The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Feel free to decide which is which.


Is something true just because power says it is?
"Let me be very clear, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist.”

Hillicon Valley (read: tech+politics blog) reports that since they can't find a law Assange actually broke, they're just gonna make one up.

An argument against the "continued infantilizing of the public"--and an assertion that the cables are going to change the way we listen to edited, elite-printed news bits in the future.

I think this is going to help divide news from spin. How would an earlier leak like this have changed the decision to go to war in Iraq, for example? 

Also, read this:

"It took a libertine to prove that information enriched the functioning of British society, a brave maverick who was constantly moving house – and sometimes country – to avoid arrest; whose epic sexual adventures had been used by the authorities as a means of entrapping and imprisoning him. The London mob came out in his favour and, supplemented by shopkeepers and members of the gentry on horseback, finally persuaded the establishment of the time to accept that publication was inevitable. And the kingdom did not fall."

That's the Guardian's Henry Porter. He's talking about John Wilkes, the guy who ostensibly created freedom of the press in the UK in 1774.

Porter also says this about the leaks:

"I don't argue for a free-for-all, regardless of the consequences. In the WikiLeaks cables, knowledge and the editing and reporting skills found in the old media, combined with the new ability to locate and seize enormous amounts of information on the web, has actually resulted in responsible publication, with names, sources, locations and dates redacted to protect people's identities and their lives."

 And finally: the screenplays and film treatments are only a matter of time--but we've already got the Wikileaks Video Game. Play a fictional Assange, waiting in the Oval office for Obama to fall asleep so he can steal government documents and do other things that have nothing to do with what actually happened.

(It'd be better if it was played as Bradley Manning seeing war crimes in action, fighting personal demons and Drill Sergeants as he obtains the Afghani War Logs and gets them to the anonymous dropbox, but whatevs.)