Lamo's elegant responses show a man attempting to detach himself from the realities of Manning's harsh detention and worrying legal prospects. They also show a man with enough philosophical soundness to reject questions about acting with hindsight.

Lamo told the Guardian's Ed Pilkington that he has not closely followed Manning's recent pretrial hearings:

It's not because I take it lightly, but because I take it as seriously as I do. Making the choice to interdict a man's freedom knowing it could mean his life, is something that's easy to judge but can only really be understood by living it. You either fold it into your character, come to terms and go on with your life, or you get stuck in that moment forever. For a while I thought I would be. I took it badly. But I came to terms and continued my life some time ago. It has, after all, been two years.

... I knew my actions might cost him his life. In that respect, any other outcome is preferable.

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Addressing supporters on a cold and wet English evening, the 41-year-old Australian looked fit and healthy despite half a year spent in trapped inside the small apartment he shares with Ecuador's diplomatic staff.

He gave no hint that he would end the standoff, which has seen him spend six months as a fugitive from European justice, saying he was holed up at the embassy for fear of the U.S. investigation into his activities.

"While this immoral investigation continues, and while the Australian government will not defend the journalism and publishing of WikiLeaks, I must remain here," he said.

While the U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets, Assange is currently wanted by police over allegations of sexual assault stemming from a trip to Sweden in mid-2010.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have suggested that the allegations are a ploy to extradite Assange, first to Sweden and then to the U.S. The Swedish government and Assange's alleged victims deny it, saying they are simply seeking justice.

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Unsurprisingly, Assange said the party platform would push for greater government transparency and against creeping intrusions on individual privacy. "Polls inside Australia show that Assange could conceivably stand a chance of winning in either New South Wales or Victoria," the Age noted.

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"The conditions that Manning was under, they can only equate to death row detainees," said the soldier's attorney, David Coombs. "If the Quantico brig could have put him in a straitjacket in a padded room and not had anybody complain, they would have." Manning's defense is claiming that the accused whistle-blower was subjected to unlawful pre-trial punishment, and are calling for all charges against the soldier to be dismissed as a result.

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Brown faces a host of charges, including a number relating to online threats made to an FBI agent unrelated to the Stratfor case. Within the newly announced grand jury indictment, however, Brown faces a charge for copying a link to a downloadable archive of compromised data -- specifically credit card information -- from one Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel and pasting it into another.

The indictment states:

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When Pfc. Bradley Manning did speak up, his crack about hanging himself with his underwear only heightened the concern for his safety, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Denise Barnes said, so she ordered him to be stripped naked each night.

"There was never an intent to punish Pfc. Manning," she testified for the prosecution at a pretrial hearing.

Barnes said she didn't consider Manning's comment in early March 2011 serious enough to warrant placing him on suicide watch but "I felt that I needed not to take that comment lightly, and I didn't."

Barnes testified on the ninth day of a hearing to determine whether Manning's nine months in maximum custody at the base in Quantico, Va., amounted to illegal pretrial punishment. He was always on either suicide watch or injury-prevention status and Manning claims the conditions were so harsh that the charges, including aiding the enemy, should be dropped.

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"Brad’s treatment at Quantico will forever be etched into our nation’s history as a disgraceful moment in time,” he said. “Not only was it stupid and counter-productive, it was criminal. An entire group of individuals, who I have no doubt were honorable, chose to turn a blind eye to how he was being treated … They cared about something more: the media impact.”

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Military judge Col. Denise Lind announced the change Sunday at a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning's trial was set to begin Feb. 4. But Lind says pretrial proceedings will push the start date back to either March 6 or March 18.

The hearing is to determine whether the highly restrictive conditions Manning experienced for nine months were justified. The defense claims the restrictions were so punishing that the case should be dismissed.

Two psychiatrists have testified that the brig commander kept Manning tightly confined despite their recommendations to ease them.

The 24-year-old is charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy. He could get life in prison.

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The prosecution produced grim props in an attempt to justify Manning's stringent detainment regime as a necessary means to keep the soldier from committing suicide. The chief prosecution lawyer, according to the Guardian's Ed Pilkington's courtroom reports, held up a knotted pink bedsheet -- a makeshift noose Manning reportedly fashioned in U.S. military custody in Kuwait, just days after his arrest. "The prosecutor also produced a second noose made from sandbag ties and two metal objects that he suggested Manning may have intended to use to harm himself, though the soldier said he did not recollect those items," reported Pilkington.

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Manning answered questions from his defense attorney as part of a pretrial motion arguing that the detained soldier suffered “unlawful pretrial punishment” and should thus have his charges dismissed for his time spent in what amounted to solitary confinement. According to reports, Manning described in detail his conditions while detained in Kuwait and then at Quantico when he returned to the U.S.

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"I didn't feel that Pfc. Manning should be detained more than 90 days in the brig," Choike told the hearing, recounting that he had conveyed the same view to his superior at the Pentagon when the accused whistle-blower arrived at the brig.

As Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola reported from Fort Meade:

Choike gave over three hours of testimony from the witness stand. The most critical testimony probably came during Judge Army Col. Denise Lind’s line of questioning. She asked him about the Sanity Board that was to determine whether Manning was mentally fit to stand trial or not. It was having problems meeting and completing its work. Lind asked if he believed Quantico was adequately resourced to house someone of Manning’s stature.

Other maximum custody (MAX) detainees, the inability to predict the number of incoming detainees, downsizing and the fact that the Brig did not have “dedicated medical support” all made it difficult. Choike answered “no.” The Brig was not a place for long-term confinement. It was adequate for 90 days.

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Manning is expected to speak about his treatment at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico as his attorney David Coombs aims to show that his detainment constituted illegal pretrial punishment, such that Manning's charges should be reduced or dismissed. Coombs has described his client's first months in the brig as "the functional equivalent of solitary confinement" — confined to a 6-by-8-foot cell, with no window or natural light, for more than 23 hours each day.

Via the Baltimore Sun:

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A 16-year-old Dutch teenager's user information was released to iSight without even so much as a warrant. RT reported:

The youngster was suspected of being involved in Operation Payback, an Anonymous-endorsed initiative that targeted the servers of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others after those companies blocked WikiLeaks from receiving online payment backs in December 2010. When hacktivists responded to the blockade by overflowing the servers of those sites with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, PayPal asked Dallas, Texas’ iSIGHT Partners Inc., a self-described“global cyber intelligence firm,” to investigate.

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In a move known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions,” Manning did not plead guilty Wednesday, rather his attorney put forward a plea notice indicating that the defendant will plead to some lesser included charges, but not the entirety of charges as they now stand. The motion hearing judge may choose to accept or reject the plea notice.

As Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola reported from Fort Meade, "Pleading to lesser-included offenses makes it possible to not plea to committing offenses under the Espionage Act or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Importantly, he can plead guilty without accepting the government’s charge that he 'aided the enemy' or 'exceeded authorized access' on his computer." If his plea notice is accepted, Manning could thus avoid facing life in prison (prosecutors have already stated that they are not seeking the death penalty -- even though an "aiding the enemy" charge can legally carry such a sentence.)

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According to Raw Story, "Judge Denise Lind said more than 600 emails withheld by prosecutors should be handed over to the defense, though she did not explain the reason behind her decision." Manning's attorneys requested the emails as evidence for their argument that their client was subjected to cruel and illegal treatment while detained at Quantico Marine base. Manning was held in a solitary cell, stripped naked and could wear only a suicide-proof smock to bed.

Raw Story reported that the officers' emails "discuss the military’s plans to respond to queries from reporters about Manning’s detention, preparing for protests, changes to Manning’s list of visitors and other details, according to the judge."

Glenn Greenwald took to Twitter to note that what comes from the email handover "should be very interesting."

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On Wednesday, WikiLeaks began to leak a batch of documents relating to the presidential election. The organization invited supporters to browse the trove of emails provided to the secret-spilling site by Anonymous from its famed Statfor hack. In a move that Anonymous called a "betrayal," WikiLeaks put the documents behind a pay wall, which prompted readers for donations.

"This is a filthy and rotten, wholly unethical action - and Anonymous is enraged," stated a release from Anonymous Global. "We are aware that the donation pay wall can be circumvented by disabling Javascript. However, this is not the point. Neither is Anonymous concerned that WikiLeaks is asking for donations," the Anonymous release notes, explaining that most readers would not know how to avoid the pay wall.

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These GI Files releases will shed insight into key U.S. federal election players... Through this release WikiLeaks aims to inform the U.S. electorate in an unbiased way through the release of source documents from one of the most oddly influential companies in the U.S. today.

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The Wikileaks founder may have also been joined by singer MIA if a tweet exchange between the singer and Gaga is to be believed. Gaga, the most followed person on Twitter, was in London near the embassy to launch her new fragrance, Fame.

This is not Gaga's first connection to Wikileaks. In fact, when Pfc. Bradley Manning passed classified documents to hacker Adrian Lamo, the CD carrying the leaked information was labeled "Lady Gaga." Manning told Lamo via now-infamous chat logs, "No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's "Telephone" while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." [h/t Atlantic wire]

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