For Mrs. Clinton, the pride in the diplomats’ work is a small compensation for a difficult week in which she has discussed the WikiLeaks case with more than two dozen foreign leaders, working to soothe bruised egos and explain how the security breach happened.

The job of damage control has fallen mainly to her. President Obama has not called any foreign leaders about the disclosures. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, meanwhile, has been reserved even though the cables were believed to be purloined from a Department of Defense computer system by an army private, Bradley Manning, who is now in a military jail.

Mrs. Clinton’s reaction to shouldering the burden has been every bit as artful as the cables that have landed her in so much trouble.

“It was a DoD system, and a DoD obviously military intel guy,” she said. “But we’re part of one government, and we’re part of one country, and we have to work together, and that’s what we’re doing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05diplo.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

Indecent Exposure: WikiLeaks Hounded for Showing Power Its True Face
Written by Chris Floyd      
Monday, 06 December 2010

Even as WikiLeaks fights for its life --  a phrase that becomes less metaphorical by the day, especially for Julian Assange, hounded and hunted by several governments -- its revelations continue to shake the world's power structures. Every day we are treated to the edifying spectacle of the most powerful and privileged people on earth scurrying around like panicked rats, trying to escape the streams of light pouring into their filthy backrooms, exposing their ruthless machtpolitik -- and their monumental incompetence at every level.

The trove of leaked diplomatic cables is too rich to encompass or fully process right away. Dip your hand into one batch and you come out with a whole handful of jewels, each one worthy of careful, in-depth analysis, buttressed with innumerable links to current events and detailed historical context. This is the work of months, even years. For now, we can only survey the highlights as they are released and draw some initial impressions.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2059-indecent-exposure-wikileaks-hounded-for-showing-power-its-true-face.html

WikiLeaks will release more secret US diplomatic cables despite the arrest on Tuesday of its Australian founder Julian Assange, a journalist working for the whistleblowing website said.

"In terms of what is happening, all is on schedule, all that stuff will keeping rolling out as ever. That's all I can tell you," WikiLeaks journalist James Ball told AFP.

Assange, 39, surrendered to British police in London on Tuesday on a Swedish arrest warrant on suspicion of rape and sexual assault. The former computer hacker denies the charges.

His lawyers have said Sweden's case could be linked to WikiLeaks' decision to release over the past week thousands of confidential US State Department documents.

Several newspapers around the world have been publishing the WikiLeaks cables and a spokesman for the website last week said they had copies of many of the documents.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/wikileaks-to-continue-despite-arrest-20101207-18oiw.html

It turns out our government has been lying to us about whether we have troops in Pakistan engaging in combat operations. The Pentagon has said the mission of American soldiers is confined to “training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military,” but in fact our forces have been embedded in Pakistani fighting units, giving them electronic data and other support as they kill the enemy.

We know this because of WikiLeaks. It’s also thanks to WikiLeaks that we know about America’s arrangement with the President of Yemen: we kill Yemen-based terrorists and he claims that Yemen is doing the killing.

In these respects, I think, WikiLeaks is doing God’s work. I realize there are tactical rationales for both of these deceptions, but I don’t see them trumping the bedrock right of citizens in a democracy to know when their tax dollars are being used to kill people — especially when those people live in countries we’re not at war with. So, if we’re going to calculate Julian Assange’s net karma, I’d put this stuff on the positive side of the ledger.

...

For that to happen — for the United States to respond wisely to the WikiLeaks fiasco — American policymakers will first have to realize that Assange himself isn’t all that important. If he had never been born, they would still eventually have to adapt to the age of transparency, to a world in which expedient lies to cover expedient collaborations with dubious regimes are a long-term threat to our national security. Sooner or later, America was bound to wake up to the implications of modern technology. Julian Assange just made it a particularly rude awakening.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/julian-assange-neocon-tool/?hp

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Gus: I think the author is diminishing Assange's deed. Any "manifesto" from someone doing what Assange is doing would appear "unresolved"... And that's where it should be. Not many people could have done what he has done. Not many people have the ability to decypher complex encrypted messaging... Not many people have the power to know the extent our governments are lying to us and to each other... We know they do, but we rarely see proofs... To obtain and publish such a mountain of data requires a teamwork that Assange was able to gather and a knowledge of the pitfalls of his own organsation security. Not many people would have the courage to be the front for such organisation (most would remain anomymous — with far less impact) when one knows one is going to be shot at. To some extend he is able to give himself up as the fall guy, while his work carries on, backstage. People like Assange are one a billion. The other six haven't realised they've got the gift and have no desire to be buried alive... He was too naive be "tricked" by sexual encouters, like Vanunu was. We've all got our Achilles' heel...

WikiLeaks is claiming that founder Julian " from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has been since 2012.

In a post on Twitter, WikiLeaks said "a high-level source within the Ecuadorian state" told the organisation that Assange would be expelled within "hours to days" from the embassy in London.

Read moe:

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/assange-to-be-expelled-from-ecuadori...

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