Things have been quiet around here of late. Work has been manic, and I’ve been too tired to think, let alone write. However, I’m off work today, so I thought I’d comment on Catherine Bennett’s article about Julian Assange.
WikiLeaks argues releasing Sony emails is in the public interest. Nonsense, when some violations are horrific.
The argument she makes is that the Sony leaks are not in the public interest and that Assange is a hypocrite. Um, well, yes… Tell us something we didn’t already know.
“This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation,” Assange said. “It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geopolitical conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”
Pseud’s corner, here we come. Assange is a narcissistic self-publicist. To confuse him with genuine civil libertarians is to do the latter a grave injustice. The man is nothing of the sort. Indeed, with friends like him, we need no enemies. I’m inclined to agree with Bennett, the Sony email leaks were not in the public interest even if they are interesting to the public. They are tittle-tattle and gossip. We do not need to know the contents of private emails and I have no interest in them. WikiLeaks is not some sort of public service; it is a vehicle for Assange. Nothing more, nothing less. If I ever found myself having to be a whistle-blower, you can be damned sure I wouldn’t go within a parsec of Assange’s grubby little site.
“Once again,” tweeted Glenn Greenwald, celebrated champion of the individual against the state’s covert mining of personal data, “@wikileaks has performed a great journalistic function & service with this new archive.”
Bollocks on stilts. This is just the usual grubby gutter journalism the mainstream media is so famed for. Come back News of the World, all is forgiven…
These arseholes are not civil libertarians and they damage us all with their behaviour.
The ‘openness’ that WikiLeaks is supposed to be about just takes us further to the state where no-one will express a personal opinion, which is probably why the public are fed-up with politicians in general.
They are ‘all the same’, because none of them dare offer an alternative to ‘approved’ opinion. Indeed even that is a shifting sand – “you said blackboard, you evil racist fascist bastard! Don’t you realise how offensive that is to the bi-polar, transgender, different-ability community?”
Far easier to say and think nothing. No new ideas, the descent into chaos is inevitable.
There isn’t really anything I can add to this, LR – except to say you have expressed my thoughts as well as your own, eloquently and succinctly.
Regarding Greenwald, he is both a lawyer and a Grauniad columnist. Either “qualification” is sufficient reason to totally disregard his waffling…