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Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems
oxide7 (1013325) writes "In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force subsequently. Assange describes his encounter with Schmidt and how he came to conclude that it was far from an innocent exchange of views."
Mr. Assange, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
I mean fuck, The Pirate Bay, which is by far the worst enemy of the Hollywood owned US Government, has safe harbor there in many respects. Meanwhile England goes out of its way to block access to that site because, among other things, it offends the US Government.
Julian Assange is the internet equivalent of Kevin Trudeau. Both of them have their followers convinced that they are just innocent victims of the US Government, meanwhile both of them are big lying fucks not only to themselves, but all of their followers as well, and both of them would happily lie to and/or steal from anybody who supports them just for the sake of feeding their own ego.
Kevin Trudeau is currently serving a 10 year sentence, and I hope he disappears into oblivion there. Same with Assange, likewise, I don't know why anybody bothers writing articles about him.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Seriously? I'm not sure you read the same thing I did. I especially found his attempts to understand his interviewers (in the opening paragraphs) to be unusually analytical and.....rational.
Certainly Assange holds different viewpoints than I do, but his points seemed more logic based than your post, for example.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...WTF did I just read? I understood none of it. Or if I did understand it, then I understood this waaay before reading this long article. Google works with the US government? Nnnooo, you don't say! What next, Apple too!?? Come on, this is shit that we don't even have to find out by any other methods than just thinking logically these days.
Are you into having a life of freedom? Then start giving credit to all of those thoughts that you have about quitting that shitty job that you hate, and/or making that change in your own life as you see fit, and stop giving credit to all of the hype about governmental powers. People like Assange need the government to be wicked, it gives him a way to have fame.
There is no political solution, only a realistic one.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The only threat has been the implied threat he created. They are happy to let him imprison himself in the Ecuadoran embassy and know with absolute certainty at some point in the future the president of Ecuador will change and the new one will probably throw him out. Then he will get taken to Sweden and whatever charges will eventually be resolved and he'll proclaim widely that the reason the US didn't put him in Guantanamo bay is because he scared them out of it.
He's never going to be prosecuted or even arrested by the US. They are happy to let him think he is though, because of the extreme measures he's taken to avoid it including breaking English law which might end up putting him in an English jail.
And lets not forget the naive English supporter he fucked over that lost their house because they put it up as collateral to bail him our of jail and then he violated his bail. I don't know why anyone would be stupid enough to support him considering how he likes to fuck people over, literally and figuratively.
While I do think the article is too long, I think some of the actions of Google are to be expected. Microsoft is also lobbying massively in Washington, and Google has to put some counterweight on that - one could think.
But what Assange lists about Google Ideas is disturbing.
And when I look at the Google Ideas website, it seems to be a very valid point. And even more disturbing.
Yet I do believe he thinks the CEO of Google has more power than he has in reality. And I might be naive. But, seriously, they should look better into what Jared Cohen is doing with the money of Google, there certainly is something fishy about this guy, his connection and interpretation of 'do no evil', thanks to Assange for pointing that out!
"I'd hate to tell you this but they're not that smart."
I hate to tell you, but they are. See the Crisis of Democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFxtNgOeiI
http://www.trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf
You people in other countries are just as indoctrinated (on average; some are less and some more so, I imagine) as we are here in the States. You acting superior because you're from somewhere else is equivalent to an American acting superior because he's an American.
That is the kind of defense we usually see from Russians. "Yes, our media is mostly propaganda, but so is yours."
Travel abroad, learn about different cultures, or at least, learn a different language and read their media and forums.
Have a look at what people who have visited your home country has to say about it. It will be an eye opener.
Don't forget the internet was invented by DARPA. Just like missiles and nukes and subs and carriers, the internet is a weapon. It is slow, but very sure to penetrate and destroy dictatorships and repressive governments worldwide. It's slow enough to say that we just deployed it recently. Even so, a number of governments have already fallen or been pressured by it; we see repressive regimes like China throwing all kinds of defenses up against it. I don't see how even China can stand against it for very long.
Assange gets this, at least on some level. That would mean America wins, and he sees America as the enemy. Oh well, suck it Assange. The business of America is business. The only real way to do business, is when people are free, and can spend their money on stuff they want. That's us winning. (Not to excuse our recent spate on NSA abuses; they are going to always try to do that, and it's up to us voters to keep them in check.)
America used to be the one who fight for liberty.
Nah, that was just PR for the masses. You weren't around for the internment camps during WWII or the McCarthy witch trials, but you should've been around for the CIA's involvement in South America and Iran.
America stands as much for liberty and freedom as China stands for money. Liberty and freedom are convenient lines to trot out to the masses when the government wants to take some otherwise unpopular action (just like money is convenient to keep the masses quiet, but all over the world, not just China). The real motivation behind America is imperial power via trade. Unlike the first and second ages of imperialism, the people in power in the U.S. realize you don't have to own the land, you just have to control what the land produces.
Sorry to burst your bubble. Outside looking in can be as limiting as inside looking out. It's best to have both perspectives.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
No shit shirlock. But why do you think he's hiding there? Avoiding extradition to the US has nothing to do with it.
Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy. Swedish prisons aren't the hell holes in the US or Australia. Even if Assange had an irrational fear of being labelled a sex offender felon, it would not outweigh the price he is paying being holed up in the Ecuador embassy.
Its all about not going to a country that will extradite him to the US over a trumped up security issue. Assange does not have the legal rights an American citizen has. He can be put into Guantanamo, or any other black ops prison, because the US does not respect universal notions of due process. If the US did, Guantanamo couldn't exist.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
1) Your assurances are meaningless.
2) Look at what happened to Kevin Mitnick. Because the American public had such a poor understanding of hacking and the level of threat posed by hacking, people though Mitnick had to be placed behind bars to keep America (corporations) safe. Because the American legal system is much more complex and byzantine than the simplified mythology propagated to its citizens, Kevin had to spend many years in a medium security jail before even going to trial, to optimize his chances of either beating the conviction, or reducing the maximum penalty. What actually happened was that the technology moved so fast, and the public's miniscule understanding of hacking was modified ("Why worry about some jerk that went on a computer joyride, when hackers are stealing American intellectual property and money from the safety of Russia or China"), it eventually became cost effective for the US DOJ to deescalate the witchhunt they were making over Mitnick.
The point being that as long as organizations exist to reveal information the US government prefers to conceal, the security apparatus of the US will treat those organizations as national security threats. This even sort of includes legitimate news organizations like the NY Times, UK Guardian, etc. They are captive to the US government. As long as they operate within the laws defined by the judicial branch, and "play ball", they aren't going to get the Assange treatment. No one like Assange or Snowden can assume they are beyond the reach or interest of the US government.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy.
Ok before you go any further, consider that both Swedish AND international law have both long established that in order for Sweden to extradite him to the US, the UK government at this point also has to approve of it.
Also consider this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
And furthermore, if this is all about freedom of the press, then why the fuck is he seeking assylum from a country that has a terrible track record of it?
http://en.rsf.org/ecuador.html
America is as bad as China in term of the suppression of liberty
You surrender your credibility when you make such ridiculously hyperbolic statements.
It's "Don't be Evil".
~15 years ago, Google was "Chaotic Neutral" (openly disruptive, with both lawful and lawless tendencies).
Today, they're more "Neutral Neutral" (they still enjoy being disruptive, but they've been reined in by self-preservation and forced to pay lip service to lawfulness).
Twenty years from now, they'll probably be "Lawful Neutral", with increasingly-frequent side trips into "Lawful Evil" territory (which they'll rationalize and publicly blame on government regulations, even when those regulations are more of a pretense than a legally-binding order backed up by overwhelming firepower and force).
The real danger isn't Eric Schmidt. It's his successor's successor, who (more likely than not) will be a bland, Wall Street-approved CEO with a completely conventional background who'll contentedly fill his role of making Google the government's favorite bitch... as long as he can invoice the feds for the effort, eliminate R&D, outsource everything to Nigeria, and prop up the stock price with annual layoffs and the sale of a division or two, just like every other major corporation in America that's owned primarily by risk-averse institutional investors run by CEOs who went to the same elite universities.
... hmm. It occurs to me that the GP can be completely wrong about there being some grand conspiracy and yet still accurately describe/predict what happens.
Enough people, acting independently towards coincidentally similar goals, can look remarkably like a conspiracy from the outside.
And unfortunately cause the same problems.
Best to amend the system so that the effect is prevented/fixed regardless of the cause.
He's not in another country. Read the entire post:
"That was why I left China and went to America decades ago."
His observation isn't based on domestic propaganda or nationalism and an inability to consider perspectives outside his only cultural upbringing.
You're condescendingly dismissing the perspective of an expat who came to America looking for Freedom and Liberty. When expats ask for a refund, that's a good sign your marketing is better than your product.
If your neighbor's dog spits out the slop you feed your pet, it raises the question: "is the neighbor's dog picky? Or is my dog just used to food that tastes like shit?"
It doesn't even require knowledge by any party of another's existence, much less collusion, just the aggregation of a large number of privileged parties acting entirely in their own interest.
If Assange was in British custody and the USA made an extradition request, he would be extradited unless the crime that the USA wants to charge him with carries the death penalty. Even if there was a possibility of the death penalty, I expect we would extradite him if the Americans gave us an assurance that he won't be executed.
Note that the British did have Assange in custody for a bit and the USA made no attempt to extradite him. I don't think they have anything on him. Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy because he thinks he might get convicted of rape.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
"one Nation under God"
The God bit was only added in 1954, and probably would have horrified the founding fathers.
""indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Thats the scary bit, which sounds a lot like China. A legacy of the civil war. US is the Hotel California - you can never leave. Last time some states disagreed and tried to leave, millions died.
Fortunately the Russians did not treat their former republics that way!
So long as the Americans treat Lincoln as a hero, instead of a mass killer in the company of Stalin and Mao, we know the indoctrination is strong.