Julian Assange's Homage to Catalonia

There is a discrepancy between the reporting of The New York Times (Sewell Chan, "Ecuador Cuts Off Julian Assange’s Internet Access. Again.") and RT ("Ecuador cut Assange’s internet over Catalonia crackdown tweet, source close to WikiLeaks tells RT") regarding the severing of Julian Assange's internet where he is sequestered at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

RT is unequivocal -- "The move by the Ecuadorian embassy to cut all communication for Julian Assange was triggered by his critical remark on the arrest of Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, which compared modern Germany to the Nazis, a source says."

The NYT speculates that it might have to do with the poisoning of the Skripals:

The government did not provide specifics, but some speculated that the decision might have been related to the Western nations’ coordinated actions against Russia after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. In a series of Twitter posts this week, Mr. Assange was critical of Western nations’ expulsions of Russian diplomats.

My guess is that The Times doesn't want to lend credence to the connection between the silencing of Assange and Puigdemont's arrest because then the "newspaper of record" would have to quote Assange's excellent tweet:

In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited.

Powerful states and their servants in the corporate press act as if they possess a monopoly on comparisons to Nazis and Hitler.

The last three paragraphs of Raphael Minder's "Arrest of Catalan Leader Tests Spain, Separatists and E.U." foretell a continued unraveling of the European Union:

Mr. Puigdemont, who had traveled to Finland, left that country on Friday, driving across Scandinavia, with officers of Spain’s secret service following him. He was detained after crossing into Germany, whose criminal code, Spanish authorities believe, will allow for his extradition.

Christian Mölling, the research director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said he saw no reason Mr. Puigdemont would not be extradited to Spain.

“If we pass this onto politics, it would be a declaration of bankruptcy for the judiciary,” he said. “We have courts precisely to depoliticize things.”