The motives of Wikileaks' Julian Assange


sjw

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http://web.archive.o...6/http://iq.org

Wed 03 Jan 2007 : Witnessing

Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice.

If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find.

If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes.

The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.

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They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. -- Andy Warhol

SJW has begun the thread, "The motives of Wikileaks' Julian Assange,” and quoted Mr Assange:

“If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers.”

“Stated” motives be damned. If Julian’s name were Arabic he would be considered an enemy combatant, aiding terrorists. He will be legally (and morally) found guilty of espionage, and have the death of many upon his hands - and all for an egotistical, school – boy - hacker, lark. He is despicable, not heroic.

Let his "daring adventure that draws on all (his) powers" keep him looking over his shoulders for the rest of his miserable life.

Peter Taylor

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It's a textbook example of Nietzschean whim-worship, bearing out the claims of Stephen Hicks and Jonah Goldberg that N. belongs with the fascists and not with the individualists.

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They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. -- Andy Warhol

SJW has begun the thread, "The motives of Wikileaks' Julian Assange,” and quoted Mr Assange:

“If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers.”

“Stated” motives be damned. If Julian’s name were Arabic he would be considered an enemy combatant, aiding terrorists. He will be legally (and morally) found guilty of espionage, and have the death of many upon his hands - and all for an egotistical, school – boy - hacker, lark. He is despicable, not heroic.

Let his "daring adventure that draws on all (his) powers" keep him looking over his shoulders for the rest of his miserable life.

Peter Taylor

That's very self-righteous Peter. And maybe you are righteous. So what are you (and others like you) actually doing about situations like this:

http://briandaitken.com

Or about the TSA shoving their hands down our pants? Or about other Bill of Rights violations by government? Or about other areas where our government is authoritarian and out of control and not actually devoted to protecting individual rights?

More transparency and accountability in government that is getting more and more authoritarian is a good thing. Everyone would uniformly condemn Wikileaks if our government stepped up to the plate and made itself transparent by default, keeping things secret only when they really should be. As I do not know the full content of what was leaked, I can't uniformly stand behind the whole of what they did, but in principle, I see an authoritarian out of control government that needs to be put in its place. It should be our defender and servant accountable to us, but it wants to be our master.

One of these days you pseudo-patriots may wake up and realize that the real patriots were the ones fighting for principle instead of blindly defending government. You may find one day, precisely because of your pseudo-patriotism, that government will have fallen so far that even you can't lie to yourself about it. But hopefully men of principle will save you so that you can maintain your delusions -- because I don't want to see things get so bad that even you wake up.

Shayne

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Countries and their diplomats are simply going to have to adjust to these new technologies.

--Brant

They will have to meet in underground caves, swept for "bugs", face to face and in secret. No notes will be recorded on any magnetic media.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Wikileaks has repeatedly attempted to get the US government's help in redacting in order to protect innocents:

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/11/wikileaks-and-state-department-correspondence

"We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials."

This skirts the moral question: does the government have the natural law right to withhold information about what it does from the public eye? Does it have the natural law right to withhold the particular items Wikileaks has disclosed? If not, then what the government is doing is already illegal according to natural law. Surely, even if some items ought not to have been disclosed, there were those that should have been (e.g., where is the natural law right to withhold the evidence concerning the journalists that were killed by our military in the video Wikileaks disclosed earlier this year?)

Wikileaks is attempting to implement a redacting policy in accordance with minimizing harm to innocents, while still revealing what it believes ought to be disclosed. That demonstrates an implicit concern for natural law. The government's response indicates a total lack of concern for natural law and rights, with authoritarianism in their place.

It would be oversimplifying to conclude from this that Wikileaks is perfectly in the right. But a key premise underlying Wikileaks is the virtuous idea that natural law trumps man-made laws. Objectivists should be for this, even if they find other things to criticize. Unfortunately many are not, because instead of being for individual rights, they are really just run of the mill neocons. They are exactly equivalent to religious conservatives.

Shayne

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It would be oversimplifying to conclude from this that Wikileaks is perfectly in the right. But a key premise underlying Wikileaks is the virtuous idea that natural law trumps man-made laws. Objectivists should be for this, even if they find other things to criticize. Unfortunately many are not, because instead of being for individual rights, they are really just run of the mill neocons. They are exactly equivalent to religious conservatives.

I think Rand in her old age seriously tended toward this way, leaving the radical vision of Atlas for state sanction. I can understand this to some extent. What I can't understand is how the ARI got so completely taken over with it and Leonard Peikoff's rantings and ravings. I'm pro-Israel, mostly, but I'm not pro the Israeli tail wagging the American dog.

--Brant

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"Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening... "

This fool will never live to be an old man.

You'd say the same about Ragnar.

Shayne

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It would be oversimplifying to conclude from this that Wikileaks is perfectly in the right. But a key premise underlying Wikileaks is the virtuous idea that natural law trumps man-made laws. Objectivists should be for this, even if they find other things to criticize. Unfortunately many are not, because instead of being for individual rights, they are really just run of the mill neocons. They are exactly equivalent to religious conservatives.

I think Rand in her old age seriously tended toward this way, leaving the radical vision of Atlas for state sanction. I can understand this to some extent.

Why? What do you think happened?

Shayne

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http://www.politics.co.uk/comment/culture-media-and-sport/comment-the-hypocrisy-of-the-media-attack-on-wikileaks-$21385948.htm

"The only difference between Wikileaks and other news organisations is that Wikileaks is doing its job properly. This is not a symptom of its greater intelligence, merely its ability to comprehend the ramifications of new technology. ..."

"... no-one was calling Assange irresponsible when Wikileaks released "Kenya: The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances", which won the 2009 Amnesty International UK New Media Award. Many commentators today are encouraging Assange to get back to tracking a supposedly authoritarian government elsewhere, rather than concentrate on the US."

"There is a suspicious, slightly conspiratorial school of left-wing thought which considers the media part of the 'state apparatus'. The reality is far more complex, but the reaction to the Wikileaks dilemma reveals there is some substantial truth to it, or at least more truth than those of us working in the media would like to admit. The genuine role of the media, the role it must adopt if society is to function in a practically and morally coherent way, is to reveal power, to pester power, to hound it with questions. Because power cannot be trusted."

"People ask how diplomacy can function with releases like this. That's for the diplomats to work out. The purpose of the media is not to concern itself with British interests, or that of the West. The purpose of the media is simply to reveal the truth. There are moments, such as Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan, which require some information to be retained in cooperation with authorities, but these are few and far between."

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"Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening... "

This fool will never live to be an old man.

You'd say the same about Ragnar.

Shayne

No.

Yes you would -- if you heard a similar story as Ayn Rand told but not told by Ayn Rand.

Shayne

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It would be oversimplifying to conclude from this that Wikileaks is perfectly in the right. But a key premise underlying Wikileaks is the virtuous idea that natural law trumps man-made laws. Objectivists should be for this, even if they find other things to criticize. Unfortunately many are not, because instead of being for individual rights, they are really just run of the mill neocons. They are exactly equivalent to religious conservatives.

I think Rand in her old age seriously tended toward this way, leaving the radical vision of Atlas for state sanction. I can understand this to some extent.

Why? What do you think happened?

She was resolutely pro-Israel and anti-Soviet and anti-Democratic Party, so she supported Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and over McGovern in 1972. Going to the Apollo 11 blast off in Florida and West Point and with Alan Greenspan to the White House seems to have been subtle bribery of a sort. The best politician she ever supported was Barry Goldwater, but you should read that ghost-written book of his on foreign policy in the early 1960s. She was always as fervently anti-communist as William F. Buckley, but with variations that seemed to exclude Vietnam. The guys who ran South Vietnam were Roman Catholic and I think that appealed to Buckley. My best guess is it mostly came out of the Cold War which was basically the USSR vs the US. This is about as much of my speculation as I care for sans true scholarship except to note there was no Nazi Germany or Soviet Union in her novel so she hadn't devoted herself to preparing for the world she came back to to some extent after its publication.

--Brant

I sure do hope for other comments

Edited by Brant Gaede
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Alan Greenspan decided to be an effective politician instead of an ineffective pamphleteer. With The Ayn Rand Letter and the break with the Brandens she seems to have become much more current events focused, turning away from her basic ideas by not talking about them as much. She had written herself out with the politics and morality and epistemology. What she then wrote about seemed to be more jejune and leftovers. This kinda re-enforces Greenspan's own attitude, his anti-intellectualism.

--Brant

I'm now of the opinion that Rand's primary locus and emphasis would have been best spent on individual rights than other philosophical issues and the philosophy generally. There would have been a direct tie-in to the founding of this country which would have been very powerful

Edited by Brant Gaede
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Ayn Rand's fiction inspires a reverence for Natural Rights, but I don't think she fully understood or cared about them. Her acolytes understand and care about them far less, particularly ARI Objectivists.

I think her philosophy is ultimately a cardboard cutout of what can be and ought to be. It is a fictional representation of an ideal, one that can inspire the right sort of person (and derange the wrong sort), but it is not itself the ideal. Which is fitting, because she was primarily a novelist, not a philosopher.

Shayne

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The reaction to this, a white house review and a criminal probe, is laughable. The creep's actions amount to an act of war. The state department should be demanding he be immediately arrested and extradited. Any state harboring him is at war with us.

Edited by Ted Keer
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The reaction to this, a white house review and a criminal probe, is laughable. The creep's actions amount to an act of war. The state department should be demanding he be immediately arrested and extradited. Any state harboring him is at war with us.

Wikileaks didn't steal anything, they published it, just as a lot of other news organizations around the world are doing right now.

Only a person with a statist conception of journalism would single out Wikileaks in the face of hundreds of other journalists leaking the same information. An individualist conception would recognize that if person A gives something to person B to publish, then it doesn't matter if A is the original leaker and B was Wikileaks, or if A was Wikileaks and B was the New York Times, in principle the same event happened. So, if Wikileaks should be prosecuted, then so should a hundred other journalists.

Shayne

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Shayne wrote:

One of these days you pseudo-patriots may wake up and realize that the real patriots were the ones fighting for principle instead of blindly defending government.

End quote

On Glenn Beck’s show today he tied the founding of Wikileaks to money from George Soros. The Progressive’s motive is chaos and anarchy, then nationalism and tyranny, at which point the Progressives will create a new world order – with them in charge, of course.

Nigel Farage, the quoted - below member of Britain’s Parliament, was outstanding, pointing his finger of shame at each member of parliament as they are mentioned. I strongly urge you Shayne to go to Glenn’s site and watch the video.

Our system that protects individual rights is all that stands between us and chaos. And you, who make no pretense at being a patriot, are blindly defending anarchy.

It’s is the stroke before midnight.

Independent Objectivist

Peter Taylor

Glenn Beck: Nigel Farage goes loco on EU

November 29, 2010 - 15:35 ET

GLENN: Now, there's something else that is going on in Europe that I find fascinating. Europe is on the brink, and I want to play this audio from an amazing speech given on the floor of parliament, the European Union parliament, and this is a British European Union parliamentary member and he is reading the EU the riot act. Listen to this.

VOICE: You've been in office for one year and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble. This chaos, the money's running out. I should thank you. You should perhaps be the pinup boy of the Euro skeptic movement. But just look around this chamber this morning. Just look at these faces. Look at the fear. Look at the anger. Poor old Barroso here look like he's seen a ghost. You know, they are beginning to understand that the game is up and yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learned anything. You know, when you yourself, Mr. Van Rompuy say that the Euro has brought us stability, I suppose I could applaud you for having a sense of humor, but isn't this really just the bunker mentality? You know, your fanaticism is out in the open. You talked about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in a 21st century globalized world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium who haven't had a government for six months. But for the rest of us right across every member state in this union, and perhaps this is why we see the fear in the faces, increasingly people are saying we don't want that flag, we don't want the anthem, we don't want this political class. We want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history. And we had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year and now we have the situation in Ireland. Now, I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this. They should never, ever have joined the Euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom, and a massive bust. But look at your response to them. What they are being told as their government's collapsing, is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact, Commissioner Wren here said they had to agree their budget first before they would be allowed to have a general election. Just who the hell do you think you people are? You are very, very dangerous people indeed. Your obsession with creating this Euro state means that you're happy to destroy democracy. You appear to be happy for millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions must suffer so that your Euro dream can continue. But it won't work because it's Portugal next, with their debt levels of 325% of GDP, they are the next ones on the list. And after that I suspect it will be Spain. And the bailout for Spain would be seven times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all of the bailout money has gone. There won't be any more. But it's even more serious than economics. Because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.

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They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. -- Andy Warhol

SJW has begun the thread, "The motives of Wikileaks' Julian Assange,” and quoted Mr Assange:

“If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers.”

“Stated” motives be damned. If Julian’s name were Arabic he would be considered an enemy combatant, aiding terrorists. He will be legally (and morally) found guilty of espionage, and have the death of many upon his hands - and all for an egotistical, school – boy - hacker, lark. He is despicable, not heroic.

So far, there is no evidence that even one person has died as a result of the document releases. There is abundant evidence, however, that hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died as a result of U.S. foreign policy over the last 20 years. Are our rulers who have implemented this foreign policy and killed all of these innocent people at least as guilty as Julian Assange, who has killed noone?

Let his "daring adventure that draws on all (his) powers" keep him looking over his shoulders for the rest of his miserable life.

Peter Taylor

You obviously think that it's just nifty that he will have to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder as U.S. or other governmental agencies try their best to assassinate him. Of course, this will not be a problem for the murderous war criminals Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. They will receive lifetime secret service protection, paid for by all of the taxpayer suckers.

Martin

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Our system that protects individual rights is all that stands between us and chaos. And you, who make no pretense at being a patriot, are blindly defending anarchy.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/11/29/bts.holder.wikileaks.cnn?hpt=T1

If our government officials were primarily concerned about protecting individual rights, Holder would reserve at least a little outrage about cases like http://briandaitken.com . But no. Our representatives are more worried about maintaining control than about maintaining legitimacy. If they would just pick a few cases of government running roughshod over our rights and stand up for the individual here and there I think they'd probably have a fanatical following.

You are the one blindly defending anarchy -- the anarchy which is a government that no longer follows the rule of law. I am strongly pro-government, but the government must be a law abiding one, and must strictly conform to the highest law, Natural Law.

Shayne

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Wikileaks has repeatedly attempted to get the US government's help in redacting in order to protect innocents:

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/11/wikileaks-and-state-department-correspondence

"We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials."

In other words, all of these U.S. government officials screaming about how these document releases are so terrible because they endanger innocent lives are spewing bullshit. Here, the government is being given the chance to review the documents and redact portions that may endanger innocent lives, and they refuse to do it. Apparently, they have other priorities.

This skirts the moral question: does the government have the natural law right to withhold information about what it does from the public eye? Does it have the natural law right to withhold the particular items Wikileaks has disclosed? If not, then what the government is doing is already illegal according to natural law. Surely, even if some items ought not to have been disclosed, there were those that should have been (e.g., where is the natural law right to withhold the evidence concerning the journalists that were killed by our military in the video Wikileaks disclosed earlier this year?)

Unfortunately for us, the government does not respect natural law rights. It does whatever the hell it wishes to do, backed up by the muzzle of a gun.

Wikileaks is attempting to implement a redacting policy in accordance with minimizing harm to innocents, while still revealing what it believes ought to be disclosed. That demonstrates an implicit concern for natural law. The government's response indicates a total lack of concern for natural law and rights, with authoritarianism in their place.

Should we really be surprised by this? Wikileaks tries to minimize harm to innocents, because Assange actually has a conscience and cares about human life. For this he is condemned as evil by some of the resident objectivists on this site and elsewhere. Should we really expect the U.S. government to give a damn about the lives of people who may be killed as a result of the document releases, when it has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent others in pursuit of its imperial ambitions? To hear U.S. government officials proclaim their concern for innocent human life is the most loathsome, despicable hypocrisy.

It would be oversimplifying to conclude from this that Wikileaks is perfectly in the right. But a key premise underlying Wikileaks is the virtuous idea that natural law trumps man-made laws. Objectivists should be for this, even if they find other things to criticize. Unfortunately many are not, because instead of being for individual rights, they are really just run of the mill neocons. They are exactly equivalent to religious conservatives.

Shayne

Actually, many self-identified objectivists are far worse than run of the mill neocons. Witness the appearance of Leonard Peikoff on Bill O'Reilly's show. Even the neocon stooge O'Reilly thought that Peikoff was speaking like a lunatic.

Martin

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Actually, many self-identified objectivists are far worse than run of the mill neocons. Witness the appearance of Leonard Peikoff on Bill O'Reilly's show. Even the neocon stooge O'Reilly thought that Peikoff was speaking like a lunatic.

Martin

O'Reilly would think that anyone defending Natural Rights was a lunatic too. I think this is more a case of a broken clock being right twice a day than O'Reilly actually having a rational thought.

Shayne

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The reaction to this, a white house review and a criminal probe, is laughable. The creep's actions amount to an act of war. The state department should be demanding he be immediately arrested and extradited. Any state harboring him is at war with us.

Wikileaks didn't steal anything, they published it, just as a lot of other news organizations around the world are doing right now.

Only a person with a statist conception of journalism would single out Wikileaks in the face of hundreds of other journalists leaking the same information. An individualist conception would recognize that if person A gives something to person B to publish, then it doesn't matter if A is the original leaker and B was Wikileaks, or if A was Wikileaks and B was the New York Times, in principle the same event happened. So, if Wikileaks should be prosecuted, then so should a hundred other journalists.

Shayne

I agree, the NY Times is also guilty.

You are a prancing absolutist fool, Shayne.

One doesn't, for example, get the right to sell stolen property because someone else is guilty of the theft. If done by a foreign power this would be an act of war. Some pervert in a hat doesn't get immunity from releasing stolen secrets that will result in the loss of life because he calls himself a "journalist." I suppose the Rosenbergs' mistake was in handing the secrets they stole to Russia, instead of the Daily Worker.

A fool, fool, foolity-fool you are, you fool.

Edited by Ted Keer
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