Monday, December 6, 2010

WikiLeaks: A Cyber-Deep-throat?

The Watergate Scandal of the early 1970's ultimately led to the resignation of US President Richard M. Nixon in August of 1974. The whole thing began as a little noticed story; a break-in at the Democratic Party National Headquarters, followed by arrests, cover-ups, tapes, denials and finally presidential resignation. The whole process was fuelled to the end by enterprising journalists from the New York Times and especially Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post. Many of the details came from the Post's whistle-blower source nick-named 'Deep Throat' but now known to be former Associate Director of the FBI W. Mark Felt.
I'm not sure if the WikiLeaks data dump(s) from Julian Assange will have as much or even more impact than the Watergate story, but I'm hoping it does. I'm hoping its bigger.
The stories coming out of WikiLeaks have already had an impact as far as I'm concerned. Canada's new three year commitment to the Afghan debacle has been immediately spotlighted from the WikiLeaks releases. Now everyone here knows that Hamid Karzai and his gang of thugs is corrupt, if there were any doubts before.
Canada has lost 153 dead and thousands injured physically and mentally, with billions of dollars frittered away by spineless politicians and bureaucrats. What is our strategic gain from this mess? Are Canadians, Americans, anyone, safer today than they were a year ago? Five years ago? Will we ever leave Afghanistan?
We also know from WikiLeaks that Hilary Clinton thinks the Saudis, American allies, are the "most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." I'm sure glad all the terrorist funding sources have been plugged up almost a decade after 9/11.
Talking about 'plugging,' its good to know that American security is so tight, that a 23 year old soldier who can lip-sync Lady Gaga can steal thousands of classified documents and show that government incompetence is forever and everywhere.
In a strange way WikiLeaks is reassuring, how can anyone believe in government conspiracies after this? How can anyone believe in any kind of conspiracies? How can anyone believe in government/politicians announcements? WikiLeaks encourages skepticism, and that kind of disbelief is what will keep us all free.
To those who think Julian Assange should be prosecuted or worse, executed for treasonous acts, I think otherwise. I think he's done us all a great service, in fact I think we should remove the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize from its undeserving winner and hand it over to Assange. That would be a worthwhile tribute. By the way the 2007 Peace prize was also undeserved, but that's a story for later.

2 comments:

  1. I was in discussion with a friend and he said in the course of the conversation that we shouldn't turn our backs on the 153 that died. My reaction was I couldn't do much about them but I hope I can have some say at the next 153 being led into the fodder. So kudos to Assange!
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  2. Lets hope there are no more, but that was a good response to your friend.

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