Julian Assange

"Hacktivist, Whistleblower"  Julian Assange       (Publisher, Hacker?, Spook?)
Born	Julian Paul Hawkins 1971-07-03 Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	Central Queensland University, University of Melbourne
Parents	• Christine Assange • John Shipton
Children	• Gabriel • Max
Spouse	• Teresa Doe • (1989–1999) • Sarah Harrison • (2009–2012) • Stella Moris-Smith Robertson • (2015–present)
Founder of	Wikileaks
Interest of	Polona Florijančič, Sarah Harrison, Taylor Hudak, John Jones (lawyer), Joe Lauria, Elizabeth Vos
Party	Independent, (since 2015), WikiLeaks, (2012—2015)
Subpage	•Julian Assange/Imprisonment
A "hacktivist" of mysterious background, whose website, Wikileaks, has been the conduit for a lot of whistleblowing. His pronounced disinterest in 9/11 is particularly notable.  Editor-in-Chief In office 2006 - 26 September 2018 Employer WikiLeaks Succeeded by Kristinn Hrafnsson  Chairman of the WikiLeaks Party In office 2 July 2013 - 23 July 2015

Julian Assange, born Julian Paul Hawkins, is an Australian programmer and Internet activist. In 2006 he founded Wikileaks. Facing arrest, Assange took refuge in June 2012 in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) reported he was being "arbitrarily detained". He was arrested in April 2019 and imprisoned in Belmarsh. In May 2019 allegations surfaced that he was being chemically tortured.

Craig Murray observed at the time that:

“[...] the most lucid man I know is now not capable of having a rational conversation is extremely alarming.”
Craig Murray (31 May 2019) 

Background

Julian Assange was born in Australia to Christine Ann Hawkins, a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder, who separated before their son was born. His mother married Richard Brett Assange when Julian was a year old. Assange had a nomadic childhood, and had lived in over thirty Australian towns and cities by the time he reached his mid-teens, when he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne, Victoria. His mother "became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, a member of Australian cult The Family, with whom she had a son before the couple broke up in 1982."

Career

Hacking

Julian Assange’s hacker alias, which he used from the age of 16, was Mendax, (Latin for "lying").

In 1986, he managed to hack into the Minerva system of mainframes operated by Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission in Sydney, as the entrance test into the Australian hacker community:

Assange was determined to access Minerva, both for bragging rights and to exploit the mainframes' capabilities to run scanning and cracking programs or other netherworld adventures. But he needed a password.

And the only way he knew to get one was through what hackers call "social engineering", simply calling up a human being and conning him or her into divulging secrets.

Hence the noisy layers of Shakespearean tragedy that the altogether sane young man was producing. Assange's sound show was for the benefit of his cassette recorder, the better to simulate the background chaos of a busy office. A few minutes later, he had found a valid number within an OTC branch office in Perth. And using his uncannily deep sixteen-year-old's voice while the noise-tape played behind him, he became "John Teller", a trustworthy operator in the Sydney office trying to check a few data points corrupted by a crashed storage drive.

He dialled and a man picked up. Assange introduced himself and began the game. "The back up tape is two days old, so we want to check your information is up-to-date so your service is not interrupted," he casually told the man who answered, not missing a beat.

"Oh dear. Yes. Let's check it," Assange's mark responded in a concerned tone. Assange read out a list of easily accessible information for Minerva staff users that he had downloaded, carefully inserting an error into one user's fax number. The voice on the other end interrupted helpfully: "Oh no, that's wrong, our fax number is definitely wrong," he said.

So Assange tried to match his victim's worried tone and explained that they would need to confirm all the user's information. "Let's see. We have your account number, but we had better check your password...what was it?"

"Yes, it's L-U-R-C-H–full stop." Lurch. Assange was in. He politely ended the conversation, gave his target a call back number that rang eternally busy, and hung up, victorious in the greatest hack of his young life.

Julian Assange was caught after a police raid in 1991, and charged in 1994 “with thirty-one counts of hacking and related crimes. In December 1996, he pleaded guilty to twenty-five charges (the other six were dropped), and was ordered to pay reparations of A$2,100 and released on a good behaviour bond. The perceived absence of malicious or mercenary intent and his disrupted childhood were cited to justify his lenient penalty.”

Books

Julian Assange is the author of "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet", published in November 2012:

The harassment of WikiLeaks and other Internet activists, together with attempts to introduce anti-file sharing legislation such as SOPA and ACTA, indicate that the politics of the Internet have reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that guarantees, in the watchwords of the cypherpunks, "privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful"; in the other lies an Internet that allows government and large corporations to discover ever more about internet users while hiding their own activities. Assange and his co-discussants unpick the complex issues surrounding this crucial choice with clarity and engaging enthusiasm.

He is co-author with Suelette Dreyfus of "Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier", published 1997, which

tells the extraordinary true story of the computer underground, and the bizarre lives and crimes of an elite ring of international hackers who took on the establishment. Spanning three continents and a decade of high level infiltration, they created chaos amongst some of the world's biggest and most powerful organisations, including NASA and the US military. Brilliant and obsessed, many of them found themselves addicted to hacking and phreaking. Some descended into drugs and madness, others ended up in jail. As riveting as the finest detective novel and meticulously researched, "Underground" follows the hackers through their crimes, their betrayals, the hunt, raids and investigations. It is a gripping tale of the digital underground.

Nobel Peace Prize nomination

On 27 January 2022, United News of India reported that Julian Assange should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Stella Moris tweeted: "Nobel Peace Prize nomination deadline is 31 January 2022. Nominations are themselves protective, but a win would be so politically protective it would very likely secure Julian's freedom."

Czech Republic's Markéta Gregorová MEP responded: "Hi Stella, I will be nominating Julian for the Nobel Peace Prize, as a Member of the European Parliament. I plan on doing so tomorrow (28 January 2022), we are wrapping up the nomination text right now. I would be happy to coordinate together!"

Wikileaks

Full article: Wikileaks

Assange receiving the Economist New Media Award at an Index on Censorship event in 2008, the same year as the Julius Bär leak.

In 2006, Assange set up Wikileaks, a website intended to publish leaked information. This has published a lot of information.

Ecuadorian embassy siege, Arrest and Trial

Full article: Julian Assange/Imprisonment

Views on 9/11

Full article: 9-11

Since his organisation, Wikileaks, focuses on releasing information to the public that is intended to show government wrongdoing, his view on 9-11 is particularly notable:

“I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”
Julian Assange (19 July 2010) 
By 2019, the original Belfast Telegraph page was changed to hide the 9-11 quote to anyone who had not logged in. The citation uses an archived version.

Webster Tarpley is highly critical for his public support for the 9-11/Official narrative and describes Wikileaks as a "modified limited hangout". It is thinkable that he made the point (even if he wasn't pressed to do so) to make Wikileaks more acceptable to decisionmakers in the commercially-controlled media, at a time when he (still) had to focus on relationship building.

However, on April 20, 2019 Caitlin Johnstone disputes claim Assange is a CIA intelligence asset-limited hangout: "Debunking All the Assange Smears" pointing out how can he possibly be a "CIA asset-limited hangout" and be imprisoned in Belmarsh, awaiting extradition to the U.S.? Note that Webster Tarpley stated Wikileaks is a modified limited hangout and not directly Julian Assange.

Brendon O'Connell offers an alternative explanation on Jan 5, 2022, Episode 90: "Assange, Snowden Russia And Israel"- The Great Game. According to O'Connell, Assange worked for KGB and Russian security services as an asset, offering a video history of his hacking, before Wikileaks.

"Following 9/11, the CIA paved the way for the creation of ISIS"

 

Documents by Julian Assange

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Assange Statement on the start of Bradley Manning trial	statement	4 June 2013	Chelsea Manning
Document:Freedom and the Future of the Internet	book introduction	1 October 2012	Surveillance State Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet
Document:Google and the NSA	article	24 August 2013	National Security Agency Mass surveillance Google
Document:Guantanamo SOP Confirms Psychological Torture	article	17 November 2007	Torture Guantanamo Bay detention camp	Standard operating procedures for military personnel running the Guatanamo Bay military prison confirm that the rules governing the treatment of its inmates amounts to systematic torture
Document:Julian Assange at Moment of Truth	Video transcript	15 September 2014	UKUSA Mass surveillance	Speech by Julian Assange to the Moment of Truth event in New Zealand on 15 September 2014

 

Quotes by Julian Assange

Page	Quote	Date	Source
Australia	“We should understand, Australia is part of the United States. It is part of this English-speaking empire, the center of gravity of which is the United States, the second center of which is the United Kingdom”...“Australia is a suburb in that arrangement. Our capital is Washington. The capital of Australia is DC. That’s the reality...That’s where the decisions are made.”
Mobile phone	“A mobile phone is a tracking device that also makes calls”		Cypherpunk Ethics: Radical Ethics for the Digital Age (2022) by Patrick D. Anderson
Donald Trump	“My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment. Banks, intelligence, arms companies, foreign money, etc. are all united behind Hillary Clinton. And the media as well. Media owners, and the journalists themselves.”	November 2016	Julian Assange

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Ilham Aliyev	“How do you assess what happened to Mr Assange? Is it a reflection of free media in your country?”	Ilham Aliyev	15 November 2020
COVID-19/Response	“To minimize COVID-19] infection the UK is granting early release to all non-violent, non-Julian Assange prisoners.”	Caitlin Johnstone	4 April 2020
Prison	“Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has warned, he will effectively have been tortured to death. Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors' watch. The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds. In the interests of defending medical ethics, medical authority, and the human right to health, and taking a stand against torture, together we can challenge and raise awareness of the abuses detailed in our letters. Our appeals are simple: we are calling upon governments to end the torture of Assange and ensure his access to the best available health care before it is too late. Our request to others is this: please join us...”	117 doctors	February 2020
Yanis Varoufakis	“The establishment, the Deep State, call it whatever you want, the oligarchy, they’ve become much, much better at character assassination than they used to be. Because back in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, they would accuse you of being a Communist. They would accuse me of being a Marxist. Well, I am a Marxist. I’m really not going to suffer that much if you accuse me of being a left-winger. I am a left-winger! ... Now what they do is something far worse. They accuse you of something that really hurts you. Calling somebody like us a racist, a bigot, an antisemite, a rapist. This is what really hurts because if anybody calls me a rapist today, right, even if it’s complete baloney, I feel as a feminist I have the need to give the woman, implied or involved somehow in this accusation, the opportunity to speak against me. Because that is what we left-wingers do.”	Yanis Varoufakis	6 January 2021

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Assange Judge is 40-year "good friend" of Minister who orchestrated his arrest	Article	2 December 2021	Mark Curtis Matt Kennard	Julian Assange’s fate lies in the hands of an Appeal Judge who is a close friend of Sir Alan Duncan - the former Foreign Office minister who called Assange a “miserable little worm” in Parliament
Document:Beyond Words	blog post	8 April 2020	Craig Murray	Nobody cultivates her own anonymity more than Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser who has her existence carefully removed from the Internet almost entirely. Yet she seeks to destroy the peace and young lives of Julian Assange’s family.
Document:Chelsea Manning released, faces new imprisonment for refusing to testify against Assange	Article	10 May 2019	Niles Niemuth	“The idea I hold the keys to my own cell is an absurd one, as I face the prospect of suffering either way due to this unnecessary and punitive subpoena: I can either go to jail or betray my principles,” Manning explained. “The latter exists as a much worse prison than the government can construct.”
Document:Chelsea and Julian are in Jail. History Trembles.	blog post	12 April 2019	Craig Murray	Julian Assange said nothing during the whole brief proceedings, other than to say “Not guilty” twice, and to ask a one sentence question about why the charges were changed midway through this sham “trial”. Yet Judge Michael Snow condemned Assange as “narcissistic”.
Document:Civil Liberty Vanishes	blog post	6 May 2020	Craig Murray	"Serious questions have to be asked about why the UK government has developed its own unique app, universally criticised for its permanent central data collection and ability to identify individuals from their unique codes. That this is overseen by NHSX CEO Matthew Gould who held all those secret meetings with Liam Fox and Adam Werritty, including with Mossad, frankly stinks."
Document:Council of Europe sides with Julian Assange	Article		Sara Chessa	The attitude of European institutions is changing after years of silence which seemed to authorise or support the US and the United Kingdom’s behaviour in relation to an individual who is apparently deprived of the right to prepare his defence and deprived as well of his right to dignified psychophysical conditions. Now, the Council of Europe has decided to speak up on behalf of Julian Assange.
Document:Craig Murray’s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism	blog post	30 July 2021	Jonathan Cook	Assange and Murray are not only telling us troubling truths we are not supposed to hear. The fact that they are being denied solidarity by those who are their colleagues, those who may be next in the firing line, tells us everything we need to know about the so-called mainstream media: that the role of corporate journalists is to serve establishment interests, not challenge them.
Document:Diane Abbott – 2019 Speech on Julian Assange	Speech	11 April 2019	Diane Abbott	We only have to look at the treatment of Chelsea Manning to see what awaits Julian Assange if he is extradited to the US
Document:Eye Witness to the Agony of Julian Assange	Article	2 October 2020	John Pilger	In the Assange trial, the defendant was caged behind thick glass, and had to crawl on his knees to a slit in the glass, overseen by his guard, to make contact with his lawyers. His message, whispered barely audibly through face masks, was then passed by post-it the length of the court to where his barristers were arguing the case against his extradition to an American hellhole.
Document:FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart	blog post	29 June 2021	Craig Murray	The revelation that Sigi Thordarson’s allegations are fabricated – which everyone knew already, Vanessa Baraitser just pretended she didn’t – is just one more illegality that the Establishment will shimmy over in its continued persecution of Julian Assange.
Document:Five questions for new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer about his UK and US national security establishment links	Article	5 June 2020	Matt Kennard	Keir Starmer did not become leader to help Labour win, but to restore establishment control over the party and vanquish the heretics that dared defy its agenda. For the forces he truly represents, the project has been a smashing success.
Document:Framing Russian meddling in the Catalan question	report	October 2017	Integrity Initiative/Cluster/Spain	An example of Projection by the Integrity Initiative. The Moncloa operation shows that the group itself has been involved in subverting the Spanish political process. This document accuses Russia of involvment in the Catalonia independence question.
Document:Julian Assange Must be Freed, Not Betrayed	Article	18 February 2020	John Pilger	Sarah Ferguson's interview made no mention of a leaked document, revealed by WikiLeaks, called 'Libya Tick Tock', prepared for Hillary Clinton, which described her as the central figure driving the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011. This resulted in 40,000 deaths, the arrival of ISIS in North Africa and the European refugee and migrant crisis.
Document:Julian Assange Tortured with Psychotropic Drug	Article	8 May 2019	Kurt Nimmo	The FBI, Pentagon, and CIA are “interviewing” Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison. The CIA Director Gina Haspel (aka Chemical Gina) has her hands in this one, and we are being told that Assange is being “treated” with BZ (a powerful drug that produces hallucinations).
Document:Julian Assange exposed the crimes of powerful actors, including Israel	blog post	19 April 2019	Alison Weir	Julian Assange has recently been honoured with the 2019 Award for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire has nominated him for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
Document:Julian Assange is a suspected Russian intelligence asset	Article	24 February 2020	Susie Boniface	"If Assange was interested in avoiding extradition to the US, he'd have gone to Sweden to answer the charges that were unlikely to see a conviction, and where he had far less chance of being extradited. But if he really WERE a Russian intelligence asset... well, then it all makes sense." - except that what it really makes is nonsense.
Document:Keir Starmer is a Long-Time Servant of the British Security State	Article	2 March 2021	Oliver Eagleton	Keir Starmer is sometimes praised for being an outsider in the world of politics (or mocked as too lawyerly and insufficiently political). But in reality, much of his work as Director of Public Prosecutions blurred the boundaries between prosecutor and politician – following the dictates of the Cameron coalition, negotiating with foreign officials on its behalf, and dropping or pursuing cases according to its interests.
Document:Media Freedom? Show me the MSM Journalist Opposing the Torture of Assange	blog post	7 September 2020	Craig Murray	At a time when the government is mooting designating Extinction Rebellion as Serious Organised Crime, right wing bequiffed muppet Keir Starmer was piously condemning the group, stating: “The free press is the cornerstone of democracy and we must do all we can to protect it.”
Document:Media silent on dismissal of DNC suit against Julian Assange	Article	2 August 2019	Oscar Grenfell	Judge Koeltl further undermined the claims of the Trump administration, the Democrats and the media that Julian Assange is a “hacker,” undeserving of First Amendment protections. In other words, the attempt to extradite Assange to the US and prosecute him is a frontal assault on the US Constitution and press freedom.
Document:Muellergate and the Discreet Lies of the Bourgeoisie	Blog post	1 April 2019	Craig Murray	The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton’s defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working “free media”.
Document:Murray Scottish Appeal Denied; Allowed to Try UK Court	Article	8 June 2021	Joe Lauria	Craig Murray may have been a Crown target for the contempt conviction because he was among few writers defending Alex Salmond and was vindicated by Salmond’s acquittal. Murray has been a fierce advocate for his friend Julian Assange, the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher, whom the United States is trying to extradite from Britain.
Document:No fair hearing for Assange at the Guardian	article	5 February 2016	Jonathan Cook	Demonstrates the Establishment-friendly double standards of the UK's flagship 'Left-wing' newspaper - The Guardian - through analysis of its coverage of a UN decision on the political asylum of Julian Assange
Document:On the Pavement with Wikileaks	blog post	7 April 2019	Craig Murray	Pretty well all of the Western media is going to want to focus on these false anti-Assange narratives, and they will be determined to give as little attention as possible to the fact he is a publisher facing trial for publishing leaked state documents which revealed state wrongdoing. It is a classic and fundamental issue of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Document:People Need to Reclaim the Internet	blog post	19 October 2020	Craig Murray	The development of social media gatekeeping of internet traffic is one of the key socio-political issues of our time. We need the original founders of the Internet to get together with figures like Richard Stallman and – vitally – Julian Assange – to find a way we break free from this.
Document:Publishing is not a Crime	Letter	28 November 2022	GNM press office	Belated crocodile tears spilt by elements of the corporate media over Julian Assange
Document:Revenge Is Mine Saith Washington	article	20 November 2018	Paul Craig Roberts	An abridged article about the persecution of Julian Assange. It illustrates the depths to which elementary notions of justice have sunk in the West - and especially in the UK and USA - where perceived threats to Deep State interests are involved.
Document:Sex, Lies and Julian Assange	Transcript	23 July 2012	Andrew Fowler	He humiliated the most powerful country in the world. But his relationship with two Swedish women, and their claims of sexual assault, may yet destroy Julian Assange.
Document:So Where is the Swedish Warrant?	blog post	27 April 2019	Craig Murray	All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.
Document:The 7 years of lies about Assange won’t stop now	Blog post	11 April 2019	Jonathan Cook	A brief resume of the lies and deceptions promoted by The Establishment about Julian Assange during his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Document:The Assange Arrest is a Warning From History	Article	12 April 2019	John Pilger	Leni Riefenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public: "When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”
Document:The Assange Case Invalidates US Criticisms Of Russia: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix	Article	14 April 2022	Caitlin Johnstone	Just the fact that the US and UK are imprisoning a journalist for exposing the war crimes of a war criminal president — just that one fact by itself — completely invalidates all criticisms of Russia from Washington and its allies.
Document:The Broader View Reveals the Ugliest of Prospects	blog post	17 June 2019	Craig Murray	I find it hard to believe that I live in times where Julian Assange suffers as he does for telling the truth, where a dedicated anti-racist like Jeremy Corbyn is subjected to daily false accusations of racism and to US and security service backed efforts to thwart his democratic prospects, where the most laughable false flag is paraded to move us towards war with Iran, and where there is no semblance of a genuinely independent media.
Document:The CIA plot to kidnap or kill Julian Assange in London is a story that is being mistakenly ignored	Article	1 October 2021	Patrick Cockburn	Julian Assange and Jamal Khashoggi were targeted because they fulfilled the primary duty of journalists – telling the public what governments want to keep secret
Document:The Unrelenting State	blog post	31 May 2019	Craig Murray	Julian Assange: That the most lucid man I know is now not capable of having a rational conversation is extremely alarming.
Document:Trump, Assange, Bannon, Farage… bound together in an unholy alliance	Op-ed	29 October 2017	Carole Cadwalladr	(You got this? Farage visited Trump, then Assange, then Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher met Don Trump’s Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Then Assange. And is now trying to close the circle with Trump.)
Document:Whenever it truly matters, from Assange to Corbyn, George Monbiot cripples the left	Article	11 October 2022	Jonathan Cook	George Monbiot is treated by much of the left as a figurehead, one whose environmentalism earns him credibility and credit with the left on foreign policy issues, from Syria to Ukraine, in which he echoes the same talking points one hears from Keir Starmer to Liz Truss. While on matters at home, like Assange and Corbyn, he sucks the wind out of the left’s sails.
Document:Why I am Convinced that Anna Ardin is a Liar	blog post	11 September 2012	Craig Murray	To those useful idiots who claim that the way to test these matters is in court, I would say of course, you are right, we should trust the state always, fit-ups never happen, and we should absolutely condemn the disgraceful behaviour of those who campaigned for the Birmingham Six
Document:Wikileaks - Open Letter to the US Government	open letter	14 July 2011	RevolutionTruth