My Exclusive Interview with WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange --- by Cenk Uygur

kpete

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Wed Dec-22-10 07:52 PM
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My Exclusive Interview with WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange --- by Cenk Uygur

Edited on Wed Dec-22-10 07:54 PM by kpete

VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL8g3vye4xo

JULIAN ASSANGE, FOUNDER, WIKILEAKS: Good evening, Cenk.

UYGUR: All right, the first question I have for you, Julian, is do you consider yourself a member of the press?

Are you a journalist?

ASSANGE: Well, I have been a member of the Australian press union for many years. I co-authored my first book when I was 25 and have been involved in setting up the -- the very fabric of the Internet in Australia since 1993 as a publisher.

So quite interesting that this is something that is being raised.

It's -- it's actually a quite deliberate attempt to split off our organization from the First Amendment protections that are afforded to all publishers.

You know, as time has gone by and our journalism has increased, I've been pushed up into senior management, into a position where I manage other journalists. I now even am in a -- in a position where I'm managing the interrelations between "The Guardian," "Spiegel," "The New York Times," "Al Jazeera" and so on, which were used in -- in our last production.

So, yes, unfortunately, I don't write that much anymore, because I'm busy being editor-in-chief, coordinating the actions of other journalists. But a quite deliberate attempt to split us off in the mind of the public from those "good" traditions of the United States, protecting the rights of the press to publish, to split us off from the support of the press in the United States, the support of journalists.

Some of those journalists have fallen for that.

And why?

Because they're worried that they're going to be next. They believe that if they sell us out, if they say, well, he's not really a journalist, they can have the U.S. -- have the Washington authorities target us and destroy us and somehow steer clear of the crossfire, which they worry will -- will scatter out through all journalists.

But I have a message to them. They're going to be next. And we're seeing these statements that "The New York Times" is -- is, you know, is now also being looked at in terms of whether it has engaged in what they call a conspiracy to con -- commit espionage.

So us journalists and publishers and writers, we all have to stick together to resist this sort of reinterpretation of the First Amendment, this attempt to use the 1917 Espionage Act, something that was put in place in the middle of World War -- toward the end of World War II, in the middle of the U.S. involvement in World War I, to stop bona fide espionage in World War I.

Now, we've got this antiquated act that they are trying to apply to publishers, arguably, unconstitutional. But that will take many years to get through the court.

And in the meantime, what happens?

In the meantime, we have our people harassed. We have calls to apply this to -- to other newspapers.

All members of the press and -- and all the American people who believe in freedom and the -- and the good founding principles of revolution -- of the revolutionary fathers have got to pull together and resist this attack on the First Amendment.

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WAY MORE (interesting too, kp): http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/12/22/931037/-My-Exclusive-Interview-with-WikiLeaks-Founder-Julian-Assange