Assange supporters outside Ecuador Embass in London, August 19, 2012. Photo by Vertigogen.
Joshua Keating is now finding fault with Julian Assange -- of course, too, little, too late. Still, it's all to the good, as he even awards WikiLeaks the prize for worst analysis of the tragedy in Libya, by claiming that the US "set up" this situation of mobs and militants attacking our embassies abroad by supposedly backing the UK stance on Assange in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. But Assange doesn't face a well-founded fear of persecution," to put it in US legal terms, because he faces proper and legitimate action by the Swedish justice system. The US Department of Justice has not issued any warrant or request for extradition or even any statement about Assange, and it's just pure victimology to claim that Assange shouldn't face the music in Sweden due to ostensible fears of extradition to the US.
Micah Sifry also had an excellent piece critiquing Assange that really is quite admirable and very nearly restored my faith in the left in America as an honourable enterprise.
Micah's mad that the cause for radical transparency is lost with this goofus as its mascot, and he's right -- except I'm not sure the cause of radical transparency was ever just in the first place, especially when it is so unevenly applied only to America.
But Micah's right that in movement terms, Assange is a "single point of failure" by drawing all the blanket on himself and trying to make it seem as if he were indispensable. But I don't know why Sifry thinks that "leaderless" distributed movements of the sort that Alec Ross salivates over are in fact building institution when in fact they are only about marches through them to turn them, or more often destruction of them.
Sifry talks about the disenchantment in Assange from his former colleagues, and quotes Birgitta Jonsdottir -- no angel, she. But that means he's willing to accept the moral component of the WikiLeaks problem. It's not just that Assage let down the comrades with selfishness and hogging the lime-light -- his own bad character and bad behaviour damaged its reputation. Sifry seems to take the Swedish women's complaints at face value -- which is admirable, especially for a man of the left, when so many "progressive" men online have been smearing these women as sluts or worse, US agents.
I remember the evening organized by Sifry at NYU in which Rosen's idea, which Clay Shirky was enthusiastically touting, seemed the wave of the future, and was capturing the imagination of the left (Sifry hurried to put out a book about it):
The idea of a transnational, or "stateless" as Jay Rosen put it, news organization that anyone could safely and anonymously leak to, in order to blow the whistle on all kinds of official misbehavior, and that no single government could intimidate, seemed unstoppable.
Except, there's nothing *good* about transnational stateless beings who have no governance or higher power that governs *them*. Sovereignty isn't a bad thing, and provides a framework for a national justice system *and* a corrective on the venality of the international systems as well. Er, why did we need stateless entities to blow whistles on states? You can criticize states without having to pretend that you are purer than Ceaser's wife yourself. Most of what we've seen from these lovely transnational stateless movements like WikiLeaks, Occupy, and Anonymous has been *awful* -- thuggish, violent, stupid, failed.
Micah reminds us of the secretive figure named "the architect" who was originally involved in WikiLeaks, and writes:
Not only did Domscheit-Berg and Jonsdottir stop working with Wikileaks, so did the "architect," who took the software that had enabled the site to safely receive anonymous leaks.
Say, was the "architect" Jacob Appelbaum, do you think? Likely not, given that he stood by Assange at that infamous hacker's meeting after which he began to be tracked by the FBI, and I haven't seen him be critical of the albino goon ever, on Twitter, the way Jonsdottir is.
When hordes of Anony-mice on Twitter are justifying every bad thing that Assange and WikiLeaks does, Sifty, under his own real name, is saying that WikiLeaks harmed people by exposing the sources mentioned in the cables. Most of the time, the snotty kids defending the hackers make it seem like there is no harm at all, or that it is exaggerated, or even, appalling, as Jonsdottir did with me when I confronted her in Dublin, claiming that the harm of some of the sources was worth it because of the ostensibly greater harm of the US troops which was now exposed. Huh? No wonder these people always remind me of Bolsheviks. They never proved their case with "Collateral Murder" -- regrettably, Sifry doesn't extend his admirable decency here in this piece to concede that Big Lie.
Sifry also braves Glenn Greenwald, who implies that invoking Ecuador's press freedom problems is a distraction, and does invoke it. Good! It must be invoked, and he even does it altruistically, saying WikiLeaks itself could face problems in that repressive environment.
After this generally excellent performance, Sifry then fails on the honesty quotient by implying that Assange couldn't get a fair trial in the US. Are you kidding?! Every lefty lawyer and prog human rights outfit would be all over this like white on rice. He would have an ultra-hyper-extraordinary fair trial with every white hair on his head covered by the prog press. But...there isn't a case. Nobody issued an indictment. Come on people, it's been nearly two years now since Cablegate. It's not likely coming. Let's stop scaring ourselves with our own shadows, eh?
In conclusion, Sifry says:
The cause of transparency is far, far bigger than the legal troubles of one brilliant, courageous but ultimately flawed individual. Britain ought to let Assange flee to Ecuador, because there's little chance he can get a fair trial in either Sweden or the United States. But then let's be done with him. Those of us who want freedom of information to thrive should learn a key lesson from Assange's case. For information to flow freely, there can't be any single point of control.
I think it's a utopian fantasy to imagine there can be stateless leaderless transparently flowing platforms that function as Sifry implies. How about starting with some transparency on who "architect" is? Why can't these people stand up and name their names if they are so sure they are just?
And then, my answer to Keating:
A welcome admission, but too little, too late. See that other latecomer, Micah Sifry as well, at TechPresident.
While you touch upon superficial issues and cultural issues that rub you the wrong way, neither of you seem to concede the real way that WikiLeaks harmed the cause of transparency -- which of course, was never really its cause (in fact, destruction of the liberal government of America is):
o making common cause with the hacker vigilantes Anonymous, and allowing them to crash servers and steal data for the sake of their cause -- Assange even sicced LulzSec after an enemy in Iceland.
o presenting tendentious, misleading, and mendacious material in "Collateral Murder". Jacob Appelbaum continued to lie outright that US soldiers had deliberately injured children, which was false. This film didn't proof US complicity in any war crime, but only exposed just how manipulative and false WikiLeaks is.
o there's no "to be fair" here -- the overwhelming majority of materials stem from their anti-American bias, and they never followed up on any other areas of the world with any sincerity
o Israel Shamir, the East European representative, conspired with the Belarusian dictator Lukashenka and may have leaked cables to him to harm the democratic Belarusian opposition
o there are plenty of people harmed by WikiLeaks -- but they don't wish to further paint a target on their backs and prove that to jaded journalists. I know some personally and it's appalling. I've confronted WikiLeaks leaders and prominent supporters personally on their culpability, and like Bolsheviks, they think the ends justifies the means, and some sources *have* to be harmed (not just get accidentally harmed!) to offset what they see as harm caused by US troops in wars
o making common cause with the Kremlin is despicable
o And I'm glad you're reinforcing the existing information that points to Assange's collusion with Manning, although he lies about this and says he was never in contact with him.
All in all, in the larger scheme of things, it's good that these two sturdy "progressives" help give their dubious cause a better name by criticizing the obviously awful. That isolates and discredits a little more the WikiLeaks freaks on Twitter who keep propagandizing and bullying and distracting on behalf of their failed hero.
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