Showing posts with label Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Show all posts

Monday, December 25, 2017

Assange"s Twitter Account Mysteriously Deleted, Reappears Hours Later

Update: as of 9:30am ET, the @JulianAssange accounts has returned, although it appears to be a truncated or restored one, which shortly after its reappearance shows just over 1,000 followers.



A "returned" Assange tweeted the following cartoon.



* * *


Julian Assange"s Twitter account was mysteriously deleted on Christmas Eve, leaving perhaps the most important witness in the Trump-Russia investigation cut off from the rest of the world while he sits in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. 



Attempting to access Assange"s Twitter account results in the following message:



This page only appears when an account has been deleted, not suspended - by either Twitter or the account owner. 


It wasn"t clear whether the account was suspended or deleted by Twitter or Assange himself -- or why or for how long. Twitter wasn"t commenting


This tweet by the WikiLeaks Task Force - an official WikiLeaks handle, suggested that people shouldn"t jump to conclusions, as "haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish," before wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.  



The official Wikileaks Twitter account was still live but wasn"t mentioning the Assange account.


According to CBS, an account purporting to be an alternative Assange account was claiming Twitter had deleted his official one ahead of a blockbuster story he"s preparing to break. There was no confirmation that Assange was authoring that alternative account -- and that account has now been suspended by Twitter.


Meanwhile, Journalist Charles Johnson - who traveled with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to London to meet with Assange in August, posted the following on Facebook after Assange"s Twitter account went down: 



Moreover, on December 1, WikiLeaks" official account tweeted "Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks" with an embedded video referencing perpetual war, and the hashtags #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine



Some have suggested that the events are part of some Christmas-linked plan, although so far there has been no confirmation. 


The account deletion comes on the heels of a break-in last Monday at the Madrid office of WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon"s, in what police described as a "very professional" operation. Garzon told El Periodico and Ser magazine "They had not taken what they have been looking for," and client security "has not been affected," however police are analyzing his computer equipment to determine whether any files were taken or copied. 


Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange published a tweet calling a Jimmy Dore video "Brilliant" - prominently featuring Assange"s interview with a Dutch television host in which the WikiLeaks founder strongly implies that slain DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was the source of emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.  (Assange clip at 21:30)



During the clip, Assange can be seen nodding his head in response to a question about Rich:



In August, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher travelled to London with journalist Charles Johnson for a meeting with Assange, where Rohrabacher said the WikiLeaks founder offered "firsthand" information proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, and which would refute the Russian hacking theory.


Rohrabacher brought that message back to Trump"s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, to propose a deal. In exchange for a presidential pardon, Assange would share evidence that would refute the Russian hacking theory by proving they weren"t the source of the emails, according to the WSJ. 








“The possible “deal”—a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call—would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.”


 


‘He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,’ Mr. Rohrabacher said.



When Trump was asked in late September about the Assange proposal, he responded that he"d "never heard" of it, causing Rohrabacher to unleash on John Kelly, who he blamed for blocking the proposal from reaching the President, Rohrabacher told the Daily Caller: 








“I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.


 


“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.



Contributing to the notion of deep-state interference, CIA director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service" in April, calling Julian Assange "a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen" for exposing information about democratic governments rather than authoritarian regimes. This quite the ironic statement, considering Pompeo used leaked emails from WikiLeaks as proof "the fix was in" against President Trump. 



 Let"s also not forget Donald Trump proclaiming "I Love Wikileaks!" less than a month before the 2016 election.



So Julian Assange - ostensibly the most important witness in the Russia hacking investigation, offered to prove that Russia was not the source of the leaked emails in exchange for a pardon. This proposition was conveyed through Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who Rohrabacher says never allowed the deal to reach Trump for consideration.  Months later, WikiLeaks attorney Baltasar Garzon"s office was raided in a "very professional" operation which is being labeled an attempted robbery. Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange tweets a Jimmy Dore video containing his own strong implication that Seth Rich was the source of the leaked emails, and six days later his Twitter account is gone. 


That said, tweets directly from the WikiLeaks urge not to jump to conclusions.


Assange"s account deletion also comes on the heels of several new Twitter rules rolled out on December 18, which many feared was the beginning of a "purge" of conservative accounts over user behavior both on and off the platform. The rules are aimed at people who associate with hate groups that "use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes" - however nothing Assange has done comes close to fitting that description.


So did Julian Assange delete his Twitter account - and if so, why? Was this yet another rogue Twitter employee lashing out on their last day, as was the case with President Trump"s temporary account deletion in early November? Or did Twitter delete the account of one of the most important figures in the 2016 election. 









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Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Assange Blasts Clinton's "Constant Lying" Over Claim Wikileaks Is "Subsidiary Of Russian Intelligence"

Julian Assange accused Hillary Clinton of “constant lying” and displaying a “cold creepiness” after the former US presidential candidate accused Wikileaks of being a front for Russian intelligence during interviews with British and Australian media last week, Russia Today reported.


Clinton, who has sat for interviews with media outlets in several different countries over the past week as the global leg of her book tour for “What Happened” began, described the organization that Assange founded as part of a “concerted operation” between Russia, Wikileaks and “people in the United States” – likely an oblique reference to the Trump campaign.



“It is not just her constant lying,” Assange tweeted on Monday. “It is not just that she throws off menacing glares and seethes thwarted entitlement.”


“Something much darker rides along with it. A cold creepiness rarely seen.”



Hillary Clinton claimed in an interview with one Australian news program that Assange colluded with the Russian government to obtain and publish emails stolen from the DNC in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election.





“Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator,” she said.



“WikiLeaks is unfortunately now practically a fully owned subsidiary of Russian intelligence.”



“I think that their intention, coming from the very top with Putin, was to hurt me and to help [then-presidential hopeful Donald] Trump,” she said.



“Our intelligence community and other observers of Russia and Putin have said he held a grudge against me because as secretary of state, I stood up against some of his actions, his authoritarianism,” Clinton said.



“If he’s such a martyr of free speech, why doesn’t WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia? You don’t see damaging, negative information coming out about the Kremlin on WikiLeaks,” she added.



According to Clinton, Assange was motivated by a personal dislike of her stemming from her role as secretary of state, when the Obama administration cracked down on Wikileaks after it published sensitive government cables. Of course, Clinton has made similar accusations about Putin, whom she claims developed a hatred for her after she encouraged anti-Putin protests in 2009.  





“I had a lot of history with him because I was secretary of state when WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive information from our State Department and our Defense Department,” she said.



For what it’s worth, Assange has repeatedly denied having any connection with Russia, and has even offered to turn over conclusive evidence that Russia wasn’t Wikileaks’ source for the hacked DNC emails – in exchange for a presidential pardon. However, nobody in the administration has considered his offer, according to a member of Congress who’s tried to help broker the deal.


Assange has been in hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2011. Even though Sweden dropped sex crime charges against Assange earlier this year, he has remained in the embassy for fear of being arrested by the US for publishing classified material through Wikileaks.  
 

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Sunday, October 15, 2017

Russia Unveils 'CryptoRuble' As Assange Thanks US Govt For His 50,000% Gain On Bitcoin

Once again the unintended consequences of government intervention are exposed...


In 2010 - following the release of sensitive government documents related to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - John McCain and Joe Lieberman led a bipartisan attempt to cut off WikiLeaks funding by forcing "traditional" payment systems to block them.



image courtesy of CoinTelegraph


7 years later and the price of Bitcoin has... risen...50,000%!



And Julian Assange chose yesterday to thank the US government and its corporatocracy for his forced investment...



As CoinTelegraph concludes, Wikileaks has been on the forefront of revealing government corruption, and Assange has lived as a fugitive in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012. With all the antigovernment rhetoric, it’s no wonder Assange is not friendly with pro-government fiat currencies. Wikileaks and its founder represent the sort of non-governmental control that Bitcoin is founded upon.


And while governments around the world play "pass the hot potato" with their regulatory crackdowns on cryptocurrencies, it appears - after denouncing Bitcoin earlier in the week - that Russia has accepted the inevitability of digital currencies... and created its own.



image courtesy of CoinTelegraph


As CoinTelegraph reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially stated that Russia will issue its own ‘CryptoRuble’ at a closed door meeting in Moscow, according to local news sources.


The news broke through Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov.


According to the official, the state issued cryptocurrency cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities.


The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied.


The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale. Nikiforov said:





“I confidently declare that we run CryptoRuble for one simple reason: if we do not, then after 2 months our neighbors in the EurAsEC will.”



While the announcement means that Russia will enter the cryptocurrency world, it is in no way an affirmation or legalization of Bitcoin or any other decentralized cryptocurrency. On the contrary, Putin quite recently called for a complete ban on all cryptocurrencies within Russia. The statement from Putin seemed apparently to contradict the earlier comments from other ministers who seemed pro-crypto, but only with regulations, as well as Putin’s recent meetings with Buterin and others.


Now, with the issuance of the CryptoRuble, the apparent contradiction has been made clear.

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Friday, September 29, 2017

Congressman Attacks "Disloyal" John Kelly For Quashing Possible Trump-Assange Deal

As we reported last week, California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher earlier this year tried to broker a deal between the Trump administration and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange whereby Assange would furnish purportedly conclusive evidence that Russia wasn’t responsible for the DNC leaks in exchange for a presidential pardon.


Well, apparently Trump isn’t an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal (the newspaper that originally reported on the Rohrabacher-Assange deal), because when asked about it over the weekend, he responded that he’d “never heard” of the deal.



That’s not surprising. As WSJ initially reported, Rohrabacher was stymied by Chief of Staff John Kelly when he tried to take the deal to the president. Trump’s chief of staff, who’s efforts to impose “discipline” on the West Wing in part by limiting access to the president have been widely publicized, suggested that Rohrabacher first clear the deal with the intelligence agencies, which, of course, would be a non-starter.


So, in what’s likely another attempt to circumvent Kelly’s influence via the media (after all, it’s not out of the question that Rohrabacher was behind the initial leaks to WSJ) Rohrabacher complained to the Daily Caller that certain disloyal aides are creating “a wall around” the president.





“I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.



...



“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.



As WSJ reported, Rohrabacher met with Assange in August at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has lived in asylum since 2012 due to now-dropped sexual assault charges in Sweden. However, American authorities are reportedly still investigating Assange for his role in disseminating thousands of classified US documents. At the meeting, Assange purportedly promised to deliver information that proves Russia wasn’t behind the DNC leak.


While Trump said early in the campaign that he believed Assange should get “the death penalty” for publishing US secrets and endangering intelligence assets, he has since softened his tone. Earlier this year, he praised Wikileaks for publicly denying that the Russian government was the source of the leaked DNC emails – provoking outrage among Democrats and some Republicans, who accused the president of siding with an enemy of the state over his own intelligence community.


US intelligence agencies have claimed that Russian state actors were involved with the hacking and leaking of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.


Rohrabacher said that a pardon would likely have to occur for Assange to give up this information about the source of the DNC emails. Assange has long maintained that he would never reveal a source, but Rohrabacher said that Assange now “wants to get out of the Ecuadorian embassy.” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller that he hasn’t seen the information that Assange says vindicates Russia, but vouched that the Wikileaks founder would provide the goods if the president is on board.” According to US laws, the president is able to preemptively pardon someone.


To be sure, nobody has railed against the ongoing Russia investigation harder than Trump, who has vehemently denied accusations that his campaign colluded with Russia, while also pushing back against the notion that Russia actively tried to interfere in the US election.


It’s not out of the question that Trump would consider such a deal if it were presented to him.

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Friday, April 21, 2017

U.S. Preparing Charges To Arrest Julian Assange

In a stunning new report, CNN has just revealed, according to anonymous sources at least, that US authorities have prepared charges and will seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for intelligence leaks dating all the way back to 2010.





US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.



The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.





This latest revelation comes after CIA Director Mike Pompeo ramped up the Trump administration"s rhetoric against WikiLeaks describing it as a "non-state hostile intelligence service" earlier this week.  Ironically, as we noted this morning, Pompeo"s comments can just days before the FBI and CIA admitted that they are searching for an "insider" at the CIA (not a Russian) who exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.





Last week in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, CIA Director Mike Pompeo went further than any US government official in describing a role by WikiLeaks that went beyond First Amendment activity.



He said WikiLeaks "directed Chelsea Manning to intercept specific secret information, and it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States."



"It"s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," Pompeo said.



Pompeo"s comments were, of course, met with an immediate snarky reply from Assange over twitter.




For the past several years, U.S. prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange.  In fact, in what now appears to be a very prescient opinion piece, Julian Assange recently penned an article in the Washington Post defending his publications by saying that his motives are "identical to those claimed by the New York Times and The Post."





Quite simply, our motive is identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post — to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the U.S. Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media. And we strive to mitigate legitimate concerns, for example by using redaction to protect the identities of at-risk intelligence agents.



During President Barack Obama"s administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn"t alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.


All that said, CNN"s sources seem to believe those same prosecutors have now found a way to move forward...though we"re sure the New York Times won"t receive similar arrest warrants.


Of course, it"s unclear what immediate purpose the charges will serve given that Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the sole purpose of avoiding political persecution.  That said, somehow we suspect that some form of "leverage" is about to be applied against Ecuador to help them "remember" that they have other immediate and critically important uses for Assange"s London bedroom.


And this pretty much sums it up:


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Friday, April 14, 2017

Assange Responds To CIA Director That "Produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet"

After being blasted by new CIA Director Mike Pompeo yesterday as a "hostile non-state intelligence service," Julian Assange has decided to respond by trolling the CIA, the "state non-intelligence agency," over its own roles in producing “al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran and Pinochet.”





"Called a "non-state intelligence service" today by the "state non-intelligence agency" which produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet."





Assange"s Twitter trolling was prompted by Pompeo’s attack on WikiLeaks yesterday which appeared to be in response to an op-ed Assange wrote in the Washington Post on Tuesday which referenced President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech, in which he warned of the dangers of the influence of the military industrial complex. Assange said the speech is similar to WikiLeaks’ own mission statement.





On his last night in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a powerful farewell speech to the nation — words so important that he’d spent a year and a half preparing them. “Ike” famously warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”



Much of Eisenhower’s speech could form part of the mission statement of WikiLeaks today. We publish truths regarding overreaches and abuses conducted in secret by the powerful.



Our most recent disclosures describe the CIA’s multibillion-dollar cyberwarfare program, in which the agency created dangerous cyberweapons, targeted private companies’ consumer products and then lost control of its cyber-arsenal. Our source(s) said they hoped to initiate a principled public debate about the “security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”



The truths we publish are inconvenient for those who seek to avoid one of the magnificent hallmarks of American life — public debate. Governments assert that WikiLeaks’ reporting harms security. Some claim that publishing facts about military and national security malfeasance is a greater problem than the malfeasance itself. Yet, as Eisenhower emphasized, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”



For those who missed it, below is our note on Pompeo"s comments from yesterday.


* * *


And so Donald Trump flips on yet another issue.


One day after the President reversed his core stance on a broad range of policies including the US Dollar, interest rates, the futures of Janet Yellen, the Ex-Im bank, the obsolescence of NATO and whether China is a currency manipulator, on Thursday afternoon he took aim at Wikileaks and Julian Assance, when CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, in his first public appearance since taking the top intel post in the Trump administration, called the whistleblower organization a "non-state hostile intelligence service" abetted by state actors like Russia.


"It"s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia" Pompeo said.


"WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service," Pompeo told an audience at a Washington think tank, adding that Russia"s GRU intelligence service had used the anti-secrecy group to distribute hacked material during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.



Pompeo took aim at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden during his first major public appearance since leaving Congress to serve in the top intelligence post in Donald Trump’s administration.


He also said that disclosures by Assange and Snowden have done "great harm to our nation’s national security and they will continue to do so in the long term."


And to think that just 6 months ago, Trump, i.e., Mike Pompeo"s boss, said he loved Wikileaks...



On Thursday, Pompeo cited the intelligence community’s January report concluding that the GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence unit, went through WikiLeaks to released hacked emails from the DNC to influence the presidential election.  The report concluded that Russia’s state-controlled media outlet RT actively collaborated with WikiLeaks in the influence campaign against the election.


Pompeo called Assange "a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen," skewering him for exposing information about democratic governments rather than authoritarian regimes.


Which is ironic for Pompeo to say when just last July, Pompeo was quite keen on using the information disclosed by this "fraud and coward" for his own political purposes, when he was sharing Wikileaks documents on his Congressional Twitter account less than a year ago



Pompeo also accused Snowden of committing "treason" by leaking top-secret National Security Agency files, adding that his disclosures have made it more difficult for U.S. intelligence agencies to track terrorists and given them tools to hide in "digital forests."


“He was no whistleblower," Pompeo said.


Trump"s latest reversal means that any hope Julian Assange may have had of being pardoned despite - at least according to Hillary Clinton and now the CIA - winning the election for Trump, is now officially gone, and should Assange ever be evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his fate will be anything but pleasant.

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