Comments from feedback form - "courage julian!"
courage julian!
I think we should move away from treating this guy as some sort of hero. This isn't what it is supposed to be about, the powers that be are making this personal - let's not do the same! It distracts from the intended impact which is in the favour of those who would want to cover up leaks, not expose illegal actions, corruption and hypocrisy.
While I like the basic idea of Wikileaks, something seems wrong about just suddenly releasing documents in huge, announced, planned batches like some kind of spectacle, and then leaving it up to the media to spin it in its usual fashion, thus accomplishing little to nothing.
I see no change being advocated here, I see no clear-cut cause. No message is being sent to the governments of the world other than "America sucks at keeping secrets." Worthwhile lessons can be derived from this event, but Assange doesn't seem to be pointing anyone in a particular direction. He's running something extremely dangerous yet he seems to avoid committing himself to a goal, allowing his vague agenda to be twisted into whatever people want to believe he's doing - to his enemies he's trying to destabilize the world while others regard him as a freedom-fighter. I don't think he knows what he wants or how to achieve it; alternatively, he foolishly expects someone else to champion particular issues Wikileaks brings to light, believing that his purpose is only to facilitate that.
There was a story on BoingBoing about Assange's philosophy. His idea is to make a "leaky" environment in order to discourage unjust conspiracies - roughly, any group who wishes to work in secret, and against the best interests of society as a whole. (Apparently, Assange is anarchist enough to consider the Democratic and Republican parties conspiracies. Moral of the story: Watergate would have been cool if the robbers had leaked the info to the press instead of Nixon...) In order to prevent leaks, 'conspiracies' will have to control internal dissemination of information in ways that will prevent the conspiracy from acting effectively. So Assange's goal isn't to expose any particular conspiracy, but to expose all secrets that are reported to wikileaks. AFAIK, the only control on what gets leaked is whether some member of a conspiracy is willing to rat the conspiracy out.
The down side is that not all 'conspiracies' are bad. (For example, the conspiracy to allow diplomats to give a honest appraisal to their bosses of the people they have to work constructively with. Boss needs to know the guy is an idiot, but you still have to work with the idiot.) Just because you're trying to work in secret, it doesn't follow that you're acting unjustly, just that you might have enemies who might try to disrupt your organization. What the existence of Wikileaks does is give all trusted members of a conspiracy a veto over the conspiracy - something that might appeal to anarchists.
If the rape thing is a state attack against Assange over wikileaks, then that is a rather shortsighted reaction. (Paypal pulling out might just be the result of legal inertia, the DDoS from freelance idiots.) Making Assange/wikileaks a martyr will just spread the idea. Cracking down on all sites like wikileaks would have to make a mockery of the freedom of speech in order to work. A more effective solution might be to engage in a massive disinformation campaign - flood wikileaks with an overload of plausible bullshit. People would have to sort out what is true in order to find out the stuff you want to keep secret.
It seems very coincidental these charges are now pending....When the US newspapers release information such as this, the US Goverment has been far less aggressive....Why is that?
Yeah, the Powers That Be clearly have a hate on for Assange. I'm not even going try to argue against that claim. I don't think it's so much that Assange is foreign (given the 'treason' talk, it's not clear how many of the squakers grasp that he *is* foreign), it's that he isn't operating like a traditional journalist. When a traditional journalist drops something secret, they generally have a definite target in mind - some specific story whose importance to the public interest outweighs the ethical cost of revealing secret information. Assange doesn't care about that, he's engaged in informational carpet bombing. With the Afghanistan and Iraq files, Wikileaks did at least try to hide the identity of Iraqi and Afghan informants. I think Assange et al badly underestimated the ethical importance of keeping diplomatic communications confidential. If you understand why it's so important to keep diplomatic communications confidential, it might be clearer why the Powers That Be are so pissed.
Just to give one example: imagine you're trying to work out a deal with a foreign politician who is publicly a hardliner against your country. If the negotiations are confidential, he might be more willing to drop the persona and bargain like a reasonable human being. If the negotiations have to occur out in the open, then the 'hardliner' may be tempted/forced to sticking with his public persona. One of the purposes of Wikileaks might be to encourage the powerful to make their public and private personae match. (Public persona = "servant of the people", private persona = "power-grabbing scumbag") Sometimes stopping the hypocrisy is good (more "public servant," less "scumbag"); but sometimes it ain't (more "raging xenophobe," less "rational human being").
Well he's 'foreign' to everybody that isn't australia. Don't forget these leaks aren't just about the US. They just happen to have their fingers in everybody's pies and kick up the biggest fuss when these leaks occur - just look at the amount of shit happening online coz the US is leaning on companies to sever ties with Wikileaks