Posts by Seriatim
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Graham Dunster,
Ditto
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No, I missed none of that - I think you're a bit off point. By 'attention', I meant admiring media interest, of course, not the sneers - my argument was that the sneering and ridiculing WOULD do damage to the whistleblowing cause. Those who have tried to level this sort of attention (those who stand to lose much by being Leaked) may be suspecting it is backfiring now.
However - what exactly is the damage from the examples you cite? The 'feminism' debate has been fascinating and ultimately very healthy - that liberal left chasm wasn't 'opened' - it was exposed! All sorts of people have been dragged gasping out of their 1970s cliches and into the 21stC on that one; all good. He is eloquent about the (related) split with Nick Davies, and frankly has a point.
But the fact is that only extraordinary passionate people are going to embark on a venture like Wikileaks with all its personal risks, so of course the atmosphere is going to be volatile, of course they argue and fall out. So a colleague called him a 'slave trader' (what does that mean - he felt the cause was important enough to demand that they all work hard?). In a situation like this internal ructions are to be expected and, as with many internal ructions, can lead to really positive outcomes - a rash of OtherLeaks for instance. All good.
My plea was that all of us who are not members of that charmed circle will at least keep a respectful overview, and make sure the baby isn't lost somewhere in the bathwater. We don't have to join the adoring masses, but we certainly shouldn't be lending our weight to those who want to keep dark corners dark.
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A few days ago in this thread RB explained that he felt that all the attention that was going onto Julian Assange would damage Wikileaks. This hadn’t occurred to me. However after considerable thought I still can’t see how this could be so. In what way is this attention harmful? Isn’t the ongoing ridiculing of him on sites like this likely to be far more damaging to Wikileaks? The more Assange is belittled and sneered at, surely the more the whole whistleblowing cause is weakened?
The way I see it, by taking advantage of the way he has been thrust into the limelight (and of any perceived ‘charisma’), he is keeping debate going about Wikileaks and the issues it is raising – as he says himself, the bald data is dry and difficult to sift, few journalists seem to be willing or up to the task, and it needs as many helping hands as possible to digest and disseminate. He sought the limelight in the first place so he could do this, answer and deflect criticism.
In his interviews, from the early TED one to the recent one with David Frost, he has always conducted himself with dignity and emerges to me (and most people I think) as a genuinely committed, honest, trustworthy person, with admirable motives – important at a time when the US is trying to whip him up as the spawn of the devil. This helps ensure that the act of whistleblowing retains its dignity, and that potential whistleblowers retain their trust in Wikileaks, without which it certainly will fail.
And most important of all at the moment is that he has been instrumental in keeping the spotlight on Bradley Manning and his mistreatment (possibly soon to be officially re-named ‘torture’) at the hands of the US legal system. As someone has remarked, it is ironic that those who destroyed the tapes of US waterboarding torture in Guantanamo should get off scot free, while someone who disseminates the truth about wrongdoing is confined to a solitary cell for 7 months.
However, even if someone can convince me that the attention on Assange does damage the Wikileaks cause (and it certainly hasn’t formed the basis of any of the criticism of him that I’ve seen so far) this doesn’t change my view that most of it amounts to little more than petty jealousy - or the usual immature sniping indulged in by those frightened of looking naive if they express admiration for someone who is challenging the powers that be.
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(The links from the original post don't seem to work anymore - have I missed an updated link?)
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RB, instead of being petty about the kind of sandals they wear, get on the side of the angels and send some support - www.wikileaks.ch/support.html.
You know you want to. -
And also James - (re the movie Sicko NOT being banned in Cuba after all!) see:-
www.newser.com/story/107864/sicko-was-not-banned-in-cuba.html
www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/us-diplomats-damned-ottawa-for-being-soft-on-cuban-abuses/article1842985/
www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/viva-wikileaks-sicko-was_b_798586.html
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Oh dear James - shame! The Guardian has already posted the below clarifying that this was a standard CIA porky, exposed in WikiLeaks cables, which their own journalists failed to investigate properly!
See below -
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/18/wikileaks-us-diplomats-story-cuba-banned-sicko-film?INTCMP=SRCH
www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/viva-wikileaks
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"Assange is a fool but he is our fool ..." Yes, what a bugger that he is probably going to go down in history as a genius, a world changer, a man of phenomenal courage and vision - and a bit of a stud, to boot. Damn. And all us deserving really clever on-to-it people can do is potter on with our trivial little lives being arrogant about all those people like him who have the guts to put their lives on the line for a cause. How irritating.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Steve Parks,
Thanks Steve! I had just cheerfully accepted that I'd failed on all counts!
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I'm mortified that the irony in my last post (several aeons ago) flew straight over RB's head - I was trying to be cleverly snide about the continuing attention paid to one man and his genitals rather than the political fallout of events ... however I was also highly amused that RB then went on to contribute yet more huge slabs of prurient comment.
Unlike everyone else it seems I think Naomi Wolf DID hit the nail on the head as well as being very funny. Perhaps her angry irony whizzed past as well:-
"Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone -- there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately..."