Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all neween Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant's with me. Jerry's here, so it's the whole gang.
Speaker 1: It's stuff you should know. What's that? It's our dude
Speaker 1: little theme song that was good? Thank you? Can you
Speaker 1: hear like trumpet's going? Doc Severnson baseline on that Doc Severnson?
Speaker 1: That dates us. People are like, who's our senior halls guy?
Speaker 1: Doc Severnson For people who don't know, was Johnny Carson's
Speaker 1: band leader on the Tonight Show? And I don't remember
Speaker 1: Arsenio was a band at all? Oh wait, it was
Speaker 1: a dude. They're always the weirdest flakes with band leaders. Yeah, like, um,
Speaker 1: Paul Shaffer, he's a little odd. I love the guy,
Speaker 1: but here it's had odd. Didn't this guy wear like
Speaker 1: tales like tuxedo? Remember with Tales and News for that matter?
Speaker 1: Who was Chevy Chases and Magic Johnson's bands man? Remember
Speaker 1: those ships? No? Yeah, short lived and that's why I
Speaker 1: don't remember them. Uh, it's a chuck. Yes, Um, I wonder,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of diplomatic community? I have, because
Speaker 1: I've seen Lethal Weapon two. What do you what is that?
Speaker 1: That was the basically the premise of that whole movie.
Speaker 1: Diplomatic Community was this South African diplomat who was I
Speaker 1: think he was. He's just doing bad stuff. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was the apartheid era, yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: all under you know. He even said at one point
Speaker 1: like I have diplomatic community. And that's when spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: that's when Gibson shot him in the face. I don't
Speaker 1: know about the face, but I think he killed him
Speaker 1: and said something like immunity revoked. Man, I don't think
Speaker 1: he said that, yeah, exactly, wow, and said I don't
Speaker 1: like Jewish people. I'm mel Gibson what a jerk? Wow?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah you did. I'm calling him out as
Speaker 1: an anti Semite right here, Jenish you put like an echo? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: so uh sorry about that. I have heard of diplomatic community, okay, um.
Speaker 1: I've seen Lethal Weapon too, I think, and I don't
Speaker 1: remember any of that. Yeah, I think it was part two.
Speaker 1: Maybe I've just seen the one, which one is Joe Pesci.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. You're thinking loaded weapon. That was good. Actually,
Speaker 1: as far as Sposco, that one was pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it was like hotshots level good. Anyway, Chuck.
Speaker 1: A lot of people on Twitter, I want to know
Speaker 1: what diplomatic community was or how it worked. Howd that
Speaker 1: come up? I just asked. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of stuff to write about, so I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the people of Twitter. Um and a couple of
Speaker 1: people said diplomatic community. So I was like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a good idea. So I would did a little research
Speaker 1: and wrote a post and like, here we are, like
Speaker 1: diplomatic community. We're about to explain it. It's like one
Speaker 1: of those things that everybody knows about, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: really know the nuts and bolts of it. I thought
Speaker 1: it was very interesting and it's pretty easy to understand too,
Speaker 1: especially if you take out my terrible sentences. They're not terrible.
Speaker 1: The structure. You just like to write, man, you like words, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you like to get those fingers a little too much.
Speaker 1: It's like short sentence. What is that? I'll take three
Speaker 1: of those things and put them together. I like it, though,
Speaker 1: you man, why aren't you a novelist? I don't know,
Speaker 1: work on that okay, okay, so um, we're talking diplomatic community.
Speaker 1: It ain't anything new if at least four thousand years
Speaker 1: old at least. And we know this because remember Hammurabi.
Speaker 1: He was the first guy to come up with a
Speaker 1: set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi. And it was like,
Speaker 1: remember this thing. I don't remember what we talked about
Speaker 1: it in but it was like, if you see someone
Speaker 1: burning their house burning and you go to help them
Speaker 1: get their stuff out of their house, but you steal something,
Speaker 1: you're put to death. There's a lot of smiting. If
Speaker 1: you covet your neighbor's goat, you're put to death. And
Speaker 1: he came up with the eye for an eye here, um,
Speaker 1: and it was the first set of laws. Hammurabi also
Speaker 1: has the distinction of being the first person who is
Speaker 1: documented to have broken the spirit of diplomatic community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he may be responsible for the phrase kill the messenger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think he killed anybody. He didn't know shun
Speaker 1: smite the messenger, don't protect the messenger if you don't
Speaker 1: like his news exactly. That's kind of what it came
Speaker 1: down to. But his his basically, some someone sent an
Speaker 1: envoy and I don't know what the message was or
Speaker 1: who sent the envoy. There was probably like only two
Speaker 1: or three other civilizations at the time, so it had
Speaker 1: to be one of them. Um. But they they he
Speaker 1: didn't like what they had to say, so he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not providing your protection back to
Speaker 1: your homeland. Good luck because and he was essentially a
Speaker 1: diplomat being set loose without protection, right, which is in
Speaker 1: violation of the diplomatic community of one part of it.
Speaker 1: That's Um. Thomas Jefferson didn't like the idea so much.
Speaker 1: He thought, well, this doesn't make any sense. You're basically
Speaker 1: just giving permission for spies to get in there and
Speaker 1: do what the heck they want. Yeah, and he he Um.
Speaker 1: That was also the sentiment of the French Revolution, the
Speaker 1: people who ran the French Revolution and the post revolution government,
Speaker 1: And which is kind of funny because Thomas Jefferson was
Speaker 1: the ambassador to France during that time and he was saying,
Speaker 1: diplomatic community doesn't make any sense, even though I enjoy it, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you point out that it's really kind of the
Speaker 1: same over the years, and in fact, um almost wrongly,
Speaker 1: has not changed much over the years. Yeah. Like it's
Speaker 1: it was one of those things that was perfected pretty
Speaker 1: early on, I mean around the time of Hamma Rabbi,
Speaker 1: and then it was added to in the Renaissance, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it hasn't changed. And now it's kind of the point
Speaker 1: where yeah, it probably should change. Yeah, they should maybe
Speaker 1: look into the nuts and bolts of it a little bit.
Speaker 1: So the first concept, the one that Hamma Rabbi violated,
Speaker 1: is this concept, this principle of personal and viold inviolable. Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I knew I was going to have a problem with
Speaker 1: this one. Inviolability. Yeah, it's a mouthful. You can't violate
Speaker 1: the person of a diplomat as part of diplomatic community,
Speaker 1: that's right. And you make a very good point in
Speaker 1: here that um it's it's a great concept, but it
Speaker 1: is only a strong concept if people observe it, because
Speaker 1: if they don't, then you know, there it goes right
Speaker 1: out the window. It's almost like an honor code, it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's saying, like you, this diplomat is untouchable, but
Speaker 1: also your diplomat is untouchable when they come to my country.
Speaker 1: Don't kill mine and won't kill yours, right, And it
Speaker 1: works the other way too. If I kill yours, you're
Speaker 1: gonna kill mine. So it's this kind of um truce
Speaker 1: between nations that have um diplomatic missions within one another
Speaker 1: that you don't touch our people, we don't touch your people.
Speaker 1: To diplomat it is sacra saying yeah, but a tenuous one.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, it sounds like it sounds like
Speaker 1: it could go go south and turn into you killed mine,
Speaker 1: I'll kill yours. It could. Um. There was Genghis Khan.
Speaker 1: Actually Um was a an incredibly progressive ruler. You mean
Speaker 1: ginge hiss Jengis That's right, Jengis is it? Jingis? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's I mean at least at firm bank. How was
Speaker 1: that where we learned that? Yeah, Jengis Khan um he uh.
Speaker 1: He was very much an observer of diplomatic community, and
Speaker 1: he sent an envoy to the a mirror of Kara's Charasaman.
Speaker 1: I believe it was in modern day Iran. It was
Speaker 1: in modern day Iran, uh in parts of Afghanistan. He
Speaker 1: said this envoy saying like, hey, I'm the ruler of
Speaker 1: the land where the sun rises. You're the ruler of
Speaker 1: the land where the sun sets. Let's establish a friendly
Speaker 1: peace treaty and trade relations. Yea. And he took it
Speaker 1: really seriously, like if you messed around with that with him,
Speaker 1: it would it was bad news for you. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: the Amir did mess around with it. He had the envoy,
Speaker 1: the five hundred Muslim strong envoy from the Mongols killed
Speaker 1: and had two Mongol representatives shaved and sent back to
Speaker 1: Genghisa on Jengis Khan, and Jengis con said say goodbye
Speaker 1: to your empire and I'm going to utterly destroy And
Speaker 1: he didn't because specifically because the diplomatic community of his
Speaker 1: people was violated by the ruler. So before we move on,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good time for a message break.
Speaker 1: Where were we? So there were lots of envoys, some
Speaker 1: respect in some violation early on, right, But even when
Speaker 1: it was violated, some rulers have said no, still not
Speaker 1: going to do anything about it. Like Darius the first
Speaker 1: movie the three hundred. Uh yeah, not there. It's not
Speaker 1: the three hundred, No, it's just three hundred. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw it. It's like Edie brick Hell and New Bohemians.
Speaker 1: It's like it wasn't look at her now, all right,
Speaker 1: So why is it the three hundred. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: three d Well. Anyway, that actually happened at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know where he kick the envoy into the pit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't know if he actually kicked him
Speaker 1: into a pit. But the Spartans did killed two envoys
Speaker 1: from Darius the first and he had some Spartan nobles
Speaker 1: with him when he learned the news, and he refused
Speaker 1: to harm them because he said, quote, it would wreak
Speaker 1: havoc of all human law. Yeah, basically, it would send
Speaker 1: us down this path of retribution back and forth. And
Speaker 1: and you know it might not even be a law anymore.
Speaker 1: You don't touch diplomats, don't touch him. And again, this
Speaker 1: thing has been so ingrained chuck for so long that, um,
Speaker 1: there was a power vacuum that was left after Rome fell,
Speaker 1: and uh, there were a couple of hundred years before
Speaker 1: Charlemagne was pronounced the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: And during this time in between those two, in this
Speaker 1: power vacuum, it was so well established that you didn't
Speaker 1: mess with a diplomat that to kill a diplomat would
Speaker 1: have been like a greater crime than killing a king
Speaker 1: in many cases. Yeah, and the you know it should
Speaker 1: be obvious why you need to protect diplomats, but I
Speaker 1: guess we should just state diplomats. It's rooted in the
Speaker 1: word diplomacy. They are there to be brokers of peace
Speaker 1: between nations, or at the very least, ah, brokers of
Speaker 1: messages of peace and trying to avoid war. Like they're
Speaker 1: not like negotiating peace. But they're they're almost well they
Speaker 1: are in some cases, but almost said they're neutral. They're
Speaker 1: not neutral, but there is a certain neutrality to being
Speaker 1: a messenger. I think, yeah, and and yes some of them.
Speaker 1: It's and it isn't just messages, it's part of it,
Speaker 1: but it is brokering peace, attempting to bring peace or
Speaker 1: maintain peace between two countries. And so this is kind
Speaker 1: of a special talent. It's a special job and as
Speaker 1: such it must be afforded special protection because if they
Speaker 1: weren't protected, they would be killed, and if they were killed,
Speaker 1: no one would want to do it. If no one
Speaker 1: would want to do it, then there would be more war.
Speaker 1: Right plus speaking of war, if since a diplomat is
Speaker 1: often the last person in a country trying to broke
Speaker 1: her peace between that country and the diplomats country, if
Speaker 1: the peace negotiations fall through, the diplomat has to be
Speaker 1: able to get out of that country. Yeah, usually or
Speaker 1: hopefully with the assistance of the host country. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: that still happens today. As you point out, you go
Speaker 1: to New York City and you might on any given
Speaker 1: day see the New York Police Department escorting diplomat cars
Speaker 1: back and forth between the U N and the W hotel,
Speaker 1: right or wherever they like to stay. Um, So it's
Speaker 1: still still very much, very much the same, like, you know,
Speaker 1: not only protection, but like safe passage. In World War Two,
Speaker 1: apparently the Nazis um gave safe passage to the diplomats,
Speaker 1: the Allied diplomats in the country when war was declared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, which is kind of surprising. And then Benghazi
Speaker 1: was a big deal in part because the Libyan government
Speaker 1: was expected to protect the people who populate the embassies
Speaker 1: in that country. Yeah, and Christopher Stevens was killed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: US ambassador is it an ambassador the same thing as
Speaker 1: a diplomat. It's a type of diplomat, but a diplomat
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily an ambassador. That's right, because we'll find out
Speaker 1: there are lots of people who have diplomatic status. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can be an antiche and emissary, you all. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of things a company typically, Yeah, in the US,
Speaker 1: the diplomat or the head diplomat is the ambassador. And
Speaker 1: it also applies to UM, to the family and the
Speaker 1: domestic workers. Yeah, people that work for you. Um, if
Speaker 1: you have a driver, if you have a made your car, housekeeper,
Speaker 1: your car. It's all protected under diplomatic community. And you
Speaker 1: know what, my friend John, I wonder if you ever
Speaker 1: wrote this. My friend John in l A wrote a
Speaker 1: book about called Embassy Kids that I don't think he
Speaker 1: ever got published. That sounded really good to me, and
Speaker 1: it was about diplomat kids in New York City in
Speaker 1: the eighties. Just raising Hell. Yeah, I need to call
Speaker 1: him and ask him about that, because I always thought
Speaker 1: it was a great idea for a book. Call him
Speaker 1: right now. We have fine, that's right. UM, So you
Speaker 1: just brought up the second principle. There's two principles that um.
Speaker 1: Modern diplomacy and diplomatic community is based on personal and
Speaker 1: violability and extra territoriality. Yeah, that one's kind of neat,
Speaker 1: and that's what we just touched on it. It is
Speaker 1: the house, you live in, the car, you drive everywhere
Speaker 1: you are. Basically it might as well be your homeland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's considered to be situated on your home soil. So
Speaker 1: therefore the cops have about as much right uh to
Speaker 1: rating those places, are entering those places unbidden as they
Speaker 1: would your house in your native country. And that's the
Speaker 1: type of legal fiction like I'm in my car, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna smoke some weed and blow it in your face cop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can't do anything about it. Okay, So here's
Speaker 1: here's here's part of a misconception. Technically, the cop can
Speaker 1: very much do something about it. They can arrest you,
Speaker 1: They can take you to jail, they can hold you
Speaker 1: until you have a hearing, and then once you have
Speaker 1: a hearing, then you're going to come face to face
Speaker 1: with the brick while a diplomatic community, because the court
Speaker 1: is going to say, we have zero jurisdiction over this
Speaker 1: person and you have to let them go and drop
Speaker 1: all charges. So basically, they can disrupt your life. Um,
Speaker 1: which they probably would if you blew pot smoke in
Speaker 1: their face. Yeah, but they might not if it was
Speaker 1: something else because they're like, it's not worth the trouble. Right,
Speaker 1: So I've got I have a whole um a little
Speaker 1: scene here that displays all this. Right, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're in England, very nice. Uh, And there's a Russian
Speaker 1: diplomat who is leaving the country to go back to Russia.
Speaker 1: He's drunk on vodka. He's drunk on something because he's
Speaker 1: racked up quite a bit of debt at this particular pub. Well,
Speaker 1: the public owner finds out that he's about to leave
Speaker 1: and stiff him and he grabs the guy has him
Speaker 1: grabbed and is holding him, jailing him at his pub.
Speaker 1: At the time, this is perfectly legal, like there were
Speaker 1: debtors prisons, Like if you're a debtor, you had not
Speaker 1: that many rights, right, Yeah, he got he wanted his rubles, yeah,
Speaker 1: from the Russian. So um Peter the Great finds out
Speaker 1: about this and it's contexts um Elizabeth the First and says, hey,
Speaker 1: just wrang her up. Yeah, Liz, Well, you can imagine
Speaker 1: like how long this correspondence is taking. This guy was
Speaker 1: being held in the pub. So um Peter the Great
Speaker 1: asked for his envoys release and Elizabeth the First said, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, we'll release him. And not only that you too,
Speaker 1: who are legally holding this man in your pub You're
Speaker 1: going to jail? Like, what do we do? And she's
Speaker 1: like just shut up, um, And then England passed an
Speaker 1: act I think the following year that said foreign embassies
Speaker 1: are untouchable and outside the jurisdiction in the law, including debt.
Speaker 1: Cod Yes, so what your codified personal and violability and
Speaker 1: extra territoriality in this act? And it does it? It
Speaker 1: reveals something else about diplomatic community corruption. Yeah, but what's
Speaker 1: the deal with debt is that can't still be true? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: You can't come over here and rack up a bunch
Speaker 1: of debt and then just leave it, can you? As
Speaker 1: far as I know, as far as I could tell
Speaker 1: you can. The problem is it's very hard to do
Speaker 1: because if somebody finds out you have diplomatic community, they're
Speaker 1: not going to extend your line of credit because you
Speaker 1: can legally walk out. Yeah, and you're well, I guess
Speaker 1: it depends on who you are and how a corruptive
Speaker 1: a person you are. But if you're interested in remaining
Speaker 1: a diplomat, you're gonna keep your nose clean and not
Speaker 1: do stuff like that. Sure, Now, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: too much trouble for a diplomat to get credit. But
Speaker 1: the line of credits coming from their home country, like
Speaker 1: they have their credit card or whatever from their home country,
Speaker 1: so they don't they don't need to establish the line
Speaker 1: of credit the local tailor that they can just get
Speaker 1: spindy with their own rubles um. But that does illustrate
Speaker 1: a big problem like corruption still remains. It might not
Speaker 1: be in racking up debt and leaving, which it could still,
Speaker 1: but there's corruption all over the place. Because when you
Speaker 1: send a diplomat to a foreign country, you're saying you
Speaker 1: can't be prosecuted. Yeah, yeah, and it's that's a very
Speaker 1: tantalizing situation. Like you said, I think if you're a
Speaker 1: career diplomat, you're gonna keep your nose clean. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I bet you prostitution happens. I bet you illegal drugs
Speaker 1: happen more than you would think. Apparently, drinking and driving
Speaker 1: is an enormous thing. Drinking and driving, And we'll get
Speaker 1: to the traffic tickets, but that's obviously a big one.
Speaker 1: Because you can just park wherever the heck you want.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, so technically you're still under when you're
Speaker 1: in a foreign country with diplomatic community, you're subject to
Speaker 1: the laws of your homeland then, um and the courts
Speaker 1: and all that jurisdiction. And that has happened here and
Speaker 1: there over the years, Like people have been recalled and
Speaker 1: prosecuted for crimes they committed in another country with diplomatic community.
Speaker 1: They've been tried and prosecuted for it back in their
Speaker 1: home countries or that law. As we'll see with some
Speaker 1: of these UH instances, sometimes it's a hand slap and
Speaker 1: removal of your credentials as a diplomat, like you can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. You're fired essentially, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to like prosecute you. But the the depending on the crime,
Speaker 1: depending on the person too, um, the sending government, the
Speaker 1: that the diplomats home country is ruled by might very
Speaker 1: well just look the other way. Traffic tickets, like you said,
Speaker 1: it depends on what it is. Let's talk traffic tickets.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven July of two thousand eleven, the
Speaker 1: city of New York, which is where the u N
Speaker 1: is situated, so there's tons of diplomats running around, they
Speaker 1: were owed it was sixteen point seven million dollars and
Speaker 1: unpaid traffic tickets from people with diplomatic community in that month.
Speaker 1: Now not just that month, but in that month, if
Speaker 1: you took a snapshot of how much money was the
Speaker 1: total that was owed. Yeah, we found a great cracked
Speaker 1: um article the sixth and most Ridiculous Abuses of Diplomatic Community,
Speaker 1: and they did cover the parking tickets and between and
Speaker 1: two thousand two foreign diplomats got more than a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand parking tickets, not fines, a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand tickets. And they broke it down that is
Speaker 1: seventy parking tickets a day. And they're like, you would
Speaker 1: almost literally have to try hard to do illegal things
Speaker 1: in your car to wrack up that many parking tickets.
Speaker 1: And that is what accrued eventually to like close to
Speaker 1: seventeen million bucks. They said the biggest defender was Russia
Speaker 1: with thirty two thousand unpaid parking tickets. That's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really justlike thumbing your nose. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you ever been in driving in New York and you
Speaker 1: see people, if you see a diplomat double park, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to finish that sentence. I was gonna
Speaker 1: recommend something, but I don't know what to do. Yell
Speaker 1: and scream. Yeah, I mean anything. If you slash the
Speaker 1: tires on their car, that's you're You're in trouble. You
Speaker 1: don't have diplomatic community. Just pick up that condom off
Speaker 1: the sidewalk and throw it at him. So there's a
Speaker 1: what is a Coney Island white face? Yeah, don't pick
Speaker 1: those up. Actually, Um, that's good advice, chuck. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you are required to follow the laws of your host
Speaker 1: country as per the u N Convention on Diplomatic Community.
Speaker 1: From h They don't just say go do anything you want.
Speaker 1: They say you can't be prosecuted. Yes, Um, I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to be a good boy. And there are cases, like
Speaker 1: you said, there's there's people who have been prosecuted. For
Speaker 1: the most part, though it's it's looked the other way,
Speaker 1: especially on things like speeding, traffic tickets, parking tickets, driving
Speaker 1: drunk um. And because this extends to the person's home
Speaker 1: and to their workers, their employees um, some people have
Speaker 1: been accused lately, especially of human trafficking. Because your house
Speaker 1: is considered sovereign soil um, it's outside of American labor laws.
Speaker 1: So you can write a contract with somebody in your
Speaker 1: home country and say, come work for us. We'll work
Speaker 1: you forty hours a week and you get Sundays off
Speaker 1: and you only have to prepare three meals a day,
Speaker 1: and um, it's gonna be easy. It will pay you
Speaker 1: X amount of dollars and when they get to your house,
Speaker 1: you can literally tear the contract up in front of them,
Speaker 1: lock the doors to keep them from leaving, and work
Speaker 1: them like a dog. Um. The thing is is this
Speaker 1: violates not just American law, but international law. That's human trafficking.
Speaker 1: And it's apparently like unnervingly frequent. How often this happens.
Speaker 1: Maybe not in lock the door and work you for
Speaker 1: no money for a hundred and fifty hours a week,
Speaker 1: but to some degree. Anytime there's somebody who feels like
Speaker 1: they're not free to come and go as they please,
Speaker 1: they're not being paid what they were told they were
Speaker 1: going to be paid, that's a violation. Um. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: they're starting to call it what it is, which is
Speaker 1: human trafficking, which I predict will mean that it drops
Speaker 1: off dramatically. It's kidnap thing. Yeah, it's false imprisonment, forced labor.
Speaker 1: So let's say these are well that's not minor offense,
Speaker 1: but speeding and things like that, or minor offenses. They're
Speaker 1: willing to look the other way if they do something
Speaker 1: really bad, Um, then sometimes you can't look the other way,
Speaker 1: and you actually have to address it. If you're the
Speaker 1: country that sent them, boy, who's in trouble, well, you
Speaker 1: gotta address it between the two countries, Like we got
Speaker 1: a situation here this this dude did something really bad
Speaker 1: and we really need to like settle this. We can't
Speaker 1: turn the other cheek. This thing going away. It's not
Speaker 1: going away. Um. And that means you can recall a person,
Speaker 1: declare them persona non grata, and say I want them
Speaker 1: out of here. Yes, that's if you're the host country.
Speaker 1: You you're the one who declares them persona non grata. Exactly,
Speaker 1: I want them to be expelled, basically go back to
Speaker 1: where you came from. Persona non grata apparently literally means
Speaker 1: um unwelcome person. That's right. And if you're declared persona
Speaker 1: non grata, especially if you're a career diplomat, that's a
Speaker 1: big deal because you have X amount of hours or
Speaker 1: days to leave that country or else that country saying
Speaker 1: you don't have diplomatic community anymore, and we're gonna prosecute you.
Speaker 1: The best thing your government can do in that situation
Speaker 1: is recall you, hopefully before you're officially declared persona on
Speaker 1: grata um. If you are declared persona on grata they
Speaker 1: basically have to recall you. And if they don't recall you,
Speaker 1: that means your government has just left you twisting in
Speaker 1: the wind because you're you're you're gonna have to leave
Speaker 1: on your own accord, pay for your own ticket, and
Speaker 1: your government is not backing you up any longer. They're
Speaker 1: not recalling you. They're just saying, yeah, go ahead and
Speaker 1: prosecute this person. Yeah, but that can the recall thing
Speaker 1: can open up a big can of worms. Um. Like
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, this contractor, defense contractor named Raymond
Speaker 1: Davis killed a couple of would be assassins you remember that,
Speaker 1: Yeah and um in Pakistan, And basically he was he
Speaker 1: was not a diplomat, but he was under their under
Speaker 1: diplomatic community. He was a like a CIA contractor. Yeah
Speaker 1: and um. So basically they had to break a broker
Speaker 1: a deal between the United States and Pakistan, in which
Speaker 1: Pakistan said, you know what we want to We have
Speaker 1: a list of three thirty one Americans now that we
Speaker 1: think are shy in some way, so we want all
Speaker 1: of them recalled. And the US was sort of like,
Speaker 1: I really, you know, their hands were kind of tied,
Speaker 1: probably because this Davis guy had killed two people. So
Speaker 1: did all those people get recalled in the end? All yeah,
Speaker 1: And as far as they know that, the deal was
Speaker 1: that they didn't. Um, they weren't declared persona on grata,
Speaker 1: which means that they could come back and try again,
Speaker 1: I guess or whatever. But um, that that's the can
Speaker 1: of worms. Like you could potentially it could be a
Speaker 1: good thing for a country like Pakistan and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is our chance to get all these people recalled exactly,
Speaker 1: and that's what they did. They used diplomatic community. There
Speaker 1: were the tenants of it to basically rid the country
Speaker 1: of spies or contractors who whatever they were doing. I
Speaker 1: guess Pakistan just thought they were shady folks. So um,
Speaker 1: there's also you're not supposed to take declaring somebody persona
Speaker 1: on grata lightly some countries to some countries are just like,
Speaker 1: oh you're criticizing me publicly, your persona on grata, get
Speaker 1: out of here, and like that's how they deal with
Speaker 1: dissent among foreign ambassadors is just by declaring him persona
Speaker 1: on grata and um, under international law, the the host
Speaker 1: country doesn't have to give any reason why they declared
Speaker 1: him persona not really, Yeah, that's just you're gonna never
Speaker 1: coming back exactly. Yes. Um, you also make a good point.
Speaker 1: We talked earlier about how it might should be changing
Speaker 1: these days. It was created at a time where things
Speaker 1: were a lot different back then, Uh kings like you
Speaker 1: couldn't even prosecut uh the ruling class back then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you couldn't even raise a dissent. Yeah, you had to
Speaker 1: overthrow them. That's how you handle that. But then that change,
Speaker 1: Yet diplomatic community stayed firmly entrenched. Right, you can sue
Speaker 1: a government, you can see the government's leaders typically, Um,
Speaker 1: there's you have. The average person has recourse. As difficult
Speaker 1: as it may be, the people who are running the
Speaker 1: show aren't totally untouchable like they were when personal and
Speaker 1: viability was established. Um, it doesn't take weeks to get
Speaker 1: back to your homeland and along bandit ridden caravan lines
Speaker 1: or that you need the same passage. Yeah. So there's
Speaker 1: there's all these what are now kind of quaint rules
Speaker 1: that are associated with diplomacy and diplomatic community. And then
Speaker 1: what's more, there's a lot more people who have diplomatic
Speaker 1: community than used to, especially following World War one and two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize this. International organizations, um, that don't
Speaker 1: have borders, they generally all operate with diplomatic community. And
Speaker 1: even you pointed out the Inter American Tropical Tunic Commission
Speaker 1: operates in their family and everyone they work with operates
Speaker 1: with diplomatic community. So it's not just diplomats, like, not
Speaker 1: even close. Right, there was a run on diplomatic community
Speaker 1: after the first two world wars, and um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all over the place, so a lot of people have it,
Speaker 1: and these um the immunity is way more sweeping and
Speaker 1: broad than is necessary. Yeah. So there's this this third
Speaker 1: principle that's part of the u N Convention from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one that a lot of people, especially career diplomats,
Speaker 1: are calling for to be exercises called functional necessity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's in there, but it's just not uh No
Speaker 1: one pays much attention to it. It's like the the
Speaker 1: wet blanket principle of diplomatic community. Yes, it basically says you, uh,
Speaker 1: it's just whatever you need to do to function in
Speaker 1: your job is what's protected. Yes, so if you want
Speaker 1: to go out and get hookers and and have a
Speaker 1: card game, but it's not an official function, it's not
Speaker 1: an official function, and you should not be protected for that,
Speaker 1: and that's in there. But just it just sounds like
Speaker 1: no one pays attention to it, right And well, the reason,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons, one of the very good reasons
Speaker 1: why people don't pay attention to it is because it's
Speaker 1: kind of subjective. It's like, okay, so you should have
Speaker 1: to pay your parking ticket or else you get in
Speaker 1: trouble or something like that. But what if the diplomat
Speaker 1: has a really important message that has to be delivered
Speaker 1: right then in person they don't have time to get
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be considered like an official function, like not
Speaker 1: like double parking right then? Um, or that prostitute was
Speaker 1: really attractive. I mean, there's definitely a line obviously, but
Speaker 1: but um, no one's very much interested in exploring or
Speaker 1: not enough people are interested in exploring it. And it's
Speaker 1: not like you can go to the u N and say,
Speaker 1: you guys need to carry out functional necessity and that's it.
Speaker 1: Because the u N as recently as two UM invoked
Speaker 1: diplomatic community again for itself. Uh. After the Haitian earthquake,
Speaker 1: a bunch of Nepalese soldiers were sent down there to
Speaker 1: help like rebuild the country stabilize it, and um they
Speaker 1: weren't screened for cholera, and there was a cholera outbreak
Speaker 1: uh and eight thousand Haitians died as a result. And
Speaker 1: the u N s a diplomatic community. So they're not
Speaker 1: interested in digging in too much, right because they use
Speaker 1: it themselves. So the other reason why it's probably not
Speaker 1: going to change very much is because this same structure
Speaker 1: that like allows a little diplomats, you know, Brady kid
Speaker 1: driving his Ferrari like a hundred and fifty down a
Speaker 1: residential street, keeps him from going to jail, is also
Speaker 1: the same system that keeps this global spycraft agreement that
Speaker 1: everybody has alive. Yeah, it's very interesting. Nobody's going to
Speaker 1: give that up. So that's diplomatic community. Man, do you
Speaker 1: you said you have some this cracked article with some
Speaker 1: egregious Yeah, these are true stories. Um, six most ridiculous abuses. Um.
Speaker 1: One of them was pretty good. A Mexican attache apparently
Speaker 1: when you go into meetings at and I love this,
Speaker 1: when you go into meetings at the White House, everyone
Speaker 1: has to leave their cell phone outside, uh to be
Speaker 1: cared for, like you don't care to be watered and yeah,
Speaker 1: well know, but um, you know you can't carry yourself
Speaker 1: phones into meetings, which I think is awesome. Um. And
Speaker 1: in uh two thousand eight Mexican press at at a
Speaker 1: Raphael Cantaro Curial um took a big took all those phones,
Speaker 1: like just nicked the bun of blackberries. Uh. They literally
Speaker 1: got on a plane and stopped him after they saw
Speaker 1: security camera footage of him doing it. And he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's talking about. I didn't do
Speaker 1: this on the plane, and they showed him the footage
Speaker 1: and he went like, oh, I did do that, he said, UM,
Speaker 1: actually it was an accident. I just found all those
Speaker 1: that bag of phones and I thought they were lost,
Speaker 1: and I was going to give him to the driver
Speaker 1: of the car and I just forgot And that's why
Speaker 1: I have all of them, and um, then he waved
Speaker 1: this diplomatic community pass and they had to let him go.
Speaker 1: They got the phones back. So that that flies in
Speaker 1: the face of something I learned, like, I don't think
Speaker 1: they can. I don't think a diplomat, an individual can
Speaker 1: wave their own immunity. It's up to the host nation
Speaker 1: to wave diplomatic community for a person. Well they eventually did.
Speaker 1: Um yeah that he no, not waved, he waved as
Speaker 1: in like invoked invoked. I mean he waved in their face,
Speaker 1: like waved without the eye. Yeah. Um, so they had
Speaker 1: to let him go. They got the phones back when
Speaker 1: he got back home. Um, he was fired of course,
Speaker 1: and didn't get much like a punishment or what would
Speaker 1: you steal a bunch of phones? It's so dumb. I
Speaker 1: guess blake berries are worth a lot. It's funny you
Speaker 1: can't take your phone into meetings in the White House.
Speaker 1: I wonder how many times they've tried to figure out
Speaker 1: who was in the star of that hockey movie young Blood,
Speaker 1: and no one could figure it out because no one
Speaker 1: had a phone roblo. Yeah. Uh. And then they have
Speaker 1: number one on the list a murder um in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, a Burmese ambassador to Sri Lanka found out
Speaker 1: his wife was having an affair, killed her, built a
Speaker 1: funeral pyre in his front yard, which again is legally
Speaker 1: Burmese soil, and burned her body in full view of
Speaker 1: the press and the police, and they were unable to
Speaker 1: do anything. And he remained ambassador. Wow, burned shot and
Speaker 1: killed his wife, burned her alive in front of the cops. Well,
Speaker 1: if there's uh, if it's fall owing the law custom
Speaker 1: in his home country, then that's a pretty perfect example
Speaker 1: in diplomatic community. Man, that's crazy. And then just this
Speaker 1: week in the news, this last thing. Um in mid July,
Speaker 1: Joshua Wald, he's an officer at the American embassy in Nairobi,
Speaker 1: he was driving too fast in his suv um hit
Speaker 1: a little minibus and killed a man and injured eight people.
Speaker 1: And then immediately after that he was questioned by the cops.
Speaker 1: He left, his statement, invoked diplomatic community, got his family
Speaker 1: and got the heck out of there the next day.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of angry people saying, hold on,
Speaker 1: this guy's needs to answer for this somehow. Um, you
Speaker 1: can't just evacuate him and protect him although they definitely can.
Speaker 1: So there are people on you know, Facebook of course
Speaker 1: and social media trying to get some attention for this,
Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens. I don't know how that
Speaker 1: one's gonna play out. What when was that July? Wow? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like, see you later, yep to the Memories of America,
Speaker 1: Smell you later. Jerry does say that, doesn't she? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does that bug you? He acted lucky? Didn't like it.
Speaker 1: It's just so juvenile. So I got nothing else. Diplomatic
Speaker 1: Community is done. We did it. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about it, you're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: onto our website. Cans how stuff works. Doesn't have an article, friends,
Speaker 1: we have the article on it. Just go to stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com and type Diplomatic Community in
Speaker 1: the search bar. We have one of those two. And
Speaker 1: since I said we have one of those two, it's
Speaker 1: time for Yeah. Uh, I'm gonna call this objection seat stuff. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: been listening for a while a couple of years now.
Speaker 1: It's become my favorite mental escape while I perform menial
Speaker 1: tasks of life. Just listen to the Ejection Seat podcast
Speaker 1: and was inspired to write I've been a fan of
Speaker 1: aviation since I was a kid, and they've learned a
Speaker 1: lot in the past forty years. Listening to the ramblings
Speaker 1: about ejection seats, thanks for that, UH, reminded me of
Speaker 1: a story I heard a few years ago. It's about
Speaker 1: a U. S. Navy navigator, Lieutenant Keith Gallagher, who survived
Speaker 1: Did you hear about that? Okay? He survived a misfire
Speaker 1: of his ejection seat. Basically, he was the second guy
Speaker 1: in a two man crew flying in an A six intruder.
Speaker 1: One day, while flying a routine mission, his seat misfired,
Speaker 1: blasted him through the canopy, then stopped. He was still
Speaker 1: attached to the seat lower body in the cockpit, but
Speaker 1: his upper body was hanging out a jacket hole with
Speaker 1: like one arm sticking up. You think there was a
Speaker 1: picture of it. The pilot incredibly remained calm and in
Speaker 1: control and managed to land the aircraft back on the
Speaker 1: carrier with Gallagher still flailing around in the slip stream.
Speaker 1: If you check out this link, there are first hand
Speaker 1: accounts from the crew, photos and even a video of
Speaker 1: the landing. And that is at UH www dot gallagher
Speaker 1: dot com. Slash ejection underscore seat and pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: Had I been in that situation, my first response would
Speaker 1: have been to soil myself and start crying, not necessarily
Speaker 1: in that order. Keep up the awesomeness that is from
Speaker 1: Matt in Bristow v A. Thanks Matt. Yeah, did you
Speaker 1: check out those photos? Yeah, dude was hanging out. The
Speaker 1: link went to this long post on it. Pretty detailed
Speaker 1: stuff that sneake, but the guys like alive and well,
Speaker 1: good for him, like a massive limb floyl suffered massive limployel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've read something that has something to do with
Speaker 1: something we said something, Uh, we want to know about it,
Speaker 1: like we love stuff like that. Like that's how we
Speaker 1: found out. Do you remember seem Ohia the White Death
Speaker 1: for Finland. We had no idea about him, but we
Speaker 1: did an episode on the Japanese stragglers and somebody wrote
Speaker 1: in and says, you thought this guy was bad. I
Speaker 1: can't remember his name, Lieutenant something. Oh, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: remember was Auti Murphy? No, No, he was on the list.
Speaker 1: We Yeah, we had like a contest to find like
Speaker 1: the baddest dude of World War Two, and we put
Speaker 1: up the Japanese straggler who fought the war for another
Speaker 1: thirty years. Up there, somebody put up body Murphy, and
Speaker 1: then somebody else put up seam Ohia, who we may
Speaker 1: never have come across. Have we not heard from a
Speaker 1: listener like Matt who told us about this guy suffering
Speaker 1: massive bloom flail from an injection seat malfunction. My point
Speaker 1: is we like hearing about stuff that we don't know about,
Speaker 1: and if we didn't mention in the podcast, the chances
Speaker 1: aren't we didn't hear about it um and we do
Speaker 1: want to know about it, so let us know. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email with
Speaker 1: this info to Stuff Podcast at discovery dot com. And
Speaker 1: you should check out our website because we got stuff
Speaker 1: you don't know that we want you to know about.
Speaker 1: Right that made sense. Our website is called Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com m for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
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