The Wikileaks collection

[JMA]

JMA,

Returning to your earlier posts 201 & 202, there is an odd BBC News report entitled: and cites John Pilger:

Link to a heated studio discussion:http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today...00/9301452.stm

Good stuff... I like robust debate.

The side effect of the idiotic USG reaction is that it pushes basically conservative people like me and many others into the same camp as the "lefties" like Pilger and Michael Moore and further isolates the USG from their local and international support base.

I have no idea whether such an attempt is likely, but our UK-USA extradition agreement is rather one-sided and subject of considerable opposition to so far successful extraditions (bar one case IIRC). If Assange was returned to Sweden I doubt if Sweden has such a extradition agreement as the UK's.

The issue of ex post facto laws or retroactive or retrospective laws are not considered acceptable even in the US.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is applicable:

Article 11
Paragraph 2: Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

One would have thought that the USG (after the Guantánamo Bay fiasco) would have realised that they also need to play by the rules. Seems not.

This Keystone Cops approach to Assange and WikiLeaks does nothing for the US reputation across the world... which since the hanging chad, dimpled chad or pregnant chad comedy is close to laughing stock levels. I for one am sad about this (FWTW).