WikiLeaks cables: Live Q&A with Julian Assange NOW!

WikiLeaks cables: Live Q&A with Julian Assange NOW!

www.guardian.co.uk

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, will be live online from 1pm today to answer readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

(visit the link for the full news article)

He is online now to answer questions, i think it is temporarily suspended but not postponed. Availability due to internet access which is said to be a live issue. Maybe he has been arrested! They are saying the session is temporarily down due to overwhelming demand but who knows?
Some Questions so far..

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.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

This guy has some balls!
wonder if he will admit working for the US govt?

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
edit on 3-12-2010 by aivlas because: (no reason given)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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rajiv1857
Hi,
Is the game that your 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 necesarily 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 neceesarily 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.

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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.

Source = www.guardian.co.uk...

"However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs."

hmm, interesting, I wonder what extent these documents go to

No more answers to come

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.

Source = www.guardian.co.uk...

One day I think he is an agent... Another day, I love this man in a completely non gay way!
Why can't I get a good read on this situation??? I pride myself on being able to see through the BS right to the core of an issue.
Have they finally found a fool proof way to get into our heads and twist it... Or is this guy really legit and my mistrust of anything is causing me to doubt him any way..

Again- back to sit on my fence.. Awaiting being pushed to one side or the other.

I was on the fence about his intentions until I read this.

Wed 03 Jan 2007 : Witnessing
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice.

If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find.

If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes.

The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.

Julian Assange

Can be found along with other thought provoking correspondences at the link in Denv's quote. Couldn't figure out how to get the dang link to work. lol

Originally posted by the_denv

In fact here is Julian Assange before Wikileaks: (MUST READ)!
web.archive.org...
iq.org...

A very interesting insight into Julian and WikiLeaks.

I was particularly impressed with the statement that they had intentionally placed some of their servers in places where they could expect to be attacked. This "mousetrap" approach speaks to a great deal of thought having been put into WikiLeaks. The idea of revealing a tyrant by making him act like one comes to mind...

The revelation of the contents of the "insurance" file was not unexpected, but personally I was disappointed that only 100,000 of us had chosen to download it - although that number may increase after todays announcement.

While all of Julians' replies were articulate and well considered, his answer to the free speach question was expecially telling. The political and philosophical ramifications of that reply reflects a keen intellect and an ability to "think on his feet" that is almost unique among the public figures and newsmakers of today.

The supreme irony of the WikiLeaks saga must be that the entire concept and execution of the organization is so well thought out and on such solid legal footing that its very success fuels speculation that it is somehow controlled by one shadowy group or another.

In point of fact WikiLeaks as a whole has seemingly committed no crime in any jurisdiction that might seek to bring charges against it (although the U.S is searching frantically for some basis to charge it with something, anything). This would seem to apply to Julian as well considering that even Sweden has failed to bring official charges in the so-called "rape" case. He is officially "wanted for questioning" in Sweden in that case but the Swedish government declined his invitation to question him in the U.K.

All in all it's an interesting story to follow, as I shall continue and urge others to do.

It was a great expose, he should answer questions in that format more often -- because it is regular people he is connecting with...

I know if I saw my question being answered on there, I would be ecstatically proud.


The mention of UFO's in the cablegates is extremely intriguing.

It means this is the final showdown, these next coming months... well, all the way until 2012(elections) really

No questions about any info on 9/11 or about the the status of the "password"?
Softball Q & A.

Next.................

I wish some one had asked him about the mysterious "Insurance FIle" that they posted a few months ago after the first cable leak ....

Thanks guys for posting the Q&A's.

The man is simply a genius.
He is brilliant,
and every interview or talk with him,
Just shows it more and more all the time.

He is a beautiful person.

Im sorry soo many cannot, choose not, or refuse to see it.


love this answer from him~

rajiv1857
Hi,
Is the game that your 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 necesarily 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 neceesarily 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.

You are an amazing human, Mr. Assange.
and I see you as more and more of an Angel every day. lol
many thanks.
You are loved.

Originally posted by jpvskyfreak
I wish some one had asked him about the mysterious "Insurance FIle" that they posted a few months ago after the first cable leak ....

Sort of answered. His not going to tell us what's in the insurance file

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.

reply to post by Black_Fox


You really think that any "info" about that is going to or has been leaked to Assange?

Posted from a duplicate thread:

I liked this question or more specifically how he refused to answer or even acknowledge it.

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.

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.

Hmm…

Btw am I the only one who is a little put off by strange personality cult building up around Assange? I mean, “I love this man in a non gay way”, “he’s a genius”, “he is a beautiful human being” I’ve seen people call him a hero etc. Regardless of what you think of the leaks this man hasn’t, on examination, really done anything of any note with regard to these leaks, its other people who took the risk of getting this information, its established media outlets that are bringing it to the people and even within wikileaks itself there are a lot more people doing the work. Assange isn’t much more than the middle man in this.

Remember as well that this “insurance file” must be something he considers important enough to guarantee his safety yet despite this importance he is happy to sit on it for his own ends. Is that the act of a crusader for truth? I’m sure some would argue that this file ensures the continued flow of leaks but is that really true? As above the actual information would have been taken without wikileaks and there is no reason it could not then have been handed straight to the media. Leaks have happened before wikileaks and would no doubt happen after.

Did anyone notice this:

However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.

I think the guy has balls.... and wish him luck, I think he'll need it.


OR....


He's a puppet and we're all being played.... and Wikileaks is just BS.


But I dunno man.... been some pretty crazy stuff from them over the last couple of years.

The Killing of the Reuters reporter by American troops was one.... that was harrowing.


I dunno..... there's something odd about the whole thing... kinda seems scripted.

BUT....

I still think he may be genuine... so if you are Julian, rock on man.

Originally posted by Mike_A
Btw am I the only one who is a little put off by strange personality cult building up around Assange? I mean, “I love this man in a non gay way”, “he’s a genius”, “he is a beautiful human being” I’ve seen people call him a hero etc. Regardless of what you think of the leaks this man hasn’t, on examination, really done anything of any note with regard to these leaks, its other people who took the risk of getting this information, its established media outlets that are bringing it to the people and even within wikileaks itself there are a lot more people doing the work. Assange isn’t much more than the middle man in this.

He's provided a platform or avenue for people to get their info heard.
Whistleblowers the world over have sent stuff to them, encrypted stuff and so on.

He may be a glorified "middle man" but he's done far more than anyone on here... and to say that he's not really done anything is harsh and not even remotely accurate.

He's risked his life to get info out and expose government and military cover-ups and conspiracies.

I tip my hat to the man.