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Israel's biggest union announces "historic" strike as Prime Minister Netanyahu faces intense pressure over judicialtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…Oc
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FDIC says First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company will purchase the assets of Silicon Valley Bank cnn.it/3LT1meo
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that he has been released from an inpatient physical therapy ftwitter.com/i/web/status/1…Nu
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Your pick for Most Intriguing Person of 2010 is ...
He's been called a criminal, a spy and a champion of the First Amendment. Some think he’s a villain. Some see him as a hero.
The only thing that’s beyond debate: Julian Assange has more intrigue than the pulp section of a bookstore.
WikiLeaks' mastermind, the guy who everyone loved to hate or loved to defend, got the most first-place votes (25%) on CNN.com's “Most Intriguing Person” poll for 2010. Following Assange were:
2. President Barack Obama
3. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
4. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs
5. Marisol Valles Garcia, a police chief in Mexico
6. Chilean miner Edison Pena
7. Kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart
8. Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP
9. Kim Jong Un, presumed future leader of North Korea
10. Antoine Dodson, whose thoughts about rape went viral on video
Maybe Assange’s victory is payback for Zuckerberg edging him out of Time's Person of the Year?
Let's recap why Assange was so captivating in ’10.
In July, the 39-year-old Australian with snow-white hair dominated headlines when the online organization he founded four years ago published a huge trove - 90,000 documents - of secret military documents about the Afghanistan war. Simultaneously, major news outlets The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel published the classified records and provided series of stories layered with context about the biggest intelligence leak in U.S. history. The documents provided what is considered to be the first on-the-ground, unvarnished look at the Afghanistan war. Many said that the documents conveyed that the war was going much worse than the positive interpretation often heard in Washington.
Suddenly, Assange was everywhere, and so were questions. Who was this man, and how did he get this information? What is WikiLeaks?
Assange taunted his critics (mostly government officials) on Twitter and in interviews and defended the right to publish the information, arguing that the world should know. An American soldier, Pvt. Bradley Manning, sat in a military prison in Virginia, widely suspected of the leak. Manning seems to have garnered fewer headlines than Assange, though the soldier’s story and the characters involved have sparked passionate reaction. Assange has repeatedly said that he does not know whether Manning was indeed the source of secret documents.
And that was just this summer.
By the fall, Assange was uber-famous. He was elusive, telling journalists that he hopped around the globe trying to avoid the officials whose ire he'd mightily stoked by betraying their secrets. During an interview with CNN on the eve of another document dump - this time more than 400,000 classified documents about the Iraq war - Assange walked out. He was irate that a reporter would ask him about allegations that he'd committed a sex crime in Sweden.
That separate story concerning the Sweden case unfolded in intriguing ways and is still unspooling. It's playing out now, as is another massive development in the ongoing WikiLeaks saga.
Popularly known as CableGate, WikiLeaks has released what it says is the beginning of a collection of 250,000 diplomatic U.S. cables. Some cables seem to be merely titillating; others appear to be critically revealing. No matter what, the story is going to continue for a long while. Consider this: Less than 1 percent of that gigantic trove has been published so far.
In the wake of the cable releases, corporations and groups doing business with WikiLeaks stopped doing business with the group, and in response Anonymous avengers fought back. Meanwhile, Assange was arrested in relation to the Sweden case, chatter about a "poison pill" file that Assange established captured the public's imagination, and the debate over WikiLeaks raged on.
Bottom line: You know you're interesting when “Saturday Night Live” creates a recurring character based on you. And isn't it a clue that you're going to win Most Intriguing Person on CNN.com when even your alleged years-old online love pursuits become a top headline? Read his old OKCupid profile.
There's undoubtedly more to come from Assange. He told Forbes magazine in a recent interview that he has insider documents from a major bank, revealing all kinds of corruption and misdeeds. Many have speculated that it's Bank of America.
The holidays proved no break in Assange coverage. News hit that he inked a book deal. He said the money would go to pay his legal fees.
The biggest question, the one that perhaps fascinates the most, is this: Will Assange be charged with espionage?
2011 might hold the answer.
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@cnnbrk on Twitter
The sad thing is people really believe the wikileaks revealed what"s really going on behind closed doors. Since there is nothing carefully concealed that is not fully revealed, perhaps if the realities of the world's government's illicit activities are leaked a little bit at a time, people won't be so shocked when reality stares them in the face.
It's not that wiki leaks has an audience that think's wiki leaks has revealed any truth. it's that there is no way for us to stop a corrupt runn away demon-o-cracy of demicide and dacnomania operating in our ultra secret government spy communication systems bush-(GHWB) and cheny built and took it upon themselvs to indignisticly entrapt the global populate through fabricated pre conspired famicide into slanderous exploitation so they could have a reason to spy on everyone. they engineered the indign, forced it onto us in making it a part of our everyday livlihood they conspired malice befriendal onto us for such a lengthly period of time it promoted their lie to become incorperated as truth. reality is the bush erra is corrupt and an indign to the world. cheny should NOT go to mars.
sounds like phil is an expert on herpes...
[Click] and poof!
that's because I have herpes
most intriguing? Really, really? so you want bobo to get the next noble peace prize as well? Only the liberal media
I want JA inside me.
This "TOP TEN" list shows how sad this world has become.
Nice, someone promoting terrorism is the "most intriguing". Fail. I hope he gets a hold in the head as well as every other idiot that supports wikiterrorists.
I don't care for him either, and I don't support what he has done. Having served in the military with a top secret clearance, I vowed to protect our secrets from being revealed. This is just common sense. I could go on and on, but I don't have to. Many others already have made the same point.
Having said that, Mark, how can you POSSIBLY deny that he is not "intriguing" in the sense that EVERYONE knows who he is and is talking about him? That's all it means. It doesn't mean he's good or what he did was right. It means people are discussing him. And we are.
intriguing? meh. There are other people that are more intriguing. As for the other "Mark" comment, I lol'd 🙂
I'm gay
I lol'd
its ok, so am I
now don't I justt feel like the pretteist girl at the dance, I do declare.
CHEAP like my mother
Women apparently are not intriquing.
That's because they can't spell.
or equal, don't for get that they aren't equal.
This must be a liberal list. Was this taken at Berkeley?