Latest news with #Wikileaks
India Gazette
08-07-2025
- Politics
- India Gazette
"Hooliganism his only purpose": BJP MP Nishikant Dubey slams Raj Thackeray amid Hindi-Marathi row
New Delhi [India], July 8 (ANI): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey on Tuesday lashed out at Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray after incidents of violence and vandalism by MNS workers were reported in the state amid Hindi-Marathi language row. Sharing a 2207 incident of violence by MNS workers on a student from Bihar mentioned in Wikileaks, Nishikant Dubey stated that 'hooliganism' is Raj Thackeray's sole purpose, which the MNS chief does 'out of fear' of losing Municipal Corporation elections. In a post on X, Nishikant Dubey said, 'When Raj Thackeray does not get public support, he puts goons forward, meaning hooliganism is his sole purpose, which he does just before the Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections out of fear of losing.' 'My opposition is to Thackeray's hooliganism, and the limits of tolerance have been exhausted,' he added. Nishikant Dubey, who earlier triggered a row over his comments, expressed his respect to the Maratha community. 'The Maratha community is always respectable, and the country belongs to all of us. Where I am an MP, Maratha Madhulimaye ji has been an MP three times in a row. We made a Maratha win the Lok Sabha against Indira Gandhi. Thackeray, come to your senses, don't make your fight about the Maratha community, we have contributed to Mumbai's development and will continue to do so,' Dubey said. Five workers of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have been arrested in connection with the vandalism at entrepreneur Sushil Kedia's office in Worli, police said on Saturday. A case has been registered against them under Sections 223, 189(2), 189(3), 190, 191(2), 191(3), and 125 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023. Meanwhile, Dubey sparked a political row with his sharp response to Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray's statement. Addressing Raj Thackeray's controversial instruction to his party workers, 'beat but don't make a video,' Dubey lashed out, saying, 'If you dare to beat Hindi speakers, then beat those who speak Urdu, Tamil, and Telugu too. If you're such a 'boss', come out of Maharashtra--come to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu. 'Tumko patak patak ke maarenge'...' Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Aaditya Thackeray alleged that Dubey held a visible hatred for Marathi identity. 'Nishikant Dubey is not a Hindi-speaking spokesperson. The hatred for Marathi is visible in his mind. He has the responsibility of Bihar. Break and win the election; this is the usual thing,' he further said. (ANI)
Time of India
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Marathi-Hindi row: Nishikant Dubey doubles down; cites 2007 'Wikileaks document' to target Raj Thackeray
Nishikant Dubey; Raj Thackeray NEW DELHI: A day after his "marenge" threat , BJP MP Nishikant Dubey on Tuesday refused to back down despite criticism, and again targeted Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray . Also Read | 'Not for common Marathis, but still inappropriate': Devendra Fadnavis on Nishikant Dubey's 'marenge' threat Dubey shared a "Wikileaks" document to allege that Thackeray is stoking the Marathi-Hindi row for political mileage ahead of the high-stakes municipal corporation polls in Mumbai. "This Wikileaks is from 2007. When Raj Thackeray gets no public support, he sends his goons. His sole purpose his thuggery, and he is doing this out of fear of losing the Mumbai municipal corporation election," he wrote on X. The Wikileaks document cited by the BJP MP from Godda in Jharkhand - a Hind-speaking state - mentions attacks on north Indian students by MNS workers (the specific violent incident happened in 2008). Nishikant Dubey X post Meanwhile, Dubey further asserted that he is only objecting to Thackeray's "hooliganism." "All limits of tolerance have been exhausted. We respect the Maratha community... (but) the country belongs to all of us. My region gave Madhu Limaye ji, a Maratha, three successive terms in the Lok Sabha. Come to your senses, don't make your fight about the Maratha community, we have contributed to Mumbai's development and will continue to do so," he added. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is the richest civic body in India and is widely considered the richest civic body of Asia too.
ABC News
24-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Backstory to Assange's secret deal for freedom
A year ago this week Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was released from prison after a 14-year fight for freedom. Assange accepted a guilty plea of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. documents in exchange for being returned home to Australia. But how did this deal come about and what happened in the lead-up to his return home? Journalist Andrew Fowler shares the inner-dealings and joins the dots on the backstory of the negotiations to release Assange. Guest: Andrew Fowler - journalist and author of The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and his secret White House deal for freedom Producer: Sarah Allely
Russia Today
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Russia Today
Hollywood seeded Iran war narrative for years
Screenwriters in Hollywood who 'say they are Jewish' have been planting pro-war narratives about Iran in mainstream entertainment for more than a decade, Wikileaks has claimed. Israel launched airstrikes on Iran earlier this month, claiming Tehran was close to creating a nuclear weapon. Over the weekend, the US also directly joined the conflict by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. In a post on X on Sunday, Wikileaks stated that Hollywood writers 'who say they are Jewish' have been 'planting the mental seeds for war with Iran for years,' citing productions such as Top Gun: Maverick, Homeland, 24, and The Fifth Estate. The group shared a clip of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's speech at Oxford Union from 2013. In the video, he discussed The Fifth Estate – a biographical drama about Wikileaks – which opens with a side plot about a fictional Iranian nuclear bomb project. Assange recalled that the opening scene depicts Iranian scientists in Tehran assembling a bomb, with one character stating that the device could be operational within six months. 'How is it that such a lie got into a script about Wikileaks?' Assange asked, noting that at the time, 16 US intelligence agencies had already found that Tehran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Hollywood script writers who say they are 'Jewish' have been planting the mental seeds for war with Iran for years, including in Top Gun Maverick, Homeland, 24, and in the DreamWorks film on Julian Assange 'The Fifth Estate'. Excerpt from Oxford Union speech, 30 January 2013.… 'It is an attack against Iran,' Assange said, claiming that the scene 'fans the flames to start a war with Iran' and served the interests of the 'people in the system that want the war.' Prior to Israel's latest strikes, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and US intelligence agencies stated there was no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Nevertheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to insist that Tehran was on the brink of creating a bomb – a claim he has repeated for decades. At the UN General Assembly in 2012, he infamously used a cartoon bomb illustration to warn that Iran was 'months away' from a nuclear weapon, and made comparable statements throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Israel's attack has drawn international condemnation, including from Russia, which has said the strikes were illegal. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the operation 'an unprovoked aggression.' US involvement in Israel's campaign has also drawn criticism, with Moscow comparing it to the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, which was started over false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. US President Donald Trump's decision to strike Iran has also met pushback from inside the White House. According to Reuters, Vice President J.D. Vance – an Iraq War veteran – opposed joining the Israeli offensive and warned during internal discussions that Israel was dragging the US into another war.
Forbes
23-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Web3 Promised Freedom—So Why Are We Still Trapped?
Swarm Foundation President and architect of Ethereum Swarm, a decentralized storage infrastructure for a self-sovereign digital society. One morning in 2010, the future arrived not with a bang but a freeze. Wikileaks, the whistleblowing platform that, depending on whom you asked, either exposed war crimes or endangered national security, found itself financially paralyzed. No court order, no charges, not even a press release. Just a quiet blockade, as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal severed access to its donations. Without legal recourse, Wikileaks was silenced by infrastructure. In the aftermath, something else stirred. Bitcoin, then a fringe idea, offered a glimpse of resistance: a currency that didn't need permission, couldn't be blocked and ran beyond the reach of gatekeepers. What began as an experiment soon evolved into a broader vision—an internet without chokepoints, where value and information could flow freely. Over the next decade, a decentralized movement took shape, from blockchains and smart contracts to NFTs, DAOs and decentralized finance protocols. These weren't just new tools; they were a rejection of the surveillance capitalism that had come to define Web2. As explored in earlier installments of this series, the internet's shift from open protocols to closed platforms eroded user autonomy and transformed individuals from creators into commodities, their data endlessly extracted, analyzed and monetized. Web3 promised to reverse that trajectory. But as decentralization gains momentum, a quieter question emerges: What if we've rebuilt the old architecture with the same dependencies? For all its boldness, the Web3 stack still leans on the bones of its predecessor. Applications run on centralized APIs, wallets rely on cloud infrastructure, and network attacks can still compromise access to unstoppable applications. This piece further explores the unfinished business of decentralization—not just as a technical challenge but as a deeper reckoning with the foundations we've inherited and the future we hope to build. The Unravelling Of A Privacy Utopia On a rainy August morning in Amsterdam, a 29-year-old developer was led away in handcuffs. His alleged crime? Writing code. Not malware, just a tool called Tornado Cash, one of Ethereum's most used privacy protocols. Tornado allowed users to deposit crypto into a shared pool, and when they withdrew, the link between sender and recipient was cryptographically obscured. A freelancer could keep earnings private. A whistleblower might shield a donation. Even Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, used it to donate to Ukraine, protecting recipients from retaliation. But on August 8, 2022, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned the protocol, alleging it laundered billions in stolen funds, including crypto tied to North Korea. Just like that, the walls closed in. Within hours, the infrastructure buckled. Infura and Alchemy blocked access. Circle froze $75,000 in USDC. GitHub erased the code. MetaMask, which relies on Infura, returned errors to anyone trying to use Tornado. What had been built as unstoppable was suddenly inaccessible—not from a hack but from legal pressure. The Infrastructure We Forgot To Decentralize But Tornado wasn't a one-off—it revealed a deeper fragility. Web3 blockchains may be decentralized, but the systems around them often aren't. Access still depends on centralized internet protocols. DNS, which maps domains to servers, is controlled by central authorities. BGP, which routes data between providers, can be hijacked. In July 2022, users of dApps on Polygon and Fantom were served phishing prompts via a DNS attack. The chain was untouched, but the interface was swapped. Weeks later, a BGP hijack hit Celer Bridge, rerouting users to a fake front end. Instantly, $235,000 vanished—not from smart contract flaws but from internet-level exploits. The chain didn't lie, but it couldn't protect what wasn't on-chain. Applications face the same risks. Most users rely on wallets and dApps powered by cloud services like Infura, the default backend for MetaMask. In 2020, an Infura outage disrupted Ethereum. In 2022, a sanctions filter misfire caused MetaMask to block access in Venezuela. The decentralized stack failed at its centralized chokepoint. The NFT That Became A Poop Emoji Even NFTs, the poster child of digital permanence, are vulnerable to the same sleight of hand. When Moxie Marlinspike, cryptographer and creator of Signal, minted an NFT in 2022, it came with a twist. On the NFT marketplace OpenSea, it showed one image; on Rarible, another; and in his wallet, it became a poop emoji. The experiment exposed how NFT data storage isn't as decentralized as the philosophy suggests. Why? Most NFTs don't store content on-chain—they store pointers to the images as URLs. Web2 URLs resolve to a specific server, and since Moxie controlled the server, he could change the image at will. The punchline? When OpenSea delisted the NFT, it vanished from Moxie's wallet, too, because wallets like MetaMask pull data from OpenSea's API. If OpenSea didn't list it, it effectively didn't exist. As Moxie wrote: 'It doesn't functionally matter that my NFT is indelibly on the blockchain … the wallet is just using the OpenSea API.' Decentralized storage networks exist to mitigate this problem by spreading files across many nodes. But unless data is truly replicated widely, availability still hinges on just a few custodians. Ownership may be decentralized, but visibility depends on centralized infrastructure. Decentralizing The Full Stack Web3 still runs on rails it doesn't control. DNS is attackable. Front ends sit on cloud servers. Wallets rely on APIs. RPCs become chokepoints. And when governments or attackers apply pressure, they fold. To be fair, decentralization is hard. It's slow, expensive and still too technical. Many projects reach for shortcuts: a centralized server here, a hosted front end there. It works—until it doesn't. Yet there's momentum. Across the ecosystem, developers, researchers and communities are working to rebuild foundations: rethinking storage, improving infrastructure, exploring new privacy approaches and serving front ends in a way that they cannot be tampered with or blinked off with a DNS edit or routing attack. But we're not there yet. Web3 remains deeply entangled with Web2. Unless we peel it back layer by layer, from front end to routing to RPC, we're still building freedom on fragile ground. Decentralization isn't real until it touches every layer. For now, Web3 is a dream under construction in search of solid ground. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
