With a $1.5 million book contract, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange should have enough cash on hand to handle his legal bills. But what about those of alleged source Bradley Manning, to whom WikiLeaks promised $50,000 to defend him? And then, in December, a mere $20,000? As of now, the Bradley Manning Support Network has received $15,100 from the group, which, at least publicly, it is acting thankful for. That brings BMSN’s total to about $100k, or $12,500 for every month he’s been locked up without being charged with a crime.
GaiusLivius
Wikileaks is all about Assange and his personal crusade. The little people don’t matter.
David
Wikileaks is actually all about international governments trying to suppress democracy and free speech. Assange is one of the little people. Do you seriously think $1,500,000 is enough to take on the US government which has decided to illegally imprison Manning without trial. If Manning is ever charged and released he should flee and seek asylum in Canada or Mexico.
SouthSideShorty
Anyone who thinks Manning and Assange are heroes has some seriously fucked-up priorities. Seriously — what if these two had access to your own personal medical and educational records and made them public? Would they still be heroic in their actions? What if they had a list of all us gays in the U.S. and wanted that to be known world-wide . . . still a man of the masses? Just because he’s as anti-American as you are doesn’t mean he’s doing great things for you.
Hylomorphic
@SouthSideShorty:
And what if George Bush ate the still-beating hearts of newborns for Sunday dinner?
You can attack anyone with ridiculous counterfactuals like these. What Manning and Assange /might/ have done, but didn’t, has exactly zero relevance.
Jason
He betrayed his country and should be put to death.
Soupy
He exposed his country and its lies.
ousslander
A malignant narcissist is what they both are. They thought that everyone’s an idiot who would worship them and shower them with praise. While there are some like above commenters, most people recognize that manning is a traitor and Assange wants the high life at anyone’s expense.
UWSguy
Wikileaks should definitely help this guy.
justiceontherocks
Not a very good idea to abandon the “co-conspirator.” He might get chatty. They need to ante up.
Soupy
A malignant narcissist is what they both are. They thought that everyone’s an idiot who would worship them and shower them with praise.
The same description applies to Bush and Cheney.
Soupy
Don’t you think that taking America to war over knowingly fabricated evidence as Cheney did is treasonous? Why wasn’t he prosecuted. Oh wait…Bush took care of that with a pre-emptive pardon.
David
People who are calling for the trial of Assange without also calling for the trial of Bush and Cheney is opposed to democracy and free speech. Those 2 malignant war criminals have destroyed democracy in the US,
B
No. 12 · David wrote, “People who are calling for the trial of Assange without also calling for the trial of Bush and Cheney is opposed to democracy and free speech.”
Assange is not a U.S. citizen and he was not in the U.S. when he (or his organization) published these documents, which (as far as I know) were simply sent to him. While the U.S. government obviously is not pleased with his antics, it is not clear to me that he committed a crime – it was the U.S. government’s responsibility to keep sensitive information confidential. The U.S. government does, however, have a right to declare him persona non grata, which means he wouldn’t be able to legally visit Disneyland in Southern California.
For example, if for some strange reason (maybe a mistyped email address) someone sent me some of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s private documents, what crime would I, as a U.S. citizen, have committed if I turned those documents over to the New York Times and/or the U.S. government? If I did that, the worse the Iranian government could legitimately do to me is to bar me from entering Iran.
Jeffree
MSNBC on Jan. 24 reported that “military” officials still haven’t proven that Manning was the source of the leaked documents. Assange, for whatever it’s wort.h, claimed that his org. hadn’t heard of Manning until the press covered the story.