Demonstrations Worldwide To Demand WikiLeaks’ Founders Release

(9AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports today that online supporters of Julian Assange working through the Spanish-language website Free WikiLeaks called for worldwide demonstrations Saturday to press for the release of the founder of WikiLeaks from a London jail where he awaits possible extradition to Sweden, and called for the restoration of the Wikileaks.org domain, which Amazon shut down after WikiLeaks began publishing secret US Embassy Diplomatic Cables two weeks ago.

Mirrors of the WikiLeaks site state that “On Sunday 28th November 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the US Government’s foreign activities.”

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.

The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments — even the most corrupt — around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.

The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of “The Iraq War Logs”, the world’s previously largest classified information release).

The Spanish language site urged rallies at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT) in eight Spanish cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, while similar demonstrations were planned in Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Bogota and Lima, says AFP.

Meanwhile BBC News Europe also reported today that “Protests have taken place across Spain calling for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is facing extradition from the UK to Sweden for alleged sexual offences” and that “The crowd outside the British embassy in Madrid wore Julian Assange masks as they called for his release”, and that the Free WikiLeaks site demanded that Visa and MasterCard restore credit card services because “no one had proven Mr Assange’s guilt”.

Saturday’s protests were some of the first street demonstrations in support of Wikileaks, although there has been a worldwide outpouring of online support shown for Mr. Assange.

The Free Wikileaks site said protests were also planned for other Spanish cities, including Valencia and Seville.