Re: <nettime> Wikileaks - time to switch the focus: save private Manning!

["J.A. Terranson" <measl@mfn.org>]

On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, Patrice Riemens wrote:

<SNIP all of the terrible things happening to Manning>

> I believe this is grossly unfair and calls for redress. Without denying 
> the importance of watching developments around Wikileaks and what 
> happens with its somewhat quixotic supremo, I am getting worried and 
> upset by the fact that this gets far more attention, concern, and I dare 
> say sympathy, at the expense of pressure and campaigning in favor of 
> Bradley Manning, who, like every other defendant, deserves human 
> conditions of detention and a fair trial.

Such is the very nature of whistleblowing: the whistleblower gets shit on, 
often unable to ever find work again (if not worse, like Manning), while 
those who s/he has leaked to make a fortune off the leak(s) (all the while 
not actually working too hard to make the leaks into the tools they were 
envisioned by the leaker, but instead using them as a short term financial 
windfall, afterwhich the source(s) get to GFY, and the public mouthpiece 
get to move on to the next sucker in line.

The altruistic whistleblower (ie, one who does it for no money) always 
gets left out in the cold.  Such is the nature of the Universe, which, of 
course, hates each and every one of us when you get right down to it...

//Alif

-- 
"Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always
be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."

Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech


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