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U.S. Extradites Julian Assange for ‘Conspiracy with Chelsea Manning in 2010’


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2019 Apr 11, 5:34pm   774 views  5 comments

by WillPowers   ➕follow (3)   💰tip   ignore  

British police have further arrested WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange on behalf of United States authorities under an extradition request, according to the U.K’s Metropolitan Police.

In June last year, Vice President Mike Pence pressured the Ecuadorian government on the status of Assange following demands from Senate Democrats that he do so. The New York Times reported in December that Ecuador has been offered debt relief by the U.S. in exchange for handing over Assange.

A lawyer for WikiLeaks claimed that the extradition request was made by the Trump Department of Justice in 2017 for “conspiracy with Chelsea Manning in early 2010.”

The executive director of Reporter Without Borders, an advocacy organization protecting the rights of journalists, called Assange’s potential extradition and trial a “punitive measure” that would “set a dangerous precedent for journalists.”

SOURCE: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/04/11/u-s-extradition-request-forced-assange-arrest/

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1   WillPowers   2019 Apr 11, 5:38pm  

This from @Guardian reporter @ewenmacaskill is critical. Note Obama DOJ looked but found no evidence that Assange worked with Manning, but even if he had, journalists often work with sources. Still a huge threat to press freedom, as @dankennedy_nu argued https://t.co/QeIbnUQwdk https://t.co/m2fDZASppa

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 11, 2019
2   WillPowers   2019 Apr 11, 5:38pm  

Important background for journalists covering the arrest of Julian #Assange by Ecuador: the United Nations formally ruled his detention to be arbitrary, a violation of human rights. They have repeatedly issued statements calling for him to walk free–including very recently. pic.twitter.com/fr12rYdWUF

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 11, 2019
3   cmdrda2leak   2019 Apr 12, 7:41am  

Once again, Carlson shows he's one of the dwindling few mass/mainstream media commentators willing to be somewhat honest about an issue that cuts both left and right:

www.youtube.com/embed/ZE7OfU71Sbk

Corollary: the Assange arrest is a litmus test for critical thinking vs. "is this a right or a left opinion"-style thinking.
4   cmdrda2leak   2019 Apr 12, 7:53am  

^ transcript for the above, because i hate waiting through videos:


If you watched a lot of the coverage of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's arrest on television Thursday, you likely came away with the understanding that he is some kind of Russian spy who is in trouble because he stole classified documents from the U.S. government. That is not true. It's factually incorrect, and saying so is not a defense of Assange. We're not here to promote him or excuse any number of things he said over the years that we disagree with quite a lot.

But just so it's clear, whatever his sins, Assange did not steal documents from the United States government. He did not hack the DNC servers. He didn't break into John Podesta's Gmail account. There is no proof that he is working for the Russian government or ever has worked for the Russian government. Assange has never been charged with any of that and wasn't on Thursday, no matter what they tell you.

If you're upset about the theft of classified documents from the U.S. government -- and there is reason to be -- we already know who did that. A 22- year-old Army private named Bradley Manning, now called Chelsea Manning. In 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to stealing secret material and got 35 years in prison for it. Shortly after that, President Obama commuted Manning's sentence. This allowed Manning to leave jail decades early, go back on television as a commentator, and then run for political office.

So if your real concern is America's national security, you have someone to be angry at -- Barack Obama. And yet strangely, nobody is.

Instead, they're furious at Julian Assange for posting the documents that other people stole. "Julian Assange has long been a wicked tool of Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services," wrote professional moralizer Ben Sasse, who also serves in the U.S. Senate. "He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison."

Wicked? The rest of his life in prison? Idi Amin ate people and never faced this kind of scorn. Not even close. Nor, for the record, was Amin ever extradited. He died at 78 years old in his own bed, leaving behind 43 loving children.

So what's going on here? A couple of things. First, Julian Assange embarrassed virtually everyone in power in Washington. He published documents that undermined the official story on the Iraq War and Afghanistan. He got Debbie Wasserman-Schultz fired from the DNC. He humiliated Hillary Clinton by showing that the Democratic primaries were, in fact, rigged. Pretty much everyone in Washington has reason to hate Julian Assange.

Rather than just admit that straightforwardly - that he made us look like buffoons, so now we're sending him to prison -- instead, they're denouncing him as, you guessed it, a Russian agent. "Justice should come to Julian Assange for his role in Russian meddling in our election and the sooner the better," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.


(side note: look up all that Dick Blumenthal has done to hobble the Internet.)


Okay, so once again, just to be totally clear, no one has ever shown that Julian Assange is a Russian agent. The indictment against him does not say that; t doesn't mention Russia at all. But that has not stopped virtually every politician in Washington from repeating Senator Blumenthal's line, including many Republicans. Robert Mueller nearly killed the Russia collusion hoax. Julian Assange is allowing them to keep it alive.

You'd think journalists would say something about this. Assange is, after all, one of them. What do you call a man who publishes news for a living? Assange is no sleazier than many journalists in Washington; he's definitely not more anti-American. He's broken stories the New York Times would have won Pulitzers for. And yet many of his colleagues have disowned him.

"Oh, please," wrote Alexia Campbell of Vox. "Assange is no journalist. We know who he works for. " (Meaning Russia.) "Julian Assange is not a journalist," explained Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker, without actually explaining. Ken Dilanian of NBC, who doesn't so much cover the national security state as he writes memos on its behalf, noted that, "Many believe that if Assange ever was a journalist, those days ended a long time ago."

At NBC when they tell you "many believe" something, it means they believe it.

So why all the hostility to Julian Assange? Assange's real sin was preventing Hillary Clinton from becoming president. Former Democratic staffer and current CNN anchor Jim Sciutto explained it this way: "He is central to several cases. He is central to Russian interference in the election. The U.S. intelligence views him as a middleman, a cutout that he was in effect part of this interference. He's central to questions about what the Trump administration or Trump campaign, I should say, knew prior to the release of those materials, right? What were the communications between Roger Stone, et cetera? It's possible that this has something President Trump himself is not particularly excited about."

It's remarkable to watch this. It's bewildering, actually. There was a time, not so long ago, really, when reporters didn't applaud the arrest of other journalists for publishing information.

In 1971, the Washington Post and the New York Times published a trove of stolen classified documents about the Vietnam War. It was called the Pentagon Papers. Remember that? Liberals loved it. Books were written celebrating their bravery.

[...]


https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-assanges-real-sin-was-preventing-hillary-clinton-from-becoming-president

PS. every other talking head and news show on Fox and every other mainstream network is throwing Assange under a whole bus station of buses. Thanks for the courage, Tucker m
5   WillPowers   2019 Apr 12, 9:51am  

In this video we compile past comments & analysis from experts that were interviewed on acTVism on the topic of Wikileaks & Julian Assange before Assange was arrested. They include in order: Edward Snowden, Yanis Varoufakis, Glenn Greenwald, Srećko Horvat & Noam Chomsky

www.youtube.com/embed/LeJ3DZXGs24

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