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WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN Assange vowed to keep exposing secret documents and defended his controversial website, two years after it published a massive trove of sensitive US diplomatic cables.
Marking the anniversary of “cablegate,” Assange alleged in a commentary published Thursday that his self-styled anti-secrecy website had uncovered US attempts to hide atrocities, coerce other governments and dominate the global economy.
“Since 2010, Western governments have tried to portray WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization, enabling a disproportionate response from both political figures and private institutions,” he wrote in the Huffington Post.
“It is the case that WikiLeaks’ publications can and have changed the world, but that change has clearly been for the better,” he said, citing some of the once secret State Department cables that his site disclosed.
Two years on, no claim of individual harm has been presented, and the examples (cables) above clearly show precisely who has blood on their hands.
By exposing details of the deaths of Iraqi civilians and the corruption of the Tunisian regime, WikiLeaks had helped force the US military’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and had fueled an uprising in Tunisia that spread across Arab countries, according to Assange.
Despite condemnation by the US government, the Australian ex-hacker said his organization would not shy away from divulging more secret documents and would combat attempts to block supporters from making online financial contributions to WikiLeaks.
“We will continue our fight against the financial blockade, and we will continue to publish.”
He said the leak of the diplomatic cables had confirmed press reports that the US was carrying out a covert bombing campaign against militants in Pakistan as well as drone strikes in Yemen, with the government there hiding the US role.
Assange’s commentary appeared as the army private accused of leaking the US documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, testified for the first time at a pre-trial hearing after two years in detention.
Assange has been holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy for five months to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is facing allegations of rape and sexual assault, charges he strongly denies.
He says that if extradited, he could be handed over to the United States for prosecution.
Assange was arrested in 2010 after WikiLeaks enraged Washington earlier that year by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified US documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as embarrassing diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world.
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Fair play to Julian Assange and best of luck.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act. George Orwell was on the button with just about everything he said, including that.
Watched Argo last night, Assange needs a similar crazy scheme to get him out of the UK unnoticed :)
yup….all he has done is update everything naom chomsky has issued….the last big leak I think was called the “pentagon papers” (they proved the start of the vietnam war was a setup….and the direction the first world wanted the planet to go
Why is it that Assange only seems obsessed with Western governments. Why don’t we see stuff from China or Russia? Just a thought.
He’s leaked stuff from African governments too.
The mainstream media are happy enough to cater for that end, Mick…just as Chinese media will highlight western criminality and suppress their own.
The western media like to portray themselves as watchdogs of open government and democracy, but most of them are corporate shills or subtle spin outlets. Assange broke OUR hypocritical silences, just like Vanunu and Manning.
He has exposed the shallowness of our nominal democracies as facades for cartels of hereditary banking and industrial power, a new aristocratic order where Liberty is for the financially strong, and Equality is as far away as it was before 1789, and retreating at a rate of red-shifted light.
Go Julian,international hero
He is going to release the transcripts from the staff room at Irish schools next, where teachers openly describe some children as “brats”, “difficult” and “spoilt morons”.
Should be really helpful in fixing the education system.
Assange sort of seems like a champion of the people, but in reality has done nothing for the world other than endanger the lives of good people who were employed in the art of countries getting along and understanding each other.
An adolescent in terms of understanding how the world works.
and what about the future lives he has saved? is that you Kevin Naizi?
sorry EDIT….Naom Chomsky didnt issue anything….he just brought it to the common person
have your say