I am reproducing two recent articles , one from the Observer/Guardian and the other from an Australian paper, ‘The Daily Reckoning’ sent to me by my colleague Egdar Winter from Down Under.  Thanks Edgar!

In the article from yesterday’s Observer/Guardian 12th December 2010, please note that John Wilkes gained freedom of the press during Pluto’s now famous sojourn through Capricorn 1763-1779 – these recurring themes really are something, aren’t they?  See my recent post entitled ‘Demise of the Eurozone?’

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Article by Henry Porter

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 December 2010 21.30 GMT

WikiLeaks may make the powerful howl, but we are learning the truth…..

WikiLeaks has offered us glimpses of how the world works. And in most cases nothing but good can come of it

I have lost count of the politicians and opinion formers of an authoritarian bent warning of the dreadful damage done by the WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic cables, and in the very next breath dismissing the content as frivolous tittle-tattle. To seek simultaneous advantage from opposing arguments is not a new gambit, but to be wrong in both is quite an achievement.

Publication of the cables has caused no loss of life; troops are not being mobilised; and the only real diplomatic crisis is merely one of discomfort. The idea that the past two weeks have been a disaster is self-evidently preposterous. Yet the leaks are of unprecedented importance because, at a stroke, they have enlightened the masses about what is being done in their name and have shown the corruption, incompetence – and sometimes wisdom – of our politicians, corporations and diplomats. More significantly, we have been given a snapshot of the world as it is, rather than the edited account agreed upon by diverse elites, whose only common interest is the maintenance of their power and our ignorance.

The world has changed, not simply because governments find they are just as vulnerable to the acquisition, copying and distribution of huge amounts of data as the music, publishing and film businesses were, but because we are unlikely to return to the happy ignorance of the past. Knowing Saudi Arabia has urged the bombing of Iran, that Shell maintains an iron grip on the government of Nigeria, that Pfizer hired investigators to disrupt investigations into drugs trials on children, also in Nigeria, that the Pakistan intelligence service, the ISI, is swinging both ways on the Taliban, that China launched a cyber attack on Google, that North Korean has provided nuclear scientists to Burma, that Russia is a virtual mafia state in which security services and gangsters are joined at the hip – and knowing all this in some detail – means we are far more likely to treat the accounts of events we are given in the future with much greater scepticism.

Never mind the self-serving politicians who waffle on about the need for diplomatic confidentiality when they themselves order the bugging of diplomats and hacking of diplomatic communications. What is astonishing is the number of journalists out there who argue that it is better not to know these things, that the world is safer if the public is kept in ignorance. In their swooning infatuation with practically any power elite that comes to hand, some writers for the Murdoch press and Telegraph titles argue in essence for the Chinese or Russian models of deceit and obscurantism. They advocate the continued infantilising of the public.

Nothing is new. In 1771, that great lover of liberty, John Wilkes, and a number of printers challenged the law that prohibited the reporting of Parliamentary debates and speeches, kept secret because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would disrupt the life of the country if made public. Using the arcane laws of the City of London, Alderman Wilkes arranged for the interception of the Parliamentary messengers sent to arrest the printers who had published debates, and in doing so successfully blocked Parliament. By 1774, a contemporary was able to write: “The debates in both houses have been constantly printed in the London papers.” From that moment, the freedom of the press was born.

It took a libertine to prove that information enriched the functioning of British society, a brave maverick who was constantly moving house – and sometimes country – to avoid arrest; whose epic sexual adventures had been used by the authorities as a means of entrapping and imprisoning him. The London mob came out in his favour and, supplemented by shopkeepers and members of the gentry on horseback, finally persuaded the establishment of the time to accept that publication was inevitable. And the kingdom did not fall.

Over the past few weeks, there have been similarly dire predictions from sanctimonious men and women of affairs about the likely impacts of publication, and of course Julian Assange finds himself banged up in Wandsworth nick, having neither been formally charged with, nor found guilty of, the sex crimes he is alleged to have committed in Sweden. Making no comment about his guilt or innocence, or the possibility of his entrapment, I limit myself to saying that we have been here before with John Wilkes; and the reason for this is that authorities the world over and through history react the same way when there is a challenge to a monopoly of information.

It is all about power and who has access to information. Nothing more. When those who want society to operate on the basis of the parent-child relationship because it is obviously easier to manage, shut the door and say “not in front of the children”, they are usually looking after their interests, not ours.

I don’t argue for a free-for-all, regardless of the consequences. In the WikiLeaks cables, knowledge and the editing and reporting skills found in the old media, combined with the new ability to locate and seize enormous amounts of information on the web, has actually resulted in responsible publication, with names, sources, locations and dates redacted to protect people’s identities and their lives.

America is sore and naturally feels exposed, but the state department would have had much less cause for regret if it had listened to Ross Anderson, the Cambridge professor often quoted here in relation to Labour’s obsession with huge databases of personal information. His rule states that it is a mathematical impossibility to maintain a large and functional database that is also secure. Hillary Clinton must rue the day that the Bush administration built a great silo of cables that could be accessed by three million staff. The Chinese and Russians would never have been so trusting.

There has been more than a hint that China and Russia have empathised with the Americans. The unseen affinities of the powerful may also be responsible for the unforgivable behaviour by Amazon, which pulled the plug on hosting WikiLeaks, and PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, which unilaterally stopped customers making donations to WikiLeaks. There was not the slightest consideration of principles about free information or the freedom of their customers to make up their own minds. What next? Will these corporate giants be blocking payment to the New York Times and the Guardian? It is hard to feel much regret over the cyber attacks on their websites because, in the end, they did not seem much better than Shell and Pfizer, the companies that appear to be running so much of Nigeria like the worst type of imperial powers.

Nothing but good can come from revelations about these companies, and in this brief moment when we have a glimpse of how things really are, we should relish the fact that publication of the cables, as well as the shameful reactions to it, have brought light, not fire.

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Now an article sent to me by my colleague Edgar Winter in Australia appearing in  “The Daily Reckoning”  Dec, 11, 2010

Don’t Shoot Messenger for Revealing Uncomfortable Truths

By Julian Assange

Wikileaks deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use Internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain’s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the coordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be “taken out” by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

• The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, Internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.
• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.
• Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran’s nuclear program stopped by any means available.
• Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.
• Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.
• The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said, “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.