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As most readers probably know by now, Julian Assange, Wikileaks' leader, has gone ahead with the release of 391,832 secret documents related to the war in Iraq. These documents cover most of the period between May 2004 and March 2009.

The information was released in three forms, the "Diary Dig," the "Warlogs" and bittorrent download in CSV and SQL formats.

Chinese activists banned from their own Facebook accounts. ReadWriteWeb has written before about Facebook's shutting down of pages and groups devoted to boycotting corporations. We have discovered and covered a loophole, whether intended or not, that allowed bully groups to shut down pages run by people they didn't like or devoted to ideas they objected to.

Now, three activists in Hong Kong have been banned from their own page. All three administrators of a Facebook page devoted to stopping the development of luxury housing on endangered wetlands in Hong Kong. One admin was accused of using a false name, another of "abusing" the Add Friend button.

Facebook responds below the fold.

Pambazuka News, a sterling example of how new media can revitalize news gathering, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. That's a big enough deal on its own. It's even more important to note that, in a tech world sometimes overly focused on Silicon Valley, Pambazuka News is an African website devoted to African news and analysis run by Africans.

Pambazuka News was launched in 2000 by Fahamu, an African non-profit devoted to human rights and progressive reform. Its goal was, and remains, to connect activists intent on progressive reform in Africa. What is has become is a large, vibrant community of citizen journalists reporting the news from a pan-African point of view and with a focus on social justice.

The Israel Antiquities Authority and Google are teaming up to publish the Dead Sea Scrolls online.

The approximately 1,000 scrolls, managed by the IAA, were discovered in a series of caves near the Dead Sea in the West Bank. Dating from the second and first centuries, B.C.E., these Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek documents constituted a significant trove of information on the ancient world. And of course, they also contained the seeds of division.

Bahraini blogger tortured. Abd El Galil AlSingace, the Bahraini blogger who was arrested in August, has been tortured. He suffered a perforated eardrum after being beaten and is now partially deaf. He has been denied his walking cane, a wheel chair and the medicine he takes for chronic conditions.

AlSingace, who had been arrested before, in 2008, had complained on his blog about the use of torture in Bahrain. I guess the torturers in Bahrain are showing him who's boss.AlSingace had flown to London before his arrest to speak to the House of Lords about human rights in Bahrain.

China is widely acknowledged to have the most extensive censorship program in the world, with a particular emphasis online. But now a large group of influential retired Communist Party officials have published an open letter demanding the government throw open the doors of free speech to its people.

"Article 35 of China's Constitution as adopted in 1982 clearly states that: 'Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.' For 28 years this article has stood unrealized, having been negated by detailed rules and regulations for 'implementation.' This false democracy of formal avowal and concrete denial has become a scandalous mark on the history of world democracy."

Jens Stober, a 24-year-old university student in Karlsruhe, Germany, has chosen a unique way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has created an FPS, a first person shooter video game, that forces the player to take the role of an East German guard and provides the player with the opportunity to "kill" people attempting to escape to the West.

The game is called 1378 km, after the length the wall covered while it stood (856 miles). Because the game creates an environment that encourages the participant take part in those murders, it was considered "controversial" and pushed back from its release date of October 3rd, the anniversary of German reunification. Its release is now planned for early December at the Karlsruhe University for Arts and Design.

Creative Commons announced the release of the Public Domain Mark today, a tool that will help easily identify those works that are free of copyright restrictions. The mark - the letter C that's associated with the symbol for copyright, but with a slash through it - is meant to make it clear that the material is free to reuse.

Works are part of the public domain when their copyright expires or when the artist designates the work as such. This means that people can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work - even for commercial purposes, without asking permission.

The threat to ban Research in Motion's BlackBerry mobile device messaging services spread across the Middle East like a brushfire. The threat first arose in the U.A.E., followed by Saudi Arabia. India, Tunisia and Lebanon all threatened to follow suit.

Just three days before the ban was to be implemented in the United Arab Emirates, the telecommunications declared that RIM is "compliant with the U.A.E.'s telecommunications regulatory framework." The question is, are they compliant because they've given up their users' information or because the U.A.E. backed down? Neither side is talking.

Want to blog in Saudi Arabia? Get a license. Saudi Arabia has trotted out a couple of the old stand-bys, libel and porno, to justify a tightening of blogging rules in that country. If the proposal goes through, no Saudi will be able to write a blog post without a license.

The Kingdom has had a robust blogging life for years, though not without occasional arrests. (You don't want to "annoy others" in the KSA.). But this move will make anyone at all who blogs without a license a criminal. Saudis are kicking back against this with particular contempt for the Ministry of Information, which would be the issuing authority for these alleged licenses.