Re: <nettime> Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[mp <mp@aktivix.org>]

Ecuador changed government.

Old government's networks of cream skimming were focused on China.

New government wants to establish its own flows of cash corruption, so
they return to the old sugar daddy, USA.

Getting back in to favourable trade relations costs some thing.

Assange is a thing.

Simple transaction and it makes for better relations with little brexit
brother, too.

Win-win-win.


On 11/04/2019 17:03, tbyfield wrote:
> So far, coverage has understandably focused on the event of Assange's
> arrest. Lots of voices are arguing that it's 'chilling' — as if keeping
> someone jailed other names for six+ years in a forlorn and ambiguous
> situation weren't chilling. If anything, the indefinite uncertainty of
> his semi-voluntary confinement was even more chilling; and the fact that
> it had to end in something like this, but no one knew when or why, made
> it even more so.
> 
> Most of the comments I've seen so far feel like they were pulled out of
> the freezer to thaw it out for dinnertime news programs: he's an
> Australian citizen, he had immunity, Wikileaks isn't a US entity, the
> embassy is Ecuador's sovereign territory, etc, etc. These conditions
> were all true give days ago, five weeks ago, even five years ago, so
> they don't add much to understanding what's afoot right now. A better
> line of questions might involve what's changed since he first entered
> the embassy. Most of what we 'know' amounts to tea-leaf reading — for
> example, Manning being jailed for refusing to testify before a grand
> jury, and the Wikileaks tweet several days ago that he'd be arrested
> within 'hours, or days,' or something like that. Beyond those scattered
> crumbs, I think it depends on where you stand on 'conspiratorial' ideas
> — like how this might related to the trajectory of Mueller's report.
> 
> But a myriad of other, 'softer' things has changed in a big way. When
> Assange and Wikileaks rose to power, if you could call it that, the US
> relied heavily on extraordinary rendition to move ill-defined 'enemy
> combatants' from secret to secret — 'torture taxi' private jets and
> 'black sites.' TIRED. What's WIRED is the US brazenly subjecting vast
> numbers of undocumented newcomers to detention and family-separation
> policies. And whatever you think of Glenn Greenwald, he was a bit
> fresher when this Wikileaks thing was starting up; now Greenwald is
> buried in ossified complaints that his views are hopelessly compromised
> and ridiculously selective. A few generations of dodgy messaging apps
> have been tossed in the dustbin of internet history and, among them,
> Signal has become a way of signaling a certain savvy. And, as Felix
> points out, Wikileaks's basic proposition — secure drops of confidential
> data for journalists — has become so normy that some news outlets have
> already retired their systems. Basically, security isn't 'sexy' anymore.
> And neither is Assange.
> 
> The fact that this arrest was conducted not just in the open but in
> broad daylight can't be ignored — and nor can the way he was
> half-hustled, half-carried out. It seems like the intent was to present
> him in the most bedraggled, infirm way in order to strip him of as much
> dignity as possible. And it also seems like Assange knew that. It's
> possible he just happened to be so engrossed in Gore Vidal's _History of
> the National Security State_ that he didn't think much of it when a
> police truck pulled up and a dozen officers poured through the embassy's
> door — and that the head officer said, 'Fine, sure, waiting can be
> boring — why not bring some light reading?' But police tend to be
> cautious about letting arrestees carry loose possessions, so it's more
> likely that there was a bit of coordinated choreography there: that
> Assange chose a book whose cover would be identifiable in even the
> crappiest video footage, and that the police, who surely handcuffed him,
> nevertheless allowed him the odd privilege of making some mute comment.
> But prisoners of conscience brandishing 'significant' books as they move
> through public settings has become a bit of a thing in the past few
> years, which suggests that some police forces have developed procedures
> for distinguishing free speech from blunt weapons.
> 
> As obvious as it may seem, it's also worth noting that the Ecuadorians
> didn't just push him out the door and leave him sitting on the steps
> with boxes of his possessions. In a way, I'm surprised they didn't.
> Where could he have gone that he couldn't be apprehended on the way?
> Maybe that would have been to shambolic or, however improbably, too
> risky. Whatever the case, Ecuador chose to do it deliberately by
> allowing seemingly normal police to enter the premises (though I'd wager
> they'll be doing a pretty thorough security sweep to make sure the
> visitors didn't leave any presents behind). From now now, Assange will
> be moved from one rigorously specified setting to another: holding
> cells, secure transport, interrogation rooms, courtrooms. The big
> question, which drove these events from the beginning, is *which* ones?
> A few in the UK, then almost certainly in Sweden, then almost as
> certainly in the US. I don't think anyone seriously believes this
> odyssey will be driven by a strictly limited questions about the details
> of his relations with a few women and (as the NYT puts it) 'a single
> charge [of] conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.' While Mueller's
> team 'interviewed' a staggering range of people, there was rampant
> speculation about what they were up to; surely Assange will be subjected
> to similarly broad questions — but by whom, and to what end?
> 
> This is where things get really iffy. Whatever the back-and-forth
> between Trump's campaign and the Russian government was, Assange knows a
> lot — for example, about Roger Stone and Guccifer 2.0. So I doubt the
> primary concern is Assange's reputation among Trump's 'base'; more
> likely, it's Assange's potential for some of the dozen+ entities
> investigating Trump, some of which answer to Barr, some of which don't.
> It's a real question what else, aside from Assange, the police were
> allowed to remove from the embassy — for example, whether Ecuador also
> let them take Assange's electronics. I expect they were penetrated long
> ago by a few intel agencies, but there's always the chance that — at
> some points — they've held secrets that intel agencies weren't 100%
> confident they'd pinned down. Those things will be at least as
> interesting as the unreliable and hyperideological Assange himself, and
> that the attention on his person will distract people from who 'owns'
> those. My guess: Ecuador insisted on keeping them, in part to use them
> as leverage with the Trump administration, maybe with May's government
> mediating — and dabbling in — any exchange.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ted
> 
> On 11 Apr 2019, at 9:38, Felix Stalder wrote:
> 
>> Democracy Now is doing interviews on this, which you can access via
>> their twitter feed.
>>
>> https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1116320933977841664/video/1
>>
>> and there, Glenn Greenwald makes the point that Assange is neither US
>> citizen, nor is Wikileaks a US-based news organization, thus "the idea
>> that the U.S. government can just extend its reach to any news outlet
>> anywhere in the world and criminalize publication of documents … is
>> extremely chilling."
>>
>> For Trump, it poses an odd political problem, because Assange is a real
>> hero to this base. I scrolled through the comments on Breitbart, and the
>> were all really positive about him, and saw is arrest as the works of
>> the "globalist" deep state.
>>
>> Even if you don't like his dealings with Trump and would like to see him
>> properly prosecuted for his alleged rape in Sweden, I think Greenwald's
>> point is still the core one.
>>
>> Besides the specific content of the leaks that came out of Wikileaks, I
>> think Assange has been the most innovative person in journalism, and
>> particularly the print media owe him a lot of thanks for pioneering a
>> model (research pools, database investigation, data journalism beyond
>> graphic design etc) that made them more relevant again.
>>
>> All the best. Felix
>  <...>
> #  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> #  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: