WikiFreaks

[digitaldiscipline]

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

- George Orwell

The WikiLeaks thing is obviously not a clear-cut situation from any angle. There are items that put people's lives at risk, for instance, and publishing that info is, for lack of a better phrase, just not cool.

NPR's All Things Considered had Amy from "Ask Amy" on last Friday for a slightly facetious presentation of the US' situation of looking like a douchebag, and the social advice boiled down to "If you don't have anything nice to day, don't say it... or at least don't write it down."

Honestly, I don't think anything in the inter-personal opinions expressed comes as a great fucking surprise to anyone. "People are worried about Iran being douchebags with a nuke; in other news, sun rises in east; water wet." Rampant corruption among middle eastern government officials falls under the same category.

Sure, some of the catty remarks leave a little egg on people's faces, but the flip side of that coin is that, you know, if someone repeatedly gets called a dipshit, maybe it's because they're a dipshit.

I think that Assange's arrest smells as fishy as last week's sushi, and that if the US Government had put half as much focused attention into capturing, say, Osama Bin Laden, we probably could have avoided Dubya's wars of choice... which is a large part of the reason the US looks like assholes in all these cables that everyone's so het up over.

Comments

I pretty much agree

[hermine-93.livejournal.com]

all I would add is: screw Assange. I am trying to be brief and not go on too long about the START treaty, which you know is something I am trying to keep in people's minds, but you did bring up something I've been thinking about, so here's my (unsolicited) take:
1. I don't think he deserves the attention he's gotten for what he did. Like you said, he hasn't revealed anything everybody in the world didn't already know.
2. The nonstory he released is a distraction from the START treaty and John Kyl's open sabotage of national security for political gain. thus, Assange annoys me in much the same way as Paris Hilton does-- for being a substanceless distraction at a time when we really need to be paying attention.
3. I have to say this isn't the first time his timing has seemed awfully convenient to the right. I'm not saying I'm sure he has an agenda, but like you, I don't like him. I think Assange himself seems fishy to me. Where was he when W. was in power?
4. I think he did it. I don't know if that's why he was arrested at this time, but the accusation is not new, Sweden doesn't really have all that much invested in the information that Assange released (they might have enough invested in good relations with the US to time an arrest conveniently, but that's not the same as arrest without cause), and he strikes me as exactly the kind of douchebag who would do something like that and expect to get away with it because he's really rich(the latter being why he thinks will get away with it, not why I think he did it-- why I think he did it is just my gut), so to hell with him.

Re: I pretty much agree

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Every time I hear about the procedural roadblocks holding up senate votes, at least on NPR, they almost always mention START as important business being held up.

John Kyl being a fuckstick is such a part of the scenery that it barely warrants mentioning, but that doesn't prevent his constituents for voting his dumb, traitorous ass into office.

Posted mostly for aesthetic reasons

[hermine-93.livejournal.com]

It still bugs me that NPR seems to be the only news outlet still covering that story, though.
Kyl's graduation from douchebaggery to treason still bears mentioning (and will until we do something about it), whereas the cables Assange released never did, but most Americans rely on news anchors that can't distinguish between a puff piece and a news story or hold more than one story at a time in their exquisitely coiffed little heads (okay, I admit it -- that phrase is why I posted the reply-- I am inordinately proud of it).

Re: Posted mostly for aesthetic reasons

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Your expectations of the MSM and the average news listener are entirely too high. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste or intellect of the average american.

Yeah, I know how it can be. I was enjoying the "cease this onerous bullshit" too much to cull it from the letter I sent my congresscritters.