Ecuador's president Rafael Correa has agreed to give the WikiLeaks founder asylum, according to an official in Quito.

Ecuador's president Rafael Correa has agreed to give Julian Assange asylum, officials within Ecuador's government have said. The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up at Ecuador's London embassy since 19 June, when he officially requested political asylum. On Monday, Correa told state-run ECTV that he would decide this week whether to grant asylum to Assange. Correa said a large amount of material about international law had to be examined to make a responsible informed decision.

Ecuador's foreign minister Ricardo Patiño indicated that the president would reveal his answer once the Olympic Games were over. But it remains unclear if giving Assange asylum will allow him to leave Britain and fly to Ecuador, or amounts to little more than a symbolic gesture. At the moment he faces the prospect of arrest as soon as he leaves the embassy for breaching his bail conditions. "For Mr Assange to leave England, he should have a safe pass from the British [government]. Will that be possible? That's an issue we have to take into account," Patino told Reuters on Tuesday.

Syrian opposition officials say that the CIA is controlling the weapons flow to Syrian insurgents.

"Not one bullet enters Syria without U.S. approval," a Syrian opposition, speaking in Istanbul, told The Australian newspaper. "The Americans want the (rebellion) to continue but they are not allowing enough supplies in to make the Damascus regime fall."

The allegations, if true, reveal a division between the U.S. State Department, whose stated policy is to assist the removal of the regime of President Bashar Assad and U.S. intelligence services, which are, Syrian opposition forces say, attempting to monitor and manage the tempo of the Syrian insurgency's armed efforts against the regime, The Australian reported Monday. The Syrian civil war, the murkiest and most violent result of the "Arab Spring" uprisings which began last year, is being assisted by covert agents not only from the United States but Britain, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran as Syria devolves into a regional struggle for power in Damascus.

Israel Shamir: Israel's Plan for Syria: Somalisation
Patrick Goodenough: ‘More Visible’ U.S. Role Expected in Syria in Coming Weeks, Turkey Says

The Jig Is Up, but US Fighting to Keep Details Secret. - Poland’s efforts to probe the full details of the CIA-run “black site” hidden on the campus of a northern intelligence academy are still slow going, but there is no real doubt remaining that the previous Polish government conspired to allow the US to operate an illegal torture facility on their territory, and then sought to keep it secret. The real question is, what is the current Polish government going to do about it. Prosecutors continue to work feverishly to build a case against officials involved in the scandal, former Interior Minister Zbigniew Siemiatkowski is already charged, and plenty more could be coming. One would think that’s “game over” for the US, which has been caught out in the humiliating scandal, but is still fighting against Polish prosecutors trying to keep the details of their crimes “classified.”

The broad strokes are known. The site was used to “disappear” detainees and to torture them. The US had a special “cage” brought in for some unknown reason. What Polish contractors involved in the facility’s operation knew, when they knew it, and perhaps most importantly what Polish officials were given in return for violating Polish, EU and international law are the big questions still to be revealed.

The facts behind TrapWire continue to surface in the days since WikiLeaks exposed the state-of-the-art surveillance system, but minute-by-minute more is being revealed about not just the scary intelligence infrastructure but its questionable ties.

Last week, WikiLeaks published their latest addition to trove of the so-called Global Intelligence Files — emails uncovered from Texas-based Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) by Anonymous late last year — in turn revealing a widespread surveillance system blanketing much of the United States and abroad. The project, TrapWire, is the brainchild of Abraxas, a Northern Virginia corporation that has cut countless deals with the federal government and is staffed by former agents out of not just the Pentagon but practically every leading intelligence agency in the country. As those connections are examined under a magnifying glass by researchers and hacktivists alike, though, more and more is being brought to light about the correlations that exist between the biggest of brothers and an entire industry that profits from pulverizing what is left of privacy. In addition to Abraxas overseeing perhaps the most-secret and advanced surveillance system in the world, other entities directly connected to the company have a monopoly in America’s mass-transit system and have also advertised themselves as the purveyors behind a tool designed to protect the privacy of US citizens.

Gawker: Everything You Need to Know About TrapWire, the Surveillance System Everyone Is Freaking Out About

Kurt Nimmo: TrapWire: Big Brother Now Monitors Your Every Move - The latest Wikileaks data-dump reveals that the government now has the ability to grab video from far-flung surveillance cameras located in stores, casinos and other businesses around the country. It uses sophisticated facial recognition software to identify people of interest captured by the ubiquitous cameras numbering in the millions. The software, TrapWire, is a significant breakthrough for the surveillance state. It was uncovered by security researcher Justin Ferguson. He delved into the massive pile of emails hacked from Stratfor – regarded as a shadow CIA – on Christmas of 2011. In response to Ferguson’s discovery and the TrapWire revelation, Wikileaks was recently hit with a large scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

According to the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, the organization has sustained a several-day Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that has left its Web site effectually inoperable. "The attack is well over 10Gbits/second sustained on the main WikiLeaks domains," read one of several tweets the organization posted on Friday. "The range of IPs used is huge. Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them." Apparently WikiLeaks' Web site has been slow moving or inaccessible since the beginning of August, according to the Associated Press.

The slaughter of 77 people by Right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik last year could have been prevented, investigators have claimed. - Norway’s intelligence services knew eight months before the attacks that Breivik was buying explosives. The country’s version of MI5 was warned in December 2010 that Breivik had bought chemicals used for making bombs from a website in Poland. Customs officials warned security officials twice – on December 3 and December 6 – but they failed to follow up the claims. An investigation at that time would have also revealed that Breivik had already bought the assault weapons he would use to murder 69 of his victims on Utoya Island, and that he was a frequent visitor of extremist websites. Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted to the bombing of the government's headquarters in Oslo, which killed eight people, and the subsequent shooting spree at a youth camp that left 69 dead, more than half of them teenagers. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

NYPD officers shot and killed a dog allegedly guarding its passed-out owner on 14th Street and Second Avenue Monday afternoon.

Gothamist reports officers attempted to approach a man who was unconscious on the ground, when the dog "lunged" at police. A witness at the scene tweeted the owner was "doped out." Famed chef Eddie Huang, whose restaurant BaoHaus is located at 238 East 14th Street, tweeted a photo of the incident with the message, "Pigs shot a dog and let it die slow." He explained to The Observer:

We heard the gunshot, and we all ducked, and saw people running and screaming. All of the sudden, our chef Mitch ran towards the gunshot. He was like Yo, it’s that dog in front of KFC—because there’s always this dog in front of KFC—and by the time I get there, I can see the dog whipping around and convulsing.

Apparently onlookers yelled at police to put the dog, "wiggling and flaying, blood coming out of its mouth," out of its misery. Huang continued:

You can see in the photo, the trail of blood. The dog traveled. People were really really vocal, harassing the cops to put the dog down, and they wouldn’t do it. The whole thing just seemed really, really unnecessary. I don’t know what the protocol is for this, I know they have to keep the peace, but it really seemed like an abuse of power, an unnecessary one, and not doing it the right way. They really should’ve put that dog out of its misery. We’ve all seen Old Yeller. We all know the right way to do this.

Over the last month, heavily armed "domestic terrorism" units of the FBI used battering rams and stun grenades to conduct early-morning raids on the homes of political protesters in Seattle and Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. On July 25, three homes were raided in Portland alone and, since July 10, as many as six homes have been raided. These raids are only the latest in an emerging pattern of similar raids conducted by the Obama administration in order to terrorize, suppress and chill political dissent, in flagrant violation of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

QANTAS airline defends policy of moving any men sitting next to unaccompanied minors, to different seats. Because every adult male is a potential child molester...A nurse was made to feel as if he had a sign that read "kiddie fiddler" over his head after he was moved away from a young girl on a Qantas flight, he said. Daniel McCluskie said he had a similar experience to a firefighter on a Virgin Australia flight when he was made to switch seats with a woman because he was sitting next to an unaccompanied child. Qantas has defended its policy, saying it is consistent with that of other airlines around the world and reflects parents' concerns.

USS Porter in the Strait of Hormuz

A senior commander of Iran's Armed Forces called on the international community to pressure the US to withdraw its forces from the Persian Gulf, cautioning that the US military deployment threatens safety and security of shipping and trade in the waterway.

"The presence of the US military forces in the region and the Persian Gulf, no doubt, disturbs security," Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces for Basij and Defense Culture Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri said. Jazzayeri further pointed to the recent collision between an American guided missile destroyer and a Japanese-owned bulk oil tanker near the strategic Strait of Hormuz near the entrance to the Persian Gulf, and said the incident was predictable.

Iranian officials have on many occasions have called for the withdrawal of US forces from the region, stressing that the regional states are capable of maintaining security in the region. Jazzayeri said all the regional nations are worried about the US military deployment in the region, and called on the leaders of the Persian Gulf states to do their best to maintain security of the strategic shipping lane. Security of the Strait of Hormuz has long been a responsibility of Iran.

UPI-Asia: Iran Protests US Presence in Gulf After USS Porter Collides With Japanese Tanker
AWIP: US warship, Japanese-owned oil tanker collide near PG

Dozens of people have reportedly been injured after the army fired rubber bullets at protesters during a recent escalation of violence in Bahrain. Several Bahraini towns have witnessed heavy clashes between protesters and regime forces. - Activists posted on Twitter scores of photos showing fresh injuries from rubber bullets as well as clouds of teargas in the streets of Bahrain. Most of the reports of violence were coming from one of Bahrain's largest cities A’ali. Clashes have also been reported in Saar, Sitra, Karanah and several other cities. Activists say at least two people were detained during the latest night of clashes. Authorities have deployed additional troops and, reportedly, tanks to patrol the streets. The ongoing uprising by the country’s Shiite majority, which claims systematic discrimination on the part of Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, has weakened after multiple mass arrests. At least 50 people have been killed and many more detained since protests began 18 months ago. The Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, a leading Bahraini opposition party, accuses the regime of keeping around 1,400 prisoners as political hostages to put pressure on the opposition. One of its leading figures, Khalil Al-Marzooq, told RT that the authorities are violently suppressing protests and arresting citizens on a daily basis to prevent the people from expressing their lawful demands.

Stephen Lendman: Bahrain's War on Freedom