Sweden’s public television broadcasting service, SVT (Sveriges Television), has published an exclusive rough-cut of the first in-depth documentary covering WikiLeaks and the people behind it.

If  you have 57 minutes to spare I highly recommend watching it. And don’t forget to pass it on.

Reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist have traveled to key countries where WikiLeaks operates, interviewing top members, such as Assange, new Spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson, as well as people like Daniel Domscheit-Berg who now is starting his own version – Openleaks.org!

Where is the secretive organization heading? Stronger than ever, or broken by the US? Who is Assange: champion of freedom, spy or rapist? What are his objectives? What are the consequences for the internet?”

Stay classy, Amazon. (click for full size)

Just last week Amazon removed WikiLeaks from its cloud servers by claiming it was violating its terms of service. Now they’re selling a kindle ebook titled “WikiLeaks documents expose US foreign policy conspiracies. All cables with tags from 1- 5000” for £7,37 ($11,6). And the ebook is selling pretty well too. At the time of this posting it was the #1 bestseller for political ebooks in Japan, #2 in the Kindle Store Politics & Current Affairs section and #188 in the whole paid store.

Where are your terms of service now, Amazon?

The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) is running a clever ad campaign illustrating how dictators feel about the internet and its (current) freedom. What I really love about the ads is that they could easily be extended to also cover the feelings of international democratic leaders about WikiLeaks.

uhoh

Following PayPal, Amazon, the Swiss bank Post Finance and MasterCard, Visa is also cutting links with WikiLeaks. They have announced today that WikiLeaks’ Visa payments are suspended. Meanwhile, Julian Assange has been arrested and refused bail.

What a wonderful, wonderful world. Not.

BBC

This band will blow you away.

A greengrocer from Quetta thought the NATO forces in Afghanistan are incredibly stupid, so he planned a simple scheme to scam some money out of them. He pretended to be Mullah Akhtar Muhammed Mansour, a senior Taliban official, second-in-command to (Taliban chief) Mullah Omar. He then told NATO officials that he wanted to negotiate the end of the Afghan conflict and requested the release of all Taliban prisoners, safety assurances for fighters returning home and the promise of government-funded jobs – but not the withdrawal of the occupation forces. Having the MI6 vouching for him and all the Afghan allies seeing him as an angel sent down from the heavens, he even managed to hold talks at the Presidential palace in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US General David Petraeus.

By the time NATO realized he was a hoaxer telling them what they desperately wanted to hear, the greengrocer was gone with £600,000 (US$940,000) of their money. Oopsies!

At the Nato summit in Lisbon a fortnight ago, an appalling vista must have opened up before the 28 leaders of the most powerful military alliance in history, with its bombers, tanks, drones and helicopter gunships, being defeated by a lightly-armed bunch of farmers’ sons and tribesmen.

It was in the distorted, demented perspective brought on by this terrifying possibility that the aubergine salesman from downtown Quetta (or maybe he was a dentist, how would I know?) was greeted like an angel of God.

They don’t who they are dealing with, they don’t know what they are doing, they are lost in Afghanistan, and their war is lost.

In the words of Nelson Muntz: Ha Ha! Just how f*cking stupid are you, NATO?

I don’t even want to think about what would happen if NATO was ever to invade Nigeria.

belfasttelegraph

I approve of this judge.

A petition asking for the complete ban of WikiLeaks in Pakistan has been dismissed by Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed of the Lahore High Court because he believes nothing is greater than the truth – and the leaked reports are based on nothing but truth and facts.

The judge said we need to face the realities eye to eye. “The secret information may cause trouble for some personalities in Pakistan but it will be good for growth of the nation in the long run.”

“We, as a nation, should have courage to tolerate and digest criticism and live with it,” he added.

They might have religious censorship in Pakistan, but judges like this make up for it. I just wish there were more like him.

nation.com.pk