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Comment by larrywright | Hacker News Reader

That's really an excellent point. Wikileaks is scandalous because it was leaked, not because of the content. There are a handful of embarrassing things in there, but that's it.

The best analogy I could come up with is if someone leaked all the private Facebook messages from all the students at a high school. Sure, feelings would be hurt, but at the end of the day it's really no big deal.

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There was shocking information in the leaks -- that the government deliberately classified information that would simply make for bad PR and not to save lives or anything else.

To argue otherwise is anti-democratic.

Not really. I was not shocked. Were you shocked? If so, have you gotten all the sand out of your ears yet?

Well, I suspected it but in my opinion the public in general should be outraged by it. It's also a significant violation of the laws that prohibit the government from propagandizing the American people.

Lotta depressed kids would probably kill themselves if that happened.

Kind of. The cablegate is scandalous because it shows that wikileaks is serious and efficient. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain why virtually every country and major corporation in the world is shitting their pants now and want Assange's head on a silver plate. They figured they may be the next ones.

I'm not sure how trustworthy the following is, but they say that Medvedev's office unofficially recommends NGO to nominate Assange for a Nobel Peace Prize.

My guess it's because the cables regarding Russia are ridiculous beyond any recognition, they don't have ANY hard data and consist mostly of hoax and whatnot, there isn't anything there what you couldn't read in opposition media.

Public reaction here is more like:

    Cable: Russian government is mafia
    Russian citizen: ha-ha, oh wow

It also seems Putin has heavily criticized the UK for arresting Assange, claiming is the evidence that UK doesn't have a real democracy. I have no idea what's going on: the only explanation I could come with is that Putin is trolling hard.

He is just having fun :)

The claim sounds weird to you because you are considering how the claim sounds to a citizen in a western democracy. The truth is, Putin really couldn't care less about that. The remarks were absolutely aimed at Russian citizens -- see, we are not that bad in comparison.

There appears to be an ongoing low-level diplomatic conflict between the UK and Russia since the FSB guy who was killed on British soil - I'm sure that plays a part in his comment.

The "conflict" has been going on ever since the Berezovsky received asylum in the UK. He continues to fund activities against the Russian government, but the UK refuses to extradite him. The reason all the politicians in the UK freaked out over Litvinenko is that it puts London's reputation as the leading safe haven for defectors/dissidents/mafiosos and their money in doubt. A big reason that London is the world's financial capital is that it is also the world's money laundering capital.

Of course none of this applies to people like Assange because they don't have any money or come from countries the US doesn't like.

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