This "Julian Assange" perspective, contains some interesting items, is a little lengthy, readers no doubt will make their own assumptions.
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Hans Ulrich Obrist
In Conversation with Julian Assange, Part I
a couple of extracts shown below.
The interview is divided into two parts—in the first, I was interested in tracing his work back to its beginnings. I was not interested in his court case or private life, but in his public work as the voice of WikiLeaks, and the experiences and philosophical background that informs such a monumentally polemical project. In the second part, which will be published in the following issue of e-flux journal, Assange responds to questions posed to him by artists Goldin+Senneby, Paul Chan, Metahaven (Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk), Martha Rosler, Luis Camnitzer, Superflex, Philippe Parreno, and Ai Weiwei.
Hans Ulrich Obrist: How did it all begin?
Julian Assange: I grew up in Australia in the 1970s. My parents were in the theatre, so I lived everywhere—in over fifty different towns, attending thirty-seven different schools. Many of these towns were in rural environments, so I lived like Tom Sawyer—riding horses, exploring caves, fishing, diving, and riding my motorcycle. I lived a classical boyhood in this regard. But there were other events, such as in Adelaide, where my mother was involved in helping to smuggle information out of Maralinga, the British atomic bomb test site in the outback. She and I and a courier were detained one night by the Australian Federal Police, who told her that it could be said that she was an unfit mother to be keeping such company at 2:00 a.m., and that she had better stay out of politics if she didn’t want to hear such things.
I was very curious as a child, always asking why, and always wanting to overcome barriers to knowing, which meant that by the time I was around fifteen I was breaking encryption systems that were used to stop people sharing software, and then, later on, breaking systems that were used to hide information in government computers. Australia was a very provincial place before the internet, and it was a great delight to be able to get out, intellectually, into the wider world, to tunnel through it and understand it. For someone who was young and relatively removed from the rest of the world, to be able to enter the depths of the Pentagon’s Eighth Command at the age of seventeen was a liberating experience. But our group, which centered on the underground magazine I founded, was raided by the Federal Police. It was a big operation. But I thought that I needed to share this wealth that I had discovered about the world with people, to give knowledge to people, and so following that I set up the first part of the internet industry in Australia. I spent a number of years bringing the internet to the people through my free speech ISP and then began to look for something with a new intellectual challenge.
Full interviw at the link http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/232
Hey,
Just read about the "draconian" confidentiality agreement the staff of WikiLeaks are subject to for a significant leak of unpublished material of the organization. Not sure how I feel about this. The article says it is because of the loss of potential monies that they could charge for this info. What do y'all think??
The Australian Government should stand by Assange
19 December 2011
"The DRUM Opinion" ABC News Australia.
by Greg Barns: Greg Barns is National President of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and together with a number of other prominent individuals, is a signatory to an open letter to Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd published today about the plight of Julian Assange.
Julian Assange lives to fight another day it seems with the highest court in the UK, the Supreme Court, agreeing on Friday (Australian time) to hear an appeal against a decision allowing Sweden to have Mr Assange extradited.
While this is welcome news for Mr Assange and his supporters it needs to remembered that regardless of the outcome of this appeal, we should all hold significant concerns for his safety.
The US political, security and military establishment loathes Mr Assange and it will do whatever it takes to get its collective hands on the leader of an organisation which has caused profound embarrassment to the key superpower in the world today.
The US has taken a number of public steps, and who knows how many back channel manoeuvres, to suggest that it is planning a full scale prosecution of Assange in which the rule of law will be given short shrift, just as it has been at Guantanamo Bay.
While the grand jury process is secret, we have learnt about secret subpoenas to social media companies, non-US citizens and Google to obtain private information and the harassment of WikiLeaks associates, Jacob Appelbaum and David House amongst others.
Bartering in conspiracy theories is rarely wise; but on the face of this evidence, it is difficult to believe that the Obama Administration is not doing everything in its power to manufacture a charge against Assange and to ensure he lands on American soil so it can place him on trial.
The home of the brave and the land of the free does not have a good record when it comes to the treatment of its enemies. It routinely renders and tortures its enemies in secret prisons around the world or keeps them in inhumane conditions in the pocket of lawlessness that is Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, we have greater insight into this process because of what WikiLeaks has revealed and the subsequent analysis by journalists of this material.
The likely shabby treatment of an Australian citizen at the hands of the US is not something the Australian Government ought let lie. We ought surely to have learnt from the appalling treatment of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, two Gitmo prisoners, that when Australia does not stand by its citizens when they are subjected to cruelty overseas we diminish ourselves as a nation.
Thus the Australian Government needs to step up to the task now. The Gillard Government can be in no doubt that the US will do its best to try to get Assange in front of an American court at some point. If our relationship is in any way as friendly and respectful as our leaders like to make out, we should be able to have a reasonable conversation about how someone like Assange will be treated.
The Gillard Government needs to recognise that the US is less of a friend and more of a bully on the matter of WikiLeaks. The US has held Bradley Manning, the man accused of leaking material to WikiLeaks in detention since May 2010 and for a significant portion of those 19 months in solitary confinement. Worse still, for the majority of time Manning has been detained he has had no knowledge of the charge against him. Such actions are plainly inappropriate and offend basic notions of decency. The rule of law is a foundational principle of a liberal democracy, not something to aim for or apply selectively; it should not be undermined because the powers that be find the actions of an individual profoundly embarrassing.
That the US will, if it can get away with it, treat Assange as shabbily as it has Manning is as obvious as it is that night follows day and it is for this reason the Gillard Government needs to assume, for the purposes of ensuring that its citizen is not subjected to torture and a kangaroo court, the position of a toe-to-toe combatant with the US rather than that of a supplicant on bended knee.
Of course it does not need to come to this. If Mr Assange were any other Australian citizen he would, once the Swedish process is completed (and assuming the sometimes wobbly Swedes don't allow the Americans to capture Assange), be welcomed home and allowed to go about his life.
Australians need to remember what it is Assange has done for our world. WikiLeaks has contributed immensely to our understanding of how our democracy works and has armed us with the knowledge and arguments to demand greater transparency from governments. We should not be bullied into silence when a supposed ally tries to persecute a WikiLeaks journalist for precisely this reason.
miolchu liked this post.
"... The US political, security and military establishment loathes Mr Assange and it will do whatever it takes to get its collective hands on the leader of an organisation which has caused profound embarrassment to the key superpower in the world today.
The US has taken a number of public steps, and who knows how many back channel manoeuvres, to suggest that it is planning a full scale prosecution of Assange in which the rule of law will be given short shrift, just as it has been at Guantanamo Bay.
Bartering in conspiracy theories is rarely wise; but on the face of this evidence, it is difficult to believe that the Obama Administration is not doing everything in its power to manufacture a charge against Assange and to ensure he lands on American soil so it can place him on trial.
The home of the brave and the land of the free does not have a good record when it comes to the treatment of its enemies. It routinely renders and tortures its enemies in secret prisons around the world or keeps them in inhumane conditions in the pocket of lawlessness that is Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, we have greater insight into this process because of what WikiLeaks has revealed and the subsequent analysis by journalists of this material..."
I find it rather interesting what has happened to the U.S. since 2001. For years American media and politicians would belittle their overseas peers for for 'over-reacting' to threats created by terrorism. Now we get groped if we travel by train or commercial air carrier. We are arrested if we balk and try to move against the tide as seen in the various 'occupy' movments. Our supposed constitutional right to free speech is under assault. Our government incarcerates people without right to legal representation or trial by jury; sometimes bullying erstwhile allies into handing over their citizens to our military courts...
The twenty hijackers who died on September 11, 2011 would have been proud. Besides gutting one wing of the Pentagon and two world trade center towers, they destroyed democracy in the United States....
1938 Observer thanked for this post.
1938 Observer liked this post.
Please check your dates.
I guess he meant September 11, 2001. Easy typo to make.
Elda
1938 Observer thanked for this post.
Hey All,
Read a couple of days ago that WikiLeaks began publishing over 5 million e-mails from the "Global Intelligence" files of the company '"Stratfor" located here in Austin, Texas. Seems they have many clients that really aren't associated with their supposed business. Hmmmmm, who would have thought????I think I understand why the US is so determind to bring charges. Apparently WikiLeaks hacked many sites. Well how else are all of us suppose to get the truth????
1938 Observer liked this post.
Hi Diane,
Here is a local ABC [Australia] article for you, from the tone of it there may not be much in the way of Newsworthy leaks in this sequence, however time will tell.
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Confessions of a Stratfor subscriber
The Drum
By ABC's Mark Corcoran
Updated February 29, 2012 12:54:18
[B]I have a confession to make. Yes, I have been a Stratfor subscriber for more than 12 years.
I was among the reportedly 300 Australian subscribers whose personal details and credit card information were posted online in late December by the group Anonymous after activists hacked into the Stratfor database.
Now Wikileaks is engineering a megadump. Five million confidential Stratfor emails will soon wallpaper cyberspace.
The Texas-based firm, founded in 1996, once claimed to be the world's largest private intelligence company - a kind of privatised CIA.
I'll place the link to let you read the full article http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-2...criber/3859418
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Here also is the link to "Stratfor" Personally I agree that they don't appear to offer a great deal, any diligent researcher using appropriate search terms and with the ability to explore any and all relevant publications may readily find volumes of "Intelligence" available without the need to pay an exorbitant fee for a service which may be carried out by most people 'free of charge'
Stratfor http://www.stratfor.com/
Gordon.
Last edited by 1938 Observer; 29th February 2012 at 23:56. Reason: add word
Diane thanked for this post.
Hey Gordon,
I just knew you would respond with information. I read both links you provided. Sounds like the company is on the up and up. Just wondering why WikiLeaks would publish so many e-mails if they have no relevance to their cause. They had months to review them. If they had no secrets, why would WikiLeaks expose them? I guess like you said, time will tell.
1938 Observer liked this post.
Hey,
Read this morning that Julian Assange will be running for a seat in the Australian Senate in elections due next year. Would love to hear any thoughts y'all might have regarding this move. Thanks!
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