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Assange Internet Link Cut By State Actor, Claims Wikileaks (rt.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report by RussianToday: WikiLeaks has activated "contingency plans" after its co-founder's internet service was intentionally cut off by a state actor, the media organization said in a tweet. The internet is one of the few, if not only, available ways for Julian Assange, who has been locked up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than four years, to maintain contact with the outside world. Facing extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape, which he denies, the Australian computer programmer has been holed up in the embassy in West London since 2012. He claims the extradition is actually a bid to move him to a jurisdiction from which he can then be sent to the US, which is known to be actively investigating WikiLeaks. The unverified claims of state sabotage come as WikiLeaks continues to release damaging documents, most recently thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta.
The emails aren't her's, they're from and to a friend of her's, Podesta. She has absolutely no ability to tell how many, if any, of the emails are legitimate. So actually her comments are absolutely the right thing to say, and it would have shown poor judgement to say anything else.
FWIW, once passed through the Russian media filter, at least one series of emails was attributed to her that had nothing to do with her, resulting in false allegations Clinton had used the N-word to describe her supporters. This smear was sufficiently believed by the anti-Clinton groups that I saw it posted over and over again in the comments sections of various news sites I read during that time. Again, this underscores how unwise it would have been to "confirm" jack shit.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Oh look, lets see how easy it is to extradite someone from the UK
Technically, he's not in the UK. He's in Ecuador.
Embassy grounds are considered foreign territory.
You are presuming that he's using the connection of the main Ecuadoran embassy (for which it may have more than one). And, yes doing so would likely cause a diplomatic issue, However I'd like to propose a couple of things : * It does not say which state. If the connection is a separate one facilitated by the Embassy, it does not say that Ecuador did not cut it. * If could be a separate connection not used for official business by the Embassy, but for visitors etc. but on contract facilitated by the Embassy that was then cut by a request to the provider by the UK. There are a number of ways this could be setup, and still be consistent with the published statement. Perhaps notching back on the histrionics would provide, overall, a better perspective on whats actually in play here.
At the same time today, RT's branch in London had it's accounts frozen. It seems pretty likely that the Ecuador embassy has no internet since the ambassador isn't answering emails. That sounds an awful lot like the west taking the anti-Russia action it's been talking about.
Don't get me wrong, I think Russia's probably been doing what it's accused of. But this is not the response of a western demicracy. We are supposed to have a free marketplace of ideas. In a free marketplace of ideas, you tollerate Russian BS because the better ideas will win... unless maybe, just matbe, the Russians have a point.
Methinks that if our western governments are reacting like authoritarian assholes, the Russians might have a point.
There hasn't been much uncovering of anything. The whole Wikileaks dump reminds me of the Prince Charles Spider Letters, where the Guardian put so much effort into getting access to Prince Charles' letters and memorandums to the British cabinet, absolutely certain that he was influencing policy in some evil nefarious way, only to find out he talked a lot about his concerns about agriculture.
Yes, there are some embarrassing things in the email dumps, as there would be if anyone's emails were leaked, but there is absolutely nothing to demonstrate this bizarre conspiracy theory that Clinton is the Lizard Queen of the Illuminati.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"But that's even less of a stretch than the feat Anderson Cooper accomplished recently by redefining assault to include unappreciated kiss."
Try an actual legal dictionary.
http://legal-dictionary.thefre...
"an intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact."
That's ALL that's required for assault.
An unwanted kiss is actually assault AND battery; since there was unwanted ('offensive') physical contact too.