This diary was initially to feature his (and his Guardian cronies) May 14 ‘Sergei Skripal briefed European intelligence services, *reports say*’; Reported meetings between former Russian spy and several intelligence services in Europe may offer motive for poisoning, Luke Harding and allies, Mon 14 May 2018…in which I’d bring to bear his past lies and storytelling via ‘skripals & co. in Deep Dark badger holes under a D notice’, Café Babylon, May 3, 2018, featuring former UK Ambassador Craig Murray v. Luke Harding in Craig Murray’s: ‘Where They Tell You Not to Look’, and parallel investigative work by Thomas Scripps at wsws.org. I’d had the outline of it finished when I’d popped into Murray’s website yesterday afternoon and had checked out the Twitter accounts of some of the members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, wondering what they might have thought about Luke and Co’s current ironclad innuendo, but found nothing.
But ay yi yi, when I just checked with Murray this a.m., and found his new spine-chilling allusion to Lyin’ Luke and friends (Murray rightfully calls him a CIA mouthpiece) and the Guardian. The stories, if partially true, have the most dangerous implications for not only Julian Assange who could likely soon end up in Gitmo or worse (is there a worse?), press freedom (as if), but for anyone who has ever visited or contacted him in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
‘The Guardian Rejoices in the Silencing of Assange’ 16 May, 2018, craigmurray.org
“The Guardian has today published a whole series of attack piece articles on Julian Assange which plainly exult in the fact he has now been silenced by the cutting of his communication with the outside world. They also include outright lies such as this one by Dan Collyns:
The quote is an image, maybe a screen shot, but is to the effect that Sweden dropped its investigation into alleged sexual offenses because it was unable to question Assange, etc., and says that even Rafel Correa had told journalists that Assange’s days were numbered because his former protege, Lenin Moreno would throw him out of the embassy at the first pressure from the US.
Now I was unable to find that quote in either of these pieces by the same trio yesterday; the worst first: ‘Revealed: Ecuador spent millions on spy operation for Julian Assange ; Exclusive: Files show at least $5m went on activities including spying on guests at London embassy’, Dan Collyns, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Luke Harding
‘How Julian Assange became an unwelcome guest in Ecuador’s embassy; He has been in the Knightsbridge building for six years, but his departure looks ever more likely’ by Luke Harding, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Dan Collyns, but maybe either or both have been edited by now. Back to Craig Murray:
“In fact Julian Assange was questioned for two days solid in the Embassy by Swedish procurators and police in November 2016. The statement he gave to them at that time I published in full. Following that questioning it was plain that there was no hope of a successful prosecution, particularly as the only physical evidence Swedish Police had was a condom Anna Ardin claimed he had worn but which had no trace of his DNA – a physical impossibility.
Dan Collyns is a freelance based in Peru, but the Guardian’s editors certainly know it is blatantly untrue that the investigation into Assange was dropped because he could not be questioned. They have knowingly published a lie. “Facts are sacred” there, apparently.
The Guardian article gives another complete lie, this time in the Harding penned section, where it says that “sources” reveal that Assange had hacked into the Embassy’s communications. That is completely untrue as are the “facts” given about Julian’s relationship with the Embassy staff, whom I know well. It is plain that these “sources” are separate from the Ecuadorean security dossier published in Focus Ecuador by the CIA. I would bet any money that these anonymous “sources” are as always Harding’s mates in the UK security services. That the Guardian should allow itself to be used in a security service disinformation campaign designed to provoke distrust between Assange and Embassy staff, is appalling.
I had a front row seat in 2010 when the Guardian suddenly switched from championing Assange to attacking him, in a deeply unedifying row about the rights and money from a projected autobiography. But they have sunk to a new low today in a collaboration between long term MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding and the CIA financed neo-con propagandists of Focus Ecuador.”
Murray then scoffs at the ‘revelations’ that he, his friends, his attorneys, Sarah Harrison, et.al. visited Assange, as they’d been quite open if not pubicized meetings, with the claim that the meetings ‘will certainly interest Mueller‘. Craig’s conclusions at the end I’m not sure I agree with as per monitoring the WikiLeaks Twitter account daily, but that’s okay.
How fine it is that Mike Head at wsws.org has unveiled the ‘Conspiracy emerges to push Julian Assange into British and US hands’, 16 May 2018 in greater detail, and he brings in a hit job by a now-Guardian bad-actor James Ball (here and here at the minimum) as well. The history you already know, so I’ll jump to:
“Moves are afoot to force Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought political asylum close to six years ago and has been forced to live as an effective prisoner. If he is taken into custody by British authorities, he faces being handed over to the US government, which has long sought to place him on trial on espionage charges that potentially carry the death sentence.” [snip]
“The fresh offensive against Assange comes seven weeks after the Ecuadorian government, under pressure from the US, Britain and other powers, cut off Assange’s entire Internet and phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from visiting him.
The Guardian has published unsubstantiated allegations that Assange “violated” the embassy’s communications system and “apparently” read “confidential diplomatic traffic.” In a tweet, WikiLeaks emphatically denied the accusation and pointed to its source, saying: “That’s an anonymous libel aligned with the current UK-US government onslaught against Mr Assange’s asylum—while he can’t respond.”
There is no doubt about the intent of the latest allegations. Guardian opinion writer James Ball was blunt. The WikiLeaks’ founder, Ball asserted, “should hold his hands up and leave the embassy.” [referencing this ball BS, I assume]
The Guardian’s lead article declared: “If he walks out of the embassy, he can expect arrest and could spend up to a year in prison for breaking his bail conditions. The US might then seek to extradite him. He would contest any attempt, and might win, but would face a long, uncomfortable spell behind bars while his case is decided.”
Earlier this year, Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, who took office last May, stated that Assange was a costly “inherited problem” and a “hacker,” and made it clear that he viewed Assange as an obstacle to better relations with the US.
Since his election, Moreno has carried out a sharp turn to the right, with tax cuts for big business, cuts in social spending and attempts to reduce Ecuador’s dependence on loans and investment from China in favour of closer relations with US imperialism.
Ecuador’s government cut off Assange’s communications just one day after it welcomed a delegation from the US Southern Command (Southcom), the Pentagon’s arm in Latin America and the Caribbean, headed by General Joseph DiSalvo. Southcom said discussions were held to strengthen “security cooperation.”
WD here: this is what I believe is at the core of the conspiracy: WikiLeaks publications of CIA vaults 7 and 8 exploits, not Assange’s support of the Catalan independence movement that Murray posits. And the WikiLeaks that amply demonstrated the Imperium’s intentions to take down leftist governments in the global south, as in: Obomba and Trump: ‘Venezuela is a threat to US national security’. Well… that just might be, but not in the way they pretend.
“There is no doubt that the US intelligence apparatus and political establishment are driving the conspiracy against Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began publishing more incriminating files about the CIA’s global operations. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, declared that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
Head reminds readers of the DNC lawsuit against WL, Assange, Russia, an Trump…and quotes John Pilger telling Sputnik News that he’d (committed the crime) of telling the truth about US war crimes, exposing the machinations of the DNC, etc., but then, Pilger again:
“Pilger pointed to the accommodation that Moreno was seeking with Washington, which has been aggressively moving against any government in Latin America regarded as an obstacle to US hegemony over the continent.
“It’s quite clear that this government has deferred to the United States because it cut off Julian’s contacts—all Internet, all phone, all visitors apart from food and lawyers on the day that US Southcom deputy commander General Joseph DiSalvo arrived in Quito, Ecuador to renegotiate a US base that Correa had shut down.”
The Guardian based its unverified accusations against Assange on “secret records” it had “seen,” together with Focus Ecuador, a right-wing website. It charged that Ecuador’s intelligence agency “bankrolled a multi-million-dollar spy operation” to “protect” Assange in the embassy. Over six years, this activity had cost $5 million.
Operation Guest” logged every visitor that Assange had for six years, and spied on his every movement in the tiny embassy, monitoring his mood, habits and sleeping patterns, the Guardian reported. Agents recorded each visitor’s purpose of visit, their passport information and arrival and departure times.
[an agitprop psyop with a hidden purpose, or just so?]
“Every month, the security company sent a confidential list of Assange’s visitors to the Ecuadorian president,” the newspaper stated. “Sometimes, the company included stills from secret video footage of interesting guests, plus profiles and analysis.”
According to the Guardian, this possibly offered “clues as to who gave him the trove of hacked documents that helped to bring down Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.” It ominously stated that such a “visitor” would “interest” US special counsel Robert Mueller, who heads an investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged links to Russia.
According to the newspaper, the FBI has already interviewed “at least one source close to Operation Guest,” indicating that Ecuador has handed over all its records to the US intelligence agencies. As a result, every person who has visited or communicated with Assange while he has been in the embassy is at risk of persecution and, potentially, frame-up charges of complicity in espionage or seeking to manipulate the 2016 US election.”
And just to make it clear again, from the Guardian:
“Ecuador bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Julian Assange in its central London embassy, employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
“Worried that British authorities could use force to enter the embassy and seize Assange, Ecuadorian officials came up with plans to help him escape.
They included smuggling Assange out in a diplomatic vehicle or appointing him as Ecuador’s United Nations representative so he could have diplomatic immunity in order to attend UN meetings, according to documents seen by the Guardian dated August 2012.”
What comes after this paragraph toward the end is inscrutable to me; you might make more sense out of it:
“But the Operation Hotel outgoings were a fraction of the intelligence agency’s special expenses. In Assange’s first two months in the embassy, Senain spent $22.5m on 38 other operations with codenames including “undercover agents”, “counter-intelligence” and “Venezuela”, according to official documents.”,etc.
Now here’s the serial story teller on TRNN Dec. 23, 2017: ‘Where’s the ‘Collusion’? Amid news the Mueller probe could extend through 2018, Guardian reporter Luke Harding and TRNN’s Aaron Mate discuss Russiagate and Harding’s new book “Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win”. If you read the transcript you’ll see that Harding self-identifies as ‘a journalist, a story-teller‘, and claims to be able to identify bad-guy Russians colluding with Trump….by their use of emoticons.
I’ll bring a few WikiLeaks tweets in comments. His team must be beside themselves with angst, as Julian must be.
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
https://twitter.com/avilarenata/status/996434626951483394
Then beginning on march 7 various parts of CIA Vault 7 global hacking force…once again. now this i’d forgotten, fwiw:
hello, café; anyone home but me? this page at wikileak.org leads to all their leaks over the years; sometimes i forget how important so many of them have been. mind-boggling and breath-taking really. scroll down the page.
https://wikileaks.org/-Leaks-.html
What’s happening to Assange is based on fear of the truth.
I have a saying: Fear is a thief; don’t let it steal from you.
agreed, v. the hatred is fear-based, but i’m still blown away by how many in the twittersphere despise him, and still buy into the scurrilous charges against him. how does it go? if one repeats a lie enough times, it becomes as the truth?
‘oh, well, if the fearless investigative journalists at the Intercept scourge him, what’s not to believe?’ the atlantic? daily beast? same thing…what.a.stacked.deck. anyhoo, john pilger tweet the link to his interview at sputnik with this: ‘I can say that the new government in Ecuador led by Lenin Moreno is a disgrace’, etc. i won’t bring BB’s exclusive!!!™ interview w/ rafel correa.
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201805151064484059-ecuador-uk-assange-talks-john-pilger-response/
So many present situations seem to be reaching a tipping point, that I cannot help wondering if the possible consequence to follow all of this, that is for Assange to be extradited to the US, might not have consequences for the latter that would more than overshadow any punishment this government might attempt to inflict.
We have precious few heroes these days, and Julian Assange is one of them. Yes, this country has behaved brutally towards other ‘whistleblowers’, and Assange is the cream of the crop, but as such he surely represents an unknown quantity in the whole imperial dynamic. That dynamic is riddled with holes and like the balloon of the wizard of oz doesn’t have much further to drift helplessly away.
There will come a critical moment. Assange’s outrageous treatment could be it. He deserves our thanks and support.
whoa, yes, so many tipping points are afoot. but my apologies for not following the rest of your first paragraph, esp. this: ‘ might not have consequences for the latter that would more than overshadow any punishment this government might attempt to inflict.’ i’m missing who or what the latter is (assange?) and what might be worse? me, i’d rather be assassinated outright than die slowly in gitmo.
what is known about him i on thing; what charges are laid at his door is a whole ‘nother matter, isn’t it? but what would get leaked to the organization may have grown time as things get more desperate for the global ‘useless eater’ class, but i sincerely fear that not enough citizens care what happens to him, although some comments at wsws, consortium news, murray’s site do hope for such.
what the PTB don’t know is if wikileaks’ purported ‘dead man’s switch’ gets triggered, what gets published, as i understand it, all will be released. but that may simply have been a chimera of an insurance policy to keep him alive. wish i knew. sorry to be so incoherent; this new round finds my brain with barbed wire in it, so full of dark thoughts…
i’ve forgotten which related comment stream it was that a commenter had linked to media lens on the changed ownership of the guardian. but among the internal links, this one from 2014 had the simplest explanation:
A Guardian Of Power
“The Guardian is, as we have often noted, at the liberal end of the corporate media ‘spectrum’. It portrays itself as a compassionate forum for journalism willing to hold power to account, and it makes great play of its journalistic freedom under the auspices of Scott Trust Limited (replacing the Scott Trust in 2008). The paper, therefore, might not at first sight appear to be a corporate institution. But the paper is owned by the Guardian Media Group which is run by a high-powered Board comprising elite, well-connected people from the worlds of banking, insurance, advertising, multinational consumer goods companies, telecommunications, information technology giants, venture investment firms, media, marketing services, the World Economic Forum, and other sectors of big business, finance and industry. This is not a Board staffed by radically nonconformist environmental, human rights and peace campaigners, trade unionists, NHS campaigners, housing collectives; nor anyone else who might threaten the status quo. As Ahmed observes:
‘If this is the state of The Guardian, undoubtedly one of the better newspapers, then clearly we have a serious problem with the media. Ultimately, mainstream media remains under the undue influence of powerful special interests, whether financial, corporate or ideological.’
the board as of 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/gmg/2015/jul/23/gnm-board
dunno why b seems so surprised, as the OPCW’s report had been written in the stars beforehand: ‘Syria – Inconsistent, Incomplete And Implausible – The OPCW Report On Saraqib Is Another Disgrace’
he quotes the guardian coverage, natch, as per its new ownership, and compromised human rights watch. all evidence was collected by the white helmets, which both call the ‘syria civil defense’ of course.
“The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is a intergovernmental organization with the task to implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention. Its acting body is the Technical Secretariat which is currently led by the Turkish career diplomat Ahmet Üzümcü. It is financed by all 192 convention members.
The OPCW report on Saraqib to which the Guardian refers is headlined:
REPORT OF THE OPCW FACT-FINDING MISSION IN SYRIA REGARDING AN ALLEGED INCIDENT IN SARAQIB, SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC ON 4 FEBRUARY 2018 (pdf)
There is one immediate problem with the headline. It insinuates that an OPCW fact-finding mission IN Syria took place. However the report itself says that no OPCW fact-finder entered Syria to investigate the alleged incident in Saraqib.
The OPCW fact-finders interviewed ‘witnesses’ while being outside of Syria. Access to those witnesses was provided by shady “Non-Government-Organizations” which are financed by governments hostile to Syria. All environmental samples tested by the OPCW laboratories were taken by paid ‘volunteers’ of the White Helmets propaganda organization. There is no documented ‘chain of custody’ for the samples.”
the woke twittersphere has caught on, raig murray hadn’t and was part of righteous jihad against wikipedia. others brought the new alliance between facebook and the atlantic council, mouthpiece for nato.
but yes, their report is all bullshit.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/syria-inconsistent-incomplete-and-implausible-the-opcw-report-on-saraqib-is-another-disgrace-.html
The attack on Skripal is literally driving everybody in England bonkers, from the toffs at the Foreign Office right down to the cops on the beat.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/17/almost-100-police-have-received-psychological-help-after-salisbury-attack-wiltshire-force
mega-lulz! ‘…the guardian can reveal’. talk about ‘the tale (yes, i mean the ‘story’ wagging the dog! let’ decide on a conclusion, then buttress it with constantly evolving, devolving ‘facts’. if all those wiltshire po-po sought help for those conditions at the ‘various related site investigations’ (a big IF), they may be suffering delusional PTSD psychosomatic symptoms.
‘the novochok was an order of magnitude stronger than the garden-variety kind! we know the roosians were studying doorknobs! i’m beginning to wonder if the skripals ever existed, myself, but…RT says ‘sergei has been released from the hospital’. (one po-po had apparently been admitted just after the ‘event’, as i remember it). guess the D notice is no longer operative, eh guardian?
https://www.rt.com/uk/427080-skripal-salisbury-nhs-poison/
yeah, the truth will never see the light of day on this one, nor many others. too many villains need to be silenced, putsched, sanctioned, an tra la la.
on edit: while i was at the guardian, i’d seen ‘opinion: gina haspel must atone for her past’, lo-fooking-l! (likely the dude hadn’t been recommending hara-kiri, either…)
The only other thing that comes to mind is a Hopi word:
Koyaanisqatsi
(n.) “life out of balance.”
a state of life that calls for another way of living.
Indeed, another way of living. My adopted country affords that opportunity…
i hadn’t known that word, thank you. the dineh have a similar for being in harmony, balance, dunno it’s opposite. variously hozhro or hozho, which is the designation for those who are ‘ill’ enough to need any of the various healing ceremonies.
we’ve spent considerable time in hopiland over the decades, and were always blown away by the generosity and earthy wisdom of ‘the people’. but yeah, i am seriously Koyaanisqatsi lately, as is most the planet now. or: ka-hopi, not peaceful… i’m glad you’ve found a more wholesome way of living, v.
maybe when i watch my favorite meditation video today…i won’t argue with the guide as often? ;-)
thanks, jacob. when i’d bingled for the word, the only reference i’d seen was that film. ooof, what a relief when the haunting music (moog?) finally went from evidence of industrial disease to what i assume were the hopi mesas! dunno that all the images were near hopi, esp. the desert sands, but the one shot that was a river turning around a giant cliff *may* have been the little colorado that drains into the grand canyon, w/ a hole (sipapu) that the hopi creation stories say were where ‘the people’ emerged into the (now) fourth world.
if you go out and sit on the mesa tops you’ll find boatloads of prayer sticks in the ground, adorned with paint and eagle down that blows if there’s a bit of a breeze. and when you gaze south it does seem as though you can see…forever. and of course by now, and tragically, the water that fed their springs for thousands of years…is being stolen upstream by more er…powerful entities for ‘civilized’ use, like making snow, watering golf courses, and other more important stuff.
and thank you all; this diary over yonder at c99 gleaned exactly two commenters. but another man put one up this a.m., far more abbreviated, which is what the commentariat there appreciates, so…the word will get out, in any event, fwiw.
one such, one was featured at traditionalhopi.com, not this one, iirc:
‘Please Help the Hopi Cloud-Callers and the Diné Save Their Water’, wd, april 6, 2012, then, my.fdl
https://shadowproof.com/2012/04/06/please-help-the-hopi-cloud-callers-and-the-dine-save-their-water/
As a political writer, for these past several years, I have ignored what Assange and WikiLeaks portends for our public discourse,
However, after having read that “treason” is a reasonable facsimile of what has been perceived as his behavior, and in particular, his involvement in the release of the DNC email cache, seems probable. And yet, no one to my knowledge has posited, in an irrefutable manner, that the Russians “gave” this cache” to Assange or to WikiLeaks. Further, the ‘report’ crafted by the Intelligence Surveillance Agencies, have, collectively, determined that the Russians inserted themselves into our election of 2016.
And with this in mind, I would like to see Assange voluntarily walk out of the embassy and where he has voluntarily incarcerated himself, and if so, hire Stormy Daniels’ attorney, and subsequently legally sue the USA under the Rico Act, and done in order to clear his name. Thus, there are many political tangents to Assange et.al, and in doing so, Assange would ‘inform’ and ‘educate’ the public relative to what our “employees” and “contractors” are doing in our name and in the name of our federal government. Now, a successful Rico lawsuit would result in costing the taxpayers a considerable amount of monies, but this effort, if successful, would directly address our ‘quiet’ use of Public Policy, and to be made public.
Jaango
hey, jaango. you’ve made your position abundantly clear in the past, but ‘hire stormy daniels’ attorney’ brings art to your ‘give himself up’ idiocy. how, phone said attorney from gitmo after being water-boarded 67 times in order that he gives up his sources? and you seem to be claiming to be speaking for ALL chicano veterans as you’ve come in under their flag. jeebus, jaango.
wendy,
discus required that I include our website. And why, I don’t know, but being the ‘nice’ guy that I am, I will cooperate and thusly, did so.
As to your comment on being waterboarded 67 times, you lost me. Or misunderstood Assange’s history for being the victim of waterboarding.
Please explain.
Jaango
what i’m saying is that if assange ‘walks out of the ecuadorian embassy’, he will be arrested, handed over to the amerikan in-justice system, and likely be sent to GITMO for the traitor you believe him to be. he has reams of attorneys around the world already, none are permitted to speak with him any longer (as of seven weeks ago).
the imagined water-boarding would be to get him to name the sources of the leaks WiliLeaks has published. heh; how did i know that what seems to piss you off most were the dnc leaks? among all of these? oh, what a great service he and the WL team have provided us!
https://wikileaks.org/-Leaks-.html
but discus? this site doesn’t use disqus, that’s an off-site commenting system, very insecure, so i have no idea what you’d encountered.
Unfortunately for Assange, he’s turned himself into a ‘dead brick of history. In short, he should’ve utilized the Tribal Courts here in the USA, and in order to defend himself. As such, several tribal treaties exceed or reach further back in history that has been utilized to challenge our national approach to “empire,” and that’s where Assange has no actual knowledge on how to defend himself successfully. And the same can be said of the activists among the Protest Movement that has and been ongoing throughout the Latin America Region of these past many years. And RICO is the only available vehicle to challenge this behavior toward ’empire’ fruition and of the many tangents of this condensation of this drip and doggerel.
Jaango
omg! i’m tempted not to even engage on this zaniness, but er…um…for one thing, assange is australian, not amerikan. but i think i may need to be finished w/ this, jaango.
And Yes, I am incorrect on disquis but Word Press does not recognize my password anymore.
As to my suggestion, almost any Tribal Court would provide the legal venue for Assange to challenge the federal government and its various agencies that are angry with Assange. He need’s only to ask, but he won’t. And his being an Australian has nothing to with this opportunity since Native Americans are also concerned with Assange’s behavior but also concerned with America’ behavior and to include the protest movement that courses throughout this hemisphere.
Jaango
apparently you tried to sign in with a different email address than usual, one you use at another wordpress site. as to the rest, i think you have no idea what it takes to have ‘standing’ in any court of law. but the case you’re making is just beyond anything reasonable. pompeo wants him gone due to WL’s publication of the CIA exploit vaults 7 and 8, and the new head of the cia is the ‘torturer in chief’. and you think he should have availed himself of tribal courts? gosh, why didn’t his global civil rights attorneys think of that?
and here i am again engaging with you, jaango. but methinks that your comment at the top was exactly right: “As a political writer, for these past several years, I have ignored what Assange and WikiLeaks portends for our public discourse“. i won’t go back onto other WikiLeak threads and dig out your hateful , clinton-esque comments toward him, okay? as i’d said, you’ve made yourself abundantly clear over time where you stand: not on his side.