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WikiLeaks' International Man of Mystery
AcidAUS writes "The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow the whistle. Here's a detailed profile of the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, by Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald."
You gotta hand it to the CIA. When they attack something like Wikileaks, they really take the long view.
First, show how Wikileaks is somehow providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information. Now, set the founder up for more publicity, implicitly encouraging violence upon him.
It's a chilling effect on anyone who might be initially inclined to provide information to Wikileaks under their cover of anonymity.
This is the second time I've seen Julian Assange come up in reference to the video. I wonder why he's giving all this publicity? Surely this will hamper his efforts and get him on watch lists that make it difficult for him to travel. Maybe he's succumbing to the temptation to become infamous. Or maybe he just feels this is the best way to make sure the media hangs onto this story to make sure something changes. The interesting thing is that if he is a hacker, it makes it all that more interesting about how wikileaks is getting their stuff. Is it really even being leaked?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Although I can see why Slashdot might give you that impression, do remember that the reporting on here is usually quite sensationalist.
Australia doesn't yet have an internet filter (hell, the Bill hasn't even been introduced into the House yet, and even if it passed there would face near-certain death in the Senate), and it's been aggressively fought every step of the way. Contrast this with China, which obviously has a well-known filter (and one far, far more intrusive than the simple URL blacklist proposed in AU). Contrast this further with other countries have introduced an AU-like filter quietly and without much debate (most recently, New Zealand).
If anything, it shows that the democratic process is working well in Australia, the fact that you are hearing and seeing so many stories (read: so much opposition) to such proposals.
The other kooky story you are likely to have heard out of Australia in the last 12 months is the lack of an R rating for computer games. There's been quite a breakthrough on that front, with the one man primarily responsible for blocking the introduction of the R rating retiring as South Australian Attorney-General. His replacement has publicly stated they are in support of an R rating for games. So it appears we'll get our R rating within the not too distant future, bringing us into line with the classification systems in the US and EU.
Australia has problems like any country. But I don't think they are anywhere on the scale of China, or even on the scale of other Western countries like the UK (far more surveillance there than in AU). The US overall has a good record on such matters, but it too is not perfect (witness the whole warrantless logging/tapping of public phone conversations debacle etc.). The problems might be ~different~ in other countries but they are no less serious.
More information on Assanage the reporter doesn't know about...
Back in the early 90's, APANA, The Australian Public Access :/
Network Association, kicked 'proff' out because he was using
their network to crack into overseas systems. APANA was
threatened with disconnection because of his attempts were traced
easily. proff was already a known kook, who was attempting to
make his system 'suburbia' (later suburbia.net) a global
CyBeRpUnK HQ, his quest being to become the ULTIMATE CYBERPUNK
who could overthrow governments (sound familiar..?) When we
kicked him out, he spammed and attempted to DDoS apana.org.au.
Er ... although I certainly am opposed to any form of censorship on the Internet, I do feel obliged to point out that Mr. Evers is not Australian. His lawyer has simply informed him that because he has broken an Australian law (whether or not you agree with the appropriateness of that law, which in this case pertains to racially discriminatory language/hate speech ... conveniently omitted from what you've quoted), setting foot in Australia in the future ~may~ result in his being detained.
The same would apply to an Australian who breaks a US law (and believe me, you have your fair share of wacky laws too, including some that are very similar to the law Mr. Evans is alleged to have breached) - if they attempt to visit the US in the future they are likely to be arrested at the border. Mr. Evans may have family in Australia (as referred to in what you have quoted above), but he himself is not Australian. So the whole "he cannot return to his homeland" thing doesn't really apply.
Having said that I agree with the main anti-censorship sentiment of your post :)
Haven't you heard? In Australia, the penalty for serious crimes is exile to the United States.
I am officially gone from
Actually such things are inevitable in a warzone. That's why you should never start wars lightly[1]. Lots of bad stuff will happen.
It's obvious to many in hindsight that it's a camera. But if you look it from the POV from a paranoid nervous young military helicopter pilot, it does look like the tube of a RPG - esp when the camera sticks out from behind the wall...
What follows after that is just what soldiers do - they kill people, and they are _conditioned_ to think it's OK to kill people. So they make up all sorts of excuses so that they can pull the trigger.
If the helicopter pilot isn't paranoid enough, he or his friends will get killed. Because there ARE people out there who are out to kill him and his friends, and yes sometimes there are children around when it happens. And yes, both sides can be relaxed and merrily joking about stuff minutes before they blow away the other side.
War is how you get otherwise reasonable people to kill strangers they have never met and would otherwise be happy to sit down and have a meal with together. You set things up so that if they don't kill the other side, the other side would kill them and/or their friends. If that doesn't happen, you kill/punish them for disobeying orders.
To me the appalling bit is not that civilians were killed because the pilot made a mistake, it's that the war was either started due to lies or incompetence.
I have to say though that the US military seem to have a reputation of being more trigger happy, and even since the WWII days - the joke goes that when a German plane flies over, the British take cover; when a British plane flies over, the Germans take cover; when a US plane flies over, everyone takes cover... ;)
[1] http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/How-to-reduce-unwanted-wars
Frankly No.
I also saw the video. From the resolution of the images I can honestly say that the they did look like they where armed and when the camera man was ducking around the the corner with his camera he did look like a shooter setting up an ambush.
Other looked like they where caring weapons and the video cometary did say that they where caring AK-47s.
In that situation with that data I can see how the crew could open fire.
The van was not an Ambulance and was not marked with the Red Crescent or Cross.
If you can not see how they could decide to shoot then yes you are not being reasonable.
Yes I can understand how this error was made.
I happened to be visiting family in Northern Ireland in the 80s during the troubles.
I was with some other teens when a bomb went off a few blocks down. I didn't run fast enough and was knocked down by a British solder because I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I was shortly let go but I understand how errors can happen even when I was the target of that error. I was lucky that I wasn't hurt too bad but yes I could have been dead for no other reason than I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That is what happens in insurgent fights like Northern Ireland back then or Iraq now.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.