By: Ivan A. Lopakhin, special to Cathedral City Observed
Summary: Julian Assange, the problematic houseguest of Ecuador’s London embassy, finally outstayed his welcome and was expelled from the Embassy this morning. The process of British justice against the WikiLeaks cofounder has creaked into motion, while on both sides of the pond, conspiracy theorists and irate supporters of “Democratic” presidential wannabe Bernard Sanders are whipping themselves into a frenzy and waxing wroth against Her Majesty’s Government, and against the American intelligence communities. For votaries of the cult of personality that is the Sanders campaign, this morning’s news cannot have been welcome.
----------------------------------------------------
A little bit before 11 this morning, London time, just as bankers in The City, bureaucrats in Whitehall, barristers at the Inns of Court, and Billingsgate fishwives were preparing for their Elevenses, British police, acting at the express request of the Ecuadorian Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, entered Ecuador’s embassy in Knightsbridge, hard by Harrods, and seized the person of WikiLeaks co-founder and doubtless Russian asset Julian Assange.
The explosion of anger from the Sanders left in the United States was immediate and utterly predictable. However, while American Sanders “progressives” may be waxing wroth and spinning ever more Baroque and Byzantine conspiracy theories, it is significant that there has been relatively little reaction from the Kremlin or the intelligence apparat of the Russian State. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, an experienced KGB case officer, knows when to cut his losses and burn an asset.
While there may not be a lot of schadenfreude within the confines of the Moscow Kremlin, there is certainly some palatable schadenfreude among Hillary Clinton loyalists and supporters of the Democratic National Committee. After all, Gospodin Assange, whose Russian connections are an open secret, positioned himself as an eager adversary of Hillary Clinton. Indeed, so obvious was Assange’s misogynistic disdain for Hillary Clinton, that it was impossible not to infer that he was acting on behalf of Donald Trump, the Russian state, or both.
Indeed, after the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016, many angry Sanders supporters, drifting ineluctably in the direction of Donald Trump and the Russian state, looked to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to vindicate their failed cause. The comment threads of nearly every article concerning Hillary Clinton, Bernard Sanders, or WikiLeaks, contained either predictions that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks would sooner or later bring down the Clinton campaign and “expose” how the primary election process had been “rigged” against Bernard Sanders.
Indeed, the #neverHillary and “Bernie or bust” movements, with the active, knowing, complicity of Gospodin Zuckerberg and Facebook, eagerly and uncritically disseminated both Trump campaign talking points and disinformation from WikiLeaks, treating the latter as if it were gospel. Never once did the #neverHillary or “Bernie or bust” cultists ever once undertake any due diligence whatsoever. Instead, they eagerly repeated what Gospodin Assange chose to release.
Now, of course, the Sanders intransigents, the Japanese-holdout-on-Pacific-island-sore-losers, the followers of the Bernie personality cult, have begun to fabricate a congenial, if cynical, mythology of Assange as some kind of “journalistic martyr for freedom of expression.”
Never mind that Gospodin Assange has never, not even once, disclosed any material embarrassing to the interests of the Russian State, or to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself.
Never mind that in his ill-advised interview with Gospodin Assange, Bill Maher extracted a promise from Gospodin Assange that Gospodin Assange would secure and release Donald Trump’s tax returns, a promise Gospodin Assange ostentatiously did not keep.
Never mind that Gospodin Assange sued the very Ecuadorian State which had offered him asylum and refuge, and smeared feces on the walls of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Never mind that Julian Assange has never been a credentialed journalist, and that he has never written a single article for any journalistic outlet.
Never mind all that. The gullible and easily manipulated votaries and fellow travelers of the Sanders left, foolish people who managed to make Joe McCarthy look good, will whinge and wail, ball and squall, and sling snot and spittle in their outrage that Julian Assange, wanted on charges of bail jumping, rape of an underage minor, and criminal computer hacking, in three separate countries, will finally be brought to account for the brazen way in which he has thumbed his nose at the Royal Government of Sweden, at Her Majesty’s Government in the UK, and at the American people.
The Komsomoltsy of the Bernie Sanders cult and the foolish followers of Gospodin Trump should perhaps stop waxing wroth and start worrying about what Julian Assange may have to say should he decide either to start cooperating or instruct his followers to try to burn down the world in some kind of Götterdämmerung orgy of Assange–ish narcissism. For what Assange knows and may be prepared to make public could very well be more than enough to destroy both Donald Trump and Bernard Sanders.
Karma, it seems, is ineluctable.
-xxx-
Ivan Arkadyevich Lopakhin, who posts occasionally in this blog is, like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, a hybrid. Of Russo-American parentage, he has been a critic and gadfly of the governments of the Russian State since he was a Young Pioneer and aspiring Komsomolets in Leningrad. Since his widowed mom brought him back from the Soviet Union to Southern California, Ivan has been a devoted American, surfer, husband, father, and occasional yente for American companies wanting to risk doing business in Russkiy Otechestvo. The views set forth herein are entirely his own.
