October 19, 2016 at 6:40 PM EDT

... RAPHAEL SATTER, Associated Press: ... There is an enormous amount of speculation about what’s going on behind the scenes ... The Ecuadorians were rather vague in their statements. They said that they were restricting his Internet access ... That could mean that he can use the Internet for some things and not for others, or it could mean that he’s been kicked off the Internet altogether. It’s not clear, and no one’s answered our questions, whether Julian Assange can make phone calls, whether he can send text messages, whether he can send courier messages back and forth ...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/whats-motive-behind-julian-assanges-internet-ban/

ROBERT MCMILLAN
Dow Jones 9:21AM October 20, 2016

... Some former allies and observers say that after four years confined to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Mr Assange is alienating former supporters and undermining WikiLeaks’ relevance.

They cite a series of leaks that they say supported Russian efforts to disrupt the US election and carelessly promoted Turkish government documents exposing the personal information of thousands of ordinary citizens.

WikiLeaks “has pioneered open government but has now gone off the rails in a way that damages the global transparency movement,” said Alex Howard, a senior analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, a group once sympathetic to WikiLeaks that backs open-government efforts in the US ...

There is no evidence of collusion between Russia and WikiLeaks, said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. “However, Assange has made it very clear that he’s willing to be a useful idiot for any intelligence service, as long as it furthers his own agenda,” he said ...

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-increasingly-isolated-as-ecuador-blocks-his-internet-access/news-story/273fa7c66f5b8c4e68fc49fa48b1e261

What?