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Wikileaks Breaks $3 Billion Corruption Story
James Hardine writes Wikileaks, the website for whistleblowers, has broken one of the world's biggest corruption stories in the international press (Guardian, BBC, Forbes, Sydney Morning Herald). The site has leaked a secret report on looting by ex-president Moi of Kenya — and possibly altered the outcome of an impending national election. Moi has become a key player in political life in Kenya, and is now an essential pillar in President Kibaki's campaign for re-election in December 2007. From the Wikileaks page: 'The suppressed auditor's report reveals that currency worth billions of US dollars was looted from Kenya by President Moi and his associates. The money was laundered across the world and includes properties and shell companies in London, New York and South Africa and even a 10,000 hectare ranch in Australia.'"
See, this is why I stay away from Kenya and only deal with my legitimate business partners from Nigeria.
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I've been following the Wikileaks idea for a bit, every since Cryptome published a bunch of info about it.
I'm in two minds about Wikileaks. On the one hand, the idea is kind of cool - I'm all for whistle-blowers, and think they perform a vital function. It's sometimes important for the public to see information that could be blocked from public release due to legal pressures.
But on the other hand, maybe that information should not be in the public domain, as it could put lives at risk (as was argued in the previous link).
Also, it's ultimately flawed in the same way that business Web 2.0 review-type sites are flawed: you can't trust the information worth a damn. People have a terrible habit of trying to set up someone they feel disgruntled about, or wish to slander a company that they feel treated them unfairly. Or, of course, they could just be out to rubbish a competitor.
Wikileaks is likely to become a stomping ground of disinformation, misinformation, and vendettas, and if they think the wisdom of the crowds is going to be able to judge that a piece of information is, in fact, a forgery, they're fools.
Also, who exactly will be held accountable when it's used, say, to swing an election, only for us to discover that the information in question was bogus? Wikileaks? Will they hand over the leaker?
I can't help but feel that Wikileaks may, in fact, do more harm than good. A few bad incidents at Wikileaks, and it's highly likely that the law (and government, business etc.) is going to come down hard to silence legitimate whistle-blowers under the pretext of protecting themselves from slander and libel.
What's really needed is a system of legal mechanisms to encourage and protect leakers in the real world, as well as allow a system of accountability. The incidents described by leakers who stepped forward regarding corruption in Iraq indicates that there are simply not enough legal avenues open to help and protect whistle-blowers.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Show me where socialism and government control over business activity has brought about prosperity and lifted a country out of poverty? My socialist prosperity, let me show you it: http://www.hydroquebec.com/profile/index.html
Interestingly enough, when deregulation in Ohio led to the great blackout of 2003, the Quebec grid was mostly unaffected because Hydro-Quebec keeps its grid out of sync with its neighbors because they expected something like that to happen, since the states around it are dangerously under-regulated.
And the CBC is a much more reliable source of news than any of the conglomerate-operated sources in the USA, FOX news they ain't. prosperity and lifted a country out of poverty? I can show examples for capitalism: China http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/364
It was not clear of the counterfeit powder included any toxic ingredients, but some children were reported to have died within three days of being fed the fake milk.
Others were hospitalised when their parents realised they were ill. Fuyang's People's Hospital alone received more than 60 babies who had been fed fake milk formula, according to the Beijing News.
You can't take the sky from me...
I gotta say, when I read reports like this, it's not 'capitalism' or 'socialism' that I end up blaming...
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Agreed: pure socialism doesn't work well. But neither does pure capitalism. What is interesting to me is trying to find the balance. I tend far towards the capitalist side myself, even sympathizing with Libertarian ideas. But then I realize that all ideals are subject to their limitations when implemented in reality.
For example: welfare. In a perfect world there would be no such thing and everyone would make their own way or pay the price. So we abolish welfare. Problem is, there will always be a percentage of people who don't make it and who cause those who do to pay the price through theft and violence and being a general nuisance. So it is better for the people who make it to set aside some amount of their income to keep these people living at least at a level where crime upon others is minimized but so is freeloading. Make living at the bottom of the barrel nice enough to prevent crime yet uncomfortable enough that only the most serious hard cases would put up with it. There's no perfect solution, but there is an optimal balance point.
Call it extortion by the poor, but in a pragmatic sense your money that goes towards welfare stabilizes things in a way that benefits you more than just holding on to that money would. There are countries that go too far in that direction, redistributing wealth, and have serious problems. There are countries that don't do any wealth redistribution, and they have different serious problems. Finding that balance... which few talk about... is really the puzzle. But we just get caught up in arguing about which extreme is correct, holding on to impractical ideals.
The same balancing act applies to many areas; health care, government mitigating the tragedy of the commons, copyright. How much should the governement get involved in things? For a healthy society the answer is close to "none", but it's not "none".
Cheers.
The only way I can describe that is Bollocks.
I'm not supporting grandparent's idea that socialism is the cause of corruption in Kenya, but to see socialism in Britain as an economic success story is just plain wrong.
What was the economic legacy of socialist governments in Britain? Rampant unions, unemployment, loss making state-owned manufacturing industries that were decades out of date.
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Before 1917 Russia was a state based on slavery, it is true. Many believe that some form of a revolt was almost inevitable due to the top government not being able to do its job effectively and due to the general population's dissatisfaction with the status quo. Obviously the Russian-Japanese war did not help the matters much at all, why the Russian army was sent against Japanese machine guns with nothing more than some religious icons and crosses in their hands.
The USSR of-course has defeated the Fascist Germany, the first man in space was Yuri Gagarin and Lev Landau was at least as smart as Einstein. However you are contributing these obvious achievements to the socialist/communist regime set in place, which is a logical fallacy.
You see, after the October Revolution took place there were people (Stolypin) in the country who proposed reforms that could have turned the country around and brought it into a soft form of capitalism (small size landownership actually.) After all, the country itself was mostly agrarian.
What has actually happened was very different. My great-grandfather's 7 out of 12 children have died in Ukraine in the beginning of 1930th from hunger along with 30 million other people. So my great-grandfather was moved off his land, because he had to hire help to work in the field, this was against the communist law of the time. His remaining family and himself together with millions others were put on trains and moved to Siberia, away from their lands. His wife and one more kid died in the train during the move from diphteria. Now to some this may not mean much, but they may not understand what Ukraine actually was at the time (and still is today.) It was called the Bread Basket of the Soviet Union. For 30 million farmers to die from hunger is not something that can be explained easily, but the basics of it are these: the new communist government needed money, which it did not have, to jump start a non-existing industrial complex. The only way to do this was to take away what could be taken away from the farmers of the land and to sell it abroad, namely food. Food was taken away completely for at least 3 years in a row, which resulted in approximately 30 million deaths.
That is just one small bookmark in the novel written by the new communist regime.
Many probably do not realize this, but when Hitler attacked USSR, he hit Ukraine first. The initial reaction of the people was mixed, most were fed up with the Soviet form of government and they would have stayed away from the war completely and let the Nazi forces through, however Hitler made one of his many many blunders, he killed the civilians and he killed them in numbers and with ferocity that somehow outmatched the late doings of the Communist Party in the republic. At the end of it all Ukrainians had little choice, they had to fight the immediate danger of being exterminated.
You have cited some examples of ingenuity shown by the people of the former Soviet Union, what you have not seen though outmatches everything that you have heard off. The fate of the people of that land between 1912 and up to about the end of 1960th was terrible. From about 1970th and to the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union the life became much easier, but it was never free.
You see, the socialists do not want to free people from anything really, they want to tell the people how to live their lives too. If you weren't with 'it' in the former USSR, you were against the law, and the Communist Party set the law. There was no other party.
Personally I would rather live in a capitalist country during depression, then in a communist country in the best of times though.
You can't handle the truth.
Funny how there's no link in "related stories" to the original Slashdot post about Wikileaks. You know, the one that was all about how Wikileaks was a scam and would never get off the ground.
Thanks for posting that, it's a fascinating account. If you write a history book I will buy it. :(
However I must take exception to attributing the horrors and abuses of the Soviet government to socialism or communism. The USSR was about as true an example of "socialism" as the US is of "democracy".
Socialism didn't cause the problems, just as democracy didn't cause the oil war. The bastards who succeed at politics always promote an ideology, but they do not follow it. Whether it's socialism or capitalism, it's always the same kind of crooks doing the exact same things.
Some of the Scandinavian countries are doing very well blending socialism and capitalism, BTW. Something we are sadly still too brainwashed to do here in the US.
Caveat Utilitor