The Paradox of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks 266
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?"
Paparazzi for The Firm (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporations however, are either breaking your heart, or shaking your confidence daily, so you need to have loads of info on them.
Or was that my pretend girlfriend Cecilia that I was stalking? Either way, you totally understand what I am saying.
One can't be 100% transparent (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
"to produce ... a more just society" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"to produce ... a more just society" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:A lot of this BS is just Daniel Berg's fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, those rapists.
I remember a guy who made a speech [guardian.co.uk] calling for a global currency to challenge the dollar. Turns out he became a rapist too, just a few months after making that speech in fact. Well, he was a rapist for a while anyway. The DA later admitted that the previously "rock solid" case against him was completely bogus--exactly three days after his successor at the IMF took office. Coincidental timing, I guess.
But then I guess I would be accused of wearing a tinfoil hat if I suggested that there was anything suspicious about the timing of some rape charges.
Re:propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:A lot of this BS is just Daniel Berg's fiction (Score:3, Interesting)
I like the Daniel Domscheit-Berg book myself, without being able to swear to it's veracity. It has the ring of truth about it, and while there are places where I disagree with the author I think the mistakes he makes are the ones that idealistic hackers are prone to -- e.g. he underrates the value of having a poster-boy like Assange (a position for which being egocentric is almost a job requirement), and D seemed to be groping for a purely technical solution to the wikileaks problem that would take all human decision-making out of the system (good luck with that...).
The idea that D was planted on Assange is crazy: he was with him too long, no one knew who Assange was when D started working with him.
D's "openleaks" project might've been a front of some sort, but couldn't you say the same thing about "wikileaks"? And even if these projects don't start that way, what stops them from being subverted later?
If you're going to play whistle-blower, watch your butt... myself I doubt it can be done anonymously at all, and the real trouble with wikileaks and co is that it encourages people to believe that that's possible.