Julian Assange Awarded Peace Medal

Julian Assange received the award for championing Freedom of Information

Assange awarded peace medal



Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama were two of the other three to receive the award.

He's in good company.

Mr. Assange has always been careful to designated Manning as an alleged source.

A separate one for Manning would be nice, though.

He gave Manning 15k.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/manning-donations/

Wikileaks took in 1.9 million in donations through one charity alone in 2010--
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/wau-holland-report/

Julian Assange got a 1.5 million dollar book deal--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/26/assange-book-deal-wikileaks-autobiography_n_801287.html


Can someone figure out for me what percentage 15k is, out of 3.4 million????

Ugatz? As I would say in Sicilian?

therefore he cannot take part in this award because he did - nothing.

Every time I see his picture I swear his hair is made out of plastic.:rofl:

Well earned

good company indeed. K/R

I hope the Nobel Peace Prize is next. That one would be very well deserved.

has a considerably higher opinion of diplomacy than Assange does

All he did was what our media failed to do.

The people have a right to know, eg, when their government is protecting war criminals while claiming they oppose torture.

Governments acting in secret on issues that should not be secret are a threat to democracy. That is why he received this prize.

This is not the first prize he has received. He was awarded a prize by Amnesty International also for his incredible work on the corrupt government in Kenya. Funny that no one in the US had a problem with him then.

hesitates to go after Bin Laden while subjecting our bodies, our bags and our communications to constant surveillance. Is that what you mean?

:thumbsup:

Bush's GWOT. Such as the total destruction of our economy while the country was distracted by two useless wars. Why we are involved in the business of every, single country in the world. Why war crimes are now standard procedure for this country and no longer regarded as crimes. We got some answers to why our country supports brutal dictators over democratically elected leaders.

Are you saying that the only thing this country has to worry about is Bin Laden? Is that, in your opinion, the most important issue in this country? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point ~

And thanks for the correction :-)

No worries in any case


:grouphug:

Knee-jerk reacion on my part which I promised myself over and over again I would not do :-)

as you claim they do of diplomacy.

Orwell did really see this coming, didn't he?

'diplomacy'. The US was caught using the State Dept. to conduct espionage on UN officials and the heads of state of other countries. A clear violation of UN rules. Yet, nothing has been done about it.

I just find it ironic how the same people who get teary eyed when a prosecuted non-westerner gets the Nobel peace for fighting the powers that be in his or her native land, are sometimes the same ones who get their panties all in a twist whenever a Westerner who dares fight the powers that be in the West gets an award.

I assume it is because some people's logical dissonance does not allow them to grasp the possibility that our shit may stink as much (and sometimes ever worse) as everybody else's. Because in the end it may turn out that molehill of moral superiority, they rush to with such gusto, is built on a precarious foundation of fecal matter. And that is a no-no.

In any case, ever since they awarded the Nobel Peace price to Kissinger, that award has been kind of irrelevant. The committees for the other four prices have had their misses, but none of the other Nobels have made such egregious and arbitrary errors.

we know just what it is we really stand for. Otoh, we refuse to prosecute war criminals, while at the same time claiming we oppose human rights abuses. We are a schitzophrenic nation, but relatively speaking we are still a very young nation, making all the mistakes older nations made when they were young also.

Maybe we'll grow up faster than they did though as things are moving more quickly in these times. I hope so because we cannot afford to be the world's latest Colonial Empire much longer :-)

Meantime, Bradley ("Aiding the Enemy") Manning is still jailed by the USA and may not be informed should he receive the peace award.
Note that Bradley Manning would not be so imprisoned if George ("Uranium from... Africa") Bush had not lied ("Traitor") the USA into War... after Bush was first initially Pretend-Elected President in the two "assassination of Paul Wellstone," Florida "Hanging Chad," "Vote Caging," "Diebold Machine" elections. Bush the Pretender grandson of William of Orange.

Welcome to DU.

The way you think.

I think Assange has to be careful never to confirm that Manning is the leaker, which he may not know for sure anyhow.

But I would love to see Manning get a prize also, maybe one day soon ~ :-)

At least there are those who see the work the man is doing.

Recommended!

....I'm happy for Assange.

K and R

Where is Pavulon? He must still be unconscious from the shock! :rofl:

It was like a moth to a flame, whenever the name 'Julian Assange' appeared! Lol!

:wow:

Wow, that was a long time in coming.

threads! Well, sort of :-)

:toast:

....allowed to attend the Sydney Peace Foundation award ceremony or is he still a political prisoner?

comment #9 by DUer Luminous Animal. I watched it and I think he accepted it in England.

A political prisoner, absolutely.

Where was he when *ush was doing all this shit and NO ONE would listen? IF he'd stood up THEN, yeah, I'd believe he earned this medal. 1/2 million people signing pettitions to get the Downing Street Memo the attention it deserved, peaceful protestors showing up in the hundreds of thousands in Washington DC. THOSE were boots on the ground. WHERE was Assange and his information THEN when it could have helped the situation?

Why did it get leaked out in such a way that the people who are trying to fix the problems created by the *ush administration are getting blamed for their existence while the ones who did the damage skate off into the sunset?

IF his journalism really held the perps accountable for their behavior and didn't put chum in the water so anything and everyone got shredded to pieces starting a feeding frenzy that became the news and the truth got sideswiped in the process, THEN I'd believe he was some sort of hero.

Maybe he just got played by the people leaking the information selectively or maybe he just wanted to make a buck. Who knows? But he ain't MY hero.


Just saying.


Tig

Kind of tough to release info when the organization didn't even exist yet.

Much of what he's released has been about the Bush years, but he wasn't in much of a position to do anything about it then, and may not even have had the info at the time, or in such a form to release it in any meaningful way anyways. You sort through millions of documents and make something meaningful from it that would get attention in under a year. Bet you couldn't do it, or even come close. I know I couldn't.

And I'll leave it at that, as your mind seems pretty firmly made up on the guy.

Some members on another board where I post then thought Wikileaks might have been a CIA front.

back during the Bush years. But it is only about four years old so it was just in its early stages during the Bush years.

Much of what has been released is actually FROM the Bush years. He had no control over when the material came to Wikileaks.

I have read that the concept came about, not because of the US at all, but because there were so many countries, like China that were censoring information and brutally cracking down on anyone who spoke out.

I believe it was Chinese dissidents from the Tianenmen Square era who helped start Wikileaks. He is often called the founder, but I'm not sure he was. It was many, many people from around the world who had the concept and then it was put into practice.

They have said that as soon as they set up their website they began getting material, from countries like Kenya eg. Assange became very involved in the Kenya story where journalists died and many people were being disappeared. He received the Amnesty Int. Award for his work in Kenya.

At first they were not getting any material from the US nor were they singling out any country to try to get material from. They were there, and if someone wanted to use their services who could not trust their own media, that's what they did.

After a short time they were overwhelmed with the amount of material they were receiving. And then came the US War Logs, the Video and the Embassy cables.

It is not as though Wikileaks was aimed at the US, it wasn't. But it is a great concept in places where the media is not doing its job.

It did take great courage to take on the US. And as I said, if the media had covered the leaks properly people would know that most of the material IS from the Bush years.

It's a new idea. He was heartbroken over the oppression of people in countries like Africa eg, and has said he could not ignore their suffering which is why he got invovled in Wikileaks. He was on the run way before the US was after him. All the countries exposed by Wikileaks were after him.

What is sad is that this administration did not use the leaks to start investigations which would have made it clear that most of the war crimes exposed, eg, were from the Bush era. Instead they went AFTER Wikileaks and it is said now that Karl Rove et al were behind the attacks in Sweden eg. Most likely Rove at least saw the threat to his boss from these leaks. But this Administration went along and as we now know, even protected the Bush torturers. So we can't complain that Bush was not exposed in the leaks, he was. This administration chose to protect them, and that gave the impression that they too had a lot to hide.

The truth is there was no such concept as Wikileaks during the Downing Street Memos era. I too wish there had been and there may be documents FROM that period as they supposedly go way, way back. And that may explain the panic of people like Rove. Obama should NOT be protecting them.

From what he has said, I gather that he just has a site where whistleblowers can contact him.

Anyway, he was publishing things about other governments in the world.

That is why the US government will have such a problem prosecuting him. If what he has said about his techniques is at all true, then he really did not do much more than receive information. He did not solicit it.

We shall see, but, beyond what it tells us about how poorly our so-called "news" (should read propaganda) media covers the news, that is why this case is so interesting.

delete

and they have covered more stuff than the diplomatic wires.

So your argument is kind of moot, but I suspect you were more interested in scoring a cheap political point.

Well done Mr. Assange and thank you.

Steven Wright .....



“I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.


“I was at this restaurant. The sign said "Breakfast Anytime." So I ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.”




Anyway ... good for the Australian Government
and Julian didn't kill anyone for it.

"I went to a general store but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific."

Don't me going on Wright. :D

It's ironic that his 2004 joke has sort of become a reality. I wonder how he feels about that?

PM Julia Gillard!

Hrrrmmmph!

Karma is sure bitch...

election. I hope Australians are now aware of how much outside forces are influencing their elections and get rid of her as soon as possible.

I'm sure she's not happy about this though. Makes it much harder for her to follow the orders she gets from Washington.

Australia can be proud of their famous citizen, but not so much their elected officials.

I have this on the bulletin board in my computer room. For when the insanity gets me down.

thinking that for all the attacks on him, after he started publishing material the US did not like, that quote said pretty much all I wanted to know about him.

I would put it in the OP if it weren't too late, but thanks for posting it anyhow.

:)

K&R
:patriot:

Julian Assange is the true symbol of freedom of information and democracy in our world, he is the hero of our time, of our era. He is the new Che Guevara - icon of resistance to totalitarian systems.

reserved for war-starters like Obama?

everywhere else but here.

I see that our DOJ is has a Grand Jury deciding whether Assange can be charged with crimes?

We are going to look great indicting a News Organization which has been awarded a Peace Prize given to only three other people in 14 years!

'Change' we can believe in! :eyes:

and from his home as well. Thanks for the article :thumbsup: Good news

bandwagon regarding Wikileaks. The country appears to be very proud of their famous citizen.