In this case, the adversary in the US crosshairs has been not only Julian Assange and Wikileaks, but the global populations that Wikileaks seeks to inform. It is our own vulnerabilities – the vulnerabilities in the information processing systems of all human beings – that have been leveraged and exploited in order to undermine and discredit Wikileaks.
Human reality-perception, moreover, as I shall explore more fully in a subsequent article, is an inherently vulnerable beast. It is driven by a range of unconscious psychological influences that are ripe for manipulation.
One such vulnerability, upon which the whole Assange smear campaign depends, concerns the narrative nature of human decision-making. Although human beings perceive ourselves as rational thinkers who weigh evidence logically and carefully, the truth is that we are inclined to understand the world, and particularly the social world, through stories.
Rather than reaching verdicts by carefully weighing facts and evidence, for instance, jurors have been found to decide guilt or innocence by constructing narratives. Using the information presented to them in court, they create stories that weave together what they have been told.
The story that most fluently ties the evidence together in a coherent narrative, which is consistent with jurors’ existing knowledge and world views, becomes the version of the case that they are most willing to accept. Whether the accused ends up as a villain or protagonist in that tale shapes verdicts of innocence and guilt.
The implication for smear campaigns, such as that against Julian Assange, is that in the court of public opinion, a smear-artist’s chances are only as good as the guilty narratives that he or she can weave. Casting the target in an unsympathetic role, as an antagonist, is key.
“The Republic* is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning justice … including the topic of what kind of stories are appropriate.”
“I argue that muthos in the broad sense of story or narrative in fact plays an indispensable philosophical role” Plato
With the new year, however, news broke that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had offered Ecuador a $10 billion bailout in return for handing Julian Assange over to the United States. This bounty came on top of earlier US pressures and inducements, reportedly including increased oil exports, military co-operation and another $1.1 billion in IMF loans, with the US representative of the IMF instructing Ecuadorthat it must “resolve” its relationship with Julian Assange in order to receive the IMF money.
Long article, but this is what blew my mind. Governments everywhere are terrified of whistleblowers.
I know right…
They are using Julian Assange, nobel peace prize nominee, as a political pawn to be traded with.
And by they I mean all the governments involved, including ours, his home country’s. It’s not as if they as much as twitched a finger to give him proper diplomatic assistance.
Honestly butter goes on bread, did anyone notice that it was actually a design treat to use wikis for IT company asset management and employee sourced sources of truths. Now the word wiki makes these IT kissers want to place an order for an ‘asset management solution a la carte’.
I honestly cannot wait for the Everipedia fork to start using that format again.
It’s quite simple, use middle source ( less than $350/- ) and open source products, and certify a company as open source friendly if they use simple understandable products rather than placing their emotionally charged behemoths that noone understands that round every corner in the ITSM 3.0 specification.
And actually physically start using wikis for asset management and employee sourced sources of truths.
If the GDP is 1.3 Trillion dollars for a nation half the size of some cities, all the world’s cesspool of crappy commercial solutions that have heavy military backdoors and commercial shenanigans none of which is of any use to the end user or the buyers of the software.