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Wikileaks and Democracy In Zimbabwe
OCatenac writes "The Atlantic has an interesting story on the collateral damage of exposing diplomatic communications in Zimbabwe. From the article: 'The reaction in Zimbabwe was swift. Zimbabwe's Mugabe-appointed attorney general announced he was investigating the Prime Minister on treason charges based exclusively on the contents of the leaked cable. While it's unlikely Tsvangirai could be convicted on the contents of the cable alone, the political damage has already been done. The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. Furthermore, it could provide Mugabe with the pretense to abandon the coalition government that allowed Tsvangirai to become prime minister in 2009.' Undoubtedly there are lots of things that our governments hide from us which should not be hidden but it's a shame that no one from Wikileaks could be troubled to consider the potential repercussions of this particular exposure."
"Why exactly [hasn't] some decent Western power has had [sic] that vile repugnant monster Mugabe filled so full of holes you could use him as a soup strainer is beyond me.
Because you cannot bring about Democracy by force. Either the people are ready for it or they are not, and the single best test of "are they ready" is that they overthrow the tyrant (bonus points for NOT filling him full of holes, but trying him in a civilized manner).
If "some decent Western power" fills the sovereign leader of a foreign country full of holes, they immediately invalidate the adjective "decent".
Moreover, since the people aren't ready for Democracy, the result will just be the rise of a new tyrant.
www.eFax.com are spammers
There will be never be democracy in Zimbabwe with Mugabe in power.
Mugabe doesn't NEED ammo. Do you think he's survived all these years because of legal niceties and the ability to prosecute people on facts? He don't need no stinkin' facts! He's a dictator and dictators have never needed facts to support their case. The fact that this ONE time the facts give him some support is irrelevant. The implication of your comment is that its Wikileaks' fault (specifically "Lord High Julian") that Zimbabwe will now continue to be under dictatorial rule. Bullshit.
He will continue to rule for as long as the people of Zimbabwe do not rise up and thrown the bum out. If the people of Zimbabwe are more concerned at Tsvangirai's connections to Western powers than Mugabe's rape of the nation then that tells you what their priorities are. The western powers are even less interested in Mugabe than they are Kim Jong Il and even if they were - it ain't their job to tell other peoples how to run their states.
While Ellsberg supports Assange and what they are trying to do, in actuality he redacted many names and even entire sections of diplomatic reports that assessed the allies of the US who were secretly supporting the Vietnam war, like Poland.
Assange (or whoever at his organization) also redacts names from the majority of Wikileaks releases, generally except where the names are of public figures.
The question is, is it worth it? To see how the bankers and the financiers and the heads of state control the world and the wealth in the world? Will it REALLY help democracy and display capitalism's flaws? Haven't we known that since Marx?
This is the most cynical, hopeless thing I have ever heard. It's essentially an admittance of defeat. You're saying, we may as well let the government and the corporations operate in secret, because we know that exposing their crimes won't do any good anyway. And the sad thing is, you might be right.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Sorta like Saddam Hussein and his sons running Iraq. But Jesus, did America catch hell for doing something about it. We still are.
We caught hell for that because we put Saddam in power and supported him for decades. When you have to take out the same guy you put in, it makes the game itself look ridiculous. All the players hate it when you make the game look ridiculous.
If it's one thing I've learned, dictators are protected by larger nations so that they may be used like pawns and creating stalemates in global diplomacy. Nice huh?
We are one of the worst offenders in that regard.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Guess you missed most of the world shifting to democracy. Shifting to democracy wasn't love, hugs, and cookies. It was violent, unbelievably so. France slaughtered royalty and politicians alike. In the UK they were drawing magistrates in the streets. The US not only fought the British, but threw them out. India's shift was very violent as well, so was pakistan's. Israel's was the same. Oh lets not forget Argentina either.
People can be ready and want democracy. The shift to give people rights beyond what the government(royalty, or dictatorships), was violent everywhere. So yes, you can bring democracy by force. In fact, most of the democratic world was brought into existence by force. It's the erosion of democracy that's silent.
Om, nomnomnom...
Assange is to blame as well.
To invoke Godwin's Law, would you have supported a leak of where all the Jews were hiding in Nazi Germany? Only the Nazis would be to blame for what happens next, right?
No, but if diplomatic secrets were given to party A, and party A went to five separate well known and well respected papers to redact those diplomatic secrets, and people were then harmed by unredacted material, I would blame the papers, not the person who went to the papers. You do realize that Assange, responding to criticism that he was not redacting confidential information, made a deal with five venerable papers of record in various countries, and gave them the cables to redact, right? So Assange is still not to blame, the papers are. Nice attempt at deflection though.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"if the only voice of reform is painted as a western puppet and a traitor"
If the shoe fits. Are you saying it was wrong of wikileaks to expose a western attempt to manipulate a people into overthrowing their leader?
The people of Zimbabwe are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves if they want to live under a dictator there is no need for western govs to manipulate them.
I think Wikileaks is great. I am sure Zimbabwe would be a different place if the majority of people had access to unbiased information - the vast majority of people only have access to state media check out http://www.herald.co.zw/ and http://www.chronicle.co.zw/ for a taste of what that's like!
However, worse crimes are done by US Officials and the judicial system does nearly nothing about it. I wonder which state is actually more democratic right now.
This is the kind of mind-blowing stupidity that make me lose all hope for humanity.
Here's the money quote from the article:
In private, he says "Keep these sanctions up". In public, he says "Down with sanctions you evil western foreigners etc".
When the cables were released, surprise surprise, his opponent capitalizes on the fact that he says one thing in private and the exact opposite in public - and arguably, the things he says in private are detrimental to his country (he was basically saying "USA, it's totally okay for you to keep on penalizing our entire country because one political party refuses to play ball"). The citizenry, now that they know this guy is not necessarily acting in their best interests, turn against him. It's not really their fault that his opposite number is a complete asshole.
Maybe he shouldn't have been a two-faced liar? That would have kept this from happening. Pity integrity is apparently something that happens to other people.
You do know who sold him that nerve gas, right? The good old US of A. No one was calling them WMDs when he was gassing the Kurds, that phrasing came in the push for war. By the time we started accusing him as opposed to covering up for him, he had none left, so what BobMcD says is arguably true.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Quite frankly, The Atlantic should be bitterly ashamed of itself for that ghastly piece of drivel.
Wikileaks revealed a cable, the contents of which included the fact that Tsvangirai, while pretending to be against sanctions against Zimbabwe while at home, sucking up to the electorate, was in fact in favor of them. The Atlantic says that this is a blow to democracy. Srsly? Do they actually think that "Democracy" is just some kind of game show, where you get to line up and put your little scrap of paper in the box every few years, to decide which of the competing politicians you find more mediagenic? Some kind of variant on "Survivor"; but with more national pride?
Unless your "democracy" is to be a cargo-cult sham, where you go through the motions and get none of the effects, people must be able to(and must be willing to, which might ultimately be the harder part...) vote for positions and platforms represented by politicians, not for politicians-as-characters. The fact that one of the major contenders actually represents the exact opposite of his stated position is, y'know, just a teeny bit relevant...
Now, if The Atlantic holds the view that, since Mugabe is just such a scumbag, his removal is more important than democracy; they ought to say so. It isn't hard: "Hey, Raison d'etat, bitches! Getting rid of an obviously bad dude is clearly more important than a bunch of little people getting to know what they are casting their cute little ballots for. Maybe when they are all grown up and sophisticated, like us, they will be ready for real democracy; but, for now, the important thing is making sure that they get what they need, not what they claim to want." See, that was easy, use it with my compliments.
However, if The Atlantic actually values "democracy" in Zimbabwe, they should be celebrating the fact that the people thereof now know more than they did before about who and what they are voting for. Instead, we get this pusillanimous drivel. Pathetic.