Mostly harmless
Oh well at least he hasn't published classified information this time. However if he wanted to do the world a favour he should man up to his responsibilities and go sort out the accusations in Sweden.
WikiLeaker-in-chief Julian Assange, who is languishing in self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, has kept himself busy by scraping more than one million documents from the US national archives. The latest collection of reports to be published on his news leaks website - some of which are labelled "NODIS …
Yes. He is being most cowardly.
If he truly was concerned about biased treatment (which I found highly unlikely before his hide in the embassy stunt) he could at least entertain us with madcap global adventures complete with 'Assange Sighted in Rangoon Escapes in Hang Glider' headlines. His hiding in a closet republishing public documents while begging for pocket money is no fun at all.
From The Register, just a few days ago:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/04/assange_extradition_unlikely/
Justice Stefan Lindskog, a senior judge from Sweden’s supreme court, has told an Australian audience..
...snip, snip, snip,...
[/That] his personal view,..., is that Assange has done good works.
“At the end of the day Assange will be thought of as someone who made public certain pieces of information,” Lindskog says, adding that he feels many of Wikileaks’ leaks “were good for society and should not be punished.”
“The good made by leakage of such information cannot be underestimated,” he says. “It should never be a crime to make known the crime of a state.”
Me, I'm from the "You are what you do, not what you (or others) say you do" school... On the whole, IMHO, Assange's contributions have made the world a little better.
Now, if we can just arrest Bush and Blair and drag them to the ICC...
To be fair I don't think he's being accused of a serious rape, just the light-hearted stuff Jimmy Saville got up to in the early days before he went a bit too far. On the other-hand wikileaks has not revealed anything that John Mcafee's spy network has already uncovered, so it's not like we need Assange anymore. We also have to bear in mind the credible intelligence that Julian Assange is capable of launching a political attack on the UK within 45 minutes. Perhaps we can just redefine the UK border such that on paper the Ecuador embassy is in international waters? Then the americans could go get him in a paper boat.
I agree completely. You are what you do. Wilileakes meh. No real impact other than a little embarrassment to a few people who are pretty embarrassing anyway.
The mess in Sweden though, that's a much more real thing. He should face his accusers. His actions in refusing to do so are those of the worst sort of coward. Until he acts in an honorable manner in regards to how he is accused of treating real people (not countries or administrations) his subsequent actions cannot be viewed as honorable.
Assange is also chasing cash from WikiLeaks fans who want to see his "public library of US diplomacy" expanded by asking them to donate money - in euros - to his cause.
I guess the rich donors who got burnt when he skipped bail aren't willing to give this waste of oxygen more money so he is having to resort to the gullible public.
> Cue calls for Assange to be tried for treason. Once a secret, always a secret. etc.
All of these documents are already de-classified. They are all available to the public at the US national archives.
The only thing Assange has done is copy them to wikileaks and make them searchable. It's no big deal.
I don't know how brave he really is. Meh, if eventually captured/extradited by the US, he'll be put on trial, *maybe*, and and spend a few years behind bars, *maybe*. Not like he could be dropped and "lost" into Gitmo, he's too public a figure. The Swedish domestic charges are probably much more of a legitimate concern. The rest of it is him trying to puff himself up for later book sales.
I'd like to see him release some really good Russian or Chinese secret documents and see how long it is before he passes away of "natural causes". The Russians in particular have already shown how they deal with such things.
I do take exception to him primarily releasing just US docs though. If he was equally releasing data on everyone in the interest of "information needs to be free", then it would look more like he was sincere about it if it was everyone's dirt. But I suspect he doesn't want an anonymous visit from the FSB while in the Ecuadorian Embassy.