How will Assange be punished for attempting to advance democracy?

A couple of interesting essays on CableGate/WikiLeaks. First up is:

Slavoj Zizek at the London Review of Books

with his usual sexy-but-maybe-half-cocked pop-culture references:

"In one of the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks Putin and Medvedev are compared to Batman and Robin. It’s a useful analogy: isn’t Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s organiser, a real-life counterpart to the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight? In the film, the district attorney, Harvey Dent, an obsessive vigilante who is corrupted and himself commits murders, is killed by Batman. Batman and his friend police commissioner Gordon realise that the city’s morale would suffer if Dent’s murders were made public, so plot to preserve his image by holding Batman responsible for the killings. The film’s take-home message is that lying is necessary to sustain public morale: only a lie can redeem us. "

Next up is zunguzungu , offering a commentary on the WikiLeaks program as expressed in certain of Assange's writings, and considering authoritarian conspiracy and network models of social organization (with a few sexy references to The Wire and The Battle of Algiers included for good measure):

"[Assange] decides [...] that the most effective way to attack [authoritarian conspiracy] would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire"

 

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What ever happened to Julian? Haven't heard from him since our little sexy chat some weeks ago.

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Except Assange is D-bag not a hero.

 

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I actually consider him both.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AxOzxZJQo4

 

Two details: neither the original leaker or Wikileaks went to the NYT.

Manning, the accused original leaker (if true, an indictment in itself) is now several months into Gitmo-light "interrogation", which was not supposed to happen to American citizens and which can easily destroy his value as a source of reliable information.

One implication of those two details is that the most important revelation of this leak is what has happened to the American press and news media since about 1980.

 

Aww, here he is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNqd4hW98sQ

 

Didn't Manning admit to the leak with one Adrain Lamo? Isn't it this that got him caught?

 

Dunno. Your point?