The Keller Files 1:2 Julian Assange is a Stateless Person

Occasionally people try assert that Julian Assange is not only homeless, but stateless, like one of those people who lives in an airport because he can't enter the country in which the airport is located, and can't go back to where he came from .

Bill Keller's spy thriller stops short of actually calling Assange a stateless person (because Keller is big on facts, and that is obviously not a fact), instead referring to him as "an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence", and describing him as a "bag lady" and a "derelict". The end result is the same - leaving the reader with the impression that Assange is a person with no home and no country.

But what could the point of this characterization be? Why spend so much time and sacrifice so many adjectives for the purpose of making certain that everyone understands that Julian Assange is a passport orphan??? 

hmmm... well... a great deal of Keller's piece of shit is about how not-Assangian Keller and his colleagues are, so maybe calling Assange "stateless" is intended to set up a contrast between a drifter who is unburdened by fealty to any state, and people who have a home that they love and are completely devoted to.

Keller, as it turns out, is Captain America as evidenced by the following:

• He spews the right rhetoric (" in Europe ...there is often a certain pleasure in seeing the last superpower taken down a peg"; "We live and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favorite terrorist target, and in the wake of 9/11 our journalists plunged into the ruins to tell the story of what happened here" ),
• He parties with the right people (he gleefully relates story about a party given by Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan),
• He admires the approach taken by the Obama administration with respect to redacting the leaked documents, carefully detailing the cooperation between the NYT and the Obama administration in deciding what to release, and how best to ensure no one gets killed as a result of the leaks, all the while using language that evokes thoughts of a placid lake in the sunshine, the scent of baby powder, and music by John Tesh.  
• He outs Assange as anti-American, and makes it clear that he does not approve of such things.  

All this leaves me wondering if Keller may have leadership aspirations beyond the NYT, having , as men like to say "shot his load" at that job. Maybe he'd like a nice diplomatic post somewhere pretty. He does, after all, know how diplomacy "works" now. Or maybe his aspirations are higher, and more OVAL!!

In any case, Keller, just remember that while you're wrapping yourself in the flag, I can see right through it, and I see that your balls are shrinking, while my man Julian's grow ever larger.

The Keller Files 1:1 : Julian Assange is a Smelly Bag Lady!

By now, everyone is aware of Bill Keller's piece in NYT Magazine, and a few people have been able to stay awake all the way through it. It's long, and peppered with annoying rhetoric, all of which I will point out in the days to come, after I've had my teeth sharpened and I can get my hands on a new  supply of Red Bull.

For now, I just want to touch on the description of Julian Assange as a malodorous street person.

Let's take a moment to look at Julian Assange

Now let's imagine touching that lapel. It's the finest, lightest Italian wool - I can just feel it. I bet he smells of delicately scented moss with a hint of alderwood smoke. That is one fine, fine boy.

Later in the article, BK does discuss Assange's made-over look, saying that he now favors "fashionably skinny suits and ties". Kudos to Bill for being on top of trends in men's fashion,  but how does he do this with the pressures of his job, and having to spend countless days and sleepless nights dealing with the tempestuous and petulant Assange? Let's look at a picture of Bill for some clues.

My Assessment: Pret-a-porter, Bill? Really???  The article in question paints Assange as a difficult man-child who is riding the tide of his new-found fame onto a pedestal of Euro-cult worship, into the consciousness of the celebrity mind, and up women's vaginas. All of this may very well be true, but if and when he starts going to fashion shows, they WILL be couture.

Julian Assange is Heath Ledger's Joker

The question "What is motivating Julian Assange?" has been posted on Quora.  There are a few useful responses, and then there is this..

Julian Assange's motivations remind me of "The Joker" in The Dark Knight, the classic Oscar-winning performance by the late Heath Ledger. Director Chris Nolan's interpretation of the Joker was to paint a portrait of a modern-day terrorist and agitator, someone who was nomadic, with no known relatives or residences. Nolan and Ledger's Joker was motivated by "sending a message" to authorities. It was not about money or fame. The Joker believed that everyone had "plans" and that when things went according to plan, even if they were horrific, nobody would care. However, if something when against the plan, such as the attempted assassination of the Gotham mayor in the movie, the public freaks out. It's chaos. It's dogs chasing cars. These leaks go way, way against the plans of authorities, and it provides very intense sunshine, and that freaks many people out. Nolan's and Ledger's Joker is an outlaw and is willing to break any law, no matter the cost, to introduce any bit of anarchy into the mix. The more and more I read about Assange, such as the New Yorker article from earlier this year, or this recent leak, or the upcoming corporate hit he's going to lay on Wall Street, the more it becomes apparent to me that what's motivating Assange is the same thing that motivated the Joker: they are both squarely focused on sending a strong message and disrupting the authorities' plans.

My comments:

Hmm... usually when someone does a "Julian Assange as an archetype" sort of analysis, they call on references that go a little farther back than 2008. Like, normally one would expect to see some connections made to figures from mythology, some of the classics in literature, or even the work of Carl Jung. But okay, maybe you can be as insightful by referencing Dilbert as you can by exploring links between what is happening in the world now and the writings of Neitzche.

Still, the analogy is pretty much a thinly disguised piece of bullshit. Julian Assange is no anarchist. Anarchists don't sit still for interviews, they don't drink coffee from huge ceramic mugs while lounging on comfy sofas, they don't speak in calm voices, and they certainly never wear white, because anarchists are always dirty, and wearing white would just not be practical. In addition, someone as fine as Julian wold never and should never wear a balaclava as all anarchist must at some point do.

Further, the author claims to be talking about motivations, when he/she only ever addresses the behaviours of both the Joker and Assange. This is problematic because, although all non-reflexive, goal-directed behaviour can be said to have underlying motivations, behaviours and motivations are separate concepts. The one can not be inferred from the other - certainly not without some much more intimate knowledge of the person. It's also problematic because it's just not very in-depth or insightful. 

In conclusion.. FAIL.

Julian Assange is Dead

In a twist on the "Julian Assange is in bed with the CIA" conspiracy theory, a new theory proposes that the US Government has control of the cables and is releasing the ones that put the USA in a good light and Iran in a bad light, opening the door for the US to take decisive military action against (read "bomb") Iran. The leaks about Iran have been interspersed with information about various other inconsequential matters to keep the sheeple from being suspicious.

My Comments: There are a lot of factual errors in the blog entry that details this theory. I should probably enumerate them here in the interest of educating the author, but that's not what I'm here for. What I'm here for is to play strip Scrabble with Julian Assange, and since that hasn't happened yet, I'm going to conclude that he's still alive.

Julian Assange is Fucked Up Because of His Childhood

Sometimes, when I'm eating dinner, I save the tastiest bits for last. So it is with this item. I've been sitting on this "thing people say about Julian Assange" for a while now, waiting for a time when I needed to reward myself by biting into something really juicy. That time has now come.

Recently, some information has come to light about Julian Assange's unusual childhood. Key points:

- Julian never knew his biological father

- When he was an adolescent, Julian and his mother went into hiding in an attempt to escape from her abusive boyfriend, moving frequently from town-to-town and state-to-state (or province-to-province - whatever they've got down there in Oz)

- During this time, Julian was frequently bullied and ostracized by his peers

- When he was 13 or 14, his mother bought a computer for him, and the computer became his "only friend"

All of this paints a picture of a lonely child at the margins of society - someone who couldn't help but grow increasingly resentful, increasingly marginalized, increasingly deviant, increasingly paranoid, and increasingly... dangerous...

It's obvious that someone so brutally abused, shunned by society, and left to communicate with the world through nothing but combinations of zeros and ones would become evil, and eventually ... MANIACAL!!! And obviously his target would be the very paragon of power and captain-of-the-football-team-type popularity.. the United States of America!!

My comments:

** oh JesusChristDeepSigh..**

Really, seriously.. how hard is it for people see that all they are doing is working backwards from the man they *think* they see to what effect they *think* his childhood had on him?? Let's count the problems with this:

- We only know the most salient things about his childhood

- We only know the things that were raised in court in an attempt to protect him from prosecution during his previous run-in with the law

- The connection between this information and the behaviours of the man we see today are speculative at best, unless we have an insightful and deeply incisive and personal analysis from Assange himself

- One could very easily argue that this history led him to be someone who is protective of others, and concerned with ensuring that vulnerable people have access to the information and resources that can help them protect themselves

In summary, I'm no psychologist, but.. oh wait, yes I am..

In summary, no one can know how Julian Assange's childhood affected him except Julian Assange himself. So we all need to wait for him to disclose this, if he wants to do that. If he decides he doesn't, we all need to be just fine with that, because that information.

is.

and should be.

private.

Julian Assange is Tintin

This video gives evidence that Julian Assange might be the flesh-and-blood incarnation of the popular cartoon character, Tintin. To sum up:

- They are both investigative journalists

- Their work has been translated into many languages (I myself have read them in three!)

- They both fight injustice world-wide

- They both wind up in dangerous situations on a more-or-less ongoing basis

- Neither appears to have a boss or a senior editor to whom they report

- Tintin appears to have no coworkers, and Assange's are ghostly figures at best, except for the pretty woman with the curly hair and the comfy scarf, and the cute guy with the high hair and the glasses. I adore them both, but I'm not sure what their role is exactly.

A side-by-side indicates some striking physical similarities..



Tintin is rarely seen at his at his own place. According to my sister, who is a Tintin expert, he does rent a room somewhere, but is normally seen at Marlinspike Hall, the home of his wealthy friend, Captain Haddock, or he is travelling. As we all know, Assange is currently being hosted by HIS wealthy friend, Vaughan Smith, at HIS home, Ellingham Hall, pictured on the left below. Marlinspike is on the right.

My Assessment: I probably need to see my doctor to tweak my meds, because I think this might actually be true. It definitely makes more sense than him being an agent for the CIA or a crappy lover (come on, you don't believe that any more than I do) There are some problems though:

- Haddock is an alcoholic, and while he does redeem himself at times, he usually gets the crew into more trouble than it was in before. Vaughan Smith seems quite a bit more stable, and has yet to be seen in public falling-down drunk. There is still time though.

- Tintin never has girlfriends or lovers. I don't think I need to expand on this point.

- Tintin has been to outerspace.

- The cast of characters has yet to be fleshed out. We need a rotund female opera singer, an absent-minded Swiss physicist, and a fluffy little terrier. The parts of the bumbling detectives, Thompson and Thompson have of course been filled by Marianne Ny and Claes Borgström.

- It's unclear how he would have leaped off the page and become a three-dimensional organism, but maybe the nice people who produced the movie "The Ring" can help out with that part.

Overall, I think this one is a winner. Hopefully soon our hero will be able to go on his next adventure!

Julian Assange is the World's Worst Lover!

Wow! It must suck to be Julian Assange, with this sort of thing being widely reported about your sexual skills. Yet, legions of women still want to fuck him, so I guess it's not so bad after all.

My comments: Hey, Salty Droid! Somebody's getting pussy, and it's not you. Wanna know who it is?? Here's a hint...