Julian Assange, he of WikiLeaks, can sure dish it out.
He’s just decided to release even more American classified documents. From WikiLeaks.org:
At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports (‘The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.
He is bound and determined to undermine the United States of America to the fullest extent possible.
But he can’t take it. He folds like a House of Cards when the light of revelation is shone upon himself. Imagine that. What a running c#@*.
When CNN, of all Leftist media places, lobs something towards him that isn’t completely Softball in nature, he dives into the foetal position first, then huffs imperially off the set.
To question the Great Julian Assange is to invite heresy and chaos into one’s life, clearly.
There exists what is typified as a civil war inside WikiLeaks. From the UK Independent:
At least a dozen key supporters of the website are known to have left in recent months. They say Wikileaks has ignored reams of new exposés because so much attention has been paid to the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.
The heavily encrypted arm of the website that allows users to safely send information to the organisation has been offline for four weeks, making new submissions impossible.
According to former supporters, the submission section is down because a number of key personnel have fallen out with Assange over the direction of the website and his behaviour. “Outside of the Iraq and Afghan dossiers, Wikileaks has been incapacitated by internal turmoil and politics,” Smari McCarthy, a former Wikileaks volunteer and freedom of information campaigners from Iceland, told The Independent.
“Key people have become very concerned about the direction of Wikileaks with regard to its strong focus on US military files at the expense of ignoring everything else. There were also serious disagreements over the decision not to redact the names of Afghan civilians; something which I’m pleased to see was not repeated with the Iraq dossiers.”
Wikileaks admits that one member of the submission team has left but says that wing of the website is down for a system overhaul and will be back online soon.
LONDON — Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London’s rundown Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears.
He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.
Much has changed since 2006, when Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, used years of computer hacking and what friends call a near genius I.Q. to establish WikiLeaks, redefining whistle-blowing by gathering secrets in bulk, storing them beyond the reach of governments and others determined to retrieve them, then releasing them instantly, and globally.
Now it is not just governments that denounce him: some of his own comrades are abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behavior, and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood.
Several WikiLeaks colleagues say he alone decided to release the Afghan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for NATO troops. “We were very, very upset with that, and with the way he spoke about it afterwards,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, a core WikiLeaks volunteer and a member of Iceland’s Parliament. “If he could just focus on the important things he does, it would be better.”
He is also being investigated in connection with accusations of rape and molestation involving two Swedish women. Mr. Assange has denied the allegations, saying the relations were consensual. But prosecutors in Sweden have yet to formally approve charges or dismiss the case eight weeks after the complaints against Mr. Assange were filed, damaging his quest for a secure base for himself and WikiLeaks. Though he characterizes the claims as “a smear campaign,” the scandal has compounded the pressures of his cloaked life.
NPR fired Juan Williams because, on the Bill O’Reilly show, he had the temerity to actually express an opinion. Mr Williams said, regarding Muslims:
Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Late Wednesday night, NPR issued a statement praising Williams as a valuable contributor but saying it had given him notice that it is severing his contract. “His remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR,” the statement read.
You know, NPR — where there are “All Things Considered.” Apparently you can consider all things, you simply can’t verbally express them in terms of your opinion.
And isn’t it odd, I might posit (during my college days this might be the time where a professor would ask me to “contrast and compare” in my blue book), that Mr Williams is fired for expressing an opinion whereas other NPR associates have not; for example:
– Andrei Codrescu, who was on contract with NPR at the time, said in 1995 that “The evaporation of four million people who believe this crap [the Rapture] would leave the world an instantly better place.” He later apologized, and NPR left it at that.
– In 1995, Nina Totenberg said “I think [Sen. Jesse Helms] ought to be worried about what’s going on in the Good Lord’s mind, because if there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”
– In 1994 Sunni Khalid, an NPR reporter, said “I think there’s a big difference when people told Father Aristide to sort of moderate his views, they were concerned about people being dragged through the streets, killed and necklaced. I don’t think that is what Newt Gingrich has in mind. I think he’s looking at a more scientific, a more civil way of lynching people.”
– This year Sarah Spitz, who has contributed a number of pieces to NPR’s biggest magazine programs “Morning Edition” and — get this — “All Things Considered,” claimed to her fellow liberals on JournoList she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” if Rush Limbaugh were dying in front of her.
Hey, good times eh?
But perhaps the largest shard of irony, in new and improved Chunky Size:
Fired from NPR, Fox just awarded Juan Williams a new contract because of this incident — for $2 million dollars.
Mr Williams, in his Thursday opinion piece for Fox News wrote that he was “fired for telling the truth.”
I’d say: why yes, he was. And he said it in a much kinder way than I.
