The Telegraph reports that Assange refused to meet the film's star, Benedict Cumberbatch, who maintains that he's a fan:

"He didn't want to condone the film because he thought – hopefully erroneously when he sees the end product – that the project would castigate him and portray a negative side of his enterprise," the busy Cumberbatch told me when we talked at the Corinthia Hotel in London, where he was promoting Star Trek Into Darkness.

"He didn't want to meet me because he feels the source materials we've based the movie on were poisonous to his account of the events. When he sees it I hope he feels that it's more balanced. I think he will. I hope he will."

The film just finished shooting, but Assange obtained a copy of the script months ago, calling it "a lie upon lie" about his life and the organization.

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The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), or Scotland Yard, said the estimated cost of surrounding the Ecuadorean Embassy from June 19, 2012, when Assange entered the building, until Jan. 31, 2013, is the equivalent of $4.5 million.

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It is the second closed session in recent months. A portion of the proceedings were closed on March 1 to deliberate over whether the defense should be allowed access to a Defense Department “operator” — ”John Doe” — who was part of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and allegedly uncovered digital media with copies of documents Manning disclosed to WikiLeaks.

David Dishneau, who has been regularly covering the proceedings for the Associated Press, writes, “government secrecy” is reaching a “new level,” as “military judge, Col. Denise Lind, has ordered what prosecutors say is an unprecedented closed hearing Wednesday at Fort Meade to help her decide how much of Manning’s upcoming trial should be closed to protect national security.”

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The decision greatly offended some of the most militaristic LGBT organizations and activists, who condemned SF Pride. That ultimately led to capitulation by SF Pride president, Lisa Williams, who announced in a letter that Manning would not be honored this year.

She cast the reversal as a product of dysfunction in the organization:

Bradley Manning will not be a grand marshal in this year’s San Francisco Pride celebration. His nomination was a mistake and should never have been allowed to happen. A staff person at SF Pride, acting under his own initiative, prematurely contacted Bradley Manning based on internal conversations within the SF Pride organization. That was an error and that person has been disciplined. He does not now, nor did he at that time, speak for SF Pride.

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Reporting from the Fort Meade courtroom, Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola noted, Lind "wholly rejected the arguments the defense had made that evidence involving receipt of information by al-Qaida or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) would be prejudicial to proceedings."

However, Lind also ruled that the onus will be on the government to prove that Manning aided the enemy. As Gosztola reported:

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The cable aptly captures the Thatcher mythos:

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The late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi may have been a middleman for an arms deal in the 1970s, according to diplomatic cables searched by The Hindu newspaper. Gandhi was employed by Swedish group Saab-Scania to help sell its Viggen fighter jet reportedly because of access to his mother Indira Ghandi  -- prime minister at the time. In his press conference Monday, Julian Assange said this revelation is shaking Indian politics, as the Ghandi family still dominates India's ruling party.

Meanwhile, one cable dated October 18, 1973 sent to Washington by the US embassy to the Vatican reveals that the Vatican once dismissed reports of massacres by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as "Communist propaganda."

Updated, 9:56 a.m.: Assange compares the Kissinger Cables to "essentially like what Aaron Swartz was doing" -- namely collating documents which are hard to access, or available only through a specific intermediary.

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Glenn Greenwald, who sits on FPF's board, noted in the Guardian Tuesday, "One particularly oppressive rule governing the Manning trial has barred not only all video or audio recordings of the proceedings, but also any photographs being taken of Manning or even transcripts made of what is said in court. Combined with the prohibition on all press interviews with him, this extraordinary secrecy regime has meant that, in the two-and-a-half years since his arrest, the world has been prevented, literally, from hearing Manning's voice. That changes today."

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“Given the scope of the alleged misconduct, the seriousness of the charged offenses, and the evidence and testimony available, the United States intends to proceed with the court-martial to prove Manning committed the charged offenses beyond the lesser charges to which he has already pled guilty,” said a statement from the military district.

As the Guardian's Ed Pilkington pointed out, "It will be the sixth time the Espionage Act has been unleashed against the source of an official leak of classified information under the Obama administration - more than the total number of times it has been deployed under all previous presidents since it was enacted in 1917."

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Judge Lind: Pfc. Manning you may read your statement.

Pfc. Bradley Manning: Yes, your Honor. I wrote this statement in the confinement facility. The following facts are provided in support of the providence inquiry for my court martial, United States v. Pfc. Bradley E. Manning.

Personal Facts.

I am a 25-year-old Private First Class in the United States Army currently assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, HHC, U.S. Army Garrison (USAG), Joint Base Myer, Henderson Hall, Fort Meyer, Va.

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In a striking revelation -- which many will see as significant indictment of the mainstream media -- Manning said that he had contacted both the New York Times and the Washington Post about the war logs before reaching out to WikiLeaks to leak the information.

"Manning said he talked to [a] person at WaPo who he did not think took him seriously when he described [the] war logs," tweeted Kevin Gosztola, following proceedings live. Manning also told the court he had planned to offer material, including the Collateral Murder video, to Politico but was unable to reach the publication's offices due to inclement weather.

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Original post: Pfc. Bradley Manning Thursday pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including being the source of a leak of state secrets to WikiLeaks. At his pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, Manning (through his attorney David Coombs) pleaded not guilty to the major charge that could see him serve life in prison -- "aiding the enemy."

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Up until now the only access to these documents has come second-hand. As the Guardian's Ed Pilkington described it, the refusal to publish the documents, "has led to an Alice in Wonderland world where  [presiding military judge Denise] Lind has read out documents in court, which are then reported in the media."

Via Pilkington:

The 84 documents released by the army include court rulings on defence and government motions, and orders that set the scheduling of the trial that is currently earmarked to begin on 3 June. But the batch constitutes only a tiny portion of the huge mountain of paperwork that has already been generated in the proceedings, including some 500 documents stretching to 30,000 pages.

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As the Guardian's Ed Pilkington reported from the courtroom, Lind concluded "that the exceptional length of the case was almost entirely justified as a result of its uniquely complex and sensitive nature." Firedoglake's Kevin Gozstola, also reporting from the trial, called the judge's ruling (which she took nearly two hours to read) "a mind-numbing list of dates and government agency alphabet soup" -- minutiae as proof of the need to lock up the accused whistleblower for over two and a half years without trial.

Via Pilkington:

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Swartz was an amazing human being who fought tirelessly for our right to a free and open Internet. He was much more than just the “Reddit guy.” I encourage people to read about his legacy to understand how important he was towards the movement of hacktivists and whistleblowers.

The Swartz mural follows the more controversial Bradley Manning (of WikiLeaks fame) work that first appeared on the street in late 2011. At the time, BAMN explained that he considered himself more of a weekend warrior when it comes to street art, and he said, his “first interaction with street art was through Poster Boy. I liked the idea of a loose collective participating in political art.”

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Assange critiqued the film in a speech at the Oxford Union, wrote AP, the video of which is embedded below.

"It is a mass propaganda attack against WikiLeaks, the organization (and) the character of my staff," said Assange to an audience of largely youthful onlookers.

"It is not just an attack against us, it is an attack against Iran. It fans the flames of an attack against Iran," Assange added, claiming that it contributed to Western fears of an Iranian nuclear program, which he said were being "ramped up" by the Western media.

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Although the movie isn't set to premiere until November, Assange has obtained a copy of the script--and doesn't approve. From within London's Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange remains in hiding, he connected with Oxford University students via Internet and slammed the film, which allegedly contains scenes regarding a nuclear weapons program in Iran. "How does this have anything to do with us?... How is it that a lie gets into a script about WikiLeaks?" he asked. He called the scenes "an attack against us [WikiLeaks]" as well as "an attack against Iran." "It fans the flames to start a war with Iran," he said.

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Manning's defense attorney David Coombs has argued in the soldier's pretrial hearings at Fort Meade that Manning's intentions to act as a whistleblower show he had no desire to harm U.S. interests. However, military judge Col. Denise Lind on Thursday's pretrial session ruled that the defense would not be permitted to argue motive except against the specific charge that Manning knew giving information to WikiLeaks meant he was “dealing with the enemy.”

Kevin Gozstola, reporting from Fort Meade, detailed the areas where Manning's motive were deemed "immaterial" in Lind's ruling:

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