A senior Spanish prosecutor told the US Embassy in Madrid that Russia, Belarus and Chechnya had become virtual "mafia states", new disclosures of classified material by Wikileaks show.

A cable also questions whether Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is implicated in the Russian mafia.

Another reveals that a powerful Ukrainian businessman told US officials he had ties to Russian organised crime.

The documents are among hundreds being released by the whistle-blower website.

On Wednesday the US online shopping giant Amazon reportedly blocked Wikileaks from its servers - a move welcomed by US officials.

Access to Wikileaks' homepage was sporadic on Wednesday. The website had been using Amazon servers since its Swedish-based servers came under cyber-attack twice earlier this week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11893886

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John Stewart was trying to belittle Assange, on his show. But instead John did not fire well and his usual wit was below the plimson line. It was a bit like trying to douse petrol on a beautiful woman and not lighting it up while threatening to do so while pissing oneself laughing... A bad joke that could go wrong any minute...

In regard to the Russian Mafia, one has to be aware that Putin had to deal also with the likes of the CIA and MI6 who were trying to "bankrupt" Russia by setting up banks designed to bleed the wealth out of that country. Second, Putin got the gig with the help of the "oligarchs" but soon after he got elected, he made sure they got either exiled or placed in prison... It's most likely the "Russian Mafia" is operating out of London than from Moscow...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is at risk of being assassinated over the release of secret US documents and will remain in hiding for his own security, the website's spokesman said this morning.

Spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said the Australian's safety was at stake after US politicians called for him to face treason charges and an adviser to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper reportedly said he should be killed.

"We have had threats from governments and commentators, some of them totally preposterous, even calls for the assassination of Julian Assange," Mr Hrafnsson said during a debate at the Frontline Club in London.

"He is justified in being concerned for his safety. When you have people calling, for example, for his assassination, it is best to keep a low profile," he added.

Mr Hrafnsson said Assange's whereabouts would remain secret. He is known to have recently spent time in Sweden and London and is the subject of an Interpol arrest request over a rape allegation in Sweden.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/02/3082471.htm?section=justin

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gus: the assassins have been paid half... the rest on completion of contract...

Meanwhile some serious agreements are half-pregnant:

A confidential cable released by the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks, and the Guardian newspaper appears to show that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office kept quiet about a loophole that allows the US to continue storing cluster bombs on British territory, despite an international ban on the weapons.

The message was sent in May 2009 from the US Embassy in London.

Dropped from the air or fired from the ground, cluster munitions release small bomblets over a wide area.

Campaigners say the weapons have a devastating humanitarian impact - most victims are civilians; a third are children.

Britain was among more than 90 countries which signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in December 2008. The treaty bans the use of cluster bombs and prohibits signatories from assisting other countries to use, stockpile or transfer them.

The then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, hailed the treaty as a "major breakthrough".

'Temporary exception'

But the US - along with other major military powers such as Russia, China, India and Pakistan - was not a signatory. And that clearly put the UK in an awkward position with a key ally.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11894759

The American airwaves quiver with the screams of parlour assassins howling for Julian Assange's head. Jonah Goldberg, contributor to the National Review, asks in his syndicated column, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?" Sarah Palin wants him hunted down and brought to justice, saying: "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."

Assange can survive these theatrical blusters. A tougher question is how he will fare at the hands of the US government, which is hopping mad. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, announced on Monday that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing criminal investigation" into the latest Assange-facilitated leak under Washington's Espionage Act.

Asked how the US could prosecute Assange, a non-US citizen, Holder said, "Let me be clear. This is not sabre-rattling," and vowed "to swiftly close the gaps in current US legislation…"

In other words the espionage statute is being rewritten to target Assange, and in short order, if not already, President Obama – who as a candidate pledged "transparency" in government - will sign an order okaying the seizing of Assange and his transport into the US jurisdiction. Render first, fight the habeas corpus lawsuits later.

Interpol, the investigative arm of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, has issued a fugitive notice for Assange. He's wanted in Sweden for questioning in two alleged sexual assaults, one of which seems to boil down to a charge of unsafe sex and failure to phone his date the following day.

This prime accuser, Anna Ardin has, according to the journalist Israel Shamir, writing on the CounterPunch site, "ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba…Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities."

It's certainly not conspiracism to suspect that the CIA has been at work in fomenting these Swedish accusations. As Shamir reports, "The moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service."

Sweden's highest court has refused permission to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to appeal against an arrest order issued over alleged sexual crimes.

Mr Assange's lawyer this week appealed against an arrest warrant, which also led to an Interpol notice.

The court decision means the domestic and international arrest warrants still stand.

"The High Court has not granted a leave to appeal, so the Svea Court of Appeals ruling still stands," High Court official Kerstin Norman told Reuters.

The court's decision comes as Swedish police confirmed that they would issue a new international arrest warrant for Julian Assange to replace one that could not be enforced in Britain because of a procedural error.

"We have to refresh the warrant. It's a procedural fault, we agree. The prosecutor Marianne Ny has to write a new one," Tommy Kangasvieri of the Swedish National Criminal Police told AFP.

"The procedure demands that the maximum penalty for all crimes Assange is suspected for is written [in the warrant]," he explained.

"We described it only for the rape."

Mr Kangasvieri could not say how long it would take Swedish police to issue the new warrant.

Britain's Times newspaper reported Thursday that British police knew where the internet whistleblower was - believed to be a location in south-east England - but could not act on the information as the European arrest warrant was incorrectly filled out.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson has defended Mr Assange's decision to remain in hiding and not face up to the warrant.

He says Mr Assange has received assassination threats over the release of secret US documents and will remain in hiding for his own security.

US politicians have called for Mr Assange to face treason charges and an adviser to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper reportedly said he should be killed.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/02/3083338.htm?section=justin

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See toon at top. Assange should be strongly protected and after the diplomatic dust settles should be the hero of true democracy. All the professional liars that call themselves diplomats have been exposed as sociopaths who will butter their counterpart to their face while knifing them in the back... And of course this goes not only with the Yanks but the other sides too... It shows the world affairs are and have been at a sad low point for a very long time. History tells us this mistrust and disdain goes back at least 2500 years... Let's hope Assange's work could generate the start of a giant clean up and start afresh with honesty...

The carefully concocted versions of events that we used to swallow are now no longer swallowable. The latest revelations provided through the WikiLeaks website of potentially a quarter of a million ''diplomatic'' cables that passed between the US State Department and American embassies have driven home the old world/new world divide.

The material, in parts, is vastly entertaining, but hardly surprising. As one European leader told Hillary Clinton: ''Don't worry about your cables. You should see what we say about you.''

What is of lasting significance is that politicians and captains of industry and even the courts have lost the power to control the way information is drip-fed in their self-interest. That was the way it was done in the old world. Journalists grasped at snippets and morsels to assist the insider in some undeclared agenda. This new world represents as big a change for journalism as it does for the rest of the established order.

To use a horrid, new age expression, journalists have been ''disintermediated''. They are now required to distil and present information that has been obtained and published by another source. We see much the same thing happening in the world of ''open media'', also known as social media. This runs in a parallel stream with mainstream media, but pays no heed to usual restraints or conventions.

...

No lasting damage to the US or anyone else's national interest will flow from that, just as there was no damage to the US national interest from the Pentagon Papers. Embarrassment, certainly, accompanied by a lot of posturing, but life in a more informed way went on. The New Enlightenment has arrived and there's nothing anyone can do about it - thank god.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/wikileaks-opens-the-door-to-a-new-enlightenment-20101202-18i3l.html

The whistleblower website's original domain host, EveryDNS.net, says it terminated its services because Wikileaks had been coming under "massive" cyber attacks.

The new address - wikileaks.ch - was put online six hours after the original site wikileaks.org was killed.

An internet trace of the new domain name suggests that the site itself is still hosted in Sweden and in France.

Web users accessing the wikileaks.ch address are directed to a page under the URL http://213.251.145.96/ which gives them access to the former site, including a massive trove of leaked US diplomatic traffic.

The WikiLeaks website released more than 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables this week, which has left governments around the world scrambling to deal with the fallout.

Meanwhile, British media reports Scotland Yard could arrest the site's founder Julian Assange within days.

Prosecutors in Sweden want to question Mr Assange over alleged sex crimes involving two women during a visit to Stockholm in August.

Mr Assange, who was born in Australia, has not been charged and he denies the allegations.

He reportedly avoided arrest this week because Swedish authorities had filled out an Interpol red notice incorrectly.

Britain's Independent newspaper reports that police know Mr Assange's whereabouts in England and are expected to arrest him in the coming days.

Mr Assange's Stockholm-based lawyer Bjoern Hurtig says he will fight his client's extradition to Sweden in the event of his arrest.

"Together with my British colleague Mark Stephens and international experts, we will fight the extradition warrants," he said.

A WikiLeaks spokesman says Mr Assange has to remain out of the public eye because he is facing assassination threats following the whistleblowing website's publication of the secret cables.

Several US senators have also called for him to be charged with espionage.

Senator Dianne Feinstein says the leak is a serious breach of national security and action must be taken.

"We have reviewed the espionage statutes and we believe it qualifies," she said.

"That this, allowed to be carried out, incapacitates this nation to carry out business."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/03/3084384.htm

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Gus: one thing for sure is that Google would have already "archived" the site files. One of the secret of Google search is in it's ability to store all pages — including deleted pages from sites, including pages from sites that have bitten the dust... Uncanny...

Meanwhile Assange needs to be protected by governments from all the crap that is thrown at him. He may have to make a deal with the Mafia... Who knows?

Not since Leon Trotsky began publishing the secrets of the Romanov archives in 1918 has there been a more devastating leak of diplomatic documents than this week’s WikiLeaks dump. The Romanov files contained the secret treaties the imperial Allies had signed to carve up the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman empires after a war fought “to make the world safe for democracy.” It was to counter cynicism after revelation of these “secret treaties” that Woodrow Wilson called for “open covenants, openly arrived at.”

In 1898, a leaked document inflamed America and infuriated President McKinley, who had not wanted to go to war with Spain. The Spanish minister in Washington, Enrique Dupuy De Lome, had written an indiscreet letter that was stolen by a sympathizer of the Cuban revolution and leaked to William Randolph Hearst’s warmongering New York Journal. In the De Lome letter, the minister had said of McKinley that he is “weak, and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a … politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.” Six days later, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. Hearst’s Journal screamed Spanish “treachery.” And the war was on. On Jan. 16, 1917, the German Foreign Secretary Zimmermann had cabled his envoy in Mexico City to convey an offer. If Mexico would join Germany in a war against the United States, Mexico’s reward would be Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Written in code, the Zimmermann telegram was intercepted and deciphered by the British, who happily turned it over to the Americans.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/12/02/the-911-of-american-diplomacy/

Meanwhile at the servile sunshine country:

Attorney-General Robert McClelland says nothing is stopping fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from coming home to Australia.

Mr McClelland says Assange, who says he has been "abandoned" by Australia, is "entitled" to come home and could also obtain consular assistance overseas.

But as US anger over Wikileaks' massive cable dump grows, Mr McClelland has warned that the Government also has obligations to the US in the investigation of criminal matters.

A global arrest warrant for Assange was issued last week as Wikileaks pressed on with its release of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell says Assange should be prosecuted by US authorities because he is a "high-tech" terrorist.

Over the weekend Assange said he would like to return to Australia but said Mr McClelland had made it clear he could not return.

But Mr McClelland says this is not the case, saying Assange is "entitled" to come home and could also obtain consular assistance overseas.

"That is the fact," he said.

"But equally he is aware that Australia has obligations pursuant to agreements we have signed that ensure we will provide mutual assistance to countries investigating criminal law enforcement matters.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/06/3085658.htm

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And now from an expert putting his neck out:

You see, this is the first time anything like WikiLeaks has been attempted. Yes, there have been leaks prior to this, but never before have hyperdistribution and cryptoanarchism come to the service of the whistleblower. This is a new thing, and as well thought-out as WikiLeaks might be, it isn’t perfect. How could it be? It’s untried, and untested. Or was. Now that contact with the enemy has been made - the state with all its powers - it has become clear where WikiLeaks has been found wanting. WikiLeaks needs a distributed network of servers that are too broad and too diffuse to be attacked. WikiLeaks needs an alternative to the Domain Name Service. And WikiLeaks needs a funding mechanism which can not be choked off by the actions of any other actor.

We’ve been here before. This is 1999, the company is Napster, and the angry party is the recording industry. It took them a while to strangle the beast, but they did finally manage to choke all the life out of it - for all the good it did them. Within days after the death of Napster, Gnutella came around, and righted all the wrongs of Napster: decentralised where Napster was centralised; pervasive and increasingly invisible. Gnutella created the ‘darknet’ for file-sharing which has permanently crippled the recording and film industries. The failure of Napster was the blueprint for Gnutella.

In exactly the same way - note for note -the failures of WikiLeaks provide the blueprint for the systems which will follow it, and which will permanently leave the state and its actors neutered. Assange must know this - a teenage hacker would understand the lesson of Napster. Assange knows that someone had to get out in front and fail, before others could come along and succeed. We’re learning now, and to learn means to try and fail and try again.

This failure comes with a high cost. It’s likely that the Americans will eventually get their hands on Assange - a compliant Australian Government has already made it clear that it will do nothing to thwart or even slow that request - and he’ll be charged with espionage, likely convicted, and sent to a US federal prison for many, many years. Assange gets to be the scapegoat, the pinup boy for a new kind of anarchism. But what he’s done can not be undone; this tear in the body politic will never truly heal.

Everything is different now. Everything feels more authentic. We can choose to embrace this authenticity, and use it to construct a new system of relations, one which does not rely on secrets and lies. A week ago that would have sounded utopian, now it’s just facing facts. I’m hopeful. For the first time in my life I see the possibility for change on a scale beyond the personal. Assange has brought out the radical hiding inside me, the one always afraid to show his face. I think I’m not alone.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/41846.html

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/1176

and yet another side of the real julia .....

The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions was the most significant disarmament and humanitarian treaty negotiated in more than a decade. It unequivocally seeks to ban cluster munitions, and the suffering they cause, for all time. Australia is one of more than a hundred countries to have signed the Convention and a Senate committee is currently reviewing the ratification legislation. Many of Australia's military allies have also joined the Convention, with the United States being a key exception.

And this is where the Australian government runs into problems. In its efforts (some might say overly enthusiastic efforts) to keep a powerful military ally onside, the Australian government has drafted legislation that is littered with alarming loopholes which, to my mind, directly undermine the very spirit and intention of the Convention.

Of course it is important for Australia to maintain military cooperation with its allies. Such cooperation is already preserved by the Convention, which does not jeopardise military operations with countries that are not parties to the Convention. Further, any unknowing or inadvertent participation in the use of cluster munitions by Australia in the course of such cooperation would not constitute an offence under the Convention. This is as it should be.

However, Australia's proposed legislation goes too far in paving the way for Australian forces to actively assist in activities that are explicitly prohibited by the Convention.

I find it particularly worrying that the Australian government has seen fit to isolate Australia in this manner. We are the only country thus far to give a blanket exemption to our military allies, allowing them unfettered access to transit their cluster bombs across our territory and stockpile these awful weapons on our soil. Apart from causing Australia international embarrassment, and arguably subverting our obligations under the Convention, what sort of precedent is Australia setting for other countries considering ratification of the Convention? Do we want our demonstrably weak interpretation of the Convention to stand as an international example for others to follow?

Australia Must Stand Up To US On Cluster Bomb Legislation