Wikileaks - Julian Assange Discussion

[angelburst29]

Assange was taken to Belmarsh straight after the Westminster Magistrates' Court ruled to keep him in custody.

WikiLeaks founder Assange put into ‘Britain’s Guantanamo’ — agency April 13, 2019
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been put into the Belmarsh high-security prison in southeastern London, known informally as "Britain’s Guantanamo," Bloomberg reported on Friday citing Assange’s friend Vaughan Smith.

Smith was the last person who visited Assange in the Embassy of Ecuador prior to his arrest this Thursday. He says that Assange was taken to Belmarsh straight after the Westminster Magistrates' Court ruled to keep him in custody.

The Belmarsh prison is known for its harsh security measures. In the past, the facility has held high-profile inmates, such as radical Islamic preacher Abu Qatada, once referred to as "Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe."

Assange was arrested by the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday, after Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno had announced the withdrawal of his asylum.


Assange’s associate, detained in Ecuador, released after questioning — TV April 13, 2019
A man with reported ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was earlier detained in Ecuador, was released after questioning, the SVT TV channel reported on Friday citing Ecuador’s embassy in Sweden.

The diplomatic mission announced, citing information obtained from the country’s officials, that "the man was questioned about WikiLeaks, but is free at present."

The Swedish Foreign Ministry has not yet confirmed the detention of its citizens in Ecuador in the past 24 hours.

The UK-based Daily Express reported earlier on Friday that the man worked for Assange as a software developer for his WikiLeaks project. The paper identified him as Swedish national Ola Bini.

Ecuadorian Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo earlier said that a man, who was trying to board a plane to Japan, was detained in one of the country’s airports. She did not reveal his identity, but said the detainee, who has close ties to Assange, was apprehended on suspicion of "assisting attempts to destabilize situation in the country with the aim to harm the government."

 

[Cosmos]

Noam Chomsky speaks out against this outrages step too:

Edit: Spelling

 

[Voyageur]

Interview with John Pilger and Assange Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson on his arrest:

Here is Pilger's latest to go along with the interview:

April 12, 2019The Assange Arrest is a Warning From History
by John Pilger

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair
The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.
That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.
But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice.
Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth.
The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilisation”. The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast.
Assange’s principal media tormentor, the Guardian, a collaborator with the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial that scaled new weasel heights. The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called “the greatest scoop of the last 30 years”. The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.
With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.
With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding joined the police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”. The Guardian has since published a series of falsehoods about Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The meetings never happened; it was fake.
But the tone has now changed. “The Assange case is a morally tangled web,” the paper opined. “He (Assange) believes in publishing things that should not be published …. But he has always shone a light on things that should never have been hidden.
These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the expose of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It all available on the WikiLeaks site.
The Guardian is understandably nervous. Secret policemen have already visited the newspaper and demanded and got the ritual destruction of a hard drive. On this, the paper has form. In 1983, a Foreign Office clerk, Sarah Tisdall, leaked British Government documents showing when American cruise nuclear weapons would arrive in Europe. The Guardian was showered with praise.
When a court order demanded to know the source, instead of the editor going to prison on a fundamental principle of protecting a source, Tisdall was betrayed, prosecuted and served six months.
If Assange is extradited to America for publishing what the Guardian calls truthful “things”, what is to stop the current editor, Katherine Viner, following him, or the previous editor, Alan Rusbridger, or the prolific propagandist Luke Harding?
What is to stop the editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, who also published morsels of the truth that originated with WikiLeaks, and the editor of El Pais in Spain, and Der Spiegel in Germany and the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. The list is long.
David McCraw, lead lawyer of the New York Times, wrote: “I think the prosecution [of Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers … from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and the law would have a very hard time distinguishing between the New York Times and WilLeaks.”
Even if journalists who published WikiLeaks’ leaks are not summoned by an American grand jury, the intimidation of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning will be enough. Real journalism is being criminalised by thugs in plain sight. Dissent has become an indulgence.
In Australia, the current America-besotted government is prosecuting two whistle-blowers who revealed that Canberra’s spooks bugged the cabinet meetings of the new government of East Timor for the express purpose of cheating the tiny, impoverished nation out of its proper share of the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. Their trial will be held in secret. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is infamous for his part in setting up concentration camps for refugees on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus, where children self harm and suicide. In 2014, Morrison proposed mass detention camps for 30,000 people.
Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the Ministry of Defence in London produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat.
The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it. “We had no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”
What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake — if there are others — are silenced and “the right to know and question and challenge” is taken away?
In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.
She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public.
“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked her.
“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”
And did.
The rest, she might have added, is history.

And here is Ray McGovern - Opened with a comment that he is in the process of moving outside the Washington swamp (I've only caught half of it):

Ray McGovern - Why Julian Assange is being silenced

 

[SHNAGFNAY]

UK pressured not to overlook Swedish claims to Assange
By GREGORY KATZ 2 hours ago



1 of 3
FILE - This Sept. 4, 2015 file photo shows a general view of HMP Belmarsh, in London. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has exchanged a small room at the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London for a cell at Belmarsh Prison, a grim facility in southeast London after his arrest on Thursday, April 11, 2019. (Anthony Devlin/PA via AP, File)

LONDON (AP) — British lawmakers are heaping pressure on the government to make sure that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces Swedish justice if prosecutors there reopen a rape investigation against him.

There is mounting concern that Assange should not be allowed to sidestep the Swedish investigation stemming from his 2010 visit to Sweden. The complaints from two women eventually led him to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London rather than return to Sweden for questioning.

Some are calling for the British government to extradite Assange to Sweden, if it makes an official request, rather than to the U.S., which seeks him on conspiracy charges.

More than 70 British lawmakers signed a letter late Friday urging Home Secretary Sajid Javid to “do everything you can to champion action that will ensure Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden in the event Sweden makes an extradition request.”

Prominent Conservative Party lawmaker Alistair Burt, a former Foreign Office minister, said Saturday that it’s “quite disturbing” to see the sexual allegations minimized.

He said the testimony of the two women makes it “essential” that Assange face justice, to either be cleared in a Swedish court or be convicted.

Assange, 47, has denied the sexual misconduct allegations, which he claims are politically motivated. He claims the sex was consensual.

Sweden suspended its investigation into possible sexual misconduct against Assange two years ago because he was beyond their reach while he was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London with political asylum status. Prosecutors said the investigation could be revived if his situation changed.

Assange was arrested Thursday after Ecuador withdrew his asylum. He is now in Belmarsh Prison in southeast London, waiting to be sentenced for jumping bail in Britain and facing an extradition request from the United States on charges of conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer.

WikiLeaks says Assange will fight the U.S. extradition request and has been meeting with his legal team to plan his defense.

He has not had a chance to enter a plea in response to the U.S. charge, but he says all of his WikiLeaks actions are those of a legitimate journalist.

If Britain receives competing extradition requests, lawyers say the Home Secretary would have some leeway in deciding which takes priority. Considerations usually include which request came first and which alleged crime is more serious.

Most of the lawmakers who signed the letter are from the opposition Labour Party, whose leader, Jeremy Corbyn, wants Britain to refuse to send Assange to the U.S. After Assange’s arrest, Corbyn praised him for exposing U.S. atrocities committed in Iraq and Afghanistan when WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of confidential U.S. documents in 2010.

British politicians are free to lobby the government for a certain course of action, but it’s up to the courts to decide whether the U.S. request for Assange’s extradition — and a possible future request from Sweden — should be honored.

The Home Secretary, a senior Cabinet official, can block extradition under certain circumstances, including cases where a person might face capital punishment or torture in the country seeking their extradition.

Swedish prosecutors opened an investigation into Assange after two women accused him of sexual offenses during a 2010 visit to Sweden. Some of the sexual misconduct accusations are no longer viable because their time ran out. But Swedish prosecutors have said a rape case could be reactivated since the statute of limitations for that runs until August 2020.

After Assange’s arrest this week, Swedish prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson was tapped to look into a request from a lawyer for one of the accusers, to find out whether the case can be pursued.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer for the woman who reported being raped by Assange, told The Associated Press that she would “do everything” to have the Swedish case reopened so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted.

The extradition process is not swift, and Assange could appeal several times if decisions go against him. It’s expected it would take a year or longer for him to be sent to the United States or possibly to Sweden even if he ultimately loses in court.
___
Associated Press writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark contributed.

link UK pressured not to overlook Swedish claims to Assange

 

[angelburst29]

Assange’s associate, detained in Ecuador, released after questioning — TV April 13, 2019
A man with reported ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was earlier detained in Ecuador, was released after questioning, the SVT TV channel reported on Friday citing Ecuador’s embassy in Sweden.

A report that Ola Bini has now been jailed pending trial?

Ecuador holding Swedish programmer linked to Assange in custody
Ecuador said on Friday it is holding a programmer linked to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in custody pending possible charges of interfering in private communications, a day after ending Assange’s seven-year asylum in its London embassy.

“He is detained for the purposes of investigation. This is a detention that took place in recent hours, ordered by judges of course, and requested by state prosecutors,” Romo said in televised comments. “This person is very close to WikiLeaks.”

Romo, who on Thursday had announced the detention of an unidentified individual, did not provide further details.

On his website, Bini describes himself as a software developer who works for the Quito-based Center for Digital Autonomy, which focuses on digital privacy and security. The site does not mention WikiLeaks.

Bini and the Center for Digital Autonomy did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Romo said the government had information that Bini had traveled on several occasions with Ricardo Patino, who was Ecuador Foreign Minister when Assange was granted asylum in 2012 during the government of former President Rafael Correa.

Patino via Twitter said he does not know Bini.

Romo said two Russian citizens were also under investigation but had not been arrested.

Moreno’s government accused WikiLeaks of being behind an anonymous website that said Moreno’s brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a United Nations agency.

Moreno, who was Correa’s vice president but fell out with him after taking office in 2017, denies wrongdoing.

Ecuadorean judge orders Swedish citizen close to Assange jailed pending trial
An Ecuadorean judge ordered a Swedish citizen, who according to the Andean country's government was linked to WikiLeaks, jailed pending trial for alleged involvement in hacking government computer systems, the prosecutor's office said on Saturday.

Ola Bini, who has lived in Ecuador for five years, was detained at Quito airport on Thursday as he prepared to board a flight to Japan, after the country’s interior minister said three foreign citizens had been leaking private information related to the South American country.

That announcement came the same day Ecuador ended its asylum for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who had lived in the country’s London embassy since 2012, avoiding possible extradition to the United States, where he has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

More recently, Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno had accused WikiLeaks and Assange of violating his privacy by publishing private family photographs. WikiLeaks has denied those allegations, arguing that Moreno was attempting to deflect attention from corruption allegations against him.

Bini, a 36-year-old software developer, works at the Quito-based Center for Digital Autonomy, an organization focusing on cybersecurity and data privacy. Bini had visited Assange at the embassy some 12 times in recent years, interior minister Maria Paulo Romo said in a local television interview on Friday.

Bini’s lawyer, Carlos Soria, called the judge’s decision “incomprehensible and surprising,” and said he planned to appeal the decision, arguing that the justice system “has allowed itself to be influenced by non-judicial factors.”

“They are trying to link him with some sort of possible espionage case without any proof or evidence,” Soria told Reuters in a telephone interview. “He is a personal friend of Julian Assange, he is not a member of WikiLeaks, and being friends with somebody is not a crime - neither is having computers in your home.”

The prosecutor’s office said it had found “a large quantity” of electronic equipment and credit cards in Bini’s suitcase and during a raid of his home.

It also presented a report showing he had paid more than $230,000 for internet services between 2015 and 2019.

 

[Ryan]

Notice that there was only ONE camera crew at the arrest of Assange - Russia Today - Every other major mainstream media news outlet in the UK (and USA) undoubtedly also knew about the impending arrest, but ALL of them neglected to send camera crews and reporters to cover it.

If that doesn't confirm that ALL major mainstream press outlets are fully aligned with Western government's agenda, then nothing does. As a result, no one should ever be in doubt that, on all major issues, EVERYTHING you read from a major Western media outlet is, effectively, government propaganda.

About two weeks ago when rumours of Assange's impending eviction broke, many mainstream media outlets sent crews to cover the embassy. After Julian's supporters turned up, the whole thing looked like it was going to 'fizzle out', and then police came along and moved everybody on. Ruptly were the only news agency that stayed.

A few days later, the story exploded that criminals in Spain had somehow obtained surveillance footage from the embassy and tried to extort Wikileaks for €3 million. Only a day or two after this, Moreno personally and illegally revoked Julian's asylum.

The timing of all this is extremely odd. I can't help but wonder if Assange's arrest was planned for approximately two weeks ago, but Moreno then had second thoughts with all the media and supporters present, and the 'extortion attempt' was actually meant to take place after Assange was in police custody, as a kind of 'multi vector attack' on Wikileaks? Whether or not Moreno knew about the extortion attempt beforehand, he realised that it going public could implicate his government so he immediately reacted to deliver the 'coup de gráce' personally, but this time the mainstream media were instructed to keep quiet until after the arrest?

If this is correct, it infers links between perpetrators in the Ecuadorian, Spanish, UK and US governments to coordinate all this.

 

[Joe]

If this is correct, it infers links between perpetrators in the Ecuadorian, Spanish, UK and US governments to coordinate all this.

I'd say there's little doubt that that is the case.

 

[Gawan]

Here is a good quote that sums it up, I don't know who actually said it first though. But I think it can be used well in the case of Assange arrest on social media:

"When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals"

I created two versions. See attachment.

 

[DougEE]

It's possible that this arrest is a 'deep fake'. Here is one breakdown with some interesting questions from about the 8:30 mark to 19:00.

 

[Laura]

If this is correct, it infers links between perpetrators in the Ecuadorian, Spanish, UK and US governments to coordinate all this.

Did you infer this from the data, or are you saying it was implied?

 

[BlackCartouche]

About two weeks ago when rumours of Assange's impending eviction broke, many mainstream media outlets sent crews to cover the embassy. After Julian's supporters turned up, the whole thing looked like it was going to 'fizzle out', and then police came along and moved everybody on. Ruptly were the only news agency that stayed.

That's interesting. If that's the case, it could be a very subtle psyop to needle another 'Russiagate'.

 

[Keit]

Here's a pretty good video by Tucker Carlson about Assange.

And here's another even more interesting video from The Jimmy Dore Show, where he analyzes Tucker's monologue. He says that while he may not agree with Tucker on many things, he thinks that what he says is exactly what others should say but don't.

 

[thorbiorn]

Regarding the mechanics of using billions in loan from the IMF in exchange for Assange, there was this in the Manual on Unconventional Warfare that was mentioned by John Pilger as one of the best from WikiLeaks, and which I decided to look into:

https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-130

Financial Instrument of U.S. National Power and Unconventional Warfare 2-44. The agent controlling the creation, flow, and access to “stores of value” wields power. Although finance is generally an operation of real and virtual currency, anything that can serve as a “medium of exchange” provides those who accept the medium with a method of financial transaction. For both reasons, ARSOF understand that they can and should exploit the active and analytical capabilities existing in the financial instrument of U. S.power in the conduct of UW.2-45. Like the economic activity, which all nation-states, human groups, and individuals respond to, ARSOF can use financial power as a weapon in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general. Like the economic activity that it is related to, most financial power is unmanaged, routine, and peaceful. However, manipulation of U.S. financial strength can leverage the policies and cooperation of state governments. Financial incentives and disincentives can build and sustain international coalitions waging or supporting U.S.UW campaigns. As part of an interagency effort, the U.S. a Treasury can recommend changes to U.S. policy that can provide such incentives to state governments and others at the national strategic policy level. Participation in international financial organizations, such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), offers the U. S. diplomatic-financial venues to accomplish search coalitions.

In the discussion of the last session, Session 23 March 2019 there was a mentioning of the book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon

And regarding the power of a crowd, a priest I heard recently pointed out the role of the crowd in the events as retold in the New Testament around the Passover festival, or what Christians celebrate as Easter. He said that the change of the sentiment in the crowd from very positive, on what is known as Palm Sunday, to very negative at the time of crucifixion is an example of how powerful a crowd can be and that its sentiment can change rapidly. I was waiting for the priest to give a practical example and mention the case of Julian Assange, who has attempted to make use of the internet to make people aware of what is going on. Assange whose efforts was used by a crowd of journalists and politicians, but now they hardly care about what is being done to him and even applaud the treatment he is being served by the institutions and governments that wish him dead. That Assange was jailed so close to Easter in and by country that is still mostly Christian is ... interesting.

 

[genero81]

And here's another even more interesting video from The Jimmy Dore Show, where he analyzes Tucker's monologue. He says that while he may not agree with Tucker on many things, he thinks that what he says is exactly what others should say but don't.

Yeah, I really like Jimmy Dore. The only thing from him so far I didn't like was his little piece on Jordan Peterson that was none too flattering but even then he at least admitted that he didn't really know anything about Peterson. But Dore emphasizes a really good question that I myself can't quite figure out; why is Tucker Carson allowed to tell the truth on a major news network? That is weird as Jimmy Dore points out.

 

[caballero reyes]

Speaks Assange's lawyer. Blatant violations of international law.


After the arrest of Julian Assange, in the headquarters of the Embassy of Ecuador in England, Carlos Poveda, lawyer of the journalist, described what happened in the last hours after he was retired, to his defendant, the asylum by President Lenin Moreno.
He pointed out that Assange "has not voluntarily surrendered, the British police entered, in front of the opening of the embassy." teleSUR