WikiLeaks founder says he did right thing. Named man is already dead.

I just got this article on Assange and I thought it deserved a thread, since this board is full of misinformation about this whole case. So I will present some interesting quotes from the interview/article, that is long.

This quote is about what The Times did to him. They made Wikileaks look like they already killed an informant.

By the time I come to talk to Assange, his very last interview of the week, the backlash is in full swing. "Have you seen this?" he says waving a copy of the Times at me. "Have you seen how much bull# this is? Have you seen page 13? Do you think I should call [the libel law firm] Carter-Ruck?

"It would be a bit silly for me but I'm tempted to. Just look at the headlines and the photo. What's the imputation?"

There's a photo of Assange below a headline that reads "'Taliban hitlist' row: WikiLeaks founder says he did right thing". And next to the photo, another headline reading "Named man is already dead." The imputation is quite clearly that Assange's actions have resulted in the man's death, although in the story itself it makes it clear that he actually died two years ago.

"Is it clear?" says Assange. "Let's see how much we have to read before we reach that information. It's not in the first paragraph, second, third, fourth, it's not in the fifth. It's not until the sixth paragraph you learn that."

The Times had splashed on its front page the claims that there are named Afghan sources in the files whose lives are now in danger. It's pure "self-interest", he says, designed to undermine the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper and one of three publications to publish stories based on the files, the others being the New York Times and Der Spiegel. "You can see that this is coming down from editorial, not up from journalism."

This other quote is about the informant names.

"If there are innocent Afghans being revealed, which was our concern, which was why we kept back 15,000 files, then of course we take that seriously."

But what if it's too late?

"Well, we will review our procedures."

Too late for the individuals, I say. Dead.

"Well, anything might happen but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen … In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged. On the other hand, we have changed governments and constitutions and had tremendous positive outcomes."

"This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan …It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."

Another great quote, but that on the regular media ...

There's a school of thought, to which a leading article in the Times gave voice, that he is playing a dangerous game. He says he hasn't read it, so I quote a chunk: "The sanctimonious piety of the man is sickening."

"Oh sure," he says. "Because it would be better to be a ruthless media mogul just in it for the money. That would be then be acceptable. We can't actually have people doing something for moral reasons. It's only acceptable if we do it just for the money."

About the morality of what they done ...

When I try to question him about the morality of what he's done, if he worries about unleashing something that he can't control, that no one can control, he tells me the story of the Kenyan 2007 elections when a WikiLeak document "swung the election".

The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."

About whats their agenda, truth ...

You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion." "We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings,"

This just shows the attempt and the success of the old media to make Wikileaks look like the bandits. We can see this on ATS, a lot of people believe they are the bad guys ... I just thought it would be nice to everyone be able to read some actual quotes and pieces from wikileaks, before jumping on the "murderers bandwagon"

reply to post by Faiol


It is good to see objective reporting of the Wikileaks story here on ATS. It has been remiss of late, with the exception of one or two threads. A worrying trend to saddle up to the high octane reports from mainstream media is being displayed across ATS boards. Posters are quick to jump onto spurious reports and go along for the ride without discerning fact from fiction and give little regard to context. This is displayed throughout the Gulf oil spill threads, particularly exemplified in the Shirley Sherrod case and now in the coverage of the Wikileaks story. For a member base that is wary of government and mainstream media, it is curious to know why many people have taken the comments made by the Obama administration and other media outlets accusing Wikileaks of treason and having blood on its hands and reiterated them throughout the discussion threads.

The Afghan War Diary brings home the horror and nonsense of this war and we should be using this information to understand what has been perpetrated in our names and to bring pressure on our respective governments to bring closure to the war as soon as possible.

reply to post by LarryLove


Larry, you did a good job on this yourself here.

What's more interesting to me too is which MSM outlet is reporting what and how. That shows us how they're aligning on this matter and who might be their masters. Weird as that may sound.

Props to you both.

[edit on 8/1/2010 by ~Lucidity]

[edit on 1-8-2010 by UmbraSumus]

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
reply to post by LarryLove

 

Larry, you did a good job on this yourself here.

What's more interesting to me too is which MSM outlet is reporting what and how. That shows us how they're aligning on this matter and who might be their masters. Weird as that may sound.

Props to you both.

[edit on 8/1/2010 by ~Lucidity]

Thank you and you make a good point. I too would like to know the answer to the question you raise. Take The Times article cited in the opening post. It is clear that an editorial decision was taken to make you initially think that releasing the documents has already caused the death of an informant. Well, The Times is owned by Mr Murdoch.

reply to post by Faiol


Screw the MSM. They are jealous that they could not provide such information. Whose interest is MSM like Times, Fox etc are working for? Certainly not the masses and definitely not for truth.

reply to post by LarryLove

Exactly. The beginning of a trend caught my eye in the reporting of the leaks. It seemed to me that Bloomberg and the WSJ were cherry picking information from them to support escalation of the war...slanting their stories that way. Other MSM did not seem to be doing that...or not as much. But I haven't followed through on that analysis. Just an observation so far.

He's right though. Unless you start with TRUTH, a clear understanding of the realities, then no decision made will be worth anything.

When i think of the millions dead through the CIA / US govt et al's lies, i hardly think they can point fingers. I don't care what the truth is, i can handle it, just give me the truth please.

reply to post by Faiol


I have to agree with the OP. It seems the more publicity Wikileaks gets, the more rumours about its founder we hear. I would not be surprised at all if Editors of major newspapers/magazines around the world are "encouraging" staff to publish any dirt they can. I said in another thread that one of the most effective ways to discredit somebody you oppose is to suggest they are corrupted or double-agents. While this might be the case for some supposed whistle-blowers, others really are interested in discovering truth and justice.

[edit on 1/8/2010 by Dark Ghost]

reply to post by Dark Ghost

TPTB Cardinal Rule 1. If you can't kill the truth, vilify, belittle, discredit, threaten, and blackmail it.

Starred and flagged for the objective quotes, man. I needed to read that. It's good that Assange knows the effects of his releases, and that they try to take responsibility for it's effects.

There'll be a lot of criticism from people for what he do. I've criticized him too. But as long as he does what he think is best, I can't blame him too much, even if he makes mistakes.

Thank you for this smoking gun post. S&F I was sort of on the fence and wanting to believe in Wikileaks, but being a suspecious type I fell into the trap that was playing out threw the the disinfo agents . I am ready now to support Wikileaks .Good Post .

Have you guys seen Assange's interview with Napolitano?

Video at this link... that's from yesterday.

I now have a new reason to appreciate Assange.

I read all this wikileaks yesterday and heard him talk on all these clips, and read some of his writings....and looked up some science studies.....

and I started thinking about truth and what it even was.

I started thinking about social networks and how they were being set up, so they could be manipulated - by corporations for sure, by govt also no doubt. I started think about HOW they could be manipulated....

I had several aha! minutes that I've not had in a very long time. I think, for a while now, I've had a fuzzy view about truth. That maybe truth COULD be only relative. I think because often I see both sides of any situation, and that's really not an easy way to be.

It is all about the information. True information is like gravity. It should be what determines your position.

June and July were the deadliest months in Afghanistan for the American troops in 9 years and some think that Assange releasing this info is going to make that worse?

They will probably say the documents released will be the reasoning why August becomes the deadliest month for troop casualties. Just wait. I will be real surprised if they don't use this as an excuse.

You can't trust any of the MSM media outlets. Sure you can find bits and pieces of the truth but you have to actually read many different publications to find it. I'm willing to bet that they have already distorted some of the released info from Assange.

Assange should have release this info to sites like ATS or even Alex Jones (I know many despise Alex) that way more of the truth would have made it out rather than it being a journalists impression of what he or she just read and decided to relay to the public.

Next time Assange does anything like this he needs to strongly consider who he releases the info to. He was better off releasing some of it to The Onion than some of the publications he choose.

Anyone have any thoughts on the mysterious "insurance" file that has shown up on the Wikileaks site?

www.wired.com...

Not sure what to make of it.

Originally posted by intjus01
Anyone have any thoughts on the mysterious "insurance" file that has shown up on the Wikileaks site?

www.wired.com...

Not sure what to make of it.

It's being discussed in this thread mate. www.abovetopsecret.com...

BTW good post OP, I'm really considering a thread on 'which media outlets can generally be trusted, which ones it's unclear, and which cant' these smear campaigns are so patent and obvious sometimes

[edit on 1-8-2010 by fraggdya]

[edit on 1-8-2010 by fraggdya]

reply to post by fraggdya


There definitely needs to be a list of trusting news media. If you do this I will be looking for it. I know the list of who can be trusted will be very small and most of them will either be out of the country or small independent organizations. I only know of a handful. It would be great to find out there is more.

This would allow for other fellow members of ATS to chime in and put down ones they trust also.

Great thought, fraggdya!

reply to post by Faiol



I am not so much against wiki-leaks or Assange and the others involved. I am just very cautious and skeptical. I have yet to formulate an hard opinion on the organization or the man himself.

I am expected to not trust my government and officials of the government and that's acceptable to most here but because this guy has some support for his organization I am supposed to just accept that he is ado gooder and means well? Not pointed at you per say but the kind of mindset that I mentioned above.

I really appreciate this thread though. It's nice to see an objective and informative post about Assange and wiki-leaks just the same.

I quite like the Times, it's not a bad read, but the part about the named man being already dead is kind of stooping to the red tops level.

You kind of think that the paper is under a bit of pressure for missing two of the biggest scoops to come out in the last 12 months, this and the MPs expenses scandal.

This and the fact that they are being propped up by their sister paper would suggest their esteem is at an all time low, judging by their 'toys out the pram' editorial.