three dire tweets for Julian Assange’s safety and freedom
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US Democratic Senators, who receive money from arms companies, demand Vice President Mike Pence, who is has a state visit to Ecuador today, tell its president to illegally revoke @JulianAssange's asylum. They pushed out the demands to Spanish newswire EFE https://t.co/NCNtuRJpu6
— #FreeAssange! (tweets by campaign)⌛ (@JulianAssange) June 27, 2018
Deport refugee! Revoke asyum! Letter from U.S. Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein, Mark Warner, Bob Menendez, Durbin, Blumenthal, Markey, Bennet, Coons, Manchin & Shaheen demands @VP Mike Pence tell Ecuador to revoke @JulianAssange's asylum. https://t.co/WQGGp4PrLE
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 28, 2018
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/6-27-18%20RM%20letter%20to%...
Oh the carrots, oh the sticks, oh...the lies in that letter, and it doesn't seem the sort one can copy/paste.
Now the first two seem directly related to this June 25 Tweet pinned to the top of their account:
We can confirm the accuracy of the Hill report on Comey, however, it should be noted that 'immunity/safe passage' was limited to covering the talks.
For background see Vault7: https://t.co/OkOvDMIbkc
& this Assage OpEd in WaPo: https://t.co/AxcpmgwwUEhttps://t.co/zWACFjmPJu— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 26, 2018
From thehill.com, June 25: ‘How Comey intervened to kill WikiLeaks' immunity deal’, some excerpts:
“One of the more devastating intelligence leaks in American history — the unmasking of the CIA’s arsenal of cyber warfare weapons last year — has an untold prelude worthy of a spy novel.
Some of the characters are household names, thanks to the Russia scandal: James Comey, fired FBI director. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr. Julian Assange, grand master of WikiLeaks. And American attorney Adam Waldman, who has a Forrest Gump-like penchant for showing up in major cases of intrigue.
Each played a role in the early days of the Trump administration to try to get Assange to agree to “risk mitigation” — essentially, limiting some classified CIA information he might release in the future.
The effort resulted in the drafting of a limited immunity deal that might have temporarily freed the WikiLeaks founder from a London embassy where he has been exiled for years, according to interviews and a trove of internal DOJ documents turned over to Senate investigators. Read the draft immunity deal proffer that the Justice Department was considering for Assange here.
But an unexpected intervention by Comey — relayed through Warner — soured the negotiations, multiple sources tell me. Assange eventually unleashed a series of leaks that U.S. officials say damaged their cyber warfare capabilities for a long time to come.”
“Assange made clear through the lawyer that he would never compromise his sources, or stop publishing information, but was willing to consider concessions like redactions.”
“Laufman played to Assange’s belief that he was a publisher, the documents show; he put an offer on the table from the intelligence community to help Assange assess how some hostile foreign powers might be infiltrating or harming WikiLeaks staff.” wtf?
and OMG! because: Russia.
This just in:
The White House released the following statement to reporters about @JulianAssange today after intelligence hawks Senators Diane Feinstein and Mark Warner called for him pressure Ecuador's president @Lenin Moreno over @JulianAssange's asylum. pic.twitter.com/1U0X46GCJr
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 28, 2018
Comments
letter as jpg
(To read: Right click; open file in new window; zoom in, or just zoom in right here ;->)
Original PDF
thank you,
the right click dinnae work for me, but clicking the link did. did mine not work? i built this from the ground up w/ those 'embed tweet' monstrous lines of code, and got purdy confused.
No, sorry for cluttering up the comments
It was a crappy pdf and I had to save as a copy to save as a jpg.
won't matter a whit unless there are ton of comments.
if so, you can always blink out the jpegs. (smile) (i loathe emoticons)
Ah, james cogan at wsws has some of the text,
and good on him:
“The letter declares that the Democratic senators are “extremely concerned” that Ecuador still provides asylum to Assange. It states they are “alarmed” that the read-out of Pence’s visit to Ecuador did not mention the WikiLeaks editor.
The letter declares: “[I]t is imperative that you raise US concerns with President Moreno about Ecuador’s continued support for Mr. Assange at a time when WikiLeaks continues its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally.”
By “democratic processes,” the Democratic senators mean the ability of US imperialism to wage illegal wars of aggression, to use the most criminal and predatory means to shore up the fortunes of a tiny layer of billionaire oligarchs, to intrigue and manipulate the political affairs of other countries, and to treat the American and international working class as nothing more than fodder for exploitation.
The Democrats repeat the slanderous accusation that has been levelled against Assange to pave the way for his extradition to the United States and trial on charges of espionage: that WikiLeaks was a partner in purported Russian intelligence “interference” in the 2016 US presidential election.
“The letter of the Democratic senators relies exclusively on a report issued by the US intelligence agencies to vilify Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. A declassified version of the report was published on January 6, 2017.”
“The claims of Pompeo and the DNC have only one motive. They are intended to establish a political atmosphere in which Julian Assange can be forced from the embassy in London and detained on allegations of being essentially a foreign spy or a form of a non-state “unlawful enemy combatant”—the charge laid against alleged members of the Al Qaeda terrorist organisation. Such charges are designed to block any defence based on constitutional and legal rights and protections of freedom of speech.”
there’s a lot more, of course.
but i'd add that they'd said that pence could build on the new relationship with lenin moreno, whereas (with rafael correa) it was very strained, and that moreno had signed two 'agreements' with the Empire...and really one was a military one, under some other guise.
i did dig up his australian attorney's Twit account, jennifer robinson, but she doesn't seem to know about this new assault yet.
damn them to hell.
much better n/t
lol
and ?. never mind (smile).
Guantanamo, here we come
This is exactly what they intend to do. Once the bastards get their murderous hands on Julian Assange, you can bet the farm that he will be immediately ushered to Guantanamo or some other third world Black Site CIA torture center. I seriously doubt he would be brought to the United States mainland. Once that happens, it will be a decade before anyone lays eyes on the man. I question whether he would even live to be seen again.
Did I mention that the CIA are murderous bastards?
sigh.
i've long imagined the same. the egregious lies and smears against him took, and over the past year, 18 mos., i'd have to check, they've been from the intercept, the daily beast, the guardian (that profited from the wikileaks's publications, no less). i've tried to keep up w/ them all at the café, and it's an altogether horrid compilation.
who will know when the combined forces *do* escort him out the door? i tried to find the one spy-cam photo in which he's sitting w/ a couple of his lawyers (besides robinsn) so i could check if they know anything, but it's a quixotic effort at best, idiocy at worst. checked w/ pilger: nuttin'; craig murry: nuttin' (on assange, plenty else).
on afternoon edit: this i craig murray's 'plenty else':
'Prosecute Blair govt officials at ICC after torture report – ex-diplomat Craig Murray (VIDEO)', via RT today
in a word: whooosh.
Exposing US criminal war acts to the 'we the people'
is espionage? The war machine got their collective peepee exposed so they want to shoot the messenger. Lawlessness, high crimes and murder is what the government is responsible for.
yes, this.
the truth is subversive to the amerikan empire, in this case: the D team. and to the CIA, which is NED, USAID and other corrupted NGOs afoot. atlantic council and facebook, lol? even though HRW and amnesty int'l even sometimes get it right.
Oh, so I see that it's still okay to kill Afghani men?
That poster could have been devised by someone with the innate humanity (/s) of Killary Klinton. She, who agreed with Madeline "There's A Special Place in Hell" Albright, about the correctness of the IraQ and Afghan murderous intrusions by the Empire until HER ran for president--"Oops. I made a mistake". She'd clean up the Afghan war after the next opium harvest and enforce "peace" on IraQ after draining its oil supplies. HER would then bomb the crap out of Iran until they, too, turned over their oil. I mean, after all, what's another 500,000 more dead kids? After you've seen one dead kid, you've seen them all (to paraphrase Saint Ronnie's observation about trees).
yeah, exactly.
dunno what year was that movie marquee poster, but there are magazine covers, too. ten years ago?
remember, though, da womyns an' da chirren! was one in a long list of reasons to #stayinAfghanistan. musta worked; a new general was just put in charge to oversee...er...the poppies and strategic minerals grabs. shit, even bill moyers was into it w/ his crap 'guests'. 'we're building schools for the gurls!; oh those evil taliban!'
Maybe side topic, if so I apologize
but I wonder if Putin will hand over Snowden at his meeting with Trump and make this a 2fer.
Only if Trump gives away Melania
in exchange. Trading wives, cadillacs, diamonds and spies. Just warming up for the good shit: countries, nukes, drugs and world domination. When does China get to play?
I like your style
trying to come up with a new way of thinking.
Thanks man. Appreciaten. Encouregment helps.
my goodness, y'all seem to have been propagandized about
putin in general, and yes, he's an oligarch, but y'all are making my forehead furrow, i'll admit. but to equate him to Herr Drumpf is seven bridges (from crimea to rooosia, lol) too far, imo.
How about music with your comment?
Try this:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grhVbIrwDDg&frags=pl%2Cwn]
nice, and thank you.
i'd only ever heard rita coolidge's cover, and i'd thought she'd written in. nope, steve young, country rocker.
propa-grandastating
doesn't work on thinking people, fur as icantel.
i haven't any ide what that means, but that issue has been
addressed by not only lavrov and putin, but your pal ed snowden, too, and in the guardian, no less! he really is a tool w/ the shittiest politics, imo. kept em just 4 U'all.
"Asked about WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, with whom he is often compared, Snowden said: “I’m a reformist, he’s a revolutionary. I don’t want to burn the system down, if I believe it can still be saved.”
Although Assange helped organise Snowden’s escape from Hong Kong, the two hold many different views, including how much classified information should be published, with Snowden favouring a more selective approach."
yeah, he'd always said that he'd "just wanted to start a conversation. if amerikans wanted to vote on being spied on, that's their decision' (or quite close to that). he and GG always had their publications vetted w/ the military and security state. but oh my: there are NEW snowden revelations at the intercept on AT&T Tor spying! jeebus. mightta told folks earlier...ed.
OT is fine, but i'm most sincerely at a loss as to why you'd
even pose the Q. has putin given some indication to you that he might do so after all these years? snowden poses no risk to either russia or the western hegemon, and has become rather irrelevant by now a far as i can tell.
Mainly
what you said, he's not much use to anyone, and it would be a nice gold star for Trump. Handing him over as a sign of friendship. The US loves its show trials, and punishment.
I agree. Snowden has no real value to Putin
IMO, Putin gave him asylum just to poke a stick in Obama's eye. Putin is no Altruist. If Putin can get any concessions from Donnie Douchebag, why wouldn't he turn him over.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
I am afraid it might be so
In this Punch and Judy show grand, meaningless gestures are everything.
@Citizen Of Earth Putin enjoys
Putin enjoys Snowden because, as somebody said, the existence of a Snowden fleeing America and seeking asylum from Russia is just too delicious for Putin to forego.
The problem with him giving up Snowden for concessions is that who would believe the United States about anything at this point? The Russians are now using a word for us that means "someone who cannot keep a promise."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Prefer that Putin offer Assange asylum too.
Is it known whether Assange has a 'dead man switch' to release major info in the event he comes to harm?
t'would be nice, but the hegemon and puppets won't even
offer safe passage to hospital. yeah, on my last assange in dire jeopoardy we'd been discussing that issue. once he was held incommunicado however many months ago, wikiLeaks issued a ban pf code some thought *was* the deadman's switch. turned out it wasn't, but the only way i can imagine one is that the default is that he's not alive communicating somehow, and the switch is tripped. i did poke about a bit, but on that issue, my bingling failed me.
Horrific, but nothing Mark Warner would do surprises me.
Assange is the thing that brings me closest to prayer, these days. Every time I hear an update, I want to pray for him.
I imagine they would have seized him before now if they weren't afraid of more than Ecuador's sovereign territorial rights, embodied in their embassy. I simply don't believe that the U.S. is that respectful of the rights of a nation they clearly view as a wayward client state that wandered off the reservation. And anyway, the CIA is clearly cleaning house down in South America, as recent events in Brazil and Venezuela have shown. So I doubt the need to respect Ecuador's rights motivates them much. They didn't respect Bolivia's rights much when they grounded Bolivia's version of Air Force One, essentially seizing the person of their president and preventing him from returning home.
Clearly Assange et al would have set up some very ugly series of revelations or some other kind of monkey wrench that would happen if he were taken. That's just basic good sense, of the kind Assange has a lot of
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
clearly lenin moreno has made ‘other arrangement’s w/ the US
(correa chose the wrong sell-out neoliberal usian puppet VP), and yes to the CIA busy toppling governments in brazil, argentina and installing US puppet gummints. dunno if the new term limit laws in ecuador were totally in aid of rafael correan ever being allowed to run for prez again, mainly because as usual...i’ve forgotten by now.
as in: moreno has seen the advantages of partnering w/ the US, quite unlike correa who’d made some srsly provocative moves against the US and iirc, CIA front groups, .
the sole bright light in the south is that at the moment, leftist mexican prez candidate Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (amlo) is leading by far in the polls, and if he lives and wins on july 1, it might shake the entire leftist math in the south. and according to oliver vargas, the WH is srsly worried. so as we pray (even apatheistically) for julian, we might consider the same for amlo. especially as that's all that's left to us.
nice to see you, cousin.
@wendy davis Nice to see you too.
Nice to see you too.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
i got to musing more about how military agreements w/
lenin moreno are, especially if you add in the fact that colombia was recently made...a nato partner. given that colombia has ports on both the pacific and atlantic sides, it's a brand new shiny western hegemonic alliance: north/south/atlantic/pacific treaty organization. has a nice ring about it, no?
so their ships will be ready and willing to topple VZ by force if the cia soft-coups don't quite work in the end. but i've been reading on pence's twit machine, and he's also been visiting w/ us puppet neoliberal temer, and he's met sooo many people who'd fled maduro's dictatorship in VZ. "the bible tells us that where the spirit of the Lord, is...there is freedom.'
'Honored to be in Ecuador. Thank you to our gracious hosts President @Lenin Moreno & First Lady Rocío González de Moreno. Freedom has been the foundation of the friendship between our nations for nearly 200 years. Today, we are renewing our bond.' 9save for when that pinko was prez...) but srsly, i don't recall the colonization, neo-colonization of ecuador.
and a message to take heed of: "I have a message for the people of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador… You are our neighbors. We want you and your nations to prosper and thrive... If you want to come to the United States, come legally, or don’t come at all."
zo...stay tuned for the july 1 presidential in mexico; could be a game-changer or...more assassinations.
If I needed a reminder
of the malevolence of corporate Democrats, this does the trick.
heh, i suppose there might be some senate dems who
don't qualify as 'corporate dems', but at the moment no name are springing to my mind. but CO senator michael bennet has always been such , as w/ gov, john (swear to gawd) hickenlooper.
on morning edit: could the citizenry devise a test similar to the ones used in salem, massachusetts? we'd drop senate dems overboard from this Ship of Fools...the ones who float are the corporate corporate ones, those who drown...ooopsie, weren't?
Ed Markey, MA "Liberal" shows his true colors.
I had some respect for Markey, for his work on science; and generally had not seen anything that put me off him - UNTIL THIS.
Geez, Ed, Julian Assange is a threat to us? No. You are. You typically compromised, phony liberal.
being rather unfamiliar w/ markey,
i looked at his wiki page, esp. 'Environment and energy'. dunno what to say, arendt.
Markey: decent Rep, corrupt Senator
Apparently it doesn't take very long to corrupt anyone elected to the Senate (even Bernie is a little ragged round the edges).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
ha; i can't swear all of this is so, but a hella lot if it is..
but someone had recently linked to russia-insider's '12 Ways Bernie Sanders Is a Pro-Establishment, pro-Israel, Warmonger - He's Part of the Problem, Not the Solution'
would he sink or float? (grin)
thanks for weighing in, amiga.
I know what you mean
I see Richard Durbin ( from my home state of Il. ) has signed on. Not that I had any respect for him or anything buy still disappointing. I did notice he signed his name Dick Durbin, Emphasis on Dick as far as I'm concerned.
That's because Durbin knows he's a dick.
meg-lulz.
only thing i really remember about him was during the time ost-2008 meltdown, and the I white house shot down any sort of meaningful banking reform, he's said "yeah, the banks really DO run this country". and we ended up with the craptastic dodd-frank. but now it's being killed piece-meal as well.
tonight’s sign off lullaby will need to be
the last song john trudell of AIM (and occupying alcatraz and wounded knee and more) recorded w/ the pines and his long-time brother quiltman... before his ‘ride came for him' in dec. 2015. rest in power, john, protect assange and obrador an other worthies if you're able.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRTMe_EPgSM]
more on pense's charm tour of 'our backyard'
from telesur english:
ha! ‘Maduro Dubs US VP Mike Pence a 'Viper' Touring Latin America’, 28 June 2018, telesur english
““Every time the poisonous viper Mike Pence opens his mouth, I feel stronger. We have defeated you and we are going to defeat (you) wherever you are,” Maduro said during a televised speech.
Pence's first stop was Brazil where he spoke with Senate-imposed President Michel Temer. During a joint press conference, Pence said, “The U.S. asks Brazil to adopt firm attitudes towards Nicolas Maduro’s regime, which destroyed democracy and has built a brutal dictatorship that has made Venezuela a poor country.”
Brazil, a member of the so-called Lima Group, is a key U.S. ally in the region. "Brazil has led efforts to expel Venezuela from Mercosur, joined the U.S. to suspend Venezuela from the Organization of American States. Now, the time has come to act more firmly," Pence added.
In response to his comments, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted, “What an irony and hypocrisy that @VP Pence, whose racist government separates families and cages innocent children, intends to interfere in the affairs of our region. Venezuela and Brazil reject the presence of such violator of Latin American immigrants' human rights.”
yeah, well, quelle surprise: ‘Colombia's Duque Commits to Pressure Venezuela With Mike Pence’, 23 June 2018 (by telephone)
C. Johnstone posted this today.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/06/29/white-house-us-ecuador-coordinat...
thanks,
no new ground plowed really, but good on her. as i'd told travelerxxx when he'd brought this to one of my assange in danger posts recently, while i'm not a particular fan of hers, i sure do admire her steadfast dedication to her fellow countryman, but that i could have kissed her for this one, it's that brilliant!
‘Why Bringing Assange Home Would Be The Best Possible Thing For Australia’, june 8
i never say 'this is a must-read', but on this one i'll take an exception. it's breath-taking in its honesty, imagery, and reasoning.
"I'm not a particular fan of hers"
you said the same thing earlier.
what is it about her that bothers you?
I may have missed something.
thx.
OT. AS to AOC- the antiwar plank is still MIA. You'd think that would have been fixed by now.
Also I was struck by how reluctant she was to endorse Nixon against Cuomo.(CNN) She made it a debt she just had to pay,rather than Nixon is the much better candidate.
In fact this seemed her tack on all questions which could put her at odds with Dem leadership.
At this point I am leaning "disappointed." However,I don't get any pleasure from laughing at those who hoped for more.(not that you do.) I went through it all with Sanders.
If she is a faker, she should be exposed and criticized. We must try to be realistic.
Bernie gets no free pass from me,fwiw.(check my comments) AOC gets same-same.
posted last week-
edit. checked again. the "peace economy" plank is back up. that is something.
ha, good on ya for the O/T.
i looked at gjohnsit's Newest thread about AOC, and dinnae want to drop that news in there. last night all of it was missing, and as they're saying in the twittersphere, 'she added to it, fleshed it out', and she seems to have. but oddly, i couldn't get any of her ocasio2018 pages to boot from the links i'd put in a word doc. so brilliant of you to just paste in the words. not quite as long as Gun Control iirc, but still...(smile)
along the way to finding her campaign site again, i did see lots of headlines like 'clarified this', 'amended that', 'interviewed on msdnc, cenk', etc. so yeah, she's made quite the splash.
my chiches w/ johnstone are hard to put into words. it sure ain't her trash mouth, i own one, myself. perhaps because for so long she spent soooo much ink saying 'they're attacking me! put money in my tip jar!' her schtick about joining (making common cause with? i've forgotten) w/ the 'alt right' (is that about milo Y and friends?) made me ask 'to do what, exactly?' that's all i can come w/ for now, and that seems inadequate, but it'll have to do for now. but as far as assange: totally steadfast.
but yes, not endorsing nixon, not that i know what her platform is, seemed lame, if not cowardly, as in: not returning the favor. as far as elected media stars, have they ever not been major disappointments?
but you're correct, i don't see any change coming from reform Democrats, i just wanted to point out the inherent dangers of 'cult of personality' blindness, and the usual consequences. but lol, still: 'i'd support the Red Queen'...arrrggh.
and ooof, hard hit on obrador at wsws this mornin'. and it don't look good: 'his aids are walking back renationalizing the oil', meetings with the biggest baddest banskters,
'free market', and tra la la. and vargas at counterpunch had cause me to hope for a return to the pink tide in south america. see how easily i can get schmoozed into hope and change myownself?
but if AOC wins the general, we'll see what happens after a year or two of her voting record. but yanno, a they say around here: 'if x or y gets us one step closer to where we want to go...' (i do not subscribe to this point of view; i see instead 'dems as status quo gatekeepers'.)
thx.
you bring a lot to the table.
h/t
welcome, but i'm not sure i get what you mean,
but may i tease: "it's big table"?
sorry.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bring-something-t...
you have made valuable contributions here in a short time.
ah. i'm familiar with the phrase, i just dinnae know if you'd
meant on this comment or what. and my tease was a tweak on 'the D party is a big tent'.
in my defense
you left out the "a".
but yeah, it went right over my head. good one.
"I only said I was the Greatest. I never said I was the Smartest."- Muhammad Ali
in my own defense, i'd ferget my butt if it weren't nailed on.
i just added this to your thread, but in this interview w/ chuck the toad, he actually factually said those words. kinda walkin' it back already. and yeah, i know, she's not quite ready for prime time w/ the toad, but the tankies have had a bit o' fun at her expense other issues.