Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

Julian Assange wanted in Sweden for rape!?

http://translate.google.se/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.expressen.se%2FNyheter%2F1.2104976%2Fwikileaks-grundare-anhallen-for-valdtakt&sl=sv&tl=en

Wiki twitter: "it's just a tabloid + distraction" - http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/21731365419

Nice bit of character assassination.

Spreading outside of Sweden by now - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047025

Pentagon (by the way, there's a mosque in there, did you know?) looking into persecuting WikiLeaks

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704488404575441673460880204.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_MIDDLEThirdNews

Swedish rape warrant withdrawn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316

Ridiculous. Way to martyr the guy.

http://www.internet-d.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Julian-assange-nyp.png

wow this whole thing is like

man

julian assange eats a cheeseburger - http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/cheeseburger1(1).jpg

no wait, julian assange finishes cheeseburger, throws it away - http://www.13dots.com/reddragon/trashcan/final.gif

Huh:

http://www.fox40.com/news/capitolpulse/ktxl-news-soldierwikileaks0823,0,2298783.story

But but... I've heard that Assange eats live puppies!

Countdown til "Assange is a Muslim".

that's awesome; no one will pay attention tho i bet

All they have to do is say he's an Australian, surely that'll do it right? :D

haha an article i read today called wikileaks "stockholm-based". maybe that's true, technically

The Pentagon said on Sunday it had a 120-member team prepared to review a massive leak of as many as 500,000 Iraq war documents, which are expected to be released by the WikiLeaks website sometime this month.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan told Reuters the timing of the leak remained unclear but the Defense Department was ready for a document dump as early as Monday or Tuesday, a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.

I suppose they will do their usual thing of throwing whistleblowers in jail and trying to shut down Wikileaks, rather than bothering to investigate any of the crimes the documents might expose.

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_0-KUaQl7k

^^^
I don't understand this either - the NYTimes had an article that was totally about Julian Assange's personal life, I mean the guy just revealed that the US documented 100,000 deaths from the Iraq War and then lied about the fact that they documented those deaths... I mean are the large news outlets trying to smear him?

sex sells, right?

also

1. it's a lot easier & more fun for lazy journalists to focus on a rape scandal than to sift through thousands of war documents
2. it makes them feel like they're actually doing a job -- "asking the tough questions" -- rather than having to defer to someone who is doing it for them

are the large news outlets trying to smear him?

of course.

it's not really the story, but he is an extremely strange guy. it's not like they are making this stuff up.

are the large news outlets trying to smear him?

of course.

― sleeve, Monday, October 25, 2010 9:50 AM

wikileaks makes the major news outlets look ineffectual. also what j0rdan said

Heh.

apparently what he does it very popular with veteran lefty journalists in the uk at least, who associate his politics with things they like, but the younger ones are a bit more creeped out because they have more direct experience of/dislike for libertarianism through the internet (which is still basically the only place you see it in the uk)

that interview is so very retarded. focusing on the eclipsing personality of assange and the rape rumours is obviously the perfect way for media to acknowledge the leaks as news without actually talking about them at all

an information dump of half a million documents which are about literally thousands of events is perhaps not the best way to get material covered (this is a point a lot of people who share wikileaks' presumed sympathies have made)

Yeah, it's always easier to criticize. What would have been a better way then? 5 x 100,000 documents? (the second release would make those same people go "boring!")

i haven't read the half million documents yet, so i don't know, but it seems like cooperating with journalists so that synthesised/digested stories are extracted and published in advance of the releases is a good idea PR-wise. if you don't do that then the release itself is the story. the newspapers wl cooperated with on the afghanistan release seem to either not have cooperated this time or not been given the opportunity and at the same time wl is being criticized by amnesty et al. they're not doing it right, and they're leaving gaps for stories about assange being a crank (which like i say, is not a lie).

this guy is not terribly effective at drawing attention to the issues at hand - he's unable to redirect the debate from being about HIM and his methods to the contents of the documents he releases

there's a suspicion among the people i know who've met him that he likes it that way (cyberpunk outfits, think he's morpheus, etc.). it's clear he's got a lot of the personality issues shared by libertarian hacker types (as alluded to in that nyt piece).

it's disingenuous of him to suggest the goal is just freeing information/generating debate. or if that's true, it's pretty unambitious/careless. it seems like he has real political preferences. and given that, it's not ad hominem to find faul with/write features about the figurehead when his M.O. works against generating supporting for those preferences.

But when the story's about him instead of the revelations it's most distracting.

that's the joke

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/23/obama-investigate-war-logs-torture

Nowak said it would be up to the Obama administration to launch an "independent and objective" investigation with a view not only to "bring the perpetrators to justice but also to provide the victims with adequate remedy and reparation".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/iraq-war-logs-us-iraqi-torture

you know, I'm actually kind of psyched about this

I'm sure there will be a full investigation, along with the indictment of top Bush Administration officials. And there will be fudge and ice cream.

Morbs this is one of those brief windows where we can all be psyched about the same thing imo

wait hold up what are we psyched about, other than the leak

Clegg said: "We can bemoan how these leaks occurred, but I think the nature of the allegations made are extraordinarily serious. They are distressing to read about and they are very serious. I am assuming the US administration will want to provide its own answer. It's not for us to tell them how to do that."

this is a positive development, people saying "the point isn't 'leak,' it's the information & our responsibility in light of it"

I know it's not the revolution in its full splendor but it'll have to do

The sooner we dismantle the stupid national daydream that war can be some neat and by-the-numbers campaign of justice and fairness, and accept that when we go to war this is what we mean, the better.

oh yeah that was a righteous thing to say props to clegg - i have some doubts that the US will heed this call but i'd love to be proven wrong

xp otm i think

"But you ARE going to prosecute, right?" Diane Sawyer wanted to know, practically falling on the lap of the DOD apparatchik whom she interviewed on Friday.

this guy is not terribly effective at drawing attention to the issues at hand - he's unable to redirect the debate from being about HIM and his methods to the contents of the documents he releases

On purpose or not (from either his or the media's perspective) this is how old media does things and has always done things. This is why we know more about the sex lives of politicians than what they vote for/against.

Thing is, he should be aware of this. And probably is.

hate to get all morbs, but "i have some doubts that the US will heed this call" is kind of an understatement. this is nick clegg we're talking about.

It's always amazing when the major media outlets latch onto one idea to discredit an anti-war message, without stating its corollary; for example, a newspaper suggesting that "WikiLeaks puts people in danger by releasing names of informants," without also asserting that WikiLeaks is operating precisely because another organization puts people in danger by tacitly condoning torture. So that the message is: the US Gov't behaving outside citizens' best interest does not demand intervention, but WikiLeaks behaving outside -some- citizens' best interest demands intervention. It's amazing the extent to which power is a one-way street.