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Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

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Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#11

Post by corin_ »

steve19 wrote: post #8
xnull2guest wrote: post #3

This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests. He doesn't want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of removing the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published.…

Nonsense. Assange goes to great lengths to spin his political agenda. For example the "Collateral Murder" video. He did not publish raw source material, he published his narrative: http://www.collateralmurder.com/ He is no Snowden. Snowden was upfront and honest from the start about what he was trying to achieve. I used to admire Assange, now Assange is caught up in his own myth and he seems desperate to keep that my…

Pretty much agree - I never agreed with everything Assange was doing, but I at least thought he was doing it for the right reasons and respected him for that, but as time goes on he just seems more deluded and often self-interested. I suppose in his defense it can't be easy being stuck in an embassy for two and a half years.

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#12

Post by sien »

xnull2guest wrote: post #3

This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests. He doesn't want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of removing the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published.…

Assange is explicitly and deliberately a politician.

He stood as a candidate for the Australian Senate and used the brand 'wikileaks' for his party.

http://www.wikileaksparty.org.au/

They performed very poorly, getting only 0.62% of the vote.

Assange was popular as someone who enabled information to be available. As a politician with his own agenda he is not.

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#13

Post by finid »

youngtaff wrote: post #10
eternalban wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

The article makes many assertions of connections, without really backing up those assertions.

You don't have to depend on an article to provide evidence of a connection between Google's execs and the political leadership.

The fact that those execs were getting cheap gas for their private jets is more than enough for anybody to put 2 and 2 together and get the right result.

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#14

Post by finid »

steve19 wrote: post #8
xnull2guest wrote: post #3

This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests. He doesn't want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of removing the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published.…

Nonsense. Assange goes to great lengths to spin his political agenda. For example the "Collateral Murder" video. He did not publish raw source material, he published his narrative: http://www.collateralmurder.com/ He is no Snowden. Snowden was upfront and honest from the start about what he was trying to achieve. I used to admire Assange, now Assange is caught up in his own myth and he seems desperate to keep that my…

Please don't forget that regardless of what you think his agenda is, Assange was/is doing what the MSM is failing to do.

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#15

Post by danieltillett »

sien wrote: post #12
xnull2guest wrote: post #3

This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests. He doesn't want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of removing the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published.…

Assange is explicitly and deliberately a politician. He stood as a candidate for the Australian Senate and used the brand 'wikileaks' for his party. http://www.wikileaksparty.org.au/ They performed very poorly, getting only 0.62% of the vote. Assange was popular as someone who enabled information to be available. As a politician with his own agenda he is not.

Actually 0.62% is not too bad for a candidate that got very little coverage. If he is a politician then he is not a very good one as the person who won the last senate seat Ricky Muir (we have 12 senators for each state) in Victoria (the state Assange was running in) only got 0.51% [1].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Muir

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#16

Post by cyphunk »

steve19 wrote: post #8
xnull2guest wrote: post #3

This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests. He doesn't want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of removing the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published.…

Nonsense. Assange goes to great lengths to spin his political agenda. For example the "Collateral Murder" video. He did not publish raw source material, he published his narrative: http://www.collateralmurder.com/ He is no Snowden. Snowden was upfront and honest from the start about what he was trying to achieve. I used to admire Assange, now Assange is caught up in his own myth and he seems desperate to keep that my…

If you imagine a world where non-nationalist universal civil liberties is a reality you may find Assange's political agenda makes sense. While Snowden and others came to the idea of universal civil liberties only after being buffed for questioning the debasement of US civil liberties Assange started from this principle from the outset. 100 years from now I'm pretty confident that people will consider our debate of Assange and find little merit in pegging his actions to a purely personal ego motivation. But this is just my opinion and I understand how differentiating the personal motives of Assange from the broader motives, with many placing heavier weight on the former, is possible. I think his mind lives in a better world and he just doesn't have the patience to wait for it. And you may be right about Assange defending a myth. Then again, myth and vision can often be impossible to distinguish. On another note: famous people just got a different set of problems.

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#17

Post by alex_hitchins »

corin_ wrote: post #11
steve19 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Assange goes to great lengths to spin his political agenda. For example the "Collateral Murder" video. He did not publish raw source material, he published his narrative: http://www.collateralmurder.com/ He is no Snowden. Snowden was upfront and honest from the start about what he was trying to achieve. I used to admire Assange, now Assange is caught up in his own myth and he seems desperate to keep that my…

Pretty much agree - I never agreed with everything Assange was doing, but I at least thought he was doing it for the right reasons and respected him for that, but as time goes on he just seems more deluded and often self-interested. I suppose in his defense it can't be easy being stuck in an embassy for two and a half years.

Regards to him hiding out in the embassy, it really irritates me when he refers to this as 'house arrest' or 'detained without charge'.

He is there of his own free will. He can leave at any time. He chooses not to as he is a coward.

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#19

Post by Pyxl101 »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #17
corin_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much agree - I never agreed with everything Assange was doing, but I at least thought he was doing it for the right reasons and respected him for that, but as time goes on he just seems more deluded and often self-interested. I suppose in his defense it can't be easy being stuck in an embassy for two and a half years.

Regards to him hiding out in the embassy, it really irritates me when he refers to this as 'house arrest' or 'detained without charge'. He is there of his own free will. He can leave at any time. He chooses not to as he is a coward.

If he attempts to leave his domicile, won't he immediately be arrested? That is the impression I was under.

It's the same scenario as someone under house arrest. When you're under house arrest, typically there is not an armed guard preventing you from leaving (although this is sometimes required by a court). Rather, you have the ability to leave your house, but if you do, then you will be arrested. I can see why he would consider the situation equivalent to house arrest.

[Edit: moving my other comments about the Assange case to a separate reply]

Re: Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks

#20

Post by niels_olson »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #17
corin_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much agree - I never agreed with everything Assange was doing, but I at least thought he was doing it for the right reasons and respected him for that, but as time goes on he just seems more deluded and often self-interested. I suppose in his defense it can't be easy being stuck in an embassy for two and a half years.

Regards to him hiding out in the embassy, it really irritates me when he refers to this as 'house arrest' or 'detained without charge'. He is there of his own free will. He can leave at any time. He chooses not to as he is a coward.

> He chooses not to as he is a coward

It's pretty clear that the UK would arrest him the second he walked out the door and promptly turn him over to the US. The US has made it quite clear, vis-a-vis Manning, Drake, Binning, etc, that he would have a very bad time ahead of him, and possibly see everything he has attempted to accomplish shuttered and turned against him. In any case, his signal would surely be reduced to zero.

Snowden likewise chose asylum. Are they both cowards?

Perhaps an alternative narrative is that these new political asylum seekrs are both using their asylum as so many asylum seekers have: as a chance to amplify their signal.

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