Re:Euro MPs block bank data deal with US
by bensummers on Thursday February 11, 2010 @11:35AM
(#1117959)
[citation needed]
If this were the case, wouldn't it be better not to have the treaty in the first place? Then no questions are asked at all.
And what was wrong with the old treaty, apart from the inconvenience of having to produce enough evidence to satisfy a British judge?
Re:Euro MPs block bank data deal with US
by iujhygfbh on Thursday February 11, 2010 @01:26PM
(#1118315)
If you don't have a treaty then you are part of the axis of evil - or at the very least they don't let your soldiers play with their soldiers and your politicians don't get to stand on the Whitehouse lawn looking like a world statesman.
Re:Euro MPs block bank data deal with US
by jrockway on Thursday February 11, 2010 @01:36PM
(#1118352)
BS. It's the UK. They have international standing regardless of what the US thinks.
Re:Euro MPs block bank data deal with US
by iujhygfbh on Thursday February 11, 2010 @02:12PM
(#1118460)
Not since Suez, the last time the UK got to play at soldiers against the US wishes was the Falklands.
The UK has a huge amount of investment in the US, if the US were to treat the UK like it did France after they refused to join the 'coalition of the willing' it would do a lot more harm to the UK economy than boycotting Perrier did to France's
The concerns were that there are a few members of certain Irish cultural organisations happily living in the US and it would wreck the peace process to extradite them, while NOT extraditing them would raise objections from the other side.
And, it's rather easier to bring a private prosecution for say war crimes in the UK - and the government didn't want the embarrassment of having to arrest various senior US politicians. This happened recently with an attempt by a human rights group to prosecute an Israeli gerneral over the west bank 'invasion'. The government couldn't stop the warrant being issued but got round it by the politican not leaving the plane when it landed in London and the police claiming that an El Al plane was Israeli soil and they didn't have jurisdiction.