USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

On the surface, I find this hard to believe and think there might be some hidden subtext we don't know about.
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Julian Assange confirms he is willing to travel to US after Manning decision

WikiLeaks founder says Obama's decision to free whistleblower means he could submit to extradition request





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Robert Booth and Alice Ross
Thursday 19 January 2017 19.26 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 31 January 2017 15.31 GMT

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said he stands by his offer to travel to the US following Barack Obama's decision to release whistleblower Chelsea Manning from prison.

Speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London during a web broadcast on Thursday, Assange said there were many discussions about his future that could happen before Manning left prison in May, adding: "I have always been willing to go to the United States provided my rights are respected."



Assange has been living in the embassy since claiming asylum there in 2012. He has refused to meet prosecutors in Sweden, where he remains wanted on an allegation of rape, which he denies, and has repeatedly said he fears extradition to the US on espionage charges if he leaves the embassy. At the moment, the only public extradition ruling against him comes from Sweden.
WikiLeaks tweeted last week that Assange would agree to US extradition if Obama granted Manning clemency. Asked during a web broadcast on Thursday if he would now leave the embassy, Assange said: "I stand by everything I said, including the offer to go to the United States if Chelsea Manning's sentence was commuted."
Assange said there had been a seven-year-long attempt to build a prosecution against him and WikiLeaks in the US and his name was on several warrants and subpoenas. "As of this year, it is active and ongoing," he said.
"If it takes me going to United States to somehow flush out this case and get the DoJ [Department of Justice] to either make a charge or extradition or to drop it, then we are interested in looking at that as well."

He said it remained to be seen whether the DoJ under Donald Trump would treat his case differently from Obama's administration.
The US justice department has never announced any indictment of Assange and it is not clear that any charges have been brought without becoming a matter of public record. The department, in refusing to turn over investigative documents sought by Manning under the Freedom of Information Act, has acknowledged that the FBI is continuing to investigate the publication of national security information on WikiLeaks arising from Manning's disclosures.

The government's refusal to confirm or deny the existence of charges is a "deliberate attempt by the Department of Justice to keep me and WikiLeaks in a state of uncertainty, abusing the process for psychological gains," Assange said.
Earlier this week, the White House insisted that Assange's offer to submit to extradition if Obama granted Manning clemency had no bearing on the US president's action. "I have no insight into Mr Assange's travel plans," a White House official said. "I can't speak to any charges or potential charges he may be facing from the justice department."
Obama used his final hours in the White House to allow Manning to go free nearly 30 years early. The 29-year-old transgender former intelligence analyst in Iraq was sentenced in 2013 after a military court convicted her of passing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks. She said she did so to raise awareness about the impact of war.
During Thursday's web broadcast, Assange said Trump's impact on global relations was "very interesting" adding: "His behaviour is [that of] someone who's not a diplomat at all, making inflammatory statements about what he really thinks … From WikiLeaks' perspective, we like to see this churn and invigoration and everything being reconsidered."

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Republicans voice disdain after Trump tweets support for Julian Assange

The president-elect's tweets approvingly repeated WikiLeaks founder's claim that the Russian state was not the source of the hacked emails from the DNC





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Trump's spokesman said the president-elect was stating what Assange is stating publicly and looking forward to a briefing to discuss all of these matters'.Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PAJulian Borger in Washington
Thursday 5 January 2017 14.31 GMTFirst published on Wednesday 4 January 2017 18.41 GMT

Leading Republicans broke with Donald Trump on Wednesday after the president-elect appeared to put more faith in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange than in US intelligence agencies.

The sharp differences on a highly charged national security issue are the latest sign that matters of intelligence and policy towards Russia reflect a deep fault line in Trump's relationship with the Republican party establishment.

Julian Assange gives guarded praise of Trump and blasts Clinton in interview

Read more



The House speaker, Paul Ryan, called Assange "a sycophant for Russia" on a conservative radio show and GOP Senator Tom Cotton told MSNBC that he had "a lot more faith in our intelligence officers serving around the world … than I do in people like Julian Assange ".

The comments followed tweets from Trump on Wednesday morning in which he approvingly repeated Assange's claim that the Russian state was not the source of the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, published by Wiki Leaks during the election.


"Julian Assange said a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta ' why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! " one Trump tweet said. Another quoted Assange as describing US media coverage on the issue as "very dishonest". Trump added: "More dishonest than anyone knows."
The tweets referred to an interview with Assange conducted by Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, a vocal Trump supporter, in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where the Australian computer expert and transparency advocate has been living for more than four years, since sexual assault allegations were made against him in Sweden. He denies the allegations and has not been charged with any crime.

Julian Assange tells Sean Hannity: Russia was not our sourceAssange is also under US criminal investigation for the publication of large numbers of classified US documents by WikiLeaks, an act characterised for many years by Republican and many Democrat leaders as an act of aggression against the US.
In the interview, Assange said: "Our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party." US intelligence agencies have suggested that Russia passed the hacked material to WikiLeaks through intermediaries.
Asked about the Trump tweets, the president elect's spokesman, Sean Spicer said the president-elect "was stating what Assange is stating publicly and looking forward to [a forthcoming intelligence] briefing to discuss all of these matters."
Last month Obama deported 35 Russian diplomats in response to the election hacking, in a move criticised as premature by the Trump team. The president elect praised Vladimir Putin for not taking retaliatory measures, saying: "I always knew he was very smart!"
Trump has said he would make public new facts over election hacking known only to him either on Tuesday or Wednesday this week.
The spat is being played out at a time when one investigation into Russian hacking of the US election is nearing completion and another is just beginning. Both have the potential to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency.
An intelligence community review of the evidence is expected to be delivered to Obama on Thursday and will form the basis for a briefing for Trump from top intelligence officials on Friday. Meanwhile, hearings begin on Russian cyber-attacks on Thursday in the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by John McCain, a Republican with hardline views on Russia.
McCain called the alleged Russian cyber-attacks "an act of war" on Wednesday.
"I'm not saying it's an atomic attack," he said. "I'm just saying that when you attack a nation's fundamental structure, which they are doing, then it's an act of war."
Trump's support for Assange has not led to break with all his Republican allies. Sarah Palin said on Wednesday that she now regretted her attacks on Assange in 2010 after he published leaked documents from her time as governor of Alaska.

"He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban," she said at the time.
"Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Palin now says she has changed her mind since WikiLeaks published Democratic Party emails.
"The media collusion that hid what many on the Left have been supporting is shocking. This important information that finally opened people's eyes to democrat candidates and operatives would not have been exposed were it not for Julian Assange," she wrote on Facebook.
The Republican foreign policy establishment however, has been more resistant to such whiplash changes in views and allegiances. Many senior figures are uneasy about Trump's open feud with the US intelligence community.
On Tuesday, the president elect trolled the US agencies, going so far as putting the word intelligence in quote marks.
"The Intelligence' briefing on so-called Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!" he said on Twitter.
In response, intelligence officials briefed correspondents that the plan had always been for the Russian briefing to take place on Friday, and referred to his remarks as "adversarial".