WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

Disgust from troops at risk on front line
(Dan Oakes, Sydney Morning Herald, December 13, 2010)

MUSAZAI, Afghanistan: Soldiers on the front line have disputed comments by the Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, about the progress of the war in Afghanistan and have criticised WikiLeaks for releasing leaked secret documents on the war.

Just before beginning an eight-hour patrol in the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan, the Diggers said the coalition effort was reaping tangible benefits on the ground, and that it was difficult to gain the full perspective back in Australia.

''With so many nations rethinking their commitment here, it can seem like a morass of wicked problems, as opposed to our perception from the ground, where you have tangible outcomes as a result of the work we're doing," said Captain Jim Wallace.

Captain Richard Trembath, commander of Patrol Base Musazai, said the Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police and other agencies were working to strengthen what a senior official was recorded as describing as a ''wobbly three-legged stool''.

''It'll be difficult for a while yet, but we have to temper our expectations as Western nations in an Eastern nation. But if we're safer and Afghan people are safer when we leave, that's a measure of success.''

Soldiers were also disgusted by the actions of WikiLeaks in releasing secret cables on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying they put the lives of Australian soldiers at risk.

''The thing I feel strongest about is the safety of my soldiers, and if through these leaks even one of them … ends up dead because an internet general back in Australia is releasing this information it disgusts me,'' Captain Trembath said.

Wandel - since you're the only legal eagle posting on this page so far I'd like to ask your opinion on this part of the editorial:

Quote:

How else can you explain
the so-called "poison pill" of documents that
Assange said would be released if he is harmed? Is
it really to protect him? If WikiLeaks is really
supposed to be about public service, why not
release those documents now?

That's an idiotic question on the face of it - WikiLeaks is under no obligation to observe anybody else's timetable. As I understand international law he cannot be extradited from England because he's a Commonwealth citizen; for the same reason he is provided with no consular services.

But if he's sent to Sweden, he can be extradited to the US to face terrorism charges, which can result in a death sentence. Most European countries will not extradite anybody unless they get an assurance from the US that the death penalty will not apply to the accused. Sweden will ask the same.

Even if he were only faced with life imprisonment, not execution, it makes perfect sense to be keeping a little information reserve somewhere. I find this persecution (per-, not only pro-) completely baseless and idiotic as I don't see what law the man has broken in the US. We're acting like hysterical buffoons and it is we, not wikileaks, who are generating all that "anti-Americanism" worldwide.

The founders of Openleaks.org say they are former WikiLeaks members unhappy with the way WikiLeaks is being run under Assange.

"It has weakened the organization," one of those founders, Daniel Domscheit-Berg says in a documentary airing Sunday night on Swedish television network SVT. He said WikiLeaks has become "too much focused on one person, and one person is always much weaker than an organization."

But Domscheit-Berg said, "If you preach transparency to everyone else, you have to be transparent yourself."

"You have to fulfill the same standards that you expect from others," he told SVT. "And I think that's where we've not been heading in the same direction philosophically anymore."

Another former WikiLeaks staffer said he had brought up his discontent with Assange, but that the WikiLeaks founder had not wanted to listen.

"Eventually this ended with me arguing with Julian about basically his dictatorial behavior, which ended in Julian saying to me that if I had a problem with him I could just 'piss off,' I quote," Herbert Snorreson said.

and that it won't be long before Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have fallen well back into the irrelvant.

'The mentality I'm seeing is that it must be true. It was secret.'

After 12 days of WikiLeaks cables, the world looks on US with new eyes

Reaction across the globe to the leaked US embassy cables has ranged from anger and bitterness to extreme indifference...

Vatican Church hits back at WikiLeaks revelations
From: AAP
December 12, 2010 2:45AM

THE Vatican has hit back after cables released by WikiLeaks indicated it refused to cooperate with an Irish probe into child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Dublin.

The Vatican press office yesterday expressed scepticism at the reliability of the reports in a statement that referred to "the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences".

"Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials," it said.

"Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind."[/i]

A cable from the US embassy in Rome, carried by The Guardian, had said requests for information by Ireland's Murphy Commission "offended many in the Vatican... because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty". ...<cont>

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

and that it won't be long before Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have fallen well back into the irrelvant.

well i'm pretty sure another season of Dancing with the Stars will start eventually

That's it in a nutshell