Today's WikiLeaks News

In today's episode of As WikiLeaks Turns we learn that WikiLeaks's main web site is back up less than 10 days after EveryDNS terminated the domain name over stability concerns. A 16-year-old Dutch boy suspected of being involved in the pro-WikiLeaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa has been arrested. But Dutch teenagers aren't the only Assange fans in the news. Many top journalists in Australia have sent a letter(PDF) to Prime Minister Julia Gillard today to express their support of WikiLeaks. The Sydney Police have written their own letter however to organizers of a pro-WikiLeaks rally saying that the police oppose a planned demonstration. Finally, special correspondent for The Times, Alexi Mostrous and freelance reporter Heather Brooke were given permission by the judge in the Julian Assange trial to post Twitter updates about the proceedings.

Comments

Bradley Manning

[gambino21]

Related to this, Bradley Manning has been in solitary confinement for 5 months. And there doesn't seem to be an end, or even a trial, in sight.

Re:Bradley Manning

[radtea]

And meanwhile, Roman Polanski is still free, and it took almost thirty years for the United States to get around to having an international warrant for his arrest issued despite his having actually admitted to sex crimes involving a thirteen year old girl. I guess that doesn't count very much compared to embarrassing powerful people.

And why exactly is Assange being harrassed for doing something that is far less serious than what this English woman has admitted doing in a major newspaper: having sex with men using condoms deliberately tampered with so she can get pregnant?

Is the government of England really concerned with the sexual integrity of Swedish womanhood? Or are they just using the legal system to harrass someone who has made them look like the bunch of wankers they are?

Re:Bradley Manning

[grcumb]

Guess he should have thought of that before committing a military crime while he was an active member of the military service. He is governed by a different set of laws that aren't nearly as nice as civilian laws.

Or at least, he might have thought of that BEFORE HE STARTED FUCKING BRAGGING ABOUT IT.

If he valued his own safety more than anything, perhaps he would have. But let's look at his motivation for leaking the materials:

To see why that's so, just recall some of what Manning purportedly said about why he chose to leak, at least as reflected in the edited chat logs published by Wired:

Lamo: what's your endgame plan, then?. . .

Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth regardless of who they are because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

if i knew then, what i knew now - kind of thing, or maybe im just young, naive, and stupid . . . im hoping for the former - it cant be the latter - because if it is were fucking screwed (as a society) - and i dont want to believe that were screwed.

Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S.Government: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing so-called "insurgent" literature which, when Manning had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than "a scholarly critique against PM Maliki":

i had an interpreter read it for me and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PMs cabinet i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on he didnt want to hear any of it he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees

i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth but that was a point where i was a *part* of something i was actively involved in something that i was completely against

And Manning explained why he never considered the thought of selling this classified information to a foreign nation for substantial profit or even just secretly transmitting it to foreign powers, as he easily could have done:

Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

Lamo: why didnt you?

Manning: because it's public data

Lamo: i mean, the cables

Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information try and get some edge - if its out in the open it should be a public good.

That's a whistleblower in the purest and most noble form: discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." Given how much Manning has been demonized -- at the same time that he's been rendered silent by the ban on his communication with an

How close are the US and Sweden?

[Somewhat Delirious]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8202745/WikiLeaks-Swedish-government-hid-anti-terror-operations-with-America-from-Parliament.html

I think this sheds some interesting light on the Assange case in Sweden and its political connotations...