Sequence 4 parts 2010
WikiLeaks
Was WikiLeaks journalism, an act of war, or a new way of governing? Four posts from December 2010 on the cables, the Assange commentators, and what leaking might do to the business of government.
Two Theories of Wikileaks, or Just One?
So far as I can tell, the news coverage of the latest diplomatic infodump breaks along a line orthogonal to ordinary US partisanship. Either: 1. There’s nothing new here, although the possibility of future exposure may hamper diplomatic efforts in the near term. or 2. Secrecy is bad, here are some secrets. Neither perspective is particular…
The Growing Field of Julian Assange Secondary Scholarship
If you haven’t read Assange’s own self-justifications , then you can read this summary of them to get a sense of what worried me . Now, Peter Ludlow does a proper study of Assange’s political theory: this is conspiracy in the sense of the original etymology of ‘conspire’ – as in “breathe with” or “breathe together”. …
Wikileaks and War
Is this the argument ? 1. (Our) wars are unjust. 2. Stopping (our) wars will prevent further injustice. combined with: 3. (Our) wars depend on secrecy in inception and in daily practice. 4. Thus, (our) wars can be prevented by eliminating the secrecy in inception. 5. Moreover, (our) wars can be stopped by eliminating the…
Wikileaks as Distributed Governance
Hannah Arendt begins The Human Condition with an account of a world in which “speech has lost its power,” where scientific omnipotence is achieved through the manipulation of mathematical equations whose sense escapes even the mathematicians’ capacity to intuit, and the decision to unleash destructive nuclear powers has been foisted upon non-scientists who are even…