The Assassination of Julian Assange

By A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 12:12pm |

I have just watched We Steal Secrets, Alex Gibney’s documentary about Wikileaks and Julian Assange. One useful thing I learnt is the difference between a hatchet job and character assassination. Gibney is too clever for a hatchet job, and his propaganda is all the more effective for it.

URL:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/29/the-assassination-of-julian-assange/

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The film’s contention is that Assange is a natural-born egotist and, however noble his initial project, Wikileaks ended up not only feeding his vanity but also accentuating in him the very qualities — secretiveness, manipulativeness, dishonesty and a hunger for power — he so despises in the global forces he has taken on.

by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 12:14pm

Yeah, he's so secret everyone keeps telling him to shut up. And look at all that power.

I guess it would have been okay if all they did was publish Scientology texts to laugh at. I think it funny when someone holds up Domscheit-Berg as a dissident of proof without noticing that Daniel never actually did anything after he left Wikileaks.

Anyway, despite attempts by people to shoot the messenger, any public enthusiasm about Iraq/Afghanistan is now pretty deflated, Bradley Manning's a household name with our actions in Iraq well-publicized, and Snowden's got everyone talking about actual mass snooping - whether we do something about it or not. So they succeeded - everything else is just quibbling or gossiping like some fan magazine.

by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 12:43pm

I don't know that Assange's true nature is, but I see nothing unusual in the concept that you have someone revealing everyone else's secrets who has secrets of their own to hide. Indeed that story is quite an old one.

by Verified Atheist on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 12:55pm

I don't agree that the whistle blowers have succeeded yet. Public opinion has moved a few points on a few issues and the yellow ribbon industry has suffered a bit, but not enough to change anything. Clapper, for instance, has been shown lieing under oath to Congress and the world and he still has his job. This comment is being intercepted and stored along with all others and all phone calls. More than half of all elected representatives voted to keep it that way. Some people in positions to know but bound by secrecy oaths say there is worse going on than that. War crimes continue to create new enemies daily. Even among those who object and think the government has gone too far, many, if not the majority, think the whistle blowers should go to jail for harshing our mellow by revealing it.

by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 1:31pm

They succeeded even if they haven't triumphed (yet or ever)

by Anonymous PP (not verified) on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 2:00pm

Why doesn't Assange go back to Sweden to fight the charges?

Don't they have an Ecuadorian embassy there (if necessary)?

I already believed Assange was secretive, manipulative, dishonest and vain and I never watched the Gibney video, or conjectured on the the quality of Assange's Swedish condoms.

Tomorrow we find out what price Manning pays for giving 700,000 documents to this vain and manipulative man tomorrow.

by NCD on Mon, 07/29/2013 - 9:09pm

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