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Julian Assange marks 2nd year in Ecuador’s embassy

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Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hold a vigil outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to mark his two years in refuge at the embassy, Thursday, June 19, 2014. Julian Assange entered the embassy in June 2012 to gain political asylum to prevent him from being extradited to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sex crimes, which he denies.(AP Photo/Sang Tan)

LONDON (AP) The gathering at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London has the feel of something which may become an annual fixture.

For the second time in as many years, journalists were invited Thursday to the embassy to mark the anniversary of WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange's stay there a bid to escape extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted over allegations of sexual misconduct, and to the United States, where an investigation into WikiLeaks' dissemination of hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents remains live.

Supporters including one with a figure of Assange on a crucifix chanted slogans outside the embassy. Inside, Assange said he has no intention of going to Sweden because he has no guarantee he wouldn't subsequently be sent to the U.S.

Dressed in a suit and sneakers and appearing relaxed, he traded pleasantries with Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino as reporters crowded around to listen in on the banter.

"I can see that your beard is longer now," Patino joked via videolink from Ecuador, referring to Assange's wispy white stubble. Assange in turn paid tribute to Ecuador's "robust resistance" to pressure from outside powers which he said is why "I have a liberty to work today."

Assange had been under a form of supervised release in the U.K., but shortly after losing his battle in Britain's highest court he jumped bail and applied for asylum at the Ecuadorean Embassy on June 19, 2012.

British police on guard outside the embassy have orders to arrest him should he ever step out.

That doesn't seem likely.

Patino told journalists that negotiations with Britain over Assange's fate were at an impasse and that there would be no attempt to force him back to Sweden.

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Julian Assange marks 2nd year in Ecuador's embassy

Julian Assange unlikely to slip quietly into obscurity

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June 20, 2014, 3 a.m.

Is Julian Assange back in the game? Many media and other observers have written off the WikiLeaks publisher as a diminished, almost comical, figure eking out an existence in Ecuador's London embassy where he has been granted diplomatic asylum.

Is Julian Assange back in the game? Many media and other observers have written off the WikiLeaks publisher as a diminished, almost comical, figure eking out an existence in Ecuador's London embassy where he has been granted diplomatic asylum.

Assange has not seen the sun for two years, and it has appeared to many that his anti-secrecy group might also have had its day.

After all, WikiLeaks' biggest hits - the publication in 2010-11 of the leaked Baghdad helicopter gunship video, the US Army's Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and the massive "cablegate" trove of US diplomatic records - are now three years in the past.

WikiLeaks' most notable source, US Army private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning has been tried, found guilty and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

In a world that craves novelty and where the media cycle turns ever faster, Assange has looked like yesterday's news.

His complex legal circumstances remain unresolved. Sweden still wishes to extradite him to face questioning about sexual assault allegations that were first made in August 2010.

Assange denies the allegations and continues to claim that he is at risk of extradition to the United States to face prosecution arising from Manning's unauthorised disclosure of US government secrets.

Ecuador appears prepared to provide Assange with indefinite asylum. However, neither Britain nor Sweden appear at all inclined to provide any assurances that Assange would not be surrendered to the US at some future date. So Assange will not leave the embassy.

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Julian Assange unlikely to slip quietly into obscurity

Detained leaker says US public lied to

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The detained US soldier convicted of leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks has made a rare foray into public life to warn Americans they were being lied to about Iraq once more.

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence on espionage charges and other offences for passing along 700,000 secret documents, including diplomatic cables and military intelligence files, to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in the largest-scale leak in US history.

"I understand that my actions violated the law. However, the concerns that motivated me have not been resolved," the soldier formerly a man known as Bradley Manning wrote in a New York Times editorial on Saturday.

"As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan."

President Barack Obama said this week he was "looking at all the options" to halt the offensive that has brought militants within 80km of Baghdad's city limits, but ruled out any return of US combat troops.

Obama has been under mounting fire from Republican critics over the swift collapse of Iraq's security forces, which Washington spent billions of dollars training and equipping before pulling out its own troops in 2011.

While the US military was upbeat in its public outlook on the 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections, suggesting it had helped bring stability and democracy to the country, "those of us stationed there were acutely aware of a more complicated reality", Manning wrote.

"Military and diplomatic reports coming across my desk detailed a brutal crackdown against political dissidents by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and federal police, on behalf of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. Detainees were often tortured, or even killed."

Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, said he was "shocked by our military's complicity in the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling details flew under the American media's radar."

Criticising the military's practice of embedding journalists, Manning charged that "the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance."

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Detained leaker says US public lied to

Government Conspiracy **EDWARD SNOWDEN** Exposes Chemtrails **Proof** – Video

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Government Conspiracy **EDWARD SNOWDEN** Exposes Chemtrails **Proof**
Chemtrails Are Destroying The Ecosystem and killing us softly. HAARP = H.A.A.R.P. = High Active Auroral Research Program Phoenix Arizona """ Edward Snowden, the hacker who gained access...

By: My Media Alternative

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Government Conspiracy **EDWARD SNOWDEN** Exposes Chemtrails **Proof** - Video

Snowden’s German NSA dossier leaks online

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The so-called "German NSA dossier" leaked on the Internet. According to Edward Snowden, over 50 files in the dossier contain information about the locations, where NSA agents stay in Germany.

Also, the documents show that U.S. special services did not only exchange information with Berlin, but also organized training courses for German colleagues. Among European countries, the NSA is said to conduct most active work in Germany.

In July 2013, CIA officer Edward Snowden passed secret information to the press,. It turned out that the NSA spies not only on American, but also foreign citizens, including top European officials, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Snowden left the United States, where he faces either up to 30 years in prison or death penalty, and went to Latin America. However, due to the fact that the U.S. revoked his passport, he had to stay in Russia.

Anna Chapman in love with Edward Snowden

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Snowden's German NSA dossier leaks online

New Snowden Revelations on NSA Spying in Germany

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Is it possible that the German government really knew nothing about all of these NSA activities within Germany? Are they really -- as they claimed in August 2013 in response to a query from the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) -- "unaware of the surveillance stations used by the NSA in Germany"?

That is difficult to believe, especially given that the NSA has been active in Germany for decades and has cooperated closely with the country's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, which is overseen by the Chancellery. A top-secret NSA paper from January 2013 notes: "NSA established a relationship with its SIGINT counterpart in Germany, the BND-TA, in 1962, which includes extensive analytical, operational, and technical exchanges."

When the cooperation with its junior partner from West Germany began, the NSA was just 10 years old and maintained stations in Augsburg and West Berlin in addition to its European headquarters in Stuttgart-Vaihingen.

American intelligence agencies, like those of the three other World War II victors, immediately began to monitor Germans within their zones of occupation, as confirmed by internal guidelines relating to the evaluation of reports stemming from the years 1946 to 1967.

In 1955, the British and French reduced their surveillance of Germans and focused on operations further to the east. The Americans, however, did not and continued to monitor telephone and other transmissions both within Germany and between the country and others in Western Europe. By the mid 1950s, US spies may have been listening in on some 5 million telephone conversations per year in Germany.

The easternmost NSA surveillance post in Europe during the Cold War was the Field Station Berlin, located on Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) in West Berlin. The hill is made from the rubble left over from World War II -- and the agents operating from its top were apparently extremely competent. They won the coveted Travis Trophy, awarded by the NSA each year to the best surveillance post worldwide, four times.

'A Perpetual State of Domination'

Josef Foschepoth, a German historian, refers to German-American relations as "a perpetual state of domination." He speaks of a "common law developed over the course of 60 years" allowing for uncontrolled US surveillance in Germany. Just how comprehensive this surveillance was -- and remains -- can be seen from the so-called SIGAD lists, which are part of the Snowden archive. SIGAD stands for "Signal Intelligence Activity Designator" and refers to intelligence sources that intercept radio or telephone signals. Every US monitoring facility carries a code name made up of letters and numbers.

Documents indicate that the Americans often opened new SIGAD facilities and closed old ones over the decades, with a total of around 150 prior to the fall of the Wall. The technology used for such surveillance operations has advanced tremendously since then, with modern fiber-optic cables largely supplanting satellite communications. Data has become digital, making the capture of large quantities of it far easier.

The Snowden documents include a 2007 list that goes all the way back to 1917 and includes the names of many former and still active US military installations as well as other US facilities that are indicated as sites of data collection. It notes that a number of the codes listed are no longer in operation, and a deactivation date is included for at least a dozen. In other instances, the document states that the closing date is either unknown or that the SIGADs in question are still in operation. These latter codes include sites in Frankfurt, Berlin, Bad Aibling and Stuttgart -- all places still known to have an active NSA presence.

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New Snowden Revelations on NSA Spying in Germany


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