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The Paradox of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
schnell writes "The New Statesman is publishing a new in-depth article that examines in detail the seemingly paradoxical nature of WikiLeaks' brave mission of public transparency with the private opaqueness of Julian Assange's leadership. On one hand, WikiLeaks created 'a transparency mechanism to hold governments and corporations to account' when nobody else could or would. On the other hand, WikiLeaks itself was 'guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.' If WikiLeaks performs a public service exposing the secrets of others but censors its own secrets, does it really matter? Or are the ethics of the organization and its leader inseparable?"
Julian Assange may be a bit cocky, but keep in mind that a lot of this "Cult of Assange" shit and a lot of the infighting reports came from Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a person of VERY questionable motives and honesty--to say the least. His dubious book is the source of many of these reports.
Now personally, I've always strongly suspected that Domscheit-Berg was an intelligence plant at Wikileaks (working for the CIA, BND, or take your pick). He started to physically sabotage the organization pretty much from day one, acted a lot like an agent provocateur when he was there, destroyed some 3,500 unpublished whistleblower communications as he was leaving, immediately went on a campaign to discredit Wikileaks and Assange after he left, and then unsuccessfully tried to set up a leaks site himself that sounded suspiciously like a honeypot to me (send us your leaked documents and trust us to maybe release them to the press--or maybe just send some FBI agents to kick down your door). And apparently Assange suspected this too.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Wikileaks and all of the people working for it are OBVIOUSLY going to need to obfuscate details about themselves. Look at the absolutely living nightmare of a shitstorm that Assange has been dragged through. Look where he is now.
But no, hey, let's be transparent. How about all of the contacts at Wikileaks post their full contact information. SURELY nobody on earth has any axe to grind against them, and they will remain in perfect harmony and safety.
We the people do seem to have spent a lot of time blindly supporting Wiki-leaks without much critical analysis going on of whether the function was being done right or even being done well.
Its rather too easy to just say that we are glad that they are sticking it to the man when they release stuff that causes governments serious embarrassment. But I dont see much discussion of the consequences to the behavior of Government in future as a result of un-redacted mass publishing of private information.
We wouldn't be too happy as individuals if the contents of our lives were copied and published online so why is Wikileaks so immune from criticism? Its high time there was more constructive criticism of Wiki-leaks and its role in the world.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Exposing secrets of powerful institutions that can manipulate the fate of humanity isn't in the same league as the secrets that organization may hold. Isn't even the same galaxy.
You can't take revenge and prosecute the powers that be. If you could, they wouldn't be powers and they wouldn't require whistleblowing. Wikileaks, on the otherhand, is very destructible.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The biggest surprise of the leaks was that the US didn't have more to be embarrassed about.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My problem with wikileaks is its heavy anti-american bias. It seems like he wants to embarrass the U.S. just for the sake of embarrassment, and not to make the world "a more just society".
If you look at the great evils in the world today you can pretty much name them the USA, China, and Russia. They're the nations who are wandering around the planet dicking with other nations' governments the most, selling the most military hardware and/or engaging in the most metanational corporate activity. We could argue all day over whether these nations are truly in competition or are really engaged in dividing the globe up between themselves in a way they see as equitable and it wouldn't change a damn thing for the average man on the street anywhere in the world, including within these nations.
The USA is projecting more power across the globe in the name of profit than any other nation, so naturally it should fall under the most scrutiny. And unfortunately, the more scrutiny you subject this government to, the more serious malfeasance you find. At some point you expect things to stop getting worse, but they don't; the system is rotten to the core. It might well look like the USA is being singled out, but perhaps the truth is that the USA is simply up to more misdeeds. The facts seem to support this hypothesis.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
is not incompatible with personal privacy.
The secrecy was designed to protect the volunteers that worked on his project. He was anonymous for a long time, before he was outed. He takes the safety of his volunteers seriously, even if he does work them pretty hard.
Mark Anthony Collins
After all, what do you think 130,000 CIA employees do all day, sit around and stare at the walls?
No, Goats
Is Livestrong's anti-cancer mission any less worthy now that Lance Armstrong is de-famed?
It's incredible how anti-Assange the US media is. They even try to create this pseudo-opinion of "I am really progressive and don't like war and all that, but Assange is just not right not to come clean about this."
The US media is anti-Assange because the US government is anti-Assange. US news organizations have basically declared themselves tools of the government. Some examples of this:
- There was recently a dust-up over the New York Times revealing the existence of a drone base in Saudi Arabia, a drone base that several news organizations had known about for 2 years but never reported on, even though its existence had been covered in other media. In other words, there was no legitimate reason to keep its existence secret, because any bad guys would have been able to find out about it using a sophisticated tool known as "Google", but media organizations in the US didn't say a word about it because the government asked them to keep it a secret.
- Cenk Uygur was hired at MSNBC because of his successful online news program. He does a few shows, but then one of the network execs pulls him aside and tells him that some politicians in Washington don't like his reporting, so he needs to change it. Cenk didn't change it, and was promptly fired.
- Several news organizations sat on a story that provided significant evidence of a massive illegal domestic surveillance program run by the Bush administration. For a year and a half. For the sole reason that the Bush administration had asked them to. It just so happened that that year and a half gave Bush enough time to be re-elected in the interim.
Also, there's no major news organization that doesn't like war. War is exciting and entertaining. War draws in viewers and readers. War sells ads for the armed forces and cool guns and fast cars and action-packed movie extravaganzas. Remember, if it's white and bleeds, it leads (not-white and bleeds may be acceptable if no white victims are available).
I am officially gone from
No Goatse.
Often they took the pictures.
No, you're thinking of the TSA.