Bahrain/Egypt Video & Transcript: Nabeel Rajab and Alaa Abd-El Fattah with Julian Assange

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Alaa Abd-El Fattah is a prominent Egyptian activist and blogger. Imprisoned in 2006 for 45 days by the Mubarak regime, he was also detained for more than two months by Egypt's military rulers at the end of 2011.

Nabeel Rajab is the head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He has been detained on several occasions by the regime and is currently in prison after his arrest last Saturday.

Just before Rajab's detention, the two men were interviewed by Julian Assange for almost three hours --- Assange's organisation WikiLeaks has posted a full transcript.

Middle East Video: From Media Battle in Syria to Imprisoned Egyptian Blogger to Video Games

Al Jazeera's Listening Post, takes on the contest between the regime and opposition to frame the presentation of the conflict in Syria, the situation of imprisoned Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah, the latest news from Wikileaks and Julian Assange, and the case of an Israeli whistle-blower.

And then there is the last item on how video games are being used to simulate the news, hopefully engaging, educating, and inspiring audiences along the way:

US WikiLeaks Feature: Former State Department Spokesman Crowley --- Why the Treatment of Bradley Manning is Stupid

Bradley ManningWhen I was asked about the "elephant in the room," I said the treatment of Private Manning, while well-intentioned, was "ridiculous" and "counterproductive" and, yes, "stupid".

I stand by what I said. The United States should set the global standard for treatment of its citizens --- and then exceed it. It is what the world expects of us. It is what we should expect of ourselves.

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WikiLeaks Latest: US Department of Justice Subpoenas Twitter Records of Volunteers (Greenwald)

Last night, Birgitta Jónsdóttir --- a former WikiLeaks volunteer and current member of the Icelandic Parliament --- announced on Twitter) that she had been notified by Twitter that the DOJ had served a Subpoena demanding information "about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009.

What hasn't been reported is that the Subpoena served on Twitter -- which is actually an Order from a federal court that the DOJ requested -- seeks the same information for numerous other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Julian Assange.  It also seeks the same information for Bradley Manning and for WikiLeaks' Twitter account.

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WikiLeaks Shocker: Julian Assange and the Missing Library Book

In its four years of existence, WikiLeaks has whipped up a controversy or two, but it took Ms EA to uncover what may be the biggest scandal of all. On a trip Down Under, she happened to find this document which, strangely enough, has not appeared on WikiLeaks website.

Click to enlarge the "smoking gun", or rather "smoking book", from the past of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:

That's right. The devious Julian strolled into the University of Melbourne in 2004, picked up Introduction to Non-Classical Logic by Graham Priest --- no doubt to confound the media interviewers who would try to trip him up six years later --- and never returned the book.

The Melbourne Library Police note, "Despite many attempts by staff he was unable to be contacted." I can help them out a bit if they wish, but I have a feeling they may have to take their place in a queue waiting to have words with Mr Assange....

Reality Check: Journalism is not an Attack, WikiLeaks is not Warfare

I am not an insurgent, and neither are you. Until we realize that, until we understand the difference between journalism and war, then the government will continue to claim it's acting in self-defence.

Stop giving the government an excuse for repression. Stop calling Wikileaks "warfare".

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Afghanistan: Wikileaks and the Pentagon's Deceptive Response

Remember the fuss this summer, after Wikileaks released almost 92,000 documents on the US military intervention in Afghanistan, when the Pentagon and US military said that the primary effect of the published material would be the exposure of troops and those helping the Americans, putting their lives at risk at the hands of the Taliban?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, spared no words accusing Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." 

At the time --- while not ignoring the possibility --- it felt primarily like a campaign by the Obama Administration and the Department of Defense, not only to limit the damage of the documents but to turn the story into one of Wikileaks' responsibility rather than the complications of American military action. At the start of 2010, the US Government had been slow to respond to Wikileaks' presentation of the "Collateral Murder" video, showing the apparent gunning down of Iraqi civilians by American planes. This time would be different.

This weekend, however, there was a twist in the Obama Administration's tale. A 16 August letter from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Senator Carl Levin, the head of the Armed Services Committee, emerged: "The review [by the Department of Defense] to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure."

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