Assange is in the same cell that once held Oscar Wilde;)
Guardian UK editorial
The hacktivists of Anonymous may be accused of many things – such as immaturity or being run by a herd instinct. But theirs is the cyber equivalent of non-violent action or civil disobedience. It disrupts rather than damages. In challenging the credit card companies and the web hosts in this way, they are reminding these businesses that their brand reputation relies not only on how the state department sees them, but also on how they maintain their independence in the eyes of their users.
In times when big business and governments attempt to monitor and control everything, there is a need as never before for an internet that remains a free and universal form of communication. WikiLeaks' chief crime has been to speak truth to power. What is at stake is nothing less than the freedom of the internet. All the rest is a sideshow distracting attention from the real battle that is being fought. We should all keep focus on the true target.
Official Wikileaks cable viewer
Unofficial Wikileaks information resource
search tool for the cables
Watch Wikileaks documentary
Liveblogs:
Guardian
The Nation - Like I've provided, Mitchell also provides the 57min Wikileaks doc called Wikirebels.
Steven Colbert interview with Ellsberg .right here. Please watch.
Glenn Greenwald is still all over this story:
UPDATE III: The New York Times has a new article which, in the first paragraph, takes note of these facts:
For many Europeans, Washington’s fierce reaction to the flood of secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks displays imperial arrogance and hypocrisy, indicating a post-9/11 obsession with secrecy that contradicts American principles.
You don't say. Along those lines, former Bush OLC official Jack Goldsmith today said he agrees "with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified" and, further, is unable to see how WikiLeaks' conduct can be distinguished from either that of The New York Times (both in this leak and past ones), as well as "Bob Woodward, [who], with the obvious assistance of many top Obama administration officials, disclosed many details about top secret programs, code names, documents, meetings, and the like." He adds, with great understatement: "the U.S. government reaction to WikiLeaks is more than a little awkward for the State Department’s Internet Freedom initiative."
As always, many many many links and info can be found in yesterdays livethread diary and my other diaries on this issue.
As always, link 'em if ya got 'em in the comments.
Thanks everyone!
Thanks to user swarf we have this by Peter Gordon a lawyer from Australia. You need to read this. Here is a snippet:
But more important than any of these, when this information may compromise governments and the biggest corporations, it's time to recognise we need a system that protects the process of disclosure from abusive litigious attack and from the pressure of professional public vilification. Because for every Julian Assange who attracts worldwide demonstrations of support, there are a thousand people whose important information got beaten into oblivion by big companies or big governments using various versions of the tactics on display in the past two weeks.
The sight of the most prominent politicians in the world inciting either the prosecution, incarceration or assassination of Assange, or the persecution of his family, is a form of barbarism that demeans us all. Moreover, the phenomenon of companies as big as MasterCard and Visa being gangpressed into anti-trust violations of their commercial relations with WikiLeaks is truly frightening.
WikiLeaks is the most obvious example of the broader war being waged by the most powerful interests in society on access to important information generally.
Olbermann interviewing Ellsberg last night. video and transcript right here
Huffingtonpost interview with lawyer for Assange
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde (a quote repeated by Julian Assange in the introduction to "Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier," a book he co-authored in 1997)
In case people do not want to click on the livethread 2 1/2, I will include this in honor of Ellsberg, Manning and Assange:
Near v. Minnesota
Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment). Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called Near the Court's "first great press case."[1]
It was later a key precedent in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), in which the Court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.
NYTimes Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.
President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press under the First Amendment was subordinate to a claimed Executive need to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment did protect the New York Times' right to print said materials.
Jack Goldsmith, exBush DOJ official writes a 7-point defense of Wikileaks.
■I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at the New York Times. What if there were no wikileaks and Manning had simply given the Lady Gaga CD to the Times? Presumably the Times would eventually have published most of the same information, with a few redactions, for all the world to see. Would our reaction to that have been more subdued than our reaction now to Assange? If so, why? If not, why is our reaction so subdued when the Times receives and publishes the information from Bradley through Assange the intermediary? Finally, in 2005-2006, the Times disclosed information about important but fragile government surveillance programs. There is no way to know, but I would bet that these disclosures were more harmful to national security than the wikileaks disclosures. There was outcry over the Times’ surveillance disclosures, but nothing compared to the outcry over wikileaks. Why the difference? Because of quantity? Because Assange is not a U.S. citizen? Because he has a philosophy more menacing than "freedom of the press"? Because he is not a journalist? Because he has a bad motive
Here is the Symposium on Wikileaks and internet freedom and it is no longer live so just click on the part 1 in the video library just underneath the video to watch part 1. Then, click part two is you want to watch the whole thing after 1 is finished.
CBS News weekend updates! thanks to shenderson
Even they they lie in the first line, this Washington Post editorial calls for no prosecution of Assange.
