WikiLeaks’ Assange fires back at The Guardian to competitor

[cowcommander]

Source: AP

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange slammed the New York Times in October for the paper's critical front-page profile of him.

That's presumably one of the reasons that the Times -- which received hundreds of thousands of secret Afghanistan and Iraq documents from WikiLeaks -- was shut out when WikiLeaks provided 250,000 State Department cables to several news outlets for publication in November. The Times ended up getting its documents from The Guardian.

But now Assange is taking issue with The Guardian's coverage of him. So could the British paper be shut out next?

David Leigh, The Guardian's investigations editor, told The Cutline that he doesn't want "to be too critical of Julian because he's been under a lot of strain lately."

However, Leigh added that "it seems he's going to war with just about everyone at the moment."

Assange's "war" with The Guardian landed on the front page of Tuesday's Times of London (shown above), a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper that, so far, hasn't been on the receiving end of any of WikiLeaks' trove of classified documents. (The Times of London article is behind a paywall, but many of the details have already leaked out.)



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20101221/ts_yblog_thecutline/wikileaks-assange-fires-back-at-the-guardian-to-competitor

[bemildred]

1. Dang, no loyalty to the MSM eh?

How unethical.
:sarcasm:

[nyy1998]

2. Sounds hypocritical to me, it's alright for him to criticize the US govt, but if he gets criticized

then you could go to hell. I think it's starting to become clear why OpenLeaks was created. If you're going to create a higher-profile for yourself and your organization, you're going to have to take the good with the bad. Not everyone is going to love you and admire what you've done, while others will consider you a hero. I'm not sure he understands that, and is becoming increasingly defensive about ANY criticism, whether it's fair or not.

[bemildred]

3. So you feel that it's wrong for him to fight back?

The Guardian is now Mother Theresa or something?

[nyy1998]

7. I'm not neccesary saying that the Guardian is great or anything, but...

I'm saying he doesn't handle any criticism well or anything that refutes his power. Hence the creation of OpenLeaks, hence the ABC News story, and the Guardian story. Besides, essentially the Guardian story was about a leaked police report about Assange, apparently he could leak documents, but if something is leaked about him, he gets into a hissy fit.

For all we know, the police could be wrong, but he's shooting the messenger(the Guardian) instead of criticizing Scotland Yards for their possibly false report. It's as if the Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel must kiss his ass if they want the Wikileaks documents.

[bemildred]

9. And I'm saying "Why should he?"

He does not owe the Guardian anything, he did them a favor, not the other way around. He is under no obligation to be a doormat for all the bizarre bullshit being "alleged" against him. It is not him that is throwing hissy fits, far from it.

[reorg]

11. Well, no.

If you want to know how he handles criticism, I'd recommend listening to this BBC interview:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9309000/9309320.stm

It also provides an answer to the question with which you seem to be struggling, why some leaks may be different from others.

Regarding the suspension of his former colleague, I'd also recommend you investigate further, instead of relying on the US mainstream spin on this matter.

[bemildred]

13. Yes, that was a good interview, though the interviewer was far from "objective".

And some of the questions were very leading, "But don't you think if you were guilty then you'd be guilty?" and stuff along that line.

[nyy1998]

15. I'm sorry, but "… that promotes justice through the mechanism of transparency and journalism. "

Doesn't really cut it. How do we not know there could be some sort of justice in his case?

And I reread the OpenLeaks situation, still not convinced that they're not blaming Assange. in fact, I pulled up this interview from Der Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,719619,00.html

Money quote:I have tried again and again to push for that, but Julian Assange reacted to any criticism with the allegation that I was disobedient to him and disloyal to the project. Four weeks ago, he suspended me-- acting as the prosecutor, judge and hangman in one person.

Is this also by the US spin media?

[DeSwiss]

5. That's nonsense. n/t

[nyy1998]

8. Um, ok

[sofa king]

4. He's the first of some sort of something, I'll give him that.

But while he's an information merchant who defends himself with his wares on an imaginary battlefield, he's still susceptible to all the dangers of being human. I hope he knows what he's doing, and I hope he keeps doing it.

[Peace Patriot]

6. I sure hope the good guys are able to keep cool heads in this situation.

I've no doubt that the London Slimes and Mudrock are pissing with glee at having partially succeeded with their little "divide and conquer" bit. Assange and the Guardian need to deny them any further such joy.

And Assange needs to realize that, for the very reason that the CIA's ugly little sex sting is all they've got, they are not going to let it go away. They are going to milk it for all it's worth. They are going to see that its dirty little details are repeated every day, in every way. One can hardly blame the loyal Guardian for covering it. They are a newspaper--not a tabloid but an actual publisher of actual news. And the fraudulence of the sex sting is a very public issue. Assange could end up falsely imprisoned because of it. The Guardian has to cover it. They really have no choice. It is a vital component of a much bigger story--the U.S. vs. freedom of the press, in which Assange's fate and possibly the fate of Wikileaks--and, God knows, the fate of the remaining vestiges of free speech in the "free world"--are at issue.

The stakes are very high. I'm sure the pressures are beyond what most of us could bear, on Assange, with intense pressures also all around Asaange, on everyone--good, bad or in between--involved in this matter, by choice or by circumstance. The ones with worst motives--the U.S. government and its agents and toadies--will be looking for every little pinhole to stick pins through, and have been known to just dump bombs, literally, with not a whole of care about who they blow to smithereens. They are out for blood because they are covering up so many evil and bloody deeds, and are protecting those who have committed them. They, and/or the multinational corporations and war profiteers who are really running things, will go to any lengths to discredit, punish and, if possible, 'disappear' Julian Assange. So, whatever little patches of "thin skin" he may have, he needs to patch over with impenetrable bandaids. I feel for him. He has good cause for complaint--about the sex charges, the wholly baseless arrest and detention, the calls for his assassination, for godssakes, by U.S. politicians and everything else. And, really, he should complain. I have never seen such egregious behavior by these two purported democracies--the U.S. and the U.K.--not even back in the Pentagon Papers days. This beats all. But I hope Assange dials down his anger at his friends, in this case, so as not to play into his enemies' hands, and because they, too, are under pressure. All are under pressure.

[JDPriestly]

10. Assange does not strike me as an easy guy to get along with.

Rather unpleasant actually. Not a family man. Not affable at all. Probably a real party-pooper, which may be why he is being accused of rape.

His personality has nothing to do with Wikileaks, but his personality does not seem to be very pleasant. Take all kinds.

[reorg]

12. Interesting

From his public statemtents, I get the direct opposite impression.

[bemildred]

14. He's a nerd. If you don't like nerds, you won't like him. nt

[sofa king]

16. I'm a nerd, and I've known a few people like him.

I live a bizarre life in which I consider myself a reasonably bright person, but I only rate a mail-room job at my work because everybody else around me is a helluva lot smarter than I am.

Within that population is a small group of people I call in my own crude mind, "scary-smart."

Here there is an entire administrative department being run by a grandmother who has what I swear must be an eidetic memory, or something close enough to it that a guy like me can call it that and feel like he's telling the truth. She runs it all with a single, also very capable assistant. Her mind tracks the location and status of thousands of valuable objects, hundreds of people and vehicles, a dozen houses and other properties, with their upkeep rates and their depreciation over time, and so on. She even knows by heart who parks where in the parking garage and what time they usually leave, and where the deer like to lay down at lunchtime in the winter outside of her office.

Every day I spend working with this woman is a jaw-dropping experience, and I cannot fully explain how much I admire her and her level of professionalism, which I can never hope to even pantomime. But still, I have my problems with her from time to time, because she doesn't suffer fools gracefully, and by comparison to her, I should be wearing a jester suit. She's not the only one like that around here; each one of them has a unique personality that defies comparison, even to each other.

People like this friend of mine simply don't see or even interact with this world in the same way most of the rest of us do, and while it might not be beyond our understanding it probably isn't easy. Their intellect colors every aspect of their personality. Some people find them frightening, but I think it is the brilliant among us who are the more frightened, for they see the world in much better focus than we, and they know the world is being driven straight into the dirt by a much of slobbering idiots.

[bemildred]

18. Yes, me too. Well said.

Off topic: your grandmother sounds like what I imagine an old hunter-gatherer woman must have been like thousands of years ago, knows all the plants and animals within 100 miles, where they are and when, what they are good for, all the terrain, everything that matters ...

[sofa king]

19. Yes!

I strongly suspect that my friend is the matriarch of her entire familial clan, but not only that, she has a complete familiarity with the family lives of just about everyone she knows, their family relationships between one another, and she extends her matronly concern to all of them, including me.

Recently, with two emails, she ended the on-time arrival problems of both myself and another fellow who happens to live in my town, 35 miles away from work, by shooing the two of us into a carpool, and together we haven't been late since. How can you not love a person like that? But how can one not also be cowed at how easy it is for her to maneuver us to changing our behavior by her mere force of will, and make us like it?

Someone just like her must have been running the more successful chiefdoms through history for a hundred thousand years, either from in front of the crowd, or neatly seated nearby.

[Gravel Democrat]

17. What an amazing gift you seem to have

being able to know that much about someone you've only read about, and many of those words chosen very carefully.

You should tell fortunes.

Bill Clinton was accused of rape, but it's funny how many people think he's a role model now. A "big Dawg", whatever that means, presumably humping everything with a hole. Some even would probably not believe that he ...uh... messed up the dress of a (barely legal) member of his young staff in a room next to the oval office, preferring to imagine he was set up.

Not exactly stellar behavior, at least on the job.