The US has been planning to have Julian Assange handed over for a longtime, that much is obvious. Mike Pence, the Vice President, was visiting Ecuador last year, notionally to discuss the Venezuela situation, and trade. But it was fairly obvious at the time, and even more so now, that they were discussing the details of Assange being handed over to UK authorities, and eventually extradited to the US.
“Trade”, indeed.
In terms of quid pro quo, the situation is clear-cut – In February, Ecuador got a $4.2 BILLION loan approved by the International Monetary Fund (amongst other pay-outs). Reuters reported on February 19th of this year:
Ecuador has reached a $4.2 billion staff-level financing deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), President Lenin Moreno said on Wednesday, as the Andean country grapples with a large fiscal deficit and heavy external debt.
The country will also receive $6 billion in loans from multilateral institutions including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the CAF Andean development bank…
So, less than 2 months ago, it was announced Ecuador was going to receive over 10 billion dollars of loans. Where all that money will eventually end up is anyone’s guess, it certainly isn’tbeing spent on infrastructure or state enterprise:
Moreno has begun to implement an austerity plan that includes layoffs of workers at state-owned companies and cuts to gasoline subsidies, also plans to find a private operator for state-run telecoms company CNT and other state-owned firms.
President Moreno has already been the subject of numerous corruption accusations. So these “loans”, nominally for “[creating] work opportunities for those who have not yet found something stable”, could more realistically be described as “a pay-off”.
More than just money, Lenin Moreno has been gifted something all insecure third-world leaders crave: Western approval.
The Economist ran a story on April 12th, the day after Assange was arrested, praising Lenin Moreno’s economic policies, and blaming the previous administration for the “mess” that Moreno has to clear ups. (Of course, the idea that Moreno is handling the economy brilliantly, but somehow also needs over $10 billion dollars in loans is never addressed. A tiny logical contradiction compared with the nonsense the MSM dish-up on a daily basis).
The basic structure of the give-and-take of this situation is fairly obvious.
Less on the nose, but still definitely present, is the slow-burn media-based campaign of defamation and smears directed at Assange. A campaign designed to weaken public support for him and lessen the potential outcry if/when the UK handed him to US authorities, who famously use “enhanced interrogation” on suspects.
Last October, just three months after Pence’s Ecuador visit, an Ecuadorian government memo was “leaked” claiming that Assange had bad personal hygiene habits, was hacking people’s electrical devices, and neglecting his cat. These charges, cynically designed to make Assange a figure of ridicule, got massive play in the media. The Guardian, ever at the vanguard of sticking the boot in on Assange, ran a gleeful opinion piece mocking him. As did many other publications.
To this day we have no way of knowing if there is any veracity to this “leaked” memo, but real or not, it served both to belittle Assange in the public mind, and provide Ecuador with an excuse to get rid of him (they set up “rules”, claim Assange wasn’t following them and THAT’s why they kicked him out – not the 10 billion dollars they got from international financial institutions).
The media are, of course, complicit in this lie.
Various outlets, from the Guardian, to CNN to the Australian have written “explainer” articles with headlines such as: ‘Rude, ungrateful and meddling’: why Ecuador turned on Assange.
Because – you know – ‘rude and ‘ungrateful’ people don’t deserve to have their human rights respected. There’s probably a clause in the UN charter to that effect.
Every step of this ignoble process, so far, has been based on lies. Let’s list them.
Lie #1: Assange hs been and is attacked as a “Russian agent” and “Putin’s stooge”. A “breaking news” story for the Guardian, written by an erstwhile plagiarist and a convicted forger, claimed Assange had worked with Paul Manafort to swing the US election for Trump.
No evidence for these claims has been supplied. It remains to date nothing more than a baseless allegation, and WikiLeaks is in the process of suing the Guardian over it. This lie paints Assange as an “enemy combatant”, and will be used to justify whatever happens to him.
Lie #2: Let’s all recall that, for months, we were told the US didn’t want Assange, that “the only barrier to him leaving the embassy was pride”. WikiLeaks claims that US had sealed indictments waiting for Assange were dismissed as “conspiracy theories”.
Lie #3: Just one week ago, the Ecuadorian government claimed they had NO plans to kick Assange out, and that WikiLeaks lied when they claimed as much.
They released Assange to UK police just six days later.
Equally obnoxious and dishonest is the ‘corporate concern trolling’ that allows faux-liberals to take up the craven position of “qualified support”, such as:
“You can think Assange is a liar, fascist and misogynist, but still think he shouldn’t be extradited”
This is the stance adopted by folks like Owen Jones in the Guardian, a position which claims to support one course of action, but is actually covertly arguing for the opposite. Damning Assange with the pretence of faint praise.
And ‘identity politics’ is also playing its part here – displaying its usefulness in clogging up public debate with shallow finger-pointing and Crucible-esque accusations of moral impurity. (Jones labels anyone who doesn’t believe the accusations against Assange “a misogynist”).
Suzanne Moore, the epitome of the liberal hypocrite, wrote a column for the New Statesmentalking quite a lot about totally unproven accusations of “molestation”, but breezing over the very-much-proven crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile seventy UK MPs, including “people’s champion” Jess Philips, and John Woodcock (who quit Labour over accusations of sexually inappropriate behaviour), signed a letter to Sajid Javiddemanding Assange be handed over to Sweden to face “justice”. A position marred only by the fact that Sweden haven’t actually asked for him yet. (This was aimed at Corbyn and Diane Abbott, whose support for Assange will be turned against them, and used to label Labour as being “soft on sexual predators” or “not supporting women” etc).
But this is all distraction and obfuscation – keeping the totally discredited accusations in the headlines, whilst avoiding the actual truth, which is:
Julian Assange was arrested for publishing evidence of US war crimes, after the US government bribed the Ecuadorian government to break international law.
That is what happened. And anyone who uses lies and distraction to deny this truth is on the wrong side of history.
The latest Democrat to join the 2020 race is Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, who has made gun control the focus of his platform. Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, Swalwell discussed his platform and said that he doesn’t want to take away all guns, but that the Second Amendment is not an absolute right.
Tapper first asked about criminal prosecution for possession of so-called “assault” weapons under Swalwell’s proposed ban and buyback. “What’s the punishment for people who don’t hand in their guns, do they go to jail?”
“They would,” he said. “But I also offer an alternative, which would be to keep them at a hunting club or a shooting range.”
Swalwell said that both gun violence and “the immeasurable fear” of potential gun violence are the rationale behind that move. “I want to get rid of that fear, I want to do what Australia did, and New Zealand just recently did,” he said. “I think this issue just needs some bold leadership to do it.”
In the gun debate, there is a constant back-and-forth between pro- and anti-gun positions about whether those who favor gun control intend to actually take away everyone’s guns, and Tapper brought it up.
“I know you know this, but the vast majority of gun related deaths in this country are not related to these semi-automatic assault weapons, or whatever you want to call them, and the vast majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens who have purchased these weapons legally, and use them safely,” said Tapper. “One of the most frequent attacks on this issue from President Trump and the Republicans is the Democrats want to take away your guns, but isn’t it fair to say you actually do want to take away people’s guns?”
“You know, keep your pistols, keep your long rifles, keep your shotguns. I want the most dangerous weapons, these weapons of war, out of the hands of the most dangerous people,” said Swalwell. “But when it comes to what else we can do, because I don’t even suggest this is all we can do, I also want background checks. So do 73% of NRA members.”
He listed some other agenda items, like “prevention programs” and said that on guns he wants “to lead” on the issue.
“Former supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says that the United States should repeal the second amendment,” said Tapper, getting past the campaign talk and to the heart of the issue. “Do you agree?”
“No. I don’t agree,” said Swalwell. “But I think the greatest threat to the second amendment is doing nothing.”
He then added, “And the second amendment is not an absolute right,” and compared it to freedom of speech, arguing that not being able to shout fire in a movie theater is the same as not being able to “own a bazooka” or “a tank.”
“We should put some limits in place, and I think the American people are with me,” said Swalwell. “I’m no longer intimidated by the NRA.”
(Daily Mail) Workers may have found 27 more human graves near notorious Florida reform school shuttered in 2011, where children were said to have been locked in chains, beaten and sexually abused.
‘Anomalies consistent with possible graves’ were uncovered at the site of the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in the Florida Panhandle city of Marianna.
Department of Environmental Protection workers made the discovery as they were preparing to clean up fuel storage 500 feet adjacent to Boot Hill Cemetery, Miami Herald reports.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could still face sex assault charges in Sweden in the case that led to his living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain, officials said.
Meghan McCain didn’t sugarcoat her feelings about Julian Assange‘s arrest Thursday morning in London.
“I hope he rots in hell!” McCain said.
And that set the stage for fireworks.
In an explosive opening segment of The View, McCain battled Sunny Hostin — who argued that the arrest of the Wikileaks founder is an attack on press freedom.
“I think that if you have a problem with Julian Assange and what he released in terms of national security, then you need to have a problem with the Pentagon Papers, you the Panama Papers, you need to have a problem with the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs being released,” Hostin said. She added, “Our constitution does protect Julian Assange.”
“I’m sorry,” McCain said — interjecting. “I’ve got to push back hard on that.”
“You can push back after I’ve finished speaking,” Hostin shot back.
Hostin wrapped up her point, and then McCain wasted no time on her rebuttal.
“I think what you said was just straight propaganda, just so we’re clear,” McCain said.
Hostin replied, “Well, if the law is propaganda, then I’m sorry.”
YouTube launched its competitor to cable TV two years ago, charging $35 a month, but it's now over 40 percent more expensive.
Google raised the price of YouTube TV to $40 in March 2018 and yesterday announced it's raising the price again, this time to $49.99. In both cases, the Google-owned streaming TV service paired the price hike with extra channels, but subscribers have to pay the new, higher price whether they want the new channels or not.
"To keep bringing you the best service possible, we are also updating our membership pricing," YouTube TV told subscribers in an email yesterday. "The price for new and existing members will be $49.99/month."
It bears repeating, given the nearly past three years of 'Russiagate' collusion hysteria which focused heavily and uncritically on the role of WikiLeaks in both Hillary's defeat and the rise of Trump, and centrally the "Russian connection" supposedly tying it all together: there seems yet more daily and weekly evidence demonstrating how absurd the claims were and are.
With Thursday's dramatic UK arrest of WikiLeaks founder and leader Julian Assange, revealed to be based largely on a US extradition request, which we've all now learned has been pursued for the past two years by the Trump Department of Justice, another conspiracy theory bites the dust. Journalist Aaron Maté points out "over the last 2 years, just as Maddow et al were feverishly speculating that Trump and Assange secretly conspired, Trump's DOJ was secretly trying to extradite Assange."
Looking back in light of Thursday morning's events, Maté says, "Assange's arrest reminds us how moronic the Wikileaks aspect of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory...".
So much of it continues to unravel. Maté continues: "The conspiracy theory never slowed even after Roger Stone's indictment revealed that a) Trump camp had no advance knowledge of WL releases b) they tried to find out from Stone, who also had no advance knowledge.
Assange's arrest reminds us how moronic the Wikileaks aspect of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory is: over the last 2 years, just as @Maddow et al were feverishly speculating that Trump and Assange secretly conspired, Trump's DOJ was secretly trying to extradite Assange.
Maté adds that further "Stone had no such knowledge because he had no actual contact to WikiLeaks."
And just last month here's the aptly dubbed Russiagate Grand Wizard Rachel Maddow with her Glenn Beck style visuals to suggest a Trump-WikiLeaks-Russia conspiracy plot was thickening:
Something appears to be happening in federal court that pertains to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange... pic.twitter.com/lVVKywh0zY
And that something "is based on [Assange's] pre-2016 conduct, not the election hacks" investigated by Mueller (https://t.co/QUIiKPjcih). But @Maddow omits that inconvenient part of the WP article, going instead w/ Stone-Cohen innuendo to falsely suggest this pertains to Mueller: https://t.co/0KGO9jkMAY
We noted earlier that if one believes Mike Pompeo's warnings that Wikileaks is "an arm of Russian intelligence" then the prosecution of Assange would be another example of Trump acting contrary to Putin's interests.
As The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald also summarized, "The belief that Assange is a Russian agent has always been painfully stupid (and, I should note, completely without evidence). But if you're someone who decided to believe that, then you'd have to see this as another case of Trump taking actions directly harmful to the Kremlin."
Montreal law professor Daniel Turp, citing Saudi Arabia's poor human-rights record, asked the Federal Court to review the government's decision to issue export permits authorizing the deal.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange may risk torture if he is extradited to the United States, one of his lawyers said in Madrid on Thursday, following Assange's arrest in London.
The son of a sheriff's deputy was arrested in connection with a string of fires that burned down three historically black Louisiana churches, according to reports.Holden Matthews, 21, was take...
Enlarge / Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at court on April 11, 2019 in London. (credit: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
British police arrested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday. He had been hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 and was arrested after the Ecuadorian government invited the Metropolitan Police Service into the embassy to remove him. Assange was initially arrested for jumping bail in 2012, but the Metropolitan Police Service subsequently announced that he had been "further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities."
After Assange's arrest, the US Justice Department unsealed its indictment against him. The indictment focuses on Assange's role in helping Chelsea Manning steal classified information from the US military.
In 2010, "Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers," the indictment charges. Manning allegedly provided Assange with the hash of a password and asked Assange to crack it.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was convicted on Thursday by a London court of skipping bail in 2012 after an extradition order to Sweden over an allegation of rape.
U.S. prosecutors announced charges on Thursday against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
A lot of people are dunking on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange now that he's been arrested by British law enforcement and will likely face extradition hearings to the United States on charges that he conspired with Chelsea Manning to "commit computer intrusion" on a U.S. government machine. Assuming the British authorities do go forward with extradition, it will almost certainly be years before the matter is settled (and there's a strong argument that Assange might walk in British courts). In the meantime, Assange has effectively traded exile in Ecuador's embassy in London for a jail cell in the same city. As Robby Soave notes, prosecuting Assange for publishing leaked documents—something that media outlets do on a regular basis—would be very bad for press freedom.
Regardless of how you feel about Assange as a person, there's no question that WikiLeaks, founded in 2006, has been central to starting a salutary era of forced transparency, a time when state and corporate actors have much more trouble keeping secrets. Forced transparency is bigger than WikiLeaks, of course. It's one of the defining dynamics of our time, riding the same technological wave that gave us Napster and other innovations that disperse power and information in all sorts of unauthorized ways. But let's give credit and praise where it's due. The world is better for the fact that it's harder than ever for governments to keep their own secrets.
Early exposés by the organization included documents from the Church of Scientology and East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit. In 2010, the organization came into its own by publishing a trove of documents given to it by Chelsea Manning, then an Army intelligence analyst. Among the things that came to light:
graphic video of a U.S. Apache helicopter killing Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists;
90,000-plus pages of military memos, now known as the Afghan War Diaries, that showed that the Taliban and the Pakistani government were in regular contact and that civilian casualties were far greater than the U.S. officially acknowledged;
400,000 pages of documents about the war in Iraq, including revelation of 15,000 unreported civilian deaths and brutal reprisals by Iraqi forces;
diplomatic cables that showed a wide gulf between the U.S.'s public positions and private analysis.
In 2016, of course, WikiLeaks also released hacked emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, which unmasked various bad-faith dealings within the Democratic Party establishment.
There are legitimate questions about WikiLeaks' relationship with the Russian government, but it's the worst sort of whataboutism to argue that WikiLeaks' revelatons about the United States government should not be taken seriously until it releases equally damaging material about, say, the Putin regime. The information it has shared about the United States is widely understood to be accurate; calls for some sort of geopolitical balance doesn't make the group's revelations about our leaders any less true.
In 2017, FBI Director James Comey said that WikiLeaks trafficked in "public intelligence porn." Mike Pompeo, then CIA director and now secretary of state, went so far as to condemn Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the state. "We can no longer allow [Julian] Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us," Pompeo declared at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for." Such talk was reminiscent of The Wall Street Journal calling Assange an "enemy of the U.S." who should face the death penalty.
Such backward thinking is absurd. We won't be "crushed" if our actions are defensible. Assume the worst about Assange, who was first taken into custody in relation to sexual assault charges in Sweden that have since been dropped. We don't need to praise the man to recognize that governments' radical loss of control of secret knowledge is ultimately a very good thing—and one that isn't going away anytime soon.
From 2010, here's a Reason video in which four experts grapple with the question, "Is WikiLeaks a Force for Good?"
Scientists obtained image of black hole at center of galaxy M87, outlined by emission from hot gas under influence of strong gravity near its event horizon.
Former President Barack Obama's former White House counsel Greg Craig expects to be indicted on federal corruption charges over a scandal with Ukraine, his lawyers said Wednesday.
Two days after a 5-year-old boy was flung from the the third floor of Mall of America in Minnesota, a GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $436,000.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could still face sex assault charges in Sweden in the case that led to his living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain, officials said.
A lot of people are dunking on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange now that he's been arrested by British law enforcement and will likely face extradition hearings to the United States on charges that he conspired with Chelsea Manning to "commit computer intrusion" on a U.S. government machine. Assuming the British authorities do go forward with extradition, it will almost certainly be years before the matter is settled (and there's a strong argument that Assange might walk in British courts). In the meantime, Assange has effectively traded exile in Ecuador's embassy in London for a jail cell in the same city. As Robby Soave notes, prosecuting Assange for publishing leaked documents—something that media outlets do on a regular basis—would be very bad for press freedom.
