Julian Assange Is About To Lose Asylum, Arrest Imminent
Julian Assange Is About To Lose Asylum And Be Arrested according to the intercept and Glenn Greenwald. Ecuadorian president Moreno says that Assange violated the conditions of his asylum by being political but many say the real reason is that he wants to gain favor with the US, Spain, and the UK. Assange was once a darling of the left but for many reasons that has flipped with the left attacking him and the right praising him. What does his loss of asylum mean for journalistic freedom and is Assange more than just a publisher? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ayEV9RGFFg&list=PLxQaod7tWvYICaWgUIpKLZqfs3NRmKkCY&t=0s&index=2Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Glenn Greenwald has reported that Ecuador will soon withdraw asylum for Julian Assange and hand him over to UK authorities.
If that happens, there is a possibility that Assange could be extradited to the US for his work with Wikileaks.
Because as we've heard from this administration and others, they view Wikileaks as a criminal organization of some sort.
Now unsurprisingly, many people on the left are cheering for this because they're claiming that Assange is a Russian asset because the documents he published in 2016 embarrass the Democrats.
But WikiLeaks has embarrassed both the left and the right.
He's been active for quite some time.
If he does get extradited, this could be devastating for press freedoms, because WikiLeaks is just a publisher.
And though what they do is a bit more specific from other organizations, they just publish documents.
So why is it that the left has turned on Julian Assange and even Glenn Greenwald?
And what will happen to press freedoms if Julian Assange is extradited?
But before we get started, please head over to patreon.com forward slash timcast to become a patron.
This is what I do for a living.
If you like these videos and want to see more on the ground reporting and interviews, please consider becoming a patron and giving whatever you feel comfortable today to help support my work.
From the intercept, Ecuador will imminently withdraw asylum for Julian Assange and hand him over to the UK.
What comes next?
In the story they say, a source close to the Ecuadorian foreign ministry and the president's office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the UK within the next several weeks.
The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week.
On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.
The consequences of such an agreement depend in part on the concessions Ecuador extracts in exchange for withdrawing Assange's asylum.
But as former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told The Intercept in an interview in May, Moreno's government has returned Ecuador to a highly subservient and submissive posture toward Western governments.
It is thus highly unlikely that Moreno, who has shown himself willing to submit to threats and coercion from the UK, Spain, and the US, The only known criminal proceeding Assange currently faces is a pending 2012 arrest warrant for failure to surrender, basically a minor bail violation that arose when he obtained asylum from Ecuador rather than complying with bail conditions by returning to court for a hearing on his attempt to resist
at Tradition to Sweden.
That offense carries a prison term of three months and a fine, though it is possible that
the time Assange has already spent in prison in the UK could be counted against that sentence.
In 2010, Assange was imprisoned in Wandsworth Prison, kept in isolation for 10 days until
he was released on bail.
He was then under house arrest for 550 days at the home of a supporter.
Now, supporters of WikiLeaks are saying this is a political move Ecuador is making to earn points with the West.
But detractors say that this is actually about Julian Assange violating the conditions of his asylum by getting political.
The Guardian reported May 31st, Ecuador's president says Julian Assange can stay in the embassy with conditions.
Assange must follow rules and avoid talking politics on Twitter, otherwise Lenin Moreno says he will take a decision.
Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, has said Julian Assange's asylum status in the country's London embassy is not under threat, provided he complies with the conditions of his stay and avoids voicing his political opinions on Twitter.
However, In an interview with Deutsche Welle on Wednesday, Moreno said his government would take a decision if Assange didn't comply with the restrictions.
Let's not forget the conditions of his asylum prevent him from speaking about politics or intervening in the politics of other countries.
That's why we cut his communication, he said.
Ecuador suspended Assange's communication system in March.
Julian Assange has been very political.
In fact, we saw at one point he was direct messaging Donald Trump Jr.
In an effort to gain access to Trump administration documents, and at one point even suggested himself as potential ambassador to Australia.
Last November, Donald Trump Jr.
released this tweet.
He said, WikiLeaks tweeted to Donald Trump Jr.
of messages with Wikileaks with my whopping three responses, which one of the congressional
committees has chosen to selectively leak, how ironic.
Wikileaks tweeted to Donald Trump Jr. in September, A PAC-run anti-Trump site is about to launch.
The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war pack.
We have guessed the password.
It is Putin-Trump.
See about for who is behind it.
Any comments?
Donald Trump Jr.
responded, off the record, I don't know who that is, but I'll ask around.
It'd be great if you guys could comment on slash push this story.
About a week later, one of the more egregious tweets from WikiLeaks was made.
He said, hey Don, we have an unusual idea.
Leak us one or more of your father's tax returns.
The benefits are this.
Most of the harm has already been done by the New York Times and preempted by your father, tax write-downs.
It's possible that any moment they could come out through the most biased source, New York Times, MSNBC, who will distort them in the worst possible light.
If we publish them, it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality.
This is the real kicker.
That means the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing about Clinton will have much higher impact because it won't be perceived as coming from a pro-Trump, pro-Russia source.
Which the Clinton campaign is constantly slandering us with.
And that was the extent of the messages sent to Donald Trump Jr.
Obviously, many people on the left felt that WikiLeaks was trying to act like they were impartial, but they were actually going to support Donald Trump's campaign by painting them in a favorable light.
Julian Assange said that this is actually an attempt to get them to leak the documents themselves.
I gotta say, personally, I don't really believe Wikileaks in this matter, simply because they know any information they get from the Trump campaign is going to be biased.
It's going to be selective.
And if Wikileaks published that claiming that it was a legitimate leak, people would then believe this was not favorable coverage, and it would make Trump look good.
So this is pretty damning direct messages coming from Wikileaks.
But a few points that need to be made.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with what Julian Assange did, the UN found that he is in arbitrary detention.
This story from February of 2016.
A United Nations panel has decided that Julian Assange's three and a half years in the Ecuadorian embassy amount to arbitrary detention, leading his lawyers to call for the Swedish extradition request to be dropped immediately.
A Swedish foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that the UN panel due to publish its findings on Friday,
had concluded that Assange was arbitrarily detained.
Eventually, Sweden dropped their request for extradition.
Keep in mind, Assange was never actually charged with the crime.
He was wanted for questioning.
And I can say this a million times, the politics around Assange are extremely, extremely
complicated.
It warrants its own documentary.
In my opinion, the criticisms of Wikileaks over their perceived support of Trump is fair.
Is it fair to say that they shouldn't have published the documents on the DNC and the Democrats?
No, that's not fair.
WikiLeaks should have done that because that's what any good publication would do.
If they waited, I agree.
It would have been essentially favoring Clinton.
If they had the information, they should show it.
And all they really did is show us that the DNC kind of screwed over Bernie Sanders.
Showing us how the political game is being played isn't WikiLeaks' fault, simply because they had access to publish it.
But we did see those DMs with Donald Trump Jr., and it does seem like, in some way, they were favorable to the Trump campaign.
Unsurprising, as I mentioned.
Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks.
But it's also important to note, WikiLeaks is a publisher.
They may not be the same as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, aesthetically.
But what they do is they receive leaks and they publish them.
They do a lot of work behind the scenes and almost every news organization has some mechanism for taking in leaks and publishing them.
Many mainstream news organizations published the Snowden leaks.
What's the difference between that and the New York Times?
And if your claim is that WikiLeaks is partisan and that's why they should be criticized or why Assange should be stopped, keep in mind the New York Times directly endorsed Hillary Clinton.
September 24, 2016 from Politico.
New York Times endorses Hillary Clinton.
The editorial board of the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton on Saturday, urging the newspaper's readers to vote for the former Secretary of State as the person best suited to confront bigoted tribalist movements and their leaders on the march across the globe.
Ban the story by saying.
But in a parenthetical aside, the board previews a forthcoming broadside against the Republican nominee that will be published on Monday.
We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.
So you can choose which makes you angrier, WikiLeaks' perceivable support of Donald Trump in private, or the New York Times, a much more powerful news organization directly endorsing one of the candidates and denouncing the other.
Glenn Greenwald ended the story by saying, It should not be this difficult for journalists to set
aside their personal emotions about Assange to recognize the profound dangers,
not just to press freedoms, but to themselves.
government succeeds in keeping Assange imprisoned for years to come, all due to its attempts to prosecute him for publishing classified or stolen documents.
That seems the highly likely scenario once Ecuador hands over Assange to the U.K.
For all their screaming about Donald Trump's statements on fake news and how we must protect a free press, too many people are backing away from Julian Assange.
You don't have to like him.
You can accuse him of being partisan.
You can even say he published the DNC documents just before the election on purpose to hurt Hillary Clinton.
By all means, think that.
But keep in mind the New York Times made a direct endorsement.
If we're going to say a news publication shouldn't be allowed to exist because they're partisan, then we're targeting many of our long-standing and mainstream news publications as well.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are a publisher, and if he remains imprisoned or he is extradited, this sets a terrifying precedent for journalists.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
Do you think Wikileaks is being genuine when they say that they were actually just trying to be fair in how they went about contacting Donald Trump Jr.
and publishing the documents?
Do you think Julian Assange should be extradited?
Do you think he should be held for any reason at all?
Or is it all just another big political game where people only call out Julian Assange now Because he's hurting their side.
Sure enough, when WikiLeaks was publishing things about the Iraq and Afghanistan war, the left loved him, and the right was critical of him.
And then when he came out with documents embarrassing the DNC, the right apologized and supported him, and now the left criticizes him.
To me, it's all political BS.
One big game.
And I am concerned that if they extradite Assange or keep him imprisoned, we are setting a terrible precedent
