{"id":4296,"date":"2011-09-04T23:50:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T23:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=4296"},"modified":"2011-09-05T02:36:03","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T02:36:03","slug":"elkus-on-wikileaks-and-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=4296","title":{"rendered":"Elkus on Wikileaks and Sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Elkus<\/strong> has a smart piece up at Rethinking Security<\/strong> that deserves wider readership:<\/p>\n

WikiLeaks and Sovereignty<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

….WikiLeaks represents the idea that states have no inherent authority to hold onto vital national secrets. Because information is fundamentally boundless and unlimited by the “oldthink” of national borders and politics, state control over proprietary information is irrelevant. WikiLeaks and other radical transparency advocates believe that they-an unelected, transnational elite-can pick and choose which states are good and bad and whose secrets deserve exposure. And if information deserves to be free-and the only people who would keep it from being so are those with something to hide-then it is fine for non-state networks to arrogate themselves the right to receive and expose state secrets.<\/strong><\/p>\n

….While WikiLeaks is often positioned as a champion of digital democracy, it is actually wholly anti-democratic<\/em>. It transfers power and security from national governments and their publics to unelected international activist organizations and bureaucrats. While this may seem like a harsh interpretation, there is no check on the likes of Julian Assange. Governments-even autocratic ones-still must contend on a day-to-day basis with the people. Even China <\/strong>had to face a reckoning<\/strong><\/a> after the Wenzhou train crash. WikiLeaks and other radical transparency organizations mean to replace one group of elites-which at least nominally can be called to court-with another who are accountable only to their own consciences.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Let me add a few comments to Adam’s excellent analysis.<\/p>\n

Wikileaks and Julian Assange were not and have never been, lone wolves or information-must-be-free martyrs. They are allied with important institutions and individuals within the Western progressive elite, not least major media heavyweights like The New York Times<\/strong>, The Guardian<\/strong> and Der Spiegel<\/strong>, but also sympathizers within Western governments. Unless you think that Pvt. Bradley Manning<\/strong> was a hacker wunderkind with an intuitive grasp of which files that could be swept up to further a\u00a0sophisticated political agenda, the man had some inside help from further up the food chain.<\/p>\n

Adam is correct to describe these political factions as anti-democratic because they are and while leaking has been going on as long as there have been governments, we now have the emergence of a transnational\u00a0generational clique that see themselves as entitled to rule and impose policies that comport with their social prejudices, economic self-aggrandizement and ideological fetishes,\u00a0whether the people support them or not. A vanguard attitude, if not an organizational vanguard.<\/p>\n

Wikileaks and\u00a0other devices\u00a0operating in shadowy undercurrents\u00a0are their form of liberum veto<\/em><\/strong> against the rest of us in the instances where they are not completely in control, thus migrating political\u00a0power from responsible state institutions to the social class that currently fills most of the offices and appointments. So far, their actions have been largely cost-free because their peers in government, however irritated they may be at the effects of Wikileaks, are loath to cross the Rubicon and hammer these influential\u00a0conspirators with\u00a0whom they went to school, intermarry, do business,\u00a0live amongst\u00a0and look out for the careers of each other’s children\u00a0the way they have hammered\u00a0Bradley Manning.<\/p>\n

The same\u00a0oligarchical class indulgence\u00a0is seen in the financial crisis where almost none of the people responsible for massive criminal fraud in the banking and investment\u00a0 sectors that melted the global economy have faced prosecution, unlike previous financial scandals like the S&L crisis or BCCI where even iconic figures faced grand juries.\u00a0Instead of indictments, the new class\u00a0received subsidies, bonuses and sweetheart, secret deals from their\u00a0alumni chums running central banks and national governments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carl Prine<\/strong>,\u00a0commenting on\u00a0a much narrower and wholly American slice <\/a>of this corrupt camarilla, described this new class very well:<\/p>\n

Let me be blunt.\u00a0 A late Baby Boomer generation of politicians, bankers, reporters\u00a0and generals has formed into a cancer inside this democracy, and their tumorous\u00a0leadership won’t be kind to your future.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, this cancer is not limited to our democracy, it is the root of the decline of the West.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Elkus has a smart piece up at Rethinking Security that deserves wider readership: WikiLeaks and Sovereignty ….WikiLeaks represents the idea that states have no inherent authority to hold onto vital national secrets. Because information is fundamentally boundless and unlimited by the “oldthink” of national borders and politics, state control over proprietary information is irrelevant. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,516,361,46,457,321,151,309,215,476,132,574,87,456,425,78,492,465,270,14,96,372,588,187,66,236,104,268,381,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-ae","category-america","category-analytic","category-black-globalization","category-blogosphere","category-conspiracy","category-criminals","category-culture","category-democracy","category-dystopia","category-failed-state","category-foreign-policy","category-globalization","category-government","category-ideas","category-leadership","category-legitimacy","category-national-security","category-networks","category-new-york-times","category-non-state-actors","category-oligarchy","category-politics","category-primary-loyalties","category-radical-transparency","category-reform","category-social-networks","category-society","category-state-failure","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}