The Cult of Julian Assange and Wikileaks

What would you think if your mother called you this evening and told you that your very best friend from grade school, high school, college and beyond came to her and told her everything. Because of some quirk of a new found belief, this friend thought it was best to be transparent about not only his life, but yours as well. So your mother now knows everything. Like what you drink and how often. And how often to passing out. Who you slept with and how often you have sex with someone you don’t really know. The drugs you like and have hidden in your apartment. The kinky stuff as well. Your deepest secrets that really you shouldn’t have told your friend and you certainly never wanted your mother to know. Even if she suspects some of the things might be true.

How would you feel? Mad at your friend? Worried about who else knows? Worried what your mother now thinks about you? And now your friends just sort of look at you since you may have told your friend secrets about them and they heard about them.

Well, that is just what Julian Assange just did. He told your mother everything and he also told a number of people too. Stuff they suspected or assumed, but now it is out in the open, well what you said, not what anyone else said.

Why did he do it? The enigmatic Mr. Assange doesn’t really say. He says it is for transparency. But I think what he has done is not transparent, but created a one-way mirror. People can look in on our dirty laundry, but we only see ourselves. Being transparent would be taking the cables related to Iran and publishing Iran’s cables about us. That is transparent.

My belief is that Mr. Assange is an anarchist who found the best bomb. One that doesn’t kill anyone, but can be deadly. He says he is a journalist, but all he is doing is dumping these cables and letting everyone else evaluate them. There is no investigation or interpretation of these cables, because he doesn’t care about that. He is only interested in disrupting the world.

I think it is very naïve of people to think that governments have only positive things to say about one another and can be transparent to each other about what goes on. Diplomacy in itself is the absence of transparency. Mr. Assange and his minions seem to believe I have a right to learn that we don’t like the Russians. I know we don’t like the Russians, but I don’t need to tell them we don’t since they don’t like us either.

In the end, Wikileaks will be an interesting footnote to the world history. Mr. Assange will go away and brood about why he isn’t in charge of the world and his minions will grow up and get jobs and wonder what the hell they were thinking back then. Unless, like a playground dust up, a push/shove match starts over a few words. Then Mr. Assange will need to think about what he started and how many lives might be lost because he thinks he is better equipped to tell the world what to think than everyone else.

The Purpose of Protest

I grew up during the 60’s. I saw and kind of participated in the protest against the Vietnam War. I guess doing what everyone else was doing, I went along. During those war years and as I got closer to draft age, I worried, like all young men did. We all knew the war was bad, but we really didn’t want to be forced into the service. I have very bad eyes and probably had a deferment, but all it took was an Army doctor saying that my eyes weren’t that bad and I was in.

One of the jokes after the war was that guys went to the college protests because it was a chance to meet girls. I guess if you showed up and yelled and screamed, you might get lucky. I wasn’t at those kinds of schools nor was I really old enough during the height of the war to go to meet girls. But it seems to be a pretty relevant comment.

Lately, there have been more protests than usual. Arizona, the BP oil Spill and the Anti-Bank protests come to mind. . I’ve come to a change of heart on protests, probably because I no longer am interested in meeting girls and now wonder what good comes of these. My new position is nothing happens because someone has a protest. Just like the Vietnam War rallies and protests probably didn’t change any one’s mind that the war was wrong.

Let’s define though that there are protests that are necessary. The Buddhist Monks during the Viet Nam War who burned themselves. Others like the lone protester at Tiananmen Square, the Mother’s March in the Philippines, the Civil Rights Marches in the South. These were beyond protest to a form of insurrection. The Monks gave up their lives to inform people that the war was wrong. The lone protester is believed to be still in prison and the Mother’s March and Civil Rights Marches could have ended in the deaths of the people who marched. So when I speak of protests here, I mean the sign waving, chanting, marching type of protests.

So what purpose does a protest have? Basically, the only purpose is to channel efforts to support a cause. However, the people that participate usually agree with your beliefs and frankly are the audience you hope to reach. There may be media coverage or you can create your own YouTube coverage of an event. And the people that will see it will either total agree or will vehemently disagree with your cause. So are you going to change any minds? No. The people that see any 10 second view of the protest may see some witty signs, but I think 20 words on a poster will not give anyone a head slapping moment and make them change sides. The purpose of the protest is to me, the ability to see if you can bring people together. It is marketing. If your group can muster 1000 people, maybe when another similar cause comes up, they might call you to get some of those people to a rally. Except those 1000 people probably are in the same 5 groups which all compete for the bodies.

So again, why hold a protest? I don’t see a reason. You won’t educate anyone on the problem with a few signs. You won’t change anyone’s mind because of a chant or the fact you are out there. You won’t get the people that you are protesting against to suddenly change their behavior. But someone got you out there and that might impress some people. As I thought about this, it no longer impressed me.

So instead of a protest, think about how you can change people’s minds or change their awareness of the problem. If you are attempting to change a company’s actions, what would make them change, such as a boycott. Companies don’t have shame so you can’t get them to change like you can a person. Corporations only are interested in profits. If you want to get people to change their opinions, then education works better than cute signs. Yes, a protest looks like education, but only to the people that already agree with you. You want to reach out to people that don’t agree with you. That can be done with flyers, teach ins or ads and nothing works as well as one-to-one dialog. And the time and money used to organize a protest could be used to help the cause you are protesting.

Now, I don’t mean that people shouldn’t protest. This is a right and privilege we all have. But in based on civil and rational discussion, a protest should be viewed in light of the probable outcome. In most cases, I believe we should save the shoe leather and get off the street. Nothing is improved by protests and I believe everything can be changed with dialog.