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New Wikileaks Switzerland wikileaks.ch Julian Assange On Run Wanted Dead and Alive

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by hearit

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The Wikileaks motto may be “will help you safely get the truth out” but it doesn’t tend to be working for founder Julian Assange – not only is the founder on the “Most-Wanted” list, but powerful beings are more likely to want him dead than alive. The Wikileaks site has found its new domain and DNS at "wikileaks.ch" in Switzerland with hosting in France and Sweden, but no one's sure how long that will last: it's slated to be a DNS provider "whack-a-mole" game, in play after the U.S. oust only hours ago.

For those that believe there’s no true censorship in America, ask Wikileaks founder Assange what he thinks: the Wikileaks website was effectively shut down after its servers were dropped by Amazon and now its Domain Name Service provider has thrown the site ‘under the bus’ with claims that the DNS needs to protect stability for its supposed half a million other ‘customers’. Julian Assange just got a new DNS for Switzerland with hosting in France and, ironically, Sweden, but he’s far from safe. Assange has got a price on his head, the Wikileaks founder unable to even return to his homeland of Australia – the country claiming it too will detain him, in accordance with Interpol arrest warrants, upon any entry.

So while Wikileaks now has a new “home” – at least temporarily, or for the next few hours – Julian Assange has got none: Assange continues to be on the run, said to be changing hairstyle, hair color, altering his appearance, and hiding out. If Wikileaks gets itself ousted from its new DNS provider in Switzerland, it may mark the end for the website devoted to “secret information,” as other countries battle to ban internal hosting companies from even being able to provide DNS services to the controversial site. As danger rises for Wikileaks – and what many mark as its doomsday as Wikileaks becomes the ‘least-wanted’ website in the world -- Assange himself becomes one of the world’s ‘most-wanted’ men, and arrest by Interpol may actually be his safest bet.

There’s rumors of a price on Julian Assange’s head – and, with the information Assange claims that he intends to release in the future, those rumors aren’t so hard to believe. Assange now seems to be bartering for his life, with not-so-subtle threats that the safety of many depend on his own: the Wikileaks founder claims that he literally holds the (encryption) key that will mark the doom of many, simultaneously, if anything detrimental occurs to him or his company.

Stupid people may be stupid, but make them look stupid enough and one thing is for sure: they’ll find a ‘smart’ way to retaliate. Piss off stupid people and vengeance is assured – piss off a country, or two, and be assured of a business and personal ‘death warrant’.

Julian Assange had his ‘warning’ from the superpowers that be, just months ago in August: sex acts and rape charges, levied against the the Wikileaks founder by the Swedish courts and government, magically seemed to disappear – or at least they were put on the backburner. The first charges of “rape” against Assange, which arose from Swedish courts, “coincidentally” followed the Wikileaks website’s “leak” of 75,000 documents in late summer.

Then, in the blink of an eye, those August 2010 rape charges seemed to disappear – in hindsight, at least for the rest of the world, the not-so-subtle indicator to Assange and his Wikileaks website that he’d better lay off of future “leaks”. The rape charges against Assange seemed to vanish about as quickly as they came about, the disappearance of the sex acts charges insinuated – by the Swedish government – to be along the lines of ‘accidental’ and related to a junior attorney filling in for a more senior attorney. Assange didn’t take the ‘hint’ to leave well enough alone: rape charges have again recently surfaced, with Swedish courts now filing with Interpol for arrest of Julian Assange – the Wikileaks founder now placed on Interpol’s “Most Wanted” list of criminal suspects.

In-between late summer and now, the Wikileaks founder has been playing with fire that could cost him not only his company, but his life: Julian Assange recently told Time Magazine that he intended to release future information pertaining to a scandal involving corruption in a major American bank, and that he holds information about relations between Russia and China. The Wikileaks founder openly boasted that he intended to release more “leaks”, specifically concerning not only what he deemed a crooked American bank but the forthcoming release of secret “cables” concerning American diplomats – and releasing another 250,00 documents less than a week ago.

United States DNS provider, “EveryDNS”, just dropped the Wikileaks domain name of “wikileaks.org” while citing via statement: “wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites.Thus, last night, at approximately 10PM EST, December 1, 2010 a 24 hour termination notification email was sent to the email address associated with the wikileaks.org account.”

In less than 24 hours, the world has been marking the permanent demise of Assange’s Wikileaks company. December 3, Assange has managed to get his Wikileaks website back online, at least for now. Russia would typically be the next hosting option for a company kicked out of U.S. hosting options – but Assange has assured that option will be shut down for Wikileaks: the newly-released diplomats’ “secret cables,” contained within the 250,000 recently-released files, revealed numerous American officials warning Saakashvili not to go to war, or risk facing precisely the consequence that occurred: institution of doubt in his leadership.

Julian Assange has successfully ‘restarted’ the Wikileaks website with a DNS in Switzerland however Assange had better not get himself kicked out -- any remaining countries as options remain extremely limited at this point.

The past few days have proved hard and heavy ones for Julian Assange:

December 1, reports that the country of China blocked the Wikileaks website from behind its firewall were released.

Separately in the United States on December 1, a Pentagon spokesman boasted that the U.S. government could have destroyed the Wikileaks website in entirety but chose not to kill the site – the Pentagon’s claim, that impact of the “secret cables” leaks did not warrant the U.S. to do so. The Pentagon’s ability to kill the Wikileaks website is far less questionable than its reason provided for not doing so: namely, the irony in timing of announcement and the idea that the United States is not a Communist government.

Assange has just called for Clinton's resignation -- speaking to Time Magazine from an undisclosed location, while the Wikipedia founder remains on the run from Interpol -- stating that Clinton should resign from duty if her responsibility can be shown in any ordering of U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she [Clinton] should resign over that."

December 2, Senator Lieberman and two other senators introduce legislation intended to make it illegal to publish names of military or intelligence informants – deliberately aimed at Wikileaks and any similar websites. Interestingly, and particularly scary for freedoms like those pertaining to speech, is that there is no current law broken in the United States by the Wikileaks site – clearly evidenced by the United States push for instituting legislation to stop future leaks by online sites: despite lack of law, the U.S. Attorney General’s office is looking for any means to prosecute.

For those who agree or disagree with the Wikileaks release of information, the U.S. government’s attempts that lean toward censorship are nothing less than startling: United States Attorney General Eric Holder is now referring to what he calls "an active, ongoing, criminal investigation" into WikiLeaks' release of the diplomatic cables – despite the fact there is no law violated by Wikileaks. U.S. Attorney General Holder now claims that release of the “secret cables” and 250,000 files of information released in late November 2010 has jeopardized national security, diplomatic efforts and U.S. relationships around the world.”

The Attorney General’s statements that release of the Wikileaks 250,000 “secret cables” and files have jeopardized U.S. security is extremely interesting, considering that it directly violates the Pentagon’s December 1 statement only days ago, that the Pentagon had the ability to kill or dismantle the Wikileaks website but deliberately chose not to do so because the ‘impact’ of the information and cables being released specifically did not warrant such an action on behalf of the government.

The Pentagon claims it had the ability to rid the world of Wikileaks (along frightening lines of Communism) but that the information being released was not worthy of killing the website – while U.S. Attorney General Holder claims that the released information was so important that it jeopardized U.S. national security.

Only one day before the United States DNS provider drops the Wikileaks site on December 3, Amazon dropped its providing of server services to the organization December 2. Amazon booted Wikileaks from its server hosting December 1 after U.S. Congressional members began putting pressure on the online giant – asking Amazon about its relationship to Wikileaks. Amazon claims its dropped server services to Wikileaks simply because the website doesn’t own its own content and claims it could endanger “innocent people by publishing unredacted material.”

Fearing DNS services to be short-lived, regardless of locale, Julian Assanage has begun issuing threats of a ‘back-up plan’. Less than 24 hours ago, the Wikileaks DNS provider in Manchester, New Hampshire –the company “EveryDNS” – decides it is in fact not a provider for ‘every’ DNS: only a day after Amazon yanks its server services from Wikileaks in entirety, the United States DNS provider says goodbye to Wikileaks and its ‘wikileaks.org’ domain name for good. “EveryDNS” claims ‘cyber attacks’ for the rest of its network as the reason for dropping Wikileaks -- ‘reputation attacks’ for the DNS provider are most likely a much for viable reason for the yank.

Wikileaks goes offline – while many count the website as being ‘down for the count’ permanently. Somehow founder Julian Assange manages to convince good old neutral Switzerland to take over DNS services: for hours, the Wikileaks website moved to the Swiss domain name of ‘wikileaks.ch’ – now with two companies hosting the new ‘wikileaks.ch’ domain name, one in France (which may be short-lived, as French government pushes to oust Wikileaks and tries to institute law which would ban any company from providing the hosting to Wikileaks) and the second host in the (very ironic) location of Sweden.

It’s hard to say how long Assange and Wikileaks will last with hosting in Sweden: Swedish courts have just recently put Julian Assange on the Interpol “Most-Wanted” list of criminals, for crimes the country claims Assange has committed in the areas of sex acts and rape.

But Assange is playing the ‘Wild West’ and coming out with guns drawn, which may his only option at this point in the game – and considering how many people, and countries, would now be happy to see Assange financially or personally dead: apparently aware that his death may now be worth far more than his life, Julian Assange now says that if anything happens to either him or Wikileaks’ DNS services, the world can count on thousands and thousands of encrypted zip files being released. The Wikileaks founder claims that those currently encrypted zip files contain the uncensored version of “secret cables” the world has yet to see, and that the encryption key and those files will become public.

December 3, Wikileaks’ United States DNS provider officially drops all hosting services to Assange and the founder’s site. Separately, France’s government began working on way to deny French servers any right to host the Wikileaks website. While Assange has been battling to keep Wikileaks online, part of his “back-up plan” with refused DNS services now includes the French website Octave Klaba, which confirms it has been hosting Wikileaks since December 2.

What Julian Assange is now being forced to do to continue operations – skipping from one DNS provider to another, if they continue to shut out the Wikileaks website – is being described as a “whack-a-mole” method: Wikileaks’ new method of continued operation includes a back-up DNS providers take over, as needed, and as each DNS provider continues to ban the website from its services.

After being shut out of the United States DNS provider days ago, Assange has now skipped to Switzerland and additionally has DNS services confirmed to exist in France. Other countries providing possible DNS services to Wikileaks currently remain unknown, but founder Assange claims at least two more back-ups. Despite those existing DNS back-up services, countries battle to oust Wikileaks, and Assange and his company may soon run out of DNS providers willing – or legally able, as countries fight to rid Wikileaks – to provide any DNS services.

‘The Guardian’ – one of the five original news outlets to distribute release of the 250,000 “secret cables” of diplomats – has problems hosting even an online ‘Question and Answer’ interview with Julian Assange after getting too many viewers and online traffic.

Aside from Switzerland, Assange is going to have a hell of a time with any new “back-up plans” – governments across the world are now fighting to keep Wikileaks out and cripple or cut its access to the internet from countries abroad. For a company dedicated to releasing ‘secret’ information, options of releasing that secret info are dwindling fast – possibly as fast as Assange’s personal safety: things are obviously bad when Assange is bartering not only for his company’s safety, but also for his own.

As the situation stands, Julian Assange can’t even return home: the normally mild-mannered Australia, Assange’s homeland, won’t even tolerate the Wikileaks founder’s return – the country stating it will detain Assange, if he returns, in response to the Swedish arrest warrant on file with Interpol police.

Talk show host Todd Schnitt is calling the Wikileaks founder a terrorist and placed a $50,000 bounty on Julian Aassange’s head: the radio talk show host calls the 39-year-old Assange a menace, claiming that “Assange is a terrorist, an enemy combatant, and needs to be treated as such.” The Tampa, Florida, syndicated talk show host announced that any person with credible information that could lead the federal or international authorities to the capture Assange is eligible for the reward – that any informant with information leading to the Wikileaks founder’s arrest will be turned over to Interpol.

The Florida talk show host is likely the least of Julian Assange’s problems: there are probably far more powerful people, and countries, holding the view that the company – or its leader – might be better off dead than alive.

The problem isn't exactly the information Julian Assange has revealed and released, quite so much as the potential threat of what the Wikileaks founder plans to reveal: Assange told Forbes magazine -- in an interview right prior to the latest Wikileaks leak of 250,000 files and documents -- that a large U.S. financial corporation is a target, that info coming soon. Assange confirmed to Forbes: "Yes, the banks are in there. Many different multinational organizations are in the upcoming weeks, but that is a continuation of what we have been doing for the past four years" since Wikileaks came to be. In fact, boasted Assange to Forbes, volume of material has skyrocketed: "The upcoming bank material is 10,000 documents, as opposed to hundreds, which we have gotten in the other cases."

But the real problem may have far less to do with the U.S. country, even, than others -- Assange telling Time Magazine that he’d like to see his whistle-blower Wikileakas website eventually expose secrets and inner workings of ties between Russia and China. If that’s the case, Julian Assange may not make it to ‘eventual’.

Perhaps someone might further Julian Assange’s life by familiarizing him with the concept of the Russian mob -- but even that may be less painful than if China gets a hold of him.

In the meantime, Assange refuses to believe that his Wikileaks website can or will be shut down, with back-up plans to continue his “whack-a-mole” methods of DNS provider switches -- whatever necessary to keep Wikileaks up and running. Concurrently, Assange is still running -- and there's only one significant change that can surely end that run.

Location

Wikileaks
Sweden
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