In a recent article  for Slate,  Farhad Manjoo offers a critical look at WikiLeaks  through the lens of the release of Afghanistan war logs. Manjoo asks, “Is radical transparency compatible with total anonymity?”.  With total anonymity of sources, which means that even WikiLeaks does not know and cannot know the sources of the leaks it provides, WikiLeaks has become “an opaque, insular organization” and has “shrouded itself in secrecy.”  As if the pejorative ‘insular’ and ‘shrouded’ and ‘secrecy’ were not enough, this is “a problem” Manjoo informs us, since “most whistle-blowers” have “some sort of agenda” and this agenda is “part of the story” and “could provide valuable context.”  Manjoo concludes, “would many leakers balk if WikiLeaks began asking them simple questions? Let me offer a few suggestions: Who are you, how did you find this document, and why are you leaking it now?”

As one who has been on the WikiLeak side of this kind of criticism (an experience originating a mild theme for my book in progress), I felt compelled to offer a reply.  I have not in the past spent much time on the political.  Perhaps I am finally getting drawn in, or perhaps it is not just politics at stake here. This issue regards our appreciation, or lack thereof, for the endearing role totalitarianism has played through human history, particularly with respect to the gruesomely attained discovery of that still globally rare and precious form of life we call freedom.  Freedom to think, freedom to know, freedom to talk, freedom to act.  Freedom from unknown microphones in one’s bedside phone and freedom from imprisonment and torture for failure to whoop it up for the local big-mouthed pathological monomaniac.  I speak of a Freedom not only for the guru or the state sponsored saint or the patriarch or the dear leader or all those deluded murderous tyrants we apparently cannot live without. I speak of a Freedom of the human mammal, which, by categorical definition, possesses some extent of at least a rough similarity to my own consciousness, emotions, and nervous system.

In answer to Manjoo’s question then—and I am glad he asks it—‘NO’, I do not think many leakers would “balk.”  They after all are in a position of simply trying to find a way to “balk” about their own immediate affiliations and social ties and daily life routines without the ramifications of, on the mild end of the whipping stick, the fine-tuned mechanisms of discrimination, shunning, ridicule, shame, and psychological torture.  These leakers would hardly have the arrogance, motivation, emotional energy, or concern to “balk” at WikiLeak for asking such questions.  These would-be leakers would simply not leak, but go on, oppressed by their knowledge of the truth that powerful people have so far succeeded in keeping under wraps.  The suggestion that “most whistle-blowers” have some “sort of agenda” is an insult to all those men and women who have suffered for the cause of truth.  I do hope that Manjoo’s easy dismissal of this possibility from even a quick reference does not reflect his own inability to empathize with this kind of “agenda”.  As WikiLeak alleges, globally, “Whistleblowers account for around half of all exposures of fraud.”  It is hard to imagine that this important source of truth in the world is primarily guided by private ambitions or more neutral selfish drives like “agendas”, irrelevant if not counter to, the knowledge of the truth. 

As for the charge of insularity and secrecy:  How does this smear—that is all it can be, right or wrong: a smear apt to cue strong emotions—fall even near the argumentative crux?  The military needs a mechanism to secure some information.  In this case, this mechanism failed. This was only ‘secret’ information though. So far, we have seen no ‘top secret’ information.  We have laws about leaking this information.  The leaker still stands the risk of discovery and prosecution according to law and under the protections of the U.S. Constitution—although the leaker is currently ‘innocent’ and will remain so until declared guilty by someone other than Obama and James Jones—while Wikileaks has established itself even more as a safe source to leak important information from within oppressive regimes throughout the world.

Manjoo stays clear of this more sticky point of law and the peculiar power of the executive branch and military to the more interesting epistemological point: how do we know? How do we know why the documents were leaked, or if these are all the relevant documents or if the documents have been tampered?  But the argument here is mangled.  Manjoo confuses two kinds of evidence: the evidence of primary documents and the evidence of testimony.  Understanding the source indeed will provide narrative context and such context is always “helpful”—as well as entertaining—but after 90,000 of official military documents have been presented to the court of public opinion, such “helpfulness” diminishes up an asymptotic curve.  The media has been concerned about what these documents say, with the interpretive context well secured over the fact that they do not know who leaked, why, if these are all the documents and, prima facie, if they have been tampered. And alternatively, the government simply wants the leaker’s head on a stick, regardless of who he is and why he leaked the information.  Manjoo has therefore simply played into the hands of the authoritarian and helped weaken our always tentative grasp on freedom.  

I leave you with Wikileak’s nailing of the epistemological point:

WikiLeaks believes that best way to truly determine if a story is authentic, is not just our expertise, but to provide the full source document to the broader community – and particularly the community of interest around the document. So for example, let’s say a WikiLeaks’ document reveals human rights abuses and it is purportedly from a regional Chinese government. Some of the best people to analyze the document’s veracity are the local dissident community, human rights groups and regional experts (such as academics). They may be particularly interested in this sort of document. But of course WikiLeaks will be open for anyone to comment.

Update: An attorney from the Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter  to the CEO of the rocket center on the behalf of their “client” Vision Forum. The CEO of the rocket center in turn welcomed  the use of the facilities.

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Doug Philips’ new movie  The Mysterious Island was banned after initial go-ahead from the theater of the Davidson Center Auditorium at the United States Space and Rocket Center:

a government-run agency and taxpayer-subsidized venue which is open to the general public for private rentals and screenings. According to federal law, it is not supposed to discriminate on the basis of religion.

Phillips claims that officials “have rejected the film which is critical of Charles Darwin, as being too controversial.”  While not doubting the unscientific propaganda in the movie, my past experience with Phillips would suggest that this report is accurate.

I do not have time to investigate. Any comments or information welcomed.

The founders of our constitutional republic knew what it was like to journey into in the lair of the great dragon, that ancient beast who has hunted and maimed the human race since before the dawning of written history. The lair is always filled with dead men’s bones and the beast’s rotten, living breath. The founder’s investigation pressed on into the darkness and stench with paper and goose quill in hand; they reeled and retreated only after their weak lantern finally flickered against the now gaping sharp-toothed mouth. Now fast behind them, the dragon’s serrated claws slashed at their calves and back as they made their safe exit.

That small band of educated, adventurous revolutionaries wisely discerned the threat of this ancient beast, and they became the repositories of a truth that was then so fresh yet today so easily forgotten: communities need not fear the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Communities rather need fear that ancient beast, that lust for power latent in the hearts of all men. As the constitution’s founders prepared their document, they could peer into the dragon’s lair by looking to themselves and to their neighbor.

The founder’s intimacy with this dark enemy gave them the wisdom they needed to fashion a government of laws and not of men, a government balanced between the will of the majority and the rights of the person.   Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. There could not be a stronger situationist statement.  The corrupt man does not corrupt the community. Rather, power corrupts the man. A bad tree puts forth bad fruit, and by a similar statistical relation, a bad barrel is where we find the ‘bad apples.’ Power just is the social situation in which one man or one dominant group owns the technology of control. 

Later in life, after a visitation from this ancient monster, some of us come to learn that it is this dragon’s lair that gives meaning to those droning grown-up words we recall from junior high: ‘checks and balances.’ It was far too easy to understand ‘checks and balances’ in terms of the ‘stocks and bonds’ of the class after and the ‘x and y axis’ of the class before. The checks and balances of social power – political power – is something far more sacred than this; checks and balances of political power is a correlate of our judicial system’s taming of the Furies. We hang by a thread over the twin fiery pits of vengeance and tyranny. How sweet yet how delicate is that thread of checks and balances.

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By means of our community-living here in coastal North County San Diego, I came to find out about the historical checks and balances of a medium sized congregation just up the 101 highway from here, Carlsbad Community Church.    For eighty years the constitution of this church provided stability. Power was divided between three equal branches of church government. The dragon had been making appearances within the church walls for a decade, but it was over the last two years that the beast was entirely unleashed. A small dominant group surrounding a vicious politician – who was then their new pastor – gained too much power, and the techniques for collapsing three branches of government into one were wielded with praiseworthy success.  After years of steady news coverage of the Bush administration, these techniques would have been all too well known, but the efficiency and stealth by which these men worked is to be commended. 

Former President Bush’s brain is same in type to all human mammals. It should not be surprising, then, that the successful grasp of power by the new dominant males at Carlsbad Community Church would release the same reason-numbing brain chemicals. The new leaders blinded themselves to the inventible aftermath. As the checks and balances quickly disintegrated, so did the attendance and so did the money. The congregation shrank from 1000 to 400! 

Were there protests?  Well, of course. . . . . (more…)