Julian Assange. And I thought *I* had a big ego.

[Damocles]

He's always seemed narcissistic to me, but this is just awesome.

He needs to start writing fanfiction.

[GaijinPunch]

As someone who peruses dating sites and Craigslist for fun, this seems somewhat tame (and kind of to the point). He was probably busy and wanted to get laid.

[Stormwatch]

Assange has the right to be as narcissistic as he wants to. He is THAT awesome.

[`Throwdown]

Dudes not "awesome" at all. This guy would instigate a war, or even a major global conflict with his actions and not even care. I wish someone would assassinate him, I'm tired of hearing about him already. He's quickly becoming a idol to noobs...

[Michaelm]

I wish someone would assassinate throwdown and all of those other americans who call out for assassination.

Just my 0.02 cents

[`Throwdown]

I wish someone would assassinate throwdown and all of those other americans who call out for assassination.

Just my 0.02 cents

This coming from Eurotrash.

[Michaelm]

This coming from Eurotrash.

Oh well, it's better you say it then someone who actually uses his brain.

[`Throwdown]

This coming from Eurotrash.

Oh well, it's better you say it then someone who actually uses his brain.

I didn't mean to offend you with my comments about Assange. You would be better off going to the streets with your cardboard sign and flogging your back with a whip talking about "Free ASSANGE!!!" then trying to start a flame war on these forums. Get off the mans genitals.

[Stormwatch]

Dudes not "awesome" at all. This guy would instigate a war, or even a major global conflict with his actions and not even care.

Look at all the conflicts around the world right now. HOW MANY of those did he instigate again?

[LtC]

Thread needs more anti-USA propaganda

[`Throwdown]

Dudes not "awesome" at all. This guy would instigate a war, or even a major global conflict with his actions and not even care.

Look at all the conflicts around the world right now. HOW MANY of those did he instigate again?

I didn't say DID I said "would". Read please, read.

[Michaelm]

I didn't mean to offend you with my comments about Assange. You would be better off going to the streets with your cardboard sign and flogging your back with a whip talking about "Free ASSANGE!!!" then trying to start a flame war on these forums. Get off the mans genitals.

You say you wish someone gets assassinated and then state you didn't want to offend people ?!?
Hmm, I just followed you're logic and yet you seem to be offended.
I guess that's just the american way.

You clearly forget that Assange is only publishing the words written out by the officials that represent you.
If this would instigate a war or even a major global conflict you should know that that's because of the words used by those officials.
It is not the messengers fault.

But hey, I take it you kill the postman too for delivering a defective PCB that was already dead before it got send.

And let us also not forget that fabulous snuff movie recorded by the us army where they just kill civilians and journalists and those innocents that tried to help a wounded man.

Edit: Just added a link to the Collateral murder video in this post as to avoid some narcissist member of thinking I would only reply to it's posts.

[`Throwdown]

I'm not worried about offending anyone, but apparently I have lit you up considering your trolling this thread waiting to respond to whatever I post.

2ndly, the whole issue here doesn't seem to be about me. It's about your anti-Americanism and blind support for a radical journalist that is backed by hackers.

And this "messanger" is snatching private documents and information and exposing them to the public when they are suppose to be classified. That's no mere journalism, that's a man getting famous off of global instigation and exposure.

I'd put what he's doing on par or worse than pirating peoples credit card information off of the internet. But as long as it's done to a Yankee it's not bad, it's justice.

[`Throwdown]

Sorry for the double post but what in the hell does an American "Snuff film" have to do with the topic at hand? What a waste of time...

[david peterson]

LOL americans .

[Drum]

Sorry for the double post but what in the hell does an American "Snuff film" have to do with the topic at hand? What a waste of time...

Well, until Wikileaks starts posting credit card details and instigating wars, we just have to talk about the things it actually has done.

[`Throwdown]

Sorry for the double post but what in the hell does an American "Snuff film" have to do with the topic at hand? What a waste of time...

Well, until Wikileaks starts posting credit card details and instigating wars, we just have to talk about the things it actually has done.

Fair enough. My point is, the information leaks are damaging. Nothing good can come of it, and the man has become a global star because of it.

[Drum]

Sorry for the double post but what in the hell does an American "Snuff film" have to do with the topic at hand? What a waste of time...

Well, until Wikileaks starts posting credit card details and instigating wars, we just have to talk about the things it actually has done.

Fair enough. My point is, the information leaks are damaging. Nothing good can come of it, and the man has become a global star because of it.

Well, you'd know.

[Skykid]

Throwdown, I know nothing about you except you're pro-Americanism has offended me greatly, as does the preposterous suggestion michaelm is trolling.

Most of my extended family are residents of Philly and I'm a dual passport holder, US/UK, even though none of my family were born natively American except for my younger cousins.
Off the bat, I have nothing against American people, I just feel sorry for them, and for those soldiers, all of whom have had their heads shoved up their asses just like you for such a long time by the governing institutions.
I was going to open a thread yesterday called "Is your country racist?", after hearing a news story that yet again pinpoints Muslims for their ethnicity. It occurred to me, the report, which was about an asylum seeker who killed a girl under his truck and fled, wouldn't have been news if he wasn't a muslim. The 'so called' argument (who's arguing?) and propaganda spin was whether he should be thrown out of the UK for his crime, leaving behind his two young kids.
I don't know and I don't care, but it's increasingly apparent that the world wants me to care that A: he's a muslim and B: to question whether he belongs here.

This propagandist bullshit works on people. I know, because of the comments you've made in this thread Throwdown. These stories we keep getting in the UK are a byproduct of an economic situation whereby the country is overpopulated with asylum seekers and threatening jobs, but also a product of America's dirty oil war, and have risen in frequency and intent as the war has been prolonged.

The American government and military are tyrants and those brainwashed soldiers are a plague on the poor people of Iraq.

The revolution will not be televised after all, it'll be delivered by broadband. Assange now faces his first inevitable challenge to evade extradition and the desperate hands of the United States government that want to shut him up. I wish him all the luck in the world in holding on to his freedom so that he can continue in his work.

[CMoon]

Thread needs more anti-USA propaganda

This is like a half-way point on the road to Idiocracy. I like it.

[BulletMagnet]

The tone in here needs to lighten up NOW, or this thread goes kaput.

In an attempt to comment on the topic at hand (more or less), as a USA resident in spirit I support what Wikileaks does, since I'm inherently wary of a government operating in too secretive a fashion (Cheney and his self-exonerating definition of "executive privilege" can go to hell, and I'm highly disappointed in Obama for not doing more to roll back the autocratic trends the former started). Then again, I do acknowledge that there are some things that shouldn't be immediately made public - whether Wikileaks has crossed that boundary with what it's released so far I'm really not sure, since some insist that this information puts diplomatic relations and combat troops at risk, while others say they're relatively harmless considering what else is floating around out there. Once again I wish our media wasn't owned by billionaires' corporations and our culture so blithely dismissive of informedness and intelligence, else we might actually be able to make some hard-and-fast sense of the situation.

[DC906270]

I agree with Bullet Magnet

[t0yrobo]

Well this thread is off to a great start :/. I don't really care about what he's doing, I just think he's going about it the wrong way. I don't buy this crusader image he seems to be going for when he acts like a very smug thug.
Anyway, so far I'm not sure if what's been released has been THAT damaging. I don't think it should be a surprise to anyone that a country that makes itself involved in various shit all over the world has dirty laundry, the cables have shown that it's not just the US that's up to sleazy shit as well. And it's no surprise that the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has been horribly mismanaged, everyone should know that by now. I doubt wikileaks will be causing a revolution anytime soon, but it will at least get the US gov to either clean their shit up a bit, or hide it better.

[doctorx0079]

THIS is the worst thread ever.

PS i like tacos

[greg]

Take the cruel, culturally insensitive macho assholes in high school who had no world philosophy, no respect for the value of others' lives, had no direction in life and who enjoyed treating others sadistically, and give them advanced, high tech weaponry, send them to countries they do not respect, and see what happens. Well, thanks to Julian Assange, we get to see what happens. Things get out of hand, innocents get killed, and quite often the military deals with those involved. Assange could be considered a hero and may help keep the US military in line, but that doesn't nullify the fact that he was in unauthorized possession of classified stuff relating to national defense/military matters and purposely disseminated that information. Hero or not, he can't hide behind "freedom of speech" when he has committed a crime that's punishable by law.

I hope in the end he's done more good than harm, but I can't stop thinking that this stuff will only fuel the Islamic idiots who want everyone to believe that all this happens 100% of the time and that it is the US's policy to murder innocents carelessly just because they are Muslim, when the fact is that no Americans really give a crap about their religion to begin with. Me make long sentence just now.

[louisg]

It cracks me up that a government that has started two useless wars (one of them completely baseless) and has killed untold thousands of people has the nerve to claim that Assange has blood on his hands. Just give me a break already.

If he has committed a crime punishable by law, why hasn't he been brought to the US for justice? What's with these petty charges being filed against him, as opposed to real charges like espionage? My understanding is that it is not illegal to publish content that an anonymous source has leaked.. the leaker is the one with the problem.

Anyway, I see Assange as the counter-balance to a situation where the news does not do what it's supposed to.

EDIT: Actually I think we're giving him too much credit.. I understand he's only one part of WikiLeaks, and has gone public because he's got an ego to stroke

[BulletMagnet]

Hero or not, he can't hide behind "freedom of speech" when he has committed a crime that's punishable by law.

I'm generally in agreement on this point (when you're more or less attempting to redefine "journalism" you'd best be prepared for a fight, as opposed to simply asserting that everything was already in place for you to do as you please), but I've seen a lot of the same people who are lambasting Assange (not you, necessarily, of course) step up without hesitation to defend a slew of self-labeled "patriots" who knowingly disseminate all sorts of libelous and provably false garbage to baldly further their own ends whilst hiding under the "free speech" banner - I wish someone would ask them to reconcile their contradictory views on the record, but again, in the current media climate it'll never happen (maybe on The Daily Show).

I hope in the end he's done more good than harm, but I can't stop thinking that this stuff will only fuel the Islamic idiots who want everyone to believe that all this happens 100% of the time and that it is the US's policy to murder innocents carelessly just because they are Muslim, when the fact is that no Americans really give a crap about their religion to begin with.

On this note, how would you explain the furor over the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", or the profitable screaming by high-profile candidates this past election that sharia law had been (or would soon be) implemented in our own communities unless we "stand up and fight", despite, again, that all of it is utterly false? Not in the same category as killing anyone, but definitely not supportive of the "nobody really cares about their religion and they have no reason whatsoever to doubt us on this" viewpoint, if you ask me.

[Aliquantic]

EDIT: Actually I think we're giving him too much credit.. I understand he's only one part of WikiLeaks, and has gone public because he's got an ego to stroke

Not to mention that leakers would go to newspapers in the first place if it were not for Wikileaks... or to another one of the "middlemen" leaking organizations, but there seems to be very little outrage about newspapers actually publishing leaks. I can't remember any major backlash against Wikileaks either for previous leaks (like their recent leaks on the US military)...

[Skykid]

I find the circumstances of the allegations against Assange highly dubious. If he's guilty then he's guilty, we'll just have to wait and see.

Wikileaks is potential threat to national security, yeah, but I can live with that. I'd rather people were educated the hard way than live in a world of falsehoods. Most wars are atrocities and the Iraq war is no different, may as well show people why.

[louisg]

I hope in the end he's done more good than harm, but I can't stop thinking that this stuff will only fuel the Islamic idiots who want everyone to believe that all this happens 100% of the time and that it is the US's policy to murder innocents carelessly just because they are Muslim, when the fact is that no Americans really give a crap about their religion to begin with.

On this note, how would you explain the furor over the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", or the profitable screaming by high-profile candidates this past election that sharia law had been (or would soon be) implemented in our own communities unless we "stand up and fight", despite, again, that all of it is utterly false? Not in the same category as killing anyone, but definitely not supportive of the "nobody really cares about their religion and they have no reason whatsoever to doubt us on this" viewpoint, if you ask me.

I'd also add that I think we'd have a hard time confusing the public into thinking that Iraq=Iran=Afghanistan=etc if a lot of people generally didn't think like that. The sad truth is that once you leave city centers, you're often in contact with some really narrow-minded people, many of whom even have problems with different denominations of their own religion, and go absolutely nutso when it comes to entirely different religions. There's been a really insane amount of mainstream Muslim bashing; tbqh it's kind of starting to scare the shit out of me. But this is derailing the topic...