WikiLeaks and the First Global Condom War
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 13 Dec 2010
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service
Political Awakening through Asymmetric Psychodrama: US Versus Assange
Introduction
This is an exploration of the curious mirroring between the role of Julian Assange, as the founder of WikiLeaks, and that of the US as the world’s currently acclaimed sole superpower. As is now typical of any global crisis, many are now focused on who to blame and whether they can be neutralized or eliminated — getting the justice they deserve — whilst others complicit in the process escape with impunity, honours and rewards as the exemplification of the universal values of humanity. Assumptions that rational arguments are possible in this context are variously flawed and serve only to reinforce the perspective of those presenting them. They do not engage with alternative perspectives such as to articulate a larger and more fruitful context.
The approach taken here is therefore to set the actors and processes within a psychodrama. This may well be what the future derives from the current confrontation — long after key players have been assassinated to the satisfaction of their opponents — perhaps taking the form of myth lending itself to portrayal in movies and interactive videogames. Current references to a period of global political awakening may well be more appropriately understood for many of the players through myth and what is activated in the imagination and psyche. Rather than information warfare or cyberwarfare as is widely claimed, it might then be more appropriate to see the global encounter as one of memetic warfare (Missiles, Missives, Missions and Memetic Warfare, 2001). Any “warfare” is then better understood as being about, or between, domains of confidence.
From a perspective of psychological warfare, the argument here uses the latter’s three-fold concern with “information dominance“, “asymmetric threat” and “cyberthreat“, as noted by John Pilger (Why Are Wars Not Being Reported Honestly? The Guardian, 10 December 2010). In what follows these are conflated into “condom” as an acronym central to the current drama of the “First Global Condom War”. Condom is fruitfully understood here as implying “confidence dominance” (as being the key to “information dominance”), with connotations of “confidence trick” — especially in the light of the continuing crises of confidence in the financial domain (David DeGraw, Wall Street’s Pentagon Papers: biggest financial scam in world history – $12.3 trillion in taxpayers’ money, Global Research, 6 December 2010).
Assange and Pilger share both an Australian background and a concern with meaningful social change. As further justification for use of “condom”, it is appropriate to note reference in parliamentary debate in that region to a minister being a “condom on the penis of progress”. The argument here is that this insight may be of global relevance.
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