Stratfor, Significance of WikiLeaks & the Persecution of Assange
Solidarity | 29.02.2012 10:07 | Repression
Feb. 27 WikiLeaks press conference: The Global Intelligence Files
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/20736311
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/20736311
WikiLeaks press release: The Global Intelligence Files
On the 27th of February 2012, Wikileaks released the following statement:
"LONDON—Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example:
"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.
The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.
PRESS RELEASE CONTINUED.....
http://wlcentral.org/node/2474
On the 27th of February 2012, Wikileaks released the following statement:
"LONDON—Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example:
"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.
The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.
PRESS RELEASE CONTINUED.....
http://wlcentral.org/node/2474
Solidarity
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SYDNEY MORNING HERALD report on Stratfor and targetting of Assange
29.02.2012 10:10
''If I thought I could switch this dickhead off without getting done, I don't think I'd have too much of a problem."
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
UNITED States prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a confidential internal email obtained from a private US intelligence company, Stratfor.
In the email, sent to Stratfor intelligence analysts on January 26 last year, the company's vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks. He wrote: "We have a sealed indictment on Assange."
Underlining the sensitivity of the information - apparently obtained from a US government source - he wrote "Pls protect" and "Not for Pub[lication]
ARTICLE CONITUED.....
Leaked Stratfor emails can be found at wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html
SMH
Homepage:
http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html
Humphrey McQueen: WikiLeaks can help us interpret and change the world
29.02.2012 10:28
* Humphrey McQueen is an Australian historian
More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology Sydney on February 17 a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”. The forum was organised by the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition.
Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Mary Kostakidis chaired the forum.
“I don’t have to tell you why we are here. Instead, having been introduced as a historian, I shall spend most of my time relating what is happening now to past struggles, and why they relate to the ways in which information is regulated.
SPEECH CONTINUED.........
Sydney
Homepage:
http://chriswhiteonline.org/2012/02/mcqueen-on-wikileaks/