Comment hexed

Below the fold (click READ MORE if you’re on this blog’s front page) is a comment by Caz that disappeared from this thread soon after she posted it there. I’ve tried to repost the comment several times, but then those reposts soon disappear again.

I’m re-posting Caz’s comment here partly ‘for the record’ because it’s worth reading, and partly to see what happens. I’ve taken the precaution, however, of enclosing it in a meme-proof layer... just in case...

Posted by Caz to Applied Hermeneutics at 27/2/11 3:20 PM See also his footnote: "There are people from the Wikileaks community who became uncomfortable with Julian Assange, and are attempting to rev up alternative leak sites. Some of these experiments might turn out well, and I might become an enthusiast for them." Utterly inconsistent, or rather, a point that is unsupportable from whatever argument Lanier thinks he has presented in his article (and I'm still not even sure what he thinks he has said, although commenters seem to believe he has made a sharp and compelling point of some kind ... I'm still digging to find it). How is one publication site, or recipient site for leaked material better than another? Will Openleaks (or whatever their name is) offer documents for publication received from China or North Korea? Do they have a bunch of academically qualified translators on hand to know what is and isn't valuable, what should or doesn't need to be redacted? That's one of the big problems with every recent critique of Wikileaks during the last 12 mths: it has become all about America, and the leaks from other countries that lead to real reforms, having exposed corruptions, are now in a waste basket, utterly ignored. That's the problem of the US and everyone else treating the US as if they're the centre of the universe. If it's not about them, it's unimportant. Which is utter bullshit. Assange has a sharp intellect, but he contributed to the current obsession by declaring the US a particular target, as if America is somehow worse than any other country - they're bigger, so on a scale, they are, but scale isn't the point, and Assange used to know that. He decided he needed more exposure, of his little hobby, he was tired of doing good, but not getting the kudos and the media coverage, so he went for the biggest target in town. Worse, he has continued to nominate the US as his pet target, despite holding onto goodness knows what documents from other countries, or relating to matters of import to a broader public. Assange dug the hole all by himself. It's so dumb and so obvious, but like some idiot politician or bastard CEO, Assange won't let it go. Lanier, ostensibly an intelligent man, has been suckered into believing that Wikileaks is all about attaching the US - despite prior years of evidence that it isn't, and regardless of the obvious limitations of any site accepting leaked material: they're at the mercy of access (more access in Western and most European countries, therefore, leaks will come from predominately English speaking countries), and language and political understanding (even if leaks come from a brutalised country, the material will not be in English, and few people in the world would understand the import of the content, even when translated).