Australian editor, publisher, and activist (born 1971)
Julian Paul Assange (born Julian Paul Hawkins; 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer. He founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and came to international attention in 2010, when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by Chelsea Manning. These included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and CableGate (November 2010). In August 2012, he was granted political asylum by Ecuador and remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. After Ecuador withdrew its granting of asylum, Assange was arrested by British police on 11 April 2019 and imprisoned, initially for jumping bail when he entered the embassy. The United States attempted to extradite Assange, but in June 2024 he was released; he flew to a US territory in the north Pacific for a court hearing in which he admitted guilt to one charge. He did not serve any further time in prison and returned to Australia.
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We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. <p> If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes.<p> The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.
The United States paid large numbers of Iraqis to defect from the Sunni insurgency and instead fight against al-Qaeda, on the promise of receiving regular employment through integration into the Iraqi military. As Jamail argues, the failure of the Maliki government to honor this promise saw huge numbers of US-trained, US-armed, and US-financed — but now unemployed — Sunni militants return to the insurgency, eventually swelling the ranks of the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, which in 2014 became known as ISIS, or the “Islamic State.
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AFGHAN WAR LOGS (EXTRACTS) These logs consist of a short report on every incident regarded as noteworthy by American troops in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009. Around 90,000 incidents are reported in the document passed to WikiLeaks, though only around 75,000 were released. These seven entries detail incidents of civilian casualties caused by British troops in October, November and December 2008. Like other similar reports throughout the logs, they give an insight into the chaotic nature of the battlefield and the constant risk – and consequences of – mistakes by coalition troops. Some of the information in each report has been removed and some acronyms have been expanded for the sake of readability, but each original report can be identified by its number and read in full on the WikiLeaks website. Some of the logs were redacted by WikiLeaks on release.
KROLL REPORT ON CORRUPTION IN KENYA This report, more than 100 pages long, details allegations of corruption by former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, his family and associates. It was commissioned by Mwai Kibaki after he replaced Moi as president in 2002, but never released. These extracts give examples of the nature, tone and severity of the allegations.