Assange and Manning are loved by the public

The people have spoken:

The controversial founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has won an online vote to be TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year.

The annual online vote asks readers to choose the most influential person, people or things from the previous year.

Readers voted a total of 1,249,425 times, and the favorite was clear, TIME reported. Julian Assange raked in 382,020 votes, giving him an easy first place. He was 148,383 votes over the silver medalist, Recep Tayyip Ergodan, Prime Minister of Turkey.

Speaking of people power:

The US Army private suspected of giving a mountain of secret data to WikiLeaks, may be crowned a hero in the California city known for hippies and anti-war protests.

Berkeley city council members were to vote on Tuesday on a resolution proclaiming Bradley Manning a hero and urging military officials to release him from custody.

“Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime,” read a resolution endorsed by the city’s Peace and Justice Commission.

“If Pfc. Bradley Manning is the source who provided WikiLeaks with the ‘Collateral Murder’ video and/or the 92,000 documents known as ‘The Afghan War Diary’, (then) he is a hero.”

Manning is already seen as a hero by anti-war activists and a villain by government officials outraged over the exposure of classified files.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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