Re: <nettime> Questions concerning Wikileaks

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

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.




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