Global Reactions to Leaked Documents - WikiLeaks Saga Continues

The reactions to the recently leaked U.S. Government cables by WikiLeaks are wide and varied, depending on who you talk to. As one would imagine it's been more than just water cooler talk at the office. The Guardian has compiled a list of global reactions and quotes in the wake of the political storm that has brewed and it ranges from "grossly irresponsible" to calling Julian Assange a "hero".

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the incident "psychological warfare."

Libian leader Muammar Gaddafi praised WikiLeaks for exposing US "hypocrisy."

While China's Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Beijing hoped the emergence of the cables would not affect relations with Washington.

In Assange's homeland of Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the publication of the cables is illegal, and Assange's actions are "grossly irresponsible" but on the other hand former Prime Minister Paul Rudd said "Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. "The Americans are responsible for that,".

Oh how interesting this has all become...

Twitter A-buzz With The Arrest Of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

Fired up my Twitter account this morning and every other tweet is about the arrest of Julian Assange in London. Here is the Associated Press story: http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16026/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=6qEaVSwN

LONDON (AP) - Police say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested on a Swedish warrant.

Assange was arrested at 9:30 a.m. (0930 GMT) Tuesday and was due to appear at Westminster Magistrate's Court later in the day.

Is The Effort To Hide The Truth More Damaging Than The Truth Itself?

Until now I've not had much to say about the recent round of WikiLeaks vs. the U.S. gov't. This time around the documents being shared are causing a bit of a diplomatic uproar as damning information regarding U.S. diplomat's impressions of foreign leaders have surfaced. It seems as though the American government is feeling the heat over this leak a great deal more than the mostly military leaks that previously hit the site. In the last round WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was publicly criticized and then a character assassination attempted with allegations of a sexual assault linked to him.

In this round the site has been hit by a DDOS attack, then it's temporary host Amazon pulled the plug, and it's domain name service has just given it the boot. All of this and a world wide warrant being placed on Assange by Interpol. It seems as though the powers that be are more willing to silence the detractors than to fess up. No one should be fooled into thinking that due diligence is not conducted by all nations, in the form of intelligence gathering, and that assessments of personal characters is not routine. Perhaps however the U.S. might wish to secure it's documents, instruct and or teach it's diplomats to be, well, diplomatic in their assessments on paper.  While I do not wish to downplay those contents, the act of attempting to silence WikiLeaks and the lengths at which it is going to do so is more damning, at least in my eyes, than the documents themselves. I am sure that there are skeletons in everyone's closet but the U.S. government is going about this the wrong way. Then again perhaps there is more than one government worried about who's closet will be searched next...

Just my 2 cents worth.

p.s. WikiLeaks is still available online, at least for now, at http://213.251.145.96/ 

WikiLeaks Insurance Policy

WikiLeaks has been in the news a lot as of late for the leak of some  77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that the site posted in July. Yesterday the US Defense Department demanded that WikiLeaks hand over all documents belonging to the Pentagon and issued a strong warning saying "The only acceptable course is for Wikileaks to take steps immediately to return all versions of all of these documents to the U.S. government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records," and that "If doing the right thing is not good enough for them, then we will figure out what other alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing," department spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "These documents belong to the United States government. They don't belong to WikiLeaks. They don't belong to anyone else."

In an interesting twist however a 1.4 gigabyte encrypted file called "insurance" was posted to the site and WikiLeaks Editor-in-chief Julian Assange told the independent U.S. news network Democracy Now! that “I think it's better that we don't comment on that,” according to the network's transcript of the interview. “But, you know, one could imagine in a similar situation that it might be worth ensuring that important parts of history do not disappear.”

I wouldn't want to be in Mr Assange's shoes right now, he's in a real life cat and mouse game and he's staring directly into the jaws of the biggest cat he's ever seen. Good luck!

Sources: The Globe and Mail, CNN