Those who have criticized WikiLeaks and its founder for targeting U.S. misdeeds and not Russia’s or China’s are about to get their wish. And in terms of Russian politics, this is sure to be a Battle Royal. That’s because Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper partly owned by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, has just entered into a partnership with WikiLeaks. And according to this article from the newspaper by columnist Roman Anin, an acquaintance of Julian Assange,...

Christmas or no Christmas, the WikiLeaks juggernaut marches on. In this report from Juan Jesus Aznarez of Spain’s El Pais, a U.S. diplomatic cable has emerged that shows America pressuring Brazil to get Hugo Chavez to ‘show more restraint’ when speaking of the U.S. and its president, George W. Bush, who Chavez referred to as ‘El Diablo [Satan], a ‘donkey’, an ‘alcoholic’ and a ‘murderer,’ among other things. For El Pais, Juan Jesus Aznarez...

First – I want to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the entire Moderate Voice community from all the people of Worldmeets.US. As one of the Net’s great efforts to provide a platform for all viewpoints, the Moderate Voice makes a contribution to building a better world, and we are proud to play our part. As we have seen quite frequently over the past few years, sports and politics frequently collide, particularly when it involves a global sporting event. Weeks ago, the tiny...

One would be hard pressed to find a country – or a media – more supportive of American exceptionalism than Romania. In a column sure to warm the Christmas hearts of the American right, columnist Cristian Campeanu of Romania Libera writes that despite the massive evidence WikiLeaks has provided of the accuracy of America’s global view, the ‘real’ world continues to obstinately refuse to dispense with the myth of the “Great Satan” propagated by the radical...

With the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Beijing is at its angriest. This article by writer Dai Yan for China’s state-run Global Times lays bare China’s never-ending consternation over centuries of abuse at the hands of the Western powers, and the indignance many Chinese now feel toward the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. For the state-run Global Times, Dai Yan writes in small part: Anyone with a little political common sense knows that human rights...

According to columnist Sergio Malbergier of Brazil’s Folha newspaper, the controversy over WikiLeaks’ release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables will be remembered not for its ‘rich collection of truisms and gossip,’ but for announcing a global cyberwar. And all of us are its foot soldiers. For Folha, Sergio Malbergier writes in part: This is a war that’s anything but virtual, and is fought between people, companies, organizations, countries or any combination of these...

Is the U.S. government hypocritical to castigate China for limiting press and Internet freedom, while seeking to jail WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for making use of these very same freedoms? According to this painfully ironic editorial from China’s state-controlled Global Times, in pursing the arrest of Julian Assange, America only inflicts further damage to its already tarnished public image. The Global Times editorial says in part: And all of this is happening in a country that loudly boasts...

Is Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, being persecuted for the crimes of his accusers? Patrik Etschmayer of Switzerland’s News writes that the world’s power elite don’t like – and aren’t used to – having their incompetence and misbehavior so roundly exposed, and in an effort to deflect public angst directed at them, are trying to make Julian Assange the issue. For Switzerland’s News, Patrik Etschmayer writes in part: WikiLeaks is a hot topic and...

Has WikiLeaks turned the pecking order of global decision making upside down? For Liberation, French historian Elisabeth Roudinesco asserts that if the recent massive disclosure of classified U.S. diplomatic cables through five of the world’s best known newspapers tells us nothing else, it’s that hackers now rule the world. Historian Elisabeth Roudinesco, for Liberation, writes in part: If the hacker [Assange] has been able to become a global Internet hero, he has also become the prey...

While criticism of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange is fierce in some quarters, people in many countries long for him or someone like him to give leaders and secret communications in their countries the ‘WikiLeaks treatment.’ One example is columnist Elizabeth Araujo of Venezuela’s Tal Cual, who wonders what skeletons would be found in the confidential closet of President Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution. For Tal Cual, Elizabeth Araujo writes in part: One thing...

A good German counterpoint to yesterday’s article from the Berliner Zeitung headlined U.S. Assault on Assange Betrays America’s Founding Principles is this article from Die Welt, headlined WikiLeaks Threat to America is Nothing for Europe to Snicker About by columnist Thomas Kielinger. Kielinger warns readers that to encourage and support organizations that undermine U.S. power and credibility like WikiLeaks is tantamount to undermining European security. For Die Welt, Thomas Kielinger...

When people in other countries quote the Founding Fathers to Americans, they are almost invariably seeking to strike a nerve that they hope will get the United States to change course. Columnist Holger Schmale in this article from of Germany’s Berliner Zeitung asserts to his readers that by seeking the arrest and prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Washington is acting hypocritically and making a mockery of the ideals it seeks to promote around the world. For the Berliner Zeitung,...

Today, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize – but his chair went empty. Beijing refused to allow him, his wife or any of his relatives to travel to Oslo and accept the award. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, awarding the Prize to Liu Xiaobo is part of a long-running Western conspiracy to obstruct China’s ‘peaceful rise’ and is a ‘political farce.’ The Global Times...

The ramifications of the WikiLeaks disclosures continue to ripple around the world. One country that has had to scramble more than most to deal with the fallout from the massive leak of U.S. diplomatic communications is Lebanon. Not only did the cables reveal the Saudis suggesting an armed Arab force to ‘destroy’ Hezbullah, which is well represented in the current Lebanese government, but news that Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri advised American officials that they ‘must be willing...

Mexico is another country plunged into turmoil by the unvarnished views of American diplomats made available by WikiLeaks. According to Mexico’s Coordinator of the Dialogue for the Reconstruction of Mexico, Manuel Camacho Solís, writing for El Universal, ‘If someone had been dedicated to tracking files that are the most devastating to Mexico in the State Department archives, he would have been hard pressed to find a more damaging set.’ For Mexico’s El Universal, Manuel...

What is the long-term significance of the disclosures by WikiLeaks? And how are international journalists coping with interpreting the huge mass of once-declassified material suddenly flung into the public domain? These two articles – one from Germany and the other from France – give a European accounting of the answers. According to the first article headlined WikiLeaks Makes Real a Global Public Sphere by Ines Kappert of Germany’s Die Tageszeitung, WikiLeaks has put more power...

Has China been too restrained and too considerate of its nervous neighbors, by not building an aircraft carrier of its own? According to this article from China’s state-run Global Times, America’s recent military exercises with South Korea near the China coast is all the reason Beijing needs to set aside any misgivings and begin construction. For China’s state-controlled Global Times, Sun Peisong, director of China’s Jiangsu Lianyungang Development Research Institute, writes...

Are the people of WikiLeaks just like the neighborhood gossips, and doesn’t the name of their leader Julian Assange sound like a brand of hairspray? Columnist Joao Quadros of Portugal’s Jornal De Negocios takes a humorous and uniquely Portuguese and European look at what, in terms of ink spilled, may be one of the most significant news stories in years. For the Portugal’s Jornal De Negocios, Joao Quadros writes in part: Immediately, the U.S. administration strongly criticized...

The reaction of China to the disclosure by WikiLeaks of U.S. diplomatic cables is particularly interesting. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, Beijing suspects that the U.S. may have some kind of ‘tacit understanding’ with WikiLeaks. But even if WikiLeaks developed organically, the editorial says that China is concerned that as a child of the Western-dominated Internet, it could end up damaging its own interests far more than it appears to have hurt...

It’s one of the most fascinating details to emerge from the leak of classified U.S. diplomatic dispatches: Leaders in Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf nations want the United States to stop Iran and its nuclear program, or in the words of Saudi King Abdullah, ‘cut off the head of the snake.’ But as the articles below show, while the two nations may in fact be at loggerheads, they agree on one thing: both in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the suspicion is that this massive release...