John Young on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 09:27:47 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Questions concerning Wikileaks |
The use of "wiki" was and is a marketing schtick, it was never intended, never tried. WL was conceived as an authoritative initiative cloaked as public interest as is wont with authoritatives. Authoritatives are worse than authoritarians for they dissemble about their manipulations of the public to diminish the likelihood of opposition. Submissions were never as open nor as secure as claimed. Many of WL "submissions" did not come from the outside, that too is dissimulative. Assange bragged of have millions of documents at the very beginning before submissions were proffered as a marketing device. Domscheit-Berg has been coy about exactly what he "took away for security" and which he claims will be returned when assured proper WL security is available. This too is common marketing flim-flam. WL ratcheting up numbers is patently shysterist, first millions of files on hand, then a few hunded "high quality" gradually published, then an astounding thousands of Congressional Research Reports, then singular blockblusters, then more hundreds of thousands of Afgan and Iraq "files" all heavily doctored for public consumption, no raw files published at all thoughout WL's history. Now lately hundreds of millions of words flaunted to balloon file claims. Submissions and publication have stopped and started more than once for dramatic effect, crisis upon crisis. This is trite market teasing to be sure not uncommon among public interest authoritatives run out to the point of idiocy-panels on PBS. For some years WL was very hostile to working with journalism and other media, and that was a virtue which distinguished it from most who cannot conceive of operating without tongues deeply embedded in well-reamed assholes. The change, according Domscheit-Berg occurred when Assange was seduced by a seasoned publicist-hack in Iceland to hyper-monetize Wikileaks with the gunship video. It was obvious that WL had abandoned its hostility to the media with the gunship campaign roll-out in the National Press Club preceded by market teasing previews. This publicist-hack is now the WL spokesperson. And according to DDB this hack orchestrated the conflict between Julian and Daniel with whispers about financial irregularities, aided and abetted by another publicist speech writer nanny who plotted with the hack to take over the Wikileaks-Assange brand as their own. This led to the redesign of the Web site to feature Julian's glamorizing fake-journalist headshot, which just happened to exactly copy what was done with Wikipedia and its heroic founder for a major funding campaign, as if the same designer did both for a cut-rate. More likely simple plagiarism. This campaign to convert Wikileaks into a commercial journalism outlet led to the involvement of the Guardian which was then used to draw in the others, and more others thereafter. This laid the foundation for journalistic protection of a commercial operation which almost worked. However in the long tradition of journalists screwing each other as scoundrels must, the multiple deals fell apart when Julian began to smell a rat. Not the rat advising him but the rats the main rat bred suspicion about. It should be expected that Julian will be royally fucked, and stay fucked by the rats now running his once noble venture. Was he too susceptible to skilled Machiavellis, as little princes always are? Or is he sufficiently shrewd to fuck the fuckers in the media milking his danger to the max, and there are hundreds of them, just think of who has come to prominence on Julian's risk, merely search Wikileaks to see their names brightly at the top, flogging their books, their weekly updates, their appearances of TV, their sharp wisdom on panels, their pithy scholarship, their nominations for awards, their bountiful cliches, all the claptrap of publicity whores, sorry, pros. Some of us hope those courteseans get old-style Wikileak reamed, for Anonymous to expose their emails and cell records, their bank accounts, their deals with officials, their lawyers' files, their tips and tricks to feed the mill, their backroom slurs of Wikileaks and others like it and their crows about the endless supply of suckers. Read the end of DDB's book where he poses a series of questions deserving answers. Then imagine what lies behind that publicity screen. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org