WikiLeaks founder and former hacker Julian Assange could be evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has lived for six years while claiming diplomatic asylum, according to reports. The embassy cut off Assanges internet connections, computers and phones several months ago, though he still speaks with his lawyers.

Assange sought refuge at Ecuador's embassy in the U.K. in 2012, after he broke bail connected to sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden. Though the Swedish investigation was dropped in 2017, the U.K. warrant for his arrest on bail-jumping charges remains. As long as he remains in the embassy, he cannot be arrested by U.K. authorities.

The Ecuadorian presidents recent trip to London included closed-door discussions with British officials, according to a report on Saturday from The Intercept. The agreement could lead to the embassy expelling Assange, at which point he would be handed over to authorities in London.

Questions remain about whether the British would extradite Assange to the U.S., where lawmakers have vowed to prosecute him for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents.

Julian Assange, born in Australia in 1971, is a computer programmer by trade who has been involved in hacking schemes, including attacks targeting the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.S. Navy and several private American companies.

In 2006, he founded the website WikiLeaks, which published secret information leaked to the site by whistleblowers.

Over the years, WikiLeaks has published massive dumps of unredacted diplomatic cables, thousands of which contained sensitive information that was not hidden, and classified intelligence documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, it uploaded a U.S. Army manual for dealing with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

In 2010, it published a video that appeared to show a U.S. Apache helicopter firing on civilians and journalists in Iraq in 2007, which went viral. The Pentagon said that the crew at the time believed the targets were insurgents and not civilians.

One of WikiLeaks' main sources of documents was former U.S. Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, who was known previously as "Bradley" before transitioning to a woman. Manning was convicted by court martial and sentenced to 35 years in prison for more than a dozen charges, including under the Espionage Act. In one of his final acts as President, Barack Obama commuted Mannings sentence, paving the way for her release in May 2017.

The website also posted emails from one of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's accounts, the names and addresses of members of a U.K. far-right political party, the British National Party, as well as emails that were purportedly hacked from the Sony Corporation.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta, as well as thousands of U.S. intelligence documents.

In June 2012, Assange was living in the U.K., out on bail, and was wearing an ankle monitor when he rang the doorbell of the Ecuadorian embassy in London to ask for political asylum. He had just lost his fight against extradition to Sweden where he was accused of rape.

It's not clear why Assange chose to ask Ecuador, but then-President Rafael Correa had a strained relationship with the U.S. The year before Assange knocked on the embassy door, Ecuador was fuming at statements in the cables exposed by WikiLeaks that showed American diplomats believed he had knowingly hired a corrupt police chief. The U.S. ambassador to Ecuador was swiftly expelled.

The embassy granted Assange's request and allowed him to live there, which sparked a major diplomatic fight with the U.K. The Metropolitan police deployed dozens of officers outside Ecuador's embassy building ready to arrest Assange if he were to leave the premises.

He has not left the building since.

However, the new government in Ecuador is making changes and the administration wants to rebuild ties with the U.S. Ecuador's new president, Lenin Moreno, has described Assange as "his inherited problem."

Excerpt from:
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange may be evicted from Ecuador ...

After protecting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for almost six years, Ecuador is now planning to withdraw its political asylum, probably next week, and eject him from its London embassyeventually would turn him over to the British authorities.

Lenn Moreno, the newly-elected President of Ecuador, has arrived in London this Friday to give a speech at Global Disability Summit on 24 July 2018.

However, media reports suggest the actual purpose of the President's visit is to finalize a deal with UK government to withdraw its asylum protection of Assange.

Julian Assange, 47, has been living in Ecuador's London embassy since June 2012, when he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government after a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning sexual assault and rape.

Founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has not been online since last three months after Ecuador cut his communications with the outside world from its London embassy.

According to Ecuador, Assange had breached an agreement to refrain from interfering in other states' affairs.

"Sources close to Assange said he himself was not aware of the talks but believed that America was putting 'significant pressure' on Ecuador, including threatening to block a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if he continues to stay at the embassy," RT said.

Assange is currently facing an arrest warrant from the British government for a minor charge of "failure to surrender," which carries a prison term of three months and a fine.

Now, what will be the future of Assange?

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Ecuador to Withdraw Asylum for Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

The Intercept and other media outlets are reporting that the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has had sanctuary in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, is imminent.

In light of this breaking news, Truthdig is reposting a July 15 article (at bottom here) by vacationing Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges that explores the persecution of Assange.

We also call to your attention a few of the other articles on Assange that have been posted or reposted on Truthdig:

Where Is the Outrage Against Julian Assanges Silencing? by Teodrose Fikre, April 3, 2018

In Defense of Julian Assange and Free Speech by John Pilger, March 31, 2018

Sweden Drops Rape Inquiry Against Julian Assange by Donald Kaufman, May 19, 2017

Julian Assange Strikes Back at the CIA Director: WikiLeaks Is Not Omnipotent by Eric Ortiz, April 20, 2017

Truthdigger of the Week: Julian Assange, Publisher of the Clinton Campaign Emails by Alexander Reed Kelly, Oct. 23, 2016

Julian Assange Explains Why Voting for Hillary Clinton Will Spread Terrorism by Natasha Hakimi Zapata, Feb. 24, 2016

Julian Assange: The Untold Story of an Epic Struggle for Justice by John Pilger, Aug. 4, 2015

The Death of Truth by Chris Hedges, May 6, 2013

Listen: Chris Hedges Interviews Julian Assange, May 6, 2013

Heres a repost of Chris Hedges most recent column, titled The War on Assange Is a War on Press Freedom:

The failure on the part of establishment media to defend Julian Assange, who has been trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, has been denied communication with the outside world since March and appears to be facing imminent expulsion and arrest, is astonishing. The extradition of the publisherthe maniacal goal of the U.S. governmentwould set a legal precedent that would criminalize any journalistic oversight or investigation of the corporate state. It would turn leaks and whistleblowing into treason. It would shroud in total secrecy the actions of the ruling global elites. If Assange is extradited to the United States and sentenced, The New York Times, The Washington Post and every other media organization, no matter how tepid their coverage of the corporate state, would be subject to the same draconian censorship. Under the precedent set, Donald Trumps Supreme Court would enthusiastically uphold the arrest and imprisonment of any publisher, editor or reporter in the name of national security.

There are growing signs that the Ecuadorean government of Lenn Moreno is preparing to evict Assange and turn him over to British police. Moreno and his foreign minister, Jos Valencia, have confirmed they are in negotiations with the British government to resolve the fate of Assange. Moreno, who will visit Britain in a few weeks, calls Assange an inherited problem and a stone in the shoe and has referred to him as a hacker. It appears thatunder a Moreno government Assange is no longer welcome in Ecuador. His only hope now is safe passage to his native Australia or another country willing to give him asylum.

Ecuador has been looking for a solution to this problem, Valencia commented on television. The refuge is not forever, you cannot expect it to last for years without us reviewing this situation, including because this violates the rights of the refugee.

Morenos predecessor as president, Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum in the embassy and made him an Ecuadorean citizen last year, warned that Assanges days were numbered. He charged that Morenowho cut off Assanges communications the day after Moreno welcomed a delegation from the U.S. Southern Commandwould throw him out of the embassy at the first pressure from the United States.

Assange, who reportedly is in ill health, took asylum in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer questions about sexual offense charges. He feared that once in Swedish custody for these charges, which he said were false, he would be extradited to the United States. The Swedish prosecutors office ended its investigation and extradition request to Britain in May 2017 and did not file sexual offense charges against Assange. But the British government said Assange would nevertheless be arrested and jailed for breaching his bail conditions.

The persecution of Assange is part of a broad assault against anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist news organizations. The ruling elites, who refuse to accept responsibility for profound social inequality or the crimes of empire, have no ideological veneer left to justify their greed, ineptitude and pillage. Global capitalism and its ideological justification, neoliberalism, are discredited as forces for democracy and the equitable distribution of wealth. The corporate-controlled economic and political system is as hated by right-wing populists as it is by the rest of the population. This makes the critics of corporatism and imperialismjournalists, writers, dissidents and intellectuals already pushed to the margins of the media landscapedangerous and it makes them prime targets. Assange is at the top of the list.

I took part with dozens of others, including Daniel Ellsberg, William Binney, Craig Murray, Peter Van Buren, Slavoj Zizek, George Galloway and Cian Westmoreland, a week ago in a 36-hour international online vigil demanding freedom for the WikiLeaks publisher. The vigil was organized by the New Zealand Internet Party leader Suzie Dawson. It was the third Unity4J vigil since all of Assanges communication with the outside world was severed by the Ecuadorean authorities and visits with him were suspended in March, part of the increased pressure the United States has brought on the Ecuadorean government. Assange has since March been allowed to meet only with his attorneys and consular officials from the Australian Embassy.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled Friday that those seeking political asylum have the right to take refuge in embassies and diplomatic compounds. The court stated that governments are obliged to provide safe passage out of the country to those granted asylum. The ruling did not name Assange, but it was a powerful rebuke to the British government, which has refused to allow the WikiLeaks co-founder safe passage to the airport.

The ruling elites no longer have a counterargument to their critics. They have resorted to cruder forms of control. These include censorship, slander and character assassination (which in the case of Assange has sadly been successful), blacklisting, financial strangulation, intimidation, imprisonment under the Espionage Act and branding critics and dissidents as agents of a foreign power and purveyors of fake news. The corporate media amplifies these charges, which have no credibility but which become part of the common vernacular through constant repetition. The blacklisting, imprisonment and deportation of tens of thousands of people of conscience during the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s are back with a vengeance. It is a New McCarthyism.

Did Russia attempt to influence the election? Undoubtedly. This is what governments do. The United States interfered in 81 electionsfrom 1945 to 2000, according to professor Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. His statistics do not include the numerous coups we orchestrated in countries such as Greece, Iran, Guatemala and Chile or the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. We indirectly bankrolled the re-election campaign of Russias buffoonish Boris Yeltsin to the tune of $2.5 billion.

But did Russia, as the Democratic Party establishment claims, swing the election to Trump? No. Trump is not Vladimir Putins puppet. He is part of the wave of right-wing populists, from Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson in Britain to Viktor Orbn in Hungary, who have harnessed the rage and frustration born of an economic and political system dominated by global capitalism and under which the rights and aspirations of working men and women do not matter.

The Democratic Party establishment, like the liberal elites in most of the rest of the industrialized world, would be swept from power in an open political process devoid of corporate money. The party elite, including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, is a creation of the corporate state. Campaign finance and electoral reform are the last things the party hierarchy intends to champion. It will not call for social and political programs that will alienate its corporate masters. This myopia and naked self-interest may ensure a second term for Donald Trump; it may further empower the lunatic fringe that is loyal to Trump; it may continue to erode the credibility of the political system. But the choice before the Democratic Party elites is clear: political oblivion or enduring the rule of a demagogue. They have chosen the latter. They are not interested in reform. They are determined to silence anyone, like Assange, who exposes the rot within the ruling class.

The Democratic Party establishment benefits from our system of legalized bribery. It benefits from deregulating Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry. It benefits from the endless wars. It benefits from the curtailment of civil liberties, including the right to privacy and due process. It benefits from militarized police. It benefits from austerity programs. It benefits from mass incarceration. It is an enabler of tyranny, not an impediment.

Demagogues like Trump, Farage and Johnson, of course, have no intention of altering the system of corporate pillage. Rather, they accelerate the pillage, which is what happened with the passage of the massive U.S. tax cut for corporations. They divert the publics anger toward demonized groups such as Muslims, undocumented workers, people of color, liberals, intellectuals, artists, feminists, the LGBT community and the press. The demonized are blamed for the social and economic dysfunction, much as Jews were falsely blamed for Germanys defeat in World War I and the economic collapse that followed. Corporations such as Goldman Sachs, in the midst of the decay, continue to make a financial killing.

The corporate titans, who often come out of elite universities and are groomed in institutions like Harvard Business School, find these demagogues crude and vulgar. They are embarrassed by their imbecility, megalomania and incompetence. But they endure their presence rather than permit socialists or leftist politicians to impede their profits and divert government spending to social programs and away from weapons manufacturers, the military, private prisons, big banks and hedge funds, the fossil fuel industry, charter schools, private paramilitary forces, private intelligence companies and pet programs designed to allow corporations to cannibalize the state.

The irony is that there was serious meddling in the presidential election, but it did not come from Russia. The Democratic Party, outdoing any of the dirty tricks employed by Richard Nixon, purged hundreds of thousands of primary voters from the rolls, denied those registered as independents the right to vote in primaries, used superdelegates to swing the vote to Hillary Clinton, hijacked the Democratic National Committee to serve the Clinton campaign, controlled the message of media outlets such as MSNBC and The New York Times, stole the Nevada caucus, spent hundreds of millions of dollars of dark corporate money on the Clinton campaign and fixed the primary debates. This meddling, which stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, who probably could have defeated Trump, is unmentioned. The party hierarchy will do nothing to reform its corrupt nominating process.

WikiLeaks exposed much of this corruption when it published tens of thousands of messages hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podestas email account. The messages brought to light the efforts by the Democratic Party leadership to thwart the nomination of Sanders, and they disclosed Clintons close ties with Wall Street, including her lucrative Wall Street speeches. They also raised serious questions about conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation and whether Clinton received advance information on primary-debate questions.

The Democratic National Committee, for this reason, is leading the Russia hysteria and the persecution of Assange. It filed a lawsuit that names WikiLeaks and Assange as co-conspirators with Russia and the Trump campaign in an alleged effort to steal the presidential election.

But it is not only Assange and WikiLeaks that are being attacked as Russian pawns. For example, The Washington Post, which has sided with the Democratic Party in the war against Trump, without critical analysis published a report on a blacklist posted by the anonymous website PropOrNot. The blacklist was composed of 199 sites that PropOrNot alleged, with no evidence, reliably echo Russian propaganda. More than half of those sites were far-right, conspiracy-driven ones. But about 20 of the sites were major progressive outlets including AlterNet, Black Agenda Report, Democracy Now!, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truthout, CounterPunch and the World Socialist Web Site. PropOrNot, short for Propaganda or Not, accused these sites of disseminating fake news on behalf of Russia. The Posts headline was unequivocal: Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during the election, experts say.

In addition to offering no evidence, PropOrNot never even disclosed who ran the website. Even so, its charge was used to justify the imposition of algorithms by Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon to direct traffic away from the targeted sites. These algorithms, or filters, overseen by thousands of evaluators, many hired from the military and security and surveillance apparatus, hunt for keywords such as U.S. military, inequality and socialism, along with personal names such as Julian Assange and Laura Poitras. The keywords are known as impressions. Before the imposition of the algorithms, a reader could type in the name Julian Assange and be directed to an article on one of the targeted sites. After the algorithms were put in place, these impressions directed readers only to mainstream sites such as The Washington Post. Referral traffic from the impressions at most of the targeted sites has plummeted, often by more than half. This isolation will be compounded by the abolition of net neutrality.

Any news or media outlet that addresses the reality of our failed democracy and exposes the crimes of empire will be targeted. The January 2017 Director of National Intelligence Report spent seven pages on RT America, where I have a show, On Contact. The report does not accuse RT America of disseminating Russian propaganda, but it does allege the network exploits divisions within American society by giving airtime to dissidents and critics including whistleblowers, anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, Black Lives Matter activists, anti-fracking campaigners and the third-party candidates the establishment is seeking to mute.

If the United States had a public broadcasting system free from corporate money or a commercial press that was not under corporate control, these dissident voices would be included in the mainstream discourse. But we dont. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Malcolm X, Sheldon Wolin, Ralph Nader, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Angela Davis and Edward Said once appeared regularly on public broadcasting. Now critics like these are banned, replaced with vapid courtiers such as columnist David Brooks. RT America was forced to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). This act requires Americans who work for a foreign party to register as foreign agents. The FARA registration is part of the broader assault on all independent media, including the effort to silence Assange.

WikiLeaks publication in 2017 of 8,761 CIA files, known as Vault 7, appeared to be the final indignity. Vault 7 included a description of the cyber tools used by the CIA to hack into computer systems and devices such as smartphones. Former CIA software engineer Joshua Adam Schulte was indicted on charges of violating the Espionage Act by allegedly leaking the documents.

The publication of Vault 7 saw the United States significantly increase its pressure on the Ecuadorean government to isolate and eject Assange from the embassy. Mike Pompeo, then the CIA director, said in response to the leaks that the U.S. government can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Assanges arrest was a priority.

It is up to us to mobilize to protect Assange. His life is in jeopardy. The Ecuadorean government, violating his fundamental rights, has transformed his asylum into a form of incarceration. By cutting off his access to the internet, it has deprived him of the ability to communicate and follow world events. The aim of this isolation is to pressure Assange out of the embassy so he can be seized by London police, thrown into a British jail and then delivered into the hands of Pompeo, John Bolton and the CIAs torturer in chief, Gina Haspel.

Assange is a courageous and fearless publisher who is being persecuted for exposing the crimes of the corporate state and imperialism. His defense is the cutting edge of the fight against government suppression of our most important and fundamental democratic rights. The government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, where Assange was born, must be pressured to provide him with the protection to which he is entitled as a citizen. It must intercede to stop the illegal persecution of the journalist by the British, American and Ecuadorean governments. It must secure his safe return to Australia. If we fail to protect Assange, we fail to protect ourselves.

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The Arrest of Julian Assange Appears Near - Truthdig

The UK and Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno are "close to finalizing" or have already finalized a deal to evict Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, according to an article published by The Intercept.

According to reporter Glenn Greenwald, Ecuador could withdraw its protection of the WikiLeaks founder in a matter of days. Greenwald first drew widespread public attention by publishing data provided by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

According to Greenwald's article, Ecuador's Moreno used the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit as a pretext to travel to London and discuss handing over Assange to British officials. Moreno has been critical of Assange, describing him as an "inherited problem,"a "pebble in the shoe,"who has created "more than a nuisance" for his government.

However, Moreno told DW in June that Assange "should be able to continue enjoying his right to asylum and the respect that this asylum affords him," and appeared to suggest he would be welcome at the embassy "as long as he meets the requirements."

"His asylum status prevents him from talking about politics and intervening in the politics of friendly countries. That is why we have had cut off his communications," Moreno said.

In March, Ecuador's government cut off Assange's internet connection after he denounced the arrest of a Catalan separatist politician on social media.

Wearing out his welcome

Assangefirst faced legal troubles shortly after his platform WikiLeaks published several tranches of confidential US documents in 2010. In November that year, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for the internet activist over allegations of rape and sexual assault. He was detained in London thatDecember and placed underhouse arrest, while continuing to fight his extradition to Sweden.

Assange repeatedly stated he was not opposed to facing the allegations in Sweden, but was afraid that Stockholm would deliver him to the US to be tried for publishing secrets, where he could face harsh prison sentences or even the death penalty.

After a UK judge ruled that Assange should be extradited to Sweden,the Australian-born activist sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.Quito granted him asylum in 2012. However, ties between Assange and his Ecuadorian hosts gradually soured as his yearslong stay irritated Western nations.

Hunt: 'British police will have a warm welcome' for Assange

Sweden dropped therape allegations case against Assange in 2017, saying there was "no possibility of arresting Assange in the foreseeable future," but the UK later upheld its own arrest warrant against Assange for breaching bail to seek refugein the embassy.

If expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Assange will likely face the minor "failure to surrender" charge. However, it is possible that UK prosecutors would argue that his prolonged evasion of justice amounted to more serious contempt of court, which carries a prison term of up to two years. During that time, he would likely need to fend off Washington's demands to be extradited to the US.

Earlier this week, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Assange has "serious charges" laid against him, but added the UK was "a country of due process."

"At any time he wants to he is free to walk out onto the street () and the British police will have a warm welcome for him" Hunt said.

Embassy cuts Assange's internet

Quito officials gave Assange Ecuadorian citizenship earlier this year in a failed attempt to resolve the impasse. In March, the embassy cut Assange's internet access after he questioned Theresa May's claim that Russia was behind the Skripal poisoning.

His actions "put at risk the good relations that the country maintains with the United Kingdom, with the rest of the European Union states and other nations," the Ecuadorian diplomats said at the time.

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.

Read more from the original source:
Ecuador close to evicting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ...

This story has been in the making since 2012, but according to Glenn Greenwald, the asylum of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuadors London embassy is coming to an end, possibly as soon as this week. Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno is in London where he is allegedly meeting with British officials to discuss the end of Assanges asylum and the details of turning him over to British authorities.

So with Assange having been a guest at the embassy (if a very troublesome one at times) for so long, whats changed now? Kimberly Leonard at the Washington Examiner explains that the breaking point has little to do with England, the United States or even Sweden (where he was originally charged with sexual assault, starting this entire mess), but instead is being driven by Spain.

During the last three months, Assange has been blocked from accessing the Internet, with officials saying that he violated an agreement not to intervene in state affairs. He angered Spanish officials when he tweeted support for separatist leaders in Catalonia who sought to secede last year.

Moreno, who was elected in May, has called Assange an inherited problem and a stone in the shoe.

Ecuador has a very close relationship with Spain in matters of both trade and diplomacy and wants to remain in their good graces. Moreno isnt quite as fearful of ticking off the governments of the United States or Great Britain as he would be of getting under the skin of Madrid. But hes also said to be more amenable to working with western governments than his predecessor. After Assange started publicly criticizing Spains handling of the Catalan independence movement, he went from being an inconvenience to a serious diplomatic problem.

So what happens next? Thats an open question for now and Greenwald has some rather wild and wooly theories about it. The Brits dont have much in the way of outstanding charges against Assange aside from a Failure to Surrender case. (Which should be worth only a few months in jail and a modest fine at best.) The bigger question is whether or not the United States would seek to extradite him. Weve been unable to get our hands on Edward Snowden because we dont have an extradition agreement with the Russians, but we do have one with the Brits.

Since Assange could challenge any such extradition in court it could take months or even years to sort out, and given Trumps lack of popularity in England right now, Assange would likely have a lot of public support. But that doesnt make it impossible for some American agents to be waiting when Assange emerges, ready to start cutting a deal with the Brits. Since Assange is a demonstrated flight risk, hed probably wind up sitting in an English jail while all this plays out.

But would President Trump greenlight such a plan? Hes been a fan of Wikileaks at times in the past, particularly when it helped with his presidential campaign. But Assange is also the only person who really knows where he got the DNC emails he published. Hes claimed from the beginning that he didnt get them from the Russians, but rather from a disgruntled DNC worker who was upset over the way they were treating Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary. Having Assanges voice chiming in to further muddy the waters of the Russia investigation might be some tempting fruit for Donald Trump.

An attempt at prosecuting Assange would be a bloody mess in U.S. courts. He released secrets (first stolen by Chelsea Manning) but should he be treated as a journalist for publishing them at Wikileaks or as a co-conspirator in the mishandling of classified information? Technically a journalist publishing such material is also guilty of a felony but the government has been hesitant to prosecute anyone on those grounds. Assange is more of a quasi-journalist however and might make for an easier case to sell.

Its going to be interesting to be sure. But I dont think we should expect a quick resolution. It may be years before Assange is ever either entirely free to go about his business or on trial either here or in the U.K. Odds are that the only difference between the past six years and the immediate future is where hell be locked up.

Read more here:
Is this finally the end for Julian Assange? - hotair.com

In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department has released the FISA application submitted by the FBI to spy on Carter Page, the rather hapless would-be advisor to the Trump campaign who has been smeared as a Russian agent but has not been charged after almost two years.

Weve never before even seen a FISA application, in which law enforcement agents explain to a judge why it is necessary for them to conduct surveillance on an American citizen, and so this is a special treat. The document that came out of this unique Freedom of Information Act request shows that the FBI had an ulterior motive in going after Page and that they lied to the FISA court judge.

In order to get the judge to agree to the surveillance, the FBI had to establish a fairly convincing probable cause: at a minimum, agents had to identify multiple sources indicating that an act of espionage may have occurred or is about to occur imminently. This FISA application shows that the FBI had a single source: the unverified dossier, compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump. The other ostensible sources were news articles by journalists whom Steele had leaked to. There was a clear intent to deceive the judge who read this application.

This technique is a familiar one: remember how the neocons used to quote each other as proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction? Its the old echo chamber trick, and every third-rate smear artist deploys it. The question arises: so is this how the FBI carries out its investigations into espionage?

This whole affair, and the shocking denouement, reminds me of the FBI investigation of myself and our co-founder, Eric Garris. If you look at the initial memo proposing a preliminary investigation of the two of us, it contains an article by raving neocon Ronald Radosh that appeared in the Boston Globe accusing me of trying to create a red-brown coalition to oppose the Iraq war. It is full of the most imaginative smears, including a discussion of my alleged sexual proclivities, supposedly proving Im an agent of a foreign power just like Carter Page.

Apart from fag-baiting, the rest of the Radosh piece is simply a series of epithets Im a fascist, a Very Bad Person, etc. etc. Radosh doesnt bother citing a single complete sentence of anything Ive written or said. In short, the FBI included this worthless compendium of bile only in order to justify spying on me. But since when does an opinion piece by a clearly biased person serve as evidence of anything? Is this how the federal law enforcement authorities routinely guard the nations security?

Im very much afraid that the answer is yes.

Carter Page is just a high profile victim of a widespread practice on the part of those supposedly assigned to guard the nation against espionage, saboteurs, and spies they make it up as they go along. Since their goal is to conduct surveillance on everyone, they cast as wide a net as possible in hopes of catching a real villain. Yet the powerful tools at their disposal married to dubious methods enable the worst excesses and that is certainly a fair description of what happened in the case of Carter Page. For it wasnt Page they were really after: they simply used him to get to other members of the Trump campaign staff.

This isnt mere incompetence: its sheer malevolence. This is what happens in police states.

Speaking of unmitigated evil the Gnostics believed that Satan, not God, reigns in Heaven, and directs the ways of the world, and that certainly explains all too many recent events, especially the continued martyrdom of Julian Assange.

I wont reiterate the many tortures Assange has had to endure due to his unique position as the greatest truth-teller of modern times. Suffice to say that his long six years! imprisonment in Londons Ecuadorian embassy is a sentence that was neither deserved nor was it legal. As far as we know, Assange has not been charged with any crime: contra journalistic malfeasance, he was never actually charged by the Swedish authorities for supposedly engaging in bad behavior with two women. He sought asylum in the embassy because the Swedes, always subservient to Washington, would have shipped him to the United States to stand trial for espionage despite the fact that we dont know if a grand jury has proffered charges.

Assange was granted sanctuary due to Rafael Correa, then the President of Ecuador: unfortunately, Correas successor one Lenin Moreno has caved to pressure from the US and Britain, and it looks like Assange is going to be handed over to the British imminently.

What happens next is anybodys guess, but my own view is that there has indeed been a grand jury secretly deliberating his case, and charges will be made public: which means Assange will be sent to America, and to an uncertain fate.

Uncertain due to the Supreme Court decision in the Pentagon Papers case, in which the Supremes ruled that the First Amendment protects journalists who report facts that may embarrass or otherwise inconvenience the government.

In other circumstances, and in an earlier era, his fate would not be uncertain, it would be sealed. After all, WikiLeaks has revealed more US government secrets than any single individual or state adversary in history. One after another the revelations came a US helicopter gunship gunning down Iraqi civilians, the entire secret diplomatic history of the US, complete with original documents and references, the methodology of hi-tech US surveillance on ordinary Americans, and the list goes on and on. Assange is, in short, the greatest journalist of our time and so naturally the rest of the profession hates his guts, and is calling for his head.

The reasons for this should be clear enough: the Russia-gate mythology, a matter of faith for the Fourth Estate, characterizes Assange as one of its chief demons. He is, in their fake-expert phraseology, a Russian asset, Putins puppet, who deprived Hillary Clinton of her rightful due and stole the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.

There is no evidence for this, although the mainstream media and their CIA/FBI handlers carry on as if its a settled matter. It isnt. We have no idea where the DNC files came from, although we do know that John Podesta, Hillarys top aide, had his email account penetrated because his password was password. What anyone who knows anything about attribution of hacking incidents can tell you is that Trump is right: it could have been the Russians, just as it could have been anyone. Assange has strongly hinted that it was an inside job. My own view no, I cant prove it is that it was probably a disaffected Bernie-crat who kept his or her sympathies secret and acted when he or she saw what was going on.

Yet why, we have to ask, is this relevant? The question of whodunit is surely interesting in itself, but ultimately it doesnt matter: what mattered then and matters now is that the material uncovered is true. The WikiLeaks document dump exposed the fact that the Democratic primary was rigged from the very beginning. Bernie Sanders never had a chance, due to the machinations of the Democratic National Committee in cahoots with the Clinton campaign. So when the media refers to stolen emails, translate that into rigged primary and you get an accurate picture of the reality.

There will be considerable pressure on President Trump from his base to pardon Assange if charges are made public and hes dragged to the US by his British captors. I dont see how he can pull that one off, politically: I have no doubt that the top leadership of the CIA, the FBI, and various other agencies would collectively resign in protest.

From my perspective, that would be a good thing: its one way to get rid of the Deep State, or at least pry the worst ones from the levers of power. Then again, Im not the President of the United States, Donald Trump is, and I cant imagine him deliberately provoking an unbelievable uproar and taking the slings and arrows that would come his way if he dared to do it.

On the other hand, I can imagine it. Cant you?

This is the really interesting thing about such a turn of events: predicting who will be howling for Assanges blood and who will be demanding that he be set free. Its the same division thats occurring over the Russia-gate hoax: the believers (and I mean that in the religious sense) will form a mob straight out of The Lottery. The few skeptics Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, a scattering of honest leftists, and most of us libertarians (although who knows if the Kochs will let Reason magazine come out for Assange) will be his only defenders.

As long as WikiLeaks was exposing the dark underside of the Bush administrations murderous foreign policy, our virtue-signaling liberals were all for it: Assange was a hero in their eyes. Just as soon as Obama took office, however, his left-wing fan club largely turned their backs on him. And during the 2016 presidential election they went after him with a vengeance: Hillary herself wondered aloud if the US could drone strike him. She was only half-joking.

As in the case of war and peace, so in this very important civil liberties case, the traditional positions of the left and the right are transposed, with the left arguing for the continued imprisonment of the man they used to lionize, and the right (populist version) rising to defend the civil liberties of journalists everywhere. This division wont be clean, however: a few liberals (see above) will join with Trumps base to campaign for Assanges freedom, and I think well even see some alleged libertarians go A.W.O.L. in this fight. Trump Derangement Syndrome has some pretty ugly symptoms.

Assange, who is very sympathetic to libertarianism, has been swimming against the tide for all of his public life. To say he hasnt taken the easy way out is a bit of an understatement. Instead of mouthing the expected leftist bromides, and exhibiting the well-known prejudices of the species, Assange has gored everyones ox without fear or favor. As a result, his enemies are legion a situation I can personally sympathize with.

The aura of inevitable doom that has permeated the air around Assange has finally descended on him, and may very well devour him in the end. We cant let him go down without a fight. President Trump who hailed WikiLeaks during the campaign! is his only hope. Yes, yes, I know thats not exactly reassuring. But its all we have: its all Assange has, at this point.

Call the White House: (202) 456-1111. If Assange is being held by the British, bombard the Brits with your protests call their Washington embassy and give them holy hell. Dont let this horrific injustice pass in silence: make noise. Speak up. Fight back.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

Ive written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

Justin Raimondo is editor-at-large at Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].View all posts by Justin Raimondo

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Martyrs to the Cause: Carter Page and Julian Assange ...