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    Wikileaks: More Crap + Updated Crap



    This evening, I was amused to see last night's Daily Show discussing Wikileaks as regards transparency vs privacy:

    Jon: For more on the story, we go to our senior intelligence correspondent, Aasif Mandvi. Aasif? Aasif? What is all this Wikileaks?

    Aasif: This is the 21st century, what I'm calling, The Information Age, a glorious, utopian datascape in which everyone has the right to know everything about everyone. It's why I get to see your penis at the airport.

    Jon: You don't get to, I'm not gonna let you see my penis ...

    Aasif: Why? ... What are you hiding?

    Jon: I'm hiding my penis.

    Aasif: Oh. Oh, really? (Jon: Yes) Is there something about your penis you don't want us to know about? (Facing crowd) Are you in favor or are you not in favor of transparency?

    Jon: But Aasif, that's not transparency. Transparency is being open to the public on important issues and processes so that the public can make informed decisions ...

    Aasif: Aah, wrong again, Rip van old grandpa man. Transparency is about me knowing everything I don't already know, because if I don't know it, that means someone's keeping it from me, (points at Jon) like your penis.

    Jon: So you're, you're, you're ... my penis is a metaphor.

    Aasif: Sure if that helps you sleep at night.

    Jon: Alright, ya know? Should everything be out there? If there's total transparency, we won't really see anything.

    Aasif: Ooooh, (steering wheel motion) I'm an old 20th century man, driving my car to get "food."

    Jon: (puzzled, looks to audience for help) People still do that, you don't do that? I'm not that much older than you!

    Aasif: Well, there's only one way to find out. Let's count the rings on your penis.

    Jon: That's not how you find out! Enough with the penis already.

    Aasif: I know Jon, I'm annoying you. But it's that kind of dogged persistence that's the hallmark of a free press. That's why this wikileaks dump is so important. It's basically our generation's Pentagon Papers.

    Jon: Well, uhhh ... The Pentagon Papers exposed blatant lies, about how the government got us into the Vietnam war, about how they continued to mislead us on the war's progress. Even the most cycnical reading of these documents, I don't think rises to that indictable level of ...

    Aasif: Uh, it's not meant to, man, it's about the beautiful anarchy of information. It shows that what the government says in private is not necessarily what it says in public.

    Jon: But who doesn't know that? That seems like a relatively banal point to be made. Not all information is equal though, Aasif.

    Aasif: (makes over the head motion and sound) And that's why your fly will always be up, and my generation's will always be down.

    Jon: (hesitantly) Your ... Your fly is down?

    Aasif: Always.


    But before I got home, saw the Daily Show, and realized I should have blogged about my penis instead of OBIT, I was reading the Daily Dish, where Andrew Sullivan referenced, and lauded, Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government” on zunguzungu, which includes a link to a PDF of what they claim are Assange's own essays.

    “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.”

        Julian Assange, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”


    The Assange writing about regime change above seems a good bit more revolutionary than the Assange who told Forbes that he simply wanted to bring about a more ethical business environment.

    You’ve developed a reputation as anti-establishment and anti-institution.

    Not at all. Creating a well-run establishment is a difficult thing to do, and I’ve been in countries where institutions are in a state of collapse, so I understand the difficulty of running a company. Institutions don’t come from nowhere. ...

    WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.

    And zunguzungu (Aaron Bady) has his own take:

    ... Most of the news media seems to be losing their minds over Wikileaks without actually reading these essays, even though he describes the function and aims of an organization like Wikileaks in pretty straightforward terms. But, to summarize, he begins by describing a state like the US as essentially an authoritarian conspiracy, and then reasons that the practical strategy for combating that conspiracy is to degrade its ability to conspire, to hinder its ability to “think” as a conspiratorial mind. The metaphor of a computing network is mostly implicit, but utterly crucial: he seeks to oppose the power of the state by treating it like a computer and tossing sand in its diodes.

    He begins by positing that conspiracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand, arguing that since authoritarianism produces resistance to itself — to the extent that its authoritarianism becomes generally known — it can only continue to exist and function by preventing its intentions (the authorship of its authority?) from being generally known. It inevitably becomes, he argues, a conspiracy.

    So he's anti-authoritarian - there are worse things to be.

    ... Assange ... decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire.

    So I think I've answered my own question, "Who are these guys?" They aren't merely journalists, bringing truth to power like say, Amy Goodman. They are revolutionaries, committed to throttling the invisible government behind the ostensible government.

    Update:

    In his blog entry, The Ambitions of Julian Assange, Ross Douthat quotes Will Wilkinson:

    To get at the value of WikiLeaks, I think it’s important to distinguish between the government—the temporary, elected authors of national policy—and the state—the permanent bureaucratic and military apparatus superficially but not fully controlled by the reigning government. The careerists scattered about the world in America’s intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America’s unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.


    But while he agrees with the zunguzungu opinion that Wikileaks seeks to throttle that unelected state, Douthat can't see them actually succeeding:

    The hyperbole of certain Republicans notwithstanding, Assange is not a terrorist. But he has this much in common with al Qaeda: In response to what they perceive as the inherent injustice of the American empire, both the jihadis and the Australian anarchist are willing to take steps that they know will make the United States more imperial in the short term — in Al Qaeda’s case, acts of terrorism that inspire American military interventions in the Muslim world; in Assange’s case, information dumps that inspire ever-greater secrecy and centralization in the federal bureaucracy — in the hopes that the system will eventually collapse under its own weight and “more open forms of governance” (or, I suppose, a global caliphate) can take its place.

    The problem, though, is that the American national security state is almost certainly more resilient than either Assange or Osama bin Laden seems to think. Which means that their efforts at sabotage have little chance (by design) of prompting any actual reforms in the system they despise, a vanishingly small chance of actually bringing the whole thing to its knees — and a substantial chance of just making life worse for everybody, inside and outside the United States government alike.

    It may be cathartic for critics of state power to cheer when Assange sticks an online thumb into leviathan’s eye. But WikiLeaks is at best a temporary victory for transparency, and it’s likely to spur the further insulation of the permanent state from scrutiny, accountability or even self-knowledge.

     

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    Comments

    So I think I've answered my own question, "Who are these guys?" They aren't merely journalists, bringing truth to power like say, Amy Goodman. They are revolutionaries, committed to throttling the invisible government behind the ostensible government.

    And more power to them. I shall do a post on this very subject shortly, Donal. After rereading Ted Rall's book which I just received.



    I wonder if fresh water economists are healthier than the salt water variety?


    Not sure. But I would cook thoroughly so as not to get e-coli infections.


    I keep being surprised by dagblog's perspective on this issue. "Revolutionaries"? Based on this kind of evidence? From the excerpts you provide it seems like they are motivated by pretty moderate guiding philosophy - create an atmosphere where the conspiracy-minded in government cannot feel safe to operate, where they feel they will, or might be, held ...

    accountable to the public.

    Shock, horror! Those same motivations were behind what used to be pretty decent whistle-blower protections in the US, what used to be a pretty decent culture of investigative journalism (Over here in Switzerland, comparing CNN's breathless coverage of that suspicious Assange character with the European channels' coverage of ... the actual leaks, the former comes off as a paranoid Pravda-like outlet)

    Maybe you all think that there are no conspiracies in government, or that the institutional framework and defences provide sufficient protections against them. Or maybe the State was in your mind always authoritarian, maybe conspiracy has always been the norm, and that to you is just life. What do I know. But for some in the younger generation it looks as if at least over the last ten years there has been a breakdown of those institutional defences, and a commensurate increase in government secrecy. So we don't know what they are doing behind those walls, and the evidence of the recent past hardly breeds confidence that it is necessarily for the public good. And it is quite unclear how to reverse that trend, what levers of power the public has to change that. Or, worse, it is quite unclear that a large swathe of the public even wants to change that.

    Insofar as wikileaks alters the risk-assessment of the conspiratorial schemers in government, has them looking shifty-eyed over their shoulders, that is a good thing. Isn't it? It is hardly a revolutionary enterprise to seek to make government function as though it were accountable to the public. Naturally, it would have been nicer if we could just, you know, elect a leader who favored transparency and accountability. But that clearly lies outside the bounds of political possibility in the current environment.

    The fact that you, and I'm guessing others around here, see it as utterly 'revolutionary' to seek a more ethical capitalism and a more accountable government shows just how far down the rabbit-hole we've fallen. That you all seem to be flailing around for analogies illustrating your gut sense that all is wrong with Wikileaks - it's "Porn", it's "Big Brother", Assange "might, just might want one day to publish pictures of your private parts" - and that you all have little interest in climbing out of that hole is just wierd to me.


    If it isn't revolutionary to want to topple a longstanding government, what is? Do they have to wear berets and bandoliers to be seen as revolutionaries? I am not criticizing them for being revolutionary, but they certainly are just that.


    I don't know where you get 'toppling a government' as an aim. I read your excerpt of Assange above and I see him saying the aim is to

    "shift regime behavior"

    and to think about

    "what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove."

    Of course if he elsewhere says that he intends to topple a given western government by non-democratic means, I'll happily concede the point.


    I'm getting that aim from (what we are told is) Assange's essay (pdf).

    Throttling weighted conspiracies
    Instead of cutting links between conspirators so as to separate a weighted conspiracy we can achieve a similar effect by throttling the conspiracy — constricting (reducing the weight of) those high weight links which bridge regions of equal total conspiratorial power.


    An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces
    When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment. Later we will see how new technology and insights into the psychological motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for more humane forms of governance.


    Like I said before (and people denied) you're quite happy debating this issue by attacking Julian Assange. Combined with your fellow mastheaders and their attacks on people who READ Wikileaks, I'd say it's a bit of a low moment here at dagblog. 

    But really, if you're going to go on (and on) with this crap, at least learn to read. Feels to me like you saw the word "revolution" and proceeded to pee your pants.

    1. Obey's already pointed out that wanting to change an "aspect" or government or the "behavior" of neocorporatism is not quite the same as becoming Young Lenin. 

    2. As for these big frightening phrases of Assange's, like "authoritarian conspiracy," that seem to have you so worked up, a reading of the actual Assange essay itself finds - at the very head of the piece - this quote:

    "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship."

    Clearly, this is the sort of madness you'd want to see restrained, and that dagblog rightfully condemns. Why thse kind of wild statements are what you get when you combine the untrustworthy eyes of Assange with his cult of porno-voyeur followers! 

    Except the quote is from.... President Theodore Roosevelt.

    *

    TEDDY, YOU OLD RED ROOSTER YOU!

    AMERICANS OF TODAY WOULD SALUTE YOU, IF THEY WEREN'T TOO BUSY PISSING THEIR PANTS!

    DAGBLOGGERS! TO THE BUNKERS! SEATON WILL LEAD YOU! EMBRACE THE FEAR!

    Jesus.

    P.S. A Jon Stewart skit linking two well-known events which have occurred at the same time - the TSA scanner issue and the Wikileaks - does not a strong argument make. Try harder. Fail.


    I think many of us see the exact same words and end up with completely different interpretations. I do not see Donal getting upset about the word "revolution"; nor do I see him comparing Assange to Lenin. I suppose this is why some seemed to think there were an excessive number of personal attacks on Assange where I saw very few. What were the particular words that made you think Donal thinks Assange is particularly Lenin-like? I see lots of quotes from other sources put together with some commentary, none of them particularly frightening. Maybe you're right and Donal is terrified of Assange, but that's just not the vibe I'm picking up.


    This site, on this issue, is serving up the same shite as the right-wing commentators I read.

    We've got a blog that's been up for 7 hours stating outright that Assange should be killed ("Rogue.")

    It's got personal attacks on Assange - such as this one - which quotes Douthat approvingly and fails to note that the most revolutionary phrases being used by Assange happen to come from Teddy Roosevelt.

    It's got the dagblog masthead busying itself with attacks on the porno-style mood of the Wiki readers (which would be me, and you) - the same exact lines used this morning by Canada's most right-wing columnists as they defend the head of our spyservice, who was outed as not being that keen on... Canadians.

    It's got a raft of readers bleating for stability and security, and a rush back into the loving arms of the surveillance and secrecy state. 

    It's all a bit astonishing to me. 

    So now Donal wants to show Assange is a revolutionary. It's just more of the same shit, from people losing the plot. It's a personal focus, which Dagblog seems intent on at this point - either attacking Assange's character or that of his readers. In this case, Assange is a revolutionary, looking to topple governments, he just happens to not be wearing a beret. Tomorrow, stay tuned, it'll be why such a revolution isn't a good idea.

    A pathetic performance, and intellectually bereft.


    There is something very few people here at Dagblog seem to taking into account in talking about Wikileaks. Right now we are living a moment of tremendous economic instability and turbulence... not to mention two wars running and two more (Iran and Korea) waiting in the wings, world food prices are rising... it goes on and on. Bad times, the worst times since the 1930s.

    Obviously this is a moment where those who have been chosen (democratically or otherwise) to take decisions which affect the lives, income and welfare of millions of people should be able to communicate frankly and calmly with each other and reach agreements quickly.

    To put it mildly, people like Julian Assange or Glenn Beck are not helpful right now. To tolerate them is frivolous.


    Geez! As long as we're tossing around weird equivalencies, I'm kinda thinking people like David Seaton and Kim Jongh Il aren't really helpful right now,

    Do you believe that the status quo can be maintained indefinitely if dissenters simply shut up? I don't. I think Beck and Assange, and the Tea Party, too, are symptoms of structural problems that both of us have read about at sites like Dmitry Orlov's, Jim Kunstler's and others. If you somehow struck them down, others would appear.


    I don't think the global system is so irredeemably fucked up that it requires dismantling.  When I was in my late teens and early twenties, without a pot to piss in and worshiping the calls to anarchy of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, I would have welcomed the revolution many seem to think Wikileaks heralds.  Now, with a couple of decades of asset accumulation and a lot of reading of history under my belt, I now feel just as strongly that this type of revolution will make things far, far worse for generations of people worldwide than it will make things better.

    I don't want to garrot Assange (Jonah Goldberg, on the other hand...).  I cheer the intentions behind the leaks inmany respects.  But I wish Wikileaks would target its leaks to specific instances of wrongdoing, using those more isolated instances to lead the public to the conclusions those of us on the left ultimately hope they arrive at.  

    The current method of indiscriminate leaking is creating far too much white noise interfering with public discussion of the underlying issues (primarily, whether the unsavory compromises we make in our international adventures are effectively advancing legitimate US interests), and allowing everyone to go "meta" over whether complete transparency is a good thing or not.  Most people (even many well-meaning left-of-center people who comment on blogs) question whether we want to impose a standard where every utterance and action they take will inevitably held up for public scrutiny.  I think it's hard to deny that there is an anarchic undercurrent to the total disclosure argument that makes many people who would like to see our government behave better very uncomfortable.     


    "You say you want a revolution ..." I watched Her Knight in Armor a few weeks ago on TCM. Marlene Dietrich is a Countess trying to get away from the Reds and Robert Donat is a Brit posing as a Red and trying to avoid the Whites. Aside from the homage to the Potemkin steps scene, what struck me about the film was that both sides were equally blasé about lining up and shooting the peasant folk that might be unsympathetic to their cause. I completely understand Assange wanting revolution, and he may be doing exactly the right thing, but like you, I am nervous about whether the revolution will be merely televised or whether it will be involuntarily participatory.

    (BTW, I edited your pubic scrutiny to public scrutiny, though part of me wanted to change it to pubic scrotiny)


    Brew, I wonder if you'd explain you're 'no pot to piss in/liked revolutionay talk' evolution to 'asset accumulation/history reading/revolution aversion'.  I'm wondering how your personal comfort level and assets within the system's construct, affect your outlook.  I ask because I've been wondering a lot about the personal profiles and demographics of more conservative Dems.

    I'd been wending my way toward Lefties maybe being/feeling more shut out of comfort (especially after working a lifetime's worth), but I also factored in a huge empathy factor, too, as in: we really are our brothers' keepers, which concept seems to be disappearing in our discourse and even in our communities. 

    You say here, too, that 'many Left-of-center people' are questioning the plethora of leaks.  I wonder if these are the same people, for instance, who really don't favor the Big Five or Big Six Banks being put into receivership, downsized, cleaned-up, and actually regulated within the small constraints that exist now.  Are these the same people who who buy into the meme that doing so would 'potentially cause instability to the financial sector'? 

    I'm not trying to cast aspersions here, but wondering, and thinking you could shed some light on this. 

    As an aside: when I cruised the news sites this morning, every page had almost hysterical coverage of 'Interpol searching for Assange' stories.  Given what Obey and other said about the opposite sort of coverage of the leaks, but not Assange himself, I'm wondering if a lot of what's driving the freakout might be that BoA may be the next recipient of leaked docs.  (Fantastic, IMO, especially just after the Fed finally released the list of recipients of the Fed's emergency loans--all over the globe.)


    I don't think my politics have changed all that much, except through a greater resignation to the status quo, a greater despair that the American people will ever share my politics, and a level of comfort I could have never envisioned when I was hiding from my landlords or living in other peoples' apartments and/or transient hotels.  

    Even though I still support an economic system that is much more redistributive and that much better promotes equality of opportunity (leaving our ever-more militarized foreign policy out of it for the time being), there are a lot of things worth preserving about America in 2010.  Granted, the trends are not moving in the right direction, but we are still the freest and most abundant major power in human history.

    The American people simply don't agree that blowing the whole thing up and starting over is the best path forward.  And I've come to respect that conclusion.  Ultimtately, I share the political goals of the liberals who have placed themselves in opposition to Obama.  Our areas of disagreement come almost exclusively in the areas of tactics and rhetoric. 

    I know it's easy for you to assume I'm a heartless, DLC Dem, but you really don't know me or my history.  I have come to terms with the staus quo more out of sorrow and despair than out of a love of material comfort (not that I have that much) and a hardening of my heart towards the poor.         


    Au contraire, Brew; it takes a lot of hard work to assume you're heartless la la la...Innocent

    No, thanks for responding.  I'm just working through the theory, partly based on the fact that the poor tend to be far more generous than the comfortable (it's a real statistic, crazily enough.  And when I read comments sometimes by centrists, I can get the feeling of those similar dividing lines.   I sometimes thing age is a dividing line, too, and that those of us who have been in activist politics primarily to change eco issues and economic justice and war for so long, feel that this really is a turning point right now, as corporate power is swallowing our representative democracy.

    I'm not getting the 'blowing it up and starting over' piece, unless it's about wikileaks having the possibility to make that happen.  I sure don't think so.  But your statement that you've come to a certain amount of comfort with the status quo kinda makes me sad, Brew. 

    Some days I go to bed so exhausted and feeling that 'resistance is futile', and then the next day I'll ususally be ready to rock n roll for Better Days and Better Ways.  Thanks for sharing.  


    I guess at some point I felt like I was fighting a battle that no one on whose behalf I thought I was fighting cared to join.  Look, I still do campaign work and contribute money when able, and I handle 5-10 cases a year through a legal aid group in Chicago.  I intend to raise my kids with the right values, and hope they stick. I recycle religiously; I drive a Prius (used). 

    But I won't devote the primary energy in my life to fighting to right all of the wrongs of modern society, and I won't apologize for enjoying my middle-class lifestyle.  One of the lessons my reading of history is that progressive change happens when it has to, not when we would like it to; there has to be some precipitating crisis.  And, sadly, things are probably going to go down this road until they hit the wall.  There's very little you or I can do about that.  We might be goign to hell in a bucket, so I'm at least going to enjoy the ride.     


    Okey-dokey, Brew; guess I can't quit fighting, though.  And how are the babbies doing? 


    More power to you, Wendy.  Sincerely.

    The twins are teething or something right now and we're having a hard time getting them to sleep (since I run on 5-6 hours sleep a day anyway, not such a big deal for me, but it is stressing out my wife).  But I'm not kidding when I say they are two of the most beautiful babies you'll ever see.  We get stopped everywhere we go when we have them out.  Genetics is a funny thing; I tend to  avoid mirrors whenever possible. 


    LOL!  I avoid cameras, too!  Glad they're gorgeous; god, I love babbies!  All that wonder and hope, and their needs are so simple right now.  Google teething and fennel seed tea; that sticks in my mind.  Would do it if I had more time...it's good for stomach flu and vomiting, too.  Or google 'herbal help for teething babies'; the sites know what babbies can have..usually simple alterives are fine, if not beneficial.

    Oh, pooh: here's a product to check out: Gum-omile topical stuff:

    The ingredients in this product are; almond oil, willow bark extract, chamomile flowers, clove essential oil and vitamin e oil.

    Best, stardust



    Forget that herbal crap stardust is pushing. I recommend cutting their formula with rum. Equal parts should do the trick.


    Ah, go verify yerself, Atheist!  Tongue out


    Rum?  Sorry, we're Americans.  Nothing but fine Kentucky bourbon for my babies. 


    Mebbe the revolution could be rescheduled to take place at a more convienient time?  Next Tuesday at 4pm werks fer me.  ;)

     

    As a goes along with sidenote....

    The Whistleblower Protection Act, last revised under President George H.W. Bush in 1994, is on the Senate's table this week and if passed, is expected to glide through the House next week.

    Convenient coincidence, or what?  Oh, who the hell knows anymore.


    As a concept, I like Wikileaks.  I think it has a noble purpose.  Discerning the difference between whistleblowing and invasion of privacy doesn't seem that difficult of a thing to do.  One causes alarm, the other embarrassment.

    What I am beginning to have trouble with is Assange's character.  Over a month ago there were articles published that spoke of disagreements within Wikileaks on how leaks were being prioritized.  I also found it interesting that Assange is placing so much emphasis on U.S military leakage and less on the private industries.

    As an example...Wendell Potter, the former Cigna Exec., just published a whistleblower book on the healthcare industry.  I would reckon that Wikileaks had that information as well and I would have rather had Assange bring that information to the fore way back when the HCR debate was raging.  Maybe then the Public Option would have had a fighting chance. But, no, we had to wait for Potter to tell his story too long after the fact.

    Instead, from Assange, we get a  bunch of military and diplomatic stuff flooding the news cycle, most of which isn't really news anymore.  That is suspect, to me.

    The Bank of America stuff should be fun, though.


    Can't figure why you'd quote Douthat, but it's my personal bias.  Dude thinks the Pope's right to condemn the use of condoms, because he was right that birth control would lead to more divorce and abortions.  Sound crazy?  It is.

    But Stewart?  On another thread at Dagblog, someone said he refused to call torture a War Crime; someone at FDL said it again yesterday.  If it's true, I'd sure take a careful look at the political opinions he holds.


    INFIDEL!!!!! All references to Stewart at dagblog are hereby banned forever.


    (I get that a lot, Genghis.)  Kiss  After skirmishing with you on the subject of the er...possible lack of meaning for that event, I got into a row over a blogger's insistence that Stewart was conflating Olbermann and Fox News.  Now I'll say it was my worst day ever on the boards, but I really didn't see that taking Keith to task was so huge.  Still haven't figured it all out, if there's indeed any truth to be had on the subject, but I am a bit more wary of him.  And I sure didn't like it that he met with Tim Geithner, given that his bro is involved heavily in finance. 

    Having said that, if I criticize him again, you feel free to interptret it as a subconscious plea to be banned forever from Dagblog; though last ttime I said that A-man said that asking precluded banning...er something.   Sealed


    Actually, I meant that Stewart is the infidel, since he clearly doesn't hold liberally correct views. But you can both be infidels. I say, the more the infidelier. I will alert the tribunal.


    Well, Good Goddam, son; I wasted that whole confession fer nothin'???  C'mon, now; didn't it read like you wuz callin' me out as an Infidel?  Been called worse, I wager...

    (but...er...who's on the tribunal? stardust worried...)


    I've probably said all I possibly could about Assange but lemme throw out one more idea... he's an activist, and that's that.  Just like a member of Green Peace or Earth First or Act Up.  So there's no doubt he wants to change, alter or disrupt (if they refuse to change) the institutions that are the subjects of his leaks.  You can call that arrogant.  You can say "who appointed him to decide what's secret and what's not?" or you can call him a hero.  All activists get those labels, depending on who's labeling.  But in the end it's all just activism and while most activists would probably embrace the term "revolutionary" if it's too loaded for this conversation, so be it.  You have here a guy who feels passionately that by revealing the backstage antics of major institutions he can improve or disrupt those institutions and that either would be better for the world than just letting the status quo prevail.  I think reasonable people can decide whether he's right or wrong or kinda sorta both.


    Well put, but where are these reasonable people you speak of? Laughing


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