Julian Assange, Wiikileaks founder is now an assassination target by the US Feds.

Run_to_da_hills

Julian Assange, the Australian born founder of WikiLeaks, is in now gone into in hiding overseas since the US military arrested one of its own soldiers, Bradley Manning, and accused him of leaking a a secret video of a US Army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq in 2007.

The video was released on Wikileaks this year, and the US is now desperate to silence Mr Assange and his site before thousands of hugely embarrassing state diplomatic cables are leaked out, which are believed to discuss the Middle East, its governments and leaders.

The fact that he is non an American citizen will make it more difficult for the US authorities to arrest him, Could the US copy the Israelis and try to secretly bump him off in a foreign country?

Some background on Julian Assange, Wiikileaks:

"Time magazine wrote, "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act."

WikiLEAKS, according to Wikipedia, is "an amorphous, international organization, originally Sweden-based,[1] that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of their sources."

WikiLEAKS - has been peceived as having been more effective at revealing government "secrets" (i.e. official lies) than all the US news media put together.

SHADES OF DANIEL ELLSBERG, "The Most Dangerous Man in America" ( and probably the world if he is capible of releasing sensitive information from other countries)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ2-PRlbvdo&feature=player_embedded

Mahatma coat

Wikileaks exists to apease our apathy, we seem to believe that as long as at least one person is willng to stand up and be counted we're not beyond redemption, and we might just be able to make the difference

Torakx

Ying and yang they provide both sides ^^ maybe here too.

Richard tea

It was reported a few weeks ago on ATS I think, that Wikileaks are about to release some '' History changing '' info. Has anybody heard anything about this?

And, maybe he went into hiding for a while so he could release this info in safety:)

Run_to_da_hills

Richard tea wrote: »

It was reported a few weeks ago on ATS I think, that Wikileaks are about to release some '' History changing '' info. Has anybody heard anything about this?

And, maybe he went into hiding for a while so he could release this info in safety:)

I am sure this guy has proxy sourses for leaking out information. I am sure if he goes down several more will pop up and take his place.

Richard tea

What is a '' diplomatic cables''

Sparticle

How did you go from "Wikileaks founder is hiding overseas" to "Wikileaks founder is an assassination target"?

Run_to_da_hills

Richard tea wrote: »

What is a '' diplomatic cables''

I presume it’s Yankee terminology for "confidential government information".

Sparticle wrote: »

How did you go from "Wikileaks founder is hiding overseas" to "Wikileaks founder is an assassination target"?

Did you bother watching the link video?

studiorat

didn't really pay attention but shades of Ellsberg either refers to his sunglasses or it means that like Vietnam the US Gov. were aware that they were in a war they couldn't win but stayed there anyway.

According to The Daily Beast, federal officials say the leaked documents could cause "serious damage to national security." While it's unclear what the US government could do to Assagne if he were caught -- seeing as WikiLeaks operates on servers in Sweden -- officials told The Daily Beast, "We'd like to know where he is; we'd like his cooperation in this."

For his part, Assagne is staying out of the United States. He has canceled a planned appearance on a panel in Las Vegas this week, and at the recent Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, Assagne was interviewed over Skype. (Conference chair Micah Sifry said Assagne decided he "shouldn't go to countries that don't respect the rule of law.")

But in addition to flying under the radar, Assagne is seeking help. In last night's email, he urged recipients to "work together with our other supporters to set up a "Friends of WikiLeaks" group in your area... Please write to friends@sunshinepress.org if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions." (As of the time this blog was published, Internet Evolution received no response to an email to Sunshine Press requesting more information.)

Further citing costs for Collateral Murder's production of over $50,000, Assagne also wrote that "any financial contributions will be of IMMEDIATE assistance."

Whistleblowers have been around since before the Internet made it this easy to leak secrets with the click of a mouse. But in the past -- as in the days of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers -- a middleman (like The New York Times) was required. The ability to leak documents without a filter, as WikiLeaks does, makes things especially complicated for both the government, which has less control, and sites like WikiLeaks, which depend on public financing and the ability to hide out in order to survive.

]

source

Sparticle

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Did you bother watching the link video?

Right then I didn't see that...... Ummm it's opinion not fact. Do you really think the U.S government would kill the founder of wikileaks?? ,because making a scandal into an even bigger scandal is just plain stupid.

Torakx

Well its only a scandal if its in some way true.Either they are trying to quieten him or he is lying.Or somewhere in between.
Or its another social experiment on responses to drama.

Sparticle

Anything he has on the US government is probably true and scandalous i'm not arguing that. It's really the OP calling something fact when it's just opinion and speculation that irks me.

Run_to_da_hills

Sparticle wrote: »

Right then I didn't see that...... Ummm it's opinion not fact. Do you really think the U.S government would kill the founder of wikileaks?? ,because making a scandal into an even bigger scandal is just plain stupid.

Unless they try to contract it to a third party or create a "circumstance" which is also quite possible.

TalkieWalkie

Julian Assange, who the Feds fear may release State Dept. secrets, denies having them—but he’s readying video of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan.

After several days underground, the founder of the secretive website WikiLeaks has gone public to disclose that he is preparing to release a classified Pentagon video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan last year that left as many as 140 civilians dead, most of them children and teenagers.

In an email obtained by The Daily Beast that was sent to WikiLeaks supporters in the United States Tuesday, Julian Assange, the website’s Australian-born founder, also defends a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist who is now under arrest in Kuwait on charges that he leaked classified Pentagon combat videos, as well as 260,000 State Department cables, to WikiLeaks.

"Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s [sic] engaging in abusive actions all over the world," Assange said in an email. "We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true."

American officials have said they are eager to determine the whereabouts of Assange, who canceled an appearance last Friday in Las Vegas, to discourage him from releasing any more classified information on his website, which is nominally based in Sweden and promotes itself as a global resource for whistleblowers. As recently as two weeks ago, Assange, who first gained global notoriety as a computer hacker, was in his native Australia.

In April, his website posted a copy of a classified Pentagon video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Baghdad in which a dozen people were killed; that video is also believed to have been leaked by the Army intelligence analyst, Specialist Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland.

hile denying again that WikiLeaks has the State Department cables, Assange acknowledges in the email today that he is in custody of the May 2009 video that shows the airstrike on the Afghan village of Garani, believed to be the most lethal combat strike in Afghanistan—in terms of civilian deaths—since the United States invaded the country in 2001. Assange writes that "we are still working on" preparations for release of the video of "the Garani massacre."

The State Department and Pentagon did not immediately comment on Assange’s email message.

American officials have acknowledged in the past that they are concerned about the release of the Garani video, fearing that it could undermine public support for the American military campaign in Afghanistan both in that country and in the United States. Pentagon officials were outraged by WikiLeaks’ release of the Baghdad video this spring.

State Department officials are especially alarmed by the potential that Assange might post the huge library of classified department memos that Manning is reported to have bragged of providing to WikiLeaks earlier this year. The department has confirmed that it is conducting a forensic examination of Manning’s computer equipment for evidence of what he may have downloaded.

In the email, Assange does not confirm any relationship between the website and Manning, describing him as "one of our alleged sources."

But he suggests that Manning is being treated unfairly—"detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held" without trial.

"Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscience and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani," Assange continues.

"Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s [sic] engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government." Assange does not reveal exactly what that other material might be.

American officials are treating Assange’s claim that he does not have the State Department emails with skepticism, suggesting that he is playing word games—that while he may not have exactly 260,000 cables, he has a large number of them.

Assange seems to enjoying taunting the United States government and news organizations with information that is not always accurate. Last Friday, WikiLeaks—which tends to communicate with the outside world through Twitter messages–created a flurry when it disclosed via tweet that Assange was scheduled to appear that afternoon at a journalists’ conference in Las Vegas. The Twitter notice failed to mention that Assange had canceled his appearance several days earlier because of unspecified security concerns.

The arrest of Manning became public last week after Wired magazine disclosed that Manning had been turned in to authorities by another former computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, who had been contacted by Manning for counsel. Much of the evidence against Manning is contained in an Internet chat log that Lamo has already turned over to authorities.

In an interview with The Daily Beast on Monday, Lamo said that he had been interviewed for nearly 12 hours this weekend by investigators from the Defense Department, the State Department, and the FBI, as formal criminal charges are being prepared for Manning. Lamo said he was motivated to turn in Manning out of fear that the classified information he had provided to WikiLeaks could put lives in danger—within the United States government and elsewhere.

Lamo said he is convinced that Manning did have access to highly classified State Department cables, and that Manning’s boast of having stolen 260,000 cables sounds truthful.

In his email, Assange asks supporters for money, citing "an enforced lack of resources" for the website. "Please donate and tell the world you have done so," he writes. "Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious."
http://uruknet.info/?p=m67084&hd=&size=1&l=e

Dude111

Mahatma coat wrote:

Wikileaks exists to apease our apathy, we seem to believe that as long as at least one person is willng to stand up and be counted we're not beyond redemption, and we might just be able to make the difference

EXCELLENT REPLY!!!!

IF THEY WERENT DOING SO MANY EVIL/UNDERHANDED THINGS,THEY WOULDNT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THEM LEAKING OUT NOW WOULD THEY?

I hope the guy stays safe and out of harm!!

Richard tea

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/21/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-breaks-cover

Looks like he is out if hiding. Hope it doesnt take long to release the info


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10394357.stm

northwest100

they probably won't kill him just yet since all the media are focused on him, too high profile.

anyway, i'm sure more volunteers would take his place if he were killed, so maybe nothing will happen.