re: #31 Charleston Chew

I don’t think he has that much of a well-thought-out agenda. He strikes me as more of a stir-the-pot anarchist.

I think he’s more of an opportunist. He sets his sights on any organization who’s dirt falls into his lap. What bothers me about this is that the freer societies are more vulnerable to this and the police states are less likely to leak any info, giving a distorted view of who the really bad people in the world are.

I really don’t think he’s thought things out on this level. Wikileaks is more like kids leaving a flaming bag of poo on the doorstep of a mean teacher, only on the grandest scale ever.

That’s what I used to think. Then I went looking for what he has written and said in interviews. Seriously, go looking. You’ll find things like these (cryptome copy of two 2006 essays by Assange).

Seriously, thinking of him as a popinjay is giving him too little credit. Consider, just for one example, that he’s a major contributor to the rubberhose filesystem. (see this iq.org info paper for explanation.)