WikiLeaks back online after it 'moves to Switzerland'

WikiLeaks was forced Friday to switch over to a Swiss domain name after a new round of hacker attacks on its system prompted its American domain name system provider to withdraw its service. Not - reports are Joe Lieberman has a fine hand in all of this just like with Amazon. GAH!

WikiLeaks' DNS provider, EveryDNS "terminated" its services for the wikileaks.org name late Thursday, saying it took the action because the new hacker attacks threatened the rest of its network of nearly 500,000 other websites.

"Wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure," EveryDNS said in a statement, which said the service was withdrawn at 10 p.m. ET.

However, at about 4:10 a.m. ET Friday, the controversial website tweeted "WikiLeaks moves to Switzerland," and linked to a new web address for the site, wikileaks.ch.

Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40486718/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in_security/

WikiLeaks cables claim first scalp as German minister's aide is sacked
Helmut Metzner admitted acting as a mole for t

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-first-scalp-german-aide

The WikiLeaks revelations have claimed their first political scalp in Europe with the sacking of the German foreign minister's chief of staff, who acted as a mole for the Americans, keeping the US embassy in Berlin posted last year on the confidential negotiations to form Angela Merkel's new government.

Amid a mood of increasing anger in the German political class at the disparaging observations on the chancellor's cabinet from US officials, a liberal MP today demanded the withdrawal of the American ambassador in Berlin, Philip Murphy.

Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister and leader of the liberal Free Democrats, the junior partner in the Merkel coalition, is described unflatteringly in the US cables from Berlin as inexperienced, "exuberant" and "wild".

The cables relate how an FDP insider – "a fly on the wall, a young, up-and-coming party loyalist who was taking notes during the marathon talks" – delivered documents to the US embassy and kept US diplomats informed on the new government formation in October last year.

On Monday Westerwelle dismissed the reports as false and insisted there was no mole. But Helmut Metzner, his chief of staff, was sacked after admitting he was the source of the US intelligence.

Senior Turkey official says Israel behind WikiLeaks release

Deputy leader of Turkish PM Erdogan's AKP party hints that Israel engineered the release of U.S. diplomatic cables as a plot to pressure Turkey, the daily Hurriyet reports.

A senior Turkish official blamed Israel for the WikiLeaks release, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Wednesday.

Addressing reporters, Huseyin Celik, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party, hinted that Israel engineered the leak of hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables as a plot to pressure the Turkish government.

“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.

Turkish officials suspect that "the main cause of these leaks was to weaken the Turkish government”, Hurriyet reported.

On Tuesday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said that the leak appeared to be "a result of a systematic work with some purpose behind it" but Gul did not mention Israel.

According to Hurriyet report, around 8,000 documents from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara have been released by WikiLeaks.

Israeli-Turkish relations have cooled in recent years and reached a low point last May when nine Turkish citizens were killed as Israeli naval commandos boarded a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.


http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/senior-turkey-official-says-israel-behind-wikileaks-release-1.328373

Barak: WikiLeaks has changed face of world diplomacy

Defense Minister says Israel emerged from fiasco unscathed, but adds that diplomats the world over will now have to be more cautious

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday that the classified cables revealed by WikiLeaks had not damaged Israel but would surely change the face of global diplomacy.

"Diplomacy will look different today. People, diplomats in every corner of the world, will be much more cautious when they speak, and not just with the Americans," Barak said while touring an industrial military factory in central Israel. "It will shake the diplomatic conversation."

"But with regard to Israel, I don't think any damage has been done," Barak added. "There is no great difference between what has been read in WikiLeaks and what is heard in our deep briefings."

The defense minister added that the leaked documents "revealed interesting things pertaining to the stance of the entire Arab world" with regard to Iran's nuclear program, and gave a glimpse into global "information from behind closed doors."

Snip

Source Here

I hope this is just one of MANY more corrupt public officials to get the axe

Julian Assange: The Latest Digital Refugee



Dec 4,2010


Earlier this week WikiLeaks moved its site from its hosting platform in Sweden to Amazon in an attempt to deal with distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. Then on December 1 Amazon withdrew its support, saying it took down the site as it violated "terms of service" in that WikiLeaks was hosting content it didn't own. (There were also disputed reports that Senator Joe Lieberman had been involved in getting Amazon to pull the plug.)

Then on December 3, EveryDNS, a company that provided WikiLeaks with its Domain Name System (the URLs that correspond to IP addresses), withdrew its support -- not they said because they disagreed with WikiLeaks' content, but rather because providing their services to WikiLeaks threatened their operations and other customers.

Of course, companies that provide hosting and web services are right to be worried. In 2009, DDOS attacks against a Georgian blogger, Cyxymu (who might have been the first popular digital refugee) meant Twitter going offline for a few hours and caused problems and speed issues for Facebook and LiveJournal. Cyxymu, a 34-year-old economics professor from Tbilisi, had most probably incurred the wrath of Russian hackers who were upset by his stance on the 2008 Russian-Georgian war.

DDOS attacks are relatively cheap, usually effective, and don't need an incredibly high level of technical knowhow. They can also be pretty hard to defend against. As Hal Roberts from Harvard University's Berkman Center points out in a blog post, "there are very few infrastructures that can deal with them":


Defending against these large network attacks requires massive amounts of bandwidth, specific and deep technical experience, and often connections to the folks running the networks where the attacks are originating from. There are only a couple dozen organizations (ISPs, hypergiant websites, and content distribution networks) at the core of the Internet who have sufficient amounts of bandwidth, technical ability, and community connections to fight off the biggest of these attacks. Paying for services from those organizations is very expensive, though, starting at thousands of dollars per month without bandwidth costs and often going much, much higher.

Whatever you may think of Assange (I think his attempts at radical transparency are misguided and will eventually backfire), the WikiLeaks case does raise many interesting questions about "intermediary censorship," where private companies, for instance Internet service providers or social networks, remove offending material. (A good example from this year was Facebook removing content related to the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day after complaints from the Pakistani government.)

Human rights groups often go with companies like Amazon for their hosting, or use Google's Blogger platform, as those organizations have the capacity to deal with huge DDOS attacks. They see them as safe havens. The problem, of course, is that big conglomerates (especially in authoritarian countries) aren't always safe havens and as Ethan Zuckerman points out in a blog post, "you’re relying on that company’s continued willingness to host your site."

Intermediaries can censor/pull the plug for many reasons: direct pressure from officials; because they want to continue receiving preferential treatment from a government; or because they don't want to damage their business. Those intermediaries can justify removing content by saying it violates the site's terms of service: i.e. attracting cyber-attacks and thus slowing down the site for everyone else. It's what Evgeny Morozov has called "Terms of Service Censorship."

Of course, for those organizations intent on getting their message out, there are always other distribution channels. There is currently an initiative to set up mirror sites for WikiLeaks. Another option is BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. (For a while, there has been a mysterious "insurance file" which WikiLeaks has asked people to download and share.)

Bar shutting down the Internet, there's very little that can be done to stop those files from being distributed.


http://www.rferl.org/content/wikileaks_assange_digital_refugee_amazon/2239111.html


Well - the verdict is still in the making. I trust Julian keeps going and puts the sh#ts up all the critics of his antics!


Viva Julian!!!

This is Funny!


Government Workers Ordered Not to Read Cables
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: December 4, 2010

WASHINGTON — In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff.

The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might have, as long as they are accessing the documents on nonclassified government networks. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have “accidentially” already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their “information security offices.”


Snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html

This makes me wanna cancel my own PayPal account!!!


PayPal Freezes WikiLeaks Account

In potentially the most significant attack on WikiLeaks to date, PayPal on Friday froze the account of the German foundation accepting donations for the secret spilling website, claiming that WikiLeaks was in violation of PayPal's terms of service. "PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity," reads a statement on PayPal's website.

Snip


http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/paypal-wikileaks/

Unbelievable

Yeah - let's just sell 'em some more high tech toys and wait for the next attack, why don't we?

WikiLeaks cables assess terrorism funding in Saudi Arabia, Gulf states

(CNN) -- "Terrorist funding emanating from Saudi Arabia remains a serious concern." So states a cable prepared for the visit of U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke to the kingdom earlier this year.

It is one of several that have appeared on the WikiLeaks site to indicate that despite some progress, the flow of cash to extremist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan from individuals and charities in the Gulf has certainly not been halted.

The cable, written by U.S. Ambassador James B Smith, says that the Saudis are "cooperating more actively than at any previous point to respond to terrorist financing concerns raised by the United States, and to investigate and detain financial facilitators of concern."

It says the Saudi Ministry of Interior had begun to detain individuals involved in funding networks for groups such as Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT), an extremist Pakistani group that carried out the Mumbai attacks in 2008, the Taliban, and Hamas.

But it says donors in Saudi Arabia "continue to constitute a source of funding to Sunni extremist groups worldwide, especially during the Hajj and Ramadan." And it adds the kingdom remains "almost completely dependent on the CIA to provide analytic support and direction for its counterterrorism operations."

Read more here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/12/06/wikileaks.terrorism.funding/index.html?hpt=T2

WikiLeaks publishes list of worldwide infrastructure 'critical' to security of U.S

A list drawn up by U.S. officials of companies and installations around the world regarded as "critical" to the security of the United States has been published online by controversial website WikiLeaks.

The list includes factories, ports, fuel companies, drug manufacturers, undersea cables, pipelines, communication hubs and a host of other "key resources."

A Danish insulin plant, a company making anti-snake venom in Australia and a Cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo are also included.

Its publication was denounced as "irresponsible" by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley, amid fears it could be used as a list of targets by terrorists, Britain's Times newspaper reported. You, sir, are a complete and utter buffoon! As IF "the terrorists" don't already have their OWN list - much more extensive than THIS. GAH!

Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40526224/ns/us_news-security/

Cyber attacks close Wikileaks website

Renewed cyber attacks on Wikileaks servers in Sweden closed down sections of the whistle-blowing website today as the information war over the State Department cables escalated dramatically.

The attacks came as the Swiss post office announced it had frozen a Wikileaks bank account containing 31,000 euros, leaving the website with limited ability to raise money.

The ongoing attempts to halt the release of US government communiqués has created a backlash amongst grassroots online campaigners who have rallied under the Wikileaks banner to keep the website online.

Using the moniker “I Am Wikileaks”, supporters are using social network sites to publicise new outlets for the State Department cables when old ones get closed down or taken offline. They have also now created more than 570 mirror versions of the Wikileaks website and have called for a boycott of Paypal, Amazon and EveryDNS, three US-based websites that recently severed ties to Wikileaks.

Followers have vowed to retaliate against attempts to muzzle Wikileaks. Anonymous, a shadowy network of global cyber activists behind a series of recent high profile hacks, has threatened companies with retaliatory cyber attacks if they cut Wikileaks off.

Following Paypal’s decision to suspend its Wikileaks account, Mr Assange tried to open a bank account for donations with Postfinace but the application was rejected this afternoon because the Wikileaks’ founder did not have an address in Switzerland.

Read more here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media ... 52953.html

No matter what these assholes do to try and supress the truth the truth will prevail, one way or the other.

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange to hand himself in to police after arrest warrant issued
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, will hand himself in to police - possibly as early as Tuesday - after a fresh European Arrest Warrant was issued by the Swedish authorities.

By Caroline Gammell, Christopher Hope and Steven Swinford 9:16PM GMT 06 Dec 2010

Mr Assange is expected to voluntarily attend a police station within the next 24 hours, and will then appear in a magistrates’ court. He is wanted over allegations of sexual assault in Sweden.

He is currently in hiding in the south-east of England but police are understood to have the necessary paperwork to arrest him.

Mark Stephens, Mr Assange’s British lawyer, said: “We are in discussions about him going to the police by consent.”

read article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ssued.html

The Telegraph (UK) has listed a summary of the leaks, by days or weeks. You can access that info here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ber-6.html

a few excerpts from today's summary:

* US officials were shocked after the European parliament rebuked the Obama administration over plans to monitor international banking transactions for terrorist activity, leaked cables reveal.

* Hundreds of sites across the globe that could present a target for terrorist attacks have been identified by US officials.

* Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist groups are chiefly funded by private backers in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states friendly to America, diplomats claimed.

* Britain’s 'paranoia' over maintaining the 'special relationship' was privately mocked by American officials, cables released by WikiLeaks suggest.

* WikiLeaks: 10 greatest scoops

* The key WikiLeaks revelations

*The structure of Wikileaks makes it practically impossible for governments and other organisations embarrassed by its disclosures to make legal challenges against it.

Wikileaks Julian Assange rape charge for not using condoms

The Worldwide pursuit of Wikileaks Editor-In-Chief Julian Assange because of both a rape charge in Sweden and his release of now hundreds of thousands of classified documents, is due to a detail that must be reviewed.

According to The Raw Story and Crikey, Swedish prosecutors charge that while Mr. Assange did have consentual sex with his two accusers, he allegedly did not use a condom, which, according to The Herald Sun, is against Swedish law. Thus, Swedish authorities are in the process of re-issuing the once-closed arrest warrant for Assange.

snip




(brief summary of what I've read on the above: it is Swedish law that if a woman requests a man use a condom, and he does not, it is a crime. Assange did not have any, but the two women (who knew each other) said it was all right not to use them. Afterwards, they reported him to police.

re the 2 women filing the charges:


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abr ... z17OActAMT

Can anyone say "setup"? JMHO, of course.

Release Of Damaging Secrets If Arrested Or Killed
(Referred to as a "poison pill drop")
by Mark Joyella | 9:48 am, December 6th, 2010

A report out of the U.K. this morning alleges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has created a “poison pill” document drop–filled with “damaging secrets” to be released in the event he’s arrested or killed.

Reports from London suggest an arrest by Scotland Yard could come as early as Tuesday, if Assange is–as has been rumored–hiding out in Britain.

According to the Daily Mail, Assange has distributed his doomsday document drop to a network of hackers, with instructions on its release:



con. here: http://www.mediaite.com/online/report-j ... or-killed/

Reports in the Canadian Press this morning that he turned himself in.

Wann bet these ar etrumped up charges to try and silence him

I hope he drops the bomb on these A-Holes

Assange Beseiged

Read more here: http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir09142010.html

By ISRAEL SHAMIR and PAUL BENNETT

The plot thickens as our favorite hero of the Matrix; our own “Captain Neo” Julian Assange, faces danger yet again. When we last parted company with the legendary founder of WikiLeaks, he was breathing a sigh of relief after dodging spurious double-rape charges. The complaints were dropped, and our hero was free to roam the globe once again. But soap opera plots are repetitive; the story was quickly recycled and now our brave captain is again under threat of being castrated on Stockholm’s Stora Torget, or whatever the latest craven penalty is for molesting sacred Nordic virgins in a land where Vikings once ruled.

In other words, the farcical rape charges have once again been leveled against the Pentagon’s Public Enemy Number One. Julian Assange now stands accused of: (1) not calling a young woman the day after he had enjoyed a night with her, (2) asking her to pay for his bus ticket, (3) having unsafe sex, and (4) participating in two brief affairs in the course of one week. These four minor charges, worthy of Leopold Bloom’s mock trial in the Nightown chapter in Ulysses, have been shaken and fermented until they were able to cook up a half-baked rape case! Step down Iran; Sweden takes the cake! While Iran is notorious for unyielding conservative sentences against adulterers, Sweden shows us what the liberal side of the coin looks like as she invents criminal charges for failing to telephone and for careless use of preservatives in consensual acts of affection. Worse, they are purposely conflating consensual sex with rape for political purposes. In this, Sweden makes a mockery of the very real crime of violent rape.

The Swedes have a practical reason behind their deceptively slapstick police-work. The WikiLeaks founder, pursued by malevolent forces around the world, sought momentary relief beneath Sweden’s reputation as a bastion of free speech. But the moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service. That got the present right-wing government out of its chair, as it does everything it can to bury the Prime Minister Olof Palme’s legacy of careful neutrality. The suspicion of whether the rape farce is an orchestrated campaign, might be illuminated by these facts: (1) Sweden sent troops to Afghanistan, (2) Assange’s WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Diary which exposed this cruel and needless neo-colonial campaign. Furthermore, the expected release of new secret materials by WikiLeaks might just influence the general elections on September 19. Perhaps that explains the sudden police raid on a WikiLeaks server.

An American Tea Party website the RightwingNews.com suggested that “a CIA agent with a sniper rifle rattle a bullet around [Assange’s] skull the next time he appears in public as a warning”. Rest assured that the CIA is wiser than the Tea Party. They at least have learned the lesson of Che Guevara. Nowadays they ruin a rebel’s reputation instead of wasting a bullet. snip

Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here. Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities. In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter. Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”

However we do not have to accept the single-bullet theory. Life is more complicated than that. In addition to her anti-Castro, pro-CIA streak, Anna Ardin apparently indulges in her favorite sport of male-bashing. A Swedish forum reports that she is an expert on sexual harassment and the male “master suppression techniques”. Once, as she was lecturing, a male student in the audience looked at his notes instead of staring at her. Anna Ardin reported him for sexual harassment because he discriminated against her for being a woman and because she claimed he made use of the male “master suppression technique” in trying to make her feel invisible. As soon as the student learned about her complaint, he contacted her to apologize and explain himself. Anna Ardin’s response was to once again report him for sexual harassment, again because he was using the “master suppression technique”, this time to belittle her feelings.

snip

The second accuser, Sofia Wilen, 26, is Anna’ friend. Here is a video of an Assange press conference where one can see the girls together. Those present at the conference marveled at her groupie-like behavior. Though rock stars are used to girls dying to have sex with them, it is much less common in the harsh field of political journalism. Sofia worked hard to bed Assange, according to her own confession; she was also the first to complain to police. She is little known and her motives are vague. Why might a young woman (who shares her life with American artist Seth Benson) pursue such a sordid political adventure?

snip

Rape is a horrible crime, and it should not be stretched to encompass minor misdemeanors and moral failings (like the failure to give an encouraging phone call the next day). Tellingly, when the complainant’s advocate was asked why the young women were unsure whether they were raped, he replied: “They are not lawyers”. Rape (like murder) is a crime that one needs no lawyers to understand. Rape is a capital crime: if the rape charges are proved false, then certainly the complainant should be charged with criminal defamation.

snip

Visa suspends all payments to WikiLeaks

LONDON (AP) — Visa says it has suspended all payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of the organization's business.

Visa's decision is a powerful blow to the loosely knit organization, which relies on online donations to fund its operations.

Popular online payment company PayPal has already severed its links with WikiLeaks. Visa's decision to pull the plug on WikiLeaks leaves the website with one fewer source of revenue.

MasterCard has pulled the plug on payments to WikiLeaks, according to technology news website CNET.

Read more here - this is a breaking story:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2010-12-07-visa-wikileaks_N.htm

Hmmmm - interesting. I think The Australian is owned by Rupert Murdoch. :shock:

`The truth will always win’ - Julian Assange writes

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mediadiary/index.php/australianmedia/comments/julian1/

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange wrote this Op-Ed for The Australian today:

Key lines:

* WikiLeaks is fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

* 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.

* (My idea is) to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

* 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.

* The Gillard government (Australia) is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed.

Text follows:

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 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 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.

dang. i really fear for this guy. nothing may happen to him now....while he's sitting there for a week. i worry for him afterward. and no...the charges are not legit. no real info, ..just know it.

did anyone try to download the 'hi$tory in$urance'? i'm so lost when it comes to getting stuff like that downloaded. i got as far as the torrent page and downloading share file programs, etc and just gave up. if i don't understand what i'm doing...i tend not to do it.
hope it doesn't come to it, but having a file copy on a few million pc's might be a good idea.

Nope, Gen, but I might try tonight. In the meantime, here for your viewing pleasure:

Indecent Exposure: WikiLeaks Hounded for Showing Power Its True Face

Read more here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Indecent-Exposure-WikiLea-by-Chris-Floyd-101206-753.html

Even as WikiLeaks fights for its life -- a phrase that becomes less metaphorical by the day, especially for Julian Assange, hounded and hunted by several governments -- its revelations continue to shake the world's power structures. Every day we are treated to the edifying spectacle of the most powerful and privileged people on earth scurrying around like panicked rats, trying to escape the streams of light pouring into their filthy backrooms, exposing their ruthless machtpolitik -- and their monumental incompetence at every level.

The trove of leaked diplomatic cables is too rich to encompass or fully process right away. Dip your hand into one batch and you come out with a whole handful of jewels, each one worthy of careful, in-depth analysis, buttressed with innumerable links to current events and detailed historical context. This is the work of months, even years. For now, we can only survey the highlights as they are released and draw some initial impressions.

Two things stand out immediately. First, the leaked cables reveal -- or rather, confirm -- that American "intelligence" on the activities of foreign nations is based almost totally on hearsay, rumor, gossip and fantasies brewed from a deadly mix of arrogance and ignorance. Second, they show that the overwhelming majority of the public statements made by top American officials about the nation's foreign policy are deliberate, knowing lies: the cheapest, most threadbare bromides about America's noble intentions coupled with cynical fear-mongering, which knowingly fans low-grade -- or non-existent -- threats into dire "emergencies" that somehow, always, fill the coffers of war-profiteers (and that new breed of gluttonous predator, the security-profiteers) and require ever-greater expansions of authoritarian power.

Or as Arthur Silber, who has explored these themes in depth for years, puts it: "They'll lie about everything."

Take for example a couple of the latest Guardian stories from the WikiLeaks trove: "Cables portray Saudi Arabia as cash machine for terrorists" and "Saudi Arabia rated a bigger threat to Iraqi stability than Iran." These are not particularly major revelations, but they are highly illustrative for our purposes. In them, we find American diplomats flinging accusations of extensive terrorist funding by powerful Saudis and, in particular, by Saudi-based charities which work around the world. Even as they report their assertions back to Washington, however, the diplomats admit that the "intelligence" they are relying upon is merely "suggestive," that it is based on "limited information," that confirmation of the charges and rumors is "hard to come by."

This is not to say that powerful Saudi interests -- that is, staunch political allies and business partners of the American elite -- are not helping finance extremist organizations around the world. This is hardly a secret: the Saudi Arabian monarchy itself is one of the most extremist organizations in the world, openly propagating a retrograde and repressive brand of Islam, even as its bloated ranks of royalty enjoy every possible secular indulgence in their Western pleasure palaces.

And the American government has often used the Saudis' extremist networks to advance its own agenda -- usually the undermining of any government or movement (secular or religious) that might offer a genuine alternative to thuggish American clients (such as the brutal dictatorship in Egypt) or simply to the general principle of rule by corrupt, rapacious elites (such as our own dear great and good in God's shining city on the hill). Must we bring up yet again the great US-Saudi alliance in building a worldwide network of armed Islamic extremists to fight the great Jesus-Mohammed-Allah-Jehovah crusade against the Commies in Afghanistan? (Well yes, we must, given the total amnesia that afflicts the American memory, where every new day is a fresh clean slate of goodness and righteousness.)

I know - I really should let this rest but I can't resist. The hits just keep on a comin'!

I am sitting in my office with the door closed eating lunch (er trying to). I am wiping tears from my face and have actually snorted with hilarity once or twice. Oops! There appears to be a bit of mashed potato on my monitor!

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