WIKILEAKS: Julian Assange arrested, as Trump claims he knows nothing about him

USA: The Russia Probe: What Roger Stone’s Latest Lie Reveals About Russia Scandal - by Jonathan Chait

TRUMPUT

This weekend, the Washington Post reported that Roger Stone met in May 2016 with a Russian man offering to sell the Trump campaign damaging information on Hillary Clinton. There’s no evidence that Stone consummated the transaction. But there is plenty of significance in the revelation.

The first is that the story confirms Stone’s functionally active status as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. Stone officially left his role in August 2015. But he continued to speak regularly with Trump, while supporting him fervently. There is abundant evidence that Stone communicated privately with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

Stone turned down the latest offer because, as he told fellow Trump adviser Michael Caputo at the time, the self-styled Russian intermediary was demanding too much money in return for goods that seemed to promise little. He turned the deal down because it was a bad deal, and claims he now believes the man was an FBI planting trying to entrap him, but there is no dispute he was negotiating on Trump’s behalf.

This tells us that any contacts Stone had with WikiLeaks were also done in his unofficial capacity as Trump surrogate. Stone was colluding with the publicity arm of Russian intelligence as a functional member of the Trump campaign.

Second, it matters that Stone and Caputo have been caught in another lie. Both men told congressional investigators they had no contact with Russians or people identifying themselves as Russian. “I’ve never been to Russia. I didn’t talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign,” he explained to the Washington Post. “I very definitely can’t think of anybody who might have been a Russian without my knowledge.”

Stone now says he forgot all about this meeting. “I just didn’t remember, 2016 was a pretty busy year,” he tells ABC. It would be fairly surprising for Stone to have forgotten all about an approach from a Russian man offering dirt on Clinton given that Stone says he had zero contacts with Russians. You never forget your first time, as they say. It would be plausible that he forgot this contact with the Russians if he had a lot of contacts with Russians. Even if Stone’s unsupported charge that he was being set up is true, it would not explain why he failed to disclose the meeting and lied about it. In either case, “I forgot” is not usually a compelling defense against charges of perjury.

And the broader point is that Trump and his campaign keep lying, over and over, about the extent of their contacts with Russia. It is conceivable that one or two members of Trump’s campaign might forget an incidental contact with a purported Russian agent, especially if that person had a legitimate role as well. But the scores of lies tell us something different. They are not coming clean in the belief they did nothing wrong. They are denying everything, and when their lies are disproven, they simply retreat to a new categorical defense, and keep doing it. At every moment they insist that the only Russian contacts that occurred are the ones publicly known, but the list just keeps growing. The assumption that the list of known contacts is the entire list rests upon an assumption of innocence that, at some point we long ago passed, is forfeit.

Read more: What Roger Stone’s Latest Lie Reveals About Russia Scandal

Privacy Issues: CIA hacks TVs, phones all over the world, Wikileaks claims

The CIA has become the preeminent hacking operation, sneaking into high-tech phones and televisions to spy on people worldwide, according to an explosive WikiLeaks publication of purported internal CIA documents on Tuesday.

To hide its operations, the CIA routinely adopted hacking techniques that enabled them to appear as if they were hackers in Russia, WikiLeaks said.

WikiLeaks also claimed that nearly all of the CIA's arsenal of privacy-crushing cyberweapons have been stolen, and the tools are potentially in the hands of criminals and foreign spies.

WikiLeaks claimed the stolen tools ended up in the hands of "former U.S. government hackers and contractors... one of whom" leaked documents to WikiLeaks.

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California called for an immediate congressional investigation.

"I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools. The ramifications could be devastating," he said in a statement. ""We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans."

"The potential privacy concerns are mind-boggling," he said.

WikiLeaks said it published the documents to show the potentially hazardous ramifications of the CIA's covert hacking program -- and the massive theft of those tools.

"There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber 'weapons,'" said WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange in a statement.

WikiLeaks, an outfit that believes in transparency, backed up the claims by publishing a massive trove of what it says are secret CIA documents. It calls the collection "Year Zero," and it consists of 8,761 documents and files.

The CIA, citing standing policy, declined to say whether the published documents are genuine.

"We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents," said CIA spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak. 

Read more: CIA hacks TVs, phones all over the world, Wikileaks claims - Mar. 7, 2017

WikiLeaks promised a Hillary Clinton bombshell. Instead, they trolled us all.

Julian Assange trolled the internet — and much of the world — Tuesday, getting thousands to tune into a glorified informercial for WikiLeaks and his new book by teasing he would be dropping a surprise in October on Hillary Clinton.

But Assange didn't release any documents. Instead, he again moved the goal post for when new documents related to the election would leak — saying they'd come before the end of the year.

"We are going to need an army to defend us from the pressure that is already starting to arise," Assange said via live video feed into a press conference to celebrate WikiLeaks' 10-year anniversary, NBC News reported.

Top supporters of Donald Trump — including noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and political operative Roger Stone — had hyped Assange's press conference, saying he would release documents that would end Clinton's presidential bid.

Read more: WikiLeaks promised a Hillary Clinton bombshell. Instead, they trolled us all.

TTIP meetings - secrecy: WikiLeaks raises reward for details on TTIP

WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to collect reward funds to be given to people, who can provide insider information on the planned EU-US trade deal, also known as TTIP. Donations are already pouring in.

By early afternoon, the whistleblowing website had already collected about a fifth of the target sum, with contributions coming from former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and many others.

Critics of the planned trade deal have been worrying it may water down consumer protection provisions and allow companies to block undesirable regulation. But relevant details of the draft agreement have not been made available to the public.

TTIP "remains secret almost in its entirety, closely guarded by the negotiators," WikiLeaks wrote in an online post. "WikiLeaks is taking steps to ensure that Europeans can finally read the monster trade deal."

Read more: WikiLeaks raises reward for details on TTIP | Business | DW.COM | 11.08.2015

US NSA SPYIING CHARGES: France’s Hollande Calls Defense Cabinet Meeting After NSA Spying Claims - by S. Schechner and W. Horobin

French President François Hollande plans to convene top defense advisers on Wednesday after WikiLeaks published documents that purportedly show that the U.S. spied on him and his two predecessors.

The six documents, also published late Tuesday by two French publications, describe purported U.S. surveillance of internal deliberations and conversations of Mr. Hollande and former French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

The White House late Tuesday said that it is not now spying on Mr. Hollande and that it would not undertake such surveillance against him in the future. The statement did not deny that spying had taken place in the past.

“We do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose,” said Ned Price, White House National Security Council spokesman. “This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike.”

It wasn’t immediately possible to authenticate the documents, which span a period from 2006 to 2012. WikiLeaks has leaked documents in the past that were later authenticated.

Mr. Hollande’s office said Wednesday’s meeting would seek to “evaluate the nature” of the leaked documents and “draw useful conclusions.”

An aide to Mr. Sarkozy told the Associated Press that the former president considers these methods unacceptable, especially from an ally. Mr. Chirac didn’t immediately comment, the AP reported.

The latest leak detailing alleged U.S. spying on European allies is likely to worsen simmering trans-Atlantic tensions over surveillance.

Note EU-Digest - with friends like this who needs any enemies?

Read more: France’s Hollande Calls Defense Cabinet Meeting After NSA Spying Claims - WSJ

USA and German Spying under fire in Germany

Wikileaks has published transcripts of "unclassified sessions" of the Bundestag inquiry into the BND-NSA colloboration. The leaked documents show discrepancies between public and private sessions of the inquiry.

"In this important Bundestag inquiry, the German and international public is the injured party. The purpose of this inquiry, properly stated, is to discover who is responsible for the injury of a great many people's rights and how these violations were committed," Wikileaks co-founder and editor in chief Julian Assange said in a statement.

"As the injured party, the public has a right to understand this inquiry's work. It is only through effective public oversight that this inquiry's stated objectives of transparency and justice will be met."

Read more in DW about the present investigation going on in Germany

Wistleblowers :Assange to allow Swedish prosecutors to question him in LondonWikileaks

Julian Assange’s his legal team says the whistleblower has agreed to a long-negotiated interview with Swedish prosecutors about allegations of rape and sexual assault dating back to 2010.

“We have today sent a confirmation to prosecutors that Julian Assange agrees to be questioned. He assumes that the interrogation will follow the existing rules framework,” his lawyer Thomas Olsson told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Thursday.

Australian-born Assange has spent more than 1,000 days in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, to avoid extradition to Sweden, which he fears will hand him over to the US. In America he may face separate charges pertaining to his role in the US diplomatic cable leaks, hosted on his website WikiLeaks in 2010.
Assange says he has “repeatedly” invited prosecutors to question him by video link or in London over charges brought by two women, which he denies.

To read more  click here

Wikileaks' Assange 'united against oppression'

Julian Assange launched an appeal from the balcony of Ecuador's embassy in London where he has sought refuge. "There is still oppression, and we need to remain united against oppression. Obama, stop the hunt against Wikileaks." After having thanked Ecuador for having granted him asylum and the other Latin American countries which met to evaluate the standoff between London and Quito, the founder of Wikileaks recalled the detention conditions of Bradley Manning, the American soldier who is said to have passed Assange secret files from the US diplomatic services, and the sentence condemning Pussy Riots emitted the day before yesterday in Moscow. .

Read more: AGI.it - Wikileaks' Assange 'united against oppression'

WikiLeaks publishes 'embarrassing' Syrian emails - by Richard Hubbard

The secret-spilling group WikiLeaks said today Thursday it was in the process of publishing material from 2.4 million Syrian emails — many of which it said came from official government accounts.

WikiLeaks' Sarah Harrison told journalists at London's Frontline Club that the emails reveal interactions between the Syrian government and Western companies, although she declined to go into much further detail.

Harrison quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying that "the material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria's external opponents."

Read more: WikiLeaks publishes 'embarrassing' Syrian emails - World - CBC News

WikiLeaks founder Assange to be extradited to Sweden to face rape claims - by Erik Larson

Julian Assange, founder of the anti- secrecy website WikiLeaks, lost a U.K. appeal to stop his extradition to Sweden to face rape claims almost 11 months after he was arrested in London.

The U.K. Court of Appeal today said the 40-year-old Australian must return to Sweden, where he’s sought in an investigation of two sexual assault cases. He’s accused of failing to use a condom in one incident and of having sex with a woman who was sleeping in another.

For more: WikiLeaks founder Assange to be extradited to Sweden to face rape claims - The Washington Post

Internet: 20-Plus Suspected Anonymous Hackers Arrested in U.S., UK, Netherlands

Law enforcement agencies in the U.S., UK and the Netherlands have arrested 20 suspected members of the hacker collective Anonymous. The U.S. FBI were responsible for the majority of the arrests, detaining 16 suspected hackers.

In Europe one 16-year-old by was detained in London, while four individuals were arrested in the Netherlands.
Of the 16 arrested by the FBI, 14 are suspected of taking part in Anonymous' original attack on Paypal last December. The attack was one of the first high-profile hacks enacted by the group and was done to protest the company's decision to cut payments to Wikileaks.

Note EU-Digest: a British labor politician asked when he heard about the arrest: "why isn't the police also putting out an arrest warrant for Rupert Murdoch, whose hacking activities were far more serious?" .

For more: 20-Plus Suspected Anonymous Hackers Arrested in U.S., UK, Netherlands - International Business Times

Visa Europe Will Block WikiLeaks Donations Through Payment Site - by Aoife White

Visa Europe Ltd. said it stopped payments to WikiLeaks a second time, hours after an Internet site restarted donations to the anti-secrecy group.

WikiLeaks’s payment provider, DataCell, attempted to use an alternative-payment gateway to process money sent through MasterCard, the world’s second-largest payments network, and Visa Europe, which runs the largest card network in the European Union, Reykjavik, Iceland-based DataCell said yesterday.

“As soon as this came to our attention, action was taken with the suspension of Visa payment acceptance,” Amanda Kamin, a spokeswoman for London-based Visa Europe said in an e-mailed statement today.

Visa Europe and MasterCard in December blocked WikiLeaks from using its network to collect funds from donors. 

For more: Visa Europe Will Block WikiLeaks Donations Through Payment Site - Bloomberg

Wikileaks: US pressured Netherlands Labour leader Wouter Bos over Afghanistan

Labour MPs in the Netherlands have reacted with shock to claims that senior Dutch civil servants urged US officials to pressure former Labour party leader Wouter Bos to support a continued Dutch military mission in Afghanistan.

"Mark Rutte who heads up the new Dutch Government has recently proposed the Netherlands return to Afghanistan. This time with with what he calls a "training mission" but "souped up" with air-force and military support. units".(EU-Digest) 

The claims flow from US diplomatic cables leaked by the Wikileaks website. Labour's refusal to back a longer stay in Afghanistan eventually led to the government's collapse.

In one cable, officials write that Bos must be made aware the Netherlands' invitation to take part in an important G20 summit is thanks to the country's efforts in Afghanistan. Dutch Labour MPs now want a parliamentary debate on the issue. 'If this is true, we have a big problem,' Labour MP Ronald Plasterk told the Volkskrant. 'Imagine a US civil servant making plans with the Dutch government against president Obama? It's impossible to imagine such a thing.'

For more: DutchNews.nl - Wikileaks: US pressured Labour leader over Afghanistan

Assange vows to drop 'insurance' files on Rupert Murdoch

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he has a trove of private documents on Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp empire and is prepared to release them in the event the whistle-blower website is taken down.

“If something happens to me or to WikiLeaks, 'insurance' files will be released,” he told The New Statesman. “There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organization and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp.”

The site will also move ahead with plans to publish tens of thousands of confidential documents depicting an “ecosystem of corruption” at Bank of America, CNBC reported.

For more: Assange vows to drop 'insurance' files on Rupert Murdoch • The Register

U.S. Subpoenas Twitter Over WikiLeaks Supporters - by Scott Shane

Prosecutors investigating the disclosure of thousands of classified government documents by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks have gone to court to demand the Twitter account activity of several people linked to the organization, including its founder, Julian Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena made public late Friday.

For more: U.S. Subpoenas Twitter Over WikiLeaks Supporters - NYTimes.com

Banking Industry: All eyes on Bank of America as WikiLeaks hints at new bombshell - by Rick Rothacker

Heading into the new year, a big question looms for Bank of America Corp.: What's next in the WikiLeaks saga?

Julian Assange, the anti-secrecy organization's founder, has said he is preparing a "megaleak" about a large bank, leading to speculation the Charlotte bank is the target. On Monday, he told the Times of London that he had enough information to make the bosses of a major bank resign. Meanwhile, Bank of America has cut off payments intended for WikiLeaks, spurring the group to tell customers to stop doing business with the bank. Other financial institutions that have foiled payments have faced cyberspace attacks from WikiLeaks supporters, but so far the bank doesn't appear to be suffering ill effects.

Analysts say it's possible WikiLeaks could stir up new trouble for the nation's biggest bank, perhaps exposing more problems in the mortgage arena or reviving questions about its Merrill Lynch acquisition. It's also possible the revelations cause little harm or that WikiLeaks bypasses the bank altogether.

A Bank of America employee told McClatchy Newspapers that it appeared the bank had recently stepped up security internally, taking steps to block access to websites such as Gmail on company laptops. The bank declined to comment on security procedures.

For more: All eyes on Bank of America as WikiLeaks hints at new bombshell - KansasCity.com

The Future is Being Written Right Now - by Daniel Taylor

The world, it seams, is reaching a critical juncture in history. Current trends are pointing towards dramatic changes in government and society. Long standing institutions are scrambling to stay afloat as new rivals challenge old ideas. Meanwhile, the global elite, foreseeing these changes, is fighting to retain control over a global system that is being torn apart by economic meltdown and a global political awakening. As top global strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski have admitted, cracks are forming in the many bases of establishment control. "Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people".    "It is easier to kill than to control."

Looking at Europe where the EU, an admitted brainchild of the Bilderberg Group, is a globalist pet project that was to be a model for global governance. Today however, the EU is suffering an economic meltdown and discord that is bringing a backlash against the collectivist ideology behind the union. Global and regional governance faces an additional problem, specifically the fact that without the perception of an outside threat the coherence of the system falls apart. Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization and frequent attendee of Bilderberg meetings, stated in a November 2009 speech that, “The anthropological dimension of supranationality has probably been underestimated. Once the imminence of the menace of a new war has disappeared from our horizon, it is as if the glue that holds Europe together as a community will also disappear. As if there were no common myths, dreams and aspirations.” Lamay further stated that “…We are witnessing a growing distance between European public opinions and the European project.”

The Internet: Blogger Andrew Steele writes, concerning a recent incident involving Congressman Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, “Because cameras are more widely available to the average consumer and because of the popularity of user fed sites like YouTube, citizen journalists have become abundant in America over the past decade.” Steele continues, “This phenomenon has weakened the controlled media’s power to influence and shape reality, as well as the power of politicians to control their exposure through that media.”

The current consensus among the intelligentsia in government – Obama regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein for example – is that information must be filtered in the new media age. “Conspiracy theories” are becoming too prolific, and an intellectual elite must guide society toward “right ways” of thinking. This type of social engineering is the driving philosophy behind many of the current initiatives coming from the Obama White House.

While the mainstream media will attempt to hold its position and stifle the growing juggernaut of alternative media, its growth has proven too explosive to be contained. Bloggers and alternative news websites continue to break stories of significance across all spectrums of society. An example; BP’s recent attempt to use photoshopped images to give an exaggerated impression of its oil cleanup efforts was exposed by a blogger. 

Note EU-Digest: more recently the Wikileaks and the Julian Assange arrest also seem to be another  indication of this "clamp-down" on the freedom of expression.


For more: The Future is Being Written Right Now | Old-Thinker News

The Netherlands - Wikileaks: US embassy cables: Barack Obama's briefing on Dutch politics

US diplomats informing President Barack Obama on Dutch politics point out that the anti-Islam Freedom Party was the fastest growing party in the Netherlands.

The remark that Mr Wilders was "no friend of the US" was due to the party's opposition to an extension of the Dutch mission in Afghanistan and because Mr Wilders "foments fear and hate of immigrants". The diplomats refer to "The Wilders Factor: golden-pompadoured, maverick parliamentarian Geert Wilders whose anti-Islam, nationalist Freedom Party remains a thorn in the coalition's side, capitalizing on the social stresses resulting from the failure to fully integrate almost a million Dutch Muslims".

Former Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende also is also named in the documents. Initially he is seen as a "Harry Potter" look-alike", however, the cables go on to say "he has consistently and skillfully delivered cabinet support for US policy objectives while balancing fragile parliamentary majorities.

For more: US embassy cables: Barack Obama's briefing on Dutch politics | World news | guardian.co.uk

Amazon says outage in Europe due to hardware failure, not hacking attack

Amazon says that the outage which made its UK, Italian, German and Spanish sites unavailable for about half an hour on Sunday night was due to a hardware failure, and not an attack by online activists angry at its stance on WikiLeaks.

"The brief interruption to our European retail sites earlier today was due to hardware failure in our European datacenter network and not the result of a DDOS attempt," a spokeswoman for Amazon told Reuters. The different countries' sites are all served through systems there.

Amazon was among the first American companies to stop providing services to WikiLeaks when it took the site off its EC2 cloud computing service at the end of November. That followed political pressure in the US, though Amazon insisted the decision was because WikiLeaks did not have the rights to the content.

For more: Amazon says outage in Europe due to hardware failure, not hacking attack | Technology | guardian.co.uk