{"id":40148,"date":"2018-11-04T19:12:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T00:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40148"},"modified":"2018-11-04T19:13:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T00:13:47","slug":"what-empire-loyalists-are-really-saying-when-they-bash-julian-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40148","title":{"rendered":"What Empire Loyalists Are Really Saying When They Bash Julian\u00a0Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title eltd-post-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2018\/11\/02\/what-empire-loyalists-are-really-saying-when-they-bash-julian-assange\/\">What Empire Loyalists Are Really Saying When They Bash Julian\u00a0Assange<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"eltd-blog-single-share\">\n<div class=\"eltd-social-share-holder eltd-dropdown\">\n<div class=\"eltd-social-share-dropdown\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<article id=\"post-5506\" class=\"post-5506 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-article category-news tag-julian-assange tag-smears tag-wikileaks tag-wired\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-content\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-image-area\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-newsroom_elated_post_feature_image size-newsroom_elated_post_feature_image wp-post-image\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-Shot-2018-11-03-at-3.56.08-AM.png?fit=883%2C524&amp;ssl=1\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 883px) 100vw, 883px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-Shot-2018-11-03-at-3.56.08-AM.png?w=883&amp;ssl=1 883w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-Shot-2018-11-03-at-3.56.08-AM.png?resize=300%2C178&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Screen-Shot-2018-11-03-at-3.56.08-AM.png?resize=768%2C456&amp;ssl=1 768w\" alt=\"\" width=\"883\" height=\"524\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"eltd-post-text\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-text-inner clearfix\">\n<p><em>Wired<\/em> has just published what might be the single most brazenly dishonest and manipulative piece of down-punching empire smut that I have ever read. An article by Virginia Heffernan titled \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/archive.is\/6poNj\">The Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy<\/a>\u201d revolves around the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AssangeDefence\/status\/1054096480909320197\">outright lie<\/a> that Julian Assange is suing the Ecuadorian government because he doesn\u2019t feel like cleaning up after his cat and maintaining basic hygiene in the embassy he\u2019s been confined to since 2012. In reality, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/11\/02\/assa-n02.html\">the\u00a0legal case arose<\/a>\u00a0from the fact that despite being granted political asylum for his journalism, Assange has for months been cut off from the world and forbidden to practice journalism by the new government of Ecuador, and would remain unable to practice journalism under the new conditions Quito recently imposed upon him.<\/p>\n<p>The article reads as though its author is attempting to force snarky humor through a thick fog of hatred and personal misery while seeing how many lies she can pack into each paragraph. Heffernan claims falsely that Assange is \u201cwanted on various criminal charges\u201d; Assange has not been charged with anything.\u00a0Heffernan claims falsely that Assange \u201chas been closely linked to the Kremlin and Russian president Vladimir Putin\u201d; this is just objectively false with no evidence backing it up whatsoever.\u00a0Heffernan claims falsely that \u201cthe distinct possibility has surfaced that during his embassy tenure Assange communicated with Roger Stone, Donald Trump\u2019s consigliere, via magic decoder rings or the internet\u201d; there\u2019s no evidence that Stone had any back channel with WikiLeaks, and the information he notoriously amplified\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AssangeDefence\/status\/1058356406083039236\">was already public<\/a>.\u00a0Heffernan claims falsely that WikiLeaks is \u201cRussia-aligned\u201d; another assertion for which there is zero evidence and <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@caityjohnstone\/wikileaks-has-published-leaks-on-trump-admin-and-russia-and-is-seeking-more-e36d53151394\">much evidence to the contrary<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Empire Loyalists Are Really Saying When They Bash Julian\u00a0Assange Wired has just published what might be the single most brazenly dishonest and manipulative piece of down-punching empire smut that I have ever read. An article by Virginia Heffernan titled \u201cThe Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy\u201d revolves around the outright lie that Julian Assange [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17039,8739,259,22786,2001,471,694,22787,857,880,2007],"class_list":["post-40148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-caitlin-johnstone","tag-ecuador","tag-empire","tag-empire-loyalists","tag-julian-assange","tag-kremlin","tag-russia","tag-viriginia-heffernan","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-wikileaks","tag-wired"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40149,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40148\/revisions\/40149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}