Saturday, December 4, 2010

A Brief Look at the Arguments Against Wikileaks...

What are the arguments against Wikileaks? I only know a few.

1. Wikileaks has blood on it's hands for endangering sources or collaborators with the US.

This has never been proven, and seems to be largely a Pentagon talking point used to sway opinion, having no basis in fact. People who collaborate and aid invading armies like the U.S. occupying force in Afghanistan and Iraq are of course always in danger. That the Taliban have read Wikileaks and then hunted down individuals has never been proven. If there were such cases, I'm sure the Pentagon would be jumping all over them. Assange has also pointed out that these people may not be so innocent as some pretend, since they are individuals who have decided to aid an occupying force for personal profit or other motive.

2. Wikileaks has hurt diplomacy, made it more difficult for the U.S. to do essential work like halting the spread of nuclear weapons.

If anyone had faith in our western governments, this might be a valid point. However their secrecy, corruption and dishonesty have turned them into unreliable partners for a just and democratic world. Just to use a famous example, the UK and the US conspired to fake intelligence and outright lie about WMDs in order to invade Iraq. On a personal basis, if we know someone to be a liar, we will want added transparency in our dealings with them. The same should go for governments. We cannot entrust them with such power until they rediscover the importance of principle and justice in their dealings.

You've lost my trust, now you have to lose your secrecy!

3. Assange is a Patsy and Wikileaks is a plot by Soros or the CIA to bring us to war, help Israeli concerns, or to shut down or censor the internet.

I haven't seen any strong evidence that points to this other then people who are completely convinced of it, without giving much proof. If there is evidence of some such thing, bring it out, let's have a look. I find it, as well, hard to believe that the document dumps are in the interest or serve somehow the agenda of the CIA or the larger military-industrial-financial complex. Of course any form of resistance can trigger a crackdown from the authorities, but does that make the resistance itself wrong? It might also be that the crackdown or increase in security will tax the energies of the military-industrial-financial complex and make them weaker and not stronger in the long run.

3 comments:

  1. i am not a very good informant about this topic but with the amount of information i have i can say that whatever Assange is doing is nothing less than total bullshit. Has any damn person noticed that he has not posted even one article about Australia ? Why is it so ? He wants to see the world fight but doesn't want to see a drop of blood in his own nation !!

    ReplyDelete
  2. he has posted things about australia. alot of information about australia in fact. the cables are however us state department cables, and so exposes the views of the u.s. state department.

    i dont think he wants to see the world fight as you put it. i think the reasoning behind the cable release is that it will either force governments to be more open, or to be even more secretive which will ultimately slow down their power structure and make them less effective.
    i'm not a big fan of our government. so for me their outrage is a moment for me to smile a bit.

    ReplyDelete