Ecuador revokes Julian Assange's citizenship

[thewayne]

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Let's see. Through Wikileaks, Julian publishes a video that pisses off the American government. Goes to Sweden, two women accuse him of rape after having sex with them and they withdraw their consent. He flees to England, seeks refuge at the Ecuadoran embassy who let him in. I think Ecuador doesn't have an extradition treaty with the USA. Ecuador grants him citizenship, apparently considering granting him diplomatic status which would give him immunity from prosecution which would cause so much fun and laughter.

Sweden drops the investigation after not being able to get anywhere in the investigation - including interviewing Assange in the embassy, but I've heard they have the ability to refile the charges. He's a lousy guest to the Ecuadorans: doesn't keep his space clean, continues to publish Wikileaks when he's specifically asked not to, I seem to recall rumors of him attempting to hack Ecuadoran Embassy systems and uses massive amounts of WiFi bandwidth.

Then a big thing happens. Ecuador has a change in government: the one that was friendly towards Assange is out of power, the new one - doing something very familiar to Americans - sets about reversing many of the policies of the previous administration. And they call the London police and ask them if they'd be interested in making a pickup, and kick him out.

Assange is arrested, convicted of evading "Bail Evasion", whatever that is, and is now trying to avoid extradition to the USA. Apparently a scheme is in the works where he could come here, face trial, and if convicted, serve the sentence in an Australian prison.

Frankly, I don't really care. I find him rather bothersome.

To a degree, I like the concept of Wikileaks. I think some of the exposures are good for people. The video that got him into trouble was akin to the Pentagon Papers in that it showed the government was lying to the people about innocents being killed in Iraq. We knew it was happening, the government was lying about it. But Assange does not sanitize information, he just dumps it, regardless of the consequences to people. And that can include private information about people, information, or processes that shouldn't be made public and can endanger lives.

When Edward Snowden released information to reporters, they didn't just dump it out there, they carefully reviewed it so that private information didn't risk lives, while it still showed that the government was spying on the United States and the rest of the world. That's the responsible way to do it.

Assange wants to claim to be a journalist and hide behind First Amendment Freedom of the Press protections, but he doesn't follow Press Practices.

I don't think I would go quite so far as calling him an anarchist, but he is pretty close to being a bomb thrower. Does he deserve prison time? I'm not sure on that call. Those Swedish rape charges sound a little weird to me - the women absolutely have the right to withdraw consent. But he's a public political target, and it wouldn't surprise me if some money exchanged some hands to encourage them to withdraw their consent. I think it deserves investigating.

We shall see how this all plays out. I don't think that this loss of Ecuadoran citizenship will really mean a thing in the short or long term personally.

https://gizmodo.com/ecuador-tells-julian-assange-his-citizenship-has-been-r-1847379150

Comments

[silveradept]

Releasing the raw material, without a care for who else might get hurt by it is not the kind of thing that endears you to anyone. We usually get after entities that hurt innocents, even when they want to claim they're journalists and just doing their jobs appropriately.

Assange continues not to make any friends. Of course, just because he's a dick doesn't mean he shouldn't get a vigorous defense and people doing their best to prove his innocence.

[thewayne]

I agree, I expect he will get a good defense.  And the fact that there is an attempt to make sure he is not mistreated if he's transferred to U.S. custody pending trial and to try to get him to an Australian prison to serve his sentence if convicted, I think that's an excellent show of good faith.

[kraig]

A few things... When men say things like women may have been paid off to drum up rape charges, that completely undercuts any belief that may be expressed in what they have to say. Either we believe them, or we believe money may have changed hands, it can't be both.

Assange is a grifter. As you say, the original video that made Wikileaks big was well-founded. Then he made Wikileaks all about him (or possibly it always was, but nobody cared) - as if nobody else can be sent documents by criminals and then turn around and post them on the Internet carte blanche. Nobody else can be trusted to do the right thing of... publishing private information, malware, and documents completely irrelevant to any so-called mission. Nobody else can demonstrate a complete lack of empathy about the little people they hurt along the way.

Sure, he deserves defense, and I'm sure the folks he's duped will be happy to buy him lawyers better than you or I would ever see. But as you said, he's no journalist. Journalists are selective about what they publish, and how they publish it, the same way librarians curate archives instead of just cramming everything they can find onto shelves and calling it good. He does not deserve the protection that the press would get, although after the last year of seeing how press are treated in North American contexts of covering protests, maybe those protections aren't what they're vaunted to be anyway.

[captainsblog]

And you got through that whole post without any snark about his stinky cat.

I'm proud of you.

[thewayne]

Honestly, I'd forgotten about the cat!  Just lump it under him being a bad guest.  Myself, I'm more partial to cats than dogs, but I love them both.

[reynardo]

Yes, it's only hearsay, but I have a number of friends who knew Assange here in Australia while he was a student, and from the way he acted and the stories of how he treated at least one ex, I can totally believe that he chose to remove the condoms without the consent of the women involved.

I think the original work of Wikileaks was excellent and utterly needed, but it morphed badly over the years.

One piece of information I will pass on is that Assange's mother's pet name for him was "Wizzy". Which surely means that the agency should be known as "Wizzyleaks"?

[rain_gryphon]

What I particularly find loathsome about Assange is his attitude that, having found a new way to commit espionage, he was then above the law, because no-one had thought of that particular idea before. Also, the friend who put up his English country house as collateral for Assange's bail lost it when he went to hide in the embassy, thereby leaving British territory. And his poor cat that he'd been given for company, he turned out of doors one night because 'it wanted to be free'. He is a toxic, evil man, concerned about no-one but himself. Prison's the best place for that sort.

[thewayne]

I did not know about the man losing his house, nor the cat.  Based on some other private correspondence, yeah, definitely toxic person.