Still, it is not easy knowing who is who when they play the same game using the same strategies, moves, gambits, ploys, feints, struts, deceptions. This mirroring of the opposition is a long tradition of authorities, their covert agents and provocateurs manipulating their citizenry, consumers, fans, doling out manufactured information. No doubt the game advances the interests of all the games players so long as they follow their agreed upon rules and cheat very carefully. We may admire their skill and daring and triumphs but the rules state we are not qualified to be the players, that requires ranking by authorities of the game. Assange was once not a player, studied hard, watched the masters, now he is surrounded by grand masterful players and reaps the rewards of fame, acclaim, and happily the monetary prizes, to be sure spending a lot of that on lawyers and promoters. So it goes. Meanwhile there is a need for more undoctored documents for the newbies and bystanders angling for a chance, for consumers to see what happens offstage, how vetting and redacting, parceling and censoring is done. But Assange and cohorts have become secretive about the WikiLeaks operation and apparently (who knows) hidden stashes of income, in concert with the practices of secretkeepers of all stripes. And not least WL engages in defamation to an almost hysterical extent that suggests much to hide, again mirroring authoritarian shilling. Promoting adversarialism is ancient theocracy where only priests play the game they rig. Let us all play, unmedicated by reputation-mongering tradecraft of TV, news, advertizing, limited access to documentation and overload of "if you knew what we know, trust us" pulp fiction. At 10:21 AM 9/4/2013, you wrote:
2013/9/4 John Young <mailto:jya@pipeline.comjya@pipeline.com> The Snowden material needs an untethered, unchoked, and unmarionetted leaker not more commercial journalism dribbling what, unforntunately has become common in the "era of WikiLeaks journalism," is disinfo. And implies the prospect of complicity with authorities under rigging of privileged journalism and coddled D-Noticers.
You could say playing games is what politicians do. But not playing the games means you get no game. Assange does explicitly, publicly and knowingly play games. He knows they work. Had all the documents been published unedited there would be a single headline in every newspaper.
Now there's thousands. Every week it's hammered upon. We see people claiming "Oh, see, the NSA said something to make it okay, and I think it actually is!" only to be stomped by the next headline showing it was definitely not okay. This releasing scheme is a very, very good match for the current journalistic reality.
Given Assange seems to be pretty well on the side of civil liberty, freedom and power, I think he's doing a rather good job.