Free Talk Live

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and has requested political asylum, officials and WikiLeaks said Tuesday. Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino read a statement to reporters at a news conference in Quito. He took no questions. Assange has been fighting for a year and a half against being sent to Sweden for questioning about accusations of sexual abuse. Two women accused him in August 2010 of sexually assaulting them during a visit to Sweden in connection with a WikiLeaks release of internal U.S. military documents.

U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

IN the estimation of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stands alongside the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.

As he outrages and embarrasses world leaders by leaking secret US diplomatic cables - and continues to face down allegations of sex offences - Mr Assange has been chosen by the foundation to receive a rare gold medal for peace with justice.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/julian-assange-awarded-sydney-peace...

"Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago. ... Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike."

Some interesting stuff on page 5 about being "a free market proponent".
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikil...

Britain’s Supreme Court has upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sex crimes. Assange’s lawyers had argued that the Swedish public prosecutor did not have the legal authority to issue the arrest warrant, but the British justices disagreed in a 5-to-2 decision. Assange’s attorneys will have 14 days to file a new appeal. We get reaction from Salon.com blogger and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald.

The warrant for the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been withdrawn, the Swedish Prosecution Authority has confirmed.

STOCKHOLM — The founder of WikiLeaks was accused of rape in a Swedish arrest warrant Saturday that turned the spotlight onto the former hacker who's infuriated governments with his self-proclaimed mission to make secrets public.

The accusation was labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents from the Afghan war.

Judge rules that Obama administration must hand over documents assessing leak of diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks - Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of being the source of the biggest leak of state secrets in American history, has won a partial victory in his battle to force the government to disclose vital information that could help his defense. The judge presiding over his trial at Fort Meade in Maryland has ordered the US government to hand over several confidential documents relating to the massive leak to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks from inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. "The Pentagon is maintaining a line that WikiLeaks inherently, as an institution that tells military and government whistleblowers to step forward with information, is a crime. They allege we are criminal, moving forward," Assange says.