Whatever you can say about Assange, he certainly captured the attention of the world lately, dividing the audience into haters and admirers. No one remained indifferent, for a wide variety of reasons. It could be said - and I tend to accept the view expressed by Francis Sedgemore - that Assange and his team started something that is far beyond the related scandals and dirt and is of extreme importance to the journalism and politics of this century.
Assange methods and Assange personal habits, though, may undermine the possible good that could come out of the whole endeavor. Enough is said and written about the way Assange published hundreds of documents that endangered people. A lot is written about his persona, so there is no need to repeat all this stuff. WikiLeaks could certainly do with a more sensible leader.
Recently I have stumbled on another Assange's trait: his blindness in choosing his partners and supporters. It appears that, while selecting newspapers that will publish his latest batch (the diplomatic cables), he has decided to work with Israel Shamir, among his many other titles a reporter for Русский Репортер (Russian Reporter) as one of the many reporters and newspapers over the world "accredited" (Shamir's choice of term) to work with the release of this batch.
This picture of Assange with Shamir in the background (I confess, it had an impact on the headline of this post) appears in the
Russian Reporter article that opens their series of Cablegate publications. Here is a more popular picture of Israel Shamir which was infesting the Internet for many (too many) years.
I am not sure about the reason Shamir is so enamored with this picture - it is not particularly complimentary, I feel, but he persistently stuck it in many of his on-line publications, of which there is a legion. If Shamir is anything at all it is prolific.
"Anything at all" is a central point when looking at this exceedingly odious and "mysterious" person. I put quotation marks around "mysterious", because the mystery here is not a result of information scarcity. Just the opposite: there are too many contradictory facts, and the result is so confusing that only a team of spies and psychiatrists working together for a long time could unravel the rather sad story of the walking multiple personality disorder named... oops, let's start with names. Israel (Adam) Shamir (Shlessing) by birth (but this is anyone's guess), then Jöran Jermas (after his conversion to Christianity), later touched up a bit to become Adam Ermash, he also uses a wealth of other monikers when and where it suits him for reasons that only he understands.
His biography is no less exciting. You can read one of the
versions in English here. Only remember that, aside of defining himself "
an internationally acclaimed radical spiritual and political thinker, Internet columnist and writer", Shamir changes and manipulates the bio as frequently and unashamedly as convenient, again for reasons that escape an untrained observer. More about his bio - and some other exciting stuff too -
here.
Citizenship: Russian, Israeli, Swedish, Russian once more - pick any, because he picks the one required at the moment.
Beliefs: from Zionism to anti-Zionism, from Jew to anti-Semite of the worst order of magnitude. From a Russian dissident to an anti-Western hack nostalgic of the good ole USSR. From a (non-practicing) Jew to a (probably non-practicing) Christian. I wouldn't even try to figure it out. But I shall throw in his flirt with white supremacists of several kinds.
Friends: are changing, after being repelled by another change in Shamir's dynamic world view. When a man is rejected by
Indymedia and by other
anti-Israeli folks for being too anti-Semitic, you would guess that there is nowhere to go, but you would be wrong - there always are Gilad Atzmon, David Duke, shady dealings with David Irving, Rense etc. Or, for comic effect, this one:
Cynthia Ann McKinney... who else?
Now a few quotes - nothing could work better in this case:
Everyone can kill a Jew in himself.
The Jewish supremacy forces and the greed worshippers united again to crucify Christ.
The Ashkenazi Jews believed that spilled Jewish blood has a magic effect of calling down Divine Vengeance on the heads of the Gentiles…
Good enough? To conclude, a quote from the
same anti-Zionist guy:
One puzzle has been solved, but questions remain: "Who is "Israel Shamir"? Is he "Jöran Jermas"? Or are they both fictional? What about his other aliases, “Vassili Krasevsky” and “Robert David” (inter alia?)? More important still, whoever he is, what's his game?"
And this is the character whom Assange has chosen as a partner in his latest endeavor. Whatever his game, his support for Assange carries indelible fingerprints of heavy-duty Soviet propaganda. The best example is the way
he has chosen to discredit Assange's Swedish "girlfriends": Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen. Instead of seeing Anna Ardin for what she is, which is a militant (or raving, one could say) feminist with a pyramid-sized chip on her shoulder, he has concocted a CIA-led conspiracy to beat any feverish dream. Of course, it's easy to see through, as these
two bloggers show. But so what - there are enough moonbats to buy this crap and put it on their flag...
To conclude: I hope for Assange's own good that the rest of his partners are not similar to Israel Shamir. Although it may already be too late, because even one Israel Shamir is one too many to have watching your back.
And if you are into Biblical (New Testament) analogies and apt to compare Julian Assange with The One: he may have already found that specific disciple it's so fashionable to hate for the last 2,000 years or so...
After the movie, several presentations will be given by the principal actors:
Halal refreshments served to survivors in the lobby.
