WikiLeaks rallies in Australia, US congressman writes to Robert Gates about Bradley Manning's "cruel and unusual" punishment and more of today's WikiLeaks news and views

11.40am: Some recent developments:

• A pre-recorded message from Julian Assange has been played to pro-WikiLeaks rally in Australia. He said he wants to return home to Sydney Melbourne and compared WikiLeaks to the peace movement, environmentalism and feminism. He said:

For the internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time. We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. Surely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.

Australia's ABC adds that he called on Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, to take "active steps to bring me home".

• Bradley Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, has posted the following statement on his blog about the US army private's citizenship:

PFC Manning does not hold a British passport, nor does he consider himself a British citizen. He is an American, and is proud to be serving in the United States Army. His current confinement conditions are troubling to many both here in the United States and abroad. This concern, however, is not a citizenship issue. Instead, it is one involving a basic fundamental right not to be unlawfully punished prior to trial. PFC Manning is not being held like any other detainee at Quantico. He is in Maximum Custody and under Prevention of Injury watch over the repeated recommendation of brig forensic psychiatrists. There has been no stated justification for PFC Manning's confinement conditions. It is the hope of the defense that through the various inquiries into the arbitrary nature of his confinement status, he will soon receive relief from these onerous conditions

• Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for his party's nomination in the last two presidential elections, has suggested in a letter to the US defence secretary that Manning could be being subject to "cruel and unusual" punishment in military jail. His phraseology is important - "cruel and unusual" punishment is in violation of the US constitution.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee", the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on himNow, reports indicate that the Army has taken Pfc. Manning, a soldier with documented mental health problems, and confined him under conditions that are almost guaranteed to exacerbate his mental health problems. If true, the Army's treatment would obviously constitute "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• Here is a link to Thursday's Wikiblog

12.50pm: The Telegraph has published cables on homegrown UK terrorism. In one, a US congressional delegation (which included Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman shot last month in Tucson) is told the following by a member of MI6 (name redacted):



The internal threat is growing more dangerous because some extremists are conducting non-lethal training without ever leaving the country. Should these extremists then decide to become suicide operatives, HMG intelligence resources, eavesdropping and surveillance would be hard pressed to find them on any "radar screen." XXXXXXXXXXXX described this as a "generational" problem that will not go away anytime soon

2.35pm: Clay Shirky on Comment is free:

For half a century, from 1946 to 2005, this use of transnational networks to get around national controls was asymmetric: governments could use this technique to surveil citizens, but not vice-versa. In 2006, WikiLeaks launched, holding out the possibility of evening up the odds, however slightly, in favour of the citizens. For the first three years of its existence, this change was more potential than actual, but in 2010, with the release of the Collateral Murder video, the Afghan war logs, and, most significantly, the US embassy cables, increased oversight of the state by citizens became real

3pm: The Cutline blog has a report on an event last night in New York with New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and the Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger. The two said Assange would have their support if the US were to bring a criminal prosecution against him:



"If, God forbid, ever this came to court, I would be completely side-by-side with him in terms of defending him with respect to what he did," said Rusbridger, one of the panelists, acknowledging that Assange and WikiLeaks should be afforded the same protections as journalists when it comes to the publication of government secrets. "Completely shoulder to shoulder," Rusbridger continued. "I've got great admiration for him in a lot of stuff he's done." And Keller? "In terms of his right to be protected for publishing secrets, I think we do stand by him," said the Times chief, though he was a bit less unequivocal in his response. "I think the Times' lawyers would prefer I not declare what I'd do in a court of law. Outside a court of law, I agree it would be very difficult to come up with a prosecution of Assange in a way that wouldn't be applicable to us."

There is more in the post on WikiLeaks-style drop boxes for news organisations.

4.15pm: Aftenposten, the Norwegian newspaper, has published a series of cables on political reform in Jordan. King Abdullah this week fired his cabinet and ordered the new prime minister to carry out political reforms.

This isn't the first time reforms have been promised in the country, and Aftenposten's own report (translation here) notes that Abdullah "has also promised reforms before – without having to implement them."

The cables discusses barriers to reform, such as tribal leaders with an interest in the status quo, but also whether Abdullah can implement it. When the prime minister most recently fired was appointed in 2009, US diplomats noted that "while the king's enthusiastic push for revitalised reforms and expressed anti-corruption sentiment is noteworthy, his designation letter to the new premier is a tall order for a cabinet and a parliament not yet formed, much less proven."

This is a US assessment from April 2009:

While the King promotes democratization indirectly, he has proved reluctant to spend political capital on pressing directly for reforms which could encroach on his power base of conservative tribal elites. We continue to push for changes to Jordan's electoral system, increased political space for civil society and the press, and the promotion of women´s rights.

4.40pm: Back next week.