> The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”.
At this point, they can give any plausible reason, it wouldn't make a difference. They're just bending over to the US... It's surprising they lasted that long already :-/
That is a deeply condescending statement that does nothing but display your own ignorance of the norms and constraints of international diplomacy.
Ecuador would at this point in time be fully justified in declaring that Assange was no longer welcome on their territory and expelling him from his hidey-hole. That they are merely cutting off his internet is extremely generous of them given the trouble and expense he has caused them.
I imagine if this keeps up, the Ecuadorian government will follow other articles in the written commitment and will take away his cell phone, impose a two week curfew and will not give him any pocket money in foreseeable future.
That was something suggested during the blackout of his internet access in 2016-2017, but that would certainly be grounds to rescind the Ecuadorian Welcome Mat.
I would be surprised if a Pringles can can do it. This stuff is symmetrical. If signal can get in and out from one end, it can also get in/out from the other, meaning MI6 would be able to listen in on their diplomatic correspondence. So there’s probably a serious Faraday cage around the place.
A Faraday cage at building-scale is just that, a cage to attenuate omnidirectional signals.
The Pringles antenna for wifi, or a Yagi or parabolic dish, is strongly directional and can pass through the voids in a cage when aligned. It just needs 12.5cm between the cage elements, like a window.
Window can too be a part of the cage, if special glass is used. I guess he could open a window, but I don’t think I’d test fate quite so brazenly if I was in his position.
It makes me wonder just how much of this is actually going on in the neighborhood around the Ecuadoran embassy .. there surely must be sympathetic folks living in the area that are more than willing to share their Wifi with Assange .. has anyone done any scanning in the area and discovered the open "JoinThisNetWorkJulian"-style wifi SSID's that are bound to be around there?
Come to think of it, the nature of the Wifi environment around the embassy must, at the very least, be an interesting subject for a pen-test white-paper ..
> I have already fully served any theoretical (I haven’t been charged) ‘bail violation’ whilst in prison and under house arrest. So why is there a warrant for my arrest?”
Not in the least bit arrogant. "Well, I hid out here because I feared extradition. That should basically count as my sentence for violating bail, right?"
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/651/. For someone who spends his time distributing leaked government documents, he sure has a … peculiar understanding of how the law works. (At least, how it works 99.9% of the time).
I don't mean this to sound like a cheap shot at Julian because, as many do, I have mixed feelings about him. However, what you are describing is CLASSIC narcissism.
That doesn't effect his work, or shouldn't really, but it does explain his personal actions and martyr complex.
Pretty poor is the state that when faced with "smear/assassinate this person's character" comes up with "may have had consensual sex with questionable consent about the use of a condom with a female".
That's the best the forces of the US/ UK/ Swedish intelligence communities could come up with?
> The move came after Assange tweeted on Monday challenging Britain’s accusation that Russia was responsible for the nerve agent poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury earlier this month.
So it's actually not so wrong to think that Russia is not >proven< guilty after all.
I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this time.
Of course we don't know the whole story, but shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?
Also, why would the UK-Ecuador relations be in danger of a tweet of a fugitive?
> I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this time.
Putin is given far too much credit. But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack.
> shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?
Largely Assange has been an anti-liberal democracy apologist for the last 5+ years. A sad turn for someone starting at a radical anarchist position, but it's been pretty obvious. He's also largely destroyed any of Wikileaks rep as a honest broker and reduced it to the reputation of "anti-US intelligence". AFAICT, he's operating as a (probably unwitting) Russian front these days.
When he disappeared from view for a few weeks before the election and the wikileaks twitter drastically changed tone was what did it for me. There was something really weird going on there - as an example, the twitter refused to sign anything with their public key to prove it was still controlled by the same group.
> But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack.
There is strong circumstantial evidence, but proof is a slightly different game. It would be nice, for example, to have a clear motive for why Russia might have poisoned the man. According to the wiki article the Russian justice system had sentenced him to 13 years in a penal colony in 2006, and then handed him over in a prisoners exchange in 2010. What happened to upgrade that to a death sentence in 2018 that the GRU didn't know about in 2006-2010?
Evidence should be a high bar. We might suspect the Russians, but lets not pretend there is any clear public evidence beyond government say-so. The government can be wrong, just like the rest of us.
He kept working against the Russians after the exchange. Lately, he was seeking permission to return to Russia. His phone was off for 4 hours before he was found unconscious.(can't find the sources right now, on mobile, but you can trust me ;) )
He took a meeting, hoping to be allowed back, and instead was poisoned. Sounds plausible to me, but then again its really similar to the plot of McMafia.
But it just as easily could be a false flag. I don't trust the Orwellian British anymore than I do the ruskies.
There is just too little public info to say for sure. For example, how are the Brits so sure it was a Novochik agent? Especially since they are designed to be untraceable.
.. and in order to do so, you must of course have access to the materials first of all, in order to create the spectrometric signature upon which your comparison - and thus, evidence - is made.
So, no. You can't claim its only available in Russia, if you've positively identified it using these signatures .. since you'd have had to have the material to compare with, yourself ..
I didn't claim that only Russia was able to make the chemical agent.
I don't entertain the false flag narrative because it is so difficult to disprove. If the UK was willing to kill this man and endanger the lives of their citizens to destabilize Russian relations, then pretty much anything is possible. Even if this was some special nerve agent that only Russia is able to make, the UK could simply kill the man with a similar nerve agent and claim it was the special Russia one. If you can't trust the UK government here, than they could easily fabricate or claim they have hard proof of Russian involvement. You also have to ask yourself what hard proof of Russian involvement would even look like, and how realistic it would be to find such a thing even if Russia were to be involved.
That it coincidentally happens during a coordinated anti-Russian media onslaught should be taken into consideration. The US/UK are not above fabricating evidence when it suits them, as their post-9/11 tactics have made clear.
Since September 11th the US and UK have showed they're not even willing and able to organise the covert manufacture of nerve agents to "discover" in Iraq to avoid many leading political figures being permanently discredited when nothing was found, never mind manufacturing and using nerve agents to bump off a couple of Russians in a public place in Britain for no obvious political benefit.
If you genuinely think the UK needed a couple more dead Russian dissidents (and pretty unsympathetic ones at that) to justify stricter sanctions on Russia, you really, really don't understand the relevant politics.
Russia has very little to gain and lots to lose from this shit move. This is not a move that you make on the international checkerboard. Stop taking us for idiots.
Russia has been doing this for a long time, for example Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 [1]. The goal is to remind the "traitors" that the punishment can come at any time and make them live in fear.
It reminds me how some religious communities go after the people who don't follow their rules even after they flee to other country [2].
Last time a Russian double agent died from a poisoning in the UK, the person the victim named as his murderer on his deathbed was elected to the Russian State Duma. Stop taking us for idiots.
Yeah, the Russian intelligence agent known to met the suspect shortly before the poisoning and been present at other areas where polonium was found, known to have rushed back to Russia to have a medical test, and then been named by the suspect as the man handing out the fateful teacup is definitely an unlikely candidate to have carried out the poisoning, and the reason he's since sat in the State Duma and hosted a TV show called "Traitors" is because the Russian state apparatus is completely convinced he was actually a friend and ally of defector Litvinenko and not the man who bumped him off.
Nobody is stupid enough to honestly believe that. Nobody. Jog on troll.
An assassination attempt is made with a nerve gas only Russia is known to have been developing and suddenly we should give them the benefit of the doubt? Seriously? After they did the exact same thing already, in the same country, with polonium?
It's sort of a weird story, on the one hand it's apparently not hard to make and it's been known about for some time[0], and it has a clearly Russian name with a clearly Russian pedigree. It makes for a poor assassination agent if you care about being traced.
On the other hand, having a clearly Russian pedigree may be precisely the reason it was used; either to send a strong message to would-be dissenters in the Russian intelligence sphere or to make it look like a Russian hit.
The same thing happened with the radioactive tea. The perpetrators must have known it would be traced back to the source, and that is exactly why you use a substance like that, the murder is a byproduct of sending a message that will be heard loud-and-clear by the people you are targeting.
You can't see how Russian intelligence might be clearly motivated to add an ex-agency traitor to a growing list enemies of the state killed when they think they're in safe overseas exile to send out a nobody can escape us message even though it didn't think it worth lobbying legislators to rewrite sentencing laws to do things by the book back in 2006? Really?
The UK government can be wrong, but it the absence of any plausible alternative candidates, it's probably right to conclude the perpetrator is the party known to have carried out similar attacks against similar targets using similar deniable but too sophisticated to be regular criminal means using a murder weapon identified as one they are known to have created. Especially when their public response is trolling and branding the victim a traitor rather than alarm.
> Also, why would the UK-Ecuador relations be in danger of a tweet of a fugitive?
Because the fugitive is occupying a Ecuadorian diplomatic facility in the UK and using it inconsistently with it's diplomatic function, which, if permitted by Ecuador, is a violation by Ecuador of Article 41, Paragraph 3 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
>I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this time.
Please lay out evidence supporting this claim. Given you're being rational about it, you should be able to do so.
How ... convenient all of Wikileaks were damaging to the government of the USA and somehow never to the government of Russia. And, of course, Mr Assange had his show on RT (Russia Today). No way he is a Russian agent. No way.
There's a difference between a whistleblower wanting to expose things that violate the constitution because they want those things to stop, and a foreign agent exposing the same actions, but with the intent to destabilize people's trust in their government.
The end result might be the same. But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.
Update to add my bias here: This is why I can respect the actions of Edward Snowden, but find Julian Assange completely untrustworthy.
>But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.
Well I guess we have to agree to disagree then. If a "foreign spy" reports that Dow Checmial is dumping pollution in the river, I'm gonna question Dow first, not the spy.
You're being either extremely naive or intentionally obtuse.
No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored. To use your example, if there were reason to believe that this spy was revealing this information on behalf of Dow's competitors to influence the market and shield/draw attention away from their own malfeasance, that's a concern. The source and the intent of the source does actually matter.
No, it wasn't at all. The allegation was that Assange was selectively releasing info on Clinton and the DNC that was obtained by Russian hackers for the purpose of swaying the election in favor of Trump, or at least severely damaging Clinton. The issue was never that the information was false. Even the DNC itself confirmed that the emails were theirs.
More broadly, it's that Assange uses the guise of a seemingly-neutral Teller of Truths to dole out information for the purpose of manipulation, either for his own or other people's agendas.
I don't find most sources of information trustworthy. I just want to get info from opposing sources with conflicting goals, which helps put together the whole picture.
I full support Russia Today (RT) despite being obviously backed by the Russian government because they are willing to talk about things that no US media outlet will touch. It's despicable that Google publicly and vocally denounces them and de-rates their results in search and news.
> Most of what comes out of US mainstream media is propaganda.
No, it isn't. There is a lot of pretty good journalism and then there is a bunch of trash. But the balance - for now - is still on the good side. If Rupert Murdoch kicked the bucket it might get a bit better still.
> I support alternate sources in conjunction with those.
Such as?
FOX vs Russia Today is not 'alternate' by any definition.
But if you want to compare the Washington Post with the BBC or Al Jazeera then you might find some balance between those.
> What I don't support is getting all your info from a single narrative.
Agreed, but which narratives you pick still makes a huge difference even when you are trying to discount for bias.
> Edit: there are obviously a lot of brainwashed people or actual agents in this thread doing some unfair downvoting.
Or maybe they just don't subscribe to your views and are letting you know their disagreement by downvoting you.
If you think HN is full of brainwashed people or actual agents because of a couple of downvotes I suspect the problem is on your end.
I've actually read manufacturing consent and while I agree with the general idea that everything that we consume is propaganda to some degree I disagree that CNN is at the same level as Pravda in Russia.
There is definitely a case to be made for mass media being complicit in all this but not to the extent that actual propaganda mechanisms are put to work. The state does not own CNN, it does not own the Washington Post and it does not own the Guardian. Ironically, it does own the BBC and there are definitely times when you just knew that there was more to a story than what you could read but on the whole the 'manufacturing of consent' is not the same as outright propaganda.
For that you'd have to take a step back and look at some actual propaganda to see the difference. In the United States FOX comes pretty close (though not their 'hard news' section, that is still more or less factual), in Russia there are the various state owned media outlets and in China everything that the party sanctioned press will print would count as propaganda.
The rest of the media can - still, and who knows for how much longer - be held to a slightly higher standard.
You are moving the goalposts. We aren't talking about Pravda, we are talking about Russia Today, and we aren't talking about how bad the propaganda is, but whether it is propaganda at all.
Also, you are misunderstanding how propaganda works in the US if you think the outlet needs to be state owned. I suggest the following article:
I definitely consider Russia Today as a propaganda mouthpiece of the Russian State. I have no illusions about being able to operate something like Russia Today without permission from the state.
As for the state of affairs in the USA: I believe the USA is fundamentally broken in many ways. Born from violence and with an extreme focus on money in all aspects of life it has some pretty bad elements that amount to legalized corruption. The MIC, the number of people imprisoned, the two party system, the evangelical element, American exceptionalism, the fun fetish, the power of lobbyists, the power of money in elections all amount to flaws that each individually could be fatal, and that collectively are a ticking time bomb under the most powerful country in the world.
Which way that will go is anybody's guess, I personally am horrified that someone like Trump could make it to the position of president of the USA, but then again, if Ronald Reagan could then why not someone even less qualified?
Time will tell where it is all headed, but - in spite of you r links - I refuse to believe that all American media are complicit in this, even though I do believe that they could do a much better job at keeping the politicians sharp.
> there are obviously a lot of brainwashed people or actual agents in this thread doing some unfair downvoting
Know your audience. The only acceptable stance on HN is rabid and unsubstantiated Russiaphobia. Either don't comment or find a different community, on this topic.
You're permitted to have an opinion on typesafe languages, tabs vs spaces, etc. Dissent from CIA or GCHQ talking points? Not so much.
Well, I'm pretty outspoken and I have a general anti-corporate streak running through me and I do not like the way the USA has comported itself on the world stage since 9/11 much. They had all the credit that they could possibly wish for and they totally fucked it up. The fact that my comments in that vein are not categorically downvoted (rather the opposite) should be a pretty strong proof that it is definitely possible to walk your own course on HN without being harassed. Where HN draws the line is: stuff that is unsourced or plainly made up or crackpot, falsehoods and apologist stuff. That will get you downvoted in a hurry.
There is no concrete evidence made publicly available whatsoever in the Russia hysteria that has been going on for 18 months. Bernie Sanders, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Jill Stein, Glenn Greenwald, and anyone who criticizes the left at all, even if they are leftist themselves, get called Russian stooges at this point.
You're aware that a whole bunch of people have already been indicted and have admitted guilt?
At this point in time the 'Russia hysteria' is on pretty solid footing, the question is not whether or not there is something there but how high up it goes and who knew what and when.
Manafort will almost certainly end up being convicted and whether or not he will spend the rest of his life in jail hinges on Trump's ability to pardon him.
Whoever calls Sanders, Assange, Snowdon Stein and Greenwald a Russian Stooge has a problem, but that's not my problem.
The real issue is that even though none of them are with any likelihood - as far as I can see at the moment - Russian stooges does not mean that there are no Russian stooges. And if you put Manafort and Gates in there and listed Assange, Papadopoulos and mr. van der Zwaan in there as useful idiots I would probably agree with the list.
Incidentally, Greenwald is doing a pretty good job at keeping an even keel in general, and I totally support his debunking bogus claims. But that does not mean that all claims are bogus.
Is your point that there are no charges or that the charges are irrelevant? Something else? Rather than argue for the sake of argument, if you know something, put it on the table and move the ball forward.
> "collusion with Russians to interfere wit US elections."
While others may make that claim, and it would be included in the scope of the investigation, that's not its only remit. Nor, from my reading, does 'jacquesm make that claim. But he can argue his case better than I.
If you have been following this at all then none of this should be news to you, if you haven't been following this then I do not understand some of the positions you have been taking in this thread.
No, do your own homework. You can't ask others to prove a negative. By the link you provided yourself, there is nothing in there about any indictments regarding collusion with Russia to interfere with the US election.
I think you fail to understand how a typical special counsel investigation works.
So the fact that there are no indictments regarding to collusion to Russia at this point in time means absolutely nothing. But if there still are no such indictments when it is all over it would be safe to conclude there was no such thing.
Yes, but since there is no public evidence, and no indictments, why is the mainstream media pumping this russia fear narrative non-stop for the last 18 months? That's the topic of this thread. Why is everyone so damn sure of the truth when there is no evidence or charges?
You said in this thread:
> You're aware that a whole bunch of people have already been indicted and have admitted guilt?
Because you can safely assume that if it has happened whoever did it did not leave a box and a card with a pointer saying 'smoking gun'. Have some patience, it will all come out in time, either way. For now there is a whole lot more evidence that at least some people didn't mind playing fast and loose with the truth and that alone should be cause enough for worry. And no, none of that is 'the topic of this thread', you made it that, the topic of this thread is Assange losing comms privileges.
And the media isn't pumping any 'fear' narrative, it is for the most part reporting that which is either leaked or found in court documents.
So, nobody is 'damn sure of the truth', and neither are you and no evidence or charges does not mean there won't be any. Or do you mean to say the investigation should be closed before it has run its course because you think there never will be any charges? And if that's true what does it matter? In that case you should want it to conclude because that is the only way this thing will go away in a way that it will stay away.
I'm saying that with a straight face because I'm not feeling any 'fear' from whatever the media wrote. If you feel fear that's your problem, not mine. Russiagate is a pretty apt description, and any comparison with PEARL HARBOR would seem to be historically pretty inaccurate, even if it is all true, which remains to be seen. But there is more than just a little bit of smoke, let's hope there is no fire because if there is a fire and hard proof is obtained it will have vast consequences. Better hope it all isn't true that would be the best outcome.
Sure, I support BBC which has a very strong propaganda to news ratio. I also support RT and Al Jazeera. I do not support CNN, because it's ratio is so high it's offensive to me.
An unfortunate element of propaganda is that it is designed to not be detected by the majority of those receiving it, as evidenced by the down votes you are receiving. I don't understand how the HN crowd which is clearly full of very intelligent people don't see that sources like BBC and CNN are clearly propaganda outlets.
At some point an individual has to decide whether to try to fight the beliefs and behaviors of others, or to exploit that they hold/engage in such for some ends.
Intent is how we judge the veracity of the information and whether it's slanted or not. I could tell you that Argentina sank a Chinese fishing vessel. Or I could tell you that Argentina sank a Chinese fishing vessel that was fishing in Argentine territorial waters. Both are true statements. One of them is incomplete and can lead you to judging the event differently. And unfortunately you, like most of us, aren't in a position to have personally witnessed the event. Thus you cannot objectively validate the veracity of what I have stated. So we have to rely on various heuristics, things like reputation of the speaker and what we understand about that speaker's biases and intention as well as historical context of the information presented.
Your example is perfect. You can judge the truth value of whether the boat actually went below the water line regardless of who said it. If you make further judgements on other aspects based on the source that's your own mistake and nothing to do with whether the boat actually sank or not.
No, they're telling us selective elements of the truth (e.g., releasing only information on one political party during an election to sway that election) to destabilize our society and government to increase their own power and shield themselves from scrutiny and criticism. Yes, that is pretty disgusting.
Selectivity of rule-enforcers is a major tool of warfare. If sneezing in public is made illegal, but only Bangladeshis are arrested for it, that's not OK.
No, Russia is looking after its own interests in much the same way that America did for many years. After all, it's not as if the Americans are lily white when it comes to influencing other people's elections, deposing properly elected governments abroad and funding revolutions when it suited their best interests.
So there is a huge amount of hypocrisy there. But that does not excuse Russia for meddling in the affairs of The USA or Europe either.
They're all guilty of this, some more than others.
That is so, which is why I see Russia no more evil than USA.
In fact, less so, given the historial record. Funding revolutions, killing 100 000 civilians in another country on other side of the planet from them, was not on Russias list of deeds for past 25 years.
That may simply be a function of how little leaks out of Russia. Reasonably closed states that tend to murder their opposition have a bit of an advantage here. If Snowden or Manning had been Russian I would totally expect them to be killed to serve as an example to other potential leakers.
The point is that Assange/Wikileaks, while he/it may not have (and is unlikely to have, IMO) started out as a Russian asset, he was clearly compromised and has behaved as one for the last 6 years or so.
He was getting low on funds, and then was cutoff from the credit card system for contributions. shortly after that, he started getting RU appearances. RUS influence likely a combination of providing critical funding and also developing Kompromat - compromising, coercing information, whether true or not.
In short, he's not a free, independent agent working to strengthen democratic principles and institutions.
(note that 'asset' does not mean necessarily the classic willing spy, could be merely duped or coerced)
The USA is the strongest country in the world politically, economically and militarily. Who better to criticize than the USA if the goal is to change the status quo?
"Damaging" Russia makes no sense. They don't make the rules!
"Changing the status quo" is a moronic goal. You should be aiming to make life better for the most people in the world. Does increasing the relative power and status of political regimes that provide less freedom and lowering the relative power and status of regimes that provide more freedom going to accomplish that?
And you appear to be a (probably unwitting) agent of US propaganda.
Edit: I'm getting down voted to hell, so I'll clarify: the narrative that Assange is a Russian agent is absolutely US propaganda. The US government has been smearing Assange and Wikileaks for at least 8 years, and was even caught red-handed hiring Palantir and HBGary to enact a media and infiltration campaign to destroy Wikileaks:
I don't even know where to begin with this. Is the goal of Wikileaks to be "damaging to governments"? Or is it to reveal corruption and help the people? Why do you care about corruption in Russia? If you're American you should be glad there is so much focus on your government.
It sounds like you're describing a game with two players where one is being disproportionally punished for breaking the rules.
It started out as 'reveal corruption and help people' and somewhere along the way morphed into 'USA antagonists-R-us', or even just plain old 'anti-establishment'.
There is a good chance that reviewing all that Iraq war footage resulted in some good old radicalization.
Please stop with the McCarthyism red-scare nonsense. It's time to admit that all this Russia nonsense serves only to take the spotlight off of Hillary's corrupt campaign. Any Russian election "interference" was negligible compared to Citzen's United (the real source of propaganda) and DNC corruption.
No, he definitely wasn't/isn't a Russian agent. You'd have known because then he would have fled to the Russian embassy instead.
Assange basically did what he could to damage the interests of the USA, and probably succeeded wildly beyond his dreams. He's made a whole bunch of stupid calls and he's blown his own credibility and that of WikiLeaks by showing an overt agenda instead of just being a 'dumb pipe'.
Funny though, the one time that he did act as a dumb pipe everybody was screaming blue murder about how irresponsible that was.
> No, he definitely wasn't/isn't a Russian agent. You'd have known because then he would have fled to the Russian embassy instead.
If Assange is a Russian asset, he is one that it is critical for Russia to conceal it's connection to if he is to continue to have value. Not running to Russia's embassy has helped him continue to spread propaganda that serves Russian interests, so it's not incompatible with him being an (even actively managed) Russian asset.
Sure, but it overcomplicates something that doesn't need to be made more complicated to be understood. If the simplest explanation works then that is usually the right one.
In this case: Assange/WikiLeaks have an agenda: to hit America where it hurts, by exposing their actions on the world stage and by creating as big a rift between the different political sides in the United States as they could manage. In that they are no different from Al Queada or the Russians, their goals align and so you get some pretty strange bedfellows.
Assange is a 'useful idiot' to Russia when he's go between for content hacked from US servers by the Russians that they can't be seen to release directly.
I agree with you that it is not incompatible but it is too paranoid for me to take into account until there is some actual proof. He could be a double agent too, he could be anything. But my money is on him being an idealistic, narcissistic hacker with a political agenda that amounts to 'Reduce American Influence in any way possible'. And if that involves cooperating with the Russians (knowingly or otherwise) that does not necessarily mean he is a Russian agent.
By contrast, Paul Manafort, who made many millions of dollars working for the Russians and who has his hands all over the 2016 election cycle and the damage done to Ukraine to me would qualify as a Russian agent.
I'm pretty sure if there was any proof that Assange was an actual Russian agent it would have been used to pressure Ecuador to turn him over since the Ecuadorians would definitely not want to be seen as 'harboring a Russian agent' versus 'harboring a left wing anti-American hacker'. The former doesn't play nearly as good at the home front as the latter.
I suspect the intended read is "a left-wing anti-American hacker". Reading it as "a left wing anti hacker", which would be a valid alternate reading following your suggestion, doesn't make sense to me.
'jacquesm, I have a couple of extra hyphens if you're running low.
> In this case: Assange/WikiLeaks have an agenda: to hit America where it hurts, by exposing their actions on the world stage and by creating as big a rift between the different political sides in the United States as they could manage
That might explain Assange’s US-related actions, but not those related to Catalonia or a number of other issues, all of which align with Russian interests and Russian propaganda conducted through other channels.
If Assange isn't a Russian asset, he simply has an amazing coincidental multidimensionsl confluence of interests with Russia. At some point, collaboration becomes more plausible than coincidence.
I'm sorry, I don't buy it. You may be right but Assange may merely be pointing out the irony of the situation. I've been wondering about this parallel myself and I'm fairly sure I'm not a Russian agent. If anything beyond 'Anti American' I would propose that he's Anti Establishment and that aligns his goals with Russia perfectly except for when it comes to Russia, which he is most likely a bit more afraid of than most other nation states.
The whole Spanish argument that secession is 'against the constitution of Spain and therefore invalid' doesn't hold much water with me, obviously no country will be happy about a part of it wanting to break away and the Spanish government handled the whole affair about as heavy handed and wrong as they possibly could.
Keep in mind that Spain is afraid of something that it doesn't want the general public to realize: that the Basques and the Catalans have as much claim to wanting to be independent as the Irish, the Scots, the Slowaks, the Czechs and so on had, and that Europe to a large extent managed to accommodate these smaller chunks of larger entities because it made the dominance of Germany and France all that much stronger.
And that circles us back to Germany, which is why it is funny how Germany is now 'damned if they do and damned if they don't', if they extradite then they will alienate the Catalonians (which, incidentally is going to cause a lot of trouble for German visitors to Catalonia this summer) and if they don't then they will be at loggerheads with Spain which they need badly in the EU.
So this is quite the little clusterfuck and Assange/Russians role is just bit players, anything to fuck up the various houses of power is to their advantage so I'm not too surprised to see Assange do this.
Neither Snowden (living in Russia), Manning nor Assange strike me as 'Russian agents', though they definitely did as much more more damage to US interests than if they had been.
A couple of days later... So, re-reading this thread you could make the same case for Trump being a Russian asset based on the 'actions that make no sense' including not implementing the sanctions, the pro-Russian modifications of the republican platform regarding the US position vs Ukraine and so on. And yet, I'd find - absent proof - that just as hard to stomach as seeing Assange as a Russian agent.
Given this statement, it is important to remind people not to fall into an appeal to motive. It is important to bring into question the motives for presenting information, but not to dismiss it as false due to such a motive being present.
You realize that they can only release what is given to them, right?
This criticism only makes sense if they are sitting on a pile of leaked material that is unflattering Russia. There’s no reason to believe that is the case.
You'd have to put absolutely zero effort into researching their history and earlier leaks to come to the conclusion that they have anything to do with Russia. Even the crazy conspiracy theory that they are actually a CIA operation themselves makes more sense than this, and that one is pretty silly.
Once you start down this hole it can be hard to know what to believe by it's very nature. Hard evidence is hard to come by, and absolutes like "no reason to believe" become hard to justify. There are at least some reports that Assange turned down leaks related to the Kremlin.
Here's the plan. We form a large enough mob of people who are dressed to look exactly like Assange (wigs and all), then he can just run into the mob and disperse, make contact with sympathizers, and flee to a less oppressive country.
I think you'll find it much harder to find enough Assange sympathizers to pull this off than it was a few years ago. He's been working pretty hard to reduce his - and WikiLeaks - image over the last couple of years.
Personally I think that by now he should get it over with and walk out, be arrested, do the time for skipping bail and then he can put his extradition theory to the test. The current political leadership in the USA is about as pro Assange as it is ever going to get.
His opponents -- ie: the entire western MSM apparatus -- have been working harder at that, and certainly done much more damage to Wikileaks than Assange could ever manage. Though I don't see how he's damaged the image of Wikileaks or himself much in the last couple of years. With Wikileaks' good works around the 2016 US elections you'd think would have won them plenty of goodwiil -- exposing the sham that is the US electoral system directly from the mouths of its brightest and most powerful.
That's where the immense, ongoing smear via Western MSM outlets comes in though, I suppose.
> walk out, be arrested, do the time
Definitely, just do it. It's easy for us to say, but imagine how terrifying that must be for him: who knows whose dungeon he'll end up in, but that he'll be effectively neutralized in his efficacy in regards to Wikileaks permanently is almost certain -- at the very least!
If your enemy is a state actor, playing by its rules can only guarantee the worst possible outcome. You would be lucky if you end up in prison for life. Because "suicide" is also a very real possibility.
Police is also generally useless if a crowd is not willing to let someone get arrested, especially a public figure. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQ_zw_vUrU
Doesn't Assange have a 'dead mans switch' which will trigger when he doesn't have internet access after a given amount of time? There were articles about a false alarm last year maybe along these lines. Curious if this will result in a dump of more content or something else.
which I understand we're all encouraged to share widely in the event the key to decrypt one or more of them is released. I don't know what's in any of the insurance files.
At this point, the insurance files must contain something absolutely vile and heinous. I really can't imagine what is in them unless of course its the infamous "Hillary killing and eating a baby" video that is rumored to be among the stash of the cognescenti ..
Assange's communications have been cut down due to the overwhelming pressure of the Spanish government into Ecuador. This is clearly explained in the official communication of the Ecuador government : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZY7pY1WkAALgkz.jpg (could not find a better link)
The reason is that he was tweeting again in favour of Catalan Republicans, more precisely against the current wave of political prisoners that Spain is taking, including probably the last Catalan elected president, now under custody in Germany.
This is confirmed by Assange himself in his last tweet "I have no right to twit about political prisoners."
The guy is now a hero to many catalans. He will be an honorary citizen of the forthcoming Catalan Republic, and there are already talks of erecting a statue of him in the center of Barcelona!
Did you read the article? It includes your image, and says that is not the reason this time. The example you quote was when he was given his first/last warning. This time he was cut because he commented on the UK/Russia poisoning thing.
> Wikileaks editor @julianassange has been gagged and isolated by order of Ecuador's new president @Lenin Moreno. He cannot tweet, speak to the press, recieve visitors or make telephone calls. Ecuador demanded that he remove the following Tweet:
> [Assange's tweet] "In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."
> This is the only tweet the government of Ecuador asked to be removed. In an email to his London lawyers on 27 March at 14:54 BST the Ecuadorian foreign ministry referenced no other matter.
Hopefully your downvote is some due to automated mechanism.
Complete shot in the dark-time.
Since many say that Russia is behind Wikileaks and Russia said they would respond to the diplomat expulsion.. Russia somehow pressured Ecuador into cutting his internet to trigger Assange's dead mans switch?
161 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] thread> The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”.
Ecuador would at this point in time be fully justified in declaring that Assange was no longer welcome on their territory and expelling him from his hidey-hole. That they are merely cutting off his internet is extremely generous of them given the trouble and expense he has caused them.
What changed their mind? His behavior certainly hasn't changed.
Unless they threaten to throw him out for accessing the internet.
The Pringles antenna for wifi, or a Yagi or parabolic dish, is strongly directional and can pass through the voids in a cage when aligned. It just needs 12.5cm between the cage elements, like a window.
Come to think of it, the nature of the Wifi environment around the embassy must, at the very least, be an interesting subject for a pen-test white-paper ..
Not in the least bit arrogant. "Well, I hid out here because I feared extradition. That should basically count as my sentence for violating bail, right?"
That doesn't effect his work, or shouldn't really, but it does explain his personal actions and martyr complex.
Given his scenario, information he has, he may simply find himself resolved to a very difficult life, willing to work to maximize it's impact.
There's no justification for his extradition to Sweden as they no longer have a warrant for his arrest. The UK has him under arbitrary detention.
Julian is being unfairly persecuted because his method of journalism is effective and seeks to shed light on corrupt systems of power.
That's the best the forces of the US/ UK/ Swedish intelligence communities could come up with?
So it's actually not so wrong to think that Russia is not >proven< guilty after all.
I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this time.
Of course we don't know the whole story, but shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?
Also, why would the UK-Ecuador relations be in danger of a tweet of a fugitive?
Because he's a fugitive that they are sheltering. They've taken responsibility for him.
Putin is given far too much credit. But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack.
> shouldn't people like Assange reveal it?
Largely Assange has been an anti-liberal democracy apologist for the last 5+ years. A sad turn for someone starting at a radical anarchist position, but it's been pretty obvious. He's also largely destroyed any of Wikileaks rep as a honest broker and reduced it to the reputation of "anti-US intelligence". AFAICT, he's operating as a (probably unwitting) Russian front these days.
I agree, he changed dramatically sometime around or during the Trump campaign; I hardly recognize him any longer.
There is strong circumstantial evidence, but proof is a slightly different game. It would be nice, for example, to have a clear motive for why Russia might have poisoned the man. According to the wiki article the Russian justice system had sentenced him to 13 years in a penal colony in 2006, and then handed him over in a prisoners exchange in 2010. What happened to upgrade that to a death sentence in 2018 that the GRU didn't know about in 2006-2010?
Evidence should be a high bar. We might suspect the Russians, but lets not pretend there is any clear public evidence beyond government say-so. The government can be wrong, just like the rest of us.
He took a meeting, hoping to be allowed back, and instead was poisoned. Sounds plausible to me, but then again its really similar to the plot of McMafia.
But it just as easily could be a false flag. I don't trust the Orwellian British anymore than I do the ruskies.
There is just too little public info to say for sure. For example, how are the Brits so sure it was a Novochik agent? Especially since they are designed to be untraceable.
So, no. You can't claim its only available in Russia, if you've positively identified it using these signatures .. since you'd have had to have the material to compare with, yourself ..
I don't entertain the false flag narrative because it is so difficult to disprove. If the UK was willing to kill this man and endanger the lives of their citizens to destabilize Russian relations, then pretty much anything is possible. Even if this was some special nerve agent that only Russia is able to make, the UK could simply kill the man with a similar nerve agent and claim it was the special Russia one. If you can't trust the UK government here, than they could easily fabricate or claim they have hard proof of Russian involvement. You also have to ask yourself what hard proof of Russian involvement would even look like, and how realistic it would be to find such a thing even if Russia were to be involved.
this is the dicey bit with spy games. part of the goal is to ensure courtroom proof isn't available.
> why Russia might have poisoned the man
Kill double agents as warnings? disloyal spies aren't exactly popular.
My impression is Russia is moving to an execution phase for a plan of action.
If you genuinely think the UK needed a couple more dead Russian dissidents (and pretty unsympathetic ones at that) to justify stricter sanctions on Russia, you really, really don't understand the relevant politics.
It reminds me how some religious communities go after the people who don't follow their rules even after they flee to other country [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Assassination
[2] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2017/05/25/we-will-set-them-str...
https://cs9.pikabu.ru/post_img/2018/03/13/8/1520947357114473...
And
http://i12.pixs.ru/storage/2/3/6/Bezimyanni_3398267_29746236...
Nobody is stupid enough to honestly believe that. Nobody. Jog on troll.
On the other hand, having a clearly Russian pedigree may be precisely the reason it was used; either to send a strong message to would-be dissenters in the Russian intelligence sphere or to make it look like a Russian hit.
Spooks doing what spooks do, it seems.
0: https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/556148/
The UK government can be wrong, but it the absence of any plausible alternative candidates, it's probably right to conclude the perpetrator is the party known to have carried out similar attacks against similar targets using similar deniable but too sophisticated to be regular criminal means using a murder weapon identified as one they are known to have created. Especially when their public response is trolling and branding the victim a traitor rather than alarm.
He's turned Wikileaks into his own personal vendetta machine.
Because the fugitive is occupying a Ecuadorian diplomatic facility in the UK and using it inconsistently with it's diplomatic function, which, if permitted by Ecuador, is a violation by Ecuador of Article 41, Paragraph 3 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Please lay out evidence supporting this claim. Given you're being rational about it, you should be able to do so.
How about judging the information on its merits, not its source? Why does it matter one wink if you don't like the leakers?
There's a difference between a whistleblower wanting to expose things that violate the constitution because they want those things to stop, and a foreign agent exposing the same actions, but with the intent to destabilize people's trust in their government.
The end result might be the same. But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.
Update to add my bias here: This is why I can respect the actions of Edward Snowden, but find Julian Assange completely untrustworthy.
Well I guess we have to agree to disagree then. If a "foreign spy" reports that Dow Checmial is dumping pollution in the river, I'm gonna question Dow first, not the spy.
No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored. To use your example, if there were reason to believe that this spy was revealing this information on behalf of Dow's competitors to influence the market and shield/draw attention away from their own malfeasance, that's a concern. The source and the intent of the source does actually matter.
That was precisely the intention behind characterizing Assange as a Russian spy during the election.
More broadly, it's that Assange uses the guise of a seemingly-neutral Teller of Truths to dole out information for the purpose of manipulation, either for his own or other people's agendas.
Exactly. This accusation was intended to be equal parts distraction from the contents and ad hominem.
They also mooted the idea that he was a pedophile for a while, but it didn't really take.
>either for his own or other people's agendas.
But of course. She literally expressed a desire to see him murdered because of him doling out secrets. Who would take kindly to that?
I full support Russia Today (RT) despite being obviously backed by the Russian government because they are willing to talk about things that no US media outlet will touch. It's despicable that Google publicly and vocally denounces them and de-rates their results in search and news.
What I don't support is getting all your info from a single narrative.
Edit: there are obviously a lot of brainwashed people or actual agents in this thread doing some unfair downvoting.
No, it isn't. There is a lot of pretty good journalism and then there is a bunch of trash. But the balance - for now - is still on the good side. If Rupert Murdoch kicked the bucket it might get a bit better still.
> I support alternate sources in conjunction with those.
Such as?
FOX vs Russia Today is not 'alternate' by any definition.
But if you want to compare the Washington Post with the BBC or Al Jazeera then you might find some balance between those.
> What I don't support is getting all your info from a single narrative.
Agreed, but which narratives you pick still makes a huge difference even when you are trying to discount for bias.
> Edit: there are obviously a lot of brainwashed people or actual agents in this thread doing some unfair downvoting.
Or maybe they just don't subscribe to your views and are letting you know their disagreement by downvoting you.
If you think HN is full of brainwashed people or actual agents because of a couple of downvotes I suspect the problem is on your end.
Except, yes, it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti...
https://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/why-were-governme...
https://fair.org/take-action/media-advisories/iraq-and-the-m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_State...
There is definitely a case to be made for mass media being complicit in all this but not to the extent that actual propaganda mechanisms are put to work. The state does not own CNN, it does not own the Washington Post and it does not own the Guardian. Ironically, it does own the BBC and there are definitely times when you just knew that there was more to a story than what you could read but on the whole the 'manufacturing of consent' is not the same as outright propaganda.
For that you'd have to take a step back and look at some actual propaganda to see the difference. In the United States FOX comes pretty close (though not their 'hard news' section, that is still more or less factual), in Russia there are the various state owned media outlets and in China everything that the party sanctioned press will print would count as propaganda.
The rest of the media can - still, and who knows for how much longer - be held to a slightly higher standard.
Also, you are misunderstanding how propaganda works in the US if you think the outlet needs to be state owned. I suggest the following article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism#Compa...
As for the state of affairs in the USA: I believe the USA is fundamentally broken in many ways. Born from violence and with an extreme focus on money in all aspects of life it has some pretty bad elements that amount to legalized corruption. The MIC, the number of people imprisoned, the two party system, the evangelical element, American exceptionalism, the fun fetish, the power of lobbyists, the power of money in elections all amount to flaws that each individually could be fatal, and that collectively are a ticking time bomb under the most powerful country in the world.
Which way that will go is anybody's guess, I personally am horrified that someone like Trump could make it to the position of president of the USA, but then again, if Ronald Reagan could then why not someone even less qualified?
Time will tell where it is all headed, but - in spite of you r links - I refuse to believe that all American media are complicit in this, even though I do believe that they could do a much better job at keeping the politicians sharp.
https://www.theguardian.com
https://theintercept.com
http://therealnews.com
https://www.democracynow.org
Know your audience. The only acceptable stance on HN is rabid and unsubstantiated Russiaphobia. Either don't comment or find a different community, on this topic.
You're permitted to have an opinion on typesafe languages, tabs vs spaces, etc. Dissent from CIA or GCHQ talking points? Not so much.
That is simply not true.
It's too much:
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia...
At this point in time the 'Russia hysteria' is on pretty solid footing, the question is not whether or not there is something there but how high up it goes and who knew what and when.
Manafort will almost certainly end up being convicted and whether or not he will spend the rest of his life in jail hinges on Trump's ability to pardon him.
Whoever calls Sanders, Assange, Snowdon Stein and Greenwald a Russian Stooge has a problem, but that's not my problem.
The real issue is that even though none of them are with any likelihood - as far as I can see at the moment - Russian stooges does not mean that there are no Russian stooges. And if you put Manafort and Gates in there and listed Assange, Papadopoulos and mr. van der Zwaan in there as useful idiots I would probably agree with the list.
Incidentally, Greenwald is doing a pretty good job at keeping an even keel in general, and I totally support his debunking bogus claims. But that does not mean that all claims are bogus.
While others may make that claim, and it would be included in the scope of the investigation, that's not its only remit. Nor, from my reading, does 'jacquesm make that claim. But he can argue his case better than I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_...
If you have been following this at all then none of this should be news to you, if you haven't been following this then I do not understand some of the positions you have been taking in this thread.
So the fact that there are no indictments regarding to collusion to Russia at this point in time means absolutely nothing. But if there still are no such indictments when it is all over it would be safe to conclude there was no such thing.
You said in this thread:
> You're aware that a whole bunch of people have already been indicted and have admitted guilt?
No they haven't.
And the media isn't pumping any 'fear' narrative, it is for the most part reporting that which is either leaked or found in court documents.
So, nobody is 'damn sure of the truth', and neither are you and no evidence or charges does not mean there won't be any. Or do you mean to say the investigation should be closed before it has run its course because you think there never will be any charges? And if that's true what does it matter? In that case you should want it to conclude because that is the only way this thing will go away in a way that it will stay away.
How can you say that with a straight face? Are you not paying attention at all? It's called RUSSIAGATE and has been compared to PEARL HARBOR.
-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
Go ahead and question it.
Have you come up with any evidence that it's fabricated?
So there is a huge amount of hypocrisy there. But that does not excuse Russia for meddling in the affairs of The USA or Europe either.
They're all guilty of this, some more than others.
In fact, less so, given the historial record. Funding revolutions, killing 100 000 civilians in another country on other side of the planet from them, was not on Russias list of deeds for past 25 years.
Yemen.
Wikileaks releases documents it claims detail Russia mass surveillance apparatus https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/wikileaks-releases-documen...
> It’s the _first_ time the organization has leaked (what it claims is) material directly pertaining to the Russian state.
So... first time for how many years? And as, article points out, the leak itself is rather minor.
He was getting low on funds, and then was cutoff from the credit card system for contributions. shortly after that, he started getting RU appearances. RUS influence likely a combination of providing critical funding and also developing Kompromat - compromising, coercing information, whether true or not.
In short, he's not a free, independent agent working to strengthen democratic principles and institutions.
(note that 'asset' does not mean necessarily the classic willing spy, could be merely duped or coerced)
"Damaging" Russia makes no sense. They don't make the rules!
Edit: I'm getting down voted to hell, so I'll clarify: the narrative that Assange is a Russian agent is absolutely US propaganda. The US government has been smearing Assange and Wikileaks for at least 8 years, and was even caught red-handed hiring Palantir and HBGary to enact a media and infiltration campaign to destroy Wikileaks:
http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-apology-20...
It sounds like you're describing a game with two players where one is being disproportionally punished for breaking the rules.
There is a good chance that reviewing all that Iraq war footage resulted in some good old radicalization.
Assange basically did what he could to damage the interests of the USA, and probably succeeded wildly beyond his dreams. He's made a whole bunch of stupid calls and he's blown his own credibility and that of WikiLeaks by showing an overt agenda instead of just being a 'dumb pipe'.
Funny though, the one time that he did act as a dumb pipe everybody was screaming blue murder about how irresponsible that was.
If Assange is a Russian asset, he is one that it is critical for Russia to conceal it's connection to if he is to continue to have value. Not running to Russia's embassy has helped him continue to spread propaganda that serves Russian interests, so it's not incompatible with him being an (even actively managed) Russian asset.
In this case: Assange/WikiLeaks have an agenda: to hit America where it hurts, by exposing their actions on the world stage and by creating as big a rift between the different political sides in the United States as they could manage. In that they are no different from Al Queada or the Russians, their goals align and so you get some pretty strange bedfellows.
Assange is a 'useful idiot' to Russia when he's go between for content hacked from US servers by the Russians that they can't be seen to release directly.
I agree with you that it is not incompatible but it is too paranoid for me to take into account until there is some actual proof. He could be a double agent too, he could be anything. But my money is on him being an idealistic, narcissistic hacker with a political agenda that amounts to 'Reduce American Influence in any way possible'. And if that involves cooperating with the Russians (knowingly or otherwise) that does not necessarily mean he is a Russian agent.
By contrast, Paul Manafort, who made many millions of dollars working for the Russians and who has his hands all over the 2016 election cycle and the damage done to Ukraine to me would qualify as a Russian agent.
I'm pretty sure if there was any proof that Assange was an actual Russian agent it would have been used to pressure Ecuador to turn him over since the Ecuadorians would definitely not want to be seen as 'harboring a Russian agent' versus 'harboring a left wing anti-American hacker'. The former doesn't play nearly as good at the home front as the latter.
Australian.
EDIT: Nevermind, I managed to miss the "anti"
'jacquesm, I have a couple of extra hyphens if you're running low.
Let me see if I can source them locally, if not I will be happy to take some of your hands.
That might explain Assange’s US-related actions, but not those related to Catalonia or a number of other issues, all of which align with Russian interests and Russian propaganda conducted through other channels.
If Assange isn't a Russian asset, he simply has an amazing coincidental multidimensionsl confluence of interests with Russia. At some point, collaboration becomes more plausible than coincidence.
The whole Spanish argument that secession is 'against the constitution of Spain and therefore invalid' doesn't hold much water with me, obviously no country will be happy about a part of it wanting to break away and the Spanish government handled the whole affair about as heavy handed and wrong as they possibly could.
Keep in mind that Spain is afraid of something that it doesn't want the general public to realize: that the Basques and the Catalans have as much claim to wanting to be independent as the Irish, the Scots, the Slowaks, the Czechs and so on had, and that Europe to a large extent managed to accommodate these smaller chunks of larger entities because it made the dominance of Germany and France all that much stronger.
And that circles us back to Germany, which is why it is funny how Germany is now 'damned if they do and damned if they don't', if they extradite then they will alienate the Catalonians (which, incidentally is going to cause a lot of trouble for German visitors to Catalonia this summer) and if they don't then they will be at loggerheads with Spain which they need badly in the EU.
So this is quite the little clusterfuck and Assange/Russians role is just bit players, anything to fuck up the various houses of power is to their advantage so I'm not too surprised to see Assange do this.
Neither Snowden (living in Russia), Manning nor Assange strike me as 'Russian agents', though they definitely did as much more more damage to US interests than if they had been.
This criticism only makes sense if they are sitting on a pile of leaked material that is unflattering Russia. There’s no reason to believe that is the case.
So, you mean, WikiLeaks is merely a useful-but-innocent tool of Russian intelligence, rather than an active collaborator?
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-le...
Personally I think that by now he should get it over with and walk out, be arrested, do the time for skipping bail and then he can put his extradition theory to the test. The current political leadership in the USA is about as pro Assange as it is ever going to get.
His opponents -- ie: the entire western MSM apparatus -- have been working harder at that, and certainly done much more damage to Wikileaks than Assange could ever manage. Though I don't see how he's damaged the image of Wikileaks or himself much in the last couple of years. With Wikileaks' good works around the 2016 US elections you'd think would have won them plenty of goodwiil -- exposing the sham that is the US electoral system directly from the mouths of its brightest and most powerful.
That's where the immense, ongoing smear via Western MSM outlets comes in though, I suppose.
> walk out, be arrested, do the time
Definitely, just do it. It's easy for us to say, but imagine how terrifying that must be for him: who knows whose dungeon he'll end up in, but that he'll be effectively neutralized in his efficacy in regards to Wikileaks permanently is almost certain -- at the very least!
They are also a much better shot than crime movies would lead you to believe.
Given how many times he has promised leaks and not delivered, most likely it won't.
So far WikiLeaks' publications are what they claim the publications are, and WikiLeaks has released a number of "insurance" files such as:
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823724/WikiLeaks_insurance...
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823728/WikiLeaks_insurance...
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/8823733/WikiLeaks_insurance...
https://archive.org/details/WikiLeaks_Insurance_File
which I understand we're all encouraged to share widely in the event the key to decrypt one or more of them is released. I don't know what's in any of the insurance files.
The reason is that he was tweeting again in favour of Catalan Republicans, more precisely against the current wave of political prisoners that Spain is taking, including probably the last Catalan elected president, now under custody in Germany.
This is confirmed by Assange himself in his last tweet "I have no right to twit about political prisoners."
The guy is now a hero to many catalans. He will be an honorary citizen of the forthcoming Catalan Republic, and there are already talks of erecting a statue of him in the center of Barcelona!
Even sadder is how the most accessible channnels of communication (tv, for instance) have become state and corporate mediums for propaganda.
1) the spanish nationalist media is all histerical about this event, thanking Ecuador for its help and solidarity
2) this comes just one day after Assange started re-tweeting again about Catalonia, after several months of radio silence about the subject
3) he has always been commenting about russia, the uk, and many other things.
4) The UK can not effectively cut the connection to Assange, only Ecuador (by threatening to expel him from his embassy).
> Wikileaks editor @julianassange has been gagged and isolated by order of Ecuador's new president @Lenin Moreno. He cannot tweet, speak to the press, recieve visitors or make telephone calls. Ecuador demanded that he remove the following Tweet:
> [Assange's tweet] "In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."
> This is the only tweet the government of Ecuador asked to be removed. In an email to his London lawyers on 27 March at 14:54 BST the Ecuadorian foreign ministry referenced no other matter.
Complete shot in the dark-time.
Since many say that Russia is behind Wikileaks and Russia said they would respond to the diplomat expulsion.. Russia somehow pressured Ecuador into cutting his internet to trigger Assange's dead mans switch?