Pakistan May Have Outed Chief of CIA’s Islamibad Station

Posted: December 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Affairs, Pakistan | Tags: , , , , , | 12 Comments

Things seem to be getting pretty dicey for the U.S. in Pakistan. The Guardian UK reports that:

The CIA has pulled its station chief from Islamabad, one of America’s most important spy posts, after his cover was blown in a legal action brought by victims of US drone strikes in the tribal belt.

The officer, named in Pakistan as Jonathan Banks, left the country yesterday, after a tribesman publicly accused him of being responsible for the death of his brother and son in a CIA drone strike in December 2009. Karim Khan, a journalist from North Waziristan, called for Banks to be charged with murder and executed.

In a rare move, the CIA called Banks home yesterday, citing “security concerns” and saying he had received death threats, Washington officials told Associated Press. Khan’s lawyer said he was fleeing the possibility of prosecution.

Banks may have only a business visa, and so wouldn’t have diplomatic immunity if he were required to testify in the trial. According to the article, recalling a station chief is extremely rare. Although the Pakistani government supposedly supports U.S. drone strikes, many Pakistanis are understandably outraged by them.

The recall comes at a sensitive moment for Washington. This week’s Afghanistan policy review brought fresh focus on Taliban safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Meanwhile CIA drone attacks – which are co-ordinated from the Islamabad embassy – have reached a new peak. Three drones struck targets in Khyber, a previously untouched tribal agency, on Friday, reportedly killing 24 people and signalling a widening of the CIA covert campaign….There have been over 100 strikes so this year, twice as many as in 2009.

The Guardian says there are rumors that Banks may have been outed by someone in the Pakistani intelligence agency (the ISI), because “several senior ISI officials were named in a New York legal action brought by relatives of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.”

The New York Times also has posted an article about this.

On Thursday and Friday, the United States appeared to make good on promises to expand its own efforts to attack the militants, with drone strikes for the first time hitting Khyber agency in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Most drone strikes this year have targeted North Waziristan. Pakistani government officials said at least 26 militants were killed in the most recent attacks.

The outing of the C.I.A. station chief is tied to the spy agency’s campaign of drone strikes, which are very unpopular in Pakistan, although the government has given its tacit approval for them.

Gee, no kidding. I mean who wants to have their house blown up unexpectedly by agents of a foreign power? Interestingly, the Times avoided telling its readers the outed agent’s name, even though the Guardian had already published it. The Times is truly the Obama administration’s house organ. According article,

The intensifying mistrust between the C.I.A. and I.S.I., two uneasy but co-dependent allies, could hardly come at a worse time. The Obama administration relies on Pakistan’s support for the armed drone program, which this year has launched a record number of strikes in North Waziristan against terror suspects.

“We will continue to help strengthen Pakistani capacity to root out terrorists,” President Obama said on Thursday. “Nevertheless, progress has not come fast enough. So we will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”

Not being an expert on foreign affairs, I’m not sure if this statement triggered anger in Pakistan or not. Maybe President Obama should leave diplomacy to his Secretary of State.

Understatement of the Year Award

Posted: December 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Bailout Blues, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , | 55 Comments

From Bloomberg Business Week:

It’s a Great Time to Be Rich

“If the tax cuts become law, the next two years will be the best in living memory for many wealthy Americans to shield their income and fortunes “

A bonanza of new and extended tax benefits could make it as easy as ever for the rich to stay that way.

Under legislation approved by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, Dec. 15, and now moving on to the House, savvy wealthy Americans would be able to capitalize on an environment in which their tax rates on income and investments remain at historic lows. Also, new rules would make it possible to pass on fortunes to heirs with less fuss and lower taxes than all but a brief period of the past 80 years. It’s a far cry from the 70 percent bite the federal government took out of the largest incomes and estates as recently as 1980.

“The climate we’ll have after this legislation is extremely favorable for wealthy families,” says Jeffrey Cooper, a professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a former estate planner who has studied the history of U.S. tax law.

The article goes on to list the incredible list of give aways to people that don’t need it in the Tax Cuts for Billionaires Act.    Here’s one salient point to think about while eating your daily gruel and waiting for the debtor’s prisons and poor houses to re-open so you’ll have some place to go when the banks seize your home illegally .

The good news for the rich starts with income tax rates, which for top income groups would remain 35 percent , a rate enacted by former President George W. Bush in 2003. Except for a period from 1988 to 1992, the top tax rate has never been this low since 1931.

Happy Days are here again if you’re part of the investor class too!  I’m getting nostalgic for Nixon.  That says something, doesn’t it?

For the country’s wealthiest families, income from wages can be far less important than income from investments. According to a Tax Policy Center analysis of 2006 returns, 18.1 percent of all Americans’ cash income comes from business ownership or capital investments, compared with 64.5 percent from labor. For those in the top 1 percent of earners, however, business and capital income make up 53.6 percent of income and labor accounts for 35.3 percent.

Thus, Cooper notes, taxes on capital gains and dividends can be far more important to the rich than income tax rates. The tax compromise extends a 15 percent top tax rate on long-term capital gains and dividends enacted in 2003, which is the lowest rate since 1933. The top capital-gains rate was 77 percent in 1918 and, since 1921, its highest point was 39.9 percent in 1976 and 1977—though certain gains could be excluded from taxation.

No wonder Charles Krauthammer’s red face is all aglow with the spirit of the season!!  It’s just not the prunes and the eggnog!!

How can any one defend this administration and its policies as being anything the worst of Reaganomics?  At a time when we are seeing record long term unemployment, record foreclosures, record numbers of home owner’s with underwater mortgages, this is what we get.  The same folks that benefited from all those bail outs from their failed business decisions and failed investment strategies are being subsidized again.

How can any Democratic congress critter go home and face any of their middle and working class constituents knowing full well they sold their souls to the Obama Company Store.  I’m more convinced than ever that this country is in banana republic territory.  Next step will undoubtedly be removing what little of the safety net was left in place after Reagan hit the country.   After all about one half of U.S. children will most likely be on food stamps at some point in their life. Afterall, they could be out selling matches in the street!!  And It’s Christmas time!  Why not recreate Dickensian poverty? I’m sure we could use a few child work houses too!  After all, it would contribute to the bottom lines of the people that really matter in this country!!

Friday Reads

Posted: December 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: just because, morning reads, No Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , | 41 Comments
Welcome back to the Gilded Age!!!
Well, it’s morning!

It’s more like a mourning morning than anything else.  If you ever needed more proof that voting for Democrats appears to be a waste of time any more, this is it.  Republicans have been overrun by Birchers and the Dems appear to be ready to let them get away with anything.  On top of that we have a president that appears to want to further enact Reaganomics.  It’s really a very sad situation.

Politico has an apt headline from last night’s gruel for every one else spending bill. You know those guys and gals that easily passed the Tax Breaks for Billionaires Bill?  The headline is ‘Democrats concede budget fight to Republicans’.  Senate Democrats don’t fight for the high ground and they sell out everything.

Senate Democrats abruptly abandoned an omnibus budget bill for the coming year, pushing major spending decisions into the next Congress and giving Republicans immense new leverage to confront President Barack Obama priorities.

The decision Thursday night sweeps away months of bipartisan work by the Senate Appropriations Committee which had crafted the $1.1 trillion bill to meet spending targets embraced by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R—Ky.) himself prior to the elections.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R—Utah), an old McConnell friend, worked actively to round up as many as nine potential Republican votes for the compromise, but these numbers rapidly evaporated amid personal attacks and the uproar this week over spending earmarks in the package.

McConnell, embarrassed by reports on his own earmarks in the omnibus, went to the Senate floor Thursday to propose a one page, “clean” two month extension of the current stop gap funding resolution that has kept the government funded since Oct. 1. And as if caught with their hands in the cookie jar, he and other top Republicans vowed to do everything in their powers to kill the omnibus to square themselves with their tea party backers.

It keeps getting worse. This is also from Politico: ‘Democrats keep ‘don’t ask’ on wish list’. Wish list?  They’ve got enough votes to repeal DADT. WTF is holding them up?

Senate Democrats on Thursday moved one step closer to repealing the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) scheduling a key vote Saturday on a bill to end the ban on openly gay service members.

But Democrats are bracing for an enormous backlash from repeal advocates if they fall short again.

As time runs out on the 111th Congress, top Democrats are pointing fingers at Republicans for stalling Senate action, saying if the buzzer sounds before Congress ends the policy, the GOP will be to blame. Still, there are at least four Republican senators on the record saying they’ll vote to repeal “don’t ask” under the right procedural circumstances.

Democrats also are reminding gay-rights activists that they — not their Republican counterparts — have been fighting to overturn the 17-year “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

One Republican senator suggested “he was going to do everything he could to run out the clock,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters. “I don’t think that’s really what the American people want — to run out the clock. I think what they want is for us to get things accomplished.”

They frittered away two years of a supermajority when they could’ve really accomplished things instead of  following–at best–a Reagan/Dubya Democratic president.  Obama’s re-election strategy is going to be to basically run as a Republican.  I hope all those Dems that supported his vanity agenda that gave tons of money to the corporate plutocracy get thrown out of office next time.  At the very least, some special hell realm should await them.

Here’s more information on the passage of the Tax Breaks for Billionaires Act. It also zoomed through the House.  Thanks a lot Nancy!  You are sooooo gonna get lumps of coal in your stockings for the rest of your life!

Congress passed the most far-reaching tax bill in a decade late Thursday, averting across-the-board tax increases, enacting new breaks for individuals and businesses and laying a marker for how Washington might work in an era of divided government.

The bill goes to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature after the House overcame persistent liberal opposition and passed it with an unexpectedly large bipartisan majority of 277-148. The measure passed the Senate earlier in the week also with an overwhelming majority.

The bill reaches deeply into the life and economy of the U.S., more so than might have been expected when Congress first started tackling the matter. Wage-earners will get a new payroll tax break; wealthy heirs get a lower estate-tax rate; and businesses gain an unexpected plum—a big tax write-off for new equipment purchases.

I don’t want to hear any of these jackasses talk about the deficit if they can justify signing this kind of disastrous economic policy.  It’s tax pandering and pork squandering at its absolute worse. There’s absolutely  no economic justification for this.

So, at least one piece of good news is coming out from the Fed. Yup, that’s the FED that all the tea partiers love to hate. The Dodd-Frank Law that extended the FED’s ability to regulate credit is actually having an impact.  If you give the Fed the power to do things, they will do it.  They’re reeling in the extraordinary profits from VISA and MasterCard.

Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. may face permanent damage to the fastest-growing part of their business after the Federal Reserve proposed rules that could cut debit-card transaction fees by 90 percent.

“It is negative all around,” wrote Scott Valentin, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets, in a note to clients. “This significantly impacts the business model for the networks.”

Visa and MasterCard, the world’s biggest payment networks, plunged more than 10 percent in New York trading yesterday after the Fed proposed capping so-called interchange fees at 12 cents each. Currently, the networks charge merchants an average of 1 percent of the purchase price, regardless of cost, and pass that money along to card-issuing banks.

The change, if approved by the Fed after a public comment period, would wipe out most of an estimated $15 billion in annual revenue for U.S. lenders that issue Visa and MasterCard debit cards, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.

“These credit-card giants and banks are imposing fees that are in no relation to the actual cost of processing, and the retailers and merchants have no way to bargain or even resist these increases,” U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who pushed for the caps, said in an interview. “This new law brings the Federal Reserve into the picture and changes that dynamic.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of plutocrats!   Here’s a somewhat depressing headline from The Daily Mail :  ‘We’re living longer… but not healthier: Children born today will suffer an extra year of disabilities than those born three decades ago’.

Living longer is not necessarily a bed of roses – it may mean more years spent struggling with disability, researchers say.

Figures show life expectancy is rising but that in return people born now will have to cope with disability or a long-term illness for an extra year compared with those born 30 years ago.

The gender gap is also closing, with women losing their traditional advantage in having better health for longer as they enjoy greater life expectancy.

There is some especially bad news for elderly women.

Men born in 2007 are likely to spend an even greater proportion of their life in poor health, 8.7 years compared with 6.4 years in 1981.

Women today spend 11 years in poor health compared with 10 years in 1981, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics.

Most of these problems will be due to obesity, an increase in hypertension and high cholesterol, more cancer, and more diabetes and cardiovascular disease.   Lifestyle and eating habits as well as exercise are more important than ever.

The Independent has a article up about a new threat to Polar Bears from climate change.   Scientists believe that there will be polar bear-grizzly bear hybrids as the two species have to change their habits to survive the immense loss of habitat.  Polar bears are especially endangered.

The first polar-grizzly hybrid to be spotted in the wild was shot by hunters in 2006. It was a white bear with brown patches and DNA tests subsequently confirmed that it was the result of cross breeding between the two species.

Although hybrids were known from captive bears kept in zoos, none had been confirmed in the wild. However, earlier this year another hybrid was killed by a hunter in the western Canadian Arctic and tests confirmed that it was a second-generation hybrid – the offspring of a hybrid female and a pure-bred grizzly bear male.

Scientists said that more cases of polar-grizzly bear hybrids are probably out there waiting to be discovered because of the change in behaviour of the polar bear brought about by climate change. They are spending more time on shore waiting for the sea ice to form, bringing them into close contact with grizzlies.

Brendan Kelly of the US National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Juneau, Alaska, led a study that found 34 possible hybridisations between discreet populations or species of large mammals living in or near to the Arctic. Twenty-two of these cases involved isolated populations at risk of intermixing.

“The Arctic Ocean is predicted to be ice-free in summer before the end of the century, removing a continent-sized barrier to interbreeding. Polar bears are spending more time in the same areas as grizzlies; seals and whales currently isolated by sea ice will soon be likely to share the same waters,” Dr Kelly and his colleagues report in the journal Nature.

It looks like its going to be one of those days where I’d just like to pull the covers over my head and stay asleep.  A recent report on the war in Afghanistan shows very mixed results.

Already, parts of the country with fewer troops are showing a deterioration of security, and the gains that have been made were hard won, coming at the cost of a third more casualties among NATO forces this year.

Then there are the starkly different timelines being used in Washington and on the ground. President Obama is on a political timetable, needing to assure a restless public and his political base that a withdrawal is on track to begin by the deadline he set of next summer and that he can show measurable success before the next election cycle.

Afghanistan, and the American military, are running on a different clock, based on more intractable realities. Some of the most stubborn and important scourges they face — ineffectual governance, deep-rooted corruption and the lack of a functioning judicial system — the report barely glanced at.

“We have metrics that show increased progress,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul. “But those positives are extremely fragile because we haven’t done enough about governance, about corruption. 2010 was supposed to be a year of change, but it has not changed as much as we hoped.”

It’s not known as the grave yard of empires for lack of evidence, that’s for certain.

Anyway, hug your  loved ones and appreciate the local if you can, because, all I can say is we are so f’d on the national level.

Oh, there’s one thing I’m kind’ve giggling about.   The Obamas are not on the Wedding list for the Prince William/Kate Middleton merger. Next time, some one should tell FLOTUS she’s not to touch the Queen and tell POTUS it’s totally tacky to return a present like a bust of Churchill.  Saying you didn’t know who it was makes the return even worse.

Oh, the humiliation. Once not so long ago one of the world’s top celebrities in his own right, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle did not make the cut for invitations to the royal wedding in London next spring.

On April 29 in Westminster Abbey with all the grace and pageantry sure to capture international imaginations, commoner Kate Middleton will marry Prince William, son of Princess Diana. And don’t forget the horsedrawn carriage perhaps.

But the current residents of the White House will not be there, according to the Daily Mail.

The official excuse provided to the British paper by royal sources is that the royal couple wants to share their special nuptial moment with ordinary citizens. Anyway, it is not an official state event, they said. And, you know, Westminster only seats 2,000.

Nice try.

So then how to explain the invites to French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni?

What goes around eventually comes around.  Karma will out.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Breaking…House leaders pull tax cut bill from the floor

Posted: December 16, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 19 Comments

CNN Political Ticker:

As the debate over how the tax cut bill will be brought to the floor and voted on was wrapping up, House Democratic leaders abruptly PULLED the “rule” from the floor because they don’t know if they have enough votes to even bring the tax bill to the floor, according to a senior Democratic leadership aide.

Before the debate on the tax bill starts, the House first needs to pass the rule on how the debate and votes will go, with a simple majority vote. Because Republicans will all vote against the rule set by Democratic leaders – Pelosi and Democratic leaders need to pass the rule just with Democratic votes.

Apparently many Reps are still really unhappy with the bill, so we should all call, e-mail, or fax our reps and let them know how we feel.

USA Today:

Many liberals in the Democratic caucus are upset at the bill’s provision on estate taxes and want to amend the measure and send it back to the Senate. The problem is that Democrats would have to vote on the Senate-passed bill if they want to change the estate tax provision.

[….]

A deal is being worked out, according to DeFazio, that would allow liberals to offer an amendment that would change the estate-tax provision so that estates up to $7 million would be tax free for couples, with anything above that amount taxed at 45%.

That amendment also would include a plan by Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., to get rid of the 2% cut in payroll taxes in the bill, which some opponents believe would undermine Social Security. It would be replaced by a new infusion of the “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for families that Obama included in last year’s massive economic stimulus package. Also, liberal Democrats want to include a $250 relief payment to seniors.

A little more detail from the Wall Street Journal:

A procedural motion setting rules for debate on the bill was scotched due to objections from Rep. Gene Taylor (D., Miss.) and other Democrats, lawmakers and aides said.

“There have been a number of issues raised. We need time to work it out,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.), after the procedural motion was pulled from the floor.

Mr. McGovern said he believes the vote will still happen at some point Thursday, after leaders have time to consult with Democratic lawmakers on the way forward. “It’s a bump, I think it’ll be taken care of,” said Mr. McGovern.

Democrats who objected to the procedural motion said they wanted a chance to vote to change estate-tax provisions in the Senate bill, without having to vote in support of the rest of the Senate bill’s provisions.

I’ll post updates as I learn more. I wish this meant a real uprising by liberal reps, but I hate to get my hopes up only to have them dashed once again.

Julian Assange Out of Jail

Posted: December 16, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Foreign Affairs, Wikileaks | Tags: , , | 24 Comments

In the weirdest set of moves yet, the U.S. government is trying to build a legal case against Assange.  I’ve rightly heard this compared to jailing Carl Bernstein for “the Deep Throat” leaks. Carl Bernstein was at least an American.

Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.

Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

Adrian Lamo, an ex-hacker in whom Private Manning confided and who eventually turned him in, said Private Manning detailed those interactions in instant-message conversations with him.

For some reason, Eric Holder is taking a bigger interest in this than he did in our breaking the Geneva Convention agreements on torture and the West Wing’s orders to assassinate a U.S. citizen abroad.  What a warped sense of Justice we’ve developed in this country!

Every one from Sweden to the Crown Prosecution service have argued against bail for Assange.    Sweden was not allowed to make any arguments or offer any evidence as is custom in British Courts.

There was an early sign that the day would go in Assange’s favour when Ouseley said: “The history of the way it [the case] has been dealt with by the Swedish prosecutors would give Mr Assange some basis that he might be acquitted following a trial.”

American legal action could further complicate the situation. As you hear in the video above, Assange vowed to continue his work.   Here’s one interesting result from the leaks of some of the cables.  CNN reports that Zimbabwe’s first lady is suing because it was leaked she had dealings in illegal diamonds. You may recall the blood diamond issue from the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio.

The cables in question, from the U.S. Embassy in Harare, claimed that Zimbabwe’s first lady was among the senior Zanu-PF and government officials who were gaining huge profits from the smuggling of diamonds in the eastern part of Zimbabwe.

“The diamonds that are sold to regime members and elites are sold for freshly printed Zimbabwean notes issued by the RBZ (Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe),” the paper quoted a 2008 cable as saying.

“The cables suggested that (the head of the bank, Gideon) Gono kept the money printing press running to finance the purchase of diamonds and this could have accelerated hyperinflation, which eventually rendered the Zimbabwe dollar worthless,” the newspaper charged.

Grace Mugabe said in the suit that the report published Sunday by The Standard was “false, scandalous, malicious and bent on damaging (her) reputation.”

The documents said the newspaper wrongly suggested that Grace Mugabe had “used her position as the First Lady to access diamonds clandestinely, enriching herself in circumstances in which the country was facing serious foreign currency shortages, which amounts should have been channeled to the fiscus.

AlterNet has an interesting interview up with peace activist Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the NYT during the Nixon years.  Ellsberg believes the law that Holder is using to try to prosecute Assange is unconstitutional.

Yet, as CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin pointed out earlier this month, the law no more shields journalists than anybody else from prosecution for the dissemination of classified information. For instance, in the case decided by the Supreme Court regarding the New York Times’ decision to publish the Pentagon Papers leaked by Ellsberg, the court held only that the government did not have the right to keep the Times from publishing the papers, but the government still had the right to prosecute the Times after classified information from the papers was published in its pages. So, why try to make a distinction, however polemical?

“The law they’re using makes no distinction between journalists, the press — it applies to readers of the New York Times, just as well as to the publishers, the journalists and the leakers,” Ellsberg explained. “The language of that law makes no distinction. Now, that’s why they’ve been reluctant to use it — because it’s so broad, that it’s almost clearly unconstitutional.”

“They have tried to use the law — mostly unsuccessfully — but they’ve tried to use the law against leakers,” Ellsberg continued. “They’ve never tried to use it against a publisher. So this would be a first.”

In other words, if the Justice Department can successfully brand Assange as something other than a journalist or a publisher, it would not appear to be violating the perception of freedom of expression held by most Americans.

Exactly.  We’re talking freedom of the Press here. The Republicans continue to shake their fists and spew weird diatribes at Assange.  The weirdest to date was the P Woman accusing Assange of being “un-American” which is some weird word salad given Assange is an Aussie.  Fred Thompson has been twittering up a storm on Michael Moore’s contributions to Assange’s bail. Something about Democrats not understanding real patriotism.  Same old Republican jingoism!   It does seems odd to me that a Democratic Attorney General would be following their lead, but hey,  these appear to be strange times for Democrats in deed.  To quote John Lennon: “Most peculiar Mama!”

Update: Since more Republican memes about Assange appear to be showing up in unlikely places–Remember, what they tried to do to Daniel Ellsberg?– I’m putting up some of the honors Assange has earned from the International Community.

Assange founded the WikiLeaks website in 2006 and serves on its advisory board. He has been involved in publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, for which he won the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award. He has also published material about toxic waste dumping in Africa, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer.[11] In 2010, he published classified details about US involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then, on 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five media partners began publishing secret US diplomatic cables.[12] The White House has called Assange’s release of the diplomatic cables “reckless and dangerous”.[13]

For his work with WikiLeaks, Assange received the 2008 Economist Freedom of Expression Award and the 2010 Sam Adams Award. Utne Reader named him as one of the “25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World”. In 2010, New Statesman ranked Assange number 23 among the “The World’s 50 Most Influential Figures”.

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