Julian Assange - Still a Class-A prick

[Animavore]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. People are actually talking about squeezing his neck 'til blood comes out over a few leaks as if there have never been leaks before in history.
Scary stuff.

Fuss over nothing? The man in charge is not 'nothing'.
I have no problems with the idea of Wikileaks, I have every problem with Assange which is who this has always been about.

Yeah, you've problems over his "ego". I get it.

[Ian]

Nobody's died on your orders because you haven't the competence to get in to a position where such a thing is possible.
Thankfully.

You see, we've got lots in common. But I'm sure if I tried hard enough, I could be up there, sending people to their deaths. Competence comes with practice.
.

But as you've proven so abundantly, ignorance requires no practice whatsoever.

[Ian]

For all the talk of him putting soldiers at risk there has still been no example of this happening in reality.

They're not even at risk of having to answer for their crimes.
What this does expose is the lies and deceit that masquerade as investigations of killings. (or "incidents" as they prefer to call them).
This guy's a hero and we need more like him.
.

So the ends justify the means? You're just as bad as the guys who got us into Iraq in the first place. Pathetically naive and shortsighted.

[Ian]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. People are actually talking about squeezing his neck 'til blood comes out over a few leaks as if there have never been leaks before in history.
Scary stuff.

And I meant every word of it. In my entire life, I've never hated anyone as much as I hate this guy.

I don't expect most people to fully grasp why; nobody else here seems to have a job similar to mine.

[Animavore]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. People are actually talking about squeezing his neck 'til blood comes out over a few leaks as if there have never been leaks before in history.
Scary stuff.

And I meant every word of it. I don't expect most people to fully grasp why; nobody else here seems to have a job similar to mine.

Yeah. I can kind of understand where you're coming from. I didn't even hear about him 'til yesterday, although I know who Wikileaks are. I just don't think much is going to come of it and the American government are over-playing it.
Here's what the Iraq right's ministry said;

Meanwhile, Iraq's rights ministry said the leaked document's "did not contain any surprises".

"The report did not contain any surprises, because we had already mentioned many things that happened, including at Abu Ghraib prison, and many cases involving US forces," Kamil al-Amin, the ministry spokesman, said.

The files show that 109,000 people were killed in Iraq from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2009. Of those, 66,081 – two-thirds of the total – were civilians.

"This figure of 109,000 victims is close to the one given by the Iraqi health ministry," al-Amin said.

"There were many deaths and many people were buried without any documents, at a time when the [Iraqi] government still had not imposed its control over the situation.

"The ministry has proof of many deliberate killings."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/ameri ... 10515.html

And I read somewhere else I can't remember that nothing has come out in the leaks, so far anyway, that hasn't already been reported elsewhere.

[Animavore]

Oh yeah, and the Guardian have an article that fits this thread

Here's an interesting assessment of the Wikileaks phenomenon and its prime mover, Julian Assange, that makes a lot of sense.

Alex Moore argues that Assange's countercultural mission is having a hard time finding a home in a world without counterculture.

He points up the differences between the way in which Daniel Ellsberg's leak of Vietnam war secrets, known as the Pentagon Papers, was greeted in 1971 and the response to Assange's recent web postings of secret information on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the 1970s - when hippies were alive and kicking - there was "a generation that valued integrity and the principle of truth." People were concerned about the substance of the leaks, the discovery that the US president had lied to the people.

By contrast, even though the Wikileaks revelations tell of killings and torture in Iraq that are more shocking than those exposed by the Pentagon Papers, "all anyone seems to talk about is what a jerk the guy [Assange] is."

[cont.] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greensl ... an-assange

[eXcommunicate]

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." -- Noam Chomsky

[DMac]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. People are actually talking about squeezing his neck 'til blood comes out over a few leaks as if there have never been leaks before in history.
Scary stuff.

And I meant every word of it. In my entire life, I've never hated anyone as much as I hate this guy.

I don't expect most people to fully grasp why; nobody else here seems to have a job similar to mine.

Oh my, argument from elitism (? and miltarianism?) Exactly what is your job? And why should anyone give a fuck except for you? You brought it up so please, explain why your job gives you a singular outrage at Assange. And why we should care.

[DMac]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. People are actually talking about squeezing his neck 'til blood comes out over a few leaks as if there have never been leaks before in history.
Scary stuff.

And I meant every word of it. In my entire life, I've never hated anyone as much as I hate this guy.

I don't expect most people to fully grasp why; nobody else here seems to have a job similar to mine.

Oh my, argument from elitism (? and miltarianism?) Exactly what is your job? And why should anyone give a fuck except for you? You brought it up so please, explain why your job gives you a singular outrage at Assange. And why we should care.

LOL Ian at your most recent avatar. Sure are living up the gung-ho soldier thing, eh?

I guess you're too scared to respond what your job is, or maybe it's super-secret/classified? LOL.

I also guess if I select my avatar as a chicken-killing farmer I can talk with secret knowledge and destroy all PETA protests because hey, I actually work in the job zomg! LOL

[Trolldor]

I would say "stop while you're on top", but it seems to be a very, very small pile.

[Coito ergo sum]

He may be a prick. But let's see how big his balls are....

Say what you will about Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, but his work has shown him to be pretty fearless. After his site published the biggest cache of secret files in U.S. history on Oct. 22, detailing some of the ugly truths about the war in Iraq, he continued to travel around Europe despite U.S. reprimands and warnings. He even told the global media that new leaks would expose more secrets not only about the U.S. military but about other "repressive regimes," such as Russia and China. The signals coming from Moscow, however, suggest that the Russian reaction will not be as reserved as America's. So is WikiLeaks really ready to take on the world's more callous states?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 83,00.html

So far Russia has had no official response. But on Wednesday, an official at the Center for Information Security of the FSB, Russia's secret police, gave a warning to WikiLeaks that showed none of the tact of the U.S. reply to the Iraq revelations. "It's essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, [WikiLeaks] can be made inaccessible forever," the anonymous official told the independent Russian news website LifeNews.

Translation, "we'll fucking kill you, Comrade!"

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... z14Dpf95jS

"If the FSB says it is capable [of taking out WikiLeaks], I believe them," says Gadi Evron, an expert on cybersecurity and counterespionage. It would not be necessary to crash the WikiLeaks site, says Evron, because "behind every Internet project, there are people." And people can be coerced — or worse.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... z14Dq4j9jQ

[Ian]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of fuss over nothing. People are actually talking about squeezing his neck 'til blood comes out over a few leaks as if there have never been leaks before in history.
Scary stuff.

And I meant every word of it. In my entire life, I've never hated anyone as much as I hate this guy.

I don't expect most people to fully grasp why; nobody else here seems to have a job similar to mine.

Oh my, argument from elitism (? and miltarianism?) Exactly what is your job? And why should anyone give a fuck except for you? You brought it up so please, explain why your job gives you a singular outrage at Assange. And why we should care.

LOL Ian at your most recent avatar. Sure are living up the gung-ho soldier thing, eh?

I guess you're too scared to respond what your job is, or maybe it's super-secret/classified? LOL.

I also guess if I select my avatar as a chicken-killing farmer I can talk with secret knowledge and destroy all PETA protests because hey, I actually work in the job zomg! LOL

OK Angry Person, I haven't been online to respond. You're just blowing your own credibility by calling me scared.

First about my avatar - it's a Halloween costume, Sherlock. Specifically, I'm a life-sized toy soldier. Ever seen Toy Story? I decided on it on a whim when I saw a similar costume in a department store, since my previous costume (a gladiator outfit) proved to be too cold for late October. It was a real hit with the ladies, by the way.
Some of us have what's known as a "sense of humor". Google it or look around on Wikipedia or something, I'm sure you'll find references to this concept.

Anyway, my criticism of Assange has nothing to do with a militaristic philosophy or defending the Iraq War. I'm not really sure who you are, but if you knew me better you wouldn't even infer that. I've been against US involvement in Iraq since before it ever happened.

My criticism stems from the fact that Assange's actions undermine the very foundations of international diplomacy and intelligence-gathering. Most people don't seem to realize this - they see Assange poking his finger in the eye of the Pentagon and giggling about it. He's clearly driven more by ego than by an opportunity to be a "whistleblower" (he's also published Sarah Palin's private emails: much as I like to see her embarrassed, I don't see how this is whistleblowing, either). He's shed very little light on Iraq and Afghanistan, but he's done so at a potentially tremendous cost. The fallout in Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty much the least of my concerns: people all over the world, from politicians and diplomats to those who work with law enforcement, the State Department and the military are going to be (and trust me, already are!) less inclined to work with others in confidence. This does not apply only to the US, by the way. Assange's treasure trove of military messages came to him not by some hand-wringing General hoping to blow a whistle and increase the public's knowledge - they came via a 22-yr old junior-enlisted Army grunt who had been seeking an ego boost. Now, on the international stage, how many people are going to want to deal with anyone in confidence if feel they they have no guarantee of that confidence? A lot fewer. There have always been leaks, but now anyone who has any sort of classified information can send it to Assange anonymously and see it published apparently without legal consequence.

My job is intelligence analysis, since you asked. This means I have some real hands-on understanding of classified information, why it is classified, and of the fallout that can occur from the compromise of it. Call it elitism if you like: I prefer to say that I'm someone who has a much better understanding of the issues involved than you do.

What I'd like to do with Assange is just my personal feelings if I got him in a room and had no fear of the law. Realistically, I think he ought to be hauled in on espionage charges. (Look at the bright side: fifty years ago he would have "disappeared" long before his latest deluge of classified documents.) And he's finding governments around the world less and less sympathetic to him. On the other hand, as people increasingly perceive him to be a reckless egotist, it prevents someone more credible from taking his place.

[DMac]

OK Angry Person, I haven't been online to respond. You're just blowing your own credibility by calling me scared.

First about my avatar - it's a Halloween costume, Sherlock. Specifically, I'm a life-sized toy soldier. Ever seen Toy Story? I decided on it on a whim when I saw a similar costume in a department store, since my previous costume (a gladiator outfit) proved to be too cold for late October. It was a real hit with the ladies, by the way.
Some of us have what's known as a "sense of humor". Google it or look around on Wikipedia or something, I'm sure you'll find references to this concept.

Not angry, was just drunk and bored. I get mean when I'm drunk, sorry.

eta: never seen Toy Story because the animation looked like shit, but I saw both the Puppet Master series and that Tommy Lee Jones movie with the little soldiers. And of course Toy Soldiers starring Wesley Crusher and Samwise Gamgee.

Anyway, my criticism of Assange has nothing to do with a militaristic philosophy or defending the Iraq War. I'm not really sure who you are, but if you knew me better you wouldn't even infer that. I've been against US involvement in Iraq since before it ever happened.

Reasons pro and con have already been given, I was just interested in how/why your job gave you special insight, or an implied superior bias/opinion.

My job is intelligence analysis, since you asked. This means I have some real hands-on understanding of classified information, why it is classified, and of the fallout that can occur from the compromise of it. Call it elitism if you like: I prefer to say that I'm someone who has a much better understanding of the issues involved than you do.

Okay. Then we're ultimately arguing about a side issue. I'd accept a 9/11 every ten years, if it meant keeping our Constitution intact, plus keeping our government from needlessly invading other countries. Price of freedom, those who give up essential liberties for protection deserve neither, etc.

Dozens of countries had experienced severe terrorism acts prior to 2001, yet only when we're the one targeted is it cause for massaging evidence, warrantless searches, etc., along with the unquestioned assumption that all the world must rally behind us, and if they don't they're the enemy. Which arrogant penis-throwing we condemn in other countries even if they've experienced a LOT more domestic deaths from terrorism or warfare than we have. My opinion, which may be wrong, is that this is another example of American exceptionalism, as well as a golden opportunity that neocons pounced on. A "mere" 3000 dead and $12 billion or so in damage is enough to shred 200 years of Amendments and freedom and not killing quite as many Muslims? They've been shredded in the past yes, but (aside from segregation) primarily due to the Civil War and it's 200,000 dead Americans and WWII and its 400,000. Both were as "total war" as this country has seen. 9/11 and a nationless terrorist threat is hardly total war.

So...I guess this may be offtopic but...anti-US terrorism, what's the big deal? Six times as many are killed by drunk driving every year. The Iraq War has cost what, 100 times the damage of 9/11. Pragmatically Islamic terrorism is a nuisance, it only causes us to call for Assange's head or tout our intelligence jobs because it's heightened to mythological, crucial self-defense threat and other BS. Both Israel and England have much more justification for being asshole murderers than we do, yet we want to be the best at everything, including going over the deep bend on revenge. Sunday Bloody Sunday? Got nothing on Iraq War Bloody Iraq War, you British ponces. I wonder if there are analogues in Ireland/GBR or Israel to Assange, and if so why they should also be killed.

I'm a little drunk right now too but I hope I was less of an ass this time. Nice costume (for a costume that implicitly supports genocide of babies, of course).

[Ian]

I think I'll put the kids to bed and have a beer meself.

[DMac]

I think I'll put the kids to bed and have a beer meself.

Good call. Hope they had a nice Halloween! Sorry for being so strident