Julian Paul Assange (b. July 3, 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is known as the editor-in- chief of the website WikiLeaks, which he co-founded in 2006 after an earlier career in hacking and programming. WikiLeaks achieved particular prominence in 2010 when it published U.S. military and diplomatic documents leaked by Chelsea Manning. Assange has been under investigation in the United States since that time. In the same year, the Swedish Director of Public Prosecution opened an investigation into sexual offenses that Assange is alleged to have committed. In 2012, facing extradition to Sweden, he sought refuge at the Embassy of Ecuador in London and was granted political asylum by Ecuador. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Big Brother is home. He is installed in the item you just dragged home from the Apple store.
Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them.
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.
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.
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.
It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that they're going on.
It is the media that controls the boundaries of what is politically permissible, so better to change the media.
Large newspapers are routinely censored by legal costs. It is time this stopped. It is time a country said, enough is enough, justice must be seen, history must be preserved, and we will give shelter from the storm.
One of the best ways to achieve justice is to expose injustice.
Our number one enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the number one enemy for everyone- it's not understanding what actually is going on in the world.
Power is a thing of perception. They don't need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you.
The goal is justice, the method? is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method.
The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
The only way to keep a secret is to never have one.
The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense of mental independence. You're not swept up in the trivialities of a nation. You can concentrate on the serious matters.
There is a view that one should never be permitted to be criticized for being even possibly in the future engaged in a contributory act that might be immoral, and that that type of arse-covering is more important than actually saving people's lives. That it is better to let a thousand people die than risk going to save them and possibly running over someone on the way. And that is something that I find to be philosophically repugnant.
Vanity in a newspaper man is like perfume on a whore; they use it to fend off a dark whiff of themselves.
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.
What we know is everything, it is our limit, of what we can be.
WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.
You can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism.
You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.
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(July 3 is also the birthday of Charlotte Perkins, Franz Kafka, Tom Stoppard, and Dave Barry.)
Categories: Julian Assange, Quotes of the day
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