Re: <nettime> Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

*Semi*-voluntary is just a statement of fact, not an evaluation: he had 
more choices than someone entirely in custody. None of those choices 
were good, and, like I said, I don't think any of them could have 
changed this outcome — that, sooner or later, he'd be physically 
removed from the embassy.

A certain measure of normalization is inevitable: there are kids who 
were born after Assange entered the embassy but know his name. I think 
the issue is what *kind* of normalization. As Felix and you both point 
out, albeit in very different ways, the widespread adoption of 
Wikileaks's basic vocabulary — both as ways of working and as 
historical context — is another form.

You give Assange more credit than he's due for changing public 
discourse, I think. The exposure of classified military and diplomatic 
materials has been going on for half a century or more, and there are 
organizations — say, the National Security Archive in the US, and 
other  entities in other countries — that have been actively working 
in a sort of proto-Wikileaks 'space' for decades. If anything, the more 
promising aspect of Wikileaks wasn't the leaks, it was the wiki — the 
hope that leaking could become pervasive and transformative (I'm tempted 
to say, *be normalized*). I'd argue that Assange himself turned out to 
be one of the greatest obstacles to that hope. But, as absurd as it may 
sound, I don't say any of this to diminish his impact or to diss him: 
the best respect is to think carefully about what he *did* accomplish.

I tried to get at some of this several years ago, in point/counterpoint 
piece with Florian Cramer that Mute ~commissioned in 2011:

http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/wikileaks-has-radically-altered-military-diplomatic-information-complex-%E2%80%93-10-reasons-and-against

Cheers,
Ted


On 11 Apr 2019, at 13:02, Morlock Elloi wrote:

> What was the voluntary part? Lifelong imprisonment in the US or 
> execution are viable alternatives?
>
> The amount of normalization is staggering. And it works.
>
> From left-talk about revelations of criminal election rigging being 
> far bigger crime than the criminal rigging itself (cretins on the left 
> still believe it, also that Assange is a rapist), to forgetting how 
> Wikileaks profoundly changed the public discourse (cables, war logs, 
> collateral murder, vault, etc etc.) how it saved Snowden from chains, 
> how it enabled effective whistleblowing.
>
> And it is enabled mainly by cretins on the left living in psychotic 
> denial of reality.
>
> Now watch the sad show of British and their judicial system as they 
> bend over to receive the final ejaculation ... state-size necrophilia.
>
> > semi-voluntary confinement
 <...>
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