Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Founder Considers Asylum in Switzerland

 Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks is considering applying for asylum in Switzerland, according to the article below. He certainly has ruffled a lot of feathers with the leaked documents about US Military secrets and he's threatening releases of other US documents as well as some from other "repressive" regimes. No wonder he needs asylum. Watch your back Julian!
    . . . June


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WikiLeaks founder mulls asylum in Switzerland:
The Associated Press
GENEVA (AP) — The founder of WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowers' Web site, said Friday he may apply for asylum in Switzerland, claiming he and his group have come under increasing pressure since releasing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military documents.

Julian Assange told reporters he was 'still looking into the process' of requesting asylum, but was considering the Alpine country because 'the Swiss have a history of fierce independence.'

In October, Sweden denied Assange's application for a residence permit. The 39-year-old Australian had sought to establish a base for WikiLeaks in Sweden to take advantage of its laws protecting whistle-blowers.

Prosecutors in the Scandinavian country are still investigating rape and sexual molestation allegations against Assange by two Swedish women. Assange has denied the allegations.

Assange was speaking Friday at the United Nations in Geneva after a meeting organized by the Iranian Elite Research Center, a U.N.-accredited group based in Tehran.

He has urged U.S. authorities to probe possible rights abuses by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq following the publication by his group of almost 500,000 secret U.S. documents about the wars there.

U.S. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh dismissed the call Friday, saying information in the leaked files was already known to U.S. authorities and hundreds of investigations into suspected abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq had taken place.

Assange, a veteran computer hacker, established WikiLeaks in 2006 and it has obtained secret documents, stored them outside the reach of governments, then released them globally.

That has included 391,832 secret documents on the Iraqi war and some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.


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Is WikiLeaks Planning To LEAK SECRETS About Russia the China?

 If I were Julian Assange, I think it might be time to back off. Russia and China could be rather dangerous enemies. According to the following article, Assange told the global media that new leaks will expose more secrets not only about the U.S. military but about other 'repressive regimes,' such as Russia and China. Be careful what feathers you ruffle!
    . . . June

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WikiLeaks: Is Russia the Next Target?
TIME:  By Simon Shuster / Moscow Monday, Nov. 01, 2010

Say what you will about Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, but his work has shown him to be pretty fearless. After his site published the biggest cache of secret files in U.S. history on Oct. 22, detailing some of the ugly truths about the war in Iraq, he continued to travel around Europe despite U.S. reprimands and warnings. He even told the global media that new leaks will expose more secrets not only about the U.S. military but about other 'repressive regimes,' such as Russia and China.

The signals coming from Moscow, however, suggest that the Russian reaction will not be as reserved as America's. So is WikiLeaks really ready to take on the world's more callous states?

It's certainly talking the talk. In an interview published on Tuesday in Russia's leading daily newspaper Kommersant, WikiKeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said that "Russian readers will learn a lot about their country" after one of the site's upcoming document dumps. "We want to tell people the truth about the actions of their governments."






So far Russia has had no official response. But on Wednesday, an official at the Center for Information Security of the FSB, Russia's secret police, gave a warning to WikiLeaks that showed none of the tact of the U.S. reply to the Iraq revelations. "It's essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, [WikiLeaks] can be made inaccessible forever," the anonymous official told the independent Russian news website LifeNews.


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Daniel Ellsberg Endorses the WikiLeaks Publication of Iraq War Log

 There appears to be a direct correlation between Daniel Ellsberg, once called 'The most dangerous man in America' and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. According to the article below, Ellsberg famously leaked 7,000 pages of Pentagon documents much as Assange is now leaking Pentagon Documents.
   . . . June

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The 'most dangerous man in America':
gulfnews

Daniel Ellsberg, former US military analyst, speaks during a press conference in London to endorse the WikiLeaks publication of almost 400,000 Iraq war logs last week

The 'most dangerous man in America' is how former US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger once described the man. But in person Daniel Ellsberg is anything but. Down to earth, friendly and a bit jetlagged is how I find the 79-year-old former military analyst when we meet in London — where he had journeyed to attend the largest intelligence leak in US history by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Nearly 40 years ago, long before Julian Assange became a household name, Ellsberg famously leaked 7,000 pages of Pentagon documents which are said to have helped bring to an end the Vietnam War.

There are, of course, key differences between the ways the two leaks were conducted. For one, in Ellsberg's case, back in 1969, the internet wasn't an option when it came to spreading the word. He had to copy the Pentagon Papers on a slow Xerox machine in the small advertising agency of a friend while his 10-year-old daughter cut the words "Top Secret" off the top and bottom of the pages. His son helped too.

It wasn't a decision he had taken lightly. Ellsberg risked life in prison for carrying through with the task he had set himself. Yet he wanted his children to know their father wasn't a traitor, that he felt what he was doing was right for the country. A top Pentagon official at the time, working for the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg spent months smuggling out the papers in his briefcase after becoming deeply unhappy with the long war in Vietnam which was ongoing under President Nixon at the time. The documents exposed the lies and cover-ups the American people had been fed about the war.

He initially tried releasing the documents through politicians, but when that didn't work out, Ellsberg got the New York Times and Washington Post involved. With some difficulty, the information was finally released in 1971. Ellsberg went on the run but was eventually arrested and charged under the Espionage Act. He was acquitted in 1973 after gross government misconduct and illegal evidence gathering were revealed.

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Julian Assange, WIKILEAKS Founder Hits Out At Wired Magazine

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder has attacked Wired magazine, claiming it is deliberately spreading misinformation. According to the following article, Assange said that speculation on one of the US tech magazine's blogs led to more than 700 articles being published all over the world this week about WikiLeak's SUPPOSED upcoming release of confidential Iraq war documents.Maybe they need to confirm their sources.
    . . . .June

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WikiLeaks founder takes aim at credibility of Wired magazine
The Daily Telegraph:

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has attacked Wired magazine, claiming it is deliberately spreading misinformation.

The criticism comes amid ongoing speculation this week about the release of confidential Iraq war documents.

In a post on Twitter yesterday, Assange, 39, accused one of the US tech magazine's blogs of being a 'known opponent' of WikiLeaks and a 'spreader of all sorts of misinformation' about the whistle-blowing website.

Assange wrote that speculation on the blog led to more than 700 articles being published all over the world this week about WikiLeak's supposed upcoming release of confidential Iraq war documents.

He wrote that the only source of claims that WikiLeaks would release nearly 400,000 documents on Iraq was Wired blog.

Assange wrote that the magazine had "ramped up" its attacks on WikiLeaks since the whistle-blowing organization called for an investigation into what role Wired magazine played in the arrest of US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.


Manning was arrested by US authorities on suspicion of leaking video footage of a US air strike in Baghdad. The footage was published by WikiLeaks in April 2010.

Assange also accused two Wired blogs - Threat Level and Danger Room - of "ship[ping] puff pieces" and publishing "a tremendous amount of other completely false information [about] WikiLeaks."

Wired senior editor Kevin Poulsen hit back at Assange's attack, saying the magazine and its blogs had "diligently charted WikiLeaks' successes, and its setbacks" in more than 70 stories over the years.

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WIKILEAKS FUNDING Blocked After Government Blacklisting?

 According to the article below, the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government. Moneybookers emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist. This came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder for obtaining thousands of classified military documents. Retaliation?
     . . . June

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WikiLeaks says funding has been blocked after government blacklisting
Media | The Guardian:

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.

Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army's biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.

WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.

Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: "Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities."

When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: "When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.

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Demonstrators Call for Release of Soldier in Wikileaks Case

 Bradley Manning,the soldier accused of leaking military secrets to the public is facing 52 years in prison for leaking the Iraq documents to WikiLeaks for publication.  The US government warns that these documents could imperil the lives of US troups still in Iraq. However, Marjorie Cohn, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, argues that if Manning did what he is accused of doing, he should be honoured as a hero for exposing war crimes. I guess there are a;ways two sides to every story.
   . . . June


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Demonstrators to call for release of soldier in Wikileaks case
Media | guardian.co.uk:

Rallies will be staged in 21 US cities this week calling for the release of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking military secrets to the public.

Manning allegedly passed on the video known as 'collateral murder' that showed American troops shooting civilians from a helicopter in Iraq in July 2007. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Though the actions depicted in the video amount to violations of the Geneva Conventions (aka war crimes), none of the soldiers have been prosecuted.

Manning, who faces 52 years in prison, is also being investigated for allegedly leaking the 'Afghan war diary' documents that were posted on Wikileaks and reported by The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, argues that if Manning did what he is accused of doing, he should be honoured as a hero for exposing war crimes.

In a separate development, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been told he is not obliged to remain in Sweden even though prosecutors are however continuing to investigate rape allegations against him.

Assange's lawyer, Björn Hurtig, said: "I have been told that there is no arrest warrant against him."

Assange has said the allegations against him are part of a "smear campaign" aimed at discrediting his website, and that he will stay in Sweden to prove his innocence.

Read entire article . . .