In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks to Democracy Now! from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the credit card company Visa did not break the European Union's anti-trust rules by blocking donations to WikiLeaks.
"Since the blockade was erected in December 2010, WikiLeaks has lost 95 percent of donations that were attempted to be transferred to us over that period ... our rightful and natural growth, our ability to publish as much as we would like, our ability to defend ourselves and our sources has been diminished by that blockade." Assange also speaks about his new book, "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet." "The mass surveillance and mass interception that is occurring to all of us now who use the Internet is also a mass transfer of power from individuals into extremely sophisticated state and private intelligence organizations and their cronies," he says.
Assange also discusses the United States' targeting of WikiLeaks. "The Pentagon is maintaining a line that WikiLeaks inherently as an institution, that tells military and governmental whistleblowers to step forward with information, is a crime. They allege that we are criminal moving forward," Assange says. "Now the new interpretation of the Espionage Act that the government is trying to hammer into the legal system, and which the department of justice is complicit in, would mean the end of national security journalism in the United States."
To watch the entire weekday independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, search our vast archive, or to find more information about Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman, visit http://www.democracynow.org.
Re: On WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, Cypherpunks, Surveillance State
I wonder if intelligence services can plant false information to wikileaks...
I was looking at myself talking to myself and I realized this conversation...I was having with myself looking at myself was a conversation with myself that I needed to have with myself.
Re: On WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, Cypherpunks, Surveillance State
Salaam
Another update
Julian Assange's Christmas Speech
Despite all the difficulties the WikiLeaks faced in 2012, Julian Assange vowed to publish some 1,000,000 new documents in the coming year. In his Christmas speech he called for people to continue fighting for democracy “from Tahrir to London.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared on the balcony of London’s Ecuadorian embassy at 19:00 GMT welcoming the cheering crowd in the street.
The whistleblower, who took shelter there in June, said he was very grateful to people who provided him refuge and supported WikiLeaks and recalled the names of those who were “unlike him in prison tonight.” "My freedom is limited, but I am at least able to communicate. Unlike Gottfrid Svartholm, Jeremy Hammond, Nabeel Rajab, Bradley Manning," Assange said. WikiLeaks already has over a million documents nearly ready for release – “documents that affect every country in the world,” according to Assange. “Every country in this world!” he reiterated, trying to speak over the crowd of cheering supporters.
The WikiLeaks boss also mentioned his plans to run for a seat in the Australian Senate, indicating confidence that he would win next year’s federal election. “In Australia, an unelected senator will be replaced by one that is elected,” he stated.
* ‘We continue to stand up to bullies’.
Assange praised the Ecuadorian government and other Latin American governments for showing how cooperation and shared values can embolden countries to “stand up to coercion and support self-determination.” “Their governments threaten no one, attack no one, send drones at no one – but together they stand strong and independent,” he stated. The power of people uniting to speak up and resist terrifies corrupt and undemocratic powers, Assange said, adding that every day ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech.
“Ordinary people here in the West are now the enemy of governments, an enemy to be watched, an enemy to be controlled,” he said. “True democracy is the resistance of people armed with the truth against lies, from Tahrir to right here in London.”
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