By Mike Head 5 January 2019

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose courageous publication of leaked documents exposed the crimes and mass surveillance of the US and its allies, is facing a new threat to expel him from Ecuadors London embassy. He was granted political asylum there in 2012 to protect him from being extradited to the US to face possible life imprisonment, or even execution, on trumped-up espionage or conspiracy charges.

Having already cut off Assanges internet access and communication with the outside world last March, in an effort to coerce him into leaving the embassy, Ecuadorian President Lenn Moreno has set in motion a pseudo-legal inquisition to provide a cover for his government to repudiate its asylum obligations.

Facing mounting demands from Washington, Morenos government has unveiled a special examination of Assanges asylum and citizenshipa process clearly designed to repudiate both. The issue of citizenship is significant because Ecuadorian law forbids extradition of citizens.

On January 3, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, whose government granted Assange asylum, tweeted an image of a letter he received from Ecuadors State Comptroller General on December 19, notifying him of an investigation by the Direction National de Auditoria.

Specifically, the general objective of the audit is to determine whether the procedures for granting asylum and naturalization to Julian Assange were carried out in accordance with national and international law. It will cover the period between January 1, 2012 and September 20, 2018.

Correa, now living in Belgium, was asked to supply information for the inquiry, but no timeline was mentioned, nor any date for the end result. There is no doubt, however, that the timing is directly connected to the escalating economic, financial and political pressure on Ecuador, above all emanating from the US military-intelligence apparatus and political establishment.

WikiLeaks tweeted Correas news the same day, pointing to the link between the special examination and the Moreno governments mooted resort to an IMF bailout because of its deepening debts, which have been fuelled by falling global oil prices and the dictates of the financial markets.

WikiLeaks reported: Ecuador has initiated a formal Special Examination of Julian Assanges asylum and nationality (nationals cannot be extradited) as it seeks a $10 billion+ IMF bailout for which the US government demanded handing over Assange and dropping environmental claims against Chevron.

All the evidence points to the handing over to the US of Assange, effectively the worlds number 1 political prisoner, being a condition set by Washington and the financial elite for the survival of Moreno and his government. The relentless and vindictive operation against Assange is driven by the ruling capitalist classs determination to silence dissent as it faces the re-emergence of working-class struggles around the world.

Squeezed by lower oil prices and punitive interest rates on its international loans, Moreno has admitted considering an IMF bailout, which would also require savage cost-cutting and further attacks on working class conditions. Absolutely nothing is off the table, he told reporters last month when asked about a potential IMF agreement.

Any such loan could trigger widespread unrest. Jaime Carrera, director of the watchdog Fiscal Policy Observatory, recently told the Los Angeles Times that the IMF was sure to set onerous conditions, including likely demands that Moreno cut at least 10 percent of the 450,000-strong central government workforce and end all or most of $4 billion in annual fuel subsidies for consumers. Those reductions will bring a lot of people out into the streets to protest, Carrera said.

Confronted by this prospect, Moreno has been desperately seeking financing from investment banks and other countries, including China. He visited Beijing last month to discuss re-negotiating repayments on Chinese loans, said to total $6.5 billion.

Like other Latin American countries, Ecuador has been placed in a financial and political vice by the US and the international financial institutions. S&P Global Ratings has imposed junk bond status on Ecuador, with the countrys B- rating one notch below Argentinas B grade. These ratings mean usurious rates of interestmore than 10 percenton Ecuadors sovereign bonds.

In recent months, the US media has highlighted the Chinese debt, as part of its propaganda offensive against Beijing, accusing it of debt diplomacy to financially trap poor countries. But Ecuadors debts also feature US finance houses and conglomerates. The government-owned Petroamazonas oil firm, which produces 80 percent of the countrys oil, owes $3 billion in debts to contractors, including Texas-based oil field services firm Schlumberger.

An IMF team visited Ecuador last year, from June 20 to July 4, and later issued a statement insisting that, while Moreno had moved to embrace the requirements of the financial markets since taking office in April 2017, much harsher measures were needed. Among them were higher oil prices, temporary tax measures, cuts in capital spending, and a public sector hiring freeze.

It was no coincidence that US Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Quito at the same time to discuss tightening Ecuadors economic and military ties with Washington, as well as Assanges fate. At a press conference in the government palace, Ecuadors Economy and Finance Minister Richard Martinez said he had spoken with Pence, who also met Moreno, about securing US support to permit multilateral organisations to generate sources of financing with favourable conditions for Ecuador.

While Pence and President Donald Trump have been centrally involved in ratcheting up the intense pressure on Ecuador, the Democrats have been the most vehement, repeatedly demanding that the Trump administration force Ecuador to hand over Assange.

Now that the Democrats hold a majority in the US House of Representatives, this agitation is certain to escalate. It forms a pivotal aspect of the drive by the Democrats, working closely with the military-intelligence agencies, to push the White House into a confrontation with Russia as well as China.

Democratic-aligned corporate media outlets have made lurid and absurd allegations that WikiLeaks was part of a nefarious conspiracy with Russian President Vladimir Putin to assist Trumps 2016 presidential campaign. This is feeding into the witch-hunting investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, formerly a long-time FBI director, into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

At the centre of these accusations are leaked emails proving that the Democratic National Committee sought to undermine the so-called democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and ensure that Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Partys presidential candidate. They also included the texts of speeches Clinton gave to corporate audiences pledging support to Wall Street and boasting of her role in organising the barbaric US-led war on Libya in 2011.

Significantly, the new threat to Assange follows the collapse of the latest smear campaign: Decembers much-headlined claim by the Guardian that Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Five weeks on, as the Intercepts Glenn Greenwald reported on January 3, the Guardian s editor-in-chief Kath Viner and the chief author of the claim, Luke Harding, have refused repeated requests to respond to the exposure of the obvious falsifications and contradictions in the report. The claims have been categorically refuted by Manafort, WikiLeaks and former Ecuadorian embassy staff.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties internationally are conducting a campaign in the working class and among youth to defend Assange and WikiLeaks. This is an absolutely essential issue in the fight to defend free speech against the intensifying repression and censorship of capitalist governments and corporate giants, such as Google and Facebook, aimed at silencing and isolating anti-war and anti-capitalist dissent.

As part of that struggle, the SEP in Australia, where Assange remains a citizen, will organise and seek the broadest support for political demonstrations in Sydney on March 3 and Melbourne on March 10. The rallies will demand that the Australian government end its collaboration with the US-led persecution of Assange and immediately intervene, using all its diplomatic and legal powers, to insist that the British government allow the WikiLeaks publisher to leave the Ecuadorian embassy and unconditionally return to Australia, if he chooses to do so, with a guarantee against extradition to the US.

Google is blocking the World Socialist Web Site from search results.

To fight this blacklisting:

Go here to read the rest:
Ecuador unveils special examination of Julian Assanges ...

An obscure sex-crime case may have just revealed a groundbreaking moment for the intersecting worlds of press freedom, espionage, and the Trump-Russia case: sealed federal criminal charges against WikiLeaks Julian Assange.

An August filing by the Justice Department in a case involving a Washington, D.C.-area man, Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, accidentally names the founder of the anti-secrecy group in two paragraphs, reporting that a federal criminal complaint has been lodged against him in secrecya development long feared by Assange and his allies.

The Justice Department conceded to The Daily Beast and other outlets that Assanges name was in the document as a result of an error but answered no further questions about the apparent charges against Assange.

The slip-up was first spotted by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism analyst at George Washington University who was closely following the case and flagged the passage on Twitter:

On Aug. 22, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer filed a motion to temporarily seal Kokayis charges pending his arrest, which occurred the next day, Aug. 23.

At first, Dwyers filing understandably argues that disclosure would jeopardize Kokayis arrest. It proceeds to argue that redacting parts of the document would be insufficient to mitigate the potential harm. But then the attorney makes an accidental declaration.

Another procedure short of sealing will not adequately protect the needs of law enforcement at this time because, due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged, Dwyer wrote.

It seems possible or even likely that someone cut and pasted from a prior motion to seal involving a defendant named Assange. I know of only one Assange facing potential charges.

Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan

Kokayi is not elsewhere described as a particularly sophisticated defendant, and his case received no publicity. But the description fits Assanges circumstances perfectly.

A second reference to Assange includes even more details that apply to the fugitive leak master, and not to Kokayi. The complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.

Kokayi was arrested in Virginia and did not need be extradited. Assange, in contrast, would have to be extradited from the U.K. to face U.S. charges.

It seems possible or even likely that someone cut and pasted from a prior motion to seal involving a defendant named Assange, said Barbara McQuade, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. I know of only one Assange facing potential charges.

It could be a [prosecutor] or support staff member who prepared the document, since a sealing order is sort of a boilerplate filing, said McQuade.

Dwyer works out of the U.S. Attorneys Office in Alexandria, Virginia, and is not part of special counsel Robert Muellers team.

A Justice Department spokesperson, Joshua Stueve, told The Daily Beast, The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing. Asked repeatedly if Assange had been indicted and if the slip-up had jeopardized any prosecution of a man who has lived for years in Ecuadors London embassy, Stueve said he had no further comment.

The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported late Thursday that what Dwyer was disclosing was true, but unintentional.

Barry Pollack, an attorney for Assange, told the Post he did not know if his client had been charged. The only thing more irresponsible than charging a person for publishing truthful information would be to put in a public filing information that clearly was not intended for the public and without any notice to Mr. Assange, he said.

The notion that the federal criminal charges could be brought based on the publication of truthful information is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday that the Justice Department was preparing to indict Assange.

In an interview with the Journal, John Demers, who runs the Justice Departments national-security division, said about possibly prosecuting Assange: On that, Ill just say, Well see.

An indictment of Assange, whom Mueller has portrayed in his own indictments as a cats paw of Russian intelligence, would immediately draw worldwide attention.

Since Assange disclosed hundreds of thousands of tactical military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and cables from U.S. diplomats worldwide in 2010, press-freedom advocates have warned that a U.S. government move against him for fundamentally journalistic activitypublishing documents in the public interestwould be illegitimate and set a fearsome precedent.

Yet Assanges irascible personal behavior and accusations of sexual assault by two women in Sweden wore away his store of goodwill from many advocates even before WikiLeaks published embarrassing information from leading Democrats purloined by Russian intelligence and surreptitiously cultivated ties to the Trump campaign that had nothing to do with its ostensible anti-secrecy mandate.

Still, for eight years, no government effort at investigating Assange has yielded any charges. Numerous reports over the years have claimed that Justice Department attorneys have found no evidence or legal theory sufficient to indict WikiLeaks but narrow enough to avoid the specter of criminalizing legitimate journalism or other First Amendment-protected activity.

Should that have recently changed and Assange been indicted, Dwyers ominous reference gave no indication as to the pivotal question of what Assange is accused of doing. No one at the Justice Department or FBI responded to The Daily Beasts repeated inquiries on the subject.

Any prosecution of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations, said Ben Wizner, a senior attorney with the ACLU, who also represents the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the publics interest.

Visit link:
Julian Assange Has Been Charged, According to Justice ...

Julian Assange. (AP Photo / Dominic Lipinski)

I love WikiLeaks! candidate Trump proclaimed in 2016. Now Julian Assange has learned what Donalds love is worth: a sealed criminal indictment.Ad Policy

If the consequences for the First Amendment werent so sobering, it would be a savage cosmic joke. First, Assangeconvinced the Obama administration would snatch him up if given half a chancesentences himself to indefinite confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Then, believing Hillary Rodham Clinton is a sadistic sociopath, he publishes those Russia-hacked Democratic National Committee e-mails at a pivotal moment in the campaign. Now the administration that Assange helped elect (headed by a genuinely sociopathic president who actually endorsed torture and rendition) takes the very step against him that Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, consistently refused.

What to make of this bizarre turn? The murky hints inadvertently revealed in a Justice Department filing leave much about the Assange indictment unclear. Do the charges relate to Robert Muellers Russian-hacking inquiry? Or to earlier leaks of classified documents? (My money says the latter: A sloppy breach of news about Assange would seem out of character for the fiercely disciplined and silent Mueller team.) Is it an unprecedented charging of a publisher under the Espionage Act, or some more conventional criminal complaint? Is there even an active indictment at all, or merely a determination by Trumps Justice Department to pursue one? Regardless, what we know is enough: The notion of sealed charges against a publisher of leaked documents ought to have warning sirens screaming in every news organization, think tank, research service, university, and civil-liberties lobby.

Assange, of course, doesnt make it easy. From the founding of WikiLeaks he has been a confounding figure. His historic innovationan anonymous dropbox for otherwise-secret datachanged investigative reporting. The breadth of WikiLeaks disclosures, commingled with Assanges own idiosyncratic motivations for what to publish and what to withhold, have tied lawyers and press-freedom advocates into knots for the better part of a decade. But nowwith the charge against Assange coming amid the Trump administrations broader assault on journaliststhis once-academic debate takes on fierce urgency.

Is Assange a journalist at all? Thats where the argument usually begins, and too often ends. As NYU law professor Stephen Gillers points out in his penetrating and essential new book Journalism Under Fire: Protecting the Future of Investigative Reporting, the most far-reaching federal shield law proposed in recent years to protect reportersthe Free Flow of Information Act, introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham in 2013 but never passedexplicitly wrote WikiLeaks out of the equation, denying protection to outfits whose principal function is publishing primary source documentswithout authorization. The dividing line, says Gillers, is editorial judgment: What defines WikiLeaks as non-journalism is that it is an undiscriminating document dump. For years that same argument has allowed many traditional news organizations to keep their distance from WikiLeaks overtly activist publishing.Related Article

But thats a dangerously crabbed view of the press. For one thing, Assange and WikiLeaks unquestionably exercise editorial judgment. It may be, at times, irresponsible, one-sided, or irredeemably wrongheaded; but it is judgmenteditorial curationnonetheless: What leaked material to release and when, how to organize it for readers, whether to protect the identities of vulnerable individuals named in leaks, and so on.

Whats more, major news organizations and investigative-reporting nonprofits worldwide long ago adopted key elements of the WikiLeaks approach, launching their secure dropboxes for leaked material and publishing wide-ranging primary-source databases and documents alongside traditional stories. Whatever the line between news organization and activist document dump, editorial judgment is a continuum rather than an absolute. A threat to one public-interest dropbox is a threat to all.Current Issue

Subscribe today and Save up to $129.

More profoundly, that crucial press-freedom clause in the First AmendmentCongress shall make no law abridging freedom of the pressdoesnt limit protection to self-defined reporters and editors: Indeed, in 1791, when the newly federated United States ratified the First Amendment, journalism as a distinct profession barely existed. To the framers generation, the press meant a contentious post-revolutionary ecosystem of publishersprinters and pamphleteers whose raucous invective had little in common with any of todays journalistic canons, and whose arguments over transparency, political conspiracy, and corporate interest were as potent and one-sided as any Trump-era Twitter storm. And it was the publishing of government secrets that the Supreme Court upheld almost two centuries later in the Pentagon Papers case, celebrated last year in Steven Spielbergs inspiring (and mainly accurate) film. Whether or not WikiLeaks counts as journalism, it surely counts as publishing.

But what if the DNC hackor other WikiLeaks datawas an instrument of Russian dirty tricks? Assange, of course, has always claimed he does not know the identity of the DNC e-mail hackera claim somewhere on the spectrum from willfully naive to cynically mendacious, given the ample evidence of Russian direction and interest. But even if Assange knew the hacks were a gift from Moscow, for investigative journalists worldwide that only raises the stakes in this case. If press freedom and the First Amendment mean anything to muckrakers, it is the right to obtain public-interest information from impure, indeed hopelessly tainted, sources.

In a perverse way, Assange himself may regard the revelation of the Trump Justice Department charges as a gift: validating his view of himself as a martyr to transparency and anti-imperialism, and justifying the drama of his flight to the Ecuadorean embassy. At that level, its arguable that he and Trump deserve each other. But those are questions of character, which history will need to judge. Far more important is the present-tense reality of sealed criminal charges against a publisher of leaked secrets. At a minimum, given the stakes for investigative reporting and public-interest journalism, news organizations should be in court immediately demanding that the charges be unsealed so their legitimacy can be assessed. Assange, confined in his embassy redoubt, poses neither a flight risk nor an imminent security threat.

Over recent weeks, mainstream news organizations and civil libertarians correctly leapt to the defense of Jim Acostas White House press pass. Important as that fight is, in scale and consequence it is a rubbish fire. The still-secret Assange charges, if unchallenged, could burn down the scaffolding of American investigative reporting.

Visit link:
The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Press Freedom

Donald Trumps lawyer said on Monday that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange should not be prosecuted and he compared WikiLeaks publications to the Pentagon Papers.

By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News

Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, said Monday that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange had not done anything wrong and should not go to jail for disseminating stolen information just as major media does.

Lets take the Pentagon Papers, Giuliani told Fox News. The Pentagon Papers were stolen property, werent they? It was in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Nobody went to jail at The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Giuliani said there were revelations during the Bush administration such as Abu Ghraib. All of that is stolen property taken from the government, its against the law. But onceit gets to a media publication, they can publish it, Giuliani said, for the purpose of informing people.

You cant put Assange in a different position, he said. He was a guy who communicated.

Giuliani said, We may not like what [Assange] communicates, but he was a media facility. He was putting that information out, he said. Every newspaper and station grabbed it, and published it.

The U.S. government has admitted that it has indicted Assange for publishing classified information, but it is battling in court to keep the details of the indictment secret. As a lawyer and close advisor to Trump, Giuliani could have influence on the presidents and the Justice Departments thinking on Assange.

Giuliani also said there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. I was with Donald Trump day in and day out during the last four months of the campaign, he said. He was as surprised as I was about the WikiLeaks disclosures. Sometimes surprised to the extent of Oh my god, did they really say that? We were wondering if it was true. They [the Clinton campaign] never denied it.

Giuliani said: The thing that really got Hillary is not so much that it was revealed, but they were true. They actually had people as bad as that and she really was cheating on the debates. She really was getting from Donna Brazile the questions before hand. She really did completely screw Bernie Sanders.

Every bit of that was true, he went on. Just like the Pentagon Papers put a different view on Vietnam, this put a different view on Hillary Clinton.

Giuliani said, It was not right to hack. People who did it should go to jail, but no press person or person disseminating that for the purpose of informing did anything wrong.

Assange has been holed up as a refugee in the Ecuador embassy in London for the past six years fearing that if he were to leave British authorities would arrest him and extradite him to the U.S. for prosecution.

You can watch the entire Fox News interview with Giuliani here:

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached atjoelauria@consortiumnews.comand followed on Twitter@unjoe.

Read more here:
Giuliani Says Assange Should Not Be Prosecuted

This has been the 7th year that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange spent Christmas in confinement inside Ecuadors London embassy. For nearly a decade, the US governments aggressive witch-hunt of truthtellers has trapped him in the UK.

Assange claimed political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2012 to mitigate the risk of extradition to the US, relating to his publishing activities. He has been unlawfully held by the UK government without charge, being denied access to medical treatment, fresh air, sunlight and adequate space to exercise. In December 2015, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Assange was being "arbitrarily deprived of his freedom and demanded that he be released". Yet the UK governments refusal to comply with the UN finding has allowed this unlawful detention to continue.

This cruel persecution of Assange represents a deep crisis of Western democracy. As injustice against this Western journalist prevails, the legitimacy of traditional institutions has weakened. The benevolent Democracy that many were taught to believe in has been shown to be an illusion. It has been revealed as a system of control, lacking enforcement mechanisms in law to deal with real offenders of human rights violations, who for example illegally invade countries under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Under this managed democracy, the premise of "no person is above laws" is made into a pretense that elites use to escape democratic accountability. Media has become the "Guardian" of ruling elites that engage in propaganda to distort truth.

Dictatorship of the West

Assanges plight, his struggle for freedom revealed a dictatorship in the West. There have been changes in Ecuadors treatment of Assange ever since a new President Lenin Moreno took office in May 2017. Contrary to the former President Rafael Correa, who courageously granted the publisher asylum, Moreno has shown total disregard for this Australian journalist who has become a political refugee and also a citizen of Ecuador since December 2017.

This Ecuadorian governments shift in attitude had to do with Western governments bullying this small nation of South America. It was reported that the US has pressured Ecuador over loans, making it act illegally in violation of international laws as well as its own constitution. At the end of March, one day after a high level US military visit to Ecuador, this new Ecuadorian president unilaterally cut off Assange from the outside world, by denying his access to internet, prohibiting him from having visitors and communicating with the press. Assange has been put into isolation, which Human Rights Watch general counsel described as being similar to solitary confinement.

In mid October, in the guise of restoring his Internet access, Ecuador issued a "Special Protocol" that perpetuates this silencing of Assange. By further restricting his freedom of expression and requiring him to pay for medical bills and phone calls, Moreno government seeks to break Assange. He is forcing him to leave the embassy on his own accord and get arrested by UK authorities, who are refusing to give him assurances to not extradite him to the US.

US imperialism

Assange has met the fury of empire by exposing US government war crimes having the blood of tens of thousands of innocent people dripping from its hands. He has become a political prisoner, being treated as an enemy by the most powerful government in the world. Last month, US prosecutors mistakenly revealed secret criminal charges against Assange under file in the Eastern District of Virginia.

James Goodale, First Amendment lawyer and former general counsel of the New York Times, commented on the danger of US governments efforts to charge a journalist possibly under espionage who is not American and did not publish in the US:

"A charge against Assange for conspiring with a source is the most dangerous charge that I can think of with respect to the First Amendment in almost all my years representing media organizations."

The Espionage Act of 1917 is a US federal law, created after World War I to prosecute spies during wartime. This law is still in effect today and can be used to go after even those outside of US territory, due to a later amendment that removed this wording from the act: "within the jurisdiction of the United States, on the high seas, and within the United States".

Obamas Justice Department was eager to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents, but chose not to do so, due to concerns that it would set a precedent which could strip away the First Amendment protection for the press. After WikiLeaks Vault 7 publication in March 2017 detailing CIA capabilities to perform electronic surveillance, the US government showed its appetite to abuse this outdated law to criminalize journalism.

In April 2017, the then Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that the arrest of Assange is a priority. This threat on press freedom increased in the following months, as he showed his determination to prosecute media outlets publishing classified information. Trumps Secretary of State and the former CIA director, Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service", claiming that the organization tries to subvert American values and it needs to be shut down. As the Trump administration tries to claim that it has a right to prosecute anyone in the world in their assault on free press, top Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill showed their bipartisan support. They signed a letter demanding Pompeo urges Ecuador to evict Assange.

Contagious act of resistance

The secret indictment against Assange opened a sad era for democracy. Barry Pollack, WikiLeaks founders Washington D.C. based attorney noted that this Trump administrations attempt to prosecute "someone for publishing truth is a dangerous path for democracy to take". David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression stated that "prosecuting Assange would be dangerously problematic from the perspective of press freedom" and should be resisted.

Top human rights organizations have been showing strong opposition against the extradition of Assange. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urged the UK government not to extradite him to the US. More than 30 Parliamentarians of the German Parliament and EU Parliament wrote to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, asking the UN to intervene so that Assange can travel to a safe third country.

Now, significant support for Assange has emerged from one of the European nations. On December 20, two German parliamentarians came to London to visit Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy. Germany that once suffered the suppression of civil liberty under a terrifyingly totalitarian state, has in recent years become a safe haven for Western dissidents who were forced to flee their countries against their governments persecution. In the aftermath of Snowden revelations of the "United Stasi of America", support for the safety of whistleblowers and journalists who report on government surveillance has increasingly grown.

WikiLeaks investigative editor Sarah Harrison, who helped to secure asylum for the NSA whistleblower found her refuge for her exile from the UK in Berlin. Germanys major center-left political party, SPD recognized her political courage, demonstrated in her work with WikiLeaks and the organizations extraordinary source protection. Harrison was given an award, named after a journalist and the former West German chancellor Willy Brant who escaped the Nazis and was exiled before returning to Germany.

Last week, two German politicians who traveled to visit Assange, carried out an act of urgent diplomacy to represent this countrys commitment to the value of freedom of speech. At the press conference outside of the embassy after their visit, the pair who has been eager to see Assange for months, but were not allowed to do so until now, stood with Assanges father and called for an international solution to Western governments persecution of Assange. Sevim Dagdelen, member of the Left Party, emphasized that Assanges injustice is an exceptional case, noting how "there is no other publisher or editor in the Western world who has been arbitrarily detained" and this is a betrayal of Western values about human rights. Heike Hansel, vice-chairman of the Left parliamentary group, urged people to resist US government extraterritorial prosecution of Assange.

The courage of individuals inside democratic institutions, striving to uphold civil liberties, became contagious. Just before Christmas Eve this year, UN experts reiterated their demand for the UK to honor its international obligations and allow Assange to leave the embassy without fear of arrest and extradition. Chris Williamson, a sitting UK Member of Parliament has endorsed the UNs statement that Assange should be compensated and be made free. While elected officials are standing up for the principle of democracy, concerned citizens around the world day and night stand watch over Assange outside of the embassy in London.

Restoring rule of law

As 2018 comes to an end, the legitimacy of the West and its entire fabric of institutions is now being tested. Democracy birthed in ancient Athens, was peoples aspiration to organize a society through their direct participation in power. In modern times, it got uprooted from the original imagination and quickly degenerated into a form of "elective despotism" that Thomas Jefferson once predicted.

In the institutional hierarchy of Western liberal democracy, what was regarded as the force for progress began to decay, from inside out. A system of representation that is purported to make those who are capable and intelligent to use their skills for public service, has been abused. Now, the rich and powerful began to inflict harm on those whom they are supposed to represent.

WikiLeaks, the worlds first global Fourth Estate, has come to existence as response to this crisis of democracy. With a pristine record of accuracy in its publications, the whistleblowing site brought a way for citizens around the world to transform this hollow democracy that has devoured ideals that once inspired the hearts of ordinary people.

From the 2007 release of the Kroll report on official corruption in Kenya that affected the outcome of the national election, to the exposing of the moral bankruptcy of Icelands largest bank in 2009, WikiLeaks publications helped awaken the power of citizenry in many countries. Released documents sparked global uprisings, transforming pervasive defeatism and despair into collective action on the streets. US diplomatic cables leak shared through social media in 2010 unleashed a powerful force that finally topped the corrupt Tunisian dictator Ben Ali.

Months after the Arab Spring, informed by WikiLeaks cables, people in Mexico launched a peaceful youth movement against the political corruption of the media. Revelations of Cablegate also affected the course of a presidential election in Peru, and transformed the media in Brazil. In 2016, the DNC leaks and publication of Podesta emails educated American people about how their political system works.

Julian Assange, through his work with WikiLeaks, engaged in that type of vibrant journalism that revitalized the impulse for real democracy. By publishing vital information in the public interest, he defended publics right to know, empowering ordinary people to actively participate in history.

Now, it is our responsibility to respond to this crisis of democracy through solidarity. Can each of us step up to the challenge to solve the problems that our leaders have created? Efforts to free Assange urge us all to claim and exercise the power inherent within that can restore justice to end this prosecution of free speech.

Nozomi Hayase, Ph.D., is a writer who has been covering issues of freedom of speech, transparency, and decentralized movements. Her work is featured in many publications. Find her on twitter @nozomimagine.

Read the rest here:
Justice for Julian Assange, Test of Western Democracy ...

As attempts to evict Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London get more and more aggressive, we are seeing a proportionate increase in the establishment smear campaign against him and against WikiLeaks. This is not a coincidence.

The planned campaign to remove Assange from political asylum and the greatly escalated smear campaign to destroy public support for Assange are both occurring at the same time that Assange has been cut off from the world without internet, phone calls or visitors, completely unable to defend himself from the smear campaign. This, also, is not a coincidence.

The ability to control the narrative about what is going on in the world is of unparalleled importance to the plutocrats who use governments as tools to advance their agendas. The agenda to make an example of a leak publisher with a massive platform who has repeatedly exposed the corruption of the establishment upon which western plutocrats have built their empires will require continuous narrative spin, since the precedent set by prosecuting a journalist for publishing authentic documents would arguably constitute a greater leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia than the Patriot Act.

Among the latest components of this campaign has been a viral dump of Twitter DMs being promoted as a hot news item by outlets like Motherboard, The Hill, Forbes and Think Progress and across #Resistance Twitter. The fact that the juicy bits from those DMs had already been published months ago by The Intercept, and the fact that the smears and spin were seeing reruns of today were long ago ripped to shreds in journalist Suzie Dawsons epic essay Being Julian Assange after the Intercept publication, has not dampened the orgiastic frenzy with which this non-story is being bandied about by establishment loyalists and defenders of power as evidence of Assanges nefariousness.

This is entirely illegitimate. It is not legitimate to make claims about someone who has been deliberately deprived of the ability to defend himself. It is not legitimate to spin a narrative about someone whose ability to participate in that narrative has been deliberately cut off. You dont get to silence a man and then legitimately take over the public narrative about him. That is not a valid thing to do.

But that of course is the idea. By cutting Assange off from internet access, phone calls and visitors, he has been deprived of the ability to give his side of the story in another interview with Fox News, for example, or in tweets to his millions of followers, thus making his side of the story mainstream knowledge. Every voice has been shoved off the stage but that of the political and media establishment which just so happens to be owned and operated by the same powerful oligarchs who want Assange silenced and prosecuted for challenging their rule. This is not a coincidence.

I have said it before and I will say it again: whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you can control the stories that the public are telling themselves about whats going on in the world, you control the public itself. So many of the plutocratic establishments most aggressive spin campaigns recently have been about securing narrative control in a new media environment with unprecedented public internet access, from constant warnings about fake news and conspiracy theories, to fearmongering about Russian bots and Russian propaganda, to promoting and legitimizing the persecution of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Every claim made about Assange since his silencing in late March of this year can therefore be safely dismissed by the public on general principles. As long as they are rigging the debate in their favor, the debate is invalid. Literally any attack on or criticism of Assange being promoted in public discourse can legitimately be dismissed with Assange has been deprived of his ability to defend himself from that accusation. As long as he is cut off from the world, thats an invalid accusation to make.

Feel free to say this to every blue-checkmarked establishment crony on social media who is bravely kicking Assange while his hands and feet are tied behind his back. Their smear campaign is intrinsically invalid, and they should be told so at every opportunity.

Caitlin Johnstone is an uncouth heretic and unapologetic rabble rouser writing out of Melbourne, Australia. A prolific writer. Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper. You will disagree with her sometimes. That's okay.

Like Loading...

Read more:
How Julian Assange Exposed the Fraudulence of Mainstream ...

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has accused his hosts at the Ecuadorian Embassy of spying on him for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to reports.

Assange has been hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 in order to avoid extradition to the United States, where he would almost certainly face charges for the publication of classified information. Ecuador has now said that they would like the Wikileaks founder to leave. Assange has reportedly clashed on numerous occasionswith embassy staff, who accuse him of having poor hygiene and of failing to feed his pet cat, and some officials say that he is a drain on embassy resources.

The Venezuela-based broadcaster Telesur, which is closely aligned with the Russian state-run news outlet RT, reported on Friday that Assange had spoken withreporters via video conference and said he feared he was under surveillance in the embassy. He also said that the FBI is pressuring Ecuador to have him extradited to the U.S., and that the embassy is sending surveillance footage of him to the FBI, according to Telesur.

Wikileaks originally touted itself as a defender of transparency but is increasingly seen by critics as a toolof the Russian government. The organization published emails stolen from Democratic Party officials by Russian hackers and released the emails at a time that would be especially harmful for the presidential campaign of then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Assange also reportedly attempted to obtain a Russian visa before he ultimately sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Julian Assange steps out to speak to the media from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy, in London, on May 19, 2017. Assange has accused his hosts at the embassy of spying on him for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to reports. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

RT published a story on its site on Friday that claimed Assange had compared his situation to that of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who was murdered for criticizing the Saudi regime. The reports from RT and Telesur raise questions about whether Assange is giving exclusive access to reporters who are aligned with Russia.

Officials investigating whether members of the Trump campaign collaborated with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and damage Clintons campaign have also set their sites on Wikileaks. Trump ally Roger Stone preemptively predicted that the organization would publish the hacked Democratic emails. Meanwhile, recent reports have suggested that Assange may have been visited in the embassy by Trumps embattled former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has since been convicted of eight counts of financial crimes.

Adam Waldman, another Washington lobbyist with ties to both Manafort and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, also reportedly visited Assange in the embassy last year.

On Wednesday, Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein published a letter calling on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to brief Congress about his conversations with Ecuadorian officials regarding Assanges case.

Given the role of Wikileaks in election interference efforts and reports of Paul Manafort visiting Julian Assange, were calling on Secretary Pompeo to brief us on his recent meeting with Ecuadorian officials. The public deserves answers on foreign interference in our elections, Feinstein tweeted Wednesday.

Read more from the original source:
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tells Russia-aligned media ...

WikiLeaks founder and transparency activist Julian Assange is locked in a legal battle with Ecuador over the new stringent conditions imposed in October on his embassy stay. This week, he has threatened to take his case to the International Court of Justice if a second appeal against the Ecuadorian government fails.

The new rules by the Ecuadorian Embassy have resulted in the tightening of privileges he is allowed and put financial demands on his remaining in the building. It also introduced the option for Quito to expel the Australian if he breaks the new rules.

Assange sought to challenge the new house rules in court in November, saying they violated his fundamental rights,but judges ruled against him. He has appealed the decision and should receive a verdict on in eight days.

Read more:Julian Assange: Five years without sunlight

Ecuador wants Assange out

For the past year, the Ecuadorian government has been seeking to rid itself of what it sees as an international problem it inherited from the previous administration. The WikiLeaks founder has been at the embassy since 2012, when he was granted asylum by the administration of President Rafael Correa.

The stricter rules and reduction in privileges suggest the Ecuadorean government is hoping Assange will choose to leave, but the efforts have been unsuccessful.

Ecuadorian daily newspaper El Comercio reported last week that Quito was ready to improve its diplomatic relations with the UK, citing comments from Ambassador Jaime Marchan. "In the recent years, due to the situation we have at the embassy, there has been an obligatory cooling and distancing in the relationship," Marchan said.

In terms of Assange's embassy home, Marchan did not mince his words. "The embassy is not an asylum camp, but a diplomatic mission that has a daily function to fulfill," the ambassador said.

Marchan said that since efforts to grant him citizenship or diplomatic status have failed, he felt that now "Assange should be the one to make the decision" to leave.

Read more:Whistleblowers should be protected not prosecuted

Assange denounces 'espionage'

As a result of Ecuador's change of heart, the relationship between Assange and his hosts has soured, but the WikiLeaks founder is still reluctant to leave.

Venezuela-based Latin American broadcaster Telesur reported on Wednesday that Assange had claimed to be under surveillance within the embassy, an accusation he made to reporters in a video conference. Assange accused the FBI of running an operation to pressure Quito to end his political asylum deal and extradite him to the United States.

Assange claimed that his surveillance information was being sent directly to the FBI. He also criticized Ecuadorian authorities, saying that officials at the embassy had made "pejorative and threatening comments" about him and that his work as a journalist had been questioned.

The Australian spoke out against his housing restrictions, noting that he lives in a type of "solitary confinement," whichis now threatening his health.

Assange's fears that the US is out to get him are not completely unfounded. Last month, US officials accidentally revealed the existence of an indictment against him, though the charges remain unknown.

US extradition

The extent to which the US has pressured Ecuador to expel him from the embassy remains unclear, though WikiLeaks maintains thatWashington is actively involved.

"Ecuador recently secured $1.1 billion (970 million )in loans. The US representative to the IMF told Ecuador in late 2017 that loans were conditional on Ecuador resolving the Assange and Chevron matters," WikiLeaks said in a statement.

If Assange left the embassy, the matter of his extradition would be decided by courts in the UK. Ecuador has said the UK provided written guarantees to President Lenin Moreno that the Australian would not be extradited to a country where he would face the death penalty.

Read more:From VW to Julian Assange: How does extradition work?

This does not mean, however, that Assange wouldn't be apprehended by UK authorities for violating conditions of his bail agreement when he fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

On Wednesday, Ecuador's top attorney, Inigo Salvador, said the written guarantees were all that Quito had to give. Salvador admitted that his country "cannot provide assurances to Mr. Assange that the UK will not hand him over to a third country that requests his extradition."

The UK signaled in October that it would not extradite the Australian if he left the embassy, as no extradition request currently exists, and that he would only serve six months in jail for his outstanding jail violation.

Although an individual facing the death penalty in the US cannot be extradited, the lawwould allow for the US to extraditeAssange if it guarantees the British government that if convicted he would not be executed.

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.

Link:
Julian Assange facing embassy exit and uncertain fate ...

Supporters of the Wikileaks founder say he wont leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London unless the British police drag him away.

If you look at his enemies, and you look at who wants to lock him up forever, it's clear that we have to defend him.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appears to be one step closer to forcible removal from Ecuador's London Embassy, most likely to be extradited to the US to face charges in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, which is commonly known as the espionage court. If UK police have to go in and remove him by force that will of course demonstrate the brutality of the state in the Gandhian tradition.

The US and UK governments may nevertheless be in a hurry to get hold of him however they can, with Theresa May's Tory government so close to collapse and Jeremy Corbyn's Labor Party so close to power. Given all that Corbyn has said about protecting journalists who take risks to reveal the truth about power, it's hard to imagine him extraditing Assange in response to US demands, even though refusal would no doubt damage the longstanding Anglo-American alliance.

It's hard to imagine Jeremy Corbynextraditing Assange in response to US demands.

Ecuador Envivo reports that Ecuador's new ambassador to the UK has very clear instructions regarding Assange, who has been an asylee in the embassy for the past six years. And that the government said Assange's asylum has been detrimental to its relationship with the UK and could further damage trade relations between the two countries.

Supporters of Assange met last Friday evening on an international online video conference about his worsening situation. Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria said that he does not expect Assange to leave the embassy of his own volition. Stefania Maurizi, Italian La Republica journalist and longtime Wikileaks publishing partner, told Lauria that she was able to see Assange about 10 days ago, and that he's not planning to come out on his own, no matter what they do to him.

Black Agenda Report columnist Margaret Kimberley and Joe Lauria both said that the elite list of those determined to arrest and silence Assange prove that he deserves the support of the people:

Margaret Kimberley:If you look at his enemies, and you look at who wants to lock him up forever, it's clear that he's important and it's clear that we have to defend him.

Joe Lauria:They want to lock him up because he's directly threatening their interests. I'm talking about individuals inside the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, MI6, and big business. If you oppose Julian Assange, you're on the side of the state against the people.

Chris Hedges said that defending Assange is equivalent to defending the possibility of investigative journalism despite mass surveillance:

Investigative journalism into the inner workings of power has been frozen completely because of wholesale surveillance.

Chris Hedges:I really can't reiterate enough times that this is the last chance we have not only to defend Julian Assange, but also to protect publishers ability to disseminate material on the inner workings of corporations and corporate states.

I worked as an investigative journalist for the New York Timesand I still have colleagues there, and they are quite blunt about the fact that investigative journalism into the inner workings of power has been frozen completely because of wholesale surveillance.Government officials, because they know they're monitored, and journalists, because they know they're monitored, can no longer shine a light into the inner workings of power. Leaks are the only mechanisms left by which we can understand power and particularly the crimes that are being committed by power, by the elites.

The three-hour video conferences regarding developments and possible responses to the UK and US governments pursuit of Julian Assange can be viewed every Friday evening beginning at 8 pm Eastern Time on the website Unity4J.com. Viewers can ask questions, make suggestions, and share details of upcoming Assange solidarity events in the YouTube chat window.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prizefor her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [emailprotected].

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Continue reading here:
Julian Assange: No Surrender | Black Agenda Report

This is going to be one of the most infamous news disasters since Stern published the Hitler Diaries. WikiLeaks, Twitter, Nov 27, 2018

Those at The Guardian certainly felt they were onto something. It would be a scoop that would have consequences on a range of fronts featuring President Donald Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Julian Assange and the eponymous Russian connection with the 2016 US elections.

If they could tie the ribbon of Manafort over the Assage package, one linked to the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails in the summer of 2016, they could strike journalistic gold. At one stroke, they could achieve a trifecta: an expos on WikiLeaks, Russian involvement, and the tie-in with the Trump campaign.

The virally charged story, when run towards the leg end of November, claimed that Manafort had visited Assange in the embassy in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016. Speculation happily followed in an account untroubled by heavy documentation. It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It was a strikingly shoddy effort. An internal document supposedly garnered from the Ecuadorean intelligence agency named a certain Paul Manaford [sic] as a guest while also noting the presence of Russians. No document or individual names were supplied.

The enterprise was supposedly to come with an added satisfaction: getting one over the prickly Assange, a person with whom the paper has yet a frosty association with since things went pear shaped after Cablegate in 2010. Luke Harding, the lead behind this latest packaging effort, has received his fair share of pasting in the past, with Assange accusing him of minimal additional research and mere reiteration in the shabby cobbling The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the Worlds Most Wanted Man (2014). The Guardian, Assange observed in reviewing the work, is a curiously inward-looking beast. Harding, for his part, is whistling the promotional tune of his unmistakably titled book Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House. The feud persists with much fuel.

Unfortunately for those coup seekers attempting a framed symmetry, the bomb has yet to detonate, an inert creature finding its ways into placid waters. WikiLeaks was, understandably, the first out of the stables with an irate tweet. Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the papers reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editors head that Manafort never met Assange.

Manafort himself denied ever meeting Assange. I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter.

WikiLeaks has also pointed to a certain busy bee fabricator as a possible source for Harding et al, an Ecuadorean journalist by the name of Fernando Villavicencio. Villavicencio cut his teeth digging into the record of Morenos predecessor and somewhat Assange friendly, Rafael Correa.

Glenn Greenwald, himself having had a stint and a fruitful one covering the Snowden revelations on the National Security Agency had also been relentless on the inconsistencies. If Manafort did visit Assange, why the vagueness and absence of evidence? London, he points out, is one of the worlds most surveilled, if not the most surveilled, cities. The Ecuadorean embassy is, in turn, one of the most scrutinized, surveilled, monitored and filmed locations on the planet. Yet no photographic or video evidence has been found linking Manafort to Assange.

The grey-haired establishment types are also wondering about the lack of fizz and bubble. Paul Farhi at The Washington Post furnishes an example: No other news organization has been able to corroborate the Guardians reporting to substantiate its central claim of a meeting. News organizations typically do such independent reporting to confirm important stories.

Another distorting aspect to this squalid matter is the Manafort-Ecuadorean link, which does little to help Hardings account. A debt-ridden Manafort, according to the New York Times, ventured his way to Ecuador in mid-May last year to proffer his services to the newly elected president, Lenn Moreno. Moreno could not have been flattered: this was a mans swansong and rescue bid, desperate to ingratiate himself with governments as varied as Iraqi Kurdistan and Puerto Rico.

In two meetings (the number might be more) between Manafort and his Ecuadorean interlocutor, various issues were canvassed. Eyes remained on China but there was also interest in finding some workable solution to debt relief from the United States. Then came that issue of a certain Australian, and now also Ecuadorean national, holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge, London.

Moreno has been courting several options, none of which seem to have grown wings. A possibility of getting a diplomatic post for Assange in Russia did not take off. (British authorities still threatened the prospect of arrest.) The issue of removing the thorniest dissident publisher in modern memory remains furiously alive.

As ever, accounts of the Moreno-Manafort tte--tte vary. A spokesman for Manafort, one Jason Maloni, suggests a different account. Manafort was not the instigator, but merely the recipient, of a query from Moreno about his desire to remove Julian Assange from Ecuadors embassy. Manafort listened impassively, but made no promises as this was ancillary to the purpose of the meeting. Russia, he sought to clarify, did not crop up.

Fraud might run through Manaforts blood (convictions on eight counts of bank-and tax-fraud is fairly convincing proof of that), but the case assembled against Assange seems very much one of enthusiastic botch-up masquerading as a stitch-up. So far, the paper has batten down the hatches, and Harding has referred any queries through The Guardians spokesman, Brendan OGrady. Zeal can be punishing. OGrady will have to earn his keep.

More:
The Bomb that Did Not Detonate: Julian Assange, Manafort and ...