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Numerous media outlets -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and NPR, among others - last night published classified files on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. The leak was originally provided to WikiLeaks, which then gave them to the Post, NPR and others; the NYT and The Guardian claim to have received them from "another source" (WikiLeaks suggested the "other source" was Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks associate who WikiLeaks claims took, without authorization, many WikiLeaks files when he left). The documents reveal vast new information about these detainees and, in particular, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the "evidence" used (both before and now) to justify their due-process-free detentions. There are several points worth noting about all this:

The US imagines itself a great democracy, yet most Americans despise its politics. Which is why direct democracy inspires them

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, answers readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables

Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord

It is for governments - not journalists - to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks' revelations

Defects in newborns 11 times higher than normal, with 'war contaminants' from 2004 attack blamed as possible cause

Slavoj Žižek: There is no room for compromise. Either the entire Mubarak edifice falls, or the uprising is betrayed

Europe must move beyond mere tolerance of others and resuscitate its legacy of radical and universal emancipation

Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

Country recovering from collapse of its banks and government is using social media to get citizens to share their ideas

The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare

We have the evidence: the hardpressed US taxpayer is being fleeced by profiteering contractors and corrupt military personnel

A protest at the White House against a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands is emerging as the biggest green civil disobedience campaign in a generation, organisers said.