Talk:Michi (cat)

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Hardly 'neutral'.


 * First, the ridiculously silly/tongue-in-cheek suggestion/speculation by one source, the NPR article, that the cat stuff 'arguably played a small role' in a major political decision such as the eviction of Assange was not only presented as truth and placed in the lede but even amplified with the wording 'due in part' (without specifying that even NPR acknowledged that it would have been a 'small' part). This was part of the Ecuadoran government's major geopolitical U-turn from opposing the US to assisting it, in turn part of a general political U-turn from the left to the right executed by Moreno when took over from Correa. Believing that domestic nuisances would have been any kind of factor in an issue at this level of international relations is absurdly stupid, and presenting/reading this issue as a morality tale about taking care of your pets requires a level of pettiness and childishness that is beyond belief. Even at the level of principles and morality, it is clear that a government either believes and states, as a matter of official position, that a person is unjustly persecuted and legitimately deserves asylum, or it doesn't; it can't change its mind on that subject because of unrelated trivial domestic issues such as whether they take good care of a cat. Not to mention that the timing doesn't make sense either: the alleged 'cause' of the eviction is very likely to have disappeared long before the time of the eviction, as it is disputed if the cat was even still in the embassy at the time of the eviction, and the 'explanation' requires a further assumption that Assange had continued in his alleged non-caring of the cat after the rules were introduced, even though there are no reports to that effect. It seems that NPR felt that given that the subject is one of 'levity', standard requirements for sourcing and logic don't apply either - after all, who cares what is true anyway, the goal is to be funny.


 * Second, the very claim that Assange had failed to take care of the cat was accepted as true, again, based only on the NPR article, which, in turn, based it only on the Ecuadoran embassy's new house rules. These rules only said that Assange should take care of the cat and did not represent an explicit claim that he didn't, but, even more importantly, an implicit or explicit claim would still be only an accusation by the Ecuadoran embassy, which wouldn't necessarily mean that it is also true. (It was clear then and even clearer now that the Ecuadoran government under Moreno had turned against Assange and that these pronouncements, regardless of whether they were truthful or not, were just a small part of an overall strategy of preparation for its eventual complete about-face and for handing him over to the UK.) Of course, Assange has never admitted that he didn't care for the cat. Of the sources, only NPR made the step to assume that such an accusation was true, choosing to believe the Embassy rather than Assange, based, apparently, on nothing. Nevertheless, this, too, was presented as unquestionably true in the lede, along with the previous claim.


 * Third, the hook is based on the statement by Assange's lawyer, Baltasar Garzón, that the rules were 'denigrating'. This is made to sound like an absurd and cheeky argument to the effect that pet-owners shouldn't be obliged to take care of their pets, because it 'denigrates' pet-owners (and the question remains who should should take care of their pets then). I can't find any original recording, transcript or quote including even the entire sentence that included the word 'denigrating', let alone the complete text of the statement, but it seems very likely that what the lawyer actually meant was that the publication of the rules implying that Assange was not taking care of the cat was part of a campaign of defamation seeking to blacken/denigrate Assange's character. (Which it, of course, was, and so was the way the media focused on it.) The lawyer's possibly imperfect wording (although without a complete quote it's hard to even know if it was imperfect) was then quoted by all the media in a way that at least allows the interpretation that he is saying something surreally ridiculous, providing some 'infotainment'. In other words, this is a quote pulled out of context, without which it is difficult to know what it actually meant, and neither this article nor any of its cited sources expounds on it and provides the context. Yet it is chosen as the thing to place most prominently on Wikipedia's front page.


 * In sum, the overall effect of this 'neutral' article was to once again rehash a small, 'comedic' part of the campaign of slander against Assange just as he is about to be extradited to the US in order to be imprisoned, possibly for life, or even executed on nonsensical charges in revenge for his opposition to the operations of the US imperial machine and for his exposure of its war crimes and other malfeasance, and as his health after the prolonged isolation and the unjustified confinement in a maximum security prison is so poor that it's unclear how long he will live in any case. If anyone was able to view the situation as some trivial sitcom about cats at the time, the fact that it is a dead serious tragedy should have been abundantly clear by now.--62.73.69.121 (talk) 10:04, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Since you keep reverting, do you have any sources saying he was taking sufficient care of his cat? At the moment, we have multiple (NPR, BBC, Vox, NYT, etc) saying otherwise. BilledMammal (talk) 10:47, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * You keep saying this, but this is precisely what I'm disputing and what I am asking you to prove. Please provide a quotation from any of the other 'reliable sources' besides NPR (e.g. from 'BBC, Vox, NYT, etc') that does actually say, as a statement of fact, that he wasn't taking sufficient care of his cat, rather than just reporting the set of rules which the Ecuadorian embassy published (and which can be read as a hint on the part of the Embassy that he didn't). Moreover, this is just one of the two claims I find only in NPR, the other one being that this was a genuine reason for his eviction. You need to provide another source that says that, too, if you insist on stating it as a fact rather than attributing it to NPR. And no, I'm not the one who is supposed to find a source that says that a claim is false, that's not how it works - you are the one who has to find a source that says that a claim is true. The burden of proof is on whoever wants to keep a claim in the article, not on whoever wants to keep a claim out of it - see WP:BURDEN. And I've already said all of this clearly even just in the edit summaries, not to mention the talk page.--62.73.69.121 (talk) 12:39, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I gave you a list of sources. However, I've updated the lede, and I believe it resolves your issues. BilledMammal (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)