Will WikiLeaks unravel the American 'secret government'?

[Peter Presland]

Personally, I'm getting pissed off at the Assange baiters. Time will tell.....

Oddly enough, I think we are now past Assange and Wikileaks per se. Whether he is an Israeli tool, or not, also is no longer the main point imo.

This has become an international fight for the freedom of speech and holding our lying, deceitful and corrupt political elites to account. The power they have at their fingertips is clear for all to see. And their will to wield that power, irrespective of the rule of law, is also now blatantly obvious. And the often concealed spider's web of their power is also coming more sharply into focus.

That's the direction I'm moving in too David. There are two fundamentally different issues here:

1. Access to unedited/unmediated information
   
2. The manipulation (spin) of the information post-facto
   

The SIS's are deeply complicit in both (the evidence to date says Mossad especially so on item 1 in this particular case) and probably don't have much of a preference for whether or not the level of stuff we are seeing is released or not. They'll do their thing whatever.

There are overlaps but the pure politicos are another matter entirely. Item 1 may indeed be selectively released to serve hidden agendas. There may even be the odd damaging plant etc etc but the instincts of the puppets is always to kill the messenger whenever their strutting, preening status is exposed for the lying self-serving sham that it actually is.


BTW Assange was arrested 9:30 this morning - in custody awaiting bail hearing etc.

[Danny Jarman]

Personally, I'm getting pissed off at the Assange baiters. Time will tell.....

Oddly enough, I think we are now past Assange and Wikileaks per se. Whether he is an Israeli tool, or not, also is no longer the main point imo.

This has become an international fight for the freedom of speech and holding our lying, deceitful and corrupt political elites to account. The power they have at their fingertips is clear for all to see. And their will to wield that power, irrespective of the rule of law, is also now blatantly obvious. And the often concealed spider's web of their power is also coming more sharply into focus.

That's the direction I'm moving in too David. There are two fundamentally different issues here:

1. Access to unedited/unmediated information
   
2. The manipulation (spin) of the information post-facto
   

The SIS's are deeply complicit in both (the evidence to date says Mossad especially so on item 1 in this particular case) and probably don't have much of a preference for whether or not the level of stuff we are seeing is released or not. They'll do their thing whatever.

There are overlaps but the pure politicos are another matter entirely. Item 1 may indeed be selectively released to serve hidden agendas. There may even be the odd damaging plant etc etc but the instincts of the puppets is always to kill the messenger whenever their strutting, preening status is exposed for the lying self-serving sham that it actually is.


BTW Assange was arrested 9:30 this morning - in custody awaiting bail hearing etc.

Same here Peter. I can't help but think if this was all for real, he would of been a dead man a long time ago.

[Peter Lemkin]

Hackers take down website of bank that froze WikiLeaks funds


By Daniel Tencer
Monday, December 6th, 2010 -- 8:32 pm
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A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks.
Announcing its successful hack on a Twitter account, the group declared, "We will fire at anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks."
Earlier in the day, Swiss bank PostFinance issued a statement announcing that it had frozen 31,000 euro ($41,000 US) in an account set up as a legal defense fund for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The bank said it had frozen the account because, in opening it, Assange had claimed residency in Geneva.
"Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance," the bank said.

As of Monday evening, the PostFinance website was unavailable.
Operation Payback also promised a hack attack on PayPal, the online payment service that last week cut off WikiLeaks, denying the group a major tool for collecting donations from supporters.
With the financial noose tightening around WikiLeaks even as a legal one tightens around its founder's neck, Operation Payback has effectively declared war on the organizations working to hobble WikiLeaks.
"In these modern times, Internet access is fast becoming a basic human right," the group says in a video posted to YouTube. "Just like any other basic human right, we believe it is wrong to infringe upon it."
The video continues: "To move to censor content on the Internet based on your own prejudice is, at best, laughably impossible. The unjust restrictions you impose on us will meet with disaster, and only strengthen our resolve to disobey and rebel against your tyranny."
WikiLeaks has in recent days been under a deluge of cyber-attacks that led to its DNS registration for its .org URL being taken down, but by mid-Monday the site had reappeared on more than 500 different domains.
News sources in Britain reported late Monday that Assange has arranged to meet with British police on Tuesday, and will likely face a court hearing over an international warrant issued by Sweden in connection with accusations of sexual assault. The criminal probe does not allege non-consensual sex, only that Assange had sex with two women without a condom.
Supporters of the secret-spilling organization argue that the controversies surrounding WikiLeaks -- from the unusual criminal probe against Assange, to banks freezing their funds -- are part of a global campaign to shut down a website that has embarrassed world leaders on numerous occasions.
-- With earlier reporting by Stephen C. Webster
The following video was posted to YouTube by Operation Payback.

The Enemy has been engaged! Bravo! ecruity:

A demostration to protest Julian Assange's arrest is being organized today at 13:30 London time in front of the Westminster Magistrates' Court. Please join if you can!

Address: 70 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2AX

Map: Google maps

Details: http://www.justiceforassange.com/

[David Guyatt]

Assange has been remanded in custody until 14th Decemeber 2010 ---- bail refused.

Five well known people, John Pilger, Jemima Khan and Ken Loach amongst them offered to stand bail....

[David Guyatt]

Why has not the New York Times been prosecuted by US authorities for distributing US state secrets (i.e., Wikileaks) that seems to be in contravention of the Espionage Act which included the Sedition Act of 1918?

If Free Speech is okay for them, why is it not okay for a foreign citizen championing free speech?

Answers to be submitted inside a well-stuffed brown envelope...

[Peter Lemkin]

Assange has been remanded in custody until 14th Decemeber 2010 ---- bail refused.

Five well known people, John Pilger, Jemima Khan and Ken Loach amongst them offered to stand bail....

Absolutely EVERY DIRTY trick in the book. They can't deny this is political. Who even heard of any of this over a broken condom - during consensual sex with a CIA honeytrap, no less!?

[Peter Lemkin]

Journalist John Pilger, filmmaker Ken Loach, and socialite Jemima Khan were among six people in court willing to offer surety.

They all offered at least £20,000 each. An anonymous individual offered surety of £60,000.

But District Judge Howard Riddle refused the WikiLeaks founder bail on the grounds that he had access to financial means and the judge was worried he would fail to surrender.

He said these were "serious allegations against someone who has comparatively weak community ties in this country and the means and ability to abscond".

But he rejected the prosecution claim that bail should be rejected on the grounds of Assange's safety.

Assange appeared in court in blue suit, white shirt and no tie. Asked to give an address he replied: "PO Box 4080." When the question was asked again, he said: "Do you want it for correspondence or for some other reason?" Later he gave an address in Australia. He was accompanied by officials from the Australian high commission.

Gemma Lindfield, for the Swedish authorities, told the court Assange was wanted in connection with four allegations.

She said the first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of "unlawful coercion" on the night of 14 August in Stockholm.

The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleged Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used.

The third charge claimed Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on 18 August "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity".

The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on 17 August without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.

A European arrest warrant issued by the Swedish authorities was received by officers at the Metropolitan police extradition unit last night.

An earlier warrant, issued last month, was not valid as officials had failed to fill in the form properly.

Assange has been at the centre of an international row since WikiLeaks released a huge tranche of US embassy cables, in conjunction with five news organisations including the Guardian, at the beginning of last week.

The sex offence allegations are a separate case. "This case is not about WikiLeaks," Riddle told the court.

WikiLeaks faces increasing problems continuing to operate. Today Visa said it had suspended all payments to the organisation "pending further investigation", while MasterCard said it was "taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products".

Earlier today Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, welcomed Assange's arrest. Speaking to reporters on a visit to US troops in Afghanistan, Gates said: "I hadn't heard that, but that sounds like good news to me."

Assange defended the leak of the embassy cables in an article in the Australian today.

[Peter Lemkin]

2010-12-07: Statement by Civil Liberties Australia
Submitted by admin on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 08:10

Civil Liberties Australia unreservedly supports Julian Assange's right to operate as a journalist/blogger, and to post leaked material online. By doing so, he commits no legitimate offence we're aware of in the USA or Australia*.

In fact, he is following in a proud US tradition, along the lines of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with leaker 'Deep Throat' in the Nixon era, and the now-revered leaker Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers at the time of the Vietnam war.

If the person who leaked the material to Assange has broken a US law, it would be the same law that leaker Ellsberg would have broken in the case of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 during Vietnam...and Ellsberg is now a US hero.

If Assange himself has broken a US law, it would be the same law that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke in the Watergate – Deep Throat case which led to the impeachment and departure in disgrace of President Richard Nixon. Both journalists are American heroes, with at least one movie and many books about them and their leaking/reporting ways.

What was the problem in both the Pentagon Papers and Watergate cases? US military and Administration officials were caught lying.

Plus ca change...

As regards Assange and the Australian Government, CLA is alarmed that a government can so readily abandon an Australian citizen as Prime Minister Gillard and Attorney-General McClelland appeared to do at the outset of this matter.

CLA recalls how even extremely conservative Australians eventually rebelled and forced the Howard Liberal Government to do something to help David Hicks, whom that government had abandoned to fabricated American laws and prison-without-reason at the Guantanamo Bay hellhole in Cuba.

Now, it seems, the Gillard Labor Government is going one better, and refusing to stand up for an Australian citizen whose only proven crime is being a good journalist/blogger. It makes you wonder what is the value of an Australian passport if the Australian Government's first response is to try to help a foreign power find a charge to lay against an Australian passport holder.

CLA would prefer the Australian Government spent its resources assisting Assange defend possibly-fabricated sex crime charges being made against him. Remember, they were made once, then dropped by a Swedish prosecutor, and only recently re-instated by another prosecutor at the time of the latest leaks.

CLA would like to nominate Julian Assange for Australian of the Year 2011: he has done more to eliminate lies, deceit, humbug and hubris in international affairs than anyone in the Gillard (or, for that matter, Howard) Governments…or in the US Government.

* The US might decide to charge him with sedition – historically a charge laid at the whim of English kings – which is a political ‘offence’ not used in the USA for half a century and one formally and officially discredited in Australia by a change of legislation in 2010.

– released by Bill Rowlings, CEO, Civil Liberties Australia, 7 Dec 2010

[David Guyatt]

3 offenses by the same women over three days (it looks like)...

Mmmm. She must've really been outraged.

Simply outraged.

Outraged, I say.

[Peter Lemkin]

4.14pm: Charles Arthur, the Guardian's technology editor, points out that while MasterCard and Visa have cut WikiLeaks off you can still use those cards to donate to overtly racist organisations such as the Knights Party, which is supported by the Ku Klux Klan.

The Ku Klux Klan website directs users to a site called Christian Concepts. It takes Visa and MasterCard donations for users willing to state that they are "white and not of racially mixed descent. I am not married to a non-white. I do not date non-whites nor do I have non-white dependents. I believe in the ideals of western Christian civilisation and profess my belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God."