The Nihilism of Julian Assange
nybooks.com
nybooks.com
> "Assange, by contrast [to Snowden], appears to have no interest in anyone’s privacy but his own and his sources’. Private communications, personal information, intimate conversations are all fair game to him. He calls this nihilism “freedom,” and in so doing elevates it to a principle that gives him license to act without regard to consequences."
Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model.
As far as I know, there are no documented cases of deaths due to the Wikileaks leaks at issue in the unsubstantiated quote: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/...
Oh this is just beyond ridiculous.
They bring it up because people's lives were put at risk. I won't go so far as to claim people actually died, but that absolutely was a risk and Assange very consciously chose to take that risk.
Who cares if the "old media" also happens to see WikiLeaks as a "threat to their business model"? That's literally 100% beside the core point, here, though it's a mighty fine deflection on your part.
He is literally the definition of a basement dwelling keyboard troll... he isn't getting to socialise properly and is locked into a digital world that is quite separate from reality while simultaneously being put on a pedestal, idolised and demonised by power impressive people...
Even the best of us would develop weird quirks and poor thought processes in that scenario.
This is where censorship begins. No matter what one thinks of Julian Assange personally, or of WikiLeaks’s reckless publication practices, like it or not, they have become the litmus test of our commitment to free speech. If the government successfully prosecutes WikiLeaks for publishing classified information, why not, then, “the failed New York Times,” as the president likes to call it, or any news organization or journalist? It’s a slippery slope leading to a sheer cliff. That is the real risk being presented here, though Poitras doesn’t directly address it.
We are all Julian Assange.
That's a point among many.
This is a documentary about Assange himself. By definition that means a study of the man, not strictly a study of the issues. So "kvetching about Assange's personality and motivations" is exactly the flipping point.
Now, pivoting to the issues for a moment: the situation with WikiLeaks is complicated. To distill it down to a simple slippery slope fallacy without acknowledging that complexity is, at best, pretty shallow thinking.
It would be dishonest to claim that the kind of radical transparency WikiLeaks espouses has no downsides. Again, the potential threat to Afghani informants is a pretty damn good example.
Is that cost worth the 100% censorship free society that WikiLeaks seems to want? Personally, I don't know... because, again, it's actually pretty damn complicated.
Why exactly is meeting with the bumbling though reprehensible idiot Nigel Farage clear evidence that Assange is a tool of designated state enemy #1?
After giving up a successful lucrative career in the city of London, Farage has after innumerable campaigns across the country, fulfilled what he sees as Margaret Thatcher's dream of separating Britain from Europe. Few would demur from the view that Brexit would never have happened but for Farage who meantime has been merely an MEP in the European Parliament not an MP in the UK.