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Jules & The Amateurs

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EVERYWHERE (Rixstep) — Things are happening at WikiLeaks. Nerves are shot. The WikiLeaks founder is under a lot of pressure. There's a war on - yes it's a war.

But the ranks somehow don't get it.

Only a few years ago when the Idiot Prince ascended the throne in the US amidst protests of election rigging and the world's biggest fan of 'My Pet Goat' declared war on Saddam Hussein (under obviously fabricated circumstances) the people of the US - not to speak of their military and renowned five-sided building - closed ranks.

Now when times are tough for WikiLeaks, what do the rank and file do? Bicker in public.

Perhaps the hawks in the Pentagon will escape universal admiration. But at least they know how to behave in wartime. Not so the amateurs in Julian Assange's WikiLeaks organisation.

First we had the delectable Birgitta Jónsdóttir complaining to right wing hawk websites, then offering a feeble reversal whilst promising more in a while (except that never happened of course).

Then only a few days ago we had 'Daniel' (who can't seem to decide what his family name is - Schmitt, Berg, or whatever) deciding to go public because he'd been ousted from the organisation.

And on 25 September we had a former WikiLeaks chatroom moderator (?) responding to the WikiLeaks correction of a Der Spiegel gaffe by tweeting 'fuck off, Julian'.

Those dudes in the CIA and the Pentagon won't have much to worry about if things continue like this.

Snorrason's argument might seem legit at face value. Assange evidently told him to 'piss off' when chat room moderator Snorrason voiced support for others who thought the new release date for further Afghan war diaries was too premature.

But the Pentagon don't hang out their laundry in public. Assange doesn't either. These people however do.

They're amateurs.

War

There are wars going on - one in Iraq to find Saddam's long lost Weapons of Mass Destruction/Reuters cameras, another in Afghanistan for who knows or cares what reason, and a third one against WikiLeaks. And the most important of these is the one against WikiLeaks.

And all the while Assange lives under pressure from the Swedish authorities for not knowing how to use latex prophylactics and has lived under this pressure for more than a month, his loyal followers with Daniel 'von Whatever' in the lead decide to stage a coup.

It's OK to disagree with Assange. It's OK to question his wisdom and his decisions. It's OK to call him names. It's OK to get pissed off too. But Assange isn't WikiLeaks. One doesn't work for Assange - one works for WikiLeaks, no matter what the man seems to be saying. One doesn't work for WikiLeaks because one believes in Jules Assange - one works for WikiLeaks because one believes in WikiLeaks.

The nonsense circulating in the media these past few days - nonsense spewed by former WikiLeaks insiders who Assange suspects of having been leaking for sometime now - cannot possibly serve the cause of WikiLeaks or efforts to end war or force corrupt institutions into greater transparency.

Should every single WikiLeaks insider have had it 'up to here' with their founder, they need only quit - walk out the door - and their message will get across. Their recurring outbursts read more like the actions of attention whores, of loose cannons.

The ongoing war within WikiLeaks is not the only one on the planet. The war within WikiLeaks doesn't cause anyone any physical harm. There are ways of dealing with a situation other than undermining an organisation that can truly save lives.