“Julian Assange’s internet link has been intentionally severed” - by state actor

[MikeWB]

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787889195507417088


Assange's internet link intentionally severed by state party - WikiLeaks
Published time: 17 Oct, 2016 05:39
Edited time: 17 Oct, 2016 13:53

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.
Julian Assange's internet link has been intentionally severed by a state party. We have activated the appropriate contingency plans.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 17, 2016
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.

Earlier this month, Assange claimed his organization would aim to publish documents "every week" in the run up to US Election Day on November 8.

Clinton's campaign has made unsubstantiated claims that WikiLeaks is working with the Russian government to help defeat the Democrat in favor of Trump.

Last week the FBI reissued a statement saying it was working to "determine the accuracy, nature and scope" of cyber intrusions, but did not name any suspected perpetrators.

The ninth release of Podesta emails occurred on Sunday, bringing the total number of leaked files to over 12,000.

Among the hundreds of emails released are discussions about Clinton's appeal among black voters, her email apologies, and Chelsea Clinton being described by one of her father's longtime aides as a 'backstabber'.


The batch also comes amid revelations of Clinton's cozy relationship with the mainstream media, and how they work closely to control the media landscape and set up stories that show her in a favorable light.

Earlier this month, it emerged that Hillary Clinton reportedly wanted to "drone" WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when she was the US secretary of state.

According to True Pundit, Clinton and the State Department were under pressure to silence the whistleblower in the months before WikiLeaks dumped some 250,000 diplomatic cables from 1966 to 2010, dubbed CableGate.

Unidentified State Department sources claimed Clinton asked "can't we just drone this guy?".

https://www.rt.com/news/362985-julian-assange-internet-link/

[MikeWB]

This comes just few hours after these mysterious tweets:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787777344740163584

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781046519693316

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781519951720449

Do they have Kerry's inbox? Did someone hack UK's Foreign Office (FCO)? Is this why NSA/GCHQ cut off his internet? To prevent those leaks?

Fascinating.

[MikeWB]

From 4chan:


https://i.imgur.com/abcVS6q.jpg

[rmstock]

Wikileaks Activates "Contingency Plans" After Unknown "State Party" Cuts Julian Assange's Internet Connection
by Tyler Durden ,  Oct 17, 2016 7:50 AM , 134146, 329
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-17/wikileaks-activates-contingency-plans-after-unknown-state-party-cuts-julian-assanges

  "In what may be the first official retaliation against Julian Assange
   and Wikileaks since the organization started disseminating the hacked
   Podesta emails, this morning WikiLeaks announced it has "activated
   contingency" plans after Assange's internet link was intentionally cut
   off by a state party, WikiLeaks has said in a tweet.
   https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787889195507417088
   There was little actual detail, aside from a subsequent tweet in which
   https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787915227924992000
   WikiLeaks called on the public to support it by donating.
   
   Previously on Sunday, there was concern about Assange's well-being when
   Wikileaks tweeted out what some suggested were the "dead man keys" that
   are allegedly the encryption codes for highly damaging secret documents
   to be uneviled in the case of Assange's death.
   https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787777344740163584
   https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781046519693316
   https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781519951720449
   These may have been the "contingency plans" referred to in the
   subsequent Wiki tweet.
   
   Even former outspoken Trump advisor Roger Stone got involved tweeting
   that "John Kerry has threatened the Ecuadorian President with "grave
   consequences for Equador" if Assange is not silenced" adding that
   "Reports the Brits storm the Ecuadorian Embassy tonite while Kerry
   demands the UK revoke their diplomatic status so Assange can be seized."
   https://twitter.com/RogerJStoneJr/status/787858612844695552
   https://twitter.com/RogerJStoneJr/status/787863160149598208
   So far this appears to be just wild speculation. The latest news in the
   Assange saga comes as WikiLeaks continues to release on a daily basis
   hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta,
   which could ruin Clinton's chances of becoming the next US president.
   Clinton's campaign has suggested that WikiLeaks is working together
   with the Russian government to help defeat them in favor of Trump. The
   latest, 9th, batch comes amid revelations of Clinton's cozy
   relationship with the mainstream media, and how they work closely to
   control the media landscape and set up stories that show her in a
   favorable light. Earlier this month, it emerged that Hillary Clinton
   reportedly wanted to "drone" WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when she
   was the US secretary of state.
   
   So far there had been no intervention by outside entities to attempt to
   silence Julian Assange, so the latest intervention "by a state party",
   if confirmed would be a notable escalation in the status quo, and
   suggests that Wikileaks may have even more damaging revelations to come. "

[rmstock]

So what happened a day earlier ?


US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, waves as he is greeted by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson ahead of a meeting on the situation in Syria, at Lancaster House in London today

Russia must show 'mercy' to Aleppo, Boris Johnson warns as he joins John Kerry to threaten new sanctions but admits there is no support for Western action to end bombing in Syria
  . Foreign Secretary gathered international leaders in London for a summit
. Johnson said the Russians had to take responsibility for a cease fire
. A series of deals have collapsed and heavy bombing has continued
By Tim Sculthorpe, Mailonline Deputy Political Editor and Larisa Brown Defence Correspondent For The Daily Mail
Published: 17:01 GMT, 16 October 2016  | Updated: 00:03 GMT, 17 October 2016
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3840652/Diplomats-forge-new-track-end-Syria-violence-no-truce.html

[MikeWB]

I wonder why  Ecuador hasn't made arrangements to get Assange out of that embassy and send him to Russia...

Ecuador is simply not in the position to resist US pressure. Only Russia (and China) can withstand the force of US economic, legal and political establishment bearing down on it.

From these tweets, it looks like Ecuador is succumbing to the pressure. Why else would WikiLeaks have "Ecuador" file hash in there?

I hope they don't manage to extradite him.

[MikeWB]

https://twitter.com/danrolle/status/788019208453890048

https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/787987282351443968

[rmstock]

Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Julian Assange Credit: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images

News
Pamela Anderson brings Julian Assange a vegan lunch at the Ecuadorian Embassy
By Telegraph Reporters 16 October 2016 • 12:00pm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/16/pamela-anderson-says-julian-assange-was-a-bit-pale-after-visitin/

  "Pamela Anderson has spoken of her fears over Julian Assange's health
   after visiting him at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
   
   The former Playboy model said the WikiLeaks founder was doing "really
   well" but expressed concern for him and his family.
   
   The Australian has been living in the embassy for more than four years
   and has been granted political asylum by Ecuador.
   
   
   Pamela Anderson at the Oxford Union Credit: Oxford Union/REX/Shutterstock
   
   He is due to be questioned over a sex allegation in Sweden - which he
   denies. Mr Assange believes that if he goes to Sweden he will be
   extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of
   WikiLeaks.
   
   The former Baywatch star said: "I really believe in him and think he's
   a good person, and I'm concerned about his health, his family, and I
   just hope that by some miracle he's set free."
   
   
   Wikileaks founder Julian Assange Credit: AFP/Getty Images
   
   Earlier this month Mr Assange said that he was "a bit pale" after being
   asked how his health was after four years without sunlight.
   
   Anderson was pictured entering the central London building on Saturday
   carrying Pret a Manger paper bags.
   
   The 49-year-old animal rights activist said: "I brought him a nice
   vegan lunch and some vegan snacks." She then joked: "He said I tortured
   him with bringing him vegan food". "

[MikeWB]

It was Ecuador. State Department must have made some credible threats to them.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/788099178832420865

Assange needs to somehow escape out of that embassy ASAP!

[MikeWB]

Wikileaks Provides An Update On The Assange Internet Outage

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Oct 17, 2016 4:03 PM
It seems that the Obama administration's efforts to save the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton is finally starting to yield tangible results as WikiLeaks just provided the following update that Julian Assange was cut off from using the Internet at the Ecuadorian embassy in London effective Saturday evening.

We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 17, 2016


Clearly the lack of internet for Assange hasn't slowed the release of Hillary's emails as Part 9 of the Podesta emails were released yesterday and Part 10 was just released a few hours ago.

Of course, this comes just a few days after the Obama administration announced overt plans to escalate a cyber war with Russia over allegations they were behind the hacking of Hillary's private email server.

Certainly, one has to wonder what this means for the future of Assange as clearly the Obama administration has applied sufficient pressure on the Ecuadorian government such that they have started to cave on their support of him.  Perhaps we should be checking flight logs for mysterious planes landing in Quito with billions of Swiss Francs on board.

Or perhaps, the Ecuadorian goverment prefers to "swap gold" with Hillary's other political ally, Goldman Sachs, as Bloomberg noted they did back in 2014.  Just another of the many ways that Hillary's wall street relationships have paid dividends...quid pro quo, Goldman. 

Ecuador, one of only eight countries to adopt the U.S. dollar as its official currency, swapped gold with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for liquid assets in a sign the nation is short on cash, according to Loomis Sayles & Co.

"It does raise a red flag," Bianca Taylor, a sovereign analyst who helps oversee $210 billion at Loomis Sayles, said yesterday in a phone interview from Boston. "Whenever a country needs to sell or monetize its gold reserves, it's definitely a signal that the sovereign is strapped for cash."

President Rafael Correa is stepping up his search for financing at home and abroad after borrowing more than $11 billion from China since defaulting on $3.2 billion of foreign debt five years ago. Ecuador's use of the dollar means it can't finance deficits by printing money like other countries. Correa, a self-described revolutionary socialist, is now planning to raise about $700 million in an overseas bond sale this year and agreed to allow the International Monetary Fund to perform an economic review for the first time since 2008.

Ecuador's central bank, stripped of its autonomy in a constitutional referendum a year after Correa took power in 2007, says it "invested" the gold with Goldman Sachs in return for assets that can be liquidated within seven days. The country will get the same quantity of gold back three years from now and expects to earn a profit of $16 million to $20 million from the deal, it said.
Below is what we recently wrote regarding the Obama administration's stepped up efforts targeting Russia and Assange.

* * *

In what is looking more and more like a season finale of the HBO series "House of Cards" with each passing day, the Obama administration is now literally threatening a cyber war with Russia over allegations it was behind the hacking of Clinton's emails.  According to an exclusive NBC report, the Obama administration "is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action" (though it's unclear how exactly it's covert if Biden is announcing it to the world via an interview with Chuck Todd)  against Russia, in "retaliation for alleged" interference in the American presidential election, and has asked the CIA to draft plans for a "wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership."

So now the Obama administration is overtly leveraging the full power of the United States to intimidate foreign governments, and most likely Julian Assange, in order to maintain control of the Executive Branch of the government.  Does anyone within the mainstream media see any problems with this?  Certainly Chuck Todd and NBC do not.  And notice that even the NBC article refers to "alleged" Russian interference because not a shred of evidence has been presented to prove that senior Russian officials were actually behind the hacking of Hillary's emails...but who needs facts when you have a complicit media eager to advance whatever propaganda is necessary to maintain power?   

The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership.

The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vice President Joe Biden told "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that "we're sending a message" to Putin and that "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact."

When asked if the American public will know a message was sent, the vice president replied, "Hope not."
Former CIA officers interviewed by NBC said that there is a long history of the White House plotting potential cyber attacks against Russia.  That said, none of them were ultimately carried out because "none of the options were particularly good, nor did we think that any of them would be particularly effective."

Two former CIA officers who worked on Russia told NBC News that there is a long history of the White House asking the CIA to come up with options for covert action against Russia, including cyber options — only to abandon the idea.

A second former officer, who helped run intelligence operations against Russia, said he was asked several times in recent years to work on covert action plans, but "none of the options were particularly good, nor did we think that any of them would be particularly effective," he said.
Putin Obama



Others warned that the White House has always caved on plans to follow through with cyber attacks because anything the U.S. can do against Russia, they can also do in response.  As one of the former CIA officers said, "if you are looking to mess with their networks, we can do that, but then the issue becomes, they can do worse things to us in other places."

"We've always hesitated to use a lot of stuff we've had, but that's a political decision," one former officer said. "If someone has decided, `We've had enough of the Russians,' there is a lot we can do. Step one is to remind them that two can play at this game and we have a lot of stuff. Step two, if you are looking to mess with their networks, we can do that, but then the issue becomes, they can do worse things to us in other places."

Putin is almost beyond embarrassing, he said, and anything the U.S. can do against, for example, Russian bank accounts, the Russian can do in response.

"Do you want to have Barack Obama bouncing checks?" he asked.

Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell expressed skepticism that the U.S. would go so far as to attack Russian networks.

"Physical attacks on networks is not something the U.S. wants to do because we don't want to set a precedent for other countries to do it as well, including against us," he said. "My own view is that our response shouldn't be covert -- it should overt, for everybody to see."
Here is a brief clip of Biden discussing the "covert" planning with NBC's Chuck Todd.





If the Obama administration is willing to go to such great lengths, literally escalating tensions with another superpower, to protect their candidate from whatever it is that she's hiding then we suspect whatever WikiLeaks has yet to release could be really good.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-17/wikileaks-provides-update-assange-internet-outage

[rmstock]

Someone made a phone-call to the Ecuadorian Embassy ...

Rumors Going VIRAL About Wikileaks Julian Assange, Here's The TRUTH About What's Really Going DOWN
by Lisa Haven , Published on Oct 17, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twW7GBzxz1U