So does it feel as good 9 years later

It's a continuum, nine years ago there was a different nine years ago, and then in turn a different nine years ago and so on. People aren't events, even if the bleaters all around aren't people.

What d'ya thing of John Young Have you seen any of Daniel Estulin

Can't say as I have. My name acquisition processes aren't really open to the internet, because reasons.

even if it came out that there were some rogues, some rogue agents involved and that that’s how it would be positioned no matter who it was

This is an old story.

your extraordinary personal experience as a leaker

"As an untouchable asshole" more's the case.

“…On the 9/11 issue generally, ahhh,…,… yea, I don’t, I don’t think it is particularly important uh, in the sense that, uh, every day, or, or every few weeks Wikileaks and some other publishers have published proof of very serious Existing conspiracies that are happening right now or just a couple of years ago in order to start wars or steal billions of dollars, uh th, these things I think can have more of a change.
There’s a certain view in relation to 9/11 that it it’s some kind of holy grail that would shake the existing order of things. I don’t think it would even if it came out that there were some rogues, some rogue agents involved and that that’s how it would be positioned no matter who it was…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG23AyiIObk

Do you know anything of Assange's upbringing?
Have you seen any of Daniel Estulin's stuff?
He wrote a whole ambiguous book about Assange. Unfortunately I'm in one country and all of my stuff is another so I can't be more specific (as I don't recall the nitty gritty details). Something about hanging out with a German hacker working in the underworld of the internationally rogue secret services who was as wildly intelligent as he was erratically neurotic, finally meeting an early demise...with a funny name...
?
Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to fill me in on your extraordinary personal experience as a leaker. Sorry for misattributing ideas to you emitted by the lastpsychiatrist.
Life just seems to be getting stranger and stranger... or maybe it's just the effect of this excellent Spanish Rioja...?
What an intriguing website.

If Wikileaks had not occurred naturally,

Amusingly enough to me, I expect you're not exactly familiar with the intricate history of all that?

tl;dr: wikileaks became a public/online item because I broke what was originally intended as a "the Guardian(&friends) monopoly". Chalk it up as an inter-generational passing of the torch gone unexpectedly wrong ; and in the process suddenly come to understand all sort and manner of "unrelated" contemporary history tidbits.

-such as the reason you, Mr Popescu, intimated: it comes from Wikileaks so it must be true.

The text stands under the authorship of a meanwhile disappeared Chicago-area doctor by the name of Christos Ballas (though until this was published on Trilema, everyone knew him as "TLP" after the initialism of his blog, or "Alone" after his own pen name). The adnotations (ie, footnotes) are Mr Popescu.

here's the fact of perpetuating the illusion that any kind of meaningful whistleblowing is even possible, while smoking out any dangerous wannabees for extermination;

Ever since the dawn of Eve, exactly one kind of fucking around was possible : the kind where there's someone to fuck around with. Absent the beta to betray the alpha with, and especially should the beta be really just a beta and the alpha really the alpha...

Of course it's always been a perilous sort of activity. It's supposed to be.

the profoundly destabilizing yet readily adopted trend of "secretly film and denounce your neighbor"

Ironically, this is actually very stabilizing. Much like any other sclerotic process, the formation of the police state stabilizes, and in stabilizing dooms, both the prevailing social order and the ideological construction it incarnates.

The reason old men sound so ridiculous has everything to do with how stable their ideas are. The Titanic sunk for similar reasons.

soma for the masses, keeping us complacent with our own impotence

Nobody can be kept complacent. The whole thing smacks of the pregnant teenager who "was seduced" (at least for as long as anyone's yelling/asking). There's no such thing, once the hussy has the seduction pore she's no longer a highschooler. She's a young mother already, on a deserted island as well and exactly as much as anywhere else.

But anyways: for most of its history, "America" (nowadays "the US") did not matter in any sense. For most of its (considerably longer) history, Europe did not matter in any sense either. Taking brief interludes in that general trend as some sort of cornerstone for "thought" ain't gonna produce thoughts.

So it did.

Wikileaks has so effectively succeeded in orienting socio-political thought and establishing today's ubiquitous panopticon atmosphere one might be forgiven for wondering if he weren't an engineered phenomenon.

-such as offering Mockingbird Frontline interviewers the opportunity to virtue signal what the politically correct way of thinking is to the masses (in case there was any doubt) while making Mr. "I-triggered-the-Arab-Spring" look like a impartial maverick.

Wonder why that high-profile interviewer made that easily preventable "mistake" of saying that Wikileaks broke Climategate? It was a classic number of the white clown and the Auguste. The foolish Frontline Auguste falling for the white-haired clown's fibs. The obvious circus in Bread and Circus.
Nobody retains that Assange is a climate skeptic afaik. The choreographed gag was only to prove that if there's a notable and polemic leak unleashed that Wikileaks is at the Frontline. And of course he knew practically no one of any visibility would call him out on that convenient and promotional fib. The sketch fuels Joe Sixpack's contempt for Assange as it's intended to, but the real target for Whistleblower superheros, the climate heretics and other varieties of truther-geek, swoon and subscribe unconditionally. And on we go with controlled opposition, divide and conquer Icons.

-such as the reason you, Mr Popescu, intimated: it comes from Wikileaks so it must be true. A windfall for lazy "intellectuals" who wouldn't be caught dead being politically incorrect. Here you have not only someone on whom to focus all your frenzied devotional needs but a detailed manual on how to react stylishly and "comme il faut" to any given geo-political event.

- and though Wikileaks' ostensible raison d'être is to compensate for the 4th Estate's failings, it paradoxically burnishes the image of these 5 left-wing national ahem cough news organs who were to be the first beneficiaries of the golden eggs obligingly and selectively laid by the collaborative Wikileaks goose.

And of course, amongst others, there's the fact of perpetuating the illusion that any kind of meaningful whistleblowing is even possible, while smoking out any dangerous wannabees for extermination;

And the other reason you hinted at; while shooting anabolic steroids into the profoundly destabilizing yet readily adopted trend of "secretly film and denounce your neighbor". And then try to denounce total surveillance.

Oh, Wikileaks will occasionally offer a few Panama papers to recall the Ellsbergian scent of the Pentagon variety, that are still mostly mistaken for the real deal, but on the whole "Where's the Beef?" Like the Snowjob who looks on as Greenwald pockets millions from selling Eddy's purported secrets to Sony without so much as a peep. But the interceptors of salaciously subversive and lucrative secrets gatekeeping at the Omidyar-financed Intercept are doing just fine.

You're absolutely right that the Arch-angel Ass-Ange is soma for the masses, keeping us complacent with our own impotence, rigorously channeling our need to slobber over some idol in veneration towards a pied-piper who will selectively and with no context "inform" and reveal, ultimately leaking its disarmed and passive disciples to their blissfully oblivious demise.

No witting ally could have done any better.