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Wikileaks, Security, Transparency, and Agency — 4 Comments

  1. It seems unlikely that a buck private was the real source of all these documents. Discovering the complete sources of the leaks surely merits further investigation.

    Much greater than security concerns is that Secretary of State Madame Clinton ordering 33 embassies to steal the personal credit card numbers, passwords and encryption keys of all major UN leaders. Where is the moral outrage that a aspirant to the oval office, besides being loved by Saul Alinsky in her college days, is running a major government department like a Soviet commissar? She should be indicted and punished, after resigning in disgrace from the government, of course. Trent Lott and Tom Delay committed no crimes, yet they were howled out of office by the Democrats and their media lackeys. Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, and Hillary Clinton commit real crimes and there is nary a peep, much less punishment.

    According the the Secretary of Defense, Wikileaks has not endangered anyone.

    From http://opiniojuris.org/2010/12/03/why-wikileaks-good-far-outweighs-its-harm/
    The ongoing release of U.S. diplomatic communications by the Wikileaks organization is “embarrassing” and “awkward,” said Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates yesterday, but its consequences for U.S. foreign policy are likely to be “fairly modest.”

    “I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets… Other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another.”

    The Espionage Act some want to charge Assange under dates from the dark days of Woodrow Wilson, and gave rise to the Palmer raids. Attorney General Palmer denied due process rights like reasonable bail, the right to a defense lawyer and jury trials to over 3,000 people.

    In this age of a gargantuan out of control federal government, Wikileaks is a wonderful tonic. The purpose of the American government is to protect individual freedom in the anti federalist tradition of the Declaration of Independence.

  2. The internet (bless those hippies from the 60’s!)is one-and perhaps only-magic bullet to prod our inauthentic human relations into the light of transparency and honesty. We do live in a world where human relations are still based on fear, mistrust, self-serving manipulations, and duplicitous social interactions. Whatever appears to help breakdown and alter this sick and perverse form of human relations is welcome by me.

  3. Gordon; you got some acrion on this one. You mentioned Sovereignty, Membership in the United Nations- NATO etc. has seriously undermined our sovereinth as a Nation. State dept. treatys have totaly undermined our Constitution as have the Admiralty Jurisdiction (maritine law) that our courts operate under. That is why we are kept under a continual state of war. The Korean war is still not over by the way. I know this leads off into a whole different, however it is a key piece of the whole jigsaw puzzle we are struggling with.

  4. Charles, sovereignty is a complicated issue that certainly merits more discussion, perhaps with more articles. However, one of the main points that I make in my book is that each level of government has its proper sphere of sovereignty. In fact, the first level of government is the individual citizen. Creating a government “of the people” means to create one based on sovereign citizens. When citizens create a state, they give it some sovereignty, but only sovereignty over that with they agree among themselves to cede. When the sovereign states, entered into a federal union, they ceded some of their sovereignty, but they should not have ceded any individual sovereignty of citizens, only their sovereignty in certain things better done at the federal level-e.g. protection from foreign invasion and monitoring interstate commerce. When the United States joined the United Nations, it should not have ceded any sovereignty of its member states or its citizens, but only some sovereignty related to genuinely international concerns, like war between nations or the mistreatment of one nation by another.

    The key point to this system of organization is that for a world of peace it has to be voluntary. Members at every level should have a right of withdrawal if the higher body is not serving its purpose. A world based on force, conquest, and oppression prevents secession. A world of freedom requires voluntary participation based on the idea that the higher level will perform a useful purpose the lower levels cannot perform. It is wrong to expect the UN to plow your driveway, but it would also be wrong to expect one individual not to obey some international air traffic controls when flying a plane to another country.

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