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Could it be a coincidence that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) handed the Republic of Ecuador a sweet $4.2 billion staff-level financing deal at the end of February, and 50 days later the Ecuadorian embassy invites London police in to arrest Julian Assange and hand him over to the United States?
That looks suspicious as hell, doesn’t it?
$4.2 Billion Loan Raises Alarming Questions
The curious timing of Ecuador’s betrayal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reeks of corruption. | Source: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Here’s a timeline of those fifty days:
The $4.2 billion IMF deal goes down on February 20th.
Later that month, Chelsea Manning receives a subpoena for information her legal counsel says is:
“duplicative of evidence already in the possession of the grand jury, and was not needed in order for US Attorneys to obtain an indictment of Mr Assange.”
For refusing to aid that investigation, Manning spent 28 days in isolation for 22 hours a day. In a detailed denial of her supporters’ claims about prisoner abuse, the sheriff did not dispute that she was only permitted to leave her cell or make phone calls between 1 am and 3 am.
On April 2nd, Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno disparaged WikiLeaks in public remarks, leveling wild, but unsupported claims that WikiLeaks had intercepted his private conversations and photos of his bedroom.
On April 11th, the Ecuadorian embassy handed Julian Assange over to London police.
Who Watches The Night Watchmen? WikiLeaks.
Something is rotten. This whole saga reeks of corruption.
But it does give you a sense of scale for the amount of money the world’s governments are making from the business of murder and mayhem Julian Assange exposed.
And from working with their many active partners in a crooked, decadent, servile news media to divert public attention and manipulate public opinion to bolster the military-industrial complex.
Just look at what WikiLeaks document dumps exposed:
- How a U.S. Apache helicopter crew murdered two Reuters journalists in Baghdad
- How U.S. soldiers mistreated and abused prisoners indefinitely detained at Gitmo
- How climate scientists manipulated their findings to distort public opinion
- How Hillary Clinton stood for Wall Street and endless war
Julian Assange will now stand trial for conspiring with Chelsea Manning to crack the government’s digital passkey security to access classified files.
However, U.S. police have been collecting people’s data from computers by all nondestructive means for some time now under the third-party doctrine.
In United States v. Miller (1976) and Smith v. Maryland (1979), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that:
“A person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”
Third parties include banks and phone companies. These laws have been used to justify the financial surveillance regime for decades. Third parties also include computer servers.
If it is legally permissible for state police agents to use any nondestructive means to gather digital information that has been voluntarily entrusted to a third party such as a cell phone company database – or say, a Dept. of Defense computer hard drive – then it is an intolerable double standard to impose on journalists the additional severe burden of criminal prosecution for a crime it calls “computer intrusion” should they take similar measures to expose government corruption.
That is true political equality. And without the equal protection of the law, the already incomparably mighty military powers of the world would also enjoy a legally-privileged status in the digital realm and multiply opportunities for corruption and injustice in the lack of oversight.
If by the United States’ own logic the NSA is legally allowed to secretly vacuum up all of America and half the rest of the world’s private smartphone data just because the data were out there somewhere and the NSA could technically do it –
Then Julian Assange must go free.
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