Julian Assange
Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, its current editor in chief, and two-time winner of the Richard Dawkins Lookalike Competition.
Just The Facts
- Wikileaks is an organization and online database that was founded in 2006
- Its aim was to publish anonymous leaked documents that expose oppressive governments and unethical behavior worldwide
- At some point in 2010, Assange gave up on that and decided that being a supervillain was more fun.
Background
Assange's organization, Wikileaks, was envisioned as a way to protect freedom-fighting journalists and whistle-blowers fighting against evil and corruption around the world, particularly in China, the Soviet bloc, Asia and the Middle East. According to Assange, its goals were to "free the press, establish rights and wrongs through exposing abuses and create and preserve the historical record."
Wikileaks volunteers at work, circa 2008
Changes in Wikileaks' mission became apparent in January 2010, when a car driven by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates struck Assange, causing him to stumble into a vat of industrial-strength hydrogen peroxide. That April, Wikileaks gained new notoriety when it released a video of US troops gunning down two reporters they had mistaken for insurgents. In accordance with their mission of providing free, impartial information for all, Wikileaks edited 21 minutes out of the video, halving its running time, and labeled it 'Collateral murder'.
The attention this video gained taught Assange that picking on the US military was more fun than boring stuff like Taiwanese dissidents, because later he released 75,000 leaked military documents on the Afghanistan war.
The documents exposed such shocking facts as:
- Innocent people are sometimes killed in wars.
- The US military tones down negative coverage instead of employing self-deprecation and weeping openly about its insecurities on national television.
- Government contractors can sometimes be inefficient.
When asked if he was concerned about innocent people potentially being killed by the information he released, Assange referred to them as 'collateral damage', which must be the biggest instance of irony since Mel Gibson was gang-raped in Mozambique earlier this month. Assange also blamed any damage on the US military itself for being 'lackadaisical' with sources. Pulling out a gun and shooting the Swedish prime minister three times in the face, Assange then pointed out that his actions were simply demonstrating the rampant flaws in the country's security system.
Asked to clarify, Assange then replied "MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" and alluded to a female acquaintance of President Obama being held hostage in Iceland's Skol mountain.
Personal Life
In late 2010 Assange faced a rape accusation in Sweden, which was controversially thrown out when a Swedish judge ruled that he was 'too girly' to have done it.
Still, Assange has written widely on the subject of women. He once described his mating technique thus:
"Just when one might suspect that men are krill to the baleen of female romantic manipulation, I found myself loving a girl who was a coffee addict. I would make a watery paste of finely ground coffee and surreptitiously smear this around my neck and shoulders before seducing her so she would associate my body with her dopaminergic cravings."
Assange later tried this with a girl who liked honey, which led to his famous hospitalization in 2004 after being attacked by flesh-eating ants.
He doesn't look anything like Richard Dawkins.
Replyso it was fine when Assange was exposing China and the Middle East's wrong doings, but God forbid he should also tackle the almighty U.S on its hypocrisies?
ReplyDid you actually watch the video of the reporters being gunned down. Because I did, and what I saw was an unprovoked attack, on innocent civilians. They also severly injured the children of the men who then tried to rescue the shot men. And laughed and congratulated each other while doing it.
You need to grow up. Wikileaks provides an important service for civilians. BTW, as the U.S is in Saudia Arabia's pocket , due to all the monetary handouts its receives from that country, it's important to know that this country is then urging America to start ANOTHER war-this time with Iran-or didn't you realise that?
The vast majority of the wikileak files in relation to the Us are benign. They expose no great evils, no torture or murders. The problem is that they divulge statements made by foreign leaders that were to have been made in confidence and they very irresponsibly name the names of confidential informants. Total transperancy in government is idiotic. If they are doing something grossly illegal or committing human rights violations, I need to know. But they’ve failed to reveal great crimes by our nation and what he is doing is seriously negatively impacting our attempts at diplomacy. We cannot expect peaceful resolution to conflicts if we no one trusts us. Take North Korea. Kim Jong Il is a very unstable man. He is considered by his people to be of divine descent and has total control. He is woefully underqualified for his job and has committed and continues to commit human rights atrocities. The situation is so bad in NK that children near the border to South Korea are often abducted and presumed “eaten”. He refuses aid from western nations because he does not want their influence corrupting his people and limiting his power. He also wears pajamas all day and has the world’s largest collection of Daffy Duck cartoons. He is an entitled, under-qualified despot with total power and a cache of nuclear materials. He is dying and had not had due time to ensure a seamless transition to his next heir. Thus he desperately needs to drum up patriotism from his half-dead-from-starvation populous. Thus all of the peacocking being done of late. He is also, as a result of the Korean War. Fiercely anti-american. He wiped his ass with the UN’s global anti-proliferation treaty and will really only engage China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. In order to PEACEFULLY keep this nutbag from attacking SK or from continuing ongoing efforts to build missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to neighboring nations (just last year missile tests reached Japan and fell just short of Hawaii) we DEPEND on solid diplomatic relations with China and Russia. Relations that are being strained by sensitive material being leaked by your friend Mr. Assange. Put down the V for Vendetta comic and think about this. If you really cared about avoiding wars, this is the stupidest possible thing you could do.
He looks like Rick Astley.
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