Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/30/julian-assange-mistakenly-offe.html
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Julian Assange, Non-Partisan.
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Julian, that little room you’ve been living in must be getting to you…
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You’d think if any fugitive whistleblowing IT guy was going to do Russia’s dirty work it would be the one hiding out in Moscow instead of the one holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy. What exactly is Ecuador getting out of this arrangement?
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Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars.
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Irrespective of his flight from investigation for sexual assault, to support Assange is to support both Trump and Putin. Any Assange fanbois claiming otherwise are only fooling themselves, not unlike Trumpkins.
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Maybe Assange has dirt on people in Equador too?
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Not much, and they’re increasingly pissed about it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/22/ecuadors-president-calls-julian-assange-more-than-a-nuisance/?utm_term=.0d87710fecd7
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I wouldn’t be surprised if Assange is trying to bring down Democrats because he thinks it could get him a pardon from Trump. He’d still be stuck with the sexual assault charges though.
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Prosecuting Assange for espionage would be difficult. Prosecutors would have to prove he specifically intended to aid a hostile foreign power or otherwise harm US national security. Unlike many nations, the bar for obtaining a conviction against a non-government employee for spying on the US is surprisingly high due to the First Amendment. He’s waited out the Swedish statute of limitations on three of the four sexual assault charges. The fourth expires in 2020. While that 2020 deadline is not doubt a major motivator for staying in the embassy, like Trump’s other supporters, Assange revels in playing the victim.
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This makes me doubt his technical competence to say that his leak source definitely wasn’t the Russians.
(Leaving aside his honesty as another question.)
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If anything, it’s more ironic than surprising.
Assange is an agitator and likes to play anarchist “blow shit up” games as often as he can. He’ll loop in whoever for his fun whenever he can.
If he doesn’t do it, somebody else likely will in his place. Bomb throwers like Assange are a new reality and anybody narcissistic enough to play the game should act accordingly.
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When does the statute of limitations on jumping bail run out?
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Good question. I’m not sure when, but Assange jumped bail in UK in 2012, so my guess would be that that too will run out by 2020.
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In the UK, crimes (other than minor offences) have no limitation statute. He’ll need to stay in there for a while yet.
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I have to admit I used to support Assange, back before they did the big governmental leaks (and still a bit after the diplomatic papers leaked by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning).
I agreed with the points of the Wikileaks Manifesto, which in a nutshell was to shine light on all the tiny de-facto conspiracies that happen in circles of power.
I don’t know what happened to Assange and Wikileaks since he fled Sweden and holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy. Some people claim Wikileaks was hijacked (pointing to a sudden and unexplained change in the crypto signing keys IIRC), but Assange certainly isn’t disowning it. He appears more hell-bent on tearing the Democratic party apart than anything else, in the process supporting the destructive trend that the current Republican party is following, but then that may be a bias on the Wikileaks-related news that I notice.
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Except Assange’s “dirt” is to give the details on John Podesta’s risotto while ignoring [what must be] the mountain of unaired GOP dirty laundry that could come tumbling down if one Republican or Trump ally had a particle of integrity.
What’s so batty about Assange is: Sure, by his actions he’s a GOP stooge. But by his affect and his persona and public declaration of principles, you’d think “This guy is such a selfless whistleblower.” At least with tools like James O’Keefe (and Veritas, his propaganda organ), you see them coming a mile away. I think there are a lot of people who are still fooled by Assange. In particular: Bernie supporters, who took everything he leaked at face value.
I have yet to figure out whether Assange is a partisan crypto-Republican or just a useful idiot, enjoying his self-image as a “brash contrarian.”
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I always just assumed Assange hates the US government, full stop. A bit of a Chomskyan “two-sides of the same coin” thing.
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So why hasn’t he been serving up all kinds of dirt on Trump, a President who has taken non-disclosure to levels never before seen in modern American history?
Shouldn’t Wikileaks have been feeding us all kinds of intel on Russian election meddling and collusion and Trump’s tax returns and the Stormy Daniels payoff and who knows what else?
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Based on his 2006 Wikileaks Manifesto, he wants to create a state of “organizational stupor” through the induction of paranoia and strangled communication.
I would hazard that the Trump administration could not be any more stupid than it already is.
I don’t really agree with what/how he does things, but based on what I know about the guy, he just wants to disrupt America, not just one party over another. Russia has the same goals for the same reason, so maybe that makes this one of those enemy-of-my-enemy things.
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