Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Molly Hankwitz]

Dear ted, Morlock, nettimers  on Julian Assange,

I'm weighing in - after yesterday - a very cold/chilling day on our
Internet.

What power wants is the Internet itself. Duh! And western industrialized
UK/USA
are working together to secure the First World...a world of make-believe
"dreams" that ought to come true as long as there is no critical outside
which is what Wikileaks and Julian Assange have provided as  journalists,
other journalists with! Neo-liberal paradigms have longed taught that all
we need to keep the peace are some candy-coated reform jobs and slicked up
"events' where everything is cool and politely handled.

What the arrest of Julian Assange is,  is yet another event in a long line
of arrests of journalists and dissenters in the last decade as this new era
of billionaire power and social control (of the Internet?) sets in. One of
the biggest effects has been the effort to censor the Internet!  What was
it *before*...baby of the DOD? Well, it is still baby of the DOD and don't
anyone forget it. PRISM. If only the power to communicate from our laptops
could be stopped, or at least threatened or controlled or commodified or
market driven or interrupted or overpriced. If only the FCC and Congress
and the EU could secure all that mental labor out there and all the dissent
and all the potential data; could read and secure it all.  What Julian
Assange represents, and what power and control would go so far as to
concoct and "conjure" about this mysterious hair-dying feral otherness
brain-child of computing he is, is that Assange is someone who has had the
guts to live in the space of a person who is not under "social" control.
Yes, in an embassy with a little balcony. Juliet Assange, effeminate, and
soft spoken. (Ecuadorian pres, art of deal, Julian token of exchange in
right-wing deal)

WTF has Assange done, anyway? I asked myself this question about 50 million
times yesterday. Just what is it that Julian Assange has actually done? Had
the dross as a foreign subject to reject US war crimes? To publish the
truth.

LIFE magazine,  amidst of the Vietnam War published color photos of the
repulsive MyLai incident, slaughter of women and children civilians by US
marines for those of you too young to remember. As history would have it,
those full color photographs sparked disgust and dissent among the American
people about their own army and government involvement in Vietnam and CO
Lieutenant Calley became  a court-marshalled household name. I draw this
parallel to remind myself of how times have changed because either I'm
imagining things or release of the video of the creepy first-person shooter
type marines talking shop from their helicopter as they draw bede on and
blow away the van and kill civilians, children, and Reuters personnel isn't
a whole lot different from that war crime and yet. No military tribunal. No
Congressional investigation. Nothing.

Who is Assange anyway, some journalist/hacker from Melbourne, Australia?
Who would think he and his merry pranksters could have anything to do or
say about US involvement in Iraq?

Who is Assange anyway, when Hillary Clinton, ex-Secretary of State, first
female Dem presidential candidate, wants him dead?
Who is he daring to be? The guy whose outfit leaked the emails that helped
get Trump elected? OMG. One can get myopic living inside the prism of
mainstream media with the "one-guy" theory of power and control as an only
source of information. It would be more convenient if we could just jail
"one-guy".

But it must have been Julian Assange.
This made only that much worse by the primitivist theory of SHRUNKEN
talking heads on tiny little screens and the little pictures being
innocently exchanged on Facebook. Users are, after all, once the analytics
are out, are simply looking for someone to blame as well as someone to
answer their often desperate lemming prayers for salvation from social
ills. The are looking for someone to impeach Trump, they are looking for
someone to free Julian. They are looking to fix everything that's been
broken and disturbed.


On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:38 AM tbyfield  wrote:

> On 11 Apr 2019, at 14:18, Morlock Elloi wrote:
>
> > OK, let's look at it from another angle: who did, in the last 10
> > years, change public discourse in the desirable (to me at least) way
> > more than Wikileaks and its staff? Suntanned POTUS? Pope? Habermas?
> > Mother Theresa? Dalai Lama? Zizek? Beyonce? nettime?
>
> I agree Assange's impact has been immense, but that kind of heroic model
> is a counterproductive way of thinking about Assange and his
> contributions. If anything, the distinctive (maybe even decisive)
> feature of the last decade was its lack of heroes and the growing sense
> that we're enmeshed in tangled and collapsing systems.
>
> In effect, you're asking the kind of question that the editors of Time
> magazine would pose in naming a Person of the Year. That annual ritual
> was a central feature of Henry Luce's efforts to proj

Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

This paper has comprehensive references:

https://openanthropology.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/chapter-7-niv5-2015-forte.pdf

On 4/12/19, 11:39, Morlock Elloi wrote:

As for the theory, look up his paper on how elites organize and how it

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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

I agree Assange's impact has been immense, but that kind of heroic model
is a counterproductive way of thinking about Assange and his
contributions. If anything, the distinctive (maybe even decisive)
feature of the last decade was its lack of heroes and the growing sense
that we're enmeshed in tangled and collapsing systems.


I often see this system vs. heroes argument, and if you look at my 
infrastructure rants, I generally support the 'systemic' approach and 
denigrate 'heroes'. But who creates the proper systemic approach, as 
opposed to the present one? The 'system' more often than not turns into 
ecosystem of cowards, leeches and opportunistic parasites, and nothing, 
*nothing* ever comes out of it. So we are back to the necessity of 
heroes and martyrs, and if you look back in the recorded history, 
nothing happened without them.


The cycle is then: corrupt system -> hero/martyr -> better system -> 
actual change. Assange's efforts may become visible long after he is 
neutralized. But he is a required component.


As for the theory, look up his paper on how elites organize and how it 
can be disrupted. I think it's a general mistake to classify Wikileaks 
as the new journalism model. Journalism is part of the system and 
journalists are prostitutes. Wikileaks is about actual disruption of 
elites, which journalism sometimes accidentally or incidentally does. 
While calling them publishers is convenient in the legal battle, it has 
a side effect of masking what they actually do. This is what makes the 
case interesting: everyone that matters knows what Wikileaks is really 
about, yet it has to be narrated through this silly cover. Similar to 
Cryptome - where JY has to put up a balanced front of a runaway mind in 
order not to be carried away by neither TLA nor people in white. In the 
end, it's all about who will you be carried away by.



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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[tbyfield]

On 11 Apr 2019, at 14:18, Morlock Elloi wrote:

OK, let's look at it from another angle: who did, in the last 10 
years, change public discourse in the desirable (to me at least) way 
more than Wikileaks and its staff? Suntanned POTUS? Pope? Habermas? 
Mother Theresa? Dalai Lama? Zizek? Beyonce? nettime?


I agree Assange's impact has been immense, but that kind of heroic model 
is a counterproductive way of thinking about Assange and his 
contributions. If anything, the distinctive (maybe even decisive) 
feature of the last decade was its lack of heroes and the growing sense 
that we're enmeshed in tangled and collapsing systems.


In effect, you're asking the kind of question that the editors of Time 
magazine would pose in naming a Person of the Year. That annual ritual 
was a central feature of Henry Luce's efforts to project an American 
Century: in the face of the growing challenge posed by socialism and all 
its messy masses, he drew on a nostalgic model of history ('great men, 
battles, and speeches,' as they say) to propose a sort of 
philosopher-scientist-king to tickle the fancy of the Washington–New 
York consensus. But Wikileaks's most significant actions — Cablegate, 
Collateral Murder, etc — were aimed precisely *at* the military and 
diplomatic aspects of that US hegemony. And that was and remains 
Assange's plight: on the one hand, he wanted to bring down the world 
modeled on US hegemony, on the other, he wanted to be the kind of 
anti/hero it relied on.


Note, FWIW, the cover story of _The Atlantic_, to the extent that that 
former monthly has a cover anymore (YA network effect): 'The End of the 
American Century.'



https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/end-of-the-american-century/514526/

And note as well Forensic Architecture's statement, which sounds a lot 
like something Time magazine would write: Wikileaks 'shattered every 
established paradigm of public interest journalism, and ushered in a new 
era of investigative reporting.'



https://www.forensic-architecture.org/statement-from-forensic-architecture-on-the-arrest-of-julian-assange/

Like I said, we can think critically about Assange — and acknowledge 
his formidable contributions — without lapsing into that kind of 
rhetoric.  He didn't shatter any paradigms of public-interest 
journalism: he bundled together a lot of conventional networky ideas — 
about leaky secrets, about enabling direct access to primary sources, 
about the expansive capacity of hard drives rather than the limited 
space of print news, about the role of security in protecting sources 
— and wrapped them in an effective (ugh) 'brand.' That was really 
important, and project like ProPublica and the sprawling collaborations 
surrounding the Panama Papers etc owe him a big debt.


The important thing to understand why is Wikileaks considered such 
danger: unlike impotent philosophiles, left, right and progressives, 
Wikileaks uses effective technological tools. Which is why it is 
universally hated. You are supposed to only pretend to be effecting 
change.


That's the dream of Wikileaks. The reality is that the 'organization' 
spent much of the last several years squandering its credibility and 
becoming an increasingly threadbare cover for Assange's cryptic designs. 
Again, that's not intended as a criticism of *him*. The fact that he 
remained at liberty, or at least not imprisoned forever, and more sane 
than not through all this is a testament to some sort of strength. It'd 
be easy to see what I say as the usual 'moderate' bending with the wind, 
but it isn't: I was clear-eyed about him ~25 years ago when he was 
 banging on about 'rubber hose' cryptography, and I'm 
clear-eyed about him now. And YMMV, but I think it's also clear-eyed to 
recognize that overly effusive statements now will fall prey to the same 
old cycle of coverage that will make him yesterday's news when, as his 
many trials drag on, he'll need a more sustained kind of respect. So:


Make no mistake - it's not about Assange or anyone else - it's about 
two simple technical facts:


1. Wikileaks servers could not be suppressed neither by rubberhosing 
service providers, registrars, nor telecoms. They did try, for a long 
time. If they could, none of this would happen.


2. Wikileaks sources were far better protected than anyone else's (and 
still are) by using custom submission technology.


#1 and #2 is what put rope around Assange's neck. Use of tools. 
Wikileaks works. Effective use of technology cannot be allowed, and an 
example needs to be set. Tweeting and blogging on corporate servers is 
OK.


I agree, but as long as he's alive it does need to remain, in part, 
about Assange. Do I really need to argue why?


Cheers,
Ted





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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D351_3qWwAEkMXt.jpg


Now watch the sad show of British and their judicial system as they bend


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Official EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content | Internet Archive Blogs

[Eric Kluitenberg]

meanwhile around the corner...
(not related to Brexit or Assange…)

"Official EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as 
Terrorist Content"
https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10/official-eu-agencies-falsely-report-more-than-550-archive-org-urls-as-terrorist-content/
 


how much worse can it get…?
-e.

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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[David Garcia]

The bluring of the Swedish allegations and request for extradition and the US 
request for 
allegations have proved a useful smoke screen for the authorities. 

This deliberate bluring makes it particularly  important that we don’t add to 
the fog by eliding
all the allegations into one conspiritorial box..

IMHO it means keeping the Swedish and US allegations separate and not assuming
that we know who is conspiring with whom and why. However In the midst of 
yesterday’s fog 
of misinformation and political posturing one fact stands out

The Swedes do not seem to have been informed in advance of arrest. The Swedish 
prosecutor 
expressed surprise and were unprepared.

Whatever US and Ecuador knew in advance, Sweden does not appear to have been in 
the loop
https://news.cision.com/aklagarmyndigheten/r/statement-regarding-media-information-on-arrest-in-london,c2786974

Whereas the US authorities had clrearly been well prepped.

We should not assume that the Swedish allegations are a groundless fabrication. 
The was a request for extradition in
2010 but Assange jumped bail but the request was left outstanding until 2017 
when it was dropped despite the prosecutor believing 
there was a case to answer. Yesterday after Assange’s evicton and arrest the 
request, the Swedish prosecuting body has now confirmed 
it is reviewing whether to resume the investigation and thereby renew its 
extradition request.

https://news.cision.com/aklagarmyndigheten/r/update-in-the-assange-case,c2787466

Sweden may be less of a stooge for US ambitions than the UK (who is desperate 
to please the US as they imagine that it offers a 
solid alliance economic and geo-political alliance post-brexit).   

David Garcia


On 12 Apr 2019, at 01:58, Morlock Elloi  wrote:

> The principal sin is that Wikileaks undermined (by explicitly exposing 
> crimes) the wide spread belief among subjects of modern states: "it is OK for 
> my state/party to behave criminally, because I benefit from it, as long as 
> they keep it quiet". This is the unpardonable offense.
> 
> If documenting crimes requires "super-empowered individual" it just means 
> that criminals are expending enormous efforts to hide them.
> 
> 
>> Assange (and Wikileaks) has become a prime example of what military
>> theorist in the early 00s called a "super-empowered individual" capable
>> of marshaling technology and resources available to non-sate actors to
> 
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