From 2ced9c95871b358076b4cf8918706238a67ccb90 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nick White Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:17:21 +0000 Subject: Solidify margin workaround, update tests --- tests/html/bbcnewsleaks.html.simple | 74 +++++++++++++++++------------------ tests/html/guardiangoogle.html.simple | 2 +- tests/html/newyorkerleaks.html.simple | 2 +- tests/html/riemenstext.html.simple | 32 +++++++-------- tests/html/wikireading.html.simple | 22 +++++------ 5 files changed, 66 insertions(+), 66 deletions(-) (limited to 'tests/html') diff --git a/tests/html/bbcnewsleaks.html.simple b/tests/html/bbcnewsleaks.html.simple index 4b6043e..25b887e 100644 --- a/tests/html/bbcnewsleaks.html.simple +++ b/tests/html/bbcnewsleaks.html.simple @@ -166,9 +166,9 @@ $render("page-bookmark-links","page-bookmark-links-head",{ Some suspected insurgents held in Iraqi custody suffered abuse, according to the leaked records

Wikileaks has released almost 400,000 secret US military logs, which suggest US commanders ignored evidence of torture by the Iraqi authorities.

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The documents also suggest "hundreds" of civilians were killed at US military checkpoints after the invasion in 2003.

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And the files show the US kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. The death toll was put at 109,000, of whom 66,081 were civilians.

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The US criticised the largest leak of classified documents in its history.

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The documents also suggest "hundreds" of civilians were killed at US military checkpoints after the invasion in 2003.

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And the files show the US kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. The death toll was put at 109,000, of whom 66,081 were civilians.

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The US criticised the largest leak of classified documents in its history.

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

A US Department of Defense spokesman dismissed the documents published by the whistleblowing website as raw observations by tactical units, which were only snapshots of tragic, mundane events.

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On allegations of abuse, he said it was policy always to report "potentially illegal abusive behaviour" so action could be taken.

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At a news conference in London, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that those snapshots of everyday events offered a glimpse at the "human scale" of the conflict.

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The deaths of one or two individuals made up the "overwhelming number" of people killed in Iraq, Mr Assange said.

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The new documents and new deaths contained within them showed the range and frequency of the "small, relentless tragedies of this war" added John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, which worked with Wikileaks.

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Speaking to reporters in Washington on Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she condemned the disclosure and suggested the leaks put lives at risk.

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However, Wikileaks said it was confident that the documents - published in a heavily censored form - contain "no information that could be harmful to any individual".

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Wikileaks says it expects to launch legal proceedings as a result of information contained in the documents.

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'Nothing new'

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The 391,831 US army Sigacts (Significant Actions) reports published by Wikileaks on Friday describe the apparent torture of Iraqi detainees by the Iraqi authorities, sometimes using electrocution, electric drills and in some cases even executing detainees, says the BBC's Adam Brookes, who has examined some of the files.

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The US military knew of the abuses, the documents suggest, but reports were sent up the chain of command marked "no further investigation", our correspondent adds.

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On allegations of abuse, he said it was policy always to report "potentially illegal abusive behaviour" so action could be taken.

+

At a news conference in London, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that those snapshots of everyday events offered a glimpse at the "human scale" of the conflict.

+

The deaths of one or two individuals made up the "overwhelming number" of people killed in Iraq, Mr Assange said.

+

The new documents and new deaths contained within them showed the range and frequency of the "small, relentless tragedies of this war" added John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, which worked with Wikileaks.

+

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she condemned the disclosure and suggested the leaks put lives at risk.

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However, Wikileaks said it was confident that the documents - published in a heavily censored form - contain "no information that could be harmful to any individual".

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Wikileaks says it expects to launch legal proceedings as a result of information contained in the documents.

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'Nothing new'

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The 391,831 US army Sigacts (Significant Actions) reports published by Wikileaks on Friday describe the apparent torture of Iraqi detainees by the Iraqi authorities, sometimes using electrocution, electric drills and in some cases even executing detainees, says the BBC's Adam Brookes, who has examined some of the files.

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The US military knew of the abuses, the documents suggest, but reports were sent up the chain of command marked "no further investigation", our correspondent adds.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

@@ -198,23 +198,23 @@ $render("page-bookmark-links","page-bookmark-links-head",{
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The documents number in the hundreds of thousands. They take the form of reports written by soldiers after vicious firefights with insurgents, or after a roadside bomb has gone off, or the bodies of a family have been found murdered in an abandoned factory. Their language is military - hard and attenuated.

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We found, with relative ease, reports of horrible abuse committed by Iraqi security forces on detainees - beatings, electrocution, the use of an electric drill on a man's legs. The Americans were aware the abuse had taken place. On some, not all, of these reports was marked "no further investigation", suggesting that American forces took no action on learning of the abuse.

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The true lessons contained in these documents will take months or years to emerge. But an early question they pose is: why do Iraqi security forces appear to be continuing practices that might have died with the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime? And what has the United States done to end them?

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The documents number in the hundreds of thousands. They take the form of reports written by soldiers after vicious firefights with insurgents, or after a roadside bomb has gone off, or the bodies of a family have been found murdered in an abandoned factory. Their language is military - hard and attenuated.

+

We found, with relative ease, reports of horrible abuse committed by Iraqi security forces on detainees - beatings, electrocution, the use of an electric drill on a man's legs. The Americans were aware the abuse had taken place. On some, not all, of these reports was marked "no further investigation", suggesting that American forces took no action on learning of the abuse.

+

The true lessons contained in these documents will take months or years to emerge. But an early question they pose is: why do Iraqi security forces appear to be continuing practices that might have died with the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime? And what has the United States done to end them?

One document shows the US military was given a video apparently showing Iraqi Army (IA) officers executing a prisoner in the northern town of Talafar.

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"The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him," states the log, which also names at least one of the perpetrators.

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In another case, US soldiers suspected army officers of cutting off a detainee's fingers and burning him with acid.

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Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told the BBC that if abuse by the Iraqi security forces was witnessed, or reports of it were received, US military personnel were instructed to inform their commanders.

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"And at the appropriate level that information would then be shared with the Iraqi authorities and the military for them to take action."

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The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which US forces killed civilians at checkpoints and during operations.

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In one incident in July 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed by a helicopter, about half of them civilians, according to the log.

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Another record shows an Apache helicopter gunship fired on two men believed to have fired mortars at a military base in Baghdad in February 2007, even though they were attempting to surrender. The crew asked a lawyer whether they could accept the surrender, but were told they could not, "and are still valid targets". So they shot them.

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The helicopter - with the callsign "Crazyhorse 18" - was also involved in another incident that July in which two journalists were killed and two children wounded.

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There are also new indications of Iran's involvement in Iraq, with reports of insurgents being trained and using weapons provided by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

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Finally, the documents appear to show that the US military did keep records of civilian deaths, despite earlier denials that any official statistics on the death toll were available.

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The logs showed there were more than 109,000 violent deaths between 2004 and the end of 2009.

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"The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him," states the log, which also names at least one of the perpetrators.

+

In another case, US soldiers suspected army officers of cutting off a detainee's fingers and burning him with acid.

+

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told the BBC that if abuse by the Iraqi security forces was witnessed, or reports of it were received, US military personnel were instructed to inform their commanders.

+

"And at the appropriate level that information would then be shared with the Iraqi authorities and the military for them to take action."

+

The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which US forces killed civilians at checkpoints and during operations.

+

In one incident in July 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed by a helicopter, about half of them civilians, according to the log.

+

Another record shows an Apache helicopter gunship fired on two men believed to have fired mortars at a military base in Baghdad in February 2007, even though they were attempting to surrender. The crew asked a lawyer whether they could accept the surrender, but were told they could not, "and are still valid targets". So they shot them.

+

The helicopter - with the callsign "Crazyhorse 18" - was also involved in another incident that July in which two journalists were killed and two children wounded.

+

There are also new indications of Iran's involvement in Iraq, with reports of insurgents being trained and using weapons provided by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

+

Finally, the documents appear to show that the US military did keep records of civilian deaths, despite earlier denials that any official statistics on the death toll were available.

+

The logs showed there were more than 109,000 violent deaths between 2004 and the end of 2009.

@@ -285,11 +285,11 @@ $render("page-bookmark-links","page-bookmark-links-head",{ -

They included 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy", 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 coalition troops.

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Iraq Body Count, which collates civilian deaths using cross-checked media reports and other figures such as morgue records, said that based on an analysis of a sample of 860 logs, it estimated that around 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths would be identified.

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The UK's Guardian newspaper also reported that the US military appeared not to have recorded any civilian deaths during its two major offensives on the city of Falluja in 2004.

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Mr Morrell, of the Pentagon, told the BBC that the leak was a "travesty" which provided enemies of the West with an "extraordinary database to figure out how we operate".

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He said the cache of documents contained "nothing new" with regards to fundamental policy issues.

+

They included 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy", 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 coalition troops.

+

Iraq Body Count, which collates civilian deaths using cross-checked media reports and other figures such as morgue records, said that based on an analysis of a sample of 860 logs, it estimated that around 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths would be identified.

+

The UK's Guardian newspaper also reported that the US military appeared not to have recorded any civilian deaths during its two major offensives on the city of Falluja in 2004.

+

Mr Morrell, of the Pentagon, told the BBC that the leak was a "travesty" which provided enemies of the West with an "extraordinary database to figure out how we operate".

+

He said the cache of documents contained "nothing new" with regards to fundamental policy issues.

@@ -343,11 +343,11 @@ $render("page-bookmark-links","page-bookmark-links-head",{ -

And he once again asked Wikileaks to remove the documents from the web and return them to the Department of Defense.

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US Defence Secretary Robert Gates suggested the whistle-blowing website had blood on its hands in July after it published more than 70,000 secret papers about the war in Afghanistan.

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The investigation into the Afghan leak has focused on Bradley Manning, a US army intelligence analyst who is in custody and has been charged with providing Wikileaks with a video of the July 2007 attack by a helicopter with the callsign Crazyhorse 18.

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The release of the documents comes as the US military prepares to withdraw all 50,000 remaining troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

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Violence in the country has declined sharply over the past two years, but near-daily bombings and shootings continue.

+

And he once again asked Wikileaks to remove the documents from the web and return them to the Department of Defense.

+

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates suggested the whistle-blowing website had blood on its hands in July after it published more than 70,000 secret papers about the war in Afghanistan.

+

The investigation into the Afghan leak has focused on Bradley Manning, a US army intelligence analyst who is in custody and has been charged with providing Wikileaks with a video of the July 2007 attack by a helicopter with the callsign Crazyhorse 18.

+

The release of the documents comes as the US military prepares to withdraw all 50,000 remaining troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

+

Violence in the country has declined sharply over the past two years, but near-daily bombings and shootings continue.

diff --git a/tests/html/guardiangoogle.html.simple b/tests/html/guardiangoogle.html.simple index 0d1de23..8f1a199 100644 --- a/tests/html/guardiangoogle.html.simple +++ b/tests/html/guardiangoogle.html.simple @@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
Google advertising … 'We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.' Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
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An advertising agency has monopolised, disorganised, and commercialised the largest library in human history. Without a fundamental rethinking of the way knowledge is organised in the digital era, Google's information coup d'état will have profound existential consequences.

Google was originally conceived to be a commercial-free search engine. Twelve years ago, in the first public documentation of their technology, the inventors of Google warned that advertising corrupts search engines. "[W]e expect that advertising-funded search engines," Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote, "will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." And they condemned as particularly "insidious" the sale of the top spot on search results; a practice Google now champions.

Under the sway of CEO Eric Schmidt, Google currently makes nearly all its money from practices its founders once rightly abhorred. Following its $3.1bn acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007, Google has became the world's largest online advertising company. With ad space on 85% of all internet sites, upwards of 98% of Google's revenue comes solely from polluting online knowledge with commercial messages. In the gleeful words of Schmidt, "We are an advertising company." Google is not a search engine; it is the most powerful commercialising force on the internet.

Every era believes their way of organising knowledge is ideal and dismisses prior systems as nonsensical. Academic libraries in the US use subject categorisation derived from Sir Francis Bacon's 17th-century division of all knowledge into imagination, memory and reason. Yet who today, aside from one or two exceptions, would try to organise the internet using a handful of categories? For a generation trained to use Google, this approach seems outmoded, illogical or impossible. But modern search engines, which operate by indexing instead of categorising, are also fundamentally flawed.

Three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift foresaw the cultural danger of relying on indexes to organise knowledge. He believed index learning led to superficial thinking. Swift was right and a growing of teachers and public intellectuals are coming to the realisation that search engines encourage skimming, light reading and trifling thoughts. Whereas subject classification creates harmony and encourages serendipity; indexes fracture knowledge into snippets making us stupid. Thanks to Google, the superficiality of index learning is infecting our culture, our society, and our civilisation.

Google did not invent the index. That honour goes to the 500 monks led by Hugh of St Cher who compiled the first concordance of the bible in 1230. Nor was Google the first to dream of indexing all of human knowledge. Henry Wheately had the idea in 1902 for a "universal index". And Google was not the first to cynically dump advertisements into the search-engine index. What makes Google unique is the extent to which it has, oblivious to the consequences, made a business out of commercialising the organisation of knowledge.

The vast library that is the internet is flooded with so many advertisements that many people claim not to notice them anymore. Ads line the top and right of the search results page, are displayed next to emails in Gmail, on our favourite blog, and beside reportage of anti-corporate struggles. As evidenced by the tragic reality that most people can't tell the difference between ads and content any more, this commercial barrage is having a cultural impact.

The omnipresence of internet advertising constrains the horizon of our thought. Seneca's exhortations to live a frugal life are surrounded by commercials for eco-holidays. The parables of Jesus are mere fodder for selling bamboo flooring. The juxtaposition of advertisements with wisdom neutralises the latter. The prevalence of commercial messages traps us in the marketplace. No wonder it has become nearly impossible to imagine a world without consumerism. Advertising has become the distorting frame through which we view the world.

There is no system for organising knowledge that does not carry with it social, political and cultural consequences. Nor is an entirely unbiased organising principle possible. The trouble is that too few people realise this today. We've grown complacent as researchers; lazy as thinkers. We place too much trust in one company, a corporate advertising agency, and a single way of organising knowledge, automated keyword indexing.

The danger of allowing an advertising company to control the index of human knowledge is too obvious to ignore. The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatise the index, commercialise the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder. We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a promise: "We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm." Now it is up to us to realise the dream of a non-commercial paradigm for organising the internet. Only then will humanity find the wisdom it needs to deal with the many crises that threaten our shared future.

+

An advertising agency has monopolised, disorganised, and commercialised the largest library in human history. Without a fundamental rethinking of the way knowledge is organised in the digital era, Google's information coup d'état will have profound existential consequences.

Google was originally conceived to be a commercial-free search engine. Twelve years ago, in the first public documentation of their technology, the inventors of Google warned that advertising corrupts search engines. "[W]e expect that advertising-funded search engines," Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote, "will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." And they condemned as particularly "insidious" the sale of the top spot on search results; a practice Google now champions.

Under the sway of CEO Eric Schmidt, Google currently makes nearly all its money from practices its founders once rightly abhorred. Following its $3.1bn acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007, Google has became the world's largest online advertising company. With ad space on 85% of all internet sites, upwards of 98% of Google's revenue comes solely from polluting online knowledge with commercial messages. In the gleeful words of Schmidt, "We are an advertising company." Google is not a search engine; it is the most powerful commercialising force on the internet.

Every era believes their way of organising knowledge is ideal and dismisses prior systems as nonsensical. Academic libraries in the US use subject categorisation derived from Sir Francis Bacon's 17th-century division of all knowledge into imagination, memory and reason. Yet who today, aside from one or two exceptions, would try to organise the internet using a handful of categories? For a generation trained to use Google, this approach seems outmoded, illogical or impossible. But modern search engines, which operate by indexing instead of categorising, are also fundamentally flawed.

Three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift foresaw the cultural danger of relying on indexes to organise knowledge. He believed index learning led to superficial thinking. Swift was right and a growing of teachers and public intellectuals are coming to the realisation that search engines encourage skimming, light reading and trifling thoughts. Whereas subject classification creates harmony and encourages serendipity; indexes fracture knowledge into snippets making us stupid. Thanks to Google, the superficiality of index learning is infecting our culture, our society, and our civilisation.

Google did not invent the index. That honour goes to the 500 monks led by Hugh of St Cher who compiled the first concordance of the bible in 1230. Nor was Google the first to dream of indexing all of human knowledge. Henry Wheately had the idea in 1902 for a "universal index". And Google was not the first to cynically dump advertisements into the search-engine index. What makes Google unique is the extent to which it has, oblivious to the consequences, made a business out of commercialising the organisation of knowledge.

The vast library that is the internet is flooded with so many advertisements that many people claim not to notice them anymore. Ads line the top and right of the search results page, are displayed next to emails in Gmail, on our favourite blog, and beside reportage of anti-corporate struggles. As evidenced by the tragic reality that most people can't tell the difference between ads and content any more, this commercial barrage is having a cultural impact.

The omnipresence of internet advertising constrains the horizon of our thought. Seneca's exhortations to live a frugal life are surrounded by commercials for eco-holidays. The parables of Jesus are mere fodder for selling bamboo flooring. The juxtaposition of advertisements with wisdom neutralises the latter. The prevalence of commercial messages traps us in the marketplace. No wonder it has become nearly impossible to imagine a world without consumerism. Advertising has become the distorting frame through which we view the world.

There is no system for organising knowledge that does not carry with it social, political and cultural consequences. Nor is an entirely unbiased organising principle possible. The trouble is that too few people realise this today. We've grown complacent as researchers; lazy as thinkers. We place too much trust in one company, a corporate advertising agency, and a single way of organising knowledge, automated keyword indexing.

The danger of allowing an advertising company to control the index of human knowledge is too obvious to ignore. The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatise the index, commercialise the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder. We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a promise: "We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm." Now it is up to us to realise the dream of a non-commercial paradigm for organising the internet. Only then will humanity find the wisdom it needs to deal with the many crises that threaten our shared future.

diff --git a/tests/html/newyorkerleaks.html.simple b/tests/html/newyorkerleaks.html.simple index 12309ac..d428bef 100644 --- a/tests/html/newyorkerleaks.html.simple +++ b/tests/html/newyorkerleaks.html.simple @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@

WikiLeaks on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan : The New Yorker

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Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had a tumultuous youth in Australia and grew into an autodidact with eclectic skills and a deep distrust of hierarchies and governments. In 2006, as he prepared to launch a digital enterprise devoted to the exposure of secrets, he wrote a sort of manifesto about the structure of official conspiracy and its effects on human welfare. He quoted Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Lord Halifax; the writing veers between lucidity and opaqueness. Its tone, familiar from science fiction, echoes the purifying language of purges and revolutions: “We must understand the key generative structure of bad government. We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position of clarity.”

In July, WikiLeaks defied the Obama Administration by publishing seventy-six thousand intelligence and military field reports from the Afghan war. In October, it posted nearly four hundred thousand secret documents generated on the front lines of the Iraq conflict. The archives are bracing and valuable. There is a literary quality to their all-caps urgency and secret jargon. They disclose important new facts about civilian casualties, the torture of detainees by our allies, Iran’s exported violence, the disruptions caused by private contractors, and the debilitating patterns of clandestine warfare in two benighted regions.

America’s all-volunteer military has left many in the country at a remove from the debasements of the wars; the WikiLeaks archives offer an authentic transcript of them. All wars are terrible, but some must be fought. A democracy is strengthened when its citizens are confronted with the raw truths that follow from the choices of their elected leaders.

Whether WikiLeaks will prove over time to be a credible publisher of such truths is another question. Assange disclosed the names of informants in some of the war reports, even though doing so might endanger them and possibly cause their death. That action has prompted defections from the organization, as has some of Assange’s recent comportment. Internal messages quoted in the Times portray him as a self-aggrandizing control freak. In Sweden, prosecutors are reportedly investigating sexual-assault allegations against him. No charges have been filed in the case, and last week, on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Assange dismissed it as a “relatively trivial matter,” adding that King “should be ashamed” for raising the subject. In response, King, a scholar of the communications strategies of accused celebrities, tutored him on his tone-deafness: “Rape is not trivial. To say they”—the allegations—“were false, that’s your answer. ‘They’re false.’ That’s fine. That’s all we wanted to hear.”

Henry David Thoreau, in his founding essay on civil disobedience, wrote that “action from principle . . . divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.” He meant that a dissenter’s human frailty should not undermine the righteousness of his message. In the case of the WikiLeaks project, however, the sources of doubt involve more than Assange’s behavior and his editorial calls. They also involve his political conceptions and acuity.

In rolling out the Iraq files, Assange won an endorsement from Daniel Ellsberg, the former RAND Corporation analyst who, in 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press. Assange has suggested that his organization’s disclosures are similarly important. At a press conference in London, he called the Iraq documents “the most comprehensive and detailed account of any war ever to have entered the public record.” In fact, the archives that WikiLeaks has published are much less significant than the Pentagon Papers were in their day. Ellsberg and his collaborators in the press exposed lies by President Lyndon Johnson and his cabinet about critical decisions in the Vietnam War, such as Johnson’s exaggeration of enemy action in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which he used as a rationale for escalating combat. The WikiLeaks files contain nothing comparable. Nor are they distinctively comprehensive; there are many open archives in the United States and Europe that chronicle the depredations of wars past, unit by unit, prison camp by prison camp. It is not necessary to promote the value of the WikiLeaks archive by overstating its importance.

If the organization continues to attract sources and vast caches of unfiltered secret documents, it will have to steer through the foggy borderlands between dissent and vandalism, and it will have to defend its investigative journalism against those who perceive it as a crime. Assange is animated by the idea of radical transparency, but WikiLeaks as yet lacks a fixed address. Nor does it offer its audiences any mechanism for its own accountability. If the organization were an insurgency, these characteristics might be in its nature. Assange declares that he is pioneering an improved, daring form of journalism. That profession, however, despite its flaws, has constructed its legitimacy by serving as a check on governmental and corporate power within constitutional arrangements that assume the viability of the rule of law. The Times and the Washington Post, in successfully defending their decision to publish the Pentagon Papers before the Supreme Court, extended considerably the political impact of their revelations.

WikiLeaks has recently been in discussions with lawmakers in Iceland about trying to concoct the world’s most extensive press-freedom regime there. The idea apparently is to transform Iceland, in the aftermath of its recent, disastrous experiments with offshore banking, into the Cayman Islands of First Amendment-inspired subversion. A volcanic-island nation may well find whistle-blowing to be a compatible flagship industry. And it could provide the project with a sustainable basis for legal legitimacy.

It is not clear, however, that such normalcy within a national system would entirely suit Assange’s purposes. In a part of his manifesto titled “State and Terrorist Conspiracies,” he wrote, “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly, for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed.” If dissenters hacked and published enough secret information harbored by governments, he went on, this might disrupt what he imagined to be the absolute dependency of governments on flows of hidden data. “An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself against the opponents it induces,” Assange concluded. That is, he believed that he could break governments by siphoning the secrets that nourish them.

But something like the opposite may be the case: if WikiLeaks cannot learn to think efficiently about its publishing choices, it will risk failure, not only because of the governmental opponents it has induced but also because so far it lacks an ethical culture that is consonant with the ideals of free media. ♦

+

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had a tumultuous youth in Australia and grew into an autodidact with eclectic skills and a deep distrust of hierarchies and governments. In 2006, as he prepared to launch a digital enterprise devoted to the exposure of secrets, he wrote a sort of manifesto about the structure of official conspiracy and its effects on human welfare. He quoted Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Lord Halifax; the writing veers between lucidity and opaqueness. Its tone, familiar from science fiction, echoes the purifying language of purges and revolutions: “We must understand the key generative structure of bad government. We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position of clarity.”

In July, WikiLeaks defied the Obama Administration by publishing seventy-six thousand intelligence and military field reports from the Afghan war. In October, it posted nearly four hundred thousand secret documents generated on the front lines of the Iraq conflict. The archives are bracing and valuable. There is a literary quality to their all-caps urgency and secret jargon. They disclose important new facts about civilian casualties, the torture of detainees by our allies, Iran’s exported violence, the disruptions caused by private contractors, and the debilitating patterns of clandestine warfare in two benighted regions.

America’s all-volunteer military has left many in the country at a remove from the debasements of the wars; the WikiLeaks archives offer an authentic transcript of them. All wars are terrible, but some must be fought. A democracy is strengthened when its citizens are confronted with the raw truths that follow from the choices of their elected leaders.

Whether WikiLeaks will prove over time to be a credible publisher of such truths is another question. Assange disclosed the names of informants in some of the war reports, even though doing so might endanger them and possibly cause their death. That action has prompted defections from the organization, as has some of Assange’s recent comportment. Internal messages quoted in the Times portray him as a self-aggrandizing control freak. In Sweden, prosecutors are reportedly investigating sexual-assault allegations against him. No charges have been filed in the case, and last week, on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Assange dismissed it as a “relatively trivial matter,” adding that King “should be ashamed” for raising the subject. In response, King, a scholar of the communications strategies of accused celebrities, tutored him on his tone-deafness: “Rape is not trivial. To say they”—the allegations—“were false, that’s your answer. ‘They’re false.’ That’s fine. That’s all we wanted to hear.”

Henry David Thoreau, in his founding essay on civil disobedience, wrote that “action from principle . . . divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.” He meant that a dissenter’s human frailty should not undermine the righteousness of his message. In the case of the WikiLeaks project, however, the sources of doubt involve more than Assange’s behavior and his editorial calls. They also involve his political conceptions and acuity.

In rolling out the Iraq files, Assange won an endorsement from Daniel Ellsberg, the former RAND Corporation analyst who, in 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press. Assange has suggested that his organization’s disclosures are similarly important. At a press conference in London, he called the Iraq documents “the most comprehensive and detailed account of any war ever to have entered the public record.” In fact, the archives that WikiLeaks has published are much less significant than the Pentagon Papers were in their day. Ellsberg and his collaborators in the press exposed lies by President Lyndon Johnson and his cabinet about critical decisions in the Vietnam War, such as Johnson’s exaggeration of enemy action in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which he used as a rationale for escalating combat. The WikiLeaks files contain nothing comparable. Nor are they distinctively comprehensive; there are many open archives in the United States and Europe that chronicle the depredations of wars past, unit by unit, prison camp by prison camp. It is not necessary to promote the value of the WikiLeaks archive by overstating its importance.

If the organization continues to attract sources and vast caches of unfiltered secret documents, it will have to steer through the foggy borderlands between dissent and vandalism, and it will have to defend its investigative journalism against those who perceive it as a crime. Assange is animated by the idea of radical transparency, but WikiLeaks as yet lacks a fixed address. Nor does it offer its audiences any mechanism for its own accountability. If the organization were an insurgency, these characteristics might be in its nature. Assange declares that he is pioneering an improved, daring form of journalism. That profession, however, despite its flaws, has constructed its legitimacy by serving as a check on governmental and corporate power within constitutional arrangements that assume the viability of the rule of law. The Times and the Washington Post, in successfully defending their decision to publish the Pentagon Papers before the Supreme Court, extended considerably the political impact of their revelations.

WikiLeaks has recently been in discussions with lawmakers in Iceland about trying to concoct the world’s most extensive press-freedom regime there. The idea apparently is to transform Iceland, in the aftermath of its recent, disastrous experiments with offshore banking, into the Cayman Islands of First Amendment-inspired subversion. A volcanic-island nation may well find whistle-blowing to be a compatible flagship industry. And it could provide the project with a sustainable basis for legal legitimacy.

It is not clear, however, that such normalcy within a national system would entirely suit Assange’s purposes. In a part of his manifesto titled “State and Terrorist Conspiracies,” he wrote, “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly, for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed.” If dissenters hacked and published enough secret information harbored by governments, he went on, this might disrupt what he imagined to be the absolute dependency of governments on flows of hidden data. “An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself against the opponents it induces,” Assange concluded. That is, he believed that he could break governments by siphoning the secrets that nourish them.

But something like the opposite may be the case: if WikiLeaks cannot learn to think efficiently about its publishing choices, it will risk failure, not only because of the governmental opponents it has induced but also because so far it lacks an ethical culture that is consonant with the ideals of free media. ♦

diff --git a/tests/html/riemenstext.html.simple b/tests/html/riemenstext.html.simple index 3020d90..5ead416 100644 --- a/tests/html/riemenstext.html.simple +++ b/tests/html/riemenstext.html.simple @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Riemens

-

"The +

"The Theory of 'Free Software' as the seed of a post-capitalist society only makes sense where it is understood as the exposure of those very contradictions of the development of productive forces which are relevant to the process @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ of a process that one ought to follow as if it were a blueprint." ("Eight Theses on Liberation," Oekonux mailing list)

-

As +

As the new information and communication technologies (ICT) entered our lives and became increasingly important in our daily activities, so did all kinds of knowledge, working habits and ways of thinking that were previously @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ days, artists, intellectuals, and political activists have become fairly visible as informed and even innovative actors in what has become known as the public domain in cyberspace.

-

"Hackers," +

"Hackers," also often, but inexactly referred to as "computer pirates" or other derogatory term, constitute without doubt the first social movement that was intrinsic to the electronic technology that spawned our networked @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ assumed with various degrees of (de)merit by a plethora of cultural and political activists associated, closely or loosely, with the "counter-globalization movement."

-

Yet, +

Yet, whereas hackers (if we take a broad definition of the term) have been pioneering the opening up of electronic channels of communication in the South, in the North, they initially were held in suspicion by those same @@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ breakdown of their stranglehold on communication and information taking place. For some time, it looked like as if a level playing field between hitherto dominators and dominated had come within sight.

-

The +

The Net, as a result, became not only one of the principal carriers of political activism, but also one of its major locus and issue. Once they had overcome their initial shock and surprise, the powers that be were bound to react @@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ and has resulted in activist circles (political, but also intellectual, cultural, and artistic) becoming markedly, sometimes completely, ITC-driven. However, as we will see, this does not ipso facto make them hackers.

-

But +

But it was equally within the domain of ICT itself that the exponential expansion of both range and carrying capacity of the Internet, as well of that of the related technologies, and all this within an increasingly aggressive @@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ programs, utilities and application modalities that have become known under the generic name of Linux, Free Software, Open Source, and General Public License (for definitions, see www.gnu.org).

-

De +

De prime abord, these developments suggest that given these technological settings and socio-economic and political circumstances, convergence was bound to take place between the actors involved, meaning a merger between @@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ run roughshod of the sensibilities of "authentic" hackers - and it does so unfortuitously - it also misrepresents reality hence giving rise to erroneous hypothesizes and unwarranted expectations.

-

"Hacker +

"Hacker culture," a concept one often encounters these days among networked activists, purports to represent this playful confluence between tech wizardry and the moral high ground. Hence, "Open Source" is @@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ on liberties by powerful institutions. The group later had to defend itself of guilt by association with respect to recent manifestations of "hacktivism" as Distributed Denial of Services (DoDS) attacks.

-

Behind +

Behind the so-called "Hacker Ethic" is the usual, daily activity of hackers. To put it very simply, without going deeper into its precise content, the hacker ethic runs strikingly parallel to the formula "l'art @@ -163,7 +163,7 @@ acquainted with their "natural allies." Yet it is neither fortuitous nor aberrant that the Californian transmutation of libertarianism enjoys such widespread support among hackers.

-

The +

The existence of such "ideological" positions has its reflection in the daily and usual activities of hackers, which are generally characterized by an absence of preconceived ideas and positions. Despite the avowed @@ -178,7 +178,7 @@ to think that such a program, as limited as it may sound, is essential, not subsequent, to the achievement of the better society we all aspire too.

-

This +

This being said, the points of convergence between the activities of hackers and those of (political) activists are many, and they increase by the day. It is becoming more and more evident that both groups face the same @@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ and endure in the same measure as the hostility and risks both groups are likely to encounter augment, it is worthwhile to analyze what unites as well as what separates them.

-

"Hacktivist" +

"Hacktivist" activities (and I am mostly referring here to the handywork of three groups, Electronic Disturbance Theater, Electrohippies and RTMark), well advertised by their authors, but also gleefully reported in the mainstream media, @@ -210,13 +210,13 @@ of aims and targets, amount in their eyes to attacks on the freedom of expression, which they seem to respect in a much more principled manner than most political activists.

-

The +

The truth is, that by abetting "hacktivism," activists implicitly admit that the net has become a mere corporate carrier, to which they have only a subordinate, almost clandestine, access, as opposed to be stakeholders in, and thus sharing responsibility for it. This constitutes their fundamental divergence with hackers, and it is not easily remediable.

-

Political +

Political activists are also, almost by definition, inclined to seek maximum media exposure for their ideas and actions. Their activities, therefore, tend to be public in all the acceptations of the term. The range of issues @@ -233,7 +233,7 @@ between equals, that is equals recognized as such beforehand, and hence also elitist. Political activists on the other hand are much more opportunistic when it comes to alliances and associations they engage in.

-

So +

So does the idea of "hacker culture" represent an effective way to describe and define certain current modes of political activism, especially when those do have a large ICT component? In many instances where the @@ -249,7 +249,7 @@ www.anarchogeek.com). But it should caution against a facile (and trendy) assumption of an equivalence, and maybe against the confusion-inducing use of the term "hacker culture" itself.

-


+


This article first appeared in French in Multitudes, Vol 2, No 8, March-April 2002, and in (an expanded) English translation diff --git a/tests/html/wikireading.html.simple b/tests/html/wikireading.html.simple index 1aa37d1..224d9b4 100644 --- a/tests/html/wikireading.html.simple +++ b/tests/html/wikireading.html.simple @@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ Management of dyslexia -

Slow reading is the intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure. The concept appears to have originated in the study of philosophy and literature as a technique to more fully comprehend and appreciate a complex text. More recently, there has been increased interest in slow reading as result of the slow movement and its focus on decelerating the pace of modern life.

+

Slow reading is the intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure. The concept appears to have originated in the study of philosophy and literature as a technique to more fully comprehend and appreciate a complex text. More recently, there has been increased interest in slow reading as result of the slow movement and its focus on decelerating the pace of modern life.

@@ -111,19 +111,19 @@ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; //]]>

[edit] Related terms

-

The use of slow reading in literary criticism is sometimes referred to as close reading. Of less common usage is the term, "deep reading" (Birkerts, 1994). Slow reading is contrasted with speed reading which involves techniques to increase the rate of reading without adversely affecting comprehension, and contrasted with skimming which employs visual page cues to increase reading speed.

+

The use of slow reading in literary criticism is sometimes referred to as close reading. Of less common usage is the term, "deep reading" (Birkerts, 1994). Slow reading is contrasted with speed reading which involves techniques to increase the rate of reading without adversely affecting comprehension, and contrasted with skimming which employs visual page cues to increase reading speed.

[edit] Philosophy and literature

-

The earliest reference to slow reading appears to be in Nietzsche's (1887) preface to Daybreak: "It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading."[1]

-

Birkerts (1994) stated "Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book." His statement speaks to the idea that slow reading is not merely about slowing down, but about controlling the pace of reading. Slow readers may speed up at times, and then slow down for the more difficult or pleasurable portions of a text.

-

The importance of personal control over the speed of reading is echoed by Pullman (2004) who argued that slow reading is needed to reinforce democracy in America. Part of its democratic nature is that the manner of reading is not determined by someone else: "we can skim, or we can read it slowly". A similar view was stated by Postman (1985) who noted the character of the ordinary citizen of the 19th century, a mind that could listen for hours on end to political orations clearly shaped by a culture favouring text. Postman warns that reading books is important for developing rational thinking and political astuteness.

-

Lindsay Waters, Executive Editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, declared a worldwide reading crisis resulting from our global push toward productivity. He asserts that young children are learning to read faster, skipping phonetics and diagramming sentences, and concludes that these children will not grow up to read Milton. He foresees the end of graduate English literature programs. "There is something similar between a reading method that focuses primarily on the bottom-line meaning of a story in a novel and the economic emphasis on the bottom line that makes automobile manufacturers speed up assembly lines." He advised re-introducing time into reading, "The mighty imperative is to speed everything up, but there might be some advantage in slowing things down. People are trying slow eating. Why not slow reading?" (2007).

+

The earliest reference to slow reading appears to be in Nietzsche's (1887) preface to Daybreak: "It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading."[1]

+

Birkerts (1994) stated "Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book." His statement speaks to the idea that slow reading is not merely about slowing down, but about controlling the pace of reading. Slow readers may speed up at times, and then slow down for the more difficult or pleasurable portions of a text.

+

The importance of personal control over the speed of reading is echoed by Pullman (2004) who argued that slow reading is needed to reinforce democracy in America. Part of its democratic nature is that the manner of reading is not determined by someone else: "we can skim, or we can read it slowly". A similar view was stated by Postman (1985) who noted the character of the ordinary citizen of the 19th century, a mind that could listen for hours on end to political orations clearly shaped by a culture favouring text. Postman warns that reading books is important for developing rational thinking and political astuteness.

+

Lindsay Waters, Executive Editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, declared a worldwide reading crisis resulting from our global push toward productivity. He asserts that young children are learning to read faster, skipping phonetics and diagramming sentences, and concludes that these children will not grow up to read Milton. He foresees the end of graduate English literature programs. "There is something similar between a reading method that focuses primarily on the bottom-line meaning of a story in a novel and the economic emphasis on the bottom line that makes automobile manufacturers speed up assembly lines." He advised re-introducing time into reading, "The mighty imperative is to speed everything up, but there might be some advantage in slowing things down. People are trying slow eating. Why not slow reading?" (2007).

[edit] Slow movement

-

Carl Honoré wrote the best-selling book about the slow movement, In Praise of Slow. Honoré's interest in the slow movement began one day in an airport when he saw a book called The One-Minute Bedtime Story. At first it struck him as brilliant — the cure to his nightly tug-of-war with his son’s demands for more stories — then the absurdity of his fast lifestyle called him to his senses. The slow movement acknowledges that "speed has helped to remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating" (2004) but our obsession with speed has turned into an addiction. "When you accelerate things that should not be accelerated, when you forget how to slow down, there is a price to pay." Slow reading is recommended as one of several practices to decelerate from the fast pace of modern life. Jennings (2005) also discussed the book.

-

Slow reading from this perspective is somewhat different from its tradition in philosophy and literature. As a practice for achieving balance, slow reading often involves reading light material at a relaxed pace for pleasure, and not just complex materials read slowly for insight. Also, the slow movement also has a strong theme of locality. Most notably, the slow food movement encourages buying local foods. With slow reading, this idea takes the form of encouraging local authors, micro-publishing of materials of local interest, and community building around local libraries and reading events.

+

Carl Honoré wrote the best-selling book about the slow movement, In Praise of Slow. Honoré's interest in the slow movement began one day in an airport when he saw a book called The One-Minute Bedtime Story. At first it struck him as brilliant — the cure to his nightly tug-of-war with his son’s demands for more stories — then the absurdity of his fast lifestyle called him to his senses. The slow movement acknowledges that "speed has helped to remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating" (2004) but our obsession with speed has turned into an addiction. "When you accelerate things that should not be accelerated, when you forget how to slow down, there is a price to pay." Slow reading is recommended as one of several practices to decelerate from the fast pace of modern life. Jennings (2005) also discussed the book.

+

Slow reading from this perspective is somewhat different from its tradition in philosophy and literature. As a practice for achieving balance, slow reading often involves reading light material at a relaxed pace for pleasure, and not just complex materials read slowly for insight. Also, the slow movement also has a strong theme of locality. Most notably, the slow food movement encourages buying local foods. With slow reading, this idea takes the form of encouraging local authors, micro-publishing of materials of local interest, and community building around local libraries and reading events.

[edit] Research

-

A number of research studies exist on the problematic aspects of involuntary slow reading. For example, Wimmer (1996) found that a slow reading rate in children indicates a lack of fluency and is a predictor of dyslexia. A few studies demonstrate the positive value of voluntary slow reading, the type of reading defined in this entry. Nell (1988) showed that there is substantial rate variability during natural reading, with most-liked pages being read significantly slower. Sherry Jr. and Schouten (2002) suggested that close reading could have commercial application as a research method for the use of poetry in marketing. Contrary to the claims of advocates of speed-reading, there is evidence that subvocalization has no observable negative effect on the reading process, and may in fact aid comprehension (Carver, 1990).

-

There is a fair body of literature in the area of bibliotherapy, a practice involving the selection of materials for therapeutic purposes. The process often involves emotional identification with reading material, and thoughtful discussion with a professional; as such it is a type of slow reading.

-

The Slow Book Movement was officially founded in Lebanon Springs, NY, in November, 2009, by novelist I. Alexander Olchowski. In the midst of becoming a nonprofit entity, this movement aims to actively promote the act of slowing down to read books. In addition to the Founding Director, Mr. Olchowski, The Slow Book Movement's Assistant Director is Amanda Giracca. [edit] See also +

A number of research studies exist on the problematic aspects of involuntary slow reading. For example, Wimmer (1996) found that a slow reading rate in children indicates a lack of fluency and is a predictor of dyslexia. A few studies demonstrate the positive value of voluntary slow reading, the type of reading defined in this entry. Nell (1988) showed that there is substantial rate variability during natural reading, with most-liked pages being read significantly slower. Sherry Jr. and Schouten (2002) suggested that close reading could have commercial application as a research method for the use of poetry in marketing. Contrary to the claims of advocates of speed-reading, there is evidence that subvocalization has no observable negative effect on the reading process, and may in fact aid comprehension (Carver, 1990).

+

There is a fair body of literature in the area of bibliotherapy, a practice involving the selection of materials for therapeutic purposes. The process often involves emotional identification with reading material, and thoughtful discussion with a professional; as such it is a type of slow reading.

+

The Slow Book Movement was officially founded in Lebanon Springs, NY, in November, 2009, by novelist I. Alexander Olchowski. In the midst of becoming a nonprofit entity, this movement aims to actively promote the act of slowing down to read books. In addition to the Founding Director, Mr. Olchowski, The Slow Book Movement's Assistant Director is Amanda Giracca. [edit] See also

  • Reading (process)
  • Speed reading
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