The unintended consequences of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, like it or not, is a publisher. He is also an idealist and quite possibly an anarchist. According to INTERPOL’s Red Notice, Assange may have a dark side no one could defend, a personal side quite apart from WikiLeaks where he’s published damaging information about countries like the U.S., Kenya, China, Iraq and others. Many Americans are calling for his head. But the persecution and/or prosecution of Assange could have devastating consequences that might seriously injure civil rights in the U.S. and abroad.

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Gibbs’ bravado towards Assange contradicts administration’s actions

On Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, Robert Gibbs, the Obama adminstration’s press secretary, appeared to be full of bravado when asked about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Our foreign policy and our country is stronger than one guy with one website,” said Gibbs, who then ramped up the tone. “We’re not scared of one guy with a keyboard and a laptop.” Gibbs talks big, but the administration’s actions suggest otherwise.

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WikiLeaks a human failure but First Amendment still applies

Whoever leaked hundreds of thousands of dispatches and cables to WikiLeaks reportedly had access to SIPRNET, the US Defense Dept. and the State Dept.’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. Outrage is running through the blogosphere right now—the left is predictably horrified at how state business is conducted and the right is horrified at such an unprecedented security leak.

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Mystery men Manning and Assange have much in common

Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are both somewhat of a mystery. But both men have much in  common aside from their passion for leaking classified material that harms the United States.

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Leaked military files elevate mystery about Wikileaks founder Assange

Updated on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 8:55PM by Kay B. Day, Editor

Updated on Monday, November 29, 2010 at 10:03AM by Kay B. Day, Editor

Photo of Julian Assange from Wikipedia. At first glance, I was reminded for some reason of David McCallum who played Russian-born spy Illya Kuryakin on the TV series The Man From UNCLE.Wikileaks has published 75,000 US military documents about the war in Afghanistan and thousands more about other US military matters. No one knows the extent of the damage yet. But behind this new media coup is the Wikileaks founder who goes by the name of Julian Assange. And his public biography sounds more like fiction than fact.

The early years information in Assange’s bio is attributed to a single source—a New Yorker article by Raffi Khatchadourian. We have to assume there was a viable means of checking facts about Assange, but with media nowadays, it’s really hard to know what you can trust.

Start with Assange’s early life documented in the publicly-composed Wikipedia. Assange is said to be the child of a couple who ran a touring theatre company and that “he was enrolled in 37 schools and six universities in Australia over his early life.” He “lived on the run with his mom and half-brother.”

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Can Clinton handle collateral damage from Wikileaks State Dept. cables?

By Kay B. Day

In the belief that Wikileaks might publish large numbers of cables from the US Dept. of State, the Pentagon is said to be searching for the founder of the site, Julian Assange. Philip Shenon at The Daily Beast said, “American officials said Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait.”

It’s hard to tell how much information is in Wikileaks’ files because, after all, these are matters of state secrets and Wikileaks isn’t exactly transparent, perhaps by necessity, about its own inner mechanism.

Manning is the ‘whistleblower’ in the viral video Wikileaks edited into the brief film ‘Collateral Murder

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