200 turn out for Canberra Wikileaks protest

Kerryhemsley said :

Assange is being positioned as some sort of world saviour

Saviour? Hardly… but can you seriously believe that the world’s Governments are all getting pissy because some of the secrets about how they operate behind the scenes have come out? They should all be ashamed rather than trump up charges to try and get him locked up, or worse still, assassinated as several US pollies have suggested. He’s no hero, but he is (or should be) getting some governments to seriously think about how they conduct themselves…

Yeah, sorry, P1 – I was mixing your comments up with another posters. My bad. I agree with you completely.

A minute ago you were talking about competing media modes, which is what I was addressing. Now it’s onto ‘Assange is arrogant’ because he’s releasing previously unknown information – which seems to me to be a very silly argument.

Wow, either I’ve communicated even less clearly then normal, or you are miss reading my intent totally. Maybe both.

What I am saying is that the media keeps talking about Assange as being “a leaker”, while I see him (his organisation) as being exactly the same as all the other media organisations. He had the documents first, and got to go through them, picking the interesting bits, editing things he didn’t want released for whatever reason and then choosing how the information goes out. This is exactly what the newspapers would have done had the cables been sent to them, yet he is being painted not as a journalist but something else.

At no point did I mean to suggest he is arrogant (although some of his statements make me think he sometimes is), and at no point did I intend to suggest I don’t like him or that others shouldn’t. I think he deserves quite a lot of respect for doing what he has done.

Jim Jones said :

You do realise that Assange is not exactly the first person to leak government information, right?

Actually, he isn’t leaking government information at all, he is simply publishing it.

p1 said :

Jim Jones said :

Napster and the music industry – the Murdoch dummy-spit about the evil internets and erecting paywalls around News Ltd (and the ongoing demise of the printed newspaper) – the publishing industry and online retailers (and now ebooks) – etc.

First might have been an exaggeration, but those things are not exactly the same.

I’m talking not of creating content and them profiting from it, but rather the feeling of a moral right to be the one who decides what the public is told and what it isn’t.

A minute ago you were talking about competing media modes, which is what I was addressing. Now it’s onto ‘Assange is arrogant’ because he’s releasing previously unknown information – which seems to me to be a very silly argument.

You do realise that Assange is not exactly the first person to leak government information, right?

Famously, there are such examples as The Pentagon Papers and Nixon’s tapes. Would you level the same accusation of ‘arrogance’ against the people who leaked this information?

I get the impression that you don’t really have an argument – you just don’t like Assange. Which is pretty irrelevant really, he’s not the person who leaked the information, he’s just releasing it.

Regardless, no man is a god or devil – we’re all just men.

… except for women, who are not.

Waiting For Godot said :

Gee, 200 Canberrans protested on behalf of Assange. Meanwhile 350,000 people stayed away and did not support him. Says it all, really.

well, apart from this being a fallacious argument, the canberra protest seems to have worked – he’s been freed. says it all, really…

Jim Jones said :

Napster and the music industry – the Murdoch dummy-spit about the evil internets and erecting paywalls around News Ltd (and the ongoing demise of the printed newspaper) – the publishing industry and online retailers (and now ebooks) – etc.

First might have been an exaggeration, but those things are not exactly the same.

I’m talking not of creating content and them profiting from it, but rather the feeling of a moral right to be the one who decides what the public is told and what it isn’t.

Jim Jones said :

Waiting For Godot said :

Gee, 200 Canberrans protested on behalf of Assange. Meanwhile 350,000 people stayed away and did not support him. Says it all, really.

By this logic, everyone who failed to turn up to the ‘reclaim the night’ march is in favour of rape and violence against women.

+1

By and large democratic governments have been walking all over their citizens for some time. Try over the last ten years. And it is not just at the Federal level. It’s also at the State and Territory level.

Now I bet none of them will admit this is what they do >>>http://reut.rs/bcvkzW

A certain lack of transparency. Funny that.

If anything what Assange has exposed is the tip of a very large iceberg.

Assange is being positioned as some sort of world saviour.

I love the video news release that accompanies nearly every story on him.

Looks like some sad rock clip from the 80s.

and if you said “Bradley manning” to all 200 I’d suggest a good percentage would have had no idea what you were talking about…bandwaqon…jump on….quote]

Swaggie, you might be surprised to know that Bradley Manning’s plight was mentioned a number of times during the protest. Speakers highlighting the fact that he too has been held without charge to date (and is unlikely to see the light of day again for a very long time if the US get their way).