WikiLeaks

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE Wed Apr 24 17:24:44 BST

Milestone Supreme Court Decision for WikiLeaks Case in Iceland

Today's decision marked the most important victory to date against the unlawful and arbitrary economic blockade erected by US companies against WikiLeaks. Iceland's Supreme Court upheld the decision that Valitor (formerly VISA Iceland and current Visa subcontractor) had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks donations processor DataCell. This strong judgement is an important milestone for WikiLeaks' legal battle to end the economic blockade that has besieged the organisation since early December 2010. Despite the effects of the blockade having crippled WikiLeaks resources, the organisation is fighting the blockade on many fronts. It is a battle that concerns free speech and the future of the free press; it concerns fundamental civil rights; and it is a struggle for the rights of individuals to vote with their wallet and donate to the cause they believe in.

On 3 February 2013 at a private dinner at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, attended by more than 150 guests, Julian Assange will receive the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts 2013 for his WikiLeaks work including, amongst other releases, Collateral Murder. This award is given to people who have displayed extraordinary courage and who through their artistry have changed the world.

Senator the Hon Bob Carr
Minister for Foreign Affairs
PO Box 6100
Senate Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

14 January 2013

Dear Minister,

Please find below a series of statements made by members of the Swedish Executive and government officials on the Assange case.

Senator the Hon Bob Carr
Minister for Foreign Affairs
PO Box 6100
Senate Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

28 November 2012

Dear Minister,

Please find below a series of links to evidence relating to the existence of a criminal grand jury investigation into Wikileaks.

On Monday Torrent Freak reported that, after three years of service to the organization, PayPal has frozen the funds of PRQ, an ISP founded by The Pirate Bay's Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm. Earlier this month, sources also reported the suspension of the Twitter account of Anonymous Sweden (@AnonOpsSweden). Anonymous, which supports WikiLeaks, is allegedly responsible for numerous high-profile computer hacks.

Since the Stockholm-based web host PeRiQuito AB, or PRQ, was created in 2004, it has had a public policy that it will host and defend any website that is legal in Sweden. Boasting "no-questions-asked" customer service, PRQ even accepts cash payments to ensure the anonymity of website operators. "Generally we don't know who our customers are," says PRQ's owner Mikael Viborg. "By Swedish law, we're not required to." Viborg adds: "We don't cooperate with the authorities unless we absolutely have to." This approach has garnered the ISP the business of many controversial websites, including WikiLeaks. It has also attracted the attention of authorities. PRQ has been repeatedly raided by Swedish law enforcement -- most recently this October, when authorities confiscated four of the company's servers and took down dozens of sites. In 2006 police took 180 servers in an investigation of The Pirate Bay (reportedly, The Pirate Bay is no longer hosted by PRQ).

Earlier this month, the pro-WikiLeaks Swedish transparency websites Under Mattan and Corruptio were shut down by their web host, allegedly at the request of Sweden's armed forces. Without prior warning or explanation, the ISP Blog.com pulled the plug on Under Mattan (translation: "Under the Rug") soon after the site posted documents that indicated Swedish military involvement in the Assange case, and that also showed possible allegiances between Sweden's media and armed forces in connection with the Assange investigation.

One source apparently affiliated with Under Mattan stated that, when the site's owners tried to contact Blog.com after the shutdown, "The people at the ISP Blog.com refuse{d} to take our calls or reply to our inquiries." However, Crikey now reports that, according to Under Mattan, the ISP has stated that it took down the site at the behest of the Swedish Army's Special Intelligence unit.

Thursday December 20th, 19:00 GMT

(Not checked to delivery)

Six months ago - 185 days ago - I entered this building.

It has become my home, my office and my refuge.

Thanks to the principled stance of the Ecuadorian government and the support of its people I am safe in this Embassy and safe to speak from this Embassy.

And every single day outside, people like you have watched over this embassy - rain hail and shine.

Earlier this week, a group of high-profile journalists and free-speech activists announced the launch of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), an initiative intended to thwart a two-year financial blockade against WikiLeaks and to fund-raise for similar nonprofit organizations.

Designed to fund journalism institutions that are dedicated to "aggressive, uncompromising journalism in the vein of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers," FPF collects donations for media outlets that expose "mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government." As WikiLeaks puts it, FPF "will crowd-source fundraising and support for organizations or individuals under attack for publishing the truth."

FPF's co-founders include legendary "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; John Perry Barlow, who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and for decades wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead; EFF writer and activist Trevor Timm, who is also FPF's Executive Director; and Rainey Reitman, who co-founded the Bradley Manning Support Network and serves as FPF's Chief Operating Officer. Also on the board of directors are Guardian columnist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald; actor and activist John Cusack; award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras; Boing Boing co-founder and co-editor Xeni Jardin; and Josh Stearns of Free Press. EFF web developer Micah Lee is FPF's Chief Technology Officer.

Press release from WikiLeaks and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Sunday 16th December, 23:00 GMT

Today sees the launch of the Freedom of the Press Foundation − a new initiative inspired by the fight against the two-year-long extra-judicial financial embargo imposed on WikiLeaks by U.S. financial giants including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and the Bank of America.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, an initiative of Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) co-founder John Perry Barlow, former Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the actor John Cusack and others, will crowd-source fundraising and support for organizations or individuals under attack for publishing the truth. It aims to promote "aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption and law-breaking in government".

Over the last two years the blockade has stopped 95 per cent of contributions to WikiLeaks, running primary cash reserves down from more than a million dollars in 2010 to under a thousand dollars, as of December 2012. Only an aggressive attack against the blockade will permit WikiLeaks to continue publishing through 2013.

The new initiative, combined with a recent victory in Germany, means contributions to WikiLeaks now have tax-deductible status throughout the United States and Europe.

Sources have announced that on the evening of Thursday, December 20, 2012, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief and Australian Senate candidate Julian Assange will deliver a Christmas speech from the Ecuadorean embassy in London. The December 20 speech marks six months of Assange's stay at the embassy, where he has sought refuge since June in order to resist extradition to Sweden and to the U.S. This will also be Assange's first public address since he confirmed his candidacy for the Australian Senate earlier in the week.

Assange presented a speech from the embassy's balcony on August 19, 2012, just days after receiving Ecuador's formal grant of asylum. On September 27, he gave an address to the United Nations via Skype.

Wise Up Action, a solidarity network for Assange and alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, has asked Assange supporters to attend the event, to arrive at the embassy by 6:30 p.m. for songs of solidarity, and to bring candles and food.

The Ecuadorean embassy is located at 3 Hans Crescent, SW1X 0LS London, United Kingdom. Assange is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. GMT.

Directed by teacher and citizen journalist Cathy Vogan, The WikiLeaks Tapes is a new, two-disc DVD of interviews with dozens of prominent personalities on the topic of WikiLeaks. Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, John Pilger, Christine Assange, Julian Morrow, Senator Scott Lundlam, and Mary Kostakidis are just a few of the famous names speaking out on record regarding Western governments' persecution of WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange.

AFP news agency has reported that Julian Assange will meet this Thursday in London with French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, co-Chairman of France's Left Party (PG). A press conference will be held at Ecuador's London embassy after the meeting.

Promoting what he calls a "citizens' revolution," Mélenchon and his Left Front movement advocate a populist approach to governance. In an interview earlier this year, Mélenchon explained:

"The politics of the established order speaks to no one except the powerful. It speaks a dead language in which there are no people, no love, no fraternity, no poetry, no taste of the future, no passion for science. The only thing that counts is the balance sheet, and on the condition that public spending is reduced. We have dared to change all that. We have somehow broken the inhuman law of silence. And reintroduced human questions, by asking how to address them. We came to the realization that the possible was not far from the desirable. And that sometimes the possible can be greater than what people dare to dream. People had been taught to stunt their dreams. We, by contrast, tell them to let them flourish. This is actually another way of doing politics."

A new WikiLeaks documentary is scheduled to premiere at the Sundance film festival early next year. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks will screen at the Salt Lake City, Utah festival which takes place January 17-27, 2013.

According to the Sundance website:
"The definitive story of Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks, WE STEAL SECRETS explores the people and events behind the upstart website that rocked the U.S. government, ushered in a new era of transparency and ignited an information war."

Trevor Groth, Sundance Director of Programming states:
"The films in the Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections offer compelling portraits of worlds and people ranging from the beloved to the misunderstood to the unknown. Expertly crafted by some of the most esteemed filmmakers in the world these films have the power to delight audiences at the Festival and impact our culture at large."

The complete Sundance lineup can be viewed here.

Julian Assange was asked to present at the European Parliament S&D party seminar on Corruption in member states of the European Union. Bivol made a presentation in this seminar entitled Government Level Corruption and Ties to Organized Crime. Julian Assange spoke as part of this presentation on the wider corruption revealed in Cablegate, and legal cases that have used the cables as evidence.

European Commission documents released today by WikiLeaks show that hard-right U.S. politicians were directly behind the extrajudicial banking blockade against WikiLeaks. In the heavily redacted documents, MasterCard Europe admits that Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Peter T. King both "had conversations" with MasterCard in the United States. Lieberman, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, boasted of instigating Amazon's cutting of service to WikiLeaks - an action condemned by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers on 7 December 2011.

On November 27, 2012, Julian Assange will give a keynote speech regarding "A Vision of the Future Society" at ConventionCamp 2012, an Internet conference in Hanover, Germany.

Ingo Stoll, organizer and managing director of the agency neuwaerts, commented on the choice of Assange for the keynote speech:

"The internet and the digital revolution have initiated a fundamental change in our society. The established institutions have already been struggling for a long time for their retention of power in being the opinion and interpretation leaders. So far, nobody has challenged these institutions as much as WikliLeaks and in person Julian Assange. Who else could be more suitable for speaking about our key issue of ... 'real change' far away from Twitter, Facebook, etc.? We are interested in his vision of the future society. And we believe that with his ... views he will ... make the 1,500 attendees step out of the comfort zone of their own thoughts."

Assange is scheduled to appear via video stream at 9:45AM. An exclusive interview will follow the keynote.

Wau-Holland-Stiftung (WHS), named in memory of the German philosopher and net activist Wau Holland, has been collecting donations for WikiLeaks since 2009. In the immediate aftermath of WikiLeaks publication of the US diplomatic cables in 2010, not only did PayPal arbitarily shut down the WHS donations account, but the tax-exempt status of the Foundation was challenged as well.

This situation has now been rectified.

In a landmark decision today the European Parliament initiated the drafting of legislation that would stop the arbitrary banking blockades against WikiLeaks and other organizations facing economic censorship. This is an important signal from the European lawmakers. It is a recognition of the seriousness of the precedents set in December 2010, still in force, when Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and Bank of America launched a unilateral, extrajudicial banking blockade against donations to WikiLeaks.

After being offline since 3 August, wikileaks.org came back tonight under the protection of CloudFlare. The donations channels are again open.

By Nikolas Kozloff.

Due to competing interests, the emerging world power's foreign policy is being pulled between pragmatism and idealism.