I'd Like My Own Poison Pill, Thank You

So many people like this Julian Assange guy and I can't figure out why.

Here is a man sitting on tons of sensitive material, releasing it whenever it pleases him, redacting information seemingly at random and revealing the names and identities of hundreds of informants around the globe, putting the lives of military personnel and (even worse) civilians around the world in jeopardy. Now, he's threatening to release a "poison pill" of files if he's detained too long, or extradited to Sweden.

It's one thing to want true transparency in international relations and to expose the ineptitude of American diplomats, but to sit on sensitive material and to release it at one's leisure, or to use it as an ultimatum, or blackmail, to save his own ass, and, barring that, just as revenge for extradition, makes me think this guy is not an innocent. He seems to be only interested in either saving himself, or promoting his own interests and has ended up making himself a walking contradiction of what Wikileaks was supposed to stand for in the first place; an unofficial check and balancer to local and world dealings that could expose true corruption that could be a detriment to everyone.

It wasn't meant to be an organization formed to be used as a bargaining chip in court to save one person. This isn't a revolution of empowering the people and encouraging transparency. It's just another moment in history when a minor megalomaniac is using a stockpile of virtual wealth he fell ass backwards into and he's not afraid to abuse the information as much as the diplomats who stupidly reported it.


If this is the face of the next people's revolution I'd rather take my own poison pill.


What a joke.