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Julian Assange Plans Modeling Debut At London Fashion Show 173

An anonymous reader writes with news about a possible new direction for Julian Assange. Julian Assange is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September. The Australian WikiLeaks founder will reportedly model for Vivienne Westwood’s son, Ben Westwood, at a fashion show staged at the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he has been seeking refuge for the past two years. He is avoiding extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of sex offences. “Julian’s been in the embassy for two years and it’s important that he doesn’t slip into obscurity,” said Ben Westwood. “I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair.”
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Julian Assange Plans Modeling Debut At London Fashion Show

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  • by bigjocker ( 113512 ) * on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:42AM (#47349645) Homepage

    ... he will bare it all?

    • by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:50AM (#47349697)
      I just want to double-check- are we absolutely, 100% positive that this is a legitimate news story, and not a leaked script for a sequel to Zoolander or the latest Austin Powers movie?
      • by Anonymous Coward

        In a twist, the bit where he's sandwiched between the two Finnish dwarves and the Maori tribesmen ends with him being extradited without charge and holed up in an embassy for two years.

      • You might be onto something there: "the WikiLeaks Twitter account criticized the media for spreading a rumor about Julian Assange starring in a fashion show (12,600 results on Google News Search) despite Assange never hearing of it and the fashion show director Ben Westwood stating, "I haven't spoken to Julian at all actually":" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/... [twitter.com]

        Journalism standards collapse: 12,600 news articles on #Assange fashion show - that #Assange hadn't even heard of

    • Re:Can we asume ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by AndyAndyAndyAndy ( 967043 ) <afacini AT gmail DOT com> on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:51AM (#47349701)
      No, but someone will anonymously release pictures from the changing room.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I was wondering the same, and if there's a risk of him taking a wiki-leak on the platform, in civil disobedience fashion.

  • by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:44AM (#47349661) Homepage Journal

    This is now at level of E!.
    Modeling debut? Good grief.

  • and yet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aryden ( 1872756 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:48AM (#47349673)
    Had he just taken the damn HIV test, he'd be at home leaking more stuff.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 )

      If by "home" you mean "Gitmo" and by "more stuff" you mean bodily fluids you generally try to keep inside...

      • by aliquis ( 678370 )

        Personally I would had wanted to find out if my country really deserved to lit on fire or whatever he's just a chicken.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by BitZtream ( 692029 )

        Why would he go to Gitmo? His leaks were a joke at best. He lost all credibility at the ridiculously edited collateral murder video and then actually managed to go down hill more after that. He has done more to destroy his own credibility than anyone in the US government could have possibly done. A couple senators tried to politic it up by shouting silly things about him to get people worked up but at no point was he ever going to be extradited nor was he ever going to gitmo, at least not for any of the

        • You don't rendition a prisoner to a black site for punishment - you do it to send a message to would-be followers. The UK flight tracking club has already disclosed that the CIA rendition plane was sent to Scotland as he was fleeing west and we know they grounded President Morales's plane to grab him the next day. That's a preponderance of evidence.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ScentCone ( 795499 )

        If by "home" you mean "Gitmo"

        So you really, honestly believe that if he'd answered the questions that the Swedish investigators wanted to ask, that he'd have been sent from Sweden, via some flavor of rendition, right to Gitmo? Assange's nearly Jobs-like reality distortion field is definitely getting to you. Or, you're just trolling in the interests of ... what, exactly?

        • Maybe not Gitmo. Maybe the brig on a Navy ship somewhere or a prison on the mainland US. Maybe he would have got a regular plane ride instead of a trip on the Torture Taxi. But I'm quite certain he would have been put in US custody and extradited. An embassy in London has been surrounded by cops 24/7 for years in case he ever steps foot outside. The demand to bring him in for questioning hasn't been dropped even though the condom he was allegedly wearing had none of his DNA on it.

          Do you really, honestly bel

        • Re:and yet (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @09:46AM (#47350165) Homepage

          The funny thing being that according to Wikileaks itself, in 2006 Sweden created a major diplomatic incident with the US by diguising their special forces as airport workers and hijacking a US rendition flight to stop the US from renditioning people through their airspace [thelocal.se]. The very Swedish foreign minister that Assange rails against (Carl Bildt) is the same guy who was prime minister when Sweden refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard to the US because Swedish law bans extradition for intelligence crimes.

          No country is perfect, and every country has bad marks at some point on its record, so anyone who wants to can pick attacks for any country. However, in Sweden, these sort of things are few and far between. The peer-reviewed World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks Sweden #1 in the world [worldjusticeproject.org] for fundamental rights of the accused. Assange on at least two occasions called Sweden his "shield" before the incident due to their having such good whistleblower protections**, and was applying for residence there. It was only after he got anklagad for rape that he suddenly changed his tune and decided that Sweden is an evil US lackey bent on his downfall. Funny how that works.

          (** It's actually those very whistleblower protections that are responsible for why we know so much about the case. In Sweden, it's illegal to even look for a person who leaks documents if they consider it whisteblowing; as a result, pretty much every high-profile criminal case in Sweden leaks like a sieve)

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

            Sweden refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard to the US because Swedish law bans extradition for intelligence crimes.

            This isn't an intelligence crime. Assange is accused of terrorism and actively harming US security and interests. What you are suggesting is that he takes a huge risk, and the result of losing will be rotting in gitmo forever.

            • What he is accused of in the US is absolutely irrelevant. It's what the Swedish court says that would matter.

            • Re:and yet (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @10:52AM (#47350709) Homepage

              Assange is not accused of anything by the US. There are no US charges against him. There is still an investigation open, but it's questionable that they'll ever even be able to charge him with anything [washingtonpost.com]. Just assuming that they did, a terrorism charge would get utterly laughed out of each of the *five* different bodies (Swedish courts, Swedish governments, British courts, British government, and ECHR) that would have independent veto authority over a US request. You might as well accuse him of of beating to death an astronaut on the moon, it's about as plausible. And the US could barely get Abu-freaking-Hamza extradited, an *actual* who everyone hated, a guy who was working to set up terrorist training camps in the US (and even when they finally did, a decade later, they couldn't even put him in a supermax prison because the EU considers that too cruel). And "actively harming US security and interests" isn't even a charge in the US, let alone anything that would even remotely meet even the basic double criminality standard.

          • Interesting link, but the article doesn't say they hijacked the aircraft, only that they boarded and confirmed there were prisoners onboard.

            I'm also trying to figure out what they mean by "carried out without the knowledge of the Americans." If the Americans knew about it, why would the Swedes even bother going in undercover? Unless they knew about it and chose to do nothing I suppose, since it sounds like it was on Swedish soil.

  • What happened to him is totally unfair.

    Yes. It is totally unfair, but nevertheless it seems quite fashionable.

  • Bizarre (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:51AM (#47349707) Journal

    Can things possibly get any more bizarre with Assange? I have an idea. Let's lock Julian Assange, John McAfee and Edward Snowden in a room for a week and see who is left surviving at the end. We can call it Hunger Games - Nerd Edition (my bet's on McAfee).

  • by westlake ( 615356 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @08:51AM (#47349709)

    Julian Assange is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September.

    What begins as tragedy ends as farce.

  • ... the "Zoolander" gambit?
  • I don't understand why the Ecuadorians don't make him a countryman and give him a diplomatic passport?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You cannot get immunity for previous crimes.

    • Because it's not that simple. You can't just declare your citizens diplomats. The UK would have to accept his diplomatic credentials.
    • Diplomatic immunity is not retroactive.

      Sweden and the UK would have to accept him as a diplomat.

      Diplomatic immunity does not cover rape.

      None of which even touches on there is a huge difference between giving refuge at an embassy, and allowing him to escape scot free. I mean, hell, they could put him in a diplomatic pouch and get him to Ecuador if they wanted, but it would be pretty poor form.

      • Rape was not involved. Don't people read or remember anymore??

        He wasn't charged; it is questioning but under their system questioning is higher level than it is here it's still below being charged with the crime. The crime in this case is involuntary rape using US terms; we don't have something like that here which is way it sounds so stupid. Even over there they have a top court ruling that essentially throws it out, making it one of those laws on the books but is functionally dead. They are stretching i

    • I don't understand why the Ecuadorians don't make him a countryman and give him a diplomatic passport?

      I wonder what percentage of the Ecuadorian embassy's budget goes on feeding Assange. And if they plan to send him a bill eventually. They must be kicking themselves.

    • Because the Ecuadorian President decided to offer him sanctuary just to yank the US's chain. They couldn't care less about him. I see the situation developing in one three ways: (1) Assange gives himself up to the British authorities who will ship him to Sweden (2) Britain gets tired of the abuse of diplomatic privileges and tells the Ecuadorians to give him up or GTFO. At this point they could probably give Assange a diplomatic passport and take him back to Ecuador without him being arrested. (3) The Ecua
  • The sexual assault comes from hiring hookers and not following their terms of the verbal agreement -- "wear a condom or don't have sex". The hookers were totally in the right for calling Assange out for being an asshole.

  • Assange is modeling? Yay, I guess.
  • Naive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Monday June 30, 2014 @09:39AM (#47350111)

    “I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair.”

    He's in self-imposed exile and he made it worse on himself by running into the Ecuadorian embassy in the first place. Somebody needs to tell this twit that life is unfair, get used to it.

    • What's wrong with the Ecuadorian embassy?
      • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        Well, for a start, its address is

        Flat 3b, 3 Hans Crescent, London SW1X 0LS

        In Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], it is described as "a suite of rooms occupying part of the ground floor of the building, which has been described as an "apartment block".

        It's likely not very big. It would probably be quite comfortable for Assange if he didn't have to share it with the Ecuador diplomatic staff.

      • No qualms about the Ecuadorian embassy. I think the Ecuadorian government was duped into providing him haven though because all they've got to show for it is less space in the embassy and all his upkeep.

  • I will gouge my eyes out with a rusty fork!

  • ... ... ...
    But why male models?

  • This is further proof of his insidious and insatiable Narcissism [wikipedia.org]

    When will his loyal fanbois catch on that everthing he does is about his own ego?

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