"... his languorous, very un-Australian limbs, and his aura of blinding pallor that appears to admit no nuance, Assange looks every inch the amoral, uber-nerd villain, icily detached from the real world of moral choices in which the rest of us saps live."
Oh, no! It's the Wikileaks guy, Julian Assange. He seems like some kind of monster, if we go by the way he looks.
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This time, it's personal.
He'd definitely make a good Bond villian.
Also, he seems like some kind of monster, if we go by what he has done.
He seems like some kind of monster, if we go by the way he looks.
...or by the way he acts. The blood of a lot of Afghanis is going to be on his hands, once the Taliban start murdering our informants and their families...
Also, he seems like some kind of monster, if we go by what he has done.
Was coming in here to say this.
I thought that leaking documents that discredited and endangered our military was a good thing.
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!"
Right? I think I read that in the New York Times, which used to leak a lot of documents.
What happened to change that?
Oh, I forgot. We elected a Democratic president.
from the article:
What does Assange want? Does he really want the free world to cringe under constant threat from al Qaeda? If we fail to defeat this threat, what does Assange think will happen? Do we have any sense that he cares?
Of course he doesn't care. He isn't any different than those others whose hatred of the US and the West in general is so intense, they have no problems making common cause with the nihilists who want to see it destroyed.
Yet, they still hold dear those 'progressive' ideals which the jihadists find the most contemptible of Western society so the cognitive dissonance of guys like this is remarkable. It reminds me of an anti-war protest photo I saw of a couple of girls wearing short shorts, halter tops and keffiyehs as if they could get 10 feet dressed like that in the Palestinian territories.
Lenin's coining of the term useful idiots never rang more true than today.
One of the worst part of this is his complete hand-washing of the fate of Afghan collaborators. Apart from his dark wizard appearance, that is.
You know, we're really getting the life imitates art shaft.
In a world where a comic book villain like Assange ..."Heh heh heh, now I will leak thousands of top secret documents, helping terrorists all across the world, heh heh heh..." can exist, why can't we have a real life Spider-Man? Or even a Daredevil?
Same with Soros, who makes Lex Luthor look like a piker.
"...Bwa ha ha...now I will manipulate the global currency market, bringing disaster down on those evil U.S. Allies, the Brits...Bwa ha ha ha". Where's Superman to restore/preserve the American way? Too busy making teen dramedies in Smallville? Weak.
That description comes from cartoons like Batman. It called to mind a sentence I saw recently in a review of 'The Pacific': "That kind of writing, aspiring to vigour but conveying nothing vivid, concocted by people whose mentalities are saturated by the movies and by nothing else, is put in instead of writing." (Clive James, in the TLS for 7/9).
Tunku V is a smart and cultured guy. But you wouldn't know it by that column.
And, despite his best efforts, it's hard to turn Assange into a uniquely evil arch-villian when the NYT and other mainline sources have published much more harmful stuff leaked to them by gov't workers who don't like current policy. The NYT editors would explain their decision in more anodyne terms, but what matters is the disclosure. On that score, there's not much difference.
Also, he seems like some kind of monster, if we go by what he has done.
+1 to this
Assange is an egotistical, nihilistic douchebag (and funny-looking), but the real villain here is Private Bradley Manning. He is the one who took the oath to support and defend the Constitution, which he then willingly betrayed. I'll be interested to see what the Obama administration does with this cocksucker. He should get a life sentence, just as Jonathan Pollard did.
One of the worst part of this is his complete hand-washing of the fate of Afghan collaborators.
Its quite possible he views them in the same light as the French resistance viewed the Vichy.
I seem to recall that the Constitution of the United States defines treason as giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.
Manning should be shot (not to mention Soros and a good many others).
Since the Aussies, who are in A-stan also, probably have a more British (read looser) version, the same should happen to Assange.
Execute some of these 'citizens of the world' and this sort of thing will stop.
Kevin said...
He seems like some kind of monster, if we go by the way he looks.
...or by the way he acts. The blood of a lot of Afghanis is going to be on his hands, once the Taliban start murdering our informants and their families...
... and more than a few American soldiers.
Assange has stated that his main goal is to "end the war in Afghanistan" by having the US withdraw.
Yes, chew that logic over. If the US leaves Afghanistan he believes that the war for the nation will end.
For him, it's all about defeating the US. Weakening the US, harming the US.
Anything else - the Afghan people - is of no concern.
Since Robespierre, it's not at all shocking how clinical and detached people can be about their destructive and murderous actions.
Quite simply, some people appear to have been born without a conscience. A few are asshole bosses, some go into TV and movies, a few become serial killers, and a few murder thousands.
Consider what can happen when the one lacking conscience is also born with the magic of charisma. From that alchemy devolves the fate of generations.
Isn't this guy what predators were made for?
One can read another take on Assange in this profile from a couple of months ago.
Hmmm, putting people already in harm's way in further danger. It takes a class act to contribute to or soldiers getting it from all sides.
The people who do this and the people who support them are also the same people who want to sue Arizona for trying to proect themselves, Mirandize illegal combatants, and toss conservatives through windows.
The left is always about prioritizing.
If the US leaves Afghanistan he believes that the war for the nation will end.
Why does the normally-omnipresent Vietnam analogy always seem to desert these guys just at the point where they might actually learn something from it?
"He seems like some kind of monster, if we go by what he has done."
Beat me to it.
Private Bradley Manning.
Man, prepare yourself for a life-long ass kicking, buddy.
You are in for it.
Actually, I don't think Assange is even operating on the level of global geo-politics. He just wants hits for his site. Affecting an anti-US bent means that all the BDS people will come to his site more often.
You're right that he's got a startlingly amoral outlook, but you're wrong about the degree. He hasn't yet got beyond the hump-kill-eat-shit level.
"He seems like some kind of monster, if we go by what he has done."
Very well put.
It's one thing for someone to be mistaken about what is moral and what is not. It's another entirely for someone to not care either way.
Civilized people should shun the amoral.
edutcher said: "Manning should be shot..."
I hesitate to suggest something so...permanent...particularly because I'm not a big fan of the death penalty.
But in this case, I agree.
And it's up to Australia in the case of this Assange, but I think that he should be executed too.
They've purposefully undermined our side in a real, live war where people will die because of what they've done. And I hope that we relocate as many of these Afghan informants to the US as we can before they and their families are murdered.
I have no problem with Manning being sentenced to death. If treason like this doesn't merit a death penalty, nothing does.
Shooting one asshole like Manning would make a whole bunch of others see the seriousness of this.
The above assumes 2 things, of course:
1) That the crime legally merits the death penalty
2) That he is fully tried and found guilty.
No, Pastafarian, do not relocate the Afghans to the US.
Relocate them to Australia.
Not far from wherever Assange lives.
And make sure they know his address.
"What does Assange want? Does he really want the free world to cringe under constant threat from al Qaeda? "
Anyone in this country cringing from fear of Al Qaeda should change the batteries in his spine stiffener implant because the one's he's got have died and turned to boiled spaghetti.
We should take the $100 billion or so we're using to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan and use it to rebuild America, which really needs it, in case no one has looked out the window recently.
Shooting one asshole like Manning would make a whole bunch of others see the seriousness of this
I would like to see our Nobel Peace Prize Winner In Chief (NPPWICOTUS?) authorize the death penalty for this guy.
WV - nippwicotus
"..We should take the $100 billion or so we're using to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan and use it to rebuild America, which really needs it, in case no one has looked out the window recently."
I'll see your 100 billion and raise you 750 billion. It was called the Obama's 'shovel-ready' jobs stimulus package.
It was in all the papers about 18 months ago. You haven't heard
When he has longer hair he looks like Valerie Plame. I'm suspicious.
We should take the $100 billion or so we're using to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan and use it to rebuild America, which really needs it, in case no one has looked out the window recently.
It's much less than that.
The Congressional Research Service estimates that since the invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago, the U.S. has spent closer to $227 billion. The Pentagon puts the number at $156 billion.
About $30-40 billion per year (Afghan costs)
And one of those persons worried about Al-Qaeda would be Barack Obama.
The $100 billion would be spent on the same people who have consistently failed and grossly overspent in every major program they've ever undertaken (I'm think Union rules a la the Big Dig). The people who could actually do the jobs right, and who would actually stimulate the economy by adding value, are locked in the dreaded private sector where their only purpose is to fund their public counterparts.
"When he has longer hair he looks like Valerie Plame. I'm suspicious."
Thread winner!
I want to see Assange and PFC Manning beheaded with dull knives- the fate that was handed out to Daniel Pearl by the Jihadis that both Assange and Manning seem to be i n love with.
And why didn't he redact the documents with the information about the informants? Laziness?
"Dude, that would take, like, FOREVER! Eff it, let's just dump the whole thing online. You know, whatever happens, happens. Let's go grab some lattes after the upload."
And so here we are.
oof dah! That's some mighty damning writing there, by jimminy.
He is a monster, even if he looks like Winnie-the-Pooh .
He is a monster, even if he looks like Winnie-the-Pooh .
You mean Winnie The AntiChrist (from a honey bee's perspective)?
He reminds of this villain from the movie "12 monkeys"
SMGalbraith wrote:
Yes, chew that logic over. If the US leaves Afghanistan he believes that the war for the nation will end.
For him, it's all about defeating the US. Weakening the US, harming the US.
Anything else - the Afghan people - is of no concern.
Is that really any different than democrats and liberals view Iraq? I guess he didn't get the memo or read the talking point about afghanistan being the good war that Iraq was the diversion from.
ANd I guess it's good to know that the NYT will leak documents even for the good war and despite the fact that it might damage Obama.Still, it's pretty darn seditious.
Leaking the names of informants is like leaking the names of people in the witness protection program or undercover cops while they're undercover. Unonscionable.
Lincolntf wrote:
In a world where a comic book villain like Assange ..."Heh heh heh, now I will leak thousands of top secret documents, helping terrorists all across the world, heh heh heh..." can exist, why can't we have a real life Spider-Man? Or even a Daredevil?
Same with Soros, who makes Lex Luthor look like a piker.
or a real life Punisher or Wolverine (No quarter asked and none given). Something tells me spidey would simply make some wisecracks and then web him to a wall to be picked up by the cops. Whereas, the Punisher would, I don't know, punish the guy for real.
I would like to see our Nobel Peace Prize Winner In Chief (NPPWICOTUS?) authorize the death penalty for this guy.
Maybe that's going too far, but could we at least waterboard the guy? Or, if people find such suggestions too obscene (but dont find killing the guy obscene) how about if we instead call it "putting him through SERE training".
I don't regard this as exculpatory, but the Wikileaks site was the place where the pilot lights of global warming were first revealed. It's the nature of things, though, that there will be more leakers with a left wing agenda than from the right. And don't hold your breath waiting for a doc dump from North Korea or Syria. Still there are a lot of crazy bank shots in history, and this might not play out the way the left supposes. The Afghan informants, for example, now have a lot of motivation to defeat the Taliban.
Private Bradley Manning.
Man, prepare yourself for a life-long ass kicking, buddy.
You are in for it.
I doubt it. Did anything ever happen to Thomas Tamm or Daniel Ellsberg?
Personally, I'd like to see the feds put a bullet behind his ear, but what will actually happen is the government will do nothing with the excuse "we haven't decided what charges are appropriate" until the firestorm dies down.
He'll be feted on the lefty talk show circuit - Maddow, Democracy Now!, etc, and make mint selling a ghostwritten book. Eventually he'll get a fawning paragraph in your kid's history book, where his courageous decision to betray his fellow Americans will be applauded.
And all the additional soldiers that die because nobody in A-stan trusts us enough to work with us? That connection will never be made in the press.
The Afghan informants, for example, now have a lot of motivation to defeat the Taliban.
Except most of these guys are probably just normal people dropping a dime on the bad guys when they're in town. They're not going to defeat the Taliban. They're going to die.
But from an intelligence perspective the real problem here isn't the guys who were informants, but the people who were toying with the idea and will now be scared off.
Once the secret is released, it's hard to fault a journalist for publishing it. It's either going to be the "monster" or it will be Al Jazeera. Seems to make little difference which. He was under no obligation to abstain from publishing. Note how many others are racing to sift through the material now to titillate us with what is in it.
I hate the guy, but it was going to be him or someone else. I despise him for what he is, not what he did. He's a sick man.
The real villain is the PFC who made it available. This is the traitor and there is no fate awful enough for him to receive.
But I doubt he'll get what he deserves.
When I was a second lieutenant, a lance corporal (name of Foote) took an A-4M Skyhawk for a joy ride around the skies of Southern California. I thought he'd be in the brig to this day. Instead, the USMC decided not to even prosecute him because they didn't want the publicity and they didn't want to explain why this lance corporal was given so much time on the simulator to learn how to fly the jet (he was accepted to OCS but wouldn't be allowed to be a pilot because he got the bends from setting glider altitude records) or why security was so lax that he could get airborne without anyone knowing he took the plane.
I suspect the army will be embarrassed to have to explain how a PFC got access to 90,000 documents and was able to remove them without anyone noticing.
It's been my experience that handling of classified documents is inordinately cumbersome in the US, but in the war zone it is lax. They probably won't want to explain how that could be.
I'm kind of hoping we bump the guy off. Not that I expect us to, but it would be nice if we did.
We should take the $100 billion or so we're using to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan and use it to rebuild America
Sure, let's take the $30 billion a year we're spending on the war in Afghanistan and give each American an extra $1.87 per week to spend on "rebuilding".
If we can hold out for three weeks, we'll have enough to rebuild ourselves a venti mocha from Starbuck's.
If we can hold out for three weeks, we'll have enough to rebuild ourselves a venti mocha from Starbuck's.
Now that there is funny.
If we can hold out for three weeks, we'll have enough to rebuild ourselves a venti mocha from Starbuck's.
Yes! My husband and children don't drink coffee, so I'll get theirs. I look forward to being ultra-caffeinated once every three weeks.
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