Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/24/ecuador-expected-to-hand-assan.html
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I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to share a house with him either.
Hasn’t anyone told him his buddies took over here?
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Trump would pardon him immediately, Assange helped get him “elected.”
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I bet he will be relieved to be out of that place.
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While Assange is a creepy person (who may or may not be a sexual predator) and yes, some of his leaks did help Trump, I think the backlash against him is somewhat misplaced. We wouldn’t have the info leaked by Manning or Snowden without him.
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Snowden and Manning didn’t have some weird supervillain motive to their revelations. Assange had an axe to grind, and did so at a world scale.
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Without Wikileaks. As much as Assange likes to take credit for everything from open-source leaking to the Arab Spring, he had rather a lot of help and isn’t as indispensable as he’d like the world to believe.
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Aren’t they supposed to slip him out in some diplomatic pouch? A duffle bag should do nicely.
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I don’t think they even want him in Ecuador. Maybe they will just show him the front door one night and then we get to see how far he can make it.
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The funniest would be if the UK just locks him up for skipping bail (12 months max, and he’ll probably get close to the maximum sentence), then bans him from returning to the UK and hands him over to Sweden.
What he wants is to be some sort of martyr, but if he’s treated like any other criminal it just makes him look like more of a tit.
We wouldn’t have the info leaked by Manning or Snowden without him.
Snowden leaked independently, he doesn’t seem to have a connection to Wikileaks, and he’s criticised them occasionally.
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I disagree completely. Edward Snowden leaked directly to reporters/filmmakers. Wikileaks stepped in afterwards with some support (one might see that as an attempt to stay relevant) but they were not instrumental or core to Snowden’s decision to leak, nor to the technical measures that Snowden (trained/skilled) employed.
I can’t speak for Chelsea Manning but I have the sense that wikileaks benefited directly from her sacrifice and her personal demons.
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Staying there that long - they should have at least made him pull his own weight. Here’s a mop and bucket - congratulations- you’re our new janitor.
I’ll bet having him sometime in Ecuador works better than having him at the embassy. You’ve been given asylum. Go get a job and housing.
He might want to lock his door.
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Yeah but with Trump in power I think Ecuador want to run a lean ship. They don’t want any complications which can be used to justify steps being taken against them.
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That’s not entirely true. Ignoring the fact that Wikileaks started the whole modern “leaks” movement (Yes, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s but nobody was doing that sort of thing for decades) and so is indirectly responsible for Snowden’s initial leaks, much of Snowden’s later interactions with the press were done through Wikileaks.
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Well - Ecuador gave him citizenship- they own him now. Sorry kids.
Edit- so give him consular status and they can expel him without arrest.
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I am still a bit disgusted that he said he would turn himself in if Manning was pardoned, Obama called his bluff, and he weaseled out on it. Takes the integrity out of what he did with Wikileaks.
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“You can’t keep him caged here forever. It’s for the best if you release him into the wild, to be with others of his own kind. It’s nature’s way.”
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You’re reaching. It’s very clear from The footage in Citizen Four that he meticulously arranged a campaign of reaching out to targeted journalists he felt he could trust, establishing secure commo and making contact in person. None of which required or was modeled after WikiLeaks. You mention Ellsberg, someone that Snowden has repeatedly cited as a major inspiration and model for some methodology; he’s too smart to go after such a vainglorious media hound as Assange.
I’m glad for what Wikileaks did in the part few years, but all in all this has been one of the most disappointing sagas in recent years. The promise that was squandered by Assange’s Petty feuding was really beautiful at one point.
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Probably something to do with the current political conflict in Ecuador. The new president, Lenin Moreno, even with that name, seems to be more moderate than previous one Correa, but apart from that, they had a HUGE split and now Correa has an Interpol order because they want him to come back to Ecuador and face the court in a case about a kidnapping in Colombia of a friend-turned-enemy politician, supposedly orchestrated by Ecuatorian inteligence operatives that are now saying they got the go ahead from Correa.
So, Moreno may be doing a lot of cleaning of Correa’s stuff he doesnt want to have to keep dealing with anymore. Also, may be a bit of a signal - hey, we now collaborate, how about you help us with getting Correa over here.
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This is point in the Assange story where you choose your own adventure:
- He ends up in jail in the UK for jumping his bail and then sent back to the Oz after serving his time.
- He gets extradited to the US and ends up getting waterboarded in Gitmo.
- He leaves the embassy and immediately boards a plane to Ecuador, and then lives happily ever after in S. America.
Which one will it be?
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