Corbett & Pilato Skewer the Villainous and Cunning Julian Assange
From Ken Adachi, Editor
http://educate-yourself.org/lte/assangecritics07dec10.shtml
December 7, 2010Corbett & Pilato Skewer the Villainous and Cunning Julian Assange (Dec. 7, 2010)
Subject: Wikileaks
From: Gnanasekharan (India)
Date: Tue, December 7, 2010
To: Ken AdachiDear Mr. Ken,
I am Gnanasekharan from India. First of all let me thank you for your wonderful work which has "educated" and continues to educate me. The current message is about wikileaks.I had come across the following video on the subject and would like to have your views on it.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/988.html
Thanks and regards.
Gnanasekharan***
Hello Gnanasekharan,
I watched the video a few times and found the criticisms of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange by these two self-appointed nay-sayers to be hollow and lacking in merit. Of the two, James Evan Pilato comes across as the more smug and self-assured. After all, we can see that he's perhaps 24 or 25 years of age and we all know how wise, erudite, perceptive, and clever we are at 25.
Knowing everything about everything, he's anxious to share his stunning insights with the world. Today, fortunately, it only takes an internet connection with a web cam, and voila ~ the world is our oyster.
I know a bit more about James Corbett and have more respect for him, but his willingnes to jump aboard the Cynics Express with Pilato is troubling, especially considering the political and historical importance of the WikiLeaks/Assange story.
I might expect a Young Turk performance from Pilato because he's at that age and maturity level, but Corbett, being older, should know better. However, it appears that they put up a lot of these YouTube video clips as a team, so I guess Corbett feels compelled to join in with Pilato's over-the-top "analysis" of WikiLeaks' apparently insignificant role in exposing incriminating government documents ("everything we already knew") and mentions dark rumors about Assange being funded by Soros or being an asset of the CIA (this is also alluded to in the title of the article posted by brasschecktv.com: " Wikileaks: Brought to you by the CIA". right)
Corbett seems resentful of the fame that WikiLeaks and Assange have achieved and views their world wide recognition as self-serving "hype" and "PR". Does James Corbett understand the difference between publicity that is artificially generated by a Public Relations firm (thus the expression "PR") and the storm of media attention that is focused on us when we do something that is dramatic and extremely upsetting to the world's power barons, especially the US government?
While they hold Julian Assange with high suspicion and in near contempt, they both refer to John Young of cryptocon.com as some sort of hero in 'getting out the story'. John Young, they claim, also views WikiLeaks as having accomplished nothing of significance because "we already knew" everything that WikiLaeks put up on the web. However, when I took a look at cryptocon.com home page today, I noticed at least two articles that directly referred to the documents that WikiLeaks posted on the internet. If John Young "already knew" everything that WikiLaeks put on the net, then why does he keep on referring to the documents that were posted by WikiLeaks? Why doesn't he quote his own, PRIOR sources of knowledge, since he "already knew"?
Pilato also cites Glenn Greenwald as another critic who is suspicious of WikiLeaks and Assange yet it's the very same Glenn Greenwald (of salon.com) who is seen defending Assange and WikiLeaks to the max in his debate with Steven Aftergood on Democracy Now on December 3, 2010 and again this morning on Democracy Now (Dec. 7, 2010) with Amy Goodman. Contrary to Pilato's claim, Greenwald is not a critic of WikiLeaks, but rather he's one of their most ardent champions.
Even more annoying is Corbett's assertions that Assange and WikiLeaks are manipulating the public for sympathy in order to bring in more PayPal donations. He disparages Assange and WikiLeaks' justified media attention as a publicity campaign:
" I think there's been a certain tendency to treat WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as some kind of Second Coming of Christ in recent months that this is going to be "the" organization that will save humanity..(yada. yada)."
How insulting and hypocritical of Corbett when his own co-host, James Evan Pilato, himself makes a pitch for the public's continued support near the end of the video clip. I think we can all agree that "support" is code for PayPal donations (which, by the way, PayPal just cut off from WikiLeaks), can't we?
Since Pilato claims that their video clips are having such a "huge" impact, I thought I would take at look at their respective web sites and see what their rankings were with alexa.com. The first thing I noticed is that no web site comes up when you type in "mediamonarchy.com" (try it). While searching for Pilato's ranking at alexa.com, it suggested that maybe I was looking for mediamonarchy.blogspot.com? Ah, hah, now we find him.
So WHY does Pilato keep on referring to himself as hosting MediaMonarchy.com when no such web site with that name exits? He's posting at a BLOG. It's not a domain name which he owns, but rather it's a blog web site registered to Google Inc. Why does he pretend otherwise?
By the way, James Pilato's mediamonarchy.blogspot.com has a world ranking on December 7, 2010 at Alexa of 947,479, while his USA ranking is 253,823. James Corbett's corbettreport.com web site gets a little more traffic. His world ranking is 336,420 and his USA ranking is 146,541. This level of viewership, however, is not "huge" by anybody's standards when they can't reach the 100,000 strata. They don't even show up on Alexa's statistics graph ("no data").
And these are the two guys who accuse Julian Assange and WikiLeaks of "hype?"
Sincerely, Ken Adachi
***
Subject: Wikileaks
From: Gnanasekharan
Date: Thu, December 9, 2010
To: Ken AdachiDear Mr. Ken
This may be of interest to you.
Some Reasons Why Wikileaks Isn't a "CIA/NWO/Zionist/Pro-War Propaganda Operation"
Regards
Gnanasekharan***
Hello Gnanasekharan,
Yes, I saw this article posted to Rense yesterday and had planned to add the link to the reply which I posted to you. This author is stating in print what should be OBVIOUS to a person of reasonable intelligence. WikiLeaks is exposing corruption and duplicity of governments and government officials. Shouldn't we applaud that effort?
Julian Assange had the courage and fortitude to take on the role of spokesman for WikiLeaks, knowing full well the "baggage" that would accompany that responsibility, in order to bolster WikiLeaks credibility and accountability. Shouldn't we admire that?
The reason I took the time to review the baseless accusations leveled at Assange by Corbett and Pilato was to illustrate the EASE with which one can accuse others of being an intelligence "asset". It's easy to take a cheap shot like that. You give your readers the impression that you're a really smart cookie and possess above average perceptive abilities, It infers that you have "inside" knowledge or contacts. This can be very rewarding for those with a need to feed their egos and inflate their sense of self importance, but what if the accusations are untrue and without supporting evidence or justification?
Are they not then responsible for recklessly smearing the honor of an innocent man? Are they not joining in and participating in a public stoning along with government character assassins? Do they, therefore, deserve our attention, or do we dismiss then as irresponsible critics, lacking in discernment and sound judgment?
I think you know how I'm voting.
Sincerely, Ken
Related
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks (Dec. 4, 2010)
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/julianassange04dec10.shtmlJulian Assange & WikiLeaks (Dec. 3, 2010)
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/wikileaksdebate03dec10.shtml
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