US House of Representative Ron Paul, of Texas , has come out in support of Wikileaks. Ron Paul , even though a member of the Republican party is mostly Libertarian and does not align with the modern NeoConservative Republican party .

"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_1...05-503544.html

Assange was arrested in the UK:

Swedish officials recently issued an arrest warrant for the 39-year-old Australian, who is wanted on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation, and unlawful coercion in the country, and Assange was arrested in London on Tuesday morning in connection with those charges.

Assange is currently appearing before the Westminster Magistrate's Court, at which point it will be decided whether or not his extradition to Sweden will be required.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_1...32-503544.html

The women in question are not accusing him of rape.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/wor...#ixzz17XyL60Fc

He is being charged for " Sex by surprise " .

Since when does Interpol give such prominence for a crime whos fine is $715.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article...probe/19741444

My first thoughts on wikileaks when they started releasing stuff was that it is boring and although the release of the diplomatic cables is controversial it will have very little effect on how governments act in the future, but then suddenly the US started complaining and taking action (and various lapdogs in the shape of international companies; most notably paypal, amazon, mastercard and visa) have started behaving rather badly.

How on earth will we (the so-called free western world) be able to criticise anyone for lack of freedom of press ever again? In my opinion the US are shooting themselves in the foot big time with how they have reacted. If they had been more laid back the whole thing would have blown over in terms of weeks. Now however....

And I do wonder whether the reason they are so upset is the threat of exposing stuff at Bank of America rather than these ridiculous cables between diplomats.

I do agree with what other members of the bored have said that what wikileaks are doing is very similar to what any good investigative journalist would have done albeit on a much bigger scale since they are soliciting for the material rather than digging around in the dark..

Anon have retaliated against the corporations that did the government's bidding.Mostly DDOS attacks.

Power to the people!

(And the voice of the people says "More salt, please...").....

The question is like asking "Should a naughty school boy with a big pile of stink bombs be allowed to let them off over the next few months/years?".

It was wrong to hand these over to wikileaks in the first place, but now they are in the public domain, the question is almost irrelevant. It is more of an embarrassment than risk to international relations/security etc (release of military signals would be a different matter).

The more relevant impact their slow release will have in international relations is that it will likely alter how diplomacy is conducted behind closed doors and introduce a lower level of trust into these meetings. And make diplomatic Political Officers (who write the cables) more nervous about what they write to summarise these meetings.

Most importantly though it has likely scuppered a good portion of my PhD field research

In the current world of smoke and mirrors it's quite refreshing .There's nothing in it we didn't already know or even think.

The most damaging aspect for them is that they can't 'spin' it or manipualte it to their own ends.