“I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan have a great deal of validity!”
by zunguzungu
“I know Daniel Ellsberg. Mr. Assange, you are no Daniel Ellsberg.”
–Todd Gitlin“Everything is Data, but Data isn’t Everything”
“The mainstream media mantra “Pentagon Papers good; wikileaks bad” is totally misguided. That’s just a cover for people who don’t want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy…I just voted for Assange as @TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year.”
–Daniel Ellsberg (here, here, here)
zunguzungu 
Ha! That is great.
I’ve been passing around links to your posts on Wikileaks; they have been among the most insightful I’ve seen. (Unfortunately, much of the competition is unbelievably knee-jerk and superficial, but that only makes your analysis even more crucial.) So thank you.
You mean Todd Gitlin’s whole fallacy is wrong.
Of course, Todd Gitlin is notorious for routinely lambasting all activism/leftwing-politics that came after him; kind of a giant dickhead.
There is nothing worse than a sourpuss old new leftie.
Heh.
Wikileaks — the medium is NOT guilty.
Those who kill for money ARE.
I wonder, if citizens had been able to read their leaders’ and diplomats’ cables in 1914 and 1939, would the First and Second World Wars have occurred?
A simple juxtaposition but effective. Very good.
TBH, I am quite surprised at Gitlin’s article considering how great a book The Whole World is Watching is – perhaps this article is the result of old age. The tweet you posted however totally puts Gitlin’s piece in check.
Aaron, you have done the best writing available on Wikileaks.
But please, can we admit that WL is a New Event, like the substrate that spawned hacktivism is based on New Events? Facebook, Twitter, 4chan?
i loved the Two Handed Engine the best, but it needs to be linked and excerpted everywhere.
Meanwhile, Assange’s fifth column, having been activated by his kabuki arrest, goes underground.
Make a thousand trails of carnage.
Thanks for this. The amount of really unhinged hysterical attacks by so-called liberals on this issue is really astonishing to me. When did they wake up and think that the establishment had our best interests at heart and just needed to be left in peace to do that? Is it that they no longer believe in transparency and accountability when Dems are in charge of the executive branch?
Scientic American says Assanges systemkiller prototype cant be turned off.
that is approx 20 per hour since WL Mirrors started.
All this intent stuff is first culture– can we pay a little attention to the empirical data?
Whatever Assange designed WL to accomplish, it is evidential that his system is WAI (working as intended) and it cannot be turned off (at least not by the powerless Hyperpower).
filmen, som WL har gjort, pe5ste5s att Assange varit i husarrest i me5nader utan att vara alakagnd (charged) och det e4r fel.Han e4r he4ktad av Svea hovre4tt som ske4ligen misste4nkt ff6r ve5ldte4kt m.m.Jag e4r absolut inte WL-hatare. Dock tror jag att me5nga f6ver driver dess betydelse och att detta har stigit Assange e5t huvudet och att han de4rff6r inte kan gf6ra en korrekt bedf6mning av le4get.Det e4r befe4ngt att Assange skulle behf6va sitta he4ktad i flera e5r. Ff6rundersf6kningen e4r i det ne4rmaste kvar. Det som e5terste5r e4r att ff6rhf6ra Assange och ff6lja upp hans sida av saken. Torde ge5 ganska snabbt. Hade han kommit hit i hf6stas hade nog tingsre4tten redan varit i me5l.Och ingen utle4mning till USA kan ske fre5n Sverige med mindre e4n att Storbritannien medger det. Tve4rtom e4r Assange faktiskt mer skyddad nu, eftersom Storbritannien inte utan vidare kan le4mna ut honom till USA nu ne4r det pe5ge5r en EAW-prf6vning.Vad ge4ller Bradley Manning se5 e4r det ju beklagligt om han fe5r sitta he4ktad le4ngre e4n nf6dve4ndigt. Samtidigt e4r ju omfattningen av brottet se5 stort att det e4r sve5rt att bedf6ma hur le5ng tid en ff6rundersf6kning kan ta.
The next piece from the same author begins with this phrase:
“When I filed my TNR.com piece called ‘Everything Is Data, but Data Isn’t Everything’, I didn’t know that Wikileaks, Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times had entered into what two AP reporters were to call “an extraordinary collaboration between some of the world’s most respected media outlets and Wikileaks.”
And he’s a professor of journalism. Apparently not modern journalism though. His earlier enunciations too betray his lack of genuine interest in the WikiLeaks significance and also his resulting ignorance.
I have to correct an important detail – Professor Gitlin claims that he filed his piece “long before” the information of the collaboration was made public; initially I checked just the publication dates and I was to hasty in my judggement of his opening sentence.
However, this doesn’t substantially change my opinion of him.
seems to me that commentators such as (Sandra) Cuffe and (Kate) Harding are laelrgy concerned with combating a certain bias in much commentary (and some reporting) on the charges against Assange and, moreover, an unjustified dismissal of the possibility that he is, in fact, guilty as charged (w/o at the same time suggesting that he is/not). At which point, two things. The first is the rather murky nature of the affair, and the fact that it’s a live issue, the status of which changes every hour, and about which it’s difficult to keep up-to-date. The interview with Greenwald on Democracy Now!, for example, regarding the process by which Assange was eventually detained by British authorities is interesting; so too, the apparent laying of four formal charges against him (as opposed to Swedish authorities merely seeking to ask him some questions as in earlier/other accounts). The other matter is I think of a more general nature and concerns the reception of such charges by the media, general public and as you state the Marxist left . Which I’ve not really had an opportunity to canvass, but which in turn raises other questions regarding law (Australian, British, Swedish, US) but also culture: the nature of consent, and feminist critiques of same. Obviously Assange’s work on Wikileaks is very admirable, and worthy of full support. But the dominant discourse about the sexual assault/rape/women is not. I guess not, but the problem lies in disentangling the issues in a context in which there is a concerted effort to have them remain mixed together. Conceptually, of course, these are distinct: the truth or otherwise of the charges against Assange may be established independently of his other actions, attributes, political significance, and so on. By the same token, if the dominant discourse is faulty, it’s not Assange’s fault (or no more so than any other participant’s arguably, anyway, and leaving aside a range of other questions regarding gender and political responsibility). At the same time, establishing the veracity of the account which surrounds the charges is very much a public affair, and amounts in some sense to a trial by media (or public opinion). In which case, it also has a strongly political dimension.Moar laters.