There is a Mount Everest-sized amount of news, information, and analysis on the Internet about Wikileaks. The release of, to date, 1,269 diplomatic cables out of a total of 251,287 that Wikileaks has in its possession has sparked a furor in the United States and globally — although the tenor of the debate in this country is strikingly different from what it is in many other parts of the world.

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...

And now the latest development from the world of science: Scientists have created mice that are the genetic product of two fathers, the latest in a series of unusual experiments in mammalian reproduction. Researchers at University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and elsewhere first engineered a female mouse whose eggs contained the DNA from a male. When the female was mated with another male, the offspring...

Globalization applies to information as well as corporate CEOs looking for cheap labor. Those high-paid, unionized manufacturing jobs will never again be the ticket to the middle class for unskilled American workers because of global economic competition that is here to stay? Well, the Internet is here to stay, too — and the Internet-fueled phenomenon known as “crowd-sourcing,” or open-source...

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,...

UPDATE Tues Dev 7, 2010 2:11 Mountain Time. London judge refuses bail to Assange, saying that he has frail ties to British residency, has much money accessible, and is thereby too easily able to not re-appear in court. Mr. Assange has thus been sent to an undisclosed jail location (as is usual in London) until further hearing in a week or so. His charges were defended by his lawyer, re alledgedly raping a woman...

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...

It seems my last post on TMV (WikiLeaks: Educating Americans About Open Society) has touched a raw nerve in some. Well that was the exact purpose. My journalistic mission has been to get people out of their comfort zone and provoke them to participate in a spirited no-holds-barred discussion. I try to irritate those who have a habit of trivializing issues I have been writing for more than two decades that...

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...

William Kern, my colleague at TMV, quoted a Spanish paper’s headline: “WikiLeaks: The Assault on ‘Big Brother’ Begins (El Pais, Spain). He also mentions another article headlined “Thanks to WikiLeaks’ Disclosure, Classical Diplomacy is Dead.” To the world at large America now, post-United States diplomatic cables leak, appears as a large wild elephant caught in the quagmire...

As I have pointed out over recent days, one of the most riveting aspects of the disclosure of classified U.S. diplomatic cables is that because they touch upon local issues and local leaders around the world, there are fascinating nuances of reaction from country to country. Below are three articles we’ve translated from Spain’s El Pais, one of the five newspapers in the consortium selected by...

As the US establishment, and many in the American media, have begun to build up hysteria against WikiLeaks and virtually calling for the assassination of Julian Assange, I am reminded of the warning by President John F. Kennedy which is so relevant even today (See You Tube). Kennedy warned that there was a “danger to the survival of our nation if our traditions don’t survive.” Kennedy said:...

The problem with streaming video to your television is not the technology. Apple TV is today’s case-in-point. Walt Mossberg: I’ve been testing the new Apple TV, including trying out AirPlay using various devices, and found that it performs as advertised. It has a clean, easy interface, does a great job of streaming content from your own computers, and it allows you to rent TV shows at just 99 cents...

TPM explains how Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, asked and Amazon complied: Lieberman said in a statement that Amazon’s “decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.” Committee staff had seen news reports yesterday that...

With once secret U.S. diplomatic cables washing over the world, are we getting all worked up over gossip everyone already new? According to columnist Clovis Rossi of Brazil’s Folha newspaper, so far at least, there is precious little ‘news’ coming out of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables doled out to some of the world’s leading newspapers. For Brazil’s Folha,...

In July of this year, Dana Priest and William M. Arkin published a series of articles in the Washington Post that were the fruit of a two-year investigation into America’s national security apparatus. In the introduction to the series — called Top Secret America — Priest and Arkin wrote:

Don’t Taze My Junk, Bro by Will Durst One thing you can say about this whole TSA enhanced pat-down mess: nobody will ever board Virgin Airlines again without ruefully grimacing. Folks are flipping out like wolverines bouncing off of submarine trampolines over new regulations requiring a prospective flier to submit to having his or her naughty bits exposed for all the world to see, or else agree to a groinal...

Steve Benen:

Happy Thanksgiving Day weekend everyone! In addition to covering the crisis in North Korea, we’re still busy covering the aftermath of the Russia-NATO Summit. After the summit last week, many analysts were baffled by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for joint ‘sectoral missile defense,’ which appears to put most of the responsibility for defending against a rogue missile...

Hi there, Dr. E. here, Some strongly question further erosion of our rights to privacy without the input or vote of the people by referendum. Many, regardless of political affiliation, libertarian, independent, Democrats, Republicans are enraged, especially those with children who are traveling this holiday. Here is a piece by New York City resident who travels much and minces no words. Disclosure: He is a...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Ron has had an increasing amount of posts about the coming energy shortages that are going to threaten industrial society. The estimates are converging across nations and social groups: we have already hit peak conventional oil and it is almost definite we will have sizeable overall oil shortfalls by 2015. Various agencies across the world project this to be around 10 million barrels per day or about 15% of...

Who is Paula? I don’t know. But Barbara Bush told Larry King that it was Paula who put the fetus in the jar, and Larry, apparently — unless Politico cut it out of this video — was not curious enough to ask:

The TSA has been given new electronic and procedural tools to search for possible bombs and weapons carried by airline passengers before they board any planes at U.S. airports. If a person objects to a highly-revealing body scan (TSA employees can see every roll of fat now) then the person will have to submit to a complete body search by hand (which could be devastating for those who are particularly ticklish)....

Air Power The Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) or Lightning II, the military’s next-generation fighter designed for bombing and air-to-air combat, is one of the most ambitious aircraft programs ever. It is a huge international program involving eight international partners or participants, each one contributing varying amounts to the development phase and cost of the program and each one...