It’s like a play, up on the stage.
He sneaks up, making sure only the proprietor is oblivious, while his audience watches. After snagging his prize, he runs away, hooting and hollering as he stuffs it in his mouth. It’s consumed in seconds.
He is caught, of course. But unable to return the stolen goods, and unable to pay — which is why he stole it in the first place — he is punished. In the open before all witnesses, he is beaten. But the audience doesn’t know the whip is lighter than feathers. It only appears to be a savage beating, but the sting never so much as penetrated his clothing.
Mission accomplished, the punishers walk away with one part of the audience fearing to mimic his crime. The thief walks away with the full street credit of one who can be trusted by other crooks. A mole has been planted inside the criminal network. Try to remember, almost every thing our government does and says is designed to deceive you, even when it appears to be unhappy with something. It’s all play acting.
So it is with Wikileaks. Of a surety, it began with the best of motives, and a good number of those involved are sincere in their high moral convictions. Yet the hands which steer the thing are actors. The recent “leak” of Afghanistan reports is not a leak. The gist of it was published, even by the mainstream press, already.
Oh, I suppose it serves as a fresh opportunity to focus attention on something very evil. In this, the thief is allowed to eat his prize. There were no secrets revealed; not a single soldier is threatened by the loss of operational security. The only threat is on par with the release of the Abu Ghraib photos — the horror of what we are paying people to do. It gives rise to an urge to question, if not outright stop, the criminal invasion. The only threat is to the war profiteers, which happens to include the majority of Congress, and virtually all of the Administration.
In exchange, we have a large international audience who now will trust Wikileaks as an outsider, an honest broker, a confessor. We can take our secret sins to Wikileaks and confess, gaining our absolution and a clear conscience. Then we can be sure some feeb like Lamo will turn us in and our lives will become a Hell only Kafka could imagine. We know of Manning’s fate only what the government deigns to tell us.
Could it be he was manipulated into this position, with the evil gnomes of counterespionage pushing him over the edge to make an example of him? Let’s be sure, there is no reason to doubt his complaints of corruption, the sort of horror and dishonesty against which it appears he rebelled. That’s the whole point. So very many people in the military system will gladly order the dismemberment and death of unlucky local civilians because it’s more convenient than thinking. I don’t doubt a great many of my former comrades in the military would gladly do it to you and I, and on the same false pretenses they pretend are real. On the other hand, is Manning simply another actor, letting his name be wagged around as some symbol in exchange for some inducement we might find hard to believe?
At any rate, whatever and whomever is running Wikileaks will get more money and more leaks, but not from those who actually understand what’s going on in this world. For example, I’ll be the first to warn you I can’t be trusted. That’s because I don’t trust me, either. Not in the sense of lying, but in the sense I can surely be wrong about something. You have to take my words and make up your own mind.
In my mind, I honestly report to you I could never trust Wikileaks any more than I trust Wikipedia. Which is to say, some things they offer are accidentally correct, simply because these things happen on the basis of sheer volume. I’ll get something right once in a while, myself. But for the most part, it’s just entertainment. Save it for those moments when you could use a good laugh, but remember it’s up on a stage. Donate what you feel is the value of your ticket price for a cheap and silly stage play. Meanwhile, walk according to your own convictions and question everything which involves humans.
If you attempt to help Wikileaks analyze things — I did once, based on my experience with military security — know that you have just handed your name and IP address to the counter-intelligence agents of the US or any other government with an interest in the information. Granted, they don’t have time to investigate all of us, and the more of us who do this, the harder it gets for them to keep up. But in the end, you are compromised, because Wikileaks is compromised. Not merely in the sense all electronic data is insecure, but you should realize Wikileaks now operates as a honey trap.
