Strangely, a Russian diplomatic car didn't come to pick him up from the Ecuadorian embassy.

Can you explain that gigantic non-sequitur to me?

Yeah because the second Assange had set foot outside the embassy, the UK cops would have arrested him. Even in a car / "diplomatic bag" the UK cops would have the right to search it for Assange, because, well, a smuggled body isn't exactly "articles intended for official use" (per Art. 27 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations).

Part of Article 27

> The packages constituting the diplomatic bag must bear visible external marks of their character and may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use.

But also part of Article 27

> The diplomatic bag shall not be opened or detained.

So you are stuck in a Catch 22. You suspect the bag doesn’t contain official documents or articles but without searching it you can not be sure.

If you believe the leaked documents they actually planned to smuggle Assange out using this method. https://www.wired.com/2015/09/ecuador-considered-smuggling-j...

How it’s usually handled is diplomatically. It’s reported to the higher ups, who will search the bag themselves but they can always refuse.

There are cases where a host country has opened diplomatic bags but they usually come with diplomatic protests.

There has been attempts to make Assange a diplomat of a country or two in an attempt to allow home to leave the embassy and leave the UK but the host country has to accept the status of a diplomat (usually done before they enter the country) and the UK government refused to recognise Assange's status still leaving him stuck.

I think they mean if he were their asset they’d trade horses like they usually do with assets.

Maybe US thought there was nothing to trade and that dealing with Assange in person would convince russians that he's not so valuable, even as an asset

The idea that WL is responsible for Clinton's loss - rather than her being a terrible candidate - is laughable. To credit Assange with Trump's election is a complete joke - not least because the same people attacking him for releasing Clinton / Podesta / DNC emails have spent the past several years utterly failing to take stock of the reasons they lost.

I say all this as a non-US observer. The US' media and political figures are completely unfit for purpose.

The election outcome is obviously much more multifactor than that, but that doesn't change the fact that Assange was coordinating with Gucifer 2.0 against Clinton. Wikileaks wasn't neutral in that election.

This is just a spurious argument - and setting aside the Guccifer 2.0 sub-plot to the whole scam - Wikileaks has absolutely no requirement to be neutral. Their job is to publish things powerful people don't want published. That's it. Why should WL be on your side? Why shouldn't WL release info damaging to Clinton? It's hardly Assange's fault the US keeps committing war crimes and engaging in blatant corruption, is it?

The issue is that in this specific case, it was willingly publishing things powerful people wanted to be published.

(Also I'm euro and don't have a dog in this fight, I just lost all respect for Assange and Wikileaks).

You're confusing correlation with causation. It doesn't matter who or what stood to gain from Clinton's emails being published; unless you can demonstrate an illegal conspiracy (which you can't), there's nothing to say. WL did their job, nothing more.

Seconded.

Meanwhile, there has been a simultaneous attack on outlets that might actually spit the truth out there: the recent "changes to Facebook's algorithm" resulting in outlets like MPN, Democracy Now, and Wikileaks go from regular 20k shares to the 7-900 range practically overnight is suspicious in the extreme.