@Mark from Queens

lol. agreed on journalists and scoops, but these days 'scoops' are often down to 'anonymous cia officials say', 'most security officials agree', etc.

seth rich is certainly the best guess for the 'insider' in the dnc, but i'm trying (and failing) to remember exactly what craig murray had said about meeting the leaker in the woods in dc (?) but there were words akin to 'the leaks were already safely in wikileaks' hands'.

MSM lies and calumnies against assange himself are to be expected by now, but the ones that have really toasted my cookies have come from Omidyar's rag: the intercept (possibly aptly named). four of them, including one by glenn greenwald and naomi klein. the daily beast and the atlantic have also been merciless toward him, and practice yellow journalism just like the the guardian does.

on edit: i also now remember that wikiLeaks had offered a reward for info on who'd murdered seth rich, and watching an interview in which the interviewer had asked assang e about that. he does not have a good poker face, let's say. ; )

but at craig's i hadn't found what i'd remembered/ misrembered above, but this is the duran's 'Here is how the Daily Mail is reporting what Craig Murray told them'

‘….Murray insisted that the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks did not come from the Russians, and were given to the whistleblowing group by Americans who had authorised access to the information.

‘Neither of the leaks came from the Russians,’ Murray said. ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks not hacks.
He said the leakers were motivated by ‘disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.’

Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information but an intermediary.’

Craig Murray has not commented on this interview on his own blog, but there is no reason to doubt the Daily Mail is reporting his comments accurately.”

has revealed are the Fascist United States of Amnesia America.

Woke up to this on WBAI. Whereupon catching the middle of a conversation with a caller and the ostensibly progressive/radical host at 7am I heard an exchange that mentioned Seth Rich as the one who gave Wiki the #PodestaEmails. The host didn't want to touch that (which was shamefully unfortunate). But he did say make the distinction that it being the DNC, a private organization and not at the federal level, the consequences wouldn't be as severe if it were brought to court. Then the host furthered clouded my faith in him. When a caller astutely mentioned the current trajectory of the country could be traced the Powell Memo of 1972 in which an associate Supreme Court Justice laid out the blueprint for a business takeover of all elements of the government, he admitted he didn't know what it was. Even Thom Hartmann ruminates on that sordid fact often. Most at C99 would have a good understanding too. At TOP? Probably not.

In my view The Powell Memo is what is treason: a high ranking person in the judiciary basically advocating for fascism. Shouldn't that and these endless examples of a corporate coup d'tat be the real story here? Wiki functions as a place where journalists can come to review information before publishing. To me they're like a Citizen Watchdog.

Where are the self-important avatars who went to journalism school currently wasting space at mainstream media outlets? What the fuck do they think a "scoop" is, an instrument for shoveling gelato onto their plates after dinner at some Senator's fete? A scoop is someone getting information that powerful people don't want printed, as far as I know. That's what journalism is supposed to be. All else is public relations.

Just about to read Hedges's weekly column, "Crucifying Julian Assange."

It's been so sickening to see so many otherwise progressive folks/friends (I thought) coming out against Assange. Part and parcel of the full court press by Establishment Propaganda to vilify anyone who challenges their nauseating narrative that purposefully avoids and distracts from uncovering the fundamental rot at the heart of American governance, which is it functions as an Auction House to the Highest Bidder and that true "freedom" is an illusion, which we can't see because there is no functioning press, or rather the MSM is the strong arm of this reality web of deceit.

@dkmich

remember the timeline better, but when assange learned thru his attorneys that the fix was in between the UK to (ahem) export him to sweden, he'd immediately requested asylum at the ecuadorian embassy. you may remember better than i, though.

All the whining by CNN pisses me off when the press, mainstream and left, doesn't give a damn about Assange one way or another.

@doh1304

i do remember her saying 'he should be droned', but let me grab a mix tape wikiLeaks had made.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuQW0US2sJw]

If she had been elected England would have been embarrassed as hell.

@aliasalias

decision. but a) they could easil know if they even cared, or clicked into the #justiceforassange hashtag they always use (OMG: 2901 days under house arrest., but b) most who do know and don't give a frack is "it's a non-binding ruing", and c) most wouldn't care whatsoever. most wikileaks tweets about assange feature the most disgusting comments underneath (subtweets?) if you click into them as stand-alones. for his detractors, it almost seems like a vocation.

The ruling that Julian Assange is being "arbitrarily detained" ,should be released and compensated was appealed by the UK. The UK lost the appeal then just ignored the ruling by the UN.
The documents supporting this ruling are at the bottom of the announcement.

"The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Deems the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Julian Assange as arbitrary"

"...On 7 December 2010, pursuant to an international arrest warrant issued at the request of the Swedish Prosecutor, Mr. Assange was detained in Wandsworth Prison for 10 days in isolation. Thereafter, he was subjected to house arrest for 550 days. While under house arrest in the United Kingdom, Mr. Assange requested the Republic of Ecuador to grant him refugee status at its Embassy in London. The Republic of Ecuador granted asylum because of Mr. Assange’s fear that if he was extradited to Sweden, he would be further extradited to the United States where he would face serious criminal charges for the peaceful exercise of his freedoms. Since August 2012, Mr. Assange has not been able to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy and is subject to extensive surveillance by the British police.

The Working Group considered that Mr. Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Having concluded that there was a continuous deprivation of liberty, the Working Group also found that the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange. The Working Group found that this detention is in violation of Articles 9 and 10 of the UDHR and Articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the ICCPR, and falls within category III as defined in its Methods of Work.

The Working Group therefore requested Sweden and the United Kingdom to assess the situation of Mr. Assange to ensure his safety and physical integrity, to facilitate the exercise of his right to freedom of movement in an expedient manner, and to ensure the full enjoyment of his rights guaranteed by the international norms on detention. The Working Group also considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr. Assange should be afforded the right to compensation. "

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17012

@Wink

is that all of his attorneys work pro bono, so lack of funding isn't the issue. his legal team live in various nations as well, but the drums beating for his head are massive in number.

for many, wikiLeaks publications of the CIA vaults 7 and 8 caused the rhetoric and smears against julian himself to get many notches higher. again, who knew that the most craptastic theme of the 2016 election was that the Blue Team learned to love the CIA, but that was even before those publications, of course.

oh, tiddly-pom, i was just looking at some of the 'Great WikiLeaks Train Robbery' dialog between klein and GG post DLC and podesta emails, and wanted to barf all over again at their malignancies. Not the CIA vaults, mind you. GG opens with:

"Nobody knows for certain who actually hacked them. The U.S. government says the Russian government was involved — although they presented no evidence for that — but there are a lot of people who believe Russia was at least implicated in some way. Whoever did it gave it to WikiLeaks, which instead of curating any of it or trying to figure out what would be in the public interest and what wouldn’t, simply took it all and dumped it on the internet.

So on the one hand, you have these actors who caused all of John Podesta’s emails — without discrimination about their impact or content or whether they had anything to do with public interest — to be published on the internet, which was the hackers combined with WikiLeaks.

And then you have this separate debate once that happens. Once these materials are made available, for better or for worse, what is the duty of journalists? Should they ignore it on the grounds that it’s illicitly obtained or might incentivize future similar bad acts? Should they weigh the fact that there’s been a massive privacy invasion against the journalistic value that can undoubtedly come from some of the specific materials? And obviously, we at The Intercept have been centrally involved in that debate, because we did make a decision to do so much reporting on the documents that we believe shed light on the person highly likely to be the next president of the United States."

and believe it or not, wink, it gets worse. bah.

Billionaires all over this?
It seems to me a few $Million here,
a few $Million there, a half dozen high-priced
lawyers... he'd be out in no time!
Instead... instead this b.s.

@gulfgal98

notes, gulfgal and snoopy.

In it, Greenwald lays out the case why attempting to prosecute Assange is so dangerous and why the Obama DoJ declined to go after Assange in the courts.

Greenwald also points out the irony of Hillary supporters like the useful idiots over at dkos are now aligning themselves with the Trump DoJ in trying to prosecute Assange for publishing the truth. Here is an excerpt to that effect.

But the grand irony is that many Democrats will side with the Trump DOJ over the Obama DOJ. Their emotional, personal contempt for Assange – due to their belief that he helped defeat Hillary Clinton: the gravest crime – easily outweighs any concerns about the threats posed to press freedoms by the Trump administration’s attempts to criminalize the publication of documents.

I highly recommend that everyone read Glenn Greenwald's article.

@Anja Geitz

in ann garrison's piece she'd quoted suzie dawson (kiriakou, too) about what comes after assange is kicked to the embassy curb, and how little time she thinks there is until that happens. i see the biggest danger now as the clause in which 'if assange has a medical emergency, we'd transport him to hospital'. again: who'd be driving the ambulance? john bolton, and straight to the airport and gitmo. but back to suzie:

"Suzie Dawson said that the FBI and the CIA will interrogate and torture Assange to try to obtain information that would allow them to bring Wikileaks down, but that he has no doubt been preparing for this eventuality for years. She believes he will have made sure that the organization has adopted security codes and measures that he himself does not know and therefore cannot reveal—even if he’s tortured.

“They want to know about security files for example. They want to know about the inner processes and workings of Wikileaks. They want access to the knowledge that’s inside Julian’s brain. And they will torture him. And they will interrogate him in order to attempt to get that.

“They will torture him.” (most esp. the 'intelligence' agencies)

I am reminded of a 1970's political thriller, where Robert Redford played a bookish CIA researcher who returns back from lunch to find his entire department has been murdered.

When he finally figures out who ordered the hit and why, the bargaining chip he uses to save his life is the threat of becoming a whistleblower and sending the entire story to the New York Times. When questioned if they'll print such an explosive story, Redford's character displays a surprising amount of confidence.

"Oh, they'll print it", he says.

Maybe that was true back in the 1970's, but I'd be hard pressed to imagine the once venerable NYT printing anything that reveals our corrupt government for what it truly is. Julian Assange seems to be the only person with the guts to stand up against the corruption these days. And unlike the movie where the whistleblower is a hero, Assange has been painted as the enemy by a Borg-like media and the useful idiots who still believe we live in democracy even when Freedom of the Press is a conditional concept.

I can only hope and pray that Assange manages to pull off one hell of a miracle. For himself, his family, and for the rest of us who are pretty fucking sick and tired of seeing the bad guys always win.

Thanks Wendy for keeping us updated on this very important story.

@on the cusp

and worthy declaration, i'll say that the images in my mind are tumbling and turning like a kaleidoscope. my favorite assange quote is 'if lies can bring wars...the truth might end them' (or close to that).

but we can't have that, so the lies must stay buried; thus, assange and wikiLeaks are enemies who must be put down like rabid dogs. DNC corruption demonstrated in their own emails? can't have that.

i admit it was crushing to learn that turnbull's replacement, PM scott morrison laughed when at a presser he got the Q as to repatriating assange to australia. gotta stop now, although what a half-baked answer to your thesis; sorry my attention's so very scattered, on the cusp.

to be that moment in world history that defines and explains what was, and what is, and what will be.

@Mark from Queens

; ) but hadn't GG said much the same thing? hacked, 'some say russians', 'publishing illegally stolen material without 'curating it first'?' i forget what all i read in my 'wikileaks train robbery', but similar quasi-smears, in any event. i loved "he's a revolutionary, wants to burn it all down!, while we...want folks to vote and decide if they want the NSA spying on them; after all, the NSA helps keeps us safe from Bad Guys!"

Booting Jim Acosta from the White House was bad for press rights. Charging Julian Assange might be worse.

"Might" be. Ya think?

Press-freedom advocates got a rare chance to celebrate on Friday, with a federal judge’s ruling that the White House must restore the credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

But an unrelated case should keep them from breaking out too many bottles of Dom Pérignon.

Julian Assange has been charged with an unspecified crime in a separate government case, and — while the WikiLeaks founder is an unsympathetic and unsavory figure — that raises troubling questions about the right to publish stolen material.

These Beltway douchebags are insufferable. Cutesy, smarmy, with lame champagne reference, unfounded and derogatory attack slags.

Guess she talked to two people, both of whom said prosecuting Assange would be a profound threat to press freedom. Couldn't go with the Acosta martyr angle, so instead pays Assange's case a reluctant backhanded compliment.

The background, of course, is that WikiLeaks published thousands of emails from Democrats during the presidential race that were stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

The big question, Abrams said, is whether Assange not only received the emails but also actually participated in the Russian hack. (Assange’s story is nothing if not weird: He has been holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for years, initially avoiding Swedish authorities over an investigation into rape and sexual assault allegations.)

"Stolen by Russian intelligence officers"?

His story is "nothing if not weird"?

Bold-faced lie, based on the DNC-disseminated lie that was concocted as a cover in the event that Hillary lost. And Russian intelligence officers stealing them? Add that to the long list of endless pathetic contrivances.

"Nothing if not weird." Smug asshole. Like he's had any choice, with the hellhounds of the American gov't on his trail, after publishing the seriously incriminating Manning videos showing how capricious the American military has been killing innocent civilians and journalists. The whole thing is a raw power play by the CIA and military intelligence to corner him and force him to submit or else. But she thinks it's "weird" that he just won't leave.

It's that breezy, lightness of reporting style that galls me. Like the way some perfunctory NPR announcer at the top of the hour just matter-of-factly reads off a blurb about the death toll rising in such and such, or another he said/she said equivocation that adds up to nothing.

I'd like to see just once maybe, someone in the MSM taking a fucking stand.

@Raggedy Ann

but fr one thing, khashoggi was the WaPo's whistleblower to the degree that he was, so there's that. were his rebukes deadly enough for prince bin salman to have tortured, then killed him, never mind how they got his body out of the consulate, ish. but the CIA says it's so, or at least a headline read like that.

but how queer is it now that the WaPo is reporting smears like that after profiting from WL publications back in the day? but of course, the russian hacks.

is it an editorial decision by jeff bezos?

killing of Khashoggi? How are we different than Saudi Arabia in this? Who are we?