09 December 2010

Hardly Heroic

In the past few days, some media outlets have trumpeted Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, as an information-age hero.  After all, his activities do play in to a convenient narrative for an anti-American, tin-foil hatted, and politically naive crowd.

Nevertheless, those who view Assange as a paragon of virtue might want to reconsider his altruism and loyalty to his compatriots.  Though Wikileaks' Twitter page proudly displays a banner which reads "Free Bradley [Manning]", in reference to the Army intelligence analyst who provided Wikileaks with its biggest intelligence coup to date, representatives for Manning claim that Wikileaks has yet to provide a single dime for Manning's legal defense fund, despite promises to do so.  Manning currently faces fifty two years in Federal prison, while Julian Assange has recently flaunted the documents stolen by Manning as some sort of insurance policy against arrest or murder.

A man of the people, indeed.

3 comments:

staghounds said...

Flouted is what Manning did to Army regulations and the law, flaunted is what Mr. Assange did with the documents.

Starbuck said...

I really need to stop posting these things early in the morning...

Anonymous said...

Have you noticed how many suits Assage owns? Does the man not own a T-shirt? He's like Barney from How I Met Your Mother. Maybe he could donate a few Armani's to Manning's legal fund.