More WikiLeaks Stuff (will be updated as needed)

UPDATED AND BUMPED:

December 7, 2010:

ASSange behind bars in London

"US Republican congressman Pete King, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has called for Assange to be extradited to the US to face court there, too.

"Sweden is obviously a democracy and they have the right to pursue whatever legal acts they have against Assange," he said.

"But ultimately, and really sooner rather than later, I think it's important that he be extradited from whatever country he's in to the United States because his conduct to me clearly violates the US Espionage Act.

"It's putting American lives at risk throughout the world. Clearly what he's done is wrong and he has to be punished.""

 WikiLeaks founder Julian ASSange arrested

"Those leaked files have turned Assange into an international figure, vilified by the U.S. and governments around the world for spilling official secrets but lionized by activists demanding a free flow of information. In Washington, the Obama administration blames Assange for recklessly damaging U.S. relations with other countries and even aiding terrorists."

US could face hurdles in extradicting ASSange from Sweden

"U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that he has authorized "significant" actions related to a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks. The site has been under intense pressure from the United States and its allies since it began posting the first of more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents November 28."

The case against Julian ASSange

"His lawyers are likely to argue that in Sweden he will be vulnerable to extradition requests from other countries including the U.S., which has had an extradition treaty with Sweden since the 1960s."

London Court Denies WikiLeaks Founder Bail

"Assange is an Australian citizen and while the country's attorney general said Assange has a right to consular support, Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, says the country is investigating whether a crime was committed in Australia.

"The foundation stone of it is an illegal act. Information was taken and that was illegal. So, let's not try and put any glosses on this. It would not happen, information would not be on WikiLeaks, if there had not been an illegal act undertaken.""

Good! This will give the Yanks enough time to build their case.

December 6, 2010:

Turkish PM Threatens to Sue Over Wikileaks Claims

""Those who have slandered us will be crushed under these claims, will be finished and will disappear," he said."

A grand game of Russian Roulette has been unleashed. Who will be the first to get him? And how will we know?


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Ongoing:

Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak

December 6th:

Something good coming out of the WikiLeaks docu-dump?

Leaked cable details Canadian sites 'vital' to U.S.

...and Fort Mac ain't on it!!

Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's account

Scotland Yard has the papers. Send in the lawyers.

Wikileaks reveals ugly truth about Iran appeasers

"OURS is the great age of the autobiographical alibi.

So it seems fitting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's mother should really be to blame. According to an indulgent profile in The New Yorker, Assange suffered a chaotic childhood in the artistic-bohemian community of NSW's Byron Bay, where young Julian was home-schooled following his mother's doctrine that formal education inculcates "an unhealthy respect for authority" and dampens a child's "will to learn".

No doubt all this explains how Assange, having been taught to resist each and every exercise of authority, could resolve to defy all the authorities of the world simultaneously, thus condemning a poor confused 23-year-old US security analyst to a life in prison, and all without the slightest hint of responsibility.

By the same logic, it would be interesting to guess at the excuses of those many foreign policy analysts whose pretexts, alibis and downright falsehoods about "constructive engagement" with Iran have come rather awfully unstuck in the past week, in the light of Assange's latest Dadaist escapade. Who knows: perhaps they too suffered the privations of an artistic-bohemian childhood in some seaside shack on Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard?

These past two years it has become received wisdom in influential sections of the foreign policy community that, in the wake of the Bush administration's foreign policy excesses and errors, the chief imperative of US foreign policy is to avoid any further foreign entanglements. In the pursuit of this shimmering transcendent goal, however, it soon enough becomes necessary to use any and every argument that comes to hand, no matter how implausible."

[---]

"Yet these are the same Leveretts who insisted, 18 months ago in The Washington Post, that Iran's elections were not only free and fair, but actually freer and fairer than those of their own country. Even though, as the WikiLeaks cables have now clarified, US diplomats knew all along that the result was fixed; and further knew that the actual election figures were very similar to those revealed by a brave young official in the Iranian Information Ministry, Mohammad Asghari, who paid for this act of heroism with his life, only to have his information greeted with pure white silence in Washington."

RTWT It gets down to the blunt and ugly truth about the Obama administration, progressives and Iran's brutal Mullahocracy.


December 5th:

Charge against Wikileaks founder 'not political': Sweden Buried deep in that article is this interesting factoid:

"Among the latest revelations was one document that said Saudi Arabia was the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hamas.

Gulf states Qatar and Kuwait were also lax in pursuing locals who donated to the groups, said the cable, an assessment from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated December 30, 2009."

Yawn. As if we didn't know that.

And this:

"And as fresh leaks of US diplomatic cables heaped more embarrassment on Washington, one report suggested that the revelations would force a major reshuffle of their diplomatic, military and intelligence staff.

The US news website The Daily Beast reported Sunday that the leaks might have made it "dangerous" if not impossible for those found to have been strongly critical of corrupt or incompetent governments to do their job.

"We're going to have to pull out some of our best people... because they dared to report back the truth about the nations in which they serve," a senior US national-security official told the website."

Assange hunt 'political stunt': lawyer

Wikileaks archives - China's battle with Google

Wikileaks bank account in Switzerland under scrutiny

"GENEVA: Bank officials are looking at shutting down an account opened by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Switzerland, media reports said Sunday.

Postfinance spokesman Marc Andrey told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper that in order to keep a regular bank account open, Assange would have to prove he obtained Swiss residence, owns property in the country or has business dealings in Switzerland."

Not looking good, is it dear Julian.

This next one is really good.

Diplomats gossip; don't be shocked

"We're all familiar with gossip, which has been described as the dishing of the dirt, to "wag one's tongue; speak about others and reveal secrets or intimacies.

Lawyers do it, farmers do it, truckers do it, journalists do it and housewives do it. So why is everyone so surprised, dare I say even aghast, that diplomats do it?"

[---]

"Most of the comments contained in all those gazillions of pages of U.S. diplomatic cables dumped on the world this week by the brain surgeons at the website WikiLeaks amount to little more than gossip.

Because of this, world leaders seem much less disturbed by the leaks than are members of the media and the everyday gossips of the world-which would include all the rest of us."

[---]

"Gossip or not, much of what was spoken and/or written, of course, contains a lot of truth-sometimes too much for our comfort.

For example, our own former CSIS Director Jim Judd told a Washington contact that Canadians have an "Alice in Wonderland" attitude towards terrorism. True in spades.

In reference to a video of Omar Khadr he also lamented our "knee jerk anti-Americanism and paroxysms of moral outrage," which he called "a Canadian specialty." There's another truism about Canadians that we all should consider carefully.

At least one of our "beloved" institutions comes in for some heavy criticism in the dispatches."

Guess which "beloved" institution that is? You probably already know, but, just in case, the answer is in the tags at the bottom of this post."


December 4th:

Wikileaks struggles to keep its site active online

"WikiLeaks, according to former members, has servers in different countries precisely to avoid the sort of trouble it is facing now. But its release of the cables has so angered some governments that they are seeking ways to silence WikiLeaks by prevailing upon the largely invisible providers whose services make the Internet work."

'Pretty harsh stuff'

WikiLeaks site's Swiss host dismisses pressure to take it off line

Afghan finance minister warns leaked cables will damage relations with US

Spanish PM helped GE Rolls Royce to helicopter deal

Wikileaks founder sends out 100000 copies of secret files

WikiLeaks website stopped again; shifting to Sweden

Meet WikiLeaks likely first victim

December 3rd:

A good one translated from Russian @ Simply Jews - Julian the Almighty.

Cyber attack forces Wikileaks to change web address

Wikileaks Fights to Stay Online Amid Attacks

"WikiLeaks became an Internet vagabond Friday, moving from one website to another as governments and hackers hounded the organization, trying to deprive it of a direct line to the public"

WikiLeaks diverts to European websites amid U.S. fury

WikiLeaks faces donations blow as it fights for survival

November 30th:

WikiLeaks' boss living on borrowed time