So, it made rec-list news here a few days ago that Julian Assange thinks the only hope for the future of the US is Rand Paul and his Republican followers. That being, of course, the same Rand Paul who compared same-sex marraige to bestiality, wants to define personhood at conception, and never saw a tax cut for the wealthy he didn't like. Of course, it wasn't as widely reported that in the same speech Assange himself called taxation and abortion forms of violence, statements hard into tricorner hat-territory.
"So, non-violence: well, don’t go and invade a foreign country. [...] Non-violence: doesn’t extort taxes from people to the federal Government with a policeman. Similarly, other aspects of non-violence in relation to abortion that they hold."
Even less reported in this hemisphere has been some of the other... oh, let's just say "interesting" news right from within the Wikileaks party - and I do mean "right"! Join me below the fold for details.
Update: Aaaaand... the party implodes.
In Australian politics, minor party candidates live and die by the preference system, which determines how votes from parties that don't perform well enough in the election get reallocated. Parties with ideological leanings invariably tend to stand together to help each other get office should one fail.
Hence it came as quite a shock to the Greens, who thought they were Wikileaks Party allies, when Wikileaks preferenced with the far right.
Twice.
In the first case, in New South Wales, Wikileaks preferenced the Shooters and Fishers party, the Non-Custodial Parents Party, and the Australia First party above the Greens and the major parties. Shooters and Fishers is basically an Australian NRA-party (they also hate foreign aid). Non-Custodial Parents Party is a "Men's Rights" party. And Australia First is even more interesting. Their primary objectives are to end all immigration, reinstate the death penalty, and "abolish multiculturalism". Their candidate, who would be most likely to get Wikileaks votes in NSW should they falter, is Jim Saleam, a neo-nazi who was once convicted for coordinating a shotgun attack on a political opponent.
In a second seat Wikileaks is running for, Western Australia, they once again chose the right over the Greens, preferencing with the National Party (one part of a semi-permanent center-right coalition with the Liberal Party).
After a huge row erupted in NSW, the Wikileaks Party claimed it was an "administrative error", a claim that has been met with considerable skepticism among the Greens given that Wikileaks had hired political dealmaker Glenn Druery to help establish preference deals for them, primarily with rightwing parties. Interestingly enough, the Australia First party's anti-immigration stance seems to at least be partly reflected in Assange's own statements, after he called the Green's policies to support asylum-seekers "simplistic and foolish". Both the Wikileaks Party and Assange himself have been pressed to elaborate on the nature of the "administrative error" and have refused (with Assange himself trying to insinuate that the electoral commission did it)
In Western Australia, the WIkileaks Party has defended their pick, saying that it's simply a strategic move, that the Nationals candidate they endorsed doesn't stand a chance of winning and thus Wikileaks votes would get directed to the Greens' candidate, who the Western Australia spokesman called a "shoo-in". His claims about the Nationals standing no chance and the Greens being a shoo-in appear to be shared with almost nobody else, as the Nationals candidate has better electoral standing than the Greens, and the move has further enraged the Greens. It hasn't been made any more credible in their eyes given who the Wikileaks spokesman (and decider of their WA preferences) is: Gerry Georgatos, the man who defected from the Greens in 2009 and tried to form a rival "Real Greens" party.
In response to all of this, Greens leader Christine Milne isn't holding back:
WIKILEAKS' claim it accidentally directed preferences to right-wing parties in three states isn't a good signal of competence, Greens leader Christine Milne says.
Ms Milne made the comment as the Greens launched their West Australian election campaign, including ambitious plans to convert all of the state's energy sources to renewables by 2029.
She said it was "shocking" Julian Assange's party had "betrayed" WA Greens Senator Scott Ludlam by putting him last on their how to vote card, behind conservative candidates, given he was one of their staunchest supporters.
"WikiLeaks has said that their preference arrangements in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia were all administrative errors," she told reporters in Perth.
"One has to wonder how it is possible to make administrative errors with three different sets of negotiations in three states.
"If that is the best they can do, it's not a very good recommendation to be sending anyone from that party to Canberra."
...
Interesting indeed. Stay tuned for the outcome from the election on September 7th!
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Addendum: I haven't written an Assange diary in quite some time. I was recently asked to diary about Assange's troubling past with women, including accusations of cyberstalking a teenager from before he got famous, accusations of aggressive sexual behavior from whistleblowers he was working with, his comments on his blog about how women's brains can't do math and how he's a god to women, his self-description as a chauvinist pig and his friendship with misogynistic author Israel Shamir, etc.
While there's a huge amount I could add to what I've already written about the subject, I'd much rather leave off with this: Assange has been accused by a number of former Wikileaks staffers as having an obsession with (and boasting about) fathering children all over the world. He missed a meeting with journalists at one point to attend the birth of a child with a woman he'd gotten pregnant in France while on tour promoting Wikileaks. Both of his accusers cases involve Assange doing illegal behavior in order to have unprotected sex with them - in one case, (after giving up trying to pry her legs open) ripping a condom and then pretending it wasn't ripped, and in the other, waiting until she fell asleep to initiate it after she spent all night refusing it. The latter claims he cracked jokes about it at the end, hoping she'd get pregnant and saying that he "should always carry abortion pills that were actually sugar pills".
With this sort of background, knowing that he considers abortion to be "violence" is more than a little telling - and unsettling.