Just got back after a long chat with Julian Assange. We were joined for a light supper by the ever interesting and ebullient Yanis Varoufakis. Another of those brilliant evenings that will live in the mind.
Julian is very aware of the persistent rumours about his position or health. He is fine apart from a cold, and buoyed by recent events.
Thank God.
Assange won’t go down in history as a great man of our times; because those that write history are a particularly pernicious subset of those that write current affairs. Nevertheless he clearly is a great man and needs to be remembered. His good health is good news.
Depends on acedemia – the fact is WikiLeaks have shared documents with immense historic importance and any historian would be over the moon to have them – but it will probably take quite a bit of time
Good.
The way is now open for demented commenters to speculate as to which intelligence agencies Julian and indeed his dinner guests are working for.
Some will ‘know’ that he is working for the CIA. Others will be even more confident that he is working for the Russian government.
In fact he is working for the people and for truth and deserves our understanding, sympathy and support.
They are not reliable enough to be employed – that is the defining feature of useful idiots. Fellow travellers on the other hand can be trusted.
Eh?
At least that’s what Resident dissident tells the job centre when he signs on.
bevin,
Nowt wrong with a bit of dementia – just a part of growing old. I just hope I still have an open mind and wonder why people like Julian Assange and Ed Snowden (who looks exactly like a young unix “techie” guy I used to work with in London – (except he had a posh Southern English accent – he got fired – I asked make me redundant instead – but they wouldn’t) – gets such Enormous Publicity in a completely Discredited Mainstream Media..
Of course your view maybe correct…but how do you know you are right?
Jon Rappoport is even older than me. he may also be older than you – check out his view – he may of course be wrong
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/matrix-who-is-edward-snowden/
Extract
“If you can’t separate Snowden’s minor revelations from the question of who he is, if you can’t entertain the notion that covert ops and intelligence-agency games are reeking with cover stories, false trails, and limited hangouts, you need more fun in your life.
NSA? CIA? These guys live for high-level bullshit. They get down on their knees and worship it. They fall into a suicidal funk if they aren’t lying on at least three or four levels at once.
Okay. Let’s look at Snowden’s brief history as reported by The Guardian. Are there any holes?
Is the Pope Catholic?
In 2003, at age 19, without a high school diploma, Snowden enlists in the Army. He begins a training program to join the Special Forces. At what point after enlistment can a new soldier start this elite training program?
Snowden breaks both legs in an exercise. He’s discharged from the Army. Is that automatic? How about healing and then resuming service?
If he was accepted in the Special Forces training program because he had special computer skills, then why discharge him simply because he broke both legs?
“Sorry, Ed, but with two broken legs we just don’t think you can hack into terrorist data anymore. You were good, but not now. Try Walmart. They always have openings.” ”
Tony
‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ Obviously. But the real question should be: ‘Is the Pope a Christian’?
I would reply ‘no’.
The question then arises to why you think anybody else is interested in your doctrinal navel gazing.
I’m also amazed that you think your ruling on the matter of the pontiff’s religion should matter to anyone or why you think you are qualified to make it.
And finally since you see no point in making a distinction as to whether your disbelief in the pontiff’s religious leanings relates to the role of pontiff or to the person of the current holder of the office I see even less reason to ask you elaborate.
To myself as an atheist and to the increasing numbers of people the West who see no reason to believe in supernatural ruling entities such things are utterly, completely and totally irrelevant.
Wow, you dined in the garden in this time of year?
(I assume there isn’t a room big enough in the Ecuadorian embassy to fit the egos of both Julian Assange and Yanis Varoufakis at the same time.)
Bad case of tall poppy syndrome there. No ointment for that.
Varoufakis for world president!
Thank you for this, if you are possibly in contact with him anytime soon. Would you be so kind as to let him know there are those of us (The majority) Who didn’t doubt him & still support him 100% despite those ridiculous theories. All the best to you x
Thank God!! This is wonderful news!
Proof of life!
Sounds much too positive about Wikileaks and Assange now, given their working with Putin to pull off an “October Surprise” against Hillary to help elect Trump who had Chris Christie using his expertise in highjacking elections by getting non-residents of the key Rust Belt states to register illegally for absentee ballots for the dead and departed, the practice which made him Governor of New Jersey but Jill Stein’s recounts may well expose in spades.
Always risky to let one’s hatred go wild.
Guess Julian also told Craig not to say anything about any possible release.
Wow I’m getting angry at this circlejerking lack of POL.
Hope you are part of the spiriting away to safety for Julian..
“He is fine …., and buoyed by recent events.”
Like, um, Brexit?
Donald Trump’s election victory?
E. European disaffection with Syrian refugees?
The indications of imminent EU disintegration?
The rise of the Right in France?
Interesting.
I’m buoyed too. The old order is falling apart. (Sorry you didn’t make the WaPo list Craig.)
Be careful what you wish for. If the old order is replaced by something even more pernicious (as it is, aka fascism) then you may find yourself harking back to the good old days. A collapse of an old order is on only good if it is replaced by a better social and political order. There is little evidence that this is the case: Trump, new Post Brexit Westminster govt, Le Penn in France etc.
That’s right. We must always wait until everything is safe (after all, we are one of the safe now).
So thanks for the wisdom.
It’s very good news that Julian is in good health and “buoyed by recent events”, but I am surprised by the lack of news after 14th November. Can you share some of the good news with us a little more specifically Craig? Did the meeting take place on 14th, and what transpired? Or was Julian advised to keep mum about the results until further negotiations are completed?
Well thats a relief. Such wonderful news to hear he’s ok.
Why didn’t you take a selfie to actually prove your words, which are worth nothing to me and quite meaningless without any proof to back up your apparent “meeting”.
*Incoming Hillary shills to shut me down and call me a conspiracy theory for not accepting someones word for it*
And some video proof of RT broadcasts of Craig’s strongly critical opinions on Putins plutocracy while he’s at it. He was making such claims yesterday but didn’t reply when Habbs asked for evidence.
Just checked Varoufakis’ Twitter feed, and he confirms the veracity of Craig’s account here.
It’d be interesting to have some confirmation of Craig’s claims re: the somewhat more important point of the purported RT broadcasts of his strong criticism of the Putin regime.
I wonder what his thoughts are on #pizzagate and John Podesta’s very peculiar references to “food” contained in the Podesta files
That is very good news.
Hope the talk on Sikunder Burnes is received well this morning.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/11/sikunder-burnes-talk-saturday-26-november-11am-yunus-emre-cultural-centre-london/
Has Mr Assange’s postponed interview with Swedish judicial authorities (in the Ecuadorian Embassy, if course) taken place yet.
Or has it been postponed again?
OK, I’ve just seen Goss’s post on the previous thread. So what’s the upshot – have the Swedes or Mr Assange himself revealed anything of what transpired or are they keeping (uncharacteristically for Mr Assange) schtum?
“OK, I’ve just seen Goss’s post on the previous thread.”
Would that be this one?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/11/fun-russia-today/comment-page-3/#comment-639011
Keep up.
14 November 2016
Julian Assange faces Swedish prosecutor in London over rape accusation
WikiLeaks founder’s Swedish lawyer says he has been barred from attending interview, scheduled to take three days
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/14/julian-assange-to-face-swedish-prosecutors-over-accusation
Blimey! I wouldn’t like to meet that ‘female’ Swedish investigator down a dark alley!
Well, it appears that that old devil Fidel Castro (El Lider) has finally popped his clogs.
I shall of course not make the same sort of comments as were made on here when Baroness Thatcher finally died.
Yes the great man has passed away, dying a natural way, rather than an America’s way.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyK_2gcUAAA7I-K.jpg
Macks
Let it be on record that you (and presumably various ConspiraLoons) accept that the evil old El Lider died a natural death and was not assassinated by a Western intelligence agency!
Who said there was no such thing as progress…. 🙂
“and was not assassinated by a Western intelligence agency!”
Not as though it was hardly through a lack of trying !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro
Habby, you are overlooking, like Thomas Powers did in providing an Introduction to the paperback edition of John Marks’s The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’, that the CIA killed all Castro’s alleged supporters in the States, starting with JFK, MLK and RFK.
Trow
So let’s get this straight: the CIA believed that JFK, MLK and RFK were supporters of El Lider and killed them in consequence. Have I got that right?
Right, starting with trying to make LHO, the double-agent back in the States, a MC by rapid hypnosis in July 1963, and when it failed because he wouldn’t go along with the plan, he was set up as the patsy, though it worked with James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan.
Start reading some serious books rather than just playing tag-team with some buddy.
Do us all a service, Trow, and list a few of those “serious books”, would you?
You know : titles and authors.
Thanks.
Well, read Marks’s book for starters, beginning with what he says about rapid hypnosis at the bottom of the p. 244. and what he adds in the text on pp. 202-5.
Then there is what that lying bastard Gerald Posner wrote in Killing The Dream: James Earl Pay and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. about Raoul, aka Harvey Steinmeyer and William King Harvey.
And read carefully what William Pepper has written in An Act of State, Jim Garrison On the Trail of the Assassins, and Peter Dale Scott In Deep Politics and the Death of JFK.
Then there is the unpublished manuscript that I have written about it all.
There was a man.
You should hear the obits on the BBC and Sky. Through gritted teeth they report his success against the corruption and decay of the US stooge Batista but they emphasize the Bay of Pigs episode and the Kruschev association. I haven’t heard much from either of them about the Cuban education and health systems he instigated which knock the American versions into a cocked hat.
Look at the end of the BBC report. How vile.
‘Despised by his critics as much as he was revered by his followers, he outlasted 10 US presidents and defied scores of attempts on his life by the CIA.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Castro “one of the most iconic personalities of the 20th century” saying his country mourned his loss. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Castro was a “great friend” of Mexico.
But in Miami, where there is a large Cuban community, there have been celebrations in some parts of the city.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-38114953
Goodbye brave Fidel. You survived 634 CIA attempts to assassinate you.
Former Cuban president Fidel Castro dies
The death of the revolutionary leader, who faced 634 assassination plots between 1958 and 2000, is announced on state television.
http://news.sky.com/story/former-cuban-president-fidel-castro-dies-10672353
” he outlasted 10 US presidents ”
____________________
It is usually the case that an efficient despot outlasts a series of leaders who get reelected – or not – in a democracy.
Castro had a social conscience. He was well-liked by those who liked him and despised by the rich who took their ill-gotten gains to Miami (from where to criticise the regime they stole from). The Cuban rich of Miami are dancing in the streets.
Thatcher on the other hand was a tyrant. She was one of the rich (those who criticise Castro) who stole from the poor, starting with free milk for schoolchildren to the livelihoods of the mining communities. When those communities celebrated her death they were no different from the Cuban-rich of Miami.
Castro was in many ways a wise leader. One example could be the closing down of the US Embassy in 1961. If Ukraine had done the same a few years back there might not have been the civil-war which took the lives of 10,000 Ukrainians thankd to the manouvrings of US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt (who has now left the ship).
Poroshenko will not be long behind him. We don’t want him bringing his blood-money to the UK.
Just how many people died in Castro’s prison camps? Is that what you mean by a social conscience?
Resident Dissident
Don’t bother – Goss works on the principle that every foreign politician (or in this case, despot) who is anti-West is a truly excellent fellow.
Oh Lord.
Are there still El Caudillo Batista supporters alive.
Missing their casinos and prostitution.
Sick.
Very sick.
Herbie
How do you read that out of my posts?
You can consider El Lider to have been an evil old despot without that meaning that you are a Batista supporter.
D’ye see what I mean?
It’s simple.
But get back to me if you don’t understand, won’t you.
Was Batista an evil old despot?
I’m not sure I’d use the word “despot”, Herbie.
Just a typical Latin American tin-pot dictator I’d say.
The chief characteristic of Latin American dictators is their inefficiency; that is why they tend to get overthrown before too long (OK, General Stroessner was an exception).
El Lider, on the other hand, hung on to power for over half a century.
Anything else you’d like explained?
No charge, as always.
In what way was Castro worse than Batista?
How do you read support for Batista out of my posts at 14h07 and 14h09?
Answer the question, please.
In what way was Castro worse than Batista?
You answer my question first, Herbie.
My question to you preceded yours to me (time stamps refer).
Thing is, habby.
You’re very vocal on your distate for Castro.
But go all schtum when asked about Batista.
Tells its own story, eh.
And you, Herbie, are very quick to read support for Battista into my posts about El Lider.
That’s really “the thing”, isn’t it.
Anyway, I note with amusement but not surprise that you are unwilling to answer my question about what you wrote.
Come back when you’re ready to do so, eh?
No Batista was a disgusting skunk with strong links to organised crime – not that stops many here in supporting Putin – but that doesn’t automatically make Castro a good guy, unless you are into moral relativism. Strangely no one wants to answer my question regarding how many died in Castro’s prison camps. Is it because they don’t believe anyone did? Or is it because they don’t care? Or because they believe that the ends justify the means, or you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs or similar. Or are they in mourning for the world’s last significant Marxist Leninist and don’t wish to acknowledge the faults of that failed creed?
The good ole days, eh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rELHYmjvA
And you don’t talk very much about the US prison population.
The largest in the world.
“In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world’s population, it houses around 22 percent of the world’s prisoners.[1] Corrections (which includes prisons, jails, probation, and parole) cost around $74 billion in 2007 according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.[2][3]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
The point is that both yourself and habby are always mouthing off about this or that bogey man.
To what useful end, it’s hard to know.
Didn’t help you in discussing Syria, or the Ukraine or Iraq or whatever.
It’s just baby talk.
RD; “Strangely no one wants to answer my question regarding how many died in Castro’s prison camps. Is it because they don’t believe anyone did? Or is it because they don’t care? Or because they believe that the ends justify the means, or you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs or similar. Or are they in mourning for the world’s last significant Marxist Leninist and don’t wish to acknowledge the faults of that failed creed?”
None of the above; it was an unavoidable result of the 50 year campaign of US sponsored sedition, as no country has defied US imperialism without resorting to authoritarianism; Castro and Che were operating in the aftermath of a CIA coup in Guatemala, a country where US clients committed genocide.
Whatever – did you use the same excuse when you were give detentions at school?
RD; “No Batista was a disgusting skunk with strong links to organised crime”
Too true; and let’s not forget that Batista’s secret police ‘BRAC’ in Cuba was created by CIA. It tortured and killed thousands all with US backing.
RD; “Is that what you mean by a social conscience?”
When Cuba & prison camps are mentioned, the World’s social conscience automatically hinks of the US torture facility, at Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are known to have been tortured to death, and where many are still currently suffering abuses, yet I’ve never seen RD’s “social conscience” troubled by this, instead his has a predilection for always going back in time, to victims that are beyond help now; a cynic might be forgiven to think that RD’s “social conscience” is more interested in using victims from history for point-scorng, rather than with the current victims of on-going Human Right abuses.
Perhaps you should check up what I have actually said and believe on Guantanamo.
On the other hand you could just rely on your perfect and infallible sense of revolutionary justice.
And once you’ve done that you can search for when I expressed support for Thatcher and Pinochet. Hopefully that should keep you engaged as Mr Goss on the bit of homework that I have just set for him.
Interesting that power in Cuba passed to El Lider’s brother Raul, wasn’t it.
But I suppose Raul was “well liked” by El Lider.
For those wishing to know a social conscience can be found in state leaders who provide free education and a free health care system, available for all, at the point of access, regardless of wealth or privilege.
Nobody likes to think of people dying in prison but if RD would like to provide some names I’ll check to see whether any of them were amongst those trying to assasinate the Cuban leader. 🙂
There are over 10,000 names here
http://cubaarchive.org/wordpress/wp_database/
Look forward to hearing from you as to how many were involved in trying to assassinate Castro – sometime in the 2020s hopefully.
Well, for all his faults Castros legacy was excellent healthcare and high standards of education for the cuban citizens. Few would seriously argue that Thatcher left the world a better place after her period in power?
Not just for Cubans; this is Fidel Castro’s legacy to the World, despite 50 years of spiteful U.S. blockade, which still couldn’t stop Cuba from achieving greatness;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyL-0c6XAAAiIj2.jpg
Wow, there are some real cuckoos visiting the nest, of all colours and denominations. I don’t know whether to feel depressed about the state of humanity, or feel buoyed by the possibility that the sane choose to refrain from commenting. Especially about stuff like Assange is dead, Assange has been droned, Assange has been nuked, Assange is possessed by the CIA, Assange is Putin’s man, Assange is an alien, Assange hacked the US electoral results, Assange hacked the Brexit referendum, Assange warned Bob Dylan not to visit Sweden, Assange attempted to poison Hillary’s turkey, Assange celebrates Black Friday with London’s West End power black-out. All when Assange has a cold. Honestly!
So,where is the ‘news’ Craig that you would engage with perfectly deluded nuts? Especially when these nuts are holding us up from transcending our Type Zero Global Civilisation state.
We human beings deserve every bit of crap that is the socio-political-economic lot of our poverty of mind today. But the actual billions of human beings who have material poverty–inadequate food, water, clothing and shelter, I’m not sure of. The Unknown Villager. Anyone know one?
“Julian is very aware of the persistent rumours about his position or health”
He could dispel them all by appearing at his window in the embassy, as he used to do regularly.
For all we know, the embassy may have asked or ordered him not to.
In case anyone tried to assassinate him, you mean?
Odd…because i’ve read elsewhere he is in POOR health because he’s unable to get to a hospital to have an MRI done! Which is it??? Can you people get your stories straight before posting nonsense? Going in circles and not providing anything speaks VOLUMES.
I am glad to hear that Julian Assange is in good health and spirits. I hope that you always pass him the good wishes of those on here who wish him well, including myself.
I trust he gets plenty of Vitamin D supplements given that he hasn’t seen the sun for half a decade. Even the convicts in supermax prisons get an hour’s daylight each day.
I understand that the results of the question and answer session at which Swedish prosecutors attended have to be prepared as a written report by the Ecuadorian authorities and sent to Sweden. Presumably some decisions will be made after that. Given the glacial progress of the case so far, I would not expect prompt action.
It would be interesting to know if Mr Assange gave a DNA sample.
I think that it is worth reflecting that if Julian Assange faced a jury trial in the UK (in fact, it is not clear that his alleged crime would even be classed as a crime in this country – although I am not necessarily endorsing that as a good thing), an experienced defence barrister would tear it all to rags, in my opinion. With the history of this case, no jury would bring in a conviction in a million years.
Best of luck to him.
A somewhat more balanced take on Assange here I think :
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/julian-assange-rape-sexual-assault-allegations-a7365911.html
@Jim, “more balanced “ !!! Let’s see:
Nice “moderate” head !;
“Julian Assange is no hero of the left – after years evading justice, he’s now buddying up with Donald Trump”
Ok, let’s give the benefit of doubt and see if the article can support its headline;
“Donald Trump is the greatest threat to Western civilisation we have faced since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
WTF ! If this is hysterical start is “moderate”, what the hell is immoderate ?!
First justification for this hysteria ?;
“If elected, he threatens to jail his opponent, Hillary Clinton. “
Right, so stating that one of the most corrupt politicians in the US will be sent to jail, is the primary reason why Trump is the “greatest threat to Western civilisation ! ! 😀
Next, evidence free smearsl;
“Assange’s alliance with Donald Trump” & “may share a fondness for the conservative patriarchy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia” – (note the weasel “may”, the standard escape clause when engaging in smearing)
How about this;
“It is easy to forget how influential WikiLeaks once was.”
If WikiLeaks’ influence was in the past, why is the idiot writing this drivel in the first place, complaining that WikiLeaks has the power to subvert US Elections ?!
Next come the outright lies;
“He was due to be interviewed by police on 14 October 2010, but instead fled Sweden for London in late September.”
No, Assange stayed in Sweden for 5 weeks in order to be questioned, during which time the prosecutor declined to question him on a number of occasions. Assange left Sweden with the consent of the prosecutor.
Next the misrepresentations;
“Instead, people made excuses.”
Err, little excuses like, On 19 May 2016, the FBI told a US court that it continues to actively pursue Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. On 15 March 2016, the US Department of Justice filed a 113 page document to court saying that there is a pending national security prosecution against Assange and WikiLeaks. A federal warrant from 2012 shows that the WikiLeaks case concerns Espionage, Conspiracy to commit Espionage, Theft of Government Property, Electronic Espionage (classed as a terrorism offence under the Patriot Act), and (general) Conspiracy.
Next the smear of guilt not just by association, but by possible association !;
“ I exposed damning evidence that suggested a close associate of Assange had given top secret US embassy cables to the dictator of Belarus, which may have landed brave democracy activists in prison.
Note the standard sly smearing escape clauses by using the words “suggested” & “may”.
However towards the end these escape clause qualifiers have disappeared, and the naked smear is made that Assange has helped the dictator of Belarus;
“helping the dictator of Belarus”
If you really think this hit-piece is “balanced”, then I really think that you must be mentally very much unbalanced !
I’m going to re-post this thread on on Corbyn Over 50’s Group on FB, we need cheering up.
Get ready for a row if you do. I’ve already had numerous punch-ups over the Assange case with good friends on the left.
They’re not left.
They’re ismists.
The elite replacement for the economic left.
Naw. They’re good hearted people who have not studied the case in detail.
But they have a view.
A negative view.
Where’d they get that?
Media slant, I expect.
Plenty of people on the left take the view that just because Assange is a left icon, that should not exempt him from due process if he has engaged in criminal sexual behaviour. They note that two women have made allegations against him, and resent what they perceive as a refusal to take that testimony seriously and to dismiss it as a right-wing conspiracy against him.
Had I not studied this case with a good deal of care, that would probably be my position too.
It’s brainwashing really, isn’t it.
I doubt that Assange considers himself leftwing.
Closer to a libertarian, I’d imagine.
I’m sure he thinks left and right aren’t very useful concepts.
Herbie; But libertarian is a catch-all for left and right, even some anarchists.
Julian doesn’t fit any one, except maybe he is conditioned with more than his share of narcissism.
It’s an information thing.
He’s libertarian on information.
Wrote a book about the necessity of that.
As I said, I doubt he values the terms left and right.
They’re not very useful these days.
Are there Putin files on Wiki? I suspect so.
It’s the US that’s radically divided.
That’s why there’s more leaks.
If you haven’t worked that out yet, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Yes. I can see how much attention you’re paying…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-anti-russian-julian-assange-leaking-vladimir-putin-dirty-secrets-russia-alexei-navalny-a7394986.html
I think the divisions in the US are much deeper than nonentities like Navalny.
That’s just wishful thinking, I’m afraid.
Anyway.
If you’re looking for leakers in the US, you could do worse than look at your israeli chums.
There are big big connections between Trump and Netanyahu and more particularly with Bennet and the settlers.
And there are many many Israelis in the US with access to everything and anything they want.
Been at it for years.
Name-dropper 🙂
The word that gave me comfort was the fact that he felt ‘bouyed’ by recent events. Hopefully it will put an end to these years of suffering Julian has undergone thanks to what most likely was a US ‘honey-trap’ to stop Wikileaks publishing the truth so that unholy regime could continue its programme of world hegemony.
Wake up! Trump won…Julian Assange helped him. If you think what went before was unholy just wait for what Joolz’ golden boy is going to unleash. Christ, you people are beyond belief.
Don’t tell me to wake up Sleepy-Eyes. Some of us have been awake a long time. Trump was awake to an event 15 years ago that most people slept through and are still sleeping through thanks to MSM. You can hear what he said in the video in this link.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-99/#comment-636740
He might not be an engineer, or a politician, but he listens to others. Perhaps you should do the same because by the tone of your comments there is little content worthy of note.
So your hero is a ‘truther’ as well as a ‘birther’, what a surprise! Nice company you’re keeping.
That’s what I meant “by the tone of your comments there is little content worthy of note.”
You seem to place a lot of faith in the ‘content’ of inane conspiracy theories regarding 9/11, commonly derided by sensible commentators such as for instance Noam Chomsky.
Trump believes patent nonsense like this, as well as the utterly malignant ‘birther’ theories he espoused so loudly. You appear to be a fan of the bouffant-haired Sage. I think the contemptuous tone is eminently justified.
Does the comment in the link provided seem like I am a fan of Trump. Because if it does to you there is something wrong with your comprehension. And your attempt to put me into the Trump camp is as bad as some of our former dissenters. Do I recognise you? Have you appeared in another guise James?
John: I think it’s extremely unlikely that these events were intended as a honey-trap.
If that were true, presumably there would have been prior collusion between AA and SW. I don’t know of any evidence to suggest that.
Also, the evidence given to the by AA and SW does not suggest a deliberate plot, in my opinion. Consider, that the alleged crimes took place without witnesses and rest almost entirely on whose evidence is believed. If the matter were a honey-trap, surely the evidence of AA and SW would have been much stronger. They could easily have said that Julian Assange terrified them with threats of violence into doing whatever he wished. They said nothing of the kind.
I am much more inclined to believe that this occurred without any pre-planning and the authorities are taking advantage of it. I also think that the behaviour of the prosecutors has a good deal more to do with pride, obstinacy and bureaucracy than any sort of plot. As one goes higher up the chain of political authority different motives may enter into the matter, certainly.
My own prediction is that the charge will be dismissed and the prosecutor will be glad to be rid of the case.
“I don’t know of any evidence to suggest that.”
If they both had different handlers it is quite possible they never met before.
Anna Ardin has worked in Swedish embassies abroad. Topically, with the death yesterday of Fidel Castro, she wrote her thesis on Cuban right-wing opposition groups which (I suspect) she went to Cuba on a US grant to interview. She does not make a single mention in this thesis about the great wart on the face of US imperialism Guantanamo Bay.
There is some evidence to suggest that AA has right-wing connections and sympathies. I do not know of any such evidence that SW is anything other than an ordinary citizen. The idea that she has a “handler” is a pretty wild charge.
Presumably there would have had to have been collusion between their respective “handlers”, then. I know of no evidence to suggest this.
You have not addressed the point I made that in the event of a honey-trap, the evidence given by these unscrupulous women could, and presumably would, have been much stronger and more incriminating.
My own feeling, because SS handlers do not publicise details of their agents, is that Anna Ardin, who offered her empty home to the Wikileaks co-founder while she was away, then suddenly turned up a day early. While she was away I wonder how many cameras were monitoring him? How many microphones? You know how the secret sevices work.
Yes, less is known about Sofia Wilen and she may have been recruited, or offered large sums of money, after Assange had had a second relationship. I certainly think the first affair has all the ingredients of having been pre-planned. I also think because of its rape laws Sweden was particularly picked, a country that had gone from being a good socialist country before the assassination of Olaf Palme, to a right-wing puppet annexe of the US under the likes of Reinfeldt and “Bilderberger” Bildt.
Just as an aside as I mentioned the Bilderberg group has anybody been watching Strictly Come Dancing. By far the most cumbersome, ungainly and inarticulate dancer, Ed Balls, is still there after real dancing talent has been pushed out by him. He has no shame. I see it as and attempt to get his name and face into the public eye in hope that they can get one of their key people back into power.
Ordinary Masons are unlikely to know what happens in the groups that control the groups. But voting for him in Strictly is as silly as voting him back into parliament. He has limited talent in dancing or politics.
Bit of a digression there. Apols.
You have not addressed the point I made that in the event of a honey-trap, the evidence given by these unscrupulous women could, and presumably would, have been much stronger and more incriminating.
It is not necessarily true regarding strength of evidence. They cannot invent things though the whole is pretty well fabricated.
Why don’t you guys look at the facts rather than just barking up the wrong trees?
The pursuit of Assange was neither a deep ‘honey trap’ nor a lesser one cooked up at the time but rather one made up two months after the incidents.
I don’t agree in the least. Of course they can invent things. There’s no evidence beyond their testimonies against Assange’s. And a woman unscrupulous enough to enter into a honey-trap against Assange, and another unscrupulous enough to be bribed into giving false testimony against him, would surely not balk at saying Assange threatened to belt them if they didn’t go to bed with him. Who’s to disprove it? That would make it a very much stronger case of rape immediately.
I don’t think you have thought it through, John.
The first alleged assault took place on 13-14 August 2010. The second alleged assault took place on 17 August 2010. The complainants visited the police station on 20 August 2010.
“I don’t think you have thought it through, John.”
I’ve probably been thinking it through as long as you John and most of my comments regarding this are on the Anna Ardin thread before you started commenting here. I could be wrong. But getting the word “rape” and “Assange” together in all the world headlines the day after the police interview rather disproves what Trowbridge alleges about it being an afterthought two months later.
Anyway, I can’t spend any more time on this. I just hope that Julian Assange will soon be free and that Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen are not paid anything for their efforts.
Goss
You mentioned (not too my surprise) the Bilderbergers.
Do you see any evidence of Rothschild, Goldman Sachs, Illuminati and Säpo involvement in the Assange affair?
Actually I think I was commenting here long before the AA thread got going.
I’m sure you have lived with the case as least as long as I have. What I am pointing out is that your conclusion appears to make no sense. If AA plotted this with her handler from the beginning, they would have done a much better and more incriminating job, in my view. My own opinion is that this was happenstance which has been seized on by interested parties to damage Assange.
I’d like to suggest that it’s more conducive to view things in the light of what interests benefitted from the odd play of events in Stockholm.
Clearly events surrounding JA coming to Stockholm were manipulated to a lesser or greater extent. The way SW entered center stage from a black whole in Enköping only to return a short time after and never to been seen or heard of since. Magical! Or, if fairy-tails don’t do it, she was there to do a job. The job seemed not very challenging since it basically meant to get JA’s attention. Then this became the catalyst in the emo-drama with AA and the police.
If one strictly look at the increase in WL’s “brand value”, and the increase of influence and credibility that WL has experienced since the Stockholm event, reality shows that the Stockholm event has helped propelling the WL brand.
Therefore, cui bono? One way to look at it is that WL is the winner. JA is the winner. It basically turned out the way it was supposed to turn out. In this scenario AA was played and used to create the public waves. That would make the event in Stockholm a type of PSYOP marketing event for WL. Either he is in on it to or someone plays him hard.
And JA spends five years holed up in an embassy room to promote his brand?
Well, if, as some assume, WL is an intelligence op from the beginning to end, then so many other factors and interests weigh in, apart from JA’s personal comfort. Especially considering current events, where WL has matured as a tool used for perception management on a global scale. Well played. Assuming WL history a connection to Israel interests seem logical. Why would they prefer Trump to Hilary? More to come I guess.
Fidel Castro was far from a perfect human being, and I think it behooves the left to recognise that, as well as recognising the achievements of the Cuban people with his leadership in the face of the most extraordinary and prolonged hostility from the most powerful nation on earth.
On the other hand, while I am sure his life will be celebrated and his passing mourned in Cuba and all over the world, I doubt that the left will accord him the kind of sickening hero-worship and adulation that the right demands for Churchill and Thatcher.
Castro was a puppet under the Soviet thumb. Those praising him here would condemn any western leader who allowed a super-power to station nuclear weapons in his country.
Is that you, Henry Kissenger?
Tell me, how comes you and all the other lunatics are so sprightly at your age? I begin to have suspicions …
Yes. Viva Fidel. Viva Che. Well done. And it’s time to get Trident and it’s nuclear weapons out of Scotland.
Venceremos! Or perhaps not.
That is probably a pointless and inane comment. Having extricated themselves from under the American gangster mafia thumb, what’s a revolutionary to do? Make a deal with the regime that fostered and propagated the very neo-colonialism and gangster economics that they had just escaped. Castro was as a product of the time, just as Trump is a product of this time. Now we have the naked truth -that a tax -dodging half wit, narrow minded bigoted crook is about to become the face of USA.
OK the soviet empire was not the ideal partner but for someone looking to establish progressive socialist alternatives it was the only option in the face of the hostility from its near neighbour.
‘Independence’ and ‘freedom’ -see Gary Yonge’s article today in the Guardan.
well! I would have loved to hear some of Yanis Varoufakis thoughts on the brexit shennanigans and Trump. Come on – it myst be worth a post.
You should hear what most Greeks think of Mr Varoufakis……
The current Finance Minister, Evklidis Tsakalotos, is sanity compared to that narcisstic nutter.
“You should hear what most Greeks think of Mr Varoufakis……”
Please direct to where we can verify this baseless assertion.
Go to Greece and talk to people on the street, Macks.
Mind you, he’s so much yesterday’s man that one has to remind a good few of them who the Devil he was! 🙂
You must have used up a lot of shoe leather during your street walking for your sampling of “most Greeks” !
Castro was caught between a rock, the USA, and a hard place, the most distant USSR.
He had Stalin’s problems, writ small, unwilling to expand his revolution to make it more legitimate, and unable to do without the USSR/
Castro will be remembered for trying to resolve the riddle, but not mourned.
He took “his revolution” to S.W. Africa and thus indirectly helped in the defeat of Apartheid.
Unable to do without the USSR because of Yanqui sanctions and covert interference.
He will be mourned by many.
Castro did help in SA to end Apartheid a decade after Che had been ambushed, but there was no chance of his taking his revolution there.
Just another ripple in resolving the riddle.
Petition against the Snoopers Charter, already 93,400 and rising fast, they need to get 100,000 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199
95,902 including mine. Thanks KOWN. Will spread.
https://www.change.org/p/the-scottish-call-for-nicola-sturgeon-to-stand-down-as-first-minister-of-scotland
nearly 35000 want Frau Sturgeon to sling her crooked hook
Now up to 108,561 with mine, and rising! So it will get debated.
It will easily reach the 100,000 mark after only three days. This is no excuse for people to stop signing. What little freedom we have left could be taken away with this government surveillance programme. It must be made illegal though I doubt it can be stopped.
“This is no excuse for people to stop signing”
Sounds a little like the Blockwart in the merry old German “Democratic” Republic drumming up signatures for the latest official petition.
Were then any petitions IN Castro’s Cuba – or was everything so perfect that they never felt the need?
Now that the evil old despot (I refer to El Lider, of course) has – finally – popped his clogs, brother Raul is now really Nombre Uno in merry little Cuba.
But Brother Raul is getting on as well.
Who, I wonder, will succeed him when he finally passes on?
Will Castro’s Cuba outlive the Castros?
Or are there any nephews waiting in the wings?
Everyone is either ignorant of, or forgetting about Fidel’s wanting a nuclear war in the wake of the JFK assassination which he knew about because of the CIA setting up LHO as its patsy beforehand in Cuba.
Thanks goodness that Momo’s assassins, especially Richard Cain, shot co-conspirator Gov. John Connally too or we would all be nuclear ash now.
Source? Link? I am aware of Castro having wanted such a war at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I am unaware of any evidence that he wanted a nuclear war at the time of the assassination (although there is plenty of evidence that figures in the CIA and the U.S. military did).
“I am aware of Castro having wanted such a war at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
_______________________
Is that so – I didn’t know that.
If so, that makes him a sort of Caribbean Dr Strangelove, doesn’t it.
I wonder what his admirers on here will have to say about that.
Probably nothing.
Take me a while to find it.
Probably in something that Summers wrote about Castro being so bitter about the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and wanting to get back at both Khrushchev and Kennedy.
Perhaps you had in mind the CIA’s disinformation campaign? How the CIA tried to implicate Castro in JFK’s assassination. They were trying to blame Castro for the JFK assassination (which could have caused a nuclear war), not for seeking to bring about a nuclear war.l
Think that Castro’s letter to Khrushchev, dated October 26, 1962, that he would do everything he could to punish the USA if it ever invaded Cuba, and the Soviet leader should do the same – i.e., launch a first strike an America.
In the next 13 months, America’s covert government planned just that, triggered by assassinating JFK, which was to be followed by a removal of the Cuban regime.
In anticipation of that, especially since the USSR was no longer willing to do so, Castro had gone back on the conditions of the Missile Crisis settlement, preventing the removal of all the intermediate, nuclear-armed missiles, and apparently shooting down on November 20, 1963 a U-2 spy plane, piloted by Captain Joe ‘Glenn’ Hyde, Jr., in the process.
If the set-up plan had gone according to plan, the invasion would have followed the assassination, and Castro would have hit the invading force, and the homeland with nuclear missiles.
The shooting of Connally, most likely accidentally, ruined the plan, and everything had to be covered up as best it could.
Still looking for the source about two defecting Soviet colonels. willing to testify about Moscow going back on the terms of the settlement if it ever came to that.
‘buoyed by recent events”
The Trump victory?
Really. I don’t know wtf to make of the putative ‘left’.
I wonder how deep Julian’s mourning for Fidel goes. Is he that Old Guard?
Difficult to say, Kief. But the far-leftues are a kind of sodomites circle, aren’t they? Buggers but loyal to one another.
‘loyal to one another…’
Boy, are you wrong.