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.
Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-dept ... 5967241332
Assange writes.
Assange writes.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
Very interesting commentry by Malcolm Turnbull, a prominent right wing Aussie politician, who represented Peter Wright in his efforts to publish his memoirs, "Spycatcher", against the wishes of Margaret Thatcher .
Governments and politicians should be careful not to make a martyr of Assange and fools of themselves. Julia Gillard's claim that Assange had broken Australian laws, when it is clear he has not, demonstrates how out of her depth she is.
One may well ask whether her denunciations would be so shrill if the documents had been handed to a powerful newspaper group - if the contents were being dribbled out by The Australian, would she be accusing Rupert Murdoch of high crimes and misdemeanours?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/ ... .html#poll
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
Well, the OP provides yet more evidence of what a hubris driven megalomaniac Asswipeange is.
The man is certainly a legend in his own mind....
I'm beginning to get the impression from the cyber terrorism that some of his devotees are engaging in, and pronouncements they have made, that the group around scum boy is a sort of cross between a terrorist organization and a cult.....
The man is certainly a legend in his own mind....
I'm beginning to get the impression from the cyber terrorism that some of his devotees are engaging in, and pronouncements they have made, that the group around scum boy is a sort of cross between a terrorist organization and a cult.....
Last edited by Lord Jim on Wed Dec 08, 2010 11:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Assange writes.
How did I know you'd be the first to respond Jim 
I refer you to Mr Turnbull's statement above.
I refer you to Mr Turnbull's statement above.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
Well, the answer to that hypothetical is completely unknown, and not, it seems to me particularly relevant.One may well ask whether her denunciations would be so shrill if the documents had been handed to a powerful newspaper group - if the contents were being dribbled out by The Australian, would she be accusing Rupert Murdoch of high crimes and misdemeanours?
The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Asswipeange played in active role in the theft of these documents....
Thinking about it logically, if The Traitor Manning had been able to download all of these documents without detection and without assistance, why would he take them to a no name chump internet outfit like "Wikileaks"? Why not take them directly to a well known media organ that has demonstrated no qualms about publishing classified documents in the past....Like the New York Times?
Re: Assange writes.
Maybe because Wikileaks would have the balls/cheek/courage/nerve to publish them.
The papers are all full of these reports now they can report that "Wikileaks published them", which shows their cowardice.
The papers are all full of these reports now they can report that "Wikileaks published them", which shows their cowardice.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
It's not hypothetical, and it's completely relevant. If Assange is guilty of anything, then so is every newspaper editor in the world who authorized publication of excerpts of what appeared on Wikileaks.Lord Jim wrote:Well, the answer to that hypothetical is completely unknown, and not, it seems to me particularly relevant.
So which is it, are all of them guilty as well, or is Assange just a convenient scapegoat for an embarrassed administration?
And until you can provide evidence for such an outrageous accusation, then he is guilty of nothing more than that which can be hurled at the editors of Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, El País or the Dallas Morning World.The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Asswipeange played in active role in the theft of these documents....
Re: Assange writes.
I think it will be a good thing in the long run, if governments (particularly the US) are made aware that the inconsistencies between stated policy and reality, are causes for concern by those very individuals that evolved a second face.
Ideally, countries will not profess one stance while covertly supporting an opposing one.
But I don’t think it helps anyone to release the chatter and the unfiltered comments that bubble underneath the policy decision process.
Ideally, countries will not profess one stance while covertly supporting an opposing one.
But I don’t think it helps anyone to release the chatter and the unfiltered comments that bubble underneath the policy decision process.
A sufficiently copious dose of bombast drenched in verbose writing is lethal to the truth.
Re: Assange writes.
There's absolutely nothing "outrageous" about the accusation....And until you can provide evidence for such an outrageous accusation,
It's a perfectly logical and plausible theory based on the fact that Asswipeange is by his own admission a professional hacker, and the guy who allegedly was able to download over 250,000 documents without being detected is am Army private who doesn't even have a college degree.
Re: Assange writes.
Oh the irony!!
It's a perfectly logical and plausible theory based on the fact that Asswipeange is by his own admission a professional hacker, and the guy who allegedly was able to download over 250,000 documents without being detected is am Army private who doesn't even have a college degree.
Even you've gotta have a laff at that one Jim!!!"Don't attribute to conspiracy or malevolence something that can be explained adequately by ignorance or incompetence".
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
Well Strop, in this case, it can only be "explained adequately by incompetence" if there were no safeguards in place that had to be overcome in order to download a quarter of a million classified documents without any security alarms going off.
At the moment we don't know the answer to that....
I suspect that within the next couple of months, we'll know a lot more...
At the moment we don't know the answer to that....
I suspect that within the next couple of months, we'll know a lot more...
Re: Assange writes.
I have every belief that the veracity of your sig line will be proven. 
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
How do Assange's actions compare with lying about WMD, starting a war in Iraq, killing thousands of US servicepeople, costing hundreds of billions of dollars?
So far no one has shown harm. Some embarrassment and a little extra awkwardness going forward. Nothing.
Assange himself and his motives so far aren't that interesting to me. Is he doing it for ego? because he likes the attention? because it makes him feel important and powerful? I don't care. Daniel Ellsberg acted out of patriotism and is an example of extreme heroism; but the effects of his actions are unchanged by his motives. The same is true here.
yrs,
rubato
So far no one has shown harm. Some embarrassment and a little extra awkwardness going forward. Nothing.
Assange himself and his motives so far aren't that interesting to me. Is he doing it for ego? because he likes the attention? because it makes him feel important and powerful? I don't care. Daniel Ellsberg acted out of patriotism and is an example of extreme heroism; but the effects of his actions are unchanged by his motives. The same is true here.
yrs,
rubato
-
Mr. Duality
- Posts: 40
- Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 3:15 pm
- Location: The High Plains of Wyoming
Re: Assange writes.
"UPDATE. Assange in August:
1,300 people were eventually killed [in Kenya], and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak.
Assange today:
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. "
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph ... l_assange/
For a melanin-challenged egomaniacal self-proclaimed truth junkie he has a very selective memory.
1,300 people were eventually killed [in Kenya], and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak.
Assange today:
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. "
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph ... l_assange/
For a melanin-challenged egomaniacal self-proclaimed truth junkie he has a very selective memory.
Re: Assange writes.
And now for an example of "quote out of context-quote in context" to see just how distorted meanings can be:
Out of context:
____________________________
"...
And now in-context:
____________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/au ... fghanistan
"...
When I try to question him about the morality of what he's done, if he worries about unleashing something that he can't control, that no one can control, he tells me the story of the Kenyan 2007 elections when a WikiLeak document "swung the election".
The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."
It's the kind of moral conundrum that would unnerve most people, that made some wonder last week what the potential ramifications of the latest leak might be, but it is a subject on which Assange himself is absolutely clear: "You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion."
The other key thing about WikiLeaks is that it's internationalist in the true sense. "We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings," says Assange. And, with its servers located in different countries, and its headquarters nowhere, it raises intriguing questions about the future of nation states. WikiLeaks seems to be beyond the power of any of them, although Assange jumps on me pretty fast when I suggest as much.
... "
____________________________
The out of context version is not even trying to tell the truth is it?
"Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires."
Bertrand Russell
yrs
rubato
Out of context:
____________________________
"...
Mr. Duality wrote:"UPDATE. Assange in August:
1,300 people were eventually killed [in Kenya], and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak.
... "
And now in-context:
____________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/au ... fghanistan
"...
When I try to question him about the morality of what he's done, if he worries about unleashing something that he can't control, that no one can control, he tells me the story of the Kenyan 2007 elections when a WikiLeak document "swung the election".
The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."
It's the kind of moral conundrum that would unnerve most people, that made some wonder last week what the potential ramifications of the latest leak might be, but it is a subject on which Assange himself is absolutely clear: "You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion."
The other key thing about WikiLeaks is that it's internationalist in the true sense. "We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings," says Assange. And, with its servers located in different countries, and its headquarters nowhere, it raises intriguing questions about the future of nation states. WikiLeaks seems to be beyond the power of any of them, although Assange jumps on me pretty fast when I suggest as much.
... "
____________________________
The out of context version is not even trying to tell the truth is it?
"Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires."
Bertrand Russell
yrs
rubato
-
Mr. Duality
- Posts: 40
- Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 3:15 pm
- Location: The High Plains of Wyoming
Re: Assange writes.
So has the situation in Kenya improved? I doubt it.
Re: Assange writes.
[quote="Mr. Duality"]"
1,300 people were eventually killed [in Kenya], and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak.
/quote]
A quote from a "deleted" blog, which now only appears on right wing conspiracy websites. Steve, is that you?
1,300 people were eventually killed [in Kenya], and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak.
/quote]
A quote from a "deleted" blog, which now only appears on right wing conspiracy websites. Steve, is that you?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
A quote from a "deleted" blog, which now only appears on right wing conspiracy websites. Steve, is that you?Gob wrote:Mr. Duality wrote:"
1,300 people were eventually killed [in Kenya], and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak.
If you follow the link trail to where the "found blog" is, that quote does not exist.
It is you Steve!!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Assange writes.
Kenya had for a long time been a one-party dictatorship in fact if not in name. The uprisings that occurred in the wake of revelations of corruption, including irregularities in the 2007 elections, created the impetus for a power-sharing agreement between the two main contenders for presidency (with the incumbent president retaining that office while his main challenger was given the newly created position of prime minister). Did that miraculously create utopia? Of course not, but it loosened the stranglehold on power which had for too long been held by the same political faction.Mr. Duality wrote:So has the situation in Kenya improved? I doubt it.