Assange as the Stainless Steel Rat
http://bajanreporter.com/julian-assange-the-stainless-steel-rat-by-mattokuno... Julian Assange: The Stainless Steel Rat by Mattokunobaka Going through news stories this morning, I found one that had caught my eye: .Julian Assange to Appear in Court to Appeal. , located at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/13-13 . Having an interest in the case against Mr Assange, and especially the behavior of the United States towards him, I proceeded to read the report, when a certain passage suddenly leapt out at me. .Meanwhile a dating site profile from 2007, supposedly created by Assange, had prompted by some lively online debate. The profile on the OKCupid site featured pictures of Assange, though gave the name Harry Harrison . who described himself as a .passionate and often pig- headed activist intellectual. who sought to change the world. He concluded: .Write to me if you are brave.. (emphasis mine). I went to the site named and saved a screenshot of the page, located at http://www.okcupid.com/profile/HarryHarrison (NOTE: as of 1.30pm today, OKCupid has removed the page from public view, requiring registration to view the page.) While I was looking over the page, however, it suddenly hit me.I had a major key to his personality and the way his thought processes work. Quite simple, actually. I.ll refrain from commenting on the case itself at this time, but I can clear up one little mystery: the nom de guerre or username on the OKCupid site. If the site is confirmed as his, as is likely, the pseudonym .Harry Harrison. is entirely reasonable and to be expected, because it confirms that Assange is a fan of science fiction. And it.s a key to the mind of Julian Assange. The author Harry Harrison wrote a series of science fiction novels about a character named James Bolivar deGriz, alias .Slippery Jim., or .The Stainless Steel Rat.. The original novel was written in 1961; the last was published this year. I have the first five or so novels in my personal library, and they.re great favorites of mine. deGriz lived in a future which had no crime, no wrongdoing, and was ultimately dull and boring. He refused to be a part of such a boring utopia. Thus he decided to give police something to do, and entertain the people, by performing fantastic feats of theft and other nonviolent crimes, while making the police look like fools. He was wanted by law enforcement across numerous solar systems, as well as by planetary governments, some with a price on his head. (Sound familiar so far?) Eventually, he was captured by (and joined) a supersecret intelligence organization, which solved difficult problems concerning societies on different worlds. Subsequent novels followed those assignments and adventures. One sees from this admittedly sketchy description of the novels (by memory, I admit) that Julian Assange and Wikileaks serve as the .Stainless Steel Rat. of the present. His .crimes., if any, have been virtually nonviolent, leading .law enforcement. (including the CIA) on a merry chase, while he transmits secret documents from corporations and governments around the world. He has done this successfully for some years now. It.s evident that he identified intensely with the character of Slippery Jim deGriz from his first reading. Using the alias .Harry Harrison. is therefore a tribute to the writer he idolizes. I don.t believe Harrison himself is aware of this, but the connection seems very clear to me. And yet, as a globetrotter, it.s possible that Julian Assange might have met Harry Harrison, even in disguise. It.s also apparent to me that he not only determined to be our .Stainless Steel Rat., but that.knowing he couldn.t do it alone.Wikileaks was built around the concept. Assange, as a hacker, shows the independent, .antisocial. and anarchist nature of deGriz, although his actions ultimately benefit society. Wikileaks (and Assange) have repeatedly thwarted past efforts to contain or stop them. They have repeatedly angered corporations and governments by disseminating information revealing corruption, lies or otherwise embarrassing material. Assange, although an Australian citizen, has no .home. as such, moving from place to place. His support team are volunteers from diverse places. His equipment, funds and supplementary resources are likewise scattered. He has supporters across the world, much like some citizens of the fictional future who idolized James Bolivar deGriz. Harrison.s deGriz was a master of disguise, and loved thumbing his nose at the cops, performing feats literally under their very eyes. Yesterday, I found this story: Assange attended US embassy party in Iceland at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/72733,people,news,julian-assange-attended-us-e..., dated December 13, 2010. It.s worth quoting at length. By December 2009, Assange had received the US embassy cables, the Iraq war logs, a video of US helicopter pilots mowing down innocent Iraqis, and documents relating to the Afghanistan war, all of which were subsequently published on WikiLeaks. Although he had already upset the US, Assange was the toast of Iceland at the time of the party, having published a secret report relating to the 2008 collapse of the country.s banks on WikiLeaks. It was against this background that Assange apparently thought it would be amusing to go into the lion.s den. On the day of the ambassador.s reception, he didn.t even bother to wait for Jonsdottir before heading over to the US embassy. Jonsdottir explains: .The irony was that I went to collect him from his guesthouse and couldn.t find him, so just went back to work and didn.t even go myself. .I found out later he.d just decided to go on his own and got in by saying he was my guest. He said he.d spent a long time talking to Mr Watson.. And, at this time, he was already being sought out by the government of the United States. It would appear that the pattern holds. Assange.s boldness and behavior in this instance would mirror exactly the behavior of the deGriz of science fiction. This analysis is only partial and, as I stated, sketchy. I do believe there are enough parallels that it offers an important insight into the mind and personality of Julian Assange. It.s doubtful that the United States government would be aware of such important connections to understanding their .enemy.. Often political appointees, or even those of the traditional hierarchy, are ignorant of the subjects they are supposed to deal with. And events of the past ten years have confirmed that they do not understand whom they.re fighting very well, even now. Such was the case with Michael D Brown, of Hurricane Katrina infamy (.Heckuva job, Brownie.), who was appointed head of FEMA under President Bush. He had no qualifications and no experience in Emergency Management. Prior to his assignment, he had been a Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. I also remember reading a story some time later about a man assigned to head counterterrorism in the FBI. He admitted he knew nothing about Islam, and said something to the extent that it .wasn.t needed. for the job. It.d seem to me that it.s difficult to fight something you don.t understand. Sun Tzu realized this some thousands of years ago when he wrote .The Art Of War.. If this pattern has continued into the Obama Administration, then, I highly doubt they.ve made the connection I.ve described above. Imagination is not a quality associated with politics, in my opinion. Only fans of science fiction.probably the older ones.would even be aware of Harry Harrison.s novels, as I am. If I am correct, I believe these are important clues to his personality of Julian Assange and the nature of Wikileaks itself.
What might be most enviable about Julian is that he has held few if any jobs to distract him from exploring personal philosophy and to plot great conquests and become very rich. During the twenty years from about 18 to 38, he has managed to obtain food, shelter, clothing, child care payments, health care, expenses for travel and entertainment, laptops and network service, and a motorbike for 2-3 years of globe circling -- perhaps setting up a network of cohorts. (He described his itinerary on this noble forum in 2001.) Nothing unusual about this off-the-grid lifestyle among hackers. Like a lot of thoughtful humans not convinced steady work for bosses is a good thing, they do have a knack for avoiding regular employment. Some speculate they sell their hacker fruits of network (TOR, DoD, et al) siphoning on the black market, or extort payments from targets to return material or to not report nasty info to the authorities or news media -- or most profitable, to gin up the bidding for stolen data among competitors. Say, the Bank of America ploy, "hard drive" certified, fool. Those not adept at keeping income coming this way, can pick up a few thousands ratting on other hacker-entrepreneurs to the authorities, or best, to commercial spies who extort the ratee for information then mark it up as their own product. These techniques appear to be in full flower with Wikileaks and its desparate MSM partners, agog fans and penny-ante sock-puppets, but are hardly restricted to the newbie initiative. Businesses have alwayes used the same tawdry practices to assure profitability to the bosses, to screw the workers and investors, and the methods are taught in business schools and fine-tuned in lawyers and publicist-cum-journalists' conference rooms. The deals negotiated among WL and the MSM will make great reading in the slacker colleges someday but not so long as they are laying golden eggs. Off the grid is where the real money flows. As is often yelled in this very iniquitous den. It must have been said somewhere in blatherdom that Assange's model is Zuckenberg not Harry the Rat. He is likely in touch with Goldman and JP Morgan and the giants of Europe and Asia to get bid on the BoA wad and the others in his sample kit. Think about what he's got, or says he's got on the globe's tax authorities. Nobody here knows anything about this despite what the archives reveal. Those are forgeries.
On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 10:04:42AM -0500, John Young wrote:
The deals negotiated among WL and the MSM will make great reading in the slacker colleges someday but not so long as they are laying golden eggs. Off the grid is where the real money flows. As is often yelled in this very iniquitous den.
A friend mentioned this discussion to me, and, egads, I found out I'm still subscribed to this list after all these years. John Young is more right than he knows (or, being John, he may know more about this than the rest of us). This Vanity Fair article posted a few hours ago makes for some interesting reading about the carefully curated, not always civil, relationship between WL and the MSM: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102?prin... -Declan
A shitty account for it leaves out the crucial information about money changing hands between WL and its partners, not even under the ruse of underwriting "expenses." Assange's rage at MSM is about getting financially screwed not dissimulation of editorial and publication control. Assange wants his fortune just as much as publishers and journalists and the rest of us do. The nobility of getting information to the public untainted by venality is ridiculous -- even as PR it is rancid bacon. Assange's chronic bitch has been from Day One of WL about getting those who use Wikileaks to pay handsomely for it. That was, and is, his business model, not public service, at least no more public service than the public service racketeers. It is not about getting press coverage simply but coverage for advertising what can be bought under the table and on the black market -- just like official and criminal managers of information flow do -- spies the most generous payers. The peurile Vanitry Fair gossip about the MSM struggling financially avoids the real issue of paying sources like WL and hackers and insiders is as if there is a solemn compact to pretend that never occurs. Mutual love and admiration it aint. Why be coy about paying WL, out with it. Maybe Daniel will spill those secrets but not likely due to the money to be made by pretending to tell all but not really, tell enough to become a player, then play to the max. What might break the complicity of silence is what leads so many to leak, getting financially screwed by your partners -- the ever present threat to human intercourse, not limited to bed partners. You can bet Bank of America or whoever knows what it will take for WL not to publish financially damaging data. By now the targets have been given samples to ponder, just as the MSM were given. And Assange will continue to shop in the black market what is merely advertised by public disclosures. This is a well-established business model of hackers and publishing and as we have seen in this noble training and bragging forum, security experts. This is an ad, the good stuff is not available for free.
At 08:33 AM 1/6/2011 -0500, John Young wrote:
Assange wants his fortune just as much as publishers and journalists and the rest of us do. The nobility of getting information to the public untainted by venality is ridiculous -- even as PR it is rancid bacon.
Frankly ridiculuous, JA must realize that only ideological motivations are robust enough for his purposes. Actually, religion would be sufficient motivation as well, but all the clueful are atheists. One must have a day job, semiretired architect, say, so that one can pursue one's own noble ideals. Mozart had to tutor and perform and otherwise sell his time so he could do what he wanted. I won't speculate on JA's personal finances but intelligent people capable of controlling their environment are always valuable. I'll mention Gilmore and May as examples of selfish-atruistic-techsaints. Young and Assange will be discussed this way, one day. On the Daniel <---> JA axis of access-to-leaks I look forward to those more brazen than JA who don't bother with protecting (US) Collaborators and other collateral damage. Daniel, by offering material only to MSM, is a distraction. If MSM were adequate there would be no niche for cryptome, WL, or Daniel's honeypot. WL's current trickle is a disgrace. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. ... who'd you rather? Ardin or Wilen? ---------------- David Honig (714) 544 9727 36 Laurelwood Dr. Irvine, CA 92620
On 07/01/11 02:15, David Honig wrote:
At 08:33 AM 1/6/2011 -0500, John Young wrote:
Assange wants his fortune just as much as publishers and journalists and the rest of us do. The nobility of getting information to the public untainted by venality is ridiculous -- even as PR it is rancid bacon.
Frankly ridiculuous, JA must realize that only ideological motivations are robust enough for his purposes. Actually, religion would be sufficient motivation as well, but all the clueful are atheists.
One must have a day job, semiretired architect, say, so that one can pursue one's own noble ideals. Mozart had to tutor and perform and otherwise sell his time so he could do what he wanted. I won't speculate on JA's personal finances but intelligent people capable of controlling their environment are always valuable. I'll mention Gilmore and May as examples of selfish-atruistic-techsaints. Young and Assange will be discussed this way, one day.
On the Daniel <---> JA axis of access-to-leaks I look forward to those more brazen than JA who don't bother with protecting (US) Collaborators and other collateral damage. Daniel, by offering material only to MSM, is a distraction. If MSM were adequate there would be no niche for cryptome, WL, or Daniel's honeypot.
WL's current trickle is a disgrace. Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
... who'd you rather? Ardin or Wilen?
---------------- David Honig (714) 544 9727 36 Laurelwood Dr. Irvine, CA 92620
Hello David, http://www.rayservers.com/blog/physics-drives-finance-finance-drives-politic... "Today, we do not have money or stock markets. We have debt tokens, slave identification cards, money markets instead of stock markets, and fascists in charge. In a related note, we do not have news, we have propaganda. This is because we do not have a market for news, we have a market for advertising. News merely turns into filler in-between the paid advertising spots. Naturally parasites arise to replace news with propaganda." So, hell no, religious idealism won't cut it. You need a market. Best, Ray -- Rayservers http://www.rayservers.com/ Zurich: +41 43 5000 728 London: +44 20 30 02 74 72 Panama: +507 832 1846 San Francisco: +1 408 419 1978 USA Toll Free: +1 888 265 5009 10:00 - 24:00 GMT We prefer to be paid in gold Globals and silver Isles Global Standard - Global Settlement Foundation http://www.global-settlement.org/ Our PGP key 0x079CCE10 on http://keyserver.rayservers.com/
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