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Is This Julian Assange?

Intro­duc­tion: The sec­ond pro­gram about the Wik­iLeaks net­work high­lights the orga­ni­za­tion’s links with intel­li­gence ser­vices around the world, as well as con­nec­tions the group has with the Swedish Nazi milieu described in the late Stieg Larsson’s nov­els and the movies made from them. Wik­iLeaks receives sup­port from Pirate Bay and its asso­ci­at­ed Pirate Par­ties. Com­posed large­ly of ide­al­is­tic, rel­a­tive­ly young hack­ers, most left of cen­ter, Pirate Bay is con­trolled by [40%] investor Carl Lund­strom, a promi­nent Swedish fas­cist.

John Young, one of Wik­iLeaks’ founders turned crit­ic of the orga­ni­za­tion har­bors deep sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing the group. ” . . . they’re act­ing like a cult. They’re act­ing like a reli­gion. They’re act­ing like a gov­ern­ment. They’re act­ing like a bunch of spies. They’re hid­ing their iden­ti­ty. They don’t account for the mon­ey. They promise all sorts of good things. They sel­dom let you know what they’re real­ly up to. . .There was sus­pi­cion from day one that this was entrap­ment run by some­one unknown to suck a num­ber of peo­ple into a trap. So we actu­al­ly don’t know. But it’s cer­tain­ly a stan­dard coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence tech­nique. And they’re usu­al­ly pret­ty elab­o­rate and pret­ty care­ful­ly run. They’ll even pros­e­cute peo­ple as part of the cov­er sto­ry. That actu­al­ly was talked about at (Sunday’s) pan­el. They’ll try to con­ceal who was inform­ing and betray­ing oth­ers by pre­tend­ing to pros­e­cute them. . . .” [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]. Young har­bors many oth­er sus­pi­cions about the group as well.

Wik­iLeaks king­pin Julian Assange boasts of his links to Aus­tralian intel­li­gence and the Wau Hol­land Foun­da­tion in Ger­many (which is help­ing with Wik­iLeaks’ financ­ing) con­sults with the BND, the suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion to the Gehlen spy out­fit that jumped from the Third Reich to the CIA and the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many at the end of World War II. Assange’s e‑mails reveal that the group was found­ed by dis­si­dent expa­tri­ates from Rus­sia, Chi­na and Tibet–a descrip­tion that sounds very much like a West­ern intel­li­gence front of some kind.

Cen­tral to assess­ing Wik­iLeaks’ intel­li­gence con­nec­tions is the con­cept of the “Turned Hack­er Syn­drome,” to coin a term. It is com­mon for crim­i­nal hack­ers to be “turned” after they are brought to justice–they are put to work for the author­i­ties using their skills against some of their for­mer asso­ciates and/or for the ben­e­fit of their for­mer adver­saries.

Assange him­self got a wrist slap from the Aus­tralian author­i­ties after hack­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty data­bas­es main­tained by ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, sug­gest­ing the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that Assange was “turned” and is work­ing for one or more intel­li­gence ser­vices. In addi­tion, the Wik­iLeaks-asso­ci­at­ed Wau Hol­land Foun­da­tion also gives evi­dence of being a “Turned Hack­er” ele­ment.

A fas­ci­nat­ing detail not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast con­cerns the fact that Mon­ey­book­ers, the com­pa­ny that was han­dling 0nline con­tri­bu­tions to Wik­iLeaks is a sub­sidiary of Invest­corp, a com­pa­ny that is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the milieu of the BCCI, an intel­li­gence bank that was used for machi­na­tions in the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal, drug traf­fick­ing, the Afghan mujahideen sup­port effort and ter­ror­ism. Invest­corp is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with ele­ments of the Gulf elite who are con­nect­ed to the Bush fam­i­ly inter­ests, as well as to the events sur­round­ing 9/11.

As dis­cussed in FTR #707, Swe­den (in which Wik­iLeaks has locat­ed its oper­a­tions) hosts a vig­or­ous fas­cist com­mu­ni­ty, con­nect­ed to some of its wealth­i­est cit­i­zens, its intel­li­gence ser­vices and an inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal milieu involved with var­i­ous forms of crim­i­nal sex traf­fick­ing.

In remark­able fash­ion, the world of Wik­iLeaks over­laps the world por­trayed by the late Stieg Lars­son in his Mil­le­ni­um nov­els and the movies made from them (The Girl with the Dra­goon Tat­too, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hor­net’s Nest.) In the Lars­son novels/movies, we find the inter­twin­ing of the world of com­put­er hack­ers, Nazis (old and new), sex traf­fick­ing and crim­i­nal sex­u­al­i­ty. We find the same ele­ments in the Wik­iLeaks sto­ry. (A knowl­edge­able source famil­iar with the Swedish polit­i­cal land­scape assured author Christo­pher Hitchens that every­thing in the Lars­son novels/movies actu­al­ly took place!)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Assange’s rela­tion­ship with The Fam­i­ly of Anne Hamil­ton-Byrne; Assange’s pos­si­ble indict­ment for sex­u­al molesta­tion; PRQ server’s host­ing of a pedophile chat forum (PRQ also hosts Pirate Bay and Wik­iLeaks); the Swedish Pirate Par­ty’s spon­sor­ship of Wik­iLeaks in Swe­den (the Par­ty is close­ly con­nect­ed to Pirate Bay); the Swiss Pirate Par­ty’s host­ing of Wik­iLeaks fol­low­ing DNS attacks; the Wik­iLeaks’ use of a com­pa­ny owned by a co-founder (with Lund­strom) of Pirate Bay as an emer­gency fund-rais­ing con­duit; review of the financ­ing of Pirate Bay by Nazi financier Carl Lund­strom; Lund­strom’s sug­ges­tion that Pirate Bay’s oper­a­tions be moved to Argenti­na; Pirate Bay’s acqui­si­tion by a Swedish com­pa­ny; the mys­te­ri­ous off­shore enti­ty that is the cor­po­rate shell of Pirate Bay; indi­ca­tions that the stock of that Swedish com­pa­ny may have been sub­ject to insid­er trad­ing; the res­ig­na­tion of the Ger­man Pirate Par­ty’s lone mem­ber of Par­lia­ment because of pos­ses­sion of child pornog­ra­phy; Wik­iLeaks’ release of the East Anglia Uni­ver­si­ty doc­u­ments, which cast asper­sions on the research under­scor­ing glob­al warm­ing (“pro­gres­sives” tend to for­get this about Wik­iLeaks); the death of Nobel Prize win­ning cli­ma­tol­o­gist Stephen Schnei­der (who was receiv­ing death threats from neo-Nazis and was on a flight from Swe­den.)

1. Among those who har­bor sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing the pos­si­ble involve­ment of Wik­iLeaks with ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty is one of the group’s founders, John Young (now a promi­nent crit­ic of the group).

In addi­tion, he notes that Wik­iLeaks has behaved in a mer­ce­nary man­ner, seek­ing gen­er­ous amounts of fund­ing. Young also notes that the orga­ni­za­tion has behaved decep­tive­ly with regard to its advi­so­ry board. Hav­ing him­self been the focal point of gov­ern­ment inquiries, Young is also skep­ti­cal of Assange’s accounts of being har­rassed by sin­is­ter “gov­ern­ment agents.”

Last­ly, Young does­n’t think that Wik­iLeaks’ strate­gic retreat to Swe­den is like­ly to bear fruit–according to Young, no hack­er out­fit is “take­down-proof.”

John Young was one of Wik­iLeaks’ ear­ly founders. Now he’s one of the orga­ni­za­tion’s more promi­nent crit­ics.
Young, a 74-year-old archi­tect who lives in Man­hat­tan, pub­lish­es a doc­u­ment-leak­ing Web site called Cryptome.org that pre­dates Wik­iLeaks by over a decade. He’s drawn fire from Microsoft after post­ing leaked inter­nal doc­u­ments about police requests, irked the U.K. gov­ern­ment for dis­clos­ing the names of pos­si­ble spies, and annoyed Home­land Secu­ri­ty by dis­clos­ing a review of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion secu­ri­ty mea­sures.

Cryp­tome’s his­to­ry of pub­li­ciz­ing leaks–while not yield­ing to pres­sure to remove them–is what led Young to be invit­ed to join Wik­ileaks before its launch over three years ago. He also agreed to be the pub­lic face of the orga­ni­za­tion by list­ing his name on the domain name reg­is­tra­tion.

Oper­at­ing a Web site to post leaked doc­u­ments isn’t very expen­sive (Young esti­mates he spends a lit­tle over $100 a month for Cryp­tome’s serv­er space). So when oth­er Wik­ileaks founders start­ed to talk about the need to raise $5 mil­lion and com­plained that an ini­tial round of pub­lic­i­ty had affect­ed “our del­i­cate nego­ti­a­tions with the Open Soci­ety Insti­tute and oth­er fund­ing bod­ies,” Young says, he resigned from the effort.

In the last few weeks, after the arrest of Army intel­li­gence ana­lyst Bradley Man­ning cast a brighter spot­light on Wik­ileaks, Young has been try­ing to trace Wik­ileaks’ mon­ey flows. On July 17, Wik­ileaks asked sup­port­ers for $200,000 to pay for Man­nings’ attor­neys, even though co-founder Julian Assange said a few days ear­li­er that the orga­ni­za­tion had already raised $1 mil­lion.

CNET caught up with Young at the Next HOPE hack­er con­fer­ence here last week­end, where he was attend­ing the Wik­ileaks keynote speech. Fol­low­ing is a tran­script made from a record­ed inter­view with Young, light­ly edit­ed for space.

Q: How many hours a day or days a week do you spend on Cryp­tome? 
Young: Well, it varies. When I’m doing pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice work, it’s very lit­tle. I just answer e‑mail and when some­thing hot comes in, I’ll put it up. Most of my time is spent on my archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice. So I do Cryp­tome between when I have time to get to it. It’s by no means a full-time activ­i­ty.
What you’re doing sounds a lot like what Wik­ileaks is doing, no? 
Young: Only super­fi­cial­ly, Declan, because, and we can talk more about this, I ini­tial­ly thought that was what they were going to be doing when I first agreed to par­tic­i­pate. But it became clear right away that they were going to set up an oper­a­tion with mul­ti­ple peo­ple involved. So the first dif­fer­ence is that I don’t run an oper­a­tion. I don’t have any peo­ple work­ing on this. This is strictly–and I like the term myself, but oth­er peo­ple hate it–it’s strict­ly an ama­teur ver­sion.

It’s not like Wik­ileaks and their grand goals. I’ve nev­er had any desire to over­turn gov­ern­ments or do any of these noble things that they want to do. Or jack up jour­nal­ism. This was just a way to get cer­tain kinds of doc­u­ments out to the pub­lic.
And so when they explained the amount of mon­ey they were going to try to raise, that was the basis for part­ing com­pa­ny with them. I thought it was going to be more like Cryp­tome, which is a col­lec­tive of peo­ple con­tribut­ing their time to it and not a cen­tral­ized oper­a­tion rais­ing lots of mon­ey. Cryp­tome is not into that kind of thing. We part­ed com­pa­ny at that point. We’re still not like Wik­ileaks in that we don’t do any pro­mo­tion­al work for our activ­i­ties.

Who were the oth­er Wik­ileaks founders?

Young: I’m not going to talk about those. I’ll say Julian (Assange) was clear­ly there. I elect­ed to con­ceal those names when I pub­lished these mes­sages. And I think it’s basi­cal­ly a vio­la­tion of Cryp­tome’s policy–to pub­lish the names of peo­ple who do not want to be iden­ti­fied.

You had a falling-out with the oth­er Wik­ileaks founders? 
Young: Yes. But it was over this: some­one said that the ini­tial goal was $5 mil­lion. That caught my atten­tion. One, because I think the type of stuff I was going to pub­lish, you should nev­er do it for mon­ey. Only because that con­t­a­m­i­nates the cred­i­bil­i­ty and it turns it into a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty where there’s great treach­ery and lying going on.

And it will con­t­a­m­i­nate Wik­ileaks. It always does. In fact, that’s the prin­ci­pal means by which noble endeav­ors are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, the mon­ey trail. That’s pret­ty obvi­ous. I hap­pen to think that ama­teur stuff is bet­ter than paid stuff.
How long were you involved before you resigned? 
Young: Not long. A few weeks. It was­n’t long. How­ev­er, one of the things that hap­pened is that some­how I got sub­scribed to that list under anoth­er name and the mes­sages kept com­ing in. I got to keep read­ing what they were say­ing about me after they boot­ed me off. The mes­sages kept com­ing in. So I pub­lished those too.

Did they crit­i­cize you for, well, leak­ing about Wik­ileaks? 
Young: They cer­tain­ly did. They accused me of being an old fart and jeal­ous. And all these things that come up, that typ­i­cal­ly hap­pen when some­one does­n’t like you. That’s okay. I know you would nev­er do that and jour­nal­ists nev­er do that, but ordi­nary peo­ple do this all the time.

Because jour­nal­ism is a noble pro­fes­sion in all its guis­es?

Young: That’s right. And there’s no back-bit­ing there.
Over the years you’ve been run­ning Cryp­tome, you’ve had some encoun­ters with fed­er­al agen­cies. What vis­its did you have and what were the agents con­cerned about? 
Young: They were most con­cerned that we pub­lished lists. The names of spies. That was the first issue that brought us to their atten­tion. There was a request, so we were told, from one of the British intel­li­gence peo­ple to have that list removed.

And did you remove it?

Young: No. And not only that, but the FBI was always very polite. They said you’ve done noth­ing ille­gal, we’re not pur­su­ing a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. These are just cour­te­sies we’re offer­ing oth­er gov­ern­ments. We had one with the Brits and one with the Japan­ese that brought them to our door.

You had no oth­er inter­ac­tion with, say, Home­land Secu­ri­ty?

Young: The oth­er was when we start­ed our eye­ball series of pub­lish­ing pho­tos. That brought one vis­it and one phone call. But again, they were polite and said there’s noth­ing ille­gal about this. They nev­er used a neg­a­tive term. They just said the issue has been raised with us.

And by the way, I did a FOIA try­ing to get records of these vis­its, but I could nev­er find any­thing. I did get busi­ness cards, though, and I asked for ID. They were very polite and gave me busi­ness cards and I pub­lished all that. They asked me not to pub­lish their names. But what the hell, Declan, what else do I have to go with?

So if you’ve been pub­lish­ing sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion for so long, why have you not had the same encoun­ters that Wik­ileaks has had? [Ed. Note: Wik­ileaks has claimed its rep­re­sen­ta­tives have been harassed by U.S. gov­ern­ment agents.]

I don’t think they’ve had any encoun­ters. That’s bogus. But that’s okay. I know a lot of peo­ple who talk about how the gov­ern­men­t’s after them. It’s a fair­ly well-worn path. You know it from your own field. It remains to be seen whether any of this stuff holds up or not.

One of the tests is: unless you go to jail, it’s all bogus. When I go to jail, you’ll say he actu­al­ly did it, final­ly. He came up with some­thing that offend­ed some­one. So far that has­n’t hap­pened, no indict­ments or any­thing. These polite vis­its are the clos­est I’ve come.

Pro­fes­sion­als are going to have noth­ing to do with Wik­ileaks, as you prob­a­bly know if you check around. Peo­ple who know secu­ri­ty will not have any­thing to do with Wik­ileaks. But the pub­lic will.

Wik­ileaks pledges to main­tain the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of sources and stressed that in the pre­sen­ta­tion over the week­end. Do you offer your con­trib­u­tors the same guar­an­tee?

Young: No. That’s just a pitch. You can­not pro­vide any secu­ri­ty over the Inter­net, much less any oth­er form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We actu­al­ly post peri­od­i­cal­ly warn­ings not to trust our site. Don’t believe us. We offer no pro­tec­tion. You’re strict­ly on your own.

We also say don’t trust any­one who offers you pro­tec­tion, whether it’s the U.S. gov­ern­ment or any­body else. That’s a sto­ry they put out. It’s repeat­ed to peo­ple who are a lit­tle ner­vous. They think they can always find some­one to pro­tect them. No, you can’t. You’ve got to pro­tect your­self. You know where I learned that? From the cypher­punks.

So Wik­ileaks can­not pro­tect peo­ple. It’s so leaky. It’s unbe­liev­able how leaky it is as far as secu­ri­ty goes. But they do have a lot of smoke blow­ing on their site. Page after page after page about how they’re going to pro­tect you.

And I say, oh-oh. That’s over-promis­ing. The very over-promis­ing is an indi­ca­tion that it does­n’t work. And we know that from watch­ing the field of intel­li­gence and how gov­ern­ments oper­ate. When they over-promise, you know they’re hid­ing some­thing. Peo­ple who are real­ly trust­wor­thy do not go around broad­cast­ing how trust­wor­thy I am.

It sounds like you’ve become more crit­i­cal of Wik­ileaks over time.

Young: It’s not just them. It’s also that they’re behav­ing like untrust­wor­thy orga­ni­za­tions. So yes, if the shoe fits, fine.
I don’t want to lim­it this to Wik­ileaks, but yes, they’re act­ing like a cult. They’re act­ing like a reli­gion. They’re act­ing like a gov­ern­ment. They’re act­ing like a bunch of spies. They’re hid­ing their iden­ti­ty. They don’t account for the mon­ey. They promise all sorts of good things. They sel­dom let you know what they’re real­ly up to. They have rit­u­als and all sorts of won­der­ful stuff. So I admire them for their show­man­ship and their enter­tain­ment val­ue. But I cer­tain­ly would not trust them with infor­ma­tion if it had any val­ue, or if it put me at risk or any­one that I cared about at risk.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing devel­op­ment that’s come along, to mon­e­tize this kind of thing. That’s what they’re up to. You start with free sam­ples.

You’ve been try­ing to fol­low some of Wik­ileaks’ mon­ey flows. You con­tact­ed the Ger­man char­i­ty and post­ed their response. They said they’re going to have some infor­ma­tion to you per­haps in ear­ly August. Does that make you feel any bet­ter about the mon­ey trail?

Young: No. To clar­i­fy, they’re going to pub­lish it on their Web site. They said, “you could mir­ror it or point to it.” So it’s not just for me.

But it’s only a tiny sliv­er of what Wik­ileaks claims it’s raised. whether Wik­ileaks has raised a mil­lion dol­lars as they’ve claimed, or whether they’re try­ing to prime the pump, I don’t know. (Ger­man char­i­ty) Wal Hol­land has only han­dled a very tiny amount of this, and they’ve said that, “We know noth­ing about the rest.” . . .

. . . There was sus­pi­cion from day one that this was entrap­ment run by some­one unknown to suck a num­ber of peo­ple into a trap. So we actu­al­ly don’t know. But it’s cer­tain­ly a stan­dard coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence tech­nique. And they’re usu­al­ly pret­ty elab­o­rate and pret­ty care­ful­ly run. They’ll even pros­e­cute peo­ple as part of the cov­er sto­ry. That actu­al­ly was talked about at (Sunday’s) pan­el. They’ll try to con­ceal who was inform­ing and betray­ing oth­ers by pre­tend­ing to pros­e­cute them. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.] . . .

2. Young leaked Wik­iLeaks e‑mails, which indi­cate that dis­si­dent exiles from Chi­na, Rus­sia and else­where found­ed the group. From this description–again, derived from Wik­iLeaks’ own e‑mails, it sounds like the group is asso­ci­at­ed with a right-wing intel­li­gence network–one that is also will­ing to work against U.S. inter­ests. Among the ele­ments that should be con­sid­ered in this regard are the UNPO and the Safari Club. It appears that Assange imag­ined that he would be able to fleece CIA and West­ern intel­li­gence ser­vices.

“1. WL was found­ed by Chi­nese dis­si­dents, math­e­mati­cians and start­up com­pa­ny tech­nol­o­gists, from the US, Tai­wan, Europe, Aus­tralia and South Africa.

2. Our advi­so­ry board, which is still form­ing, includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives from expat Russ­ian and Tibetan refugee com­mu­ni­ties, reporters, a for­mer US intel­li­gence ana­lyst and cryp­tog­ra­phers.

3. There are cur­rent­ly 22 peo­ple direct­ly involved in the project.

4. We haven’t sought pub­lic feed­back so far, but dis­si­dent com­mu­ni­ties have been been very gra­cious with their assis­tance.”

To: John Young
From: Wik­ileaks
Sub­ject: martha stu­art pgp
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 12:20:25 ‑0500

J. We are going to fuck them all. Chi­nese most­ly, but not entire­ly a feint. Inven­tion abounds. Lies, twists and dis­torts every­where need­ed for pro­tec­tion. Hack­ers mon­i­tor Chi­nese and oth­er intel as they bur­row into their tar­gets, when they pull, so do we.

Inex­haustible sup­ply of mate­r­i­al. Near 100,000 documents/emails a day. We’re going to crack the world open and let it flower into some­thing new. If fleec­ing the CIA will assist us, then fleece we will. We have pull­backs from NED, CFR, Free­dom­house and oth­er CIA teats. We have all of pre 2005 Afghanistan. Almost all of India fed. Half a dozen for­eign min­istries. Dozens of polit­i­cal par­ties and con­sulates, World­bank, apec, UN sec­tions, trade groups, Tibet and Fulan Dafa asso­ci­a­tions and… Russ­ian phish­ing mafia who pull data every­where. We’re drown­ing. We don’t even know a tenth of what we have or who it belongs to. We stopped stor­ing it at 1Tb.”

http://cryptome.org/wikileaks/wikileaks-leak.htm

3. As dis­cussed in FTR #724, Wik­iLeaks has been col­lect­ing funds (in part) through the Wau Hol­land Foun­da­tion in Berlin. (The foun­da­tion has indi­cat­ed that the group’s fundrais­ing is fair­ly mysterious–they have claimed to be rais­ing mon­ey for the defense of Bradley Man­ning (the appar­ent source of the “Col­lat­er­al Mur­der” doc­u­ments). Yet it appears that they haven’t allo­cat­ed any funds for that pur­pose.

One of the things that is note­wor­thy about the Wau Hol­land Foun­da­tion is the orga­ni­za­tion’s appar­ent links to the Ger­man intel­li­gence service–the BND. Cen­tral to under­stand­ing this pro­gram is the con­cept of what–for lack of a bet­ter term– could be called “Turned Hack­er Syn­drome.”

Fre­quent­ly, hack­ers who have been “tak­en down” are “turned”–they are put to work for the very gov­ern­ments against whose laws they have trans­gressed. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the CCC may have been “turned” is one to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered.

Before Wik­iLeaks became asso­ci­at­ed with CCC, mem­bers of that group hacked into sen­si­tive NATO and U.S. data­bas­es on behalf of the KGB, which reward­ed their charges with drugs and mon­ey. Fol­low­ing that hack, one CCC lumi­nary was found hanged (an alleged sui­cide, his feet were still on the ground) and anoth­er was burned to death after hav­ing been doused with an gaso­line. Wau Hol­land him­self died of a stroke at the age of 49.

. . . Twen­ty years lat­er, the CCC now has to con­tin­ue with­out its hon­orary pres­i­dent Wau Hol­land, also known as Her­wart Hol­land-Moritz. Hol­land suf­fered a stroke in late May and fell into a coma; he died Sun­day morn­ing, age 49. . . . Hol­land taught his fel­low CCCers to nev­er hack for prof­it, to always
be open about what they were up to, and to fight for an open
infor­ma­tion soci­ety. He was deeply embar­rassed when some CCCers sold
their dis­cov­er­ies from with­in the U.S. mil­i­tary com­put­er net­work to
the KGB. This inci­dent and the sub­se­quent dis­cus­sions in the club
brought the next gen­er­a­tion to the CCCs helm.

While the new lead­er­ship has a less strict moral­is­tic, more post­mod­ern
sense of hack­ing, it remains true to the CCCs polit­i­cal objec­tives.
Hol­land became the clubs hon­orary pres­i­dent. Under his stew­ard­ship,
the CCC gained con­sid­er­able sta­tus in Ger­man pol­i­tics, with its
speak­ers invit­ed by the par­lia­ment, tele­coms firms, banks and even the
secret ser­vice . . .

http://lists.jammed.com/ISN/2001/07/0082.html

4. Assange him­self may be some­thing of a “turned hack­er.” Is he con­nect­ed to Aus­tralian intel­li­gence, as he claims? Is an ele­ment of that con­nec­tion the wrist slap he received for his crim­i­nal hack­ing in Aus­tralia?

. . . Pro­gram­ming quick­ly became hack­ing once Assange got an Inter­net con­nec­tion, and soon he was access­ing gov­ern­ment net­works and bank main­frames. He was arrest­ed in 1991 and charged with more than 30 crim­i­nal counts relat­ed to his hack­ing. Fac­ing as many as 10 years in prison, Assange struck a plea deal.

Dur­ing sen­tenc­ing, the judge ruled that Assange only had to pay a fine. Assange’s hacks were not mali­cious; they were the harm­less result of “inquis­i­tive intel­li­gence,” said the judge. . . .

“Julian Assange: The Hack­er Who Cre­at­ed Wik­iLeaks” by Scott Bland; The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor; 7/26/2010.

5. Assange has claimed he was warned by “Aus­tralian intel­li­gence” that the “Pen­ta­gon” would try to dis­cred­it him.

A top Swedish pros­e­cu­tor said on Wednes­day she was reopen­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into rape alle­ga­tions against Julian Assange, the founder of whistle­blow­ing web­site Wik­iLeaks.

…Assange has denied the charges, which a low­er offi­cial had with­drawn two weeks ago, and said he has been warned by Aus­tralian intel­li­gence that he could face a cam­paign to dis­cred­it him after leak­ing the doc­u­ments. . . . [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

“Swe­den Reopens Wik­iLeaks Founder Rape Inves­ti­ga­tion” by Simon John­son and Patrick Lan­nin [Reuters]; msnbc.com; 9/1/2010.

6. Recall that in FTR #724, we exam­ined Assange’s rela­tion­ship with “The Fam­i­ly,” which has appar­ent con­nec­tions to Aus­tralian intel­li­gence. (Well-con­nect­ed beyond any­thing one could sup­pose from “coin­ci­dence” in the civil­ian sec­tor, the cult cared for Lord Casey, the Aus­tralian gov­ern­men­tal min­is­ter in charge of over­see­ing the Aus­tralian intel­li­gence ser­vice.) Although Assange dis­miss­es his rela­tion­ship to the group as hav­ing spent years flee­ing with his moth­er from the group’s attempts at seiz­ing his half-broth­er, this “flight” entailed his moth­er repeat­ed­ly seek­ing refuge in the same places and telling friends what she was doing and where she was doing it.

Was this “flight” actu­al­ly part of the cre­ation of a “legend”–a plau­si­bly deni­able cov­er for intel­li­gence work? It should be not­ed that the group repeat­ed­ly caught up with Assange and his moth­er. Was Assange tip­ping them off? Was this part of the cov­er all along? Might this have been intend­ed to explain any future, poten­tial­ly trou­ble­some eye­wit­ness accounts of con­tact between the group, Assange and his moth­er?

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that this sto­ry involves the cre­ation of a “leg­end” is not one to be too read­i­ly cast aside.

Assange’s strange white/platinum/blonde hair is a sub­ject of inter­est. Char­ac­ter­is­tic of chil­dren raised in the Anne Hamil­ton-Byrne cult, the ori­gins of that odd coif are explained by his moth­er as stem­ming from yet anoth­er child cus­tody case. Sup­pos­ed­ly, his hair turned white because of the trau­ma of repeat­ed court appear­ances in con­nec­tion with attempts at gain­ing cus­tody of his daugh­ter. Is this part of the cre­ation of a leg­end, as well. It appears that Assange dies his hair–as illus­trat­ed above and at right.

. . . In 1999, after near­ly three dozen legal hear­ings and appeals, Assange worked out a cus­tody agree­ment with his wife. Claire told me, “We had expe­ri­enced very high lev­els of adren­a­line, and I think that after it all fin­ished I end­ed up with P.T.S.D. It was like com­ing back from a war. You just can’t inter­act with nor­mal peo­ple to the same degree, and I am sure that Jules has some P.T.S.D. that is untreat­ed.” Not long after the court cas­es, she said, Assange’s hair, which had been dark brown, became drained of all col­or. . .

“No Secrets” by Jeff Khatch­a­touri­an; The New York­er; 6/7/2010.

7. Inter­est­ing­ly, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly, it was while “on the run” from the Hamil­ton-Byrne cult that Assange began his hack­ing career. It should be not­ed that his hacks involved tar­gets that would cer­tain­ly have placed him on the radar screen of West­ern intel­li­gence! Again, was the wrist-slap he received symp­to­matic of “Turned Hack­er Syn­drome”?

. . . While on the run, Claire rent­ed a house across the street from an elec­tron­ics shop. Assange would go there to write pro­grams on a Com­modore 64, until Claire bought it for him, mov­ing to a cheap­er place to raise the mon­ey. He was soon able to crack into well-known pro­grams, where he found hid­den mes­sages left by their cre­ators. . . .

. . . He joined with two hack­ers to form a group that became known as the Inter­na­tion­al Sub­ver­sives, and they broke into com­put­er sys­tems in Europe and North Amer­i­ca, includ­ing net­works belong­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense and to the Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. . . .

Idem.

8. The con­clu­sion of the pro­gram high­lights the group’s cur­rent place of operations–Sweden–and the cir­cum­stances under which they arrived in that nation.

Wik­iLeaks has been tout­ing Swe­den as a safe base of operations–for those who would work with them. Wik­iLeaks co-founder and crit­ic John Young says that Wik­iLeaks’ assur­ances of secu­ri­ty are illu­so­ry.

BBC: What do you think about Wik­ileaks being based in a coun­try which will pro­tect it from take­down.

Cryp­tome: There is no place where a take­down can­not occur. The dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem for com­mu­ni­ca­tion can always be blocked and servers con­fis­cat­ed. Only mul­ti­ple, grow­ing and chang­ing pub­lic out­lets for pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion can offer a chance of avoid­ing shut­down, demo­niza­tion, cor­rup­tion through finance and bribery and orches­trat­ed dis­trust. . . .

“BBC Inter­views Cryp­tome”; cryptome.org; 1/14/2010.

9a. Anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing detail con­cern­ing the tan­gled web that is Wik­iLeaks con­cerns the PRQ serv­er, based in Swe­den. In addi­tion to host­ing Wik­iLeaks, it is the base for Pirate Bay, a con­trol­ling inter­est in which is owned by Carl Lund­strom, a promi­nent Swedish Nazi and financier of that coun­try’s fas­cist polit­i­cal par­ties (includ­ing the Swe­den Democ­rats, who enjoyed con­sid­er­able suc­cess in the recent Swedish elec­tions.) It is unclear if this would give Swedish Nazi ele­ments access to infor­ma­tion from doc­u­ments accessed by Wik­iLeaks, but that seems a rea­son­able pos­si­bil­i­ty. [Knowl­edge­able con­tacts in the Sil­i­con Val­ley have told me that that would have been the case.]

Note that Lund­strom sold his fam­i­ly busi­ness to the San­doz com­pa­ny. Part of the old I.G. Far­ben com­plex, it is the firm that devel­oped LSD and, accord­ing to Sarah Moore, pro­vid­ed it gratis to the Hamil­ton-Byrne cult. Note that the ele­ments of the old I.G. Far­ben firm have coa­lesced into an essen­tial ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, the eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of the Under­ground Reich.

A Swedish Inter­net com­pa­ny linked to file-shar­ing hub The Pirate Bay says it’s help­ing online whis­tle-blow­er Wik­iLeaks release clas­si­fied doc­u­ments from servers locat­ed in a Stock­holm sub­urb. Mikael Viborg, the own­er of the Web host­ing com­pa­ny PRQ, on Fri­day showed The Asso­ci­at­ed Press the site — the base­ment of a drab office build­ing — in Sol­na on the con­di­tion that the exact loca­tion was not revealed.

“This is the office. The serv­er room is fur­ther inside,” the 28-year-old Viborg said, with the door to the office cracked open. Desks with com­put­ers, doc­u­ments, and emp­ty pas­try box­es and soda cans could be seen inside before he closed the door.

Wik­iLeaks post­ed more than 76,900 clas­si­fied mil­i­tary and oth­er doc­u­ments, most­ly raw intel­li­gence reports from Afghanistan, on its web­site July 25. The White House angri­ly denounced the leaks, say­ing they put the lives of Afghan infor­mants and U.S. troops at risk.

The secre­tive web­site gives few details about its set­up, but says its “servers are dis­trib­uted over mul­ti­ple inter­na­tion­al juris­dic­tions and do not keep logs. Hence these logs can­not be seized.” . . .

” Swedish Web Host­ing Firm Con­firms Wik­iLeaks Link” by Karl Rit­ter [AP]; msnbc.com; 8/6/2010.

9b. Ulti­mate­ly, Pirate Bay was sold to Swedish gam­ing firm GGF. (It ulti­mate­ly appears that the deal was­n’t con­sum­mat­ed due to the bank­rupt­cy of GGF. Pirate Bay, in turn, is con­trolled by an off­shore enti­ty called Reservel­la, reg­is­tered in the Sey­chelles.)

The ulti­mate motive for a fas­cist like Lund­strom to fund Pirate Bay is, obvi­ous­ly, a mat­ter of spec­u­la­tion. One pos­si­bil­i­ty to be con­sid­ered is the Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario, with the Under­ground Reich gain­ing con­trol of all world media. (This is dis­cussed at greater length in the long For The Record series about Ger­man Cor­po­rate Con­trol of U.S. media. Recall BMG’s alliance with Nap­ster in the ear­ly part of the decade. Might Lund­strom have been groom­ing Pirate Bay for cor­po­rate takeover by an Under­ground Reich enti­ty?)

The lucra­tive com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Nap­ster may well have been one of the inspi­ra­tions for GGF’s takeover of Pirate Bay.

Glob­al Gam­ing Fac­to­ry (GGF) has paid 60m kro­nor (£4.7m) to take over the site from its founders.

Once it has tak­en con­trol, GGF said it would start pay­ing copy­right fees for the movies, music and games linked to via the site. . . .

“Pirate Bay Site Sold to Game Firm”; BBC News; 6/30/2009.

9c. In that same con­text, it is worth not­ing that the qua­si-pop­ulist ide­o­log­i­cal rhetoric sur­round­ing Pirate Bay dove­tails nice­ly with the sort of “fas­cist pop­ulism” mar­ket­ed by the polit­i­cal par­ties financed by Lund­strom.

. . . The mon­ey man, Carl Lund­ström, on whose servers The Pirate Bay [and WikiLeaks–D.E.] was housed, is straight out of the crime nov­els of Stieg Lars­son. He inher­it­ed a for­tune built on crisp­bread, and has a long his­to­ry of involve­ment with extreme rightwing pol­i­tics. In the 1980s, he was a mem­ber of “Keep Swe­den Swedish”, an anti-immi­grant fringe group; he has finan­cial­ly backed the Swe­den Democ­rats, a would-be pop­ulist and anti-immi­grant par­ty; and only this month the man­ag­ing direc­tor of one of his com­pa­nies was charged with a rob­bery in a small west-coast town, part of a feud with­in a neo-Nazi group. Lund­ström told the Metro news­paper (http://bit.ly/metro) after he sacked the man that he had known he was a par­ty mem­ber, but not that he had gone to col­lect anoth­er mem­ber’s com­put­er with a sub­ma­chine gun.

Got­tfrid Svartholm Varg and Fred­erik Neij, the nerds who run The Pirate Bay itself, have also been accused by the pros­e­cu­tor of tax eva­sion, but deny that they were mak­ing any mon­ey from their busi­ness. Their atti­tude of sneer­ing enti­tle­ment towards the gov­ern­ment is all of a piece with their atti­tude towards the big con­tent com­pa­nies. . . .

. . . I know that a lit­tle bit of the rhetoric around The Pirate Bay sounds left­wing – the idea that it is wrong for “inter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal” to push Swe­den around – but that’s just pop­ulist, and could be found in the rhetoric of the kind of par­ties that Carl Lund­ström has sup­port­ed too.

The over­whelm­ing impres­sion is of a clash between two rightwing views, one that says it is all right to steal from the state, and one which says it is sin­ful to steal from cor­po­ra­tions. . . .

“The Pirate Bay tri­al Is the Col­li­sion of ‘Can I?’ and ‘Should I?’ Cul­tures” by Andrew Brown; The Guardian; 2/26/2009.

9d. Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the pur­chase of Pirate Bay by GGF took place the same week as the death of Michael Jack­son. In FTR #695, we exam­ined his untime­ly demise against the back­ground of Ber­tels­man­n’s re-entry into the music busi­ness and Michael Jack­son’s own­er­ship of the high­ly lucra­tive Bea­t­les cat­a­log. Might the two events have been linked–part of the Under­ground Reich’s bid to increase its pres­ence in the music busi­ness?

Just before GGF’s pur­chase of Pirate Bay, the stock increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly in price, caus­ing many to spec­u­late that insid­er trad­ing may have been involved.

There have been two big music-busi­ness news sto­ries in the past week. One has been – and still is – dom­i­nat­ing all media out­lets, and the oth­er pret­ty much snuck in under the radar.

The biggest sto­ry, of course, was the death of Michael Jack­son and the result­ing can­cel­la­tion of his 50 gigs at the O2. . .

. . . There are reports that sub­scribers are clos­ing their accounts, and GGF is fac­ing an insid­er-trad­ing inves­ti­ga­tion after its stock saw a huge upswing in trades on Mon­day – the day before the deal was announced. . . .

“Behind the Music: Pirate Bay’s Pur­chase Proves they’re not Altru­is­tic”; The Guardian; 7/03/2009.

9e. Lund­strom is alleged to have sug­gest­ed mov­ing Pirate Bay’s oper­a­tions to Argentina–certainly a hos­pitable place for a poten­tial Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work busi­ness enter­prise!

. . . . The paper also talks about knowl­edge on Lundstrom’s side about poten­tial legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Pros­e­cu­tors say Lud­strom per­son­al­ly sent an SMS to Fredrik Neij on May 31st of 2006 to warn him about the raids against The Bay and its own­ers. Lund­strom sup­pos­ed­ly also sug­gest­ed in an email to move The Pirate Bay’s oper­a­tions to Argenti­na. . . .

“Who Is the Fourth Man in the Pirate Bay Case?” by Janko Roettgers; Gigaom; 2/2/2008.

9f. The pre­cise cor­po­rate tit­u­lar par­ent of the old Pirate Bay remains some­what mys­te­ri­ous.

. . . . Maybe more wor­ry­ing; it’s still unclear who’s the own­ers of The Pirate Bay. There’s no com­pa­ny with the name The Pirate Bay reg­is­tered in Swe­den. Accord­ing to GGF’s legal advi­sor Per Eric Alvs­ing, The Pirate Bay is owned by a com­pa­ny in the Sey­chelles, called Reservel­la, Dagens Indus­tri writes. But he doesn’t know who’s the own­er of Reservel­la. . . .

“The Pirate Bay Sold to Swedish IT Com­pa­ny” by John Nylan­der; The Swedish Wire; 6/30/2009.

9g. Pirate Bay sug­ar dad­dy Lund­strom has dis­cussed his polit­i­cal sym­pa­thies. [The excerpt below is from Google trans­la­tions. The Swedish sen­tence is fol­lowed by the Eng­lish trans­la­tion.]

. . . Lund­ström har inte gjort någon hem­lighet av sina sym­pa­ti­er för främ­lings­fientli­ga grup­per, och för­ra året fanns hans namn med på kun­dreg­istret hos det nazis­tiska bok­för­laget Nordiska För­laget. Lund­strom has made no secret of his sym­pa­thy for the xeno­pho­bic groups, and last year was his name with the cus­tomer code of the Nazi pub­lish­ing house Nordic Pub­lish­ers.

– Jag stöder dem genom att köpa böck­er och musik. - I sup­port them by buy­ing books and music. Ni i media vill bara spri­da mis­sak­t­ning om oli­ka per­son­er. You in the media just want to spread con­tempt for dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Ni i media är fyll­da av hat till Pirate Bay, avs­lu­tar en myck­et upprörd Carl Lund­ström. You in the media is full of hatred to the Pirate Bay, fin­ish­ing a very upset Carl Lund­ström.

Nordiska För­laget säl­jer vit makt musik och böck­er som hyl­lar rasis­tiska våld­shan­dlin­gar. Nordic pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny sells white pow­er music and books that cel­e­brates the racist vio­lence. För­laget stöder nazis­ter­nas demon­stra­tion i Salem och bjöd in Ku Klux Klan ledaren till en före­drag­turné i Sverige. Pub­lish­er sup­ports the Nazi demon­stra­tion in Salem and invit­ed the Ku Klux Klan leader for a lec­ture tour in Swe­den. . . .

“The Goal: Take over all Pira­cy” by Peter Karls­son; realtid.se; 3/10/2006.

10. As dis­cussed in FTR #707, Swe­den hosts a vig­or­ous fas­cist com­mu­ni­ty, con­nect­ed to some of its wealth­i­est cit­i­zens, its intel­li­gence ser­vices and an inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal milieu involved with var­i­ous forms of crim­i­nal sex traf­fick­ing.

In remark­able fash­ion, the world of Wik­iLeaks inter­sects with the world por­trayed by the late Stieg Lars­son in his Mil­le­ni­um nov­els and the movies made from them (The Girl with the Dra­goon Tat­too, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hor­net’s Nest.) In the Lars­son novels/movies, we find the inter­twin­ing of the world of com­put­er hack­ers, Nazis (old and new), sex traf­fick­ing and crim­i­nal sex­u­al­i­ty. We find the same ele­ments in the Wik­iLeaks sto­ry.

Author Christo­pher Hitchens described the political/social envi­ron­ment por­trayed by Lars­son. Note that Lars­son was the focal point of death threats and plots by Swedish Nazis, and that some­one famil­iar with the Swedish polit­i­cal and legal scene said that every­thing Lars­son wrote about actu­al­ly hap­pened! Fur­ther­more, Lars­son died on the anniver­sary of Die Krys­tall­nacht (Novem­ber 9th), a very impor­tant date in the Nazi world view. His strate­gi­cal­ly timed heart attack should be pon­dered in light of the Swedish Nazi milieu’s links to that coun­try’s intel­li­gence ser­vices. Such ele­ments can sim­u­late an appar­ent heart attack very eas­i­ly.

. . . In the Lars­son uni­verse the nasty trolls and hulk­ing ogres are bent Swedish cap­i­tal­ists, cold-faced Baltic sex traf­fick­ers, blue-eyed Viking Aryan Nazis, and oth­er Nordic riffraff who might have had their rea­sons to whack him. . . His best excuse for his own pruri­ence is that these ser­ial killers and tor­ture fanciers are prac­tic­ing a form of cap­i­tal­ism and that their rack­et is pro­tected by a porno­graphic alliance with a form of Fas­cism, its low­er ranks made up of hideous bik­ers and meth run­ners. This is not just sex or crime—it’s pol­i­tics! . . .

And this is not the only murk that hangs around his death, at the age of 50, in 2004.

To be exact, Stieg Lars­son died on Novem­ber 9, 2004, which I can’t help notic­ing was the anniver­sary of Kristall­nacht. Is it plau­si­ble that Sweden’s most pub­lic anti-Nazi just chanced to expire from nat­ural caus­es on such a date? Larsson’s mag­a­zine, Expo, which has a fair­ly clear fic­tional cous­in­hood with “Mil­len­nium,” was an unceas­ing annoy­ance to the extreme right. He him­self was the pub­lic fig­ure most iden­ti­fied with the unmask­ing of white-suprema­cist and neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tions, many of them with a hard-earned rep­u­ta­tion for homi­ci­dal vio­lence. The Swedes are not the pacif­ic her­bi­vores that many peo­ple imag­ine: in the foot­notes to his sec­ond nov­el Lars­son reminds us that Prime Min­is­ter Olof Palme was gunned down in the street in 1986 and that the for­eign min­is­ter Anna Lindh was stabbed to death (in a Stock­holm depart­ment store) in 2003. The first crime is still unsolved, and the ver­dict in the sec­ond case has by no means sat­is­fied every­body.

A report in the main­stream news­pa­per Afton­bladet describes the find­ings of anoth­er anti-Nazi researcher, named Bosse Schön, who unrav­eled a plot to mur­der Stieg Lars­son that includ­ed a Swedish SS vet­eran. Anoth­er scheme mis­fired because on the night in ques­tion, 20 years ago, he saw skin­heads with bats wait­ing out­side his office and left by the rear exit. Web sites are devot­ed to fur­ther spec­u­la­tion: one blog is pre­oc­cu­pied with the the­ory that Prime Min­is­ter Palme’s uncaught assas­sin was behind the death of Lars­son too. Larsson’s name and oth­er details were found when the Swedish police searched the apart­ment of a Fas­cist arrest­ed for a polit­i­cal mur­der. Larsson’s address, tele­phone num­ber, and pho­to­graph, along with threats to peo­ple iden­ti­fied as “ene­mies of the white race,” were pub­lished in a neo-Nazi mag­a­zine: the author­i­ties took it seri­ously enough to pros­e­cute the edi­tor. . . .

Still, I have attend­ed demon­stra­tions by these Swedish right-wing thugs, and they are tru­ly fright­en­ing. I also know some­one with excel­lent con­tacts in the Swedish police and secu­rity world who assures me that every­thing described in the ‘Mil­len­nium’ nov­els actu­ally took place. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.] And, appar­ently, Lars­son planned to write as many as 10 in all. So you can see how peo­ple could think that he might not have died but been ‘stopped.’” . . .

“The Author Who Played with Fire” by Christo­pher Hitchens; Van­ity Fair; 12/2009.

11. In Swe­den, Assange his been charged with “molesta­tion,” a sex­u­al harass­ment offense.

A top Swedish pros­e­cu­tor
said on Wednes­day she was reopen­ing an
inves­ti­ga­tion into rape alle­ga­tions against
Julian Assange, the founder of whistle­blow­ing
web­site Wik­iLeaks.

Wik­iLeaks pub­lished more than 70,000 secret
mil­i­tary files on Afghanistan in July in what U.
S. offi­cials have called one of the biggest
secu­ri­ty breach­es in U.S. mil­i­tary his­to­ry.

Assange has denied the charges, which a
low­er offi­cial had with­drawn two weeks ago,
and said he has been warned by Aus­tralian

intel­li­gence that he could face a cam­paign to
dis­cred­it him after leak­ing the doc­u­ments.

Nei­ther Assange nor his lawyer could be
imme­di­ate­ly reached for com­ment.

Direc­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Mar­i­anne Ny
said she decid­ed to reopen the inves­ti­ga­tion
after fur­ther review of the case.

“There is rea­son to believe that a crime has
been com­mit­ted. Con­sid­er­ing infor­ma­tion
avail­able at present, my judg­ment is that the
clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the crime is rape,” Ny said in a
state­ment on the Pros­e­cu­tion Author­i­ty’s
web­site.

“More inves­ti­ga­tions are nec­es­sary before a
final deci­sion can be made,” she added. She

also said a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion into
charges of molesta­tion would be expand­ed to
sex­u­al coer­cion and sex­u­al molesta­tion.

“The case has a high pri­or­i­ty,” she told
Reuters. She declined to say whether Assange
had already been ques­tioned or give fur­ther
infor­ma­tion.

Alle­ga­tions of rape and molesta­tion were
brought against Assange, an Aus­tralian
cit­i­zen, two weeks ago.

The more seri­ous charge was dropped almost
imme­di­ate­ly, though pros­e­cu­tors con­tin­ued to
look into the molesta­tion charge. . . .

“Swe­den Reopens Wik­iLeaks Founder Rape Inves­ti­ga­tion” by Simon John­son and Patrick Lan­nin [Reuters]; msnbc.com; 9/1/2010.

12. The PRQ serv­er (which serves Pirate Bay and Wik­iLeaks and is large­ly financed by Nazi lumi­nary Carl Lund­strom) also serves a site that caters to pedophiles, who use it to “groom” poten­tial part­ners.

One ques­tion that sug­gests itself con­cerns the sex­u­al abuse to which chil­dren of “The Fam­i­ly” were sub­ject­ed (see FTR #724.) Is there any rela­tion­ship between the sys­tem­at­ic sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren by the Hamil­ton-Byrne cult and the charges lev­eled against Assange? In turn, is there any link between those con­sid­er­a­tions and the Nazi-linked PRQ’s host­ing of both Wik­iLeaks and a pedophile site?

About the pedophile site:

Despite a new law designed to tack­le groom­ing of young peo­ple by sus­pect­ed pae­dophiles on inter­net web­sites, police are unable to act against those host­ing chat forums, con­tact sites and advice pages.

“The so-called groom­ing law which came into force last July for­bids sex­u­al­ly moti­vat­ed con­tact with chil­dren over the inter­net. But the adult has to take some sort of ini­tia­tive in that con­tact for it to be an offence — to arrange a date, buy a train tick­et or such like,” said Jonas Pers­son of the Swedish police to The Local on Fri­day.

In the six months after the law was adopt­ed the police received only 100 reports, despite the fact that more than half of Swedish girls aged 15 to17 claimed to have been sub­ject to groom­ing attempts by adults over the inter­net before reach­ing the age of 15, accord­ing to a Nation­al Coun­cil for Crime Pre­ven­tion (Brotts­före­byg­gan­derådet — Brå) report from 2007.

The law does not allow for the clo­sure of web­sites or the pros­e­cu­tion of those behind them. Jonas Pers­son explained why:

“I don’t think a tight­en­ing of the leg­is­la­tion is desir­able — it would come dan­ger­ous­ly close to encroach­ing on free­dom of expres­sion leg­is­la­tion,” he said.

Legal oblig­a­tions for those behind web­sites vis­it­ed by sus­pect­ed pae­dophiles and would-be “groomers” extend only to the removal of pic­tures and films which fea­ture minors, or the pub­li­ca­tion of per­son­al infor­ma­tion.

The Local has received infor­ma­tion that a man res­i­dent in Stock­holm is alleged to be behind a chat forum serv­ing as a con­tact point for pae­dophiles and host­ed by PRQ — a Swedish web-host­ing firm run by Pirate Bay co-founders Got­tfrid Svartholm Warg and Fredrik Neij, and also not­ed for host­ing the Wik­ileaks whis­tle-blow­er web­site. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

Anti-pae­dophil­ia activists claim to have made attempts to per­suade PRQ to close the man’s web­site but to no avail. . . .

“Police Pow­er­less to Close Pae­dophile Forums”; The Local [Swe­den]; 4/9/2010.

13a. Pirate Bay over­laps and is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a polit­i­cal party–The Pirate Par­ty–that has branch­es in Swe­den, Switzer­land and Ger­many, among oth­er coun­tries. The Swedish Pirate Par­ty is help­ing spon­sor Wik­iLeaks’ pres­ence in the coun­try, help­ing to pro­vide them with a for­mer under­ground nuclear shel­ter for an oper­at­ing base.

One of the world’s most con­tro­ver­sial web­sites now has one of the world’s coolest dat­a­cen­ters.
Andy Green­berg at Forbes has picked up on a Nor­we­gian report that Wik­ileaks‘ servers are now host­ed in Sweden’s Pio­nen dat­a­cen­tre, housed inside a Cold War-era under­ground nuclear bunker. 30 metres below Stock­holm, it report­ed­ly has a sin­gle entrance with half-metre thick met­al doors.

The move has been ini­ti­at­ed by the Swedish Pirate Par­ty, who began look­ing after Wik­ileaks’ host­ing this month. “We have long admired Wik­ileaks”, the Pirate Party’s Rick Falkvinge told Norway’s VG, claim­ing that as his par­ty is host­ing Wik­ileaks, an attack on Wik­ileaks is also regard­ed as an attack on a polit­i­cal par­ty. . . .

“Wik­ileaks Now Host­ed from an Under­ground Nuclear Bunker” by Mar­tin Bryant; thenextweb.com; 8/30/2010.

13b. After Wik­iLeaks was the focal point of DOS and hack­ing attacks in Novem­ber of 2010, the Swiss Pirate Par­ty under­took to access Wik­iLeaks’ mate­r­i­al.

. . . . On Fri­day, the Pirate Par­ty of Switzer­land — part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment fight­ing for the free shar­ing of online con­tent — said it owned the “wikileaks.ch” domain name and was hap­py to sup­port Wik­iLeaks.

“I don’t see an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a for­eign gov­ern­ment to reach into Switzer­land,” said Leenaars. “This is a very for­ward-look­ing move.” . . .

““Wik­iLeaks Diverts Traf­fic to Euro­pean Web­sites amid U.S. Fury” [Reuters]; Van­cou­ver Sun; 12/3/2010.

13c. A start-up owned by a co-founder of the Swedish Pirate Bay (a con­trol­ling inter­est in which is owned by Swedish fas­cist Carl Lund­strom) remains as a con­duit for dona­tions for Wik­iLeaks.

While major online financ­ing ser­vices such as Pay­Pal, Mas­ter­Card, and Visa have shut down their deal­ings with the embat­tled Wik­iLeaks, one micro­fi­nanc­ing start­up is still hang­ing on. Flat­tr, a micro­pay­ment start­up cre­at­ed by Peter Sunde, co-founder of the infa­mous Bit­Tor­rent shar­ing site The Pirate Bay, still accepts dona­tions on behalf of the doc­u­ment-leak­ing non-prof­it. . . .

. . . Sunde has been a pub­lic advo­cate for Assange and Wik­iLeaks. He has also pro­posed a peer-to-peer DNS sys­tem that would pre­vent domain name reg­is­tra­tions from being revoked, as was done with the WikiLeaks.org domain. . . .

“Wik­iLeaks Still Fund­ed by Pirate Bay Founder’s Start­up” by Ken­neth Musante; Web News­er; 12/9/2010.

13d. Fol­low­ing a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions’ refusal to con­tin­ue accept­ing mon­ey for Wik­iLeaks, mem­bers of Anony­mous, allied with Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty, launched “Oper­a­tion Pay­back,” attack­ing numer­ous web­sites.

The hack­er friend­ly web­site 4chan has begun to orga­nize its mem­bers, known col­lec­tive­ly as Anony­mous, in an effort to pre­vent “the oppres­sive future which looms ahead.” The “Oper­a­tion Avenge Assange” will con­sist of a series of Inter­net attacks that have begun with Pay­Pal.

Julian Assange is a man who has made ene­mies. The edi­tor-in-chief and cre­ator of Wik­iLeaks is fight­ing bat­tles on all fronts: legal­ly, finan­cial­ly, per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and even now sits in a jail cell in Eng­land fol­low­ing his arrest ear­li­er today, after Swe­den issued an arrest war­rant stem­ming from four charges of sex­u­al offences, includ­ing one of rape. But Assange is not with­out his allies, either. One of the more poten­tial­ly pow­er­ful groups to throw in its sup­port is the web­site 4chan, and its some of its mem­bers that are col­lec­tive­ly known as Anony­mous. The group that is either famous or infa­mous depend­ing on your point of view, have begun a new cam­paign to sup­port Wik­iLeaks and its cre­ator that they are call­ing “Oper­a­tion Avenge Assange”.

Oper­a­tion Avenge Assange is a sys­tem­at­ic attack that will tar­get groups that Anony­mous has deemed to have essen­tial­ly treat­ed Assange unfair­ly. The first tar­get on the list is Pay­Pal, which reports that cyber attacks have already begun. . . .

“4chan-based Group ‘Anony­mous’ Tar­gets Pay­Pal to Sup­port Wik­iLeaks” by Ryan Flem­ing; Dig­i­tal Trends; 12/7/2010.

14. Whether coin­ci­dence or not, the Ger­man Pirate Par­ty’s lone mem­ber of par­lia­ment resigned fol­low­ing charges that he pos­sessed child pornog­ra­phy!

For­mer par­lia­men­tar­i­an Jörg Tauss, the most promi­nent mem­ber of the Ger­man Pirate Par­ty, has resigned from the par­ty fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion for pos­sess­ing child pornog­ra­phy last week.

Two days after the Karl­sruhe dis­trict court hand­ed the 56-year-old a 15-month sus­pend­ed sen­tence, Tauss said on Sun­day that he would leave the par­ty to avoid dam­ag­ing its rep­u­ta­tion, say­ing his pres­ence would be “coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.”

“We must be able to dis­cuss our issues at our infor­ma­tion stands and should not allow our­selves to be crip­pled by the ‘Tauss debate.’ For this rea­son I declare my exit from the par­ty,” the politi­cian said Sun­day on his blog, insist­ing he would still sup­port the par­ty. . . .

“Tauss Leaves Pirate Par­ty after Child Pornog­ra­phy Con­vic­tion”; The Local [Ger­many]; 5/31/2010.

15. Although Wik­iLeaks has gar­nered pub­lic­i­ty for its osten­si­ble anti­war leaks, “pro­gres­sives” have quick­ly for­got­ten that the group leaked the doc­u­ments which proved to be the foun­da­tion of an attempt to dis­cred­it the notion of glob­al warm­ing.

. . . Though Assange’s most recent, well-known projects have had an anti­war bent – the recent Afghan war leaks, the infa­mous “col­lat­er­al mur­der” video of a US heli­copter crew gun­ning down a group that includ­ed two Reuters jour­nal­ists in Iraq – his site does not appear to have an obvi­ous ide­ol­o­gy beyond expos­ing secrets.

In oth­er projects, Assange pub­lished a trove of text mes­sages sent in the US on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, and e‑mails from the Uni­ver­si­ty of East Anglia’s Cli­mate Research Unit, which led many to believe that sci­en­tists were sup­press­ing anti-glob­al warm­ing research and results. . . .

“Julian Assange: the Hack­er Who Cre­at­ed WikiLeaks“by Scott Bland; Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor; 7/26/2010.

16. Recent­ly deceased, Nobel-Prize win­ning cli­ma­tol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Stephen Schnei­der of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty was receiv­ing death threats from Neo-Nazis. These are the same kind of ele­ments that were threat­en­ing the life of the late Stieg Lars­son before he, too, died of an appar­ent heart attack.

Admin­is­ter­ing drugs which can pro­duce a fatal heart attack is a capa­bil­i­ty pos­sessed by most mod­ern intel­li­gence ser­vices. The Swedish neo-Nazi milieu main­tains close con­nec­tions with the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice.

Were both men mur­dered? Might some of the Nazi/intelligence/industrialist links have man­i­fest­ed them­selves in both instances?

Stephen H. Schnei­der, a Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gist on the van­guard of cli­mate-change research for four decades, who argued elo­quent­ly on human cul­pa­bil­i­ty in glob­al warm­ing and will­ing­ly threw him­self into the polit­i­cal fray to explain and defend the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, has died. He was 65. . . .Schnei­der had a heart attack Mon­day while fly­ing to Lon­don from a sci­ence meet­ing in Stock­holm, accord­ing to Stan­ford spokesman Dan Sto­ber. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.] . . .

. . . . San­ter and Schnei­der were among the sci­en­tists who served on the inter­na­tion­al pan­el that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore, who in a state­ment Mon­day called Schnei­der a “pro­lif­ic researcher and author … and a won­der­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tor” whose con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment of cli­mate sci­ence will be “sore­ly missed.” . . .

. . . He [Schnei­der] said he had received hun­dreds of abu­sive e‑mails from crit­ics, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the Copen­hagen cli­mate change sum­mit in Decem­ber. A few weeks ago he told the Lon­don Guardian news­pa­per that his name was among those of sev­er­al cli­ma­tol­o­gists that appeared ear­li­er this year on a death list on a neo-Nazi web­site [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]. . .

“Stephen H. Schnei­der Dies at 65; Stan­ford Expert on Cli­mate Change” by Elaine Woo; Los Ange­les Times; 7/20/2010.

17. Wik­iLeaks’ has been col­lect­ing mon­ey through a sub­sidiary of Invest­corp, con­trolled by the Gulf elite, includ­ing ele­ments tied to the Sau­di elite, Al Qae­da and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

The whistle­blow­ing group Wik­iLeaks claims that it has had its fund­ing blocked and that it is the vic­tim of finan­cial war­fare by the US gov­ern­ment.

Mon­ey­book­ers, a British-reg­is­tered inter­net pay­ment com­pa­ny that col­lects Wik­iLeaks dona­tions, emailed the organ­i­sa­tion to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an offi­cial US watch­list and on an Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment black­list. . . .

. . . . Mon­ey­book­ers, which is reg­is­tered in the UK but con­trolled by the Bahrain-based group Invest­corp, would not make any­one avail­able to explain the deci­sion. Its pub­lic rela­tions firm, 77PR, said: “We have nev­er had any request, inquiry or cor­re­spon­dence from any author­i­ty regard­ing this for­mer cus­tomer.” Asked how this could be rec­on­ciled with the ref­er­ences in the cor­re­spon­dence to a black­list, it said: “We stick with our orig­i­nal state­ment.” . . .

“Wik­iLeaks Says Fund­ing Has Been Blocked after Gov­ern­ment Black­list­ing” by David Leigh and Rob Evans; guardian.co.uk; 10/14/2010.

18. Invest­corp fea­tures par­tic­i­pa­tion by numer­ous Gulf lumi­nar­ies, includ­ing Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh and Khalid bin Mah­fouz. The entire milieu is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the BCCI. (Baksh was involved with Harken Ener­gy, George W. Bush’s failed ener­gy com­pa­nies.)

Invest­corp isn’t your every­day invest­ment com­pa­ny. It mere­ly works with the very rich, prefer­ably from the mid­dle-east. In 2005 its port­fo­lio is val­ued at 8.6 bil­lion dol­lars.

If we would be real­ly accu­rate we would call Invest­corp a lever­aged buy-out com­pa­ny. It’s WALLSTREET all over. Invest­corp holds dif­fer­ent funds to which you — not you, but they, the very rich — can sub­scribe. Invest­corp then puts the com­pa­nies it acquires into these funds and imme­di­ate­ly has its mon­ey back (with a prof­it for the real share­hold­ers of Invest­corp).

Accord­ing to Time Mag­a­zine, Invest­corp is known to have worked the books in the nine­tees, mak­ing a los­ing com­pa­ny look like a prof­it­mak­er.

Nemir Kir­dar is pres­i­dent and CEO. Forbes puts him at num­ber 206 on the Rich List. His excel­len­cy Abdul-Rah­man Al-Atee­qu, ex-min­is­ter of oil and finance of Kuwait, advi­sor to the emir of Bahrain and the first ambas­sador of Kuwait to the U.S.A. has been Chair­man since the start of the invest­ment com­pa­ny. Vice-pres­i­dent is, Ahmed Ali Kanoo, who man­ages about 1.5 bil­lion dol­lars of the fam­i­ly for­tune. Among the share­hold­ers we find Sheik Ahmed Zki Yamani, ex min­is­ter of oil of Sau­di-Ara­bia and sev­en mem­bers of the House of Saud.

Also present in this group is Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, con­nect­ed to dif­fer­ent bank frauds. Until Sep­tem­ber 11th 2001 he was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sau­di Bin Laden group in the U.S. Accord­ing to the prospec­tus of Invest­corp from 1992 the Min­is­ter of Finance of Bahrain is indi­rect­ly one of the major share­hold­ers through a shell-com­pa­ny.

This is where it gets real­ly inter­est­ing. Abdul­lah Taha Bak­shs, Abdul Rah­man Al-Atee­qi were both impor­tant share­hold­ers in the Bank of Cred­it and Com­merce Inter­na­tion­al. The BCCI went down in a sea of scan­dals in the ear­ly 90’s. 23 bil­lion dol­lars dis­ap­peared in the hole in 73 coun­tries and still is miss­ing. The Amer­i­can Jus­tice Depart­ment calls BCCI a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion under cov­er of a bank.

The C.I.A. slushed funds through BCCI to the Muja­hedin. This went quite easy because Osama Bin Laden had a few accounts at the BCCI. Ille­gal finance for arms deals with Iraq and Iran were being done at BCCI. Mon­ey laun­der­ing for the Esco­bar and Med­delin-car­tel all went through BCCI. When the cur­tain fell 1 bil­lion dol­lars worth of loans was booked to a ran­dom col­lec­tion of Kuwaiti from the yel­low pages.

Khalid bin­Mafhouz holds the num­ber 2 slot at Invest­corp with 25% of the shares. He cur­rent­ly is num­ber 210 on the Times rich List. He was mem­ber of the board of BCCI and made a deal with the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment. He paid 225 mil­lion dol­lars for claims, 37 mil­lion dol­lars in lieu of fines and 253 mil­lion dol­lars for claims.

In 2003 it tran­spired that the Bank of Eng­land nev­er stopped the British seat of BCCI though it knew the bank laun­dered mon­ey from drugs trade.

For­mer pres­i­dent Manuel Nor­ie­ga, for­mer Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, and Sad­dam Hus­sein were among the clien­tele. From com­plaints in South-Korea it is clear that about 120 mem­bers of staff from 33 embassies had put mon­ey at the BCCI.

Khalid bin Mafhouz, explains he has finan­cial­ly backed the Muja­hedin in Afghanistan. But then, so did the U.S. It may be use­ful to remind the read­er that Osama Bin­laden was one of the lead­ers of the Muja­hedin. Bakr Mohammed bin Laden, Osama’s broth­er, has a seat on the exec­u­tive board. . . .

“Inves­ti­gat­ing Invest­corp”; kycbs.net; 9/2/2005.