It was August 9th, 2010. The events in Sweden that would lead to an international diplomatic incident were still days away, but there was already a revolt brewing on the Wikileaks team. While the staff considered Assange's October 13th deadline for redacting personal information unrealistic and were afraid of the consequences to sources, Assange had already secretly given access to the unredacted Wikileaks database to newspapers. When news of this came out, tensions boiled over. One by one people start leaving the organization, not wanting to be associated with the consequences - and it didn't just stop at low-level volunteers. It included the manager of the Wikileaks chatroom. The developer of their redaction software. Even Wikileaks' spokesman in Germany, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
Their concerns were founded. After his legal troubles began, Assange put out an "insurance file", encrypted and containing all of the unredacted leaks, with the password to be published if he were to be arrested. But a slip-up happend. Assange directly handed the password to a journalist, and the journalist, not realizing how important it was, published it in a book on Wikileaks. All of the cables were now available, unredacted, online.
Domscheit-Berg and other Wikileaks staffers were furious. He and two others, among them the architect of Wikileaks' server system, seized the servers from Assange's control and destroyed documents to prevent their sources from being compromised. "Children shouldn't play with guns," he said, in regards to taking control of the servers away from Assange. Domscheit-Berg later went on to found a separate leak site, Openleaks, along with other disillusioned Wikileaks staffers. Meanwhile other Wikileaks members continued to drop out of the organization for numerous other reasons, from Wikileaks support for a Belarussian dictator to the diverting Wikileaks funds toward his legal defense.
But this isn't an article about departing Wikileaks staff. It's not even an article about an offhand death threat from him to his then-roomate and coworker. No, first, it is an article about cats.
Julian was engaged in a constant battle for dominance—even with my cat, Mr. Schmitt. Mr. Schmitt is a lovable, lazy creature, a bit shy, with gray-and-white fur and an extremely laid-back way of walking. Unfortunately he also has a neurosis stemming from the time when Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden. Julian was always attacking the poor animal. He would spread his fingers into a fork shape and pounce on the cat’s neck. It was a game to see who was quicker. Either Julian would succeed in getting his fingers around the cat and pinning it to the floor, or the cat would drive Julian off with a swipe of its claws. It must have been a nightmare for the poor thing. No sooner would Mr. Schmitt lie down to relax than the crazy Australian would be upon him. Julian preferred to attack at times when Mr. Schmitt was tired.
“It’s about training vigilance,” Julian explained.
Mr. Schmitt was a male cat, and male cats were supposed to be dominant.
“A man must never forget he has to be the master of the situation,” Julian proclaimed.
I wasn’t aware that anyone in my apartment or the courtyard had questioned Mr. Schmitt’s masculinity. What’s more, he was neutered.
(Source)
One thing that came out with the exodus of top-level Wikileaks staffers was a flush of insight into the off-camera views and attitudes of Wikileaks' "founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest," as Julian Assange described himself.
In an excerpt leaked to the Gawker website, Mr Domscheit-Berg writes: ‘Often I sat in large groups and listened to Julian boast about how many children he had fathered in various parts of the world.
‘He seemed to enjoy the idea of lots and lots of Julians, one on every continent.
‘Whether he took care of any of these alleged children, or whether they existed at all, was another question.’
The youngest child of the controversial Australian, who faces rape charges in Sweden, is understood to be six months old, while the oldest is 20.
...
In another excerpt from Mr Domscheit-Berg’s book, he writes: ‘Julian’s main criterion for a woman was simple. She had to be young. Preferably younger than 22. And it went without saying that she couldn’t question him. “She has to be aware of her role as a woman”, he used to say.
(Source)
Naturally Assange denies these allegations. The problem is, other former staffers are saying the same thing:
However, his claim about the love children in his book, Inside WikiLeaks, tallies with that of other insiders.
Donald Bostom, a Swedish journalist and WikiLeaks volunteer, told police investigating the rape allegations that Mr Assange had ‘at least’ four children. Gawker said the figure had been ‘independently confirmed’ by a friend of Mr Assange.
According to a Gawker source, Mr Assange was obsessed with fathering children because he has a superiority complex. ‘He thinks he is so good that the world needs more of his kids,’ said the source.
If this whole thing rings any bells, there might be a reason. Of course there's the accusation that he intentionally damaged the tip of the condom with a woman after trying to have unprotected sex with her. But there's also the awkward conversation with a second woman after she claims she woke up to him having unprotected sex with her. From
the Police Protocol:
She said to him: What if I get pregnant? In reply he merely said that Sweden is a good country to have children in. She said jokingly that, if she is pregnant, he would have to pay off her student loan ... she was trying to minimize, in her own mind, the significance of what had happened. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care. When he learned the size of her student loan he said that, if he were to pay so such money, she would have to give birth. They joked about naming the child Afghanistan. He also said that he should always carry abortion pills that were actually sugar pills.
S also told H. that Assange had spoken so strangely, as though he wanted S to become pregnant. He said things that sounded like he wanted to make women pregnant. He reportedly said that he preferred virgins, because then he would be the first to make them pregnant.
Indeed, the cat thing itself might sound a bit familiar:
1. On 13th – 14th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name
given] in Stockholm, Assange, by using violence, forced the injured party to
endure his restricting her freedom of movement. The violence consisted in a
firm hold of the injured party’s arms and a forceful spreading of her legs
whilst lying on top of her and with his body weight preventing her from
moving or shifting.
(First charge against Assange in the European Arrest Warrant)
Of course, one doesn't have to listen to Assange's coworkers to get a sense of his views. His old blog gives a good sense of his views on women on their own. Let's pick a couple examples:
One of the devout was the lovely daughter of a New Castle minister. At some point in my unintended wooing of her, she looked up, fluttered her eyelids and said 'Oh, you know so much! I hardly know anything!'. 'That is why you believe in God," I explained. This conversational brutality took her breath away and she swooned. I was exactly what she secretly longed for; a man willing to openly disagree with her father. All along she had needed a man to devote herself to. All along she had failed to find a man worthy of being called a man, failed to find a man who would not bow to gods, so she had chosen a god unworthy of being called a god, but who would not bow to a man.
Mathematics is a systemization of communicable human thought created by brain architectures that have male-type spacial abilities and extremised by the extremes within that group. Extreme female brain architectures would create a different sort of mathematics. It won't be created by the females currently in mathematics because they need a male type brain to thrive in the existing mathematical world.
Perhaps a good cognitive neuroscientist will do it for them.
(Source)
Why is it linked through the Internet Archive and not directly? Because Assange went and deleted anything and everything he could that related towards his attitudes toward women (not even his years-old OK Cupid profile was spared). Even seemingly harmless things related to dating became off-limits. Famously litigious, some of his most recent lawsuits concern try to stop people from showing publicly available footage of him dancing in Iceland.
Back at Wikileaks, there was one person Assange personally brought into the organization that caused more controversy than anyone else: Israel Shamir. Shamir is probably most famous for being notorious anti-semite and holocaust-denier, but there's a lot more to him than just writing things like "Palestine is not the ultimate goal of the Jews; the world is. Palestine is just the place for world state headquarters" and refusing to acknowledge Auschwitz.
Shamir has a years-long friendship with Assange, and was privy to the contents of tens of thousands of US diplomatic cables months before WikiLeaks made public the full cache. Such was Shamir's controversial nature that Assange introduced him to WikiLeaks staffers under a false name. Known for views held by many to be antisemitic, Shamir aroused the suspicion of several WikiLeaks staffers – myself included – when he asked for access to all cable material concerning "the Jews", a request which was refused.
When questions were asked about Shamir's involvement with WikiLeaks, given his controversial background and unorthodox requests, we were told in no uncertain terms that Assange would not condone criticism of his friend. Instead, a mealy-mouthed statement distancing WikiLeaks from its freelancers was issued. Still later, when damning evidence emerged that Shamir had handed cables material to the dictator of Belarus – a man he holds in high esteem – to assist his persecution of opposition activists, Assange shamefully refused to investigate.
The two remain close. Shamir reveals in his latest piece that he has spoken (on friendly terms) with Assange just days before his hearing. There is also a strange resonance in the two men's descriptions of women: Assange has referred to "timid" Guardian reporters failing his "masculinity test", and said "Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane."
(Source)
Now wait, what's this about an article from Assange's friend, defending him? Oooh boy, this one is a doozy. Excerpting can't even do it justice; you really need to read the whole thing. But I'll provide the "best hits":
Unmanning The Man
...
Swedish men have good reason to fear the Swedish justice system, and daily they grow more and more afraid of Swedish women. In response, they take foreign wives; they are also increasingly turning gay and adopting children from abroad.
What a shame! Sweden is home to the most dazzlingly beautiful women in the world: perfectly shaped, their blond manes blown by the wind; their blue eyes reflect frankness and encouragement.
Years ago, I was blown away after seeing them for the first time: dancing on a green lawn around a maypole, sun-tanning topless on a low wooden bridge protruding into a lake as blue as the sky above, and sitting like mermaids along the rocks
...
The oaks are still leafy and mighty, the lakes still clean, the stone armada still standing amid green meadows, but the churches are empty. They have become clubs for old ladies, led by a lady pastor – as I witnessed last Sunday in a beautiful church near Vasteras. Men have been slowly pushed out of positions of power in the Church, and now the worshippers have lost interest.
It is not only Swedish churches that have lost their manly shepherds, Swedish newspaper owners prefer to hire and advance obedient women like Karin Olsson; there are few male editors, excepting the gays. Swedish publishers now only publish books that will appeal to women; books that glorify women and depict men as monsters, like the dreadful Millennium Trilogy written by the PR-savvy Stieg Larsson. Swedish museums exhibit the kind of art that is designed to appeal to a female-centric New Age audience. Swedish universities are dominated by female professors. In Sweden, it hurts your career if you are discovered to be a heterosexual male.
...
Sweden is not the only victim of this revolutionary zeal. Everywhere, all over the world, men are losing their place under the sun; it may be more than a coincidence that our freedoms vanish along with them.
Is there a method to this madness? The great conspiratorial mind and modern Russian prophet Alexandre Dugin declared that there is an ancient female conspiracy that aims to return us to a Matriarchy. Many conservative observers put the blame on feminists. Yet even though men have clearly lost the war, the victory of women wilts under examination. Once upon a time women had a choice: they could join the business world or stay at home with the kids.
...
I think the reality is worse than Dugin’s wildest conspiracy. There is an understanding between the holders of power that feminised men are easier to control. Unmanning men is a linchpin in the reprogramming of mankind into an obedient herd, because strong men are unpredictable. Strong men are prone to rebellion, ready for sacrifice and primed for action. It is no coincidence that the enemies of Empire are all masculine males, be they Qaddafi, Castro, Chavez, Lukashenko, Putin – or Julian Assange. It appears the men have been targeted for elimination; the working ants need no sex.
...
DSK must be quite a man, judging by his excellent, gifted, strong-minded, and successful wife. It may be he is a Zionist Capitalist beast, but as one man to another I can’t fault him for making a pass at a “talented journalist and novelist in France”, nor for flirting with “a brilliant Hungarian economist”. He is, after all, a Frenchman first. They each had their opportunity to say “non”, and so they did. In a healthy society this would suffice.
Did DSK’s advances constitute “harassment”? Perhaps, but so what?
...
The attacks on Assange, DSK and Qaddafi are all part and parcel of the campaign to unman humanity. The Empire hates Lukashenko and Putin not only because they do not let them seize the country’s assets, but also for their outspoken masculinity. Eric Walberg in his Great Games speaks of the deeper strategy behind the colour revolutions: their organisers “castrate modern states” in order to transform them into post-modern weaklings. This “castration” is an important plan of the rulers, far more profound than the ephemeral struggles over pipelines and resources.
The defeat of Julian Assange is a defeat for all the men, and a defeat for mankind, promising a bleak future – unless we shall do something about it. It is not only our freedom but our manhood is at stake.
(Source)
You can't make this kind of stuff up! Sadly, even despite having a legal team you would think would shut him up, Assange has made statements reflecting his friends' attitudes, such as: "Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism," he said. "I fell into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism.".
Thankfully, should he make it there, Ecuador's conservative attitudes about gender roles should prove a good fit. And if he has still has trouble finding a woman who is "aware of her role as a woman”?
He can always get a cat.