Lots of stuff going on, so I thought I’d share what I’ve been reading today in an attempt to make sense of it all.

The case against Julian Assange

Special Report: STD fears sparked case against WikiLeaks boss:

The two Swedish women who accuse WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of sexual misconduct were at first not seeking to bring charges against him. They just wanted to track him down and persuade him to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, according to several people in contact with his entourage at the time.

Mark Hosenball, Reuters

How the rape claims against Julian Assange sparked an information war:

What happened next will be the subject of any legal process, but according to her testimony Miss W, for some reason, got in touch with Miss A (they did not previously know each other); some days later the two went to a Stockholm police station where they said they were “seeking advice” on making a complaint against Assange. Miss A is understood to have told police that he had ripped the condom on purpose, while Miss W said the unprotected sex act had been without her consent. They were reportedly advised by the police officer that these allegations amounted to rape against Miss W and sexual molestation against Miss A.

Esther Addley, The Guardian

The Wikileaks sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a worldwide hunt for Julian Assange [warning - Daily Mail]:

Rejecting accusations of an international plot to trap Assange, she added: ‘The accusations were not set up by the Pentagon or anybody else. The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man with a twisted view of women, who has a problem accepting the word “no”.’

Richard Pendlebury, The Daily Mail

How the U.S. can now extradite Assange:

Now that Julian Assange is in custody of British authorities on a warrant for alleged sex crimes in Sweden, Obama administration officials may well be working behind the scenes to secure his extradition to the United States, an international criminal law expert tells Salon.

Justin Elliott, Salon

News from the State Department cables

Guardian:

Saudi Arabia proposed creating an Arab force backed by US and Nato air and sea power to intervene in Lebanon two years ago and destroy Iranian-backed Hezbollah, according to a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

Guardian:

The British government’s deep fears that Libya would take “harsh and immediate” action against UK interests if the convicted Lockerbie bomber died in a Scottish prison are revealed in secret US embassy cables which show London’s full support for the early release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Salon/Politico:

[T]he top spokesman for the State Department told reporters last December that the United States was not involved in any military operations in Yemen. But a WikiLeaks cable shows that just two days later the military launched missile strikes in Yemen that reportedly killed dozens of civilians — the sort of action that take presumably takes a lot more than two days to plan.

New York Magazine:

The latest WikiLeaks cables to surface give some insight into Afghanistan’s attempt to try to “quash” a budding scandal last June over U.S. federal contractors hired to train Afghan policemen. As part of their training, contractors from the U.S.-based DynCorp entertained the officers by indulging their vices: drugs and young “dancing boys.” The cables show the panicked struggle by Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan’s interior minister at the time, to stop the story from getting out. As the Guardian explains, “There is a long tradition of young boys dressing up as girls and dancing for men in Afghanistan, an activity that sometimes crosses the line into child abuse with Afghans keeping boys as possessions.”

Wikileaks organization

‘Chaos’ at WikiLeaks Follows Assange Arrest:

The arrest without bail of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday has left the organization in a state of uncertainty, despite transition plans laid out prior to his surrender to British police, according to one dispirited WikiLeaks activist who spoke to Threat Level on condition of anonymity.

Wired

Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt:

A domino chain of resignations at the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks followed a unilateral decision by autocratic founder Julian Assange to schedule an October release of 392,000 classified U.S. documents from the war in Iraq, according to former WikiLeaks staffers.

Wired

Analysis & Journalism

Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It’s your choice:

The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.

John Naughton, The Guardian

How Wikileaks has woken up journalism:

Wikileaks has ignited a debate about the rights and responsibilities attached to freeing information.It has illustrated that Governments, however well intentioned, do not have the best judgement in terms of what it is right for citizens to know. It has shown that the established media no longer necessarily gets to make that call either, and forces us all to think about the consequences of that shift.

Emily Bell

Julian Assange’s Great Luck:

Although a stay in stir and the prospect of Swedish prosecution might not sound appealing or even advantageous, it’s actually a lucky break for Assange. I don’t expect him to express his gratitude publicly, but I’ll bet he’s gamed out how to turn the Swedish arrest warrant, the extradition hearing, and beyond to his benefit.

Jack Shafer, Slate

Opinion

Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow.

– Clay Shirky

Dear Interpol:

As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.

– Naomi Wolf

Also:

Cablesearch
Cablegate torrents, edits and diffs

Via Metafilter, Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal, Alexander Klöpping