vRRitti.com, providing sentiency

18-year-old Julian met a local girl of 16, with whom he developed a relationship.

Soon after, the couple moved a few miles away to a cottage. This was the home where Assange’s lover became pregnant. Even then he would spend hours on his computer daily, learning to hack into other computers as the web began to spread around the world.

Their son Daniel was born when Assange’s girlfriend was 17, but it seems that even the arrival of a child was not enough to drag the fledgling-hacker away from his screen.

A year or two later, the couple moved to a rented house in Melbourne. It was there, in October 1991, that their relationship suffered a shattering blow after Assange was raided by the police.

He was caught red-handed with the tools of his burgeoning hacker’s trade – a 350 pounds Amiga 500 computer and more than a dozen discs filled with the access codes of websites.

Police also found details of hundreds of stolen passwords for networks around the world – along with the dates when he obtained them. Among them were passwords for the US Air Force 7th Command Group in the Pentagon.

He was charged with a number of offences relating to computer hacking. For the mother of his child, it was the final straw – she fled with the baby.

Though the couple had gone through what they described as an ‘unofficial marriage’, Assange has remained deeply secretive about the mother of his child. The only time he has alluded to her was when he helped write a 1997 book called ‘Underground: Tales Of Hacking, Madness And Obsession On The Electronic Frontier’.

In it, he describes his girlfriend as ‘an intelligent but introverted 16-year-old’ whom he met through a friend. After she left him, he fell into a depression so severe that it led to him going in and out of a Melbourne hospital for six months.

After Assange separated from the mother of his child, the pair embarked on a nine-year custody battle over their son, which was not settled until 1999.

The agreement effectively meant that Daniel’s continued upbringing would be his mother’s responsibility.

While little is known of Assange’s activities in the years that followed, from 2003 to 2006 he studied physics and mathematics at Melbourne University before helping to set up WikiLeaks in 2006.

More: http://news.in.msn.com/international/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4722417

Previously:

Voices from the past: Reading messages posted by Julian Assange
http://vrritti.com/2010/12/12/voices-from-the-past-reading-messages-posted-by-julian-assange/

Julian Assange, an e-mail from the past. From then to WikiLeaks
http://vrritti.com/2010/12/10/julian-assange-an-e-mail-from-the-past-from-then-to-wikileaks/

The existing Internet design is centered on creating the illusion of no-cost effort. But there is no such thing. It’s an illusion born of the idylls of youth, and leads to a distorted perception of the nature of responsibility. When there seems to be no cost, the idea of moderation doesn’t seem sensible.

A sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid. Another way to put this is that a lot of information made available over the internet encourages players to think as if they had a God’s eye view, looking down on the whole system.

Julian Assange, in defending his actions sees a vindicating contradiction in this difference: How can information be both dangerous and inconsequential, he asks? He sees information as an abstract free-standing thing, so to him, differences in perspective and circumstance mean nothing. This is how nerd supremacists think.

Much more: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/the-hazards-of-nerd-supremacy-the-case-of-wikileaks/68217/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/reviews/2010/12/ars-book-review-the-master-switch-by-tim-wu.ars

“I had never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it was published in the press,” Assange told ABC News on Friday. “Wikileaks’s technology [was] designed from the very beginning to make sure that we never know the identities or names of people submitting us material.”

These comments contradict a chat log that appears to show Manning’s conversations before his arrest — and before his name ever appeared in the media — in which he described having a close relationship with Assange as a confidential source.

More: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security/2010/12/20/assange-charges-could-depend-on-manning-contradiction-40091210/

It is surely just a coincidence that the law firm – Finers Stephens Innocent – which represents Julian Assange and set up the Julian Assange Defense Fund is also legal adviser to the Rothschild Waddesdon Trust; that the partially Rothschild-owned Economist gave Assange its 2008 Freedom of Expression Award; that Lord Rothschild is deputy chairman of BSkyB, whose warmongering chairman, Rupert Murdoch, and his propagandist father were lauded as fearless advocates of the truth by the WikiLeaks founder in an op-ed in the Murdoch-owned The Australian; that the only world leader “undoubtedly delighted” by the leaks, Benjamin Netanyahu – who often stays with Murdoch in London and has the award-winning pro-Israel media magnate on his “list of millionaires” (i.e. potential donors) – was singled out by Assange as a believer in diplomatic transparency; and that WikiLeaks has provided an unexpected “diplomatic coup” for the criminal state which was first promised to British Zionists in an enigmatic 1917 letter to an earlier Lord Rothschild.

These intriguing connections, which might appear suspicious to those suffering from the “crippled epistemology” associated with anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, are undoubtedly coincidental.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/12/wikileaks-a-very-short-coincidence-theory/

“It’s our policy not to invite anyone who is currently the object of a legal complaint,” Schwab said in an interview with the SonntagsZeitung newspaper.

He said the forum, which takes place every January in the Swiss resort of Davos, would still discuss WikiLeaks, the group behind a mass-leak of confidential United States embassy cables that has embarrassed Washington.

More: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/WikiLeaks_founder_not_on_the_Davos_guest_list_.html

Media lawyers Finers Stephens Innocent have launched the Julian Assange Defence Fund to help pay for Assange’s legal costs, whether in the UK, Sweden, US or any other jurisdiction.

The defence fund will be administered by chartered accountants Hazlems Fenton LLP and overseen by a voluntary committee, members of which already include director of the London Centre for Investigative Journalism Gavin MacFadyen and filmmaker John Pilger.

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/defence-fund-set-up-for-wikileaks-editor-julian-assange/s2/a542049/

On 18th December Dutch TV show Zembla aired a Swedish documentary about WikiLeaks.

Although the Swedish makers Jesper Huor en Bob Lindquist aren’t too critical nor addressing topics such as the news exclusivity deals with newspapers, focus of the cables, legal & financial support provided by certain newspapers and the Rothschild family, financial / budgetary issues, more relevant issues surrounding Bradley Manning and the anarcho-capitalist ideology of some of the WikiLeaks members and supporters the report does give a good view on how exactly WikiLeaks would like to be portrayed in the media (as a rebellion) as well as events leading up to WikiLeaks’ current status. The research for this documentary was conducted by Johannes Wahlström. More information about him and his father “Israel Shamir,” a.k.a. Adam Ermash or Jöran Jermas can be found in the article Assange’s Extremist Employees: http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/14/the-assange-employees

The documentary includes comments by Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg (aka Daniel Schmitt) and Mikael Viborg (PRQ), Smari McCarthy, Kristinn Hrafnsson and Birgitta Jonsdottir. The Dutch version broadcasted by Zembla can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/364ped6 (geo-location restrictions may apply).

See the full original Swedish documentary (English language) below:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBsQEQ_7Dq0