WikiLeaks’ Assange can be extradited to Sweden: judge

Has Sweden offered any assurances that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the U.S.A? Sweden has already shown itself to be a big secret supporter of U.S. foreign policy. And now for the first time someone has been extradited for sex charges in the European Union. Peacenik doesn't trust Sweden in this matter, nor Britain, nor the U.S.A. Peacenik hopes Julian Assange will have his own security. Meanwhile has anyone noticed a lack of news from Wikileaks. The efforts to marginalize and intimidate and bankrupt Wikileaks seem to be having an effect. Peacenik says release the Doomsday File now. Lets see the Bank of America documents. And free Julian Assange.

Supporters of the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange hold placards as they wait for his arrival for his extradition hearing Feb. 24.

LONDON — Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden in a sex crimes inquiry, a British judge ruled Thursday, rejecting claims by the WikiLeaks founder that he would not face a fair trial there. Assange's lawyer said he would appeal.
Judge Howard Riddle said the allegations of rape and sexual molestation by two women against Assange meet the definition of extraditable offenses and said the Swedish warrant had been properly issued and was valid.
Assange, 39, a key figure in the release of tens of thousands of secret U.S. government and military documents, has been out on bail during the extradition fight. He has seven days to appeal the ruling in British courts.
After hearing three days of testimony this month, Riddle concluded “there is simply no reason to believe there has been a mistake” about the European Arrest Warrant issued by Swedish authorities.

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Getting to Assange through Manning

Fer crying in the sink. Is there any way that the Obama administration is different from the Bush administration? Peacenik thought the Obama Justice Department might prosecute some criminals. Instead the financial terrorists walk free, and guys like Manning are harassed like he was the American Taliban. And now Obama is trying to cook up some charges against Assange. It is time for the Doomsday File.

by Glenn Greenwald

In The New York Times this morning, Charlie Savage describes the latest thinking from the DOJ about how to criminally prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Federal investigators are "are looking for evidence of any collusion" between WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning -- "trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped" the Army Private leak the documents -- and then "charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them." To achieve this, it is particularly important to "persuade Private Manning to testify against Mr. Assange." I want to make two points about this.

First, the Obama administration faces what it perceives a serious dilemma: it is -- as Savage writes -- "under intense pressure to make an example of [Assange] as a deterrent to further mass leaking)," but nothing Assange or WikiLeaks has done actually violates the law.

Moreover, as these Columbia Journalism School professors explain in opposing prosecutions, it is impossible to invent theories to indict them without simultaneously criminalizing much of investigative journalism. Thus, claiming that WikiLeaks does not merely receive and publish classify information, but rather actively seeks it and helps the leakers, is the DOJ's attempt to distinguish it from "traditional" journalism...

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange granted bail

This will be a popular story in the blogosphere today. Peacenik is getting a sense that the slow dribbling out of the secret U.S. cables is lessening the impact of them. Each shocking cable is now greated with a shrug. What kind of cable would it take to get the media and the public excited. Instead this becomes a sex case, played up for the masses. Peacenik is beginning to suspect that even the Doomsday File will be greated with little more than, Ugh????

A British judged decided Thursday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be freed on bail with conditions, rejecting the Crown's appeal to an earlier court's decision to grant bail to the public face of the secret-spilling website.

Mr. Assange is to return to court Jan. 11 for an extradition hearing. The judge said if he absconded, Mr. Assange would make supporters, including director Michael Moore, look "naive, foolish and deceitful."

Mr. Assange has been in prison since Dec. 7, following his surrender to British police over a Swedish sex-crimes warrant. He denies wrongdoing but is refusing to surrender to Sweden's request to extradite him for questioning.

Mr. Assange arrived in a prison van at the High Court in London, where judge Duncan Ouseley heard the appeal by British prosecutors acting on behalf of Sweden.

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Michael Moore offers his servers to host Wikileaks docs, posts $20,000 bail

It is hard to say who is winning the info wars. Julian Assange remains in jail, but the diplomatic cables keep dribbling out. Wikileaks now has more than one million three hundred thousand friends on Facebook. But the majority of the U.S. public thinks Assange has harmed the U.S. public interest. The U.S. leaders and their propaganda arms must be chuckling. Wikileaks helps the U.S. public. But as usual the U.S. public are so freaking dumb they oppose it. Too many boxing day sales to think about. No time to worry about freedom of speech. Or justice. Peacenik is glad Michael Moore is trying to do something.

If Amazon.com won't host leaked diplomatic cables posted by the website WikiLeaks, Michael Moore will.

The liberal filmmaker and author announced in a web posting Tuesday that he had donated $20,000 to the cause of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' embattled chief who is being held in the United Kingdom on sexual offense charges and is seeking to be released on bail.

"I support Julian, whom I see as a pioneer of free speech, transparent government and the digital revolution in journalism. His commitment to exposing the follies of government and business offers the greater society a chance to protect itself from these follies," Moore wrote in a web posting Tuesday.

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Assange Attorney: Secret Grand Jury Meeting in Virginia on WikiLeaks

The U.S. must be very frustrated that they cannot simply rendition Assange to Egypt or somewhere, where he can be tortured and possibly disappeared. That is their usual modus operandi. Yes the rule of law can be messy. So the U.S. will try for some secret grand jury charges, that might get Julian into their hands. And of course Sweden is slobbering to comply, if they can first get their hands on Julian with some trumped up sex charge. But this extradtion from the UK could take a while. It may have to follow the rule of law. The world is watching. Peacenik thinks it is time for Julian Assange to unlock the Doomsday File.

London -- A secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, is meeting to consider criminal charges in the WikiLeaks case, an attorney for the site's founder, Julian Assange, told the Al-Jazeera network in an interview.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to British authorities last week. He is set to appear in court Tuesday.

"We have heard from Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria ... they are currently investigating this," Mark Stephens told Al-Jazeera's Sir David Frost on Sunday, referring to WikiLeaks. The site, which facilitates the disclosure of secret information, has been slowly releasing a trove of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables since November 28.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week he had authorized "significant" actions related to a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks' publication of the cables, but has declined to elaborate.
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Hackers strike back at perceived enemies of WikiLeaks

Sounds like World Info War I is heating up. Has there ever been such an effort by international police agencies to pursue an apparently obscure sex crime. And the mainstream media continues to march lock step with governments and their intelligence agencies. I guess all the mainstream pundits would be happy to have the CIA and the White House press office vet their work. Wait a second. They already do. Peacenik continues to eagerly await the key to the Doomsday File. Free Julian Assange now.

Raphael G. Satter

WikiLeaks supporters struck back Wednesday at perceived enemies of founder Julian Assange, attacking the websites of Swedish prosecutors, the Swedish lawyer whose clients have accused Mr. Assange of sexual crimes and the Swiss authority that froze Assange's bank account.

MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday, also seemed to be having severe technological problems.

The online vengeance campaign appeared to be taking the form of denial of service attacks in which computers across the Internet are harnessed — sometimes surreptitiously — to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.

The online attacks are part of a wave of online support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity Wednesday, while the site's Facebook page hit 1 million fans.

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Campaigners Rally to Defense as Attempts to Muzzle Site Mount “I Am Wikileaks”

Peacenik thinks it is time for Wikileaks to launch its Doomsday File, which has been available for download since August. It is heavily encrypted. If anything happens to Julian Assange the key to the encryption will be released. This is really getting weird.

by Jerome Taylor

Renewed cyber attacks on Wikileaks servers in Sweden closed down sections of the whistle-blowing website today as the information war over the State Department cables escalated dramatically.

The attacks came as the Swiss post office announced it had frozen a Wikileaks bank account containing 31,000 euros, leaving the website with limited ability to raise money.

The ongoing attempts to halt the release of US government communiqués has created a backlash amongst grassroots online campaigners who have rallied under the Wikileaks banner to keep the website online.

Using the moniker "I Am Wikileaks", supporters are using social network sites to publicize new outlets for the State Department cables when old ones get closed down or taken offline. They have also now created more than 570 mirror versions of the Wikileaks website and have called for a boycott of Paypal, Amazon and EveryDNS, three US-based websites that recently severed ties to Wikileaks.

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Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths

It is World InFo War I. The world against Wikileaks, and Wikileaks supporters. Apparently the Wikileaks servers were being attacked at the rate of 10 gigabytes of information per second in an effort to shut it down. Here is a just released op-ed piece from Julian Assange who was arrested several hours ago. Peacenik wonders what the anti-Wikileaks crowd are afraid of. Peacenik hopes Peacenik will find out.

Julian Assange

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

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Cyber Attack Forces Wikileaks to Change Web Address

'Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160'

Watching companies cave to U.S. pressure and to the banks pressure is making Peacenik sick. Corporations, mainstream media, politicians, etc. are all in it together. Has there ever been such a blatant display of how fearful they are, of the truth? In this case, the truth will come out. Nutbars like Joe Lieberman will want to shut down the Internet. Julian Assange is not a one man operations. The truth will come out.

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has been forced to change its web address after the company providing its domain name cut off service.

EveryDNS.net said it had terminated services because Wikileaks.org had come under massive cyber attacks. But Wikileaks has already reappeared using a Swiss web address.

Wikileaks has also used micro-blogging site Twitter to urge its fans to redistribute its "raw" net address so it can be viewed at any time.

This numerical internet protocol (IP) address remains live and accessible even when web domains - the normal "www" addresses used to access most sites - are unavailable.

Experts say it is likely that Wikileaks has done deals with lots of web hosting companies, although many are likely to back away from dealing with the controversial site in the light of recent web attacks.

There is also a published list of mirror sites, which Wikileaks hopes will provide constant access to the site.

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University Of Calgary Professor And Senior Advisor To Canadian PM Calls For Julian Assange Assassination On National TV

The casual call for the murder or assassination of Julian Assange shows how far society has collapsed. How corrupt it is. Why does the mainstream media give these psychopaths airtime? Christ, the interviewers were yukking it up like it was a big joke, like they had a scoop. And this guy is an adviser to Harper. Will Harper disavow him? Will he be forced to come on tv and say he misspoke himself? Probably not. Peacenik is worried about the welfare of Julian Assange. Peacenik hopes he is somewhere safe.

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/01/2010 10:41 -0500

It is not a good week for Wikileaks. Following yesterday's Interpol arrest warrant, also yesterday, Tom Flanagan, a senior advisor and strategist to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, called for the assassination of Wikileaks director Julian Assange. On CBS News. On Live TV. As the video notes, "it is believed to be the first ever televised "fatwa" since the edict by the Iranian leadership of the late Ayatollah Khomeini against British writer Salman Rushdie in February 1989." It's a good thing western society, where due process used to mean something, is so much more evolved than that of Iran. Additionally, although news anchor Solomon afforded Flanagan the opportunity to retract his statement, Flanagan balked at doing so and instead reiterated that U.S. President should put out a "contract" on Assange or use "a drone" and that he would not be unhappy if Assange "disappeared." Flanagan who is a trusted member of PM Harper's inner circle of Tory strategists joins Sarah Palin in calling for the death of the Wikileaks director as retribution for the website's release of confidential diplomatic and intelligence "chatter" this week. How long before any senior political advisor has the freedom to issue fatwas on national TV on anyone who dares to utter or publish something that they consider offensive?

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Wikileaks Files Show 'Truth' On Iraq: Assange

Well the Wikileaks files on Iraq are getting some media attention. But between NFL football, MLB playoffs and the start of the NHL season Peacenik hasn't noticed much coverage on the television. And of course the corrupt CNN would rather talk about false charges against Julian Assange than actually discuss the files. Move along, nothing to see here. Just a few thousand war crimes. And a bunch of propaganda.>

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks during a news conference about the internet release of secret documents about the Iraq War, in London October 23, 2010. Wikileaks released nearly 400,000 classified U.S. files on the Iraq war on Friday, some detailing gruesome cases of prisoner abuse by Iraqi forces that the U.S. military knew about but did not seem to investigate.

LONDON -- WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange said Saturday that hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents leaked by the website showed the 'truth' on the Iraq war.

"This disclosure is about the truth," Assange told a news conference in London after WikiLeaks released 400,000 documents which give a grim snapshot of the Iraq war, including showing the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

"The attack on the truth by war begins long before war starts and continues long after a war ends," Assange added. Profile of the WikiLeaks founder

"We hope to correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war and which has continued on since the war officially concluded."
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