It was five years ago this month that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, having jumped bail, and clearly opposed to the idea of being extradited to Sweden, sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge. And on this fifth anniversary of his confinement, The Great Man wants the world to know that he is not a happy bunny. Moreover, the years spent indoors have not confined the size of his ego.
Assange has been railing against the press, and indeed any form of mainstream media, but in between the exhibitions of petulance, there is the occasional hint at where his real sympathies lie, and an equal hint at why he exasperated journalists like former Guardian man Nick Davies, an exceptionally patient soul whose patience was routinely exhausted by the man with whom he had been tasked to liaise.
He’s been doing some research - about Himself. So he’s able to take to Twitter and tell “Did you know that 'journalists' are so cretinous they have launched 420k pages saying I live in a 'cupboard' and 261k in a ‘basement’?" At least they haven’t forgotten him - only one thing worse than being talked about, and all that. But do go on. “What is the insecurity that drives this unprofessionalism? Imagining me stuffed in a cupboard soothes the pain. But what pain?” So he’s not living in a cupboard. And we should not diss his mates.
Who might they be? We do not have to wait long to find out. “Self-comforting by talking about Putin being short is surely an equivalent. I'm 6'2 (188cm) yet the cupboard snowflakes always avoid ‘tall’”. Don’t diss his pal Vlad, right? And “Constant references to Trump's ‘tiny hands’ are another pervasive example of reducing psychological threat through scale distortion”. Don’t diss The Combover Crybaby either.
We also get to discover which media outlets Assange hates. “Here's an anti-Syrian government propaganda account+site impersonating the UN and spreading fake CNN attack stories”. CNN. Just like Trump. “Twitter's increasing censorship points to the future: each person will live in an undetectable filterverse of one”. That’s a new one.
But predictable, given the blue tick is missing. Also, the Guardian is rotten and nasty. “After fellating UK spies and HSBC for years has the ‘Guardian’ (of what exactly is not clear--staff perks?) moved onto Chinese advertisers?” Davies and his then editor Alan Rusbridger may allow themselves a wry smile. And his immediate fears? “Senators try to force Trump to declare @WikiLeaks a ‘non-state’ spy service”. The CIA is out to get him!
Give us all a laugh and grass this clown up
Of course, Julian Assange could help himself and his situation significantly by coming clean on whether or not he is part of the Trump-Russia connection. That is something on which he is not so forthcoming. Why did Nigel “Thirsty” Farage come to visit? And why doesn’t he quit farting around, accept the Swedish authorities are acting legitimately, and let justice take its course? He’s not going anywhere else any time soon.
In any case, WikiLeaks has become devalued of late, and with him holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, that situation will only get worse. As will the number of hacks suggesting he’s living out of a cupboard. He wants to stop all that, he has to come out.
Otherwise, the only way the stories will dry up is when the world forgets him. And that’s a worrying prospect for such an ocean-going ego. Decisions, decisions.
ReplyDeleteNearly right, Tim.
Julian Assange entered the embassy June 2012 and applied for asylum the same day.
Julian Assange was granted political asylum in August 2012.
So 5 years and 2 months he has been cooped up.
Colin The Bat
According to here
ReplyDeletehttps://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/05/no-rape-charges-julian-assange-sweden-espionage-charges-julian-assange-usa/
Sweden have dropped the rape charges
However according to the article apparently the yanks want him and that's why he will not come out
while the Swedish charges may have been trumped up Assange deserves everything that's coming to him. The man is a deceptive creep and why he thought getting into bed with Farage, Trump and Putin would pay off is a mystery. These guys don't like witnesses, He played his Bannon style hand and it's backfired.
ReplyDeleteSome scientific facts courtesy of The Nation publication
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
With the salient bits being:
"....On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.
These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed….
What is the maximum achievable speed? Forensicator recently ran a test download of a comparable data volume (and using a server speed not available in 2016) 40 miles from his computer via a server 20 miles away and came up with a speed of 11.8 megabytes per second—half what the DNC operation would need were it a hack...Folden and Edward Loomis say a survey published August 3, 2016, by www.speedtest.net/reports is highly reliable and use it as their thumbnail index. It indicated that the highest average ISP speeds of first-half 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications. These speeds averaged 15.6 megabytes ps & 14.7 megabytes psrespectively. Peak speeds at higher rates were recorded intermittently but still did not reach the required 22.7 megabytes per second.
“A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said. “Based on the data we now have, what we’ve been calling a hack is impossible.” Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,” he wrote. “Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).”
you might also be interested in perusing here:
https://off-guardian.org/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
https://off-guardian.org/2017/08/07/seymour-hersh-cracks-russiagate-as-cia-planted-lie-revenge-against-trump/
But it gets worse:
"CNN has learned some of the investigators involved in the probe are buying liability insurance out of concern they could become targets of lawsuits from those who are being investigated, according to one of the people familiar with the probe. The Justice Department covers legal fees for employees sued in the course of their duties, but some of the lawyers want extra protection."
As observed here:
http://theduran.com/russiagate-inquiry-going-nowhere-investigators-private-insurance/
"after a year of investigation involving – according to some reports – 3,000 investigators and 14 prosecutors (!) and backed by the combined weight of the US’s massive intelligence community – no evidence of illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians has come to light, and the investigators are giving up hope of ever finding any."
Perhaps better use of time researching evidence is in order rather than allowing yourself, Tim, to become a mouthpiece of the virtue signalling pseuda progressive left (sic) which is being used by the neo con establishment to get back on track with its constant global war policy.
On Assange you might want to start here:
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
On Syria you might wish to provide an answer to the question posed here....:
https://off-guardian.org/2017/08/17/40037/
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/600000-syria-refugees-cia/
...rather than acting as an unpaid shrill and sock puppet for the likes of Britain's answer to the birth pill over at the Guardian - which continues to censor anything BTL which contradicts its desperate attempts to shore up the collapsing neo-liberal and neo con narrative.
Dave Hansell
chash@btinternet.com