JulianAssange_ArrestedP1

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Wikileaks editor-in-chief holds presser on new criminal case involving Julian Assange- LIVE

RT UK

Streamed live on Apr 10, 2019

LIVE: Wikileaks editor-in-chief holds presser on new criminal case involving Julian Assange.

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Category

The Heat: The arrest of Julian Assange Pt 1

CGTN America

Published on Apr 11, 2019

After taking political asylum for seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange was removed by British police. Assange was shackled and taken into custody. There was a warrant in the U.K. for skipping bail in 2012, but the United States had also charged the Wikileaks founder with conspiring to hack a classified government computer, back in 2010. He faces extradition, and if convicted, could be sentenced to five years in prison. Anand Naidoo interviewed former technical director of the U.S. National Security Agency William Benny about Assange's arrest.

Category

The Heat: The arrest of Julian Assange Pt 2

CGTN America

Published on Apr 11, 2019

Our panel discusses the latest: Jefferson Morley, a former reporter at the Washington Post and the author of three books on the CIA. Lester Munson, a principal at BGR Group, a leading government relations firm in Washington.Michael Daugherty, CEO of The Cyber Education Foundation and author of “The Devil Inside the Beltway”.

Category

https://esamawuta.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/mi6-are-the-lords-of-the-global-drug-trade.pdf

MI6 Are The Lords of the Global Drug Trade By James Casbolt – Former MI6 Agent c. 2006

In the 1950’s, a genetic bloodline study was started by the NSA based at Harwell Laboratories to find suitable candidates, especially children, to be used in Project Mannequin.

It had been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the CIA has been bringing in most of the drugs into America for the last fifty years (see ex LAPD officer Michael Rupert's 'From the wilderness' website for proof).

The CIA operates under orders from British intelligence and was created by British intelligence in 1947.

The CIA today is still loyal to the international bankers based in the city of London and the global elite aristocratic families like the Rothchilds and the Windsor's.

It may be a revelation to many people that the global drug trade is controlled and run by the intelligence agencies. In this global drug trade British intelligence reigns supreme. As intelligence insiders know MI5 and MI6 control many of the other intelligence agencies in the world (CIA, MOSSAD etc) in a vast web of intrigue and corruption that has its global power base in the city of London, the square mile. My name is James Casbolt and I worked for MI6 in 'black ops' cocaine trafficking with the IRA and MOSSAD in London and Brighton between 1995 and 1999. My father Peter Casbolt was also MI6 and worked with the CIA and mafia in Rome, trafficking cocaine into Britain. My experience was that the distinctions of all these groups became blurred until in the end we were all one international group working together for the same goals.

We were puppets who had our strings pulled by global puppet masters based in the city of London. Most levels of the intelligence agencies are not loyal to the people of the country they are based in and see themselves as 'super national'.

The CIA operates under orders from British intelligence and was created by British intelligence in 1947.

The CIA today is still loyal to the international bankers based in the city of London and the global elite aristocratic families like the Rothchilds and the Windsor's.

Since it was first started, MI6 has always brought drugs into Britain. They do not bring 'some' of the drugs into Britain but I would estimate MI6 bring in around ninety percent of the drugs in. They do this by pulling the s was a government 'signature' and this LSD was called 'Europa'. This global drugs trade controlled by British intelligence is worth at least Â£500 billion a year.

This is more than the global oil trade and the economy in Britain and America is totally dependent on this drug money.

Mafia crime boss John Gotti exposed the situation when asked in court if he was involved in drug trafficking.

He replied "No we can't compete with the government".

I believe this was only a half truth because the mafia and the CIA are the same group at the upper levels.

In Britain, the MI6 drug money is laundered through the Bank of England, Barclays Bank and other household name companies.

The drug money is passed from account to account until its origins are lost in a huge web of transactions. T

he drug money comes out 'cleaner' but not totally clean.

Diamonds are then bought with this money from the corrupt diamond business families like the Oppenheimers.

These diamonds are then sold and the drug money is clean.

MI6 and the CIA are also responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in Britain and America.

In 1978, MI6 and the CIA were in South America researching the effects of the natives smoking 'basuco' cocaine paste.

This has the same effect as crack cocaine.

They saw that the strength and addiction potential was far greater than ordinary cocaine and created crack cocaine from the basuco formula.

MI6 and the CIA then flooded Britain and America with crack. Two years later, in 1980, Britain and America were starting to see the first signs of the crack cocaine epidemic on the streets.

On August 23, 1987, in a rural community south of Little Rock in America, two teenage boys named Kevin Ives and Don Henry were murdered and dismembered after witnessing a CIA cocaine drop that was part of a CIA drug trafficking operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas.

Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas at the time. Bill Clinton was involved with the CIA at this time and $100 million worth of cocaine was coming through the Mena, Arkansas airport each month.

For proof see the books 'Compromise' and 'Dope Inc'. On my father's international MI6 drug runs, whatever fell off the back of the lorry so to speak he would keep and we would sell it in Britain. As long as my father was meeting the speedboats from Morocco in the Costa del Sol and then moving the lorry loads of cannabis through their MI6, IRA lorry business into Britain every month, British intelligence were happy.

As long as my father was moving shipments of cocaine out of Rome every month, MI5 and MI6 were happy.

If my father kept a bit to sell himself no one cared because there was enough drugs and money to go round in this Â£500 billion a year global drugs trade.

The ones who were really paying were the people addicted.

Who were paying with suffering. But karma always catches up and both myself and my father became addicted to heroin in later years and my father died addicted, and poor in prison under very strange circumstances.

Today, I am clean and drug-free and wish to help stop the untold suffering this global drugs trade causes. The intelligence agencies have always used addictive drugs as a weapon against the masses to bring in their long term plan for a one world government, a one world police force designed to be NATO and a micro chipped population known as the New World Order.

As the population is in a drug or alcohol-induced trance watching 'Coronation Street', the new world order is being crept in behind them. To properly expose this global intelligence run drugs trade we need to expose the key players in this area: 1- Tibor Rosenbaum, a MOSSAD agent and head of the Geneva based Banque du Credit international. This bank was the forerunner to the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce international (BCCI) which is a major intelligence drug money laundering bank. 'Life' magazine exposed Rosenbaum's bank as a money launderer for the Meyer Lansky American organised crime family and Tibor Rosenbaum funded and supported 'Permindex' the MI6 assassination unit which was at the heart of the John F. Kennedy assassination. 2- Robert Vesco, sponsored by the Swiss branch of the Rothchilds and part of the American connection to the Medellin drug cartel in Columbia. 3- Sir Francis de Guingand, former head of British intelligence, now living in south Africa (and every head of MI5 and MI6 has been involved in the drug world before and after him). 4- Henry Keswick, chairman of Jardine Matheson which is one of the biggest drug trafficking operations in the world. His brother John Keswick is chairman of the bank of England. 5- Sir Martin Wakefield Jacomb, Bank of England director from 1987 to 1995, Barclays Bank Deputy Chairman in 1985, Telegraph newspapers director in 1986 ( This is the reason why this can of worms doesn't get out in the mainstream media.

The people who are perpetrating these crimes control most of the mainstream media. In America former director of the CIA William Casey was, before his death in 1987, head of the council of the media network ABC. Many insiders refer to ABC as 'The CIA network.) 6- George Bush, Snr, former President and former head of the CIA and America's leading drug baron who has fronted more wars on drugs than any other president. Which in reality is just a method to eliminate competition.

A whole book could be written on George Bush's involvement in the global drug trade but it is well-covered in the book 'Dark Alliance' by investigative journalist Gary Webb. Gary Webb was found dead with two gunshot wounds to the back of his head with a revolver. The case was declared a 'suicide'.

You figure that out. Gary Webb as well as myself and other investigators, found that much of this 'black ops' drug money is being used to fund projects classified above top secret.

These projects include the building and maintaining of deep level underground bases in Dulce in New Mexico, Pine gap in Australia, Snowy mountains in Australia, The Nyala range in Africa, west of Kindu in Africa, next to the Libyan border in Egypt, Mount Blanc in Switzerland, Narvik in Scandinavia, Gottland island in Sweden and many other places around the world (more about these underground bases in my next issue).

The information on this global drugs trade run by the intelligence agencies desperately needs to get out on a large scale. Any information, comments or feedback to help me with my work would be greatly welcomed.

"MI5/MI6" were the original designations when both organisations came under the War Office, now the MOD - "MI" stands for military intelligence. Their official names (acquired in the 30s) are the Security Service (MI5) and SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_mannequin03.htm

https://exopolitics.blogs.com/files/james-casbolt-mi6-buried.alive.pdf

James Casbolt MI6 - Buried Alive

By James Casbolt/Michael Prince

Copyright James Casbolt/Michael Prince

https://exopolitics.blogs.com/files/james-casbolt-mi6-buried.alive.pdf

CHAPTER ONE - Mannequin My name is James Michael Casbolt.

The following is my life and testimony. I was born in London in 1976. I was chosen for an intelligence agency mind control and genetic enhancement program before my birth and was born into the program known as Project Mannequin.

This project is one of the most secret and classified projects in this country, and this is the first ever book written about it.

I was born into the project because of rare genetic attributes that I possess, which the handlers of the project are looking for – also, because of my family’s involvement in the intelligence community and the Illuminati. My family descends from the French royal family of the French revolution on my father's side. My Grandfather was involved in naval intelligence in the Second World War.

His name was James Casbolt. He was also a high-ranking member of the Sindlesham Grand Masonic lodge in Berkshire. Berkshire is a major centre of activity in the U.K for what has come to be known as “The New World Order.”

He was a Zionist Jew and also heavily involved with Rupert Murdoch and ran his own printing company after the war. My uncle was an MI 5 operative in logistics - his name is Brain Casbolt - and my father was a MI 6 operative; his name was Peter Casbolt. My father was also known under many different aliases in the intelligence community.

My stepfather, Neil Pettet, was a high level executive of an aluminium metal company called Hi-Mets (now called Service Metals). This company was based in Newbury, practically right on top of the AL/499 facility.

Neil had a military defence contract with the M.O.D and worked underground at R.A.F. Welford connects underground to the AL/499. He also worked at Harwell genetics labs in the area and Boscombe Down military unit in Wiltshire. Both these places are heavily connected to Project Mannequin, as we shall see later in this book.

I also have a relative called Charles Casbolt.

Charles had so many kills during dogfights in the RAF during the time of the Second World War, there is a war hero website dedicated to him on the internet. Google “Charles Casbolt” to see this. My father was involved in international drug trafficking operations bringing millions of pounds worth of illegal drugs into Britain from the 1960’s onward. He worked with associates of MI 6 operative Howard Marks and operated in Rome, Spain, the Middle East, and other places. MI 6 and the CIA have become infamous for this, and the drug money is known in secret service circles as “non-appropriated funds.” This money funds covert projects that need to be kept off certain official government records. Many 2 of these issues, as well as my involvement in Project Mannequin, will be made public for the first time in this book.

I have had constant death threats, and even intelligence people die in very suspicious circumstances hours before arranged meetings with me; however, the mission of getting this highly classified information to the public and exposing the people perpetuating the horrors of this medical project is bigger than me and must be made public. The disregard for human life and suffering compares with the Nazi scientists’ genetic and mind control experimentation in World War II. Project Mannequin is a mind control and genetic manipulation program run by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Although the NSA is officially the United States government, they run many covert “black” projects in many countries around the world.

The NSA is fast becoming the world’s most powerful secret service and is currently taking over much of the global intelligence apparatus. Project Mannequin was started in 1972 and is still being run from a 6-level underground facility beneath the small town of Peasemore in Berkshire, a few miles from where I grew up.

This underground base is so secret that the local residents of Peasmore are not even aware it exists.

This NSA facility, known in intelligence circles as the AL/499 base, is located 200 feet below the village. There are entrances to the facility at Greenham common (known as ‘Bravo’ entrance, which is now sealed off), Watchfield Military Science College (‘Delta’ entrance), and Harwell laboratories in Oxfordshire.

There are entrances to the base in Lambourne and Welford in Berkshire. The underground base at Lambourne is the “Area 51” of the U.K. with many exotic, anti-gravity aircraft stored there. The project involves the kidnapping of targeted civilians and also certain intelligence and military people. Some of the intelligence and military personnel have volunteered for the project, but many have not.

Almost all of the civilian “guinea pigs” have not volunteered and have been used against their wills. I was “sold” into the project.

Many of the civilians have also been used in the project from young children.

The reason is to create programmed “sleeper” agents using sophisticated electronic hardware-based hypnosis.

These individuals are programmed by the NSA to carry out future tasks, set by the NSA, and become hitmen as adults. Sleepers are people who carry out a huge variety of preprogrammed tasks with sometimes little awareness of the medical procedures in Project Mannequin because of advanced memory erasure techniques.

A large part of the project focuses on creating espionage agents and assassins who have undergone genetic enhancements, which will be discussed in greater detail in this book. Project Mannequin is actually a type of “school” I grew up in. I have been trained since the age of five at the AL/499 and other military bases around the U.K. I carried out my first covert assassination for the intelligence community when I was sixteen years old in Brighton.

This may sound unbelievable to many people, but a vast amount of evidence will be presented in this book.

Most people do not know what the intelligence community actually is. Forget about James Bond movies; much of the

secret service apparatus in the U.K and U.S is an occult, paedophile network run by corrupt factions of the “Illuminated” degrees of Freemasonry (33rd degree and above). Everything in Project Mannequin is organized by the Jewish kabala occult system, using such esoteric methods as numerology and archeometry (advanced remote viewing). Even the name James Casbolt means “valiant, decorated warrior of death and destruction” in Kabala numerology.

You can check this yourself on the kabala calculator available on the Internet. My security number in Project Mannequin was X4566-2, and I was a commander of a 5-member unit that consisted of four males and one female. Even this was based around the kabala, as the five members each represented one of the five elements- air, water, fire, earth, metal/spirit. Our assassination unit was part of a 15-member “Delta” team, and the team was divided into three units. Each unit comprised of four males and one female.

I was known as Commander Michael Prince. During my “visits” to the AL/499 throughout my life, I was taken through the Greenham common Bravo entrance most of the time. Sometimes other entrances were used. At the Alpha entrance in Harwell laboratories, there is a security area in one of the buildings.

This security area (A) is guarded by two security officers who are both armed. At this area is an elevator that descends 200 feet to security area B. The elevator has two sections: One for personnel and guinea pigs and one for vehicles.

The second security area is larger and has four, and sometimes five, officers that are all fully armed.

Area B has two highly secure blast doors that will seal off the tunnel to the AL/499 in the event of an emergency. Security Area B has two vehicles in operation that travel back and forth from Harwell to Peasmore.

The security officers escort all guinea pigs to, from, and around the AL/499.

The medical subjects are drugged when they enter the facility. My involvement with the intelligence community goes back years, as it was planned for, as a child in Project mannequin that I would be “used” as an espionage agent when I grew up.

By the time I was eighteen, I was involved in advanced remote viewing programs at an underground facility in London.

By the time I was nineteen, I was involved in covert MI 6 drug trafficking operations working for my father. This was in London between 1995 and 1999. My father, uncle, and grandfather also had mind control issues, and the programming sites in this country where my father was programd will be discussed in this book.

Intelligence-run mind control operations are usually a multi-generational thing with each generation more easily programd, as the genetic memory of the horrific medical procedures become more ingrained into the family’s genetic makeup.

In the 1950’s, a genetic bloodline study was started by the NSA based at Harwell Laboratories to find suitable candidates, especially children, to be used in Project Mannequin.

From this study, the project was started in 1972; however, my family may have been targeted for mind control before the 1950's.

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters:

WHOLE WORLD Must Focus on Julian Assange Arrest!

goingundergroundRT

Published on Apr 17, 2019

We speak to Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters on the arrest of Julian Assange. He calls on the UK to rise up to oppose Assange’s extradition

labels the UK a satellite state of US empire for arresting Assange and attacks the government of Lenin Moreno for revoking his asylum

LIKE Going Underground http://fb.me/GoingUndergroundRT

FOLLOW Going Underground //twitter.com/Underground_RT FOLLOW Afshin Rattansi //twitter.com/AfshinRattansi

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Interference China’s covert political influence

campaign in Australia Four Corners(日本語字幕）

CI Research & Studies

Uploaded on Apr 9, 2019

A joint investigation by Four Corners, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald reveals fresh and compelling evidence of covert Beijing-backed political activity taking place in Australia.

（Four Corners、The Age、Sydney Morning Herald

との共同調査の結果、オーストラリアおける北京が背後にある政治活動の新たな圧倒的な証拠を明らかにしました）

（現動画の場所）

https://youtu.be/7T_Lu1S0sII

Category

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-latest-ecuador-withdraws-assange-asylum-status/2019/04/11/2c3ea0ac-5c42-11e9-98d4-844088d135f2_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.755aa2b0efcb

Of Course .....

Australia won’t intervene in Julian Assange's extradition
Julian Assange Arrest At Ecuador Embassy-

"Australia won’t intervene in Julian Assange's extradition... because since the MI6 controlled CIA has effectively been controlling state and federal politics and the Australian Main Stream Media since the 1970's ....."... Simon Walters ... a senior AWN.bz, NYT.bz and INLNews.com political investigator ...
".... I was told in the 1970's by one for the people that helped start the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Commonwealth Police of Australia (now known as the Australian Federal Police - AFP) after the Second World War ended ... that he was asked by the MI6 controlled CIA and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to come out of retirement and help plot to have Gouth Whitlam, the then Labour Prime Minister of Australia in 1975 sacked as the Prime Minister of Australia, through the power of the the Queen and England's appointed 18th Governor General of Australia Sir John Robert Kerr ....." Simon Walters .. a senior AWN.bz, NYT.bz and INL News.com political investigator...

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence John Pilger …. “ Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.

Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organisation, Asio – then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric”, a CIA station officer in Saigon said: “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”…”… John Pilger …

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO /ˈeɪzioʊ/) is Australia's national security agency responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, and terrorism.

ASIO is comparable with the British Security Service (MI5) and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

ASIO is part of the Australian Intelligence Community.

ASIO has a wide range of surveillance powers to collect human and signals intelligence. Generally, ASIO operations requiring police powers of arrest and detention under warrant are co-ordinated with the Australian Federal Police and/or with state and territory police forces.

ASIO Central Office is in Canberra, with a local office being located in each mainland state and territory capital.

A new A$630 million Central Office, Ben Chifley Building, named after Ben Chifley, prime minister when ASIO was created, was officially opened by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 23 July 2013

The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as the Dismissal, has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australian history.

It culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Governor-General Sir John Kerr, who then commissioned the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, as caretaker Prime Minister.

Whitlam's Labor government had been elected in 1972 with a small majority in the House of Representatives, but with the Opposition controlling the Senate. Another election in 1974 resulted in little change. While the Whitlam Government introduced many new policies and programs, it was also rocked by scandals and political miscalculations.

In October 1975, the Opposition used its control of the Senate to defer passage of appropriation bills (needed to finance government expenditure), that had been passed by the House of Representatives. The Opposition stated that they would continue their stance unless Whitlam called an election for the House of Representatives, and urged Kerr to dismiss Whitlam unless he agreed to their demand. Whitlam believed that Kerr would not dismiss him, and Kerr did nothing to disabuse Whitlam of this notion.

On 11 November 1975, Whitlam intended to call a half-Senate election in an attempt to break the deadlock. When he went to seek Kerr's approval of the election, Kerr instead dismissed him as Prime Minister and shortly thereafter installed Fraser in his place. Acting quickly before all ALP parliamentarians became aware of the change of government, Fraser and his allies were able to secure passage of the appropriation bills, and Kerr dissolved Parliament for a double dissolutionelection. Fraser and his government were returned with a massive majority in the election held the following month.

The events of the Dismissal led to only minor constitutional change. The Senate retained its power to block supply, and the Governor-General the power to dismiss government ministers. However, these powers have not since been used to force a government from office. Kerr was widely criticised by ALP supporters for his actions, resigned early as Governor-General, and lived much of his remaining life abroad.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence

Former President of Ecuador Rafael Correa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Brussels, Thursday, April 11, 2019. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was forcibly bundled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and into a waiting British police van on Thursday, setting up a potential court battle over attempts to extradite him to the U.S. to face charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Former President of Ecuador Rafael Correa

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was forcibly bundled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and into a waiting British police van on Thursday the 11th April, 2019.

"... at our new look and run MI6 and CIA Run Corporation of Australia and

Australian Main Stream Media ..

we offer the same service as large firms, but our overheads are lower..."

A cartoonist description and and vision of the way the Corporation of Australian and the Australian main Street media is now run since the 1970's by the MI6 controlled CIA and ASIO plotted to have Gouth Whitlam the Australian Labour Prime Minister in 1975, sacked by the 18th Governor General of Australia, Sir John Robert Kerr who is appointed by the Queen of England, with the power at anytime to sack the Prime Minister of the Corporation of Australia....

"... similar to the Corporation of the USA run from Washington, ...Australia is not run as an independent free government and country ..

but a Corporation .. and .. as with any corporation the major shareholders of Australia ... being the trillionaires ...

who own and control the MI6 controlled CIA and ASIO .. have the right to sack the president/prime minister/managing director/ and any of the directors running a corporation ..

if the major shareholders are not happy as to how they are running the corporation ...".... Simon Walters .. a senior AWN.bz, NYT.bz and INL News.com political investigator...

".. In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week, dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy.

The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price " … John Pilger …

Thu 23 Oct 2014

"....See you all soon in my favourite Australian Newspaper ...

" The Australian Weekend News".... Mr WIJAT

Old Daily News building now turned into Community News Group

Community News Group 50% owned by Murdoch's Sunday Times and 50% West Australian Newspapers (WAN)

to keep their joint stranglehold on WA lucrative advertising dollars.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S MUCH LOVED
Weekend News is set to be relaunched as
an Australia-wide weekly newspaper

The Australian Weekend News

Mr WIJAT the Aussie Battler standing up for Truth Justice and the Australian Way
with Mr Wijat's Team ...

" Anyone seen my little mate.. Earth The Worm"

ERF The Worm ... Mr Wijat's Little Greenie Mate

Al Wijat .. MT WIJAT's upstart Son .. who even though supports his Dad .. Mr Wijat in standing up for Truth Justice and the Australian Way .. and will always support his Dad .. Mr WIJAT when needed .... Al Wijat likes to spend most of his time surfing and hanging out with col Aussie Chicks . and is always saying to his Dad ... Mr Wijat .... "Dad... you really should be a real job..."

Marvin The Marvellous ... Mr WIJAT's Bright Ideas Man... who come up with 100 new bright ideas for Mr WIJAT everyday ... and every now and again Mr WIJAT says.... " Marvellous Marvid my dear bright idea friend .. you have finally come up with a great idea that should work and I will run with this one..."

EP.737: John Pilger- Julian Assange’s Arrest an ASSAULT ON JOURNALISM!

http://johnpilger.com/

THE ASSANGE ARREST IS A WARNING FROM HISTORY

John Pilger, Legendary journalist and film-maker discusses the arrest of Julian Assange

John Pilger describes the meaning of Julian Assange's brutal arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London and says it is not only the extraordinary story of one man's struggle but an echo of a past that carries a lesson for us all.

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-assange-arrest-is-a-warning-from-history

goingundergroundRT

Published on Apr 13, 2019

On this episode of Going Undeground, we speak to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger who discusses the arrest of Julian Assange after his asylum status was revoked by Lenin Moreno of Ecuador and subsequent removal from the Ecuadorian Embassy. He discusses the importance of Wikileaks’ work, why it is a threat to the United States, the danger the arrest poses to journalists everywhere and the possibility of extradition to the US. Next we speak to Geoffrey Robertson QC of Doughty Street Chambers on the arrest of Assange, the legality of the revocation of his asylum status, the legality of the UK complying with the US extradition request and what this episode tells journalists around the world. LIKE Going Underground http://fb.me/GoingUndergroundRT FOLLOW Going Underground //twitter.com/Underground_RT FOLLOW Afshin Rattansi //twitter.com/AfshinRattansi FOLLOW on Instagram http://instagram.com/officialgoingund...

John Pilger, legendary journalist and film-maker who discusses the arrest of Julian Assange
Julian Assange's brutal arrest

John Richard Pilger (/ˈpɪldʒər/; born 9 October 1939) is an Australian journalist and BAFTA award-winning documentary film maker. He has been mainly based in the United Kingdom since 1962.

Pilger is a strong critic of American, Australian and British foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by an imperialist agenda. Pilger has also criticised his native country's treatment of Indigenous Australians. He first drew international attention for his reports on the Cambodian genocide.

His career as a documentary film maker began with The Quiet Mutiny (1970), made during one of his visits to Vietnam, and has continued with over fifty documentaries since then. Other works in this form include Year Zero (1979), about the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, and Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (1993). Pilger's many documentary films on indigenous Australians include The Secret Country (1985) and Utopia (2013). In the British print media, Pilger worked at the Daily Mirror from 1963 to 1986, and wrote a regular column for the New Statesman magazine from 1991 to 2014.

Pilger has won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award in 1967 and 1979.[9] His documentaries have gained awards in Britain and worldwide, including multiple BAFTA honors. The practices of the mainstream media are a regular subject in Pilger's writing.

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-assange-arrest-is-a-warning-from-history

John Pilger describes the meaning of Julian Assange's brutal arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London and says it is not only the extraordinary story of one man's struggle but an echo of a past that carries a lesson for us all.

13 April 2019

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.

Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger

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By Associated Press

April 11

LONDON — The Latest on the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London (all times local):

10:45 p.m.

Australia’s prime minister has ruled out intervention in a potential U.S. extradition of Australian citizen Julian Assange on a charge of computer intrusion conspiracy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australian Broadcasting Corp. the charge is a “matter for the United States” and has nothing to do with Australia.

Morrison says Assange is receiving standard consular assistance offered to Australians in trouble in other countries.

___

9:35 p.m.

Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is criticizing what he considers a “double standard” by Western media and governments who he says have been quick to condemn Julian Assange for publishing sensitive information about U.S. national security interests.

Correa granted Assange asylum in 2012. In an interview with The Associated Press, he is harshly critical of his successor’s decision to expel the Wikileaks founder from Ecuador’s embassy in London.

Ecuador’s former president said that “although Julian Assange denounced war crimes, he’s only the person supplying the information.”

Correa said “It’s the New York Times, the Guardian and El Pais publishing it. Why aren’t those journalists and media owners thrown in jail?”

British police on Thursday hauled a bearded and shouting Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he was holed up for nearly seven years, and the U.S. charged the WikiLeaks founder with conspiring to obtain government secrets.

___

8:35 p.m.

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno is lashing out again at Julian Assange, calling him a “miserable hacker” and “spoiled brat” who was disrespectful to officials charged with taking care of him at the country’s embassy in London.

Moreno repeated allegations that Assange smearing of his own fecal matter on the walls of the embassy building and said that was a sign of how the WikiLeaks founder viewed Ecuador as an insignificant, third-rate country.

“When you’re given shelter, cared for and provided food you don’t denounce the owner of the house,” said Moreno to applause at an event outside Quito.

He added that Ecuador will “be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments.”

In his words, “We are tolerant, calm people but we’re not stupid.”

___

8:25 p.m.

The French lawyer for Julian Assange says he wants President Emmanuel Macron to intervene to bring him from a London jail to France, where his small child lives.

Juan Branco suggested in an interview hours after the arrest Thursday of the Wikileaks founder that he could risk life in prison on trumped-up charges if extradited to the U.S.

Assange faces U.S. charges related to publication of tens of thousands of classified government documents, with an extradition hearing May 2.

For Branco, Assange is a journalist who “revealed information to the general public about crimes against humanity, war crimes.” He said the arrest is “some kind of revenge.”

Branco spoke to Assange last week and said he last saw him at Christmas at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

___

8:15 p.m.

Ecuador’s government says that as tensions with Julian Assange mounted in recent weeks, the WikiLeaks founder acted out with hostility against his hosts at the country’s embassy in London.

Foreign Minister José Valencia spoke to lawmakers Thursday and described what he said were Assange’s repeated violations of the conditions of his asylum that led the government to expel him from the diplomatic mission after almost seven years and hand him over to British authorities.

He said what began as erratic behavior by Assange — roller skating and playing soccer in embassy hallways and listening to loud music at all hours — evolved in recent months into aggressive behavior toward embassy staff.

Valencia said that Assange on occasions hit staff charged with guaranteeing his wellbeing and accused embassy officials of being U.S. spies looking to exchange information on WikiLeaks in exchange for debt relief for Ecuador.

___

7:30 p.m.

The legal team for former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says the indictment of Julian Assange shows prosecutors didn’t need her testimony to criminally charge the WikiLeaks founder.

The U.S. Justice Department charged Julian Assange on Thursday with conspiring with Manning to break into a classified government computer.

Manning has been jailed for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in Virginia that is investigating WikiLeaks. Assange is accused of agreeing to help Manning steal classified information by trying to crack a password to a U.S. government computer system. His attempts were unsuccessful.

Manning’s lawyers noted Assange’s indictment was returned more than a year before their client refused to testify. In a statement, they said Manning should be released because her continued detention would be “purely punitive.”

The lawyers plan to raise these issues in a brief before an appellate court Thursday.

The Justice Department charged Assange after he was taken into custody in connection with a U.S. extradition request and for skipping bail when he sought asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London in 2012.

___

5:55 p.m.

U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming to “know nothing about WikiLeaks” despite past praise for the anti-secrecy organization.

Trump was asked in the Oval Office on Thursday about the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London.

The president, who was sitting next to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said “It’s not my thing” and didn’t elaborate.

Trump praised WikiLeaks more than 100 times during the stretch run of the 2016 presidential campaign.

That fall, WikiLeaks released stolen embarrassing emails from the campaign of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

A disheveled Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy where he hid for more than 6 ½ years.

U.S. charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents could bring a court battle over attempts to extradite him.

___

5:25 p.m.

Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is accusing the nation’s current leader of retaliating against Julian Assange for WikiLeaks’ publication of documents that allegedly implicate President Lenin Moreno in corruption.

Correa — who led the South American nation when Assange was granted asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy — said Thursday that the decision to revoke asylum is “cowardly.”

In a stream of remarks on Twitter, Correa criticized Moreno for allowing British authorities to arrest Assange, and linked that to WikiLeaks’ disclosure about an offshore bank account allegedly linked to Moreno’s family and friends.

Correa said the decision “will never been forgotten by all of humanity.”

Former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino also rejected allegations by Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo claiming that a close collaborator of WikiLeaks had traveled with him to several countries this year, accusing her of “inventing a story.”

___

5:00 p.m.

An independent U.N. human rights expert says Julian Assange’s arrest won’t deter his efforts to determine if the privacy rights of the WikiLeaks founder were violated.

UN Special Rapporteur Joe Cannataci had planned to travel to London on April 25 to meet with Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange sought asylum in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden. Cannataci says he still plans to keep the meeting despite Assange’s arrest at the embassy on Thursday.

Cannataci said in a statement: “I will visit him and speak to him in a police station or elsewhere in the U.K. where Cannataci in a statement.

He says the U.N. human rights office plans to ask the British government to give him access to Assange on April 25.

And if Assange is extradited to the United States by then, Cannataci said “then I will direct my request for access to the government of the United States.”

___

4:15 p.m.

Julian Assange’s lawyer says the WikiLeaks founder will fight his extradition to the United States.

Attorney Jennifer Robinson sounded defiant as she spoke to reporters after Assange was arrested in London on Thursday morning. She said the arrest sets a dangerous precedent for the rights of journalists.

Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he took asylum in 2012 while facing extradition to Sweden.

Robinson suggested Assange had long said he would be arrested if he was expelled if Ecuador expelled him from the embassy. She says at least he can now get medical care while in jail.

The defense team could fight attempts to extradite Assange to the United States to face charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.

___

3:30 p.m.

Russia is criticizing the way in which London police arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the foreign embassy where he took asylum in 2012 and since remained in hiding.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday the way Assange was treated gave “the full impression of an open and rude disregard for the human dignity of the arrested.”

She said: Russia hopes “all the rights of Julian Assange will be respected.”

Ecuador’s president says his government withdrew Assange’s asylum status almost seven years after he sought refuge in the country’s embassy in London, alleging “repeated violations of international conventions and daily-life protocols.”

___

3:00 p.m.

A judge in London has found WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange guilty of breaching his bail at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

Judge Michael Snow quickly issued his verdict on Thursday after Assange appeared in the courtroom where his supporters packed the public gallery.

Assange faces a sentence of up to 12 months for the conviction, and has serious charges pending in the United States.

The basis of Assange’s defense was that he couldn’t expect a fair trial in British courts as the U.K.’s purpose was to “secure his delivery” to the United States

___

2:45 p.m.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has entered an innocent plea to a charge that he failed to surrender to custody under an order for his extradition to Sweden.

Assange faced sexual assault allegations in Sweden when he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London 2012. The sexual assault charges have since been dropped, but a charge of skipping bail remained in place.

He entered the plea at Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday.

He is also facing a potential court battle over attempts to extradite him to the United States to answer charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.

___

2:30 p.m.

Julian Assange is appearing in a London court as it considers a U.S. extradition request on criminal charges over the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.

Assange saluted supporters who packed a public gallery at Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday and gave them a thumb’s-up.

Wearing a black suit and polo shirt, Assange calmly sat reading a Gore Vidal book while waiting for his lawyers to arrive.

Police in London arrested the WikiLeaks founder at the Ecuadorian embassy, where he took refuge in August 2012.

___

2:15 p.m.

The U.S. Justice Department has charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with conspiring with Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer.

The charge was announced Thursday after Assange was taken into custody in London in connection with a U.S. extradition request, as well as for breaching U.K. bail conditions in 2012.

His lawyer has previously said that Assange planned to fight any U.S. charges against him.

The indictment accuses Assange of assisting Manning, a former U.S. intelligence analyst, in cracking a password that helped Manning infiltrate Pentagon computers.

___

2:10 p.m.

Ecuador’s government says that as part of its decision to expel Julian Assange from its embassy in London, it has withdrawn the Ecuadorian citizenship he was granted last year in a failed attempt to end the activist’s tumultuous stay at its diplomatic mission.

Ecuador also accused supporters of WikiLeaks and two Russian hackers of attempting to destabilize their country.

Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo said in Quito a close collaborator of WikiLeaks had traveled with former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino this year to several countries, including Peru, Spain and Venezuela, in an attempt to undermine the government. She did not identify the individual but said their name, as well as two Russian hackers working in Ecuador, would be turned over to judicial authorities in the coming hours.

___

2 p.m.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May says the arrest of Julian Assange shows that “no one is above the law.”

May was speaking to the House of Commons after the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder, who was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy Thursday after taking refuge there for seven years to avoid extradition. Ecuador announced it was revoking Assange’s asylum status, citing repeated violations of international conventions.

Assange is expected to appear at Westminster Magistrates court later Thursday on allegations of breaching bail conditions dating to 2012, and on extradition charges to the United States.

___

1:50 p.m.

A U.S. official says the Justice Department is preparing to announce charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The official spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because no charges have yet been announced.

The exact nature of the charges was not immediately known.

Assange was arrested Thursday in London by police for breaching 2012 bail conditions as well as on an extradition request from the United States.

--By Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C.

___

1:40 p.m.

Sweden’s Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren says “we have not been able to decide on the available information” whether a stalled investigation into alleged sexual offenses against Julian Assange could be reopened if he returns to Sweden before the statute of limitations lapses in August 2020.

In 2017, Swedish prosecutors dropped a long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, saying there was no way to detain or charge him “in the foreseeable future” because of his protected status inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Assange was arrested earlier Thursday at the embassy, where he had been holed up for seven years

___

1:10 p.m.

Edward Snowden, the former security contractor who leaked classified information about U.S. surveillance programs, says the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a blow to media freedom.

“Images of Ecuador’s ambassador inviting the U.K.’s secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher of--like it or not--award-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books,” Snowden said in a tweet.

“Assange’s critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom.”

Snowden was charged by the United States in 2013 of violating the country’s espionage act. He was granted asylum by Russia that year and the asylum has been extended until at least 2020.

___

12:50 p.m.

London police say they have arrested Julian Assange on extradition charges to the United States, as well as for breaching U.K. bail conditions.

Scotland Yard said in a statement Thursday that Assange was “further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act.”

The WikiLeaks founder sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, after he was released on bail while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations. The accusations have since been dropped but he was still wanted for jumping bail.

Separately, he has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for years for WikiLeaks’ role in publishing thousands of government secrets.

___

12:05 p.m.

A senior member of Germany’s opposition Left party says Europe must not allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States for trial.

Sevim Dagdelen said in a statement that the withdrawal of Assange’s political asylum by Ecuador and his subsequent arrest by British police was a “scandal, a violation of international law, and at the same time a severe blow to independent journalism.”

She says it is the German government’s “duty” now to prevent Britain, which earlier Thursday was granted an extension to its departure from the European Union, from extraditing Assange to the U.S., “where he faces life imprisonment or even the death penalty for exposing U.S. war crimes.”

___

12 p.m.

Julian Assange’s attorney Jennifer Robinson says the WikiLeaks founder had been arrested on an extradition request from the United States as well as on charges of breaching his bail conditions.

In a tweet, Robinson said Assange “has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request.”

The U.S. Justice Department inadvertently revealed the existence of a sealed criminal case against Assange in a court filing last year. It’s not clear what he’s been accused of.

Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who leaked a trove of classified material to WikiLeaks, was jailed last month after she refused to testify before a grand jury.

In a statement Thursday, Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said: “We are aware of the reports that Julian Assange was taken into custody by United Kingdom authorities.”

___

11:50 a.m.

The Swedish woman who alleged that she was raped by Julian Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 has welcomed his arrest in London.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer for the unnamed woman, says news of Assange’s arrest earlier Thursday came as “a shock to my client” and that it was something “we have been waiting and hoping for since 2012.”

Massi Fritz said in a text message sent to The Associated Press that “we are going to do everything” to have the Swedish case reopened “so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape.”

Massi Fritz said “no rape victim should have to wait nine years to see justice be served.”

In 2017, Sweden’s top prosecutor dropped a long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, saying there was no way to have Assange detained or charged within a foreseeable future because of his protected status inside the embassy.

___

11:35 a.m.

WikiLeaks has accused “powerful actors,” including the CIA, of a “sophisticated” effort to dehumanize Julian Assange.

The comments by the organization Assange founded came soon after he was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

In a tweet, the organization posted a photo of Assange with the words: “This man is a son, a father, a brother. He has won dozens of journalism awards. He’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 2010. Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to dehumanize, delegitimize and imprison him. #ProtectJulian.”

___

11:15 a.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says Russia wants Julian Assange’s rights to be observed following his arrest.

Shortly after Assange’s arrest in London, Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he could not comment on the overall case.

But, he said, “We of course hope that all of his rights will be observed.”

___

11 a.m.

Ecuador’s president says his government withdrew asylum status for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange almost seven years after he sought refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London, citing “repeated violations of international conventions and daily-life protocols.”

Lenin Moreno announced the “sovereign decision” in a statement accompanied by a video on Twitter on Thursday.

Assange hasn’t left the embassy since August 2012 for fear that if he steps off Ecuador’s diplomatic soil he would be arrested and extradited to the U.S. for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

London police arrested Assange at the embassy Thursday on a court warrant issued in 2012, when he failed to surrender to the court.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt thanked Moreno for breaking the impasse, saying on Twitter that Assange “is no hero and no one is above the law.”

___

10:45 a.m.

Police in London say they’ve arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy on a court warrant dating back to 2012.

In a statement Thursday, police said Assange has been taken into “custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates’ Court as soon as is possible.”

Assange hasn’t left the embassy since August 2012 for fear that if he steps off Ecuador’s diplomatic soil he will be arrested and extradited to the U.S. for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the arrest of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange here: https://www.apnews.com/WikiLeaks

Alleged Victims Arina Ardin and Sofia Wilen

Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen

* Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here. Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities. In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter. Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”

However we do not have to accept the single-bullet theory. Life is more complicated than that. In addition to her anti-Castro, pro-CIA streak, Anna Ardin apparently indulges in her favorite sport of male-bashing. A Swedish forum reports that she is an expert on sexual harassment and the male “master suppression techniques”. Once, as she was lecturing, a male student in the audience looked at his notes instead of staring at her. Anna Ardin reported him for sexual harassment because he discriminated against her for being a woman and because she claimed he made use of the male “master suppression technique” in trying to make her feel invisible. As soon as the student learned about her complaint, he contacted her to apologize and explain himself. Anna Ardin’s response was to once again report him for sexual harassment, again because he was using the “master suppression technique”, this time to belittle her feelings.

Ardin is apparently involved with a “Christian” Social-Democrat group. The Swedish church has a precious few male priests: what was once the struggle for female equality has ended up with men being effectively removed from service. Nowadays very few Swedish male-female couples marry in the church, or get married at all; most Swedish gay couples, however, are proud to become “man and wife” in the church. This is all good news for wealthy Swedes: deserted churches sell their properties (once enjoyed by the community) to be fenced off by the nouveau riche created by the latest privatization wave. So much for Swedish social democracy!

The second accuser, Sofia Wilen, 26, is Anna’ friend. Here is a video of an Assange press conference where one can see the girls together. Those present at the conference marveled at her groupie-like behavior. Though rock stars are used to girls dying to have sex with them, it is much less common in the harsh field of political journalism. Sofia worked hard to bed Assange, according to her own confession; she was also the first to complain to police. She is little known and her motives are vague. Why might a young woman (who shares her life with American artist Seth Benson) pursue such a sordid political adventure?//

//Santa is a bad example to the children... so fat
he can't get down chimneys any more
he is a reindeer abuser
and won't allow the elves to unionize // sb11

Note to self: If you go after a fly, sooner or later, you will land on a pile of shit

video=youtube;nBmueYJ0VhA]//www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBmueYJ0VhA[/video]

Rape accuser took "trophy photo", says Assange

December 27th 2010

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange

Julian Assange says he could be killed in US jail

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside Beccles police station in Suffolk, which he has to visit every day as one of the terms of his bail. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/23/julian-assa...

The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/23/julian-assa...

Julian Assange: my fate will rest in Cameron's hands if US charges me

WikiLeaks founder says it would be 'politically impossible' for Britain to extradite him to the US

Luke Harding

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 December 2010

Article history

Julian Assange said today that it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to extradite him to the United States, and that the final word on his fate if he were charged with espionage would rest with David Cameron.

In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country mansion where he is living under virtual house arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks said it would be difficult for the prime minister to hand him over to the Americans if there was strong support for him from the British people.

"It's all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor," he said.

Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden. He strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct with two Swedish women. But he believes the biggest threat to his freedom and to WikiLeaks, his whistleblowing website, emanates from a wrathful United States.

There is no evidence of any imminent US move to indict him. But according to Assange, the Obama administration is "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence officer and alleged source of the more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables embarrassingly leaked last month. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is also examining "computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism", Assange claims.

Sitting in front of a log fire, his Apple MacBook Pro perched on his lap, Assange said his recent nine-day spell in Wandsworth jail had prepared him for the possibility that he might spend a long period in prison if indicted by the US. He said the prospect of solitary confinement was no longer an "intellectual abstraction" but a reality. The high court bailed him to Norfolk last Thursday, with his extradition hearing scheduled for 6-7 February.

He said: "Solitary confinement is very difficult. But I know that provided there is some opportunity for correspondence I can withstand it. I'm mentally robust. Of course it would mean the end of my life in the conventional sense."

If the US succeeded in removing him from the UK or Sweden, Assange said there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in the US prison system.

Since moving to Ellingham Hall, a Georgian country house and organic farm owned by his friend and supporter Vaughan Smith, Assange has given numerous media interviews. But he said he was fed up with the press and described an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme – in which John Humphrys grilled him on how many people he had slept with – as "awful".

Assange also took issue with a lengthy report in Saturday's Guardian setting out the prosecution allegations against him in Sweden. Assange acknowledged that the Guardian had a right to publish the material, dealing with his alleged encounters with the women. But he said it had been "sub-selected" and not placed properly in context. Swedish prosecutors have demanded that he return to Sweden to face further questions about the allegations.

Assange also said WikiLeaks did not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though "a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us". He said legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching £500,000. The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks – apparently following US pressure – had robbed the website of a "war chest" of around €500,000, he complained. This would have been enough to fund WikiLeaks' publishing operations for six months. At its peak the organisation was receiving €100,000 a day, he said.

According to publishing sources, however, Assange can take cheer from the fact that he has secured a seven-figure advance for a book about WikiLeaks and his life story. The sources suggest he is likely to receive £250,000 himself, allowing him to pay off some of his debts and to settle his personal defence fund, currently "paralysed". The book is to be published in the spring by Knopf in the US and Canongate in the UK, the sources suggest.

Assange – who has to wear his electronic tag in the bath, and report every day to Beccles police station – confessed he has no idea where he will be in a year's time. He described the next chapter in his life as "not yet predictable.

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception."

He argued that Cameron and Nick Clegg were in a stronger position than the previous, Labour government to resist his extradition by Washington. "There is a new government, which wants to show it hasn't yet been co-opted by the US," he said, claiming that the security services – British and Australian – had a history of spying on and unduly influencing Labour politicians.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have now gone home for Christmas, leaving Assange with a scaled-down team over the holiday period, on an estate where the pheasant and grouse greatly outnumber the humans.

His immediate plan, he said, was to rest after a gruelling couple of months and then to continue with the staged global release of redacted US state department cables in the new year. Physically, he appeared somewhat wrung out, although very much composed and in good spirits.

Assange defended one of WikiLeaks' collaborators, Israel Shamir, following claims Shamir passed sensitive cables to Belarus's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko has arrested 600 opposition supporters and journalists since Sunday's presidential election. The whereabouts and fate of several of the president's high-profile opponents are unknown.

Of Shamir, Assange said: "WikiLeaks works with hundreds of journalists from different regions of the world. All are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and are generally only given limited review access to material relating to their region. We have no reason to believe these rumours in relation to Belarus are true."

Over the past month the Guardian has published more than 200 articles based on the trove of US diplomatic dispatches obtained by WikiLeaks, and 739 of the cables themselves. All cables published by the Guardian and the four other international news organisations who had exclusive early access to the material have been carefully redacted to protect sources who could be placed in danger, and the redacted versions have been passed to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks now plans to begin sharing the cables with a wider group of regional news organisations. Julian Assange says all future cables released by WikiLeaks will either be redacted by other partner news organisations, or by WikiLeaks itself. The Guardian and its partners in the project, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais and Le Monde, will continue to share redactions with WikiLeaks for any cables they publish in future.

US, Sweden accused of Assange conspiracy

Thursday, January 13, 2011 » 03:41am

Julian Assange's lawyers have accused Swedish authorities of secretly planning to extradite him to the US.

Julian Assange's lawyer in Britain has accused Swedish authorities of secretly planning to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States, in an interview with a German newspaper to appear on Thursday.

Lawyer Mark Stephens told the weekly Die Zeit that he believed Swedish officials were cooperating with US authorities with an eye to extraditing Assange as soon as the Americans have built a criminal case against him.

'We are hearing that the Swedish are prepared to drop the rape charges against Julian as soon as the Americans demand his extradition,' he said, citing sources in Washington and Stockholm.

Stephens called the Swedish charges against his client a 'holding case' to buy time until the United States can prosecute him themselves over WikiLeaks' mass release of classified US documents.

He said Assange did not believe he would receive a fair trial in Sweden which was why he was fighting his extradition from Britain.

The Australian has been living at a supporter's country estate in England since being released on bail on December 16 after his arrest by British police on a Swedish warrant.

Stephens said that he believed the 'last station' of an extradition to Sweden would be 'a high-security prison in the United States'.

Assange's lawyers released documents on Tuesday saying that if the Australian is extradited to Sweden there is a 'real risk' he will face extradition or illegal rendition to the United States where he could be detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere and subject to the death penalty.

A British judge ruled on Tuesday that Sweden's bid to have him extradited would be heard in full on February 7-8.

Swedish authorities want to question Assange about charges brought by two women that he sexually assaulted them, but the 39-year-old says the extradition attempt is politically motivated and linked to WikiLeaks' activities.

The whistleblowing website has released classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and from US diplomats stationed around the world.

A US court has reportedly subpoenaed the Twitter accounts of four WikiLeaks supporters as part of a widening criminal investigation into the leaks.

Assange prosecutor: “Lock the men up anyway”

http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/12/08/assange-prosecutor-%E2%80%9Clock-the-men-up-anyway%E2%80%9D Wed 08 Dec 2010
By Diet Simon

The Swedish prosecutor out to get Julian Assange, described as “overzealous” in the prestigious German weekly, Die Zeit, once advocated that men accused of mistreating women be locked up even without a conviction to give the accusing women time and space to think.

There is heated debate in Sweden whether the hard line taken against Assange by the state attorney is right, the paper says.

“Not an international conspiracy of secret services, but an overzealous state attorney is regarded as the main reason for (Assange’s) arrest.

“Even an association of young feminist women within the Social Democratic Party now doubts the seriousness of the accusations and the professionalism of the state attorney.

“That is remarkable inasmuch as Assange’s alleged victim (Anna Ardin) is a member of this group.”

Even within the group, Die Zeit writes, it is assumed that the allegations rest only on Assange allegedly not having used a condom against the will of his sex partner.
“These claims are not officially confirmed, however. But they would fit with the behaviour of the Swedish judiciary in the Assange case.”

When the accusations were first voiced to the Swedish police in August, the prosecutors did not lay charges.

Then personnel changed.

A new prosecutor, Marianne Ny, took over the case, distanced herself from the previous decision and laid a rape charge.

Marianne Ny is regarded as a prosecutor who goes especially far. “In one case of a woman being mistreated she voiced the opinion that men accused by women but not convicted should in any case be preventively locked up – to give the women “space to think things over”.

"Only when the man is in captivity and the woman in quietude gets time to look at her existence with some distance, does she get the opportunity to discover how she was treated,” she is quoted as saying at the time.

To Swedish media Assange’s British lawyer has likened Marianne Ny to an "unsecured firearm on the tossing deck of a ship in stormy sea”.

The second woman who accuses Assange is Sofia Wilen. Both alleged victims, who went to the police together “to seek advice”, are described as frauds at this site: http://www.inmalafide.com/2010/12/04/the-name-of-julian-assanges-other-f...

Also have a look at http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?301387-Anna-Ardin-and-Sofia-Wilen

http://www.w54.biz/showthread.php?949-WikiLeaks-founder-blasts-Pentagon-amid-Afghan-files-row&p=12144

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange fears he is subject of an 'illegal investigation'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that there could be an "illegal investigation" being carried out into him.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange celebrates as he prepares to address the media outside the High Court in central London yesterday.

1:26PM GMT 17 Dec 2010

Speaking on his first day under house arrest, the 39-year-old Australian said he had not been provided with any evidence relating to claims he sexually assaulted two women.

He was let out of prison on Thursday after a judge ruled he should be released ahead of Swedish extradition proceedings in the new year.

Bail conditions require Mr Assange to remain in the country until the extradition hearing next year and he is now staying at Ellingham Hall, a country retreat on the Norfolk/Suffolk border owned by Vaughan Smith, the founder of London's Frontline club.
Speaking from the grounds of the mansion, he claimed certain institutions were "engaged in what appears to be, certainly a secret investigation, but appears also to be an illegal investigation.

"We can see that by how certain people who are allegedly affiliated with us were contained at the US border and had their computers seized, and so on."

Asked if he was facing a US conspiracy, Mr Assange said: "I would say that there is a very aggressive investigation, that a lot of face has been lost by some people, and some people have careers to make by pursuing famous cases, but that is actually something that needs monitoring.

"We've seen the Swedish government, let's not say the government, a Swedish prosecutor in these representations to the British Government and British courts said he needed not to provide a single shred of evidence."

Mr Assange reiterated that he had spent 10 days in solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison, south west London, and had still not been presented with "a single piece of evidence".

He claimed his organisation had been attacked primarily not by governments, but by banks in Dubai, Switzerland, the US and the UK and added that WikiLeaks is continuing to release information about the banks.

He added: "Over 85 per cent of our economic resources are spent dealing with attacks, dealing with technical attacks, dealing with political attacks, dealing with legal attacks, not doing our journalism. And that, if you like, is a tax upon quality investigative journalism.

"An 85 per cent tax rate on that kind of economic activity. Whereas people who are producing celebrity pieces for Vanity Fair have much lower tax rates."

Mr Assange said that he had support from a "large Washington law firm" and from "colleagues in California" but called for more help.

He said: "We need more, and not just at a reactive level."

After emerging from the High Court in London, Mr Assange vowed to "continue his work and protest his innocence".

Assange believes further leaked information relating to the sexual assault claims are to be made public later today. He has also indicated that the US is preparing to indict him on espionage charges.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Justice would confirm only that there is "an ongoing investigation into the WikiLeaks matter".

Assange is wanted in Sweden for alleged sex offences, which he denies. His lawyers have accused the Swedish authorities of waging a "vendetta" against him.

Earlier this week at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court he was granted bail pending the bid to extradite him.

But the whistleblower remained in prison while the authorities challenged his release at the High Court in London, arguing that there was "a real risk" he would abscond.

However, on Thursday Mr Justice Ouseley released Assange after rejecting submissions that the risk he posed made it impossible to set him free.

The judge said his cooperation with police suggested he was not "a person who is seeking to evade justice" and accepted offers by Assange's supporters to stump up £200,000 as a cash deposit and a number of other sureties.

Rape accusers in a 'tizzy' after cops 'bamboozled' them: Assange

December 22, 2010 - 10:17AM

Julian Assange feels he has been unjustly persecuted.

"They know not what they do 'cos they are only women"........................you sexist pig! Bamboozled by Police my arse...........the prick still doesn't understand or accept that he has done anything wrong........

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Swedish women who have accused him of sexual assault had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility they had caught a sexually transmitted disease from him.

Assange told the BBC that one account of what happened in August - the month at the centre of allegations against him - was that the two women had panicked when they found out they had both slept with him and went to police who "bamboozled" them.

He insisted he was fighting a Swedish extradition warrant because he believes "no natural justice" would occur in Sweden.

Alleged victims of Julian Assange... Anna Ardin, left, and Sofia Wilen.

"There are some serious problems with the Swedish prosecution," he said in an interview from the mansion of a wealthy supporter in eastern England where he must stay as part of his bail conditions.

Sweden wants Britain to extradite the 39-year-old Australian to face questioning over allegations from two women that he raped one of them and sexually assaulted the other in Stockholm in August.

Assange said he was used to attention from women but would not reveal how many women he had slept with.

"A gentleman certainly doesn't count," he said. "I've never had a problem with women. Women have been extremely helpful and generous with me and put up with me, assisting me in my work, caring for me, loving me and so on. That's what I'm used to."

Assange claimed that the Swedish authorities had asked that his Swedish lawyer be "gagged", adding that his offers to be interviewed by video link or by Swedish officials in Britain had been rejected.

"I don't need to be at the beck and call of people making allegations," he said.

"I don't need to go back to Sweden. The law says I... have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way."

He said that one account of what occurred in August was that after having discovered they had each had sex with him, they had got into a "tizzy", or a panic, about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases.

As a result, he said, the women had gone to the police for advice "and then the police jumped in on this and bamboozled the women".

WikiLeaks has enraged Washington by releasing thousands of US diplomatic cables and US Vice President Joe Biden described Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".

US officials are believed to be considering how to indict Assange for espionage.

In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Assange compared WikiLeaks' "persecution" to that endured by Jews in the US in the 1950s.

Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year.

"We don't want the bank to suffer unless it's called for," Assange told The Times. "But if its management is operating in a responsive way there will be resignations," he said, without giving details about the material.

Shares in Bank of America have fallen amid speculation that it was a WikiLeaks target.

AFP

CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force: WTF, Indeed

By Spencer Ackerman December 22, 2010 | 9:33 am | Categories: Info War

It can set up mirrored sites. It can bounce from server to server. But whatever impact WikiLeaks continues to have on the U.S. government after dumping tens of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables, the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force is watching, studying, learning. It’s literally a WTF operation.

Actually, what makes it a WTF operation isn’t just the task force’s acronym. It’s the WTF’s mandate: not to launch any subterfuge against the radical disclosure entity — that would be a job for NSA, most likely, or maybe Saturday Night Live — but rather to study its disclosure’s impact on the CIA’s ability to recruit snitches and retain the trust of spy agencies worldwide.

According to the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, it takes an entire task force to determine that CIA came out of the WikiLeaks saga with minimal exposure. While WikiLeaks appeared to show CIA operations in Iraq, its biggest-hyped disclosure was a boring piece of analysis on homegrown terrorism. The Pentagon and the State Department can only wish they had such limited breaches.

Score one for the CIA’s distaste for sharing information. It didn’t participate in the government-wide SIPRNet secret internet that allowed an Army private like Bradley Manning to allegedly put hundreds of thousands of State Department cables on a Lady Gaga CD. While the Defense Department is rushing to ban thumb drives, an ex-CIA official tells Miller that if he ever put a thumb drive into his work computer, “there would probably be a little trap door under my chair.” For all the carping about CIA’s reluctance to share information from earnest think-tankers and angry congressional panels, here’s an enormous information-security upside.
That’s partially the result of an institutional culture of secrecy. But CIA’s also had a lot of early experience with cyber-insecurity. In 1995, then-Director John Deutch put classified information on his home computer, which his AOL account left vulnerable to cookies, malware or phishing – though a CIA inquiry found no harm was done. More seriously, in what might be the biggest reply-all-FAIL of all time, a CIA agent accidentally emailed the agency’s entire spy network inside Iran in 2004, allowing a double agent to identify and then neutralize all the CIA’s snitches.

And the CIA might not WikiLeak, but it leaks like a sieve. In his first public speech as director of national intelligence, Jim Clapper said that President Obama was pissed at “widely quoted amorphous and anonymous senior intelligence officials who get their jollies from blabbing to the media.” All those are WTF moments — though, as a reporter, I’m not complaining — but chances are they’re not going to merit their own task force.

Photo: CIA

The truth lies trapped in a web of intrigue

December 24, 2010

A murky situation ... Julian Assange outside a police station this week in Britain, where he is on bail. Photo: Reuters

This sexual and political drama has more mysteries than any thriller, writes Guy Rundle in London.

Whatever prompted Naomi Wolf to defend Julian Assange by penning a satirical article for The Huffington Post titled ''Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police'', one assumes she is now regretting it. Ditto Michael Moore's ex cathedra statements on whether the sex crime allegations made against the WikiLeaks founder constituted rape or not: ''His condom broke during consensual sex. This is all a bunch of hooey as far as I'm concerned.''

Two weeks ago, when he was on remand in Wandsworth prison, it was broadly accepted that the man responsible for humiliating and challenging great powers across the world had been railroaded by a series of accusations relying on scorned female fury.

But now people more critical of the ethereal 39-year-old former hacker have hit back, as tabloid articles and a long piece in The Guardian detail the allegations against him blow by blow. The tabloid pieces in Sweden's Expressen and Britain's Mail on Sunday seemed more interested in his sexual encounters that were unquestionably consensual than in the criminal accusations. It is the report from The Guardian, one of WikiLeaks' publishing partners, that may do him more damage. Yet even this assessment is more interesting for what it left out - stories of influence, tampering, shadowy establishments and hidden agendas that leave the late Stieg Larsson out in the cold.

The story begins in early August, with the first complainant, Miss A, a woman now universally acknowledged as Anna Ardin, a rising star in the Social Democratic Party and an organiser of Assange's speaking engagement in Stockholm. Ardin had put up Assange in her apartment and organised a crayfish party for him, a traditional Swedish summer get-together attended by journalists and the leaders of Sweden's libertarian anti-censorship Pirate Party.

Assange and Ardin had begun a sexual relationship but, according to Nick Davies in The Guardian report, Ardin had told two friends that the sex had been ''violent''; Assange had pinned down her arm to prevent her applying a condom. She had let him stay in her apartment, but not her bed.

Unbeknown to her, Assange was also seeing Sofia Wilen, a photographer who, by her own account to police, had become a little obsessed with Assange after seeing him on TV. Though she had told him she never had unsafe sex, she said she had woken to find him having sex with her without a condom. According to her account to prosecutors, they joked about pregnancy, had breakfast and returned to Stockholm by train, with Wilen paying for the tickets - as she had paid days earlier for the cinema, the meal and the train out.

On the Wednesday, August 18, Wilen rang Ardin, whom she did not know, to find out where Assange was. They compared notes and, on Friday, August 20, went to Klara police station to inquire how they could force Assange to take a test for sexually transmitted infections. Fifteen minutes into the interview the police decided to ask the duty prosecutor to open a rape investigation.

Though it would be months before it began to be adjudicated in The Huffington Post, the case became murky and mysterious from the get-go. Wilen's experience had been the basis for the rape accusation, Ardin's for two misdemeanour accusations. The senior prosecutor threw out the rape accusation, leaving a case barely worth pursuing.

But then Claes Borgstrom entered the scene. Battered and feisty, a real-life Kurt Wallander, Borgstrom is both a celebrity lawyer and a major figure in the Social Democratic Party, its gender equality spokesman. He petitioned the appeals prosecutor, Marianne Ny, to revive the accusations. When she did, in early September, there were four accusations, not three, the most serious being a new one - that of violent sexual coercion of Ardin.

The new accusation created a substantial difference between the first and later account of events to the police. It was at this time that material began to disappear from the internet. Two tweets were removed from Ardin's Twitter feed in early September - one saying ''Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone around'' and another from the crayfish party Ardin organised for him that night ''2am - sitting outside with the most exciting, interesting people in the world'', both tweets sent in the 24 hours after the alleged violent sexual encounter took place.

Simultaneously, two items disappeared from blogs written or co-written by Ardin: a record of events making no mention of a violent sexual encounter, and a ''7-step guide to revenge'' on ex-lovers. All four deleted items were retrieved from internet caches by Swedish bloggers.

One of those who retrieved the deleted material was Goran Rudling, an activist involved in a campaign to revise Sweden's 2005 Sex Crimes Act, which he believes has rendered the law unworkable. No fan of Assange, whom he describes as a ''villain - he wants to make himself more important by saying there is a conspiracy to get him'', Rudling nevertheless points out that the investigation of his case has been hamstrung by a routine disregard for the proper procedures.

''There is, for example, no full record of the first interviews, written or audio/video. So we don't know what questions were asked, or how they were answered,'' Rudling says. ''The arrest warrant was issued before the interview proper had even begun, and one of the complainants was only interviewed the next day, by telephone.''

Why was a warrant for a serious allegation issued so quickly? One possibility is so that it could be leaked in time for the afternoon news, especially to the right-wing tabloid Expressen, which painted such a harsh picture of Assange that it prompted Ardin to give an interview to the rival paper Aftonbladet the next day, in which she said that ''Assange is not violent and we do not fear him … this is about someone who has problems with women''.

It is this quote that has become a headache for Borgstrom, since it contradicts Ardin's later claims. Questioned about this by reporters, Borgstrom replied that said the women ''weren't jurists - they don't know what rape is''. This claim was shaky. As gender equality officer at Uppsala University, Ardin had issued a new edition of the student union's gender equality procedures, including a guide to legal recourse.

By now, however, attention had turned to Borgstrom and the passion with which he was pursuing the case. His decision to take the case had been met with bemusement by many as his party was on the verge of contesting the September general election, one it lost badly.

When the Social Democrats were last in power, Borgstrom had helped draft the 2005 Sex Crime Act, which had made it possible to charge people with what has become known as ''sex by surprise''. Since losing power in 2006, his party has claimed that the ruling centre-right coalition has done nothing to give the new laws any force. Opponents of the law contended that it was unworkable, prompting investigations into matters that would be reduced to two conflicting stories in court and open to misuse for reputation damage and revenge.

Crucially, the 2005 law had gone beyond simple notion of consent and elaborated the idea of ''violation of sexual integrity'' and non-financial ''sexual exploitation'' - that is, psychological or situational manipulation. It thus became possible to charge someone with a sex crime even if consent was present throughout, a feature of at least two, and possibly all four, of the accusations against Assange.

The accusations against him occurred at a highly charged time, as the centre-right government received an exhaustive review of the law. The review had been prompted by bitter struggle between those who said it was unworkable - people drawn from the left and right - and those on the centre-left, feminists and greens who argued that the justice system should be further transformed to overcome the low conviction rate it achieved.

One of the players in the debate had been Gothenburg's crime development unit, a department of the prosecutor's office responsible for exploring new modes for the development of sex crime legislation, and headed by the appeals prosecutor Marianne Ny.

Does this add up to a possible hidden agenda? Yes and no. Unlike the experience of Larsson's character Lisbeth Salander, Sweden has less explicit corruption than a lot of countries. What it does have is a suffocatingly tight political elite, much of it grouped around the Social Democratic Party, which has huge cultural power even in opposition.

Some, such as the law blogger Marten Schultz, are impatient with Assange's repeated claims of especially bad treatment, arguing that the most surprising decision from the prosecutors was the second one, stating that Assange was not a suspect - without carrying out any investigation.

Others, such as Christian Engstrom, a Pirate Party member of the European Parliament, suggest that it would be difficult for Assange to get a fair trial in Sweden, as the judge and ''lay examiners'' who assess each case are appointed by the political parties in proportion to their numbers in parliament. ''Usually Swedish justice works well,'' he argues. ''But in cases like Julian's everything goes strange.''

His chief of staff, Henrik Alexandersson, is more forthright, saying that as Assange has antagonised all major parties ''there is no chance of him getting a fair trial''.

Few cases in recent times have been so argued about on the basis of so much misinformation. Even Davies's account in The Guardian has been criticised as one-sided by a WikiLeaks associate in Sweden who was one of several people who tried to mediate between Assange and Ardin, before she went to the police. ''I would say that it is simply the case for the prosecution,'' he says. ''The police record contains Assange's early interview with the police on the 'misconduct' [accusations], yet none of that has been included.''

Assange has at no time been charged with any crime. His arrest warrant was issued in relation to questions the prosecutors' office wishes him to answer regarding the accusations. Assange is next due in court in Britain on January 11 for the beginning of his extradition hearing.

The WikiLeaks associate suggests the case may never come to trial, noting that ''one of the complainants has refused to sign off on her statement''. Even if that proves to be the case, Julian Assange has entered history, though it remains to be seen whether in triumph or tragedy.

Days of his life

August 20 Julian Assange is accused of the rape and sexual assault of Sofia Wilen and of ofredande (''unfreedom'' - a misdemeanour crime under Swedish law) in relation to Anna Ardin. The accusations are leaked to the tabloid Espressen.

August 21 Stockholm's chief prosecutor withdraws the arrest warrant for Assange, saying she sees no description of rape or assault. An investigation into the ofredande accusation stands.

August 31 Police in Stockholm question Assange and formally tell him of the allegation against him. He denies the accusations.

September 1 Marianne Ny, an appeals prosecutor, reopens an investigation into rape in relation to Ardin.

November 18 An arrest warrant is issued in Sweden for Assange to answer questions from the prosecutor.

November 30 Interpol issues a ''red notice'' for Assange's detention.

December 6 A European arrest warrant is issued.

December 7 Assange gives himself up to British police. The Crown Prosecution Service reads out four accusations: rape: that Assange had held Ardin down, forcibly parted her legs and had sex with her; ofredande: that Assange had unsafe sex with Ardin, thereby violating her sexual integrity; ofredande: that Assange had pushed his erect penis into Ardin's back, thereby violating her sexual integrity; sexual assault: that Assange had had unsafe sex with Wilen while she was sleeping.

December 16 Assange is released on bail of £200,000 ($308,000) plus several sureties. An initial extradition hearing is set for January 11. The substantive hearing will begin in early February.

US Army launches WikiLeaks probe

Nancy A Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers

December 24, 2010 - 2:59PM

WASHINGTON - The US Army has launched a wide-ranging investigation into how a private suspected of downloading thousands of secret reports and diplomatic cables and handing them over to WikiLeaks was able to do so and whether other soldiers should face criminal charges in the case.

An army official familiar with the investigation told McClatchy newspapers that the six-member task force has been given until February 1 to complete a report that will look at everything from how Private Bradley Manning was selected for his job and trained to whether his superiors missed warning signs that he was downloading documents he had no need to read.

The army confirmed the investigation, but wouldn't release details.

Advertisement: Story continues below The report could change how the army - the largest distributor of government security clearances - grants access to government documents as well as lead to recommendations of charges against soldiers who worked with Manning and may have been aware of his activities.

Manning was working as an intelligence specialist in Baghdad during 2009 and the early months of 2010 when he allegedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Those documents reached WikiLeaks - army officials have said they're not certain how - and have been published by the website in four separate bursts that began in April with the release of a video showing an army helicopter firing on civilians in Baghdad, killing two Reuters news agency employees.

The website also released tens of thousands of documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the current, ongoing publication of hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables, which began on November 28.

Manning allegedly downloaded the documents while pretending to listen to music by Lady Gaga on headphones, a cover story, investigators say, to explain the sound of the computer's CD drive whirring as he copied the files.

He's being held in solitary confinement at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on charges that could lead to a 52-year prison sentence.

Some human rights groups charge that Manning is being mistreated, with no ability to exercise or access to news.

The Defense Department has denied the claims.

Army Lieutenant General Robert Caslen Jr, the commander of the Army General Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will lead the study, which was ordered by John McHugh, the Army secretary.

"Lt Gen Caslen has a very broad investigative mandate and he has been assured of the co-operation of both the Department of the Army and the US Central Command as he proceeds. Lt Gen Caslen's investigation will not interfere nor conflict with the ongoing criminal investigation," Army spokesman Lt Col Christopher Garver said in a statement prepared in response to questions from McClatchy.

No other service branch is conducting a similar investigation, but the army findings could lead to changes throughout the military. With more than 800,000 uniformed personnel, the Army issues more security clearances than any other government organisation.

The US Justice Department also is conducting an investigation into whether to bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, though such a prosecution faces a number of challenges, including the apparent difficulty prosecutors are having tying Assange directly to Manning.

Manning, now 23, reportedly isn't co-operating with investigators, and Defense Department officials who have been briefed on the case said according to their most recent information, now months old, that no direct tie has been established between Manning and Assange.

© 2010 AAP

Assange says he could be killed in US jail

December 24, 2010 - 11:59AM

The only reason there'd be a "high chance" is because he is such a mouthy, obnoxious little prick and people would want the peace his non-existence would bring.............his paranoia and media manipulation continues.............

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.

The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington.

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.

He said US authorities were "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the US army soldier suspected of providing WikiLeaks with the cables.

Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.

Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald at a police station in Dallas, Texas days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Ruby's alleged links to organised crime sparked conspiracy theories about his involvement in an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.

Assange has previously said that he and other WikiLeaks staff have received death threats since the website began to release a cache of about 250,000 secret US State Department cables in November.

The 39-year-old has been staying at a friend's country mansion in eastern England since his release from jail last week on strict bail conditions that include reporting to police daily and wearing an electronic tag.

A court in London is due to hold a full hearing on the Swedish extradition request starting February 7.

The only reason there'd be a "high chance" is because he is such a mouthy, obnoxious little prick and people would want the peace his non-existence would bring.............his paranoia and media manipulation continues...........

Wow, are you serious?

Not sure if it was posted here but finally got to read the police report summary, what an arse! Doesn't change anything though

Originally Posted by Deks

Wow, are you serious?

No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................

Originally Posted by buglerbilly

No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................

h fair enough, I thought you may respond with some reasoning into your thoughts though.

For myself, I haven't yet decided whether on balance wikileaks is a good thing or not. I'm certainly not calling for the julian assanges head over and above anyone else in that particular arena

I thought my views on Mr Assange were very clear: -

1) Personally, I think he's an obnoxious little prick who's ego is only matched by his inability to keep his zip up..........this doesn't only refer to the Swedish instances............

2) He's of a left-wing "society" that believes TOTALLY in its own supreme correctness ensuring that the rest of us mere mortals have our outlooks and beliefs modified to understand that THEY are always right.........IF you've never dealt with such vermin, then undoubtedly this will sound strange to you BUT I've had to deal with it, understand the type and still have difficulty being polite when discussing the same.

3) WikiLeaks, as a group, I have no problem with IN THEORY. However, taking the current example as a case in point, we still are in the very early days of how we handle Cyber Leaks where people ILLEGALLY download masses of information NOT business info but State, Defence and Political "secrets"; to then say this puts no one at risk 'cos they've read it OR "its your fault cos you didn't read the STOLEN info we have in our possession to verify what or who was at risk" defies description in its banal rigtheous naivety and blatant stupidity. Equally, to ignore the Global political impact such disclosures can creat is also naive and stupid.

4) Do I want to live in a society where all matters are open to disclosure as a right? Nope I do NOT...........it's idealistic and almost moronic to beleve that this will somehow ensure either equality, justice or peace in this World. I most certainly do not want other people knowing what I do or say in every instance, I value my privacy far more than that and make no mistake, being allowed to leak State secrets is only a skip and a jump away from no one have any rights to privacy as privacy, by definition, could be viewed as having "secrets".

Assange prosecutor: “Lock the men up anyway”

http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/12/08/assange-prosecutor-%E2%80%9Clock-the-men-up-anyway%E2%80%9D Wed 08 Dec 2010
By Diet Simon

There is heated debate in Sweden whether the hard line taken against Assange by the state attorney is right, the paper says.

“Not an international conspiracy of secret services, but an overzealous state attorney is regarded as the main reason for (Assange’s) arrest.

“Even an association of young feminist women within the Social Democratic Party now doubts the seriousness of the accusations and the professionalism of the state attorney.

“That is remarkable inasmuch as Assange’s alleged victim (Anna Ardin) is a member of this group.”

When the accusations were first voiced to the Swedish police in August, the prosecutors did not lay charges.

Then personnel changed.

A new prosecutor, Marianne Ny, took over the case, distanced herself from the previous decision and laid a rape charge.

To Swedish media Assange’s British lawyer has likened Marianne Ny to an "unsecured firearm on the tossing deck of a ship in stormy sea”.

Also have a look at http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?301387-Anna-Ardin-and-Sofia-Wilen

http://www.w54.biz/showthread.php?949-WikiLeaks-founder-blasts-Pentagon-amid-Afghan-files-row&p=12144

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange fears he is subject of an 'illegal investigation'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that there could be an "illegal investigation" being carried out into him.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange celebrates as he prepares to address the media outside the High Court in central London yesterday. Photo: AFP/GETTY

1:26PM GMT 17 Dec 2010

Speaking on his first day under house arrest, the 39-year-old Australian said he had not been provided with any evidence relating to claims he sexually assaulted two women.

He was let out of prison on Thursday after a judge ruled he should be released ahead of Swedish extradition proceedings in the new year.

Bail conditions require Mr Assange to remain in the country until the extradition hearing next year and he is now staying at Ellingham Hall, a country retreat on the Norfolk/Suffolk border owned by Vaughan Smith, the founder of London's Frontline club.
Speaking from the grounds of the mansion, he claimed certain institutions were "engaged in what appears to be, certainly a secret investigation, but appears also to be an illegal investigation.

"We can see that by how certain people who are allegedly affiliated with us were contained at the US border and had their computers seized, and so on."

Asked if he was facing a US conspiracy, Mr Assange said: "I would say that there is a very aggressive investigation, that a lot of face has been lost by some people, and some people have careers to make by pursuing famous cases, but that is actually something that needs monitoring.

"We've seen the Swedish government, let's not say the government, a Swedish prosecutor in these representations to the British Government and British courts said he needed not to provide a single shred of evidence."

Mr Assange reiterated that he had spent 10 days in solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison, south west London, and had still not been presented with "a single piece of evidence".

He claimed his organisation had been attacked primarily not by governments, but by banks in Dubai, Switzerland, the US and the UK and added that WikiLeaks is continuing to release information about the banks.

He added: "Over 85 per cent of our economic resources are spent dealing with attacks, dealing with technical attacks, dealing with political attacks, dealing with legal attacks, not doing our journalism. And that, if you like, is a tax upon quality investigative journalism.

"An 85 per cent tax rate on that kind of economic activity. Whereas people who are producing celebrity pieces for Vanity Fair have much lower tax rates."

Mr Assange said that he had support from a "large Washington law firm" and from "colleagues in California" but called for more help.

He said: "We need more, and not just at a reactive level."

After emerging from the High Court in London, Mr Assange vowed to "continue his work and protest his innocence".

Assange believes further leaked information relating to the sexual assault claims are to be made public later today. He has also indicated that the US is preparing to indict him on espionage charges.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Justice would confirm only that there is "an ongoing investigation into the WikiLeaks matter".

Assange is wanted in Sweden for alleged sex offences, which he denies. His lawyers have accused the Swedish authorities of waging a "vendetta" against him.

Earlier this week at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court he was granted bail pending the bid to extradite him.

But the whistleblower remained in prison while the authorities challenged his release at the High Court in London, arguing that there was "a real risk" he would abscond.

However, on Thursday Mr Justice Ouseley released Assange after rejecting submissions that the risk he posed made it impossible to set him free.

The judge said his cooperation with police suggested he was not "a person who is seeking to evade justice" and accepted offers by Assange's supporters to stump up £200,000 as a cash deposit and a number of other sureties.

Rape accusers in a 'tizzy' after cops 'bamboozled' them: Assange

December 22, 2010 - 10:17AM

Julian Assange feels he has been unjustly persecuted.

"They know not what they do 'cos they are only women"........................you sexist pig! Bamboozled by Police my arse...........the prick still doesn't understand or accept that he has done anything wrong........

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Swedish women who have accused him of sexual assault had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility they had caught a sexually transmitted disease from him.

Assange told the BBC that one account of what happened in August - the month at the centre of allegations against him - was that the two women had panicked when they found out they had both slept with him and went to police who "bamboozled" them.

He insisted he was fighting a Swedish extradition warrant because he believes "no natural justice" would occur in Sweden.

Alleged victims ... Anna Ardin, left, and Sofia Wilen.

"There are some serious problems with the Swedish prosecution," he said in an interview from the mansion of a wealthy supporter in eastern England where he must stay as part of his bail conditions.

Sweden wants Britain to extradite the 39-year-old Australian to face questioning over allegations from two women that he raped one of them and sexually assaulted the other in Stockholm in August.

Assange said he was used to attention from women but would not reveal how many women he had slept with.

"A gentleman certainly doesn't count," he said. "I've never had a problem with women. Women have been extremely helpful and generous with me and put up with me, assisting me in my work, caring for me, loving me and so on. That's what I'm used to."

Assange claimed that the Swedish authorities had asked that his Swedish lawyer be "gagged", adding that his offers to be interviewed by video link or by Swedish officials in Britain had been rejected.

"I don't need to be at the beck and call of people making allegations," he said.

"I don't need to go back to Sweden. The law says I... have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way."

He said that one account of what occurred in August was that after having discovered they had each had sex with him, they had got into a "tizzy", or a panic, about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases.

As a result, he said, the women had gone to the police for advice "and then the police jumped in on this and bamboozled the women".

WikiLeaks has enraged Washington by releasing thousands of US diplomatic cables and US Vice President Joe Biden described Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".

US officials are believed to be considering how to indict Assange for espionage.

In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Assange compared WikiLeaks' "persecution" to that endured by Jews in the US in the 1950s.

Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year.

"We don't want the bank to suffer unless it's called for," Assange told The Times. "But if its management is operating in a responsive way there will be resignations," he said, without giving details about the material.

Shares in Bank of America have fallen amid speculation that it was a WikiLeaks target.

AFP

Originally Posted by Deks

Wow, are you serious?

No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................

Originally Posted by buglerbilly

The USA and the MI6 controlled CIA have used the Economic Hitmen as described by John Perkins in his books, 'The Confessions on an Economic Hitman' and 'The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman',to remove the previous President of Ecuador, and replace him with a head of Ecuador that is more friendly with the CIA and the USA, who will do what he is told by the USA and the CIA,so that the new President of Ecuador would allow the London Police to come into the Ecuador Embassy in London to arrest Julian Assange, who around seven years ago was given political asylum by Ecuador. Also in 2018 Julian Assange was made a Ecuador citizen.

In a tweet, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, said:

“We strongly condemn the detention of Julian Assange and the violation of freedom of speech.

Our solidarity with this brother who is persecuted by the US government for

revealing its human rights violations, murders of civilians and diplomatic espionage.”

Rafael Correa

Former President of Ecuador condems the arrest of Julian Assange at the Ecuador Embassy in London.

Former President of Ecuador was removed as the President of Ecuador by Economic hit men working for the USA,

and the MI6 controlled CIA and replaced by the current President of Ecuador is Lenín Moreno,

since 24 May 2017 who is has is obviously showing he will do what he is told by the USA, and the MI6 controlled CIA

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who served as President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017.

The leader of the PAIS Alliance political movement, Correa

is a democratic socialist and his administration focused on the implementation of left-wing policies

The current President of Ecuador is Lenín Morenov

since 24 May 2017. He was elected in 2017.

The President of Ecuador (Spanish: Presidente del Ecuador) officially called the President of the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: Presidente de la República del Ecuador) serves as both the head of state and head of government of Ecuador, is the highest political office in the country as the head of the executive branch of government. As per the current Constitution, the President can serve two four-year terms. Prior to that, the president could only serve one four-year term.

The current President of Ecuador is Lenín Moreno, since 24 May 2017. He was elected in 2017.

Assange shouted “this is unlawful” as police officers struggled to drag him from the Ecuadorian embassy this morning, the court heard. “This is unlawful, I’m not leaving,” he said.

Note that Gabriel Gregorio Fernando José María García Moreno y Morán de Butrón (December 24, 1821 – August 6, 1875) was an Ecuadorian politician who twice served as President of Ecuador (1861–65 and 1869–75) and was assassinated during his second term, after being elected to a third.

How Ecuador's shifting politics led to Julian Assange's arrest, and a snarky tweet from the ex-president

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ecuador-rafael-correa-lenin-moreno-strips-wikileaks-julian-assange-asylum-status/

BY HALEY OTT- APRIL 12, 2019 CBS NEWS

London -- The former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, sharply criticized the country's current president on Thursday for stripping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of asylum status and allowing him to be arrested by U.K. police. "The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenín Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange," Correa tweeted.

"Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget," the former leader said.

Assange had been living in Ecuador's embassy in London since he was granted asylum by Correa in 2012.

Rafael Correa✔@MashiRafael

The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange.
Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.

Barnaby Nerberka@barnabynerberka

BREAK: Full @Ruptly video of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest by British police this morning

"Lenín Moreno was Correa's candidate," Richard Lapper, Associate Fellow at Chatham House's U.S. and the Americas Programme, told CBS News of the now-rivals. The left-wing leader was unable to run in Ecuador's 2017 elections because of the country's term limits, so he campaigned for Moreno, who was his one-time vice president.

"Correa expected Moreno to follow very similar policies to him. That hasn't happened. Lenín Moreno has pursued a more social democratic, more centrist political line," Lapper said.

As tensions grew in Ecuador between Correa and Moreno supporters over the shift, a large trove of hacked documents, dubbed the "INA Papers," was leaked on the internet. It included material belonging to Moreno which some people believe shows he profited from corrupt business dealings. WikiLeaks tweeted a link to the papers, but denied having anything to do with their publication, the Daily Beast reported.

On Thursday, Correa tweeted: "Julian Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy for exposing Pres. Lenin Moreno's corruption in the #INAPapers." His tweet included bank details that he alleged were a secret account used by Moreno for money laundering.

Republica Del Ecusador

Cuenta Offshore Secreta De La Familia Presidencial

100-4-1071378

INA INVESTMENT CORP.

BALBOA BANK

PANAMA

View image on Twitter

Rafael Correa✔@MashiRafael

Julian Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy for exposing Pres. Lenin Moreno’s corruption in the #INAPapers
Moreno’s secret account (money laundering):
100-4-1071378
Balboa Bank Panamá.

3,126

2:37 PM - Apr 11, 2019

Earlier in the day, Moreno tweeted a video statement announcing that the country would be revoking Assange's asylum status.

"Ours is a government respectful of the principles of international law, and of the institution of the right of asylum. Granting or withdrawing asylum is a sovereign right of the Ecuadorian state, according to international law," Moreno said in the prerecorded message.

Lenín Moreno✔@Lenin

Ecuador decidió soberanamente retirar el asilo diplomático a Julian Assange por violar reiteradamente convenciones internacionales y protocolo de convivencia. #EcuadorSoberano

17.2K

10:27 AM - Apr 11, 2019

"Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially, the transgression of international treaties have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable," he said.

"Ecuador is pursuing a more pro-Western foreign policy than it did under Correa," Lapper told CBS News. "They've sought to diversify their trade and investment relations, and so (that) entails being more pragmatic, basically, in their policies."

"I think there are very good reasons for Ecuador to pursue the kind of approach it's pursuing now, especially when you look over the border in Venezuela and see what an absolute humanitarian disaster 'Chavismo' has created there," explained Lapper. "Moreno, like some of the other governments in Latin America, is taking his distance from that."

First published on April 12, 2019

The relationship between Assange and his hosts deteriorated further after Lenín Moreno was elected to the Ecuadorian presidency in 2017. Moreno had described Assange as a “stone in the shoe”, but said before his election that he could remain in the embassy if he agreed to abide by certain conditions.

In January 2018 it emerged that the country had made Assange an Ecuador ian citizen in a bid to resolve the impasse (its request to have him recognised as a diplomat was dismissed by the UK).

But the Ecuador-Assange relationship remained strained, and last year the country cut off his internet access again, saying he had breached an agreement not to interfere with other states. Assange had tweeted in support of the Catalan independence movement, causing a rift between Quito and Madrid, and challenged the UK’s accusation that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of a Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

Moreno later ordered the removal of an additional multimillion-pound security operation set up by his predecessor to protect Assange. In July last year the president said that Assange would ultimately have to leave the embassy, and by October the Australian was suing his hosts, saying their conditions for his stay violated his “fundamental rights and freedoms”. On Wednesday, WikiLeaks held a press conference to say it had uncovered a surveillance operation against him in the embassy, leading to private legal and medical information being offered for sale in what it said was an extortion attempt.

On Thursday morning, finally, Ecuador’s patience had “reached its limit”, Moreno said in a statement justifying his decision to revoke Assange’s asylum status. He is now, once again, in British custody.

This is from journalist David Crouch in Sweden:

One of the Swedish women who made the 2010 allegations against Assange, whose rape case was closed by Swedish prosecutors in 2017, told the Guardian she was opposed to his extradition to the US.

“I would be very surprised and sad if Julian is handed over to the US,” she said via email, asking for her name not to be used.

Speaking outside Westminster magistrates court after this afternoon’s hearing, WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said:

“Anyone who wants the press to be free should consider the implications of this case. If they will extradite a journalist to the US then no journalist will be safe. This must stop. This must end.”

"This sets a dangerous precedent... any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the US for having published truthful information about the US"

Julian Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson confirms Wikileaks co-founder will fight extradition

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has been commenting on today’s events in the House of Commons. “Ecuador’s actions recognise that the UK criminal justice system is one in which rights are protected and in which, contrary to what Mr Assange and his supporters claim, he and his legitimate interests will be protected,” he said.

He said that proceedings would now begin according to the court timetable. Full extradition papers would need to be received by a judge within 65 days, said Javid, and a full extradition request certified by the Home Office. Said he would not discuss the accusations against Assange.

Diane Abbott responded to Javid’s statement by saying she was pleased to hear that Assange would now have access to medical care “because there have been worrying reports about his ill health”

On this side of the house, we want to make the point that the reason we are debating Julian Assange this afternoon – even though the only charge he may face in this country is in relation to his bail hearings – ... is entirely to do with the whistleblowing activities of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

It is this whistleblowing activity into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale that has put Julian Assange in the crosshairs of the US administration. It is for this reason that they have one more issued an extradition warrant against Julian Assange.

She added: “Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect US national security, he is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces.”

Ed Edward Snowden has tweeted again, describing the “weakness of the US charge” as shocking.

Edward Snowden✔@Snowden

The weakness of the US charge against Assange is shocking.

The allegation he tried (and failed?) to help crack a password during their world-famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade:

it is the count Obama's DOJ refused to charge, saying it endangered journalism.

UK did not lobby Ecuador, says PM's spokeswoman

Dan Sabbagh

At a press briefing, Downing Street said that the prime minister and the government were aware in advance that the Ecuadorians intended to revoke Julian Assange’s asylum status, allowing him to be arrested earlier today.

A number 10 spokeswoman said: “There has been a dialogue with [the] Ecuadorian government from the onset. The decision to revoke asylum was one for them entirely. They have set that out.”

When pressed whether the UK had lobbied Ecuador, she repeated that the decision was “taken entirely by them”.

Downing Street did not respond directly when asked if Assange’s arrest raised any questions for freedom of speech. The spokesman said the WikiLeaks founder would now be subject to “an ongoing legal process, and we need to let that run its course”.

Confessions Of An Economic Hitman Author John Perkins

On Russia/Syria, The EU & Venezuela Struggles.

Richie Allen

Published on Jun 8, 2018

Gabriel Gregorio Fernando José María García Moreno y Morán de Butrón (December 24, 1821 – August 6, 1875) was an Ecuadorian politician who twice served as President of Ecuador (1861–65 and 1869–75) and was assassinated during his second term, after being elected to a third.

Did the U.S. CIA kill Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos in 1981? The investigation continues

https://cuencahighlife.com/ecuador-investigates-the-death-of-president-jaime-roldos-attorney-general-says-that-it-could-be-tied-to-the-cias-operation-condor/

Oct 14, 2018 | CuencaHighLife

By Liam Higgins

Did the U.S. government play a role in the death of former Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldós? More than four years after Ecuador’s former attorney general Galo Chiriboga opened an investigation, there is no definitive answer.

A CIA document released in 2014 reveals that Ecuador, like other South American countries, was part in the U.S.-backed Operation Condor plan from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. The U.S. State Department document said the plan was intended to maintain Latin America as the “backyard for the U.S.”

President Jaime Roldós and his wife (center) just before the fatal crash.

The document states that Ecuador, then under a military dictatorship, became part of Operation Condor in 1978, joining the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in endorsing state-sponsored terror to control what was perceived to be the threat of communism and to “eliminate subversive sectors of society.”

Ecuador’s office of the attorney general continues to investigate the 1981 plane crash that killed Roldós and his wife, based on U.S. and other evidence, that leftist or suspected leftist leaders were targeted throughout Latin America. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, writer John Perkins says that the CIA was responsible for Roldós’ death.

Roldós had been elected, following years of dictatorship, on promises of social reform and reducing U.S. influence in Ecuador.

Although national police initially reported that Roldós’ plane was brought down by a bomb shortly after takeoff from the Loja airport, the national government at the time immediately sealed all information about the crash and labelled it an “accident.” Another investigation, in 1997, conceded that Roldós was assassinated but did not pursue the case further.

Panama’s Omar Torrijos

Panama PresidentOmar Torrijos died two months later in another plane crash in which witnesses reported an explosion immediately before the plane touched down at a rural Panamanian airport. Like Roldós, Torrijos had criticized the U.S. role in Latin America and was working on programs of wealth distribution. He had successfully negotiated a treaty with U.S. President Jimmy Carter to return to the Panama Canal to local control, a treaty that President Ronald Reagan pledged to overturn.

Operation Condor activities increased dramatically after Reagan succeeded Carter as U.S. president.

In 2014, Chiriboga told the press, “We asked for documents in the United States to be declassified, in particular a CIA document, which establishes that Ecuador was one of the countries where Plan Condor operated. With this information, we are going to examine information of whether the accident which killed President Roldos was in fact an accident or was not an accident.”

The three-page CIA document stipulates that Ecuador’s intelligence services, along with its army, navy and air force, agreed to gather and share information with other states, monitor telecommunications and engage in psychological warfare as part of the plan. It also outlines Ecuador’s relationship with Argentine and Chilean officials who installed telecommunications systems in the country and offered scholarships and training to the Ecuadorian military. The activities were continued by the Ecuadorian military after Roldós was elected without his knowledge.

“The CIA financed an entire network of people to work in their interests,” said Cuenca journalist Francisco Herrera Arauz, who recently co-authored the book The CIA Against Latin America, Special Case of Ecuador, which examines CIA interventions during the period. “They wanted to destroy communism, and affect the position of sovereignty of Ecuador to break its relations with Cuba. This was not good in the eyes of the CIA and caused us a lot of damage. It is the period in which the left experienced the greatest repression.”

The countries involved with Operation Condor agreed to share information, and work to eliminate leftist groups within their borders, as well as persecute those seeking refuge abroad,” according to Arauz. Operation Condor knew no borders, as U.S.-funded death squads and extra-judicial killings were common throughout the region, he said.

A former member of the revolutionary guerrilla group Alfaro Vive ¡Carajo!, Mireya Cardenas, described the work Operation Condor: “In our case, the CIA destroyed a building one night in Cuenca. And they assassinated our friends. There were infiltrators also, who were paid over a period of two years, three years, they were paid with dollars, when the Ecuadorian currency was the sucre.”

Former CIA agent Philip Agee confirmed that he delivered money for bomb-making in Cuenca. The bombs, set off in public areas such as Parque Calderon, were intended to scare the public, he said. “We would blame them on left-wing political groups and fed this false information to the media.”

Agee added that he infiltrated suspected leftist groups in Cuenca, attending meetings at the Raymipampa restaurant, next the cathedral.

An estimated 60,000 people were killed as a result of Operation Condor by its conclusion in the mid-1980s. Through investigations of the death of President Jaime Roldos, the cases of the Alfaro Vive ¡Carajo! and other affected individuals and groups, Ecuador and the other countries making up this plan are working to uncover the truth of this period and provide justice for those victims of crimes against humanity.

https://cuencahighlife.com/ecuador-investigates-the-death-of-president-jaime-roldos-attorney-general-says-that-it-could-be-tied-to-the-cias-operation-condor/

Lawyer Susan Hennessey says the US charges present the UK authorities with an interesting dilemma.

Susan Hennessey✔@Susan_Hennessey

The fact that Assange is only being charged with CFAA violations will make it an interesting question whether the UK will distinguish this from Lauri Love, who successfully fought extradition to the US on hacking charges: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/feb/05/hacking-suspect-lauri-love-wins-appeal-against-extradition-to-us …

Dan Collyns

In a tweet, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, said: “We strongly condemn the detention of Julian Assange and the violation of freedom of speech. Our solidarity with this brother who is persecuted by the US government for revealing its human rights violations, murders of civilians and diplomatic espionage.”

Evo Morales Ayma✔@evoespueblo

Condenamos enérgicamente la detención de #JulianAssange y la violación a la libertad de expresión. Nuestra solidaridad con este hermano que es perseguido por el gobierno de #EEUU por revelar sus violaciones a los derechos humanos, asesinatos de civiles y espionaje diplomático

3:24 PM - Apr 11, 2019

How Ecuador's shifting politics led to Julian Assange's arrest, and a snarky tweet from the ex-president

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ecuador-rafael-correa-lenin-moreno-strips-wikileaks-julian-assange-asylum-status/

BY HALEY OTT- APRIL 12, 2019 CBS NEWS

"Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget," the former leader said.

Assange had been living in Ecuador's embassy in London since he was granted asylum by Correa in 2012.

Rafael Correa✔@MashiRafael

The former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, sharply criticized the country's current president

on Thursday for stripping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of asylum status

and allowing him to be arrested by U.K. police.

Barnaby Nerberka@barnabynerberka

BREAK: Full @Ruptly video of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest by British police this morning

"Lenín Moreno was Correa's candidate," Richard Lapper, Associate Fellow at Chatham House's U.S. and the Americas Programme, told CBS News of the now-rivals.

The left-wing leader was unable to run in Ecuador's 2017 elections because of the country's term limits, so he campaigned for Moreno, who was his one-time vice president.

"Correa expected Moreno to follow very similar policies to him. That hasn't happened. Lenín Moreno has pursued a more social democratic, more centrist political line," Lapper said.

Republica Del Ecusador

Cuenta Offshore Secreta De La Familia Presidencial

100-4-1071378

INA INVESTMENT CORP.

BALBOA BANK

PANAMA

View image on Twitter

Rafael Correa✔@MashiRafael

Julian Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy for exposing

Pres. Lenin Moreno’s corruption in the #INAPapers
Moreno’s secret account (money laundering):
100-4-1071378
Balboa Bank Panamá.

3,126

2:37 PM - Apr 11, 2019

Earlier in the day, Moreno tweeted a video statement announcing that the country would be revoking Assange's asylum status.

Lenín Moreno✔@Lenin

Ecuador decidió soberanamente retirar el asilo diplomático a Julian Assange por violar reiteradamente convenciones internacionales y protocolo de convivencia. #EcuadorSoberano

17.2K

10:27 AM - Apr 11, 2019

April 12, 2019

Why Julian Assange became a hot potato for Ecuador

TimesOfIndia.com April 12^th, 2019

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/68844083.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/why-julian-assange-became-a-hot-potato-for-ecuador/articleshow/68844083.cms

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange forgot on cardinal rule of asylum seekers - when you’re living off the crumbs and mercy of a country, you don’t tarnish that country’s president’s name. As Ecuador finally deserted Assange, the London Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) swooped into the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest one of the world’s most wanted fugitives who had been holed in the South American country’s diplomatic mission since 2012. So why did Ecuador let go of its own citizen ( Assange was granted Ecuadorian citizenship in 2017)?

Ungratefulness?

Julian Assange was granted refuge by Ecuador when he was being sought for extradition by Sweden for sexual assault charges, which were later dropped in 2017. Julian Assange was also sought by the US for leaking sensitive files related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ecuador was a natural choice for asylum for Julian Assange - an Australian by birth - as the South American nation, governed by Left leaning parties, has been antagonistic to US interests, going to the extend of closing down US military bases in the country, which were reopened last year. Going further, Ecuador not only granted Julian Assange citizenship, but also put in a request with the UK Foreign Office for his accreditation as a displomat, in order to grant Julian Assange diplomatic immunity - a request which was rejected.

Biting the hand:

While Assange’s relationship with the then Ecuadorian President Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado was cordial, WikiLeaks’ publishing of the Ina papers that cast corruption allegations against the incumbent president Lenin Boltaire Moreno Garces was probably the last straw in an already fractured relationship of a guest overstaying his welcome. The Ecuadorian President labelled Julian Assange as “inherited problem” and a “stone on the shoe”.

Bad house guest?

I wasn’t cheap for Ecuador to keep Julian Assange safe from British enforcement agencies - spending more than $130,000 a month which included posting undercover intelligence officers for his security. Assange however, is said to have started treating the embassy as his personal residence - occupying more than one third of the embassy’s ground floor space, including its kitchen and keeping his personal space off limited from embassy’s staff. There are also allegations by the security agencies that Julian Assange had started interfering in Ecuador’s diplomatic policies - including reading confidential diplomatic mails. The publishing of the leaked Democratic Party mails - 700,000 of them - by WikiLeaks from the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy by Assange were damaging to Moreno’s efforts to build bridges with the US.

Money Talks:

The pressing reason why Ecuador wanted Assange out of its embassy was the country’s mounting international debt. The OPEC member, which has been buffeted by the crude oil prices, was amenable to seeking an IMF bailout to repay a Chinese loan of $6.5 billion and to boost its economy. The US, which is the largest shareholder of the IMF, was agreeable to assist Moreno in exchange for giving up Julian Assange - who hadn’t exactly endeared himself to the new president.

What happens now:

While the MPS initially arrested Julian Assange for his failure to surrender in court in response to a warrant issued by Westminster Magistrate’s Court on HHJun 29^th, 2012, he was later also arrested on a separate US extradition request. Not that he was done dropping ombshells, as Julian Assange’s lawyers asked that the Chief Magustrate Emma Arbuthnot - who’s also hearing the Nirav Modi case- excuse herself as some of the Wikileaks disclosures had impacted her husband. That invited severe criticism from district judge Michael Snow who’s sought the full US extradition request by June 12^th,2019. Julian Assange will appear in Court, via videolink, on May 2, for his bail skipping case hearing - in which he - pleaded not guilty.

What we know so far

In the same press conference, the country’s foreign minister José Valencia said Assange’s Ecuadorean citizenship had been suspended due to the “innumerable problems, breaches of international accords” and his “interference in external matters”.

Cancillería Ecuador✔@CancilleriaEc

Compartimos la intervención del Canciller @ValenciaJoseEc en la rueda de prensa ofrecida esta mañana sobre el retiro del asilo diplomático al señor Julian Assange. #EcuadorSoberano.

Lauri Love ruling ‘sets precedent’ for trying hacking suspects..

Rights Group and lawyers for 33-year-old welcome landmark judgement against extradition to the US TheGardian.com

Julian Assange has been found guilty of breaching bail in 2012 after being arrested at the Ecuadorean embassy in London on Thursday. Judge Michael Snow said he will be sentenced next month at Southwark Crown Court. He said Assange had shown the “behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest”.
The United States has requested the extradition of Assange and charged him with involvement in computer hacking with Chelsea Manning. The Metropolitan police said the arrest was made on behalf of the US authorities.
The US justice department said Assange faces up to five years in jail if convicted. It said extradition request is being handled by its office of international affairs.
Theresa May welcomed Assange’s arrest saying it showed “no one is above the law.”She told MPs Assange was arrested for breach of bail after nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy and in relation to an extradition request from the United States’ authorities.
Police were videoed forcibly removing Assange from the embassy at around at around 10.50am. Police had been invited into the building by the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange had take refuge for almost seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden where authorities wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation.
The president of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, said he secured guarantees from the UK that Assange would not face the death penalty or torture. Justifying the move of handing him over to the British police, Moreno said: “In a sovereign decision, Ecuador withdrew the asylum status to Julian Assange after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life- protocols.”
Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer for one of the two women who accused Assange, welcomed the arrest. The Swedish prosecution authority is expected to issue a statement later.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped that Assange’s rights would not be violated. A spokeswoman for the foreign ministry accused the UK of strangling freedom.
The arrest was welcomed by the UK government. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, thanked Ecuador, saying: “Julian Assange is no hero and no one is above the law. He has hidden from the truth for years.” The home secretary, Sajid Javid, is due to update parliament later on Thursday.

Here is a report from the Press Association –

The court heard police officers arrived at the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge at about 9.15am and were met by the ambassador. “He indicated he was preparing to serve upon Assange documentation revoking his asylum,” James Hines, representing the US government, said.

“Officers tried to introduce themselves to him in order to execute the arrest warrant before he barged past them, attempting to return to his private room. He was eventually arrested at 10.15am. He resisted that arrest, claiming ‘this is unlawful’ and he had to be restrained.

Officers were struggling to handcuff him. They received assistance from other officers outside and he was handcuffed saying, ‘this is unlawful, I’m not leaving’. He was in fact lifted into the police van outside the embassy and taken to West End Central police station.”

Assange’s lawyer, Liam Walker, said the defence of reasonable excuse partly relied on his claims the chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, who has previously dealt with the case, was biased against him.

He alleged her husband, Lord Arbuthnot, was directly impacted by the activities of WikiLeaks and Assange. But the judge told Walker it was unacceptable for him to air the claim in front of a packed press gallery.

“This is grossly unfair and improper to do it just to ruin the reputation of a senior and able judge in front of the press.

He has chosen not to give evidence, he has chosen to make assertions about a senior judge not having the courage to place himself before the court for the purpose of cross-examination.

Those assertions made through counsel are not evidence as a matter of law. I find they are not capable of amounting to a reasonable excuse.

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

John Pilger

Opinion Gough Whitlam

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence

In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week, dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy.

The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price.

Thu 23 Oct 2014 - Last modified on Fri 14 Jul 2017

Australia's Prime Minister Gough Whitlam watches ACTU president Bob Hawke drink beer from a yard glass Melbourne, Australia, 1972.

Across the media and political establishment in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.

Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.

Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”.

Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”

Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.

Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.

When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as “the coupmaster”, he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia, to the Australian Institute of Directors, was described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”.

The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”

On 10 November 1975, Whitlam was shown a top-secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA’s East Asia division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier.

Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA, where he was briefed on the “security crisis”.

On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.

•John Pilger’s investigation into the coup again

An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action | John Perkins | TEDxTraverseCity

TEDx Talks

Published on Jun 24, 2016

John Perkins describes the methods he used to bribe and threaten the heads of state of countries on four continents in order to create a global empire and he reveals how the leaders who did not “play the game" were assassinated or overthrown. He brings us up to date about the way the economic hit man system has spread from developing countries to the US, Europe, and the rest of the world and offers a strategy for turning this around. “Each of us," he says, “can participate in this exciting revolution. We can transform a system that is consuming itself into extinction into one that is sustainable and regenerative." John's books, including The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, have sold over a million copies, spent more than 70 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists, and are published in more than 30 languages. As Chief Economist at a major consulting firm, his experiences advising the World Bank, UN, IMF, U.S. government, Fortune 500 corporations, and heads of state convinced him to devote his life to facilitating changes in social, political, and economic systems, as well as in general consciousness. He was founder and CEO of a highly successful alternative energy company and is a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, nonprofits dedicated to creating a sustainable, just, peaceful, and thriving world. John's courage in writing his books and speaking out against his former bosses exemplifies the courage shown by our Founding Fathers and Mothers when they stood up to the British Empire. Like them, John defied threats and bribes and took action. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Category

Nonprofits & Activism

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.

They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development ( USAID),

and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources.

Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, pay() s, extortion, sex, and murder.

They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM

I wrote that in 1982, as the beginning of a book with the working title, Conscience of an Economic Hit Man .

The book was dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been my clients ,

whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits -- Jaime Roldos , president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama .

Both had just died in fiery crashes.

Their deaths were not accidental .

They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate , government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire .

We EHMs failed to bring Roldos and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years.

On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events : the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War, Somalia,

the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop . In 2003, the president of a major publishing house

that is owned by a powerful international corporation read a draft of what had now become Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

He described it viii Confessions of an Economic Hit Man as "a riveting story that needs to be told."

Then he smiled sadly, shook his head, and told me that since the executives at world head - quarters might object, he could not afford to risk publishing it .

He advised me to fictionalize it. "We could market you in the mold of a novelist like John Le Carre or Graham Greene ." But this is not fiction . It is the true story of my life .

A more coura - geous publisher, one not owned by an international corporation, ha s agreed to help me tell it .

John Perkins is an American author. His best known book is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in which Perkins claims to have played a role in an

alleged process of economic colonization of Third World countries on behalf of what he portrays as a cabal of corporations, banks, and the United States government. Wikipedia

Born: January 28, 1945 (age 74 years), Hanover, New Hampshire, United States

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a partly autobiographical book written by John Perkins published in 2004.

It provides Perkins' account of his career with engineering consulting firm Chas. T. Main in Boston.

According to Perkins, his role at Main was to convince leaders of underdeveloped countries to accept substantial development loans for large construction and engineering projects that

would primarily help the richest families and local elites, rather than the poor, while making sure that these projects were contracted to U.S. companies.

Later these loans would give the U.S. political influence and access to natural resources for U.S. companies.[1]

He refers to this as an "economic hit man." Although he states that throughout his career he has always worked for private companies, and suggests a system of corporatocracy and greed,

rather than a single conspiracy, he claims the involvement of the National Security Agency (NSA), with whom he had interviewed for a job before joining Main. According to the author,

this interview effectively constituted an independent screening which led to his subsequent hiring as an economic hit man by Einar Greve,[2] a vice president of the firm (and alleged NSA liaison).

The book heavily criticizes U.S. foreign policy and the widely accepted idea that "all economic growth benefits humankind, and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits.",[3]

suggesting that in many cases only a small portion of the population benefits at the expense of the rest, with the example including increasing income inequality

where large U.S. companies exploit cheap labor and oil companies destroy local environment.[3]Perkins describes what he calls a system of corporatocracy and

greed as the driving force behind establishing the United States as a global empire, in which he took a role as an "economic hit man" to expand its influence.

According to his book, Perkins' function was to convince the political and financial leadership of underdeveloped countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the World Bank and USAID.

Saddled with debts they could not hope to pay, those countries were forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues in his book that developing nations

were effectively neutralized politically, had their wealth gaps driven wider and economies crippled in the long run. In this capacity, Perkins recounts his meetings with some prominent individuals, including Graham Greene and Omar Torrijos. Perkins describes the role of an economic hit man as follows:

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.

They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.

According to Perkins, he began writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man in the 1980s, but "threats or bribes always convinced [him] to stop."

In the book, Perkins repeatedly denies the existence of a "conspiracy".[4]

I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations.

The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950s, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew the government of Iran,

a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time‘s magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed—well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran.

At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn’t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way.

The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.
— November 4, 2004 interview

After publishing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Perkins continued with writing three other books on the topic, focusing on other aspects.

A Game as Old as Empire: the Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (2007), The Secret History of the American Empire (2007) and

Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded – and What We Need to Do to Remake Them (2009).

The epilogue to the 2006 edition provides a rebuttal to the current move by the G8 nations to forgive Third World debt. Perkins charges that the proposed conditions for this debt forgiveness require countries to privatise their health, education, electric, water and other public services.

Those countries would also have to discontinue subsidies and trade restrictions that support local business, but accept the continued subsidization of certain G8 businesses by the US and other G8 countries, and the erection of trade barriers on imports that threaten G8 industries.

In 2009, the documentary film Confessions of an Economic Hit Man featuring interviews with Perkins, was shown at film festivals around the U.S.

The film is a Greek–U.S. co-production directed by Stelios Kouloglou, and was filmed in 2007 and 2008. Numerous interview-style statements by John Perkins also appear in the 2008 Internet-based documentary, Zeitgeist: Addendum, and in the 2012 documentary, Four Horsemen

Confessions Of An Economic Hitman

Author John Perkins On Russia/Syria,

The EU & Venezuela Struggles.

Richie Allen

Published on Jun 8, 2018

Support The Richie Allen Show by donating at www.richieallen.co.uk Richie has been producing and presenting television and radio programs for the best part of twenty years. The Richie Allen Show airs Monday - Thursday at 7 PM GMT and at 11 AM UK Time each Sunday. Listen live here: http://www.richieallen.co.uk http://www.fabradiointernational.com (Channel 2) http://www.triggerwarning.tv/live https://tunein.com/radio/The-Richie-A... The show features up to the minute news analysis by researchers, journalists and academics who are ignored by the corporate controlled media, as well as featuring activists from all around the world who are making a difference in their communities every day. People are tired of hearing about the problems, they want to hear of positive solutions. That is why the show, while challenging the mainstream medias version of events, focuses heavily on the men and women who are trying to cause a seismic shift in the current paradigm. The skype line to the show will be open for listeners to call in and have their say. There will be no censorship. This Youtube Channel, associated Website and its content is copyright of The Richie Allen Show – ©The Richie Allen Show 2014. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following: * you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only * you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47891737

Confessions of An Economic Hitman

by John Perkins

PART I : 1963—197 1 1 An Economic Hit Man Is Born

3 2 "In for Life" 12

3/ Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM 20

4 Saving a Country from Communism 2 3

5 Selling My Soul 2 8 PART II : 1971—197 5

PART II : 1971—197 5

6 My Role as Inquisitor 3 7

7 Civilization on Trial 4 2

8 Jesus, Seen Differently 47

9 Opportunity of a Lifetime 52

10 Panama's President and Hero 5 8

11 Pirates in the Canal Zone 63

12 Soldiers and Prostitutes 6 7

13 Conversations with the General 7 1

14 Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History 7

15 The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair 8 1

16 Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden 9 3

PART III : 1975—198 1

17 Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene 101

18 Iran's King of Kings 108

19 Confessions of a Tortured Man 11 3

20 The Fall of a King 117

21 Colombia: Keystone of Latin America 120

22 American Republic versus Global Empire 124

23 The Deceptive Resume 131

24 Ecuador's President Battles Big Oil 141

25 I Quit 146

PART IV : 1981—PRESEN T

26 Ecuador's Presidential Death 153

27 Panama: Another Presidential Death 158

28 My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush 162

29 I Take a Bribe 167

30 The United States Invades Panama 173

31 An EHM Failure in Iraq 182

32 September 11 and its Aftermath for Me, Personally 189

33 Venezuela: Saved by Saddam 196

34 Ecuador Revisited 203

35 Piercing the Veneer 211

Epilogue 221

John Perkins Personal History 226

Notes 230

Index 240

About the Author 248

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development ( USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, pay() s, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM

I wrote that in 1982, as the beginning of a book with the working title, Conscience of an Economic Hit Man . The book was dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been my clients , whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits -- Jaime Roldos , president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama . Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental . They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate , government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire . We EHMs failed to bring Roldos and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events : the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War, Somalia, the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop . In 2003, the president of a major publishing house that is owned by a powerful international corporation read a draft of what had now become Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He described it viii Confessions of an Economic Hit Man as "a riveting story that needs to be told."

Then he smiled sadly, shook his head, and told me that since the executives at world head - quarters might object, he could not afford to risk publishing it . He advised me to fictionalize it. "We could market you in the mold of a novelist like John Le Carre or Graham Greene ." But this is not fiction . It is the true story of my life . A more coura - geous publisher, one not owned by an international corporation, ha s agreed to help me tell it .

This story must be told. We live in a time of terrible crisis — and tremendous opportunity. The story of this particular economic hit man is the story of how we got to where we are and why we currently face crises that seem insurmountable . This story must be told because only by understanding our past mistakes will we be able t o take advantage of future opportunities ; because 9/11 happened and so did the second war in Iraq ; because in addition to the three thou - sand people who died on September 11, 2001, at the hands of terrorists, another twenty-four thousand died from hunger and related causes. In fact, twenty-four thousand people die every single day because they are unable to obtain life-sustaining food. Most importantly, this story must be told because today, for the first time in history, one nation has the ability, the money, and the power to change all this. It is the nation where I was born and the one I serve d as an EHM: the United States of America.

What finally convinced me to ignore the threats and bribes?

The short answer is that my only child, Jessica, graduated from college and went out into the world on her own. When I recently told her that I was considering publishing this book and shared my fears with her, she said, "Don't worry, dad. If they get you, I'll take over where you left off. We need to do this for the grandchildren I hope to give you someday!" That is the short answer.

The longer version relates to my dedication to the country wher e I was raised, to my love of the ideals expressed by our Founding Fathers, to my deep commitment to the American republic that today promises "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people , everywhere, and to my determination after 9/11 not to sit idly by any longer while EHMs turn that republic into a global empire . That is the skeleton version of the long answer; the flesh and blood are added in the chapters that follow.

This is a true story. I lived every minute of it. The sights, the people, the conversations, and the feelings I describe were all a part of my life. It is my personal story, and yet it happened within the large r context of world events that have shaped our history, have brough t us to where we are today, and form the foundation of our children's futures. I have made every effort to present these experiences, people , and conversations accurately. Whenever I discuss historical event s or re-create conversations with other people, I do so with the help of several tools: published documents; personal records and notes; recollections — my own and those of others who participated ; the five manuscripts I began previously ; and historical accounts by other authors, most notably recently published ones that disclose information that formerly was classified or otherwise unavailable . References are provided in the end notes, to allow interested readers t o pursue these subjects in more depth. In some cases, I combine several dialogues I had with a person into one conversation to facilitate the flow o the narrative.

My publisher asked whether we actually referred to ourselves a s economic hit men. I assured him that we did, although usually only by the initials. In fact, on the day in 1971 when I began working with my teacher Claudine, she informed me, "My assignment is to mold you into an economic hit man. No one can know about your involvement — not even your wife?' Then she turned serious. "Once you're in, you're in for life ."

Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder arrested in London

BBC

Video footage shows Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47891737

Assange gave a thumbs up as he was taken to Westminster Magistrates' Court in a police van

Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson

say the arrest sets a dangerous precedent

Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.

At Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday he was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court.

He now faces US federal conspiracy charges related to one of the largest ever leaks of government secrets.

The UK will decide whether to extradite Assange, in response to allegations by the Department for Justice that he conspired with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to download classified databases.

He faces up to five years in US prison if convicted on the charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

Profile: Julian Assange
Timeline: Julian Assange saga
'Reckless hacktivist' or campaigner for truth?
How likely is a conviction in US?

Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson said they would be fighting the extradition request. She said it set a "dangerous precedent" where any journalist could face US charges for "publishing truthful information about the United States".

She said she had visited Assange in the police cells where he thanked supporters and said: "I told you so."

Assange had predicted that he would face extradition to the US if he left the embassy.

What happened in court?

After his arrest, the 47-year-old Australian national was initially taken to a central London police station before appearing in court.

Dressed in a black suit and black polo shirt, he waved to the public gallery and gave a thumbs up. He pleaded not guilty to the 2012 charge of failing to surrender to the court.

Finding him guilty of that charge, District Judge Michael Snow said Assange's behaviour was "the behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest".

He sent him to Southwark Crown Court for sentencing, where he faces up to 12 months in prison.

The court also heard that during his arrest at the embassy he had to be restrained and shouted: "This is unlawful, I am not leaving."

Why does the US government want to extradite Assange?

Assange set up Wikileaks in 2006 with the aim of obtaining and publishing confidential documents and images.

The organisation hit the headlines four years later when it released footage of US soldiers killing civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.

Former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was arrested in 2010 for disclosing more than 700,000 confidential documents, videos and diplomatic cables to the anti-secrecy website.

She said she only did so to spark debates about foreign policy, but US officials said the leak put lives at risk.

She was found guilty by a court martial in 2013 of charges including espionage. However, her jail sentence was later commuted.

Manning was recently jailed for refusing to testify before an investigation into Wikileaks' role in revealing the secret files.

What are the US charges against him?

The indictment against Assange, issued last year in the state of Virginia, alleges that he conspired in 2010 with Manning to access classified information on Department of Defense computers. He faces up to five years in jail.

Manning downloaded four databases from US departments and agencies between January and May 2010, the indictment says. This information, much of which was classified, was provided to Wikileaks.

The US Justice Department described it as "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States".

Cracking a password stored on the computers, the indictment alleges, would have allowed Manning to log on to them in such a way as to make it harder for investigators to determine the source of the disclosures. It is unclear whether the password was actually broken.

Correspondents say the narrowness of the charge seems intended to avoid falling foul of the US Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.

Why did the Ecuadorian embassy stop protecting him?

The Wikileaks co-founder had been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after seeking asylum there to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation.

The investigation into the alleged rape, which he denied, was later dropped because he had evaded the arrest warrant. The Swedish Prosecution Authority has said it is now considering whether to resume the inquiry before the statute of limitations runs out in August 2020.

Scotland Yard said it was invited into the embassy on Thursday by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum.

Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno said the country had "reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange".

Mr Moreno said: "The most recent incident occurred in January 2019, when Wikileaks leaked Vatican documents.

"This and other publications have confirmed the world's suspicion that Mr Assange is still linked to WikiLeaks and therefore involved in interfering in internal affairs of other states."

His accusations against Assange also included blocking security cameras at the embassy, accessing security files and confronting guards

Mr Moreno said the British government had confirmed in writing that Assange "would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty".

The arrest comes a day after Wikileaks said it had uncovered an extensive spying operation against its co-founder at the Ecuadorian embassy.

There has been a long-running dispute between the Ecuadorian authorities and Assange about what he was and was not allowed to do in the embassy.

Ecuador court throws out Assange lawsuit

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale said that over the years they had removed his access to the internet and accused him of engaging in political activities - which is not allowed when claiming asylum.

He said: "Precisely what has happened in the embassy is not clear - there has been claim and counter claim."

How have people reacted?

Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons: "This goes to show that in the UK, no one is above the law."

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the arrest was the result of "years of careful diplomacy" and that it was "not acceptable" for someone to "escape facing justice".

But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that Assange had revealed "evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan" and his extradition "should be opposed by the British government".

Press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders said that the UK should resist extradition, because it would "set a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistleblowers, and other journalistic sources that the US may wish to pursue in the future".

Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne said he would continue to receive "the usual consular support" and that consular officers will try to visit him.

And actress Pamela Anderson, who has visited the embassy to support Assange, said the arrest was a "vile injustice".

Timeline: Julian Assange saga

one of rape and one of molestation. Assange says the claims are "without basis"
December 2010 - Assange is arrested in London and bailed at the second attempt
May 2012 - The UK's Supreme Court rules he should be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the allegations
June 2012 - Assange enters the Ecuadorean embassy in London
August 2012 - Ecuador grants asylum to Assange, saying there are fears his human rights might be violated if he is extradited
because they have run out of time to question him. But he still faces the more serious accusation of rape.
October 2015 - Metropolitan Police announces that officers will no longer be stationed outside the Ecuadorean embassy
February 2016 - A UN panel rules that Assange has been "arbitrarily detained" by UK and Swedish authorities since 2010
May 2017 - Sweden's director of public prosecutions announces that the rape investigation into Assange is being dropped
July 2018 - The UK and Ecuador confirm they are holding ongoing talks over the fate of Assange
October 2018 - Assange is given a set of house rules at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He then launches legal action against the government of Ecuador
December 2018 - Assange's lawyer rejects an agreement announced by Ecuador's president to see him leave the Ecuadorean embassy
February 2019 - Australia grants Assange a new passport amid fears Ecuador may bring his asylum to an end

Assange's lawyer expected to give a statement after arrest

Washington Post

Started streaming 68 minutes ago

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is held at Westminster magistrates court after being arrested. Read more: https://wapo.st/2uVBUfQ. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube: https://wapo.st/2QOdcqK Follow us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/washingtonpost Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/washingtonp... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/washingtonpost/

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#CNN #News

Julian Assange has been arrested

CNN

Published on Apr 11, 2019

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, police announced. #CNN #News

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hLjuVyIIrs

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'

998,190 views

The Guardian

Published on Jul 9, 2013

SUBSCRIBE 847K

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' Subscribe to the Guardian HERE: http://bitly.com/UvkFpD The source behind the Guardian's NSA files talks to Glenn Greenwald about his motives for the biggest intelligence leak in a generation. Watch the first second of the exclusive interview with Edward Snowden HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_qdn... Read the Guardian's full NSA files coverage HERE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-n... More on the NSA leaks and Edward Snowden from the Guardian HERE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/...

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#SaudiArabia #cocaine #monarchy

Princely Trafficking (Saudi drug smuggling)

1,031,124 views

theDossier

Published on Dec 6, 2012

Documentary about Saudi Prince Nayef Al-Shaalan, who was sentenced in absentia to ten years in jail on charges of involvement in a cocaine-smuggling gang. The prince was one of ten people handed jail terms in connection with an operation which landed two tonnes of cocaine outside Paris in 1999. He was accused of using his diplomatic immunity to smuggle drugs to France on board a private jet. Was the grandson of founding Saudi monarch Abdulaziz, and son-in-law to the Saudi deputy defence minister, trying to covertly raise money for black operations? #SaudiArabia #cocaine #monarchy http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.... http://www.williambowles.info/venezue... http://www.thedossier.info https://twitter.com/theDossier_info

Category

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-at-the-ecuadorean-embassy-live-updates

Julian Assange: US justice department says he faces five years in jail

Assange found guilty of skipping bail by court in London

Key dates in the WikiLeaks founder’s case

The Guardian view on Assange: it would be wrong to extradite him

Full story: Assange arrested after taking refuge for seven years

Edward Snowden has tweeted again, describing the “weakness of the US charge” as shocking.

Edward Snowden✔@Snowden

The weakness of the US charge against Assange is shocking. The allegation he tried (and failed?) to help crack a password during their world-famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade: it is the count Obama's DOJ refused to charge, saying it endangered journalism.

Glenn Greenwald✔@ggreenwald

Replying to @ggreenwald

The DOJ says part of what Assange did to justify his prosecution - beyond allegedly helping Manning get the documents - is he encouraged Manning to get more docs for him to publish. Journalists do this with sources constantly: it's the criminalization of journalism

5,873

2:45 PM - Apr 11, 2019

Owen Bowcott

Can Julian Assange be charged with additional offences once he has been extradited to the United States? The Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent, Owen Bowcott, has this answer.

Normal practice is that anyone extradited can only be prosecuted in the country that sought them for the offences specified on the extradition indictment. That restriction is known as the Rule of Specialty. But there are two possible but difficult to use exemptions.

The first is that if it could be argued new information had come to light since his extradition, extra charges could conceivably be brought. “That almost never happens,” said Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service who is a partner at the London law firm peters and Peters. “American prosecutors would also have to seek the consent of the UK to bring in further charges.”

The second exemption covers what happens after someone has been extradited, convicted and then chooses to remain in the country. Essentially the extraditing country has to allow the prisoner time to run away after they have served their sentence.

“After a short period, however, usually two months,” Vamos explained, “anyone who remained in the same country would be deemed to be treated like a local citizen and could be charged for other offences.”

Neither conditions are likely to be met in Assange’s case. “The US has only put one charge on the indictment and it carries the maximum term of five years in prison. Assange has the opportunity to assent to it. It’s relatively light sentence by US standards,” said Vamos.

Here’s a bit more of the statement by Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, outside court today.

“Since 2010 we’ve warned that Julian Assange would face prosecution and extradition to the United States for his publishing activities with Wikileaks. Unfortunately today we’ve been proven right …

“We’ve today received a warrant and a provisional extradition request from the United States alleging that he has conspired with Chelsea Manning in relation to the materials published by Wikileaks in 2010. This sets a dangerous precedent for all media organisations and journalists in Europe and elsewhere around the world. This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States.”

David Crouch

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, lawyer for the Swedish woman whose case against Assange remains outstanding, has given the Guardian a longer statement:

My client and I have today received the news that Assange has been arrested in London. It did understandably come as a shock to my client that what we have been waiting and hoping for since 2012 has now finally happened. We are going to do everything we possibly can to get the Swedish police investigation re-opened so that Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape. No rape victim should have to wait nine years to see justice be served.

I have requested an urgent procedure [from the prosecutor to extradite Assange].

Assange’s lawyers have been speaking outside Westminster magistrates court.

BBC News (UK)✔@BBCNews

4:28 PM - Apr 11, 2019

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has been commenting on today’s events in the House of Commons. “Ecuador’s actions recognise that the UK criminal justice system is one in which rights are protected and in which, contrary to what Mr Assange and his supporters claim, he and his legitimate interests will be protected,” he said.

He said that proceedings would now begin according to the court timetable. Full extradition papers would need to be received by a judge within 65 days, said Javid, and a full extradition request certified by the Home Office. He said he would not discuss the accusations against Assange.

“I am pleased that the situation in the Ecuadorian embassy has finally been brought to an end. Mr Assange will now have the opportunity to contest the charge against him in open court and to have any extradition requests considered by the judiciary.”

Javid reads a statement on Assange to the House of Commons. Photograph: BBC

“On this side of the house, we want to make the point that the reason we are debating Julian Assange this afternoon – even though the only charge he may face in this country is in relation to his bail hearings – is entirely to do with the whistleblowing activities of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

It is this whistleblowing activity into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale that has put Julian Assange in the crosshairs of the US administration. It is for this reason that they have once more issued an extradition warrant against Julian Assange.”

She added: “Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect US national security, he is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces.”

Abbott responds to the Javid’s statement on Assange. Photograph: BBC

Speaking outside Westminster magistrates court after this afternoon’s hearing, WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said:

David Crouch

This is from journalist David Crouch in Sweden:

“For me this was never about anything else than his misconduct against me and other women, and his refusal to take responsibility for this. Too bad my case could never be investigated properly, but the arrest will not change this, the case cannot be opened. I am prepared to testify if the other case opens up again.”

More from Simon Murphy at Westminster magistrates court:

Simon Murphy✔@murphy_simon

· 2h

Replying to @murphy_simon

While Assange waited for his legal team to arrive he sat in the dock reading Gore Vidal’s “history of the national security state”. He also waved and gave a thumbs up to a supporter in the public gallery clad in a yellow vest.

Simon Murphy✔@murphy_simon

Assange shouted “this is unlawful” as police officers struggled to drag him from the Ecuadorian embassy this morning, the court heard. “This is unlawful, I’m not leaving,” he said.

3:41 PM - Apr 11, 2019

Here is a report from the Press Association –

Assange’s lawyer, Liam Walker, said the defence of reasonable excuse partly relied on his claims the chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, who has previously dealt with the case, was biased against him.

“This is grossly unfair and improper to do it just to ruin the reputation of a senior and able judge in front of the press.

He has chosen not to give evidence, he has chosen to make assertions about a senior judge not having the courage to place himself before the court for the purpose of cross-examination. Those assertions made through counsel are not evidence as a matter of law. I find they are not capable of amounting to a reasonable excuse.”

Dan Collyns

Evo Morales Ayma✔@evoespueblo

3:24 PM - Apr 11, 2019

Simon Murphy

Guardian reporter Simon Murphy has been at Westminster magistrates court, where Julian Assange was found guilty of skipping bail after spending nearly seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Justice Michael Snow described Assange as a narcissist. Snow told the court: “His assertion that he has had not had a fair hearing is laughable. And his behaviour is that of a narcissist who cannot get past his own self-interest.”

Assange, who pleaded not guilty, has been remanded in custody due to face sentencing at Southwark crown court at a date yet to be set. He is due to appear in May in relation to the United States’ extradition charge.

Simon Murphy✔@murphy_simon

Replying to @murphy_simon

Justice Michael Snow said Assange’s claim that he had not had a fair hearing was “laughable” as he appeared bedraggled in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ court.

Simon Murphy✔@murphy_simon

Justice Snow told the court: “His assertion that he has had not had a fair hearing is laughable. And his behaviour is that of a narcissist who cannot get past his own self-interest.”

3:26 PM - Apr 11, 2019

UK did not lobby Ecuador, says PM's spokeswoman

Dan Sabbagh

A number 10 spokeswoman said: “There has been a dialogue with [the] Ecuadorian government from the onset. The decision to revoke asylum was one for them entirely. They have set that out.”

The seven-year itch: Assange's awkward stay in the embassy

The WikiLeaks founder’s visit became uncomfortable for both him and his hosts

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/11/how-ecuador-lost-patience-with-houseguest-julian-assange

The WikiLeaks founder’s visit became uncomfortable for both him and his hosts

Esther Addley

Thu 11 Apr 2019 14.26 BSTFirst published on Thu 11 Apr 2019 14.25 BST

Julian Assange in a police van in London after his arrest. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

When Julian Assange, disguised as a motorcycle courier, first walked up the steps of Ecuador’s small embassy behind Harrods in central London and asked for asylum, few people – including, surely, Assange himself – could have imagined it would be almost seven years before he next exited the front door.

It was mid-June 2012, and as Britain expectantly awaited the opening of the Olympics just over a month later, the WikiLeaks publisher had exhausted every legal avenue in his attempts to avoid extradition to Sweden, where two women had made allegations of rape and sexual assault during a visit by Assange to Stockholm in 2010.

Julian Assange removed from Ecuadorian embassy in London - video

Assange, who had been briefly imprisoned and then on bail for more than a year, argued that Swedish prosecutors should interview him in London. But as well as resisting extradition to Sweden, he also feared being handed over to the US for potential prosecution over the so-called Cablegate documents (published in the Guardian and elsewhere) and other releases. The WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning was already in custody on espionage charges (she would be sentenced to 35 years in prison, later commuted by President Obama. Manning was reimprisoned last month).

Q&A

Why was Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy?

An arrest warrant for Assange was issued in August 2010 for two separate sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Police questioned him in Stockholm, where he denied the allegations. After returning to the UK, he feared that if he were extradited to Sweden he might be extradited on to the US, where he could face charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret US government files.

Ecuador offered Assange almost his last option to avoid extradition, his last appeal having failed at the supreme court. The country’s then president, the leftwinger Rafael Correa, was sympathetic and Assange was granted asylumtwo months later.

It was never a very comfortable arrangement at the poky embassy, however. An office was repurposed as a bedroom and workspace, but he was forced, initially at least, to sleep on a mattress on the floor, sharing a bathroom and with access only to a tiny basic kitchen.

Chelsea Manning has recently been reimprisoned on espionage charges. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

With the Swedes determined to extradite him, however, and a US grand jury hearing into WikiLeaks already under way, the Australian resolved to stay put. High-profile visitors came and went – Vivienne Westwood, Lady Gaga and the footballer Eric Cantona among them – and a small group of supporters maintained a periodic vigil outside. But still Assange remained.

Much has happened in the time he has been inside the embassy. WikiLeaks has continued to publish, exposing details of US tactics in trade negotiations, of the country’s surveillance of other governments, and of CIA hacking methods, among other revelations. A WikiLeaks staff member accompanied the whistleblower Edward Snowden to Moscow after he leaked classified NSA documents about US surveillance programmes to newspapers including the Guardian.

Assange has been the subject of a biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which flopped, and a documentary, which premiered at Cannes. He even acquired a cat.

More significantly for the Australian’s legal position, after years of torturous wrangling, his Swedish problem appeared to go away, thanks simply to the passage of time. An investigation into one of the Swedish women’s accusations, of sexual assault, was discontinued in 2015 after the statute of limitations expired, and in 2017, Sweden’s chief prosecutor said she was dropping her investigation into the outstanding allegation of rape after concluding there was no practical way of continuing. She gave herself the option of reopening the case if he later “made himself available”.

But even the apparent resolution of that seven-year legal standoff did not persuade Assange to leave the embassy, despite reports that the Obama administration had concluded it would not be able to prosecute him without pursuing the newspapers that had published WikiLeaks releases, including the New York Times and potentially the Guardian.

And, now that he has been removed from the embassy, the outstanding allegation of rape could be raised again if prosecutors decide to reopen the case. Elisabeth Massi Fritz, who represents his unnamed accuser, on Thursday told the Associated Press that “we are going to do everything” to have the case reopened “so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape”.

Assange’s Ecuadorian stay may have spanned two UK general elections (and two major referendums), but successive British governments have remained resolute, insisting that he would be subject to arrest if he left for alleged breaches of his bail conditions when he first sought asylum.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in a scene from the biopic The Fifth Estate. Photograph: Frank Connor/A

A finding by a UN panel in 2016 that Assange’s continued confinement in the embassy amounted to “arbitrary detention” was dismissed by the UK Foreign Office, which maintained that his presence there was voluntary.

Two significant things changed, however – both of them presidential elections.

Donald Trump was initially a great fan of Assange, praising WikiLeaks repeatedly during the 2016 presidential campaign after emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and his rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign were published by the website. But other US Republicans have remained hostile, and following Trump’s election to the presidency, his administration has vowed to attempt to prosecute Assange.

In February 2017 the then attorney general Jeff Sessions said arresting Assange was a priority, while a mistake in a document filed last Novembersuggested criminal charges had been secretly filed against him. Trump and Sessions’s successor, William Barr, now have the yet-to-be-published report by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump’s links to Russia, including allegations that the DNC releases published by WikiLeaks were obtained by Russian hackers.

The Guardian has reported that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Assange inside the embassy and visited him around the time he joined Trump’s campaign. Both Manafort and Assange emphatically denied the report after it was published.

But aside from events in the US, Assange has also had an increasing Ecuadorian problem. WikiLeaks’s DNC publications in 2016 prompted Ecuador’s discomfort at its sometimes troublesome houseguest to flare into irritation, and it temporarily cut off the Australian’s internet access saying he was using it to interfere in the US election.

Full story: Assange arrested at Ecuadorian embassy

Julian Assange speaks to reporters and supporters on a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy, London, May 2017. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Imag

In January 2018 it emerged that the country had made Assange an Ecuador ian citizen in a bid to resolve the impasse (its request to have him recognised as a diplomat was dismissed by the UK).

Julian Assange: key dates in the WikiLeaks founder's case

How Assange went from being questioned in Sweden to living for years in Ecuador’s embassy

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/11/julian-assange-key-dates-in-wikileaks-founders-case

Julian Assange removed from Ecuadorian embassy in London

Julian Assange has been arrested the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Here is a timeline of the key dates in the WikiLeaks founder’s case:

2010

31 August: Swedish police question Assange about two separate allegations – one of rape and one of molestation – which he denies.

18 November: An international arrest warrant is issued so Assange can be questioned on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.

7 December: Assange presents himself to police in London and is remanded in custody after a hearing.

16 December: He is later granted conditional bail at the high court, bankrolled by his supporters who pay £240,000.

2011

2 November: Assange loses an appeal to extradite him to Sweden; a judge denies it would violate his human rights.

2012

19 June: Assange enters the Ecuadorian embassy in London, requesting political asylum. Scotland Yard confirms he is subject to arrest for breaching his bail conditions.

16 August: He is granted political asylum by Ecuador.

19 August: Assange emerges on the Ecuadorian embassy’s balcony and calls for the US government to “renounce its witch hunt” against WikiLeaks.

20 December: He again appears to say “the door is open” for talks to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange speaking from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2012. Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

2013

18 June: Assange tells journalists he will not leave the embassy even if sex charges against him are dropped, due to fears he will be extradited to the US.

2014

16 July: A judge in Stockholm upholds the arrest warrant against him for alleged sexual offences against two women. He later loses an appeal.

2015

13 March: Swedish prosecutors ask to question him at the embassy.

13 August: Investigations into some of the sex allegations are dropped due to time restrictions. The investigation into suspected rape remains active.

16 August: The UK Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire sa ys Ecuador’s decision to harbour Assange in its embassy has prevented the proper course of justice. He restates the UK’s legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden.

12 October: The Metropolitan police end their three-year long, 24-hour guard outside the embassy. It is estimated to have cost more than £12m.

2016

5 February: The UN working group on arbitrary detention says Assange is being “arbitrarily detained”, and calls on authorities to end his “deprivation of liberty”. The following month, the UK government asks for a review, saying the opinion was “deeply flawed” – this is later rejected.

20 June: Ecuador reveals the Swedish authorities ha ve officially requested to interview Assange.

9 August: Assange files an appeal to a Swedish court, arguing the country must comply with the UN working group’s findings.

14 November: Assange is questioned over the remaining sex allegation at the Ecuadorian embassy by Swedish authorities in a two-day interview.

The Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren arrives to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in November 2016. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

2017

17 January: Barack Obama’s decision to free the whistleblower Chelsea Manning prompts speculation Assange will end his self-imposed exile.

19 January: Assange tells a press conference that he stands by his offer to go to the US, provided his rights are respected.

9 March: The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage is spotted leaving the embassy.

21 April: The then US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, says Assange’s arrest is a priority for the US.

19 May: Swedish authorities suddenly drop the investigation into an allegation of rape.

2018

11 January: The UK Foreign Office turns down a request from the Ecuadorian government to grant Assange diplomatic status. Ecuador confirms it granted citizenship to Assange in December at his request.

13 February: Westminster magistrates court upholds Assange’s arrest warrant for skipping bail. A judge urges him to show the “courage” to appear in court.

28 March: The Ecuadorian embassy suspends Assange’s internet access, complaining he interfered with other states’ affairs.

9 August: The US Senate committee asks to interview Assange as part of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

19 October: Assange accuses Ecuador of violating his “fundamental rights and freedoms”.

16 November: The US Department of Justice inadvertently names Assange in a court document, suggesting he may have been charged in secret.

2019

23 January: Lawyers for Assange say they are taking action aimed at making President Donald Trump’s administration reveal “secretly filed” charges.

5 April: There are conflicting reports over whether Assange is to be expelled from the embassy.

11 April: Assange is arrested at the embassy in London after his diplomatic status is revoked.

Green Left on Julian Assange

Editorial: Assange is right to seek asylum

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange is right to seek political asylum in Ecuador. He was left with no other choice after the Australian government made clear it would do nothing to prevent his extradition to the United States on espionage charges.

His real “crime” is groundbreaking journalism, which has exposed the lies and crimes of governments around the world, especially the US.

Editorial: Assange is right to seek asylum

June 22, 2012

Green Left: Issue  927 Ecuador Sweden

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/editorial-assange-right-seek-asylum

Julian Assange interviews Rafael Correa. Photo: WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange is right to seek political asylum in Ecuador. He was left with no other choice after the Australian government made clear it would do nothing to prevent his extradition to the United States on espionage charges.

His real “crime” is groundbreaking journalism, which has exposed the lies and crimes of governments around the world, especially the US.

The Australian government’s "slimy rhetoric" about Assange’s case is contemptible. The government has claimed it knows nothing about US plans to prosecute Assange. Australian diplomatic cables obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald in December showed the Australian government knows very well about the US’s “unprecedented” criminal investigation into Assange.

The Labor government is prepared to stand by and let the US get hold of Assange without protest. Assange is the first Australian in history forced to seek political asylum in another country.

Predictably, Western politicians and most of the mainstream media have condemned Assange, saying he should give himself up and go to Sweden. Swedish prosecutors say they want to question Assange over sexual assault allegations.

But the fact that Swedish prosecutors have not charged Assange with any crime is telling. They have refused Assange’s request to interview him about the allegations, even though he has been under house arrest in Britain for more than 560 days.

When the allegations first surfaced, Swedish prosecutors dismissed the case and repeatedly refused Assange’s attempts to meet with them for an interview. Months later, a different, politically-appointed Swedish prosecutor reopened the case and applied for Assange’s extradition from Britain.

Swedish authorities have never explained their refusal to question Assange. But it's clear that if they had questioned him, they would be forced to either charge or exonerate him.

If Assange went to Sweden, he would be held incommunicado without charge and subject to a secret pre-trail. Swedish law provides for the “temporary surrender” of prisoners to the US. If Assange went to Sweden it is likely he would be sent to the US.

If Assange were to end up in the US, he would face charges that could carry the dealth penalty. The US government’s treatment of alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning gives an insight into how Assange might be treated. The UN has said the US’s treatment of Manning has been “cruel and inhuman”.

Comments

Anonymous replied on Tue, 06/26/2012 - 00:18 PERMALINK

I'm glad Julian chose Latin America for Asylum. The rise of the Left in the recent decade has lifted the quality of life for the poor and pissed off the united states. Now they will be even angrier! Considering the US has always treated the south as their backyard and lowly 2nd class citizens. It would be great if Assange has a spot on the channel TeleSur. I hope all goes well for Assange.

Abandoned by Australia, Assange turns to Ecuador

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange went to the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19 to apply for asylum, after losing his final appeal in British courts against extradition to Sweden.

The extradition to Sweden is nominally over allegations of sexual assault, for which Swedish authorities wish to question Assange ― who has not been charged. But WikiLeaks supporters point to evidence released by the whistleblowing site this year that the United States government has prepared a secret sealed indictment against him.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/abandoned-australia-assange-turns-ecuador

Ash Pemberton

June 23, 2012

Green Left : Issue  927n Ecuador

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange went to the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19 to apply for asylum, after losing his final appeal in British courts against extradition to Sweden.

The extradition to Sweden is nominally over allegations of sexual assault, for which Swedish authorities wish to question Assange ― who has not been charged. But WikiLeaks supporters point to evidence released by the whistleblowing site this year that the United States government has prepared a secret sealed indictment against him.

Supporters fear that when Assange arrives in Sweden, he will be handed over to US authorities. Assange has said it is his fear that this is the likely outcome that has driven him to appeal for asylum.

Assange also slammed the Australian government, saying it had abandoned him. He said on June 21 that he had not met any Australian consulate official since December 2010.

The decision to seek asylum from the government of Ecuador came after the British Supreme court dismissed Assange's bid to reopen his appeal against extradition.

Assange was first offered residency in Ecuador in November 2010 when a warrant for his arrest was first issued in Britain. Ecuadorian Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said: “We are open to giving him residency in Ecuador, without any problem and without any conditions.”

Lucas also expressed support for WikiLeaks' work in exposing illegal activity by the US. However, the Ecuadorian government later backed away from the invitation.

Assange recently interviewed Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on his program The World Tomorrow. WikiLeaks has also received support from radical leaders of other Latin American countries, such as Venezuela and Bolivia.

The governments of these countries were elected on the back of big social movements of the poor, replacing US-backed governments that faithfully implemented neoliberal policies that impoverished millions.

WikiLeaks' work in exposing the crimes of US imperialism has aided the struggles of these movements for sovereignty and freedom from exploitation.

Swedish authorities have sought to question Assange for nearly two years for questioning over allegations of sex crimes. Assange made himself available for questioning in Sweden when the allegations first arose, and left the country with permission of the authorities. He has repeated said he was willing to be questioned in Britain.

Assange has not been charged with any crime, despite spending about 19 months under house arrest in Britain while challenging the extradition warrant.

Many have questioned Assange's fears of being extradited by the US from Sweden, asking why the US has not simply tried to extradite him from Britain.

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the US Center for Constitutional Rights and an attorney for Assange and WikiLeaks, told Democracy Now! on June 20 why Assange fears Sweden. Ratner said Sweden has no bail system and Assange would be held in an “almost an incommunicado prison” while he was interrogated.

From there, Ratner said, the US could file an extradition warrant that would keep Assange in jail until he won an appeal against extradition or was taken to the US.

“For the US to move within Britain … it would have complicated matters a great deal, because ... he’s facing a Swedish prosecution...”

Ratner said if the US tried to extradite him from Britain “he would have probably been able to remain on the streets in London, whereas the US … probably understood that as soon as he gets into Sweden, he’s in prison”.

He said: “The UK can take years to get someone extradited [to the US].”

Ratner said the asylum claim was “not about the allegations in Sweden or the interrogation. I think if the United States tomorrow said, 'We will not be prosecuting WikiLeaks or Julian Assange, there will be no indictment of him, the grand jury is over,' etc, etc, I don’t think Julian Assange ... would have any issue about going to Sweden for interrogation on these charges...

“What this is about is the United States wanting to get their hands on him, put him into an underground cell with no communications, giving him life imprisonment.

“And, of course, people have already called for his death in the United States. And he was faced with really a terrible situation, considering ― considering that he is the person who, as a publisher and journalist, has exposed massive U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and the WikiLeaks cables.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a rare visit to Sweden on June 3, adding further suspicion of a pre-planned extradition.

The mainstream media and politicians in the US, Britain, Sweden and Australia have worked to soften up public support for Assange to make his prosecution more palatable. One way the media have done is by promoting amnesia in the public about how it began.

Absent from the mainstream media is discussion of the importance of WikiLeaks' work in publishing the largest collection of secret government documents in history. The explosive political content in the documents ― revealing widespread crimes and lies by the US and other governments ― is almost never mentioned in the mainstream press.

Instead, attention has been focused on Assange's character, especially the allegations of sexual assault. However, the personal attacks have gone far beyond this, claiming ― among other things ― he is an egotistical “megalomaniac” who failed to get Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to attend his 40th birthday party.

The wave of negative stories has been aimed at damaging Assange's public image. The narrow focus on Assange has allowed the political motivations behind the case to slip out of view.

All allegations of sexual assault are serious and should be treated as such. Women all over the world struggle to have such claims taken seriously. It is wrong for Assange supporters to simply dismiss the claims of the two women involved as lies.

However, the claims against Assange cannot be separated from the circumstances in which they were brought. These circumstances ― almost always missing from mainstream reporting on the case ― show a clear political motivation behind the timing of the government's moves against him and the manner in which he was treated.

Allegations were first made in August 2010, after WikiLeaks' release of thousands of secret documents relating to the US's war on Afghanistan. However, the prosecutor dropped the case soon after. The case was then reopened after interference from Swedish politician Claes Borgstrom, journalist John Pilger said on May 29.

The European Arrest Warrant for his extradition to Sweden was issued in November 2010, straight after WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of secret cables from US embassies.

In such a situation, it is hard to imagine a fair process taking place.

Blame for Assange's situation must also fall on the Australian government. The government has lined up with the US in its hostility to WikiLeaks. Senior government figures have made prejudicial comments about Assange.

In a letter from Attorney-General Nicola Roxon to Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson published by WikiLeaks, Roxon refused Assange's right as an Australian citizen to protection and to have requests made on his behalf.

Roxon said Australia would not intervene in any extradition procedures involving Britain, Sweden or the US.

Roxon said that if Assange was prosecuted by the US, Australia would merely “emphasise the expectation that due process would be accorded” and that “he would be subject to procedural fairness and due process enshrined in the United States Constitution and under United States law”.

Australia's inaction reveals its shared goal with the US ― to make an example of Assange for exposing the truth and to strike a blow at all those who fight for the public right to know what the powerful do behind closed doors.

The lengths the powerful go to keep their activities secret shows how big a threat an informed public would be to their hold on power.

Sydney Latin America Social Forum asks Ecuador to accept Assange extradition request

You can sign an online petition to the government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa in support of Julian Assange's extradition request.

* * *
To:

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado
President of the Republic of Ecuador

Ricardo Armando Patiño Aroca
Minister of Foreign Relations, Republic of Ecuador

CC:

Raúl Gangotena
Ambassador of the Republic of Ecuador in Australia

Luis Felipe Valencia
Consul General of the Republic of Ecuador in Australia

Sydney Latin America Social Forum asks Ecuador to accept Assange extradition request

June 20, 2012- Green Left: Issue 927 - Ecuador

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/sydney-latin-america-social-forum-asks-ecuador-accept-assange-extradition-request

Julian Assange and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

You can sign an online petition to the government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa in support of Julian Assange's extradition request.

* * *
To:

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado
President of the Republic of Ecuador

Ricardo Armando Patiño Aroca
Minister of Foreign Relations, Republic of Ecuador

CC:

Raúl Gangotena
Ambassador of the Republic of Ecuador in Australia

Luis Felipe Valencia
Consul General of the Republic of Ecuador in Australia

Dear President Rafael Correa and Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño,

As members of the Latin American community and solidarity activists living in Sydney, we are writing to urge you to grant the request by Mr Julian Assange, an Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder, to seek asylum.

Mr Assange has gone to the Ecuadorian embassy in London after having been denied his basic human rights and given no real assistance by the Australian government while being held under house arrest in the UK without charge for nearly two years.

Although officially Mr Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden, there is much evidence to suggest that his case is political. It has been motivated as a result of the WikiLeaks' revelations of United States Embassy cables that initially exposed the reality of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and since then details of the real thinking by the US and its allies.

Human rights lawyers fear, with reason, that once in Sweden, Assange will be handed over to the US authorities who have labelled him a “high tech terrorist”, as US Vice President Joe Biden put it. Other US political figures have even called for Assange's assassination.

Knowing the crimes that the US government has committed under the so-called “war on terrorism” -- including the illegal and brutal detention of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture and of
extra-ordinary rendition -- we have no doubt that Mr Assange’s life and physical security is in danger.

We are also well aware that, much like Mr Assange, your government has been the target of this hostile campaign due to the dignified stand you have taken in defiance of the US government, such as the closure of a US military base on Ecuadorian territory.

We recognise that it was WikiLeaks' disclosure of information about activities of the US embassy in Quito that lead to your government’s decision to expel the US ambassador.

We know the Ecuadorian government understands what is at stake when it comes to Mr Assange’s life, as evidenced by your 2010 offer to give Mr Assange residency in Ecuador, and the comment made by President Rafael Correa to Mr Assange in a recent interview: “Welcome to the club of those who are persecuted!”

We therefore urge you to grant him asylum as he rightful deserves.

Regards

Federico Fuentes
Latin America Social Forum

Victor-Hugo Munoz
Committee for Human Rights in Guatemala

Raquel Iglesias
Grupo Ibiray-Fondo Raul Sendic

Jorge Gonzalez
Chilean Communist Party, Sydney

Giovanni Ortiz
Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) Committee, Sydney

Helen Arcia
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), Sydney

Lisa Macdonald
Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network

Australian people want justice for Assange, Melbourne rally planned

The editor-in-chief of Wikileaks and Australian citizen Julian Assange has not been charged with any crime in any country yet he now sits alone, abandoned by his government, in the Ecuador Embassy waiting to see if he will be granted asylum.

WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance (WACA) will hold a mass rally on the steps of the State Library in Melbourne on July 1st at noon in support of Julian Assange.

Australian people want justice for Assange, Melbourne rally planned

Samantha Castro

Melbourne- June 21, 2012 Green Left Issue  927 Australia

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/australian-people-want-justice-assange-melbourne-rally-planned

The editor-in-chief of Wikileaks and Australian citizen Julian Assange has not been charged with any crime in any country yet he now sits alone, abandoned by his government, in the Ecuador Embassy waiting to see if he will be granted asylum.

WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance (WACA) will hold a mass rally on the steps of the State Library in Melbourne on July 1st at noon in support of Julian Assange.

Julian’s mother Christine Assange told WACA: “Now is the time for the people of Australia to take to the streets and let Julian know the government may have abandoned him but the people haven’t.

The US, UK, Swedish and our own government have revealed their duplicity because WikiLeaks showed us. I hope every journalist, supporter of free speech, free press and civil rights comes to the rally in Melbourne to show their support for an award winning journalist who exposed the truth to the world.”

Speakers at the July 1 rally include: Adam Bandt MP (deputy leader of the Australian Greens), Patrick O’Connor (SEP candidate), Lizzie O’Shea (human rights lawyer), Robbie Thorpe (indigenous activist), Daniel Matthews (founding member of Wikileaks). More speaker will be announced soon. Rap News will also make a rare live appearance.

For more details visit http://wikileaksaustraliancitizensalliance.net/

Comments

A Anonymous replied on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 15:44 PERMALINK

What ever they think they have on you in Sweden it would pale into insignificance if you were to do the opposite of what they expect so as to illustrate a particular point.

Have someone charter a private flight direct to New York, sneak out of the Embassy and make your way to the foot path of the United Nations and stand there with a rope nose around your neck and wait to see what the authorities do?

I If they don't send you onto Sweden and prosecute you in the US then you have illustrate that Sweden was a ruse and perhaps, hopefully you will have won the respect of your peers in America which at that time you can present your rope nose as an exhibit for the court from the witness box along with the reasons that will put the jury in your shoes.

I know what it is like to be in a witness box with your neck on the line, and I am telling you mate you need to do the very opposite of what the authorities think you will do. Don't worry you will do okay.

Reg ards,
n

Lawence Lyons
Retired Police Officer and Witness 51 Royal Commission of Inquiry in Government Corruption referred to as the Fiztgerald Inquiry (www.thejoke.com.au )

Anonymous replied on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 21:24 PERMALINK

S pin and misdirection.

We are expected to believe a grand conspiracy by neutral Sweden while Assange has resided in the USA's closes ally, the UK, without extradition.

Meanwhile, two alleged victims have had their story ignored in favour of a grand conspiracy (Australia, USA, UK and Sweden).

C cowardice and a silver tongue!

Anonymous replied on Sat, 06/23/2012 - 12:32 PERMALINK

Y you people are nuts, how can you espouse equal rights for women as a platform, and then throw your weight behind a man how is wanted for questioning for crimes against women

A Anonymous replied on Sun, 06/24/2012 - 12:16 PERMALINK

S some facts to counter the ignorance posted above.

- As Assange voluntarily submitted himself for questioning while in Sweden for five weeks after the incident.
- Assange asked for permission to leave Sweden ans it was granted

F Facts from Christine Assange's Talking Points (http://wlcentral.org/node/2486)

28. Woman AA invited Julian to speak in Sweden at a seminar about Aphganistan in mid August 2010
29 . Woman AA offered Julian her flat to stay in as she was going to be away but returned early.
30 . Woman SW stated she went to seminar to meet Julian & invited him to stay at her place.
31. Both women have stated to police and media that sex was consensual and non-violent.
32. Exculpatory evidence (txts 2 friends) show women had no complaints re sex till finding out about each other.
33 . Evidence (100+ txts btwn AA and SW) speak of revenge, making money, and ruining Julian's reputation by going to press.

29 . Starting to see the picture?

30. Anonymous replied on Mon, 06/25/2012 - 20:09 PERMALINK#

31. Probably because having sex without a condom is not really a rape? Seeing women as equal I believe that they are more than capable enough to say "no" to a sexual encounter if they do not want a sexual encounter, or "not without a condom" if they do but not an unprotected sexual encounter. Secondly because a friend of mine had a woman make allegations against him after they " hooked up" and he made it obvious he did not want to pursue a relationship with her (because she was in-fucking-sane), everybody decided he was guilty, he learned who his friends were that week, some of his family, trusted friends, police officers, complete strangers,

the only reason he got off is because he had recorded a particularly incriminating conversation with her on his pho ne.

Anonymous replied on Wed, 06/27/2012 - 20:39 PERMALINK

Assange wants this to be about wikileaks and the US Government.

It's not.

It's about two women and questions the Swedish judiciary have. Whether or not Assange is guilty, let alone charged, remains to be seen.

The 'picture' we see is one where Sweden,a non-aligned country, is being cast as a greater lackey of the USA than Britain, America's most loyal ally.

Anonymous replied on Thu, 06/28/2012 - 19:17 PERMALINK

You can only take this view if you completely forget the circumstances in which Assange was accused of these crimes. Its bad form to simply dismiss the women's claims of sexual assault, but unfortunately even a brief review of how it all went down would remind people something dodgy was going on.

This article goes into this further: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51440

It also explains why extraditing Assange directly from Britain would be problematic for the US.

The sad thing is, it was only 18-24 months ago that this all happened. How quickly we forget. The media has done a great job of making the story all about Assange's character and not the explosive and damaging things he published about the world's most powerful people.

On the question of Sweden, its much-vaunted "neutrality" is a myth. The embassy cables pubished by WikiLeaks exposed this better than anything

Anonymous replied on Fri, 06/29/2012 - 07:07 PERMALINK

Only a complete idiot would believe Julian raped two women - But these are the facts. Both women involved in this â€œsex scandalâ€ never alleged rape, but insisted that the sex was consensual and not violent. Woman SW has actually complained about being railroaded and was so upset that Julian was charged with rape that she refused to sign her statement. the man is wanted for questioning, no charges have ever been laid - Woman AA, who took a condom to the police saying that Julian had deliberately torn a condom during sex, went for an examination that proved there was not DNA from either her or Julian in it.

Interestingly, there is a domestic political agenda involved in Sweden. When the rape allegations were made on August the 20th, in one monthâ€™s time there was to be local and general elections in Sweden. And, â€œcoincidentallyâ€, woman AA, the police officer that interrogated woman SW, and both the lawyers in the law firm that picked up the case against Julian after it was dropped by the chief prosecutor, were all running for the same party, in the same elections, on the same platform of widening the definition of rape within consensual sex. So there is the domestic agenda. Then of course weâ€™ve got other things going on. The two laywers involved, Claus Borgstrom and Thomas Bodstrom, have previously been in the Swedish government.

Claus Borgstrom knew AA. And they all know Marianne Ny, who is the Swedish prosecutor, because they all worked together on widening the sex offences for the last 10 years. Thomas Bodstrom, the partner of the womanâ€™s lawyer, had in 2001 signed off on CIA torture flights for two Egyptian refugees who were tortured in Egypt and subsequently found to be innocent and in 2003 Sweden had to pay up compensation.

So some of the facts that were not [reported] right were that Julian offered himself for interview numerous times in Sweden and was knocked back by prosecutor Ny with various excuses. The particular chosen officer, the only one in Sweden, was sick, or was away. He offered to fly back in â€” no that couldnâ€™t be done either.

Julian has constantly offered himself up for questioning, and even checked it was ok for him to leave sweeden after the allegations first surfaced, he stayed for over five weeks to assist the authorities, the moment he left, all of a sudden they wanted him for questioning with no charge, also while in England he has always made himself available for questioning, but the Sweedish authorities refused. Anybody who follows politics know this is a witch hunt. I live in Australia, and everybody knows the Australian government has done nothing to help him and even had the legislation changed after pressure from the yanks to change our legislation in relation to extraditing citizens in case Julian returned home. Julian even accused the Prime Minister - Julia Gillard on Free to Air TV of being guilty of Treason after exposing her illegal activities in spying and reporting the movements of innocent Australian citizens to foreign governments (USA) -

Collateral Murder was out on the 4th of April. The Gillard coup was the 26th of June. The Afghan War Diaries was the 25th [of July] and the sex allegations were on the 20th of [August]. So it is all working quite nicely for them isnâ€™t it?

The sad fact is we live in a world, were it is perfectly acceptable for leaders of democratic nations to murder millions of people all without there citizens saying a word, they then compound the crime by covering it up and minimising it, yet, if you have a normal human emotion such as utter disgust at the Sociopathic leaders casually murdering men, women and children to secure some resources to appease their nations addictions, you are considered a troublemaker and jeopardising life - what a backward crazy world we live in, were evil is called good, and good is considered evil. wake up people, before its too late!

Originally, Wikileaks was set up to give the oppressed in thrid world countries a voice, it was supposed to help the Third World. That was why it was set up, to help the Third World, to expose the dictatorships. But Julian had no idea heâ€™d get a drop from America. That came as a complete surprise.

But WikiLeaks took the mask off power. And power is very, very angry.

Julian was awarded the Sam Adams award in 2010. Does anyone know what that is? No, thatâ€™s because the mainstream media doesnâ€™t want you to know what it is.

The Sam Adams award is an award given by retired US senior military and intelligence officers and Julian won it in 2010. Ann Wright from Stars and Stripes, the main military magazine in America, has come out and said we in the US military know whatâ€™s going on in the war â€¦ what should be investigated is what WikiLeaks is raising. So he actually has the backing of the US military that are retired.

Anonymous replied on Fri, 06/29/2012 - 13:49 PERMALINK

Assange supporters cling to a Giant World Conspiracy...but then retreat when the simple question of Assange freedom to roam the UK comes up. Tthe Green Left rationale you refer to oddly relies on the UK and USA being very respectful of legal niceties, whereas Green Left supporters see conspiracies everywhere, including USA, UK, Australia and Sweden.

Assange should stop indulging the gullibility of his supporters - go to Sweden and answer allegations about his behaviour.

Anonymous replied on Sat, 06/30/2012 - 08:30 PERMALINK

Origin Energy will increase its Service Fee per metering point from 38.379 c/day to 74.492 c/day for residential customers in Brisbane from 11/07/12. This increase can only be seen as a transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich!

Anonymous replied on Sun, 07/01/2012 - 13:36 PERMALINK

Wow...you manage to find a connection between Gillard overthrowing Rudd, Wikileaks and the Assange rape allegations, finishing with:

"So it is all working quite nicely for them isnt it?"

Who is "them"? The stonecutters??

Anonymous replied on Sun, 07/01/2012 - 22:26 PERMALINK

Actually, the rationale referred to regarding Britain comes from Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the US Center for Constitutional Rights, as the link above shows.

Its obvious US wants to get him - politicians have called for his death, the vice-president called him a "high-tech terrorist" and the alleged source Bradley Manning has been abused in jail.

But Assange is too high profile to simply snatch off the street or whatever. Because it and other Western governments need to maintain the illusion that they respect democracy and the rule of law, they are forced to prosecute Assange by the book.

Ratner also said: "I think if the United States tomorrow said, 'We will not be prosecuting WikiLeaks or Julian Assange, there will be no indictment of him, the grand jury is over,' etc, etc, I donâ€™t think Julian Assange ... would have any issue about going to Sweden for interrogation on these charges."

Anonymous replied on Tue, 07/03/2012 - 00:18 PERMALINK

& Enemy of the Right. We aren't all perfect. What Assange did is to decide to have sexual intercourse with two separate women and going in naked. It's more of a personal lust/love triangle and an affair that if an Australian court was involved, they would laugh it straight out the door. Assange is a revolutionary. He did for the left what social media did for making us socially inept. His revolution was a positive one, complete transparency of what goes on behind the closed doors of the governments and wars of the world. Those that crucify him are not of the left. Just more of the apologists of the right, a voice that is permanent in today's society within the mainstream media.

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