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Just Released: Julian Assange Op-Ed In The Australian
Just released in The Australian
Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths
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.
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Yeah William, Rupert Murdoch is such a lovely character http://bit.ly/gkglU0
What? You thought Switzerland was an anti-American bastion of freedom?
Condom Sabateur in Chief
TDos and Kiva... there just aint no wakin some people up... keep walking... follow the pied piper
Nations have always existed to serve the purpose of the elites.
What better way to get the common masses to willingly play along? Nations & Religions--always.
The issue always has been classism, and always will be. I hope this is the start of something much larger; it's about the time the complacent masses rose up to remove the parasite "elites."
January can't come fast enough -- let's see what bank is the winner of the wikileaks 'lottery.'
Funny how the corporate controlled media is shouting the "rape charge" as loud as possible...
It was consensual sex, charge is not using a condom.
Thank God we don't have this law in the U.S , I would be buying prison stocks!
Think harder. Sex cases require no physical evidence and "rape shield" laws block examination of the accuser's relevant history. "He says, she says" is good enough.
The man doesn't even need to have been in the same country at the time, as long as he is unable to prove it.
I'd suggest going ahead on those prison stocks. It looks like this could become a new weapon of choice.
Buy "prison stocks" anyway - the USA has the highest incarceration rate in 'the free world' and it don't look like changing anytime soon. You idiot, be proud.
Naomi WolfBestselling Author, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
Posted: December 7, 2010 09:40 AM Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating PoliceDear 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
Naomi is funny and persuasive.
Holy Shit, this is heroic on her part! As a true-blue feminist, this takes boulder sized balls of integrity.
How about some similar credit for HuffPo as well?
He has just been arrested here in London, so says Reuters..
Do you need video proof you are/did wear a condom in Sweden?
julian is a hero.....keep publishing man!!!
the usa is a corrupt nazi state - there is no other satisfactory explanation for its calls for assange's assassination....fuck the hillary, fuck obama, fuck the cia
You don't even know what a Nazi is you f---ing American idiot.
So you got a whoremonger and two sluts gonna duke it out in public! Exactly what people love to see thereby taking away their thoughts and attentions from the real issues.
Assange hunted down like Osama Bin Laden? Well, it's 9 years later and he's still free (or on the payroll). Some threat. If that's what Palin and others mean as GOING AFTER HIM, it show's two things.
1) He has nothing to fear as Osama sure doesn't (9 years means SCOREBOARD)
2) Sarah Palin and others show (beyond their stupidity) their fascist roots all too easily. Kill someone who is exercising what is supposed to be tantamount to our 1st ammendment? That must be Sarah Palin's Alaska.
Of course he's been arrested now. But man is that bitch stupid or what. I've never seen a person less American, even W, and that's very hard to top. Someone should ask her and Rand Paul the Lloyd Blankenfein 'lords work' question.
Overall though, isn't it a bit like saying you're going to bring the wrath of Gen. Custer? Last I checked he wasn't very successful.
They never found Jack the Ripper (although some say he was british royalty)
Sarah "Lizzie Borden" Palin, with her cracker jack detective team. No, the kit is from a cracker jack box.
Lizzie Borden had an axe
She gave her mother 40 whacks,
When she saw what she had done
she gave her father 41.
Umm, and last I checked, the biggest proponent and propagandist of the Iraq war was Rupert Murdoch. Or have we all conveniently forgot that. Rupert Murdoch, still a fucking worthless piece of shit.
Somebody didn't like your poem. So I couter it with a +
Not to worry! O.J. is on the case! He's currently undercover in a Nevada prison, diligently working to expose the real perpretrators! :>D
Conjecture away ZHers. If Wikileaks is a "psyops" campaign designed to usher in web censorship it is far from certain that it will achieve such an aim. For my own part it does anything but. After all, did Daniel Ellsburg's Pentagon Papers revelations bring on successful calls for media censorship in the day. The Internet is beyond the crapulous elite's power to, as it were, stuff back into the bottle, and, while, admittedly, the net scares the living bejeesus out of such control freaks, and probably has spawned something like a cottage industry to deeply impair the internet's openness, it doesn't, in my view, by necessity, augur that the net will be crippled by folks who are sure they know best what is best for the rest of us.
What's with the"folks"? What's wrong with the people or even persons? Another question: Is this American fixation with "folks" just a sort of 'let's make up and be friendly' for the none too recent trend of replacing the collective noun 'citizens' with 'consumers'? Which would you rather be? Folks or the people? Consumers or citizens? Choose your words more carefully - you make your own destiny.
Folks is folks.
Why does it annoy you that English is a Germanic language?
Capitalism only needs consumers. That should explain almost everything.
JQ: "But not everyone is fooled. On Wednesday, a senior Turkish official blamed Israel for the Wiki-leaks release. Addressing reporters, Huseyin Celik: "One has to look at which countries are pleased with these," Celik was quoted as saying. "Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents." "Documents were released and they immediately said, 'Israel will not suffer from this.' How did they know that?" Celik asked. He doesn't even realize that probably many of these documents were created FOR leaking! ..."
k - BINGO! Which is the reason that he should be charged and face an open and public court: But precisely because of the dangers inherent (to the powers that be) in such a course also ironically makes the case for MURDER as the only solution - because if the truth comes out then those that have benefited directly, from this series of leaks, will become the losers (the Zionistas & USI) - as it does appear (to me) - that these documents were "created FOR leaking."
http://www.rense.com/general92/criti.htm
cui bono koolaiders?
once the looting is complete the net becomes superfluous.
Please cite an example of the leaked documents benefiting Israel. Details should be concrete and concise. Thank you.
Assange arrested for not wearing a condom. Sure glad these condom police motherfuckers weren't around in the '70's.....WOW
Hoser
If multiple couples/friends who had been to Sweden came forward and stated that during their visits they had unprotected sex the Swedish government would now be obligated to follow up on these claims right?
double post
I am partial to yesterdays' mentioned possible scenario whereby: Swedish ball busting bitches call out the law on our boy to save him from amurika.