The United States, which is contesting the United Kingdoms refusal to extradite Julian Assange, sought to reassure British justice on Wednesday as to the treatment that would be reserved for the founder of WikiLeaks if he was handed over to Washington.

Prosecuted for a massive leak of classified American documents, the 50-year-old Australian faces 175 years in prison in the United States in a case denounced by his supporters as a dangerous attack on press freedom.

At a hearing scheduled until Thursday, the United States hopes to convince the High Court of London to overturn the decision rendered last January by Vanessa Baraitser. The magistrate had rejected the American request for extradition, putting forward a risk of suicide. U.S. government attorney James Lewis insisted on assurances from Washington that Julian Assange would not be subject to special measures or be held in the dreaded ADX super-security prison in Florence, Colo. nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies.

American justice would ensure that the founder of WikiLeaks receives the necessary clinical and psychological care and that he can apply to serve his sentence in Australia, he said. According to him, the judge would have reached different conclusions if she had had these assurances, formulated after the first instance decision. After initially refusing to appear, Julian Assange visibly changed his mind, the judge noting during the hearing that Mr. Assange has joined us. He is participating in the hearing by videoconference from Belmarsh high security prison in east London, where he has been held for two and a half years after seven years in prison at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

British justice agreed to examine the American appeal in particular because the reliability of an expert who had testified in favor of Assange was questioned. The psychiatrist Michael Kopelman had indeed admitted to having deceived justice by concealing the fact that his client had become the father of two children while he was cloistered at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After the two days of hearings, the decision will be reserved for several weeks. This appeal constitutes one of the last recourse for Washington, which, in the event of a new defeat, would have no other possibility than to seize the British Supreme Court, without guarantee that this one accepts. If Washington were to win the case, the case would still be far from over: it would then be referred to a court to decide again.

The stake is to know if the British justice will extradite a journalist to the country which plotted to assassinate him, estimated before the hearing Stella Moris, the companion of Julian Assange, very worried after having it. seen very skinny in prison on Saturday. I hope the court will put an end to this nightmare, she said in front of several dozen supporters of the Australian gathered in front of the High Court in London. Julian Assange is supported by a number of press freedom organizations. He did nothing wrong from a legal, ethical or moral point of view, said Sadia Koknie, 40, questioned before the High Court. He was held in appalling conditions. () He shouldnt be there .

Julian Assange is being prosecuted for having disseminated, as of 2010, more than 700,000 classified documents on American military and diplomatic activities, in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was arrested by British police in April 2019 after spending seven years in seclusion at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had taken refuge while on bail. He feared extradition to the United States or Sweden, where he has been the subject of charges for rape, since dropped.

Julian Assange is under prosecution under President Donald Trump. Under his predecessor Barack Obama, who had Joe Biden for vice-president, American justice had given up on prosecuting the founder of WikiLeaks. But the election of Joe Biden to the White House did not bring the abandonment of the lawsuits hoped for by the supporters of Julian Assange.

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WikiLeaks: To obtain the extradition of Julian Assange, the United States seeks to reassure his fate - Paris Beacon News

Today, 9 November 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the source code and development logs to Hive, a major component of the CIA infrastructure to control its malware.

Hive solves a critical problem for the malware operators at the CIA. Even the most sophisticated malware implant on a target computer is useless if there is no way for it to communicate with its operators in a secure manner that does not draw attention. Using Hive even if an implant is discovered on a target computer, attributing it to the CIA is difficult by just looking at the communication of the malware with other servers on the internet. Hive provides a covert communications platform for a whole range of CIA malware to send exfiltrated information to CIA servers and to receive new instructions from operators at the CIA.

Hive can serve multiple operations using multiple implants on target computers. Each operation anonymously registers at least one cover domain (e.g. "perfectly-boring-looking-domain.com") for its own use. The server running the domain website is rented from commercial hosting providers as a VPS (virtual private server) and its software is customized according to CIA specifications. These servers are the public-facing side of the CIA back-end infrastructure and act as a relay for HTTP(S) traffic over a VPN connection to a "hidden" CIA server called 'Blot'.

The cover domain delivers 'innocent' content if somebody browses it by chance. A visitor will not suspect that it is anything else but a normal website. The only peculiarity is not visible to non-technical users - a HTTPS server option that is not widely used: Optional Client Authentication. But Hive uses the uncommon Optional Client Authentication so that the user browsing the website is not required to authenticate - it is optional. But implants talking to Hive do authenticate themselves and can therefore be detected by the Blot server. Traffic from implants is sent to an implant operator management gateway called Honeycomb (see graphic above) while all other traffic go to a cover server that delivers the insuspicious content for all other users.

Digital certificates for the authentication of implants are generated by the CIA impersonating existing entities. The three examples included in the source code build a fake certificate for the anti-virus company Kaspersky Laboratory, Moscow pretending to be signed by Thawte Premium Server CA, Cape Town. In this way, if the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated.

The documentation for Hive is available from the WikiLeaks Vault7 series.

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WikiLeaks - Vault 8

September 26th, 2021

Via: Yahoo News:

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuadors embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.

Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request sketches or options for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred at the highest levels of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. There seemed to be no boundaries.

The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agencys multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the groups members, and stealing their electronic devices.

While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as Vault 7, which the agency ultimately concluded represented the largest data loss in CIA history.

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cryptogon.com CIAs Secret War Plans Against WikiLeaks

Kevin Gosztola is back on the show to discuss a recent Yahoo! News article about Assange that went viral. Gosztola thinks the piece contains some good reporting but leans too much on a flawed Russiagate framing. Scott and Gosztola discuss the semantic war our government is waging with attempts to redefine certain journalists as information brokers and non-state hostile intelligence agents. Gosztola also gives an update on Assanges situation as his next hearing approaches next month.

Discussed on the show:

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, Unauthorized Disclosure. Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Drm; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio.

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9/27/21 Kevin Gosztola on the CIAs War on Assange ...

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing another extradition hearing on 27-28 October. The US authorities are appealing an earlier ruling that Assange should not be extradited to the US on health and safety grounds.

Now the US and its allies are to be put on trial by a tribunal. They are accused of committing atrocities, for example in Iraq, and of torture at Guantnamo Bay. While the tribunal possesses no legal powers, its intention is to set the record straight and demonstrate that Assange is not the criminal here.

The tribunal referred to as the Belmarsh Tribunal, after the prison where Assange continues to be held will commence proceedings on 22 October. There are 20 members of the tribunal, including:

Via a press release, Tariq Ali explains the tribunals origins:

The Tribunal takes inspiration from the Sartre-Russell Tribunal, of which I was also a member. In 1966, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre issued a call for a War Crimes Tribunal to try the United States for crimes against humanity in their conduct of the war in Vietnam. A number of us were sent to North Vietnam to observe and record the attacks on civilians. I spent six weeks under the bombs, an experience that shaped the rest of my life.

The tribunal convened in Stockholm in 1967. The jury members included Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaac Deutscher, Vladimir Dedijer, Mahmud Ali Kasuri, and David Dellinger, among others. The aim was not legal but moral: to bring the crimes to the notice of the public.

In London on 22 October 2021, we will do the same. Assange must be freed and the many crimes of the War on Terror placed centre stage.

Read on...

Jeremy Corbyn says its all about accountability:

Wikileaks exposed crimes of US empire in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond. At the Belmarsh Tribunal, we will turn the world the right way up, placing crimes of war, torture, kidnapping and a litany of other gross human rights abuses on trial.

The perpetrators of these crimes walk free, often still prominent public figures in the US, U.K. and elsewhere. They should be held accountable for the lives they destroyed and the futures they stole.

To understand why the imprisonment of Assange is a travesty of justice, its important to appreciate some of the many crimes, including war crimes, exposed by WikiLeaks.

As reported on by The Canary, during one of Assanges extradition hearings Reprieve human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith provided details of some of the war crimes committed by the US.

In a March 2019 article, the Canarys John McEvoy reported that according to a highly sensitive 2006 UK military report into Iraq, UK and US war planning ran counter to potential Geneva Convention obligations. He added how a US cable from April 2009 [published by WikiLeaks] shows UK business secretary Peter Mandelson pushing British oil and other corporate interests in Iraq. A 2009 cable also reveals that the government of former PM Gordon Brown put measures in place to protect [US] interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq.Another US cable also shows how the US and UK governments rigged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to stop it being able to hold [Tony] Blair and [George W.] Bush accountable for the crime of aggression over Iraq.

In 2018, journalist Mark Curtis reported that a WikiLeaks published cable revealed that former foreign secretary David Miliband helped the US to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the weapons at US bases on UK soil, despite Britain signing the international treaty banning the weapons the previous year.

In 2016, The Canary reported on several allegations of US war crimes based on testimony given by whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Another article in The Canary referred to a cable published by WikiLeaks that suggested that the US had intended to convince Spanish officials to interfere with the National Courts judicial independence. This was in connection with an allegation that the [six US officials] accused conspired with criminal intent to construct a legal framework to permit interrogation techniques and detentions in violation of international law. The cable shows that the US secretly pressurised the Spanish government to ensure no prosecutions took place.

The Canary also reported on allegations of a cover-up relating to hundreds of UK war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These included UK involvement in the use of torture centres in both countries. One such centre was Camp Nama where its alleged:

British soldiers and airmen helped operate a secretive US detention facility in Baghdad that was at the centre of some of the most serious human rights abuses to occur in Iraq after the invasion. Many of the detainees were brought there by snatch squads formed from Special Air Service and Special Boat Service squadrons.

Britain was also implicated in the extraordinary rendition (kidnapping and imprisonment) of detainees.

As for the number of Iraqis killed during the war, The Canary reported on figures far higher than the official estimates.

According to journalist Nafeez Ahmed:

the US-led war from 1991 to 2003 killed 1.9 million Iraqis; then from 2003 onwards around 1 million: totalling just under 3 million Iraqis dead over two decades.

Ahmed added that the overall figures of fatalities from Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 1990s from direct killings and the longer-term impact of war-imposed deprivation constituted:

around 4 million (2 million in Iraq from 1991-2003, plus 2 million from the war on terror), and could be as high as 6-8 million people when accounting for higher avoidable death estimates in Afghanistan.

The prosecution of Assange is arguably political. Indeed, journalist John McEvoy points out how mass media has responded to recent news of a plot to kill Assange with ghoulish indifference.

UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has commented how Assange has been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. In other words, the Belmarsh Tribunal will at the very least help remind us that its the perpetrators of war crimes who should be prosecuted not the person who helped reveal those crimes.

As such, Assange should be released forthwith.

Featured image via Veterans for Peace / Wikimedia Commons

Originally posted here:

Tribunal to combat disinformation on the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - The Canary

Tim Dawson, left, andJulian Assange

IT is the summer of 2017 and we are in the upmarket streets south of Knightsbridge tube.

Residents come and go from smart, brick apartments. Shoppers scurry towards Harrods, and visa applicants scan the brass plates of the areas many embassies.

But all is not as it seems. The street sweeper is a Russian GRU agent.

A patrolling bobby holds rank in MI5, and the four men digging out a water main are Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

Discreet weapons bulge beneath their garments and a secret service shoot-out is a simmering possibility.

This is according to a new report by Yahoo! News based on interviews with 30 former CIA agents.

Their interest was Julian Assange, at that time holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in Hans Crescent.

Donald Trump was president, Mike Pompeo was running the CIA, and the WikiLeaks founder was the subject of competing plans.

The Ecuadorians had tired of their visitor and were working with the Russians to spirit him to a Moscow-bound plane.

In Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA, even more feverish schemes were afoot. The former CIA officers told Yahoo! News that they were planning to either kidnap, or assassinate Assange.

The British were there to keep an eye on our allies, and possibly to do the shooting if that became necessary.

It sounds like a fantasy, perhaps inspired by bingeing Bond movies.

Such have been the revelations of CIA dirty tricks in relation to Assange, however, that such a well-sourced story cant be dismissed.

During Assanges Old Bailey extradition hearings last September, witnesses described in granular detail the CIAs bugging of the Ecuadorian embassy.

Central Intelligence Agency HQ, Langley, Virginia [Carol M Highsmith Archive Library of Congress]

David Morales of UC Global, who was working for the CIA, installed the bugs particularly targeting areas like toilets where Assange might seek a discreet word with his lawyers.

Electronic devices left at the embassys reception were cloned, DNA swabs and fingerprints were stolen, and microphones that record through windows were deployed.

The QCs representing the US government at the extradition hearing, James Lewis and Clair Dobbin, were ferocious.

Every defence witness was subjected to their wringer. Professional competences were questioned, motives impugned and arguments unpicked.

No professor was too eminent, no lawyer too august to be spared a mauling.

To the elaborate story of the embassys bugging, however, the Americans legal rottweilers had no response. The evidence was left entirely uncontested.

Against that backdrop, revelations that the CIA contemplated monstrous criminality on Londons streets, has serious credibility. Their timing is also significant.

Just before Joe Biden assumed the US presidency, in January, Judge Vanessa Baraitser dismissed the US application to extradite Assange.

Many expected Trumps crazed get WikiLeaks agenda to be quietly shelved. This has not happened.

There do appear to be cool heads in Washington, however, who are hoping to undermine the US case when it comes to the Royal Courts of Justice in late October.

Why else would a plethora of ex-CIA staffers brief Yahoo! News? Theirs is an effective campaign.

The extradition case depends on the promise of a fair trial and humane treatment if Assange faces US justice. These fresh revelations surely render that case laughable?

They also make wholly unbelievable the USAs insistence that its pursuit of Assange is not political.

For Assange, who remains in HMP Belmarsh, this is a fresh crumb of hope. For those who believe in an unfettered media, however, a dark cloud remains.

How can a country like the US, that is constitutionally bound to support free speech, have descended to contemplating such criminal depths to shut up the publisher of inconvenient truths?

Tim Dawson is a past president of the National Union of Journalists.

Continue reading here:

New questions on Assange and the CIA - Islington Tribune newspaper website

Warning: This piece will spoil elements of the Dune series, while giving a disclaimer that it is nearly impossible to succinctly cover all of the themes of the series in a single piece.

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero. Frank Herbert, Dune

Dune is the story of a boy named Paul Atreides who is thrust into a foreign land where the outgoing rulers see him as an enemy and the local people see him as a savior. The story examines the consequences of Pauls terrible purpose of leading the local people in rebellion against the occupying forces of their land. Dune is the not the typical white savior trope that we see in countless stories throughout history, rather it is an examination of the dangers that heroes present to the people they give promise to. It forces us to ask hard questions about the natures of leaders in society and the ramifications of their actions long after they are gone.

But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters. Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

In 2010, just a year after launching the Bitcoin project, Satoshi Nakamoto was already seeing the terrible purpose of what he started. Radical elements in the small Bitcoin community wanted to use Bitcoin as a political tool to help Wikileaks, who at the time was struggling to find banking partners. Satoshi made a plea to Wikileaks not to use Bitcoin, which he saw as a small beta community in its infancy. Later that year, just prior to Satoshis public exit from the project, he wrote that Wikileaks has kicked the hornets nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.

Two days later, he wrote his last public post on the forum. Two months later, Silk Road would officially launch and enable the buying and selling of drugs and other illicit materialutilizing Bitcoin as the currency of the market.

Throughout the story of Dune, Paul continually can see into the future and recognizes that by taking on the mythical role of MuadDib, he will enact his terrible purpose across the universe. He sees legions of soldiers taking up arms across the universe and enacting bloodshed in his name. Paul knows that by donning the myth of MuadDib and succeeding in helping to liberate the Arrakeen people on Dune, he will cause greater turmoil as a result.

Satoshi Nakamoto didnt intend to create a mythology around himself, but the mysterious way he emerged and departed did that on its own. While Satoshi couldnt see into the future, he seemed to have a prescience for the trouble that was coming his way.

I would prefer to be secret now. I dont think I should have to be out there I dont want money, I dont want fame, I dont want adoration, I just want to be left alone I had other people decide [to out me as the creator], and theyre making [my] life very difficult. Craig Wright, AKA Satoshi Nakamoto in 2016

In 2015, Dr. Craig S. Wright was, against his will, doxed as the creator of Bitcoin, though some had begun piecing together the story even earlier. Up until this point, Satoshi Nakamoto lived as a myth in the minds of Bitcoinersa mysterious figure that had, like Prometheus, gifted humanity with a technology that allowed for unprecedented amounts of economic innovation. Craig was clearly uncomfortable donning the role of Satoshi Nakamotohe had a hard time admitting that he created Bitcoin to reporters that asked him. He even mentioned to Andrew OHagan that he thought he would never have to admit that he was Satoshi, and would have preferred it that way.

Early on, Craig Wright tried his hardest to kill the mythos of Satoshi Nakamoto. While most people were expecting some kind of God to emerge, they instead got Craiga loud-mouthed Australian who didnt always interact well with other people. Craig saw churches dedicated to Satoshi Nakamoto emerge and saw it as a hugely negative thingbut there was nothing he could do to stop it. He sought a different pathin 2017 he stated that he was here to kill off Satoshi: There is no fucking king. There is no glorious leader [of Bitcoin] There is not going to be some great leader standing above There is not going to be one person that we come and answer to.

If you want a system to be built on truth and start trying to get people to understand, whats better: a scenario where people blindly follow you because of a name or a slow battle where you convince people using facts, mathematics and science? Ill tell you that people dont learn if you come out there and build a cult of followers. They spout what you say, but dont understand it. Craig Wright, AKA Satoshi Nakamoto in 2018

Unsurprisingly, Dr. Wrights favorite novel as a teenager was Dune. In 2017 and 2018 we saw Craig try his hardest to kill the mythos of Satoshi and use reason to convince the world why his vision for Bitcoin was the vision of its creator. After giving birth to a cryptocurrency industry rife with scams, Ponzi schemes, and outright fraudCraig saw it as his responsibility to preach the truth about Bitcoin. Like Paul Atreides, he learned how hard it was to kill a myth.

Years after Paul becomes Emperor of the Universe, a religion is formed around MuadDib. Paul endures an assassination attempt by the priests of this religion who had hoped to turn Paul into a martyr, allowing them to control the religion of MuadDib. Paul escapes these attempts and retreats to the desert, where he was largely viewed to have been dead. He re-emerged in disguise as a preacher, preaching against the exaltation of MuadDib. This angered the priests of the religion of MuadDib, and they sought a way to silence him. Paul ultimately fails, and is killed by his own followers.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. Frank Herbert, Dune

In 2019, something changed for Craig. Craig began to embrace his identity as Satoshi Nakamoto. In June of 2019 he, for the first time publicly, definitively stated to Jimmy Nguyen on stage at CoinGeek that he was the inventor of Bitcoin and the author of the 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper. He became comfortable as Satoshi Nakamoto. He began to speak openly about his past mistakes, took pleasure in some of the mystery around the Satoshi myth, and began speaking more heavy-handed about the nature of the Bitcoin protocol:

Let me make this absolutely abundantly clear. Im not here to be your friend, and I wont do anything that changes the nature of bitcoin just because people will like me or stop treating me like shit. I created bitcoin for a reason, and I dont really care if you like that reason or not, and Im not putting up with crap from other people who think I should have done it differently. Craig Wright, AKA Satoshi Nakamoto in 2021

Its clear what changed for Craigin 2018 Ira Kleiman began a lawsuit against Craig over billions in Bitcoin arguing that his brothers estate was entitled to half of Satoshi Nakamotos bitcoins. By 2019, it seemed inevitable that the truth would have to come out. The decision to embrace his identity of Satoshi Nakamoto was decided for Craig, despite his unwillingness to do so: I wanted to remain private. They took that away.

In two weeks, Craig and Ira Kleiman will go to court in Florida to decide the fate of Satoshi Nakamotos bitcoins. The mythology of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto will dissolve into depositions, email exhibits, and cross-examinations. Despite the attempts by the BTC priesthood to martyr Satoshi as the anti-establishment cypherpunk that they want him to be, we will learn about the brilliant, yet flawed, man that he is instead. The statues, churches, and lies will be torn down.

Satoshi Nakamoto has not asked you to follow him. Satoshi Nakamoto released a force upon the world that became its own myth. Others have cultivated this myth to serve their own purposesfinancial, political, and philosophical. Craig could have signed with a key in 2016 and used the myth for his own aim, but he seemed to understand the trap Frank Herbert warns about Greatness:

If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner, Jean-Paul Sartre said when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964.

Knowing theres a trap is the first step in evading it the first step along the Golden Path. Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

The Dune series ultimately shows us that Paul isnt the hero that is promised at the beginning of the story. It shows the dangers in worshipping the hero, and the impossibility of any one man to live up to the myths that are built around heroes. We learn, eventually, that Pauls ability to see into the future led him to reject the terrible purpose he saw for himself. Far into the future he saw the extinction of humanity if it stagnated and remained confined within the known universe and rigid class structure of the Imperium. However, Paul couldnt bring himself to do what had to be done to prevent it. His son, Leto, takes on this challenge and eventually transforms into a sandworm (yeahit gets weird) that lives for tens of thousands of years to teach humanity a lesson that they will remember in their bones. Leto becomes a tyrannical God Emperor in order to enact the Golden Path. Leto was seen as a God to the people he ruled, but his inner thoughts were utterly human. This tyrannical approach ultimately enacted a scattering across the Universe to ensure the survival of the human race and an appreciation for freedom.

Letos Golden Path was to ensure the survival of humanity. By 2017, Craig Wright had enacted his own Golden Path to ensure the survival of Bitcoin.

Up to 2017, Craig tried to use reason and logic to convince the global Bitcoin economy to increase the block size and restore the original Bitcoin protocol. By the end of the year, he was helping BCH to do just that. By 2018, he learned the futility of trying to reason with those that sought to stagnate the growth of Bitcoin with protocol tinkering. Satoshi enacted his own Golden Pathrestoring and locking the protocol down to ensure that Bitcoin could not go extinct. To some developers this is tyrannicalthe BCH/BTC developers that wanted CTOR, DATASIGVERIFY, Schnorr Signatures, Taproot, Segwit, and more certainly think so. Craig Wright sees all of these as extinction threats to Bitcoin, and anyone who truly understands his creation can be gifted the same prescience.

We are currently living in Satoshi Nakamotos Golden Path. It exists as something that you and I have no control over, but are trapped in.

The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. Frank Herbert, Dune

Satoshi Nakamoto controls the fate of Bitcoin in his hands. When this court case is over, the owner of the Satoshi bitcoins will have the ability to destroy BTC, BCH, and/or BSV in an instant. This is terrifying to those who do not want Satoshis identity to be revealed. Coinbase went so far as to list the unmasking of Satoshi Nakamoto as a risk factor in their Initial Public Offering.

Someone who understands Herberts lesson on Greatness would be a terrifying Satoshi Nakamoto to all of those who sought to usurp his invention for their own personal triumphs. Unfortunately for some, it seems Satoshi Nakamoto learned quite a bit from Dune:

It is not being Paul that is hardest, it is being Leto and acceptance of change. Being an agent of change. Being changed. Craig Wright, AKA Satoshi Nakamoto in 2019

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

Read more here:

Craig Wright, Dune and the Satoshi myth - CoinGeek

As I walked into the theater with my wife, she asked me again what this film was about. I said, its about Wikileaks. I told her about Assange and the mission of Wikileaks. I had already had my own formed opinions about Assange, but refrained from sharing it with her. I was curious to see what her reaction was and what her opinion of Wikileaks and Assange was after the film.

The film was not bad. It was sort of an attempt to make a Facebook style film about Wikileaks and although it nowhere measured up to the quality of "Social Network." Its attempt was commendable and all-in-all, it was not a waste of the 18 Euros we spent to see it.

However, what really bothered me throughout the entire film was Cumberbatch's portrayal of Assange. I could see he was trying very hard to mimic Assange to the best of his ability, but I either don't think he had it in him or he was purposely playing Assange a lot crazier than he appears in real life. I have seen lots of interviews with Assange, who in my mind, comes across a bit like a mixture between a politician and professor. Cumberbatch, on the other hand, came across as a sort of eccentric nut.

The next thing that bothered me is where the film decided to stop. Basically, it skimmed over the current scandals, making Assange sound like more of nut than Cumberbatch's portrayal. The last five minutes especially sunk into me the feeling that the film unfairly portrayed Assange.

And my suspicions were confirmed. I asked my wife what her opinion of Assange was as a good or bad guy, and she seemed to indicate she was leaning towards bad. The last few minutes of the film, basically sunk that message in loud and clear.

My conclusion is, that, this film is a good example of the new way of being critical. Pretend to be fair and at the last minute, throw up a bunch of negative facts.

I believe that combining the positive portrayal of the U.S. state department with the crazy portrayal of Assange, was neither fair nor accurate. History will probably judge this film as just another propaganda piece of the corrupt powers that be.

If I were to write this film, I think it would have been much more interesting to concentrate on the incidents of human rights abuses rather than on the Assange himself. It would have also had the positive effect of encouraging, rather than discouraging whistle-blowers. This film does not seem to inspire anything.

Assange was right about the film.

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The Fifth Estate (2013) - IMDb

This interview is an episode of The Socialist Program with Brian Becker, a podcast providing news and views about the world for those who want to change it. You can follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

On todays episode, Brian and Lee Camp discuss the latest revelations about the CIAs attempts to take revenge on Wikileaks for exposing the secret crimes of the U.S. government. This went as far as planning to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who was at that point confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Now in prison, the fight to free Assange continues.

They also discuss the case of Steven Donzinger, an international environmental lawyer who took on Chevron and won but has now been sentenced to prison in a case of retaliation that has drawn global outrage. They also discuss the political right turn made by Tulsi Gabbard.

Lee Camp is the host of the TV show Redacted Tonight and author of the book Bullet Points & Punch Lines. Check out his work at http://www.LeeCamp.com

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The Plot to Kill Julian Assange & Destroy Wikileaks - Liberation

A new Yahoo News investigation has revealed that the CIA, under Donald Trump, had discussed detailed plans at the highest level in 2017 to kidnap or assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who had taken refuge in Ecuadors embassy in London five years earlier. Sources for the story included a senior U.S. counter-intelligence official and more than 30 other U.S. officials eight of whom confirmed details of the abduction plan.

According to these officials, the plan discussed breaking into Ecuadors embassy, which is protected by diplomatic immunity and forcibly taking Assange out. One informant recounted a meeting in the spring of 2017 at which President Trump had asked if the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide options about how this could be done. Trump has denied the story.

Mike Pompeo, whom Trump appointed CIA director in January 2017, said publicly that targeting Julian Assange and WikiLeaks was the equivalent of taking action against a hostile intelligence service. Top U.S. intelligence officials wanted to grant themselves the power to determine who is, and who is not a journalist and label some reporters they believed were agents of a foreign power as information brokers. Between The Lines Scott Harris spoke with Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of the news website ShadowProof.com who discusses the significance of this story on the CIA plot targeting Assange and the ominous threat to press freedom.

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: Whats important to say now more than a week after this story was published is theres not a single report you can point to pushing back on the things that these government officials, former government officials said to the Yahoo News reporters, which is that all the way up to the highest levels, there were discussions about extreme measures that could be employed against Julian Assange and other staff within WikiLeaks, as well as associates who may have been working on publication and materials.

Theres over 30 former intelligence officials, as well as Trump administration officials. And it even says eight of them describe the kind of plots that were being discussed within the CIA to these Yahoo News reporters. Just to say, this is a fairly solidly reported article, making significant allegations against former CIA Director Mike Pompeo that he was entertaining discussions about plotting to assassinate Julian Assange, seeking to find out if there was any legal authority for which he could order such an assassination operation.

But then I think more plausibly, trying to figure out if they could conduct a kidnapping or a rendition operation to snatch Julian Assange from the Ecuador embassy and put him on a plane and bring him back to the United States. Then it discusses how they could take offensive operations against WikiLeaks or the way they categorized WikiLeaks as a hostile entity, which we knew that was something that the CIA had wanted to do. We just didnt know what that label meant because in his first public remarks, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said to the world that they considered WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence agency. But again, we didnt know what kind of policy or what that meant.

SCOTT HARRIS: The CIA and the U.S. government had differentiated between journalism and Julian Assange, calling him an information broker. Also in that category was Glenn Greenwald, one of the founders of the Intercept. (Also,) former Guardian columnist Laura Poitras, award-winning film documentary maker. What is the threat to journalism here as this CIA plot to kidnap or kill Julian Assange is exposed?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: I think the threat is very severe, first off, because we arent seeing any political outrage. I mean, we havent really heard a peep from any representative or senator in Congress who read this report. I mean, wheres the alarm, wheres the shock that this is what is being considered? I mean, think about, we read a report that says agents of the CIA were plotting to kill a journalist or seriously ask themselves, would this be legal to kill a journalist? Which you know, is not a question that should even be contemplated.

Theres no outrage. So what does that say? Does that give a green light to the security services of other countries to plot their own operations against journalists? I mean, were always quick to condemn the countries we see as adversaries for how they mistreat and abuse journalists. But do we really have any credibility to lecture any other country when this is what we did to Julian Assange and hes, you know, hes still in jail and these charges have not been dropped by the Biden administration?

I mean, I think whats really at stake here is, is the fact that there are tremendous problems in countries around the world with press freedom and the U.S. cant really speak to them right now without authoritarians or tyrants saying, Well, I dont have to listen to you. Julian Assange is in jail. Hes being held in a British jail cell.

Leaving aside the excuses for the moment. The fact is these are secrecy laws that apply to U.S. citizens typically, people who sign nondisclosure agreements who work for the U.S. government and none of that applies to Julian Assange. Hes never worked at a U.S. government agency. Hes never been a contractor for a U.S. government agency. Hes not a U.S. citizen, so he should not have to follow any of these espionage laws. Yet, here we are. Were still talking about this.

For more information, visit Shadow Proof News website at ShadowProof.com.Kevin Gosztola is also co-host of the weekly podcast, Unauthorized Disclosure, at shadowproof.com/category/dissenter/unauthorized-disclosure.

Originally posted here:
Investigation Exposes CIA Plot to Kidnap or Kill WikiLeaks' Founder Julian Assange - Between The Lines