- Mini Bio
- Name: Julian Assange
- Born: 3rd July 1971, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
- Occupation: Publisher and Activist
- Founded: WikiLeaks in 2006
- Marital resume: Teresa 1989 - 1999 (divorced) and Stella Moris 23rd March 2022 - present day
- Nickname: Mendax
- Controversy: He was prosecuted for various charges related to incitement to hack. Circumstantial evidence intimated his crime involved helping to author an electronic magazine with a circulation of three people that included Julian and two of his friends
- Trivia: In 2012, Julian guest-starred on the 500th episode of "The Simpsons". He played himself and his lines were recorded during phone calls made in London's Ecuadorian Embassy
"If you only have a black box, you can put all your fears into it, particularly opportunists in government or private industry who want to address a problem that may not exist. If you know what a government is doing, that can reduce tensions"
Julian Assange"The Pentagon threatened WikiLeaks and me personally, threatened us before the whole world, demanded that we destroy everything we had published, demanded we cease ‘soliciting’ new information from US government whistle-blowers"
Julian Assange"The UK Government by 2015, by the middle of 2015, admitted just one department alone had spent 12.6 million pounds - it was very embarrassing - on surveilling me. It was very embarrassing. And so in response they classified the budget"
Julian Assange"We're in constant warfare with those people who are trying to distort the understanding of how human beings actually behave, including distortions by proxy, which is to, you know, come up with nonsense about WikiLeaks or me"
Julian Assange"The United States government had to admit under oath in the trial of Chelsea Manning in 2013 that it could not find a single instance of someone who had been physically harmed as a result of our publications to that point"
Julian Assange"I often say that censorship is always a cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care what people think"
Julian Assange"It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in"
Julian Assange"I have mixed attitudes towards capitalism, but I love markets. Having lived and worked in many countries, I can see the tremendous vibrancy in, say, the Malaysian telecom sector compared to U.S."
Julian Assange"That's something I saw early on, without realizing it: potentiating people to reveal their information, creating a conduit. Without having any other robust publisher in the market, people came to us"
Julian Assange"It’s a worry, isn’t it, that the world’s media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more [classified] information than the rest of the world’s media combined"
Julian Assange"Who am I? I fought for liberty and was deprived of all liberty. I fought for freedom of speech and was denied all speech. I fought for the truth and became the subject of a thousand lies"
Julian Assange"For people who aren't familiar with this kind of disgusting machine that the media is and how it works, perhaps it's enough to say that most human wars have come about as a result of lies"
Julian Assange"Democracies have to be lied into war. It's a very serious on-going problem. It has resulted in the deaths of millions of people in the last 50 years"
Julian Assange"There is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies"
Julian Assange"The military, the CIA, the FBI, all have no choice but to hire from a pool of people that have been educated on the Internet. This means they are hiring our moles in vast numbers"
Julian Assange"Most of the media organizations do burn sources. Edward Snowden was abandoned in Hong Kong, especially by the Guardian, which had run his stories exclusively"
Julian Assange"WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more"
Julian Assange"There is a terrible failing in academia in understanding current geopolitical and technical developments and the intersection between these two areas"
Julian Assange"States never like to be forced to follow their own rules. In fact, they define themselves in significant degree as having power by violating their own rules"
Julian Assange"The insiders know where the bodies are. It's much more efficient to have insiders. They know the problems, they understand how to expose them"
Julian Assange"The CIA is not scared as an institution of people leaking. It's scared that people will know that people are leaking and getting away with it"
Julian Assange"General information about individuals is worth little, but when you group together a billion individuals, it becomes strategic like an oil or gas pipeline"
Julian Assange"Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone — it’s not understanding what actually is going on in the world"
Julian Assange"If it's a choice between being extradited to Saudi Arabia or the US, then I should go to Saudi Arabia, a land famous for its judicial moderation"
Julian Assange"There is widespread knowledge not only of how to leak, but how to leak and not be caught, how to even avoid suspicion that you are leaking"
Julian Assange"There will always be people within the system that have an agenda to defy authority"
Julian Assange"We accept all material of diplomatic, historical or ethical significance that hasn't been released before and is under active suppression"
Julian Assange"Without insight, deep insight into how those organizations are acting, they go astray. So intelligence agencies must be transparent"
Julian Assange"You can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism"
Julian Assange"WikiLeaks means it's easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this"
Julian Assange"We're the canary in the coalmine. We're at the vanguard. But the attacks against publishers in general are severe"
Julian Assange"You don’t publish the world’s most powerful governments’ dirtiest secrets and stay anonymous for long"
Julian Assange"It's not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because I've learned from many"
Julian Assange"The AI-ification of computer hacking is something that will happen at scale, because you're automating it"
Julian Assange"Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior"
Julian Assange"The goal is justice, the method? is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method"
Julian Assange"I’m interested in science and the way things move into each other, overlap or push each other away"
Julian Assange"Virginia is not an innocent choice, this is where every single military government contractor lives"
Julian Assange"In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic"
Julian Assange"Censorship represents Fear by Big Information. 'Stopping leaks' is a new form of censorship"
Julian Assange"I'm not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can't be"
Julian Assange"Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has"
Julian Assange"True democracy is the resistance of people armed with the truth, against lies"
Julian Assange"It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that they’re going on"
Julian Assange"The real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States"
Julian Assange"To keep people in control, you only need to make them scared"
Julian Assange"WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical"
Julian Assange"The US sees China helping Europe as a threat to its dominance"
Julian Assange"If wars can be started with lies, they can be stopped by truth"
Julian Assange"If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature"
Julian Assange"The goal is an endless war, not a successful war"
Julian Assange"Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship"
Julian Assange"Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism"
Julian Assange"Truth, ultimately, is all we have"
Julian Assange"All memoir is prostitution"
Julian Assange"Courage is contagious"
Julian AssangeGreat quotes are not where you find great wisdom. It's where you share this knowledge that counts
Sharing Is Caring
The Debt We Owe Julian Assange
He was a tearaway-tech from Townsville who traversed the terabyte-highway into the systems of tech-titans from Texas to Toronto. It started as a curiosity. Here was a teenager with an Amiga computer who would cut a path to fame and infamy by telling the truth.
The boy was called Julian Assange. And, he would soon discover, that truth is a very selective delicacy flavoured for a few favoured figures only.
From the beaches of Brisbane to the bars of Belmarsh there has only been two meaningful mainstay's in the mind of Assange:
Ethics and truth.
The boy from Townsville has never been a philosopher in the traditional sense. But, as his path was hazed by hell, high water and heinous hypocrisy, he always maintained a determined effort to conform to ethical practices. Back in the day, Julian was a bright eyed boy armed with a simple computer and a curiosity to explore. Ethical hacking seemed comic not crime, afterall, it was always about access and never about profit.
The essence of genius lurks in the mind of Julian Assange. His education was mostly self-taught. He seldom attended school and he bored of university. He immersed himself in skills he found interesting. Maths came easy to him, so creating cryptographic algorithm's was more cheer than chore.
He was a typical flawed genius. Some say he lacked in social skills. Some also question his willingness to expose the lies of the powerful; is this madness, they exclaim from the safety of their sofa's. But, they seldom doubt his grey matter for understanding technical analysis or creating technical solutions.
The next step in understanding Assange is his ethical code of conduct. Unwavering is the word that best describes the philosophy of truthfulness that Julian lives by. Governments and corporations would soon find out the sword of truth wielded by Assange would reveal many unclothed emperor's.
But what of main stream media journalism? Julian quickly learned that MSM think nothing of burning their sources. MSM did not share Assange's interest in truth regardless of position of power. Alternative news was the only way. WikiLeaks has spearheaded alternative news sources with the publication of in excess of 10 million documents and associated analyses.
There have been many court cases. It has never been proven that WikiLeaks published any untruths. Everything they ever published was true. Assange went further to redact any personal details to ensure no harm could come to any individual.
It could be argued that Julian's greatest achievement was not selling out to become a stooge for the establishment. Afterall, the empire likes to use the brilliance of genius to further its agenda under the radar of declared news. If he had done this many emperor's would still appear to be clothed. If he had done this there would be no WikiLeaks.
Pondering if there was no WikiLeaks is now unimaginable.
No need to imagine this; Our misbegotten leaders still pontificate their so called democracies from ivory towers built on the three C's of condescension, corruption and corpses. The distrust in western politico's has never been higher. For a few corporate dollars more this trust can still be bought, but, it raises the spectre of time. For how long?
The entire world owes a massive debt to Julian Assange, a debt we may never get the opportunity to repay. Will he ever emerge from the bowels of Belmarsh? Oh the irony, rotting in solitary confinement for telling the truth to power. The only crime by Julian Assange is exposing the crimes of the powerful. One day in the future this senseless persecution may cease and desist, let's hope for Julian that day is sooner rather than later.
Quotes About Julian Assange
The former Ecuadorian president, Evo Morales, shared this insight: "Sometimes the empire talks about freedom of expression, but deep down they are enemies of freedom of expression. The empire, when someone tells the truth…that is when the retaliation begins, like with Assange"
Morales went on to say: "This detention of our friend Assange is an intimidation so all the crimes against humanity committed by the United States are never revealed"
The human rights activist, Craig Murray, shared this assessment: "The cold calculation behind Assange’s treatment in his last months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, when he was denied access to wash and shave, in order to produce the apparent monster for the photos of his arrest, is a true example of evil unfolding"
A British politician, Jeremy Corbyn praised his ethical journalism: "Assange managed to collect information on what the U.S. was doing, U.S. foreign policy was doing, its illegal activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and much else. In the great traditions of a journalist who never reveals their sources, very important, and he was pursued because of this and as we know, eventually sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, but was unable to get out of it."
Corbyn then added: "We then discover that all that time in the Ecuadorian embassy… there was the surveillance of him by apparently an independent security company, but in reality it was working for the Americans"
The writer Chris Hedges summed up Assanges situation thus: "His imprisonment for revealing the war crimes, mendacity, cynicism, and corruption of the ruling class, including the Democratic Party, heralds a new era. Investigations into the centers of power, the life blood of journalism, will be a criminal offense."
Hedges also said, quite bluntly: "The campaign against Assange, and I have sat in on hearings in London, is a Dickensian farce, the persecution of an innocent and heroic man, far more reminiscent of the Lubyanka than the best of British jurisprudence. He is being used to send a message — if you expose what we do we will destroy you."
Hedges went on to say: "A Society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice... the battle for Julian's liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating"
His wife, Stella Assange, opined this view: "He should be free and everyone knows it. The process is being used to hide atrocities from history. … They have to tie themselves up in knots in order to allow this outrageous extradition. I think it’s probably been extremely difficult for them to come up with some kind of semi-coherent argument"
Stella went on to say: "The U.K. should not be engaging in persecution on behalf of a foreign power that is out for revenge. That foreign power … committed crimes that Julian put into the sunlight. Julian has done nothing wrong. He has done everything that any self-respecting journalist should do when given evidence of a state committing crimes — they publish it because their duty is to the public. And Julian’s duty to the public has landed him in prison."
The award winning Journalist John Pilger spoke of the treachery of the MSM: "It has been open season on the WikiLeaks' founder for more than a decade. In 2011, The Guardian exploited Julian's work as if it was its own, collected journalism prizes and Hollywood deals, then turned on its source"
John Pilger described him thus: "Julian Assange is a truth-teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale and so performed one of the great public services of my lifetime. Do we need to be reminded that justice for one is justice for all?"
John Pilger was praiseful with his words: "Julian Assange is the courageous embodiment of a struggle against the darkest, most oppressive force in our world; and people of principle, young and old, should oppose it as best they can; or one day it may touch their lives, and worse"
John Pilger on Assange's public service: "He informed millions about the deceptions of governments too many trusted; he respected the right of people to know. It was a remarkable public service"
John Pilger then shared this comparison: "His courage beyond doubt, and a quality of resistance and resilience that is heroism. It is this that may see him through the present Kafkaesque nightmare - if he is spared an American hellhole"
An Australian film maker, Mark Davis, bore witness to verify how Julian took extraordinary measures to ensure no names were revealed in the published documents: "Assange was the only one who worked day and night extracting 10,000 names of people who could be targeted by the revelations in the logs"
A former intelligence officer, John Kiriakou, on the pending extradition: "I know from personal experience, Julian Assange cannot and will not get a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia"
John Kiriakou shared an interesting insight: "In the meantime, I ran into another national security whistleblower at an event recently. He told me that the F.B.I. had recently paid him a visit. He is still on probation and the F.B.I. offered to get that probation lifted if he would tell them anything and everything he knows about Julian Assange and Ed Snowden. He told them that he speaks through his attorney and wanted no further contact with them. His attorney told the F.B.I. that his client had nothing to say, would tell them nothing about Assange or Snowden even if he knew something and to not contact his client again."
An American author and attorney, Jacob Hornberger, shared this indisputable comparison: "It’s pretty sad when the communists are condemning and criticizing the U.S. government for hypocrisy when it comes to human-rights abuses and civil liberties. It’s even sadder when they are right, especially in the case of Julian Assange"
The author, Tariq Ali, believes that truth will prevail: "Julian exposed another set of wars. Basically, he exposed the so-called war on terror, which began after 9/11, has lasted 20 years, has led to six wars, millions killed, trillions wasted. That is the only balance sheet of that war. ... And if they think that punishing him in this vindictive and punitive way is going to change people’s attitudes to coming out and telling the truth, they’re wrong"
The NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, shared this view: "Julian Assange... has been charged as a political criminal — something that I understand quite well, but he has been charged as the purest sort of political criminal, for having committed the transgression of choosing the wrong side.... The charges, which are — they are absolutely an unadorned legal fiction. We are told to believe that the state has these powers over what can be said and what can’t be said..."
Snowden went on to say: "He has consistently and continuously dared to speak the unspeakable, in the face of opposition, in the face of power. And that is a remarkable and rare thing. That is the reason that Julian Assange sits in prison today."
The author and activist, Lee Camp, shared this view: "Assange and WikiLeaks revealed the American military’s war crimes, the American government’s corruption and the American corporate media’s pathetic servile flattery to the power elite"
The ousted president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, shared this damning opinion: "The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget."
A Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, was praiseful with this description: "He not only is one of the few authentic heroes of our time, he also has shown to all of us how to be a hero today and that it is possible to be a hero today."
A political analyst, Bob Beckel, shared a different opinion: "A dead man can't leak stuff. This guy's a traitor, a treasonist, and he has broken every law of the United States. The guy ought to be — And I'm not for the death penalty, so if I'm not for the death penalty, there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch"
Back in 2010, the author and academic, Michael Lind, questioned the authenticity of the WikiLeaks founder: "Assange’s attorney has promised that if anything happens to his client, WikiLeaks will release a “nuclear bomb” of even more damaging information … If Assange sincerely believes that he needs to blackmail the U.S. government into refraining from assassinating him, he is delusional as well as conceited. Assange’s supporters ought to be upset by the revelation that the supposed champion of transparency has deliberately been holding the good stuff back. After all, authentic whistle-blowers would release the most damaging information at the beginning — not withhold it as a bargaining chip to intimidate prosecutors."
Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, used this clarification towards whistleblowers: "I think we should be clear here. WikiLeaks and people that disseminate information to people like this are criminals, first and foremost"
A Republican representative from Michigan, Candice S. Miller, did not mince her words about free speech and truth tellers: "It is time that the Obama administration treats WikiLeaks for what it is—a terrorist organization, whose continued operation threatens our security. Shut it down. Shut it down. It is time to shut down this terrorist, this terrorist Web site, WikiLeaks"
The Mexican president, Lopez Obrador, held a different view and shared this radical idea about the monument to American freedom: "If they take him to the United States and he is sentenced to the maximum penalty and to die in prison, we must start a campaign to tear down the Statue of Liberty"
The American writer, Robert Bridge, shared this assessment of the potential extradition: "Julian Assange can expect no justice in the US, nor even any sympathy, which is why London should never have agreed to extradite him to the Empire of Lies in the first place"
Julian's brother, Gabriel Shipman, spoke of his appeal against the extradition: "The appeal will include new information that we weren’t able to bring before the courts previously. Information on how Julian lawyers were spied on, and how there were plots to kidnap and kill Julian from within the CIA"
The Australian independent journalist, Caitlin Johnstone, shared this appraisal: "Extraditing a foreign journalist for exposing your war crimes is as tyrannical an agenda as you could possibly come up with. The US, UK and Australia colluding toward this end shows us that these are member states of a single empire whose only values are domination and control, and that all its posturing about human rights is pure facade. Assange keeps exposing the true face of power."
Johnstone went on to say: "There is in fact a strong argument to be made that even all these years after the 2010 leaks for which he is currently being prosecuted, Assange is doing his most important work yet. As important as his WikiLeaks publications were and are, none of them exposed the depravity of the empire as much as forcing them to look us in the eye and tell us they’ll extradite a journalist for telling the truth."
The British investigative journalist, Iain Overton, expressed this view: "As far as I can see, Assange’s only crime has been the publication of confidential – but damning – military documents."
Overton then added: "It seems that a very effective way to stop someone exposing British or American death squads is to lock them up."
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame, had this to say: "Our voices will become louder and louder and louder until Julian Assange is set free... If we no longer have a voice, we're done .... If they destroy Assange they destroy the most important voice of the 21st century"
The Irish politician Mick Wallace shared this opinion: "Julian Assange is in prison for speaking the truth about US NATO War Crimes - Staying Silent and refusing to defend him amounts to a form of complicity..."
The writer, Maxine Walker, expressed this view: "This is, of course, a political extradition – something that expressly is not allowed under Extradition agreements between the US and UK. But that has never stopped the case either"
The British politician George Galloway pondered this similitude: "If Chinese crimes rather than American crimes had been revealed by Assange, he would now be the poster boy for the Winter Olympics’ boycott campaign. Every news bulletin today would’ve led with his fate, every press still turning would be rolling out the outrage at the crushing of this butterfly on the wheel. Poor Julian, if only he had been born a Chinaman"
A film maker, Suzie Halewood, pondered irrational political logic: "How can it be a crime to report a crime? For many it would be more like a duty. Assange’s only ‘crime’ was in humiliating the intelligence community – notably Pompeo and the CIA"
The writer, Nils Melzer, did not mince his words: "Julian Assange is a victim of torture and inhuman treatment. This is a threat not just to Assange himself but to freedom of speech everywhere in the world"
An American analyst, Daniel Ellsberg was in no doubt about the threat to journalistic freedoms: "If Assange is extradited, no journalist in the world is safe from life imprisonment in the United States"
The veteran activist, Noam Chomsky opined the obvious order of international subjugation: "The abject submission of British authorities to the Master in Washington in the case of journalist Julian Assange is painful to observe but - unfortunately - not difficult to understand"
The actress, Pamela Anderson, was impressed to say: "Julian is trying to free the world by educating it"
A film producer, Elliot Grove, described him thus: "He is a subtle political thinker, a radical democrat, and an audacious dissident of the digital age"
The singer Leo Sayer shared this opinion: "You need people like him, he reveals the truth, they’re all scared of the truth of course"