Banana republic caves in

[mahnmut]

Ecuador admits cutting Julian Assange's internet access over impact of leaks on US election

Ecuador's move aims to avoid interfering in the US election? Ha! What a riot! Smells of the Economic Hit-man scenario all over again.

Is it just me, or doesn't this act come across as a bit cowardly, and a sign of fear both from Ecuador and the US, but

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

Assange has questions to answer about his private life. However this does need to be done in a neutral country with a good policy on political extradition in order to hear the case properly without bias or fear of extradition to the US. As for the revelations about Clinton, they don't appear to be very, er, revealing, and seem rather, um, unbalanced, despite Julian's "veritas veritatis" modus operandi

[mahnmut]

Maybe one day the spec ops unit who'll be sent to invade Julian's hideout, will unearth his extensive collection of weird porn tapes, just before they throw him to the bottom of the sea exactly like they did with one other bad guy.

[johnny9fingers]

Julian isn't a bad guy necessarily. The rape accusation must be faced, of course, but the rest of his thing is admirable, even if obviously made use of for their own nefarious purposes by some pretty bad hombres, if that's the phrase I'm looking for.

The problem with wikileaks and Julian is the one of editorial bias in timing of releases, which is, if you like, an editorial meta-bias, but which still influences opinion. He shows his hand thus, and his motivations too. Poor lad. I think self imposed incarceration would send anyone mad really.

I think the lesson to be learned here is that if you are going to tweak the establishment's tail, the best place to do so is from an unimpeachably strong moral position. Luckily that leaves me out of the running. Oh well. Shame and all that.

Edit: by this I mean to say I inhaled, injected, snorted or popped everything I could lay my hands on; and I slept with everyone grown up who said yes, including the married folk.

[mahnmut]

Julian isn't a bad guy necessarily

Sarcasm, bru.

options!

[oportet]

According to google maps - he's got about 1/4 mile (400 meters for y'all foreigners) straight shot to the Kuwait Embassy. From what I can tell it's the closest Embassy for a country we don't have an extradition treaty with (had to look that up too - I would have assumed we did...).

I've never been to London - so I have no idea what chance he would have with that - but he has to be looking into that kind of thing - now more than ever.

RE: options!

[johnny9fingers]

They will find an acceptable compromise or they will have to er, tacitly allow him to make an heroic getaway while our rather self-absorbed policemen are tying their shoelaces or accidently looking the other way. I mean whatever else, it wouldn't do us any good to actually catch the blighter. We'd have to be dreadfully unlucky to manage to do that.

[mikeyxw]

"Please. Don't tell me this wasn't done under pressure from the current US administration."

How about if I just make a good case that it's not in Ecuador's best interest to have someone very publicly trying to influence the US elections from their embassy, using their servers? Especially since he seems to be backing the losing side. There is simply a huge potential cost to letting Mr. Assange use their internet access and no upside. Cutting his access is simply the best option for Ecuador.

[johnny9fingers]

The thing is we need our Assanges. We just need them to be better. I hope that the rape accusation is just wrong, but I don't know enough about the case. However, holing up in an embassy for years isn't the noble way of doing things. Sanctuary is a fine and noble thing to give, but to receive must be galling.
Even if you have fucked up with language and misread a situation, which is one of the problems of an international perspective, no still means no. Now there may be all sorts of grey areas in-between. But you have to stand up and acknowledge and explain your private actions in the face of non-political criminal accusations when called upon by the law to do so. And I'm aware that in many nations of the world accusations of various kinds of sexual depravities are the norm when taking down political opponents. But not, I think, in Sweden. I am prepared to be proven wrong here, of course.

[mahnmut]

He's been a huge pain in the US ass for years and it's not in Ecuador's good interests to keep such a pain in the US ass - and they found that out now?

[mikeyxw]

Four years ago, Ecuador's oil revenue was doing very well and the Pink Tide was still going strong in South America. Ecuador could afford to be a pain in the US' ass and could expect support from its neighbors and a bit of prestige for sticking it to the man. I can't say I fully understand the pros and cons from Ecuador's standpoint, but I can sure appreciate that they have changed since then.

[abomvubuso]

Well, Colbert had a nice suggestion to Assange last evening. Use a wiki-pigeon to keep leaking those wikis :)

Oh, and apparently he's got to stop leaving his dirty socks around the Ecuadorean embassy.