Terry Glavin doesn’t think much of Julian Assange.
Julian Assange, the Wikileaks archgeek, radical-chic avatar, the Chinese
Communist Party’s nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore’s
joint-venturer, absconding debtor, American celebrity pornographer Larry Flynt’s fair-haired boy, darling of Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Bianca Jagger…Lo, Assange hath now been found to have released more than 1,000 cables outing individual political activists – several thousand tagged as sources who could be placed in danger – and more than 150 cables outing whistleblowers, people persecuted by their governments, and victims of sex crimes.
Such is his courage in speaking truth to power that Assange had already prompted Zimbabwe’s chief executioner to set up a commission to pursue treason charges against the dissidents so bravely outed by Wikileaks. Assange had already equipped the Cuban regime with evidences to mount investigations of that poor country’s subversive youth. In the police state of Belarus, where hundreds of journalists and opposition activists were already languishing in prison, Assange’s official “gatekeeper,” a holocaust-denying antisemite, was happy to meet with officials of the regime after boasting of being in possession of documents proving ties between Belarussian democrats and the foul American imperialist aggressor.
But lots of people thought he was great anyway, until just a few days ago. Be careful whom you admire.
Update: But see also Glenn Greenwald and Spiegel Online.