Julian Assange is trapped in the closet. For the last two months, the embattled whistleblower has been embedded in the Ecuadorian embassy while pigs, protesters and politicians fight for the right to evict him. Assange’s life has always been sillier than an Aussie soap opera, but it’s now degenerated into a full-blown hip-hopera. All that’s missing is R. Kelly and a midget, but it’s surely only a matter of time until these essential ingredients are lobbed into the basement of 3 Hans Crescent.
In a tale that’s had more twists than an Italian waiter’s pepper mill, Assange was this week granted political asylum and full diplomatic status by Ecuador – only for Britain to sternly wag its finger and aver ‘Troll harder, bitch.’
When Assange finally sets foot outside the embassy, will he be v& as a villain or carried all the way to the airport upon a sea of jubilant supporters? That depends on who bags him first: the enlightened left or the benighted right. If it’s the former then a lifetime of plantains, pork and unprotected sex with liberal latinas beckons. If it’s the latter then it’s more likely to be porridge and unprotected sex with porky lifers that awaits.
The lunatics have taken over the asylum seeker
Ecuador’s decision to grant asylum to Julian Assange was swiftly countered by the British government’s statement that “The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum”. Funnily enough, many in this country don’t recognise the principle of the British government, and yet we’re still obliged to put up with them. If we could call in the SAS to ‘neutralise’ every obsequious MP who kowtows to US demands, we would. Unfortunately, we’re not the ones calling the shots, which is why if the SAS are summoned, it will be on government orders to plough feet-first through the door of the Ecuadorian embassy in a haze of tear gas.
Julian Assange prepares to make his last stand.
Even if you voted NSDAP in March 1933 and haven’t missed an issue of the Daily Mail ever since, you would probably concede that Britain’s response to the Assange affair is OTT. First they remanded him in custody for eight days and then they placed him under house arrest for over 650 days – to which he’s concurrently added 60 days within the Ecuadorian embassy. It’s like a one-man edition of Celebrity Big Brother, and in the case of Julian Assange, Big Brother is always watching – which presents something of a problem to those wishing to expedite his safe passage to South America.
The Ecuadorian government may have granted Assange diplomatic immunity, but the puppet-strung UK gov has refused to play ball. Like the village slut, Assange risks being used, abused and then passed on to the next Western ‘democracy’ willing to have its wicked way with him. First Britain, then Sweden and then the US where a sealed indictment awaits him. It may sound like a fortune cookie, but opening that sealed indictment will reveal only bad omens and extradition agreements (written in very small letters for expediency.) With the jimmy status of the US and its UK proxy set to Fully Rustled, Assange faces a dilemma: how best to come out of the closet?
If JA pegs it out the front door, he risks being gunned down in a hail of machine-gun fire. This may sound extreme, but remember what happened to Brazilian electrician Jean Charles De Menezes when he tried out-sprinting the Met’s finest.
If the UK government are on a covert mission to piss off Latin America, they’re doing a faptastic job of it. As well as risking the sanctity of every British embassy in South America, they’re still emanating butt-hurt over the Falkland Islands – that shitty piece of land that the Brits and Argies have been squabbling over since the days when the witch presided over this crumbling nation. In many respects, Julian Assange is the Falkland Islands – a trinket of little value to the UK, but one that is symbolically worth going to war over.
To say that Assange is a divisive character would be an understatement on a par with Lawrence Oates’ “I’m just going outside and may be some time.”
No one merely ‘likes’ Julian Assange. No one casually opines ‘Yeah, he seems an alright guy.’ Fence-sitting is strictly prohibited when it comes to assessing the merits of JA. He’s either Apple or Android, forever destined to be loved and hated, beaten and beatified in equal measure.
Whatever your thoughts on JA, you will surely concur that there are a finite number of ways in which the whistle-blowing one can exit the Ecuadorian embassy – ten to be precise. As it happens, Ed Uncovered has gone to the bother of identifying all ten of these escape routes. That way, when saint/sinner Julian does finally leave the embassy, you can be all like ‘Ha! Told you that would happen’ before grinning smugly and resuming your perusal of the Guardian/Daily Mail.
10 Ways for Julian Assange to Exit the Embassy
1. Diplomatic car
Diplomatic vehicles enjoy protection under international law from “search, requisition, attachment and execution”. The trouble is, Assange would have to run a gauntlet of over 9,000 coppers just to get to the vehicle. The solution? Call in Michael Caine of course. With a little maneuvering, it should be possible to drive a Mini Cooper up the steps, into the hallway and up to the door of Flat 3B. All JA has to do is slip on a trollface mask, jump in the back seat and disappear with a screech of tyres, leaving five-oh to issue an APB for a speeding vehicle with the licence plate U MAD last seen heading for Heathrow.
2. Diplomatic Bag
With their champagne lifestyle and immunity from prosecution, is it any wonder that diplomats’ sons are total shits, even by the standards of posh wankers? Still, you can hardly blame them: if you had the chance to woo spoilt slags with the line ‘Wanna suck on my diplomatic bags?’, you’d be giving it large every night of the week at Annabel’s.
Diplomat bags are secure packages or containers used by countries to bring their documents in and out of a host nation. They can be any size that the country wants them to be and they cannot be opened or detained in transit. If Assange can tuck his legs in tight enough to do a Gareth Williams (but remembers to keep breathing) he should be home and dry.
3. In a Vendetta mask
As Anonymous have been swift to point out, the police can’t arrest everyone wearing a Vendetta mask. If enough Anons assemble in front of the embassy, Assange can slip out disguised as just another member of the internet’s favourite hate machine. Hidden in plain view: it’s the ultimate disguise, and an epic IRL troll to boot.
Which leads us on to point number four…
4. Disguised as a pizza guy.
Domino’s deliver pizza to the embassy – or is it Assange hatching an audacious escape?
Step 1: Order pizza to the embassy.
Step 2: Steal delivery guy’s workwear and bike helmet.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.
5. Use a brutha
At the last count, there were over 30 police watching the embassy. Assange’s best chance of escaping may be to create a decoy. But what sort of decoy has the power to distract every single cop in SW1? A black man, obviously. He doesn’t even need to be committing a crime; walking past in a hoodie, perhaps while patting his breast pocket should do the trick. 500 bullets and three fatal accident enquiries later, the Met will finally remember that they were supposed to have been guarding Assange, by which point their quarry will be long gone.
6. Teleportation
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: teleportation – dafuq? Hear me out on this one, however, before scathingly dismissing this crackpot scheme…
If we are to assume that time travel is possible – if not now, then at some point in the future – it must surely be feasible for someone from the future to travel back in time and leave a teleportation device in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy. Then, all JA has to do is look under the bed when he moves in there and whaddyaknow – some thoughtful bastard left a teleportation device with the destination pre-set to deepest Ecuador. Sure, continent-skipping in the present day may cause some kind of fatal flux in the space time continuum, but that can be fixed in the future – that’s what time machines were invented for; to clean up the mess that previous generations selfishly created.
Not convinced? OK, never mind; perhaps you’ll prefer number seven….
7. Sewers
London is built upon a maze of sewers, passageways and tunnels which criss-cross the capital and even run beneath the Thames. If he can abide the rats, the used connies and the stench of 5 million Londoners shitting out last night’s jalfrezi, Assange can roam free. He’ll need his GPS though, as it’s easy to get lost down there. Pop a manhole cover to emerge in Elephant & Castle and he could be forgiven for thinking he’d crawled straight into Guantanamo Bay. On reflection, that stuffy room at the Ecuadorian embassy might not be such a bad place to spend the next 20 years after all.
8. Swap places with Tom Cruise
Julian Assange is trapped in the closet. Tom Cruise is out of the closet. Both wish their fortunes could be reversed; Julian is choking to get out of there while Tom is clamouring to get back in. The obvious solution is for the pair to trade places.
It’s no coincidence that Julian Assange entered the closet in the same week that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes broke up. This was clearly meant to happen – followed by Cruise entering the building on a wire before silently abseiling to the floor, dodging laser beams as he goes. Mission Impossible 5? Do it Hollywood – it’s got to be better than Ghost Protocol at least.
9. An Hero
Depending on your outlook, committing an hero is either the most heroic way to end one’s life or the most cowardly. How fitting if our divisive anti-hero were to go out in such a polarising manner, leaving the left to weep over Saint Julian and the right to fap furiously to the sight of the British government detaining his ashes without charge for 650 days.
10. For the British Government to do the decent thing and offer Assange safe passage out of the country
Seems legit, which is why it’s never gonna happen. There’s more chance of William Hague donning a Pussy Riot t-shirt and chaining himself to the embassy railings than there is of the UK gov applying their own laws. Oh well, looks like it’s options one to nine for Julian.
Unless…
Shortly after Ecuador granted asylum to Assange on Wednesday, Wikileaks made an interesting announcement:
httpss://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/236150221862756352
This will mark Assange’s first public appearance since checking in to his embassy bolthole. With every pig in Knightsbridge on standby to nab the Aussie if he so much as pops out for a smoke, why would he risk his freedom by venturing onto the embassy steps? Trip over a shoelace and he could suddenly find himself out of the safe zone and into the back of a meat wagon.
The only logical explanation for this public statement is that Assange will not be appearing on the steps of the embassy in person, but rather will be reading a statement via video link – from Ecuador.
If those wily latino foxes have already smuggled Assange out of the building, it would be a massive fuck you to the Western pseudo-democracies – not to mention being the ultimate troll of all time.
A life of Ecuadorian exile doesn’t seem so bad when there’s the prospect of fapping all day to the gleaming gongs on your mantlepiece:
Julian Assange – Supreme Whistleblower and God-Tier Troll, 2010-2012
Like the man himself, such illustrious awards don’t deserve to be kept in the closet. One way or another, it seems likely that Assange will be outed soon. When, how and into whose hands remains to be seen. Until then, all we can do is speculate wildly and pray for an unarmed black man to amble by.
—★★★—
“Enjoy your 6,000 LinkedIn connections while your credit card’s getting raped by Russian mobsters.”
The Curious Tale of the Hacker Who Never Hacked
“People are doxed, hacked, trolled and pwned on a daily basis on the internet. Today it was Th3j35t3r’s turn.”
You’ve left off some plausible ones, like a helicopter to take Assange to a place where a legitimate plane has room to take off with JA’s middle finger pressed firmly against the window.
Some of the more dodgy ones you mentioned, like a car or package… He can’t risk it. Should the UK decide that these “protected” places aren’t very sacred when it’s of “national security” (though that’d be a much bigger problem in the People’s Republic of America), he’s boned. He has one chance at this.
Actually a helicopter is out of the question because the embassy occupies half of the ground floor, and the elevator and roof is deemed public space, where the police can arrest him.
A diplomatic bag is sketchy, as they aren’t actually allowed to contain a person.
A much easier approach would be to appoint Assange as a Diplomatic Courier; These can be appointed on an ad hoc basis and are exempt from detainment, search and seizure as they have diplomatic immunity.
When assigned on an ad hoc basis, their immunity ends when they have delivered their diplomatic bag. Solution? Pop a nice bag of diplomatic scotch in a bag to be delivered to the Ecuadorian President.
Assange can then be in full view, troll grin and all, and can’t be touched.
Too easy.
It’s another one of those things where it might be a tad dodgy as there isn’t any “case law” saying whether a “fugitive” can be declared a diplomatic courier or not. No matter what he tries, he has one shot at it; if he succeeds, he’s home safe, if he fails, he’s in police custody. None of the countries with an impressive military is on Assange’s side here, so at this point GB can do anything short of raiding the embassy and nobody would really care.