Soooo.... Thoughts anyone?
Are they unpatriotic anti-American traitors?
Beacons of light laying bare the dark underbelly of our so-called "democracies"?
Or are they just peddaling diplomatic gossip that really shouldn't come as any surprise to most folk?

Mr Assange: Hero? Traitor? Rapist? Likely to be shot with a ricin pellet from an umbrella-gun?

I don't know much about the whole fiasco (yet), but I'm curious as to how you are potentially in danger because of what's happened, Aust.  (Genuine unbiased curiousity, I don't have any opinion yet.)

I first heard of the WikiLeaks when it published the video of journalists being killed in Iraq. Recent leaks have shown evidence that the US has been spying at the UN contrary to existing treaties (which have the force of law), that the Chinese government was in fact thought to be responsible for the recent attacks on Google and other US internet properties, and plenty of other things. This is stuff that deserves to come to light. If the mainstream media can't or won't find it out on their own then I applaud WikiLeaks for bringing it to our attention.

I've come to believe over the years that our government keeps entirely too many things secret from its people. This belief has only been reinforced by the whole "Cablegate" fiasco. We should err on the side of openness wherever possible, because we can hardly call ourselves a democracy if we aren't allowed to inform ourselves about what our government is doing.

That's not to say there's never a good reason to keep documents secret. Military troop positions, documents naming intelligence sources, etc. are good examples of this. If you can name at least one person who would be physically harmed by the release of information, then by all means keep it secret. Otherwise I want to be able to know about it. My taxes paid for the document to be written, and my elected officials deserve to be held responsible for the product, whether it's good or bad.

Assange seems to be an interesting character. I'm not sure I would really enjoy meeting him. He doesn't seem like a nice fellow. Still, I don't get what legal obligation he should have to keep American secrets. Unlike the man who allegedly supplied this information to WikiLeaks, Assange is not an American citizen, is not located in America, and never held any security clearance that would require him to promise to keep secrets.

The sexual assault allegations are troubling, but not really pertinent to the issue at hand. It does seem convenient, though, that there was an Interpol red alert put out for those crimes. Is this done for every suspected rapist who is thought to have crossed international borders? I have no idea, but somehow I doubt it.

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The best part of all this: the State Department just put out a press release about how the US will be hosting "World Press Freedom Day" next year. The whole thing is worth a read for the sheer irony of it all, but this gem really stuck out for me:

[We] are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.

That's some mighty impressive doublethink right there. I mean, pressure from various entities within the US government has caused the .org domain registrar to kick WikiLeaks off, has caused Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal to cut off payment accounts for the organization, has caused Amazon to shut down hosting services for WikiLeaks, and other things that we probably don't even know about. Also government employees are being told that if they value their jobs they should probably stay away from WikiLeaks. All this has been accomplished without any due process whatsoever. If that's not a "determination of a government to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information," I don't know what is.

I find it enlightening what Daniel Ellsberg and associates have to say about it all.

And I agree completely with what et has said. As for the contents of those cables, I find it both unfortunate and telling that the media are mostly concentrating on the diplomatic gossip that really shouldn't come as a surprise to most people, and certainly didn't come as a surprise to me. What I find far more revealing, interesting and, frankly, important is all the lying, cheating and backstabbing, both by the US and other governments, that's being exposed, and that critics have again and again said was there and got poopoo'd for saying because there was no evidence.

And now that the evidence is there, everyone and their dog wants to shoot the messenger. I find the reaction of the political establishment, the media and the financial instituions disgusting and disgraceful (though by no means surprising, although some reactions have caused me to revise my opinion on which political parties are eligible to receive my vote in the next election. I am looking at you, Green Party!) All the people speaking up against Wikileaks make me wonder what deep, dark secrets they are hiding, too, since so many of them don't seem to have any other obvious motivation to do what they are doing right now

...What the fuckkk. I clicked this thread expecting you to be rabid and unreasonable about this, Bistro, only this time with the backing of the whole bloody world... the headline of today's Independent is Wikileaks vs The Machine, which doesn't exactly scream "we are impartial and professional journalists and have not yet formed a judgement."

I never thought I'd say this, but you just restored my faith in the reasoning powers of humanity.

I'd like to note that Julian Assange, an Australian, has no standing whatsoever to be a traitor to the United States.  This isn't quite the semantic quibble it seems; he isn't an American citizen and is not bound by any American social compact.  He owes the US nothing more than any other person on the planet does.

That's not me taking sides on any larger point around this issue, just that one.  But it seems to get lost pretty often in all of this by people who make the assumption that he must be American.

Well to be technical and honest, I think when people are going with the "traitor" angle it's more towards WikiLeaks as a whole, or at least the couple of pissed-off American soldiers who scooped this stuff up and gave it to WL.  Those actions ARE technically treason.


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Anywho, to my own opinion, I'm a bit anti-WL right now if only because they're being total attention whores about the whole thing, and especially taking great glee at just pointing at the US.   They've released a few bits from other countries, but the ones they always seem to trot out the big press releases for are when they find another cache of US stuff, and that's troubling only because it seems they're doing it only to cause some sort of international vendetta.  It's not particularly making anyone in the diplomatic circles pissed mind you, I'm sure that most diplomats of our allies already knew about some of this stuff and we'd dealt with it already, but WL won't pass up another chance to make the US look bad.   I actually applaud their supposed next target of Bank of America or whatever big corporation they're going for, at least it's a bit of spreading the wealth.

And I'm pretty sure that Assange is going to get a nice radioactive sushi box from Putin for airing stuff that everyone pretty much knew already about him.