The day irony died

[GreasyDogMeat]

So, are there going to be celebrations when Assange finally is killed, wikileaks shut down and order restored? Will we be a closer step to winning the war on terror?

Nah, but we'll party like crazy when an Afghan informant gets offed thanks to wikileaks. Its all in the name of transparency.

[Calax]

So, are there going to be celebrations when Assange finally is killed, wikileaks shut down and order restored? Will we be a closer step to winning the war on terror?

Depends on your politics

 

Yup, i would be actually interested in how the media would report it, and how leaders of different countries would comment it.

 

//EDIT For the record i see the irony of the champion of free information and transparancy doesn't like having his personal whereabouts made public. But i do think that there's a major difference between a guy's geographical position and the transparancy of governments and corporations. Just saying.

Yeah but that stopped when he opened WikiLeaks, which kind of counts as an organization. So he should be transparent....er

Person and profession are separate things.

 

And Greasy, Why aren't we dancing and partying every time any arabic person dies thanks to faux news?

[GreasyDogMeat]

And Greasy, Why aren't we dancing and partying every time any arabic person dies thanks to faux news?

What are you talking about?

[Calax]

simple, because accoring to fox news we should be celebrating a defeat of terrorism.

[Orogun01]

simple, because accoring to fox news we should be celebrating a defeat of terrorism.

You listen to Fox news?

[lord of flies]

Another army of strawmen, wrapped in uniforms made of hyperbole, marches into the breach as yet again LoF besmirches others as Nazis.

 

Edit: he's on the ignore list now. Troll.

Good to see that, as your previous posts decrying Julian as a "contrarian" without evidence suggested, you are an obnoxious wanker with zero reading comprehension. At what point in my post did I suggest that you were a Nazi? Ah, that's right: nowhere. Do you have any evidence, at all, that Julian Assange is purely a contrarian? Or is your only response a desperate attempt at style-over-substance?

 

If you must use ignore (don't, by the way), don't go about announcing it to the entire forum. It's obnoxious and serves no purpose other than to inflame.

[Thorton_AP]

Responding to people that have stated they are putting you on ignore is also obnoxious and serves no purpose.

[Calax]

simple, because accoring to fox news we should be celebrating a defeat of terrorism.

You listen to Fox news?

Nope. Just point out how utterly idiotic that argument is.

[lord of flies]

Responding to people that have stated they are putting you on ignore is also obnoxious and serves no purpose.

Don't tell anyone, but lots of people are incapable of actually using ignore and will just click the "show post" option.

[Nepenthe]

Responding to people that have stated they are putting you on ignore is also obnoxious and serves no purpose.

 

Not really.

[GreasyDogMeat]

Nope. Just point out how utterly idiotic that argument is.

Yes, talking about something comepletely unrelated really shows how idiotic that argument was. You have absolutely no idea what my point was, do you?

[Tigranes]

Ok, since most of us agree that Albino Blondie doesn't deserve any privacy

 

Here you go:

http://gawker.com/5714043/the-creepy-loves...ne=true&s=i

 

While I won't presume to guess at Orogun's own motivations, I think in general this kind of thing is quite interesting and possibly worrisome, in that so often, a media controversy or scandal really encourages us to take the position of the derisive bystander. If the public punishments of earlier times were situations that called on you to come and watch, be reminded of how despicable some people (i.e. not you) can be, and rail in righteous anger for self-satisfaction, it's the same thing here with what is, to be honest, a petty and contemptible party of bile and vitriol. Predictably, the rape accusations against Assange (which is far far away from being proven either way) have helped do what the condemnations of politicians and commentators could not alone - reduce him into a caricature which can then be demonised, Othered and laughed at in various ways. While this excessive media limelight was brought on by Assange's own behaviour (and is one of the reasons I can't see him as a hero in any way), the predictable trajectory this story as a whole has taken is quietly depressing - from debates of transparency, democracy and governance we now have Julian the Nerd and the Secret Memos of Who-Called-Who-A-Pimply-Potato.

 

Edit; you can see this most clearly if you read the post, but skip over Assange's actual emails, then start on the comments; this stops you from being drawn into how sordid they might be, and look at the public tomato-chucking going on.

[lord of flies]

Reminder: Sweden has a really ****ty record on rape prosecution.

The actual number of rapes in Sweden in 2006 was estimated to be close to 30,000, according to Swedish data compilation. This number indicates that Swedish women have so little faith in their own legal system that 85-90 percent do not bother reporting the crime to the same police who are ankle-braceleting Assange, as a 2007 study showed that only '5-10 percent of all rapes are reported to the police' -- a reporting rate lower than the US and the UK, which have reporting rates of about 13-30 percent, a shameful enough set of numbers in itself.

[Meshugger]

[Gorgon]

Logically most rape cases would consist of the conflicting testimony of two people, so I don't find it strange that so many women chose to let it go unreported. Justice might not be their first priority when held up against the stresses of an investigation and trial.

[Orogun01]

Ok, since most of us agree that Albino Blondie doesn't deserve any privacy

 

Here you go:

http://gawker.com/5714043/the-creepy-loves...ne=true&s=i

 

While I won't presume to guess at Orogun's own motivations, I think in general this kind of thing is quite interesting and possibly worrisome, in that so often, a media controversy or scandal really encourages us to take the position of the derisive bystander. If the public punishments of earlier times were situations that called on you to come and watch, be reminded of how despicable some people (i.e. not you) can be, and rail in righteous anger for self-satisfaction, it's the same thing here with what is, to be honest, a petty and contemptible party of bile and vitriol. Predictably, the rape accusations against Assange (which is far far away from being proven either way) have helped do what the condemnations of politicians and commentators could not alone - reduce him into a caricature which can then be demonised, Othered and laughed at in various ways. While this excessive media limelight was brought on by Assange's own behaviour (and is one of the reasons I can't see him as a hero in any way), the predictable trajectory this story as a whole has taken is quietly depressing - from debates of transparency, democracy and governance we now have Julian the Nerd and the Secret Memos of Who-Called-Who-A-Pimply-Potato.

 

Edit; you can see this most clearly if you read the post, but skip over Assange's actual emails, then start on the comments; this stops you from being drawn into how sordid they might be, and look at the public tomato-chucking going on.

Sure let's go with that.

 

I don't know where you live but here in the US the only debate was the juicy gossip about the world's leaders. That's basically all that the media got from the leak, us name calling world leaders. Transparency doesn't get the job done when the people don't care.

 

Asange made himself a public figure with this whole scandal, either he has a Messiah complex or he really had no idea that the whole weight would fall on him. He is simply asking to be put on the spotlight by linking his face to this whole thing. Should I feel guilty that he got what he wanted?

[Tigranes]

I think the whole "With Assange or Against Assange" dichotomy doesn't help here either. You will notice that I'm not exactly wanting him defended - if we're looking at it from the pov of "does Assange deserve", yeah, he brought this on himself through his love of the spotlight.

 

I just don't think that's particularly important, or a healthy way of looking at it. The real question regarding, say, those pickup emails, is not whether Assange deserves the ridicule, but what good purpose does it serve for us to sit there and laugh at someone else's private life like that and whether that distracts us from looking at the issue as a whole in a better light.

 

Got to run so can't finish this, but yes, the fact that all the recent cables were just pointless gossip is part of this, too.

[Humodour]

Monte Carlo, Julian Assange is a Libertarian. To me that doesn't qualify as 'left-wing'. Libertarians are economically far right and socially far left. They believe in minimal government and no state intervention in personal lives.

[Monte Carlo]

^ I've heard not one genuinely libertarian sentiment from him, and his allies seem to be the usual leftie suspects.

 

Thanks for the quick lecture, I had no idea of what a libertarian was.

Edited December 20, 2010 by Monte Carlo

[Malcador]

Always thought he was an anarchist more than anything. Then again, that's just a libertarian in a t-shirt and jeans.

[mkreku]

Why are all the right wing nuts so obsessed with Assange? It's just a person, not the organization.

[Malcador]

He puts a face on it. Easier to hate a man, than some nebulous bunch of hackers you've never seen. Not just the right, though, plenty of liberals here seeing the man as the new Che or Robin Hood (the last one, I dunno, but it's been said).

[Hurlshort]

Those romantic emails portray someone not in touch with reality. Creepy.

[Humodour]

^ I've heard not one genuinely libertarian sentiment from him, and his allies seem to be the usual leftie suspects.

 

Oh, ok. Just read some more of his comments.

 

Thanks for the quick lecture, I had no idea of what a libertarian was.

 

No problem mate.

[Meshugger]

I'm not sure about him being libertanian. The only thing that i can thing of is his sentiment that multinational corporations having the same power structure as soviet russia and that small businesses are the only ones actually participating in the free market. It sounds more like he is one of those "every community should be able to be self-sustained"-greens, not the pinko "save the whales" ones though.