Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land.

[seemslikeadream]

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange claims to have Rupert Murdoch 'insurance files'
Founder claims WikiLeaks has more than 500 US diplomatic cables on one broadcasting organisation

Josh Halliday
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 January 2011 17.40 GMT

Julian Assange said the 'insurance files' will be released 'if something happens to me or to WikiLeaks'. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, claimed today he was in possession of "insurance" files on Rupert Murdoch and his global media company, News Corporation.

Assange also claimed that WikiLeaks holds more than 500 confidential US diplomatic cables on one broadcasting organisation.

Speaking to journalist John Pilger for an interview to be published tomorrow in the latest edition of the New Statesman, Assange said: "There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp."

Assange refers to these specific cables as "insurance files" that will be released "if something happens to me or to WikiLeaks".

The Guardian has published stories based on more than 700 of the cables and has access to all 250,000.

He said yesterday that the whistleblowers' site would "shortly" continue publishing cables stories which would "speak more of the same truth to power".

WikiLeaks began publishing the leaked cables through international media partners including the Guardian, part of the group that publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk, in late November.

Their release slowed over Christmas as the partner media organisations, which supplied redacted versions of the documents to WikiLeaks, scaled back their cable operations.

The 39-year-old Australian is currently fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden on accusations of rape and sexual assault. Pilger, who counts Assange as a personal friend, last month offered to stand £20,000 in surety to secure the whistleblower's bail.

Attempts by the US to take legal action against Assange should worry the mainstream media, he said.

"I think what's emerging in the mainstream media is the awareness that if I can be indicted, other journalists can, too," he added.

"Even the New York Times is worried. This used not to be the case. If a whistleblower was prosecuted, publishers and reporters were protected by the first amendment, which journalists took for granted. That's being lost."

Despite pressure from the US on private companies to severe ties with WikiLeaks, Assange insisted that China is the real "technological enemy" of the site.

China has deployed "aggressive and sophisticated" interception technology to stop details of the diplomatic dispatches reaching its citizens, he said, adding that there were now "all sorts of ways" Chinese users could access the controversial material.

[wintler2]

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange claims to have Rupert Murdoch 'insurance files'..

Ha ha, i imagine the US State Dept has an increasing number of inbound calls from 'old friends' trying to get in touch with their contacts about that 'little problem' the StateDept helped them out with.
Conversations likely to include the golden lines:
"..did you ever put anything about me/my corp. in a cable?",
"why the fuck did you put anything in writing you moron?!", and
"well you guys created this problem you better fucking fix it, but if me/my corp. goes down we'll take you down with us!

United they rule, divided they will fall.

[vanlose kid]

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange claims to have Rupert Murdoch 'insurance files'..

Ha ha, i imagine the US State Dept has an increasing number of inbound calls from 'old friends' trying to get in touch with their contacts about that 'little problem' the StateDept helped them out with.
Conversations likely to include the golden lines:
"..did you ever put anything about me/my corp. in a cable?",
"why the fuck did you put anything in writing you moron?!", and
"well you guys created this problem you better fucking fix it, but if me/my corp. goes down we'll take you down with us!

United they rule, divided they will fall.

*

[nathan28]

I didn't find this posted when I searched. Thomas Bodstroem, the lawyer for the accusers in the Swedish sex crimes cases against Assange, has worked on terror deportations/renditions for the CIA before.

from Legal Schnauzer.
http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2011/01/lawyer-for-assange-accusers-has.html

A lawyer for the accusers in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has ties to the CIA and torture in the post-9/11 period, according to a 2009 report in Europe.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for Assange says his client is likely to be tortured or killed if he is extradited to Sweden and then handed over to the United States. Those concerns probably are valid, considering the background of a lawyer connected to Assange's accusers.

Thomas Bodstrom, one of the attorneys representing two women who claim Assange committed sex-related crimes, served as Sweden's minister of justice from 2000-2006, under Prime Minister Goran Persson. The 2009 report, based on a book released at that time, says Bodstrom and Persson used CIA agents to help expel two terror suspects to Egypt, where they reportedly were subjected to torture.

The Local (Sweden): Bodström reported over CIA terror deportations

The Local: Sweden pressured in 2001 terror case: report

Fresh details have surfaced about the deportation of two terror suspects from Sweden to Egypt in December 2001 [sound familiar?], including allegations of US pressure and the role of former foreign minister Anna Lindh, following the release a new book on Monday.

[American Dream]

[matrixdutch]

Julian Assange helps elderly man in french interview at 0:50

http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-20h/exclusif-l- ... 22084.html

[seemslikeadream]

Treasury: We 'don't have the evidence' to launch WikiLeaks embargo
By Sara Jerome - 01/14/11 11:24 AM ET
The Treasury Department will not comply with calls from House Homeland Security Chairman Pete King to add WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange to a list of sanctioned countries and people.

"We do not have evidence at this time as to Julian Assange or WikiLeaks meeting criteria under which OFAC [the Office of Foreign Assets Control] may designate persons and place them on the SDN [Specially Designated Nationals] list," a Treasury spokesperson told The Hill.

Adding Assange to the list would prevent U.S. companies from doing business with them; many foreign entities follow the list, as well.
King wrote Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this week urging him to add WikiLeaks to the list.

"The U.S. government simply cannot continue its ineffective piecemeal approach of responding in the aftermath of WikiLeaks' damage," King (R-N.Y.) wrote. "The administration must act to disrupt the WikiLeaks enterprise. The U.S. government should be making every effort to strangle the viability of Assange's organization."

King's letter prompted a strong response from Wikileaks.

"King wants to put a Cuban style trade embargo around the truth — forced on US citizens at the point of a gun," Assange said in a release dated Jan. 12.

[matrixdutch]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ja ... lmer-banks

Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the rich and famous to WikiLeaks
He will disclose the details of 'massive potential tax evasion' before he flies home to stand trial over his actions

Rudolf Elmer in Mauritius: “Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on.” Photograph: Rene Soobaroyen for the Guardian The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.

British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".

Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.

He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.

Along with the City of London and Wall Street, Switzerland is a fortress of banking and financial services, but famously secretive and expert in the concealment of wealth from all over the world for tax evasion and other extra-legal purposes.

Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".

Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."

"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."

Elmer was held in custody for 30 days in 2005, and is charged with breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at Julius Baer.

Elmer says: "I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also.

"Once you become part of senior management," he says, "and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy … Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."

The names on the CDs will not be made public, just as a much shorter list of 15 clients that Elmer handed to WikiLeaks in 2008 has remained hitherto undisclosed by the organisation headed by Julian Assange, currently on bail over alleged sex offences in Sweden, and under investigation in the US for the dissemination of thousands of state department documents.

Elmer has been hounded by the Swiss authorities and media since electing to become a whistleblower, and his health and career have suffered.

"My understanding is that my client's attempts to get the banks to act over various complaints he made came to nothing internally," says Elmer's lawyer, Jack Blum, one of America's leading experts in tracking offshore money. "Neither would the Swiss courts act on his complaints. That's why he went to WikiLeaks."

That first crop of documents was scrutinised by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, which found "details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust … The trust itself pays no tax, as a Cayman resident", although "the trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries".

Now, Blum says, "Elmer is being tried for violating Swiss banking secrecy law even though the data is from the Cayman Islands. This is bold extraterritorial nonsense. Swiss secrecy law should apply to Swiss banks in Switzerland, not a Swiss subsidiary in the Cayman Islands."

Julius Baer has denied all wrongdoing, and rejects Elmer's allegations. It has said that Elmer "altered" documents in order to "create a distorted fact pattern".

The bank issued a statement on Friday saying: "The aim of [Elmer's] activities was, and is, to discredit Julius Baer as well as clients in the eyes of the public. With this goal in mind, Mr Elmer spread baseless accusations and passed on unlawfully acquired, respectively retained, documents to the media, and later also to WikiLeaks. To back up his campaign, he also used falsified documents."

The bank also accuses Elmer of threatening colleagues.

[matrixdutch]

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/15/mi ... 11-wi.html

Miss America 2011: "Wikileaks was actually based on espionage."

Miss Nebraska, Teresa Scanlan, became champion of the 2011 Miss America pageant tonight. She has deep thoughts on foreign policy and radical transparency.

She won after strutting in a black bikini and a white evening gown, playing "White Water Chopped Sticks" on piano and telling the audience that when it comes to the website Wikileaks, security should come before public access to government information.

"You know when it came to that situation, it was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people's right to know, because it's so important that everybody who's in our borders is safe and so we can't let things like that happen, and they must be handled properly," she said.

[Nordic]

She's just a 17 year old child.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/15/miss-america-2011-wi.html

Miss America 2011: "Wikileaks was actually based on espionage."

Miss Nebraska, Teresa Scanlan, became champion of the 2011 Miss America pageant tonight. She has deep thoughts on foreign policy and radical transparency.

She won after strutting in a black bikini and a white evening gown, playing "White Water Chopped Sticks" on piano and telling the audience that when it comes to the website Wikileaks, security should come before public access to government information.

"You know when it came to that situation, it was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people's right to know, because it's so important that everybody who's in our borders is safe and so we can't let things like that happen, and they must be handled properly," she said.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-1223 ... um=twitter

A former Swiss banker who said he gave Wikileaks details of rich tax evaders has been found guilty of breaching Switzerland's strict bank secrecy laws.

A judge at Zurich's Regional Court did so even though the leaked documents referred to accounts in the Cayman Islands.

Judge Sebastian Aeppli fined Rudolf Elmer more than 6,000 Swiss francs ($6,250; £4,000).

But he rejected prosecution demands to give Elmer an eight-month prison sentence.

Elmer also said that he had handed confidential Julius Baer banking files to tax authorities, and later the Wikileaks website run by Julian Assange, because he had wanted to expose tax evasion by businessmen and politicians.

Mr Assange said he will publish that information within weeks, once it has been checked.

[matrixdutch]

People OK with murdering Assange
To get a different quote, refresh the page, or click the GRAY BUTTON labeled "SEE THE NEXT QUOTE" below

http://www.peopleokwithmurderingassange.com/

[justdrew]

Palin to be prosecuted for inciting violence if she visits Australia, attorney says

By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, January 21st, 2011 -- 2:58 pm

Under Australian law, inciting violence is a serious crime: an offense which could even trigger the prosecution of members of the US political class and mainstream media who called for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to his attorney.

Comments by Robert Stary, Assange's Melbourne-based lawyer, were carried in the US by a Friday broadcast of National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

"Our main concern is really the possible extradition to the US," he said. "We've been troubled by the sort of rhetoric that has come out of various commentators and principally Republican politicians — Sarah Palin and the like — saying Mr. Assange should be executed, assassinated."

Stary added: "Certainly if Sarah Palin or any of those other politicians come to Australia, for whatever purpose, then we can initiate a private prosecution, and that's what we intend to do."

In the fallout from WikiLeaks and other major newspapers around the world setting about publishing a trove of leaked US diplomatic cables, numerous figures in politics and the media came out strongly against Assange. Even Vice President Joe Biden joined the fray, suggesting Assange was a "high tech terrorist."

But for Fox News employees Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, and others paid by the Republican television network, the rhetoric was a bit more extreme.

Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who's long professed to be Christian, claimed during a Nov. book signing that he wanted to see Assange and the leaker "executed" for their actions. Huckabee did not issue similar calls for employees of publications like The New York Times or The Guardian, which at the time had published more US diplomatic cables than WikiLeaks.

Palin, similarly, wrote on her Facebook page that Assange should be pursued "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders" -- the implication being that the US military should assassinate him in person or by remote.

Conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly has also called for the leaker to be executed, but stopped short of calling for violence against Assange.

Likewise, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) suggested that WikiLeaks should be designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the Secretary of State. His call was echoed by the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who called Assange a "terrorist" and said the US should "change the law" in order to pursue him if current statutes did not permit it.

'Shock jocks'

Responding to the calls for violence, Assange called Fox News employees "shock jocks" who merely sought to promote themselves by making extreme statements in the press.

julianassangetimecover Palin to be prosecuted for inciting violence if she visits Australia, attorney says"If we are to have a civil society, you cannot have senior people making calls on national TV to go around the judiciary and illegally murder people," he said during a Dec. interview with the left-leaning MSNBC television network.

"That is incitement to commit murder," Assange continued. "That is an offense. When people call for illegal, deliberate assassination and kidnapping of others, they should be held to account. They should be charged for incitement to commit murder."

Following a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where a lone gunman put a bullet in a Democratic congresswoman's head and killed six others, Palin and other right-wing figures came under intense criticism for their frequent use of firearm imagery and rhetoric in political discourse.

While most Americans told pollsters that Palin was in no way responsible for the shootings, calls to tone down violent rhetoric in the media were largely perpetuated.

Assange, who's long held a membership in Australia's largest media union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, was largely viewed in his home country as a reporter, NPR added.

The US Department of Justice was still investigating whether Assange could be charged with espionage or a criminal conspiracy with Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier accused of funneling information to WikiLeaks.

Assange has denied even speaking to Manning before the young soldier was named in the media as being accused of leaking secret information obtained from the US military's network.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Cheers Drew I missed that, but I'll be on the phone later.

[Joe Hillshoist]

PS - Got a link?