Wikileaks, Guardian Personality And Sexist Of The Year

Julian Assange is exceedingly annoyed at the Guardian, as can be seen from @Wikileaks timeline on Twitter:

I am not terribly interested in Assange.

He strikes me as a manipulative misanthrope and misogynist, and will probably end up doing a “Mel Gibson” one day.

But the activities of his supporters and how they attacked a female Guardian columnist I do find very disturbing. It reinforces the view that Assange’s supporters have no difficulty attacking women, verbally or otherwise:

So I thought it appropriate to have my own Sexist of the Year poll in support of the End Violence Against Women Coalition.

Obviously, any poll is incomplete and it probably could contain many more entries but these are, in my view, a representative sample.

I would welcome reader’s comments and observations. No sexism please, that’s a reminder to Assange’s supporters!

Update 1: A reminder to read Cath Elliot’s excellent, Assange, and feminism’s so-called male allies.

Update 2: I have been remiss and didn’t explain why Julian Assange was so cheesed off at the Guardian. In short, he and his followers tried to rig the Guardian’s person of the year, but they found out.

His reason for wanting to cheat is clear enough.

The narcissistic Assange could not stand the very idea of a brave and injured 14 year old girl winning.

Had Malala Yousafzai won the Guardian poll then it would have taken attention and admiration away from Wikileaks, which would come with Bradley Mannings’ victory.

Assange wants to bathe in the reflected glory of Mannings’ win. He needs the limelight. So he arranged to fiddle it.

Update 3: I forgot to say, but you can vote for several individuals in this poll, not just one.

Update 4: News just in, George Galloway, world famous expert on bad sexual etiquette, has won the End Violence Against Women Coalition’s Sexist of the Year 2012 award:

“George Galloway MP has been voted ‘Sexist of the Year 2012’ in a poll run by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (1), and will be sent a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a prize.

The MP for Bradford West received more than a quarter of all votes cast, and around one and a times as many votes than his nearest runner up, the Prime Minister David Cameron. He received four times as many votes as the ‘bronze medal winner’, Julian Assange. Mr Galloway said, in a broadcast on YouTube in August, of having sex with a sleeping woman, “It might be really bad sexual etiquette but whatever else it is, it is not rape.”(2)

The poll, which was launched at the end of October and was open for a month, saw supporters of the EVAW Coalition and members of the public encouraged to send their nominations by email and on the twitter hashtag #sexist2012.

Voters nominated prominent institutions as well as individuals for their sexist attitudes and behaviour during 2012, including the BBC for its handling of the Savile crisis, The Sun for its ongoing Page 3 ‘feature’ and the Taleban for the attempted murder of schoolgirl campaigner Malala.

Other prominent UK politicians who were nominated included George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt and Ed Miliband (nominated by former MP Louise Mensch for his failure to censure sexist MP Austin Mitchell).

The EVAW Coalition has more than 60 members around the UK who are working to end sexual and domestic violence, forced marriage, FGM, trafficking, stalking and other forms of abuse. They include service providers, lawyers and academics who are on the frontline of tackling abuse and campaigning for government to take a more strategic approach to ending violence by aiming to prevent it in the first place.”

Post US 2012 Presidential Election Thoughts

A random pile of US election insights, links and wit.

Fox News didn’t have a good night, Watch Fox News Chew Its Own Leg Off in a Fury of Recrimination.

Huff Post and idiotic GOPers, US Election: The Funniest Angry Republican Twitter Responses To Barack Obama’s Victory.

On voting, Hollywood tweets on the Obama win, sexy voting and Karl Rove.

How Wall Street gambled on Romney and lost! Wall Street left to rebuild Obama ties after backing Romney.

Gary Younge from Chicago, Obama’s second victory is more low key, but in some ways more impressive.

Bigots can’t take it, Obama’s reelection sparks racially charged protest at Ole Miss.

At Labour List, 5 lessons for Labour from Obama 2012.

Again, Fox News provides their own excuses as to why Romney lost.

Netanyahu handling of Obama has backfired, so he’s told his MKs to shut up for fear of causing more offence.

Peter’s The Times They Are A Changin’.

Bad losers, Karl Rove melts down after Fox News calls Ohio for Obama.

Elizabeth Ann Warren’s win.

Most racist moments of the election, not pretty but Donald Trump gets a lookin.

Ever the politician, Boris Johnson buries news.

Markos Moulitsas is good and thoughtful.

Photos from the NYT.

GOPers might like this, How To Cope If Your Candidate Lost.

Talking of losers, Fox News Slowly Loses Its Mind Over Election Results.

From the Middle East, Likud and Islamic Jihad Decry Election Results.

Finally, as younger readers might say, Mel Phillips, has jumped the shark. Unbelievable nonsense, completely detached from reality, like reading a poisonous discharge from the John Birch Society. Glad I never read her in the first place!

Donald Trump And The Egalitarianism Of Twitter

There is one marvellous aspect to Twitter, its egalitarianism.

Class, skin colour, gender, sexual orientation and wealth are all irrelevant.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire, a millionaire or just someone with access to the Internet, you are all equal.

Twitter judges you on the contents of your tweets, not your wealth, and this has proved to be a problem for the likes of Donald Trump.

He is a regular Twitter user, but despite a vast wealth his idiocy is laid bare on Twitter.

Trump rants and raves with ease yet struggles to make the most elementary arguments.

He tries to delete his more idiotic comments but thankfully New York magazine has captured a few of them.

Update 1: One of Trump’s previous stupid tweets.

Crooks and Liars have more.

US Presidential Election 2012 Part Round Up

This is a partial round up of the US Presidential Election 2012, it is highly subjective as it is still going on and the final votes are not in yet.

If Romney wins as a picture!

The BBC’s America votes: scenes from the US election.

MIT or MITT? Florida Polling Place Denies Entry to Woman with an MIT T-Shirt.

Daily Kos Elections 2012 coverage.

Wow, Family of anti-gay Republican candidate for US Senate take out newspaper ad – against him.

Politics Home US elections – live.

Estimated declaration time in the US.

HOPE, not hate:

Mapping America’s Election Night and Tea Party vandals launch racist attack on Obama posters.

The Guardian live coverage is good.

This 2008 article by Mitt Romney might have lost him the election, Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.

Some intelligent comments at the Atlantic.

Rounding Up Romney, Sesame Street And The World

The US Presidential election is almost over, in a day or two voting will be completed and the counting starts.

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, has received a more than fair hearing by the world’s media, but as far I can see they have avoided talking about his weirder views and what might happen under a Romney Presidency.

Some have strong opinions about Romney’s proposed cuts to PBS:

“Organizers of the Million Puppet March on Capitol Hill in support of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television and National Public Radio (NPR) put the turnout at around 1,000 people, three days before the US presidential vote.

Characters from the children’s show “Sesame Street” — a PBS staple since the network’s founding in 1970 — figured prominently, including two Big Birds, many Kermits and Elmos, and a Miss Piggy grooving to “Dancing in the Streets.”

But the family-friendly rally on a chilly and cloudy day also attracted a frisky marionette of President Barack Obama and a blue-suited protester in a Mitt Romney mask jammed into a trash can with Big Bird on his back.

There was no shortage of sometimes witty placards, like “Keep your Mitts off Big Bird,” “puppets for peace” and, on the arm of a middle-aged gentleman with a skunk puppet, “Romney smells funny.”

The New Yorker looks at Mormonism, private equity, and the making of a candidate:

“Just about the only thing in life that Mitt Romney is obviously not very good at is the public aspect of running for office. During his four campaigns for office—U.S. senator, in 1994; governor, in 2002; President, in 2008 and 2012—he must have undergone endless hours of training and practice, but the magic just isn’t there. In June, I spent a few days on the campaign trail with him, in Wisconsin and Iowa. Romney’s trip had several purposes. A film crew was gathering footage for campaign commercials to run in the fall; Romney stopped in Janesville, Wisconsin, talking privately and doing an event with Paul Ryan, soon to be his running mate; and it was another attempt, apparently fruitless, on the part of the campaign to demonstrate the candidate’s concern with ordinary people. This segment was officially called the “Every Town Counts” tour. Romney rode around in a sleek bus painted with all-American scenes of mountains, church steeples, and ships in harbors. “

Joan Smith looks at a similar issue, men with power and keeping it to themselves:

“Now he’s been criticised by the first female head of the Home Office, the kind of person who very rarely speaks out, for excluding women from top government posts. Dame Helen Ghosh, who left her job as permanent secretary last month to run the National Trust, told students at a Cambridge college that Westminster is run by powerful networks of men which are hard for women to break into. She pointed out that there was a “magical moment” six years ago when half the heads of government departments were women, but now there are only three female permanent secretaries. “

The West-friendly Bahrain regime is locking up people, again:

“MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — A defense lawyer in Bahrain says a prominent human rights activist is in custody after defying an official ban on protest gatherings in the Gulf kingdom.

The detention of Yousef al-Muhafedha could further embolden Shiite-led demonstrators seeking a greater political voice in the Sunni-ruled nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.”

Last Presidential Debate 2012

I didn’t watch the whole debate, but Obama looked tired in this BBC clip.

There are some videos at the Beeb which give a greater flavour of the debate.

I thought the Presidential debate: Obama’s ‘horse and bayonet’ jibe was comparatively amusing, by the tame level of humour at these events, but it wasn’t a knockout blow.

CNN’s 5 things we learned in Monday’s debate is shorter, but incomplete.

This is the Guardian’s Debate decoder: the final presidential face-off deconstructed.

Depressingly, Romney is still stuck in the Cold War as CNN shows:

The US, Food Banks And Real People

Gary Younge’s description of real Americans discussing their once well-off circumstances and the need for food banks is a reminder of how precarious existence can be:

“Mark’s fortunes began to change in the summer of 2009 when was a human resources manager in a company with 1,500 employees. He was let go and replaced by a colleague 20 years his junior on half his salary. He could have found other work elsewhere in the country, but that would have involved uprooting his three children, and he didn’t think that was fair. He got another job in a start-up that involved a long commute and eventually collapsed owing him money. With his mortgage paid off and no debts, the biggest expense for a family of five was healthcare. Since everyone in the family was healthy they contemplated doing without it.

Then his youngest daughter got bitten by a rattlesnake. “That would have been a six-figure healthcare bill,” he says. “If we’d gotten rid of healthcare at that point we would have been sunk.” It was around that time he started going to the food bank. He stopped after he got a job at a major bookstore as a night-time accountant and head cashier paying just $9 an hour but with good health benefits, and is now getting a human resources consultancy practice off the ground.

When Pezzani heard the tape of Romney referring disparagingly to the 47% of the country who don’t pay taxes she was unimpressed. “It’s very difficult to see the folks that we’re serving maligned in that way,” she says. Beck-Ferkiss at the HPI has similar reservations. “It’s hard for me to believe that Romney is focused on the population that I serve,” she says.

Mark, however, says it just confirmed everything he already thought. “It doesn’t surprise me about Romney because he’s always struck me as a stuffed shirt. He’s arrogant, and it’s hard for me to get past that. It didn’t change my mind about him because I always thought that about him. It was exactly the same as Obama saying “You didn’t build that”. Those were exactly the words I would expect to come out of his mouth.” “

US Presidential Debate: Obama vs Romney

This clip from BBC news is good at summing up the second US Presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney of 2012.

I must say, I find the thought of Romney as US President to be frightening, he’s in the mold of G W Bush, but without the charm!

The 47% And Mitt Romney

Politics as a way of proving that it helps to be stupid if you’re a conservative. So it is with Mitt Romney’s campaign for the Presidency.

Romney, like many conservatives, has unbridled arrogance and conceit which he hides under a man of the people manner. Thankfully, not many people are taken in by this pretence and his gaffe about 47% of Americans will only confirm that:

“Mitt Romney’s campaign came close to hitting the self-destruct button when he stood by a secret video recording suggesting that 47% of Americans are government-dependent “victims” who do not pay taxes.

In a hastily-convened press conference, the Republican presidential candidate confirmed the authenticity of the video and opted against disavowing the views expressed in it. He said only that the case was not “elegantly stated” and that he had “spoken off the cuff”. “

Update 1: I loath the Weekly Standard, it embodies all that is wrong with American conservatism. Normally, I wouldn’t even linked to them, but in these exceptional circumstances, even they have criticised Romney:

“

Plenty of conservatives are pushing back against the worldview espoused by Mitt Romney in his “arrogant and stupid’ remarks at a private fundraiser earlier this year.

The conservative case against Romney’s analysis is multi-pronged. His description of the 47 percent who don’t pay income taxes as “dependents” flies in the face of the conservative view that Americans should be paying fewer, not more, taxes. And historically, most Americans have not paid income taxes. Moreover, most of those who don’t pay income taxes still contribute to the federal government in the form of payroll taxes and other federal taxes and fees. The political argument, that those who are “dependents” won’t be voting for Romney anyway is demonstrably wrong, and the content and tone of Romney’s remarks don’t strike many conservatives (and others) as particularly presidential.

At the Daily Caller, Jim Antle notes how Romney’s use of the “47 percent” marker who are “dependent” on government is simply wrong:

“I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said of the dreaded 47 percent.

The problem is that Romney isn’t basing that figure on dependency on government programs. He’s using the rough percentage of people who pay no federal income tax.

There are two reasons the percentage of Americans who don’t write checks to the IRS has spiked in recent years: the bad economy, which Romney pledges to ameliorate, and Republican tax cuts, which Romney plans to continue….”

Update 2: Politico is reporting that the dullard, Donald Trump, has ventured to defend Romney:

” “He has to not apologize; I think we’ve seen enough apologizing already,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today.” “He cannot apologize. What he said is probably what he means, and he did say ‘inartfully stated.’ The fact is he cannot apologize; he is going for those independents. He won’t get the votes of a lot of people he’s discussing, and if you’re not going to get the votes, let’s go on with it.”

Update 3: This superb response should be an Obama election advert:

Update 4: It beggars belief but Romney’s advice on how to bomb the US:

World Wide Snippets: Women’s Rights, Galloway And Attacking The Disabled.

A slightly delayed round up from a few weeks back.

Lest we forget, Exhibit focuses on scientists’ role in Holocaust.

How did this come about? As HOPE Note Hate comments.

Individual tragedy from the Middle East, the Oasis of Peace’s sad news.

Still no freedom for poorer rural women in South Africa.

The Women of Afghanistan:

“A recent study by Human Rights Watch, which interviewed 58 women and girls in prison, found that half were jailed for acts that any reasonable person would not consider a crime, like running away from abusive situations. People who force women into marriage, often at very young ages, or subject them to violence, are rarely prosecuted, the group said. Female victims get little support from police and judges, and they face the added injustice of being punished for committing “moral crimes,” like “zina” — sexual intercourse between two people not married to each other. Criminalizing zina is contrary to Afghanistan’s international obligations, the group says. “

No means no, lest George Galloway and his supporters forget that.

ADL’s Snapshot of Al Quds Day 2012:

“While the largest Al Quds Day events gen­er­ally take place in the Mid­dle East, protests are also held in cities across the United States. The protests, which took place last Fri­day in a dozen U.S. cities, were rife with extreme lan­guage, includ­ing signs that com­pared Israel’s treat­ment of the Pales­tini­ans to the Holocaust.

In New York, L.A. and Hous­ton, large ban­ners read­ing “Stop Pales­tin­ian Geno­cide” were on dis­play, as well as other signs that read, “Israel is a Can­cer,” “Down with Zion­ism,” Holo­caust in Pales­tine” and “Gaza=Auschwitz.” A woman in New York held a sign that said, “Free Pales­tine! End ZioN­azi Apartheid! No $$ to ‘Israel!’ Boy­cott ‘Israel’.” “

WNN is a superb source of underreported news. Recommended.

Clarifying Assange And His Would-be Cult

I used to like Wikileaks, however, their involvement with Israel Shamir sent shivers down my spine and now I find the adoration of Assange to be rather disturbing.

The consequence of Julian Assange’s antics is that Wikileaks barely exists, the focus is on the narcissistic Assange with barely a word about Bradley Manning.

As exhausting as it is trying to keep up with the varied arguments the latter two articles are quite refreshing.

Hadley Freeman spends time explaining rape to the repulsive George Galloway in Everyone’s talking about rape.

But don’t get me started on Mike Moore and Ollie Stone’s (almost) MittRomneyesque contempt for Europeans.

Adrian Chen’s Julian Assange’s Rape Case Has Nothing to Do With Free Speech:

“But every one of their points in support of a dark Swedish-U.S.-U.K. conspiracy is false, having been debunked in earlier posts by New Statesman writer and lawyer David Allen Green, and the British lawyer Anya Palmer. The facts show that there is nothing more to the case than Swedish prosecutors trying to get Assange to face justice.

First: Moore and Stone toss out the old chestnut that “Sweden has not formally charged Mr. Assange with any crime.” Assange hasn’t even been charged, so why are the Swedes pursuing him so aggressively? It must be because the CIA has secreted Swedish lawmakers’ families to black sites and won’t release them until they get Assange.

But the argument that Assange “hasn’t even been charged,” is based on a meaningless technicality: Assange has not been formally charged because in Swedish criminal cases nobody is charged until very late in an investigation, unlike in the U.S. and Britain where charges are filed early on. Assange high-tailed it out of Sweden before the investigation reached the point of a formal charge—which is why they want him back. “

Adam Wagner’s The Assange Reality Distortion Field:

“It was once said of Apple’s Steve Jobs that he could convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, and persistence. Following Jobs’ untimely death, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has taken over the mantle of his patented Reality Distortion Field.

It would seem (on Twitter at least) that you are now either with Assange or against him. To be with him is to believe that he is in the throes of an international conspiracy involving, but not limited to, the British Government, courts, the Swedish Government, his rape (not bad sexual etiquette) accusers, of course the Americans and possibly the saucer people too. To be in the other (artificially exaggerated) camp is to not automatically believe that his Swedish accusers have been concocted by a dastardly international conspiracy, but rather that their accusations should be met with (whisper it) due process. Moreover, Assange has had his days in court, all the way to the UK Supreme Court, and now must face his accusers.

RomneyShambles on YouTube

This video clip is lovely for condensing down Mitt Romney’s idiocy whilst in London:

Pam Geller & Mitt Romney

The truly awful bigot and English Defence League supporter, Pam Geller, can be seen cosying up to Mitt Romney.

Anyone unfamiliar with the EDL can see its supporter giving the Nazi salute in this video clip: