Like many supporters and detractors of Wikileaks Coll underestimates the intent of the initiative. The comparison to media is fatuous as though media, if not scholars, should be the dominant source of public information about governments and other authoritative institutions. Media and scholars are themselves authoritatives more like governments than different, enjoying privileges and protection all sides grant one another while condemning those outside their fold. None of the authoritatives are insurgencies and assuredly will find ways to "critique" whatever disturbs their perquisites and opportunities, using concepts and language meant to defuse and stigmatize threats. There is overmuch circularity in Coll's apolgia for media in which he presumes an enduring value in responsible media and scholarhip that has been squandered by timid rumination. This marks a failure to go beyond convention. One might suspect Wikileaks is laughing its ass off at the high-value conceit of supporters and detractors who are out to advance their own initiatives under guise of pondering the Wikileaks each has confected for that purpose -- and avoiding the high-risk of taking on a true threat to authoritatives. To be sure, Wikileaks as it has been might morph into a tamed beast like so many short-lived, opportunisticly aggressive insurgencies brought into submission with valorization, condemnation, attention, praise, notoriety, bribery, prizes and embrasure by mightily crafty and extremely well-endowed authoritatives who gobble up ambitious rebels like sweetmeats. Wikileaks would be smart to pull back from Ellsberg and those working diligently to manage it in the most favored direction, the prefabricated heroic, that is, all hat and no cattle. Another New Yorker article this week explores the self-affirming drive toward heroism. If not Assange's heroicly defiant Wikileaks peters out then many others more variable and durable, and that seems to be what's developing under the radar of all too delusional incisiveness. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE