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Why WikiLeaks Is Worth Defending
SomePgmr writes "By now, anyone with even a passing interest in the WikiLeaks phenomenon is familiar with most of the elements of its fall from grace: the rift between founder Julian Assange and early supporters over his autocratic and/or erratic behavior, the Swedish rape allegations that led to his seeking sanctuary in Ecuador, a recent childish hoax the organization perpetrated, and so on. Critics paint a picture of an organization that exists only in name, with a leadership vacuum and an increasingly fractured group of adherents. Despite its many flaws, however, there is still something worthwhile in what WikiLeaks has done, and theoretically continues to do. The bottom line is that we need something like a 'stateless news organization,' and so far it is the best candidate we have."
This is rich. In the US we don't have investigative journalism anymore and haven't had it since Iran-Contra for political and Vietnam for war coverage. In both circumstances, the government learned not to allow the media too close. That is why reporters were not allowed to investigate Iraq and Afghanistan on their own without being "imbedded". That is why you have no focus on the trillions spent on these war efforts and no reporting on the corruption of our government by the deep pockets of those who financially gain from fear (read Homeland Security) and war (read military industrial complex). Instead what we get for "news" is spoon fed us by the Pentagon and the White House and taken as gospel. It then gets repeated by every new organization without a single fact verified. In short, what we got for new organizations are merely propaganda machines.
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Why we need WikiLeaks: Remember the article on the Australian tax authority the other day where they want expansive powers to snoop on businesses on the off-chance they might be paying less taxes than the government would like?
OK, then, we the citizens need powers to snoop on government bureaucrats on the off-chance they're doing something illegal. If they're not doing anything wrong, they should have nothing to fear.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I guess I missed the part where the US has annexed sovereign states by force, or systematically imprisoned, impressed into forced labor, and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity.
That was during the 18th and 19th century (you know, the Indians, slavery, annexation of Hawaii, etc.) so it's understandable why you missed it.
As far as world domination goes, the US has far surpassed the Germans, and even the British -- that's why there are hundreds of military bases all over the world, and why there's one set of rules for countries in the imperial fold (e.g. Israel's nukes) and those outside (e.g. Iran's legal nuclear program).
True, the U.S. empire is "softer" than the German one -- it doesn't need mass extermination camps, it merely needs to imprison over 2 million of its own citizens, and apply surveillance over the rest, in order to keep the lid on things. That plus mass narcotization of its population via consumerism, entertainment and actual pharmaceuticals has proven a more effective form of centralization of power than the crude 20th century models.
This is a canard. Oh the media's spineless, everything it publishes is spoonfed, etc. That's just garbage. The real problem is we too many people don't want to think critically anymore; who would rather whine than ask questions or participate. They outsource responsibility for civic engagement to other people. That's why they don't notice that there are many, many reporters who are committed to discovering the truth and who take risks to do so.
Really? Are you saying that your history class literally failed to cover the Mexican American War, slavery, and the systemic genocide of the native population? These were standard topics in American History when I was growing.
I guess I missed the part where the US has annexed sovereign states by force, or systematically imprisoned, impressed into forced labor, and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity.
Then you must be Rip Van Winkle. There is an element of truth in your assertion, in that - since the 19th century, as others have pointed out - the USA has not seen fit to annex other nations in the sense of adding them to its own territory. Instead, it finds it more convenient to invade them, destroy their existing political systems, and set up puppet "Quisling" regimes. But dead people are dead however they got that way, and wherever the US armed forces have gone there seem to be an awful lot of "excess deaths". Maybe the liberated brown people simply die of excessive joy at their newly-conferred rights and freedoms.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Freedom to post whatever you want in a public forum is important in our world today. Wikileaks seems to self destructing and isn't necessary in the grand scheme of things.
Came here to say this. There will always be a vacuum for leaking facilitators, especially with the vast-reaching scale of the Internet and strong cryptography and anonymization technologies, and it will always be filled. Even without Wikileaks, there are other sites like Cryptome. Hell, even Gawker's filling that role. Hell, here's a compiled list. With decentralized file-sharing sites, any torrent tracker or public file server can operate as a host for information. As Brand famously said, "Information wants to be free", and the "99%" of any country will continue to be hungry consumers of that information.
It doesn't matter if Assange wants to be a showman or douche things up. He doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. He's merely the current public face of a system that has always existed and will always continue to exist. You can't make an example out of a thing like that.
The Powers that Be aren't stupid. They have to know this. Our job as the Public is to systematically remove any alternatives that they have to being good and respectful to their fellow man, and leaking is a critical and and inevitable part of that mission. With the Internet, we are closer than ever to having the tools to actually accomplish this. This doesn't mean that all leaks are good and noble; it does, however, mean that we need to respect their role in making the world a better place. It also means that legislating against this inevitability is both futile and self-destructive in the short term.
Information is power; If a government is forced to be wide open then they lose power. Open information should replace or be added to the 2nd Amendment. The whole point of the 2nd Amendment was to act as a brake on out of control government. But at this point in history a bunch of guys running around with 9mm pistols isn't going to change a thing. But open information can change everything. Corrupt contracts become a whole lot harder if the whole process becomes open. Things like ACTA become impossible if every step of the lobbyists become open and accountable. When I am talking open I mean really really open. Things like the DHS would be wide open. The only time I would think the government should be allowed to be even slightly closed would be open investigations which would require a judge to say, OK this is closed for 30 days. Then wiretaps and whatnot would be effective. But the second the investigation ends the records are instantly open.
All finance should be open right down to the paperclips. Wasteful spending can't happen if everyone can take a peek into their area of expertise and say, "Whoa there cowboy. You don't buy laptops for $2000 and a service plan of another $1000 per year." Or "That isn't the right concrete for an overpass. It will fall down in 10 years."
Think of the steps that had to be taken in private in order to create the Dick Murtha Airport.
Keep in mind that there are Nordic countries where they publish income tax records onto the internet. They do record who looks though. So you can see your neighbour's taxes but they can see that you are a nosy bastard. The result has been some fantastically rich people somehow claiming around $100,000 in income being busted by people finding this and then it becoming front page news.
How many times have the police gotten out of control where the whole thing was dealt with "internally"? Open government would end this.