julian assange

Assange, corporate conspiracies, and Wikileaks ultimate contradictions

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Monday, October 24th, 2011. While facing a crowd of journalists and activists gathered at London’s Frontline Club for a momentous Wikileaks press conference, Julian Assange looks nervous. Today he has to deal with the inner contradictions of his political project. No, I’m not talking about the legal consequences of his extradition case. Nor about the ongoing fratricidal struggle with his former associate Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Nor about the very polarized reactions to the whole Cablegate undertaking by the global audiences. I’m talking about this…

Yes, Julian Assange has many reasons to be nervous. After the financial blockade, the leak has been reduced to a tickle. “A handful of US finance companies have successfully blocked 95% of worldwide support for WikiLeaks”. Is there, as he implies, a conspiracy against Wikileaks? That would be ironic, as the very implementation of Wikileaks was supposed to single-handedly put an end to conspiracies (according to this seminal 2006 paper, penned by Assange himself). Well, not about as ironic as this: apparently the only way for Wikileaks to counter Bank of America and Paypal is to become as profitable as they are. Open up to “more wealthy donors”. Provide the general public with projections about donations (and, supposedly, tax deductibility). What’s next? Selling shares to new investors via an IPO? (more…)

DSK et la morale institutionnelle du FMI

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Qu’est-ce que Dominique Strauss-Kahn et Julian Assange ont un commun (à part leurs cheveux blancs et une certaine allure d’outsiders) ? Tous les deux ont été accusés du même crime odieux.

On a déjà débattu et décortiqué l’affaire Assange. Et nul doute que l’on va faire de même pour DSK. Et bien sûr, au delà de la authenticité des accusations, on ne se lassera pas d’insister ici sur la portée politique de ces scandales sexuels. La question que nous pouvons d’ores et déjà nous poser n’est pas – comme le feraient les théoriciens du complot – à qui profitent ces arrestations (<sarcasme> au tandem politique Obama/Clinton dans le cas d’Assange ? au tandem politique Sarkozy/Le Pen dans le cas de DSK ? </sarcasme>).

Il y a une question qui est à mon avis encore plus essentielle et qui était bien posée dans cet article de Joshua Gamson, paru dans le revue Social Problems : quelle est la portée normative d’un scandale sexuel pour les institutions impliquées ?

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27 theses on WikiLeaks (and counting…)

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At first I thought WikiLeaks was all about data. Data-journalism. Data-mining. Raw data hacked, transfered, mirrored, etc. Cold-blooded, hard facts. Then I realized it is not. As any culturally and politically defining moment, WikiLeaks exposes our hunger for *theory*. Abstract, verbose, fact-insensitive theory.  Here are some examples, cherry-picked from the Web.

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