Vlad the corrupter and the crisis on the left

Julian Assange still has not found the courage to face the women who accuse him of sexual abuse. Rather than try to clear his name, he has sat in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge for four years – a confinement long enough to drive most of us out of our minds.

If Assange has lost his wits, however, there is a method to his madness, as there was long before he received what paltry hospitality the Ecuadorian diplomatic corps could offer him. Nothing he leaks has ever hurt Russia. He will denounce and expose human rights abusers, as we all should. But he will never allow his followers to learn of the suppression of democracy and human rights by Putin’s forces within and without Russia’s borders. Human rights in Assange’s mind are shape shifters. Essential in the West, but dispensable in the East. When the time comes to condemn their abusers, Assange becomes the political equivalent of an estate agent.