What's the deal with diplomatic immunity?

You've heard all about diplomatic immunity, but we'll bet you don't really know how it works. Take some time to get into the nuts and bolts of this ancient and bizarre international custom and just how an embassy can be considered sovereign soil in this episode of SYSK.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all neween Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W.
Chuck Bryant's with me. Jerry's here, so it's the whole gang.

(00:20):
It's stuff you should know. What's that? It's our dude
little theme song that was good? Thank you? Can you
hear like trumpet's going? Doc Severnson baseline on that Doc Severnson?
That dates us. People are like, who's our senior halls guy?

(00:43):
Doc Severnson For people who don't know, was Johnny Carson's
band leader on the Tonight Show? And I don't remember
Arsenio was a band at all? Oh wait, it was
a dude. They're always the weirdest flakes with band leaders. Yeah, like, um,
Paul Shaffer, he's a little odd. I love the guy,

(01:03):
but here it's had odd. Didn't this guy wear like
tales like tuxedo? Remember with Tales and News for that matter?
Who was Chevy Chases and Magic Johnson's bands man? Remember
those ships? No? Yeah, short lived and that's why I
don't remember them. Uh, it's a chuck. Yes, Um, I wonder,

(01:27):
have you ever heard of diplomatic community? I have, because
I've seen Lethal Weapon two. What do you what is that?
That was the basically the premise of that whole movie.
Diplomatic Community was this South African diplomat who was I
think he was. He's just doing bad stuff. Oh yeah,
well that was the apartheid era, yeah, and it was

(01:49):
all under you know. He even said at one point
like I have diplomatic community. And that's when spoiler alert,
that's when Gibson shot him in the face. I don't
know about the face, but I think he killed him
and said something like immunity revoked. Man, I don't think
he said that, yeah, exactly, wow, and said I don't

(02:11):
like Jewish people. I'm mel Gibson what a jerk? Wow?
Yeah yeah, yeah you did. I'm calling him out as
an anti Semite right here, Jenish you put like an echo? Yeah? Um,
so uh sorry about that. I have heard of diplomatic community, okay, um.

(02:35):
I've seen Lethal Weapon too, I think, and I don't
remember any of that. Yeah, I think it was part two.
Maybe I've just seen the one, which one is Joe Pesci.
I don't remember. You're thinking loaded weapon. That was good. Actually,
as far as Sposco, that one was pretty good. Yeah.
Uh yeah, it was like hotshots level good. Anyway, Chuck.

(02:58):
A lot of people on Twitter, I want to know
what diplomatic community was or how it worked. Howd that
come up? I just asked. I was trying to think
of stuff to write about, so I was like, oh,
that's the people of Twitter. Um and a couple of
people said diplomatic community. So I was like, oh, that's
a good idea. So I would did a little research
and wrote a post and like, here we are, like

(03:18):
diplomatic community. We're about to explain it. It's like one
of those things that everybody knows about, but it doesn't
really know the nuts and bolts of it. I thought
it was very interesting and it's pretty easy to understand too,
especially if you take out my terrible sentences. They're not terrible.
The structure. You just like to write, man, you like words, Yeah,

(03:38):
you like to get those fingers a little too much.
It's like short sentence. What is that? I'll take three
of those things and put them together. I like it, though,
you man, why aren't you a novelist? I don't know,
work on that okay, okay, so um, we're talking diplomatic community.
It ain't anything new if at least four thousand years

(04:02):
old at least. And we know this because remember Hammurabi.
He was the first guy to come up with a
set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi. And it was like,
remember this thing. I don't remember what we talked about
it in but it was like, if you see someone
burning their house burning and you go to help them

(04:23):
get their stuff out of their house, but you steal something,
you're put to death. There's a lot of smiting. If
you covet your neighbor's goat, you're put to death. And
he came up with the eye for an eye here, um,
and it was the first set of laws. Hammurabi also
has the distinction of being the first person who is
documented to have broken the spirit of diplomatic community. Yeah,

(04:44):
he may be responsible for the phrase kill the messenger. Yeah,
I don't think he killed anybody. He didn't know shun
smite the messenger, don't protect the messenger if you don't
like his news exactly. That's kind of what it came
down to. But his his basically, some someone sent an
envoy and I don't know what the message was or

(05:06):
who sent the envoy. There was probably like only two
or three other civilizations at the time, so it had
to be one of them. Um. But they they he
didn't like what they had to say, so he said,
you know what, I'm not providing your protection back to
your homeland. Good luck because and he was essentially a
diplomat being set loose without protection, right, which is in

(05:28):
violation of the diplomatic community of one part of it.
That's Um. Thomas Jefferson didn't like the idea so much.
He thought, well, this doesn't make any sense. You're basically
just giving permission for spies to get in there and
do what the heck they want. Yeah, and he he Um.
That was also the sentiment of the French Revolution, the

(05:50):
people who ran the French Revolution and the post revolution government,
And which is kind of funny because Thomas Jefferson was
the ambassador to France during that time and he was saying,
diplomatic community doesn't make any sense, even though I enjoy it, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh,
and you point out that it's really kind of the
same over the years, and in fact, um almost wrongly,

(06:13):
has not changed much over the years. Yeah. Like it's
it was one of those things that was perfected pretty
early on, I mean around the time of Hamma Rabbi,
and then it was added to in the Renaissance, and yeah,
it hasn't changed. And now it's kind of the point
where yeah, it probably should change. Yeah, they should maybe
look into the nuts and bolts of it a little bit.
So the first concept, the one that Hamma Rabbi violated,

(06:37):
is this concept, this principle of personal and viold inviolable. Oh, man,
I knew I was going to have a problem with
this one. Inviolability. Yeah, it's a mouthful. You can't violate
the person of a diplomat as part of diplomatic community,
that's right. And you make a very good point in
here that um it's it's a great concept, but it

(07:00):
is only a strong concept if people observe it, because
if they don't, then you know, there it goes right
out the window. It's almost like an honor code, it is.
It's it's saying, like you, this diplomat is untouchable, but
also your diplomat is untouchable when they come to my country.
Don't kill mine and won't kill yours, right, And it
works the other way too. If I kill yours, you're

(07:22):
gonna kill mine. So it's this kind of um truce
between nations that have um diplomatic missions within one another
that you don't touch our people, we don't touch your people.
To diplomat it is sacra saying yeah, but a tenuous one.
Back in the day, it sounds like it sounds like
it could go go south and turn into you killed mine,

(07:44):
I'll kill yours. It could. Um. There was Genghis Khan.
Actually Um was a an incredibly progressive ruler. You mean
ginge hiss Jengis That's right, Jengis is it? Jingis? Yes? Okay,
that's I mean at least at firm bank. How was
that where we learned that? Yeah, Jengis Khan um he uh.

(08:06):
He was very much an observer of diplomatic community, and
he sent an envoy to the a mirror of Kara's Charasaman.
I believe it was in modern day Iran. It was
in modern day Iran, uh in parts of Afghanistan. He

(08:26):
said this envoy saying like, hey, I'm the ruler of
the land where the sun rises. You're the ruler of
the land where the sun sets. Let's establish a friendly
peace treaty and trade relations. Yea. And he took it
really seriously, like if you messed around with that with him,
it would it was bad news for you. Right. Well,
the Amir did mess around with it. He had the envoy,

(08:49):
the five hundred Muslim strong envoy from the Mongols killed
and had two Mongol representatives shaved and sent back to
Genghisa on Jengis Khan, and Jengis con said say goodbye
to your empire and I'm going to utterly destroy And
he didn't because specifically because the diplomatic community of his

(09:12):
people was violated by the ruler. So before we move on,
I think it's a good time for a message break.
Where were we? So there were lots of envoys, some
respect in some violation early on, right, But even when
it was violated, some rulers have said no, still not

(09:33):
going to do anything about it. Like Darius the first
movie the three hundred. Uh yeah, not there. It's not
the three hundred, No, it's just three hundred. But yeah,
I saw it. It's like Edie brick Hell and New Bohemians.
It's like it wasn't look at her now, all right,
So why is it the three hundred. Yeah, it's just

(09:56):
three d Well. Anyway, that actually happened at the beginning,
you know where he kick the envoy into the pit.
Oh yeah, I don't know if he actually kicked him
into a pit. But the Spartans did killed two envoys
from Darius the first and he had some Spartan nobles
with him when he learned the news, and he refused
to harm them because he said, quote, it would wreak

(10:19):
havoc of all human law. Yeah, basically, it would send
us down this path of retribution back and forth. And
and you know it might not even be a law anymore.
You don't touch diplomats, don't touch him. And again, this
thing has been so ingrained chuck for so long that, um,
there was a power vacuum that was left after Rome fell,

(10:42):
and uh, there were a couple of hundred years before
Charlemagne was pronounced the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
And during this time in between those two, in this
power vacuum, it was so well established that you didn't
mess with a diplomat that to kill a diplomat would
have been like a greater crime than killing a king
in many cases. Yeah, and the you know it should

(11:05):
be obvious why you need to protect diplomats, but I
guess we should just state diplomats. It's rooted in the
word diplomacy. They are there to be brokers of peace
between nations, or at the very least, ah, brokers of
messages of peace and trying to avoid war. Like they're
not like negotiating peace. But they're they're almost well they

(11:27):
are in some cases, but almost said they're neutral. They're
not neutral, but there is a certain neutrality to being
a messenger. I think, yeah, and and yes some of them.
It's and it isn't just messages, it's part of it,
but it is brokering peace, attempting to bring peace or
maintain peace between two countries. And so this is kind

(11:49):
of a special talent. It's a special job and as
such it must be afforded special protection because if they
weren't protected, they would be killed, and if they were killed,
no one would want to do it. If no one
would want to do it, then there would be more war.
Right plus speaking of war, if since a diplomat is

(12:10):
often the last person in a country trying to broke
her peace between that country and the diplomats country, if
the peace negotiations fall through, the diplomat has to be
able to get out of that country. Yeah, usually or
hopefully with the assistance of the host country. Yeah. And

(12:30):
that still happens today. As you point out, you go
to New York City and you might on any given
day see the New York Police Department escorting diplomat cars
back and forth between the U N and the W hotel,
right or wherever they like to stay. Um, So it's
still still very much, very much the same, like, you know,

(12:52):
not only protection, but like safe passage. In World War Two,
apparently the Nazis um gave safe passage to the diplomats,
the Allied diplomats in the country when war was declared. Yeah,
all right, which is kind of surprising. And then Benghazi
was a big deal in part because the Libyan government

(13:16):
was expected to protect the people who populate the embassies
in that country. Yeah, and Christopher Stevens was killed. Yeah.
US ambassador is it an ambassador the same thing as
a diplomat. It's a type of diplomat, but a diplomat
isn't necessarily an ambassador. That's right, because we'll find out
there are lots of people who have diplomatic status. Yeah,

(13:38):
you can be an antiche and emissary, you all. There's
all sorts of things a company typically, Yeah, in the US,
the diplomat or the head diplomat is the ambassador. And
it also applies to UM, to the family and the
domestic workers. Yeah, people that work for you. Um, if
you have a driver, if you have a made your car, housekeeper,

(13:59):
your car. It's all protected under diplomatic community. And you
know what, my friend John, I wonder if you ever
wrote this. My friend John in l A wrote a
book about called Embassy Kids that I don't think he
ever got published. That sounded really good to me, and
it was about diplomat kids in New York City in
the eighties. Just raising Hell. Yeah, I need to call

(14:23):
him and ask him about that, because I always thought
it was a great idea for a book. Call him
right now. We have fine, that's right. UM, So you
just brought up the second principle. There's two principles that um.
Modern diplomacy and diplomatic community is based on personal and
violability and extra territoriality. Yeah, that one's kind of neat,

(14:45):
and that's what we just touched on it. It is
the house, you live in, the car, you drive everywhere
you are. Basically it might as well be your homeland. Yeah,
it's considered to be situated on your home soil. So
therefore the cops have about as much right uh to
rating those places, are entering those places unbidden as they

(15:06):
would your house in your native country. And that's the
type of legal fiction like I'm in my car, I'm
gonna smoke some weed and blow it in your face cop. Yeah,
and you can't do anything about it. Okay, So here's
here's here's part of a misconception. Technically, the cop can
very much do something about it. They can arrest you,

(15:27):
They can take you to jail, they can hold you
until you have a hearing, and then once you have
a hearing, then you're going to come face to face
with the brick while a diplomatic community, because the court
is going to say, we have zero jurisdiction over this
person and you have to let them go and drop
all charges. So basically, they can disrupt your life. Um,

(15:48):
which they probably would if you blew pot smoke in
their face. Yeah, but they might not if it was
something else because they're like, it's not worth the trouble. Right,
So I've got I have a whole um a little
scene here that displays all this. Right, let's do it. Okay,
we're in England, very nice. Uh, And there's a Russian

(16:11):
diplomat who is leaving the country to go back to Russia.
He's drunk on vodka. He's drunk on something because he's
racked up quite a bit of debt at this particular pub. Well,
the public owner finds out that he's about to leave
and stiff him and he grabs the guy has him
grabbed and is holding him, jailing him at his pub.

(16:33):
At the time, this is perfectly legal, like there were
debtors prisons, Like if you're a debtor, you had not
that many rights, right, Yeah, he got he wanted his rubles, yeah,
from the Russian. So um Peter the Great finds out
about this and it's contexts um Elizabeth the First and says, hey,

(16:53):
just wrang her up. Yeah, Liz, Well, you can imagine
like how long this correspondence is taking. This guy was
being held in the pub. So um Peter the Great
asked for his envoys release and Elizabeth the First said, yes,
of course, we'll release him. And not only that you too,
who are legally holding this man in your pub You're
going to jail? Like, what do we do? And she's

(17:15):
like just shut up, um, And then England passed an
act I think the following year that said foreign embassies
are untouchable and outside the jurisdiction in the law, including debt.
Cod Yes, so what your codified personal and violability and
extra territoriality in this act? And it does it? It
reveals something else about diplomatic community corruption. Yeah, but what's

(17:40):
the deal with debt is that can't still be true? Right? Like?
You can't come over here and rack up a bunch
of debt and then just leave it, can you? As
far as I know, as far as I could tell
you can. The problem is it's very hard to do
because if somebody finds out you have diplomatic community, they're
not going to extend your line of credit because you
can legally walk out. Yeah, and you're well, I guess

(18:02):
it depends on who you are and how a corruptive
a person you are. But if you're interested in remaining
a diplomat, you're gonna keep your nose clean and not
do stuff like that. Sure, Now, I don't think that's
too much trouble for a diplomat to get credit. But
the line of credits coming from their home country, like
they have their credit card or whatever from their home country,
so they don't they don't need to establish the line

(18:23):
of credit the local tailor that they can just get
spindy with their own rubles um. But that does illustrate
a big problem like corruption still remains. It might not
be in racking up debt and leaving, which it could still,
but there's corruption all over the place. Because when you
send a diplomat to a foreign country, you're saying you
can't be prosecuted. Yeah, yeah, and it's that's a very

(18:45):
tantalizing situation. Like you said, I think if you're a
career diplomat, you're gonna keep your nose clean. Yeah, but
I bet you prostitution happens. I bet you illegal drugs
happen more than you would think. Apparently, drinking and driving
is an enormous thing. Drinking and driving, And we'll get
to the traffic tickets, but that's obviously a big one.

(19:07):
Because you can just park wherever the heck you want.
It doesn't matter, so technically you're still under when you're
in a foreign country with diplomatic community, you're subject to
the laws of your homeland then, um and the courts
and all that jurisdiction. And that has happened here and
there over the years, Like people have been recalled and

(19:28):
prosecuted for crimes they committed in another country with diplomatic community.
They've been tried and prosecuted for it back in their
home countries or that law. As we'll see with some
of these UH instances, sometimes it's a hand slap and
removal of your credentials as a diplomat, like you can't
do this anymore. You're fired essentially, but we're not going

(19:50):
to like prosecute you. But the the depending on the crime,
depending on the person too, um, the sending government, the
that the diplomats home country is ruled by might very
well just look the other way. Traffic tickets, like you said,
it depends on what it is. Let's talk traffic tickets.

(20:13):
In two thousand eleven July of two thousand eleven, the
city of New York, which is where the u N
is situated, so there's tons of diplomats running around, they
were owed it was sixteen point seven million dollars and
unpaid traffic tickets from people with diplomatic community in that month.
Now not just that month, but in that month, if

(20:35):
you took a snapshot of how much money was the
total that was owed. Yeah, we found a great cracked
um article the sixth and most Ridiculous Abuses of Diplomatic Community,
and they did cover the parking tickets and between and
two thousand two foreign diplomats got more than a hundred

(20:55):
and fifty thousand parking tickets, not fines, a hundred and
fifty thousand tickets. And they broke it down that is
seventy parking tickets a day. And they're like, you would
almost literally have to try hard to do illegal things
in your car to wrack up that many parking tickets.
And that is what accrued eventually to like close to

(21:19):
seventeen million bucks. They said the biggest defender was Russia
with thirty two thousand unpaid parking tickets. That's awesome. Yeah,
that's really justlike thumbing your nose. And you know, if
you ever been in driving in New York and you
see people, if you see a diplomat double park, I
don't know how to finish that sentence. I was gonna
recommend something, but I don't know what to do. Yell

(21:40):
and scream. Yeah, I mean anything. If you slash the
tires on their car, that's you're You're in trouble. You
don't have diplomatic community. Just pick up that condom off
the sidewalk and throw it at him. So there's a
what is a Coney Island white face? Yeah, don't pick
those up. Actually, Um, that's good advice, chuck. Uh. So

(22:01):
you are required to follow the laws of your host
country as per the u N Convention on Diplomatic Community.
From h They don't just say go do anything you want.
They say you can't be prosecuted. Yes, Um, I'm supposed
to be a good boy. And there are cases, like
you said, there's there's people who have been prosecuted. For

(22:23):
the most part, though it's it's looked the other way,
especially on things like speeding, traffic tickets, parking tickets, driving
drunk um. And because this extends to the person's home
and to their workers, their employees um, some people have
been accused lately, especially of human trafficking. Because your house

(22:48):
is considered sovereign soil um, it's outside of American labor laws.
So you can write a contract with somebody in your
home country and say, come work for us. We'll work
you forty hours a week and you get Sundays off
and you only have to prepare three meals a day,
and um, it's gonna be easy. It will pay you

(23:08):
X amount of dollars and when they get to your house,
you can literally tear the contract up in front of them,
lock the doors to keep them from leaving, and work
them like a dog. Um. The thing is is this
violates not just American law, but international law. That's human trafficking.
And it's apparently like unnervingly frequent. How often this happens.

(23:33):
Maybe not in lock the door and work you for
no money for a hundred and fifty hours a week,
but to some degree. Anytime there's somebody who feels like
they're not free to come and go as they please,
they're not being paid what they were told they were
going to be paid, that's a violation. Um. And so yeah,
they're starting to call it what it is, which is

(23:55):
human trafficking, which I predict will mean that it drops
off dramatically. It's kidnap thing. Yeah, it's false imprisonment, forced labor.
So let's say these are well that's not minor offense,
but speeding and things like that, or minor offenses. They're
willing to look the other way if they do something
really bad, Um, then sometimes you can't look the other way,

(24:18):
and you actually have to address it. If you're the
country that sent them, boy, who's in trouble, well, you
gotta address it between the two countries, Like we got
a situation here this this dude did something really bad
and we really need to like settle this. We can't
turn the other cheek. This thing going away. It's not
going away. Um. And that means you can recall a person,

(24:39):
declare them persona non grata, and say I want them
out of here. Yes, that's if you're the host country.
You you're the one who declares them persona non grata. Exactly,
I want them to be expelled, basically go back to
where you came from. Persona non grata apparently literally means
um unwelcome person. That's right. And if you're declared persona

(24:59):
non grata, especially if you're a career diplomat, that's a
big deal because you have X amount of hours or
days to leave that country or else that country saying
you don't have diplomatic community anymore, and we're gonna prosecute you.
The best thing your government can do in that situation
is recall you, hopefully before you're officially declared persona on

(25:22):
grata um. If you are declared persona on grata they
basically have to recall you. And if they don't recall you,
that means your government has just left you twisting in
the wind because you're you're you're gonna have to leave
on your own accord, pay for your own ticket, and
your government is not backing you up any longer. They're
not recalling you. They're just saying, yeah, go ahead and

(25:44):
prosecute this person. Yeah, but that can the recall thing
can open up a big can of worms. Um. Like
in two thousand eleven, this contractor, defense contractor named Raymond
Davis killed a couple of would be assassins you remember that,
Yeah and um in Pakistan, And basically he was he
was not a diplomat, but he was under their under

(26:05):
diplomatic community. He was a like a CIA contractor. Yeah
and um. So basically they had to break a broker
a deal between the United States and Pakistan, in which
Pakistan said, you know what we want to We have
a list of three thirty one Americans now that we
think are shy in some way, so we want all

(26:25):
of them recalled. And the US was sort of like,
I really, you know, their hands were kind of tied,
probably because this Davis guy had killed two people. So
did all those people get recalled in the end? All yeah,
And as far as they know that, the deal was
that they didn't. Um, they weren't declared persona on grata,

(26:46):
which means that they could come back and try again,
I guess or whatever. But um, that that's the can
of worms. Like you could potentially it could be a
good thing for a country like Pakistan and be like, oh,
this is our chance to get all these people recalled exactly,
and that's what they did. They used diplomatic community. There
were the tenants of it to basically rid the country

(27:07):
of spies or contractors who whatever they were doing. I
guess Pakistan just thought they were shady folks. So um,
there's also you're not supposed to take declaring somebody persona
on grata lightly some countries to some countries are just like,
oh you're criticizing me publicly, your persona on grata, get

(27:29):
out of here, and like that's how they deal with
dissent among foreign ambassadors is just by declaring him persona
on grata and um, under international law, the the host
country doesn't have to give any reason why they declared
him persona not really, Yeah, that's just you're gonna never
coming back exactly. Yes. Um, you also make a good point.
We talked earlier about how it might should be changing

(27:51):
these days. It was created at a time where things
were a lot different back then, Uh kings like you
couldn't even prosecut uh the ruling class back then. Yeah,
you couldn't even raise a dissent. Yeah, you had to
overthrow them. That's how you handle that. But then that change,

(28:12):
Yet diplomatic community stayed firmly entrenched. Right, you can sue
a government, you can see the government's leaders typically, Um,
there's you have. The average person has recourse. As difficult
as it may be, the people who are running the
show aren't totally untouchable like they were when personal and
viability was established. Um, it doesn't take weeks to get

(28:36):
back to your homeland and along bandit ridden caravan lines
or that you need the same passage. Yeah. So there's
there's all these what are now kind of quaint rules
that are associated with diplomacy and diplomatic community. And then
what's more, there's a lot more people who have diplomatic
community than used to, especially following World War one and two. Yeah,

(29:00):
and I didn't realize this. International organizations, um, that don't
have borders, they generally all operate with diplomatic community. And
even you pointed out the Inter American Tropical Tunic Commission
operates in their family and everyone they work with operates
with diplomatic community. So it's not just diplomats, like, not

(29:20):
even close. Right, there was a run on diplomatic community
after the first two world wars, and um, yeah, it's
all over the place, so a lot of people have it,
and these um the immunity is way more sweeping and
broad than is necessary. Yeah. So there's this this third
principle that's part of the u N Convention from nineteen

(29:40):
sixty one that a lot of people, especially career diplomats,
are calling for to be exercises called functional necessity. Yeah,
and it's in there, but it's just not uh No
one pays much attention to it. It's like the the
wet blanket principle of diplomatic community. Yes, it basically says you, uh,

(30:03):
it's just whatever you need to do to function in
your job is what's protected. Yes, so if you want
to go out and get hookers and and have a
card game, but it's not an official function, it's not
an official function, and you should not be protected for that,
and that's in there. But just it just sounds like
no one pays attention to it, right And well, the reason,

(30:23):
one of the reasons, one of the very good reasons
why people don't pay attention to it is because it's
kind of subjective. It's like, okay, so you should have
to pay your parking ticket or else you get in
trouble or something like that. But what if the diplomat
has a really important message that has to be delivered
right then in person they don't have time to get

(30:44):
wouldn't that be considered like an official function, like not
like double parking right then? Um, or that prostitute was
really attractive. I mean, there's definitely a line obviously, but
but um, no one's very much interested in exploring or
not enough people are interested in exploring it. And it's
not like you can go to the u N and say,

(31:04):
you guys need to carry out functional necessity and that's it.
Because the u N as recently as two UM invoked
diplomatic community again for itself. Uh. After the Haitian earthquake,
a bunch of Nepalese soldiers were sent down there to
help like rebuild the country stabilize it, and um they

(31:27):
weren't screened for cholera, and there was a cholera outbreak
uh and eight thousand Haitians died as a result. And
the u N s a diplomatic community. So they're not
interested in digging in too much, right because they use
it themselves. So the other reason why it's probably not
going to change very much is because this same structure

(31:49):
that like allows a little diplomats, you know, Brady kid
driving his Ferrari like a hundred and fifty down a
residential street, keeps him from going to jail, is also
the same system that keeps this global spycraft agreement that
everybody has alive. Yeah, it's very interesting. Nobody's going to

(32:13):
give that up. So that's diplomatic community. Man, do you
you said you have some this cracked article with some
egregious Yeah, these are true stories. Um, six most ridiculous abuses. Um.
One of them was pretty good. A Mexican attache apparently
when you go into meetings at and I love this,
when you go into meetings at the White House, everyone

(32:33):
has to leave their cell phone outside, uh to be
cared for, like you don't care to be watered and yeah,
well know, but um, you know you can't carry yourself
phones into meetings, which I think is awesome. Um. And
in uh two thousand eight Mexican press at at a
Raphael Cantaro Curial um took a big took all those phones,

(32:58):
like just nicked the bun of blackberries. Uh. They literally
got on a plane and stopped him after they saw
security camera footage of him doing it. And he was like,
I don't know what it's talking about. I didn't do
this on the plane, and they showed him the footage
and he went like, oh, I did do that, he said, UM,
actually it was an accident. I just found all those

(33:19):
that bag of phones and I thought they were lost,
and I was going to give him to the driver
of the car and I just forgot And that's why
I have all of them, and um, then he waved
this diplomatic community pass and they had to let him go.
They got the phones back. So that that flies in
the face of something I learned, like, I don't think
they can. I don't think a diplomat, an individual can

(33:41):
wave their own immunity. It's up to the host nation
to wave diplomatic community for a person. Well they eventually did.
Um yeah that he no, not waved, he waved as
in like invoked invoked. I mean he waved in their face,
like waved without the eye. Yeah. Um, so they had
to let him go. They got the phones back when

(34:01):
he got back home. Um, he was fired of course,
and didn't get much like a punishment or what would
you steal a bunch of phones? It's so dumb. I
guess blake berries are worth a lot. It's funny you
can't take your phone into meetings in the White House.
I wonder how many times they've tried to figure out
who was in the star of that hockey movie young Blood,
and no one could figure it out because no one

(34:22):
had a phone roblo. Yeah. Uh. And then they have
number one on the list a murder um in nineteen
seventy nine, a Burmese ambassador to Sri Lanka found out
his wife was having an affair, killed her, built a
funeral pyre in his front yard, which again is legally
Burmese soil, and burned her body in full view of

(34:46):
the press and the police, and they were unable to
do anything. And he remained ambassador. Wow, burned shot and
killed his wife, burned her alive in front of the cops. Well,
if there's uh, if it's fall owing the law custom
in his home country, then that's a pretty perfect example
in diplomatic community. Man, that's crazy. And then just this

(35:10):
week in the news, this last thing. Um in mid July,
Joshua Wald, he's an officer at the American embassy in Nairobi,
he was driving too fast in his suv um hit
a little minibus and killed a man and injured eight people.
And then immediately after that he was questioned by the cops.

(35:30):
He left, his statement, invoked diplomatic community, got his family
and got the heck out of there the next day.
And there are a lot of angry people saying, hold on,
this guy's needs to answer for this somehow. Um, you
can't just evacuate him and protect him although they definitely can.
So there are people on you know, Facebook of course

(35:51):
and social media trying to get some attention for this,
and we'll see what happens. I don't know how that
one's gonna play out. What when was that July? Wow? Yeah, yeah,
he's like, see you later, yep to the Memories of America,
Smell you later. Jerry does say that, doesn't she? Yeah?
Does that bug you? He acted lucky? Didn't like it.
It's just so juvenile. So I got nothing else. Diplomatic

(36:17):
Community is done. We did it. Uh. If you want
to learn more about it, you're gonna have to go
onto our website. Cans how stuff works. Doesn't have an article, friends,
we have the article on it. Just go to stuff
you Should Know dot com and type Diplomatic Community in
the search bar. We have one of those two. And
since I said we have one of those two, it's
time for Yeah. Uh, I'm gonna call this objection seat stuff. Hey, guys,

(36:46):
been listening for a while a couple of years now.
It's become my favorite mental escape while I perform menial
tasks of life. Just listen to the Ejection Seat podcast
and was inspired to write I've been a fan of
aviation since I was a kid, and they've learned a
lot in the past forty years. Listening to the ramblings
about ejection seats, thanks for that, UH, reminded me of

(37:08):
a story I heard a few years ago. It's about
a U. S. Navy navigator, Lieutenant Keith Gallagher, who survived
Did you hear about that? Okay? He survived a misfire
of his ejection seat. Basically, he was the second guy
in a two man crew flying in an A six intruder.
One day, while flying a routine mission, his seat misfired,
blasted him through the canopy, then stopped. He was still

(37:30):
attached to the seat lower body in the cockpit, but
his upper body was hanging out a jacket hole with
like one arm sticking up. You think there was a
picture of it. The pilot incredibly remained calm and in
control and managed to land the aircraft back on the
carrier with Gallagher still flailing around in the slip stream.
If you check out this link, there are first hand
accounts from the crew, photos and even a video of

(37:51):
the landing. And that is at UH www dot gallagher
dot com. Slash ejection underscore seat and pretty amazing stuff.
Had I been in that situation, my first response would
have been to soil myself and start crying, not necessarily
in that order. Keep up the awesomeness that is from
Matt in Bristow v A. Thanks Matt. Yeah, did you

(38:15):
check out those photos? Yeah, dude was hanging out. The
link went to this long post on it. Pretty detailed
stuff that sneake, but the guys like alive and well,
good for him, like a massive limb floyl suffered massive limployel. Yeah,
if you've read something that has something to do with
something we said something, Uh, we want to know about it,

(38:38):
like we love stuff like that. Like that's how we
found out. Do you remember seem Ohia the White Death
for Finland. We had no idea about him, but we
did an episode on the Japanese stragglers and somebody wrote
in and says, you thought this guy was bad. I
can't remember his name, Lieutenant something. Oh, yeah, I can't
remember was Auti Murphy? No, No, he was on the list.

(39:00):
We Yeah, we had like a contest to find like
the baddest dude of World War Two, and we put
up the Japanese straggler who fought the war for another
thirty years. Up there, somebody put up body Murphy, and
then somebody else put up seam Ohia, who we may
never have come across. Have we not heard from a
listener like Matt who told us about this guy suffering

(39:21):
massive bloom flail from an injection seat malfunction. My point
is we like hearing about stuff that we don't know about,
and if we didn't mention in the podcast, the chances
aren't we didn't hear about it um and we do
want to know about it, so let us know. You
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff

(39:42):
you Should Know. You can send us an email with
this info to Stuff Podcast at discovery dot com. And
you should check out our website because we got stuff
you don't know that we want you to know about.
Right that made sense. Our website is called Stuff you
Should Know dot com m for more on this and

(40:05):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
com M Brought to you by the all newteen Toyota
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