Julian Assange. I won’t say that I don’t think the work he did with WikiLeaks was totally awesome and incredibly important, yet as I’ve argued before, I have many reservations towards Assange the person – or rather the persona he projects to the world.
Possibly this is because I was slightly underwhelmed when I saw him speak at a curious debate on whistle blowers organized by the New Statesman in Kensington Town Hall back in April 2011.
The case of Julian Assange has become something of a pantomime; frankly, the notion of the SAS storming Ecuador’s Embassy is almost as comical as it is tragic. If Ecuador is prepared to taint itself by keeping Assange fattened and atop his pulpit at its own taxpayers expense then more fool it. Certainly, I wouldn’t want see British taxpayers money spent on this feeding the already giant ego of Julian Assange.
I am totally sure his overbearing narcissism is having a whale of a time as it is; this is something every ego-maniac has vivid and semi-erotic dreams about. For the record, what I have heard of the charges against Assange they seem suspect, but I am beginning to think it’s less likely the US government are behind them and more likely the man himself is. After-all, even Wikileaks itself couldn’t have generated this much publicity if it had leaked the combined contents of the Royal Families closely-guarded bed-side diary’s. Continue reading
Now that the Guardian has revealed that Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of having passed US secrets to WikiLeaks, is a UK citizen by descent from his Welsh mother, it is imperative that the British government be urged to take up his case as it (eventually) did not only with British citizens but also other former British residents at Guantánamo Bay. Amnesty’s UK director, Kate Allen, has called for Foreign Office officials to visit him “just as they would any other British person detained overseas and potentially facing trial on very serious charges.” Bradley Manning is being subjected to inhumane conditions and all those who support Wikileaks should not forget that this young man could suffer a terrible penalty for very many years. Continue reading
We know that web-based organisations like Wikileaks and UKUncut are doing a great job, but it is still gratifying to read that corporate Britain is running scared as a result. The question is will it make the tax dodgers clean up their act. PR Week gives us some clues, but it’s not god news! The report reveals:
One senior agency source told PRWeek that boardrooms across the UK were fearful of web-based organisations such as Wikileaks and UKUncut. ‘A lot of corporate Britain is running scared,’ said the source.
Leading corporate PR company chief executive, Nick Murray-Leslie of Chatsworth Communications, said that, for top corporate executives whose recent concerns have been primarily about financial risk and exposure: “reputational risk is now in the ascendency.” Asked why Wikileaks is so dangerous, he added:
Quite simply, because it has changed everything. It has opened an extended risk front to the business world, that of almost instant, global reputational risk.
Hill & Knowlton’s boss of crisis management, Tim Luckett, agreed that the internet was making corporate reputations more vulnerable:
Fundamentally, the web not only exposes businesses to a far broader range of critics, but also makes it easier to bring them together. Add to that, the reputational legacy of such incidents via the Google Effect and there becomes a significant threat to your brand. The way in which activists are mobilising has changed – these online organisations have increasing influence and subsequent offline power.
So what is the corporate world doing about this new threat? Cleaning up its act? Paying a fair amount of tax, perhaps? Err, not exactly, it seems.
Murray-Leslie explains:
Not being evil helps but if you can’t do that, prepare, prepare, prepare.
Spending a lot more on employing PR consultants seems to be the answer.
El País editor, Javier Moreno, has published an editorial setting out the reasons why his newspaper published the Wikileaks cables. It is a superb statement of justification and worth repeating in full, but further analysis is provided here.
Cynics will argue that none of what we have learned from WikiLeaks differs from the usual way in which high-level international politics is conducted, and that without diplomatic secrets, the world would be even less manageable and more dangerous for everyone. Political classes on both sides of the Atlantic convey a simple message that is tailored to their advantage: trust us, don’t try to reveal our secrets; in exchange, we offer you security. Continue reading
