The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is preparing to find out whether Sweden has been successful in its attempt to extradite him in relation to allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Assange has consistently denied the accusations, made by two women in August last year, and has been fighting extradition since he was arrested and bailed in December. The decision will be handed down on Thursday.

Guardian reporter Jack Shenker. He was arrested and beaten by plainclothes police on Tuesday night and shoved into a truck with dozens of other people.

A heady combination of reflections on our willingness to do whatever we want with our prisoners regardless of the treaties to which we are signatories & notification that Amnesty International has a letter condeming Bradley Manning's treatment; his lawyer David Coombs has stated  …

Children were abused on American military dollars. The cables are undoubtedly an embarrassment to the war effort.

An encyclopedia of rightisms!

Now this is what an adult conversation looks like!

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Tuesday to step up his site's release of secret documents while he fights extradition to Sweden, as his lawyers argued that sending him to Stockholm could land him in Guantanamo Bay or even on U.S. death row.

The widespread cultural belief that every woman who reports a rape must be taken seriously should be a common part of my day-to-day experience.

And the result of that is not only that these women are receiving death threats, they are in hiding—one of them has gone to Palestine, because she couldn't feel safe in Sweden anymore—but the even more important result of that, when we perpetuate rape myths in the media—a …

"Around a third of young British Muslims favour killing in the name of Islam, according to a survey revealed by the WikiLeaks' publication of U.S. diplomatic cables.

"Foreign visitors to Stockholm's lively bar scene might be struck by the assertiveness of the nation's women - the typical Swedish female seems to have no qualms about approaching men to start a conversation or initiate a romantic encounter.

Anonymous meets Wikileaks (cartoon)

Web attacks carried out in support of Wikileaks are being wound down as activists consider changing tactics.

Attacks against Amazon were called off late on 9 December and re-directed towards net payments firm Paypal. Analysis suggests the earlier attacks were made more effective by the involvement of hi-tech criminals.

With Julian Assange in custody and his extradition hearing set for Tuesday, the latest hand-wringing and discord over WikiLeaks has splintered: upcoming WikiLeaks cables on Guanatamo; U.S.

"While American officials have publicly been relatively upbeat about their progress in disrupting terrorist financing, the internal State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations, offer a more pessimistic account, with blunt assess …

The 39 year-old Australian, who is wanted by Interpol over a charge of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, said there were some references to extraterrestrial life in yet-to-be-published confidential files obtained from the American government.

He did not disclose what information was contained in the diplomatic memos obtained by the whistleblowing website. It also remains unclear when they will be published.

Alleged Contract Killings
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¶3. (C) xxxxxxxxxxxx said he personally knew one such martial arts master whom he said was used by the Intelligence service to murder at least six different individuals over the course of several months in xxxxxxxxxxxx said that the victims included intellectuals and young "pro-democracy activists," adding that his assassin acquaintance was ultimately "suicided" by the authorities (i.e., killed in what was subsequently labeled a suicide). xxxxxxxxxxxx claimed that his club was raided and greatly restricted xxxxxxxxxxxx after he and the club manager refused to train Basij or lend them their facilities. He said that they also refused to mobilize their membership to assist in repressing local protesters xxxxxxxxxxxx. Although he has stopped working at the school, he claimed to be under relentless pressure to cooperate, xxxxxxxxxxxx

She also asks, "Couldn't they just work for JetBlue?" and says that Manning's pretense of singing along to a Lady Gaga CD while downloading secret documents amounts to "telling" under DADT. "What constitutes being 'openly' gay now?" Coulter writes.

A former foreign office minister has said the US should not rely on any apparent secret deal to store banned cluster munitions on British territory.

Chris Bryant was responding to a leak on the Wikileaks website suggesting the US could be exempted from the ban. The Labour MP said: "If the Americans are relying on that then they were being led up the garden path."

Opinion -- From Rantings of a Sandmonkey", a popular Egyptian weblog:

Concern over TSA Regulations:
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¶9. (SBU) Prince Torki noted he had been instructed to raise Saudi Arabia's significant concern about the TSA regulations which had included Saudi Arabia in a limited group of countries for additional airport screening. Prince Torki said that this issue had caused a lot of difficulties and embarrassment for Saudi Arabia, to the degree that Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal will raise this with the Secretary in London on January 27. Prince Torki said that Saudi Arabia was not upset about the regulation itself, as it recognized the U.S. right and obligation to protect its citizens. The issue, rather, was inclusion on the list with the likes of Cuba, which causes Saudi Arabia's friends and enemies to question how strong its bilateral relationship with the United States really is. Prince Torki said it is very hard to explain to the Saudi public why they are included on this list, despite not being the origin of the December 25 flight, while other countries that have had recent terrorist incidents on planes, like the UK, Egypt and Turkey, are not. Prince Torki said that Saudi Arabia had been shocked to be included on the list. He noted that Saudi Arabia had been told these provisions would only be temporary, and said Saudi Arabia would like to know how and when they will be amended, implying that the longer they remained in effect without any public explanation from the USG, the more it was likely to prompt the Saudi Government to re-evaluate areas of cooperation, including counter-terrorism cooperation. A/S Feltman promised to convey the spirit and strength of the message, and invited any specific Saudi suggestions to address the security gap regarding nonmetallic explosives exploited in the December 25 incident.

This is just funny:

Would the FDP be a reliable security partner?
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¶7. (C) The FDP's voting record on counterterrorism legislation and the views of leading FDP security policy figures described here suggest that cooperation on security matters, particularly those involving information sharing, with a future German government that includes the FDP could be problematic. At times, the FDP's fixation on data privacy and protection issues looks to have come at the expense of the party forming responsible views on security policy.

"Reaction and updates following the release of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks. Tomorrow, revelations about North Korea and the UK." "This page will update automatically every minute:"

WASHINGTON — A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.

US military documents leaked to whistleblowing website Wikileaks reveal thousands of previously unreported civilian deaths, according to independent research organisation Iraq Body Count.

Speaking at a Wikileaks news conference, Prof John Sloboda from Iraq Body Count estimated the logs would "bring to the public knowledge more than 15,000 deaths".

Wikileaks says the secret US military logs also suggest US commanders ignored evidence of torture by the Iraqi authorities.

A US Department of Defense spokesman dismissed the documents as raw observations by tactical units, which were only snapshots of tragic events.

Julian Assange, who the Feds fear may release State Dept. secrets, denies having them—but he's readying video of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan.

After several days underground, the founder of the secretive website WikiLeaks has gone public to disclose that he is preparing to release a classified Pentagon video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan last year that left as many as 140 civilians dead, most of them children and teenagers.