Wikileaks and Democracy In Zimbabwe 669
OCatenac writes "The Atlantic has an interesting story on the collateral damage of exposing diplomatic communications in Zimbabwe. From the article: 'The reaction in Zimbabwe was swift. Zimbabwe's Mugabe-appointed attorney general announced he was investigating the Prime Minister on treason charges based exclusively on the contents of the leaked cable. While it's unlikely Tsvangirai could be convicted on the contents of the cable alone, the political damage has already been done. The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. Furthermore, it could provide Mugabe with the pretense to abandon the coalition government that allowed Tsvangirai to become prime minister in 2009.' Undoubtedly there are lots of things that our governments hide from us which should not be hidden but it's a shame that no one from Wikileaks could be troubled to consider the potential repercussions of this particular exposure."
Re:Mugabe (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how we shift the blame here. And funny how no mention is made of the fact that all the diplomatic cables were redacted by the five newspapers Assange pre-released the cables to. No, it is not Mugabe or the papers who are to blame here, it is that rapist Assange again. The spin and manipulation seem so blatant to me, so orchestrated, that it amazes me how few people seem to notice the man behind the curtain.
Re:Ellsberg actually redacted diplomatic cables (Score:5, Interesting)
Assange (or whoever at his organization) also redacts names from the majority of Wikileaks releases, generally except where the names are of public figures.
The question is, is it worth it? To see how the bankers and the financiers and the heads of state control the world and the wealth in the world? Will it REALLY help democracy and display capitalism's flaws? Haven't we known that since Marx?
This is the most cynical, hopeless thing I have ever heard. It's essentially an admittance of defeat. You're saying, we may as well let the government and the corporations operate in secret, because we know that exposing their crimes won't do any good anyway. And the sad thing is, you might be right.
Re:Mugabe (Score:2, Interesting)
Some people can only be removed by force, and will keep killing until they are killed. Mugabe is one of them. If the citizens don't have the firepower to do it, it is the moral duty of someone who can to do it. I'm all for arresting him and giving him a fair trial, but I also will not shed a tear if he is killed while resisting arrest.
Re:Mugabe (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess you missed most of the world shifting to democracy. Shifting to democracy wasn't love, hugs, and cookies. It was violent, unbelievably so. France slaughtered royalty and politicians alike. In the UK they were drawing magistrates in the streets. The US not only fought the British, but threw them out. India's shift was very violent as well, so was pakistan's. Israel's was the same. Oh lets not forget Argentina either.
People can be ready and want democracy. The shift to give people rights beyond what the government(royalty, or dictatorships), was violent everywhere. So yes, you can bring democracy by force. In fact, most of the democratic world was brought into existence by force. It's the erosion of democracy that's silent.
Re:wrong way round (Score:5, Interesting)
To further that argument, remember that when we uncovered abuse of tortures at Gitmo, we were told that there were terrorists who would now know what kind of interrogation techniques we use and would train their operatives to resist those techniques. We were told that we needed to keep our interrogation processes secret in the name of national security. And to some extent, there's some truth in that - if terrorists want to be arrested and made into martyrs, it helps to know how your captors will deal with you.
I don't know how I feel about this particular incident. I think there's a lot in the latest batch of WL releases that the public deserve to know, while a lot of it is just backroom chatter and face-saving things said behind doors that could've just been let there alone. But I absolutely hate this argument that we can't uncover the truth about things because TEH BAD PEOPLE will use that information against us.
Number one, the bad people will always find something that they can use to fuel their propaganda. You're not going to stop the bad people by keeping these things secret. Number two, if you give people a freedom, then some people will use it for bad purposes. You give people the right to bear arms, then some people are going to get shot. Some people will say that if you ban guns, then only the criminals will have guns, and I sympathize with that argument. I would say that if we don't have information getting out to people about how their governments are functioning, then only the government itself will know how it is functioning.
I want to quote a paragraph from TFA here: Zimbabwe's Mugabe-appointed attorney general announced he was investigating the Prime Minister on treason charges based exclusively on the contents of the leaked cable. While it's unlikely Tsvangirai could be convicted on the contents of the cable alone, the political damage has already been done. The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. Furthermore, it could provide Mugabe with the pretense to abandon the coalition government that allowed Tsvangirai to become prime minister in 2009.
What that paragraph says to me is - Mugabe is still in control, and if Wikileaks hadn't exposed this bit of dirt on one of his rivals, then it still would have happened for the first bit of negative information he could uncover. On top of that, the author of the post isn't talking about a loss of support for the prime minister that's already happened - he's predicting everything that's going to happen in the future, so there's no direct guarantee that the whole coalition government is about to collapse. It's terrible that Zimbabwe could be back in trouble again - not new trouble, just the trouble that was already there and was simmering quietly - but I still find blaming Wikileaks for this trouble to be the equivalent of blaming a pebble for the avalanche.
Re:wrong way round (Score:4, Interesting)
You remind me of Christine O'Donnell (former US Senate candidate). She said she'd reveal Anne Frank to the Nazis because lying is wrong.[/godwin]
Re:Ellsberg actually redacted diplomatic cables (Score:4, Interesting)
You are mistaken I'm sure. Whatever you value them as, Assange seems to have very specific ideas and motives behind him as illustrated here:
http://www.mara-stream.org/think-tank/julian-assange-conspiracy-as-governance/
In addition to this, and as has been pointed out elsewhere on Slashdot, unlike the Ellsberg leak, Assange has no actual interest in the US. Rather what he has is an interest in letting the rest of the world understand its influence upon different citizen's countries and how their governments may have interacted or even been pressured into doing deals with the US to further its own interest, often at the cost of democratic values.
The only people I see complaining now are those that are in the US. Well too bad. You made your bed (Cambodia, South and Central America, Africa, the list goes on and on), so deal with it. Its quite possible that the US are not "the good guys" that Americans would like to think and that this rallying against Wikileaks is not against the leaks, but rather a very deeply rooted cultural self esteem which is now threatened. The US is coming out as not very nice at all -- and if it was Russia no one would care, because you'd expect that from Russia, right? But the US? Bad?
Don't believe me? Its very interesting that the nature of the discussion is all about whether Wikileaks should leak, rather than the contents of the leaks themselves. Information is just information after, no? But suddenly everyone is defending Hillary Clinton and who ever else on needing this kind of secrecy to broker "important deals" and keep "security" whatever that means. This is not democratic freedom.
People in the US are probably very good people or bad people within the usual statistical distribution of a Western population. I see alot of people from the US complain endlessly about their "one party" system, and how everyone is in bed with the lobbyists and the corporations and that something should change, but then Wikileaks comes along to challenge this, and everyone complains. Its mysterious. Its important to separate yourself as a citizen from your government which Wikileaks is working against. Stand back objectively and make up your own mind.
Here's an exercise, try and place yourself in the position of any of a number of countries that have been muscled by the US in the last 50 years, and see if you can see the other side. Then understand that its not you, but your government which is responsible for this.
Re:Mugabe (Score:4, Interesting)
Because you cannot bring about Democracy by force.
Hmmmm.....seems to have worked fairly well in Germany and Japan.
Re:Mugabe (Score:5, Interesting)