UPDATED: Tunis: This Photo was Taken 66 Minutes Ago

You brought race into this conversation and you brought Assange into it so that you could belittle what is truly new here.

Of course the hacker movement is composed of people who have had ready access to computers and the education to use them and given the historic development of Western Imperialism, the majority of those people are in the west and are white males. I was the only black in Computer Science 101 in 1966 and I don't remember any women, but those facts have changed and are now changing rapidly. There are lots of women hackers [half the protesters at the Anonymous rally in LA today were women], and hackers of all races, and growing rapidly in the 3rd world. China now has more Internet seats than the U.S. India? Nigeria, you know they have some hackers! You also seem to assume that there were no Tunisians on the Cyberspace side of this struggle. You may be right but I don't assume that. The closer you are to the PM's server, the more options you have in cracking it. You don't think there are any Tunisian hackers? Or you don't think they have a dog in this fight?

And Julian Assange. WikiLeaks is not a one man act. I don't believe that he has ever tried to portray it as that but he is a founder and a spokesman so both the Media and the Law have landed on him because it's easier to demonize one 'bad guy' than acknowledge a movement. Anonymous clearly is not a one man act, here's a list of cities that held Anonymous rallies today:

Aarhus, Ankara, Athens, Athina, Barcelona, Belfast, Bilbao, Boston, Brisbane, Bucharest, Calgary, Cincinnati, Copenhagen, Dallas, Dover, Denver, Dublin, Edinburgh, Elkton, Eugene, Glasgow, Geneva, Göteborg, Hobart, Istanbul, Key Biscayne, Lisbon, Liverpool, Łódź, London, Los Angeles, Lyon, Madrid, Málaga, Miami, Minneapolis, Missoula, Montreal, München, Newcastle Upon Tyne, New Haven, New York, Paris, Peterborough, Piła, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Ortonville, Raleigh, Rotterdam, Saint Louis, Saint Paul, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Sanford, Seattle, Sydney, Tampa, Valencia, Vancouver, Vitoria Gasteiz, Washington DC, Zurich

Finally, I don't think anyone is trying to take away from the victory of the Tunisian people. There have been many very good diaries about that at DKos in the past few weeks. I linked to many of them in my diary yesterday and I say as much in the 1st para of this diary but I also say "an important part of that struggle has also taken place on the Internet and that is the focus of this dairy."

That is why I titled it "The WikiLeaks Revolution", this dairy was about that aspect, it was not saying that aspect was the main thing. That being said I think I was very precise about how the WikiLeaks revelations made the struggle that was already in progress, revolutionary:

when WikiLeaks released U.S. State Department cables about Tunisia ... the struggle turned from economic demands put to the government to a demands for a change in government. The struggle became revolutionary.

Apparently you belong to the 'nothing new under the sun' club. Well, I've got news for you, new things are being born all the time. WikiLeaks is one and so is Anonymous.