Julian Assange

There's an old proverb 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', unless he's called Julian Assange, in which case he will skip bail and hide in the Ecuadorean embassy. He claims the allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden are faked,  a cunning ruse to extradite him to United States, where he might face the gas chamber. On a pedantic, technical point, neither the Federal Government nor the States use the gas chamber as their primary method of execution. So ignoring for a moment the tortuous, paranoid logic where Assange ends up on Death Row via Sweden, once he's there, he can relax, it's most likely to  be a lethal injection. (Given he's an internet geek, you really think he could have checked that for himself).

Now there's probably a few of his former supporters wishing they could administer him a fatal jab or at the very least a sharp uppercut, after Assange broke his bail conditions and left them liable for £240,000. Before indulging in wild conspiracy theories, let's start with the facts. The Swedish police wish to question him about claims of sexual assault  by two different women, this is the real Swedish police mind, not the ones from the Stieg Larsson books, and they are doing their job.

Seems to be that too many Wikileaks supporters have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Assange is not a real life Lisbeth Salander and the Swedish authorities are not the pocket of American neo-cons. If you based your opinion of the inhabitants of Copenhagen on the The Killing, you would conclude that every one of them was sex-crazed, pathological liar with short term memory issues that never turn a light on indoors. Maybe they are all like that; I'll report back after my long weekend hanging about in disused warehouses in Vestamager.


When your hero ends up hiding in Ecuadorean Embassy claiming asylum for sex crime accusations from Sweden, one of the most liberal, open and fair societies on the planet, it is time to doubt your hero's credentials. Especially if in the  same year, he started presenting a TV show on Vladimir Putin's propaganda channel, asking the head of Hezbollah difficult and searching questions like 'Israel is an illegal state isn't it?' Assange claims to speak truth to power, but only of the power in his sights is the US government.  If there is one country that would benefit from a Wikileaks expose, it is Russia; a murderous, corrupt gangster state. Yet Assange is curiously silent about their litany of human rights abuses, probably a clause in his contract. Keep silent about Putin's murders and you need not worry about the other kind of contract he might issue. 


Sometimes your enemy's enemy is not your friend, he's a narcissist who cares only about himself. 

Irish Times

I'm back from a blogging absence, with a little story told to me by a British actor, which gives an insight into the Irish economy and its government. Every month he travels from London to Galway with two other British actors, also based in London to record four episodes of a children's cartoon series. Except the Irish government can't afford to keep Galway airport open, so they all have to fly to Shannon and then take a taxi ride that lasts 90 mins.

These three British actors then voice the cartoon, which is shown on Irish TV, as well as Australia and other countries. No Irish actors are employed in the production, so the voice over sessions could be recorded in a London location. As indeed they were originally, at a studio in the West End, neatly avoiding the five hour journey from London to Galway.

Now the funding came with conditions, that the production had to take place in Ireland, even though as you note, no Irish actors were used (couldn't do American accents apparently). True, an Irish sound engineer gets a day's work and the Holiday Inn Galway gets three new bookings, so that's probably worth it for the £1,000s in extra expenses, flying the actors over once a month for the last few years. Not.

This money, of course, doesn't originate from the Irish government, who are apparently closing down parts of Ireland in order to save cash. It was an EU grant, which given that every country save Germany is running a deficit, means the money was borrowed, which is another way of saying they took it off you, me and everyone else in the European Union.

Maybe this is a special case and Ireland reformed its ways. Although Shane Filan's Westlife has been declared bankrupt with debts of £18 million, following a failed property venture for 90 houses. No I can't work out how you can lose so much money, especially as they only built half the houses.  Perhaps they burned it in braziers to keep the builders warm.

And this cartoon, which involves the scenic tour of West Ireland for three actors, it's not even that good.