Agence France Presse reports:
Vladimir Putin on Thursday led a growing band of international leaders voicing support for WikiLeaks’ boss Julian Assange, describing his detention in Britain as “undemocratic”.
The Russian prime minister’s broadside came as hackers escalated their cyber war on opponents of the whistleblower website, setting their sights on Amazon.com.
“Why was Mr. Assange hidden in jail? Is that democracy? As we say in the village: the pot is calling the kettle black,” Putin said in response to a question on Russia’s undemocratic image in US embassy cables leaked by the website.
His comments echoed Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who expressed “solidarity” with Assange, blasting the Australian activist’s arrest as a blow against “freedom of expression.”
Assange has “exposed a diplomacy that had appeared unreachable,” said Lula, who criticized the failure of other governments to challenge Assange’s detention.
“They have arrested him and I don’t hear so much as a single protest for freedom of expression,” he said.
The Guardian adds:
Russia has suggested that Julian Assange should be awarded the Nobel peace prize, in an unexpected show of support from Moscow for the jailed WikiLeaks founder.
In what appears to be a calculated dig at the US, the Kremlin urged non-governmental organisations to think seriously about “nominating Assange as a Nobel Prize laureate”.
“Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him,” the source from inside president Dmitry Medvedev’s office told Russian news agencies. Speaking in Brussels, where Medvedev was attending a Russia-EU summit yesterday , the source went on: “Maybe, nominate him as a Nobel Prize laureate.”
Interesting to see World leaders come out in defense of Mr Assange , but not surprising. One would think that with as many so called smart thinking people that permeates the Washington D.C. area, especially the think tanks, that they would insist on a rethinking of the goals of the U.S. Government Empire building! We also have all those Military officers still fighting the Cold War, adding the War profiteers too. The costs of having the fingers in every nook & cranny is unbearable, even for a country that prints it’s own money. It appears that the decline will be sooner rather then later, as the Congress will bankrupt the country with all the giveaways being formulated. The fools on the hill are delusional if they believe that the wealthy of this country will pick up the slack to finance the war machine after the World turns its back on them. What a joke it’s going to be on them, misery on the rest of the taxpayers, at least those that still have employment.
Assange is a hero so in Manning.
So happy that Wikileaks is still doing the right thing and exposing more material as we speak.
Meanwhile the war criminal Obama keeps on killing, imprisioning and torturing people around the globe and has been awarded the Nobel prise of peace…
It may become a tradition that the Nobel Prize winner will not be allowed to take part in the ceremony and another wave of outrage will sweep over the whole international community next year.