Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a self-defined "crusader" whose delusions are his singular fate. He set up his WikiLeaks website because he apparently believes all systems of government -- democracies, dictatorships, kingships, whatever -- are fundamentally corrupt and that only his exposures -- whether through the use of stolen videos or unmasked diplomatic cables or the uncovered ruminations of spies -- will lead to the true purification of societal behavior. Godlike, he is the judge and jury of this endeavor. But his profound error is to fail to make distinctions between the ways people live. Are democracies, for example, to be lumped in with tyrannies? Are societies with free press and free assembly and free speech to be seen as similar to those which ban open media or fetter the right to demonstrate or outlaw the ability to say what is on one's mind? And is there any difference between good leaders like Barack Obama and bad leaders like George W. Bush? His answer is a profoundly anarchistic mindset, which disproves of all forms of governance and political arrangements. He is of the belief that, in the end, only a totally free-zoned society is justifiable. So, if his work subverts democracy, all the better, as any form of governance is, by definition, unredeemable. This is why he does not care what sort of institution he lays bare or what impact his disclosures have, even if it disrupts the behind-the-scenes diplomatic talks on controlling nuclear weapons or campaigns for human rights or efforts to halt corruption. As an opportunist, he takes whatever data he can get. Where he could truly make a difference -- detailing, for example, the secret diplomatic traffic of the repressive Burmese government or the iniquitous schemes of the autocratic rulers of China or the malign acts of the iron-fisted Ayatollahs of Iran -- he could care less. He knows, anyway, he is unlikely to get access to their documents. That is OK and all the same to him. Free societies, after all, in the final analysis, are really only another form of despotism. This is the essence of his own deep cynicism.
Given the atrocious reaction of America's journalists to the Wikileaks releases, I hope the author is not talking about America when he throws the term 'free press' around so loosely. To answer the author's own question, these reactions have shown that the differences are not nearly as wide as he would have us believe.
Unlike their predecessors who were (well and truly) America's poodles, they must "man up" and protect Julian Assange first by independently researching the evidentiary basis and bona fides of Sweden's charge that Assange committed any criminal act while engaged in consenual sexual relations with two women.
It is almost inconceivable that acts surrounding the position or condition of a condom during consenual sex can comprise a crime. Indeed, the sexual crime scenario being publicized is so farfetched that it is almost certain Sweden's government behaved in lap-dog obiesance to Washington in placing an international APB on Assange through Interpol.
This is the opportunity for Britain to redeem itself for its participation in America's illegal Iraq war and emancipate itself from the mental slavery mediocre U.S. presidents imposed upon Britain's weak craven and hapless New Labour (go along) Prime Ministers Blair and Brown.
Assange's theory is that sunlight yielded by an online quasi-journalistic non-profit and conscience-stricken dissidents/whistleblowers will disinfect and tame the barbaric features of the new world order.
There hasn't been anything this potentially historic at least since the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. (Friday's Democracy Now captures the hysteria Assange & Co. have provoked.)
David Cameron and Nick Clegg: shield this noble purveyor of disinfecting sunlight from the clutches of the empire across the pond. Grant Julian Assange political asylum if necessary.
Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California
I would say however that Bradley Manning, Not Assange is the real hero.
Assange is completely insignificant and if he wasn't there they would have still been published on line by someone else.
Sure, shoot the messenger, but do so admitting to your self that you are a sorry example of a journalist and can't handle the truth.
Connecting the dots should be simpler for people, but it is not. We can only make claims and opinions based on the information that is given to us or that we find ourselves and sometimes the truth is so unsettling that people decide not to look down the rabbit whole too deep.
Now the powers that be are falling all over themselves because a little truth has spilled out into the world and they all intend to shoot the messenger. Little do the so called leaders of this world realize; that you can't stop the white rabbit.
With the truth comes the responsibility of trying to understand. Who wants a world of understanding?
We mustn't burden ourselves with knowledge of our own complicity in the subverting of truth for profit. We take solace in our right to be ignorant and those that profit from deceit take solace in our desire to be so.
- http://213.251.145.96/
Assange has become ferociously single-minded and idealistic in his mission, but that might be due to the way he lives. He is pretty isolated and probably only has face-to-face conversations with people in his own circle, i.e., "yes men." If he could mingle with the general public and hear their views in person, he might broaden his viewpoint.
Is he an opportunist? Well, he's in the business of distributing leaked information. If someone like Private Manning offers Assange information, he'll take it. Assange's problem, IMO, is that he does not make any critical judgments about the information in terms of how some of it could cause harm if released. He just indiscriminately dumps it all.
I too wish Assange would expose information about Russia, Burma, China, etc., but he can only distribute information that others provide. If it is not made available to him, there's nothing he can do. What I'd like for him to get is leaks about corporate lobbyists' influence on Congress.
I feel ambivalent about Assange. I believe that governments should be able to have privacy in diplomatic communications; as others here have said, havoc can result if everything is exposed. On the other hand, I believe that governments withhold too much information from the public.
In dealing with massive amounts of documents concerning foreign affairs, the exposer runs the risk of revealing the parameters of very sensitive operations--ones that are set in motion far ahead of time and are not in any way destined to affect human rights. During the Cold War, this would have gotten lots of innocent people killed who were only involved peripherally. And it is very common for large operations to have strawmen. The Soviet secret police agencies frequently padded their rolls of suspects with innocent people because they had to keep up with a quota. Is that potentially the kind of information released here?
Because I work with older security documents that have been legally obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, I hesitate to trust these documents. Do we REALLY know the provenance of EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT? Does Wikileaks have some sort of ulterior motive? Also, when Joe Public looks at the documents, does he really know what he is looking at? The State Dept. and the CIA routinely put out forecasts--that frequently turned out to be wrong. Do you know if you are looking at fact or supposition?
I am as hesitant to find document dumps to be totally good as I am to think all government secrecy is totally bad. There is a middle ground here, and critical thinkers should be willing to stand there and examine both sides carefully.