wikileaks

[billy]

When Wikileaks published the U.S. embassy telegrams, they set bigger things in motion than they realized.
It was the publication of the telegrams from the U.S. embassy in Tunisia, which informed the U.S. State Department how corrupt the local regime was, that caused the Tunisian people to finally unite and rise up to rid itself of the dictatorship.
This quickly became the example to follow for the people of Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain.

Wikileaks deserves the credit for triggering the popular uprisings in the Muslim world this year.
Millions of oppressed people owe Julian Assange their gratitude.

you're giving it way too much credit. hunger, lack of amenities and corruption were the triggers.wiki just claimed the credit. i doubt more than one or two tunisians even read the wiki leaks documents.
syria has been a boiling pot for more than a decade with a small faction ruling a larger one. same with bahrain. lybia had already been a tinderbox and tunisia and egypt gave it impetus. wiki for all it's and your assertions never played a part in any uprising. it just came out at the time the tunisians felt they'd had enough.

[Touchstone]

[billy]

that's all well and good, but slightly untrue and misleading, he set back whistle blowing half a century.
he basically brought down wikileaks single handedly.
some things come at a higher price than cash.
at least everyone knows facebook and co are shafting them.
and if you class the usa gov as a corporation you have a small point.
he;s not a villiain, he'll never be that, the man hasn't the balls to be a villain. he's a ponzi scheme waiting to happen.
he's a leech to match any leech whose ever leeched. the guys out to screw people and thats all he's out to do. the gov, the guy who donates his lawyers fees, and travel arrangements. he pontificates how honourable he his but lacks any. like most of us he only cares about himself and his bottom line.
like few of us he doesn't care how he gets it. don't get me wrong, many of us are like him, the difference is he's still lying about why he's doing it, and some are believing what he says. the guys a con artist of the highest calibre whose been found out to be just that.

personally i think anyone who still sees him as a hero is a few beers short of a four pack.

[billy]

sorry vf but the gellhorn award is as worthless as the turner prize is for art.
and to call assange a journalist, is like calling hitler a social worker.
to call what he did journalism is almost a big a joke as the hero worshippers that follow him.

[billy]

on paper he'll say he does, but in private he probably holds nothing but contempt for the man.
as will all or most of what's left of his followers.

[billy]

yes but that doesn't make him envious of assange
and i doubt he carried them all at once. (on his person)
btw i do know how much it weighs. i just presumed ellsberg or anybody else wouldn't be stupid enough to
lift them all in one go.

[billy]

which take me back to post 256 (i think) where i stated;

on paper he'll say he does, but in private he probably holds nothing but contempt for the man.
as will all or most of what's left of his followers. the one thing they have in common is their hatred of power.

while ellsberg may admire that assange leaked what he did, i seriously doubt he'd like to be associated with the reasons why.
as i stated on many occasions; assange destroyed what wiki was and what it stood for. what's left of it he's turned into a pay per view comic strip. and again i sadly say he has sent what could have been a great iconic expression of freedom, into and below the gutter of the press he used to attain te fame he so openly craves.
and anyone who thinks assange the most dangerous man anywhere must be delusional.

[billy]

lets not call apples oranges here vf, assange did not provide anyone with anything, private manning did the providing and assange used what he provided to line his own pockets and to gain acknowledgement as the great man he his.
i get the impression ellsberg was a partially honourable person, if that's the case i can't see him not feeling some disgust as to how assange operates, how assange feels the leeks belong to him personally as some kind of collateral against monies earned.
one only has to read the contract workers at wiki leaks have to sign to see that. if they leak any of the material they have to pay 20 million or so, which is the value assange put on the leaks people have given (mainly manning) for nothing. i wouldn't expect ellsberg to say anything else, to do so would be silly. i still feel he abhors how assange acts. your hero is nothing more than a parasite. feeding off others. it's a shame wikileaks has ended up where it as, the guy and wikileaks are fast becoming has been no bodies. he is responsible for killing the whistle blower. and thats fucking sad.

as for your video, when was that made, not in the last six moths i'll warrant. i'm pretty sure any half decent human being would be disgusted with the antics of assange and the way he's abuse what he calls freedom of speech and freedom of press. what he means is how much i can make for it journalism and who can i screw over or frighten into not losing me money. i'll tell you something else. i don't hate him, i hate the character he displays. he shows the worst of all of us and he disgusts me as do people who think him some kind of god or hero.

[billy]

again i take you back to the turner prize for painting a house pink, or for cutting animals in half and placing them in formaldehyde.
awards are worth jack shit, as for the exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights, why is he hiding in the uk instead of facing his accusers re the sex case, yes he's really fucking brave. the thing is, every one wants to be part of what they perceive to be something on the off chance they can ride the coat tails to some kind of recognition. the times, as soon as someone mentioned assange and how they gave him an award they were catapulted ti international recognition. now not so much and not so big a splash. instead of the front page headline it used to be, it's now a couple of lines on some inside page no one reads.

heres what was said

---

Christopher Hope

6:56PM BST 10 May 2011

Mr Assange was given the Sydney Peace Medal at a ceremony at the Frontline Club in central London today.

The Sydney Peace Foundation said that it was making the award to recognise Mr in recognition of the need “for greater transparency and accountability of governments”.

Professor Stuart Rees, director of the foundation, said: “By challenging centuries old practices of government secrecy and by championing people’s right to know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have created the potential for a new order in journalism and in the free flow of information.”

Speaking at the event, Mr Assange referred to whistleblowers as "heroes" and said it appeared the website had played a "significant role" in the recent Arab uprisings in north Africa by releasing US diplomatic cables in December that were later translated into Arabic and French.

He said WikiLeaks was part of England's historic "free speech traditions, these go back in the UK to the time of the English Civil War of the 1640s". He said: “The real value of this award, and the Sydney Peace Foundation is that it makes explicit the link between peace and justice.

---

where this falls down for me is this; why didn't they give it to manning? the guy who actually did the deed? after all didn't he show the real courage? what recognition did assange pay to him when he accepted the award; he called whistle-blowers heroes. never mentioned manning by name because that would have tarnish his fuckin halo

and what was the bullshit that wikileaks was part of englands free speech traditions.

sorry but assange and human rights in the same sentence sounds profoundly dirty and disgusting.


that really made me laugh out loud.

[billy]

at least the Nobel people had manning on their list.
assange is a has been, soon to be a never was.
he dove wiki into the ground and put back whistle blowing at least a decade or two.
the man is corrupt, his actions are corrupt and his contempt for real freedom of rights and
speech is corrupt. he uses them as tools to further himself, his bank balance, and his ego.
people who follow him as though he's THE ONE need to return to reality.

[billy]

remember it's a discussion forum, and not just a copy and paste a link forum,
what are your views on some of these links. ?

[billy]

isn't that being a little myopic?
is anything that black and white?

i happen to think some of what the gov does should be more transparent and some should be less so.
i don't support any position. my take is from seeing assange himself in interviews from what his co workers said.
i think wikileaks is a good thing and assange a bad thing. i think that people who see him as a hero are more embedded in a dream or fantasy of what they want him to be as opposed to what he is. the usa's abuse of power and any other countries abuse of power is scandalous and i abhor it. yet i don't support a man who uses other peoples sacrifice to become a great person. that's what he did. he used people not for what should be told but for what he could gain. everybody including me loves the ideal wiki leaks stood for. what we can't stand is how he drove it and freedom of the press further into the ground than it's ever been should new laws be enacted.
you say he is a hero.

i say he's a parasite, and an opportunist, again and again he's proven he's in it for the cash and the fame.
he hasn't even got the brains to refuse any false accolades he gets till manning is released. manning is the hero, and assange fed off him like a vulture feeds off a carcass. the media did the same wit the leaks, they fed, thanks fully they didn't profess to be doing it to enhance freedom of the press or speech. they just did it to boost circulation.

could you define hero for us please?

[abu nuwas]

I have not read all this thread, so I hope my wonderful, counter-intuitive insights have not already been thrashed out by others.

I take one look at Assange, and know that I could not stand him at any price. I do not think that it is a good thing for information to be disclosed willy-nilly, whether or not it is of use to any enemy, of commercial rival. So far, just my tuppence ha'penny. However--- since the beginning of this saga, I have constantly been impressed by the effect of the disclosures: some temporary embarrassment, but then, very often, a good deal of respect for the assessments of American diplomats. This has been followed by real changes, which all the diplomacy in the world could not have achieved, real changes, most notably, in the so-called Arab Spring. It is true that Libya is a bit messy, and one has to wonder whether the will of the people across Libya is sufficiently engaged, to make the sacrifices which are necessary in regime change from with in, or stasis, or more simply, revolution. Certainly plenty have been willing to die, and I do understand very well what it is like to live in a place where a despot and secret police run things -- it is not an easy choice for the people of Tripoli.

Yet Libya aside, there seem to be great chances that the people of Syria - a very pleasant lot - will be able to have some less harsh form of government. Jordan has already agreed to go over almost entirely to a constitutional monarchy. The fact that the Saudis were able to crush resistance to revolt in Bahrain (it was not really the Khalifa family who called them in) merely underscores the intent and desire of the Bahrainis, and it will not be brooked forever.

Other countries have been affected also. But is Obama on the rack? Not over this.

Thus, whilst I detest conspiracy theories, I have to say that it would not surprise me to find that history shows the US to have been at least a willing party. Perhaps US interests have been harmed; I just cannot think of any.

I rather hate revealing myself as a crack-pot so soon after joining te site, but I suppose it would become apparent quickly enough.

[billy]

i think you make a good point about the usa not really being hurt. if anything i may even have been strengthened. not too sure i agree that wiki achieved the well spring in the middle east, i think libya was ready and up for it from the start. tunisia as well. i would be really surprised if forign agencies didn't play the major role in causing dissent within these countries. i think they also tried it in iran a couple of years back but the regime there was too strong. they were the well spring. everything that came later was a knock on effect. jmo.

[srijantje]

as a bit of a sidetack,where democracy has a great + over dictatorships is that a dictator accumulates wrongdoings over decades and starts to be seen as a monster to get rid of,often with a lot of bloodshed,where as for example in the USA presidents [or the gov.at that time]can do pretty much what they want and after 4 or at most 8 years they get replaced by a clone and everything starts again,make no mistake,george bush has much more blood on his hands than Khadafi,Sadam and Osama combined.

poor fuckin Manning

[abu nuwas]

Without wishing to appear contrary, Wikipedia has just told me that Saddam began the Iraq-Iran war -- a conventional war lasting eight years -- by invading Persia, in 1980. It estimates the dead at half a million. I don't think the wildest estimates would put American interventions on that scale, and that does not include Saddam's attacks and murders of his own people, or his responsibility for the deaths in the First Gulf War when he invaded Kuwait.

[srijantje]

usa was backing sadam all the way in that war,providing him with satelite pics etc.[accounts for complicity]
after the first gulf war thousands of children died due to lack of medicine because of sanctions

[thethingy]

I have not read all this thread.........

give it a bash, its hilarious

[srijantje]

neither this post or the one above it adds to the discussion in any way. stop it/admin

[billy]

This is a good read:

Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange
By Michael Moore

personally i didn't. moore is another in the same breed as assange. he'll say anything to get into the limelight.
micheal moore's political astuteness is on par with assange's love of humanity. both being in negative territory.