Assange has not been on the wikileaks staff for 6 months, reportedly. It’s not even clear whether he has internet access anymore. And obviously, if they had been silent on this matter people would now throw accusations of a convenient coverup.

Well that's interesting. It suggests that whoever controls the Wikileaks twitter account may have intended this to happen. And it's a rather interesting time to be stirring up this particular pot in the UK...

> And it's a rather interesting time to be stirring up this particular pot in the UK...

Can you elaborate? I can't think of any reason why this would be more or less interesting than any time since the Swedes dropped the rape case. But i can't say I've been following that closely recently.

The UK is in the middle of a constitutional and social crisis that goes by the name of Brexit.

I'm aware. What's that got to do with Assange?

Assange is a polarizing figure. He's a reminder of how irritating it is to comply with international law (it wasn't an uncommon sentiment in the UK that they should just barge in to the embassy and get him anyway). He's a reminder of "overly liberal" European laws (there was a lot of talk about the supposedly unreasonable nature of Sweden's rape laws).

In other words, nothing directly, but just seeing his name again is, politically, so much fuel for the fire. In fact I see that this entire news story has been engineered by the Wikileaks Twitter account, both the actual story and the supposed reason for it.

He's a polarising figure amongst the very small number of people in the UK who a) have heard of him or Wikileaks, b) are more concerned with "overly liberal" European laws than someone who flees the country and enters an embassy to evade the laws of the country he was visiting at the time, and c} still cares about the opinion of someone who has managed to be rabidly partisan, anti-semetic, and is possibly a Russian asset.

I'm sure we're both biased by our respective echo chambers and peer groups, but the idea that Assange has or will have any impact on the current situation is just fantastical.

Is it known if he actually still is in the embassy?

I wonder if Ecuador didn’t see hosting him as a kind of insurance against being targeted by wikileaks.

Correa was a genuinely good person. There are a number of other ways he demonstrated this.

Such as? It'd be interesting to see what else he's known for

I lived down there for 7 years that coincided with his presence in the country, and I've commented on the uniqueness of Correa as a politician before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5984041

I think it's still a good comparison: Correa was his country's Bismark. He was in the right place at the right time -- Bismark himself famously having said that the job of the politician is to listen for God's footsteps and grab onto His coattails as he passes by -- and he legitimately did build a massive amount of eg. roads, hospitals (some decent multiple of the previous N presidencies combined), reformed the tax service, got a ton of small businesses paying taxes for the first time ever (by making it incredibly cheap for even the very poorest small businesses to get into the system) ... and was pretty much like Bismark in relations with the opposition press, too.

I’d love to hear how long you’ve lived in Ecuador and how do you like it there?

I lived in a small fishing village, barring the occasional tourist and surf expedition further afield, and it's still my favorite place in the world.

I loved the only street noise being the occasional donkey. I worked over a tiny EDGE connection for years until real connectivity got to my area, working over a 'screen' session to a beefy VPS in the states.

I can't help but agree with some of the characterizations of the cities in Ecuador. But then again, personally I wouldn't understand someone who would come to the country with the primary intention of seeing those cities, saying to themselves "oh, wow, I want to see Quito or Guayaquil." I wouldn't get it. Guayaquil is kinda like Bangkok or other big cities in underdeveloped areas; bustling and alive and joyous in its own sort of way, but not something that'd draw me around the world to visit. FWIW, Loja and Cuenca are more pleasant cities to visit.

But a laid-back fishing village with good neighbors? With good sand-bottom beach breaks and warm water? Tuna and dorado right from the ocean, fresh local produce ... that's ideal for me, and I was already comfortable with small-town and rural life from my time in the United States.

I have little clout but as an American who visited for 2 weeks during the whole Snowden ordeal I felt it kinda "meh" looking at the place through expatriation goggles at the time. Quito is a very religious and conservative city, Baños is a cute mountain village with a quiet reserved culture, and Guayaquil was the more liberal but raw and somewhat... "boisterous" city. Not sure that word fits but outside of smoking pot and surfing all day in the costal town of Montanita all day I would say it's not a great ex-pat country. Overall the country felt very religiously devout and not starting to hockey-stick (at the time anyway) on tech-forward business and culture. It also is an OPEC country so it is bogged down with corruption and political issues though it does seem to strive to stamp them out. However, if your goal is South America and you would like to expatriate and remain in tech, Chile would be the place I would recommend most for all the programs the government is pushing for startups. Much more to say but I'll just wrap up with that...

You got it all wrong. Guayaquil is conservative and Quito more liberal.

Us: you're clearly partisan because you only publish bad things against muh abuela.

Also us: you don't self-censor to benefit your self-interest? That's just not smart.

There were all sorts of reports that he was a pretty taxing guest as well. Cleaning, hygiene, etc.

As Eric Weinstein put it, "we are standing on shoulders of jerks"[1]. I posted it already here once, but it is such a valuable insight that I think it's worth repeating.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKeMIWVOnbo&feature=youtu.be...

Thanks for posting this, I hadn't given that thought much time and it was interesting to hear it put so succinctly. In my opinion it's a pretty valid perspective, however, it does create a very narrow definition of genius. I'd suggest that the loud stomps unsavory genius in their sensibilities may very well create a lack of space for the quite, introverted, polite, snowflake philosophical or artistic genius, and that this to me would be equally disappointing. I think a good underlying lens is meeting people where they are, whoever they are.

I thought I read something about his cat shitting everywhere too, which was revealing as a cat companion myself. How rude.

That's not an ad hominem, as the reports of his behavior as a guest are offered relevant to discussion of his behavior as a guest, not as dismissal of his claims to which that is irrelevant.

> as a guest

You can hardly feel as a guest anymore if you live somewhere for 7 years.

I suspect tenant/squatter's rights do not apply in embassies, but I would love to hear a lawyer's opinion on that point.

Well, first I believe that Equador’s laws would be in play here, because it’s their sovereign land. But it’s also government property, which typically has different rules than private property, presumably including areas like squatters rights.

At common law, you cannot gain title by adverse possession against the government.

However, for leaseholds, it's all going to be determined by the pertinent statutes. That's even more true for Ecuador, which - as far as I know - is not a common law country.

The real issue is that ejecting him from the embassy is, in effect, ejecting him from the sovereign territory of Ecuador. Depending on the exact basis they claimed when allowing him to stay, it could constitute refoulement of an asylee, which would violate international law.

Clearly propaganda, and there was only the single source that as we can clearly see now was adversarial.

Consistent with many descriptions of what it was like to have Assange on one's sofa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le3jrp6LzjI

What a dominant way to handle that situation. Especially the rotted fruit.

Those people are so smarmy and pathetic that it's pretty laughable to hear them whine. Which, I guess, is the intended effect of the video.

The complaints are so underwhelming that you wonder if these people have ever been on a camping trip, or, dare I say, drank an entire beer in one evening.

It's like, you really have to wonder, what if he were so bold as to place a plastic yogurt cup in the recycle bin without rinsing it out first? Is he capable of such things? After watching that video, I just don't know anymore...

No one in this thread has said anything remotely like "The dude is a slob so fuck em, let him rot in solitary for 30 years". He can be a bad house guest and not deserve to rot in prison, right?

I think it's pretty clear to anyone even attempting to be objective that Assange has a "difficult personality". Even if you broadly approve of him, he's burned a lot of bridges and appears to have quite an ego.

I think a difficult personality is a necessity for the role he is performing. While a difficult personality absolutely is not and must not be a reason to condemn someone, the good such people perform doesn’t mean anyone should have to put up with their antisocial behaviour, nor that he in particular gets a free pass from the court processes which caused him to end up in the embassy in the first place.

Same rules for everyone. None of us are pure saints, and even those of us who are pure evil [1] should only be prosecuted for acts which one can reasonably believe them to be guilty of before a trial actually demonstrates the quality of the evidence.

[1] by which I mean dark triad personalities, not religious/utilitarian/etc. ethics.

If you’re going to live permanently as an un-paying guest in someone else’s building (in this case, the Ecuadorian embassy in London), it’s not a smart idea to be such “a slob” that your hosts are just waiting for an excuse to get rid of you and stop dealing with your bullshit.

Similarly, if you are a miserable guest when staying temporarily at a string of friends’ houses, you won’t keep having friends for very long.

You say guest as though he can just walk out the door anytime in the last 7 years. Will his real hosts let him catch a plane to Ecuador?

Terrible analogy.

Um, he could have just walked out the door anytime in the last 7 years.

Oh, you meant without facing the charges from Sweden? Why should he be free to not face them?

Well, maybe he should not have also offended (in the law and the colloquial sense) his „real“ hosts.

It’s almost as if no man is an island, and also Karma.

Or raped someone, for that matter.

*had consensual sex without a condom with, whose partner wanted to compel him to get an STD test, when a prosecutor with a chip on her shoulder and possibly a dollar bribe in her pocket turned it into what you now think it is. Or at least want us to believe.

I see no material difference in your description and the term rape. An agreement to have sex with a condom only is certainly not valid for condom-less sex. And your spurious accusation of bribery is just baffling.

Violently and forcibly penetrating someone against their will is a pretty big difference to not using a condom when previously asked to do so. Depending on the country, yes they're both rape by the legal definition, but it's absolutely worth clarifying.

No, it would be a small difference to some people, and it would be a big difference to others.

Just like being choked suddenly without consent would be delightful to some and horrifying to others.

It's not a matter of "which act is more violent". There are a class of acts which rise to the level of rape. This includes condom removal, forcible penetration, unforced penetration following clear withdrawal of consent, etc.

"Is it rape?" is not a matter of which of these different acts is considered most violent. The law doesn't establish a hierarchy. It's a bar. Either the act rises above the bar or not. It's a matter of whether parties explicitly gave consent, whether they explicitly withdrew consent, and which parties committed which acts under those circumstances.

It's important that it is a bar, so that people can know rationally whether they or others have crossed it. A hierarchy with "bad rape", "better rape" and "best rape" would not be a useful social contract.

One of those is recklessly exposing someone to the risk of an incurable disease, the other is doing the same thing with additional immediately visible damage.

I‘m sure he would have had to use violence, if his victim had not been asleep at the time.

What he was accused of doing violated, albeit by my not-qualified-in-law reading, multiple sections of the UK’s Sexual Offences Act 2003. As I recall, the judge in his case said something similar, and agreed to his extradition partly on that basis (although Wikipedia says there isn’t a requirement for double criminality in cases like this).

The fact that he is an asshole is clearly unimportant compared to what he achieved as a whistleblower. Clearly, I don't give a damn and nobody should.

After accusations of being a Russian mouthpiece during the 2016 election it might help their public image by releasing information regardless of how it might affect a former member.

Ecuadorian here.

Revealing the truth is not insulting us. Most of our people are(or at least should be) grateful that corruption activities are disclosed.

But it is not your people that are hosting, but the government. The Equadorian government are literally the only people assange should be on the good side.

the irony of what you just said.

If he liked keeping quiet he wouldn't need asylum in the first place.

Not to mention all his trouble started when he raped (allegedly) one of his former hosts, who had also put him up for free and was generally a fan until he violated the house rules on hygiene.

I can’t believe you still buy into that narrative. It has been shown over and over again that the rape accusations are questionable. Not guilty until proven so. Did we forget that?

Nobody who is a long-term friend or close acquaintance of Jake Appelbaum (ioerror), and isn't a sociopath themselves, believes he is innocent of rape. By association, it is quite hard to give Julian the benefit of the doubt, given their closeness and Julian's presence at several parties where Jake is known to have drugged and raped unsuspecting women/groupies.

Either way, Assange is free to be a man, walk outside those doors, and face his day in court for the crime he definitely committed: Violating the terms of his bail.

Bail. B-A-I-L. Assange was given bail. If he was going to be extradited to the USA, he never would have been given bail. Assange is just an attention-seeking snowflake who failed in his own Breitbart-esque attempt to control the political narrative, and now he's throwing a 7-year long pity party.

It would be nice to know if I committed a crime I could hide out in an embassy with free housing, free food and no bills.. I certainly wouldn't poop on the floor as a thank you.

He's not a guest in Moreno's home. He's a political asylum seeker in a sunless room in a sunless country, where he's been for seven years despite a UN panel ruling that he was being unlawfully detained.

Further, political pressure was put on Ecuador to mess with Assange by the US despite the above and more.

None of this is secret information. "Hacker News" letting this misinfo stand as top comment - I'm no longer surprised but I'm still disgusted.