Go For It

Bradley Manning says he wants to live as a woman, be called Chelsea

Meanwhile, his partner in crime, is still in the news: Julian Assange's political party implodes

"Julian Assange may have blown his best chance to leave the Ecuadorean Embassy and return home to Australia as a free man.

The founder of WikiLeaks, who has been holed up in the Ecuador's diplomatic mission in London for over a year, is now facing another obstacle to freedom. Assange had founded the WikiLeaks Party in his native Australia in an attempt to win election to the Australian Senate; which he believes would make it more difficult for him to be extradited to Sweden where he faces sexual-assault charges. However, the party just split up in turmoil earlier this week after members of its national council discovered that Assange and his inner circle had been ignoring them and making major decisions on their own."

Too much secrecy, Julian. At least Manning isn't hiding his - er - her, innermost thoughts.

The Sickest Part Of...

...this:

Bradley Manning faces Up to 136 Years in Prison

...is that his mentor/hero, Julian Assange, gets off Scot free. Oh well. There's a sucker born every minute, and a vulture waiting to eat him alive or, more correctly, chew him up and spit him out onto the cold hard concrete sidewalk. Hope you enjoyed your fifteen minutes of infamy, Bradly. I'm sure Julian Assange thanks doesn't give a shit about you.

Well, I Must Say...

...there is certainly fertile ground here:


Bradley Manning trial to be recreated in comic-book form

It can feature guest appearances by Julian Assange, decked out in a superhero costume, of course. Manning can have a costume, too, to go along with his sidekick/sucker/loser role.

Should be a best seller.

These Two Again

Bradley Manning court-martial opens

"He faces 22 charges, including a count of aiding the enemy, which could send him to prison for life without parole. He is also charged with violating the Espionage Act, a 1917 law created to try spies and traitors, which carries severe penalties."

Compare that charge to the one levied against our "child soldier" Kahdr.

And, as for Manning's hero, Assange?

Wikileaks employee claims Julian Assange adopted 'once despised' behaviour

"A Wikileaks spokesperson has said that the organization’s founder Julian Assange has become everything he ‘originally, rightly, despised."

RTWT. Sometimes the most delicious gossip makes you want to puke.

About That Idiot Julian Assange...

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  It doesn't get any better than this:

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: Thanks for nothing

"Last week, after a Supreme Court ruled extradition was legal and proper, Assange slipped into the embassy in London and claimed asylum.

You have to hope he knows what he is doing. Ecuador exports five million tons of bananas a year, and gave the world the Panama hat, but a darkness dwells at its moist and spicy heart in the form of tinpot president Rafael Correa. Irony doesn’t quite capture the mordant weirdness of Assange seeking sanctuary in a country where the suppression of information is a flagship government policy.

Here’s a recent bulletin from the Organisation of American States: “Correa regularly uses an emergency provision in the country’s broadcast law to commandeer the country’s airwaves and denounce journalists as ‘ignorant’ and ‘liars’.” But his tactics go beyond theatrics. Correa has filed multiple defamation suits against journalists and is creating a legal framework to restrict press freedom. Three executives and the former op-ed editor of the leading newspaper, El Universo, have been hit with a $40 million libel judgment and could soon be jailed.

Now, what was Julian saying before this unpleasantness began? “We [WikiLeaks] are free press activists. It’s about giving people the information they need. That is the raw ingredient that is needed to make a just and civil society. Without that you are just sailing in the dark. I have tried to invent a system that solves the problem of censorship across the whole world.”"

[---]

"It isn’t as though Assange was ever the brave moral warrior the liberal establishment made him out to be.

In their book WikiLeaks, David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian, the newspaper that first championed Assange, describe the staff’s revulsion at his behaviour. Over lunch at a London restaurant, one reporter asked if he wasn’t worried that Afghan civilians who had co-operated with the coalition forces could be exposed to danger by WikiLeaks’ revelations, Assange replied: “So, if they get killed they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” A silence fell over the table.

The New York Times, another early WikiLeaks glorifier, suffered a similar disillusionment, reporting that several of Assange’s closest associates had abandoned him, exhausted by his “erratic and imperious behaviour, and nearly delusional grandeur”."

[---]

"“Let us stop promoting this image of poor, courageous journalists, a saintly media trying to tell the truth, and tyrants and autocrats trying to stop them,” said President Correa in an interview last month. Assange, who was asking the questions, nodded obligingly. “I completely agree with your view on the media,” he beamed. How well they will get along together."

Fine hero you got there, Saskboy.

But am I surprised? Assange reminds me a lot of Luka Magnotta. Or is it the other way around? There's something about the coldhearted narcissist that makes them all alike.
==========ORIGINAL STARTS HERE==========
...you don't suppose he has an inkling that he's not that important, do you?


Assange: Ecuador's UK ambassador set for talks in Quito

"The Ecuadorean government has so far made no comment on whether they will agree to Assange's request, which would see him avoid potential deportation to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assaults against two women."

Relations between countries may be just a wee bit more important than you, dingbat, especially when one of those countries is the USA. If I was the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, I too would be seeking advice from the home country. Giving asylum to this asshole would piss off some very powerful interests which have a wee bit more weight that you do, fool. Sweden ain't the only country that would like to see you face justice. Given enough rope, naive idiots usually get around to hanging themselves. Assange may just have tightened the knot.

PS: I just realized that in my list of labels, Assange is right next to assholes. HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!

Too Bad...

..so sad, Julie.

I wonder who's paying his legal bills? His groupies?

Jesus Murphy!

Horrible… Wikileaks Document Led to Hanging Death of Western Spy This Week in Tehran

So will Bradley Manning be charged with accessory to murder?

Too Bad, So Sad...

...Judge refuses to dismiss Manning's Wikileaks case

Rex Murphy Weighs In on the Scandal de Jour

He makes some really good points between 3:00 and 3:41, and again, in response to the host's question, at 3:52 to 4:25. And then there's the vacuous hypocrisy of the self-appointed policing agency, Anonymous: And they don't know how to pronouce his name, either: And as Ezra Levant points out, there's enough hypocrisy to go around.

I Wonder How Much...

...his groupies have to cough up to pay for their hero's legal fees?

Assange in final plea to avoid extradition

...and why was he fighting so hard? Is he guilty? Does he know he's not getting out of the fix he put himself into?

Oh Dear Julian...

...what are you gonna do now?

Julian Assange's options narrow as judges reject extradition appeal

"High court rules WikiLeaks founder must face Swedish rape claim as Assange says he 'may not have cash to fight on'

Short of cash and running out of legal arguments, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, felt the net tighten around him on Wednesday as the high court dismissed his latest appeal against extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual molestation claims.

The president of the Queen's Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, sitting with Mr Justice Ouseley, threw out Assange's four-point appeal against the Swedish prosecutor's European arrest warrant. Assange's lawyers, meanwhile, indicated that the 40-year-old Australian may not have the money to pay his opponents' costs. Unless he appeals to the supreme court, and that requires high court approval and yet more legal fees, he could be removed to a Swedish jail by the end of the month to be questioned over claims of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion by two women he met on a visit to Stockholm in August 2010.

After the ruling, out on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice, Assange faced the cameras wearing a smart navy suit and a Remembrance Day poppy, [hah!] but without his usual air of defiance."

I guess all your little groupies are gonna have to get real jobs now and I'll bet they won't be too overly generous with their money. No one's gonna bail you out.

Your status as a demigod is crumbling. I hope some time soon, Australian authorities come calling.

What's With Bradley Manning...

...and his superiors?

This is an old article but it says a lot:

WikiLeaks accused Bradley Manning 'should never have been sent to Iraq'

None of this will matter of course, but I just happen to have an interest in screwed up people who do stupid things and whether and how they become unscrewed, when the full consequences of their stupidity hits them hard, like a ton of bricks, and he certainly chose the hard route.  But the question is, how hard does it have to be? Is Manning as oblivious as his hero is?

If he gets to experience the full force of what he decided he could play with impunity, will he turn his life around? Maybe. Maybe not. One never knows. And maybe he will have no life to turn around.

But I'm betting if Julian Assange also experiences the full force, that should help. When the narcissistic hero turns out to be little more than a cult leader, and his following disintegrates, as I am sure it will, maybe Manning will finally begin to understand the root of his own tragic culpability. Trouble is, his court martial may be long over before Julian even begins on that voyage of discovery.  Such are the vicissitudes of a life poorly lived, of a f*cked up childhood.

Another old article that shows how screwed up he was/is.

Awe, Poor, Poor Julian

He's had to suspend his "whistleblowing" due to lack of funds.

"Assange said in a statement that since December last year, "an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade has been imposed by Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union."

"The attack has destroyed 95 percent of our revenue," he added."

There he goes again, butchering the English language and showing the depths to which hypocricy can go. Apparently the law is for those other guys, not for him.

The view from an Arab paper: Assange's aphorism

"Assange’s adversaries have sought the shield of a Higher Cause—defence of a state in wartime—themselves. The point of this confrontation is moral without prejudice to the personal morality of the activists. Governments revel in revealing what helps their image. They hide, mostly, only what hurts. We do not have to admire Assange in order to admire what he did.

Time for mild confession. I have not read the smartly titled Julian Assange: The Unauthorised autobiography published against Assange’s will by Canongate. I have only read the reviews. But if reviews are like the tasting menu offered by grand chefs, then the flavour is sufficient to indicate that this is enough. I don’t want the full meal. Publicity and adulation have bloated Assange. He has become his own Higher Cause. He is no longer the child who exposed a superpower and went home. He wants to live the rest of his life on a pedestal.

This book project began as collaboration between him and the publisher in December last year, confirmed by a fat fee. In June Assange walked out of the deal after the first draft was written based on interviews he had given. All autobiography, claimed Assange in justification, is prostitution.

This is the sort of pompous aphorism, which has been polished for glitter before an image-enhancing mirror. Assange can no longer see the difference between an autobiography and PR press releases.

His defenders will doubtless argue that you need an unstable sense of self if you have the courage to challenge the Pentagon. Assange is a famous hero, but I wonder if he is more heroic than the American soldier, Bradley Manning who actually stole the documents and passed them on to Assange, and now sits in an anonymous cell rather than on the cover of magazines.

There is a poignant moment in this book. In 1996 Assange was tried in Australia for hacking into Nortel, the Canadian telecom system. When he rose to stand in the witness box he saw the face of a colleague who had turned state evidence against him. “It was the look,” Assange says, “that I would come to know: the look of betrayal, organised on the face to look like a high-minded interest in the truth.”

I wonder whether the American soldier jailed for life would recognise the same look if he were to see Assange’s face right now."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I feel a bit of empathy for Bradley Manning. He was obviously duped - used - betrayed - by someone he worshiped. The leader of THE GRAND CAUSE had discarded him like a used tissue.

Another good one.

"Furious", eh?

You're just one "man", with a lot to hide and a mighty big hypocrisy gene, you're not an entire country. So go f*ck yourself. Chances are, you'll find yourself a better sex partner than those women did:

"Assange toys with the idea that he could have been a victim of an American-sponsored honeytrap, but he seems to veer towards the conclusion that it was simply a case of revenge for his own boorish behaviour. Not only did he fail to keep up with woman "A", but he was even more offhand with woman "W", who had asked him to telephone her from a train he boarded after they had kissed goodbye. "I didn't do that, and it has already turned out to be the most expensive call I didn't make," he says."

BWHAHAHAHAHA!

ROTFLMAO!!

Tables turned on Wikileaks founder

"Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who rose to prominence by publishing others’ information without their consent, will wake up on Thursday with his own autobiography on sale against his wishes."

[---]

"The irony that the operator of the world’s largest whistleblowing site, responsible for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret documents, will himself find his private comments aired in public is likely to raise a smile among diplomats and politicians around the world. The US government and others have repeatedly condemned Mr Assange’s activities, in particular the leak of thousands of US diplomatic cables."

[---]

"Mr Assange signed a contract with Canongate in December last year, proclaiming that his autobiography would become “one of the unifying documents of our generation”.

But after reading the first draft in March, Mr Assange became “increasingly troubled” by the idea of an autobiography and declared: “All memoir is prostitution.”"

[---]

"The book details Mr Assange’s bohemian upbringing in Australia, the 1980s computer hacker scene and his sudden rise to international notoriety last year. One chapter is dedicated to the Swedish allegations and his fears of a conspiracy against him, although he admits that he “wasn’t a reliable boyfriend, or even a very courteous sleeping partner”."

[---]

"In spite of the large advance, Mr Assange and WikiLeaks have taken to desperate measures to raise new funds, including selling branded mugs and T-Shirts. A fundraising auction on Ebay is currently accepting bids of hundreds of pounds each for a sachet of coffee “smuggled out of prison by Mr Assange, a signed photograph of the WikiLeaks founder and a laptop used to prepare the releases of thousands of diplomatic cables.”"

Mr. Assange, you're a narcissist, pure and simple.

Julian's Pandora's Box

UPDATE: Julian won't be going home to Aussieland anytime soon, it would appear.

Julian Assange faces arrest in Australia over unredacted Wikileaks cables

This adds to his already considerable troubles:

"Australia's attorney general, Robert McClelland, confirmed in a statement on Friday that the new cable release identified at least one individual within the country's intelligence service. He added it is a criminal offence in the country to publish any information which could lead to the identification of an intelligence officer."

[---]

 "The new development adds to the pressure on the WikiLeaks founder, who is currently fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden to answer allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange will be unable to remain in the UK if his extradition appeal is successful, as his visa will by then have expired.

Assange already faces legal action in the US, where a grand jury has been convened in Virginia to decide whether to prosecute the founder of the whistleblowing website..."

[---]

"The Guardian, New York Times, El País, Der Spiegel and Le Monde, who worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents in December last year, issued a joint statement condemning the latest release.

"We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk," it said.

"Our previous dealings with WikiLeaks were on the clear basis that we would only publish cables which had been subjected to a thorough joint editing and clearance process. We will continue to defend our previous collaborative publishing endeavour. We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data – indeed, we are united in condemning it."

Kinda got yourself into a tight spot, there Julie. What'r ya gonna do now, eh?

===========ORIGINAL STARTS HERE=============
Wikileaks is at it again. Except this time, Assange is not amused. In fact, Julie's fighting a full on war internally and with his newspaper accomplices.

And don't you think there's a bit of the "pot-kettle" element to the Bradley Manning story. Who's more screwed up, Assange or Manning? I think Manning must have seen a "big brother" to look up to in Assange. Some role model. I kinda feel sorry for Manning, but Assange can go "f**k" himself. I suspect most members of Assange's Wikileaks team are hurt little boys and girls. Assange, on the other hand, is one of those monsters that prey upon and use hurt little boys and girls for their own nefarious purposes.

Anyway, this latest leak is just like the previous ones. The big dark secrets revealed are of the ho hum variety.

Why Are These Men Still Living?

Accidental Release of US Cables Endangers Sources

"The ongoing conflict between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his former German spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg has led to the accidental release of confidential data that was in WikiLeaks' possession. Since the beginning of the year, an encrypted file has been circulating on the Internet containing the collection of around 251,000 US State Department documents that WikiLeaks obtained in spring 2010 and made public in November 2010.

The release of the file could potentially endanger the informants mentioned in the documents, many of whom live in countries whose governments are hostile to the US. The confidential diplomatic cables were redacted before publication to protect sources, but the file on the Internet contains the original, unedited documents.

In the summer of 2010, Assange stored the password-protected file containing the cables in a concealed location on a WikiLeaks server. He gave the password to an external contact to allow him access to the material contained in the file.

When Domscheit-Berg left the organization in September 2010 together with a German programmer, the two men took the contents of the server with them, including the encrypted file containing the documents. As a result, Assange no longer had access to the file."

CBC Searches Further Afield for Dreaded "Hidden Agenda"

Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Half-truths and hidden agendas in bin Laden narrative

"Narrative". That's one of leftydom's favourite code words. They speak the truth. Everyone else spins a "narrative", you know.

"When President Barack Obama gave the word to launch Operation Neptune Spear, the daring assault on Osama bin Laden's compound, there were actually two combined operations set in motion.

We've heard much about the first, the Navy SEALs' raid to eliminate bin Laden; almost nothing about the second.

The second was the use of what the White House and Pentagon call "Strategic Communications," a PR strategy to dominate the narrative of an event for broad political aims worldwide."

Oh, CBC. What would we do without you? We plebeians would never be able to figure that out. No siree.

"I'm not critical of the raid itself, which I believe was masterfully directed. But I do have concerns about the current trend toward what is being called the "operationalization of information."

As we saw when a number of false, or at best half-true, statements poured out of the White House in that first day of the bin Laden drama, we now must parse news statements from supposedly authoritative sources with ever greater care for hidden agendas.

Forget traditional government PR, this is a much more muscular doctrine to combine many pointed information flows into a very solid arm of U.S. policy."

Oh come on Brian. You're about the same age as I am. You know better than that. There's nothing new about governments putting spin on things, especially during times of war. What you're really upset about is that you have to work extra hard to get the evidence you need to support your "narrative". Too bad, so sad. The laugh is on you. CBC has become a joke.

For example:

Canada offered to aid Iraq invasion: WikiLeaks

This is news? I knew that years ago. Where were you, CBC? Maybe something like this would have been a better headline: "Wikileaks digs up old news: Yawn"

Or "Epic fail: CBC lets Wikileaks do their work for them".

Why are we giving CBC a billion+ $CDN a year?

Apparently WikiLeaks Dumped Another Non-Scandal...

...about Canada and the US Embassy in Ottawa:

I must say, I agree with the Ambassador's take on Maude Barlow and several other things.

Julian, you really are boring.

The Noose Tightens

...And that's a good thing.