The Sword of The Enlightenment

Is truth.

It’s been a bad year. It’s been an Empire Strikes Back year. Our futures are being negotiated away in secret – by the people we pay to represent our interests, but who actually just kowtow to the rich. Everywhere you look, the Internet is under attack – by private-tyrannies trying to oblige ISPs to spy on us… and our weak, pathetic, and fundamentally dishonest governments repeat the lies, going along with it.

All over the world… (having just nicked our money (our schools, our hospitals) and given it to gambling bankers, who’s activities have been in no way proscribed… (Obama just stood there, and lied to us)) we now seem to have a brace of governments who seem to see cracking down on the poor as a sign of strength.

Guantanamo is still going, the occupation of Iraq is still happening, the war on Afghanistan, or Pakistan or wherever it is, is still happening. The same austerity measures that were imposed by the IMF on South America in the 80s are now being imposed on the US, UK and elsewhere as though they’re some sort of moral imperative. Privatisation, and gutting of public-services. Rentacops stopping photography in the street. Police-statism-on-tap wherever the G20 goes. It’s been a bad year.

But.

Julian Assange turned up and dropped a white hot sublimating thunderbolt into all of this, and it has transformed. It is so simple. The Truth. It makes the activities of the prestidigitating corporate lawyers and militarists look like the cheap, juggling, side-show cheats that they are. Their reaction has been predictable and pathetic – lying, spinning… all cut to nothing with a few simple words.

It’s been a week or two… has the dust settled? I don’t think it’s even started to blow up to be honest – and this is just one bomb-shell in a series… a pattern of bombshells to come. We (the people, the internet) have a weapon at our disposal, and it is exposure. It’s truth – and it beats anything that the forces of old and evil can cobble together. There’s no point fighting, on our side or theirs. We have all the energy.

So anyway… thoughts (in no particular order) arising from the wikileaks thing.

 

1) On the state of “News”

There’s been a lot of wailing and soul-searching about the gutting of that cornerstone of democracy – The 4th Estate. “The Internet is destroying it” etc, “they’re stealing our work and giving it away for free”. Actually news-reporting was being gutted by capitalism long before the internet turned up – by the slashing of budgets, and the methodical dumbing-down of content etc etc.

Wikileaks has shown what journalism should be like. You (“news”) people should be looking at yourself in the mirror in shame – absolutely pathetic. You have kowtowed to the corrupt, corporate interests, and helped create the world that makes Wikileaks necessary. You’re complicit in corruption and creeping corporatism, and although we still need a 4th Estate… your organisations do not deserve to exist.

So maybe this will be a sublimating force here as well – an example and articulation of what news should be like… which provides not so much an example for the supply-side but the demand side.

 

2) The Military

The response was the same as any big institution that has been found to be less than adequate. Denial, then anger, then spin… followed by internal head-chopping in which the lowest-ranked person that they can get away with punishing is held accountable.

So… they started out by saying “this is low-grade intelligence, everybody already knew this, IT’S IRRESPONSIBLE AND COULD COST LIVES” all in the same breath. Today the Secretary of Defence opined “They could have blood on their hands” (a statement faithfully parroted as fact in headlines all over the world)… to which Julian replied “Secretary Gates speaks about hypothetical blood, but the grounds of Iraq and Afghanistan are covered with real blood.”

You don’t get it do you military people? You’re so wrapped up in this game that you’re playing that you can’t see that… You Don’t Have Any Moral Authority.

If you were protecting your country from an existential threat, then maybe… but you’re not. Your sole purpose is to maintain your budget – which you’re doing by perpetuating a war-game that has gone on for longer than World War 2 – with a budget that is 50% of your country’s tax revenues – and bigger than the rest of the world combined, against scattered tribesmen with beards and home-made weapons. And you’re still losing.

What is the fucking point of you?

Don’t come bleating to us about blood – you’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people in other countries, for nothing, and in all likelihood, hundreds of thousands more back home by thieving money away from social infrastructure, and from the people generally. You represent a net loss. A waste. Nothing you say matters.

 

3) So it turns out that Pakistan is playing both sides.

So um… if (as the military says) we’re not told anything we didn’t already know… um… why didn’t you know this? Or did you? WTF?

 

4) Drones – are they a bit shite then? That’s not what I’d heard. That’s not what you’ve been telling us.

“Indeed, the secret memos reveal that the much-vaunted drones do not work as well as is often claimed. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has described drones as “extraordinarily effective.” And CIA director Leon Panetta has even said that drones are the most important means in the war against al-Qaida.”

“But the superweapons are also prone to problems. The US Department of Defense accident reports show that system failures, computer glitches and human errors are common occurrences during drone missions.” – from De Spiegel

Which is predictable enough I suppose – I mean how often do computers crash? But the point is – we are denied the dignity of being able to make up our own minds – because we’re lied to every centimetre of the way.

 

5) opinion-free reporting

It’s just raw data. Look it up yourself. The freedom of that is… rejuvenating. Enlightening.

Lights-on; Rats-out.

So when the Australian War-Lobby group ADA says “What Wikileaks and its apologists ignore is the clear legal and moral differences between the actions of rule-of-law democracies applying international humanitarian law in UN-endorsed warfighting (however imperfectly at times), and the deliberate rejection of such law by the Taliban and its Islamist allies“,

which is verbally-diuretic way of saying “we good; them bad”, we can quite legitimately respond “No, cunt. It’s pure data. We can make up our own minds, based on facts who is good or bad… now that we actually have some facts. Now that you fucking weaklings can’t hide them from us any more”.

We can get away from such counter-productive mindsets as “we good; them bad” and actually, for once, ask and answer the questions “is this working?”.

Because for once, we have a factual, public record – we aren’t forced to rely on the words of politicians, spin doctors and piss-wit little liars such as yourselves.

Again – you don’t deserve to exist. You should have no place in any democratic process.

 

6) on decentralisation

While all this was breaking, various people from Boing Boing or Wired or whatever were opining that Wikileaks needs to be invisible… that this material should just “appear”.

I disagree entirely – they’re misunderestimating the power of narrative, and narrative needs people. As Julian says, “bravery is contagious” – and it is. He has also protected himself (and his organisation) on a number of different levels by making himself famous. If nobody knew who he was, it would mean nothing if he were to just disappear.

If Martin Luther had nailed his thesis to the cathedral door and then snuck away in the dead of night, it would have meant nothing.

Sorry – we need people.

Revolutions happen when groundswells of popular feeling break surface around a single event – or person, and out of that a narrative arises. Revolutions are always catalysed – so while decentralised information infrastructure may be important for resilience – it is incredibly important that there be clear, recognisable faces. This is how we work.

 

7) what’s it all for?

What (as Julian has said) Wikileaks is for making sure that facts form the historical record.

It’s that simple.

If you’re opposed to this, then you don’t have any moral legitimacy, and your institution should be dismantled.

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So that’s my thought for the day.