Julian Assange Says Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen Are "Witch Doctors"

An anonymous reader writes "The Times publishes Assange's takedown of Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. From the article: 'New Digital Age is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.'"

Comments

who cares

[circletimessquare]

at one time, assange did a good think with wikileaks in this world

now he's just an entertainment "news" story figure

Re:who cares

[DeathToBill]

Bah. He "did" two girls in Sweden and doesn't want to face the music. Let's look at his options:

1. He could be in Sweden, where there is absolutely zero chance he'll be extradited to the US. Sweden's law doesn't allow extradition if there is a chance of the death penalty and even without it extradition looks legally unlikely. But he'd have to face up to charges about those girls.
2. He decided he'd rather stay in the UK, which has an extradition treaty with the USA so one-sided it makes the Gestapo look balanced.
3. When the UK looked like extraditing him to Sweden, he went to Ecuador for asylum, a country whose president says he thinks the CIA are going to try to assassinate him.

So, what do you think he's really afraid of? Persecution by the USA? Or facing charges in Sweden? If he's really worried about the USA, Sweden is about the safest place he could be. A hell of a lot better than either the UK or Ecuador.

Re:who cares

[Darth Snowshoe]

Yes, I got that, but what does it have to do with anything else in the piece? It's like quoting Star Wars in an article about (some other) war. Here's Websters:

banal: lacking originality, freshness, or novelty : trite

and here's Assange:

"The authors offer an expertly banalized version of tomorrow’s world: the gadgetry of decades hence is predicted to be much like what we have right now — only cooler. “Progress” is driven by the inexorable spread of American consumer technology over the surface of the earth."

His complaint is not that the Google technology of tomorrow will not be original or "fresh". But this is a minor quibble. I stand by my earlier assessment. Even though the book very well may be in some ways, as he writes, "But this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances" (though that's doubtful - why go to the trouble of publishing a book when a position paper would suffice?) His own absolutist position of presuming the worst motives always for American anything, and his precarious position holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy somewhere avoiding probable life incarceration, makes him an unreliable book reviewer.

Listen to this (Assange) : "In the book the authors happily take up the white geek’s burden. A liberal sprinkling of convenient, hypothetical dark-skinned worthies appear: Congolese fisherwomen, graphic designers in Botswana, anticorruption activists in San Salvador and illiterate Masai cattle herders in the Serengeti are all obediently summoned to demonstrate the progressive properties of Google phones jacked into the informational supply chain of the Western empire. " You know, that's pretty patronizing and dismissive of all these groups, just for starters. Those are real people with real needs, dignity, culture, volition, goals etc of their own - not props. Beyond that, can he describe what acceptable behavior for a technology corporation would be, within his own moral framework? I don't believe he has actually worked that out. Without his having included that in his scathing review of Google's ambitions, we have no real point of comparison, and he has no real argument. I don't believe "white guys should stay home, and not even attempt to interact with anyone else" is valid or reasonable. If Google's technology stopped at the border, you would bet there would be a huge outcry about that as well.

Not using google anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped using google and any service provided by them a while back.

All of this was being expected from the start. "google is not evil".

Wait

[cfulton]

Who cares what Julian Assange Says again? He may have had a hand in some events that I am glad took place, but some good leaks and a little rape does not make one an expert on anything.