Why Assange and Wikileaks have won this round

What was revealed in the leaks aside, this is indeed a turning point. Julien Assange has become “everyman/woman.” The veil has been drawn back and now “the people” identify with Assange as representative of each of them. It is now clear that the Establishment will do anything to protect its claim on the turf, including trampling individual rights. We have seen torture go unpunished, habeas corpus dismantled, laws supposed directed at terrorists directed at petty crime, and so forth, but so far there was no catalyst in the form a person with whom everyone can easily identify. Julien Assange is that person.

It’s back to the Sixties. This is the moment that someone handed Mario Savio a bullhorn on the steps of UCAL Berkeley redux. At that time the entire mainstream media was aligned against the “troublemakers,” and all the people had was a bullhorn. That bullhorn turned into the alternative or “free” press, but communication was very limited in those days.

But out of those times came the counterculture, which is the Right has been trying to reverse since, adding it to the New Deal on the list of enemies. But now we have the world wide web, and the situation is very different. The people have woken up to the fact that the Wikileaks affair is the just the beginning of an attempt to take down the net as a source of open information. This is going to get interesting. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the battle is now joined against the Empire.

I just get a kick out of the fact that there is a full-fledged cyber war taking place over this issue, but our U.S. press is so compromised, so pwned (as the kids say) by the corporations, that they can’t discuss it. Full fledged cyber war, and they can’t publish the juicy headlines like they’d like, because that would expose the corrupt authoritarian corporatocrisy that runs this nation.

Rule of Law; the best concept ever created by civilization.

(his actions are those of a free press)

The Pulitzer committee will see it that way, right? Or the Nobel Peace Prize committee (hoping to redeem themselves after the Obama fiasco)?

From The Guardian, which is finding some humor in this:

With the US government championing World Press Freedom Day while also
trying to squash WikiLeaks – Jeroen Kraan gets in touch: “Check out the
World Press Freedom Day Facebook page. Commenters are having a ball, as
you’d expect.”

And indeed, so they are:

“Will you be inviting Jullian Assange? He’s done some fantastic work in
this area,” wonders one. “This reminds me of the time Iran tried to join
the UN’s womens’ rights groups,” writes another. Jeroen himself comments:
“Stephen Colbert, you can admit you’re behind this event now.”

Just FYI, I’m pretty sure Assange’s first name is spelled “Julian” (“Julia” with an “n”).

It does point up that the system of corporate aristo-monarchy, for want of a better term, that congealed around GWB is still operating.

It’s a rather odd situation where the old constitutional arrangements are still unchanged on paper, but there is a widespread but hardly-spoken “understanding” that there is a system of fiat rule which entirely trumps them–something like a state of emergency, but entirely lacking the explicit enumeration and assignation of powers that a real state of emergency would bring with it. (Perhaps the term I’m looking for is…erm…”totalitarian”.)

The leaks do seem to have hit a nerve with the sort of American nationalist who prefers that the whole monstrosity continue to operate mostly under the table, leaving them free to blow off any unseemly suspicions with snotty accusations of “paternalistic and bigoted refusal to attribute agency to non-American actors” or some other such rot. Indeed, they seem to see such as being merely their natural due, and the possibility that a Wikileaks might come along and give the game away seems to inspire in them an indescribable fury–I believe that this, more than anything else, is what is inspiring all the fevered alarms about “anarchy”.

It does point up that the system of corporate aristo-monarchy, for want of a better term, that congealed around GWB is still operating.
…
Indeed, they seem to see such as being merely their natural due, and the possibility that a Wikileaks might come along and give the game away seems to inspire in them an indescribable fury…

Recall that bush&cheney & the neocons are chicken hawks. They’re fine with sending other people to fight and die, but all of them avoided it. Another way of putting it is that they are bullies. WL is not a large, long-established newspaper. It is something that they can attack with impunity, much like unarmed Iraq and Afghanistan, and unlike NKorea or China.

And it’s not safe to be an innocent civilian in Yemen:

While Saleh’s government publicly insists its own forces are responsible for counter-terrorism operations, the cables detail how the president struck a secret deal to allow the US to carry out cruise missile attacks on [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula] targets. The first strike in December last year, which killed dozens of civilians along with wanted jihadis, was presented by Saleh as Yemen’s own work, supported by US intelligence.

In the U.S., this would be like a S.W.A.T. team mowing down a crowd of shoppers to get at a suspected child molester or drug dealer. “We don’t give the orders,” the team’s commander said, “We just carry them out and do our job. And we’re damn good at it.”

This is a civil society with established outlets for change.

That is a myth. Only those with sufficient wealth and power are able to effect change in this society.

If they’re not sufficient for your taste, then work to change them within democratic means.

They cannot be changed by democratic means. Elections do not determine what legislation is written. That is determined by lobbyists (who write the legislation) and the people who employ the lobbyists and pay for the majority of the campaign contributions and campaign advertising (it’s overkill, but they do it anyway).

If you don’t like democracy, then feel free to opt into life within a totalitarian state more to your liking.

Democracy has been rendered irrelevant. Voting is free, but representation is only available to those who control and pay large amounts of money.

Your perception of your society does not match reality.

“One of the key measures of fascism, by the way, is that large corporations and government work hand in glove.”

Another key measure is that a sizeable enough demographic calls this democracy b/c they’re either a) blind or b) complicit.

@lewis

“Your cheerleading for these Krystallnacht tactics is an odd reflection of commitment to the “freedoms” you purport to espouse.”

That comparison of Operation: Payback’s DDOS to Krystallnacht tactics really reminds me of the end of Obama’s Peace Prize acceptance speech. You know, the part where he draws an equivalence between a soldier and a protester, as if there is no probable difference in the balance of power in the two situations in which the respective actors find themselves.

Isn’t the proper term for that “Doublethink”?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

@lewis,

Democracy is broken if voters can’t have the information they need to make informed decisions. If our elected officials are acting contrary to the bests interests of the country and the people, keeping it hidden can only harm the democratic process, regardless of whether some bureaucrat with a rubber stamp has marked it “classified” to save his ass from scrutiny. Whistleblowers who shine the light of day on incompetence and corruption are vital to a democracy, and that’s what real journalism is, not uncritical repeating of PR statements.

Addendum; this post regarding Datashield (above) is from a poster named Graham. He has contributed a lot of good information to the thread I started.
Many thanks Graham, cheers.

The underlying issues of this fascinate me most of all. Here we have the most clear cut example for determining who’s a Statist and who isn’t. And by Statist i mean authoritarian.

All the Tea Party protests clamoring about trees of liberty and the blood of patriots. All the Republican pandering to ideas about ending “big government” and individual liberty. All of it has been shown to be the bullshit we always knew it was.

These people, like lewis the troll, are the first and loudest to rush to defend the big government they purport to loathe. They’re the one’s who’d be happy to bend laws to try a foreigner for treason…or just assassinate him. They’re the one’s who want the NYT (rag that is) tried for espionage. Unfortunately, nobody in the big, bad “liberal media” is going to call them out on it. Certainly none of their talk show heroes will point out that WL is attacking “big government” on their behalf too.

Nope, just wave the flag and yell, “death to the unbelievers!” Break out the jackboots, freedom’s on the march.

That is quite right Lex, sadly so, but like this new Obambi “compromise” it has the added value of showing clearly for all to see (those that have eyes and are willing)who is who and what they stand for. Occasionaly we do have moments of great clarity. This is one of those.

lewis:
“This is a civil society with established outlets for change. If they’re not sufficient for your taste, then work to change them within democratic means. If you don’t like democracy, then feel free to opt into life within a totalitarian state more to your liking.”

i thought the esta blishment politicians are the ones bsy crafting that totalitarian state to save us all the bother

seriously, julian assange is not necessarily an anarchist in letting the public peep into what sort of politics and diplomacy that their taxes pay for but he also had a very insightful comment on the monetisation of politics:

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be “free” because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.”

i think that comment answers your spurious claim that civil society provides adequate outlets for change bc if it did, wikileaks probably would never have happened

@Josh

you seem to conflate the world with the USA but last i looked, the former is a much bigger place and it will not as it has not in the past necessarily follow US opinion

do i detect a touch of exceptional xenophobia?

…but not before the US figures out what to charge him with.

Charge Assange with what crime? Printing the truth?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Just FYI, I’m pretty sure Assange’s first name is spelled “Julian” (“Julia” with an “n”).

Also, FYI, the organization spells its name “WikiLeaks”, not “Wikileaks.”

anon2525,

Calling Assange a hero does not make the case for what WL is doing. Describing what is going on is what will convince Americans.

I made that case. I pointed out what Assange is doing, some of the important things Wikileaks has revealed, compared them to the Pentagon Papers, asked why they didn’t feel the same way towards Daniel Ellsberg, and asked why Assange should be charged with anything and not the editors of the NYT, Le Monde, the Guardian, El Pais, and Der Spiegel. I didn’t get any answers. And I didn’t convince anyone.

As for the Swedish investigation, this is the most (sordidly) thorough write-up I have seen:
http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USTRE6B669H20101207

I forgot who wrote it, but somebody who takes risks like Assange can likely be expected to have slightly different risk assessment heuristics – or abilities – than other people, whether it is regarding STDs or getting intimately involved with people he just met.

As for the rest… One aspect I find most fascinating is Assange’s take on secrecy. I was present in 1996 when David Brin pitched the core ideas of what became his “Transparent Society” (and part of the fabric of his novel “Earth”) to a bunch of (fellow) libertarians, and the knee-jerk response was, shell we say, telling. As (I believe) Ian wrote a while ago, claims to government and corporate secrecy and “privacy” grows as exponentially as our individual privacy is eroded. Brin inconveniently – inconvenient for the boutique libertarians, that is – argued, if memory serves, that privacy is increasingly and inevitably lost, and that the only sustainable response of open society is to enforce – pace “Earth”, to the point of nuclear war against unrepentant Swiss bankers – by law transparency on the wealthy and powerful.

I have come to believe that – aside from other problems with his proposal – Brin overestimates the impact of transparency. Quite frankly, while essential in the context of the foundational decade of the coming National Information State, with respect to open, free society, rule of law, accountability and the US constitution, Wikileaks is a distraction.

Yes, we learn of more crimes, and we learn more details of crimes, with every disclosure, but frankly, does it matter? Over the past decade, plenty of crimes have been committed, witnessed, and documented. How much more disclosure is needed, given that The People by and large gives a fuck, does not bother to doubt “official” statements or their commercial, dysfunctional media, and wouldn’t be willing or able to act even if they ever worked up an outrage? We do not need to get more facts, we have more facts than we could ever possibly act on – what we do not have is meaningful action. Quite frankly, the occasional hacker attack on PayPal or other corporate “clouds” suffocating the public square will serve as nothing but a pretext for even more surveillance. The People and their hacking discontents will save Wikileaks, the Internet, or free speech about as effectively and thoroughly as they have saved the constitution, the rule of law, and several hundred thousand civilians over the last ten years.

Past performance predicts future results.

I have come to believe that… Wikileaks is a distraction.

Likewise, the publication by the nytimes of the pentagon papers was a distraction. No one was prosecuted. LBJ stayed safely in retirement. The Vietnam War wasn’t stopped by the publication. By this logic, the papers might as well have never been published. Anything that doesn’t fix the problems of the world isn’t worth doing. There is no point in putting up any resistance. If a single stone cannot stop a river, then it is nothing. Except that dams are built up of many stones.

Back in early 2002, as the Enron collapse was getting people to call for the criminals to be held accountable, there as a Saturday when Cheney got up and cried, “Look! Terrorists!!” The corporate media outlets turned their attention from the Enron crimes. That was a distraction. A distraction is something that points people away from the truth. What WL is doing is pointing people towards the truth. It is not a distraction, by definition.

The fact that there is another truth — that people are not being held accountable for their crimes — is ongoing. The WL disclosures are not directing people away from that truth. To the contrary. The more crimes that are revealed by the disclosures, the more instances are revealed that people are not being held accountable.

@josh – I think the existence of this blog thread, and its thousands of like-minded arguments on the web, and the myriad of supportive (and opposing) viewpoints in mainstream US news outlets (Time, Newsweek, network news, cable channels, etc etc), all go to support my argument that we do indeed have a robustly informed citizenry. They may not choose to take advantage of all that freely published political information, and those who do may still not agree with your viewpoint, but you can’t argue it’s a populac underserved by access to information. That’s a necessary condition of democracy, and we have it in spades.

@Lisa Simeone – you write, “How long before bloggers who champion WikiLeaks and defend Julian Assange are designated “domestic extremists”? Or who express skepticism about the recent FBI stings that snagged two disaffected loners, one in Portland and one in Baltimore? Or who urge people to opt-out of the stripsearch scanners?” – My answer to how long is, never. That’s how long before any of these three things happen. When they do, let me know, I’ll man the barricades with you. But it’s not bullshit to point out that these scare-tactic scenarios haven’t come true and won’t come to pass. How many librarians were jailed under the Patriot Act? (Zero.)

@malcontent – Who am I? How about (d) – none of the above. No troll, and I have every right to express my well-formed opinion as you and those you agree with do. A hallmark of extremists on left and right is the attempt to shut down debate, as you do. I engage.

@Lex – I’m no troll. I believe you miss my point. I loathe “big government,” as much or more than you do – and my Jefferson reference underscores why. I believe you and I agree on core political philosophy, and in fact I do not believe that the Times should be punished at all. The original leaker, on the other hand, should. If WikiLeaks and/or Assange encouraged or spurred him on in the theft and initial release of classified documents, they should as well. But free speech? That’s a core value, particularly for Tea Partiers, who’ve had to deal with oppressively-minded “liberals” (sic) both in the 1770s and in the past two years.

@sona – and anyone else still reading way down here – My contention is the exact opposite of yours. Loud political dissent here, like that in support of WL, only exists _thanks to_ the massive political freedom (and free speech) in the United States and to varying degrees “the West.” Without it, you’d have the nightmare scenario spun by Lisa Simeone. That exists elsewhere in the world, but in nations openly criticized by the US State Department. Yes, that State Department still has its diplomats work with those in power around the world, as exposed in Cables. But give the Enlightenment time, it has opened the world tremendously in the past 300 years and continues to inspire actual political reform and change globally. It certainly is not facilitated by the blind, mechanistic bully-boy tactics of the past 24 hours.

@anon252 wrote: As someone who lives in the u.s., I don’t find this [Joe Bageant’s writing] entertaining.

It’s his style, plus the content to a lesser degree. Not everyone’s cup of tea. I’m in the US too.

@The Consul – 100% correct

…given all the warrantless wiretapping that’s going on…

That is unconstitutional warrant-less wiretapping. It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that wiretapping without a warrant is unconstitutional, but too many people do not know that. The law that permits this is itself prohibited by the u.s. constitution. Wiretapping, like all searches the gov’t. does, is permitted if the gov’t. provides a reason — some evidence — to a court and obtains a warrant from a judge. What is happening is that the gov’t. is searching people without providing any reason or evidence to a court. They are doing it because someone else in the gov’t. ordered them to. (“I was just following orders.”)

Next attack will be the blogosphere itself.

We’ll know when this happens when, for example, ianwelsh.net switches from ‘http’ to ‘https’, and people become familiar with http://www.torproject.org/ and http://www.gnupg.org/, among other tools.

Re the reaction in Europe to the US’s overreaction:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10wikileaks-react.html

The Berliner Zeitung continued: “The U.S. is betraying one of its founding myths: freedom of information. And they are doing so now, because for the first time since the end of the cold war, they are threatened with losing worldwide control of information.”

Aye, there’s the rub.

Look up “Toledo Blade Tiger Force” to read about the Toledo Blade newspaper’s reporting about the crimes committed by the military unit named “Tiger Force”. This was reported in 2003. The Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer prize for its reporting.

Where did it get its information? link

The Blade’s investigation began after the newspaper obtained 22 pages of classified Army records detailing atrocities by Tiger Force.

The records of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command were just the start.

Reporters reviewed volumes of research on the Vietnam War, finding no mention of the Army’s investigation of the platoon’s atrocities.

…

Wrongdoing on this grand a scale is always significant. It is important to know what happened and why it happened because that’s how a democracy functions. The people need to know what is being done in their name and who is responsible.

In this case, we still don’t know who made the final decision not to prosecute. The Nixon White House received case updates of the Tiger Force investigation in 1972 and 1973 at the request of presidential counsel John Dean. Reports also went to Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Secretary of the Army Howard “Bo” Callaway.

The war crimes were committed in 1967.

The platoon – a small, highly trained unit of 45 paratroopers created to spy on enemy forces – violently lost control between May and November, 1967.

For seven months, Tiger Force soldiers moved across the Central Highlands, killing scores of unarmed civilians – in some cases torturing and mutilating them – in a spate of violence never revealed to the American public.

They dropped grenades into underground bunkers where women and children were hiding – creating mass graves – and shot unarmed civilians, in some cases as they begged for their lives.

They frequently tortured and shot prisoners, severing ears and scalps for souvenirs.

A review of thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives records, and radio logs reveals a fighting unit that carried out the longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War – and commanders who looked the other way.

If Wikileaks as an organization wants to use those corporations’ services, it needs to abide by their rules / terms of service.

Amazon’s rationalization for terminating WL’s use of its servers

There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.” It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy

This is not copyrighted material that WL is claiming as their own. They are not engaging in deception, lying, or fraud. WL is not selling ads or attempting to profit from someone else’s copyrighted material. Preventing anyone from doing this — theft for profit or to falsely claim authorship — is the only legitimate purpose of a rule about owning the material on a website. WL is publishing documents for the disclosure of information about gov’t. operations (that is, gov’t. transparency). This is what all free press does.

Will the disclosure put innocent people in jeopardy? WL has said in the past that it is making efforts for this not to happen. Some questions not asked of Amazon are: Will your suppressing the disclosure of this information put innocent people in jeopardy? (Amazon could ask that question to Afghani boys who are being raped.) Will your suppressing of the disclosure of this information prevent crimes from being disclosed that otherwise would be?

@lewis,
I’m glad that we agree that a robustly informed citizenry is a necessary condition of democracy. However, I’m afraid that’s where our agreement ends. I believe our citizenry, including myself, is grossly uniformed and misinformed, and that the “freely published political information” that you speak so highly of is nothing but advertising. There are competing viewpoints, but they are pure spin, and we just choose whichever one best reinforces our preconceived notions. That is not being informed.

I’m not speaking out in favor of WikiLeaks because I’m informed. I know that I am not. I am doing so because I crave unbiased information, and they are the only ones providing it.

@sona,
“you seem to conflate the world with the USA but last i looked, the former is a much bigger place and it will not as it has not in the past necessarily follow US opinion
do i detect a touch of exceptional xenophobia?”

I am aware that I was writing from a USA-centric point of view. I was just writing what I see everyday.

There’s going to be a protest tomorrow at the prison that is holding Assange. I hope it’s huge.

http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2010/12/09/protest-over-assange-at-wandsworth-attacks-on-wikileaks-as-new-revelations-emerge/

Z

“the publication by the nytimes of the pentagon papers was a distraction. ”

Quote:
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, “It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making.”
He read until 1 a.m., until with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent towards inserting 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court’s New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in The Times and others resumed. In July 1971, Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material The Times had published.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel#Vietnam_War.2C_the_draft.2C_and_the_Pentagon_Papers

The times, they are a-changin’. To name one difference: Between LBJ and Congress, there was at least a pretense to a declaration of war. The Iraq war is an illegal, aggressive war. I see a difference between a country split on a war that was wrong, and a country in sanguine disinterest in a war that is unconstitutional and a crime under the UN charter. Torture, assassination by executive order, indefinite detention and show trials might have happened then just as they are happening now, but I am sure if you focus, you can see the difference.

If you seriously believe that the US of today is in any way comparable to the US of Gravel and Ellsberg, then your analogy might make sense to you. So let’s make a prediction that history will not even repeat itself as a farce: There will be no US Senator (or, let us lower the bar, Representative) that will read Wikileaks-provided documents into the Congressional record. I also predict that if there actually was occasion for any court decision, they will further restrict and reduce the constitutional immunity and/or effectiveness of elected representatives to disclose information the government has deemed “secret”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravel_v._United_States

I am sure the Roman Republic was saved many times by daring acts. These days, what is left is memories and marble. Maybe you are already living in the past?

LBJ, whatever one thinks of his reasoning to continue and escalate the war, might have not been willing to risk re-election to end the war, but he did knowingly risk it for civil rights. It is not by accident that what is know the first piece of Information Age legislation – FOIA – was signed by him, either. Compared to hollow men like Bygones Habeas Obama, LBJ was a giant, and the reforms passed during his presidency mark the last occasion of the US republic re-inventing itself – reforms that contributed significantly to ending the war that LBJ got declared. To the extent that Watergate was a new beginning, it was the beginning of the end – just look at Woodward, his connections, and what his legacy will be.

I do not want to consider Obama’s legacy, and I will leave the depressing exercise of comparing the likes of Reid, Pelosi, Harman, Rockefeller, Roberts et.al. to Gravel to the reader. If Bush broke the laws Nixon did not dare to, Obama and his enablers in courts and Congress are seeking to amend and change law until the constitution has lost all relevance and meaning. If you think that Wikileaks is necessary or even sufficient to prevent this, I wish you luck.

Here is an interesting take (from the Guardian, via Greenwald):
“The hacktivists of Anonymous may be accused of many things – such as immaturity or being run by a herd instinct. But theirs is the cyber equivalent of non-violent action or civil disobedience.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/10/wikileaks_media/index.html

He also quotes Scheier (via CNN): “the pro-WikiLeaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa to a bunch of protesters standing in front of an office building, refusing to let workers in. It’s annoying, but it didn’t shut down the operation.”

This is an interesting view, but given two decades of “digital terror” hysteria, I doubt it is going to gain traction. More to the point, I stand my observation that this is “armchair disobedience” – those that marched with MLK knowingly took risks, Anonymous is proceeding under the – possibly mistaken – assumption their personal risks are manageable.

Greenwald calls what Schneier describes “an act of civil disobedience”. But “it didn’t shut down the operation”. If MLK’s or Ghandi’s followers had not had a real impact on the bottom line by publicly taking risks and facing prosecution, retaliation and intimidation, I doubt anybody would have awarded the movements they spoke for a claim to “disobedience”. It is not sufficient to be breaking the law.

If this was 1776, I wonder whether Hamilton would be funding an Open Society Foundation, Washington would be a Senator occasionally denouncing the unitary executive, and Jefferson or Paine would be blogging for Harpers. The Internet is not a facilitator of action, it has become to be – falsely – seen as an alternative to it. The missing ingredient is not more information, or more communication, both of which are modes of consumption. What is needed is for The Many to refuse to consume.

If you had to cancel your Internet connection for the revolution, would you do it?

If you had to cancel your Internet connection for the revolution, would you do it?

Of course. But the question is nonsensical. In no struggle between groups does it make sense for one group to remove its ability to communicate.

The Internet is not a facilitator of action, it has become to be – falsely – seen as an alternative to it. The missing ingredient is not more information, or more communication, both of which are modes of consumption. What is needed is for The Many to refuse to consume.

I disagree. The missing ingredient is organization around an agreed set of goals and actions.

The protesters against the vietnam war had an advantage: the people who were protesting were gathered together in concentrated collections (college campuses), and these people had a vital common interest, namely, they were subject to the draft which could lead to their deaths and the deaths of the family and friends. If there had been no draft, then it is not clear that the protests would have taken place back then. College (and high school) students might simply have been content with sex, drugs, and rock&roll.

The activists who have been protesting the actions of amazon, paypal, etc. are widespread and their lives are not imminently at stake. Without the internet, they would not have known about each other, much less taken any action. Contrary to what you have written, the internet is, in fact, a facilitator of their actions.

The internet is a tool. Like all tools, it can be used for good purposes or bad. But it is not an end in itself.

FYI, all:

Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States by Naomi Wolf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/post_1394_b_795001.html

anon2525,

The way I read it she is saying that if this act is re-activated, then it could be used against any of us, not just Julian Assange. Pandora, you know.

Yes, Greenwald has also published the count. He’s one of the lone voices of courage out there.

He’s one of the lone voices of courage out there.

The question is: why aren’t all of the newspapers in the U.S. standing up for freedom of the press with editorials and front-page articles listing the facts? This is 2003 all over again, when the u.s. media simply repeated the gov’t. propaganda. Third bush term, indeed.

I mean, really, criticizing her for not writing about FISA because she’s writing about the Espionage Act just doesn’t make sense.

What she is doing is pointing out a danger to people. A potential danger. That might not happen. If pointing out a potential danger is worth doing, then pointing out an actual danger is even more worth doing. And yet she is not doing that.

By pointing out this danger she is helping the fear mongers. She is saying that it is legitimate. Instead, she should write about what is actually legitimate (freedom of speech/press/association), and then in that context point out how some people will attempt to use illegitimate and unconstitutional means to imprison people.

Perhaps someone will write a comparison between the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Espionage act.

The Sedition Act expired on March 6, 1801, coinciding with the end of the Adams administration. While this prevented its constitutionality from being directly decided by the Supreme Court, subsequent mentions of the Sedition Act in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it would be ruled unconstitutional if ever tested in court. For example, in the seminal free speech case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Court declared, “Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history.” 376 U.S. 254, 276 (1964). In a concurring opinion in Watts v. United States, which involved an alleged threat against President Lyndon Johnson, William O. Douglas noted, “The Alien and Sedition Laws constituted one of our sorriest chapters; and I had thought we had done with them forever … Suppression of speech as an effective police measure is an old, old device, outlawed by our Constitution.”

“Ian, I agree with most of your article, but I believe your conclusion is overly optimistic.”

* Edgar. [aside] And worse I may be yet. The worst is not
So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’
http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=kinglear&Act=4&Scene=1&Scope=scene

Prosecuting Julian Assange is tantamount to prosecuting Daniel Ellsberg for releasing the Pentagon papers.

It is worse. Ellsberg was a whistle-blower — he took the documents from the gov’t. to expose the crime. Assange & WL are a free press. They didn’t take anything. Prosecuting WL is the same as prosecuting any newspaper or other media outlet. It is unconstitutional in the U.S. It is an illegal act that the federal gov’t. is prohibited from doing. If the fed. gov’t. attempts this, it should be told by the courts that it is illegal.

Digby has a YouTube video of a 15-year-old kid in Britain that is truly inspirational, and I had no sooner sent a link to someone when I come here and find that I’m not the only one who directly recalled Mario Savio’s spontaneous eloquence. Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/27pwz5z and see if it doesn’t make you feel a little better.

@Lisa Simeone. Thank you for that. I have spent a pleasant afternoon, or part of one, reading these comments, and you are one of those who got my admiration, so it is good to discover a place where you specifically hang out. What’s really been fun is listening in to an intelligent conversation (among people of goodwill) concerning an important topic of the day, people– I like to call them “citizens”– trying to make sense of things and put them into context. And it’s all the better because the participants are neither stupid nor ignorant and are having the discussion as much to understand and clarify as to convince. Would that legislative sessions would do the same.

i just want to stress that i find the use of the term “rape” charge to be polemical and slanderous.

Another view: http://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/statuses/12479573723709440

“Rape is being used in the Assange prosecution in the same way that women’s freedom was used to invade Afghanistan. Wake up!”

Ian, I hope you’ll write more about primarying Obama. Too many people are just dismissing it out of hand, usually with nothing more than “President X was primaried and the other party won, so if we primary Obama the Republicans will win.”

Not that that won’t likely happen anyway:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/10/105105/poll-obamas-losing-support-romney.html

“Do I suck a little bit? I do, yeah. Can you try me for treason? You can’t, because I’m from Australia. But nice try, dummies. In closing, I”m going to remind you all that no matter how I die, it was murder.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/snl-imagines-what-would-happen-if-wikileaks-and-tmz-joined-forces/

Ian Welsh writes in “Wikileaks And The End of the Open Internet:

“I think I have a pretty good idea of how the internet in general and especially blogs in specific work. The cost of entry went down, it is about to start going up again. The censorship on major blogs is significant, much of what I write could not be written on most a-list blogs and if it was written on a diary site it would never be front paged.”

Is this happening in WikiLeaks itself?

Former Wikileaks members are launching a whistle-blowing site after criticising the running of the original.
…
Former Wikileaks member and Openleaks co-founder, Daniel Domsheit-Berg, has told Chris Vallance that personality has become too important in Wikileaks.

Link to BBC news article

This is why I laugh when well-meaning people think they can solve the myriad symptoms/outcomes of this corrupt system by petitioning the guardians of this corrupt system for redress.

People who vote still believe that voting means representation. What happens when most of the people who are voting stop believing that? Will they all laugh?

Here is the link to the Forte’s essay: The Wikileaks Revolution

I think an adage applies here, as well. Be careful not to place all your eggs in one basket because you can never be quite sure about those damned baskets.

“sucked” should be “suckered”, unless you’re going by the vampire-squid view of corruption.

“Next attack will be the blogosphere itself.”

We’ll know when this happens when, for example, ianwelsh.net switches from ‘http’ to ‘https’, and people become familiar with http://www.torproject.org/ and http://www.gnupg.org/, among other tools.

Corporate media is taking notice of TOR:

The Tor Project is now building a Linux-based system, distributed on CD, to make Internet connections entirely anonymous by providing a portable, secure operating system that can be temporarily grafted onto another computer (even in a cafe). Soon users will also be able to take a router provided by Tor and plug it into their home networks. I’m almost considering becoming a Tor relay myself so I can, however briefly and blindly, inhabit these crazy Internet tunnels for myself.