please excuse this politically motivated post. i like to refrain from discussing politics in general, but this is an issue i feel strongly about, and i believe it deserves everyone's attention...
Headlines this morning report that Interpol has put WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange on its "Most Wanted" list in connection with rape and sexual molestation charges in Sweden. I must say that, in principle, I doubt the charges. As professor Bernard put it this morning, if Assange had not been charged with rape and sexual molestation, he would have been framed with something else, underlining the simple fact that it has become necessary to get rid of Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks.
Tom Flanagan, a former senior advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said Monday night on CBC's "Power and Politics with Evan Solomon," that Assange should be assassinated, that President Obama should put out a contract for his murder, or use military assets (such as drones) to neutralize him. Tom Flanagan, a professor at the University of Calgary, claims that some of the secrets exposed by WikiLeaks "could conceivably lead to war" and concluded that "this is really not stuff that should be out," citing for example the revelation that Arab diplomats have asked the US to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
I am a strong proponent of Full Disclosure and I believe that WikiLeaks is a great stride towards Full Disclosure. By Full Disclosure I mean a system that places all affairs of state under public scrutiny. What this might look like is an independent press with unhindered and unlimited access to all government proceedings. The result would be, no government secrets and no state secrets and no personal secrets among government officials. Full disclosure is total transparency.
This is not good for states, but it is good for people.
I believe Full Disclosure is necessary because of the anarchic nature of the international system. There is no system of accountability in international politics. The United Nations Organization does not provide accountability, does not police the international system. The United Nations Organization is a forum for discussion between states. States with sufficient power can ignore the United Nations and lesser states are controlled by more powerful states through the United Nations. There is no accountability in the international system.
Furthermore, domestically, we have no true democracy. We do not live in a democratic state, in Canada. Rather we have a form of a representational republic, or a parliamentary republic, where the people are not the choosers, rather, the people choose the choosers. This is not, as we claim, democracy. I will not say this is a bad system of politics. It is, compared to many other systems, a good system of politics that I am content to live with. Nevertheless, it is not a true democratic system.
Full Disclosure holds governments accountable to the voting public and holds states accountable to one another within the international system. What results is greater democracy within states and greater democracy between states; governments are held accountable for their perfidy not only by the voting public within their own borders but by the people of all states.
If states are embarrassed by the information disclosed, they should be! They have conducted themselves in a way that is embarrassing both in foreign and in domestic policy. No state is not guilty of perfidy. As long as there are state and government secrets, there will be perfidy; as much perfidy as possible. Full Disclosure will not end perfidy, but will certainly restrict it.
Professor Raffo, in a lecture this morning, said that Full Disclosure will result in the breakdown of diplomacy and will ultimately cause chaos in the international system. I contend that Full Disclosure will result in the breakdown of secret diplomacy and a new open diplomacy will replace it. Something like what President Wilson envisaged: Open treaties of peace, openly arrived at. There will be chaos for a time. But out of that chaos will emerge a better international system based on something more closely resembling democracy. Not the current international system of dictatorship by Super Power, where global domination is shared among a few Super Powers who dictate policy to lesser states.
The Internet has brought about an age in which every individual has a voice. So, every individual ought to be informed as much as possible.
I doubt we will ever see such a system of Full Disclosure exist. Nevertheless, it is worth striving for, in the hope that some day there will be wisdom and justice in the international system. Until then, I believe that Julian Assange should be harboured and allowed to continue his work.
this post reminds me of something that happened when i was nine.
ReplyDeleteit was 1991 and there were bombs dropping in kuwait. my sister (an active member of the model U.N. in her high school) asked me what i thought about canada's official stance on this.
i'm nine, i shrugged, i don't have an opinion.
you have to! she shouted, aghast. everyone needs to make sure they are informed! ignorance is no excuse, and no action is an action!
which, of course, made me more stubborn to maintain my opinionless state ...
i think she was right, though, to an extent. the more you know, the better.
Bahahaha. Joanne has similar memories. I do remember having passionate opinions and being shocked that other people didn't care, but I was a bit tough on a 9-year-old, wasn't I?
ReplyDeleteHope you don't mind me disagreeing with you, but I am really not voting for Full Disclosure anytime soon. It sounds a lot like the girl's bathroom in high school, where people really did say everything they thought. It was NOT pretty. I was happy to escape back into the hallway where they just snickered behind their hands.
Open-ness looks in print like something very collaborative and democratic. The big problem with it is not the method, I suppose, but the fundamental flaw in the creatures that would have to implement it. People think we can get peace by getting people to hold hands and sing "Kum-ba-ya", but until we deal with the very great problem of sin, war and violence are made necessary. Even the Lord Jesus had to submit himself to violence in order to conquer sin. And hell didn't vanish when he rose from the dead, either.
The real issue that arises when we fail to recognize the problem of sin is that we are forced to accept an idea like Communism, which is a beautiful thing in theory, and has never been anything but a disaster in practice. Democracy is only a few steps ahead of mob rule, but it recognizes with much more clarity the problem we are born into, and that's why it's desirable - not because it's really an ideal that is shot through with beauty. It's just pragmatic - a band-aid solution to keep the wolves at bay until Jesus comes to turn things on their head and rule the world not only with power, but also with love.
I have to agree with your prof - I think chaos and anarchy will result from this brand of open-ness, and I think we are naive to think that the problem with WikiLeaks can be chalked up to "embarrassment". The world has just gotten a lot more unstable for those who have no God to look to, and a lot more uncomfortable for those of us who do.
It's a powerful lie of our world that we can peacefully negotiate our way out of anything; that if we just lay down our guns and offer to shake hands we'll all live in harmony. Jesus is the only one who will ever have enough power to ensure that the world isn't run by power.
I don't think total transparency is good for states or for people. Information is good, but a little bit is dangerous. Even from the democratic perspective, knowledge and understanding of a complex situation isn't something you can pick up in a Wikipedia article, and even if all the information were available, people wouldn't access enough of it to be able to make reasonable judgments.
(And Tom Flanagan, btw, is known for his bombastic and colorful style. This isn't the first time he's stirred the pot with his flamboyant sense of humour. Even though his statements might be shocking to read, it's not likely many people watching him really thought he was serious...)
I would be happy to see Julian Assange shut down and locked up. Unfortunately, I think Pandora's box has been opened, so it isn't likely that would solve the problem.
Come Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace!
Jennypo: Your argument is not convincing. Election time is like the girl's bathroom that you described. I wouldn't know what a girl's bathroom is like.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Ellsberg, the famous Vietnam War whistle blower, says in an interview on "Democracy Now" that this kind of access to information helps prevent the government from lying to the people to keep unjust wars going.
I'm not saying that all wars will stop with full disclosure. What I'm saying is that with greater access to information, the people--the voters--will have a better idea of what their country is getting into.
Take the Tonkin Resolution of the Vietnam War for example: the Johnson administration created an outright lie to gain executive powers in Vietnam. If the people had had access to the information, the government wouldn't have tried it and the war might not have been extended into North Vietnam.
You're right that people wouldn't access enough of the information to make reasonable judgments. In fact, I think the only people who are going to surf WikiLeaks are journalists and historians. And then the people will get the information synthesized through the journalists in the news media. Discerning readers will be able to, with the internet, search through various interpretations and debates on the information, but most people will probably just read one or two articles and form an opinion. Because they're stupid like that.
But governments will be less likely to mislead their people and people will have a better idea of what's going on.
And besides, chaos is a good thing. (Ok, I don't expect everyone to agree with that.)
Check out this article in the Globe and Mail, titled: "WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/wikileaks-just-made-the-world-more-repressive/article1818157/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_content=1818157&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
My response: Humanitarian causes are never motivations for political action. If western governments are using human rights violations to put pressure on one country, you can bet that they're overlooking human rights violations in a dozen others. Not to mention the human rights violations perpetrated by western governments and western-backed governments both at home and in foreign countries. International policing is always politically motivated.
If western countries are using human rights violations to put pressure on one country, it's not because they're concerned about the people who are suffering, but because they have an economic or political interest in that country.
So, I don't think that WikiLeaks does make the world more repressive. More likely, it limits the ways that governments can manipulate other governments.
ReplyDeletePolitical action taken by governments requires two things: money and political will. The will comes from people who vote, and the money comes from big business. Humanitarian causes ARE embraced by voters, and since those voters are also customers, big business often finds itself supporting humanitarian causes as well.
ReplyDeleteI respect the criticisms you're making, but the dichotomy you imply is too simplistic: government=bad, media=good. I'd be more liable to trust the government, personally, but of course, the mental hologram of the intrepid journalist revealing truth and defending democratic freedom is a hard one to shake, and it's all the more powerful because it's backed by conglomerates that control almost all of our information and are both richer and more powerful than any government in the world. They LOVE to reveal the evil government's secret agenda; they have an easy target, and it makes the sales job they are doing look like altruism.
Ah, this is a world far too complicated and deceitful for the likes of you and me. The truth we think we see beyond the smoke is just a mirror-trick.
Like you, I long for the day when the world will be ruled in righteousness and justice. When Jesus, our rightful king, comes again...
A righteous and just government is just as impossible as a righteous and just news media, even if such a thing were proposed.
ReplyDeleteI admit that the dichotomy you mentioned was implied by my arguments, however, it was an unconscious implication. I don't believe that media is any more righteous or just or good than government, in fact, the two often work together to both good and bad purposes.
As naive as it is to believe that a freer press and a freer access to information would bring in some kind of peaceful utopian world order; it is equally naive to believe that our governments have the people's best interests at heart and can be trusted to do what is right.
Ideologically, I believe, democratic governments, by necessity, take the people's best interests quite seriously but what happens in practice is a long way off from that ideology.
The "intrepid journalist revealing truth" is a mythology because, by virtue of every different politically motivated opinion, there are so many different versions of the truth that the truth is for all purposes and intents, entirely subjective.
Let me make an analogy to describe my position: in Canada we have a federal government and a provincial government. The federal government and the provincial governments very rarely get along and can hardly be thought of as working together. But their opposition to one another is seen as a good thing because each limits the power of the other, even if the results are often counterproductive.
I consider the relationship between the media and government as the same. Potentially.
Just like, in the United States, the confederacy broke away from the union and war broke out over the power of states' governments in opposition to the power of the federal government, this is a kind of civil war for power. And I place myself squarely on the side that says governmental power ought to be limited by greater access to information.
Of course, I welcome disagreement, recognizing that this is a controversial topic. I don't believe that you're wrong, Jennypo, you see it from a valuable perspective. The hope is that by debating, a balance will be found, but we must begin from extreme positions.
As you say, it's true "the government does not have people's best interests at heart, and can't be trusted to do what is right", and neither can people. Even if we knew all of the information we ought to know, there are enough of us who don't want what is good for us to mess it up. More democracy isn't the answer, and truly, no political system is.
ReplyDeleteWe have seen the enemy, and it is us.
Act 17:31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
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