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A Letter From Julian Assange
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Gamos replied on Wed Dec 8, 2010 @ 9:29pm |
 Coolness: 93535 | [ www.theaustralian.com.au ]
Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths Julian Assange From: The Australian December 08, 2010 12:00AM WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks. IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win." His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's 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. Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public. I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth. These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth. WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately? 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. People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it. If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely. WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables. Yet 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 "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's 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. And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US. Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small. We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings. Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not. Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it? It is neither. WikiLeaks 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. US 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 couldn't 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. But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts: ► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too. ► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran. ► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available. ► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests". ► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament. ► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees. In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth. |
| I'm feeling a overhang right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» KORHAL replied on Wed Dec 8, 2010 @ 9:56pm |
 Coolness: 558590 | I just finished reading the latest article on Gizmodo, wow. I can't wait to see what we can do to help and what will come of it. |
| I'm feeling got a good feeling about this right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» El_Presidente replied on Wed Dec 8, 2010 @ 10:00pm |
 Coolness: 299365 | this whole story is surreal. The rape accusations make me think of the movie "the net" when they put a shitload of charges on sandra bullock's criminal record when she pisses of the wrong people. |
| I'm feeling the president right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Termina replied on Wed Dec 8, 2010 @ 10:15pm |
 Coolness: 86130 | "LISTEN TO THE CHAIR-LEG OF TRUTH! IT DOES NOT LIE!" |
| I'm feeling x_x right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Gamos replied on Wed Dec 8, 2010 @ 11:14pm |
| Coolness: 93535 | Originally Posted By EL_PRESIDENTE
this whole story is surreal. It is actually surreal: You have elected politicians, diplomats and military officials who have comeout and said they dont believe in freedom of information. You have coverups of war crimes, and politicians saying the truth shouldnt have been exposed rather than investigating the war crimes You have corporate coverups of breaking the law, and you have corporations suing for injunctions rather than cleaning up their acts. You have high level politicians of democracies that want this guy killed and say it publicly. --- Wikileaks is exposing everything that is wrong with the world today. The contempt that governments have for the people. Diplomats, politicians and military officials saying they don't believe in the democracy they are supposed to be serving and protecting. Its an embarassment. This reminds me of V for Vendetta ...if this guy was a chinese disident, he would have been praised as a hero. I hope he wins the Nobel Peace Prize and gets a job at Harvard |
| I'm feeling a overhang right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Thu Dec 9, 2010 @ 1:39am |
 Coolness: 145240 | in the short term i think wiki leaks is good, but i don't think everyone has thought this through as carefully as they should, if wiki leaks is a powerful tool for getting the truth out it stands to reason that it's just as powerful a tool for disinformation. What if a few years from now wiki leaks or something like it comes forward with documents from a place like iran which 'conclusively' show they are building a bomb and that becomes the basis for a new war based on lies...
It's not as simple as saying wiki leaks can do no harm, even if they only ever release real documents with nothing but the truth in them, who decides what gets released and what doesn't, that's a tremendous amount of power, not to mention the potential for black mail. For now it's just stuff about international relations but what if it becomes stuff about individual politicians. What if a senator in the states is told 'you'll vote the way we tell you on this bill otherwise we release those text messages which show that you are having an affair' this is why i'm still not sure about wiki leaks... |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» DynV replied on Thu Dec 9, 2010 @ 12:14pm |
 Coolness: 108845 | Originally Posted By BASDINI
What if a senator in the states is told 'you'll vote the way we tell you on this bill otherwise we release those text messages which show that you are having an affair' Do you really think that doesn't happen already? That politicians don't have friends in telecom businesses and law agencies that "forget" to log out while they're around at the end of a remote session or at the office while they go to the bathroom? |
| I'm feeling <3 sexi_babe_69 right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PonChalice replied on Thu Dec 9, 2010 @ 1:06pm |
 Coolness: 76295 | pakistani media publish fake wikileaks cables attacking india:
[ www.guardian.co.uk ] Originally Posted By BASDINI
What if a senator in the states is told 'you'll vote the way we tell you on this bill otherwise we release those text messages which show that you are having an affair' im prety sure senators are supposed to keep things on the up & up in the first place... so that coersion can be avoided |
| I'm feeling pure terror right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Psilo replied on Thu Dec 9, 2010 @ 1:14pm |
 Coolness: 82720 | its the new perfect tool of disinformation, like every good source of information its getting corrupted. |
| I'm feeling the revolution coming right now.. | |
A Letter From Julian Assange
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