I'm at least slalomming down the final slope to middle age, if even assuming that's still ahead of me doesn't count as wishful thinking.]
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Tuesday 26th June 2018 17:54 GMT Vincent Ballard
Many things but not a traitor to the US
Assange may be many things, and I can think of a few pejorative terms I would apply to him, but any Americans who think that he is a traitor to the US are objectively morons. You can't commit treason against a country of which you have never been a citizen.
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Wednesday 27th June 2018 10:06 GMT phuzz
Re: Many things but not a traitor to the US
"That never prevented American-born Irish William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) being executed as a traitor by Britain, despite never having been British."
He had had a British passport (which he'd lied about his nationality to get), and the court decided that that made him a British citizen and thus a traitor. He appealed but was turned down, so legally yes he was a British citizen, as far as the British judicial system of the time was concerned.
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Tuesday 26th June 2018 21:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Vincent
"but any Americans who think that he is a traitor to the US are objectively morons. You can't commit treason against a country of which you have never been a citizen."
Not only that but what about the people involved in all the (often) illegal and usually questionable practices which got exposed?
That's the main part I never understood: if they had followed protocol, if they had stuck with the rules then they wouldn't have been exposed. And the worst part is that most of those are also getting away with all this. Because... reasons and the greater good I guess?
There's a reason why the saying "Don't shoot the messenger" exists. Not trying to imply that this also applies here of course, because messengers usually only deliver messages and don't rape or harass women.
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Wednesday 27th June 2018 09:55 GMT LucreLout
Re: Many things but not a traitor to the US
You can't commit treason against a country of which you have never been a citizen.
Weirdly though, you can break their laws, even if you've never been there. Its that whole global reach thing again. Mind you, the UK does the same thing with tax, so we're not exactly free & clear on this ourselves....
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Tuesday 26th June 2018 18:25 GMT Suricou Raven
His paranoia is understandable. And justified.
He was involved in the release of highly sensitive information which reflected poorly on a superpower. A superpower which, in recent years, had shown itsself willing to resort to secret kidnappings and off-the-records prisons, and to detain people indefinitely without charge of trial. If I were in his place, I'd suspect the US was plotting to get hold of me too. He may well even be right.
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
(Doesn't make him less of a general arse, though.)
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Tuesday 26th June 2018 21:28 GMT streaky
Re: His paranoia is understandable. And justified.
He was involved in the release of highly sensitive information which reflected poorly on a superpower.
The real problem is the people who got it out which the US full well knows. If the US could figure out what to charge Assange with they'd have had him extradited years ago; it's very easy to do, even from where he is.
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
Doesn't mean they are either. I don't believe for a second Assange is this paranoid, if he was he'd have never come to the UK where it's easy to get extradited to the US in the first place, he'd have stayed in Sweden or done what shall be henceforth known as "doing a Snowden". At the time this would have been very easy. He WANTED it to go this way because nobody is actually that stupid.
He's a useful idiot and his story will end the same way as the stories of all the useful idiots before him; forgotten and unwanted and that's what really scares him.
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Tuesday 26th June 2018 22:11 GMT Jan 0
Re: Er wot?
Sometimes I think that some commentards have no grasp of the history of the society they live in.
If WOT, was good enough for Chad during WWII, then it's good enough for a Limey like me.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/19/a3568719.shtml if you really don't know about Chad. Beer, because of its technical origins.
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Wednesday 27th June 2018 14:27 GMT GIRZiM
Re: Er wot?
"Sometimes I think that some commentards have no grasp of the history of the society they live in."
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Wednesday 27th June 2018 11:34 GMT I ain't Spartacus
How are we violating his human rights? Doctors can go in and see him. I don't know why Ecuador (or he) can't stump up for a mobile dentist. I'll do the work for free if he likes - string -> door handle -> slam! That should do the trick. Obviously he'd struggle to get an MRI machine through the door...
But if he pops out and gets arrested, he'll get proper medical treatment. Either in the prison hospital, or taken under guard to a normal hospital if he requires specialist treatment. As is normal.
He has human rights. But so do the people who he allegedly raped. And their human rights require that he face trial. Sadly Sweden has a 10 year statute of limitations on rape, so he may well be able to dodge his trial if he waits long enough, but until then we have a duty to both treat him and also to ship him off to Sweden to face trial.
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