Julian Assange was right not to spring an ‘October Surprise’

Yesterday 4^th October 2016 the world’s media awaited, with bated breath, an announcement from Julian Assange.

It was to be his ‘October Surprise’, a revelation which would devastate a Hillary Clinton campaign already mired in scandal and soaked in blood.

The BBC and CNN were salivating over a prospective ‘droning’. RT and Sputnik had real-time feeds so as to cover every detail. Infowars had live ‘pregame’ coverage. And then came the moment when Julian Assange told the world……NOTHING.

It was a masterful chess move by a man who is not only ahead of the curve, ahead of the assassins, but also ahead of the pundits. 

Assange played a blinder and in doing so he destroyed any hype or hysteria around what are set to be monumental leaks.

Now the world’s eyes have adjusted their focus back to the content and away from the personal controversy of Hillary Clinton openly calling for the assassination of Mr. Assange.

In many ways it is reminiscent of the way the Western mainstream media treat ‘announcements’ by President Putin. Whenever Putin is on holiday and comes back to Moscow to make a speech, one can just imagine the flunkies at CNN standing by with a headline ‘Putin announces list of countries he wants to nuke’, only to be disappointed by a totally apolitical speech, after which Putin gives awards to a schoolteacher, biologist and athlete.

As Nigel Farage said publicly to Donald Trump, the best debate tactic when up against a slanderous person like Hillary Clinton is to ignore her and matter-of-factly state the facts.

This is what Julian Assange and his supporters did yesterday. Assange deflated the bluster of his enemies and took the often overly excitable wind out of the sails of his supporters.  What was to be a blood and guts revelation turned out to be a celebration of past triumphs from Wikileaks combined with a good old fashioned fundraiser.

However, of the many ‘greatest hits’ clips which were aired during the event, the most important was footage of the ruling from a UN investigation which recently found that Mr. Assange is being arbitrarily detained by Sweden and Britain and that his liberty and freedom of movement must be restored with immediate effect.

Since mainstream media only printed the critical responses to the UN ruling, I see it fit to publish the conclusions of the UN ruling here:

The Working Group considered that Mr. Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian Embassy.  Having concluded that there was a continuous deprivation of liberty, the Working Group also found that the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange.  The Working Group found that this detention is in violation of Articles 9 and 10 of the UDHR and Articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the ICCPR, and falls within category III as defined in its Methods of Work. 

The Working Group therefore requested Sweden and the United Kingdom to assess the situation of Mr. Assange to ensure his safety and physical integrity, to facilitate the exercise of his right to freedom of movement in an expedient manner, and to ensure the full enjoyment of his rights guaranteed by the international norms on detention. The Working Group also considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr. Assange should be afforded the right to compensation. 

This should have been a titanic story, but once again Western contempt for the United Nations went on full display.

Sweden and Britain led by the then Prime Minister David Cameron, lampooned a decision from what ought to be regarded as the most respected arbiter of law and justice in the world.

Perhaps this oughtn’t to be surprising as this is the same UN which condemned David Cameron’s draconian slashing of funds for the disabled and infirm.

In an ideal world Julian Assange would be the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize and Barack Obama would have to deal with an arrest warrant, but in Orwellian times such as these, the opposite is true.

At least though, the hype is over and we can get back to what matters most, the cold, hard facts. The world awaits…