WikiLeaks

[j_b]

Wikileaks.ch, is owned by the Swiss Pirate Party, formed two years ago to campaign for freedom of information. Its officials said they had met with WikiLeaks Assange and provided him with information about how to seek asylum in Switzerland.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/wikileaks-online-presence_n_791699.html

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Bahamas!

 

Aruba would be more a propos for him.

[ivan]

can someone please explain in a non-retarded fashion the justification for calling the wiki-folk "terrorists?" for all their tendency to take the written word 100% literally, you'd think a dictionary oughta sort this out for them:

 

ter·ror·ist   /ˈtɛrərɪst/

[ter-er-ist]

–noun

1. a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.

2. a person who terrorizes or frightens others.

 

i checked out their site the other night - didn't see a word about overthrowing hte government or killing anybody or blowing anything up (though there was one groovy, groovy video of our country doing just that to somebody else's) - conservatives do generally seem frightened of their own shadows though, so i guess pretty much the whole damn world might meet #2 for them.

[Crux]

IOKIYAR

[tvashtarkatena]

Sooo....golly, guess WikiLeaks isn't an arm of the CIA after all....

[prole]

 

I take it back, this muthafucker's working for SPECTRE!

 

WikiLeaks Founder Threatens to Release Entire Cache of Unfiltered Files

12/5/10

 

Assange will unleash his 'thermonuclear device' in the event he is brought to trial

 

At the centre of a tightening web of death threats, sex-crime accusations and high-level demands for a treason trial, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threatened to unleash a "thermonuclear device" of completely unexpurgated government files if he is forced to appear before authorities.

 

Mr. Assange, the 39-year-old Australian Internet activist whose online document-leaking service has embarrassed the United States and other countries by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic and military documents, has referred to the huge, unfiltered document as his "insurance policy."

 

The 1.3-gigabyte file, distributed through file-sharing services this summer and protected with an unbreakable 256-bit encryption key, contains full versions of all the U.S. documents received by WikiLeaks to date - including those that have been withheld from publication or have had names and details removed in order to protect the lives of spies, sources and soldiers.

 

Silent for the better part of a week as WikiLeaks made daily headlines around the globe, Mr. Assange has been increasingly vocal in recent days, defending his actions, decrying his critics and defying world leaders.

 

Mr. Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens warned that if Mr. Assange were to be brought to trial on rape accusations he faces in Sweden, or for treason charges that have been suggested by U.S. politicians, he would release the encryption key. The tens of thousands of people who have downloaded the file would instantly have access to the names, addresses and details contained in the file.

 

WikiLeaks, Mr. Stephens said, has "been subject to cyberattacks and censorship around the world and they need to protect themselves ... This is what they believe to be a thermonuclear device in the information age."

 

He uttered that threat as his client was believed to be in hiding in Britain, with prominent U.S. and Saudi officials calling for Mr. Assange's arrest or death, justice officials attempting to shut down his websites in many countries, and the Swedish justice system seeking him for questioning on the sexual-crime allegations.

 

Mr. Assange has denied the accusation, made by two women who hosted a party for him in Stockholm in August. He has acknowledged having had consensual sex with the complainants. Reports say the sex became non-consensual over disagreements about condom use.

 

This weekend he refused to respond to a European arrest warrant issued by Sweden, and an Interpol alert related to the accusation. His lawyers argued that the accusations amount to a smear campaign and suggested that U.S. officials might be behind them.

 

The Swedish prosecutor took the unusual step of going before the news media to say she has received no pressure or communication of any sort from international or political authorities and that the charges are unrelated to the leaks scandal.

 

"This investigation has proceeded perfectly normally without any political pressure of any kind," prosecutor Marianne Ny told the Agence France-Presse wire service. "It is completely independent."

 

A number of high-profile U.S. figures, including Republicans Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, have called for the prosecution of Mr. Assange.

 

"Julian Assange is engaged in warfare," Mr. Gingrich said, echoing similar words spoken by Ms. Palin and others last week. "Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism. And Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant and WikiLeaks should be closed down permanently and decisively."

 

However, U.S. charges against Mr. Assange are unlikely: He is not a U.S. citizen and, because he did not steal the documents himself, but only participated in their publication, he would likely be protected under the U.S. Constitution's free-speech provisions.

 

The documents were reportedly stolen from a U.S. military installation by Bradley Manning, a former private in the U.S. Army who copied years of secret Pentagon and State Department communiqués and passed them to Mr. Assange, who in turn brokered deals with worldwide media outlets to publish details from them. Those details, despite some censorship by Mr. Assange and the publishers, have shaken relations between the United States and Gulf countries, Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

Mr. Manning is already being held in solitary confinement, and will likely face treason and espionage charges. This has not stopped a growing chorus of U.S. and foreign figures from pushing for punishment for Mr. Assange.

 

U.S. newspapers reported that a team of Justice Department and Pentagon investigators is looking into the possibility of charges against Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act. Attorney-General Eric Holder said "this is not sabre-rattling" when asked by reporters about the possibility of charges. Justice officials in Australia, where Mr. Assange was born, are reportedly also looking into a prosecution.

 

That did not stop more figures from suggesting that Mr. Assange should be harmed or killed - a circle that includes Canadian Tom Flanagan, a former campaign manager to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who told a TV interviewer last week that Mr. Assange should be assassinated (he later apologized for the remark).

 

In an online interview with the Guardian newspaper, Mr. Assange said Mr. Flanagan "should be charged with incitement to commit murder."

 

He also told reporters Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, should resign if they are shown to have authorized an operation to spy on United Nations top officials - one of the many secrets revealed in the leaked State Department cables.

 

"Obama must answer what he knew about this illegal order and when. If he refuses to answer or there is evidence he approved of these actions, he must resign," the WikiLeaks founder told the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

 

He suggested, not for the first time, that he believes his document service has had a profound effect on world history: "I believe geopolitics will be separated into pre- and post-Cablegate phases."

[prole]

NTTAWWT.

[Crux]

Can someone please explain in a non-retarded fashion the justification for calling the wiki-folk "terrorists?" ...i checked out their site the other night - didn't see a word about overthrowing hte government or killing anybody or blowing anything up...

"If that becomes a problem, we need to change the law." -- GOP leader Mitch McConnel.

 

[img:center]http://cdn.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Mitch_Mcconnell-300x200.jpg[/img]

 

[j_b]

Same people who go on rants telling us how barbarian Muslims muzzle the press and issue violent threats to prevent criticism of their god. Regressives are for a "free press" free to report the twaddle fed it by governments and corporations.

[tvashtarkatena]

Power to the People, Yo.

[tvashtarkatena]

Nothing pisses a totalitarian off more than an off-stage spotlight.

[tvashtarkatena]

Funny thing is, Palin, Gingrich et al are just punching up the site's hit rate LOL. Jebus, they probably deserve commissions.

[j_b]

Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police

 

 

Dear Interpol:

 

As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.

 

I see that Julian Assange is accused of having consensual sex with two women, in one case using a condom that broke. I understand, from the alleged victims' complaints to the media, that Assange is also accused of texting and tweeting in the taxi on the way to one of the women's apartments while on a date, and, disgustingly enough, 'reading stories about himself online' in the cab.

 

Both alleged victims are also upset that he began dating a second woman while still being in a relationship with the first. (Of course, as a feminist, I am also pleased that the alleged victims are using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings. That's what our brave suffragette foremothers intended!).

 

Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone -- there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately. I also have firsthand information that John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party -- with strippers! -- that his girlfriend wanted him to skip, and that Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut -- even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER.

 

Terrorists. Go get 'em, Interpol!

 

Yours gratefully,

 

Naomi Wolf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds-datin_b_793033.html

[ivan]

now that's fucking funny

[Crux]

Ms Wolf is obviously a CIA plant, running interference for covert operative Julian Assange: Only a conspiracy masterminded by the geniuses at the CIA could make happen such an improbable coincidence of terror, whereby "John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party -- with strippers! -- that his girlfriend wanted him to skip," while at the same time "Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut -- even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER." (!)

[billcoe]

Ms Wolf is obviously a CIA plant, running interference for covert operative Julian Assange: Only a conspiracy masterminded by the geniuses at the CIA could make happen such an improbable coincidence of terror, whereby "John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party -- with strippers! -- that his girlfriend wanted him to skip," while at the same time "Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut -- even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER." (!)

 

The CIA and your free press. You think that they just stopped this baloney? hah hah

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

 

Maybe, we do have Hope and Change in the Whitehouse now, and we can see all the difference that is making. What would be the odds that at least one of the complainants living in Sweden had ties to the CIA? Hah hah!

 

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/assange-rape-accuser-cia-ties/

Revealed: Assange ‘rape’ accuser linked to notorious CIA operative

 

By David Edwards

Monday, December 6th, 2010 -- 3:43 pm

 

One of the women accusing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of sex crimes appears to have worked with a group that has connections to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

 

James D. Catlin, a lawyer who recently represented Assange, said the sex assault investigation into the WikiLeaks founder is based on claims he didn't use condoms during sex with two Swedish women.

 

Swedish prosecutors told AOL News last week that Assange was not wanted for rape as has been reported, but for something called "sex by surprise" or "unexpected sex."

 

One accuser, Anna Ardin, may have "ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups," according to Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett, writing for CounterPunch.

 

While in Cuba, Ardin worked with the Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White), a feminist anti-Castro group.

 

Professor Michael Seltzer pointed out that the group is led by Carlos Alberto Montaner who is reportedly connected to the CIA.

 

Shamir and Bennett also describe Ardin as a "leftist" who "published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba."

 

Shamir and Bennett noted that Las damas de blanco is partially funded by the US government and also counts Luis Posada Carriles as a supporter.

 

A declassified 1976 document (.pdf) revealed Posada to be a CIA agent. He has been convicted of terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of people.

 

Ardin is "a gender equity officer at Uppsula University – who chose to associate with a US funded group openly supported by a convicted terrorist and mass murderer," FireDogLake's Kirk James Murphy observed.

 

In August, Assange told Al-Jazeera that the accusations were "clearly a smear campaign."

 

"We have been warned that, for example, the Pentagon is planning on using dirty tricks to destroy our work," Assange told the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet.

 

The WikiLeaks founder said he was told to be careful of "sex traps." Had Assange fallen for one of those traps? "Maybe. Maybe not," he said.

 

Catlin observed that both Ardin and Sofia Wilén, the second accuser, sent SMS messages and tweets boasting of their conquests following the alleged "rapes."

 

"In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange's honour at her flat after the 'crime' and tweeted to her followers that she is with the 'the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!'" he wrote.

 

"The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Niether Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape," Catlin said.

 

Ardin has also published a seven step guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends.

 

When the charges were first leveled in August, Gawker raised doubts that Ardin was working for the CIA.

 

"If anything, Ardin's outing tends to undercut Assange's conspiracy theory that one of his accusers is a major figure on Sweden's left fringe, freewheelingly indiscreet on her personal blog and, until her charges, an enthusiastic promoter of Assange's visit to the country," Gawker wrote.

 

After Interpol issued a digital "wanted" poster for Assange on Monday morning, an unnamed Scotland Yard source reportedly told Press Association it had been given the documents needed for the arrest. Police would not comment on the report publicly.

 

Several British news outlets speculated that Assange could be arrested as early as Tuesday.

 

On Monday evening, Mark Stephens, Assange's London lawyer, was negotiating with British authorities over an arrest warrant they'd received from their Swedish counterparts. Assange has vowed to fight extradition."

 

Very few people in the world have a grasp on what the truth is in this story. How long was it after his execution by elements of the US Government that everyone thought James Earl Ray actually killed Martin Luther King? Long time for the truth to get out. Some people still think Ray did it.

Edited December 8, 2010 by billcoe

[Nitrox]

Sounds like those broads failed the FourLoco challenge.

[Mal_Con]

[video:youtube]

[tvashtarkatena]

WikiLeaks has over a thousand mirror sites up now.

 

Here, Kitty Kitty Kitty!

[ivan]

[video:youtube]

guy fawkes masks are brilliant

 

i'm encouraged by the high schoolers i teach - these folks have never known a world w/o the internet, and even the very vocal conservatives i have are pro-wikileak - shit gets judged by its merits - what are you leaking and why? its not like wiki's revealing the nuclear codes or the order of battle in afghanistan.

[prole]

 

WikiGross!

 

Three cheers for public/private partnerships!

[max]

- shit gets judged by its merits -

 

or at least by the merits revealed by their superficial investigations...

[ivan]

- shit gets judged by its merits -

 

or at least by the merits revealed by their superficial investigations...

most folks don't have time for more than that of course - me included - whole pt of good journalism is to do the lions share of tha analysis for the reader

[tvashtarkatena]

Since they post original government and corporate documents, there's not much superficiality about it.

[billcoe]

Ex CIA officer on this article says that we need Wikileaks as the news is now totally corrupted by government and those in power. Whole article below:

 

"Exclusive: ‘The Fourth Estate is dead,’ former CIA analyst declares

 

By Nathan Diebenow

Friday, December 10th, 2010 -- 12:53 pm

 

 

'The Empire' is 'being threatened by a slingshot in the form of a computer'

 

RayMcGovern Exclusive: The Fourth Estate is dead, former CIA analyst declares Traditional lines of communication between the people and the press have fallen into such disrepair in America that a whole new approach is necessary to challenge the military-industrial-governmental complex, according to a former CIA analyst sympathetic to WikiLeaks.

 

"The Fourth Estate is dead," Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "The Fourth Estate in his country has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus. Captive! So, there is no Fourth Estate."

 

McGovern explained that the term the "Fourth Estate," known today as the news media in the US, was first coined by 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. Burke is said to have pointed to the balcony in Parliament and lauded the print media of his day for being the safeguards of democracy.

 

"That was very powerful back then," McGovern said. "And just a century later you get Tom Paine, James Madison. You know what Thomas Jefferson said? He said if we have to make a choice between having a government and having a press, I’ll go for the press every time. He understood that any government without a free press will resort to despotism."

 

McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President's Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates, said that he preferred to focus on the First Amendment battle of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange than on the current "cyber war" in which WikiLeaks is embroiled.

 

McGovern said that modern people can now become informed through what he termed "The Fifth Estate."

 

"Luckily, there is a Fifth Estate," he said. "The Fifth Estate exists in the ether. It’s not susceptible of government, of corporations, or advertisers or military control. It’s free. That is very dangerous to people who like to make secrets and to make secret operational things. It’s a huge threat. And the Empire – the Goliath here – is being threatened by a slingshot in the form of a computer and a stone through these emissions thrown into the ether to our own computers."

 

"It’s quite amazing," he added.

 

"Will the United States and its slavish allies present in Sweden... succeed in making such an object lesson of what happens to an organization and a person – a demonized person – namely Julian Assange? What happens to them if they defy the Empire if they break the rules which they have?" McGovern asked.

 

He also questioned Attorney General Eric Holder's handling of the WikiLeaks founder's case in the wake of habeas corpus being thrown "out the window" by the previous administration. Specifically, he wondered what Holder, the highest law enforcement officer in the US government, meant by the federal government using "other tools" to get Assange and shut down WikiLeaks.

 

Assange's attorney said Friday that he expected his client to be indicted by the US.

 

"The broad hint is the extra-judiciary tools," he said, referring to the news media. "And yet not one of those stenographer correspondents sitting before him there has the guts to say, “What do you mean ‘other tools?' You going to assassinate the guy?”

 

McGovern continued, "They’re just letting it hang out there like other stuffed shirts like Jeff Merrell at the Pentagon [who says to the effect,] 'Everything is on the table. We don’t rule anything out.' Well, you know that reflects the state of the defunct Fourth Estate. That’s precisely why you need people to be able to get out of the framework of the Fourth Estate and to the new."

 

McGovern also noted the demise of the Fourth Estate, with an anecdote about the 30th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers' release in June 2001, months before the 9/11 attacks.

 

He said that at the reunion, most of those in attendance did not believe the press would publish such information were it made available today.

 

"They went down the line, two guys from the [New York Times], two guys from the [Washington Post], and they all said, 'I don’t know,'" McGovern said. "I’m looking at that, and I’m thinking, 'Holy shit!'"

 

He continued, "The amazing thing was that these people still had a lot of self-identification with these newspapers – some were still actively employed by them. And not only did they say this, but there was no hint of embarrassment or remorse. It was just the way it is today."

 

Even while the Fourth Estate may be dead, WikiLeaks learned one important lesson from Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, McGovern admitted. That lesson was to tell the news media that the documents are being given to more than one outlet at the same time.

 

WikiLeaks addressed that question by making sure that when they gave documents to the Times, they said The Guardian, Der Spiegal, Le Monde, and El Pais also had them, McGovern said.

 

"These guys are very, very clever," he said. "As you can see, I wish them all the success in the world."

 

McGovern said that WikiLeaks' benefit is that it gives people the chance to become informed and place a check on government. He added that WikiLeaks' information on the wars is the "ground-truth," in that the data came from the American troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

McGovern said that WikiLeaks -- or outlets like it -- has the potential to make the world safer to the degree American people get exposed to this information, draw adult conclusions from it, and pressure the US government to change its policies.

 

"You have no doubt about the authenticity of what these people are reporting, and it’s a new ballgame once these things become accessible to the American people," he said."

 

From

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/former-cia-intelligence-analyst-fourth-estate-is-dead/