Wikileaks. A few thoughts.

We rejoice that Iranian and other suppressed women are gathering power for change through the net. We applaud Chinese dissidents who expose human rights abuses and other ‘embarrassments’ through the net. It is now an irreversible fact that networks, independent of governments, nations, ethnicities, and religions are mushrooming all over, to the concern of all regimes and bringing (sometimes violent) reaction from some.

Just imagine the ‘good old boys’ of the diplomatic club remembering what they once wrote to a ‘person with shared opinions’ in confidence, and we must remember we are talking documents here, not two half pissed old blokes in a bar… “Haw, haw, haw! Wait til I tell you what Hillary said to me in the plane! Haw, haw, haw!” They must be shitting themselves!

Wikileaks is a threat to world order. But maybe we no longer want the old world order of secret deals and conspiracies, the guts of most ‘alliances’. Maybe we can embrace this opportunity for unprecedented transparency. It takes imagination, but complete transparency has the potential to put an end to clandestine plotting of real or imagined conspiracies, fear that has sown the seeds of so much distrust and violence. But there is something far more important happening here of which Wikileaks is merely a symptom. Ordinary people are feeling empowered to demand to know what is really going on.

But, and it is a big ‘but’, as things stand, unless someone cracks Chinese, Korean, Russian, Israeli, Saudi, Pakistani (etc) and Vatican secret files, it is lopsided and dangerous. However, having said that, there are several dangerous flash points awaiting a spark of insanity, so I am not sure this break with tradition isn’t better than nothing.

We are, for the first time in the history of Man, becoming privy to what really happens in the secret, manipulative world of domestic and international politics. At last we can be all grown up and be told the truth. It may be that our survival as a species depends on it!