I struggle to decide what my opinion is of the whole Wiki-leaks thing. Knowledge is power and, this being the "information age," power to the people! Right? I've heard the opinion that everyone is so crooked today and that's why we had an Enron, a Bernie Madoff, and the whole financial meltdown but I'm of the opinion that people in positions of power have always been crooked and only now, when you can't shred or burn up a paper trail, is the public able to hold corporations and politicians accountable. The fact coming to light that Saudi Arabia and Israel harbour similar misgivings about Iran may hurt Saudi-Iranian relations but maybe it eases tensions between Israel and other parts of the Middle East? Is it a coincidence that the next day Iran offered to return to the nuclear negotiating table? Maybe honesty really is the best policy.
I can't believe a heard a Canadian political advisor suggest the Wiki-Leaks founder be assassinated. That's the western world's equivalent to a fatwa and how can he not feel some responsibility if some misfortune does befall Assange? Of course the next day the advisor retracted his statement and the Harper government was quick to point out that he is a former advisor and not a current one but it was still said, still put into the heads of "patriotic" nut-bars. Does anyone believe the rape allegations about Julian Assange? You have to take them with a grain of salt because every government in the world has something to gain from ruining Assange's reputation. Charges like that, even if dismissed, never go away and will be at least a footnote on any future "dumps" from Wiki-leaks. But then, maybe somebody who is crazy enough to take on every government in the world is capable of those other things. You see, even the suggestion starts to work on me as I'm typing.
It's interesting hearing the back-room talk for once instead of always the government's dumbed down, politically correct "official" statement. It's refreshing and I've been glued to the news sites as they release snippets of these cables, along with the interviews and sound bites from politicians condemning them, calling it treason. But how can it be treason when Assange is Australian? One could argue that the person who originally leaked the info committed a crime but if rebroadcasting is treason too then aren't CNN, Fox, and MSNBC just as guilty? I'm not about to pour through 250,000 documents on a website that these days is constantly under cyber attack, but I'll check the headlines on my Blackberry.
Salman Rushdie had to spend a large portion of his life in hiding and in real fear of assassination when some religious zealots didn't like the words he wrote, will Julian Assange have a similar fate because political zealots don't like their own words coming back at them?
www.wikileaks.org
