Swedish prosecutors will make their appeal against bail for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the High Court on Thursday. The 39-year-old was granted bail at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday on the condition he provides sureties of £240,000 in cash. However, he was forced to remain in Wandsworth Prison pending the appeal.
Some of Mr Assange's supporters who provide the sureties are film director Ken Loach, film producer Michael Moore, human rights campaigners Bianca Jagger, Jemima Khan, Peter Tatchell, and journalists Yvonne Ridley and John Pilger.
Mr Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he denies sexually assaulting two women. He argues that the allegations against him are politically motivated and are designed to distract attention from the sensitive material being exposed by his whistle-blowing website.
Mr Assange is accused of having unprotected sex with a woman, identified only as Miss A, when she insisted he use a condom. He is also accused of having unprotected sex with another woman, Miss W, while she was asleep.
WikiLeaks exists, in part, because the mainstream media has failed to live up to its responsibility. The corporate owners have decimated newsrooms, making it impossible for good journalists to do their job. There is no time or money anymore for investigative journalism. Simply put, investors do not want those stories exposed. They like their secrets kept ... as secrets.
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Some in the corporate-owned press have dismissed the importance of WikiLeaks ("they've released little that's new!") or have painted them as simple anarchists ("WikiLeaks just releases everything without any editorial control!").
Imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt.
On August 6th, 2001, Mr Bush was handed a "secret" document. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages, it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.
However, if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes?
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