Wikileaks

Normally I don’t weigh in too much on political issues on this blog, but I do want to put in A WORD FOR JULIAN ASSANGE. (Assuming he’s not actually a rapist, and I think there’s much reason at the moment to assume he’s not. The timing of the charges obviously raises some eyebrows.)

A lot of governments were embarrassed, but I don’t see how this is anything other than a major journalistic coup. We need informants leaking documents to journalists, however “sordid” the motives of the informants. If you or I ran a newspaper, we’d publish the documents too, or we’d be failing in our jobs.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Assange’s judgment starts to fray or has already started to fray. I’m not sure how anyone in his position could escape massive paranoia. Suddenly becoming both a world celebrity and the target of hatred by superpower governments would take a huge psychological toll, and I’d be surprised if he’s entirely sane at the moment. Rock stardom was enough to push Kurt Cobain and others over the edge, and combining rock star paranoia/narcissism with espionage figure paranoia/narcissm must be an almost impossible brew to drink. Especially when there really may be people who want to kill Assange and have the means to do it. I’m fearing a bad end for the gentleman in the not so distant future.