If Only WikiLeaks Existed Before the Iraq War Began: Die Zeit, Germany

Your pick for Most Intriguing Person of 2010 is ...
He's been called a criminal, a spy and a champion of the First Amendment. Some think he’s a villain. Some see him as a hero. The only thing that’s beyond debate: Julian Assange has more intrigue than the pulp section of a bookstore. Wikileaks' mastermind, the guy who everyone loved to hate or loved to defend, got the most first-place votes (25%) on CNN.com's “Most Intriguing Person” poll for 2010. Following Assange were: 10. Antoine Dodson, whose thoughts a...

The 21th Century Decade Retrospective
The infamous " Axis of Evil " Propaganda parlance intentionally stoked the fires for retribution reprisal. The Bush-Blair collation produced fake evidence of WMDs in Iraq, setting the stage to target their manufactured outrage, against a former CIA asset, Saddam Hussein . With Defense Secretary Colin Powell's UN Speech justifying invasion of Iraq, he "could not escape the reality that this Speech greased the skids for death and destruction in Iraq and brought unprecedented shame on our country...

Assange Alerts His Hostages
Remember how I suggested that Obama was establishing a practice of only making deals with people-whether they be Republicans or Democrats-who take hostages? Well, Julian Assange just made it clear who his hostages are: Top Officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing...

Ticket Replay: Barack '8 Years of Failed Bush Policies' Obama tells high school grads: 'Don't make excuses'
During the Holiday Season, as in years past, The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from the previous political year. This story was originally published on June 8, 2010: It was a Big Deal for the excited about-to-be graduates of Kalamazoo's Central High School. They had won a White House competition against 1,000 other schools, not for payoff jobs in the Obama Administration. But to see and hear the Real Great Talker himself. President Barack Obama went all the way to Mich...

Byron Williams: The Consequences of Speaking out
Is there a Paul Kattenburg within the Obama Administration? If there is (or was), the ship has mostly likely sailed on any potential influence he or she may have on shaping policy in Afghanistan. Kattenburg served 23 years in the United States' diplomatic corps. On Aug. 31, 1963, Kattenburg, then chairman of the Vietnam Working Group, attended a National Security Council meeting, which would dramatically alter his diplomatic career. Kattenburg was the lone dissenter at the meeting contemplatin...

Poll: Assange 2010's 'Most Intriguing'
Published: Dec. 31, 2010 at 3:30 AM Atlanta-based CNN.com said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was chosen by visitors as the "Most Intriguing Person" of 2010. UPI/Hugo Philpott ATLANTA, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Atlanta-based CNN.com said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was chosen by visitors as the "Most Intriguing Person" of 2010. The news organization said Assange received 25 percent of the votes in the online poll, with runners-up including President Barack Obama, Facebook mastermind Mark...

Call for openness after Wikileaks
Ministers should be more transparent and resist any urge to "clam up" after the Wikileaks revelations, according to the information commissioner. Christopher Graham said the government should be more proactive in publishing communications after the release of thousands of secret documents online. He said ministers needed to "wise up" to the fact that almost any official document could now be made public. Mr Graham, who became information commissioner in June 2009, added: &quo...;

China shuts down 60,000 porn sites and arrests 5,000 people in massive censorship crackdown
Critics have accused the Chinese Government of deepening the crackdown, launched last December, and said Censorship had blocked many sites with politically sensitive or even user-generated content. Please read our About Page, our Disclaimer, and our Comments Policy. Please note: InformationLiberation is neither liberal or conservative. When one takes the time to research the "liberal elite," whom the Conservatives oppose, and the "conservative elite," whom the liberals oppose, one finds both "el...

Many Arab officials have close CIA links: Assange
DOHA: Top Officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks. “These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told Al Jazeera Arabic channel in an interview yesterday. The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview whic...

More Assange
Nick Davies of The Guardian: Jagger also insists that she has a right to know who leaked the file to the Guardian and says that the leak was part of “an obvious effort to conduct a smear campaign” against Assange. Setting aside for a moment the head-splitting hypocrisy that a supporter of Wikileaks wants to hunt down the source of a leak, there are two similar problems with this claim. First, Jagger has no idea who leaked that file (and made no attempt to find out). Second, if she ...

Assange claims Arab officials spy on their own countries for the CIA
In an interview with al-Jazeera's Arabic language network on Wednesday, Wikileaker Julian Assenge claimed to have names of Arab Diplomats who are spying on their own countries for the CIA. “These officials are spies for the U.S. in their countries,” Assange said, according to Qatar's Peninsula newspaper. More: The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the

Headline men
Some of the men who have made the headlines in 2010, left to right: Kiki, Wayne Bridge, Carlos Slim Helu, Tony Hayward (top), Danny Alexander, Nicholas Mahut, Julian Assange, Gareth Williams (middle), Walter Kasper, Luis Urzua, Edward Woollard, Eddie Afekafe (bottom). JANUARY An eight-year-old boy name Kiki provided one of those heart-rending moments that so often give relief from the misery of Natural Disasters. He was pulled from the ruins of a two-storey building that had been flattened in t...

"Many Arab officials are US spies in their own countries"
"... Top Officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA, and many officials keep visiting US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily to establish links with this key US intelligence agency, says Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks. “These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange told Al Jazeera Arabic channel in an interview yesterday. The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview wh...

Bush Administration Disapproved Muhammad Cartoon Reprinting
The Wikileaks dump establishes that the US Embassy in Copenhagen did not want the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to reprint the Muhammad cartoons in 2006. (See here for a refresher on that crisis) Post´s public affairs counselor learned from a "Jyllands-Posten" Journalist (strictly protect) last week that the paper was considering several options to commemorate the cartoons´ first anniversary September 30, including re-publishing the original cartoons or running new ones on the subje...

Is Health Reform One of the 5 Biggest Stories of the Decade?
A year ago I posted my top stories and trends for the decade. Given that the decade is actually coming to an end today (more on that in a second) it seems like a good time to revisit and revise the list. First the issue of the decade ending. As I noted last year, “since our calendar goes from 1BC to 1AD, without a year zero, this is not technically the last year of the decade.” Here’s the list, in chronological order, that I put together last December: The 2000 Elections. The...

Former Treasury Secretary Paulson loses $1 million selling D.C. home
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who spent his final years in George W. Bush's administration trying to stave off the housing crisis gripping the nation, has lost over $1 million selling his own Washington, D.C., home. Paulson sold his three-bedroom home in the nation's capital for roughly $1 million less than he paid for it, and nearly a third less than his original asking price, according to Reuters. Paulson in 2006 paid $4.3 million for the home, near the National Cathedral and the ...

Hipocracy, Thy Name is Liberal
From OneNewsNow $5 gas predicted under Obama — What, no pitchforks? Five dollars per gallon of gas by 2012! A former president of Shell Oil considers this likely. The average price on Christmas Day for a gallon of regular gas reached $3.28 in Los Angeles County, the highest price since October 2008. In one month, the price rose 13 cents, up 35 cents year to year. Where are the calls to sic Obama’s Justice Department on Big Oil to hold the oil companies accountable for “market...

WikiLeaks XXV: Security Firms in Iraq Making a Killing (Figuratively in this Case)
According to an Embassy cable written earlier this year, and released last week by the Guardian as part of its Wikileaks coverage, private security firms in Iraq’s southern Basra province have been making a figurative killing protecting foreign investors throughout the region. This isn’t exactly news. Nor is the fact that some private security firms  also offer more comprehensive services, including business intelligence, geopolitical risk management, crisis management, and ki...

Judith Miller: From the Times to the nuts
Source: Salon Judith Miller used to be a superstar. She was a major reporter at the New York Times for decades -- at the DC bureau, in Cairo, in Paris, special correspondent to the Persian Gulf, embedded with a special unit in Iraq. She had the best sources. She had amazing scoops. Now she's writing -- on contract, not full-time -- for Newsmax, a goofy right-wing magazine where Conservatives you've never heard of (and John Stossel, apparently) report, constantly, that Barack Obama is bad and unp...

US MARINE & WIFE Break Their Silence After Brutal Beating at Movie Theater (Video)
Marine Federico Freire and wife, Kalyn, were looking forward to their first date after he returned on leave from Afghanistan. But the date turned into a nightmare after 300 teens waited for them outside a movie theater and beat Freire to the ground and his wife Kalyn unconscious. Iraq War Veteran Federico Freire and wife, Kalyn, pictured above were attacked Saturday outside a movie theater in Bradenton, Fla., by a group of unruly teenagers. (FoxNews.com). A Good Samaritan with flashing a gun sca...

"The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself": Why Do We Allow the Media to Terrorize Us?
When does terror succeed, even if there isn't Terrorism? That's a pertinent question to ask as we enter 2011, in which we will mark a decade since 9/11. Whether Osama bin Laden is dead or alive, a relatively small group of radical religious fundamentalists has made Americans quiver in fear at any news report of a suspected "Terrorist threat." Moreover, "anti-terrorism" has become an industry that puts an enormous economic stress on the American Economy. Just think about the costs of the wars in ...

Bradley W. Bloch: How Is Leaking Like Getting a Job?
Noam Scheiber has a much-read piece at The New Republic positing that Wikileaks "will be the death of Big Business and Big Government." In short, the Thesis is that in the age of WikiLeaks, everyone is a potential leaker, and the larger the company or government agency, the more potential leakers it has. As tightening security is of limited effectiveness, there will be downward pressure on the size of organization so that they are: Small enough to avoid wide-scale alienation, which clearly exc...

WikiLeaks' Collateral Damage
Source: Wall St Journal Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and the leader of its democratic opposition, has endured countless indignities at the hands of President Robert Mugabe. In 1997, thugs tried to throw him from the window of his 10th floor office. In 2002 and 2008, he had Elections stolen from him and his party, the Movement for Democratic Change. After that most recent ballot, he had to hide at the Dutch Embassy in Harare for fear of his life. A year later his wife died in...

WikiLeaks backers say Zimbabwe websites shut down
President Robert Mugabe's wife Grace is suing a private newspaper for $15 million for publishing details from U.S. cables on Wikileaks saying she gained "tremendous profits" from illicit diamonds. The Activists, acting under the name Anonymous, said in a statement on their website: "We are targeting Mugabe and his regime in the ZANU-PF who have outlawed the free press and threaten to sue anyone publishing WikiLeaks." The Zimbabwean government web portal www.gta.gov.zw was unreachable on Thursda...

WikiLeaks backers say Zimbabwe websites shut down
LONDON | Thu Dec 30, 2010 3:10pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Cyber Activists say they have brought down Zimbabwean government websites after the president's wife sued a newspaper for publishing a Wikileaks cable linking her with illicit diamond trading. President Robert Mugabe's wife Grace is suing a private newspaper for $15 million for publishing details from U.S. cables on Wikileaks saying she gained "tremendous profits" from illicit diamonds. The activists, acting under the name Anonymous, sai...