Interview with Julian Assange of Wikileaks

[Sabrina]

This was just forwarded by my friend Mary Moore, an article from the Guardian, London. It does not answer where to send money, but gives wonderful detailed recent interview with him.

To all: As you probably know by now, Assange is in jail (no bail in his
future) in London. Below is a Q & A article from the GUARDIAN in the same
place. MM

Julian Assange answers your questions: The founder of WikiLeaks answers
readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic
cables Dec. 6, 2010 UK Guardian News Read our users' questions

Fwoggie: I'll start the ball rolling with a question. You're an Australian
passport holder - would you want return to your own country or is this now
out of the question due to potentially being arrested on arrival for
releasing cables relating to Australian diplomats and polices?

Julian Assange: I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great
deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime minister, Julia
Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland, have made it clear
that not only is my return is impossible but that they are actively working
to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our
people. This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian
citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like
David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian
politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail
parties.

girish89: How do you think you have changed world affairs?
And if you call all the attention you've been given-credit ... shouldn't the
mole or source receive a word of praise from you?

Julian Assange: For the past four years one of our goals has been to lionise
the source who take the real risks in nearly every journalistic disclosure
and without whose efforts, journalists would be nothing. If indeed it is the
case, as alleged by the Pentagon, that the young soldier - Bradley Manning -
is behind some of our recent disclosures, then he is without doubt an
unparalleled hero.

Daithi: Have you released, or will you release, cables (either in the last
few days or with the Afghan and Iraq war logs) with the names of Afghan
informants or anything else like so? Are you willing to censor (sorry for
using the term) any names that you feel might land people in danger from
reprisals?? By the way, I think history will absolve you. Well done!!!

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that
time there has been no credible allegation, even by organisations like the
Pentagon that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our
activities. This is despite much-attempted manipulation and spin trying to
lead people to a counter-factual conclusion. We do not expect any change in
this regard.

distrot: The State Dept is mulling over the issue of whether you are a
journalist or not. Are you a journalist? As far as delivering information
that someone [anyone] does not want seen is concerned, does it matter if you
are a 'journalist' or not?

Julian Assange: I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25.
I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and
internet since that time. However, it is not necessary to debate whether I
am a journalist, or how our people mysteriously are alleged to cease to be
journalists when they start writing for our organisaiton. Although I still
write, research and investigate my role is primarily that of a publisher and
editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists.

achanth: Mr Assange, have there ever been documents forwarded to you which
deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?

Julian Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that
they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden
party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our
publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the
cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.

gnosticheresy: What happened to all the other documents that were on
Wikileaks prior to these series of "megaleaks"? Will you put them back
online at some stage ("technical difficulties" permitting)?

Julian Assange: Many of these are still available at mirror.wikileaks.info
and the rest will be returning as soon as we can find a moment to do address
the engineering complexities. Since April of this year our timetable has not
been our own, rather it has been one that has centred on the moves of
abusive elements of the United States government against us. But rest
assured I am deeply unhappy that the three-and-a-half years of my work and
others is not easily available or searchable by the general public.

CrisShutlar: Have you expected this level of impact all over the world? Do
you fear for your security?

Julian Assange: I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would perform
a global role and to some degree it was clear that is was doing that as far
back as 2007 when it changed the result of the Kenyan general election. I
thought it would take two years instead of four to be recognised by others
as having this important role, so we are still a little behind schedule and
have much more work to do. The threats against our lives are a matter of
public record, however, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the
degree that we are able when dealing with a super power.

JAnthony: Julian. I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former
duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in
the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic
cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation.
None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of
diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from
publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic
states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back
to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate
without discretion and the protection of sources. This applies to the UK and
the UN as much as the US. In publishing this massive volume of
correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing
but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US
cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails. My question to you
is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an
international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.

Julian Assange: If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular
question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.

cargun: Mr Assange, Can you explain the censorship of identities as XXXXX's
in the revealed cables? Some critical identities are left as is, whereas
some are XXXXX'd. Some cables are partially revealed. Who can make such
critical decisons, but the US gov't? As far as we know your request for such
help was rejected by the State department. Also is there an order in the
release of cable or are they randomly selected? Thank you.

Julian Assange: The cables we have release correspond to stories released by
our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the
journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material
well in order to write about it. The redactions are then reviewed by at
least one other journalist or editor, and we review samples supplied by the
other organisations to make sure the process is working.

rszopa: Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if
anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of AWS. Do
you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it?
Thank you for doing what you are doing.

Julian Assange: Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our
servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit
inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.

abbeherrera: You started something that nobody can stop. The Beginning of a
New World. Remember, that community is behind you and support you (from
Slovakia). Do you have leaks on ACTA?

Julian Assange: Yes, we have leaks on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement, a trojan horse trade agreement designed from the very beginning
to satisfy big players in the US copyright and patent industries. In fact,
it was WikiLeaks that first drew ACTA to the public's attention - with a
leak.

people1st: Tom Flanagan, a [former] senior adviser to Canadian Prime
Minister recently stated "I think Assange should be assassinated ... I think
Obama should put out a contract ... I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does
disappear." How do you feel about this?

Julian Assange: It is correct that Mr. Flanagan and the others seriously
making these statements should be charged with incitement to commit murder.

Isopod: Julian, why do you think it was necessary to "give Wikileaks a
face"? Don't you think it would be better if the organization was anonymous?
This whole debate has become very personal and reduced on you - "Julian
Assange leaked documents", "Julian Assange is a terrorist", "Julian Assange
alledgedly raped a woman", "Julian Assange should be assassinated", "Live
Q&A qith Julian Assange" etc. Nobody talks about Wikileaks as an
organization anymore. Many people don't even realize that there are other
people behind Wikileaks, too. And this, in my opinion, makes Wikileaks
vulnerable because this enables your opponents to argue ad hominem. If they
convince the public that you're an evil, woman-raping terrorist, then
Wikileaks' credibility will be gone. Also, with due respect for all that
you've done, I think it's unfair to all the other brave, hard working people
behind Wikileaks, that you get so much credit.

Julian Assange: This is an interesting question. I originally tried hard for
the organisation to have no face, because I wanted egos to play no part in
our activities. This followed the tradition of the French anonymous pure
mathematians, who wrote under the collective allonym, "The Bourbaki".
However this quickly led to tremendous distracting curiosity about who and
random individuals claiming to represent us. In the end, someone must be
responsible to the public and only a leadership that is willing to be
publicly courageous can genuinely suggest that sources take risks for the
greater good. In that process, I have become the lightening rod. I get undue
attacks on every aspect of my life, but then I also get undue credit as some
kind of balancing force.

tburgi: Western governments lay claim to moral authority in part from having
legal guarantees for a free press. Threats of legal sanction against
Wikileaks and yourself seem to weaken this claim. (What press needs to be
protected except that which is unpopular to the State? If being
state-sanctioned is the test for being a media organization, and therefore
able to claim rights to press freedom, the situation appears to be the same
in authoritarian regimes and the west.) Do you agree that western
governments risk losing moral authority by attacking Wikileaks? Do you
believe western goverments have any moral authority to begin with?
Thanks, Tim Burgi Vancouver, Canada

Julian Assange: The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships
through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on.
In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change
in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments.
Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like
badgers and birds, free. In states like China there is pervasive censorship,
because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always
look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of
speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a
great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

rajiv1857: Hi, Is the game that you are caught up in winnable? Technically,
can you keep playing hide and seek with the powers that be when services and
service providers are directly or indirectly under government control or
vulnerable to pressure - like Amazon? Also, if you get "taken out" and that
could be technical, not necessarily physical - what are the alternatives for
your cache of material? Is there a 'second line' of activists in place that
would continue the campaign? Is your material 'dispersed' so that taking out
one cache would not necessarily mean the end of the game?

Julian Assange: The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with
significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people
in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be
released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of
multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to
a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.

That's it every one, thanks for all your questions and comments. Julian
Assange is sorry that he can't answer every question but he has tried to
cover as much territory as possible. Thanks for your patience with our
earlier technical difficulties.


------ End of Forwarded Message

------ End of Forwarded Message

[Marty M]

Hello All,
Here's an interesting quote.

"I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think
that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes ...
And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big
supporter of non-censorship." – Barack Obama, November 16, 2009,
when questioned by Chinese students about
internet censorship there


Marty

This was just forwarded by my friend Mary Moore, an article from the Guardian, London. It does not answer where to send money, but gives wonderful detailed recent interview with him.

To all: As you probably know by now, Assange is in jail (no bail in his
future) in London. Below is a Q & A article from the GUARDIAN in the same
place. MM

Julian Assange answers your questions: The founder of WikiLeaks answers
readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic
cables Dec. 6, 2010 UK Guardian News Read our users' questions...

[Sabrina]

My Friend Mary Moore has again found a gem of an article about the Arrest of Julian Assange.
Here's the forwarded message:

To all: Like I said before, there is so much out there right now about all
this that it's hard to decide what to pass on. This is a good one as it
addresses the point that attacking WikiLeaks is attacking journalism itself
or at least what we've been told journalism is--keeping government honest.
And it also shows just where Obama comes down on the issue of transparency
which is yet another one of his election issues that remains unfulfilled. MM

December 7, 2010 The Arrest of Julian Assange: Truth in Chains
By CHRIS FLOYD COUNTER PUNCH

London: Well, they got him at last. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the
target of several of the world¹s most powerful governments, turned himself
into British authorities today and is now at the mercy of state authorities
who have already shown their wolfish * and lawless * desire to destroy him
and his organization. It has been, by any standard, an extraordinary
campaign of vilification and persecution, wholly comparable to the kind of
treatment doled out to dissidents in China or Burma. Lest we forget,
WikiLeaks is a journalistic outlet * just like The New York Times, the
Guardian and Der Spiegel, all of whom are even now publishing the very same
material * leaked classified documents -- available on WikiLeaks. The
website is also a journalistic outlet just like CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox and other
mainstream media venues, where we have seen an endless parade of officials *
and journalists! * calling for Assange to be prosecuted or killed outright.
Every argument being made for shutting down WikiLeaks can * and doubtless
will * be used against any journalistic enterprise that publishes material
that powerful people do not like.

And the leading role in this persecution of truth-telling is being played by
the administration of the great progressive agent of hope and change, the
self-proclaimed heir of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, the winner of
the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama. His attorney general, Eric Holder, is
now making fierce noises about the ³steps² he has already taken to bring
down WikiLeaks and criminalize the leaking of embarrassing information. And
listen to the ferocious reaction of that liberal lioness, Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, who took to the pages of Rupert Murdoch¹s Wall Street Journal to
call for Assange to be put in prison * for 2,500,000 years: ³When WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange released his latest document trove
secret State Department cables
The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts
innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.
³The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That
law makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit
"information relating to the national defense which information the
possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United
States or to the advantage of any foreign nation." ... Importantly, the
courts have held that "information relating to the national defense" applies
to both classified and unclassified material. Each violation is punishable
by up to 10 years in prison.²

So there you have it. Ten years for each offense; 250,000 separate offenses;
thus a prison term of 2.5 million years. Naturally, tomorrow the same
newspaper will denounce Feinstein for being such a namby-pamby
terrorist-coddling pinko: ³Why didn¹t she call for Assange to be torn from
limb to limb by wild dogs, as any right-thinking red-blooded American would
do!?² Meanwhile, corporate America and its international allies continue to
do their bit. Joining PayPal and Amazon, who had already cut off their
services to WikiLeaks, most of the remaining venues through which the
internet journal is funded are also freezing out the organization --
MasterCard, Visa, and a Swiss bank that WikiLeaks used to process donations.
All of these organizations are obviously responding to government pressure.

What is perhaps most remarkable is that this joint action by the world elite
to shut down WikiLeaks * which has been operating for four years * comes
after the release of diplomatic cables, not in response to earlier leaks
which provided detailed evidence of crimes and atrocities committed by the
perpetrators and continuers of Washington¹s Terror War. I suppose this is
because the diplomatic cables have upset the smooth running of the corrupt
and cynical backroom operations that actually govern our world, behind the
ludicrous lies and self-righteous posturing that our great and good lay on
for the public. They didn¹t mind being unmasked as accomplices in mass
murder and fomenters of suffering and hatred; in fact, they were rather
proud of it. And they certainly knew that their fellow corruptocrats in
foreign governments * not to mention the perpetually stunned and supine
American people * wouldn¹t give a toss about a bunch of worthless peons in
Iraq and Afghanistan getting killed. But the diplomatic cables have caused
an embarrassing stink among the closed little clique of the movers and
shakers. And that is a crime deserving of vast eons in stir * or death.

But before Assange was taken into custody, he fired off one last message to
the world, in The Australian, a newspaper in his native land. With supreme
irony, he tied WikiLeaks¹ operation to the roots of the Murdoch media
empire, which began by speaking truth to murderous and wasteful power * and
now, of course, is one of the most powerful and assiduous instruments of
murderous and wasteful power itself. Assange writes: ³IN 1958 a young Rupert
Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide¹s The News, wrote: ³In the race
between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.²
His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch¹s expose that
Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British
commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but
Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination
of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

³Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that
need to be made public. S Democratic societies need a strong media and
WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest.
WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and
broken stories about corporate corruption. ³WikiLeaks is not the only
publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain
Os The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in
Germany have published the same redacted cables. ³Yet it is WikiLeaks, as
the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious
attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been
accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US citizen. There
have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be ³taken out² by US
Special Forces. Sarah Palin says I should be ³hunted down like Osama bin
Laden², a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me
declared a ³transnational threat² and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to
the Canadian Prime Minister¹s office has called on national television for
me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old
son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than
to get at me.²

These, of course, are the defenders of Western Civilization, that pinnacle
of human progress, that bulwark against savagery like murder and torture,
that bastion of temperance and reason. But in his piece, Assange once more
gives the lie to the ferocious canards of Feinstein, Holder, Obama and Palin
about the ³great harm² the leaks have done: ³WikiLeaks has a four-year
publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but
not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US,
with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few
months alone. ³US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to
the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been
compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was
no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in
Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn¹t find a single person who
needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No
Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.²

Yes, how many thousands of people, how many tens of thousands, have been
killed by our bipartisan Terror Warriors in the four years of WikiLeaks¹
existence? How many millions have been ³harmed² not only by the direct
operations of the Terror War, but by the ever-widening, ever-deepening
violence, hatred and turmoil it is spreading throughout the world? (Not to
mention the accelerating collapse of American society, which has been
financially, politically and morally bankrupted by the acceptance of
aggressive war, torture, elite rapine and authoritarian rule.) But none of
the perpetrators of these acts, past or present, are in jail, or have even
been prosecuted, or investigated, or inconvenienced in any way. Yet Assange
is in a British prison tonight * and it is certainly not for the ³sexual
misconduct² charges that were filed against him in August, which then became
the basis of an unprecedented worldwide arrest order of the type ordinarily
reserved for war criminals * for those, in fact, accused of aggressive war,
torture, elite rapine and authoritarian rule. The judge refused to grant
bail, saying that Assange had ³access to financial means² and could flee the
country * perhaps a bitter joke on milord¹s part, aimed at a man whose means
of financial support are being systematically shut down by the most powerful
government and corporate forces in the world. Journalist John Pilger and
filmmaker Ken Loach were among those who appeared in court ready to stand
surety for Assange, but to no avail.

WikiLeaks will doubtless try to struggle on. And Assange says he has given
the entire diplomatic trove to 100,000 people. By dribs and drabs, shards of
truth will get out. But the world¹s journalists * and those persons of
conscience working in the world¹s governments * have been given a hard,
harsh, unmistakable lesson in the new realities of our degraded time. Tell a
truth that discomforts power, that challenges its domination over our lives,
our discourse, our very thoughts, and you will be destroyed. No institution,
public or private, will stand with you; the most powerful entities, public
and private, will be arrayed against you, backed up by overwhelming violent
force. This is where we are now. This is what we are now.