What are you trying to say? That you are for whistle blowing on indiscriminate leakers?
In theory the US government works for the American people but we don't know what the hell our government is doing. I also don't believe that either US domestic or foreign policy serve the American people nearly as well as they would if the people had an effective method of holding the government accountable. I think USA foreign and domestic policy makers have fooled themselves into not knowing just how incompetent and sleazy US government policy is because knowing the truth would be depressing and would interfere with their career advancement.
Saying and thinking the same things that other earlier "smart" sounding people said makes ambitious rising young people sound "smart" and pleases the ever present tentacles of the same old (and a few new) special interests who have been corrupting foreign and domestic policy for generations.
Other nations governments have the same sort of problems. Stock holders are having similar problems with corporate management. We need more transparency. There areas in which corporations need secrecy to compete with each other. This is not as true for nations. We don't want our nations competing with each other the way they used to and we need to be wary of our governments serving special interests under the veil of the secrecy that nations claim that they need to compete with each other and to compete with terrorists.
Secrecy hides special interest corruption of policy.
Secrecy also hides Napoleon syndrome (a disease in which more power is never enough and leaders urged on by their advisers try to expand and expand their groups power until they almost inevitable overreach and fail resulting in needless hardships for many). This Napoleon syndrome is instinctual and has been with our species since before we were human and can be found in street gangs and corporations and anywhere teams of men compete with other teams of men.
Special interest corruption, plus napoleon syndrome plus the mindless momentum of people parroting what previous people said in an effort to sound smart leads to bad policy. More public scrutiny won't fix bad policy overnight but more public scrutiny is a good starting point.
Had we not had too much secrecy we would not have had 9-11 because we would not have misbehaved in the Middle East. If the Us government had supported Mossadegh and justice and democracy throughout the Middle East the Middle East would probably be democratic now and wealthier and Islamic fundamentalism would probably be much much weaker.
Who are you getting your opinions about what has been revealed from.
I assume that most of these documents have not yet been read by the leaker, by anybody at wikileaks, by anybody in the media or by anybody in the general public. A quarter million documents.
A lot of what I have heard that I think is relevant just confirms things I had heard earlier from other sources. I am not surprised by Chinese government sponsored computer hacking of Google and the US government. I am not surprised about confirmation of US government support for the coup in Honduras. I am not surprised by more accounts of blatant corruption of the Karzai government.
The Gulf Arab dictators desire for the USA to attack Iran is a surprise According to polls the people of those nations consider Israel and the USA not Iran to be the threats to their nations.
Somebody said looking at the WikiLeaks documents is like diamond mining in that you have to sift through a whole lot of dirt to find a diamond.
I would not expect every diplomatic cable to be insightful or accurate and I am not surprised that observers consider most of them boring and shallow. I am not surprised that the media found the bit about "Prince Andrew" and gossip about heads of states. The media says the cables are gossipy but is that because the cables are gossipy or because the media is gossipy?
Isn't it just the State Department's Cables, not the NSA's Cables and not the CIA or the defense departments cables? The leak also probably is not the State Department's most secure cables.
I would love to search the cables for evidence of US direction of the US armed militia that overthrew the Democracy in Haiti a few years back. I don't think these cables go back that far and only tangential evidence would be likely to show up is that sort of operation is on a need to know basis and the state department people don't need to know and if the State Departments more secret information.
I don't want the USA overthrowing any more democracies. One town I lived in in the USA had a few thousand illegal immigrant Guatemalan native Americans. We are lucky that they don't have they pride and need for revenge against those who are responsible for killing their people the way Americans and Muslim fundamentalists are all proud and need revenge against those who kill their people. Almost every one of these native Guatemalans had some of their friends and family killed by US tax dollar funded supposed operations against leftists that the Guatemalan government turned into a somewhat genocidal race war against the indigenous population regardless of politics. These native Guatemalans had no bitterness that I am aware of against the USA for funding the genocide against them. For the most part the USA got lucky like that all over the world because though the USA inserted itself in the civil wars of most nations nobody seeks revenge against us. We just got lucky that all these people we fucked with in so many nations don't feel driven to seek justice the way we Americans do when we get fucked with or the way Muslim extremists do when they get fucked with.
We secretly fucked with so many nations but the secrets were not secrets in the nations that were getting fucked with. The secrets were secrets being kept from the American people who would not have approved. Prior to WW2 imperialists who wanted to occupy the Philippines or other nations could argue openly with anti-imperialists like Mark Twain. The propaganda against Hitler changed everything and made overt imperialism of the sort practiced before WW2 no longer acceptable to the American people; so from WW2 onwards whenever the USA did something in the world that went against democratic idealism the USA would attempt to hide the reality from the American people. Of course it is easier to lie to people who want to be lied to. The cold war against the Soviets was serious enough that sleazy actions done to fight the Soviets could be justified but so often the sleazy actions were of questionable value at fighting the Soviets.
The most useful thing that can be done to make the terrorists stronger is for West to continue business as usual in the manor at which it has fought the Soviets and is now fighting whoever. We need to be scrupulously honorable when we are in other people's nations.
All this stupid competition between peoples and ideologies is so destructive. If the Western powers continue this way and If the Muslim world and China and everybody else continues to follow Napoleonic thinking then nuclear war becomes inevitable. The entire mindset must change. Post WW2 has been a radical departure from pre WW2 in terms of recognizing the immorality of nations dominating other nations but now we need to take another step forward and cease covertly playing power games. Wikileaks needs to grow. We need more leakers from all departments of all governments.
Nice true slogan I think from the 1980s: One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. The opposite is also true. One man's freedom fighter or when man's defender or justice enforcer is another man's terrorist.
The powerful do collateral damage because they can target where they guess that their enemy is but whoever happens to be around will be killed. The powerful claim this is not terrorism and is not the moral equivalent of terrorism because at least they are attempting to kill the enemies rather than to get to the enemy psychologically by killing the enemies civilian population. This is an illogical argument. Collateral damage is as bad as terrorism. Politically motivated killing is politically motivated killing regardless who does the killing.
There are no Good guys in this battle between the US government and all who oppose it's dream to become ever more powerful and dominating forever. There are no Good guys in the battle between Islamic extremism and all who oppose it's dream to dominate the Muslim world and then once that is achieved to increasingly dominate the world. Both the Neocon dreamers and the Muslim extremist dreamers convince themselves that they make sense and must defend their present and future people and institutions from all enemies but both groups have been driven to delusion by their desire to be significant in the grand scheme of things.
The whole world had a revival of religious and traditionalist aspirations including religious extremism in the 1980s as a reaction to the excesses and failure of secular progress oriented aspirations in the 1970s. As much as I don't like traditionalist and religious conservative thought I am not worried about it. The social left vs social right supremacy seems to run in cycles and it is about time for the globe which now is running synchronized cycles to swing back towards the social left. In my opinion only the West's symbolic attacks on Muslims can prevent Islamic extremism from fading along with Christian and Hindu nuttyness fading beginning about now to make way for another era of secular progress oriented aspirations. Basically I thin the median people embrace the future get disappointed with what we create and then long for the past and then get sick of the past and embrace the future again. I have traveled and trust that people all over the world whether simple and backwards or high tech and modern are basically similar and are simultaneously stupid and intelligent. The next generation of Muslims will not naturally be looking towards the past for comfort, security and stability the way this last generation did but the West is going to use Muslims as their bogey men and make Muslims feel attacked then they might counter attack as Muslims even though they cycle would have them looking toward the future and the possibilities rather than towards clinging to their past.
The neocon mentality scares me more because I don't think it is cyclical. This manipulative scheming fearful but ambitious and hopeful mentality that fits with the unidealistic version of the desire to be significant in the grand scheme causes events like WW1 and numerous smaller confrontations. It is like some very geeky version of testosterone driven will to power within a chimpanzee band to get top access to the girls but played out in some weird sublimated way political intrigue substituting for the tree shaking, friendly grooming and attacking and biting that a natural male would do when trying to take over a band. I don't think US and UK policy makes any real sense. It is just momentum and this neocon attitude. In PNAC I saw that China was the real target for the NeoCons and taking Iraq was just part of the strategy to contain China. I think these guys endless preparation for war makes their counterparts in other nations more convinced that their is an intrigue against them which drives them in term to engage in intrigues and preparation for war which proves to the first group that they were correct to prepare for war. How do we get out of the cycle? We need Wikileaks much more if we are to avoid nuclear war this next 100 years. We are not going to muscle our way to safety. Only more transformation and building trust and cooperation has a chance to work.
I am sorry for any allies of the neocon-lite empire that might get hurt by Wikileaks but something more important and more life saving to the present and future people of the USA's and world's people is at stake here. Democracy must advance so that Neocon style stuck in the past pro Machiavellian way of thinking whether done by Americans or Chinese or whoever doesn't end up sucking up and wasting vast resources and lead to nuclear wars.
Wikileaks is the best step towards making the world safe from terrorism that I have seen this last five years. The truth shall set us free and build trust if anything can set us free.
Would you want to live in a family that lies to you? Could we be comfortable knowing we are being lied to? Doesn't being lied to make everything feel adversarial.
We need more truth and more tools to get more truth.
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You are always a very fair minded poster nirakar.
I'm surprised your opinions on this are so one sided.
Could you not see circumstances where information posted could be immoral or illegal? Can you see limits to freedom of information as an ideal, and where would you place those limits?[/QUOTE]
I was surprised to see you on the other side of this issue.
Overall the price paid for loss of secrecy will be worth it. Ideally Governments would be almost entirely open. Maybe let Government and corporations keep some secrets for five years but after that everything they do should be public.
Imagine if we used electronic currency and every penny was traced and available online to be viewed online. That would be the end of muggings and burglary. Privacy is to protect good people from bad people but privacy also protects bad people from good people.
Stalking victims being stalked by mentally deranged stalkers need privacy.
