Just these days, the news that Assange was approved by the British government to extradite himself to the United States caused an uproar, and a legend may be cool. After all, the United States claimed that because Assange's intelligence leaks led to a large number of American casualties, he would be sentenced to 175 years in prison, and after extradition, he would probably have to sit in jail for the rest of his life.
In fact, since 2010, the United States has begun to hunt down Assange globally, forcing him to seek asylum from the Ecuadorian Embassy and the London Metropolitan Police Department in the United Kingdom. So who is Julian Assange? What kind of energy did he have that would cause the U.S. government to exterminate him for 12 years?
All this stems from the WikiLeaks (encyclopedia) created by Assange, today I will give you a look at the ins and outs of the Assange incident, the article is a bit long, please be patient after reading Oh!
(1) Assange's growth experience
Assange's full name is Julian Paul Assange, born in Townsville, off the northeast coast of Australia, and spent most of his childhood on neighboring Magnetic Island. Sadly, before he was born, when he was still in his belly, his mother Christine divorced Assange's biological father, John Shipton. Then when Assange was one year old, his mother married the director Ofet Assange, and the younger Assange's surname was derived from his stepfather.
As early as Assange's childhood, his stepfather described him as a "very insightful child", "a personal opinion of right and wrong", and "always supported the weak, very disgusted with the people who united (bullying others)". This description is also very much in line with Assange's later style of doing things.
In 1979, Assange's mother divorced her stepfather, her mother married a man named Leif Meynell and gave birth to a son, and the outrageous assange mother divorced this man in 1982, after which Assange's mother took Assange and his brother to begin a five-year escape. By the time Assange was 14 years old, he had moved countless times. He attended numerous schools, received intermittent education, often self-taught at home, attended correspondence classes, and informally studied with university professors.
(2) Transform into a hacker
In 1987, at the age of 16, Assange got his first computer from his mother, and the trajectory of his life will be completely changed from then on. Computers at that time were not like the computer systems we use today, which required inserting a disk and then entering instructions to perform the operation. When Assange first touched the computer, he was so shocked by this thing that he immersed himself in various forums every day, learning how to hack disks with the gods. As cracking disks becomes more and more accessible, the thrill of breaking through the shackles fades. So Assange began to hack into other people's computers through the Internet, after which Assange became a hacker on the Internet under the name mendax with his extraordinary talent, and together with two other hackers, he formed a group called "International Subversives", which took pleasure in hacking into the computers of other institutions, presumably in this way to satisfy his inner desire for a pleasure of information disclosure.
In 1991, Assange hacked into the computers of Australian government departments and Australian police searched his residence in Melbourne. Police found that Assange had used a modem to hack into a computer system at an Australian university and Canada's Nortel network.
In 1992, Assange pleaded guilty to 24 charges related to hacking into computer systems. After being fined $2100 for good performance, Assange was released on bail. According to the prosecutor, "The investigation shows that the case was caused by the parties' curiosity about intelligence information and their pursuit of the pleasure of hacking into other computers, and there were no other factors".
(3) Founding WikiLeaks
Fast forward to 2006, when Assange led a team of nine advisors to create WikiLeaks, and he was the main initiator. The first secret file released after WikiLeaks was created was about the embezzlement of public funds by former Kenyan President Alapumoi, which we will describe in detail later.
WikiLeaks can be said to be a condensation of Assange's personal thoughts, and in two articles written by Assange in the same year, he explained the motivation for WikiLeaks' founding as follows:
The more secretive an organization is, the more it adopts a secretive attitude towards the incident, the more the leakage of information can lead to panic and unwarranted fear within the organization and in small circles... Because, the product of an unfair system must be a multitude of dissidents. In contrast to dissidents, the operators of the organization are often underdog and disadvantaged. In this case, the disclosure of a large amount of secret information of the system will make this unjust system appear more fragile and unstable in the face of other more open systems, surpassing the thinking of predecessors, taking inspiration from new technologies and finding technologies that are useful to us and that predecessors did not have the opportunity to use.
On October 4, 2006, the WikiLeaks website went live. More than two months later, Assange received a top-secret document about former Kenyan President Alapumoi's embezzlement of G-money. In August 2007, this highly influential top-secret material was exposed on the WikiLeaks website, and it was not long before the relevant information was cited by the British "Guardian", but it did not cause any reaction in the United Kingdom, and few countries in Europe reported on the matter. But for Assange, when he got such a strong material, he felt that the "WikiLeaks" announcement of such a scandal has a positive impact on the world, because in hindsight, because of his exposure, the corrupt officials exposed on the material were all lost in the Kenyan general election that year, at least in his view, WikiLeaks did a very right and just thing.
In the following two years, WikiLeaks has tried to exert its positive influence many times, such as the successive release of British scientists to delete research data to prove that warming is the result of the belief, and the revelation that the Kenyan police killed hundreds of young people between 2007 and 2009, and Assange won the 2009 Amnesty International media award.
However, Western countries always stand on the high ground of fairness and justice that they think, they only care about their own vested interests, their so-called human rights, justice, and freedom are just shackles imposed on others, they are blind to the scandals published by "WikiLeaks", and "WikiLeaks" has not yet attracted enough attention in the West.
It wasn't until April 2010 that WikiLeaks first burst into the global public eye, and Assange began a legendary life. Since WikiLeaks has published many major events since then, I will open a separate section to comb through these materials.
(d) Some major events announced by WikiLeaks
As mentioned above, WikiLeaks mainly do to expose the corrupt behavior of the government, the military and enterprises, since the establishment of WikiLeaks in 2006, WikiLeaks has just announced a lot of shady scenes, we focus on a few more significant and influential events.
1. Embezzlement of public funds by the former President of Kenya
The incident, which has been briefly described above, is the work of WikiLeaks and Assange's temporary appearance.
In 2006, former Kenyan President Alapumoi was exposed for embezzling public funds, and according to the revelations, Moi and a diamond merchant named Paterney jointly stole 2.2 billion pounds in cash from the national treasury.
The man, Named Pattney, is the owner of Gordenburg International Group, Kenya's largest diamond and gold export company. The company had a monopoly on gold and diamond exports throughout Kenya at one point in the late 20th century.
Pattney used to be a car dealership. By chance in 1991, Pattney met President Moi and learned that there would be a government reward for the diamond business. Soon, Pattney was plunging into the diamond and gold trade. He quickly hit the first pot of gold by falsely issuing sales invoices. Subsequently, Pattney, "drinking water without forgetting the well digger", immediately packed the 24,000 pounds worth of Kenyan shillings in a large suitcase, mentioning Moy's official residence. Subsequently, Pattney paid Three more bribes to Moy totalling £52,000.
After buying the president off with money, Pattney became even more brazen. He soon formed the Goldenberg International Group and began a larger business. According to Kenya's incentive policy, for every 100 shillings of gold and diamonds exported, the government will reward exporters with 35 shillings. With such huge profits, The Goldenburg International Group swelled rapidly and soon monopolized Kenya's gold and diamond exports.
As the president of the country, it is really rare that he can be corrupt to such an extent, and I am afraid that only Assange can be exposed.
2. The U.S. Diplomatic Telegraph Incident
On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks first published 220 diplomatic cables and sent another part to five major media outlets (The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Nations in Spain, and Le Monde in France), and WikiLeaks plans to make all documents fully public within a few months.
Most of the documents deal with the diplomatic relations between the United States and Middle Eastern countries, and the documents also cover the heads of state of Chinese mainland, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Germany, Britain, Russia, and Libya.
About 100,000 documents are labeled "confidential," about 15,000 are "secret" and there are no "top secret" documents.
The WikiLeaks leak of U.S. diplomatic cables played a role in fueling the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and occupying movements against the rule of politics and commerce in Turkey, Ukraine, and Thailand, which continue to this day.
In 2010, U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning uploaded leaked documents to WikiLeaks and was sentenced for that.
3. Toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire
On 19 August 2006, a cargo ship unloaded 20 containers of approximately 500 tons of toxic waste in the Ivorian city of Abidjan. The toxic waste, which belonged to totoke, a commodities trading company registered in the UK and the Netherlands, was later dumped at 18 sites in Abidjan, as well as many other sites that may not be known. A month before this incident, Trafigura decided not to dispose of the waste in the Netherlands due to cost issues.
According to official estimates, the toxic waste caused 15 deaths, 69 hospitalizations and nearly 110,000 seeking treatment.
10 years after this incident, the victims and other residents of Abidjan still do not know what the waste dump is, what kind of harm it may cause to their bodies, whether the dumping site has been cleaned up enough, whether the toxic waste has entered the water source and food chain, and whether the health of the next generation will be affected. The truth is that local residents are still complaining about the smell of odor after heavy rains, as well as the presence of headaches, skin diseases and respiratory problems.
Many victims do not receive adequate redress. In October 2006, two months after the dumping, free medical care was discontinued, and many victims were unable to afford treatment without access.
4. The U.S. airstrike in Baghdad was accompanied by a video of the murder
In April 2010, WikiLeaks released a 39-minute, first-person video of U.S. Apache helicopters shooting civilians in the Iraq War.
On July 12, 2007, two U.S. Army Apache helicopters attacked a residential area in Baghdad, Iraq, killing two Reuters war correspondents, the video shows. Police in Baghdad accused it of "Random American Bombing," while the official U.S. military statement said it was "fighting with the rebels." Later, after being revealed by Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence division division, WikiLeaks released the first-view shooting footage of the helicopter on April 5, 2010, with audio recordings, and anonymous officials of the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed that the video and audio were true. It has been viewed by 20 million people today. In the recording, the helicopter soldiers fabricated that someone had fired a gun (and the corresponding picture only saw the gunman standing leisurely) and eagerly hoped that the target would pick up the weapon to give them an excuse to shoot, and then indiscriminately kill the passers-by to save the wounded, and the soldiers laughed after the wounded passers-by were shot, and so on.
Probably most of us now live in peacetime without any intuitive feelings about war, but when I saw the video of domestic news reports, I was still very shocked, it turned out that in the face of absolute strength, I could really do whatever I wanted, I could ignore any civilians, lives, and in the face of the bully-like United States, Iraq was almost powerless from the beginning of the air raids, and it was destroyed in just a few days.
5. Acts of war in Afghanistan
It can be said that the us in Afghanistan is too numerous to describe, and there will be no more complaining here.
In August 2010, WikiLeaks published 92,000 unpublished documents within the U.S. military, known as the "War Diary," which contained a large number of documents and video clips taken by soldiers on the battlefield or internal defense ministry documents from the U.S. military, including civilian casualties caused by coalition forces, efforts to eliminate negative reports, and Pakistan's Islamic Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) directly linked with the Taliban to "even assassinate Afghan leaders."
After this content was exposed, it shocked the world instantly, and it was reported on the front page of the three british, German and French newspapers on the same day.
For reasons of space, one of the most notorious incidents of the US military is the Granai Massacre, or the Granai Air Raid.
On May 4, 2009, the United States massed a large number of bombers to carry out indiscriminate bombing of the village of Granai in Farah Province, Afghanistan, resulting in an airstrike in which some 86 to 147 civilians were killed. The U.S. government acknowledged serious deficiencies in the operation and stated that it had "unintended consequences by failing to identify the presence of civilians and/or failing to reduce collateral damage." The Afghan Government claimed that the incident resulted in the deaths of 140 civilians, 93 of whom were children, while only 22 were adult victims. An earlier U.S. military investigation claimed that about 20 to 30 civilians and 60 to 65 rioters were killed in the operation, while another partially released investigation report claimed that "no one can accurately determine the death toll of civilians", while the Australian newspaper claimed in the report that the casualties were the largest single death since the coalition invasion of Afghanistan.
The attitude of the United States towards this inhuman act of destruction is, yes, I did it, how? Who among you sanctioned me? Suffice it to say that there is no alternative to countering violence with violence against this kind of bully. Therefore, today, after decades of peaceful development on the mainland, every time we see someone complaining about the mainland saying that it takes time and effort to develop so many aerospace, weapons, and aircraft, what is the use? Why not improve people's livelihood? I have also seen some people say, why do I really have no feeling when I see the third aircraft carrier on the mainland launched? I laughed...
(v) The second half of Assange's life
Since WikiLeaks has continuously announced the madness of the US military in the Middle East, he has become the number one target for the United States to get rid of.
Assange was once included in a list of 2,000 assassins, but the assassination was said to have been carried out because the risk was too high. But this virtue of the United States could not stop there, and since then in 2010 the United States concocted Assange's sexual assault case in Sweden.
In 2012, Assange was granted political asylum in Ecuador, disguised as an agent, and entered the Ecuadorian consulate in London, where he stayed for 7 years, and worse, life after receiving asylum was equivalent to self-imprisonment in disguise, he could only look forward to being indoors for a long time, years of wandering life, has made his body suffer from various diseases, it is reported that his heart has been tested for problems, but also suffered from chronic lung disease and high blood pressure.
In 2019, Ecuador no longer provides political asylum for Assange, he was also expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom, on April 11, the British police said that Hessange had been arrested and brought to justice, on June 11, the U.S. government submitted an application to the British side requesting Assange's extradition, and the next day, the British side signed the application and agreed to extradite Assange to the United States.
As many as 18 charges Assange faces in the United States, once all of which are established, means that Assange will spend the rest of his life in prison in the United States.
Today, if we look at it from God's point of view, WikiLeaks is essentially a large document publishing and analysis website, but its purpose is to expose the corrupt behavior of the government, the military and enterprises, it can be said that he is in accordance with Assange's ideals, Assange really did to use his life to achieve the ideal, but the cost is too great, so that there is no place for him in the world. If Assange had only gone to expose the shady scenes of small countries such as Kenya and not to bully the United States, he might not have fallen into this, but if he had done so he would not have been Assange.