Tag Archives: Julian Assange

hillary

Gulp.

Hillary Clinton considered drone attack on Julian Assange – report (RT)

Will WikiLeaks’ Assange delay ‘October surprise’ announcement? (Fox News)

Meanwhile…

pence-kaine

US Vice President candidates Mike Pence left) and Tim Kaine

Election analyst Shane Heneghan ponders the the next week and beyond in the US elections.

Shane writes:

The vice presidential debate is traditionally somewhat of a wild card. This year, both Veep candidates are unmistakably less visible than their running mates.

Tim Kaine who gives off the vibe of a moderately embarrassing suburban dad will probably be seeking to portray himself as having a certain amount of mettle. It remains to be seen how Mike Pence would like to be seen as but he potentially would still like to be regarded as the brains of a potential Trump presidency.

That debate will be swiftly followed by a town hall debate between the main two candidates where questions will be posed by voters. Clinton has strong form in this format.

By contrast, when Trump gets a tough question he’s known to play the ball and not the man. He may get away with that with a Fox news anchor during the primaries but a member of the public during the general election just might prove to be a slightly different matter.

In terms of predictions, at this point I would give Clinton a narrow advantage but I would be nervous about saying that loudly.

Trump and Clinton are easily the two most unpopular candidates either of the two major parties have nominated in living memory. This could lead to many things. Most obviously, a dip in turnout and spike the vote of third party candidates.

The sheer unprecedented nature of the whole thing probably means any dip in turnout could hopefully be kept to a minimum and that the real story here is third party candidates.

The Libertarian ticket has two former Republican governors who are occasionally polling in double digits. Gary Johnson of New Mexico and has considerably more experience at being a Republican than Trump and the more exposure he gets the more of the GOP base he could take away from him.

Jill Stein of the US Green Party may have a similar effect on the Democratic ticket but given her relative obscurity on the national stage, her failure to get above the margin of error in most polls and the surprisingly strong efforts of Bernie Sanders to row in behind Clinton we can expect this to happen to a much smaller degree.

Another thing worth considering on a purely hypothetical basis for the time being is a candidate winning the electoral college without winning the popular vote. This has happened on four separate occasions already- most recently in 2000 when Al Gore garnered half a million more votes than his Republican rival but was denied victory.

Is it possible that if we don’t see the massive double digit margins in formerly solid blue and red states for either candidate, if we see third party candidates eating into base votes that we may have a scenario where the winner gets to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue despite being three million votes or more behind in the popular vote?

If Donald Trump were beaten in this fashion how would he react? More to the point, how would his more rumbustious trigger happy supporters react? It’s a recipe for trouble. If Clinton were beaten in a similar fashion she and the establishment that backs her would feel similarly aggrieved.

In theory, congress should take such a result as a signal to reform the electoral college. What we can be more sure of, however, is that they can use the result and the perceived lack of legitimacy in the short term to ignore the wishes of the President at will. Heck, they do it already to Obama- who is considerably more popular than either of these two.

Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned, and we get way ahead of ourselves when we say this but given the unpopularity of both candidates, it is surely highly unlikely that the winner in 2016 in will win in 2020 or that they will even be reselected to be their party’s candidate. No one has said this out loud that much but you can bet it’s a thought in the back of the heads of some operatives in both parties.

Follow Shane on Twitter: @shanehengehan

assange

Lilly writes:

“Apparently it’s not THAT Assange.”

Dr Martens Assange Boot – Always one step ahead of the authorities

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“Today Bradley Manning, a whistleblower, was convicted by a military court at Fort Meade of 19 offences for supplying the press with information, including five counts of ’espionage’. He now faces a maximum sentence of 136 years.

The ’aiding the enemy’ charge has fallen away. It was only included, it seems, to make calling journalism ’espionage’ seem reasonable. It is not.

Bradley Manning’s alleged disclosures have exposed war crimes, sparked revolutions, and induced democratic reform. He is the quintessential whistleblower.

This is the first ever espionage conviction against a whistleblower. It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism. It is a short sighted judgment that can not be tolerated and must be reversed. It can never be that conveying true information to the public is ’espionage’.

President Obama has initiated more espionage proceedings against whistleblowers and publishers than all previous presidents combined.

In 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama ran on a platform that praised whistleblowing as an act of courage and patriotism. That platform has been comprehensively betrayed. His campaign document described whistleblowers as watchdogs when government abuses its authority. It was removed from the internet last week.

Throughout the proceedings there has been a conspicuous absence: the absence of any victim. The prosecution did not present evidence that – or even claim that – a single person came to harm as a result of Bradley Manning’s disclosures. The government never claimed Mr. Manning was working for a foreign power.

The only ’victim’ was the US government’s wounded pride, but the abuse of this fine young man was never the way to restore it. Rather, the abuse of Bradley Manning has left the world with a sense of disgust at how low the Obama administration has fallen. It is not a sign of strength, but of weakness.

The judge has allowed the prosecution to substantially alter the charges after both the defense and the prosecution had rested their cases, permitted the prosecution 141 witnesses and extensive secret testimony. The government kept Bradley Manning in a cage, stripped him naked and isolated him in order to crack him, an act formally condemned by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for torture. This was never a fair trial.

The Obama administration has been chipping away democratic freedoms in the United States. With today’s verdict, Obama has hacked off much more. The administration is intent on deterring and silencing whistleblowers, intent on weakening freedom of the press.

The US first amendment states that ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’. What part of ’no’ does Barack Obama fail to comprehend?

Julian Assange

Statement by Julian Assange on Verdict in Bradley Manning Court-Martial (Wikileaks.org)

Bradley Manning cleared of ‘aiding the enemy’ but guilty of most other charges (The Guardian)

Pic: Storiesfromthefed

 

A ripped condom given to Swedish police by one of Julian Assange’s accusers does not contain the WikiLeaks founder’s DNA, forensic scientists have reportedly found.

In a 100-page document shown to Assange’s lawyers, it was revealed that the torn prophylactic, having been examined by staff at two forensic laboratories, did not bear conclusive evidence that Assange had ever worn it.

No DNA link To Assange In Condom Central To Sex Assault Case (RT)

Thanks Lars Biscuits

 

The government of Ecuador says British authorities have threatened to barge into Ecuadorean embassy in London if officials there do not comply with demands to hand over Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been hiding out there while his request for asylum is considered.

“We are not a British colony,” said the country’s prime minister in a press conference today. “The days of the colony are over.”

LIVE TWEETS: Humunculous Flannel & James Albury

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNqd4hW98sQ

Youtuber, sethsharp1 sez:

One night while I (Seth) was DJing at this club in Reykjavik (with DJ Karel), Julian Assange and some of his friends came to the club for a night of dancing. Much speculation has taken place over his dancing skills. He owned the dance floor that night for sure!

He’s good, but he’s no Thom Yorke.

via/pic @ Wikimedia Commons