“Assange Should Have Picked the Russian Embassy.” But He Did.

moscow-patriarch-poinds

In another timeline, Julian Assange may have enjoyed long walks with Edward Snowden by the Patriarch Ponds in Moscow.

Imagine that you are a dissident at risk of extradition to a jilted superpower, whose secrets you just spilled for the entire world to gawk at, and you happen to be caught up in the capital of one of its vassal states.

What do? Which Embassy do you pick?

map-us-rogues-and-lackeys

Map of how often countries vote with the US at the UN.

One of your first, more elementary considerations should be that your target country would actually be willing to give you political asylum. This rules out pretty much the entire West, and America’s various vassal states in the Third World. This is the relatively easy part, and few go wrong here. Though there are exceptions. I am reminded of a particularly dim MI6 agent who tried to sell UK intelligence secrets to… the Netherlands. But say what you will of him – Assange is mostly certainly not stupid.

Second, it should be a powerful, politically stable country. For instance, Russia has never extradited Western spies back to their homelands, even during the Americanophile 1990s under Yeltsin. In contrast, while much of Latin America might be run by American-skeptical leftists these days, they have a habit of veering sharply to the right, which tends to be highly subservient to the United States there. Ecuador narrowly avoided that in 2017, when the neoliberal Guillermo Lasso – who had promised to evict Assange – was defeated by Lenin Moreno, who promised to continue Correa’s policies. But Ecuador is a small country, vulnerable to outside pressure, and in any case, as has already long been clear, Moreno is not so committed to the anti-imperialist struggle as his predecessor.

Third, it should preferably have a physically big embassy. You are potentially going to be spending a lot of time there, and being confined to a small room for years on end will be comfortable neither for you, nor for your hosts. It will be like going to prison anyway, if with more dignity. Moreover, should you get a serious medical issue, you will be in a real pickle. In fairness, this point is mostly covered by the second requirement, since the more powerful countries also tend to have the bigger Embassies. For instance, Hungary’s Cardinal Mindszenty made the right decision, opting for the US Embassy in the wake of the crushing of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956. He ended up spending 15 years there, but at least his accomodations were reasonably lavish, consisting of two rooms and his own bathroom.

Presumably, the US Embassy was not an option for Assange. So that left China or Russia.

And of these, Russia must have been the better deal. It already had much worse relations with the West in general, and the UK in particular, than China, and was even then considered likelier to stick it to the West. This was seemingly confirmed a year later, when China pressured Edward Snowden to move on from Hong Kong to Russia, to avoid a lengthy extradition battle with the US. Seeking refuge on Russian territory would also not have been as completely ideologically contradictory for a freedom of speech activist. While Russia doesn’t have much to write home about on that front, at least its Internet was more or less entirely free back then.

Hence, my article on August 16, 2012, at the height of the drama over whether Ecuador would give him refuge: “Assange Should Have Picked the Russian Embassy.” In an exchange with the blogger spandrell in the comments, I argued that this was Assange’s own choice, on the basis that his ideological values – which included strong antipathy to “authoritarian conspiracies” – were hardly compatible with the very nature of the Russian secret police state.

Well, more fool me. Julian Assange did try to claim asylum with Russia.

Only problem was: He was refused.

This would be unambiguously confirmed to me several years later by a source who must remain anonymous, but who was in a consummately first hand position to know those details. Russian diplomatic officials were apparently not happy with the decision, but the order was clear and it came from the highest levels of the Russian government. A few months ago, a senior Russia-based journalist who has excellent access to the Kremlin elites told me he heard the same.

In September 2018, AP released an investigation showing that Julian Assange sought, and received, a Russian visa in 2010 thanks to the efforts of Israel Shamir. This happened ten days after Sweden issued a warrant for his arrest over sex crimes charges, and a day after Wikileaks began releasing the US State Department cables. Julian Assange left it too late to go to Russia physically – but he was, at least, exploring this possibility.

So why did Russia, two years later, refuse Assange asylum in their London Embassy? Why did they refuse to harbor the man who was supposed to be their puppet, at least according to the mainstream Western narrative?

Israel Shamir on the pages of this webzine has suggested that it was just a function of Russians’ general suspicion towards “ideologues” of Assange’s calibre:

It is said that Assange was in cahoots with the Russians, that they guided him and provided with the stuff they hacked and even that “Wikileaks is a Front for Russian Intelligence”. As a matter of fact, Russians were extremely hesitant to have anything to do with Assange. They could not believe he was for real. Are you so naïve, they told me, that you do not understand he is a CIA trap? Such people do not exist.

It is a problem of the Russian mind: as a rule, they do not understand and do not trust Western dissidents of Assange’s ilk. They want their western sympathisers to be bought and paid for. Free agents are suspicious in their eyes. God knows there are many people in the West whose opinions roughly coincide with those of the Russians; but the Russians would prefer to buy a journalist off the peg. That’s why RT has had more than its fair share of defectors, that is of broadcasters who denounced RT and went to the Western mass media.

As the AP investigation showed, Israel Shamir may well have been in a better position to know than most of us had hitherto expected (at least assuming he was also privy to the denied asylum request).

Still, perhaps the real explanation is more banal.

Putin, like many in the Russian elite, had started off as an Anglophile, and his strongest relationship with a Western leader during the early years of his rule was with Tony Blair. The Litvinenko Affair and the South Ossetian War had certainly soured relations with the West in general, and Britain in particular, but not in a way that appeared hopeless and permanent, as has increasingly seemed to be the case since 2014. There were hopes that things would go back to normality, and I can only assume that Putin didn’t want to set himself up a headache for the next few years, if not decades.

I suppose he sort of failed at that.

For his part, Assange will have to place his hopes on the British judicial system and its political independence.

Comments

  1. This will at least wake up those morons at places like Breitbart that Trump is nothing more than a neocon swine. I mean how much more evidence do they need to see that he is invite the world, invade the world. On top of that mass censorship being unleashed under Trump, how can anyone still be conned into supporting him.

  2. reiner Tor says

    The map immediately caught my eyes. Are you sure it’s accurate? Supposed US third world vassals like Egypt or Saudi Arabia showing pretty much of a backbone. Even Jordan. Even Georgia is different from what you’d expect.

    Meanwhile, Russia (or China)…

  3. reiner Tor says

    This will at least wake up those morons

    To be fair, Trump already said he wanted to prosecute Assange back during the campaign. It certainly didn’t wake my moronic self up.

  4. reiner Tor says

    It is a problem of the Russian mind: as a rule, they do not understand and do not trust Western dissidents of Assange’s ilk. They want their western sympathisers to be bought and paid for. Free agents are suspicious in their eyes. God knows there are many people in the West whose opinions roughly coincide with those of the Russians; but the Russians would prefer to buy a journalist off the peg.

    That dovetails nicely with another failure of Soviet propaganda: they never liked people who somewhat (but not fully) agreed with them, even though it would’ve been a nice thing to have. Instead, (at least in Hungary, but I think everywhere) even fellow travelers were forced to confirm their unshakable belief in the principles of Marxism-Leninism and similar nonsense. Of course, everyone knew they were forced to do that. Saying things which were at least mildly critical of the regime, while in general still supporting it, as a lesser of two evils, would probably have been more effective.

    This is why Anglo-Saxon propaganda is so very effective. They have freedom of speech, see? Though of course saying politically incorrect things might socially kill you, so it’s understood you won’t do that. You will say PC (including anti-Russian, etc.) platitudes always. So people will not even notice PC propaganda, like fish don’t notice they’re wet. And when trying to convince a normie, you have to break a very long, almost infinite chain of assumptions, which you won’t know how to do.

  5. Will they try him first for the ””””””””””rape ”””””””””” or is it deportation straight to the US?

  6. for-the-record says

    Will they try him first for the ””””””””””rape ”””””””””” or is it deportation straight to the US?

    There are no outstanding rape charges against him, and if there were they would be in Sweden. His UK “crime” is for having jumped bail.

  7. reiner Tor says

    The rape charges were dropped later.

  8. Never touch a Swedish Honeypot who is also Sainte-Nitouche when going up against the Westreich.

    The way things are going, if extradition proceedings go on long enough, Assange will be like one of those MIR astronauts who went up during the Soviet Union but came back during the CIS. UK splitosis may intensify.

  9. Grahamsno(G64) says

    He’ll die in prison in that Totalitarian Shithole called the USA. Sorry just extremely blackpilled today.

  10. Yes, I’ve subsequently seen that they arrested him because of a Us request for extradition for a ‘computer related offence’.

    I almost wish Corbyn were prime minister because there’s a (small) chance he would stand up to this.
    Although lots of left-wingers here are still so retarded that they oppose him because he’s a ‘rapist’ and tweeted something supporting Trump.

  11. Cagey Beast says

    Did Trump say that? I don’t remember him doing so but it may have been somewhere in the stream of stuff he said.

  12. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    This is why Anglo-Saxon propaganda is so very effective. They have freedom of speech, see? Though of course saying politically incorrect things might socially kill you, so it’s understood you won’t do that. You will say PC (including anti-Russian, etc.) platitudes always. So people will not even notice PC propaganda, like fish don’t notice they’re wet. And when trying to convince a normie, you have to break a very long, almost infinite chain of assumptions, which you won’t know how to do.

    Take a look at the career of Charles Austin Beard, for example.

    He was one of the single most highly-regarded historians in America; his contributions to the field were well-known and massively important. But even he could not break through the pillars of propaganda when he published his book about the folly of Franklin Roosevelt’s foreign policy. The “court historians” like Samuel Eliot Morison and Schlesinger, et al, blackballed his work and dismissed it with the most flippant arrogance and lack of care for detail. The major newspapers and periodicals followed suit. Overnight he became all but a pariah. Only a few regional newspapers were willing to treat his work with serious care. To his credit, Beard had anticipated this reaction, but published his works anyway.

    After World War 1, revisionism became par for the course in America – the vast majority of historians, journalists, together with the public as a whole, came to agree that America’s entry into that conflict had been a selfish mistake. But during and after World War Two, what you call “Anglo-Saxon propaganda” tightened up to a remarkably successful degree, and to this day the pro-interventionist myth of the “great crusade” is all but unimpeachable among the masses. In fact, the anti-revisionists, the “court historians,” even managed to defeat the old inter-war consensus about World War One, so that even it is now regarded as an idealistic crusade for democracy! Very remarkable stuff, though sad!

  13. Cagey Beast says

    Never touch a Swedish Honeypot who is also Sainte-Nitouche when going up against the Westreich.

    What??

  14. Actually what do you think is the benefit of giving accommodation for Assange? Because you think he could be useful as a bargaining chip, or way to troll America? Explain the benefits.

    The British are the experts of this policy of accommodating dissidents to troll opponent governments – for example, accommodating people like Litvinenko (and many others). But do the British really benefit from homing dissidents? These cases have a short term propaganda use, but in the long term they seem quite expensive (Litvinenko was expensive for both sides and created more diplomacy problems for both).

    Ecuador probably achieved some short term propaganda victory against the West, in accommodating Assange. But in the long term, this benefit is lost, when they eventually have to end the accommodation, and lose support of all the people who were happy with them.

    It was probably cool to have a celebrity in their office for a while, and probably he could help update the computers or work for them like a security guard in the building at night. But presumably this third-world country Ecuador was also paying for him to live there.

    I guess Ecuador could have benefited, if they used Assange as a tourist exhibit. People could visit or receive talks from him, in return for buying tickets. In this way, he could have paid for his accommodation.

  15. reiner Tor says
  16. reiner Tor says

    what you call “Anglo-Saxon propaganda”

    Yeah, it’s not totally Anglo-Saxon, to say the least.

  17. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    My impression is that continental leftists are, on average, at least a bit smarter than the leftists in England, America, Canada, etc. “Our” Anglophone leftists all seem convinced that the best way to die is like Foucault, of diseases contracted in a gay bathhouse. Their stupidity is absolutely incredible.

  18. Brabantian says

    This ‘arrest of Assange’ is kabuki theatre for the rubes. Every major government knows, that Assange was not really ‘living’ at the Ecuador embassy in London.

    The UK police have ‘watched’ the place so MI5-MI6 were able to move him in and out for his meetings and photo opportunities. What you are seeing is the wind-down of the Assange fraud and farce.

    There is nothing real about either Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, who are both helping to identify and ‘rat trap’ real dissidents, who are turning up dead

    It is quite easy to establish that both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are CIA fakes created during the arrogant Obama years.

    Assange was admitted to be an intel fake by no less than Benjamin Netanyahu himself, and also by Zbigniew Brzezinski on American public television. Netanyahu admitted this when responding off the cuff as to why he was not worried about ‘Wikileaks’ damaging Israel. Zbig made clear the leaks were ‘selected’ and highly limited. Some of them are done to make Assange look ‘legit’.

    At least two people who contacted Assange have turned up dead – Seth Rich & Peter W Smith. Assange pretends to be ‘concerned’ about the former; he denies receiving the latter’s files. Others are jailed. Assange and Snowden are ‘rat traps’, vehicles to destroy real whistle-blowers who are duped into contacting their CIA-goon media pumpers, NY Times, UK Guardian, Rothschild’s Greenwald, etc. We don’t know how many may have been quietly killed after contacting them.

    From Ian Greenhalgh on Veterans Today: « If Wikileaks were a real organisation carrying out real leaks that do real damage to real people and even nations, then those charged with protecting those people and nations, such as the FBI, would surely be kicking down doors and making arrests and extradition requests in order to reign them in and prevent further damage in future. The FBI is not looking for any Wikileaks people. No-one is hunting them, or cutting off their money, or even restricting their travel, or accusing them of anything … Without the protection of the FBI and other Israeli assets in the US, then Wikileaks could not operate nor could it survive very long. »

    Regarding Snowden, the intel agency report on why Snowden is a fake, is very thorough … Putin plays along on a ‘deal’ as he plays along on 9-11, Snowden is perhaps not even in Russia.

    For example, Snowden first ‘leaked’ to Bart Gellman, Dick Cheney’s friend and biographer at the CIA’s Washington Post, ha!

    Glenn Greenwald is not only a gay ex-pornographer (same previous profession as his friend Jimmy Wales of the CIA-Mossad Wikipedia), Greenwald has worked in turn for 3 billionaire families – Bill Gates, the Rothschilds, and now CIA-project-funder Pierre Omidyar.

    Another proof that Assange are Snowden are fakes, is how neither says a word regarding the devastating files on USA Virginia federal judge bribery – the very same judges who would allegedly put Assange & Snowden on trial if they were real. Covering up for USA judge bribery & corruption is a key CIA agenda item … Any real US dissident overseas would be glad to speak about it. Those files are already blocking a series of USA extradition requests for other people … yet Assange & Snowden say nothing. If Assange or Snowden were real and ‘concerned about being extradited to the USA’, this is the first thing they would be talking about, as it would make their extraditions impossible.

  19. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    That wasn’t meant as a correction, mind you, just quoting you.

  20. Daniel Chieh says

    The Information Age and its consequences of centralization of data(and therefore power) have been disastrous for the human species.

  21. You have some very strange ideas. The direct financial costs of housing Assange are absolutely negligible for Ecuador.

  22. Navalny’s No.2 gloats about Assange’s arrest. And yet one gets called a Kremlin propagandist for suggesting that these people are just American stooges.

    https://twitter.com/leonidvolkov/status/1116307834134781953

  23. reiner Tor says

    The direct cost was nothing. But the indirect cost of increasing Western (especially American) opprobrium was probably significant.

    So while it seems strange that Dmitry would think about the costs of feeding him or providing him with electricity, he’s correct that there must be some kind of longer term benefit.

    I think one such long term benefit would be propaganda: having free speech in Russia, while not in the West.

  24. He is not going to be the only one to die in that American totalitarian shithole, the push to go after whites is growing by the day. Next it will be types like Richard Spencer, Andrew Anglin or Alex Jones. After that it will be the cuckier types to sent to the gulags. The only solace will be that roaches like Bolton or Pompeo will not be safe, they will be what Yezhov and Yagrov were to the USSR regime.

  25. I think one such long term benefit would be propaganda: having free speech in Russia, while not in the West.

    It won’t because the elite are not even hiding it any more that free speech is unacceptable, if anything if Russia practiced free speech it would be hated even more.

  26. reiner Tor says

    the elite are not even hiding it any more that free speech is unacceptable

    They do in the sense that their ideology is still all about muh freedom of press.

  27. Cagey Beast says

    Fascism now includes a democratically elected head of state (who respects term limits and doesn’t use the death penalty) and a whistle-blower who takes on the world’s biggest war machine. Got it.

    Yet another “kiss up and kick down” South Asian:

    https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1116288972286722050

  28. reiner Tor says

    So why did Russia, two years later, refuse Assange – their puppet, according to the mainstream Western narrative – asylum?

    Did they? I cannot find anything.

  29. Grahamsno(G64) says

    Andrew Anglin the American Swift or Voltaire will just be murdered outright in a Harris or any other NPC Presidency, they just can’t afford to put him on trial. White nationalists are going to be as demonized as Jihadists and will be treated the same way i.e just killed with no explanations asked and none given,

  30. Grahamsno(G64) says

    Can anyone tell me why the left who so vocally opposed the Iraq war turned against Assange who exposed the massive war crimes committed by the US in the very wars they opposed. Isn’t he supposed to be a martyr? What the fuck happened it surely can’t be that bullshit ‘Russia stole the elections story’ which was just shown by Mueller to be ‘fake news.’

  31. It depends what you mean by “negligible”.

    I didn’t research how much Ecuador pays for the office space, and what proportion is occupied by Assange. But direct financial cost for the office space in Knightsbridge, could easily have been some millions of dollars. That’s aside from non-pecuniary cost to other staff in the building and their whole diplomatic mission to London.

    But my comment is not asking about that anyway. The point is what is the eventual cost, and what is the benefit.

    The British are the masters of this policy of homing dissents. Sometimes it provides them with intelligence benefits and some diplomatic or propaganda value. Sometimes, like Litvinenko, obviously eventually resulted very expensively for both sides.

  32. Cagey Beast says

    It’s the technique of gradualism developed by the Fabian Society and then taken up by the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, etc. foundations. Among other things, it’s the “nudge” technique described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book).

  33. Just sayin’ it’s possible to think that Julian Assange is a definite creep, a probable rapist, a conspiracist whackjob *and* that his arrest has incredibly worrying implications for the treatment of those who blow the whistle on gross abuses of state power.— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) April 11, 2019

  34. For instance, Russia has never extradited Western spies back to their homelands

    That may be true in the technical sense, but in 2002, the CIA spy
    Edward Lee Howard who had defected to Moscow in 1985, died
    In Moscow in 2002 of a broken neck.

    In 1985,the Russian KGB defector, Vitaly Yurchenko, told the Americans about the
    Spy Howard in order to fool the CIA with wrong leads to protect
    Their prize American CIA agent, Aldrich Ames.

    Yurchenko later re-defected back to the Soviet Union.

    Death from a broken neck is a classic method to kill someone.
    It is quite likely that he had outlived his usefulness to the Russians

  35. strange that Dmitry would think about the costs of feeding him or providing him with electricity

    I was not asking about costs of food or electricity (surely he pays this himself for food).

    The direct cost was nothing.

    I doubt Ecuador has such a large budget for external relations. So this would be expensive relative to their budget for diplomatic missions (even if Assange tried to minimize the space he occupied there, Ecuador are renting the office space in Knightsbridge where property can cost vastly per square meter). Also, even if they expanded the offices they rent, it would be unpleasant for the staff to have someone living in your office building (imagine this where you work). I wonder that Ecuador might have reduced the number of staff they hired for the diplomatic mission to London.

    I think one such long term benefit would be propaganda: having free speech in Russia, while not in the West.

    Policy of homing dissidents is partly for propaganda – which is how the British, who pioneer this policy, use it. And it can also have intelligence value.

    That said, it is unpredictable what the final result is. Litvinenko was expensive for the British, because of the whole medical and police scandal resulting from his death, as well as the fact they damaged much more important relations with Russia as a result of him. Costs for the British greatly surpassed the benefits of taking him into their country.

    In the case of Ecuador embassy, they lose any propaganda achievements they had won anyway, when they gave Assange to British police.

  36. reiner Tor says

    could easily have been some millions of dollars

    Over several years, that’s nothing for a government. Ecuador’s annual GDP is over 100 billion dollars. Assuming a very low 20% government budget, it’s still $20 billion. Even if Assange cost $20 million annually, that’d be a tenth of a percent of the budget. But probably Assange cost basically nothing, because:

    office space in Knightsbridge

    They didn’t rent extra rooms. So the cost was a slight inconvenience for the embassy staff, plus the food, electricity and hot water for Assange. That’s truly nothing.

  37. Aside from the office space in Knightsbrige, which probably costs millions of dollars for them, (apparently have to rent three different buildings in London for their diplomatic mission).

    Ecuador also has to expend a lot of money for security for him.

    Ecuadorian government has apparently spent quite a bit of money protecting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. According to a report at The Guardian, the country had the full assent of the Ecuadorian president and foreign minister to “protect” Assange via “Operation Guest,” which sources say had an average cost of at least $66,000 per month.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/15/julian-assange-protection-ecuador-millions/

  38. reiner Tor says

    I doubt Ecuador has such a large budget for external relations.

    Assange occupied less space than just one of their diplomats, and they have several in London. And they have several dozens of embassies and consulates around the world. It’s a very small fraction of the cost of maintaining a diplomatic service abroad. Which is a very small fraction of the Ecuador budget.

    Litvinenko was expensive for the British, because of the whole medical and police scandal resulting from his death, as well as the fact they damaged much more important relations with Russia as a result of him.

    Unless the goal was to create a propaganda coup to mobilize the British public against Russia.

    The direct costs were basically zero.

  39. reiner Tor says

    Okay, that’s something. I mean, more than an average Ecuadorian diplomat. Still nothing relative to Ecuador’s budget.

    Here you sound like someone who doesn’t know the difference between a million and a billion – both are a huge some.

  40. They didn’t rent extra rooms. So the cost was a slight inconvenience for the embassy staff, plus the food, electricity and hot water for Assange. That’s truly nothing.

    I’m not sure.

    In 2019, Ecuador are renting surely expensive offices in London. (Even though they only have 12 staff members with diplomatic status).

    Having someone living in an office, necessitates increasing quantity of space you rent for your staff to do their real job. (Aside from that they were expending $66,000 per month just on Assange’s security in the building)

    These are offices Ecuador rents in London:

    Embassy (space shared with Colombia).

    Flat 3B 3 Hans Crescent SW1X 0LS

    Commercial Section
    Flat 3b 3 Hans Crescent SW1X 0LS

    6 Aspen Lodge 61 Wimbledon Hill Road SW19 7QP

    1st Floor Uganda House
    58/59 Trafalgar Square WC2N 5DX

  41. Cagey Beast says

    It’s interesting how mixed the opinions on Assange’s arrest are. On Twitter and at news sites, “progressives” are especially divided on him and Wikileaks.

  42. Daniel Chieh says

    This has to be a joke. I could reasonably cover that and I’m a private individual. On even a corporate budget, this is a drop in the bucket. On a national budget, this is vanishing point.

  43. reiner Tor says

    Again. Let’s assume it cost $10,000,000 annually.

    That’s nothing for a country like Ecuador. Not even a rounding error in the budget. No individual taxpayer had to pay more taxes because of that.

  44. 2stateshmustate says

    If Mr. Assange is legit, then why hasn’t he done anything to expose the obvious false-flag 911 operation. This does not make sense.

  45. reiner Tor says

    As I wrote, here he sounded like someone who doesn’t understand the difference between a million and a billion.

  46. Here you sound like someone who doesn’t know the difference between a million and a billion – both are a huge some.

    Sure, it directly only cost them perhaps some millions of dollars (if you include security alone cost millions of dollars according to the media), and the propaganda benefit was significant for some time. But then after years, people forget about the story, and I’m not sure how much Ecuador would benefit from this operation.

    The real story would be whether Ecuador has achieved some improvement in relations with America by inviting the British police to arrest him? In that case, it will have been a success for Ecuador.

    However, it’s also possible they did not like having him living in the offices they rent in the most privileged part of London, and using equivalent of several staff’s salary to fund it.

    After some time, the Ecuadorian staff will probably be complaining about this (even if it is a dream job for them to be in London and a way Ecuador rewards its favourite staff).

    Ecuador is a poor country and the diplomatic mission to London is an expensive luxury, which they probably use to reward their staff. The Americans are pretty ruthless and it’s possible they knew they could just wait some years until Ecuador gives him up.

    Anyway, if I was Ecuadorian citizen, I would prefer they would rent some ordinary office in a business park in East London, rather than spoiling your officials with Knightsbridge.

  47. Guess whose fault it is?
    Yes, Dugin.
    Dark Lord Dugin is behind all evil of the world as all woke people know.

    https://twitter.com/WarAndWar2/status/1116343831870545920

  48. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    To some degree they already have been killed with no explanations asked and none given, like Gordon Kahl, who was killed because he tried to foment a tax rebellion.

    David Koresh, on the other hand, was by no means a white nationalist, but he was killed with no explanation asked or given. Also, they could have arrested him when he went jogging by himself every morning, but instead the ATF staged a massive raid, for some dumb internal reason. (As banal as it is, I think the ATF meatheads may have just been bored)

    Even an Ebert and Siskel – talk about normies! – review of a movie about Waco wasn’t enough to get answers.

  49. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    So, we have the techniques of libertarian paternalism without the respect for morality and nature that makes paternalism genuinely good. And we don’t have liberty, so much as we have what Patrick Henry, et al, would call “license.” Thus, instead of what would actually be libertarian paternalism, we have … hmm, what shall I call it? A dictatorship of license, with gradually decreasing perks and benefits as one descends the food chain of power?

    Interesting … thanks.

  50. reiner Tor says

    Yes, it’s possible, likely even, that it wasn’t worth it for Ecuador. (Though who knows what they got for kicking Assange out.) Not because of the costs, but because of the lack of benefits.

    In Russia’s case, the situation would be different. It’d cost even less for Russia (they sure must already have advanced security already in place, and they are a much larger and richer country), while Russia could keep him at the embassy forever.

  51. Daniel Chieh says

    One has to admire their ability to get their troops to repeat the same line.

  52. reiner Tor says

    I think one such long term benefit would be propaganda: having free speech in Russia, while not in the West.

    Another benefit would be that any dissident in the West blowing the whistle on Western mischief would know that Russia would always have his back. So, the probability of such whistle-blowers coming forward would increase greatly, which would increase the probability of such embarrassing episodes for the West. This would be significantly cheaper than RT, and worth more.

  53. The security cost of Assange, to the Ecuadorian Embassy was $5 million in the first five years – more than the salary of all the diplomatic staff of the Ecuadorian mission to London. And then the other costs of housing him were $6 million, according to Ecuadorian media.

    You can afford to spend $5 million for security for your private individual or your corporation? And you can afford office space in Knightsbridge?

    These diplomatic missions will be some of the dream jobs in the Ecuadorian government. And it seems like Assange is one of the more expensive parts of the whole mission. (They had to ask for a large increase in their budget after he came there).

    If you look at Ecuadorian newspapers, the Ecuadorian government is complaining about how expensive it was and their politicians were arguing about it.

    Eventually last year, they demanded that Assange would pay for his expenses.

    Obviously from a national budget it is tiny, even of a third world country. But from the diplomatic budget of that third world country, it is significant. .

    As a result, last year Ecuador started asking him to repay them the costs.

  54. Ecuador housing expenses for Assange were $1 million a year, according to the Ecuadorian president.

    And they were also paying around $1 million a year for his security.

    So the total direct cost for the Ecuadorian Embassy to accommodate Assange, was presumably around $12 million.

    Of course, it’s tiny money relative to country’s national budget.

    But $12 million in direct costs, is around what I implied (and was imagining) in my original comment. For a third world country’s diplomatic budget, it could be annoying. On the other hand, if they improved their relations with America by giving him to the British police, it will have been small investment, with a significant reward.

  55. Free Julian Assange and all political prisoners!

  56. reiner Tor says

    Obviously from a national budget it is tiny, even of a third world country. But from the diplomatic budget of that third world country, it is significant. .

    As a result

    That’s for the bydlo who think this is a lot of money or an important factor.

    They decided that Assange was a political cost, and they no longer hated America, or wanted a better relation with America, whatever, so they wanted to kick him out. Therefore, they started to write such stories in the press (as if it was an important factor) to move public opinion in favor of his extradition.

  57. Edward Snowden has had it pretty good in comparison, I assume he leads a pretty normal life. Lucky for him to get stuck in Russia.

  58. It is clear now. Assange is guilty of the worst sin. Burn the heretic!

    https://twitter.com/InfiniteHandles/status/1116358119817273344

  59. Daniel Chieh says

    Again, I think the scale is ridiculous.

    The company I work for isn’t even in the Fortune 100 and barely pulled in a bit over the Japanese revenue equivalent of $1 billion dollars as per Wiki(though its a few years behind). Even so, the smallest project spend is well over a half million and the largest ones are well over a hundred million. Often these are failed projects, so it did not provide the expected results. Yet in the sum of things, it hardly impacts us.

    A brief google scan shows Ecudaor’s tax revenue at over three times of our old reported income. The idea that they would sweat a few million dollars is silly. More money is almost certainly wasted in corruption there.

  60. Thorfinnsson says

    As much as I like Assange, Ecuador’s actions were not in that country’s national interest. It was thus appropriate for them to expel him.

    Ecuador is a weak, poor country which naturally falls into America’s sphere of influence.

    It was deeply irresponsible of the previous government to give him asylum. That sort of self-destructive virtue signaling is typical of leftists, and another example of why all leftists should be executed.

    As for my own country, I’m not really sure what our actions should be. I like Assange, and he even helped defeat Hillary. That said, it’s not like America can openly take the side of someone whose life mission is to expose the secrets of the Dweeb State.

  61. It’s probably true what you write. Ecuadorian politicians were last year describing Assange as a “stone in shoe” of their diplomatic policy.

    It’s also possible Ecuador have received something in exchange from America, which would be interesting (and would make it perhaps a success story for them, if they used Assange as leverage). How many tanks would America donate to the Ecuador in exchange for an Assange?

    By the way, my suspicion (now reading Ecuador newspapers), is that Ecuador was working to monitor Assange’s communications for intelligence information they could sell to America. Otherwise, why did Ecuador spend $1 million a year to rent another house opposite the road, and hire three agents to permanently watch Assange on cameras.

    Also now Ecuadorian politicians are talking about agents that they know had contact with Assange.

  62. simple_pseudonymic_handle says

    Is there a recent UK equivalent of the O. J. Simpson case where a dream legal team managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat and outmaneuver the dastardly prosecutors? That is what Julian Assange needs now if they are available.

  63. I would probably do the same thing in Putin’s situation. At a very basic level you simply cannot trust people like Assange. Giving refuge to a spy is one thing; you’re not going to let him near any state secrets so it’s not like he could betray you even if he wanted to (and it’s easy to keep an eye on him). For somebody like Assange there’s the constant threat that he could turn against you: acquire damaging information and use it as leverage, or simply release it for the sake of his own ego or murky ideals. Too much potential for embarrassment. Snowden was closer in spirit to a spy imo; Assange is more like bin Laden or a mafia boss, the head of a shadowy international organization with significant reach and resources.

    It’s sort of like the French Foreign Legion: they take a dim view of British and American recruits and generally won’t let them join unless they speak French or have prior military experience. The reason is psychological unsuitability: no sensible British or American person interested in a military career would volunteer to be a mercenary for a foreign country over serving in his own country’s well-funded armed forces. Romantics and escapists are inherently flaky and unreliable people. That’s also why Brazilians are regarded as the best Legion soldiers: they just do it to get EU citizenship.

  64. Sure it isn’t much for a large corporation.

    But let’s say Ecuador’s mission to London costs $10 million a year (I have no idea what the cost was, but they only have 12 diplomatic status staff)? At the same time, we know they were spending $2 million a year to accomodate to Assange.

    So relative to the diplomatic mission, it wouldn’t be insignificant.

    Assange occupied 70 square meters, of the 175 square meter total space Ecuador rented in Knightsbridge. In addition, Ecuador increased its budget to rent a house on the other side of the road, where they had three agents watching and monitoring Assange permanently on cameras.

    Probably the latter was in order to obtain intelligence information, which they could later use for some benefit with the Americans. (Because now Ecuadorian politicians are talking about the agents Assange had contact with).

    Americans might anyway have cynically waited, knowing Ecuador was not going to fund the hotel without cessation.

    As we were having this argument, I was searching the Ecuadorian newspapers, and there are editorials complaining about the cost, and then the new president was also complaining about cost.

    Ecuadorian media seem a bit like Swiss people, in their discussion of how they need more transparency for the spending.

    Here is a editorial asking for accountability for the cost:
    http://www.eldiario.ec/noticias-manabi-ecuador/483694-cuanto-cuesta-julian-assange-al-estado-ecuatoriano/

    And here their Supreme Court is debating about the topic, and cost is newspaper’s main headline:
    https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/gasto-ecuador-assange-embajada-asilo.html

    • Looking in the same Ecuadorian newspaper, it seems like the current Ecuadorian government is now talking about how they monitor Russian hackers associated with Assange:

    https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/ecuador-julian-assange-hackers-politica.html

    Their spending for “security for Assange”, was perhaps more related to “monitoring Assange” to get information they could use with America?

  65. reiner Tor says

    Yes, Ecuador probably had zero benefit from this.

    With Russia it’d be a different equation.

  66. that country’s national interest.

    Ecuador rented a house opposite their main offices in Knightsbridge, and had three agents in the house to permanently monitor Assange on cameras (for a cost of $1 million a year).

    So they might be more intelligent than we think?

    At the same time, Ecuador’s politicians had problems justifying the costs of this to their media.

    Perhaps it seems more like this was perceived by Ecuador, as an intelligence operation, to monitor Assange, and get intelligence information they could would use as leverage with the Americans.

    Today, the Ecuadorian interior minister is suddenly boasting about how they monitored and have knowledge about two hackers who worked with Assange.

  67. Cagey Beast says

    Ecuador would benefit from living in a world in which the United States doesn’t always gets what it wants.

  68. How much is left-wing/anti-American kudos worth?

  69. They push Open Borders but not Open Information. They build all sorts of walls to keep out the Truth.

  70. same with Snowden.

  71. The Alarmist says

    But Trump did say “I love WikiLeaks” during the campaign.

  72. For his part, Assange will have to place his hopes on the British judicial system and its political independence.

    Now the land of Magna Cuckta.

  73. Cagey Beast says

    Is it anti-American to resist whatever scheme permanent Washington comes up with?

  74. The Alarmist says

    Scotland yard tried to play down their own costs of hanging outside the Ecuadorian embassy, which in 2015 was already estimated to be well over £10m over the prior three years, by saying that a lot of that cost was money they would have spent on policing anyway: Tell that to the rapidly increasing numbers of families of murder victims in the Capital. Oops, careful about saying that in the UK, as the police there will pick you up for a thought-crime.

  75. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    That said, it’s not like America can openly take the side of someone whose life mission is to expose the secrets of the Dweeb State.

    What do you mean by “America”?

    If by “America”, you mean AMERICA, not our ruling regime, why should we not want someone to expose the secrets of the Dweeb State?

  76. Tono Bungay says

    “RT defectors”?? I would like to read more on this subject. Can anyone refer me to something worthwhile?

  77. for-the-record says

    Assange has been charged with one count of hacking, carrying a maximum penalty of 5 years. A question that immediately occurred to me, and evidently to others as well:

    Can Julian Assange be charged with additional offences once he has been extradited to the United States? The Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent, Owen Bowcott, has this answer.

    Normal practice is that anyone extradited can only be prosecuted in the country that sought them for the offences specified on the extradition indictment. That restriction is known as the Rule of Specialty. But there are two possible but difficult to use exemptions.

    The first is that if it could be argued new information had come to light since his extradition, extra charges could conceivably be brought. “That almost never happens,” said Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service who is a partner at the London law firm peters and Peters. “American prosecutors would also have to seek the consent of the UK to bring in further charges.”

    The second exemption covers what happens after someone has been extradited, convicted and then chooses to remain in the country. Essentially the extraditing country has to allow the prisoner time to run away after they have served their sentence.

    “After a short period, however, usually two months,” Vamos explained, “anyone who remained in the same country would be deemed to be treated like a local citizen and could be charged for other offences.”

    Neither conditions are likely to be met in Assange’s case. “The US has only put one charge on the indictment and it carries the maximum term of five years in prison. Assange has the opportunity to assent to it. It’s relatively light sentence by US standards,” said Vamos.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-at-the-ecuadorean-embassy-live-updates

  78. Daniel Chieh says

    Looks like they have just been reopened.

  79. Is there a recent UK equivalent of the O. J. Simpson case where a dream legal team managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat and outmaneuver the dastardly prosecutors?

    OJ’s acquittal had little to do with lawyers and almost everything to do with black female jurors.

  80. Carroll Price says

    Now that Putin appears to have, at last, learned that it’s a waste of time attempting to curry US favor by bowing to their every demand, I assume a decision concerning Assange’s assylum request today, would be the exact opposite of what it was.

  81. Poor ol’ Julian is in big trouble. Even if Drumpf could pardon him, he’d still face UK prosecution, and the UK is much more on the Blue Tribe, CIA-FBI-Democrat side of the US empire, who are sure to want him given rough treatment in a British prison, as pay back for leaking the Crooked Hillary documents.

    Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to thought criminals in the US empire. It’s astounding how people go around, loudly proclaiming their intention to resist the system, while at the same time lamenting said system’s ruthlessness and power. You can’t effectively resist a totalitarian regime, even if it’s a relatively restrained and gay totalitarianism. The only option is to flee.

  82. I think you are right in the simple explanation which is that Putin never expected the Russian/American relationship to deteriorate to the point it has today. He though it would improve and then Assange would have been a liability to hold…I think it’s also why he waited so long to assist Syria…as he didn’t really go all in until about 2015-2016. Again, probably hoping the election of Trump might ease the diplomatic situation somewhat…Once Putin realized that the situation was not going to get better anytime soon (due to these idiot Democratics and Russiagate) he had nothing to lose by assisting Syria…

    So now we have Iran practically at the borders of Israel via Syria…one nuclear power and another close-to-nuclear power who probably hate each other guts more than India and Pakistan at this point.

    The mid-East is heading into some very “interesting” times as the Chinese used to say….

  83. “Scotland yard tried to play down their own costs of hanging outside the Ecuadorian embassy, which in 2015 was already estimated to be well over £10m over the prior three years, by saying that a lot of that cost was money they would have spent on policing anyway:”

    I find it hard to believe they just hung around outside the embassy for three years or so waiting for this guy to come out. The more likely scenario is that Equador called them prior to Assange’s release and they just sent people by to intercept him as he left. I understand the US promised Equador some debt forgiveness for their part in Assange’s arrest…

  84. simple_pseudonymic_handle says

    I was not there and everything I know about the case has been presented to me by the idiotic media and commentators who are all over the place.

    1. I am open to the possibility OJ did not do it.

    2. The clips I have seen of Cochrane look pretty damn slick.

    3. One of the shocking elements in the aftermath is the jurors who talked to the media. If I am ever in charge of managing a spectacle like that some kind of counseling for the jurors will be included.

    4. You did not answer my question but ridiculed the premises of it. You must be a lot of fun at parties.

  85. Thorfinnsson says

    Even if we controlled the government, we still wouldn’t want someone exposing the secrets of the security services.

    Since we don’t control the government, I like Assange.

  86. Cagey Beast says
  87. I am sorry for disturbing, but could you look at James Thomson s new article here, at Unz, called “World IQ is 82”? At the end of the article there is a graph with results that seem at least far fetched, e.g. Turkey just as smart as Tajikistan, or Iran 9 IQ points lower than Iraq…stuff like that. I think I speak for all the other readers when I say that we would love to see your opinion about that. Thank you in advance, and sorry for disturbing.

  88. Endgame Napoleon says

    Elites around the globe protect each other more than they protect the interests of non-elites in their own nations and any who side with non-elites in any non-trivial way, so it makes sense that Latin American elites side with US elites who favor the mass immigration that has driven down wages for 40 years and the mass exportation of US jobs to Latin American since it 1) boosts the profits of American elites and 2) relieves pressure on Latin American elites.

  89. Cagey Beast says
  90. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Depends on the secrets, but, sure.

  91. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Both you and Matra need to read this book

    Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder
    – Vincent Bugliosi

    Bugliosi was a bit full of himself, in my opinion, but he had a right to be. And his argument is extremely persuasive: namely, that the horrible prosecution let Simpson walk.

    Take the jurors, for example. The prosecution could have had the trial held in the Beverly Hills area, which would have meant a mostly white jury. Instead they let the trial get moved to downtown, which led to a mostly black jury. They didn’t even try to prevent this! This is just one of many examples of grave prosecutorial incompetence in the case.

    Bugliosi also shows how the prosecution let the “dream team” smear Mark Fuhrman as a racist even though there was clear evidence that Fuhrman had, for example, 1) befriended black cops after his “rehab” in the 1980s and 2) worked off the clock to clear one black guy who had been convicted of murder – Fuhrman single-handedly got the guy out of jail! And the prosecutors didn’t even mention this; in fact, the black prosecutor (I forget his name) went right along with the Simpson lawyers, and called Fuhrman “disgusting” or something like that. And the woman prosecutor, good grief, she was just a train wreck.

    The media has spent the last 3 decades describing Simpson’s lawyers as “the dream team,” but Bugliosi shows that that was really a bunch of hype. The prosecution blew the case in a staggeringly stupid series of mistakes. The prosecution of Orenthal James Simpson was quite possibly the single most incompetent one in the entire history of American criminal law. Read the book!

  92. Ecuador seemed to get fed up with Assange – cutting him off from the world, badmouthing him in MSM, etc – early 2018 when he was mostly tweeting about Catalonia. Spain is supposedly Ecuador’s closest partner in Europe. The timing could’ve been coincidental but probably not.

  93. Or maybe it was neither Spain nor the Great Satan but the Whore of Babylon.

  94. Trump was always scum, I am endlessly amazed how it took so long for some people to see what he was.

  95. Cagey Beast says

    He was always scum but he was still the better choice than Hillary Clinton. He may still be better than his opponent in 2020. That’s how bad things are at the centre of the American empire.

    Trump had the potential to be better than he is now but Washington has pushed his back against the wall and his shitty character has thus shown itself in full. He could have been a better President under different circumstances; even with these same character flaws.

  96. Erm what? This is what this article is about.

  97. I shortened many of the comments about how much money in terms of office space Assange cost Ecuador because I think most of them were boring and bad takes.

  98. They are equally bad, but in a tie breaker the winner will always be the one that makes promises that are broken as opposed to those that openly declare you the enemy.

  99. simple_pseudonymic_handle says

    I have read Helter Skelter enough times that I wore out two copies. It was a youthful enthusiasm. Looking back I view Bugliosi as a propagandist.

    This text box is tiny for the subject matter, so I will only relay to you the most significant quip I recall (this was given to me by a black woman in reference to the OJ trial):

    never try to frame a guilty man.

  100. Cagey Beast says

    Trump was and still is the chaos candidate. When a better option than sabotage presents itself, then Trump will become the second best choice.

    Many, if not most, people knew he was the sabotage candidate when they supported him. Hillary was understood to be worse because she’d maintain and even strengthen a bad system while Trump would bugger it up.

  101. reiner Tor says

    The Deep State might already be beyond repair. So perhaps, come the Revolution, new, revolutionary state organs will need to be set up in a clean break with the obscurantist blank slatist regime. The state secrets of these new, revolutionary organs should be protected by any means necessary. But then we’ll have free countries for ourselves.

    Until then, we don’t need to protect the secrets of the oppressive obscurantist regime.

  102. Verymuchalive says

    Putin, like many in the Russian elite, had started off as an Anglophile

    Where’s the evidence for this ?

  103. Re: “Putin, like many in the Russian elite, had started off as an Anglophile, and his strongest relationship with a Western leader during the early years of his rule was with Tony Blair.”

    How disgusting. Putin must have a strong stomach and very poor taste.

  104. His actions during that time.

  105. Okay, here’s one example from Mikhail Zygar’s All the Kremlin’s Men.

    (You can use Google Translate to get the gist of it).

    Для внешней, западной, аудитории Путин и его команда подобрали другой имидж — smart guy, молодой, энергичный юрист, компетентный и самоуверенный, но открытый и дружелюбный. Фактически его ролевой моделью стал Тони Блэр. Именно с ним Путин решил установить первые дружеские отношения. А с кем еще? Клинтон и Ширак были дружны с Ельциным, слишком ассоциировались с ним, к тому же Клинтон через год должен был уйти в отставку. …

    А в 2000 году поистине царский прием в Мариинском театре приятно поразил Тони Блэра. Об этом он напишет через десять лет в своих воспоминаниях: в аналогичной ситуации в Лондоне перед театральной премьерой ему пришлось бы улыбаться и пожимать руки. Но в Мариинском все было иначе. Зрители расступались, почтительно склонив головы. «Путин в России — как царь», — удивлялся Блэр в своей книге «Странствие»3. Парадокс налицо: Путин думал, что, принимая Блэра в Петербурге, будет выглядеть европейцем, а британскому премьеру царская роскошь, наоборот, показалась азиатчиной.

    Но в 2000 году Блэр, конечно, говорил по другому. «Путин — высокоинтеллектуальный человек с четким представлением о том, чего он хочет достичь в России. Его Россия — это сильная держава, где царит закон и порядок, это еще демократическая и либеральная страна», — рассказывал он в интервью, вернувшись домой в Лондон. Первый экзамен Путин сдал — впечатление на Блэра он произвел неизгладимое. В тот же день пресс-служба Блэра сообщила, что, вернувшись на Даунинг-стрит, премьер обзвонил всех своих коллег по «Семерке» и поделился приятными впечатлениями от общения с Путиным.

  106. Re:Cagey Beast

    Disagree here, he’s energised the left to a degree that wouldn’t have happened had he not been elected and his policies are now no different to what Clinton’s would have been. In American politics, what you say appears to matter much more than what you do, so we’ve now got the perfect storm of someone who talks like a right wing populist, and the resulting backlash, but nothing to show for it. I remember ak mentioning that the only saving grace of his administration being that it had alienated allies, but even that hasnt materialised. The guy is a conman and a sellout, but he’s very clearly noticed the fact that European governments will unquestionably obey the US, so it’s pointless to treat them with any respect whatsoever: THATs the one and only positive thing I can say about him. Still not looking forward to his successor.

  107. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Yes, and a slight mea culpa for the totally OT OJ Simpson hot take 🙂

  108. reiner Tor says

    But what is your source? The AP article only says that he asked for a visa, and received it. And that he was sure he could comfortably work out of Russia. Though the source for this latter seems to be our own Israel Shamir. So at least somewhat questionable. The reason he didn’t go to Russia was that he could no longer leave the UK. It never says anything about Assange asking to stay at the Russian embassy.

    His preference was obviously to go to Russia (as opposed to staying in the UK). But it was impossible. It’s unclear if he’d have preferred another country if given the choice. He would clearly have been happy to travel to Brazil. Then he went to the Ecuadorian embassy. It’s not clear if he would’ve preferred another embassy. Is there any proof for that?

    Maybe I didn’t read carefully enough.

  109. Trump said he liked Wikileaks at that time, because they released some embarrassing emails about Hilary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential election.

    If they released embarrassing emails about Trump, he would have said the opposite.

    Trump will not have any specific principles that would make him support asylum for leakers, or generalized protection for dissidents, unless it might specifically be explained that it would help him in some way (and unless there are emails to leak about his opponent in 2020, how will it help him?).

    Putin is interested exaggeratedly about this topic (hating those who attack the Russian government, and supporting those who attack American government) because Putin was a KGB officer during the Cold War. This kind of politics was his profession, and he thinks it’s more important than it is. Trump’s profession was building skyscrapers and he probably never had thought about the topic of dissidents and leakers until 2016.

  110. So at least somewhat questionable. The reason he didn’t go to Russia was that he could no longer leave the UK. It never says anything about Assange asking to stay at the Russian embassy.

    Well, I suppose it depends on whether you consider me to be a reliable source.

    This would be unambiguously confirmed to me several years later by a source who must remain anonymous, but who was in a consummately first hand position to know those details. Russian diplomatic officials were apparently not happy with the decision, but the order was clear and it came from the highest levels of the Russian government. A few months ago, a senior Russia-based journalist who has excellent access to the Kremlin elites told me he heard the same.

  111. reiner Tor says

    Oh, I see. I was looking for a source which I could quote to a gloating liberal acquaintance.

    I believe you, but it’s useless knowledge lol.

  112. reiner Tor says

    Believe it or not, there are people celebrating it as some kind of victory for freedom, and defeat for the forces of darkness, Putin and Trump.

  113. Only way to make it less useless would be (1) burning my source(s), or (2) having it printed in the Guardian or NYT.

    Neither of which are happening anytime soon. 🙂

    PS. There isn’t, of course, a 100% guarantee that I’m correct. My source could have lied to me. And perhaps he or someone else lied to the journalist who more recently corroborated it to me. And perhaps Assange really did voluntarily opt for the cramped Ecuadorian Embassy over the spacious Russian one – even though he had no “ethical” issues in seeking a Russian visa two years previously, in 2010. But all that seems pretty unlikely.

  114. But Trump would say anything that would get him elected, and he would do many of these things. But, as plutocrat surrounded by plutocrats, he’ll never open the market for housing (allow easier re-zoning), or transportation (dismantle the dealership racket), or hospitals / doctors. Yeah, apparently he lacks the levers to reduce housing costs, but he can always fix, or promise to fix, something about Assange, or about Christian-Obamacare conflicts – despite them being equally remote from his mandate. Watch the idiotic boomers drooling all over unz.com about Trump’s “efforts” to fix immigration.

    These being the highest expenses of an American, I can see who is the idiot here.

  115. Here is some good news
    https://www.rt.com/news/456285-israel-fails-attempted-moon-landing/

    Despite the billions this parasite has extracted from white people, it still clearly is not enough.

  116. Anonymous says

    My source could have lied to me.

    Or maybe he just wanted to be like bigshot

    (Yeah yeah SNL MSM neoliberal propaganda whatever; I still thought it was funny)

  117. I think there’s a difference between applying for a Russian visa from a third country when the heat is ‘kind of’ on, but not seriously so yet, and turning up at a Russian airport at a stage where you’re completely f—ed. In the former situation they can shrug and say “it’s your problem, nothing to do with us”, in the latter they have to actively hand you over.

    Still, hopelessly naive, even at that time for him to have been in London. You probably ought to be careful yourself.

  118. reiner Tor says

    The issue is the conspiracy theory: these people believe that Assange went there voluntarily to avoid being exposed by the very smart liberal conspiracy theorist (who would immediately see through it: you see, he went to the Russian embassy, he’s a Russian asset!), so that’s why Assange chose Ecuador. Of course, the very smart liberal conspiracy theorist sees through it anyway. See how smart he is?

  119. Daniel Chieh says

    I believe you, but it’s useless knowledge lol.

    Here’s some more useless knowledge.

    Lake Vostok is an ancient sub-ice Antarctic lake that has fresh water sealed off from the surface for millions of years. It is believed that samples taken from the water within, if pristine and displaying life, will be evidence not only of an unique ecosystem using a non-solar energy source but also mimic conditions and biological life that can be found on Europa.

  120. It’s one area where Putin is usually much harsher than the Americans – how he responds to dissidents who leak classified information.

    Perhaps there is lost opportunity, from the point of view of missing the propaganda to receive Assange to Russia. But in the long term, these games of housing dissidents, are probably costing more than they benefit for all sides, and it’s smoother that Putin didn’t chase this one.

    Notice that London is always the centre of these events. How much time and effort Britain always wastes by its involvement in this game, and constant chasing of diplomatic scandals. (And then add how much loss of potential investment UK receives as a result of their heavy responses to these events and overall difficult visa policy).

  121. Verymuchalive says

    Yes: the book was praised by Svetlana Alexievich – so it must be true !

  122. Russian intelligence could simply have read the July 2007 Readers Digest under the heading ‘Worlds Most Dangerous Leaders’ and figured out who was gonna get hit…about as open source as it gets. There are no “vital secrets” to be gotten from hacking Hillary Clinton’s supposed public email server.

    https://www.amazon.com/Readers-Digest-Magazine-Articles-Spiked/dp/B004Q1VWT2/

    It’s also fairly well known that Wikileaks was more likely to have been hosted in Sweden and/or administered by Swedish hackers.

    https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-helped-wikileaks-on-several-fronts-130205/

  123. So if Alexievich said that water was wet would you also doubt her? Look, this is common knowledge. You can read the same impressions from Korobko and Hutchins’ Putin, a very pro-Putin book.

  124. Verymuchalive says

    It must be midnight in Moscow. Thank you for your diligence in answering me so swiftly.

  125. Blair was the first foreign leader to visit Russia in March 2000, after Putin became president. And Putin’s first visit abroad was to see Blair in London in April 2000.

    Putin and Blair had 9 personal meetings before the end of 2001, which included together eating in restaurants, or holding special premiere of “War and Peace” at the Mariinsky Theatre for Blair.

    For Blair to be the first foreign leader to visit President Putin, was a bit controversial in March 2000 in the UK, because Second Chechen War was occurring at the time, with a lot of bombings and casualties (and the British newspapers of the time are quite critical).

    At the same time, Chechen Information Centre was operating in London, and Putin wanted this closed.

    Retrospectively, it seems strange they considered Blair so important. But in 2000, Blair was very a fashionable politician, who was not yet damaged by involved with George W. Bush.

    Blair himself wanted Russia to be associate member of NATO
    https://korrespondent.net/world/33543-bler-otnosheniya-rossii-i-nato-ustareli

    • As for the “golden age of relations with the UK” – I wonder how we should date this? In unofficial contacts, it would surely be 2002 (?)-2008, when money from Russia starts conquering London.

  126. Anonymous says

    In the case of England I think harboring dissidents (historically) is also about projecting a liberal, progressive aura to the world. In local terms, port cities are usually more tolerant and open minded than the hinterlands. They have to be; they depend on commerce and deal with people from all over the world, bigotry and totalitarianism would be bad for business. England’s economy benefits enormously from London (and the country in general) being perceived as uniquely international, stable and permissive compared to almost every other place on Earth. Switzerland might be another example of a country that depends on this kind of reputation.

    Of course things are different now and today internationalism mostly just means neoliberalism and Atlanticism, as Julian Assange is finding out. As far as Putin goes, he is just sheltering dissidents to give a middle finger to the US; when the propaganda value evaporates, so does his interest in the project. I definitely wouldn’t be feeling secure in my long-term position if I were Edward Snowden.

  127. That must be why Singapore is well known for its liberal permissiveness

  128. Jaakko Raipala says

    the elite are not even hiding it any more that free speech is unacceptable

    They do in the sense that their ideology is still all about muh freedom of press.

    But of course that means freedom of THEIR press. Russia, for example, is an un-free country with an un-free media so of course they want Russian media operations shut down to protect the free press. That’s the logic our government uses every time they ban some Russian media operation that tries to start up here.

    They also recognize their allies very well across countries, I remember how Finland got lowered in the press freedom rankings by globalist agencies when our right-wing government actually tried to do something right-wing and reduced funding to the state broadcasting agency (Finnish BBC, full of commies). Didn’t try to ban anything, just tried to cut funding to state media, and suddenly American globalist agencies started pressuring us over the “authoritarian” moves of our government against “press freedom”.

  129. Well, Lesha spectacularly self-destructed by Crimea, and this creature was supposed to be the brains behind the operation. What else to expect?

  130. Philip Owen says

    Hours after Assange was detained, the IMF approved a loan of $4.2 Bn for Ecuador.

  131. I seem to have LOL’d prematurely.

    It seems to have happened exactly one month ago: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2019/03/11/ecuador-pr1972-imf-executive-board-approves-eff-for-ecuador

  132. Hyperborean says

    They are equally bad, but in a tie breaker the winner will always be the one that makes promises that are broken as opposed to those that openly declare you the enemy.

    It makes me think of Codreanu’s maxim:

    The first and fiercest punishment ought to fall first on the traitor, second on the enemy. If I had but one bullet and I were faced by both an enemy and a traitor, I would let the traitor have it.

  133. Cagey Beast says

    The fact that it was approved one month ago exactly makes me wonder if the order to hand over Assange was issued right after the transfer of money went through. My bank holds any cheques I deposit over a billion dollars for a month as well.

  134. Note that today, England doesn’t home dissidents in some universal sense (Assange is going to be extradited to America, not housed by England).

    The UK home dissidents in the same way Russia houses Snowden, i.e. they give asylum if the dissident is fighting against a country they have some intelligence conflict with, or want leverage against.

    Perhaps, in the 19th century, it was “more innocent and romantic”, when Napoleon III or Marx were drinking tea in London .

    However, today, with UK holding Litvinenko and Skripal, while as easily extraditing Assange – London is part of a mutual “intelligence war”, in which the long term effect seems a bit costly for all sides (it would be better for all sides – if also more immoral -, if they just extradite everyone to each other ,without these diplomatic scandals and histrionics).

  135. It seems more like approved in February? https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2019/02/21/pr1952-ecuador-and-imf-reach-staff-level-agreement-on-extended-fund-facility

    Also do you think there is a connection? I assume IMF has no particular politics as a result of it being owned and controlled by so many countries, with vote sharing: although America owns 17% – Russia still has good size of ownership of the IMF, and China twice as much.
    https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.aspx

    Sure, it is tempting to make a connection that Assange was part of the deal for the IMF loan, as it would cynically imply giving asylum to Assange was “small investment with a big pay off” for Ecuador.

  136. Blair was friendly with Putin because both were former communists.

  137. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    I think we should continue this Simpson topic in an open thread sometime.

  138. Cagey Beast says
  139. atlantis_dweller says

    I think that map of UN voting is the best photograph of the European Union around

  140. Cagey Beast says

    Blair’s father was a communist but Tony himself was probably too flakey and flexible to be a proper one himself. As for Putin:

    http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51206#sel=22:122:Lmw,22:218:23x

  141. Cagey Beast says

    Edit: She called Trump a coward but then deleted it:

    Trump today: “I know nothing about Wikileaks.” Trump three years ago: “Boy, I love reading these WikiLeaks.” Liar, traitor, and coward.

  142. This UK dissident policy you’ve referred to a few times does nothing for the people of the UK. For example, the Manchester bomber was the son of one such Libyan dissident who stayed after daddy went back to Libya.

  143. Lame. (Trump. And Alessandra deleting her Tweet).

  144. James N. Kennett says

    Is there a recent UK equivalent of the O. J. Simpson case where a dream legal team managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat and outmaneuver the dastardly prosecutors?

    OJ’s acquittal had little to do with lawyers and almost everything to do with black female jurors.

    There was the Clive Ponting case in 1985. Although Ponting had committed a straightforward breach of the Official Secrets Act, the jury accepted his public-interest defence. By an amazing stroke of luck, the foreman of the jury happened to be a sympathetic career politician whose name is still in the news: Margaret Hodge.

    There will be no such luck for Julian Assange. The extradition hearings, and the inevitable appeals, will not go before a jury. The best Assange can do is to prolong the process as long as possible and hope that a sympathetic Home Secretary will withdraw the extradition order. This would not be unprecedented: for example, the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon to the USA was halted by Theresa May in 2012, on the grounds of his poor mental health.

  145. Totally Hilarious

  146. Kratoklastes says

    The most obvious parallel was the UK’s refusal to extradite Gary McKinnon to the US.

    McKinnon gained access to 97 US military and NASA networks between early 2001 and 2002. he was also very very shit at covering his tracks.

    The US sought extradition; McKinnon’s lawyers challenged it on a bunch of grounds; McKinnon won.

    Part of the range of stuff that got him off was the refusal of the US to make guarantees that he would not be housed in a SuperMax and that he would not be placed in solitary confinement, That, plus McKinnon’s “Asperger’s” (diagnosed after he was arrested), was enough for the system to tell the US government to pound sand.

  147. Kratoklastes says

    I as among the people who warned JA not to go to the UK when he was leaving Sweden. (I’ve known the guy as a nodding acquaintance since the 1980s and WANK; I’m in he & Suelette’s book, under a different pseudonym).

    He was warned against one of the classic blunders.

    The first two classic blunders are known to all –
    never start a land war in Asia, and
    never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

    The third is less well-known:

    ③ when you’ve been honeypotted, DO NOT SEEK REFUGE ON A FUCKING ISLAND.

    When he ignored us, he was dropped from several DMSes.

    For a very smart bloke, his judgement was always suspect: he allowed a fucking nappy like Dumb Shitberg (Domscheit-Berg) inside his circle of confidants.

  148. This whole damn country is a pile of lies. I don’t know how you guys keep your sanity.
    I think America may crack in the next ten years.
    I live in a “minority-majority” area. It is all bullshit.
    Hey, let’s take all the worlds nations, races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, lifestyles, sexual orientations, etc… and stick them in one place!
    On top of this we have a government that doesn’t listen, ruled by special interest group.
    My god, how long America?
    I can’t stand this place anymore.
    It’s going to be very interesting to see the next 10 years. The country is cracking up.
    For my part, I’m learning a foreign language right now, it will come in handy when I have enough money to bail.
    Gentleman, there is nothing here worth left of preserving, only rot.

  149. Maybe it’s not a total loss for Assange.

    London is a silly place.

    https://themindunleashed.com/2019/04/giant-inflatable-boobs-london.html

  150. Prof. Woland says

    Based on what happened to the Skripals and Litvenenko, If I were a Russian defector, I would avoid England altogether and just head straight for the US. The Russians are not very worried about crossing the British but I cannot imagine what the fallout would be if one of their spies got caught got caught killing someone here.

  151. “Meanwhile, Russia (or China)…” align with US more than India. Really?

  152. Roderick Spode says

    jilt
    /jilt/
    verb
    past tense: jilted; past participle: jilted
    suddenly reject or abandon (a lover).

  153. Assange publishes leaked official documentation, he does not investigate instances as such. Also, 911 is openly discussed on a million forums, at least, we don’t need leaks when there are perfectly good public records available, such as trade patterns in airline stock some weeks before the “attack”. If you are game for some really, really simple, non-conspiratist, no-dog-in-the-fight ‘exposure’ of fraud around 911, see this article: http://www.greenpets.co.za/index.php/en/32-paranoid-goy/economics/109-911-wayleave

  154. Anonymous says

    All of the Russian leading journalists close to Kremlin are currently expressing dismay and surprise at the fact that Assange never tried to contact Russian authorities. Editor-in-Chief of RT is Assange’s personal friend who visited him many times when he was under home arrest in London. Had Assange expressed any interest in or made an attempt to ask for an asylum in Russia, she would’ve been the first person to know about it. And yet, today, in her hour-long interview to the Pervyi News Chanel she was talking about her regrets about the fact that Assange has never considered asking Russia for help.
    The passage about “Russian mind” that supposedly doesn’t understand ideological drive in foreign dissidents and measures everything with money is as contemptible as it is inaccurate. There’re many examples of spies who have worked for and have been highly appreciated by the USSR/Russia (rather than simply bought), including a few very recent reveals.
    And, what is the point of bringing up Putin’s “and other Russian elites’ Anglophilia (or its absence)? At the time that Karlin is discussing Putin wasn’t serving as Russian President, Medvedev was. Since it’s hard to imagine that Karlin doesn’t know this, I can only assume that he is just using this tragic situation to throw a few rocks at Russia and Putin. Not a good look for someone who wants to have his analysis to be seen as credible and objective.

  155. Ben Sasse: This arrest is good news for freedom-loving people. Julian Assange has long been a wicked tool of Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison

    Clearly Ben Sasse is wet behind the ears. He doesn’t have clue about what makes the world go round – end of story – PERIOD.

  156. Good On Telsi Gabbard.

    Gabbard: Assange arrest is a threat to journalists

    By Rachel Frazin – 04/11/19 06:10 PM EDT

    Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) condemned the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, calling the arrest a threat to journalists.

    “The arrest of #JulianAssange is meant to send a message to all Americans and journalists: be quiet, behave, toe the line. Or you will pay the price,” Gabbard tweeted.

    The Democrat’s remark came hours after police in London arrested Assange, citing charges he is facing in the U.S.

    Assange is accused of conspiring to hack into computers in connection with WikiLeaks’s release of classified documents from former Army private and intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/438542-gabbard-assange-arrest-is-a-threat-to-journalists

    Think Peace — Art

  157. And yet, today, in her hour-long interview to the Pervyi News Chanel she was talking about her regrets about the fact that Assange has never considered asking Russia for help.

    Maybe they’re lying or misleading because revealing that they had rejected him would be embarrassing.

  158. anno nimus says

    comrade anatoly,
    l visited this site to see if there was something on the arrest of assange and decided to comment since i remember enjoying your essay on lenin on the 100th anniversary of …
    shamir whom i highly esteem says of Russians’ suspicion of ideologues? well, haven’t we come a long way and the world has certainly changed for better at least in one instance?
    julian was betrayed by a guy named lenin… well the russians must have more reason to pity for julian now.
    hopefully, the empire will be magnanimous in their victory, remember the first amendment etc. and have julian to feign ill health and release him on compassionate grounds. he has already served seven years of confinement.
    btw, julian might have been better off with the Italians. three high ranking officials souht asylum at their embassy in Ethiopia. two allegedly got into a fight so one got killed. the other two have been living at the Italian embassy for the last 28 years… this must be a world record but i don’t know.
    the whole julian drama is worthy of Shakespeare with sodomite traiter stealing classified stuff, getting caught, changing gender (Lord have mercy!), civilians getting mawed from apaches, bring in sweden, ecuador, england, usa, Australia, etc. truth can be stranger than fiction.

  159. Putin, like many in the Russian elite, had started off as an Anglophile, and his strongest relationship with a Western leader during the early years of his rule was ”

    “Please love me, love me, I am one of you ” -Putin to Blair Bush Clinton Obama ,

    Jilted would -be lover then looked into Trump’s eyes and saw a hope. But to did not work. No wonder Chinese didn’t ride with Russia . Iran dod not believe . Assad did not spend times in Moscow and Chavez struggled alone,until all of them found out how dangerously stupid US leadership has degenerated into.

  160. Twodees Partain says

    That’s entertaining. One shot in the article shows that the Israeli “moon lander” legs were wrapped in mylar/foil giftwrap just as NASA did with theirs 50 years or so ago. I guess the Israelis have even less imagination than I gave them credit for having.

  161. Trump said he loved Wikileaks…but Trumped is such a lying, corrupt asshole how can you believe him?

  162. Quintus Sertorius says

    the USA is the new USSR.

  163. animalogic says

    “He’ll die in prison in that Totalitarian Shithole called the USA. ”
    I fear you will be correct.
    Or perhaps Australia will exercise whatever influence it has in the US on Assange’s behalf…. >#¿‚&÷¡!/#<‰… Sorry, just had a moment of profound stupidity…perhaps insanity. Assange has a better chance of being whisked away to safety by space aliens (“Life of Brian” like) than of Australia seriously coming to his aid….

  164. If the Russian had given him asylum, it would have been the ultimate “proof” that the Russians made Hilary Clinton lose the election.

    The Russians made the right decision. They have 150 million people of their own to look after. What do they care for an Australian whose own cowardly Zionist government has disowned?

  165. animalogic says

    “The FBI is not looking for any Wikileaks people. No-one is hunting them, or cutting off their money, or even restricting their travel, or accusing them of anything … ”
    Not sure about some of the stuff you mention but pretty sure Wikileaks have had their money lines squeezed — ie PayPal, Visa, MasterCard etc have cut them off.
    As for the “accusing”….well the saying about grand juries & ham sandwiches comes to mind….

  166. reiner Tor says

    By February it was already clear that Assange would be kicked out of the embassy sooner rather than later. So the deal could’ve been made months ago.

  167. Germanicus says

    I miss a consideration, that wikileaks could be a Mossad/Unit8200 operation.
    If I look at the wikileak’s site, menu “partners”, all is clear to me, “Der Spiegel” and truth are mutually exclusive.
    Wikileaks “revealed” an EU plan to use military against the poor human traffickers and Israeli NGOs who bring in these Africans and “refugees”. Fascinating, they have once in their evil life a good plan in Brussels, and wikileaks shoots against it.

    I think the question for Russian asylum is the same question why Russia did not spell the beans on 911.

  168. animalogic says

    DFH has it right — “rape” however bogus the allegations is a no-go for the PC mob (ie the pseudo-left). The genuine left (ie Socialist Equality Party etc) have supported Assange from the beginning.

  169. Assange is a hero. He exposed the corrupt, lying government we have…so this is another dark episode in American history.

  170. Gary McKinnon was mentally abnormalish, he had no pornography of any kind on his computer. But he had a girlfriend and a job once. McKinnon was a standard weed smoking UFO nut tapping away in the wee small hours but after 9/11 he turned into a false flagot going on about a security stand down . He left threatening messages about how he was going to continue disrupting on the US government computer system.

    Even though federal prisons are less dangerous for whites, his safety could only have been guaranteed by isolating him. Twenty-three hours a day safe in your own cell a la Supermax is something a lot of cons would like to have. His mother rather than lawyers got him out of it, through a political decision.

  171. Felix Keverich says

    Only low-IQ people still support Trump at this point. Those wouldn’t even know who Assange is.

  172. animalogic says

    I suspect that the US will not follow too many legal niceities in this case….neither the UK nor Sweden have.

  173. Had Assange expressed any interest in or made an attempt to ask for an asylum in Russia, she would’ve been the first person to know about it.

    The relevant diplomatic officials would have been even more likely to know about it.

    The passage about “Russian mind” that supposedly doesn’t understand ideological drive in foreign dissidents and measures everything with money is as contemptible as it is inaccurate.

    Well, you need to take that up with Israel Shamir.

    At the time that Karlin is discussing Putin wasn’t serving as Russian President, Medvedev was.

    Where did I say it was Putin who refused? I said “the highest levels of the Russian government.” It could have been Medvedev, esp. if it happened before May 2012. Or even Lavrov.

    There is also the possibility that neither my source nor Simonyan was lying if Assange had previously put out feelers and was rejected, and so didn’t feel the need to broach the subject with her again. Moreover, given what Simonyan says about Assange telling her he feared he faced the death penalty in the US, it is also perhaps just a little strange that she did not offer to pull a few strings and suggest he seek asylum at the Russian Embassy herself.

  174. “Assange is mostly certainly not stupid” [sic]

    That is arguably incorrect:

    https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/01/08/agent-assange/

    As for Shamir’s “Are you so naïve, they told me, that you do not understand he is a CIA trap? Such people do not exist”

    Maybe the Russian state was right:

    https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2019/04/11/assanges-arrest/

    ^

  175. Having Assange in a e Russian Embassy would have made any leaking he did much less effective. Assange was regarded as an anti Bush activist (the Collateral Murder vid showing a journalist being smoked up by US forces in Iraq was how he made his name)., Once he started to be seem as the force behind Hillary losing, Assange’s leftie friends suddenly started noticing that he was a self centred bastard.

  176. Freedom is sold by the kingdom
    In ounces and inches of chain
    Just enough to keep you sane

  177. Yes an ongoing trap that led to several downfalls of which the panama papers was one such trap

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/amp/

  178. I definitely wouldn’t be feeling secure in my long-term position if I were Edward Snowden.

    I don’t really think Snowden has much to fear (short of Navalnyites coming to power). Russia has never, to my knowledge, handed back defectors. While he is not classed as a defector, he is widely viewed as such, so the PR repercussions of it would be pretty bad.

  179. redmudhooch says

    Welcome to capitalisms New World Order. You are owned. You are their property. Everything belongs to them. It was always this way, the internet has just brought it to light. America is not and never was “the good guy”

    America is cursed.

    War is peace
    Freedom is slavery
    Ignorance is strength

    George Orwell 1984

    Cue the retards telling us how this is all communisms fault. Trust the plan!

  180. Cagey Beast says

    I don’t believe him now and barely believed his word even at the height of MAGA-mania. Trump is the harsh medicine Washington deserves. He is the indigestible Trump in the belly of the Beast. My only crime was hoping Washington could adapt and accept that the people had sent them this rough diamond.

    As the months roll by, we see just how revolting and corrupted the imperial capital really is. As things now stand, I hope Trump wins a second term. Maybe by then the US will have more than two political parties? One can only hope.

  181. Hyperborean says

    Only low-IQ people still support Trump at this point. Those wouldn’t even know who Assange is.

    The downsides of a personality cult.

    With Republicans he basically has a floor of 80% and a ceiling of 90% no matter what he does.

    For the last month he has been standing at 90%.

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

    (full term approval rate under MORE)

    Republicans
    %
    2019
    2019 Mar 1-10 90
    2019 Feb 12-28 90
    2019 Feb 1-10 89
    2019 Jan 21-27 88
    2019 Jan 2-10 88

    2018
    2018 Dec 17-22 89
    2018 Dec 10-16 86
    2018 Dec 3-9 89
    2018 Nov 26-Dec 2 89
    2018 Nov 19-25 86
    2018 Nov 12-18 90
    2018 Nov 5-11 91
    2018 Oct 29-Nov 4 88
    2018 Oct 22-28 89
    2018 Oct 15-21 91
    2018 Oct 8-14 88
    2018 Oct 1-7 86
    2018 Sep 24-30 87
    2018 Sep 17-23 87
    2018 Sep 10-16 88
    2018 Sep 3-9 85
    2018 Aug 27-Sep 2 85
    2018 Aug 20-26 85
    2018 Aug 13-19 87
    2018 Aug 6-12 82
    2018 Jul 30-Aug 5 89
    2018 Jul 23-29 87
    2018 Jul 16-22 85
    2018 Jul 9-15 90 38
    2018 Jul 2-8 87
    2018 Jun 25-Jul 1 87
    2018 Jun 18-24 87
    2018 Jun 11-17 90
    2018 Jun 4-10 90
    2018 May 28-Jun 3 87
    2018 May 21-27 85
    2018 May 14-20 89
    2018 May 7-13 84
    2018 Apr 30-May 6 88
    2018 Apr 23-29 89
    2018 Apr 16-22 82
    2018 Apr 9-15 85
    2018 Apr 2-8 89
    2018 Mar 26-Apr 1 86
    2018 Mar 19-25 85
    2018 Mar 12-18 82
    2018 Mar 5-11 87
    2018 Feb 26-Mar 4 85
    2018 Feb 19-25 85
    2018 Feb 12-18 86
    2018 Feb 5-11 86
    2018 Jan 29-Feb 4 90
    2018 Jan 22-28 87
    2018 Jan 15-21 81
    2018 Jan 8-14 81
    2018 Jan 1-7 87

    2017
    2017 Dec 25-31 82
    2017 Dec 18-24 80
    2017 Dec 11-17 77
    2017 Dec 4-10 82
    2017 Nov 27-Dec 3 78
    2017 Nov 20-26 81
    2017 Nov 13-19 81
    2017 Nov 6-12 82
    2017 Oct 30-Nov 5 83
    2017 Oct 23-29 78
    2017 Oct 16-22 80
    2017 Oct 9-15 79
    2017 Oct 2-8 81
    2017 Sep 25-Oct 1 80
    2017 Sep 18-24 82
    2017 Sep 11-17 81
    2017 Sep 4-10 80
    2017 Aug 28-Sep 3 79
    2017 Aug 21-27 78
    2017 Aug 14-20 79
    2017 Aug 7-13 79
    2017 Jul 31-Aug 6 82
    2017 Jul 24-30 82
    2017 Jul 17-23 86
    2017 Jul 10-16 87
    2017 Jul 3-9 85
    2017 Jun 26-Jul 2 85
    2017 Jun 19-25 85
    2017 Jun 12-18 84
    2017 Jun 5-11 83
    2017 May 29-Jun 4 82
    2017 May 22-28 87
    2017 May 15-21 84
    2017 May 8-14 84
    2017 May 1-7 84
    2017 Apr 24-30 87
    2017 Apr 17-23 86
    2017 Apr 10-16 87
    2017 Apr 3-9 87
    2017 Mar 27-Apr 2 81
    2017 Mar 20-26 84
    2017 Mar 13-19 86
    2017 Mar 6-12 88
    2017 Feb 27-Mar 5 88
    2017 Feb 20-26 88
    2017 Feb 13-19 86
    2017 Feb 6-12 87
    2017 Jan 30-Feb 5 86
    2017 Jan 20-29 89

  182. Anonymous says

    Assange did not have his porn license in order so he was arrested!

  183. Correct.
    electricians call it a residual current device.if you do not fix the fault it keeps on tripping.no pun intended.

  184. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sainte%20nitouche

    in Quebec French, a term of derision, but not insulting, for a virgin girl who is shy about being deflowered.

    Skyrock Quebec chatroom post:

    my gerda is such a sainte nitouche, I don’t know what to do anymore, we’ve been together since we were 11 years old, we’re both 16 now, and i think we should help each other out.

    reply to post: take your favorite gerda, i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt whether she is a sainte nitouche or not, and give her a beer or something at home, that’ ll loosen things up bit.

  185. Twodees Partain says

    “Those wouldn’t even know who Assange is.”

    Au contraire. They know that he’s that traitor guy who did some kind of treason stuff one time and that he must pay because USA,USA,USA.

  186. Once again you equal Soviet Union with Russia!You couldn’te be more wrong!

  187. “Documentary: Edward Snowden – Terminal F.”

  188. Twodees Partain says

    ” Maybe by then the US will have more than two political parties? One can only hope.”

    I would be satisfied if the US had two parties. That would be a huge change.

  189. “Julian Assange… Hero or Villain?”

    “Why Every American Should Give a Damn What Happens to Assange!”

  190. Cagey Beast says

    Thanks. Talk about an arcane cultural reference for a comment on an American-based website!

  191. Leftist are divided – regressives hate Assange, progressives love him. Progressives backed Sanders for 2016 so even if the Russian hackers nonsense was true Assange didn’t hurt their interest.

    Regressives think Assange cost the witch the election.

  192. Julian Assange did try to claim asylum with Russia.

    Only problem was: He was refused.

    What a steaming pile of horseshit…Karlin isn’t even smart enough to come up with a convincing story… a couple of anonymous sources…LOL…one of them is even a ‘senior Russia-based journalist who has excellent access to the Kremlin elites’…[notice the nationality of this ‘journalist’ is not revealed, just that he or she is ‘Russia-based’…]

    Yeah right…let’s imagine this psychedelic universe where a serious journalist hobnobs with a Munchausen syndrome blogger whose stock in trade is squirting spectacular streaming arcs of diarrhea…

    Then Munchausen Karlin points to an AP article that is basically a smear piece trying to link Assange to the Kremlin…that’s a curious choice of ‘evidence’…where what is trying to be shown is the exact opposite of Munchausen Karlin’s ‘thesis’…

    Here is a very simple logic test…the Assange story is huge right now…why would that ‘senior Russia-based journalist’ not publish this bombshell revelation that Russia denied Assange asylum…?

    Why…because he wants to do his buddy Munchausen Karlin a solid, by letting him take the ‘glory’…LOL

  193. Trump was always scum, I am endlessly amazed how it took so long for some people to see what he was

    The who screamed the loudest and first about him being scum gave us the wrong reasons e.i, waycist, sexiest.

    Thing like Yemen or his Israel first positions got lost in the noise

  194. While I don’t particularly care what you believe…

    Here is a very simple logic test…the Assange story is huge right now…why would that ‘senior Russia-based journalist’ not publish this bombshell revelation that Russia denied Assange asylum…?

    I am privileged, thanks to Ron, for having much more editorial freedom than the vast majority of journalists.

  195. Many voices over the internets, riding on the luxury of after-knowledge, now repeat how smart was Snowden, who by chance ended in Russia, and how naïve and non-savvy was Assange with his embassy.

    But it is all afterthought. Imagine that Putin would NOT decide suddenly to save Snowden and would let him rot in airport until him dehydrated and hungry and unconscious would be loaded on board of some US plane. And then we would have made serious faces and discuss at length how street-smart was Assange to secure himself a shelter in the embassy, and how inept and naïve was Snowden.

    Almost 10 years ago they made different bets and for a while it seems their bets are equally good. While Snowden, in theory, had some flexibility in choosing himself “lord-protector” in practice that was a flexibility of hungry stray cats running after strangers in the street hoping some one would take it home. Assange instead had a certain accommodation that just worked, even if totally lacked flexibility and emergency exits.

    But practically speaking both approaches worked well, until recent.

    What changed then?
    Maybe one thing is that WikiLeaks became needing a “sacred victim”, a “martyr”, just like EuroMaidan, etc.

    Well, I hope you would not tell me, that a man confined into a cage in the embassy for 7 years still was ruling WikiLeaks with iron grip? Just remember Timoshenko in her “jail” – and how her party behaved in her absence. And she was in the same state, almost in the same city, she was quite adept in all the intrigues – still nominally “her” party was very content with Lady Yu becoming an impotent hyped symbol rather than queen.

    Then, Snowden. I remember Snowden tried to leak something about Russia. “Grim non-smiling men” quickly came to him and took his whistle away. He was clearly told that Russia does not care about his crusade for abstract good and fairness, that he would keep silent about any Russian transgression he learns of. If that makes him feel accomplice – he better come to terms with his conscience, or else.
    Snowden got the message and learnt to be humble.

    WikiLeaks did not pushed brakes. WikiLeaks rushed to expose things about Moreno, while Assange was dependent on Moreno’s benevolence.

    Dementia and bravery?
    https://urbanculture.in/images/thumb/9/91/Slab_i_otvaga.jpg/350px-Slab_i_otvaga.jpg

    Or a plan?

    What would WikiLeaks loose with demise of Assange? Nothing, but maybe someone’s hurt feelings.
    Could WikiLeaks bargain with Moreno and cease blowing their whistles on him? Sure.
    Did they know breaking pots with Moreno endangers Assange? They should had know.
    And they did it.

    Now they have a holy martyr, they reinforced the image of organization true to the core principles even when it endangers them, plus like in USSR after Lenin demise now WikiLeaks bosses would be free to delve into “Assange’s best student” competition.
    Qui prodest?

  196. BengaliCanadianDude says

    Saudi Arabia is not thirdworld

  197. never-anonymous says

    WMD anyone? Who but the NYT championed that lie every day on the front page and in editorials – freedom of the press and 100% editorial independence.

    All so called “information releases” come from the CIA and their allied intelligence agencies in other countries. All theater for the slaves to make them think they have some control over what their owners do to them. Addled brains can only handle a simple plot, maybe two or three names and associations at once: Embassy Assange, transsexual Manning and Snowden’s fantastic escape from Hong Kong. Why doesn’t the Government let the People know its business? Why does the Government keep top secrets from the People? Why doesn’t the CIA release “diplomatic cables” from Venezuela to preemptively cleanse itself of evil?

  198. Snowden is a lot more secure than Assange, I would wager.

  199. Indeed and very unkind to the third world.

  200. annamaria says

    The leader of progressives, the dual-loyalty opportunist and CIA stooge Schumer:

    Chuck Schumer
    @SenSchumer
    Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government.

    Schumer is on for Amelec. Happy Pesach!

  201. Yes, one of the few things Theresa May can be proud of, but I would guess she actually did it for the wrong reasons.

  202. anonymous says

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51409.htm

    Since the democracy Americans won (AOC government since 1776 to 1789) from the British was overthrown by the USA in 1789-2019) crooks have increased and broadened coverage of their structured control system expressed as the USA. Its no longer limited to America but extends to the rest of the world.

    These people in government and monopoly powered wall street corporations have been exposed; they are one in the same. They are not even idealist, merely crooks with Al Capone finesse and Stalin killer instinct characteristics, seeking to make abusive profits and to engage killing people and destroying their lives for entertainment.

    Assange exposed them, so the corporate and government leg breakers are moving-in, readying their whips, twisting their batons and wetting down their water boards with purpose to break legs, back and mind in order to teach the non conforming Assange a lesson so strong that it will send a message to those who fail to comply. But the louder Assange squeaks, the more his pain, the more entertaining becomes the torture but ironically, the pain inflicted on the person of Assange the more human rights surge into view. its global and growing. ..

    many seem intent to right the wrongs inflicted against human rights all the way back to 1789? Citizens of the nation states of the world are discovering the dangers that lurk in dual citizenship, Tojanized immigration, private party produced media, and militarizes funded from the spoils extracted from others (these people behave more like pirates than civilized human beings). . I think many have final come to understand Gadaffi Khashoggi Saddam were works not of legitimate government by instead of government operated for the benefit of organized crime.

  203. annamaria says

    Yes, “Volkov — chief of staff for Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian” (position”https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/13/russian-politician-details-future-of-russian-opposition-party/) is undoubtedly a Kremlin stooge for the ever lazy yet aspiring profiteers who still peddle the amazing idea that the late Nemtsov and the still-useful Navalny represent the Vox Populi in Russia.

  204. annamaria says
  205. annamaria says

    “…because Putin was a KGB officer during the Cold War.”

    How interesting… And what was the position of the pres. Bush Sr.? You have never knew? Here is a surprise for “Dmitri:” https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2016-featured-story-archive/bush-as-director-of-central-intelligence.html

    Michael Ledeen has been an influential activist of the US politics. Ledeen is known as a “key player” in the operation Gladio (the holy Graal of holo-biz).

    Ledeen is “a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Defense. He held the Freedom Scholar chair at the American Enterprise Institute where he was a scholar for twenty years and now holds the similarly named chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

    Ledeen is considered an “agent of influence” for a foreign government: Israel.

    http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_ledeen

    https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/06/operation-gladio-the-unholy-alliance/

    It is true that Putin is different from the silver-spooned Trump and the rabid war-mongers Pompeo and Bolton.

  206. annamaria says

    The “non-diplomatic” scandal characteristic for our times of lawless deciders, with the UK leading the charge: https://www.hannenabintuherland.com/news/update-on-the-sergei-skripal-poisoning-and-the-conspicuously-many-unanswered-questions-dr-tim-hayward-herland-report/
    “The Sergej Skripal case never reached beyond allegations. The media now dead silent,” Dr. Tim Hayward – Herland Report

  207. Trumpstein and his sleazy family keep delivering for the vile jooies and the JudenPresse, JudenTV, and JudenNet will make sure he gets reelected……especially if he attacks Iran. Where is Titus now that we need him?

  208. EugeneGur says

    The Russians are not very worried about crossing the British but I cannot imagine what the fallout would be if one of their spies got caught got caught killing someone here.

    Sir, you are a rare breed. I didn’t believe who believe that nonsense about the Russians killing Litvinenko or Skripals actually existed. You have a remarkable capacity of swallowing a large pile of BS.

  209. Here is some really really really go news – news that can change history. Tulsi Gabbard will be on the Dem debate stage!

    Think peace — Art

  210. James N. Kennett says

    For a very smart bloke, his judgement was always suspect

    Indeed. He seems to have gone out of his way to annoy his hosts. One newspaper commented that the staff at the Ecuadorian embassy will probably be having a party to celebrate Assange’s departure.

    Also, Assange has known for years that the American authorities were after him, and that he would face criminal charges related to his dealings with Chelsea/Bradley Manning. If I’d been in his position I would have tried to leave the embassy, at least after the UK police monitoring was wound down. To escape the UK he would have needed help, but this would not have been impossible to find: he had a lot of supporters.

  211. In 2010 Assange was staying at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, it was a pity that he did not arrange to be smuggled out to the continent.

    That area of Norfolk had a long history of smuggling. Local contact should have been able to help him escape, either by light aircraft or small boat to the remote Frisian islands and then easy access to the Baltic and then further to the east and out of the EU and out of the jurisdiction of the European arrest warrant.

  212. By late 2002, Putin was closer to Berlusconi than to Blair.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20121009174400/http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=636565#

    Tech note: my iPhone is telling me that Unz.com is “Not Secure”

  213. Charles Carroll says

    The history books in the West still say that Germany started WW1.

  214. Just for the record, it appears Assange was able to trigger the kill switch. There’s been a massive data dump at Wikileaks:

    https://file.wikileaks.org/file/

  215. Liberty Mike says

    Actually, on several occasions during the campaign, he proclaimed that he “loves Wiki-leaks.”

    Yesterday, he was channeling his inner John Banner, “I don’t know anything about Wiki-leaks.”

  216. “He should be extradited and face justice here,” (Richard) Blumenthal said. “Justice should come to Julian Assange for his role in Russian meddling in our election, and the sooner the better.”

    The Jew Blumenthal has got it wrong again. (He is always on the wrong side of issues, you can bet on it). He is a true blue Talmuder.

    The indictment against Assange says nothing about Russia. Typical Jew Talmud bait and switch double talk.

    Of course, all the Republican senators follow his lead, like kittens.

    Think Peace — Art

  217. I think that he may have…..turned a whiter shade of pale.Not sure from the photo but did notice the lovely blond,almost grandfatherly,beard.
    Julian,is that you. Lol

    One last thing.

    And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
    And says at last just as the time bell rings
    “Goodnight, now it’s time to go home”
    Then he makes it fast with one more thing

    From my favourite song,sultans of swing.

  218. Just for a more important record — no surprise here — my quick scan of the index of file names of that “massive data dump at Wikileaks” found quite a few files about Scientology, one about tuition increase at “uofa,” another concerning Hawaii’s announcement about Obama’s birth certificate, and a “yes-we-can mp4,” but nothing at all about the World Trade Center or 9/11 that I could find.

  219. Will the UK extradite Assange if he faces the death penalty for espionage?

  220. The embassy was under 24/7 surveillance from the day he entered it, he’d have been arrested in seconds. I suppose they could’ve stuffed him in a diplomatic bag. In hindsight it would’ve been better for him to have got into a car, and driven through Finland to the russian border and illegally cross it on foot once it became clear he would face arrest in Sweden. If the Russian authorities were cornered and forced to decide explicitly between asylum and extradition it might’ve nudged them towards saving his skin.

  221. They’re requesting extradition for an offense with a maximum 5 year jail term to dodge this. Once he’s in the us, they’ll start piling on the very serious charges. British judges generally dislike journalists (real ones that is) and can generally be relied upon to make the ‘correct’ decision on matters like this without needing to be told: he’s f***ed.

  222. The US is going after whites? What’s your source on that?

  223. Anonymous says

    To follow up on my comment:

    https://www.thisisinsider.com/assange-arrest-ecuador-prevent-alleged-panic-button-2019-4

    During this stay, Assange is accused of threatening Jaime Merchan, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, with activating some kind of panic button that would bring down the embassy if he were arrested or felt in danger.

    The claim was made by Ecuador’s foreign minister, José Valencia, in a speech Thursday to the country’s National Assembly, according to the Associated Press and Reuters.

    That is why you don’t let a person like Assange into your country. Is there any doubt that if he’d gotten asylum in Russia Assange would, in short order, have gotten access to incriminating info on Russia/Putin, and then used it as leverage?

    Anatoly’s info also explains why Wikileaks generally took a pro-Putin line and didn’t leak much on Russia: Assange was still hoping they would take him in at some point.

  224. They published the Syria files in 2012 which helped discredit the Syrian government just as the civil war was getting started. That was unlikely to have generated much sympathy for him amongst the kremlins.

  225. Herodotus says

    YES….and The WPost, NYTimes, CNN NEVER made the Wikileaks regarding Israeli Mossad involvement in 911, Yemen, Sudan public…I was hoping that in the age of FAKE news the worlds Journalists (true) would see Julian Assange as the rallying/figure/icon to rescue their profession from mass world distrust..but leading global journalists are instead supporting the Lynching of one of their own..The age of .Ethical, honest, objective, intrepid, rebellious reporting is OVER…

  226. The Alarmist says

    “And what was the position of the pres. Bush Sr.?”

    And while you’re asking, what was he doing in Dallas on 22 November 1963, and did that play a part in his meteoric career?

  227. Ilyana_Rozumova says

    We will see said the blind man.
    If US official press will pay a little or no attention to Assange trial, than we will know that nothing is there, The trial and sentencing will be only act of revenge.
    But everything is vanity now. (Solomon)
    US is entering its inane period.
    CIA will not be able to build up proxy that could threaten Iran.
    Anything CIA builds up, Iran will smash in a days, There could not be any justification for US war against Iran that could be presented at UN. US neocons have no scruples, but they have a line that they will not cross.

  228. It is possible, now that Assange has been arrested, that the American charge against him is relatively minor only in order to encourage the UK to extradite him.
    Once he is in American custody those charges may well change.

    btw Trump suddenly dropping any love for Wikileaks after enthusiastically stating his approval of them over 100 times during the last election is going to cause a lot of damage to his chances of being reelected. Wikileaks is probably already putting him under the microscope, and there are all the Wikileaks fans to contend with as well. Bad move Donald, you just sacrificed a bishop to no advantage and placed yourself in danger of checkmate. More people are starting to see your ‘veracity’ as the facade it is.

  229. Hibernian says

    The exception that proves the rule. Also they are surrounded by Muslims.

  230. http://raymcgovern.com/

    Ray on Why the Deep State Hates Julian Assange

  231. BengaliCanadianDude says

    Why is it “unkind”? Are you implying the third world is worth anything?

  232. As I understand it the terms of extradition include an agreement that the extradited person can only be brought up on whatever charges have already been presented.

  233. ‘On top of that mass censorship being unleashed under Trump, how can anyone still be conned into supporting him…’

    We’ll be ‘conned’ the same way as always; what’s the alternative?

  234. Trump doesn’t strike me as someone with principles or opinions of his own. He will say and do whatever his base of “deplorables” likes to hear and whatever helps him get what he wants.

  235. Wizard of Oz says

    I had in mind that there is such a rule but I haven’t been able to confirm it. That means I don’t’t know which countries apply the rule.

  236. Liberty Mike says

    For one, its not reposing any confidence, faith, and trust in DJT. He is a charlatan who appeals to low IQ whites.

    Why do so many intelligent people delude themselves into rationalizing their support and vote for Trump upon the basis of the lesser of two evils loser mindset?

    Look at the labor participation numbers. Worse under Trump than under the Kenyan mulatto.

    Look at the rate the debt is increasing. Look at the total increase in the debt since the serial adulterer took office.

    Look at the surge in immigration under this congenital prevaricator.

    Look at the failure to build a wall.

    Look at his Hebrew obsequiousness.

  237. Cagey Beast says

    One doesn’t have to be stupid to support Trump but it helps. The same can be said for his prominent enemies though. To unconditionally and faithfully support Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi, one would have to be stupid or totally controlled by one’s emotions.

    That being said, a smart person could still support Trump. A smart person could recognize Trump finishing his term as the least bad option. In 2020, this same smart person might recognize that, amazingly, a Trump second term had become the least bad option. People can scream and throw around insults or they can present an alternative to Trump.

  238. Oct 25, 2018 Julian Assange Gets Standing Ovation At TED Talk

    https://youtu.be/gJ8RoTq9U1o

  239. Assange definitely had nothing of value to offer to the Russians, Snowden just might. The Russians claimed that Snowden actually did not reveal anything that they had not already gathered from other sources. But Snowden came from the deep state. Russia has most to gain from encouraging this kind of whistleblower, whatever intelligence was gained through Snowden or not. Assange never was a real whistleblower to begin with.

    Another problem with Assange apart from what has been already pointed out (volatilty of character, being the head of an operation that might turn anti-Russian) was his potential of galvanizing the home-grown opposition. Just as Assange is a darling to many dissidents in the West, he could easily have become a darling to Russian dissidents – especially since Russia is clamping down on the Internet.

  240. Only low IQ people (and the cynical, and the power hungry) support democracy, of which democracy with universal suffrage is the worst, allowing masses of fools, ignorantes and incompetent to vote, whom are consequently misguided and fooled by intelligent establishments and demagogues, time and time again in a perpetual cycle of lies and cunning… So that, to support democracy, is to ask to be fooled. How intelligent is that.. keep on believing against all odds is the creed.

  241. the third world is worth anything”?

    They won’t until they kick out France from Africa, US from Iraq and Saudi , Afghanistan, Somalia, from Congo Australia from E Timor , Canada from Latin America, UK from ME ,Italy from Libya, and Ethiopia, US from Pakistan and Stans of Central Asia .

  242. I think that was recorded earlier. I don’t think that he had internet access in October 2018. He was blocked from March 2018.

  243. the grand wazoo says

    There is a lot to be said for Russia’s claim, or suspicion that Assange is CIA. Personally I say add MOSSAD too. Has WikiLeaks ever exposed Israel or Benji the Nut n Yahoo? No. And remember folks the Agencies cover their tracks well. Think of Noriega, Sadam Hussein, and the many other assets they cut ties with who end up dead or tossed in some memory hole. WikiLeaks has served its purpose, it’s all over now, full speed ahead to censorship. Not to hurt anyone’s feelings but you have to be naïve to believe that the Agencies which have to date infiltrated all of MSM did not dream up WikiLeaks. I think it was CIA head Casey who said the CIA’s job would be complete when everything Americans believe to be true is a lie. Well hear we are.

  244. the grand wazoo says

    Karin’s not full of it. Had you been paying attention prior to Assange going to the Ecuador Embassy in the UK there were news reports saying the same damn thing. Russia refused him. Why? Because he’s not the hero you think he is.

  245. Cagey Beast says

    There is a lot to be said for Russia’s claim, or suspicion that Assange is CIA. Personally I say add MOSSAD too.

    Maybe Assange is a Vatican assassin too? He kind of looks like the albino monk in the Da Vinci Code.

  246. The Alarmist says

    I don’t want anyone else other than Trump as President at this juncture, but he looks like a spineless worm when, having said he loves WikiLeaks during the campaign, now offers up at the arrest of Assange that he doesn’t know jack about WikiLeaks. The same with crawling like a little baby under his desk and crying that he’ll appeal to a higher court whenever the inferior judiciary overreach and shut down his lawful executive orders with stays and injunctions.

  247. In the case of England I think harboring dissidents (historically) is also about projecting a liberal, progressive aura to the world.

    The British love this kind of thing because it makes them feel like they still count for something in the world, much more pleasant than accepting the reality that they’re a third-rate power and a particularly pathetic American vassal state.

  248. It’s not only the Russians. All Slavs are Anglophilia-prone. I’m Slav and I really don’t grasp why. There just isn’t a rational explanation.

  249. I suggest that all those going into hysterics, about this charge by the U.S. against Assange, take a step back and wait to see what happens once Assange is in U.S. custody. Stop being such knee-jerk reactionaries. This very well could just be much like Trump’s harmless fireworks show that he put on over Syria that you all were going into hysterics over… it’s called Optics.

    I’d like to remind you that Assange has been trapped in what is basically a prison cell with a window for the last 7 years with absolutely ZERO hope of any solution for being able to leave. Unless wikileaks had some super-duper secret army of trained groundhogs tunneling under the embassy that nobody knew about, the man was not getting out.

    It seems to me that an ACTUAL solution to helping Assange(IF that is the perogative of Trump) would be:

    Charge him with some flimsy incredibly low sentence crime.

    Have Trump distance himself from Assange or else the Brits, who are neck-deep involved in the “Russiagate” scandal because of spying on American citizens for Obama to avoid U.S. law, will never extradite him and the MSM would be all in calling for no extradition. Trump has to pretend to not want anything to do with Assange just like he pretended to be bombing Syria. Hence the ridiculous tweets from Trump about not knowing wikileaks… Optics.

    Once he’s on American soil, give him a deal that gives him immunity for testifying in front of Congress as to the origins of the “Russian Hack” AKA Seth Rich and any other info Assange is willing to testify about.

    And if the Deep State tries any of their shennanigans, Trump has the Presidential pardon to use if it comes down to it.

    This not only would finally make Assange a free man without having to worry about the U.S. Government waiting around every corner(for now at least) but also give him the chance to put any evidence that he may have into official record in front of Congress.

    But perhaps anyone who would criticize this sees some other way for Assange to get his freedom? I’m all ears. Or is it that for all your bluster about caring about Assange, you would rather the man rots away in an Ecudorian embassy for the rest of his life? What exactly would be your solution to the mess that he is in?

    I’m giving Trump the benefit of the doubt for now. If JA gets hit with a bunch of additional charges then maybe I’ll start to get a little bit worried but even then I think I’ll hold my judgement because of the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency Presidential pardon.

    If JA does even one day of prison time then I’ll be officially off the Trump Train but until then… Choo-choo, muthaph*ckas … choo-choo…

    Haha!

  250. Cagey Beast says

    The Soviets did some good-looking adaptations the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Jungle Book. Maybe that helped?

  251. But it does seem as though the Russians were working with the Ecuadorians to an extent to try and find a way to get Assange out of his situation, including two plans that fell through—one to make him an Ecuadorian diplomat to Russia (which the U.K. shot down through their stated refusal to recognize him as having diplomatic immunity) and even an apparently audacious plan to break him out of the Ecuadorian embassy secretly.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-assange-exclusive/exclusive-ecuador-attempted-to-give-assange-diplomat-post-in-russia-document-idUSKCN1M12R5
    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/09/did-russia-try-to-rescue-julian-assange?verso=true

    Of course none of this would make him a Russian agent, but it is still worth noting as regards Russian attitudes towards him.

  252. Liberty Mike says

    Wouldn’t a smart person recognize that his vote does not matter?

    Wouldn’t a smart person recognize that Stalin’s maxim, “its not who votes that counts, its who counts the votes” controls?

    Wouldn’t a smart person recognize that falling for a grifter who cares not about Heritage America and who dances to Bibi’s tune is never a good option?

  253. Cagey Beast says

    Wouldn’t a smart person recognize that his vote does not matter?

    You and I are voting right now just by publicly engaging in politics. Voting on election day is worth it in the same way posting comments online is worth it.

    Wouldn’t a smart person recognize that falling for a grifter who cares not about Heritage America and who dances to Bibi’s tune is never a good option?

    During the election, Trump was the least bad option who sometimes seemed like a good option. That’s still true today.

  254. Twodees Partain says

    “I’d like to remind you that Assange has been trapped in what is basically a prison cell with a window for the last 7 years with absolutely ZERO hope of any solution for being able to leave.”

    John Pilger went one better by saying:

    “Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.”

    That’s ridiculous (Pilger says such ridiculous shit in nearly every article he writes), to characterize Assange’s stay in the embassy as solitary confinement in a windowless room. At least you admitted that he had a window.

    It does seem to be in the realm of magical thinking to assume that this is some more 3D chess by Trump. I’ve come to conclude that what Trump says and does is pretty easily interpreted as bad news for anyone who wants to continue giving him credit for being who he pretended to be during his campaign.

  255. It does seem to be in the realm of magical thinking to assume that this is some more 3D chess by Trump.

    I wouldn’t characterize my thoughts as “assume” though.
    I would definitely say it’s more of a “hope” and that the only magical thinking going on is me walking around with my fingers crossed thinking it might magically make that hope happen. LMAO!

    Have a great day, Twodees! 🙂
    And thanks for the feedback.
    Great to bounce ideas and thoughts off others especially skeptical ones because it reminds me to question everything. 😉

  256. My understanding from the latest ‘news’ is that there was a verbal agreement btwn the UK and the US that Assange wouldn’t be sentenced to death.

  257. cassandra says

    I agree with most of your criticisms, and I also think that Hillary looked worse, especially when it came to foreign policy.

    One-by-one, though, Trump’s campaign promises were jettisoned along with his original supporting advisers, until the main actors now appear to be Pompeo, Bolton, with only Kushner remaining a constant. The details of that changeover are instructive.

    Like others, you assume that people voted for Trump because they saw or expected great things from him. For many, there was only a faint hope that he might do less damage.

    And who among the current field of mindlessly ideological fanatics do you think would really execute a substantially improved policy program? Do you think Tulsi Gabbard has a chance?

  258. cassandra says

    I’ve come to conclude that what Trump says and does is pretty easily interpreted as bad news for anyone who wants to continue giving him credit for being who he pretended to be during his campaign.

    What has changed is that he has one set of advisers during the campaign, and he has a different set now. (What happened before the inauguration, during the election, was Russiagate, which made rapprochement with Russia impossible.)

    The people around the President, rather than the man himself, actually determine how the executive is run. The most obvious examples are Wilson, Reagan, Bush II and Obama. Put the right people in behind the scenes, and you can override whatever preferences were expressed during the election. One by one, Sessions, Flynn, Bannon, Mattis and others were neutralized and removed.

    The pretense is the candidate thinking that he/she has an actual policy position, and that he/she will be able to override the inclinations of the advisers lobbying daily for their views.

  259. cassandra says

    Good news indeed! I’m not giving up on this one until it’s over, one way or the other. I didn’t think Hillary could be stopped last time, but wasn’t it delicious?

  260. cassandra says

    Assange, if taken in, would have become a beacon to whistleblowers within Russian. Why would Putin want to risk creating such a headache?

    Assange’s Russian asylum would leave Wikileaks even more open to charges of Russian collusion than they are now, if such a thing is possible, but this would make both Wikileaks and Russia appear even more nefarious.

    What’s on the other side of the balance? Assange’s asylum would be at best a political poke-in-the-eye for the West, but not such a poke that the world would suddenly turn toward viewing Russia as a humanitarian paradise.

    It’s not a difficult calculation.

  261. james charles says

    “Julian Assange did try to claim asylum with Russia.
    Only problem was: He was refused.”

    Because?
    “Dame Cathy Vogan‏ @CathyVoganSPK Apr 12
    Did you have any idea that @Wikileaks has released over 800K documents about Russia, most of them critical? And yet, the old canard from @HillaryClinton & others, “Why doesn’t Wikileaks ever release anything about Russia?”, usually goes unchallenged. “
    https://twitter.com/CathyVoganSPK/status/1116944514965336064

    Something to note?
    “WASHINGTON (Reuters) The two Swedish women who accuse WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of sexual misconduct were at first not seeking to bring charges against him. They just wanted to track him down and persuade him to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, according to several people in contact with his entourage at the time. “
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wikileaks-assange-charges/special-report-std-fears-sparked-case-against-wikileaks-boss-idUSTRE6B669H20101207

  262. Liberty Mike says

    Yes, based upon their own words, many expressed something close to what you write, “there was only a faint hope that he might do less damage.”

    However, there were far more people I encountered, whether in-person, via talk radio, or reading blog comments, who did express that they either “saw or expected great things from [Trump].”

    Too many people were suckered by the half-bent middle finger he gave to the gatekeepers and guardians of the political / ruling class. Too many people were seduced by Trump’s jejune naughtiness, his willingness to flout convention regarding the tone of communication and dialogue in which presidential aspirants were theretofore expected to engage.

    Too many people conflated vulgarity with vision.

    Too many people conflated luxurious life style with entrepreneurial brilliance manifested without hundreds of millions given by daddy, serial bankruptcy and stiffed creditors.

    Too many people mistook the hat for cattle.

    Put another way, too many people played Bud Fox to Trump’s Gordon Gekko.

  263. cassandra says

    OTOH, what would you have expected from Hillary? There are plenty of misguided supporters for her as well. But I agree that a lot of people were hoping Trump would follow his campaign promises. I can’t remember when I was so disappointed with Trump’s reneging on so many. Oh, yes I do: during Obama’s first term.

    I confess I did enjoy the bent middle finger, and continue to. One of life’s simple pleasures in an otherwise unpleasant world. Take whatever good you can find with the bad.

    I find Trump’s grossness humorous.

    I’m glad he’s giving as good as he gets from a corrupt msm establishment.

    I don’t particularly like vulgarity for it’s own sake either, but it’s a refreshing change from the “politician as movie star” theme going back to Reagan, maybe Kennedy. I recall reading that Justice Democrats picked AOC not because of any particular political acumen, but because she has “star quality”. Trump is a living parody of those excesses.

    Gore Vidal’s bitter enjoyment of American foibles is the only political pleasure still available to us, and I for one am grateful to Trump for providing these satirical opportunities.

    As for serious issues, well, we’re doomed, of course.

  264. And your answer was Hilary!? Trump WON because everybody is fed up with everyone else. It is that simple.

  265. Liberty Mike says

    Yes, don’t get me wrong, the half-bent middle finger was a welcome, humorous pleasure.

    One thing about Trump I do enjoy is the manner in which he holds court at his rallies. It is performance art. I just love how he enjoys it. He is as good at that as Reagan was at delivering a serious speech.

    As for Hillary, I would have expected awfulness.

  266. My god, all you Trump bashers are absolutely right… all of Trump’s supporters were fooled and the man did absolutely NOTHING that he promised to do!

    The man is an absolute charlatan who led us all to believe such things as that he was going to save our sovereignty by taking us out of the god-awful TPP trade agreement, the god-awful Paris Climate Accords, and not start any god-awful wars.

    All lies!

    We’re still in the TPP and Paris Climate Accords. He’s been starting wars all over the place. Unemployment numbers are the highest ever in history. The GDP is even worse than it was under Obama. And not only that, as we can all see there is absolutely NOTHING being done to try to fix our borders. He hasn’t even been able to force a national debate on the border issue to reveal the media and Establishment’s utter hypocrisy on the topic!

    What a con man he is and what a fool all us Trump supporters are!

    Thank you for showing me the light!

    ***P.S. You have what’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, people.
    Get you some help.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

  267. I have read that the Deep State needed to shut Assange up from revealing that Russia …..Did…..Not…..hack the DNC as claimed by the DNC and their minions. By keeping Assange silent, the Stalinists, both Dems and Republicans and Deep State, who hate Trump, can keep up the lies of Russian collusion (collusion is not a crime) obstruction, and that Russia went after the Demoncraps and Hitlary Clinton etc. to help Trump.

    Assange said the Russians did not hack the DNC and did not give him, Assange, anything. People are suspecting that DNC employee Seth Rich gave DNC information to Assange. Seth Rich was murdered and was swept under the rug.

    Hopefully the dead man’s switch will be used.

  268. james charles says

    This is why H.R.C. ‘lost’?

    “And it’s deadly. Doubtless, Crosscheck delivered Michigan to Trump who supposedly “won” the state by 10,700 votes. The Secretary of State’s office proudly told me that they were “very aggressive” in removing listed voters before the 2016 election. Kobach, who created the lists for his fellow GOP officials, tagged a whopping 417,147 in Michigan as potential double voters.”
    http://www.gregpalast.com/trump-picks-al-capone-vote-rigging-investigate-federal-voter-fraud/

  269. On August 9, 2016 Wikileaks issued a $20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/763041804652539904

  270. james charles says

    “As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened. “
    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/?fbclid=IwAR0po9MMe5DYBkxcP0EBkWdrt8oG2jw83gcG2o0XPBR3AC6X20sDUGFwukU

  271. Peter Grafström says

    Wikileaks was indeed a Cia-trap
    And Russias hesitation was logical. Israel Shamir speaks of a dissident of Assange’s calibre.
    Assange is an actor not a real opposition.
    I wonder if Anatholy Karlin and Israel Shamir ever took a look at what WL was up to. They clearly targeted the rivals of empire. But msm didnt tell the guillible admirers. The ignorance expounded in altmedia about WL tells me people dont seek info very effectively but just hook on to the latest msm piece.
    What you dont seem to understand is that WL was about undermining the altmedia. Cognitive infiltration. And what a success they got. You bought it wholesale.
    How many of you who trust Assange, have ever read this article from 2010?
    (Here republished in 2017)
    https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-is-behind-wikileaks-2/22389
    I mean Assange was in full collusion with the New York Times and the Economist from the beginning. And WL targeted China Russia Pakistan Syria Egypt Tunisia etc
    The video from Iraq was a bait for you and it wasnt even new but published before by other altmedia.
    Also Andrew Gilligan reported that Assange was wining and dining with the Us ambassador to Iceland. Israel Shamir’s idea that the russians dont understand a dissident of Assange’s calibre is laughable.
    Both Karlin and Shamir should consider looking for contrary info more energetically.

  272. Ilyana_Rozumova says

    Karin is not full of it. I do agree.
    Karlin is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  273. Ilyana_Rozumova says

    All your blah, blah, blah does not count for much.
    Only thing count is the fact that Trump did not start any war as far as now.

  274. “Assange is an actor not a real opposition.”
    — The hasbara is in overdrive.

    Enjoy, “Peter Grafström:” http://www.awdnews.com/political/assange-forget-russia-,-the-real-threat-to-america-comes-from-israel-and-the-israel-lobby
    “Assange: Forget Russia,The Real Threat to America comes from Israel and the Israel Lobby”

    Russian actions on its own doorstep in Eastern Europe do not in fact threaten the United States or any actual vital interest. …

    … there is, however, another country that has interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has corrupted America’s legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby that oddly is not subject to the accountability afforded by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 even though it manifestly works on behalf of a foreign government. That country is, of course, Israel.

    The more zionists/”progressives” puff against Assange, the more facts emerge in response to the puffing.

  275. Are you ready to name the high-level (and truly patriotic) professionals the “actors” as well?

    From Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS):
    https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/16/vips-fault-mueller-probe-criticize-refusal-to-interview-assange/

    Mueller has accepted that central-but-unproven allegation [that the Russian government hacked into the DNC and Podesta emails]… Mueller apparently has relied for forensics on a discredited, DNC-hired firm named CrowdStrike, whose credibility is on a par with “pee-tape dossier” compiler Christopher Steele.

    Like Steele, CrowdStrike was hired and paid by the DNC (through a cutout).

    We brought the lack of independent forensics to the attention of Attorney General William Barr on March 13 in a Memorandum entitled “Mueller’s Forensic-Free Findings”… In that Memorandum we described the results of our own independent, agenda-free forensic investigation led by two former Technical Directors of the NSA, who avoid squishy “assessments,” preferring to base their findings on fundamental principles of science and the scientific method. Our findings remain unchallenged; they reveal gaping holes in CrowdStrike’s conclusions. …

    We also criticized Mueller for failing to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.

  276. Anonymous says

    The Kosovo War was exactly 20 years ago. That was probably the moment when Russia permanently soured on the West.

  277. Peter Grafström says

    #277 #278 Anna Maria
    You know very well that Assange and wikileaks are accused by many to have totally protected Israel from scrutiny. Early on it was striking how some countries were excluded from compromising leaks. Only imperial rivals were seriously hit. I think I forgot to mention Iran in my previous comment. But all those targeted nations werent clearly mentioned by the msm. Only the video from Iraq which was already on the web in other altmedia and the compromising info about Hillary. But we dont know that the deep state really wanted her. It may well have been a sharade to see Trump as an opposition.
    (The trouble for the Us is that they must pretend to believe in free trade in order to be able to loot other countries. So Trump must be made to look like a renegade. But the Us/Uk have statedriven oligarchic capitalism not too different from statedriven capitalism in China and Russia. Only the latter two are not hiding that while the Us/Uk use fake fronts. Like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. And there are several other examples of fake entrepreneurial fronts.)
    I wasnt making a point of the Israel connection since I see the current type of governments in Israel that have a chance to rule there as imperial stooges but to see Assange as an opposition to that is laughable. An isolated statement like you quote proves nothing. The leaks and absence of leaks speak volumes. You know all that of course and this is your doublespeak and since you lable me hasbara you might even have expected me to play along with you?
    Like a couple of double-speak chit chatters misdirecting everyone else.
    Those vip Cia figures are hardly expected to expose an elaborate usg psyop. They are mostly interested in preventing dangerous warmongering. Cheers to them for that!
    Assange collaborating with the NYT and Economist from the beginning giving them a leading role in the filtering cannot be misunderstood. And der Spiegel and other fake news outlets.
    Assange’s role in the Los Alamos context makes his role as an opposition additionally laughable. Security expert at the nuclear bomb labs and cheered by Cass Sunstein.

    But I dont outrule that there may be something going on that isnt all bad.
    I’m just surprised that so few critics are now to be seen except those few who never miss a chance for jew-bashing. (I dont include you among them) Those jew-bashers are right about it being a sharade.
    I’m thinking of leaving this subject alone now but I’m not decided yet. I just hope peoples trust in WL wont be abused further than it already has. In the threat against free journalism, the WL was intended to be the perp by the elites and not our saviour. And it worked, internet freedom has been gradually shrinking while WLs guillible groupies have been focusing on the wrong things.
    Sun Tsu advices not to be predictable. The guillible dont understand that the elites know how to manipulate peoples hearts and minds and can predict the response. The elites see the sheeple as an army of robots and that usually works.

  278. LOL!!! Right, you are going on the word of one nutcase, and yet will ignore the fact that millions of false votes by the democrats in California and New York was actually proven by judicial watch. And just why do you think the recount was shutdown in Michigan by the way? That was an Obama judge that shut it down. Want to know why? Because they were about to get to Detroit where we would have seen hundreds of thousands of fake votes by the Demonrats. That would have been something they couldn’t hide so they shut it down. When we remove all the fake ballots not only did Trump win, he absolutely kicked Hillary’s ass to the ground.
    The Clinton’s are some of the most despicable people on this planet and anyone that supports them have to be the most disgusting, scummy, sick, twisted freaks ever to walk this planet.

  279. james charles says

    “LOL!!! Right, you are going on the word of one nutcase, . . . ”

    Play the man, not the ball?

  280. Ilyana_Rozumova says

    Israel is acting like Gypsy, who is whipping collapsed dying horse.

  281. It seems that you really, really wanted to smear Assange but were not sure that that was a good idea to do the smearing on the Unz forum.

    For those addicted to the messages of MSM’ presstitutes, here is a thorough whipping of the slanderers by the principled and fearless Caitlin Johnstone: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-20/caitlin-johnstone-debunks-all-assange-smears

    Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us know how evil and disgusting that person is? It’s true of the leader of every nation which refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it’s true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it’s true of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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