Assange

Dear Reader,

The post which is coming up is likely to offend the ”chattering classes” but lets get on with it. The saga of Mr Assange has gone to a new level, the government of Ecuador has chosen to grant asylum to him.

Julian is fearful that if he ends up in Sweden that he will be packed onto a flight from the land of Volvos, ABBA and meatballs which will then take him to the USA. He fears that once in the USA he will end up in some dark dungeon. But it is interesting that recently (before the sex crime scandal) he wanted to live in Sweden.

Now lets look for a moment at Mr Assange as a person, my legal advisor pointed out to me last night that before be was accused of the third most serious crime in the criminal justice system he was quite willing to visit Sweden and he was willing to expose himself to harm by picking up a young lady who he did not know well.

I have known for years that in terrorism and cloak and dagger stuff that a classic method is to get a person who is sexually attractive to a person to lure them away to some private spot. Either that attractive person will harm the person or set them up for capture. If Mr Assange was so scared of the Americans grabbing him then why was he willing to go with a person he did not know. This method has been used by terrorists in Northern Ireland and by countless organisations. It is so well known that it is a classic staple of spy novels which you can find at any airport or at WH Smiths.

My legal advisor got me to consider the question of “is Mr Assange’s motivation in wanting to avoid going to Sweden based on his desire to avoid facing the accusation that he is a sexual criminal rather than he desire to avoid becoming a house guest of the USA”. This was an interesting question which I am sure only Mr Assange can answer.

I would also like to point out something else, Mr Assange made a living out of irking governments and very powerful people. He must have made countless enemies by now, I would reason that he would be very well advised to keep a low profile and avoid getting into conflicts which could escalate. I can think of several people I know who have or have had easy access to things which could be of interest to foreign intelligence services or terrorists. None of these people go around yelling to the rooftops about how they have an important job and have access to XYZ. These people when they are “off duty” and in retirement are very careful regarding what they tell people about their work.

Rather than picking up a new girlfriend (woman B) for sex at a party held in your honour by a new girlfriend (woman A) and other things which raise your profile. I think Assange would be far better going for a walk with a dog (never twice using the same route), buying a pizza at ICA going home, cooking the pizza, eating it, watching TV (or editing his latest revelation) and then going to bed for an early night. Of course to reduce the risk of being grabbed outside the supermarket I would suggest that sometimes he get his pizza from Willies, Hemköp or that little independent supermarket. Perhaps he would go and eat a Max burger once in a while, I think that buying a fast food meal (randomly choose a ready cooked burger) would give the assassin much less chance to poison your food than if you go into a POSH place and ask for a meal to be cooked for you (out of your sight).

That is if the assassins and spies which Julian so fears do exist.

While you might laugh at my idea of dog walking Assange buying pizza at the supermarket, it is quite a safer way of life than many. If someone was going to poison or drug him then if he is buying food randomly at the supermarket and then taking it home and cooking it without letting it out of his sight then it would make a would be assassin or kidnapper’s job much harder than man who lives by clockwork or one who goes around seducing pretty ladies. If Mr Assange is reading this blog post then I have to say that sadly it is rather too late for him to heed my suggestion, I think that right now he is not able to visit Tesco or Safeways at will but maybe after the legal system is no longer interested in him he could try living this calm life which I suggest.

Now back to Mr Assange’s current domestic arrangements, I have seen some suggestions that he should be granted citizenship by Ecuador and then given a diplomatic passport by this nation. The problem I see with this is that a diplomat needs to be a person who is approved of by the host country. I do not think that Mr Assange would be viewed as an acceptable person for one second by the UK government.

While normally a diplomat (Z) from country X is suggested by country X as possible representative in country Y. Country Y then has the option of not allowing Z into the country under diplomatic papers or if Z does something very bad then country X can require Z to leave their country.

But to try to use the idea of diplomatic immunity to allow a fugitive from justice to leave an embassy under the cover of a diplomatic passport is something which I think is going against the spirit of the law. If Assange wants to become a diplomat for Ecuador then I respectfully would like to suggest that he should first travel to his new home country, and then he should file an application to become the new ambassador in some interesting place.

I am not sure what should be done if an attempt is made to take a man sized diplomatic package out of the embassy, I think that in the interests of public safety some efforts should be made to prevent the smuggling of people inside diplomatic crates. Some years ago in the UK (1980s) a large package was shipped by an embassy. It was found to contain a drugged man who had been kidnapped. Something should be done to prevent this type of misuse of diplomatic baggage being repeated.

The legal response to the riots part II

Dear Reader,

In the UK one of the responses to the riots is for the local authority to take legal action to evict persons accused of taking part in the riots. I see a series of problems here. Also calls have been made to stop the benifits of those involved in the riots.

1. Accused does not equal guilty, a person can be found not guilty at a trial. Also a person is presumed to be innocent until proven otherwise.

2. How do we know that the evictions will not promote crime, we need to think “what is the purpose of the criminal legal system”. I think that one of the purposes of the system is to protect society from crime. If an action of the legal system is likely to promote crime by creating an environment in which crime will flourish then the action should not be done.

It has been argued that poveity does promote some forms of crime, I think it is immoral for society to force a person to choose between staving to death and stealing.

3. I reason also that if we throw the people accused of taking part in the riots out of social housing onto the streets then this punishment will only apply to the poor, what about those rioters from rich familes who coordinated their neferious deeds using blackburies and other expensive electronic gadgets. No body is proposing throwing people out of privately rented hosuing or throwing criminals who own houses out of their homes as a punishment.

The legal response to the vile riots in London and other parts of the UK

Dear Reader,

I am sure that you are aware that in the UK a series of disgusting riots have occurred, these have lead to some rather shocking misunderstandings and exaggerations. I discovered that the Moscow news reported that the rioters had broken into London Zoo and had then released the animals, this did not happen but I do suspect that a lion or a viper would be more than a match for a typical rioter.

One of the things which has been misunderstood is that idea that British police have irreversibly changed into RoboCop style police complete with plastic shields, helmets and big sticks. While during rioting or other major unrest police officers will don special armour and have big plastic shields as soon as the rioting is over the police will put away their riot shields rather than going around for weeks on end like a group of Roman soldiers in some great formation resembling a tortoise.

Predictably and quite rightly the police have started to round up those responsible for the vile outrages; it is interesting that when these felons have been brought before courts that some commentators on the British legal system have expressed shock and outrage that the sentences have been rather harsher than normal.

I hold the view that crimes committed during the riot are special; these are crimes which are attacks on the life of the British nation. As these crimes are exceptionally serious then they quite rightly attract a more severe reaction from the legal system.

It is important to understand that a British judge or magistrate has a great deal of latitude when passing sentence, depending on the circumstances the same crime might attract a slap on the wrist or a very severe jail term.

The person who was given six months for stealing a water bottle might under normal conditions get a modest fine for stealing food/drink from a shop. But during the riot the commission of any crime contributes to the environment of law breaking which has so plagued my home nation.

I have recently read some of the sentencing guidelines issued for UK magistrates and a lot of it makes perfect sense. If we consider a modest crime of violence then the same act could be treated in a very different way.

Mr Z is sitting in a bar; a man comes in and mocks him describing in graphic detail something obscene about Mrs Z. Mr Z then rises to his feet and reconfigures the man’s nose with his fist.

Mr Z comes home and finds his wife in a compromising position with his best friend; he then punches the man and squashes his nose.

Mr Z takes exception to a man who barges in front of him in the kebab house queue and knocks him to the floor with a punch

Mr Z sees a football referee in the street who disallowed a goal which would have enabled his favourite football team to avoid relegation. He then punches the man.

Mr Z does not like the fact he has just been given a speeding ticket by a policeman, he then punches the policeman.

Mr Z is not willing to wait for his plate of curry; he racially abuses a waiter and punches him

Mr Z lays in wait for the football referee and attacks him on a dark night as the hapless man takes out his wheelie bin to the street

Mr Z lures a pizza delivery man to a house during the night and punches him while robbing him of the food

Mr Z chooses to attack the football referee while he is officiating at a under 16s football match in the park

Mr Z sees his ex-wife eating ice cream with her seven year old daughter and then goes and punches the former Mrs Z in front of her child.

Mr Z punches a pregnant Mrs Z in her own home while his eight year old son is clinging to his mother for protection (Mr Z has indicated that he wants to flog the boy for slurping his soup)

I am having trouble thinking of a more depraved version of Mr Z but let’s have a go

Mr Z punches an old man who is out walking with his five year old grandson and knocks him to the ground (breaking his glasses) while stealing his pension money. The old man falls onto his late wife’s beloved dog thus hurting the little dog. Mr Z thinks it is a jolly lark to attack the old man, his yob like friend films the deed and Mr Z then publishes it on the internet.

I imagine that you will have noticed a general trend that the acts of Mr Z seem to be getting more and more depraved, you will be glad to know that Mr Z is not a real man, he seems to be a bit of a one man violent crime wave. Now imagine that you are the magistrate and you need to pass sentence on Mr Z, the early versions of Mr Z will be likely to get a more modest penalty than the later versions of Mr Z. I think that the
reasonable person will view the deeds of Mr Z in a dim light, but the later versions of Mr Z are far worse than the early versions of him.

The presence of children, the vulnerable victim, the victim whose profession exposes them to the risk of violence, the attack within the victims home and the mocking of the victim by distributing a video recording of the attack are all features of the crime which rightfully make a person more disgusted at Mr Z’s conduct.

I hold the view that just as it is reasonable for the general public to find the latter deeds more morally repugnant than the early deeds, it is also reasonable for the legal system to treat the later versions of Mr Z in a harsher way to reflect the fact that he choose to commit these crimes which have these aggravating features.

In the same way as the aggravating factors which I mentioned made throwing the punch more serious, I think that the fact that a crime was committed during a riot makes the crime more serious. So I have to support the harsher sentences as long as these sentences were on the statue book on the day of the riot.

If we were to impose fifty lashes with the 200000 volt electric cat of ninety nine tails on the rioters who took part in the vile unrest then it is wrong on several grounds. Even if many people in society would like to see the vile yobs lashed, maybe they have not thought of the electric cat of 99 tails but some people would like them birched, whipped or beaten.

1. The electric cat of 99 tails would be a cruel and degrading punishment.
2. The use of this punishment would involve retrospective law, in another blog post I have written of how retrospective law is wrong.
3. Even if the electric cat was on the law book (maybe in the 1891 criminal justice bill section 123 subsection z as amended by the 1984 ministry of love act it is mentioned in one line) it is so poorly known that few reasonable people would know about it, because the penalty has not been clearly advertised to the publish I think its use would be wrong.

This brings me onto another issue; I will save that for another day.