By charles the moderator
While the identity(ies) of the source(s) of the Climategate files has never been identified, long time readers of WUWT and Climate Audit are quite familiar with the Climategate timeline as it unfolded here, there, and throughout the blogosphere.
We have open sourced the history and it was written up by the players.
We have the original notice of the emails, which went live on 11/19/2009
We have The Mosher Timeline. We have The CTM story. Both of which began on 11/17/2009
Now, basking in the celebrity spotlight from the various leaks of diplomatic communications, Julian Assange and wikileaks has attempted to take credit for things that they had little to do with. In this Video, Mr. Assange takes full credit for the release of “over ten years’ worth of emails.
Wikileaks role in the release of the Climategate files is, to say the least, exaggerated.
Over on Climate Audit, Steve McIntyre recounts:
Assange falsely claimed that the Climategate emails were broken by WikiLeaks. This is obviously untrue as CA readers know. I can date WikiLeaks’ entry by contemporary comments. The first notice of the emails at WikiLeaks was 2009/11/21 at 2.50 AM Eastern (12:50 AM blog time). The emails had been downloaded by many people (including me) from a Russian server on Nov 19 and had been downloaded by WUWT moderators on Nov 17. A contemporary comment in a CA thread says that WikiLeaks was down and refers people to megauploads. WikiLeaks has not even been a major reference for Climategate – that belongs to eastangliaemails.com (originally anelegantchaos.org) which was up on Nov 20 and provided a searchable database.
After an extensive Google search, I can find the first mention of wikileaks involvement on the web about 19 minutes earlier than Steve McIntyre found.
Paul Z. says:November 20, 2009 at 11:39 pm
The emails are on wikileaks.org now:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009
I think it is safe to assume that since we were all glued to our screens for those couple days that it is unlikely the files were available from wikileaks for over an hour before the comment above was placed.
Mr. Assange’s indiscretion is not going unnoticed though. He has been called on this story by some of the UK press.
Mr Assange has lied about aspects of his work. At a public meeting in London, he falsely claimed that the ‘Climategate’ emails from the University of East Anglia were first published by WikiLeaks. In fact, the emails were published by specialist climate websites in America and Canada – yet Mr Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics.
I think Ross McKitrick’s comment on Climate Audit from the earlier link sums up Assange’s performance best:
What a pair of blowhards. They were obviously unnerved by the question. They evidently like leaks that embarrass their political opponents, but in this case they found themselves tagged with a leak that had damaged the side they like; and since it seems to be more about political warfare against governments they dislike than some impartial ideal of transparency and freedom of information, they were stuck scrambling to make up a story about how it really served some nobler purpose. Of course they should simply have said that they weren’t the source of the leak, that it was in full circulation long before anyone looked to them for a copy and they didn’t know much about the details of what followed. But that would have been too humble, especially in front of a room full of simpering hero-worshippers. So they pretended to be insiders and proceeded to deliver a few minutes of sheer drivel.
While I was in the UK last fall, there was brief interest by the UK tabloids in the Russian angle, and an article appeared in the Daily Mail speculating that Russian intelligence officials had hacked the UEA and stolen the emails. But nobody took that line seriously and the story died within 48 hours. If Assange has a shred of evidence to support his lunatic theory he should release it. What’s with these secret communications between him and UK intelligence: out with it, Mr Wikileaks! Bloody poser.
On this issue at least they are nothing but fakes and cretins. Saying that UEA released all the background emails and whatnot to provide the full context is beyond idiocy; and Assange’s discussion of the “trick” is just painful to watch.
Now trying to backtrack wikileaks involvement, we find that:
Way back at 4:09 Pacific Time on the 19th the first mention of wikileaks occurred here on WUWT:
Jagman619 says:November 19, 2009 at 4:08 pm (Edit)
Someone who has the file, please post it to http://wikileaks.org/
Which did not go unnoticed. It is around that time that I submitted the files to wikileaks. Was I the first? I have no way to know. It was a frantic day.
But if Mr. Assange wants to clear the air my IP address is 20880.64.xxx
Everyone here knows this is nonsense. This is a desperate man who finally stepped on the wrong toes. Two groupies and the USA. Bush would have been hiding in the closet (if the emails were as easily downloaded during his Presidency). Obama feels free to go after leftist creeps and throw them overboard. Like Stalin and Trotsky.
charles –
would u ever have believed the sceptic websites would end up in a headline like this? however, pity the websites are not listed, and pity the rest of the MSM have not reported assange’s lies on this particular score.
19 Dec: UK Daily Mail: David Rose: The wildly promiscuous lifestyle of WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange: Look away now Jemima as our report reveals the sordid truth
Our investigation also reveals that:…
Mr Assange has lied about aspects of his work. At a public meeting in London, he falsely claimed that the ‘Climategate’ emails from the University of East Anglia were first published by WikiLeaks. In fact, the emails were published by specialist climate websites in America and Canada – yet Mr Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339859/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-promiscuous-lifestyle-revealed-Jemima-Khan-look-away-now.html
Australians can be sure that the vast majority of Americans would never, ever support a group whose founder is dedicated to the harm and downfall of Australia. It would never enter our minds or hearts to do that.
Australian Julian Assange of Wikilieaks has declared himself the enemy of the US and seeks its harm and downfall. Assange wrote a pair of essays in 2006, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies” and “Conspiracy as Governance,” in which he sees the U.S. as an authoritarian conspiracy. His motive in his own words “to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to its environment. . . .” by making it “dumber and slower and smaller.”
Please become acquainted with the well-documented fact that his plan is to reduce effective detection by the US to threats, by sabotaging our fairly open system. He has also published the Social Security Numbers of our troops in Afghanistan out of pure spite.
Whether he is guilty of rape or not, with so much information he can threaten people with, do you not think he now has international immunity from being convicted of any crimes against women?
And while liberals and some conservatives (eg Tony Blankley) may oppose our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is possible to do that without seeking the actual destruction of the Country with which you disagree.
Our Aus cousins have our sympathy and support as crops have been lost due to flooding. 🙁
Post Script
Australians can be sure that the vast majority of Americans would never, ever support a group whose founder is dedicated to the harm and downfall of Australia. It would never enter our minds or hearts to do that.
Australian Julian Assange of Wikilieaks has declared himself the enemy of the US and seeks its harm and downfall. Assange wrote a pair of essays in 2006, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies” and “Conspiracy as Governance,” in which he sees the U.S. as an authoritarian conspiracy. His motive in his own words “to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to its environment. . . .” by making it “dumber and slower and smaller.”
Please become acquainted with the well-documented fact that his plan is to reduce effective detection by the US to threats, by sabotaging our fairly open system. He has also published the Social Security Numbers of our troops in Afghanistan out of pure spite.
Whether he is guilty of rape or not, with so much information he can threaten people with, do you not think he now has international immunity from being convicted of any crimes against women?
And while liberals and some conservatives (eg Tony Blankley) may oppose our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is possible to do that without seeking the actual destruction of the Country with which you disagree.
Yup, “Bloody posers” sums it up. Thanks Dr McKitrick.
What a load of self-righteous, self-promoting pomposity from that blow-hard.
He got to the party late and now has the audacity to act as if he was at the party before it started.
This guy Assange will never receive the full measure of opprobrium that he deserves. He spoonfed the leftist media and now they are turning on him. Just desserts. If you want to be taken seriously as a some kind of moral force in this world, you have to behave accordingly. You have to be like Caesar’s wife, if for no other reason than you demonstrate a fidelity to your message. If you are a sex addict and a jerk, it tends to overshadow your larger message. If you doubt me, ask Bill Clinton.
And then there is the usual case of the political left claiming credit for things they had no part in. It’s their way. It’s what they do. It’s how they survive.
Does it really matter who released the letters first? Do we really want to find out who was the first one releasing the truth and bash the others? The more people say the truth the better, isn’t it?
I don’t have much time for Mr Assange…. Can’t have any respect for a man that molests women.
There are no government orgnizations pursuing him for his little data dump of diplomatic cables. The only people interested in Mr Assange are the Swedish police who are chasing him for sexual misconduct and rape charges.
…. Mr Assange is no champion of truth and justice…. He’s just a strange little man with a very weird childhood and personal history.
Agreed that this chap is a bit of a plonker, but I do wonder why the US is going out of its way to try and extradite him… I imagine the biggest worry is what he may have on a major US bank and threatened to release early next year.
WikiLeaks latest is a cloak for many things not the least of which could be rape.
Assange is someones useful idiot.
Mr Asssaange is merely obsessed with all matters below the belt (particularly his own!).
[snip]
Wasn’t it “The Air Vent” who was first with the climategate release?
I love this story!
“Mr Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics.”
This sentence says it all!
Ecotretas
I don’t see him claiming to be the first. Wikileaks did host the files when they were eventually sent there. Give the man credit for adhering to his principles. Clearly he found the climategate leaks an uncomfortable fit with his personal politics. But he hosted them anyway. He isn’t a hypocrite.
The level of vilification and character assassination in these comments is disgusting. Apparently (shock horror) Assange likes sex. Is anyone surprised? I mean – he is a man. A man who likes sex – now there is a surpise! What is the big deal?
I’m a wikileaks supporter. I managed to get my last donation through just before Visa and Mastercard cravenly caved in to political pressure and blocked them. The world needs sites like wikileaks and people like Assange, even if I don’t agree with his politics. And I’m really extremely enraged at the attempts to get him and the mob mentality so evident in these comments.
So much for America – land of the free. What a joke! First amendment – freedom of the press. Don’t make we laugh. We see now just how little Americans truly care for these principles when they propose to extradite and murder an editor for simply publishing a story and telling the truth.
Yes I’m angry. People fought and died in the 20th century for freedom and to stop things like lynch mobs. Yet here we are in the 21st century and we see yet again the ugly American lynch mob in full cry.
The lieing basket, it was me and Sherlock Holmes and Captain Nemo, we also had help with security in the form of Reepacheep.
It took 12 months and we were not listening to Lady Gaga or cavorting with Swedish strumpets rudely or badly, let it be said we do not cavort with Scandinavian strumpets rudely or badly.
Truthfully what a tosser, there were rumors the Beeb had them first and buried them.
No offence to this coalition of sleuths.
Perhaps reading too many spy novels and one quite reputable, notably, A bodyguard of lies by Anthony Cave Brown, together with the odd James Bond, Mission Impossible and Bourne Identity movies thrown in, I find it hard to believe that the intelligence community might not have “created” at least some of the leaks, or at least moved to distort the information to render it partially useless, or even set up the whole wikileaks thing as a disinformation “sting”. Failing that it is also difficult to believe that, if this guy was really holding sensitive “damaging” intelligence, he would not by now already have had the chat with St Peter.
Assange is doing good work with wikileaks. It’s no surprise he gets a lot of leftie tail.
It’s not surprising. All that wikileaks has revealed except for a handful of stories tell us nothing new about anything in geopolitics. So it is with the climategate emails; Asange, late to the party.
KPO said:
“Failing that it is also difficult to believe that, if this guy was really holding sensitive “damaging” intelligence, he would not by now already have had the chat with St Peter.”
True enough. Nothing over the level of classified revealed. Where’s the actual Top Secret info.
Interesting to note that Asange had something to do with programming for Los Alamos and NASA in 1994.
I guess the pro-AGW folk will just figure that Climate Disruption will get him in the end.
Julian Assange´s lawyer, Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent is the legal adviser of Rothschild in Rothschild´s Waddesdon Trust. Three trustees are: Lord Rothschild, Lady Rothschild, Beth Matilda Rothschild.
He only claims they published the leaks, which they did, never that they were the first.We should be thanking them for spreading this info to a wider audience, not bickering about motives. In any case, I think their motives were pure.
Assange merely talks about how they dealt with the information recieved, and whether it was worthy of publication. The conclusion was that it was valuable information that should be avaliable to the public, regardless of personal views. This story only upholds their claim to be impartial and to expose without regard to political or other agendas.
He was not trying to steal credit, he was merely using the question from the audience as an example of how they deal with leaked information.
@ Ale Gorney
Project much?
Where in his comments does Ross once mention the left, leftists, the right, or any right vs. left paradigm? He calls them out on their behavior, their choices, and their actions.
It just may happen that their actions “against governments they dislike” may be indicative of leftist leanings, but the direct connection is in your head and not in Ross’s language.
BTW, I specifically avoided any allusions to the Swedish charges, although they are featured heavily in one of the linked articles. I read the details and it is a murky case of definitions of consent and I have no interest in taking a side.
Anyone saying “They didn’t claim to be first” needs to watch that video carefully and watch how they play to the audience.
If ever there was any doubt that wikileaks was a tool of the establishment, this video clip certainly clears that up.
Wikileaks is without doubt a co-intel-pro “controlled dissent” front organisation.
Essential reading : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22389
The fact that Assange spins the significance of the “trick” with the official line is all one needs to understand their MO.
The biggest mistake such fools make is assume that they can continue to lie and deceive with impunity. Sure that lady in the audience was too dim to see through his bullsh!t but the chances are that she was a stooge anyway. She certainly does not represent the the majority who no exactly what was meant by the “trick” and can see from this pantomime that Assange is lying his ass off.
Wikileaks was as late to the ‘Climatgate’ party, if not more so than most of the MSM.
All Wiki leaks hit the headlines the minute they are released. Which shows that they are officially sanctioned.
The MSM did not want to even acknowledge the CRU leak. That is because it was a real leak and the MSM had no script and were clueless as to how to handle it.
Wikilleaks are fake and anyone who supports them financially needs to seriously re-evaluate that decision.
Ale Gorney says:
December 20, 2010 at 11:59 pm
“McKitrick’s are the most revealing and embarrassing part of this story IMHO.”
Really? McKitrick has touched a raw nerve obviously. He has examined Assange’s conduct and asked this question – why did he allege to being reluctant to release ‘his’ climategate emails? Is Assange acting as a neutral purveyor of information or does he filter according to his political beliefs? To make this simple observation is no more partisan than to state that Stalin spouted communist ideology, or that Goebbels was a fascist.
I find it quite bizarre that anyone would claim to be the first to host foi2009.zip in an age where every file download has a timestamp. Just checked my downloads folder and discover that I downloaded f0i2009.zip on 19/11/2009 at 18:16 PST from the Russian ftp server while it was still possible. The first comments on the WUWT story on the climategate files are timestamped about 11:00 PST on 19/11/2009.
Last year I hadn’t even heard of wikileaks and the blogs I frequent that were analyzing the climategate emails were WUWT, climateaudit and SDA. Once the Russian server was no longer hosting the file, it was available via bittorrent and I had a copy for a few months on my bittorrent server.
I know little about Assange except that his recent actions might be an excuse for statists around the world to clamp down on the internet and that he’s not very bright if he claims to have had a major role in distributing the climategate emails; a statement easily shown to be false by the thousands of timestamps of files downloaded by people before wikileaks even knew about the climategate emails.
Assange’s current location, a mansion near the village of Beccles, is just a short drive from the University of East Anglia. Perhaps they will invite him over for afternoon tea to sort it out.
Assange did publish the emails. Much of the MSM tried to ignore and suppress the leak. You have to give Assange credit for that
Have I missed something here? Assange doesn’t say in the video he was the first to leak the emails. Ok he says he leaked the emails but perhaps so did a couple of sites about the same time, this just seems semantics to me.
I have zero sympathy for a father who abandons his newborn baby.
Oh Lordy, interweby mis-information, who’d a thunk that, eh?
“I am sorry the MSM is not reporting proper information on “climatechange”.”
“What is it?”
“Its big swirly thing no-one understands. But that’s not important right now as an un-elected gubmint needs to suck more on the taxpayer tit to feel its doing “something” to “combat climate change”.
Ian H says
December 21, 2010 at 12:36 am
“…So much for America – land of the free. What a joke! First amendment – freedom of the press. Don’t make we laugh. We see now just how little Americans truly care for these principles when they propose to extradite and murder an editor for simply publishing a story and telling the truth….”
I don’t understand you. Freedom of speech is the freedom to be able to speak your mind. However there are limits: you can’t yell “fire” in a movie theater for obvious reasons. In addition, what does the freedom to speak your mind have to do with someone else taking communications that were meant to be private and making them public? By your logic you should post your credit card numbers and bank account numbers here for all to see. Freedom of speech right? Or maybe you’d be okay with Assange publishing your credit card information? It’s the freedom that you have to give me the information, not my freedom to take that information from you.
I think your whining about the wording of Mr Assange’s unprepared and unscripted answer to a difficult question really quite pathetic and does you no favours. He did not claim to “break” the climategate emails, just do what his organisation does with all its material – release it! If Wikileaks released the emails on 29/11/2009, you can be certain that they had the emails long before that and were checking them for their authenticity. Someone sent Paul Hudson a copy of an email asking for verification in October!
Wikileaks deal with a whole lot more important information than the climategate emails. For example they released this, which puts your petty bickering into perspective, I think you’ll agree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
Dear Charles the Moderator
Let him have his day because surely the East Anglia police will now be able to wrap up their investigation and press charges as they now know who to arrest and charge for releasing all that information that proves that wikileaks is on the right track in uncovering fraudulent misrepresentation of information by massively taxpayer funded nerds.
Cheers
Denis of Perth
I’m sort of wowed by the some of the comments. Lots of smearing in the pro and con wikileaks comments, but at end of day its just going to be an odd footnote in history. But Ale Gorney’s smear of Ross McKitrick was an obvious and pathetic ad hominem attack, and blatantly so for anyone who read McKitrick’s remarks.
But the truly SIGNIFICANT thing here is that bandwagon jumping is a proxy for the tide. Opportunists always clamber aboard after the fact and then claim it was their bandwagon in the first place. His “moral” comments aside, Assange has figured out that Climategate isn’t going away, the tide is turning, and will sweep the charlatans away. So he mumbles something about morals and supporting skeptics as a sop to his anti-establishment fans, but still wants to claim it was his bandwagon.
On the other side of the fence, Mr Al Gore has been quietly distancing himself from enthanol from corn as being not such a good idea after all… and you can just see that the first major opportunist to jump on the CAGW bandwagon and claim it was his is quietly edging over to the side and dragging one foot on the ground.
One thing about opportunists is that they sense the turning of the tide of public opinion and knowledge, and they are a proxy for where those are going.
Keep firing boys, the alarmists haven’t broken and run yet, but their lines are faltering and their generals keep on screaming CHARGE! but from the back of the ranks, not the front.
Thanks for this site Anthony. And keep the ammo… I mean articles… nah, ammo, coming.
“I have zero sympathy for a father who abandons his newborn baby.”
Do you have any sympathy for a father who had his child ripped away from him and fought in courts for nine years to see his son? Any sympathy for the six months he spent in therapy after he broke down? Any sympathy at all for a father that will never be a part of his childs life?
theduke says:
December 20, 2010 at 10:57 pm
This guy Assange will never receive the full measure of opprobrium that he deserves. He spoonfed the leftist media and now they are turning on him. Just desserts.
Just want to point out that the correct phrase in that context is “Just deserts.” Desert, meaning “deserving; the becoming worthy of recompense” from the root word deservir (to deserve) is pronounced like “dessert.” The desert that means “arid wasteland” is from the root word deserere (to abandon).
If the Swedish allegations are correct then Assange has serious moral shortcomings. Furthermore I think there is little doubt that he is anti-American. Those are good enough reasons for Americans to dislike him, but they certainly do not justify the hysterical reaction of those American politicians and media commentators who called for him to be assassinated.
In Russia, despite the end of Communism there, some journalists who have dared to investigate corruption in the regime have ended up dead. Is that the sort of comparison that would appeal to the American Right?
Some of the leaked documents show that the American government has a contemptuous attitude to many of its allies, including Britain. For example there is the case of the autistic man searching for information about UFOs who easily hacked into the Pentagon’s computers, thereby exposing the Pentagon’s woeful lack of security. The Prime Minister requested that because of fears over the man’s mental health, he be tried in Britain. Wikileaks exposed the arrogant and insulting nature of the US response.
Instead of calling for the assassination or execution of Assange, American politicians should be travelling around the world to issue grovelling apologies to their allies.
All this has little to do with Assange wrongly claiming credit for the release of the Climategate e-mails but that is a trivial matter compared to what Wikilieaks has revealed about the attitudes of American politicians and diplomats.
Thanks, ctm – this is exactly as I remember it, the comment on getting the files to wikileaks included.
Also, Steve McIntyre’s comment, which you quote above, is spot on in regard to the files being on anelegantchaos.org (later: eastangliaemails.com) on Nov 20th – because I was glued to the PC on those days, and sending links to the various files to my friends who couldn’t stop gasping with disbelief.
If Assange had moral hiccups about publishing these files, why didn’t he have moral hiccups about publishing stuff which endangered the lives of e.g. interpreters in Afghanistan?
Will, that’s also my impression: a “controlled dissent” front organisation, put up by the usual suspects, pushing homeopathic doses of thruth in a sea of irrelevant chatter, aka “Spielmaterial”, for us, the people, to chew on. Steve Short, in a comment over at Jeff Id’s explains it very concisely:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/wiki-liars/#comment-41183
“…So much for America – land of the free. What a joke! First amendment – freedom of the press. Don’t make we laugh. We see now just how little Americans truly care for these principles when they propose to extradite and murder an editor for simply publishing a story and telling the truth….”
Yes you do. I used small words and everything.
Freedom of speech is the freedom to be able to speak your mind. However there are limits: you can’t yell “fire” in a movie theater for obvious reasons.
Here we go; the old “fire in the crowded movie theatre” exception; the beloved excuse and prime example of all who want to limit freedom of speech. Let me point out that there are some circumstances in which you CAN yell fire in a crowded movie theatre. In particular you are quite justified in yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre if indeed the movie theatre is actually on fire! Since nothing Assange published is untrue, I fail to see how the “fire in the crowded movie theatre” exception applies.
As it happens I did send Mr Assange my credit card information when I used my credit card to make a donation. He has my name and credit card number and everything. Yet amazingly it seems he has chosen not to publish that information on the web! Fancy that! Do you think that might be because my credit card information doesn’t meet the requirements for publication on wikileaks?
Mr Assange didn’t take information from anyone. He was given it by a courageous and/or deluded young individual apparently working for the US army. Mr Assange is under no obligation to keep US secrets and since he found the information to be interesting and of public interest, chose to publish it. That is what the news media does and is entitled to do.
By your insane logic, our esteemed host should be tried for treason for discussing the contents of the climategate emails. After all those were `stolen’ – right?
Anthony – could we PLEASE have a preview button so that people like myself who make the odd formatting error can patch them up before exposing them to the world.
[ The lack of a preview / edit button is a “feature” of WordPress and beyond the control of Anthony. -MOD]
[about the only perk a moderator gets from those stingy evil overlords is the ability to edit our own comments. ~ ctm]
I’m continually perplexed by Americans desire to associate private behaviour with political message.
Assange’s sexual behaviour is of no concern to us. It’s between him and the courts. If he’s guilty he should do the time, but until then he is innocent.
Continually harping on about it, in an attempt to smear his political message, is effectively an ad hominen attack. Which posters on this site go mental over when it is one of their favourites.
Play straight! Attack his message by all means, but only that.
Reply: I did ~ ctm
This man Assagne is David Icke’s alter ego?
http://www.publiceye.org/Icke/IckeBackgrounder.htm
Kudos for a fine and informative article, Charles. While I find Mr Assange a revolting and self-serving publicity hound and all-around reprehensible character, there is plenty of opprobrium to go around for everyone concerned.
The U.S. is no different than any other country regarding its behind the scenes machinations, when they think that their diplomatic communications are confidential. This episode is like the climategate emails; for example, when it is admitted privately that it is a travesty that no evidence of AGW has been found — while publicly stating that AGW is much worse than we thought.
Julian Assange has stepped on too many toes, and like Al Capone [who couldn’t be nailed for his real crimes, so was convicted of tax evasion], Mr Assange is going to pay the price for being the snitch, as an example to others. And of course, for revenge.
Even though I find Julian Assange to be a thoroughly reprehensible character, I come down on the side of freedom of the press, including total freedom of the internet. The public should be made aware of information whenever possible. The onus should be on those in possession of information to protect it, not on those into whose lap it occasionally falls.
It baffles me why encryption is not required in government [and business] communications. Allowing hundreds of thousands of social security numbers and other personal information to fall into the wrong hands via a stolen laptop, simply because a password wasn’t mandatory, is inexplicable. It’s like leaving loaded guns around to be found by monkeys.
And the fact that a private first class [a one striper] in a highly sensitive position with little supervision was easily able to download reams of video and other information and send it to Wikileaks should be a loud wakeup call to the military and the government. Like making sausage, the public does not need to know the process; only the end result, which is what affects their lives. It is the process that must be cleaned up.
Yeah I don’t buy what is said in the video at all, not that Assange say’s he scooped anything as I don’t believe he does, he does give the impression that Wikileaks was a main source of the climategate leaks when it was really was not. The files were out there and they had no choice but to go along. That’s what my dodgy memory of events recalls anyway.
Assange at the end of the video mentions bullets of truth in the historical record allowing us to progress, I hope he means it and hope he realizes that the truth is an absolute and as foreign to the left as the right.
This guy reminds me of Al Gore–taking credit where none is due. What a pair of despicable jackwagons.
This guy is very much like Carlos the Jakal.
A complete poseur.
Those in the hacker community who have known about Assange for a long time know that he is a dishonest, democracy hating, plagiarist and rape fantasist. Case in point:
There used to be a site called Ogrish which hosted leaked war and terrorist videos. They dubbed this site ‘For those who can handle real life’. Assange and the hacker and 4chan types loved this type of online material. It’s their bit of fetish. Ogrish was hosted by ads for various ‘reality porn’ sites including simulated rape, bestiality, sex in public, and S+M. Assange was particularly impressed by the rape videos and then began practising simulated rape on his girlfriends.
Time passed and Ogrish became LiveLeak.com in order to jump on the user generated content gravy train. That meant removing offensive advertising and going mainstream. When this happened, Assange got the idea of blending LiveLeak’s concept with Wikipedia. WikiLeaks was born from that.
With that background we should not be surprised to learn about Assange’s rape case or his plagiarised credits. Even many of the so called leaked files he puts on his WikiLeaks contain nothing we don’t already now. Why? Because many of those leaked communiques are faked or edited to contain stuff we already know from months of news articles. Arabs don’t like Persians? Berlusconi a party animal? There’s nothing new in any of it.
As for shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre be it noted that for an actor, and if the script requires it, it is part of their job. Members of the audience, however, have a moral duty to shout ‘fire’, and therefore have a moral right to do so. That is, assuming there to actually be a fire about which to raise an alarm.
“yet Mr Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics.”
Interesting…aside from lying about it, he claims to wrestle with the morality of causing injury to the arguments of liars, but he has not compunction against releasing files that could (and did?) result in the deaths of hundreds of humans.
I would call him a lowlife snake, but I like snakes better than that.
A leak (in this particular sense of the word) is a one off. What has been leaked may be repeated, circulated, magnified, minimised, etc., but once information has been leaked, it cannot be leaked again.
Ian H. wrote “He isn’t a hypocrite.” Of course he is a hypocrite because he takes on the easy targets, the western democracies, not the likes of Iran, Russia, China, any middle eastern state, that truly abuses civil rights and have zero transparency. He knows no one gives a s*** about those countries because condemming them doesn’t work with their world view. Potentially putting our soldiers, agents, and diplomats in harms way by compromising state secrets does not make him a hero in anyway, it indeed makes him an enemy of the US. And don’t give me a song and dance about how American doesn’t have a free press anymore or is an opaque society, that BS and you know it. The stuff that is printed everyday about our leaders, left and right, would be a gulag sentence in many parts of the world or would have you sued to your last penny in some UK slander court, or dragged into the Human Rights Commission Courtroom for thoughtcrime in Canada.
If he has information about the banks or other financial crimes that occured in the US, i think it’s great that he publishes those, they are in fact CRIMES and should be dealt with accordingly and he should be rightly praised for exposing them. Compromising US security however should and will get him in hot water.
Ultimately I think he has no motivation beyond proving he can embarass the US and gaining as much fame as possible. He has done a good job in that regard.
I do not support anyone who is working to damage my country, its fairly elected government, or any of its citizens, most especially the ones putting themselves in harms way to protect the rest of it. Neither should any American.
I basically agree with what Smokey (December 21, 2010 at 4:30 am) says about Wikileaks. That reams of diplomatic cables and military communications were left hanging on some open tree waiting to be picked by any passer-by is incompetence at mind-blowing levels. No encryption? No private networks? Clearly some government IT hides need to be nailed to the wall.
However, the new Congress is going to update the Espionage Act to include the electronic publication of state secrets, and if they can build a fire under the useless Eric Holder (the Attorney General under Obambi), this slimeball Assange will end up spending many years in jail, if not facing a capital charge. Freedom of the press does not include espionage, which in wartime is a capital offense.
Frankly, I am not sure why anyone cares when Assange got hold of the Climategate materials, though it is presumptuous of him to imply that Wikileaks was solely responsible for releasing them to the media.
/Mr Lynn
As many here have posted, personal dislike of Julian Assange is different to criticism of his actions with regard to claiming credit for things which Wikileaks did not lead. I am not sure I am all that keen on the “no more secrets” philosophy – sometimes people need to be able to speak their mind without fear of it being spread far and wide; this being especially true of diplomats. This is a personal opinion that I am sure is not the same as everyyone else’s, but why then does one person’s opinion (Mr Assange) take precedence?
Where Mr Assange has overdone things, however, is to make threats to certain specific organizations (banks in particular – he claims to have information that will discredit at least one major banking group) and he is now finding that these groups have a bit more power than governments to affect his organization. Why is it only now that the payment agencies have begun to drop WikiLeaks when – if this was due to US government pressure – it wasn’t done earlier this year when the first tranche of Pvt Mannings’ document were released?
I don’t like conspiracy theories, but badly formed ones are even worse.
Roy wrote: “In Russia, despite the end of Communism there, some journalists who have dared to investigate corruption in the regime have ended up dead. Is that the sort of comparison that would appeal to the American Right? ”
Assange is not a journalist trying to expose corruptions. He is a foreign agent attempting to expose state secrets. There is a huge difference. One is commendable and is done every day by US journalists. The other is called “being a spy” and is a crime and is punishable by deportation or imprisonment. If the information is critical, and the only way to stop it from getting out is by offing the spy, that is perfectly acceptable when going through the proper channels.
He also wroge: “Instead of calling for the assassination or execution of Assange, American politicians should be travelling around the world to issue grovelling apologies to their allies.”
Hilary Clinton has been doing this for several weeks now.
First time in over a year of daily visits I am truly disgusted by the commentary on this site.
Assange alleged rape case is very highly political – the 1st woman invited him to her home and only afaik complains about no condom being used. Well, that is a bit hard to prove what actually happened isn’t it? Consensus on no condom, broken condom, what? She did however host a party for Assange later, which is not what most rape victims would do.
The 2nd woman has admitted to giving “oral services” to Assange in a movie theatre before they went on to spend the night together.
The accusations happened after the girls found out about each other and realized he was not a husband-type of guy.
Now, there are known rapists and child molesters at large in the EU. Where are their interpol arrest warrants? If there is no need for any evidence, anybody, that includes YOU, could be extradited anywhere anytime. Evidence? No need pal…
“WT says:
December 20, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Does it really matter who released the letters first? Do we really want to find out who was the first one releasing the truth and bash the others? The more people say the truth the better, isn’t it?”
I think you missed the point. The point is he lied. This is where character matters.
“Bulldust says:
December 20, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Agreed that this chap is a bit of a plonker, but I do wonder why the US is going out of its way to try and extradite him… I imagine the biggest worry is what he may have on a major US bank and threatened to release early next year.”
Actually, I believe it’s Sweden that is trying to extradite him.
“Ian H says:
The level of vilification and character assassination in these comments is disgusting. Apparently (shock horror) Assange likes sex. Is anyone surprised? I mean – he is a man. A man who likes sex – now there is a surpise! What is the big deal?”
The “big deal” is that it’s not quite that simple. He’s wanted for forcing women to have unprotected sex with him…an act which is against the law in Sweden where it aledgedly took place.
“…So much for America – land of the free. What a joke! First amendment – freedom of the press. Don’t make we laugh. We see now just how little Americans truly care for these principles when they propose to extradite and murder an editor for simply publishing a story and telling the truth.”
I don’t know when/where America proposed to extradite or murder this man. But don’t you find it somewhat hypocritical and ironic that the man who believes there should be NO secrets…is attempting to protect himself by keeping…secrets?
JimB
Boris Gimbarzevsky says:
December 21, 2010 at 1:38 am
FWIW:
tux:FOIA> TZ=UTC; ls -l FOI2009.zip
-rw-r–r– 1 werme users 64936854 2009-11-18 01:06 FOI2009.zip
tux:FOIA> TZ=PST8PDT; ls -l FOI2009.zip
-rw-r–r– 1 werme users 64936854 2009-11-17 17:06 FOI2009.zip
Those must reflect the timestamp on the Russian server (I think that’s
where I got it), as I first heard about the file on WUWT.
Assange is arcing high and fast. My hope is he will do like any other skyrocket ASAP.
Like Obama, when he first declared war on the US back in 2006 we would have been wise to take him seriously.
Now, like Obama, he has attracted a cult following of mindless tools who choose not to see him as he is.
His 2006 essay is disturbing- that he wrote it, and that we did not pay attention to it.
OMG they took credit for releasing the climategate mails, boo ho, oh, wait, wasn’t that exactly what they did?
Note that they don’t say that they were the first or primary release, only that they released it. One can question their omission of the fact that others released the climategate package first, but they’re not really required to, neither were the question asked by the reporter framed like they would have had to.
So essentially don’t throw stones in a green house.
“Smokey:
It baffles me why encryption is not required in government [and business] communications. Allowing hundreds of thousands of social security numbers and other personal information to fall into the wrong hands via a stolen laptop, simply because a password wasn’t mandatory, is inexplicable. It’s like leaving loaded guns around to be found by monkeys.”
I actually deal with encryption solutions as part of my job. I can tell you that by and large, encryption adoption and implementation is not dissimilar from the PC backup scenario, that being that only people that have lost everything on their PC actually do backups. For the most part, only businesses that have found themselves on the front page regarding a data leak tend to adopt encryption.
In my mind, it’s like driving without auto insurance. You may save a little this year, and maybe next…but sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself with a very large problem that dwarfs the costs of protection.
JimB
It’s pretty clear that Assange doesn’t specialize in science and doesn’t know the details of this subject … his own ideas are pretty much the standard leftist line. But what he said at the end is perfectly in line with the proper role of science. Motives and credit shouldn’t matter in the long run. If he’s working for MI5 or FSB or CIA, that shouldn’t matter.
The only thing that matters in science is having all the facts available to all the people who can use them. Fighting with bullets of truth, as he said.
And Assange has helped awaken the public to the value of having all the facts, even if he was a latecomer to this particular set of facts.
Assange is an attention-craving idealist. Exactly the wrong kind of person you want with any kind of political power. In fact, at the risk of hyperbole, his behavior is very similar to Kim Jong-Il’s.
@monroe
‘WikiLeaks latest is a cloak for many things not the least of which could be rape.’
Apparently not only Mr Assange is wearing a tin foil hat.
As to the rape, it is only per the broad Swedish legal definition of rape that it might be interpreted as rape. It pretty much boils down to if he should have disclosed of not wearing a condom when she had asked him to use one. What’s probably uping the enforcement of rape charge at this state, instead of a lesser charge, if a charge at all, seem more be with the fact that he refused to be checked for venereal deceases, especially HIV and AIDS, which probably would freak out anyone that just had a one night stand, but for a fawning fanatical wikileakser and a religious person it’s probably a bit worse what with the trust issue to a person who can be defined as an authority figure no less.
The very same arguments used by the MSM against the publication of the climategate emails (they were private, they were stolen, etc) are being used on this site to inveigh against this guy.
On the other hand, the main newspapers in the US and Europe (the NYT, The Guardian, El País etc) have sequestered the information and are freely releasing it according to their own selective criteria, with much fanfarre, gaining readership by the mere confirmation of what are known to be the standard views of the US administration: Iran is this, Venezuela is that, and so on. In the meantime, the site that contained all the information is brought down and there is a coordinated effort to dismantle the organization and criminalize this guy, with calls for his assassination by all kinds of public figures. I wonder why nobody is asking for the assassination of the editors of these MSM newspapers. In the case of the New York Times, the editors are presumably American, so if the release of this information is grounds for “treason” charges, then I suppose American nationals who engage in this activity would be much more transparently guilty of treason against their country than foreigners who never sworn any allegiance to this country.
This is such a bunch of hogwash and a monumental exercise in hypocrisy. And Mosher’s ruffled feathers at the fact that someone else may even remotely hint at being among the first to release this info is a pathetic display of hypertrophied self-importance. The “first” was the person or persons who made the information available on the Russian site and alerted climate blogs of its existence. I suppose that person would have much more reason to be amused by Mosher’s hurt feelings, than Mosher has to be dismissive of whatever the wiekileaks guy has said about those emails.
Wiekileaks did post the climategate files, and they did so in spite of the fact they didn’t like what was in them at all. That is precisely what a belief in freedom of expression means. If you believe in freedom of expression *only* for views that you find to your liking, then I can assure you that the world’s most notorious tyrants have always been big believers in it. Many of you found the climategate emails good public information and defended them on those grounds, and justly hissed at the hypocrisy of those who invoked the stolen privacy card, but now you acting exactly in the same manner as they did.
Revealing secrets is a fine line between secrets that reveal potential wrong-doing as in Climate-gate, and secrets that reveal covert security maneuvers, as in intelligence gathering carried on in foreign countries or against hamper heads here (Lord I apologize for saying “hamper heads” and for the starving children in Africa). Only those with high moral fiber and an internal finely tuned sense of right vs wrong consequences should ever touch such an endeavor. Assange is a loose canon with no such internal compass. He placed men and women serving our country in jeopardy. He should be banned from ever crossing our borders in the US, and if he ever tries, he should rot in jail.
So for whistle blowers (and in the case of Climategate, he rode coattails for sure), be prepared to take responsibility for the consequences, be it praise for revealing wrong-doers and stupidity, or jail for harming those engaged in our national security interests.
Smokey, great, great comment.
We care about freedom of speech so much we’re leading the charge at destigmatizing people for criticizing Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. You seem to confuse freedom of speech with government secrets. Now if you ask the average American, I’m sure 50-80% of them would tell you that the media in the country and indeed the world has completely failed us, they no longer ask the right questions, they no longer say the right things when questions are not answered. That is where the majority of freedom of speech has been surrendered. It’s amazing to me that many citizens of other developed nations by contrast seem to swallow what the press says without a single critical thought. Governments, even freely elected open governments *must* keep secrets. They must keep secrets because they are open and they must expect that infiltrators are everywhere. If America worked like North Korea, the government could tell everyone everything because there wouldn’t be much fear of a leak. Why does an open government need to keep a secret? Because we do not live in an ideal world. Not every government in this world works the same way, with the proper representation of it’s people. If the U.S., in trying to deal with Iran, was also exposing all of it’s options on the table for dealing with Iran by being fully open, exactly how does that help world stability? It gives every advantage to dictators when open societies lay their cards on the table. Doing so is just plain stupid.
THIS IS NOT TO SAY that the amount of secrets held by Government is perfectly appropriate, or that no mistakes in the process are made (for political reasons or otherwise). I’ve worked with government workers long enough to know that they are lazy and often under-qualified. However if you truly and fully subscribe to Mr Assange’s idealism of governments where every secret is revealed you are being quite naive. Firstly, this episode about Wikileaks and Climategate demonstrates that he’s just in it for the fame, and doesn’t care about the truth. That should raise red-flags in your mind. Now, when you combine selective release of information with any form of idealism, you essentially have a weapon that in this case is directed against freely elected governments. It’s fair to say that in your support of Assange, you supported the downfall of a freely elected government in the United States. Second, Mr Assange’s website has a history of targeting only one side of the political spectrum. If you can’t see this then I’m sorry you’ve allowed your desire for Assange’s idealism to see sunlight to blind you to what he’s actually doing. Wikileaks tends to reveal information that can directly lead to U.S. soldier deaths, and no one else. Those are volunteers put in a situation they can’t control and this ***hat attention-craving idealist has decided to put their lives on the line.
I’m all for you if your goal is to embarrass politicians who are too proud and too dishonest, but if your target is a well-meaning volunteer soldier with a kid and a working wife at home, you’re nothing but a jerk.
I honestly can’t believe you support that kind of crap.
The truth of a fire being in the theatre is *NOT* what makes it acceptable to yell fire in a theatre. What makes it acceptable is that in yelling “FIRE” you are potentially SAVING LIVES in the case when there is a fire, and potentially HARMING LIVES if there is no fire. Can you see the difference? You are conflating the existence of truth with the necessity of openness, to your discredit.
In a way it is a good sign of success for those who actually exposed the fraud of global warming. Good work.
Mr Assange is beneath contempt and not worth worrying about, really. He’s not producing the intelligence, just inciting treason on the part of a few of the radical leftists who obtained there positions courtesy of Obama. That doesn’t really take a whole lot of skill on the part of Assange. Patriots will go behind Obama’s back and stop the leaks even if he won’t. Mr. Assange is completely irrelevant.
I’m more worried about the completely bankrupt ideology of people like the poster WT above. He/she seems perfectly ready to agree that it’s best for the “truth” of our soldier’s social security numbers to be know by all, the “truth” of what our planned troop movements are (to facilitate IED placement), the “truth” of what our assessments of dictator so and so are, etc.
People like WT need to go ahead and move to Somalia and make themselves right at home. That is the kind of world they advocate. But, instead of doing that, they wait and agitate in the the hope of taking the rest of us with them.
OK, he said “we released” the emails.
Well everyone knows WikiLeaks is just publishing or hosting information. It makes availale what someone else releases. It has always been that way, he’s not claiming anything new.
The files were released by person or persons unknown to a temporary site in the Ukraine(?) with a note that they would not stay there long. Please copy and distribute. “Limited time offer” IIRC.
I was on top of this as it was happening and don’t recall WUWT or CA hosting the files themselves though they were key in getting the news around.
In that case WL did play a key role in ensuring the diffusion of this critically important information.
Assange does not claim in that video to have had a world wide scoop or to be the exclusive source. Anyone taking that as a reason to start attacking him is more likely being ingenuous and using that as a surrogate because they are pissed off about him releasing some other information. Maybe they did not like seeing crazyhorse 18 murdering people in Iraq with a 30mm canon. Maybe they don’t like the cables release.
Either way this is much a fuss about nothing. WikiLeaks was important in getting CRU emails worldwide. There’s no point in bitching about “released” vs hosted etc.
Assange has stuck his neck on the line to get this stuff out in the light of day. He has balls. No one with any self respect would be sniping at him from the safety of their keyboard.
Who said he wasn’t a hypocrite?
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/WikiLeaksAssange/2010/12/21/id/380543
Mr. Irony, meet Mr. Bitter.
I bet our Australian friends are glad Mr. Assange has chosen to leave Australia for Europe. If he winds of in jail in the land of the Nobel Prize, he will have raised the IQ of both countries.
Climate Gates emails were a serious matter while Weak-ee leaks are gossips, no comparison between the two,
WT says:
December 20, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Does it really matter who released the letters first? Do we really want to find out who was the first one releasing the truth and bash the others? The more people say the truth the better, isn’t it?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
But obviously, as we see here, Assange doesn’t know truth. He intentionally distorts his releases for political purposes and self aggrandizement without regards to the lives he endangers. Twice before, when releasing videos of violent conflicts, he edited the video to make one side appear unarmed and non-threatening. When full video is released, it shows that Assange intentionally misled, just as the video above shows.
Poser is a pretty gentle description of this dangerous megalomaniac.
Ian H says:
December 21, 2010 at 12:36 am …
Yes, Ian H, my father, no doubt along with relatives of other contributors to this blog, “fought and died in the 20th century for freedom and to stop” all sorts of things. He certainly did not fight or die for creeps like Assange.
“Assange falsely claimed that the Climategate emails were broken by WikiLeaks.” – Steve McIntyre
At no point in this video clip did I hear Assange say “broken”, or that they were the first to release the emails. He said they released the emails. As did McIntyre, Jeff ID, Watts, and anyone else who had the opportunity. I think you guys are getting on your high horse over semantics. Assange did not say that Wikileaks was the first.
By way of explanation he might have said that Wikileaks was not the only source, was one of many disseminators of the info, or some such. By this omission you hang him. He was obviously under time pressure and was trying, in under a minute, to outline the scope of Climategate to the audience as if they had never heard of it.
While I disagree with his CAGW leanings which clearly show between the lines as he dismisses the ‘trick’, etc., I really think you guys are doing a huge adhominen rant with little or no evidence.
What is the “FSB?” Ass ange is referring to?
[Reply: Successor to the KGB. ~dbs, mod.]
Julian Assange and his 15 minutes of
fameinfamyclownishness.John
Volt Aire says:
December 21, 2010 at 5:48 am
“First time in over a year of daily visits I am truly disgusted by the commentary on this site.
Assange alleged rape case is very highly political –……..”
=======================================================
And I’m truly awe struck about your interpretations of the comments. So far, 58 comments. Three included the word “rape”, excluding yours. I believe this thread, generally, is about Mr. Assange taking indecent liberties with truth (a fine lady, above reproach).
More specifically, towards his lying about his role in “releasing” the climate-gate e-mails. Others have posted towards his motivations and others prior examples of his divergences from truth. My thoughts, specifically on the issue you brought up, is that there are legal standards in G.B. If the jurists believe they are met, then he has to answer the charges according to law in Sweden.
Ian H says:
December 21, 2010 at 12:36 am
Ian – you have a great misunderstanding of what “freedom” means – in any nation. The concept of “Freedom of the Press”, “Freedom of Speech” and the other freedoms are from GOVERNMENT restrictions – not private ones. The government is not free to restrict your freedoms – either by denying you the right to say or print something – or by forcing you to.
So while bureaucrats bluster about Assange and Wikileaks, the truth is your precious symbol of the “Press” printed most of his leaks of government cables (that would be the NY Times), but refused to print any of the climategate emails “Because they were improperly obtained”. Just hypocrisy on their part – but their FREEDOM to be so.
The same with VISA and MC. They CHOSE not to do business with Wikileaks because they were getting a black eye from it. So while 10 people shout that is censorship (it is, but not government), a million shout their huzzahs at basically telling Assange they do not like what he did.
The sad part is neither Assange nor most of his supporters understand what he did. Which is supply the electrons to publish the purloined cables – be he did not leak them. Manning did. So instead of going gaga over Assange, you should be using your money to come up with a defense fund for Manning. He is your real hero, not Assange. Assange is just a fame leech. He is sucking at the teet of his 15 minutes for every drop of blood he can get – and for doing nothing other than advertising someone else work as his own.
it is no wonder he is also claiming credit for the East Anglia emails. He has done nothing yet (with the possible exception of forced unprotected sex with 2 Swedish women).
Everyone is forgetting that prior to leaking the emails to the world on November 19th 2009 the person sent them to Paul Hudson, weather and climate change expert with the BBC and former UK Met Office employee. Hudson received them on October 23rd, 2009, five weeks before. Hudson received only a portion of the documents ultimately released through the Russian IP.
One commentator says it doesn’t matter who released them. In fact, it is very important because that person clearly knew a great deal about CRU including access information and which emails were most damaging. The person also released computer codes and they are long over due for a detailed assessment. The person can tell us a great deal more about the machinations within the CRU because they clearly were from an insider.
Jones’ action by calling in the Norfolk police was important because it stopped further disclosures until they finished their investigations – this still hasn’t happened. The police brought in the National Domestic Extremism Unit. Why? It appears like all these actions were a cover up. Has anybody seen or heard from Keith Briffa lately?
1DandyTroll says:
December 21, 2010 at 6:19 am
@monroe
‘WikiLeaks latest is a cloak for many things not the least of which could be rape.’
Apparently not only Mr Assange is wearing a tin foil hat.
As to the rape, it is only per the broad Swedish legal definition of rape that it might be interpreted as rape. It pretty much boils down to if he should have disclosed of not wearing a condom when she had asked him to use one. What’s probably uping the enforcement of rape charge at this state, instead of a lesser charge, if a charge at all, seem more be with the fact that he refused to be checked for venereal deceases, especially HIV and AIDS, which probably would freak out anyone that just had a one night stand, but for a fawning fanatical wikileakser and a religious person it’s probably a bit worse what with the trust issue to a person who can be defined as an authority figure no less.
Now available from Condomania
http://americandigest.org/sidelines/dickileak-condoms.jpg
He’s visiting Jimmy Hoffa?
Ian H said at 3:14 am
Mr Assange is under no obligation to keep US secrets and since he found the information to be interesting and of public interest, chose to publish it.
Wow! Little did any of us realize Ian, that Mr. Assange is the second coming of Christ. That he, and he alone of almost 7 billion of us has the intellectual strength, above reproach moral standing, self-less nature and agenda-free insight to determine what the rest of us should know – or not know. In spite of now knowing this (and thank you) I for one decline to worship him as you do. (Ian, it’s a American “freedom” thing – to worship or not – something you know even less about than what “Americans truly care for”.)
Now, IF Mr. Assange is NOT the second coming, then what he and ALL of you who support him are for is – total anarchy. No societal rules, no government, no laws, no morality, no rights, no responsibilities, no nothing that stops any of us from saying, publishing, (Sorry CTM, your out of a job) disregarding others rights (as they have none), maybe even doing anything we want.
Oh, I know what you’re saying, “He’s taking it to an impossible extreme”. Really? Well let me then ask, who died and made Assange king of the world? Or for that matter, you Ian? The whole definition of “secrets” and what is secret is made by someone of greater authority (as defined by societal laws) than Assange, or you or I. If ANY of us can make THAT decision, then any of us can do or say anything. Ian, you lament about how “so many people died” for freedom but failed to mention surely most of them, far more than wherever you are from, (I would bet) were Americans! Because what the greater majority of us real Americans understand is there are two sides to every coin. Where on one side you have inalienable rights on the other you have responsibilities, responsibilities to honor the same rights of others. And where on one side you have freedom on the other side you have laws, laws enacted by the free that define the afore mentioned rights and responsibilities of each of us. It’s NOT JUST American freedom (and in many case, others freedoms) we Americans defend and yes, die for. It’s also the laws that define the restriction on reckless and unconstrained freedom.
And as for what your “god” released, it has had little (if any) intended effect, as it was mostly known information as clearly said in an article by George Friedman, the CEO of Stratfor, where in he said, For someone who was watching …, the leaks might have provided interesting details but they would not have provided any startling distinction between the reality that was known and what was revealed. and also There is precious little that was revealed that was unknown to the informed observer. You can read it all here: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20101213-taking-stock-wikileaks?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=101214&utm_content=GIRtitle&elq=702ffcf2caec40b3b725fec9be911305
And the importance AND impact/effect of “Climategate” to the world is far greater than anything Assange released – – well, except for Mr. Assange himself as he is now contending with the “law of unintended consequences”, a law of “responsibility” which so many do-gooders continue to ignore because so often the job of cleaning up the mess falls in the lap of others.
And yes, the IT department of the Gov. is equally to blame – – that is if someone higher up didn’t intend for this to happen in the first place.
As Lord Monckton would say :”Climate Gate” was a different kind of “leak”: A bedwetters’ leak. 🙂
Does he actually claim to be “the first to have made them available” or just to have “made them available”?
In the scheme of things, it does not really matter who takes the credit for it. In the end the public barely give a sh1t about the contents of the emails, let alone the details of the release. They just believe the “independent” inquiries, oh, and because there have been quite a few of those “independent” inquiries, I guess there is nothing wrong in applying a trick to hide a decline or in actively blocking FOI requests and conspiring to delete data you know will be subject to such a request (which is a crime in itself).
Sometimes I wonder whether people would be bothered even if some government agency started eating their children. There seems to be no limit to apathy. As long as they have the football and televised talent contests, they will put up with anything.
Pull My Finger says:
December 21, 2010 at 5:31 am
Ian H. wrote “He isn’t a hypocrite.” Of course he is a hypocrite because he takes on the easy targets, the western democracies, not the likes of Iran, Russia, China, any middle eastern state, that truly abuses civil rights and have zero transparency.
What made us particularly vulnerable to the 9-11 attacks was the “walls of separation” between our various intelligence and law enforcement agencies. We have much better inter-agency communication on foreigners who come here on student visas, etc.
The names of individual dissidents in countries with dictatorial regimes are in those emails. The fact that this makes no difference to him, in his reckless plan to harm American interests, reveals that he does not value the “regime change” he speaks of in places where people lose their lives and families for opposing the government.
WOW!
This thread knocks down my opinion of this comment “community” several notches! What ghoulish glee is demonstrated in the ad hominem parade here! What unrestrained and uncharitable speculation! What cheerful condemnation! Such spectacular conflation and imprecision of targeting! My my, if this be science, count me out.
Thanks to the few of you who have called out the ad hominems and were careful enough to make some distinctions
Zeke the Sneak:
“And while liberals and some conservatives (eg Tony Blankley) may oppose our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is possible to do that without seeking the actual destruction of the Country with which you disagree.”
Right, but is it possible to do it without embarrassing our elite and pointing out their manipulations? Neither Assange nor Wikileaks is trying to destroy the “Country” (my, must our Uber Country be capitalized now!?) Do yourself a favor and become a regular reader of antiwar.com — having the scales removed only hurts for a minute.
Assange was foolish, irresponsible and acted inimically to American and western interests. That’s the problem with freedom of speech it allows people like this egotistical attention seeking child to do what he has done.
The “leaker” of the Climategate documents was responsible and acted in the very best interests of all of us ultimately. That’s the benefit of free speech in that it allows people to get essential, if unpopular and embarrassing information out into the public’s view.
You can’t have one without the other and whilst I agree that public approbation of Wikileaks should be loud and sustained so as to give others pause before they act I can’t agree that this knob deserves punishment for doing what he has done because that would have a chilling effect on anybody else wishing to bring essential information to the public’s attention.
His rape stuff is something else altogether , that will be dealt with by the Swedish authorities in the appropriate way and anyone who tries to conflate the two just has no idea of what they are dealing with.
Ah, we yearn for openness and truth, …except when we do not like it: The messenger of truth somehow becomes the villain. WUWT?
This Wikileaks issue separates real sceptics from political sceptics, which are no sceptics at all.
I read this in a report about the transportation mess in Europe because of the snow:
“We have seen in recent years that snow in Western Europe is not such an exceptional circumstance.”
I think the powers that be are starting to regret their belief in the religion of global warming.
@ Keith Battye says:
December 21, 2010 at 8:56 am
Well stated. This quote seems to apply…………
“None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.” —John Milton
It is true that a few conservatives have made some rather extreme statements regarding assassinating Assange. Lives of Middle Eastern dissidents (a man who escaped Iran whose family is still there, for example) and of our troops are being endangered and I believe this is the cause of the over-emotionalism.
Ann Coulter:
“Among the criminal laws apparently broken by Assange is 18 U.S.C. 793(e), which provides:
“Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, (etc. etc.) relating to the national defense, … (which) the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates (etc. etc) the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same (etc) …
“Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
As is evident, merely being in unauthorized possession of classified national security documents that could be used to harm this country and publishing those documents constitutes a felony. There’s no exception for …”journalists.” Journalists are people, too!”
Ms Coulter has a law degree so this might help some of you:
“The First Amendment isn’t a Star Trek “energy field” that protects journalists from phasers, photon torpedoes, lasers, rockets and criminal prosecutions.”
Many arguments here seem to imply that anything a journalist does to publish any story is automatically a First Amendment issue. However, he has broken the law and the penalty is ten years with three squares and a cot.
Freedom of the press implies the right of the press to be critical of those in power, critical of their decisions, able to suggest the benefits of one choice over another or even bring up an option the government isn’t considering. Exposing wrong doing with information that was never intended to be public is where the area gets a bit grey depending on what the information was and how it was obtained. But none of that applies to Mr Assange.
Wikileaks exposes information at random for the sole purpose of profiting from it. He’s not reporting on information being leaked, he’s not reporting on issues that can be better understood based on the information leaked, he’s just leaking info and getting money for it.
Foley Hund says:
December 21, 2010 at 8:59 am
Ah, we yearn for openness and truth, …except when we do not like it: The messenger of truth somehow becomes the villain. WUWT?
========================================================
Who is a messenger of what truth? Is there truth in the video at the top? Is a half-truth any form of truth? Mr. Assange is a villain because he is a despicable little person that has little regard for lives or livelihoods. Mr. Assange has shown his character well before any allegations or leaks of secret documents.
Why the moral compunction against releasing the climategate e-mails?
Surely he knew by then that the “truth” always hurts after all, that’s why Wiki released what they did in other arenas?
If Wikileaks can’t aspire to be even-handed in its display of the grubby laundry of the worlds governments and institutions, its claim to be a force for the good starts to look very grubby itself.
Like the snow in London, Wiki’s whiter than white crusade quickly becomes dingy and soiled.
“Assange spent several minutes lamenting how he had found publishing them morally difficult because they boosted the arguments of global-warming sceptics.”
…. because (IMO) it would hurt the global leftist cause.
I rest my case:
Sexton says “Who is a messenger of what truth? Is there truth in the video at the top? Is a half-truth any form of truth? Mr. Assange is a villain because he is a despicable little person that has little regard for lives or livelihoods. Mr. Assange has shown his character well before any allegations or leaks of secret documents.”
Enneagram says:
December 21, 2010 at 7:22 am
Climate Gates emails were a serious matter while Weak-ee leaks are gossips, no comparison between the two,
There is no comparison between the two, except in the minds of those who cannot distiguish between laws which make it a felony to give away our national defense documents to hostile foreign nations in a time of war, and climate scientists fixing the peer review process so that other points of view cannot be heard.
Or perhaps it should be a felony to question the AGW science as well, is that what Foley Hund, J and Edim are saying?
Assange is a conspiracy theorist, like most radicals. His belief that the CIA entrapped him in Sweden is paranoia from his employees. Check out the bizarre truth by Michael C. Moynihan at http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/14/the-assange-employees .
The cable leaks do NOT promote the beliefs of the radical left. In fact they confirm mainstream views in the middle east (Arabs fear Iran as much as US and Israel, etc). Assanges’ views are so at odds with reality I suspect it’s the result of mental illness.
Wow this is amazing. The man obtains classified documents that shows no wrong doings, but rather frank descriptions of different people and places. The pinhead releases them for no other purposes than to hamper the U.S.’s ability to conduct foreign policy, all the while endangering the lives of some of the sources in the documents.
Nice, now we see where he attempts to take credit for the release of the climate-gate e-mails? All this after he released altered combat videos with malicious intent. And some here want to canonize this unscrupulous megalomaniac?
Oh, yeh, I forgot, many that pop by here are the ‘ends justifying the means’ type of people with little or no regard of how they wish to accomplish their goals. I find they are of the same ilk as the smallish people trying to convince the world that recent cooling is because of warming, now lies are truth and war is peace. Two sides of the same coin.
Smokey;
It baffles me why encryption is not required in government [and business] communications. Allowing hundreds of thousands of social security numbers and other personal information to fall into the wrong hands via a stolen laptop, simply because a password wasn’t mandatory, is inexplicable. It’s like leaving loaded guns around to be found by monkeys.>>>
This is WAY to complicated an issues to explain in one comment in a blog forum but let’s at least touch on a few important points. The first is that anyone with a strong security in IT background can tell you that making data 100% secure is possible, but you’d never be able to use it. So you have to strike a balance.
Second, this is far more complicated to achieve than just “encrypt everything”. There’s dozens of operating systems, communications systems, network protocols and there’s no encryption method that spans all of them. Further, the applications can’t process encrypted data.
But the really big problem is human knowledge. How many people who use a computer really understand how it works? How many people know that time stamps are meaningless in the hands of someone who can change it with a few key strokes and leave it in the file system with a “last modified” date that matches?
Security measures are constantly being put in place by people who know what they are doing. Then they are run by people who are just following the process. Then someone who thinks they understand makes a change and doesn’t understand the impact of the change. Look at the major mess ups in terms of data security and you almost always find a story like that underlying it. The security as designed worked. Consider a couple of examples.
There was a large company, let’s call them Analysis who would process seismic data and provide recommendations to oil companies. In those days the data was sent back and forth on computer tapes. The security process required that tapes from oil company A be used only for A, tapes for B only for B, and so on. One day Analysis is getting ready to send a tape complete with analysis back to A and it breaks. They have no other tapes from A, and the results are urgent. Someone says, hey, we got lots of tapes here from B, we over write the data when we write the tape, so we’ll use one of theirs and no harm done. Pretty soon it is standard practice and no one is even bothering to segregate the tapes.
Only a matter of time before someone at A figured out that when his data was downloaded off the tape there seemed to be yet more data because B’s data file was actually longer than A’s, and so the last part wasn’t over written. So now A has some of B’s data, and promptly starts sending very short data streams for analysis as often as possible and soon has a database of almost everyone else’s data. Went on for a couple of years!
I had a military customer who shall remain nameless who put in a document management system that was air tight. No one could make a spelling mistake because once you typed anything in, you weren’t aloud to change it. You couldn’t add anything to an existing document, if you wanted to add a footnote you would have to type the whole thing in again because once a document was closed once it was immutable to prevent forgery. Then there was an interesting quirck that sometimes you could create a document, and based on keywords and other issues, the system would classify it accordingly and encrypt it. The commanding officer had it all torn out when he discovered that if he sent something sensitive to his boss at central command, it was classified at a level meaning that he couldn’t read is own document.
It isn’t simple, and even the ultra security conscious Israelis had a similar incident recently.
..I rest my case again, thank you James Sexton.
Foley Hund says:
December 21, 2010 at 9:36 am
I rest my case:
======================================================
Really? So when Mr. Assange released an altered video that gave an appearance of U.S. soldiers firing on un-armed civilians, only for it to be later shown that the weapons were edited out, does that not show you the content of his character? When he was asked not to release the documents because of potential risk to lives, and he released them anyway, does that not show you the content of his character? In the video above, knowing how the release of the e-mails came about and how he entirely failed to mention any of it, does that not show you the content of his character?
What ever point you’re trying to make, I’m not sure, but I’ll more than happily stand my statements.
Assange created his own trouble by letting his emotions cloud his judgment. He should have been more selective in the material he published. His antipathy toward the US is obvious and it caused him to misjudge the public’s ability to discern the difference between rapacious policy and frank talk from a diplomatic report. Rather than reveal wrongdoing in the league of the Pentagon Papers, his information mainly reads like schoolgirl gossip intended to embarrass the US. A few apologies among the actors, tightened security on communications and life goes on in the diplomatic world.
Assange, meanwhile, finds himself the target of outrage by a majority of the public that sees him as a petty tattler while the US has gained a great deal of sympathy it wouldn’t have otherwise had. No one likes an informer and Assange is learning that lesson the hard way.
The Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme.
“The first notice of the emails at WikiLeaks was 2009/11/21 at 2.50 AM Eastern (12:50 AM blog time). ”
My copy was downloaded 20/11/2009 07.18GMT
You have missed the boat on this one.
He did not claim anything other than releasing the file on his website.
We should be happy that Climategate was mentioned
Is there a moral or legal equivalence between leaking emails by scientists who are fixing the peer review process to keep other hypothesis from being published,
and publishing classified secure communications in national defense documents?
I don’t know, perhaps some are making that case and some are believing it. Should questioning AGW science and policies become a felony, as giving our troop and allies’ information to enemy nations? Is that what is being argued? Maybe John Kerry is right, and global warming is a strategic defense issue?
Kerry panel looks at climate change and national security
You see, now we are getting somewhere about the equivalence arguement.
Ian H says: …Yes I’m angry. People fought and died in the 20th century for freedom and to stop things like lynch mobs.
That’s an interesting bit of historical revisionism. And here I was thinking that the massive hemoclysms of the 20th Century were all about freedom vs. commie-fascist authoritarianism, with the bulk of the slaughter perpetrated by tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, etc. A few timely lynch mobs might have saved 100 million or so lives.
To those arguing that Assange did in some way “release” the CRU emails: How, exactly, did he “release” something that has already been released? The term “release” as used by Assange denotes (and only denotes) freeing from captivity, restraint, or control. Did Assange have exclusive control over the information prior to his supposed “release”? No. Did he release new information not included in the original release? No. His claim the “we [Wikileaks] released” the e-mails is false. His insinuation that he had a role in the release is false. Like Mr. McKitrick noted, he’s a “bloody poser”.
However, Assange had a role in disseminating the e-mails, code, and data. It may be a fair argument that in his unprepared remarks he simply used the less precise of two similar words. But that just makes the “poser” label stick even harder.
Assange is “supposedly” this highly talented hacker-type of a fellow specializing in releasing and disseminating secret information with years of experience. I would assume that a man engaged in such a practice for so long would know the difference between “release” and “disseminate”. But despite his experience, (or perhaps because of?), we are to believe that his use of the term is as precise as its used in massage parlors.
Ian H says: December 21, 2010 at 12:36 am
So much for America – . . .
Yes I’m angry. People fought and died in the 20th century for freedom and to stop things like lynch mobs. . . .
You are not angry, sir. You are confused, having taken to heart the view of America promoted by the Katie Couric school of journalism.
As one who fought in the 20th Century and as a friend to a dozen of those who died then, I assure you we knew what we were fighting for, and it was not the freedom to endanger the lives of others with self promotion.
True freedom entails taking responsibility for one’s actions, but that doesn’t mean merely reading the words, “. . . and I take full responsibility for that,” off a teleprompter. Taking responsibility for your actions means taking the consequences of your actions, personally.
MLK Jr violated segregation laws back in the 60’s, but he didn’t try to weasel out of the consequences. He went to jail.
People will doubtless die because of Assange’s actions. We’ll see how he feels about consequences.
@Enneagram
‘As Lord Monckton would say :”Climate Gate” was a different kind of “leak”: A bedwetters’ leak. :-)’
Haha, but I think the good lord would have a more creative description of the leaking event. :p
So I’m thinking more like this:
The aperture size of the CRU outlet made for a large detriment to let the information flow through the fissure and through that expenditure be exposed by its oozing divulge to tell a tale that transpired to percolate from the bottomless pit that is climate, just to let slip and make it public like Mr Assange’s espouse to drip and drool of a fickle trickle of an early discharge to spill the beans of historical ignoble, and to some odious, means.
Ian H says:
December 21, 2010 at 3:14 am
So if someone got ahold of all of your personal information; all of your emails and bank accounts and credit cards and private letters, emails, etc. and gave them to me, you’d be perfectly fine with me publishing them on my web site under the guise of the “freedom of the press”? It’s my right, full transparency, full disclosure? If that happened you couldn’t get to a lawyer fast enough. If you don’t think I’m right then I’ll send you my email and you can start sending me all your information. We’ll see how you like full disclosure.
[keep your antisemitic propaganda to yourself, and yes go ahead and accuse me of continuing the media domination of the world by jews. ~ ctm]
David L says:
December 21, 2010 at 11:40 am
Ian H says:
December 21, 2010 at 3:14 am
“So if someone got ahold of all of your personal information; all of your emails and bank accounts and credit cards and private letters, emails, etc. and gave them to me, you’d be perfectly fine with me publishing them on my web site under the guise of the “freedom of the press”?
I imagine that Ian H would argue that Assange, in His wisdom, would only publish information that would harm the wicked, and never, ever compromise the innocent.
Bah!
Julian is well out of order with this, if Wikileaks was about transparency, they’d blanket bomb the net with everything they have.
They have an obvious political bias, voiding their mandate, and their leader has fallen victim to his own fairy tale image.
I can’t help but think this WikiBleats is nothing but a shill for vested interests, posing as a free speech advocate while helping to prop up a fascist ideaology.
Again and again I will have to agree with Smokey.
Look a Watergate and Climategate.
On one side you have a Deep Throat, a leak. The Deep Throat risks a lot, and might break the law. The police and justice folks can go after them, and if they catch them they can be punished. Thats a part of the Democracy.
Then on the other hand you have the publisher. It can be The Washington Post or Wikileaks, Air Vent, WUWT, or whatever. Thats an whole other story. You cannot stop the publisher, its what is called free press. They can even protect their source.
Maybe the most important part of a democracy.
Its no use getting angry at the publisher the moment that newspaper hurts “your side”. Like, if you supported Nixon, and he had to go. And then in the next case support some other publisher. Like, Climategate.
You will have to distinguish between the acts of the Deep throat, and the publisher.
Otherwise you are entering a dictatorship.
If some published material can hurt “innocent” people is very sad, but why the heck is all those agenies here and there sending such material through the hands of some private soldier? Very amateurish, dont you think? If it is that important? WUWT?
I think this article, by Michel Chossudovsky, about the manufacturing of dissent (yes, dissent, not consent) is worth a read, in the present context:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21110
And a point I should have made in my previous comment is that my great fear is that the whole Wikileaks thing, phenomenon (anonymous, etc.), will bolster the case for clamping down, globally, on the freedoms the internet currently offers the global populace, the peasants, if you will. We could lose everything because of something they may have helped create in the first place. Now, why does that sound familiar?
Tim Ball: Jones’ action by calling in the Norfolk police was important because it stopped further disclosures until they finished their investigations
Assange is currently located at a secluded house near Bungay, coincidentally about ten miles from Norwich, home of the UEA and CRU. Maybe he and Prof. Jones can get together and sort out the issue, in the spirit of this festive season of goodwill.
If Wikileaks was responsible for the CRU emails theft leak, I am sure that Assange will apologise to Jones and that can be the end of the matter, and obviously Jones will drop all criminal charges against Assange that the Norfolk police would want to bring. If Wikileaks was not responsible they can have a good laugh at all of the fuss this is causing.
Climategate is small beer compared with what Wikileaks has apparently dug up. Climate skeptics, though dead right on one issue, are making a mountain out of a molehill here. More important is Wikileaks’ exposure of the war on terror as a war OF terror, against innocent civilians in Muslim countries, which a. is criminal in itself, and b. makes them even more angry. Despite the attempts of a few of Sarah Palin’s jackboot boys (above) to use this minor event to discredit Assange, he’s a hero all over the world, except to the American knuckledraggers who have sent death threats to him and his son, and their allies, a pair of jilted Scandinavian feminists.
What truly impresses me about Mr Assange is that he struggled for several minutes over the dilemma of whether to publishor not. Obviously a man of great depth (that is sarcasm for those who didn’t spot it).
I listened to him on BBC radio 4 this morning and to his credit, the interviewer (John Humphrys), did not give him an easy ride. I found it uncomfortable listening to Assange wriggling as he avoided direct responses to many of the questions – transcript here for all to judge for themselves.
Correction: transcript here http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9309000/9309320.stm
Apologies, mods, for cock-up.
Peter
In any heated exchange like this, there will be rash and inaccurate statements, so maybe we should be clear about what the issue is :
– Assange trying to take credit for the Climategate emails, when the credit belonged to others.
Other issues, such as Assange’s extreme anti-Americanism, Assange deliberately revealing information that could seriously damage individuals aligned with the West, the Swedish rape charges against Assange (NB. they are as yet only accusations, he is innocent until proved guilty), and whether Assange would have revealed the Climategate emails if he had had the opportunity to be the first to do so, are surely side-issues on this thread. Not completely irrelevant, maybe, but still side-issues.
Zeke the Sneak : “Australians can be sure that the vast majority of Americans would never, ever support a group whose founder is dedicated to the harm and downfall of Australia. It would never enter our minds or hearts to do that.“.
I would like to think – I do think – that the feeling is mutual. Some in Australia with anarchist or marxist leanings genuinely hate the West (as led by America) and would happily bring it down by supporting people like Assange, but the majority clearly would not. I am sure, however, that there is widespread support in Australia for genuine whistleblowers. The difference between Assange and genuine whistleblowers lies in their motivation – but that is another side issue.
davidmhoffer says:
December 21, 2010 at 10:00 am (Edit)
Smokey;
It baffles me why encryption is not required in government [and business] communications.
######
Encryption will not help with some sources and methods. No technology can prevent a determined source to remove information. Basically, if you are transmitting secret data out of a facility it will be encrypted. ( encrypted phone lines as well.. used to sound like shit). The cables ( as I understand it) were walked out. There is no defense against that other than better background checks on employees. And if they get turned, then whatever passes through their hands can walk out the building.
There is something wrong here. WL stinks What did they tell us we didn´t know.
Kitefreak has got it! And thanks for the video clip, very interesting.
Tim Ball, your point about the importance of the identity of the leaker is interesting. Particularly interesting is your attempt to finger Keith Briffa, Tim. I wonder if you would care to elaborate?
Clearly in light of the claims made by Paul Hudson the leaked files had been in circulation long before the 19 Nov 09 and at least since October. Therefore it is unlikely that those who finally made the email’s public on the 19th Nov, were all that closely connected with the CRU and are only important with regards to the service they performed for their fellow men. We are all in their debt for that but their identity should and I hope will, remain a mystery.
With regards to the original leaker (Paul Hudson’s source), although for the sake of curiosity it would be interesting to hear what else he might have to say, but if his identity was discovered, the establishment would make such an example of him that it would make other genuine potential whistle-blowers think twice. Therefore his identity must also remain a mystery IMO.
After all we have the files, which was enough to kill the AGW fraud and has been nought but a headless Zombie since the 19th Nov 09.
Wikileaks: a Big Dangerous US Government Con Job
by F. William Engdahl
The process of policing the Web was well underway before the current leaks scandal. In 2009 Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (S.773). IIt would give the President unlimited power to disconnect private-sector computers from the internet. The bill “would allow the president to ’declare a cyber-security emergency’ relating to ’non-governmental’ computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat.” We can expect that now this controversial piece of legislation will get top priority when a new Republican House and the Senate convene in January.
The US Department of Homeland Security, an agency created in the political hysteria following 9/11 2001 that has been compared to the Gestapo, has already begun policing the Internet. They are quietly seizing and shutting down internet websites (web domains) without due process or a proper trial. DHS simply seizes web domains that it wants to and posts an ominous “Department of Justice” logo on the web site. See an example at http://torrent-finder.com. Over 75 websites were seized and shut in a recent week. Right now, their focus is websites that they claim “violate copyrights,” yet the torrent-finder.com website that was seized by DHS contained no copyrighted content whatsoever. It was merely a search engine website that linked to destinations where people could access copyrighted content. Step by careful step freedom of speech can be taken away. Then what?
http://www.voltairenet.org/article167733.html
Anthony when you get in there way they shut you down. They also now know the people that don´t believe there story. All the people that watch this side and write comments. B B is watching.
“”””” davidmhoffer says:
December 21, 2010 at 9:19 am
Freedom of the press implies the right of the press to be critical of those in power, critical of their decisions, able to suggest the benefits of one choice over another or even bring up an option the government isn’t considering. Exposing wrong doing with information that was never intended to be public is where the area gets a bit grey depending on what the information was and how it was obtained. “””””
Well freedom of the press, in the interest of the public’s “right to know” is a myth.
Any visitor to WUWT is well aware; that “information” is no more credible than the origin of that information is.
So included in the information that the public has a “right to know” is the original source of that information; for without a source; the “message” is garbage.
But “the press” sees no problem in THEM standing between the public and the source. ANY NEWS story without source references is worth less than the time it takes to read or listen to.
And “The Press” loves to replace source information with euphemisms; but we can easily see around that.
For me, ANY story reported by “the press” as originating from “a white house source” means it came straight from the lips or hand of The President of The United States. (POTUS). And if that isn’t true; then he should fire whoever it was that was the “source”.
“Usually reliable sources” quite often turn out to be not reliable at all. In any case they are worthless as to information.
Anything that somebody is too ashamed of their own name to append it to their “information” is not worth wasting the time on.
I don’t believe anonymous “scientific” information either.
The press should quit fabricating the news or “analysing it” and report it for an informed public to evaluate for themselves.
And I’ve heard ALL of the arguments about information not being available without source secrecy. If you are ashamed to defend it; then don’t say it.
Don’t negotiate with terrorists. Don’t negotiate with Assange.
JA: Not at all. We are an organisation that does not promote leaking. We’re an organisation that promotes justice…
Q: You hardly discourage it when you print a couple of million private cables.
JA: … that promotes justice through the mechanism of transparency and journalism.
and,
Q: This is now public. So I’m asking you the question. Did you have sex with those women?
JA: It’s a matter of public record as far as the courts are concerned but I am not going to be exposing other people’s private lives or my own more than is absolutely necessary. That is not what a gentleman does,……
So, Assange doesn’t promote leaks and doesn’t expose other people’s private lives more than is absolutely necessary. It isn’t gentlemanly. Ok, got that.
OT:
The Globe and Mail is starting early the promotion of Dr. Andrew Weaver’s upcoming book:
“Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming ”
By author: Andrew Weaver
ISBN: 9781554698042
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Pub Date: April/01/2011
Pages: 128
Paperback $9.95″
For that cheap price here is what you’ll get:
“Global warming is not so much an environmental problem as an economic and social problem.
In clear and accessible language, Generation Us explains the phenomenon of global warming, outlines the threat it presents to future generations and offers a path toward solutions to the problem.”
The watermelon decloaks: no more green “end of the world”, “worse than we thought” etc…, just the good ol’ red political message!
“The reality of global warming has long been accepted within the scientific community, yet it remains a hotly debated topic at the political and social level. Why is this? Is it the fact that the ultimate effects of global warming will not be felt in our lifetimes? Do we really feel no moral responsibility for future generations? Dr. Weaver, one of the world’s leading experts in the field, contends that, just as humans have been responsible for creating the problem of global warming, we must also be the solution.”
Here is a publisher who is so disconnected from the debate that he tries to justify his own ignorance by publishing Weaver’s political manifesto! And it’s in the “Rapid Reads” collection from this publisher…
Purchase at your own risk!
“Do you think that might be because my credit card information doesn’t meet the requirements for publication on wikileaks?”
The requirement that the subject matter be embarrassing? It’s not like it was hard-hitting journalism with an actual purpose. “Oooo… the US thinks leader X is a self-important jerk.” Yeah, I think most of the world assumes that’s the sort of thing that goes on, just like I’m certain that 90% of foreign intelligence agencies had numerous buffoon and coyboy references to George Bush.
By trying to discredit US diplomatically, the end result is less diplomacy and more strong-arming. Good job Julian!
This has been a deliberate attempt by The Powers That Be to muddy the waters of Climategate.
Wikileaks and Climategate should not have to be mentioned in the same sentence.. and yet.. here we are.
I would say it has been a successful attempt.. so far.
I have been a regular at WUWT since Climategate broke.
The very reason I am here is because of Climategate.
It appears that there a few Wikileaks people on this thread simply here to defend their messiah.. but they will eventually depart and leave us to the science.
Like many here, I was riveted to my computer for many days, using Googles experimental technology to keep track of wherever the word ‘climategate’ appeared on the internet.
I had my own thread going on another blog which had 5,000+ hits.. but which has now been deleted for some reason.
I know it makes not a scrap of difference whether Wikileaks put up the Climategate documents or not.
For Wikileaks to give the IMPRESSION it was their release is pure evil.
Wikileaks has questionable origins and motives that are fairly easy to discover.
Climategate.. when clearly understood.. is huge enough to change your ‘world view’.
There has been nothing from Wikileaks that even comes close to that sort of impact.
Even the Iraq Apache shootings that have been posted on this thread are old news.
I had two similar videos posted on my youtube account 4 years ago that was getting 3,000+ hits per day.. but which has now been deleted for some reason.
If people think of Wikileaks when they think of Climategate.. then we have a problem.
There will be the danger people will dismiss the Climategate emails purely because of Wikileaks.
We cannot let this happen.
Everyone should make their own personal effort to not let Wikileaks and Climategate be associated together.
If we don’t.. I suspect all our hard work will be undone.. and before we know it.. there will a world wide price on CO2.
And make no mistake.. that is the intention of Assange.
Let this Assange idiot brag away, it keeps Climate Gate in the headlines!
Thanks for re-posting the links to the original stories, Anthony, that whole event was nothing less of breathtaking! When the CRU emails surface on the Russian server, I searched them for Sen. Jim Inhofe’s name, and found several emails. I then notified Jim’s office about these specific emails (November 23, 2009 7:09:12 PM CST), and eventually the emails were the focus of Jim’s US Senate Minority Report.
Please see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/23/climategate-minority-report/
I’d like to thank everyone who played a role in this, no matter how large or small….this will surely be remembered as one of the great signal events in the history of science.
Will says:
December 21, 2010 at 1:34 am
Essential reading : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22389
————–
Yes, that article is indeed essential reading.
I am amazed by most of the comments here, and the level of orwellization our societies seem to have reached.
Reading through these comments, I am reminded of that old dictum attributed to an ideal consumer of news: “What I hear on tv comes in through one ear and out of my mouth”
Ross McKitrick’s ‘poser’ summation couldn’t be more correct on Assange.
He’s just another in the latest ‘Soros Puppets’ that have popped up outta nowhere for Christmas.
Last night’s banner under the news read: ‘Assange women fear STD from liaison…’
(I mean…….ABC……..runnin’ daytime drama drivel designed to keep us salivating.
Awwwhhh, come on, Guys… These ‘god-like’ (legends only in their own minds) can’t even make up a good script… Let alone ‘scare us anymore’.
The ‘assange character’ (complete with a ‘mommy-assange designed to ‘pull heartstrings’ when ‘son’ is ‘off the air’ and in prissie’…)
…As for him being an ‘Aussie’ ~ ‘they’ cause the ‘Plot to thicken’ ’cause the normally GREAT relations between the U.S. and Australian citizens could get (ohhh, I’m SOOO Afraid……NOT!)… ‘strained’?) The two ‘Friends/Mates’??? (No Way ~ especially when Julia has one country and Barry has the other…, right?)
This lame sh** has been thought through thoroughly by Behaviorists (drool, drool)…… and like most of these ‘bozos like Assange’ the final ‘button’ after ‘fame’ or ‘world-wide notoriety’ (see a pathetic angry Algore, here) their ‘final buttons’ to motivate them are…..SEX.
I bet this Julian guy even KNOWS these two ‘ladies’ from the same schools of indoctrination they attended over the years… That’s not a ‘stretch’ at all when you learn that ‘they’ have been playing us in the middle by placing two ‘friends’/’sympathizers’ at either end to drag us to. By playing the game that way ~ whether we choose …..Left OR Right…..we fall into their hands.
The best thing about all of this is that ‘they’ still think we’re simply ‘animals’ to ‘Pavlov-ize’ or ‘Skinner-ize’. It’s refreshing to see that they STILL believe their own hype…and… (as the Bible says, and I’m paraphrasing) ‘folks that like to dig pits for their enemies will fall into one of their own making.’ What grand poetic irony.
Do you ‘see’ that the ‘two women’ do ‘two things’? ~ actually more, but I’ll keep it to just ‘two’.
1. Guys ARE after all – still ‘guys’ (Thank God) and to get (or keep) their interest, arouse them in a sexual manner. ie: Remember when Chris Monckton placed a ‘shapely sigh’ in one of his ‘Missives’??? (Do you remember what you felt like when you read those words? Could you imagine yourself sitting right where Chris was..?
He ‘held your attention’ by showing you what was ‘right next to him’…and that’s ‘fantasy time’ for most of you studs out there…
Guys! I’m sure it was Truth, but…..what Sir C of M ‘used’ is what every ‘good writer’ does to keep his audience’s attention!!! It’s guaranteed to work EVERY time, p.s.! (I do hope you guys brush up on Pavlovian/Skinner stuff or you might let a few ‘pop flies’ get past you in the next months… ‘the world’ needs you to catch them all.) A good writer will appeal to your senses, right? That’s what the introduction of these two socialist/marxist babes do…they bring in ‘James/Julian’……Bond. I wonder what car he drives…….
(Then…….he lands……..can it be??? ‘safe and sound’ into “jail” by the very folks that are helping to put on this whole farce, courtesy of more Soro’s $$$. (all of these globalists are prostitutes, p.s.)
*So, gals ‘1’ and ‘2’ ‘stir up one’s sexuality…for we all know ‘sex sells’, right? (I put this in here so that those who may say I didn’t get to my POINT, won’t miss them…) Think of James Bond stuff…how many movies has been done on this fantasy? Let’s say ‘enough to know it works’ by Behaviorist Idiots. They’ll lead you with one head or the other………BOTH preferably, to make it really interesting for them…
2. The appearance of these two (‘wowie zowie’ are they as ‘hot’ as the Russian spy photos of that babe from NYC???!!! and……she was NOTHING, right? But, again ‘sex sells’… or so they think.) also divides women from men. When you want ‘confusion to rule’ you divide folks up……. Australians from Americans………Leftist’s from Rightists……..women from men….. THAT way, we all feel separated from each other….. and we lose our unity……..our HUMANNESS.
Think me silly, I truly don’t care a WIT about what anyone thinks of me……..((as I’ve lost ALL FEAR OF MEN ~NOT a sexual term for you heathens, p.s…so don’t be ignorant if you post, k?~ and I’m totally schooled on how this GOOD/evil thing works……..and I’m on the winning side, praise Jesus.
(Hey! It’s the Christmas Season and I’m gonna leave one for you guys to think about!)
WHY is it, do you think……….that ‘they’ always are displaying Jesus in His ‘swaddling clothes’???????????? I mean…….. cutie pie lil’ baby in the manger…in (I’m in Australia……) nappies! and……..then………patheticly LOVING broken man on a cross…….STILL in ‘nappies’…….huh????????
No Worries for an answer, gentlemen and gentlewomen. ‘They’ want you to keep a vision of Jesus in your mind as this ‘nut in diapers’ ~ rather than Who and WHAT He is RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT. It keeps Jesus ~ impotent-looking……right???
If you don’t agree ~ lemme take you out for YOUR NEXT BIRTHDAY at the finest restaurant in your town………dressed as you were on the day of YOUR BIRTH…
unless you were Julian Assange, or another of his perv compatriots (we know who they are, right?) you wouldn’t take me up on my offer.
Why? ‘Cause you’d want to celebrate YOUR BIRTHDAY the way you look NOW. It’d be TOTAL HUMILIATION for you, while others would jus’ laugh and laugh…..
Well kiddo’s………..someday soon……….He’s coming back…and consider this another ‘Christmas Pressie’ for you……..He’s no longer a baby and He’s no longer hanging NAKED on a cross… My Savior has grown up, resurrected, and SAVED MY ASS (August 7th 3am, 1990)………so, here’s hoping you’ll call out to Him, too.
Be Blessed and Be Ready and enjoy this Season because (phew!) He ain’t no baby no more…
Cynthia Lauren Thorpe
James Sexton says: “You [Assange] hardly discourage it [leaking] when you print a couple of million private cables” and “…Assange doesn’t promote leaks and doesn’t expose other people’s private lives more than is absolutely necessary. It isn’t gentlemanly.”
Key is the word “private“. Compare these WL emails with the Climategate emails, which have generally been agreed to have been work-related and therefore not private. The WL emails between bureaucrats are typically sent from government-owned computers during government-paid time, and are at least partly related to government business. No matter how much the sender would prefer each email not to reach the light of day, it is questionable whether such an email qualifies as “private“.
To put it more simply : The WL emails were not private. The issues are the law and motivation. What happened between Assange and the Swedish ladies was private in nature, but again the issue is the law.
Steven Mosher says:
December 21, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Smokey;
It baffles me why encryption is not required in government [and business] communications.
######
Encryption will not help with some sources and methods. No technology can prevent a determined source to remove information. Basically, if you are transmitting secret data out of a facility it will be encrypted. ( encrypted phone lines as well.. used to sound like shit). The cables ( as I understand it) were walked out.>>>
I said is isn’t as easy as “just encrypt everything” and I also said that any system 100% secure would be impossible to use. But the above is innacurate. The security breach currently in the news and a less recent one in Israel were the result of (as best I can tell from the limited information I’ve bothered to read) the result of sloppy or lax security practices. However, a “determined source” versus a well designed and maintained security plan is an easy bet. I’ll take the plan.
Military class security relies in part on buildings that cannot pass RF and other frequencies through their outer walls. Increases the price of the building, but “transmit” all you want, it isn’t going anywhere. Phone lines, power lines, etc can all be filtered so that frequencies that can carry data are blocked. And don’t start telling me that they can be easily removed by a “turned” employee because while that is true, you can detect the change via all kinds of methods from both inside and outside the building, kilometers away. Data that can’t be transmitted must be transferred onto a device. Thin client systems are pretty much a keyboard, mouse and screen. Secure class thin client devices have no usb ports, no serial ports, nothing. Just the ethernet port to the lan, and data isn’t sent down that, just an image. You’d need a camera and couple hundred years to photograph as many documents as wikileaks got.
Biometric authentication is cheap these days, and if you think that cutting off someone’s thumb or gouging out an eye like they do in the movies will work, guess again.
There are commercialy available applications that sit on the server operating system and intercept all traffic. They can identify credit card numbers, social insurance numbers, health numbers and so on and by policy prevent them from being copied to any physical device.
I could go on, but point is that the breaches in the news today were just about sloppy management. Determined security meets determined hacker… hacker loses.
F. William Engdahl on Wikileaks
December 10, 2010
excerpts:
The story on the surface makes for a script for a new Oliver Stone Hollywood thriller. A 39-year old Australian hacker holds the President of the United States and his State Department hostage to a gigantic cyber “leak,” unless the President leaves Julian Assange and his Wikileaks free to release hundreds of thousands of pages of sensitive US Government memos. A closer look at the details, so far carefully leaked by the most ultra-establishment of international media such as the New York Times, reveals a clear agenda. That agenda coincidentally serves to buttress the agenda of US geopolitics around the world from Iran to Russia to North Korea. The Wikileaks is a big and dangerous US intelligence Con Job **which will likely be used to police the Internet.**
It is almost too perfectly-scripted to be true. A discontented 22-year old US Army soldier on duty in Baghdad, Bradley Manning, a low-grade US Army intelligence analyst, described as a loner, a gay in the military, a disgruntled “computer geek,” sifts through classified information at Forward Operating Base Hammer. He decides to secretly download US State Department email communications from the entire world over a period of eight months for hours a day, onto his blank CDs while pretending to be listening to Lady Gaga.
[…]
He [Assange] selects as exclusive newspapers to decide what is to be leaked the New York Times, which did such service in promoting faked propaganda against Saddam that led to the Iraqi war, the London Guardian and Der Spiegel. Assange claims he had no time to sift through so many pages so handed them to the trusted editors of the establishment media for them to decide what should be released. Very “anti-establishment” that. The New York Times even assigned one of its top people, David E. Sanger, to control the release of the Wikileaks material. Sanger is no establishment outsider. He sits as a member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Aspen Institute Strategy Group together with the likes of Condi Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former CIA head John Deutch, former State Department Deputy Secretary and now World Bank head Robert Zoellick among others.
[…]
Full article:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22357