Nov
29
WikiLeaks Doing the World a Favor
While I realize it’s a somewhat controversial thesis and you are free to disagree by commenting directly on this post, I believe it to be true! By far the biggest breaking story at the moment is WikiLeaks releasing tons of confidential US diplomatic communications to news organizations around the world. The service, founded by secretive Australian Julian Assange has broken many controversial news stories to date, including video footage from a US Army helicopter of innocent civilians and journalists being slaughtered in Iraq and a string of e-mails from foreign policy heavyweight (sic) Sarah Palin. To keep its sources safe, the organization utilizes various temporary locations around the world, encrypts everything it receives or sends (the founder has a background in hacking), and operates out of countries which have strong press protection laws on the books, e.g. Sweden, Iceland and Belgium.
So why is this latest news such a big deal that even yours truly is writing a blog post about it? The insider documents reveal the background machinations of America and its allies, as well as plenty of juicy tidbits on its 21st century enemies. While the US government is understandably none too happy to have their privileged communications with major players of the world out in the open for all to see, it all makes for some very interesting reading and for many cynical Gen Xers like me around the world, offers rare insight into what’s REALLY going on in the world (as opposed to the spin that governments around the world would LIKE us, their mostly uninformed citizens to believe), including:
1. Arab countries like Jordan have been urging the US and not the other way around to bomb Iran. Zeid Rifai is quoted as telling a US official: “Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won’t matter.” 2. Links between the Russian government and organised crime, with diplomats further describing the relationship between Russia’s President Putin and Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi as “extraordinarily close”. 3. Yemen’s President talking to then US Mid-East commander General David Petraeus about attacks on Yemeni al-Qaeda bases: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours”, then making a joke about lying to his own parliament. Glad to not be Yemeni! 4. The childish tempter tantrum of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he was not permitted to set up his tent in Manhattan or visit ground zero during a UN session. Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he attempted to renege on carrying out his promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia. 5. China’s highest echelon, i.e. the Politburo was behind the intrusions into Google’s computer systems, all part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws since 2002. (Sources: BBC News, The Economist, NYT)
Interesting revelations all, but are they really all that surprising? I’m not shocked by any of them, in fact most of them comport with my own realpolitik view of the world. Does China hacking into Google computers really surprise you? What about Qaddafi’s little temper tantrum, incredibly equating the removal of nuclear weapons with the gratification of his own little battered ego? As for the Arab nations trying to convince the US to bomb Iran, if anything it makes America look good and Arab governments look bad, which is great, because you may not know that the name of the game in the Middle East is to talk bad about America in the street to your own people, while pleading for the US to send more money!
As a good friend of mine in Europe, whom I sometimes, perhaps unfairly so, deride for his exceedingly rosy views once claimed, the Internet may just turn out to be the greatest lever for democracy EVER CREATED. In fact, maybe we global citizens deserve to know what our governments are up to and a little transparency in this dangerous day and age, may not be such a bad thing after all. As for the leaks potentially compromising “lives” as the femininely named Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed on TV today, I couldn’t agree less. None of the documents released carried the Top Secret designation and if anything, it all adds up to surprisingly good PR for America and bad PR for its enemies and fair weather friends! Besides, my personal view is that if the US government or any government for that matter is perpetrating evil acts, then I’d like to know about it. Wouldn’t you?
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