The Insane Idea That Organized Criminals Are More Trustworthy Than The United States Government

If Julian Assange hadn't revealed himself to be a total narcissistic slime ball and a dishonest creep, his interview with Bill Maher certainly showed himself to be that.   From a story at Salon.

Asked if it was “fair game” to release donor info from a private entity, Assange said, “It was definitely good fun.”

“I am super happy with how that’s gone,” he continued. “That shows a kind of instant accountability — perhaps not proper political accountability — for a really quite concerted effort, through the chain of command at the DNC, to make sure that Bernie Sanders didn’t win, including by pumping out black PR.”

Only where is the connection between DNC staffers venting at a candidate for the Democratic nomination whose campaign was relentlessly attacking the DNC and any actual effort to defeat him
The connections between Assange, his criminal organization and the Russian kleptocratic establishment, if not government, are move obvious.

As an aside, anyone who is involved in politics should instruct and have strict rules in place against them venting their frustrations in e-mails and other documents made in work hours on work sites and even after work, in what they so often mistake to be private, off-record conversations.   Anyone who doesn't realize that their juvenile venting could be damaging is too stupid to have a position of trust.

Assange calling enabling the election of Donald Trump "good fun" is all the proof anyone who ever had doubts as to his character should need to conclude that, far from the hero we were presented with when we first heard of the Aussie twit, he is a phony, egomaniac jerk with much in common with Donald Trump.  You have to wonder if his ratfucking of Hillary Clinton's campaign is influenced by her gender instead of her policies or past.

At this point, he's essentially working to elect a fascist as president of my country.  I call someone like that the enemy of my country and the enemy of democracy.    I would have no problem with the United States government putting pressure on Ecuador, Britain, Sweden or any other country to extradite him here to face charges in his past crimes and I would also have no problem with them doing what they could to expose Wikileaks and the people behind it.  You can't be heroes when you are trying to elect a fascist as president of the United States and that's what they're doing.   If, as it would seem, they are acting on behalf of, in concert with or at the orders of the Putin government, that needs to be exposed.   It is in the interest of all of those countries to put an end to his activities, the Ecuadorian people would certainly not benefit from a Donald Trump presidency.

I think it is way past time that the Democratic Party, the United States government and other governmental agencies to stop using the internet for sensitive information.  It's too easily hacked.

The heroification of Julian Assange was always pretty disgusting, especially considering how they left their major source in their biggest leak to twist in the wind by not protecting the identity of the then Bradley Edward Manning, now Chelsea Manning.   You can add Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald and a host of others who were held up as heroes in some great, alleged protection of the privacy of average citizens.  The whole thing was a lot more nuanced than that line of propaganda PR presented it as being.  I see nothing less reassuring in this situation than that foreign governments, criminal organizations and private entities and individuals with their own interests and scores to settle having that information.

If it comes down to a choice between trusting Snowden, Assange, Greenwald and Valdimir Putin having information about me and the United States government having it, I have to confess that I have far more confidence in my government than in any of them.  There is a possibility of the Congress and President passing laws, or courts making rulings, protecting my rights and I have the right to try to put a government in place which will do that.  No one has any say in who hacks and there aren't any rules or laws governing what they'll steal and what they will do with it once they have it.   Who are you going to sue if Wikileaks destroys your life?  If the Putin government or its network of organized criminals do?  Where will you go for redress from criminal organizations?  Well, you can write to the Attorney General or State Department or something, I suppose.