Inside WikiLeaks - book review

Jack Dikian

April 2011

As we know WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit organization publishing submissions of private, secret, and classified material from anonymous sources such as news sources and whistleblowers. Over time, the original wiki-based approach that allowed "the entire global community" to participate, edit, and comment has given way to WikiLeaks giving exclusives to only a handful of mainstream media organizations.

Besides WikiLeaks winning coveted praise from important human rights organizations and established media outlets, it has also come into controversy and criticism.

Among the awards WikiLeaks received The Economist's New Media Award, Amnesty International's UK Media Award, and the New York City Daily News listing WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news".

WikiLeaks, and in particular its founder Julian Assange has also encountered a barrage of criticism, including a profile in the New York Times that used language such as "erratic and imperious behavior" and "a nearly delusional grandeur” after Wikileaks' disclosure of Iraq and Afghan war files. Anger in U.S. political circles continues to grow with some commentators calling for the U.S. government to find a way to pull the plug on the group's Web site after [it] began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

I picked up a copy of "Inside WikiLeaks, my time with Julian Assange at the world’s most dangerous website” one early morning while killing a bit of time before a meeting. I was surprised it was so heavily discounted given that it was published only a few months ago.

The author Daniel Domscheit-Berg worked with WikiLeaks for three years and probably worked closer with Assange than anyone else at the organization. I say probably because as we learn from Domscheit-Berg that while WikiLeaks made its name exposing the personal, company and government correspondence Mr. Assange lived a clandestine existence. Domscheit-Berg himself wasn’t quite sure, who other than himself and Assange was actively involved in the organization.

The story Domscheit-Berg tells is inviting and from a very personal perspective – discussing with great detail his working relationship with Assange, his habits, his strengths, and the many, perhaps, less complimentary behaviors Domscheit-Berg felt he needed to accept and manage.

As Domscheit-Berg’s story unfolds the reader begins to get the sense that the relationship between himself and Assange wasn’t going to end well. For example, Domscheit-Berg writes “He did not want to share the spotlight with anyone”. When Domscheit-Berg gave a rare interview about WikiLeaks. Assange accused him of “being a media whore”.

Oh No The Super Moon Is Almost Here…

Jack Dikian

March 2011

On the 19^th of March 2011 (in a few days) the Moon will be closer, and appear bigger than it has been and looked since 1992.

The reason the moon will be so close is because it orbits the Earth in an elliptical orbit, and so in each orbit there is a closest approach, and a furthest approach.

Some say this brings with it a cycle connected with natural disasters such as extreme weather events and earthquakes. The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 occurred around the time of a super moon as did hurricane Katrina in 2005, Indonesian earthquake in 2005, and the massive floods in Australia in 1954.

Other’s will say these are nothing more than a coincidence and the moon has no effect on flood or earthquake. The effect of the moon, a full moon, and more so a super moon on us, however, is another thing entirely.

According to folklore the full moon has been linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents, birthrates, fertility, and werewolves, among other things. Some even trade stocks according to phases of the moon.

Narcissism is on the rise…

Jack Dikian

March 2011

Introduction

Narcissistic personality disorder, according to the DSM-IV is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts and as indicated by five (or more) ... of 9 main features listed commencing with “a grandiose sense of self-importance…”.

And even while many highly successful individuals might be considered narcissistic. this disorder is only diagnosed when these behaviours become persistent and very disabling or distressing. While grandiosity is the diagnostic hallmark of pathological narcissism, there is research evidence that pathological narcissism occurs in two forms, a

(a) Grandiose state of mind in young adults that can be may be corrected by life experiences, and

(b) Stable disorder that is less about grandiosity and more around severely disturbed interpersonal relations.

Prognosis and treatment

The preferred theory seems to be that narcissism is caused by very early affective deprivation, yet the clinical material tends to describe narcissists as unwilling rather than unable, thus discussing narcissistic behaviours as a character disorder rather than framed as a personality disorder.

This distinction is important to prognosis and treatment possibilities. If, for example, narcissism is a behaviour pattern that has been learned, then there may options to assist moderate, un-learn, and/or substitute behaviours – through psychodynamic psychotherapy or cognitive-behavioral treatment modalities. Medication is sometimes prescribed to control and ameliorate attendant conditions such as mood disorders or obsessive-compulsive disorders.

On the other hand if this disorder is caused by damage in early childhood then it is probably represents an irremediable condition.

Recent research outcome

Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said a study she conducted of 16,000 university students across the US showed 30 per cent were narcissistic in psychological tests, compared with 15 per cent in 1982.

Professor Twenge said the finding built on another study based on interviews with 35,000 people of varying ages, who were asked if they had ever had symptoms of narcissism. 3 per cent of those over 65 had had symptoms, while for people in their 20s it was 10 per cent. These numbers are interesting and somewhat shocking, particularly when we consider, and according to the DSM-IV between 0.5-1% of the general population are diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

According to Professor Twenge permissive parenting, celebrity culture and the internet are among the causes of the emerging narcissism epidemic. She said telling children they were special to build self-esteem could foster narcissism.

A thought...

I am guessing the Internet era has bought with it a languge and perhaphs even more a belief that the world really does revolve around an individuale – reflect how a generation has grown up with large organisations seemingly being so ameniable through the use of website names like MyBank, MyBus, and even MySchool.

Jean Twenge is Professor of psychology at San Diego State University

Carbon Pricing Again, Copenhagen - Einstein's "God Does Not Play Dice"

Jack Dikian

February 2011

Supported by Greens and independents Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the government would introduce an as-yet-unspecified fixed carbon price from July 1, 2012.

For those that followed the proceedings of Copenhagen 2009 – remember, that forgetful meeting back in December 2009 that was considered to be the world's chance to agree a successor to Kyoto and would bring about meaningful carbon cuts.

Many might not be aware, this wasn’t a first for Copenhagen. Some of the worlds most respected physicists assembled in the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory. At that conference, Heisenberg and Born claimed quantum mechanics to be a complete theory for which the fundamental physical and mathematical hypotheses are no longer susceptible of modification.

Not everyone agreed with the new interpretation, or with Born and Heisenberg's statement about future work. Einstein and Schrödinger were among the most notable dissenters. Einstein, was so disenchanted with with this work, he famously remarked - "God does not play dice."

Positive, Negative Freedom, Liberty And Power

Jack Dikian

February 2011

Against the climate of the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and now Bahrain, the smallest Middle East nation to be engulfed in anti-government demonstrations I wanted to revisit the topic of positive and negative freedom – also known as positive and negative liberty.

The Frankfurt School psychoanalyst and Marxist humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm drew a distinction between positive and negative freedom in The Fear of Freedom (1941) and Isaiah Berlin's, in his 1958 "Two Concepts of Liberty" essay (incidentally, sometimes acknowledged as the first to draw the same distinction and probably wider read) deals with the same.

Positive Freedom

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes positive liberty, in an example, as a democratic society is a free society because it is a self-determined society, and that a member of that society is free to the extent that he or she participates in its democratic process. There are also individualist applications of the concept of positive freedom as in, a government should aim actively to create the conditions necessary for individuals to be self-sufficient or to achieve self-realization.

Where this becomes less than straight-forward is when you consider an action being taken, against an individual’s will when it is thought it is in the interest of that individual. In "Recovering the Social Contract", Ron Replogle made a similar metaphor "Surely”, he writes, “it is no assault on my dignity as a person if you take my car keys, against my will, when I have had too much to drink”. In this sense, positive liberty is the adherence to a set of rules agreed upon by all parties involved.

Should the rules be altered, all parties involved must agree upon the changes. Therefore, positive liberty is a contractarian philosophy. This is in odds to Berlin’s view of positive liberty. Positive liberty, according to Berlin, could only apply when the withdrawal of liberty from an individual was in pursuit of a choice that individual himself/herself made, not a general principle of society or any other person's opinion.

Negative Freedom

Negative liberty is defined as freedom from interference by other people, and according to Berlin, the distinction between positive and negative liberty is deeply embedded in the political tradition. Once again, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes negative liberty is most commonly assumed in liberal defenses of the constitutional liberties of liberal-democratic societies, such as freedom of movement, etc.

So why am I revisiting torts – and why now…

A fundamental question that has busied philosophers, historians, academics, and politicians for hundreds of years is that of how is an individuals’ desire for liberty to be reconciled with the assumed need for authority.

Perhaps the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, whilst not in total agreement in the level of degrees, give an influential and representative solutions answer to this question. Both agree that a line has to be drawn and a space sharply delineated where each individual can act unhindered according to their tastes, desires, and inclinations. This zone defines the sacrosanct space of personal liberty. But, they believe no society is possible without some authority, where the intended purpose of authority is to prevent collisions among the different ends and, thereby, to demarcate the boundaries where each person's zone of liberty begins and ends.

Berlin claimed that utopian ideas can be dangerous to liberal democracy. Berlin was in favor of this decline, even eager to help it along. His earlier essay, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West” formed, to a great extent, one of his central themes of his work.

Consider for example: The common recognition that “power corrupts” doesn’t capture the real dangers of political ambition. When powerful individuals are trying to change the world, corruption may well be the saving grace of political life. Berlin suggests that it is the uncorrupted, the men and women totally committed to their utopian vision, sincerely seeking to make the world better, who are really dangerous.

The greater the good that is sought, the more power that is necessary to achieve it. But whether political ambition is personal or ideological, whether the sought-after good is great or small, total or partial, the consequences are similar; only the scale is different. Political ambition produces what we might think of as a natural tendency toward greater and greater power and wealth-a natural tendency toward authoritarianism and hierarchy.

The Accidental Billionaires - review

Jack Dikian

February 2011

I usually prefer to read the book before the movie comes out, unfortunately, this time, I saw the movie once or twice before reading the book. I was already familiar with the story line, the characters, and the backdrop the book and the movie is set against – mostly Harvard University. It is no surprise therefore that while reading this book, I would continually look for how the movie diverged from this, the sequence, who said what and when, the events that led up to launching Facebook, and asking myself, which account is closer to the facts.

I was also very interested in The Accidental Billionaires because I was curious, not only about the geneses of Facebook, but also if and how incubated start-ups have changed in the last 10 years. I spend a small number of years working on an Internet idea with colleagues, seeking angel capital, building a system, and struggling with creditors and maintaining a belief in our product. It turns out that the technology has changed, but the origins and development of a start-up to a more far-flung enterprise remain very much the same.

So despite seeing the movie "The Social Network," I sat down with Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal". Ben Mezrich has a gift for finding high-energy, strange-but-true tales and The Accidental Billionaires is no exception. Mezrich is the Harvard educated author who drew public attention when he chronicled the story of a group of MIT students who finessed a blackjack card counting system and had the kahunas to try it out in the Vegas casinos. Mezrich, also wrote Rigged, Busting Vegas, Ugly Americans, all around a similar themes.

Incomplete

Eye Of The Yasi Storm

Jack Dikian

February 2011

At the time of writing this – cyclone Yasi, classified as a strong Category 5 system is about 5 hours (midnight local) away from landfall, crossing the north east coast of Queensland, Australia. Yasi is approaching the east coast at an approximate speed of 30km/h and most likely by accompanied by an ocean storm surge due to the fact that timing corresponds with high water tide.

This cyclone is significantly more intense than Larry, (a category 4) Larry left a trail of destruction including damage to 10,000 homes and a repair bill of more than a billion dollars in 2006.

Yasi is as big as the geographic size of Tasmania (see image above) and predicted to be probably more intense than anything experienced in Australia.

After the eye of Yasi passes, and the other side of the cyclone will hit, and the wind will blow with an equal strength but in the opposite direction.