the pattern somehow, and that will be an extremely difficult task.

Essentially, what Julian is describing here is The Matrix.

" Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. Zealots of the cult of consumer technology will find little to inspire them here, not that they ever seem to need it. But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy".

that the observer affects the experiment. We can change the future by creating it, just as a butterfly's wings can create a tsunami on the other side of the world.

It really helps if there are insiders and competing elites who object enough to blow the whistle or put up roadblocks. That's why working with interest groups -- even people we may not normally cooperate with, like some libertarians and conservatives -- is so important.

And sometimes exposure and coalition building can stop the best laid plans of powerful people. Look at the Neocons, who are definitely on the defensive after they tried to hijack Obama's ME agenda.

>>>Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unafflicted or only faintly perturbed.>>>>

NYT published him. Not a bad sign.

Totalitarians , take THAT. K and R

from reading it. And, no...it's not a Pun about Bill Gates...but much different.

...instead of hewing to a set of ideals. Worshiping Obama, or Assange for that matter, is just a setup for sure disappointment.

For that matter, how could somebody who rubs so many people the wrong way have gotten as far as if has if not by the quality of his ideas? Assange may not be a lovable character, but there's nobody better positioned to document the fall of Google into pure evil.

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frustration gets the best of me. I apologize.

particularly when the poster qualified the statement by saying he wasn't quality material.

Your comments don't make you look good at all.

Things can get heated around here at times...I guess that's what discussion boards are for!

Thank you for your reasonable post.

Well--there may be one or two of us here that never get a bit riled, but they're in the distinct minority.

You're not alone, and you won't be the last--DU does a good job of inflaming the passions when the debate gets interesting. It's why we keep coming back...!

I hate bullies and yet I catch myself sometimes assuming the behavior.

charged with 'rape'. He is not wanted for 'rape'. Despite the fact that he has made himself available to the Swedish prosecution for questioning they have consistently refused to do so. It has been nearly three years now that the Swedish prosecution has refused to take the step that would allow this 'case' to go forward, so the consensus is there is no case and never was.

To be accurate, the Swedish prosecutors claim they want to 'question' Assange. So to be precise, there are no rape charges, and even according to the prosecutors, all they want is to question Assange, which they have refused to do.

Watch out for those using the word 'rape' though.

Never mind the fact that Wikileaks was a team, he made it all about himself. Wikileaks is good, Assange is a fool that I wish would go away and distance himself from Wikileaks for good.

Last edited Sun Jun 2, 2013, 01:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Excellent read

Which shows that even on a supposedly enlightened website as DU, there's an awfully long way to go.

a long way indeed.

Wikileaks contingency, that there is no case. Of course that was pretty obvious from the beginning. The CIA document uncovered by Wikileaks months before the 'allegations' btw, that is all they have, allegations, revealed that they intended to get him 'caught up in a sex scandal'. And I guess they did. And no, he is NOT wanted for rape, he is wanted by Rove's friends in Sweden for 'questioning'. And Rove's friends have refused over and over again his multiple offers to answer those questions. In fact, Assange remained in Sweden and did go to the police there and answered their questions.

There is hardly a sentient being in the world who believes this now three-old sham to be anything other than political persecution.

Next time try to be accurate btw. He is wanted for QUESTIONING, a joke in itself since he has always been available for questioning.

The right wingers in Sweden and the far out 'left' who seem to be joined at the hip there, refuse to present their case, refuse to accept his offers to answer their questions, and after three years most people have concluded that is because, as even the lunatic attorney who jumped into this 'case' after it was dismissed for no evidence, admitted that 'if it ever went to court it is unlikely that there would be a conviction', that there never was a case.

I suppose they think that pretending they want to question him keeps him quiet. But with so much support around the world, put it this way, most people find him to be far more credible at this point than the persecutors.

Show us the evidence, or stop the sham, it isn't working. Assange has formed a political party in Australia and is running for office there. He has written a book, he has friends and supporters all over the world. When something is this much of a failure, it's time to give it up. Sweden's 'judicial system' has become a laughing stock around the world.

the link to the EA warrant seeking Mr. Assange. I can't make you read it.

The CT you've posted is lengthy. The CIA and Karl Rove? Where do the Illuminati fit in??

charged with a crime was the subject of such a warrant when even proven war criminals, dictators et al have escaped that kind of intense effort to 'get them'.

I know you don't answer my questions, you never did so that is nothing new. There are no answers to my questions, none that would justify the persecution of an International Award Winning News Organization. No one has been able to answer those questions so far. The only answers people get are the repetition of the lies that he 'ran' that he 'refused to answer questions' and then in your previous comment, the false claim that he is 'wanted for rape'. He is NOT wanted for rape, he has never been charged, he has offered over and over again to answer the questions for which THEY claim they want him. If they have legitimate questions they would have asked long, long ago in public where people can hear the questions and the ANSWERS.

So after three years of these political games, a majority of people have made up their minds. Those are the facts. Even the NYT apparently, not known for its journalistic courage.

I'm sorry but I just couldn't help myself...

opportunity to present an argument, no matter who the 'a

This marriage of Tech Sector to State is identical in conception to the marriage of Church to State driven by Rome for centuries. They would send in the missionaries first to get a foothold on the society by co-opting and diminishing native memes in favor of the authoritarian Christian paradigm. Then the soldiers and the trading companies would arrive and take everything by force that wasn't nailed down.

This time the idea is to get personal technology into everyone's hands and introduce them directly to the main artery of free market capitalism, consumerism and propaganda. No need for God as a middle man anymore. Any target culture will be pacified and cut off from it's traditions and identity within a generation. Same as it ever was. The New American Century lumbers forward unimpeded.

The strategy is nothing new. These guys aren't geniuses.

Every pro in the vicinity is getting a bonus to sink this post, no doubt. K & "Yarrrr!"

a well-thought out article by Julian Assange posted in the NYT...would be in some way, some support for someone that our Government doesn't approve of...just like anything about Bradley Manning get's little attention.

Even Aaron Swartz got little attention here.

What's Up with That? Are there any Human Rights Advocates left here on the Left?



"under the bus" grows larger...and that might be something that's important to think about for the future. The "Netroots Revolution" is dying...but there is a birth somewhere of something else. Maybe the "Netroots Revolution was just a transition to the "Next Step" and no one will see it coming?

the "Underground" is going way deeper than can be monitored as easily as the "Netroots Revolution" and "Occupy Wall Street" was.

I am out on a limb on this...as I said...but, there stuff going on all across the Globe and even in the USA that isn't reported on "NetRoots" we are used to. You'd have to live in the communities to see it growing.

But, I give credit to the "Netroots" for starting people coming together to get informed before "The Lockdown" (which those of us old timers have seen) and that there are others who know how to transfer info the "Old Way." Bear with me... "Mouth to Mouth" in Community or even communicating in ways that are NOT the Internet which can be surveiled. It might be going back...to go forward..to different ways of communicating with like minded folks that cannot be monitored.

Whatever...it's an interesting time we live in. If only the "CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN" hadn't been sort of a joke...we might be farther along and not this "Thing" we will have to go through to GET TO...that "Change We Can Believe in...Because We Did It."

I don't think it will be the Internet...but something else that's more "grassroots."

Just my humble opinion though.

K&R

...different from what many want to portray him as and discount him as.

Where's the hacking of and dumping of documents of countries like China, Russia, etc.? Only the US is so evil?

It's an interesting read but I find this bit odd:

The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism.

Wasn't the whole point of Wikileaks to help herald the death of privacy and confidentiality??

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blowers. Speaking truth to power upsets their carefully crafted security bubble.

Pres Obama is spying on the 99% while Wikileaks is spying on the 1%. Whose side are you on?

nt

It has absolutely nothing to do with what I've written, and nothing to do with what Assange even wrote.

I'd suggest you try again but I'm sure I'd get more of the same so let's just end this here.

You said, "Wasn't the whole point of Wikileaks to help herald the death of privacy and confidentiality??" The answer is no. The fact that you asked the question proves that you dont have a clue.

You clearly side with the authoritarian 1% that disparages Wikileaks and all whistle-blowers.

Again, the Pres Obama admin is spying on the 99% while Wikileaks is spying on the 1%.

It's time to choose sides. Looks to me like you are choosing the 1% side.

My initial post was not in any way directed to or about you, and yet here you are needlessly combative for no reason which is sort of funny considering that the vast majority of the time, the point -- whatever it may be -- flies over your head. This would be yet another example.

Assange's article is about how IT companies like Google's use of certain technologies will herald the death of privacy. The whole point of Wikileaks was to make the world and particularly its governments, more transparent. So my question was about that. The article is not in any form whatsoever about your made up contention that the "Obama admin is spying on the 99%," which like much around here from you, makes no sense and has nothing to do with the subject at hand. So my question is a valid one.

And as for your tiresome and moronic "you're choosing the 1%," I honestly don't know how many times it has to be brought to your attention that posts like that do absolutely nothing for your cause, no matter what in God's name that cause may be. Honestly, it cannot be stated enough how stupid these types of comments are.

..don't blame those who *can* for your confusion.

..wikileaks violating the privacy of private citizens.

thanks for playing.. you're so very far off base that it's not worth it to argue. 99.999999999999% of what wikileaks publishes is gov't or multinational material.

you don't know jack about wikileaks. talking straight out of the all-American ass.

Wikileaks gets stuff on EVERYTHING and they note up front that they don't censor anything that they receive. They simply decide what they will and will not publish. According to their own damn web site, they have released information on private citizens including former (and present) politicians and officials within the Catholic Church.

It is people like you, with your alluring mix of ignorance and unabashed and completely UNCALLED FOR hostility, that has turned so many people off this organization. How you think your behavior is making you look even remotely good, clever or noble is simply beyond me.

That seems to be your go-to play.

Wikileaks was, obviously, intruding on the privacy of the government, and powerful corporations. Your attempt to conflate that with the privacy rights of average citizens is just asinine.

Jesus Christ, some of you guys are absolutely DERANGED in your lust for Assange.

Put me on ignore. I have truly grown tired of your shit.

That's how it works. Manage your own chores.

NONE.

The batshit nonsense gets deeper by the day.

Authoritarian11!!one1

I would bet good money we have a cadre of closet InfoWars groupies in our midst.

Where are all those documents regarding "the 1%." And why do you include our government in "the 1%?" They are our elected representatives.

And why do we have no right to national security? Are we supposed to just let ourselves be attacked?

Governments do not have a right to secrets.

There's a bit on its web site about how it's also exposed some goings on in the Church of Scientology and the Catholic Church.

So judging by their own web site, it does appear that Wikileaks is very much proud of its work in making the world more transparent. So my question remains the same and I still feel that Assange's statement is a bit odd in that particular context. Even though I may feel the same way that he does about Google in this regard.

to do what no one here in the US has the guts to do, prosecute the Economic Criminals who helped to crash the world's economies.

THAT is why there is such an effort to silence them. No one was worried about them going after dictatorships, or corrupt organizations, it was only when it was learned from Assange that they had more information from whistle blowers about the Big Banks that caused the economic collapse, that the persecution began. One month after that revelation is when Wikileaks became a target by the Corporations.

of Wikilieaks here don't even know what they're advocating for. But judging by the quality of some of the flag-wavers, that comes as absolutely NO surprise. To ANYONE.

And I'm not referring to Luminous in this example. S/he actually had the intellectual faculty to provide information instead of frothing like a maniac unlike others. ((Looking upthread))

I'm not bothered in the least by Wikileaks presenting what they can find on the Catholic Church. The more sunshine in that regard the better.

atrocities of the USofA dont count. Do you think the USofA is not evil when we murdered many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi children? How do you rationalize that?

Why not expose all the bad guys? Why limit oneself to the USA? In fact, it is likely the Chinese and Russians do far worse. They don't even have a first amendment. It would be really interesting to see what they have recorded and what information they have on other countries. What do their operatives do?

For one thing, hopefully by exposing the injustices that OUR GOVERNMENT did and is doing, we can make changes. We cant do much about China and Russia. Just because the actions of other countries arent exposed, doesnt negate out behavior. And maybe you can forget that we, the USofA murdered close to a million Iraqis. And we are currently the big terrorist on the block with our drone killing policies.

But I understand the "what we dont know wont hurt us" mentality that hates whistle-blowers. Pres Obama has punished more than any recent president and is proud of it.

We must resist the luring comfort of fascism.

So why is he focused on it rather than others too?

Johnny should not get a pass, either, why should he?

innocent people and totally destroyed the country. The rest of the world cant look past that like you seem to be able to.

I guess rationalization is the key to happiness for some.

Where are you getting that figure?

The US thought it was defending itself from terror, at least, right in the aftermath of 911, 80% were fine with attacking Afghanistan. Other countries even joined in, including Julian's.

Bush sucks, but that does not appear to be a problem Julian has. How long do we have to flagellate ourselves over it? We've corrected course.

And it still does not explain why he does not hack the corporations and banks or other countries, which do far worse things. You can cry about the cops here, but imagine the cops in Russia. You can cry that protestors are stopped here, but what of those in China?

And the only "other countries" that "joined in" were countries that we could bully and even then their "joining in" was token.

We were wrong in Iraq and we are wrong using drones in sovereign nations to terrorize.

You hate us enough you may as well move somewhere else. Hopefully you won't put that hate into action like the Tsarnaevs did.

You're even claiming our allies were just bullied into helping us? They all secretly thought we deserved the 911 attack and didn't want to get involved, but we forced them to with bullying. OK. And the French - how were they able to avoid our bullying and not go into Iraq?

We invaded Iraq, not because they had WMD, not because they assisted those responsible for 911, but because George wanted to show his dad how tough he was. Because Cheney wanted to enrich himself and play god. And because the neo-cons wanted war in the near-east. Also, because our congressional representatives sold us out.

Before the war we had allies like France, Germany and Japan. During the war we had allies like Honduras, Estonia, and Nicaragua. Some sending as few as 50 troops. Most of these countries rely on foreign aide which may have helped their decision to send 50 troops. Even Great Britain sent less than 5% of the total troops. These were token amounts and not that of committed "allies".

I am not leaving. I am going to stay and fight the drift to fascism that some apparently are looking to for authoritarian comfort.

foundation of Wikileaks. It's interesting how popular Wikileaks was on the 'left' back in say, 2007-2008.

..I invite these wikihaters to actually fucking visit the site. It will take years to go through all the material from *all over the world* .. fucking including fucking china offs.

It's hip to despise America these days.

that could have been fixed was to prosecute the torturers and the liars who destroyed so many lives. Do you actually think that the world does not know what has been happening over the past 12 years?

Wikileaks existed for several years before they released the Iraq War Logs, mostly from the Bush era. In fact Wikileaks had been publishing Whistle Blower material on several countries with nothing on the US before that.

They published the first evidence of the corruption of the Big Banks in Iceland eg, which resulted in the people of Iceland discovering how their country had been betrayed and what had caused the economic collapse there. Unlike here when we found how our country had been betrayed by Wall St criminals, Icelanders threw out their crooked politicians, elected a new government and arrested their crooked bankers. They are the only country that has rebounded, despite all the dire predictions of what would happen if they didn't bail out the banks.

Wikileaks in fact was asked why they had never published anything negative about the US back then. Their response was that they had not received anything about the US.

Did they hate Iceland, Nigeria, China, or any of the other countries they published facts about?

They publish, and have received multiple journalistic awards for their work and are still doing so, FACTS. If you think the public should not know what their governments are up to, then you won't like a free press.

The reason Wikileaks got in trouble here is because Assange announced that he had received material about one of the biggest banks. No one here cared about war crimes being exposed, we don't prosecute war criminals. It was the fear of exposing the corruption of the Big Banks that got him in trouble. Since Wikileaks had done that in Iceland, they feared exposure and tried to silence them.

ended that and now a good share of the world looks at America as evil. The big bully that invades Iraq and kills people in sovereign nations via drones.

Many have come to despise the American government, including many Americans that have seen the Constitution ignored for political expediency.

How do you feel about America?

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And they've received info and published info from many other countries before and during the time they received and published U.S. documents.

This is easily found out by visiting the Wikileaks site and looking at the archives.

For the record, I make it a rule to find out whether a good point is ACTUALLY a good point by doing research using a newfangled tool called "Google".

The Chinese never do any wrong?

Swiss banks such as Julius Bär got their fair share too. Lots of EU and South American stuff too. For those interested enough to actually take a look.

Because they are not interested. They just want the US to be the big bad guy in all things.

..instead of spouting off and looking like you're too lazy to bother.

One thing for sure.. ignorance is not very convincing.

condemning something that it always becomes clear, they really know nothing about. Do you know why Wikileaks was established in the first place??? During the Bush years eg, Democrats were thrilled with Wikileaks. The only thing they were not thrilled with was that Wikileaks had not released ANYTHING about the Bush gang, the US. When asked why, they explained that they 'had not received anything yet' but that when they did, if it was legitimate, they would publish it.

Iow, Wikileaks was being accused of being too supportive of the US to publish anything negative about it. Some even accused them of being Bush supporters.

So it's ironic to see a few, and I know it is only a few, democrats here so unaware of the facts regarding this award-winning, international news organization so popular with Democrats here in this country because of the takeover of our own media.

They released information on Big Banks, see what happened as a result in Iceland, on Dictatorships all over the world, secrets those dictators were not able to withstand the release of.

Thousands of Chinese dissidents were involved in the establishment of Wikileaks.


And it is clear from the released material of secret conversations among Chinese leaders that they hated Wikileaks, and for good reason.

So your comment is ridiculous. Long before Wikileaks received material on the Bush years, they were receiving awards for releasing material on countries around the world. China too.

And most of Manning's leaks are related to Bush which is why it is so puzzling to see Democrats who were demanding this kind of journalism from our own media during the Bush years, NOW defending Bush's policies and calling those who finally exposed them, traitors etc.

Can you explain why you posted that comment regarding China and Wikileaks, it is so completely wrong.

that I've read among the praises of him.

Not connected to Wiikileaks in any way whatsoever.. Well.. maybe ideologically connected...

They do *not* only publish u.s. leaks. There's so much material .. they need more volunteers to go thru it all.

Schmidt and Cohen are smarmy creeps digging for more $$$$$.

Steve Jobs is Dead and Microsoft is bogged down with Bill Gates...

Meet the New Rulers...same as the Old Rulers. They owns our Information...so THEY ARE KING OF THE WORLDS!

's

They can poke into every corner of peoples lives but God help the private citizen who dares peek into the doings of the powerful.

Governments call it secrecy in the name of national security, corporations call their stuff trade secrets, but you and I get a different and considerably weaker version, its called privacy. The difference is Governments and Corporations hold their's by power of force whereas we scrabble, metaphorically, to hold on to ours with hope and broken fingernails.

The notion that our Government is made up of 'we the people' is hopelessly quaint while remaining dangerously believable.

The populace is conditioned to think that Lucy won't pull the football away this time.

I'm sure the New York Times will place it on their bestsellers list.

regained its courage and published it. Good for them.