Thursday, December 16, 2010

The Shadow Side of Julian Assange; Wikileaks and UFOs

There was an interview with Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, in the Guardian Newspaper on 3rd December. It took the form of written questions from readers. It was telling and a bit shocking that Mr Assange refused to answer the only critical question.

It was from a retired diplomat who prefaced his question with a list of some of the achievements of his diplomatic work, in e.g. preventing ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and pointed out that the diplomatic service needed to be confidential in order to operate. The questioner concluded: “Why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function?”

The question could hardly have been more germane, and Assange replied: “If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.”

And that was that. It was a big-time evasion. There were other questions which were nearly as long, and not half so cogent, which Mr. Assange had been happy to answer. And why does he call the question 'singular'? If he means 'noticeable', then why not answer it? If he means 'strange', then that is a bizarre put-down, because the question is one that everyone is asking.

The big question about Wikileaks is whether it is doing more harm than good. It has clearly done some good in the past. But it would seem that Julian Assange does not want to look at this issue, and the rudeness of his answer suggests a high degree of self-importance.

This incident reveals a shadow side of Wikileaks, and it reveals Julian Assange as a dangerous individual. There is a degree of blind anti-authoritarianism, and a sense of himself as on a special mission, that is fuelling him. But he is a cultural hero at present, the darling of the left, who are often blindly anti-establishment themselves.

Below is part of what I wrote about his astrology last week (Sun in Cancer square Uranus, Moon in Scorpio, Mars in Aquarius square Jupiter):

Click to Enlarge

Assange has Sun trine Moon (his Moon is between 0 and 12 Scorpio), so he is at ease with who he is on a basic level, he is not conflicted. But therein also lies the danger, for the primal wateriness of his Sun and Moon lack self-reflective ability; bring in the Mars square Scorpionic Jupiter, and you have someone who could be doing more harm than good, while thinking he is one of the good guys (Uranus/Aquarius). Here is the thing: Uranus comes from principles and ideals, rather than consequences of actions. And you don’t know what the consequences of all these leaks are going to be. The stage is too big, the amount of loaded information is vast. Your actions might create a more open society. Or they might lead to war. Or both. You don’t really know.

Assange also said in the interview that if anything happens to him, the cables will continue to be released, for they have been sent to 100,000 people in encrypted form. We are talking about a cultural movement, a mass protest here, more than we are talking about a single individual. And we are talking about the incoming square from Uranus to Pluto, which brings rebellion and protest, like the conjunction in the 1960s, that can do some good. But the rebellion also had its shadow side then as now, which is the tendency to be blind and highly polarised in its opposition to the establishment. You get this wherever you have opposition on a mass level. Wars are like this.

Moving on, Julian Assange makes an interesting point about free speech in the interview, saying that the reason our speech is free is because our speech does not have the power to change anything. The real power, he says, lies with the international web of financial institutions:

The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

I presume the last sentence refers to Assange’s promise to release a load of confidential info about a major US bank. Like ‘cablegate’, it will probably give us a lot of insight into how these institutions operate, but whether these leaks will do more harm than good is again the question. Assange is basically attacking the system, he seems to want to bring it down without having anything to replace it. Money has always been where the power is, and the 20th century attempts to create a mass alternative through communism were even worse than the capitalist system. Hasn’t Assange learnt from history? I am not saying the system cannot be improved, of course it can, but these blind systemic attacks are not the answer.

On perhaps a lighter note, the topic of UFOs was raised in the interview. There have, of course, been claims for years of big military cover-ups of UFO sightings and involvement with UFO technology. If this is the case, then somewhere there will be documents, and somewhere there will be someone who wants to leak some of them. And now there is somewhere to go with them: Wikileaks.

So applying a sort of reverse logic to the Wikileaks phenomenon, if something doesn’t eventually appear on Wikileaks then it probably didn’t happen! There is currently a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, which signifies UFOs, and a Neptune-Chiron conjunction in Aquarius, which signifies the use of the internet (Aquarius) for leaks (Neptune) that have a healing effect (Chiron) – or a permanently damaging effect (Chiron). So the moment has come.

Julian Assange was specifically asked, “Have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?”

He replied that no such documents had been forwarded that also met 2 of Wikileaks’ publishing rules: that the documents should be both original and not self-authored.

That said, he added that “in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.”

That sounds to me like the references are incidental, and that there is no major Wikileaks expose of military cover-ups of UFOs to look forward to. And, applying my ‘reverse Wikileaks logic’, that there has therefore probably not been any such cover-up.


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7 comments:

Lynn Hayes said...

Great post as usual DR. Assange rather embodies the Uranian detachment from consequence, and his followers (myself included) are likely being swept away by the thrilling prospect of Uranian change. I'm working on a post about Bradley Manning, the actual leaker of the cables, that ties into this as well.

Twilight said...

As I read your post, Dharmaruci I breathed a sigh of relief! I'm not the lone person on this planet who, while being in favour of serious whistle-blowing, can see a negative side to Assange and his current media orgy.

Thanks for giving me a little bit of confidence back in my "gut-reaction". You've expressed it very clearly, while all I had was a tangled mess of negative feelings about the latest events on this front.

Juliet said...

Good follow up piece to your previous post, however, I think you may be mischaracterizing Assange as "a darling of the left." See the American Conservative's "The Conservative Case for WikiLeaks" at

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/12/09/the-conservative-case-for-wikileaks/

Also, Reublican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas came out this week in support of Wikileaks:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/ron-paul-wikileaks-defense_n_795014.html

Anonymous said...

There's a certain linearity to your thinking that belies the complexity of these kinds of situations and why they might be happening.

Anonymous said...

I have seen a UFO before, and I am an amateur astronomer, so I am very well-aware that there are intelligent piloted spacecraft. I find it very difficult that the US military would not know about this, as I am.

There is a cover-up, whether it would be wise to disclose the alien reality or not, its up to question. Many think it would just create unnecessary social, religious, scientific, political upheaval, and that's the reasons for the cover-up

Barry Goddard said...

In that case, Wikileaks will probably sooner or later leak something.

Assange's mission seems to be to make controlling governments even more controlling by releasing this sort of information. This then makes those governments less efficient, and more likely that they will fall, to be replaced by more open governments.

That seems to be his theory, which he seems to view as a certainty, so justifying his actions.

Darren said...

In his interview on Ted.com Assange said that when he was a child his parents were on the run from a religious cult.