Assange, Farage, Trump and Putin
David Aaronovitch is always 'on the money' for me with his regular columns in The Times and in this one he hits the nail on the head with his assessment of the weirdo and narcissist Julian Assange.
"In other words, it isn’t Catalonia that Assange cares about, but dismantling Spain. It isn’t modern US Republicanism he wishes to see succeed, but the forces of entropy. Within himself, I conjecture, he is only made whole by bringing down others. Like the home-wrecker, driven on by the sight of others living happily in families and marriages, his entire desire is to disrupt. What he can’t have himself — peace — he can deny to others.
"Psychobabble, I know. But when, as happened in March, Nigel Farage pitched up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to support Assange, a strange quadrilateral of mutual support (possibly no more than rhetorical) emerged. Assange, Farage, Trump and Putin, loosely joined together, I would argue, in a commitment to disrupt the West."
Read the full piece via the link blow to The Times which is behind the newspaper's paywall.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/assange-isnt-a-dreamer-hesadestroyer-hws6ph3h7
Assange isn’t a dreamer, he’s a destroyer
By david aaronovitch - The Times
Don’t be fooled by the Wikileaks founder’s supposed idealism: he is in the same destructive club as Putin and Trump
I remember when Julian Assange was the coolest thing on the planet. Back in 2010, on his first visit to London after his Wikileaks organisation revealed secrets of the US war on terror, I debated with him. The large lecture hall at City University was packed, and there was an almost erotic feeling in the air. You know the scene in the Indiana Jones movie when a student bats her eyelids at Harrison Ford and they’ve got “Love You” written on them? It was like that.
The people who practically threw their knickers and boxer shorts at him that night must have been perplexed to learn this week that his organisation enjoyed close contacts with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Seven years ago, at the height of Wikileaks’ fame — or infamy — the left claimed Assange as one of their own. The Chomskys, the Michael Moores and the Ken Loaches all championed the charismatic Australian. You could see their point even if you didn’t share their disdain for the America of Barack Obama. Assange and Wikileaks were helping to build a world of transparency and free information, in which government and corporations would be held to account and democracy could flourish. I quite liked the idea of it myself.
But the revelation this week that Wikileaks had suggested Assange become Australian ambassador to the United States was a sort of ludicrous appendix to a story that had already ended tragically. We had long known about the role Wikileaks played in releasing emails stolen from the Clinton campaign by Russian hackers.
But what did that make Assange politically? If he was a man of the left, why was he helping a man of the ever-so-right? Or, to put it another way, why does Assange care so much about Catalan independence? In the run-up to and aftermath of the disputed independence referendum, Assange became one of the principal online advocates of separation from Spain. His tweets and posts were widely viewed in Catalonia — perhaps more than any other individual’s. Spain was a “banana monarchy” and an “occupying power” for whom “no trick is too dirty, no lie is too bold and no escalation is too much for a deep state to save itself. Watch.”
Also keen on Catalan independence was the Russian troll, bot and disinformation industry. In the last two weeks of September, the Sputnik news agency put out more than 200 stories on Catalonia, and these stories paid more attention to what Julian Assange was saying than they did to Catalan leaders. In that period the hashtag “Catalan” became one of the highest trending among Twitter accounts sourced back to Russian operations. Many of them were pushing the Assange tweets.
Trump? Catalonia? Russia? What does Julian Assange actually want? Hillary Clinton, who is of course his sworn enemy, recently described Assange as a “kind of nihilistic opportunist”, who has been colonised by the far cleverer and far less public organs of the Russian state.
A nihilist, in case you’ve forgotten “rejects all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless”. But meant in the way Mrs Clinton was using it, it’s someone for whom the destruction of existing beliefs and institutions is more important than the question of what replaces them.
@daaronovitch
The Biter Bit (15/11/17)
Julian Assange is a fugitive from justice and has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for the past five years, but this hasn't stopped him from continue to oversee the operation of the WikiLeaks organisation.
Slate Magazine explains how WikiLeaks was in touch with Donald Trump's son during and after America's presidential campaign, feeding illegally hacked information to Team Trump including a host of emails from the rival Clinton Camp.
Assange has since complained about 'private' communications from WikiLeaks being selectively presented to the public.
Now that is hilarious.
I cannot confirm the alleged DM's from @DonaldJTrumpJr to @WikiLeaks. @WikiLeaks does not keep such records and the Atlantic's presentation is edited and clearly does not have the full context. However, even those published by the Atlantic show that: 1/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/11/13/wikileaks_was_really_really_dumb_to_send_donald_trump_jr_dms_on_twitter.html
WikiLeaks Was Really, Really Dumb to Send Twitter DMs to Donald Trump Jr.
By April Glaser - Slate
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, ready to slide into your DMs - Jack Taylor/Getty Image
Considering it’s a hacker organization whose calling card is the anonymity it provides to whistleblowers leaking government secrets, WikiLeaks sure seems to have some shoddy security practices. The transparency group, led by its chief-in-exile Julian Assange, sent a series of direct messages over Twitter to Donald Trump Jr. starting on Sept. 20, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, according to a report in the Atlantic.
In correspondence with Trump’s son, the WikiLeaks account shared details about a new anti-Trump website it said was about to launch, putintrump.org, and provided the login information for the site. “We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump,” the message read.
“Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” Donald Trump Jr. responded.
Sending a Twitter direct message was an incredibly dumb move, at least from a digital security perspective, but Assange’s WikiLeaks continued to communicate with Trump’s son over Twitter for at least another 10 months, long after his father became president. The direct messages were shared with congressional investigators by Trump Jr.’s lawyers.
Twitter’s direct messages are not encrypted, which make it a poor medium for correspondence with a high-profile, potentially soon-to-be U.S. president’s son, especially if that correspondence is about hacking into someone else’s website. That’s because stealing a password and then using it without authorization is a violation of a federal anti-hacking law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If the Trump campaign did use the password to sneak into the backend of an opposition website, WikiLeaks potentially led the Trump campaign to participate in criminal activity.
U.S. intelligence officials reported in January that they’ve assessed with “high confidence” that WikiLeaks worked with Russian military intelligence to release stolen emails from the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. If that is true, WikiLeaks conspired with Russia to sway a U.S. presidential election, and then paved roads between itself, a Russian government conspirator, and the Trump campaign—not a good look for an administration trying to dismissclaims that it knowingly got a leg up from the Kremlin before Election Day.
Trump Jr.’s correspondence with WikiLeaks began as the investigation into Russian interference in the run-up to 2016 election was starting to heat up, only months after the WikiLeaks release of the DNC emails and right before WikiLeaks released a second trove of emails from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. WikiLeaks, according to the Atlantic’s report, continued to contact Donald Trump Jr. months after his father, Donald Trump, entered the White House and while multiple investigations into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russian agents were well under way. In other words, it appears WikiLeaks collaborated with hackers, likely Russian, to release stolen emails in an effort to support Trump’s candidacy, and in the midst of the chaos around the release the stolen Clinton-related emails, Assange’s organization maintained some level of communication with the Trump campaign through the candidate’s son.
If Assange was getting advice from a security professional that this was a fine move, that person was either giving intentionally bad advice or is terrible at their job. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in cryptography to know that it would make sense to keep some real distance from the campaign you’re trying to boost with stolen emails, hacked passwords, and a strong connection to Russia, which was already suspected of interfering with the election. Assange’s organization either terribly miscalculated how far the federal investigations into Russian meddling in the U.S. election would go, or his team just wasn’t worried about it. If the latter is true, the temerity and naivety of WikiLeaks is nothing short of phenomenal.
What’s more, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the CEO of the data firm hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had reached out to WikiLeaks’s founder Julian Assange to ask if it could “help better organize” the emails WikiLeaks was releasing about Hilary Clinton. That contact apparently happened in early June, at the same time Cambridge Analytica was in negotiations to join the Trump campaign. WikiLeaks didn’t start publishing documents stolen from the DNC until July.
Considering it’s a hacker organization whose calling card is the anonymity it provides to whistleblowers leaking government secrets, WikiLeaks sure seems to have some shoddy security practices. The transparency group, led by its chief-in-exile Julian Assange, sent a series of direct messages over Twitter to Donald Trump Jr. starting on Sept. 20, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, according to a report in the Atlantic.
In correspondence with Trump’s son, the WikiLeaks account shared details about a new anti-Trump website it said was about to launch, putintrump.org, and provided the login information for the site. “We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump,” the message read.
“Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” Donald Trump Jr. responded.
Sending a Twitter direct message was an incredibly dumb move, at least from a digital security perspective, but Assange’s WikiLeaks continued to communicate with Trump’s son over Twitter for at least another 10 months, long after his father became president. The direct messages were shared with congressional investigators by Trump Jr.’s lawyers.
Twitter’s direct messages are not encrypted, which make it a poor medium for correspondence with a high-profile, potentially soon-to-be U.S. president’s son, especially if that correspondence is about hacking into someone else’s website. That’s because stealing a password and then using it without authorization is a violation of a federal anti-hacking law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If the Trump campaign did use the password to sneak into the backend of an opposition website, WikiLeaks potentially led the Trump campaign to participate in criminal activity.
U.S. intelligence officials reported in January that they’ve assessed with “high confidence” that WikiLeaks worked with Russian military intelligence to release stolen emails from the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. If that is true, WikiLeaks conspired with Russia to sway a U.S. presidential election, and then paved roads between itself, a Russian government conspirator, and the Trump campaign—not a good look for an administration trying to dismissclaims that it knowingly got a leg up from the Kremlin before Election Day.
Trump Jr.’s correspondence with WikiLeaks began as the investigation into Russian interference in the run-up to 2016 election was starting to heat up, only months after the WikiLeaks release of the DNC emails and right before WikiLeaks released a second trove of emails from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. WikiLeaks, according to the Atlantic’s report, continued to contact Donald Trump Jr. months after his father, Donald Trump, entered the White House and while multiple investigations into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russian agents were well under way. In other words, it appears WikiLeaks collaborated with hackers, likely Russian, to release stolen emails in an effort to support Trump’s candidacy, and in the midst of the chaos around the release the stolen Clinton-related emails, Assange’s organization maintained some level of communication with the Trump campaign through the candidate’s son.
If Assange was getting advice from a security professional that this was a fine move, that person was either giving intentionally bad advice or is terrible at their job. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in cryptography to know that it would make sense to keep some real distance from the campaign you’re trying to boost with stolen emails, hacked passwords, and a strong connection to Russia, which was already suspected of interfering with the election. Assange’s organization either terribly miscalculated how far the federal investigations into Russian meddling in the U.S. election would go, or his team just wasn’t worried about it. If the latter is true, the temerity and naivety of WikiLeaks is nothing short of phenomenal.
What’s more, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the CEO of the data firm hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had reached out to WikiLeaks’s founder Julian Assange to ask if it could “help better organize” the emails WikiLeaks was releasing about Hilary Clinton. That contact apparently happened in early June, at the same time Cambridge Analytica was in negotiations to join the Trump campaign. WikiLeaks didn’t start publishing documents stolen from the DNC until July.
Weirdo and Narcissist (11/02/14)
To my mind the behaviour of the Ecuador Government is outrageous because Assange is clearly a not a refugee, political or otherwise, so why not suspend diplomatic relations with Ecuador and close its embassy in London?
And as Julian Assange is not a diplomat, but someone who is effectively on the run from the authorities in Sweden and the UK, he would have not alternative but to give himself up or face arrest, but either way he deserves to face his accusers in Sweden and the courts in the UK for breaking his solemn promise not to jump bail.
As Monty Python might have said - 'He's not the Messiah, you know. He's just a very naughty boy!'.
WikiWars (9 February 2011)
The WikiWars saga continues.
Julian Assange is back in court trying desperately to prevent his extradition to that widely despised rogue state - with a supposedly weak legal system and poor track record on human rights - more commonly known as Sweden.
The celebrity legal team defending Julian Assange has flown over a retired Swedish judge - Brita Sundberg-Weitman (a woman) - to give evidence against the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny.
The retired judge reportedly criticised the prosecutor for being a "radical feminist" and described her behaviour as "malicious", "peculiar" and displaying a "bias against men".
But when cross-examined - the retired judge admitted that she had no direct knowledge of Ms Ny's (the prosecutor's) conduct.
Confused - because if so, you're in good company?
Instead of this ridiculous legal circus - Mr Assange should do us all a favour and hop on the next plane to Stockholm.
Where he can deal with the case allegations made against him - in a proper manner.
The BBC caused something of a fuss the other day when it handed editorial control of the flagship Today (Radio 4) programme over to a guest editor, PJ Harvey, who is apparently a successful, famous and very left-wing musician - whose work an career I know nothing about, I have to concede.
Now I don't really care whether PJ Harvey's political views are left-wing, right-wing or a bit AC/DC, if you know what I mean - because as a public service, public funded broadcaster the BBC is supposed to reflect all walks of life.
But where I'm at odds with PJ Bailey is her decision to give the ridiculous Julian Assange a platform to spout his views - because the man is a wanted fugitive who has escaped justice by sloping off to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in an effort to evade questioning by the authorities in Sweden for alleged sexual offences against two separate women.
Not only that Assange gave his word to the courts in this country and various friends and acquaintances in this country that he would abide by the legal process and not jump bail while the judicial process considered a properly made request for his extradition to Sweden.
Yet he lied and jumped bail anyway, so I would say he is a dishonest and scheming little man who is completely lacking in integrity - which is why PJ was daft to allow this weirdo and narcissist to present himself to the world as some kind of martyr.
Anyway, maybe PJ's music is better than her politics - I must find out.
The narcissist and weirdo also known as Julian Assange has had a complete 'hissy fit' with the actor Benedict Cumberbatch - because he has apparently been portrayed in a not very flattering light in the new film 'The Fifth Estate' which tells the story, so far, of WikiLeaks.
Here's an extract of Julian's angry letter to Benedict Cumberbatch whom he refused to meet, according to news reports, while holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy to prevent his extradition to Sweden where Assange is wanted on charges of sexual assault.
Extracts: Assange’s letter
“You will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. To present me as someone morally compromised and to place me in a falsified history. To create a work, not of fiction, but of debased truth. Not because you want to, of course you don’t, but because, in the end, you are a jobbing actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter how debauched.
Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world. I believe you should reconsider your involvement in this enterprise. Consider the consequences of your cooperation with a project that… marginalises a living political refugee to the benefit of an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state.”
In other words the only real truth is the truth according to Julian Assange and if that's not a perfect description of a 'narcissist' - then I'm the Foreign Minister of Ecuador.
The increasingly ridiculous Julian Assagne - founder of Wikileaks - is still holed up at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London - having fled there a year ago to escape being extradited to Sweden where he faces two separate charges of sexual assault.
A meeting was held recently between the UK Foreign Secretary - William Hague - and Ecuadorean officials following which Ecuadorean foreign minister - Ricardo Patino - announced that Assange is prepared to stay in his bolt hole for at least five years.
For some reason, Ecuador seems to believe that Assange is entitled to claim asylum when - in fact - he jumped bail in the UK, having lied about his intentions to abide by a court ruling to face the music - if his extradition to Sweden was subsequently found to be lawful and justified.
Which it duly was, but instead of justice for the two women in Sweden who have complained about Assange - what we have is a complete farce with a supposedly friendly country in Ecuador thumbing its nose, diplomatically speaking, at both Sweden and the UK.
Offering asylum to people in need of protection has a noble history down the ages - but it was never intended as a safe sanctuary for people suspected of criminal behaviour.
Sweden, of course, has a good track record on upholding human rights that would compare favourably with most countries in the world.
For example I'm pretty sure Sweden would knock Ecuador into a cocked hat over human rights - yet Foreign Minister Patino is prepared to make a fool of himself by arguing that the whole business represents a "total injustice" to Julian Assange.
If I were the UK Government I would let Mr Assange stew in his little hideaway for as long as he likes - because he's bound to get fed up sooner or later.
In the meantime I can't imagine it's a whole lot of fun - and I suspect that in some strange way Ricardo and Julian probably deserve each other.
The magazine pokes fun at the self-serving comments made by Assange in his auto-biography - in which he suggests that the two Swedish women who acccused him of sexual assault - did so out of spite.
Because he is - or was - a chauvinist pig and not a thoughtful boyfriend.
What a nutter!
NEW ASSANGE LAWSUIT
by Our Media Correspondent
Jonathan Wikileake
"Julian Assange today announced his determination to sue the author of the new book about him, Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography.
A spokesman for Assange, who looked very similar to himself, told journalists, "Mr Assange has had enoughof these vile slurs against his charatcer and to say that women accused him of rape because he didn't phone them is clearly the mark of a diseased mind.
"I - by which I mean my client, Mr Assange - will be suing JUlian Assange as aggresivelky as possible, to show that the good name of Assange will not stand for these vile slurs about himself."
The author, Julian Assange, is said to be considering a counter-suit based on his allegations that Assange is part of a Jewish conspiracy.
If found guilty of defamation and bearing false witness, Mr Assange will either have to pay himself £10 million for loss of earnings and emotional damge, or go on a four month journalism course in AMerica, depending on whether he is judged by the Crown or Andreas Whittam-Smith.
Julian Assange is back in court trying desperately to prevent his extradition to that widely despised rogue state - with a supposedly weak legal system and poor track record on human rights - more commonly known as Sweden.
The celebrity legal team defending Julian Assange has flown over a retired Swedish judge - Brita Sundberg-Weitman (a woman) - to give evidence against the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny.
The retired judge reportedly criticised the prosecutor for being a "radical feminist" and described her behaviour as "malicious", "peculiar" and displaying a "bias against men".
But when cross-examined - the retired judge admitted that she had no direct knowledge of Ms Ny's (the prosecutor's) conduct.
Confused - because if so, you're in good company?
Instead of this ridiculous legal circus - Mr Assange should do us all a favour and hop on the next plane to Stockholm.
Where he can deal with the case allegations made against him - in a proper manner.
Narcissist and Weirdo
The BBC caused something of a fuss the other day when it handed editorial control of the flagship Today (Radio 4) programme over to a guest editor, PJ Harvey, who is apparently a successful, famous and very left-wing musician - whose work an career I know nothing about, I have to concede.
Now I don't really care whether PJ Harvey's political views are left-wing, right-wing or a bit AC/DC, if you know what I mean - because as a public service, public funded broadcaster the BBC is supposed to reflect all walks of life.
But where I'm at odds with PJ Bailey is her decision to give the ridiculous Julian Assange a platform to spout his views - because the man is a wanted fugitive who has escaped justice by sloping off to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in an effort to evade questioning by the authorities in Sweden for alleged sexual offences against two separate women.
Not only that Assange gave his word to the courts in this country and various friends and acquaintances in this country that he would abide by the legal process and not jump bail while the judicial process considered a properly made request for his extradition to Sweden.
Yet he lied and jumped bail anyway, so I would say he is a dishonest and scheming little man who is completely lacking in integrity - which is why PJ was daft to allow this weirdo and narcissist to present himself to the world as some kind of martyr.
Anyway, maybe PJ's music is better than her politics - I must find out.
Narcissist and Weirdo (18 October 2013)
Here's an extract of Julian's angry letter to Benedict Cumberbatch whom he refused to meet, according to news reports, while holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy to prevent his extradition to Sweden where Assange is wanted on charges of sexual assault.
Extracts: Assange’s letter
“You will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. To present me as someone morally compromised and to place me in a falsified history. To create a work, not of fiction, but of debased truth. Not because you want to, of course you don’t, but because, in the end, you are a jobbing actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter how debauched.
Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world. I believe you should reconsider your involvement in this enterprise. Consider the consequences of your cooperation with a project that… marginalises a living political refugee to the benefit of an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state.”
In other words the only real truth is the truth according to Julian Assange and if that's not a perfect description of a 'narcissist' - then I'm the Foreign Minister of Ecuador.
Escaping Justice (25 June 2013)
A meeting was held recently between the UK Foreign Secretary - William Hague - and Ecuadorean officials following which Ecuadorean foreign minister - Ricardo Patino - announced that Assange is prepared to stay in his bolt hole for at least five years.
For some reason, Ecuador seems to believe that Assange is entitled to claim asylum when - in fact - he jumped bail in the UK, having lied about his intentions to abide by a court ruling to face the music - if his extradition to Sweden was subsequently found to be lawful and justified.
Which it duly was, but instead of justice for the two women in Sweden who have complained about Assange - what we have is a complete farce with a supposedly friendly country in Ecuador thumbing its nose, diplomatically speaking, at both Sweden and the UK.
Offering asylum to people in need of protection has a noble history down the ages - but it was never intended as a safe sanctuary for people suspected of criminal behaviour.
Sweden, of course, has a good track record on upholding human rights that would compare favourably with most countries in the world.
For example I'm pretty sure Sweden would knock Ecuador into a cocked hat over human rights - yet Foreign Minister Patino is prepared to make a fool of himself by arguing that the whole business represents a "total injustice" to Julian Assange.
If I were the UK Government I would let Mr Assange stew in his little hideaway for as long as he likes - because he's bound to get fed up sooner or later.
In the meantime I can't imagine it's a whole lot of fun - and I suspect that in some strange way Ricardo and Julian probably deserve each other.
New Assange Lawsuit (9 October 2011)
The latest edition of Private Eye does a great hatchet job on the notorious narcissist and weirdo - Julian Assange.
The magazine pokes fun at the self-serving comments made by Assange in his auto-biography - in which he suggests that the two Swedish women who acccused him of sexual assault - did so out of spite.
Because he is - or was - a chauvinist pig and not a thoughtful boyfriend.
What a nutter!
NEW ASSANGE LAWSUIT
by Our Media Correspondent
Jonathan Wikileake
"Julian Assange today announced his determination to sue the author of the new book about him, Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography.
A spokesman for Assange, who looked very similar to himself, told journalists, "Mr Assange has had enoughof these vile slurs against his charatcer and to say that women accused him of rape because he didn't phone them is clearly the mark of a diseased mind.
"I - by which I mean my client, Mr Assange - will be suing JUlian Assange as aggresivelky as possible, to show that the good name of Assange will not stand for these vile slurs about himself."
The author, Julian Assange, is said to be considering a counter-suit based on his allegations that Assange is part of a Jewish conspiracy.
If found guilty of defamation and bearing false witness, Mr Assange will either have to pay himself £10 million for loss of earnings and emotional damge, or go on a four month journalism course in AMerica, depending on whether he is judged by the Crown or Andreas Whittam-Smith.
