Yesterday was Operation: Blackface. People were to wear black clothing or armbands, and change their profile pictures to black icons if they had a Facebook. I heard an argument that the title of the project was racist and I guess I can sort of understand that perspective. Someone said that when people tried to protest the term it was christened, their comments were deleted. That is not okay. The creators should have expected the outcry and planned ahead as to avoid situations that could cause a lack of unity.
While I greatly support Wikileaks, there are a couple aspects of it that are wrong. The creator, Julian Assange, is a rapist. It is not okay that he has raped women. I don’t care how it happened, “surprise sex” is a cop-out term. When a person tells you to stop doing something, you stop, especially in regards to sex. I support his Wikileaks project and hope that it thrives, but I do not support those particular actions. I heard Sweden’s punishment for rape is a mere $700. That is paltry, and a joke. One of the people Assange raped is connected to the FBI. Is this a coincidence. The world may never know.
We should all enjoy the Wikileaks project while it is at its height. This kind of momentum of a counter-movement cannot be maintained. It may never happen again. This kind of exposure of corrupt actions has never happened in the past, and governments of the world will ensure that it is even harder to happen again. Heck, federal agencies are even banning their employees from reading leaked cables.
I have friends who have been arrested for less. Thought crimes can even put an idealist activist behind bars. If the government thinks you’re a threat they will cut you down to size, before your cause is even half-way effective. Common community organizers are on the FBI’s watch list. I wonder, with my few years in the political scene, what they have on me. How thick is my file right now? There are ways to find out, but I don’t want to go through the process. Maybe in the future, when I’m not occupied with other more worthwhile endeavors, I’ll file a request.
Anyway, I find Julian Assange to be a modern day revolutionary. Governments aren’t crumbling to their knees, rather, the opposite is happening. They are on the offensive, demanding his head for exposing their dirty secrets. I am worried he might get assassinated. If he does, I won’t be surprised. Too many good people die young in a way. I supported Operation: Blackface even though its racist. Why can’t our causes be unified? This is an essential question.
A major reason this will be ineffective though, is because it is based solely on Facebook. The website is compactible, online, and can easily be ignored, On the flipside, news outlets will report on it allowing it to be heard about it a greater volume. I don’t want to say we should take to the streets, because I am burnt out from activism and most people don’t do it. We could write our legislators, but they don’t give jack shit about us. They only care about lobbyists and who can line their pockets with money.
Julian Assange is not a terrorist, but I don’t view him as a journalist either. He is simply a man who provided something unique to the world. It will be the history books. How will he be viewed? At first, the media painted him as a hero but now he is evil. Time was going to make him the person of the year, but changed it to someone I don’t like. I forget who that person was, but last year it was Ben Bernanke. Obviously, the award doesn’t mean jack shit. Ben Bernanke is a dickhead. Assange is better off without that award. Compared to his current problems at hand, having the honor revoked is nothing.
It’s possible he may get tortured in prison. This is what is supposedly happening to the person who originally leaked one of the cables. The courts couldn’t decide whether to grant him bail or not. He was given bail, then it was revoked. Life is fucked. We are all ants, cogs in the machine. The only lessons governments are learning from this experience is how to keep better secrets. I’m worried we will also find it harder to access knowledge bases in the future as well.
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