The meaning of Wikileaks
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Suddenly news determination and dissemination is no longer under the control of the mass media news editors, but is governed by the release of documents from a tiny impoverished organization with a single website, which happens to have access to insider leaks.
Governments all over the world are in panic, because US records of conversations and events reveal the darkest recesses of the diplomatic world. A world characterized by the norms of double-dealing, trickery, deception, betrayal, criminality, terrorism and all-pervasive corruption and theft. As this emerges, it will systematically destroy the carefully cultivated mirage of respectability, integrity and credibility so assiduously crafted by the ruling elites for centuries.
In the early 1990s, the United States military introduced the concept of information war as a primary focus of military doctrine. It was premised on the control of information flows through systematic dominance over the enemy's total electronic spectrum. This facilitated the devastating use of airpower, displayed in the Iraq Wars of 1991 and 2003 and in the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, at a total cost of over a million lives and three trillion dollars.
The extension of command and control over computers and communications facilitated special operations of deception and subterfuge, combined with displays of overwhelming force. Shock and Awe was intended to provide a universal means of eradicating threats from errant states, and erase the devastating memory of defeat at the hands of Vietnamese peasants in the 1970s.
But the development of global communications after the end of the cold war also laid the foundation for the ever-increasing intercommunication of mankind. Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto saw how the railways unified disparate workers' struggles into a national workers' movement, and prophesied the birth of a globally unified working class.
The exponential growth of communications devices, paves the way to reinvigorate old organizations and create new forms of union between people. We are witnessing the birth of new community of those who wish to defend their living standards, change the course of politics, and create a new culture and society to serve the interests and needs of the majority.
Over the past decade the organization of protests and demonstrations has migrated towards using the Internet, and this has reached a crescendo in recent months.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is the victim of false imprisonment, enforced in an utterly absurd manner using surreal and spurious charges.
The incarceration of Assange comes at a time when sinister threats emanating from the political elite in the USA call for him to be extradited to stand trial or even assassinated. These are expressions of the utter frustration and impotence of a threatened order.
The era of the dominance of secrecy in diplomacy, politics, military and corporate affairs, is crumbling before our eyes. As ordinary people everywhere awaken, a vast global army of insiders in every company, army, bank, parliament and palace on earth, will begin to reveal what they know. This will transform the way we see the world and help to build a new one.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/node_7084903.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn
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