WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi described in the latest leaked cables as a "mercurial and eccentric" figure who suffers severe phobias and enjoys flamenco dancing. Photograph: Guardian/EPA

10.57am: Operation Payback, a hacking group that claimed credit for
taking down the website of a Swiss Bank that cut off funds to Julian Assange, appears to have struck again.

MasterCard's website is currently unavailable after a similar attack in protest at its decision to cut payments to WikiLeaks, according Business Insider.

Mastercard.com is down, and Anon_operation just tweeted that it's due to a DDOS attack. Of course, Mastercard is one of the payment services that cut off the ability to donate to Wikileaks.

10.33am: WikiLeaks and Assange have "done substantial damage to US interests", US State department spokesman PJ Crowley said last night. You can see those comments on a new Guardian video. It also shows Crowley claiming that the US did not take a position on the arrest of Assange. He said this was a matter between the UK and Sweden.

Defence secretary Robert Gates showed what the US really thought about the arrest. When asked about it on a trip to Afghanistan yesterday he smirked, and said: "That sounds like good news to me".

10.12am: "This is the first real battleground between the political establishment and the open web," argues Emily Bell, The Guardian's former director of digital content.

The internet guru Clay Shirky said something similar on Newsnight last night. In an interesting discussion right at the end of the programme, he pointed to the American double standards being exposed by the WikiLeaks crisis.

"If WikiLeaks is attacked outside of due process and just run off the internet because the government has decided we don't like it, that would be a catastrophic loss for free speech," Shirky said.

Shirky's blogpost on the issue, was quoted approvingly the Guardian's unusually long editorial today.

10.04am: Stop writing about Assange, pleads the writer and Observer columnist John Naughton on his blog Memex 1.1.

John Naughton


The obsession with Julian Assange would be comical if it weren't so misleading. One can see why news editors go for it, of course. First of all there's a handsome, enigmatic, brooding, Svengali-like hero/villain allegedly pitting himself against the world's only superpower. Add in allegations of sexual crimes, a handful of celebrity supporters and a Court-side scrum and you've got a tabloid dream story.

Assange is undoubtedly an interesting figure, but to personalise the crisis in these terms is a failure of journalism...

WikiLeaks is bigger than Assange, and it would survive his disappearance, whether by imprisonment or worse - just as Al Qaeda would survive the death of Osama bin Laden

9.41am: There's been an almighty backlash to a piece in the Huffington Post by the writer Naomi Wolf defending Julian Assange against the rape charges.

In a sarcastic open letter to Interpol, Wolf wrote:

As a feminist, I am also pleased that the alleged victims are using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings. That's what our brave suffragette foremothers intended.

The piece provoked hundreds of hostile comments. Amy Siskind, president of the New Agenda, replied with a sarcastic open letter to Wolf.

It was so awesome that your piece made fun of Julian Assange's [alleged] victims. What better way to discourage young women from reporting attempted or successful rapes.

9.14am: There's been some interesting reaction and revelations overnight in Australia.

Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister and now foreign minister, said the leaks are the fault of the Americans, not the Australian Julian Assange.

"Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the U.S. diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that," Rudd told Reuters.

The context for this is that leaked cables portray Rudd as a "control freak", the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Another US cable accused Rudd of ''self-serving and inaccurate leaking''.

9.05am: Assange spent his first night in Wandsworth prison last night after being remanded until next Tuesday.

I've been told that his lawyer Mark Stephens says the first date he has been offered to visit Assange is next Monday, the day before his next bail hearing.

"That gives me one day to take instructions and prepare his case," Stephens said.

Stephens also said he had asked the Australian High Commissioner to request copies of the Swedish prosecutors' evidence against Assange ahead of his next hearing.

8.48am: Julian Assange is lionised in the Sydney Morning Herald as "the Ned Kelly of the digital age".

Bryce Lowry writes:

Assange is a cyber-bushranger: a renegade taunter of authority and inspiration to many who marvel at his daring to challenge the status quo.

Like the 19th-century outlaw, the 21st-century incarnation has his hideouts, sympathisers and accomplices. In the digital age, though, the weapon is a website; the bullets, information. The problem for today's enforcers is that it is not at all clear if it's actually illegal for Assange to shoot.

Writing in the Independent, Johann Hari, also piles on the praise for Assange:

Every one of us owes a debt to Julian Assange. Thanks to him, we now know that our governments are pursuing policies that place you and your family in considerably greater danger. Wikileaks has informed us they have secretly launched war on yet another Muslim country, sanctioned torture, kidnapped innocent people from the streets of free countries and intimidated the police into hushing it up, and covered up the killing of 15,000 civilians – five times the number killed on 9/11. Each one of these acts has increased the number of jihadis. We can only change these policies if we know about them – and Assange has given us the black-and-white proof.

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy, according to an editorial in the Times.

Mr Assange would probably not have been remanded in custody if he had shown more respect for the rule of law ...

It may be that he is entirely innocent of the Swedish allegations of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion, involving two women. If that is the case it would make more sense for him to face the charges and be cleared. Sweden is not a banana republic, after all...

He should not be made a martyr over a grubby issue that is wholly separate from freedom of expression.

8.38am: Scotland's first minister was also asked about the cables on the Today programme. He said:

Alex Salmond

Frankly I don't believe anybody seriously believes that the Scottish government acted in anything other than the precepts of Scots justice. And incidentally this information - as opposed to what is it suggests perhaps about other people - vindicates and bears out that position.

Last night, Salmond's office issued this statement.

The cables confirm what we always said – that our only interest was taking a justice decision based on Scots law without fear or favour, which was exactly what was done, and that our public position was identical to our private one.

They also show that the former UK government were playing false on the issue, with a different public position from their private one - which must be deeply embarrassing for the Labour Party in Scotland - and that the US government was fully aware of the pressure being applied to the UK government.

8.26am: Move along now, nothing to see here was former justice secretary Jack Straw's line on the cables about the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme he trotted out a now familiar line that the cables don't "really add anything to what was already known". He insisted he had "nothing to do with the release" of the Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Jack Straw

It was a matter of record that Libya wanted al-Megrahi released. It is also a matter of record that I signed up to a prisoner transfer agreement in 2007 in respect of general prisoner transfers, but that the agreement was never the vehicle for al-Megrahi's release.Indeed, he was refused transfer under the PTA.

This was a decision that was made by the Scottish Government and nobody else, they did it on the basis of their law and their practice so far as the release of people with serious medical conditions on compassionate grounds.

7.37am: It's Libya day on the leaked cable front, plus all the fallout from the refusal of British judge to grant bail to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The events of yesterday raise a number of interesting questions.

• What next for WikiLeaks? Critics say Assange's imprisonment highlights the over-reliance of WikiLeaks on one person, writes Rob Booth. There are plans up to allow Assange to manage the organisation from a prison cell if his incarceration proves prolonged.
• Could Assange face an espionage trial in the US? The Independent thinks so. "Informal discussions have already taken place between US and Swedish officials over the possibility of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being delivered into American custody," according to its diplomatic sources. It adds: "The US Justice Department is considering charging Mr Assange with espionage offences over his website's unprecedented release of classified US diplomatic files."
• Are the rape charges against Assange trumped up? To all the conspiracy theorists Esther Addley has a disturbing must-read account of slander and misogny that has greeted Assange's accusers. "Rarely can there have been a rape case where the personal details of the alleged victims have been so eagerly sought out by so many," she writes. She concludes: "The lives of his two accusers ... whether he is guilty or not, are likely to be depressingly predictable."

Meanwhile, the latest cables make more compelling reading and pose yet more some awkward questions for world leaders particularly in Britain, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Here's a round-up:

• The British government feared Libya would take "harsh and immediate" action against UK interests if the convicted Lockerbie bomber died.
• The cables describe Muammar Gaddafi, as a "mercurial and eccentric" figure who suffers from severe phobias, enjoys flamenco dancing and horse-racing, acts on his whims and irritates friends and enemies alike.
• "Gaddafi relies heavily on his long-time Ukrainian nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska, who has been described as a 'voluptuous blonde'."
• The cables expose a world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll behind the official pieties of Saudi Arabian royalty.
• 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.
• The US TV shows Desperate Housewives and Late Show With David Letterman are doing more to persuade Saudi youth to reject violent jihad than hundreds of millions of dollars of US government propaganda, according to US informants.