Thread:Comments:Interpol orders arrest of Wikileaks founder to face rape charges/Comments from feedback form - "courage julian!"/reply (5)

Yeah, the Powers That Be clearly have a hate on for Assange. I'm not even going try to argue against that claim. I don't think it's so much that Assange is foreign (given the 'treason' talk, it's not clear how many of the squakers grasp that he *is* foreign), it's that he isn't operating like a traditional journalist. When a traditional journalist drops something secret, they generally have a definite target in mind - some specific story whose importance to the public interest outweighs the ethical cost of revealing secret information. Assange doesn't care about that, he's engaged in informational carpet bombing. With the Afghanistan and Iraq files, Wikileaks did at least try to hide the identity of Iraqi and Afghan informants. I think Assange et al badly underestimated the ethical importance of keeping diplomatic communications confidential. If you understand why it's so important to keep diplomatic communications confidential, it might be clearer why the Powers That Be are so pissed.

Just to give one example: imagine you're trying to work out a deal with a foreign politician who is publicly a hardliner against your country. If the negotiations are confidential, he might be more willing to drop the persona and bargain like a reasonable human being. If the negotiations have to occur out in the open, then the 'hardliner' may be tempted/forced to sticking with his public persona. One of the purposes of Wikileaks might be to encourage the powerful to make their public and private personae match. (Public persona = "servant of the people", private persona = "power-grabbing scumbag") Sometimes stopping the hypocrisy is good (more "public servant," less "scumbag"); but sometimes it ain't (more "raging xenophobe," less "rational human being").