Julian Assange
The Australian

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange wrote this Op-Ed* for The Australian today [a few hours before he was arrested]:

● WikiLeaks is fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.
● 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.
● (My idea is) to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
● People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars.
● The Gillard government (Australia) is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed.

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.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia , was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

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Stephen Lendman

Believing Obama is progressive is like calling a cat a dog. Only the delusional think so. He's, in fact, hard-right, a neocon, a warrior president, a corporatist pursuing anti-populist policies favoring wealth and privilege, not social justice when more than ever it's needed.

He's a fraud, an elitist, chosen years ago, then put on a fast track to power. Big monied interests love him. So do war profiteers and members of America's aristocracy. He's one of them.

Only the voting millions who backed him were defrauded. Will they awaken, finally understand, and express their ire publicly more strongly than in mid-term theatrics, throwing out bums for new ones. It's high time. A year two Obama assessment is coming. Watch for it, parts I and II. A year one analysis can be accessed through the following links here and here.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Israel's manifestly fascist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has once again demonstrated virulent malice and ill-will toward Muslims in general, including Israel's own Muslim citizens who constitute nearly one fourth of the population, by inviting anti-Islam Dutch leader, Geert Wilders, to visit Occupied Palestine to spew his hatred and racism before a Jewish audience.

Wilders arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday, 4 December, as the biggest fire in Israel's history was still raging near Haifa, consuming large swaths of the Carmel pine forests. [Planted in the early 1930s by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in an attempt to ‘reclaim the land’.]

However, the calamity seems to have had no effect on Lieberman's fascist mindset as evident from the thuggish foreign minister's invitation to one of the most racist men in contemporary Europe to Israel to malign Islam, incite against the Palestinians and call for their ethnic cleansing.

One would have hoped that the ferocious fire, which killed dozens of Israelis and morphed some of the best natural forests in occupied Palestine into ash, would introduce some humility and modesty to Israel's psych and collective mindset.

However, it seems regrettably that racism's stranglehold on Israel's way of thinking is so strong that even a colossal calamity won't leave a dent on Israel's view of the outside world, especially their ultimate victims, the Palestinian people.

Wilders is very much like Peter the Hermit who instigated Christian Europe to wage the infamous Crusades. His fiery incitement eventually caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians.

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Joseph Kishore
WSWS

"The WikiLeaks documents—only a small fraction of which have as yet been made public—provide a glimpse of the nexus of corrupt relations and criminal operations carried out in secret by the US government."

As diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks continue to be published—revealing each day new information on the sordid maneuvers of American imperialism in various parts of the world—the US government is going on the offensive. It is leading an international campaign targeting WikiLeaks founder Jullian Assange and the organization’s web site.

To justify the witch-hunt against WikiLeaks, which has not committed any crime, innumerable government officials and media commentators have come to the defense of secret diplomacy, declaring the practice of conducting negotiations, hatching plots and making deals behind the backs of the people a positive virtue and even a bulwark of peace and democracy.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been among the most vocal in denouncing WikiLeaks, declaring that the publication of thousands of cables “is an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.”

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Jeff Sparrow & Elizabeth O'Shea
ABC.net

Editor's note: There’s no doubt that WikiLeaks and its figurehead-on-the-run Julian Assange are among the hottest items for discussion on the planet right now.

Feelings are running high, and many in this country take the view that the Australian Government ought do more to assist its vilified, beleaguered citizen.

Assange has become a cause celebre, as evidenced by the signatories to this open letter, a who’s who of sorts, from Noam Chomsky to Helen Garner...

We wrote the letter below because we believe that Julian Assange is entitled to all the protections enshrined in the rule of law – and that the Australian Government has an obligation to ensure he receives them.

The signatures here have been collected in the course of a day-and-a-half, primarily from people in publishing, law and politics. The signatories hold divergent views about WikiLeaks and its operations. But they are united in a determination to see Mr Assange treated fairly.

We know that many others would have liked to sign. But given the urgency of the situation, we though it expedient to publish now rather than collect more names.

If, however, you agree with the sentiments expressed, we encourage you to leave your name in the comments section.

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JB Campbell
Veterans Today

Reeling slightly from Gordon Duff’s November 25 piece on American war-mongering lies, which I only read this morning (two days later), I believe we now have a chance at redeeming ourselves. Hard truth is a real elixir, once you get your heart going again.

Disgrace and redemption. The disgrace is of course our acceptance of Jewish domination of our lives, thanks entirely to the mind control system of tax-exempt Christianity in which we are all immersed regardless of our piety, our agnosticism or our hard, heathen rejection. America is a Christian nation and that means that we have not been allowed to defend ourselves against Jews. Christianity protects Jews from being killed, which is its main purpose. That’s why it is tax-exempt.

American lies are Jewish lies. Since Jews control every important aspect of our lives through banking, finance, law, war, food & drugs and entertainment, we are literally floating on a reservoir of truth blocked by a dam of lies that keeps us from understanding anything about those several subjects, among many others. But now I’m thinking that we can break the dam that contains this reservoir, let out the truth and produce tremendous energy, which we would see in the form of anger. Anti-Jewish anger. When dams break we all need to get to high ground or be swept away. Big dams are impressive things but I think rivers are supposed to run. Truth also is meant to flow, not be dammed up by lies.

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Charles E. Carlson
WHTT

Zionism denies basic teaching of Jesus and the Prophets

The church centered society that makes up the largest voting block in the US practices the reverse of what its leaders say they believe. American Southern Baptists and most non-denominational mega-bible-churches, often led by TV celebrities, have in common a profession that the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God, preserved by His hand in context. But in practice leaders teach not from the words but from footnotes and commentaries to the bible written by various men who tell us what they think the bible means. Only by resorting to man made distortions are leaders able to support the Zionist political machine that thrives on war.

A growing list of authors recognize what this mere hundred year old sub-sect of supposed Christianity is doing, but unfortunately most of them have stopped short of explaining why and how Zionist leaders get away with it. Pastor John Hagee and novelist Tim Lehey are anything but literal in their reading of the Bible; rather they present the most fanciful and abusive distortion of Christ following ever seen on the planet, including Mormonism.

Once more there are too many Christian Zionist to be ignored. A Gallup poll May 25, 2007, stated that "about one-third of Americans today believe the Bible is absolutely accurate and that it should be taken literally word for word." Pew Foundation has repeatedly confirmed Gallup's number that adds up to about 100 million people. Other polls tell us these misled "literalists" tend to vote in a block generally identified today as Christian Right.

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Kourosh Ziabari

Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Wayne Madsen is an American investigative journalist and columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the political blog "Wayne Madsen Report". He has appeared on ABC News, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al-Jezeera, MSNBC and Press TV. Madsen has written the introduction to the book "Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden". Madsen's articles have appeared on a number of news websites and magazines including Global Research, Pacific Free Press, Online Journal, Counter Punch, The American Conservative, Tehran Times and In These Times.

Madsen has more than 20 years of experience in security affairs. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He has also worked for the NSA National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

Madsen joined me in an exclusive interview and answered my questions about the 9/11 attacks, Israel's dominance over the U.S. media and the prospect of Iran-U.S. relations.

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