Ecuador Complains Julian Assange Was a Bad Housegust, Neglected His Pet Cat (bbc.com)

The BBC reports that Ecuador's foreign minister Jose Valencia has been sharing complaints about Julian Assange's conduct during his stay in Ecuador's embassy -- for example, that Julian Assange "damaged the facilities by riding his skateboard and playing football, despite being told not to do so." Cleaning staff, Mr Valencia said, had described "improper hygienic conduct" throughout Assange's stay, an issue that a lawyer had attributed to "stomach problems". One unnamed senior Ecuadorean official told AP news agency that other issues included "weeks without a shower" and a "dental problem born of poor hygiene". Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo then complained that Assange had been allowed to do things like "put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature...."

Assange's stay at the embassy cost Ecuador some $6.5m (£5m) from 2012 to 2018, Mr Valencia said.
NPR reports that Julian Assange's cat also "arguably played a small role in Ecuador's decision to end its asylum agreement," citing remarks from Ecuador President Lenin Moreno: Moreno explained that Assange treated his hosts disrespectfully; late last year the embassy implemented a series of rules for Assange, including a requirement to be responsible for the "well-being, food, hygiene and proper care of your pet." If Assange didn't, the embassy threatened to put the cat in a shelter. In other words, it is likely that Assange didn't effectively clean up after his cat's own wiki-leaks...

The New Yorker reported in 2017 that Assange's interest in the cat was less as an animal lover and more as a master of his own brand. "Julian stared at the cat for about half an hour, trying to figure out how it could be useful, and then came up with this: Yeah, let's say it's from my children," the magazine quoted one of Assange's friends as saying. "For a time, he said it didn't have a name because there was a competition in Ecuador, with schoolchildren, on what to name him. Everything is P.R. -- everything."
Journalist James Ball, an early WikiLeaks employee (who left after three months) said Thursday on Twitter that he'd "genuinely offered to adopt" the cat -- but it was "reportedly given to a shelter by the Ecuadorian embassy ages ago."

Assange's legal team, however, tweeted in November that Assange had been outraged by embassy threats to send the cat to the pound, and asked his lawyers "to take his cat to safety. The cat is with Assange's family. They will be reunited in freedom."

Comments

Gaslighting?

[houstonbofh]

Can't help but think that a lot of this character assignation is cover so that no one is talking about how he was sold out for a $4.2 billion loan...

Re:Gaslighting?

[jellomizer]

From his rants and ravings, I expect this guy just isn't right in the head. Normally these "warriors of the norm" tend to have issues with basic common courtesy. Part of the outrage from what is considered normal for these people, because they just cannot understand normal conditions needed to live with other people.
Often, people who don't understand why people treat them poorly, they assume it is their fault, where it just may be them making others uncomfortable.

Being such an outsider is probably what drives him to do what he does, but it is also putting him into additional trouble. He was a guest of the Ecuador government, he seemed to think that the government is an unbreakable ally, not realizing that governments are just a group of people, the same groups of people he has a hard time dealing with.

Re:Gaslighting?

[Falos]

I'm leaning towards "opportunistic assassination". I'm quite ready to believe he's an asshole, and a good chunk of TFS.

But only a naive person will overlook how emphatically it's being presented as relevant. Plenty of criminals were unhygienic assholes and such, but how many articles about murderers bother to mention it? Except as distraction, a sideshow, a circus, misdirection.

Or to discredit someone. Especially someone with things to claim that you really want discredited.

Re:Gaslighting?

[hdyoung]

Yes, a fair bit of it is spin, misinformation and gaslighting, and the US clearly got Ecuador to come over to it's side on the matter. I have no illusions about my own country. Initially, the US was doing everything in it's power to screw with him from any angle that it could, then for a few years they were content to keep him bottled up, but eventually decided to end the game and bring him in.

That being said, there's been enough coverage get a clear picture of him beyond the hype - he's a controlling megalomaniac who thought that he could hold his own playing power-geo-politics in the same arena as the US and Russia. The man thought that he could go toe-to-toe with a frikkin superpower. Talk about delusions of grandeur.

Wikileaks was a noble idea at the very start but it quickly got corrupted, and Assange himself is mostly to blame. If you're going to run a clean free-information clearinghouse, then you treat all submitted information the same and release it all in the same matter. Assange wasn't doing this. He was releasing some info, holding other info back, and timing the releases in order to settle scores and make points with whomever he chose. Sorry, you don't get to do that and simultaneously claim victimhood or nobility. Well, you can, but anyone with (IQ>90) isn't gonna buy it.

Cardinal Richelieu could have written this

[Anonymous Coward]

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

A depressed man stares at his cat? He must be a rogue!

Re: Cardinal Richelieu could have written this

[Anonymous Coward]

Will make a better movie than SJW Skywalker.

Yeah sure

[Anonymous Coward]

No character assassination going on here, just honest diplomatic concern.

When there's bipartisan agreement

[DCFusor]

Get out the lube...you're about to be bent over. Ask Sam Clemens and many others. Julian peed in a lotta cornflakes. Funny that not one of the offended parties claims anything he published was fake or a lie. This is pure shoot the messenger to deflect from your own guilt stuff.

Don't believe it for a second

[Anonymous Coward]

Weeks without a shower? "Allowed" to smear feces on the walls? And why would he? It makes no sense. These statements are so outrageous it's clear they're false, with the intention to paint him as a crazy lunatic and erase any sympathy for him and his case.

Re:Don't believe it for a second

[squiggleslash]

While the feces on walls thing is new, the not showering thing has been reported for several years.

Not that any of this has to do with whether Assange should be granted asylum or not (probably not, he was running from a rape investigation) or whether he should be being charged by the US as a party to Manning's "crimes" (probably not on that, no.) It suggests he's an asshole (but we already knew that about stuff that's actually important), I'm just saying that at least some of this, about the cat and the lack of personal hygene, is old news.

Also it's not even a wiki.

Equator has been complaining about him for years

[pgmrdlm]

About not taking care of his cat.

About him having terrible hygiene.

About him wiping feces all over the walls

About verbally attacking officials at the embassy

Remember, they started restricting his movements and internet access years before. This is NOTHING new.

He's an asshole

[DogDude]

You know, I was originally behind what he was trying to do, but now I just see the guy as a self-serving asshole. He shits on everybody with no apparent rhyme or reason: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/europe/ecuador-assange-wikileaks.html. I do think that getting government secrets out in the open is important, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. He's done it the wrong way.