[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Julian Assange Answers Questions in Online Q&A

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Was glad to get this. --Jenifer

--- On Sat, 12/4/10, fransears at netscape.net wrote:---------- Forwarded message ----------

Common Dreams

Published on Friday, December 3, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/03-1

Julian Assange Answers Questions in Online Q&A

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is answering readers'
questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables.
We will post his responses as we receive them

Fwoggie:  I'll start the ball rolling with a question. You're an
Australian passport holder - would you want return to your own country
or is this now out of the question due to potentially being arrested
on arrival for releasing cables relating to Australian diplomats and
polices?

Julian Assange: I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a
great deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime
minister, Julia Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland,
have made it clear that not only is my return is impossible but that
they are actively working to assist the United States government in
its attacks on myself and our people. This brings into question what
does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at
all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first
possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and
diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties.

girish89: How do you think you have changed world affairs? And if you
call all the attention you've been given-credit ... shouldn't the mole
or source receive a word of praise from you?

Julian Assange: For the past four years one of our goals has been to
lionise the source who take the real risks in nearly every
journalistic disclosure and without whose efforts, journalists would
be nothing. If indeed it is the case, as alleged by the Pentagon, that
the young soldier - Bradley Manning - is behind some of our recent
disclosures, then he is without doubt an unparalleled hero.

Daithi: Have you released, or will you release, cables (either in the
last few days or with the Afghan and Iraq war logs) with the names of
Afghan informants or anything else like so? Are you willing to censor
(sorry for using the term) any names that you feel might land people
in danger from reprisals?? By the way, I think history will absolve
you. Well done!!!

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During
that time there has been no credible allegation, even by organisations
like the Pentagon that even a single person has come to harm as a
result of our activities. This is despite much-attempted manipulation
and spin trying to lead people to a counter-factual conclusion. We do
not expect any change in this regard.

distrot: The State Dept is mulling over the issue of whether you are a
journalist or not. Are you a journalist? As far as delivering
information that someone [anyone] does not want seen is concerned,
does it matter if you are a 'journalist' or not?

Julian Assange: I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was
25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV
and internet since that time. However, it is not necessary to debate
whether I am a journalist, or how our people mysteriously are alleged
to cease to be journalists when they start writing for our
organisaiton. Although I still write, research and investigate my role
is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and
directs other journalists.

achanth:  Mr Assange, have there ever been documents forwarded to you
which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?

Julian Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they
discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their
ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have
not satisfied two of our publishing rules. 1) that the documents not
be self-authored; 2) that they be original. However, it is worth
noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive
there are indeed references to UFOs.

gnosticheresy:  What happened to all the other documents that were on
Wikileaks prior to these series of "megaleaks"? Will you put them back
online at some stage ("technical difficulties" permitting)?

Julian Assange: Many of these are still available at
mirror.wikileaks.info and the rest will be returning as soon as we can
find a moment to do address the engineering complexities. Since April
of this year our timetable has not been our own, rather it has been
one that has centred on the moves of abusive elements of the United
States government against us. But rest assured I am deeply unhappy
that the three-and-a-half years of my work and others is not easily
available or searchable by the general public.

CrisShutlar: Have you expected this level of impact all over the world?
Do you fear for your security?

Julian Assange: I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would
perform a global role and to some degree it was clear that is was
doing that as far back as 2007 when it changed the result of the
Kenyan general election. I thought it would take two years instead of
four to be recognised by others as having this important role, so we
are still a little behind schedule and have much more work to do. The
threats against our lives are a matter of public record, however, we
are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able
when dealing with a super power.

JAnthony: Julian. I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my
former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a
brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state
threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme
for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible
without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the
protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of
the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which
cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an
embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without
discretion and the protection of sources. This applies to the UK and
the UN as much as the US.

[Julian Assange:] In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire
process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can
publish UK telegrams and UN emails.

My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally
responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because
diplomats cannot function.

Julian Assange: If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular
question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.

cargun:  Mr Assange, Can you explain the censorship of identities as
XXXXX's in the revealed cables? Some critical identities are left as
is, whereas some are XXXXX'd. Some cables are partially revealed. Who
can make such critical decisons, but the US gov't? As far as we know
your request for such help was rejected by the State department. Also
is there an order in the release of cable or are they randomly
selected? Thank you.

Julian Assange: The cables we have release correspond to stories
released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have
been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these
people must know the material well in order to write about it. The
redactions are then reviewed by at least one other journalist or
editor, and we review samples supplied by the other organisations to
make sure the process is working.

rszopa:  Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if
anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of
AWS. Do you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it? Thank
you for doing what you are doing.

Julian Assange: Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of
our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech
deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of
these cases.

abbeherrera:  You started something that nobody can stop. The Beginning
of a New World. Remember, that community is behind you and support you
(from Slovakia). Do you have leaks on ACTA?

Julian Assange: Yes, we have leaks on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement, a trojan horse trade agreement designed from the very
beginning to satisfy big players in the US copyright and patent
industries. In fact, it was WikiLeaks that first drew ACTA to the
public's attention - with a leak.

people1st: Tom Flanagan, a senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister
recently stated "I think Assange should be assassinated ... I think
Obama should put out a contract ... I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange
does disappear." How do you feel about this?

Julian Assange: It is correct that Mr. Flanagan and the others
seriously making these statements should be charged with incitement to
commit murder.

CommonDreams Posted: 12/3/10 9:47 EST - check back for updates

Isopod:  Julian, why do you think it was necessary to "give Wikileaks a
face"? Don't you think it would be better if the organization was
anonymous? This whole debate has become very personal and reduced on
you - "Julian Assange leaked documents", "Julian Assange is a
terrorist", "Julian Assange alledgedly raped a woman", "Julian Assange
should be assassinated", "Live Q&A qith Julian Assange" etc. Nobody
talks about Wikileaks as an organization anymore. Many people don't
even realize that there are other people behind Wikileaks, too. And
this, in my opinion, makes Wikileaks vulnerable because this enables
your opponents to argue ad hominem. If they convince the public that
you're an evil, woman-raping terrorist, then Wikileaks' credibility
will be gone. Also, with due respect for all that you've done, I think
it's unfair to all the other brave, hard working people behind
Wikileaks, that you get so much credit.

Julian Assange: This is an interesting question. I originally tried
hard for the organisation to have no face, because I wanted egos to
play no part in our activities. This followed the tradition of the
French anonymous pure mathematians, who wrote under the collective
allonym, "The Bourbaki". However this quickly led to tremendous
distracting curiosity about who and random individuals claiming to
represent us. In the end, someone must be responsible to the public
and only a leadership that is willing to be publicly courageous can
genuinely suggest that sources take risks for the greater good. In
that process, I have become the lightening rod. I get undue attacks on
every aspect of my life, but then I also get undue credit as some kind
of balancing force.

tburgi:  Western governments lay claim to moral authority in part from
having legal guarantees for a free press. Threats of legal sanction
against Wikileaks and yourself seem to weaken this claim. (What press
needs to be protected except that which is unpopular to the State? If
being state-sanctioned is the test for being a media organization, and
therefore able to claim rights to press freedom, the situation appears
to be the same in authoritarian regimes and the west.) Do you agree
that western governments risk losing moral authority by attacking
Wikileaks? Do you believe western goverments have any moral authority
to begin with? Thanks, Tim Burgi Vancouver, Canada

Julian Assange: The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships
through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so
on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because
a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic
instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect
on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China,
there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and
power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an
economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that
jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope,
speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

rajiv1857: Hi, Is the game that you are caught up in winnable?
Technically, can you keep playing hide and seek with the powers that
be when services and service providers are directly or indirectly
under government control or vulnerable to pressure - like Amazon?
Also, if you get "taken out" - and that could be technical, not
necessarily physical - what are the alternatives for your cache of
material? Is there a 'second line' of activists in place that would
continue the campaign? Is your material 'dispersed' so that taking out
one cache would not necessarily mean the end of the game?

Julian Assange: The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with
significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000
people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts
will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in
the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world
will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on
you.


That's it every one, thanks for all your questions and comments.
Julian Assange is sorry that he can't answer every question but he has
tried to cover as much territory as possible. Thanks for your patience
with our earlier technical difficulties.

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org





 


      
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