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Paul Merrell

CNN apologizes for commentator who called WikiLeaks founder a 'pedophile' | McClatchy DC - 0 views

  • In fact, the pedophile allegation has little to do with Assange’s plight that has kept him in the embassy in London, which involves incidents in Stockholm in the summer of 2010.
  • Rather, it is a bizarre tale involving a Houston-based dating website and its global and well-funded efforts to discredit Assange around the globe. The byzantine saga involves disconnected telephones and mystery websites. The website, toddandclare.com, launched and ramped up its efforts against Assange during the U.S. presidential campaign, as WikiLeaks released hacked emails related to the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.The dating site’s campaign sought to thwart WikiLeaks’ efforts and discredit Assange, who played a role in a presidential campaign season that deeply divided the U.S. electorate and illuminated Russia as a major cyber adversary of the U.S. government.One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.
  • WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company has lashed out at Assange and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”For nearly two months after the October allegations, toddandclare.com went off line. But it recently reappeared, repeating charges about the 8-year-old Canadian girl. The website did not immediately respond Thursday to a new query from McClatchy, and no respondent in the past has given a name or allowed telephone contact.The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries. The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.A person who answered emails to the website in November declined to identify him or herself.
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  • The people behind toddandclare.com persuaded a U.N. body known as the Global Compact to give it status as a participant in May, and it submitted an eight-page report to the U.N. group Oct. 4 carefully laying out its allegations against Assange. The firm was delisted by the U.N. body eight days later amid controversy over its claims. The report was later taken off the internet. An Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, said the report’s precise language raised additional suspicions at WikiLeaks, where she assists Assange in human rights litigation.“This is not a report that’s been drafted by a dating agency. It’s highly legalistic and very structured. It’s the language of someone who has drafted complex legal submissions,” she said.Under Todd Hammond’s name, the report alleged that Assange’s Swedish lawyer had reached out in June to offer Assange’s services on a campaign against rape in exchange for an undisclosed amount of bitcoin. It said the two sides held two videoconferences.Then came the bombshell: It said the company had ended ties with Assange following “pedophile crimes” he had committed in the Bahamas in late September. It charged that the victim was the 8-year-old daughter of a Canadian couple on a monthlong yachting vacation. The father went to police in Nassau on Sept. 28, the report claimed, charging that his family held video and chat logs showing Assange “internet grooming” the child and “propositioning the 8-year-old juvenile ‘to perform oral and anal sex acts.’ ”It said Assange made a connection to the child’s 22-year-old sister, who was a client of the online dating site, from his refuge in London, eventually gaining access to the young girl.
  • An assistant commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Stephen Dean, said “there is no investigation” into any such incident and that the police have received no evidence that such an incident occurred.“We got a phone call of someone giving us some information. But we never had a face-to-face. It could have been a hoax,” Dean said. “We don’t know.”If someone were in possession of video or chat logs about a pedophile crime, he or she did not provide them to Bahamian police, Dean said, which he said would be odd: “If you have something so significant, I think you’d want to leave a report.”Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, wrote to the U.N. body on Oct. 10 alleging that Hammond’s report against Assange was “entirely false” in all its facets and that he had had no contact with the dating site or Hammond.Even as authorities in the Bahamas dismissed the report, the dating site sent a fax Oct. 17 to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the Canadian family had fled the Bahamas due to “anti-white, racist abuse by Bahamian police.”“Julian Assange ... has started a smear campaign to claim our dating company is behind an elaborate scam. It is fully to be expected. Pedophiles are devious and cunning,” the fax said.The company said it would “continue to protect the family’s identity, until either the (Royal Bahamas Police Force) conduct a proper investigation, or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.”
  • The fax was signed, “The Todd and Clare Team,” and left no way to contact the firm.While the founders of toddandclare.com say they’ve been in the matchmaking business since 2011, their internet presence dates only to September 2015 and really got going only early last year. Those who have done work for the company say they were kept at arm’s length.By summer, in the run-up to what many expected to be an “October surprise” from WikiLeaks to make an impact on the U.S. election, toddandclare.com began moving against Assange in multiple countries simultaneously. The DNC and a cyber-threat intelligence firm it had hired, CrowdStrike, were already fingering Russia as behind the hacks that would provide the fodder for WikiLeaks. They’d said in June that Russian hackers had access to DNC servers for about a year.A company representative, identifying herself as Hannah Hammond, emailed Assange’s Swedish and British legal agents offering $1 million for him to appear in a five-minute tongue-in-cheek television advertisement. In a subsequent exchange Sept. 19, the representative wrote that “the source of the $1,000,000 is the Russian government.”In a curious twist, she offered what she said were three facts about Assange’s London attorney that are “unknown to the public,” including details inside her home and an event in her son’s life, suggesting a capability to conduct surveillance.Taylor, the Assange lawyer, said the details appeared “to create the impression that the members of his team were under close surveillance and/or to bolster the bona fides of the claim that the offer was linked to a State. Its inclusion does appear quite menacing.”
  • A lawyer identifying himself only as “James” responded the next day, slamming the offer as an “elaborate scam designed to entrap” Assange and embarrass him for ties to Russia.The dating site representative sought to pull the veil off “James.”“Julian: We know it’s you writing. The offer expires at midnight, October 31st 2016,” she wrote back on Sept. 21, according to copies of the emails posted by WikiLeaks on its website.By early October, toddandclare.com went on the offensive. It filed a civil complaint in a British court against Assange, seeking 295 pounds sterling – about $359 – in damages because it said it could no longer use his services due to the “child sex offenses in Nassau.”The suit, said Taylor, Assange’s lawyer, “seems to be designed to evade defamation law in the U.K. They’ve put highly noxious information knowing that it would be made public.”The global tussle between the online dating company and WikiLeaks went public in mid-October when the anti-secrecy group voiced public doubt on whether toddandclare.com actually existed, or served only as a vehicle to attack Assange.
  • The announcement opened the gates for a disparate crew of internet sleuths – some motivated by hatred of Clinton and others impelled by support for WikiLeaks – to probe into the history of toddandclare.com, suspicious that the dating site might be an undercover operation with links to the Clinton campaign.Posting their findings on the discussion websites like Reddit.com, they unearthed some curious coincidences. A perusal into the archives of the internet revealed that the Hammonds had once occupied a San Francisco building later rented to a company, Premise Data, whose co-founder has ties to Clinton and her top supporters.Moreover, a telephone number once registered to a Todd Hammond later was registered to a former Premise employee, Aaron Dunn, although with a different area code.Premise co-founder David Soloff said such findings could only be coincidences.“I want to reiterate that Premise has no connection with this case. And beyond confirming that Aaron Dunn worked at Premise until 2014, I don’t know the answer to any of your questions,” Soloff wrote in an email.
Paul Merrell

UPDATE: Julian Assange of Wikileaks To Appear by Video Tomorrow Due to Assassination Co... - 0 views

  • After canceling a planned announcement in London, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is now planning to appear via video link Tuesday morning at Wikileaks’ 10th anniversary celebration in Berlin. He’s a last-minute addition to the roster of festivities taking place this week in Germany. The change in venue appears to be related to what Wikileaks is clearly implying to be a perceived threat on Assange’s life.
  • Wikileaks used its Facebook page and Twitter to confirm that Assange would speak at the event, which starts at 4am Eastern time. An information pack published by Wikileaks late last night includes a running order which schedules Assange’s appearance for 5am Eastern (11am in Berlin):
  • According to Wikileaks, the change of venue was made “due to specific information.” Wikileaks did not specify further, but Monday’s Tweet followed several in which Wikileaks alleged that the Clinton camp wants to assassinate Assange.
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  • The news that Assange plans to appear (remotely) in Berlin comes after Wikileaks abruptly canceled a much-anticipated announcement in London that was to be made from the balcony of London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange has sought sanctuary for years. The cancelation was first reported by NBC News. According to NBC’s Jesse Rodriguez, the announcement was canceled due to “security concerns”. There had been widespread anticipating that Tuesday’s announcement might have been Assange’s long-promised document dump on Hillary Clinton. Assange appeared on Fox News last month, repeating his assertion that Wikileaks has damaging documents on Clinton and suggested WikiLeaks may soon release “teasers”. More than three weeks later, that release has yet to take place. Clinton’s more fervent opponents have hoped for weeks that the promised document dump would be an “October surprise” — damaging and revelatory emails or the like — and inflict a mortal wound on her campaign. There’s no evidence, however, that such damaging information even exists. It was only this summer that Assange’s group leaked thousands of embarrassing emails from the Democratic National Committee which showed their disdain for Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The uproar over the disclosures forced DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to resign in disgrace on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.
  • Assange and his supporters have long claimed that his personal safety is at risk due to the danger he (supposedly) represents to Clinton’s presidential ambitions. Monday morning, Wikileaks via Twitter was promoting the conspiracy theory that Clinton herself has sought to rub out Assange.
  • Assange himself has also recently hinted publicly that low-level DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered this summer in Washington DC, had been the source for Wikileaks’ document dump on the DNC. And that Rich’s alleged role in the leaks was linked to his death. There has been no evidence linking Rich to the leak and no evidence that his murder was anything more than a botched robbery. Nonetheless, the Wikileaks’ cancellation of Tuesday’s announcement in London — and the scheduling of the Tuesday video link in Berlin — has anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists working up a frantic stew of speculation.
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    So Assange is speaking at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning East Coast tIme. Probably some headlines by 6 a.m. So 3 a.m. West Coast time. Let's hope this is Assange's October Surprise announcement for Hillary. "Specific concerns" about security on the canceled Ecuadoran Embassy speech? Well, Hillary reportedly made a specific assassination proposal for Assange. Personally, I wouldn't put it past her; the Clintons already have the blood of millions on their hands.
Paul Merrell

Upcoming Trove Of Wikileaks Files To Expose Google, U.S. Government - 0 views

  • uring a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday, the media organization WikiLeaks touted 10 years of drawing the veil of secrecy away from governments and businesses worldwide while also confirming that a new batch of documents—specifically targeting the U.S. government and internet giant Google—will be released over the next two months. “Our upcoming series includes significant material on war, arms, oil, Google, the U.S. elections, and myself,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said via video link from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has been living since 2012. He saidthe documents would be released before the end of the year, with the first cache coming within the week. There was significant anticipation surrounding Tuesday’s announcement, which was originally set to come from a balcony at the embassy but was reconfigured due to “security concerns.” As the New York Times noted, “[the] remarks from Mr. Assange disappointed many followers of WikiLeaks in the United States, who had stayed up into the early hours hoping to hear information relevant to the presidential election.”
  • Indeed, The Verge reported: There was a lot of build-up to today’s press conference, in anticipation of what had been billed as an “October surprise” that could swing the U.S. presidential election. Instead, WikiLeaks devoted most of the event to recounting its most notorious releases and refuting criticism levied against it. Assange acknowledged the anticipation of a bombshell release in a winding address to reporters, though he declined to say whether the upcoming leaks would tilt the election toward Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. “There is enormous expectation in the United States,” Assange said of the forthcoming leaks. “Some of that expectation will be partly answered; but you should understand that if we’re going to make a major publication in relation to the United States at a particular hour, we don’t do it at 3am.” Assange’s previous hints about forthcoming leaks led Republican operatives to express hope that WikiLeaks’ “October Surprise” would cripple Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy. But Assange appeared to quash that narrative on Tuesday, declaring: The idea that “we intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I don’t like Hillary Clinton, all those are false.”
Paul Merrell

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange warns: Google is not what it seems - 1 views

  • Back in 2011, Julian Assange met up with Eric Schmidt for an interview that he considers the best he’s ever given. That doesn’t change, however, the opinion he now has about Schmidt and the company he represents, Google.In fact, the WikiLeaks leader doesn’t believe in the famous “Don’t Be Evil” mantra that Google has been preaching for years.Assange thinks both Schmidt and Google are at the exact opposite spectrum.“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has. Schmidt’s tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of US power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation. But Google has always been comfortable with this proximity,” Assange writes in an opinion piece for Newsweek.
  • “Long before company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hired Schmidt in 2001, their initial research upon which Google was based had been partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). And even as Schmidt’s Google developed an image as the overly friendly giant of global tech, it was building a close relationship with the intelligence community,” Assange continues.Throughout the lengthy article, Assange goes on to explain how the 2011 meeting came to be and talks about the people the Google executive chairman brought along - Lisa Shields, then vice president of the Council on Foreign Relationship, Jared Cohen, who would later become the director of Google Ideas, and Scott Malcomson, the book’s editor, who would later become the speechwriter and principal advisor to Susan Rice.“At this point, the delegation was one part Google, three parts US foreign-policy establishment, but I was still none the wiser.” Assange goes on to explain the work Cohen was doing for the government prior to his appointment at Google and just how Schmidt himself plays a bigger role than previously thought.In fact, he says that his original image of Schmidt, as a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, “a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast,” was wrong.
  • However, Assange concedes that that is not the sort of person who attends Bilderberg conferences, who regularly visits the White House, and who delivers speeches at the Davos Economic Forum.He claims that Schmidt’s emergence as Google’s “foreign minister” did not come out of nowhere, but it was “presaged by years of assimilation within US establishment networks of reputation and influence.” Assange makes further accusations that, well before Prism had even been dreamed of, the NSA was already systematically violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under its director at the time, Michael Hayden. He states, however, that during the same period, namely around 2003, Google was accepting NSA money to provide the agency with search tools for its rapidly-growing database of information.Assange continues by saying that in 2008, Google helped launch the NGA spy satellite, the GeoEye-1, into space and that the search giant shares the photographs from the satellite with the US military and intelligence communities. Later on, 2010, after the Chinese government was accused of hacking Google, the company entered into a “formal information-sharing” relationship with the NSA, which would allow the NSA’s experts to evaluate the vulnerabilities in Google’s hardware and software.
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  • “Around the same time, Google was becoming involved in a program known as the “Enduring Security Framework” (ESF), which entailed the sharing of information between Silicon Valley tech companies and Pentagon-affiliated agencies at network speed.’’Emails obtained in 2014 under Freedom of Information requests show Schmidt and his fellow Googler Sergey Brin corresponding on first-name terms with NSA chief General Keith Alexander about ESF,” Assange writes.Assange seems to have a lot of backing to his statements, providing links left and right, which people can go check on their own.
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    The "opinion piece for Newsweek" is an excerpt from Assange's new book, When Google met Wikileaks.  The chapter is well worth the read. http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447
Paul Merrell

Under Intense Pressure to Silence Wikileaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Propose... - 0 views

  • Clinton’s State Department was getting pressure from President Obama and his White House inner circle, as well as heads of state internationally, to try and cutoff Assange’s delivery of the cables and if that effort failed, then to forge a strategy to minimize the administration’s public embarrassment over the contents of the cables. Hence, Clinton’s early morning November meeting of State’s top brass who floated various proposals to stop, slow or spin the Wikileaks contamination. That is when a frustrated Clinton, sources said, at some point blurted out a controversial query. “Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton openly inquired, offering a simple remedy to silence Assange and smother Wikileaks via a planned military drone strike, according to State Department sources. The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, “walking around” freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States. Clinton was upset about Assange’s previous 2010 records releases, divulging secret U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July and the war in Iraq just a month earlier in October, sources said. At that time in 2010, Assange was relatively free and not living cloistered in in the embassy of Ecuador in London. Prior to 2010, Assange focused Wikileaks’ efforts on countries outside the United States but now under Clinton and Obama, Assange was hammering America with an unparalleled third sweeping Wikileaks document dump in five months. Clinton was fuming, sources said, as each State Department cable dispatched during the Obama administration was signed by her.
  • Following Clinton’s alleged drone proposal, another controversial remedy was floated in the State Department to place a reward or bounty for Assange’s capture and extradition to the United States, sources said. Numbers were discussed in the realm of a $10 million bounty. A State Department source described that staff meeting as bizarre. One minute staffers were inquiring about the Secretary’s blue and black checkered knit sweater and the next minute, the room was discussing the legalities of a drone strike on Assange and financial bounties, sources said. Immediately following the conclusion of the wild brainstorming session, one of Clinton’s top aides, State Department Director of Policy Planning Ann-Marie Slaughter, penned an email to Clinton, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and aides Huma Abebin and Jacob Sullivan at 10:29 a.m. entitled “an SP memo on possible legal and nonlegal strategies re Wikileaks.” “Nonlegal strategies.” How did that phrasing make it into an official State Department email subject line dealing with solving Wikileaks and Assange? Why would the secretary of state and her inner circle be discussing any “nonlegal strategies” for anything whatsoever? Against anyone? Shouldn’t all the strategies discussed by the country’s top diplomat be strictly legal only? And is the email a smoking gun to confirm Clinton was actually serious about pursuing an obvious “nonlegal strategy” proposal to allegedly assassinate Assange? Numerous attempts were made to try and interview and decipher Slaughter’s choice of email wording, however, she could not be reached for comment.
  • Slaughter’s cryptic email also contained an attached document called “SP Wikileaks doc final11.23.10.docx.” That attachment portion of Slaughter’s “nonlegal strategies” email has yet to be recovered by federal investigators and House committee investigators probing Clinton’s email practices while at State. Even Wikileaks does not have the document. Slaughter, however, shed some light on the attachment: “The result is the attached memo, which has one interesting legal approach and I think some very good suggestions about how to handle our public diplomacy.” But did it also include details on the “nonlegal strategies” teased in the subject line? Sources confirm Clinton took the email and attachment with her to the White House for an afternoon meeting with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon prior to an additional evening meeting at the White House. President Obama, sources said, did not attend the early meeting with Gates as he was traveling with Vice President Joe Biden. President Obama did attend the second meeting, however, and Wikileaks and Assange’s planned release of secret cables were discussed at length, sources said. Attending this meeting were President Obama, Clinton, Gates, Donilon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral “Mike” Mullen, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright as well as a half dozen or more various policy aides, sources confirmed. Did Clinton also share her alleged morning query of droning Assange with the members of the National Security Council and the President? Was it discussed among the top secret subjects in the meeting? Or was Clinton planning to conduct or hatch her own secret foreign policy in defiance of the President, a likely violation of the Logan Act?
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  • The FBI’s 302 report from Clinton’s email investigation interview, again, specified that Clinton had “many discussions” related to “nominating” drone strikes on individuals: “Clinton could not recall a specific process for nominating a target for a drone strike and recalled much debate pertaining to the concurrence process. Clinton knew there was a role for DOD, State and the CIA but could not provide specifics as to what it was. Due to a disagreement between these agencies, Clinton recalled having many discussions related to nominating an individual for a drone strike. When Clinton exchanged classified information pertaining to the drone program internally at State, it was in her office or on a secure call. When Clinton exchanged classified information pertaining to the drone program externally it was at the White House. Clinton never had a concern with how classified information pertaining to the drone program was handled.” Sources said Clinton’s comments on neutralizing Assange fits a pattern of callousness when combined with the FBI testimony that she often considered droning individuals and then coupled with her reaction to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s death in Oct. 2011.
  • Unable to legally counter or stop Wikileaks, and likely abandoning any and all legal and “nonlegal strategies,” Clinton and her staff were forced to weather the collateral damage of CableGate. In fact, just five days after Clinton’s meetings on Mahogany Row in the State Department and the White House, Wikileaks began releasing cables to news outlets globally on Sunday November 28, 2010. Shortly after CableGate, the WikiLeaks founder sought refuge from authorities and threats by hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Now 45, Assange is in his fifth year living quarantined inside the embassy. Clinton remains the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.
  • Perhaps Democratic political operative Bob Beckel wasn’t a party outlier during this controversial Fox broadcast. Likely, Beckel was projecting what others, including Clinton, had already privately proposed.
Paul Merrell

Julian Assange to be questioned inside embassy as Ecuador agrees to set date | Media | ... - 0 views

  • Julian Assange will be questioned by Swedish prosecutors inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, in a possible breakthrough to end the impasse over his case. The Ecuadorian attorney general delivered a document agreeing to a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question the founder of WikiLeaks. He is wanted for questioning over a rape allegation, which he denies. If he goes to Sweden he believes he will be taken to the US because of the activities of WikiLeaks. Assange has been living inside the embassy for more than four years and has been granted political asylum by Ecuador.
  • He has offered to be questioned inside the embassy but Swedish prosecutors have only recently agreed. A statement issued in Ecuador said: “In the coming weeks a date will be established for the proceedings to be held at the embassy of Ecuador in the United Kingdom.
  • The statement said the proceedings did not affect the recent opinion of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations, which found that Assange was being arbitrarily detained. The working group called for Assange to be released and given compensation for violation of his rights. The Ecuador statement added: “Ecuador’s foreign ministry reiterates its commitment to the asylum granted to Julian Assange in August 2012, and reaffirms that the protection afforded by the Ecuadorian state shall continue while the circumstances persist that led to the granting of asylum, namely fears of political persecution.”
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    Assange justifiably fears that if he submits to extradition to Sweden, that nation would in turn hand him over to the U.S. for prosecution under the Espionage Act. It is known that a grand jury handed down indictments in the case involving a leak of massive numbers of State Department cables by Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Wikileaks received and published those documents. Soon after, a prosecutor in Sweden began a rape investigation, despite both women involved saying that they were not raped. No rape charges have actually been filed. The British courts later granted Sweden's extradition request, despite there being no charges pending, at which point Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador and has been effectively imprisoned in that nation's London embassy ever since.
Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

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    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Paul Merrell

Julian Assange unlikely to face U.S. charges over publishing classified documents - The... - 0 views

  • The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials. The officials stressed that a formal decision has not been made, and a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remains impaneled, but they said there is little possibility of bringing a case against Assange, unless he is implicated in criminal activity other than releasing online top-secret military and diplomatic documents.
  • Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a “New York Times problem.” If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
  • “We have repeatedly asked the Department of Justice to tell us what the status of the investigation was with respect to Mr. Assange,” said Barry J. Pollack, a Washington attorney for Assange. “They have declined to do so. They have not informed us in any way that they are closing the investigation or have made a decision not to bring charges against Mr. Assange. While we would certainly welcome that development, it should not have taken the Department of Justice several years to come to the conclusion that it should not be investigating journalists for publishing truthful information.”
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  • There have been persistent rumors that the grand jury investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks had secretly led to charges. Officials told The Post last week that there was no sealed indictment, and other officials have since come forward to say, as one senior U.S. official put it, that the department has “all but concluded” that it will not bring a case against Assange.
Paul Merrell

Sweden Drops Rape Investigation Of Julian Assange - 0 views

  • Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday, saying the investigation had not been able to proceed because of legal obstacles. “We are not making a statement about his guilt,” Swedish Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny said. Assange, 45, has lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012 when he took refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape allegations. He feared Sweden would hand him over to the United States to face prosecution for information leaks as thousand of classified military and diplomatic documents were published by WikiLeaks. Ecuador’s government welcomed the decision by Sweden, but said it was long overdue.
  • Assange’s lawyer Per Samuelson said the drop of the investigation is a “total victory” for them.   “The preliminary investigation has been dropped and the detention order has been withdrawn, and from Sweden’s point of view this is now over,” Samuelson told Reuters. Ny added that the investigation could be reopened if Assange came to Sweden before the statute of limitations deadline for rape allegation in 2020. After a 7-year stand-off with Sweden, Assange may still not be able to leave the Ecuadorean embassy. British police said if Assange were to leave the embassy, it was still their obligation to arrest him. But the British government has not commented on whether the United States had made a request to extradite Assange. “Given that the European arrest warrant no longer holds, Ecuador will now be intensifying its diplomatic efforts with the U.K. so that Julian Assange can gain safe passage in order to enjoy his asylum in Ecuador,” said Long. “Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange following him failing to surrender to the court on the 29 June 2012,” British police said. “The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.” The United Nations has decried the unfair treatment of Assange, declaring that he was being arbitrarily detained and that his human rights were being violated. Professor Mads Andenas, chair of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, also welcomed the decision to drop the investigation. “This is a victory for the rule of law,” said Andenas. “The warrant was contestable.”
Paul Merrell

Lifting the 24 Hour Siege: Julian Assange, London's Metropolitan Police and Continued D... - 0 views

  • While things tend to get murky, sometimes by design, regarding the police presence outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, the announcement that the city’s Metropolitan Police would be lifting their twenty-four hour surveillance did surprise some. This was hardly to suggest that the police forces had lost interest in capturing Julian Assange.  What mattered here was that the costs in guarding Assange from a literal flight of fancy had simply become disproportionate, requiring a change of tact.  Over £12m in costs had been incurred since he skipped bail to avoid his Swedish sojourn, and irrespective of which side of the Assange side one was on, anger was mounting at a very conspicuously bloated project. The statement from the Metropolitan Police was cool in its language.  “Like all public services, MPS resources are finite.  With so many different criminal, and other, threats to the city it protects, the current deployment of officers is no longer believed proportionate” (The Guardian, Oct 12). The siege, according to WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, had not been lifted so much as reconstituted.  “My interpretation is that it has not been lifted. They are calling off the uniformed presence but escalating the covert operation and will arrest him if he steps outside off the embassy.”  Costs, in other words, were going to be moved off the books to un-uniformed personnel.
  • Having been granted political asylum for fears that he might be carted off to the US via Sweden to face the findings of an empanelled grand jury, he remains confined to the cramped quarters of the embassy.  Nor can he rely on new laws in the form of the Anti Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 that make an “accusation” – in this case, claims of sexual assault on two Swedish nationals in Sweden – insufficient to require extradition.  As the laws were passed after the fact, precisely motivated by the Assange imbroglio, the foreign and commonwealth office has deemed it inapplicable retrospectively.  Assange, as ever, continues to be the legal exception, a singular target of juridical manipulation. In the meantime, the UN working group on arbitrary detention (WGAD) has been considering Assange’s case, and it likely to find in his favour given its previous rulings of a deprivation of liberty when a person is forced to choose between confinement or the forfeiture of a fundamental right such as asylum.[1] It is also a principle that holds for the European Court of Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  The latter defines detention as confinement “within a narrowly bounded or restricted location, including prisons, closed camps, detention facilities or airport transit zones, where freedom of movement is substantially curtailed, and where the only opportunity to leave this limited area is to leave the territory.”
  • [2] Submission to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention by Mr. Julian Assange, available at: https://justice4assange.com/IMG/pdf/assange-wgad.pdf
Paul Merrell

Swedish court sets date for Julian Assange rape case hearing | Media | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Prosecutors in Sweden pursuing Julian Assange over rape allegations have rejected a demand by his lawyers to hand over new evidence and withdraw the warrant for his arrest, setting the stage in two weeks' time for the first legal battle in the case since 2012.In a sharply worded rebuttal, prosecutors stated that Assange does not have the right to see copies of the case files.Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder requested last week that text messages sent by his accusers be passed to the defence in an attempt to break the deadlock in the rape case brought four years ago against him."There is still probable cause to believe that Julian Assange is guilty of the offences that he was arrested for, and the basis for his detention, risk of flight, is undiminished," prosecutors Marianne Ny and Ingred Isgren said in a submission to Stockholm district court.
  • The court announced on Thursday that the two sides will present their arguments on 16 July in a public hearing – the first formal legal discussion of the case since Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London two years ago.
Paul Merrell

Assange files case to dismiss Swedish warrant - Justice for Assange - 0 views

  • On Tuesday 24th of June at 1pm CET, Julian Assange’s lawyers filed a request to Stockholm District Court to dismiss his detention without charge, which has kept him in different forms of deprivation of liberty since 7 December 2010 (3.5 years). The legal actions will lead to the first custody hearing since his arrest. The Julian Assange case is Sweden’s longest running pre-trial, pre-charge deprivation of liberty (the matter is formally at the ’preliminary investigation’ stage). Julian Assange is in a legal no-man’s-land: he has not been indicted so he cannot formally defend himself. The Swedish government refuses to guarantee he will not be extradited to the United States. The Swedish prosecutor, unlike in other cases, refuses to question him in London or via video link, instead demanding that Mr. Assange give up his right to political asylum and speak to her in Sweden. The UK has encricled Mr. Assange at a cost to date of over GBP 6.6 million/USD 11 million/SEK 75.000.000 (see: http://govwaste.co.uk). Assange obtained political asylum in relation to the United States criminal investigation against WikiLeaks in 2012. The United Kingdom and Sweden have both refused to give a guarantee that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the United States for his WikiLeaks activities. Earlier this week, 59 international organizations submitted complaints about the investigation against Julian Assange to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Paul Merrell

Ecuador Gives Sweden Green Light for Assange Interrogation | News | teleSUR English - 0 views

  • Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño confirmed Friday that his country granted the request submitted by Swedish authorities to interrogate Julian Assange in London, which could possibly result in the dropping of any future criminal charges against him. “Before (the Sweedish authorities) file three of the possible trials, they asked to go to the Ecuadorean embassy in London in order to collect his declarations,” said the state official in an interview with Radio Publica. “Julian Assange benefits from our protection for being exiled, and remains under the Ecuadorean juridiction.” Patiño explained that the procedure was the result of a two-month negotiation between the whistleblower and Swedish authorities.
  • For instance, the Swedish prosecutor could hand questions to their Ecuadorean counterpart, and the interrogation would be carried out with the presence of a Swedish attorney, he said. Once Assange's declarations are collected, Swedish authorities will be able to decide whether to proceded with criminal charges against Assange or not, meaning Assange could be able to finally leave the embassy were he has been forced to stay in since June 19, 2012. “We hope there won't be any issues with United Kingdom,” added Patiño, explaining Ecuador would then ask British authorities a letter of safe-passage, so Assange could head to the airport without fearing arrest. “Supposedly (Assange) should go straight to Ecuador, where he was granted asylum.” Swedish prosecutors have not indicated yet when they plan to visit the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to question Assange.
Paul Merrell

Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks an... - 0 views

  • Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution. The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous. One classified document from Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s top spy agency, shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.
  • Another classified document from the U.S. intelligence community, dated August 2010, recounts how the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group’s publication of the Afghanistan war logs. A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.
  • In a statement to The Intercept, Assange condemned what he called “the reckless and unlawful behavior of the National Security Agency” and GCHQ’s “extensive hostile monitoring of a popular publisher’s website and its readers.” “News that the NSA planned these operations at the level of its Office of the General Counsel is especially troubling,” Assange said. “Today, we call on the White House to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the extent of the NSA’s criminal activity against the media, including WikiLeaks, its staff, its associates and its supporters.” Illustrating how far afield the NSA deviates from its self-proclaimed focus on terrorism and national security, the documents reveal that the agency considered using its sweeping surveillance system against Pirate Bay, which has been accused of facilitating copyright violations. The agency also approved surveillance of the foreign “branches” of hacktivist groups, mentioning Anonymous by name. The documents call into question the Obama administration’s repeated insistence that U.S. citizens are not being caught up in the sweeping surveillance dragnet being cast by the NSA. Under the broad rationale considered by the agency, for example, any communication with a group designated as a “malicious foreign actor,” such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous, would be considered fair game for surveillance.
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  • The system used by GCHQ to monitor the WikiLeaks website – codenamed ANTICRISIS GIRL – is described in a classified PowerPoint presentation prepared by the British agency and distributed at the 2012 “SIGDEV Conference.” At the annual gathering, each member of the “Five Eyes” alliance – the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – describes the prior year’s surveillance successes and challenges. In a top-secret presentation at the conference, two GCHQ spies outlined how ANTICRISIS GIRL was used to enable “targeted website monitoring” of WikiLeaks (See slides 33 and 34). The agency logged data showing hundreds of users from around the world, including the United States, as they were visiting a WikiLeaks site –contradicting claims by American officials that a deal between the U.K. and the U.S. prevents each country from spying on the other’s citizens. The IP addresses collected by GCHQ are used to identify individual computers that connect to the Internet, and can be traced back to specific people if the IP address has not been masked using an anonymity service. If WikiLeaks or other news organizations were receiving submissions from sources through a public dropbox on their website, a system like ANTICRISIS GIRL could potentially be used to help track them down. (WikiLeaks has not operated a public dropbox since 2010, when it shut down its system in part due to security concerns over surveillance.)
  • It is unclear from the PowerPoint presentation whether GCHQ monitored the WikiLeaks site as part of a pilot program designed to demonstrate its capability, using only a small set of covertly collected data, or whether the agency continues to actively deploy its surveillance system to monitor visitors to WikiLeaks. It was previously reported in The Guardian that X-KEYSCORE, a comprehensive surveillance weapon used by both NSA and GCHQ, allows “an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.”
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    "... the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group's publication of the Afghanistan war logs." Sweden promptly launches an alleged rape investigation and Assange is forced by the UK courts to take refuge in the London embassy of Ecuador. Because of urging by the Obama administration aimed at chilling the the First Amendment rights of journalists. That should be grounds for impeachment.  
Paul Merrell

Former Agent of Swedish Security Police Dictated Amnesty Sweden's Stance against Julian... - 0 views

  • In December 2010 a close collaboration between Sweden and the CIA and FBI was exposed in the international media: an intelligence collaboration between Sweden and US agencies that was kept secret from the Swedish public, and even from the Swedish Parliament. [1] The Telegraph credited WikiLeaks for exposing the deal. [2] The revelations caused far more commotion internationally than in Sweden and, in any event, no government officials were ever held accountable for it. The Washington Post reported, quoting a Swedish Parliamentary investigation: “Although the Parliamentary investigator concluded that the Swedish security police deserved ‘extremely grave criticism’ for losing control of the operation and for being ‘remarkably submissive to the American officials,’ no Swedish officials have been charged or disciplined.” [3]
  • This article explores to what extent intelligence collaboration between Swedish and US security agencies might have relevance to, or direct intervention in, the political case of Sweden vs Assange. [4]
Paul Merrell

Ecuadorian Presidential Hopeful Could Be Assange's Undoing - 0 views

  • Guillermo Lasso, a former banker and Ecuador’s ex-Minister of Economics, is running for president in Ecuador and has promised to end the nation’s long-standing asylum of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange.
  • However, Ecuador’s upcoming runoff election, set to conclude April 2, could dramatically alter Assange’s situation, particularly if Guillermo Lasso – the conservative, opposition-party candidate – wins the contest. Lasso, who was recently named the most likely winner of the upcoming runoff, has stated that he would end Assange’s “costly” asylum in the embassy, adding that “the Ecuadorian people have been paying a cost that we should not have to bear.”
  • Lasso’s position on Assange’s asylum was likely intended to set him apart from the policies of long-time president Rafael Correa, whose leftist regime originally granted Assange asylum. However, Correa maintains that Lasso’s statements regarding the Wikileaks editor are more about U.S. “appeasement” than anything else. It is widely believed that Lasso – if victorious in April – would strengthen Ecuador’s ties with the U.S. compared to Correa, who famously shut down the U.S.’ Ecuadorian military base in 2009 and ejected the U.S. ambassador to the country in 2011.
Paul Merrell

Ecuador signs deal with Sweden for Assange questioning | Reuters - 0 views

  • Ecuador and Sweden have signed a pact that would allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be questioned by Swedish authorities at Ecuador's embassy in London where he has been holed up for more than three years since facing sexual assault charges, the Quito government said.The legal agreement was signed in the Ecuadorean capital after half a year of negotiations."It is, without doubt, an instrument that strengthens bilateral relations and will facilitate, for example, the fulfillment of judicial matters such as the questioning of Mr. Assange," the foreign ministry said in a weekend statement.Assange, 44, took refuge in the embassy building in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual assault and rape against two women in 2010. The Australian denies the accusations.
  • Assange says he fears Sweden will extradite him to the United States where he could be put on trial over WikiLeaks' publication of classified military and diplomatic documents five years ago, one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. Britain, which has accused Ecuador of preventing the course of justice by allowing Assange to remain in its embassy in the upmarket central London area of Knightsbridge, welcomed the agreement."It is for the Swedish Prosecutor to decide how they now proceed with a legal case," a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said.
Paul Merrell

Are US Academics Who Cite WikiLeaks Blackballed? - 0 views

  • Speaking to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in July 2015, Assange suggested that institutions within the international relations discipline have failed to understand the intersection between current geopolitical and technological developments. Specifically, Assange charged that the US journal International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), published by the prestigious International Studies Association (ISA), would not accept manuscripts based on WikiLeaks’ material. Professor of international politics Daniel W. Drezner hit back on July 30 in The Washington Post, arguing that there were other explanations for why the journal was not publishing WikiLeaks’ material. However, he did concede that it is possible that the “structural forces” opposing WikiLeaks were so powerful that a scholar would eschew WikiLeaks’ publications for “fear of being blackballed”. For the thousands of undergraduate to PhD students, fellows and academic researchers facing a precarious employment market, self-censorship for fear of freezing one’s career is not unlikely. One publicised incident from November 2010 concerning the office of career services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which according to The New York Times “grooms future diplomats”, provides the perfect illustration. That year the office sent an email to students warning them against commenting on or posting WikiLeaks’ documents on social media because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government”. The warning came to the office through a SIPA alumnus working at the State Department.
  • Years later, the tone of the warning continued to reverberate through the halls of one of the most reputable universities in the world. In documenting human rights abuses in June 2013 a Columbia University graduate class produced the anonymous academic paper “WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the sum of parts may not add up to the whole — a comparison of two tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths”. The acknowledgements section of their report refers to the 2010 warning email and states that in light of that email it would be “unwise and perhaps unethical to acknowledge all the participating students by name”. Others participating in a peer-review process have cited additional factors curtailing their use of comprehensive and illuminating WikiLeaks publications. Former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney, for example, says that she was forced to scrub her PhD dissertation from any reference of WikiLeaks material. However Drezner, who is an ISA member and on the ISQ’s web advisory board, claims that WikiLeaks’ published diplomatic cables “are not nearly as significant as Assange believes” and that the “academic universe is indifferent to WikiLeaks”. A surprising claim, given that international human rights courts have not been indifferent to evidence derived from WikiLeaks’ published cables, including cables that show the insidious ways in which European officials attempt to conceal CIA torture in secret prisons.
  • To help address the gap in scholarly analysis of the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department records published by WikiLeaks since 2010, WikiLeaks has produced a new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, published September 7, 2015. The book brings together journalists, researchers and experts on international law and foreign policy to examine the current cables and records. The documents are extensive. They expose US efforts —  across Bush and Obama administrations — to use bribes and threats to keep the US protected from facing war crimes allegations, conveying the fading effervescence of concepts such as “international justice” or “rule of law” in the face of a superpower that clearly believes that “might makes right”. Analysts review the efforts US diplomats take to maintain ties with dictators. They examine the meaning of human rights in the context of a global “War on Terror”. Like the cables they seek to illuminate, the 18 chapters of the book touch upon most major regions of the world. Experts on US foreign policy such as Robert Naiman, Stephen Zunes and Gareth Porter examine cables that reveal US meddling in Syria, US acceptance of Israeli violations of international law, and how the US dealt with the International Atomic Energy Agency in relation to Iranian nuclear development. The book offers a user guide written by WikiLeaks’ investigations editor Sarah Harrison on how to research WikiLeaks’ cables including meta data and content.
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  • Writing in the book’s introduction, Assange proposes that the diplomatic cables provide “the vivisection of a living empire, showing what substance flowed from which state organ and when”. Assange notes in his introduction that academic disciplines outside international relations, and where career aspirations do not go hand in hand with patronage by government institutions, have voluminous coverage of the cables. But the ISA does not accept submissions citing WikiLeaks’ material. Although ISA executive director Mark Boyer denies that the association has a formal policy against publishing WikiLeaks’ material, he says that journal editors have discussed the implications of publishing material that is legally prohibited by the US government. According to Gabriel J. Michael, author of the Yale Law School paper Who’s Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research, the ISQ has adopted a “provisional policy” against handling manuscripts that make use of leaked documents if such use could be interpreted as mishandling “classified” material. According to an ISQ editor quoted in Michael’s paper, this policy prohibits direct quotations as well as data mining, and was developed in consultation with legal counsel. Stating that editors are currently “in an untenable position”. According to the editor, ISQ’s policy will remain in place pending broader action from the ISA, which publishes several other disciplinary journals. The ISA and ISQ concerns about handling material that the US government forbids —  which include WikiLeaks’ cables —  amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cables go into the heart of an empire, and reflect on matters that affect everyone.
  • Without WikiLeaks, the public would still be in the dark about the Trans-Pacific Partnership “agreement” currently being negotiated. The treaty aims to rewrite the global rules on intellectual property rights and would create spheres of trade which would be protected from judicial oversight. Such agreements have the potential to change the fabric of how states operate, and the leaked cables shed light on how states negotiate significant treaties, aiming to keep citizenship participation in politics out. Where academia bans the use of important leaked documents the public loses out.
Paul Merrell

Julian Assange: Hillary Clinton, U.S. Intelligence Pushing Pence Takeover Of Presidency - 0 views

  • On the heels of the explosive release of Wikileaks’ “largest ever publication of confidential documents” originating from the CIA, Wikileaks editor Julian Assange recently revealed startling information regarding the intelligence community’s plans to impeach President Donald Trump and replace him with Mike Pence, his vice president. Assange, tweeting early Tuesday morning, claimed that two intelligence officials close to Vice President Mike Pence “stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover.” However, as Assange noted, they did not say if Pence was aware of the plan or if he had agreed to it. Perhaps more surprising was the revelation that the push for a “Pence takeover” goes beyond the intelligence community. Another tweet from Assange asserted that Hillary Clinton “stated privately this month that she is quietly pushing for a Pence takeover” as “Pence is predictable hence defeatable.”
Paul Merrell

Former Icelandic minister claims FBI tried to frame Julian Assange | Daily Mail Online - 0 views

  • Ögmundur Jonasson said US authorities first told him in June 2011 that there was an 'imminent attack' on Iceland's government databases But when they arrived in August, Jonasson claims the FBI 'sought Iceland's cooperation to frame Assange and WikiLeaks' Jonasson said he then immediately kicked them out of Iceland The story was widely reported on in 2013, but Jonasson made no mention of the US trying to frame Assange It became known that the mission was part of a 'wide-ranging investigation' into Assange and WikiLeaks Jonnason said himself he made it clear he is on 'Assange and WikiLeaks' side'
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