Adonis Diaries

Challenging democratic systems: Numeric communication?

WikiLeaks.org published vast amount of “secret” documents “Journal of Afghanistan War” on July 25.

WikiLeaks is based in Sweden (thus, benefiting of exceptional laws guaranteeing protection of “Alert Launchers” and their anonymity).  The Swedish society PRQ is its home: All documents addressed to WikiLeaks pass by servers located in Belgium (another State with strict laws protecting sources of information).

The owner of Wikileaks.org, Julian Assange, an Australian, chose Island to publish the video massacre in Baghdad by US combat helicopter (killing civilians and two journalists from Reuters).  Island has just promulgated a set of laws “Islandic Modern Media Initiative” designed to harbor alert launchers.

Three days before publishing the documents, WikiLeaks passed on the file to three dailies: The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel.  The three dailies have the potentials in personnel, finance, and organization to verify reliability and accuracy of the documents.

What conclusions may we draw from this interesting story?

First, numeric press organs are still very reliant and dependent on State laws to function properly.

Second, numeric publishing of critical documents depends on large-scale paper press with vast potentials for verification of information and then disseminating it to paper readers.

Third, sharing the same platform grouped under “social medias” does not lead to sharing the same function.  For example, WikiLeaks has to verify every document for reliability before publishing.  Thus, it is the perfect medium for honest, ethical, and moral technocrats to leaking critical documents and policies judged harmful to society and common people.

The other numeric social platforms such as WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube serve the function of initiating common people to the freedom of expression, offering reflected opinions and ideas that dailies and controlled media censure.

Two premises have been proven and witnessed.

First, governments are the shadow of the real powers such as multinationals and monopolistic corporations, and barons of industries: Multinationals break the backs of common people and then, are the first to be aided by governments in financial crisis.

The second premise is that technocrats ate the backbone of any political system; they run and execute political policies.  The isolated technocrats learn quickly to water down any ethical and moral issues in policies in order to reaching end results satisfying the “aristocratic” political classes.

You feel that the distinct two functions of numeric social platforms should be the catalyst to reforming various “democratic” systems that have reduced citizens to spectators after voting.  That is what we hoped and wished.

Fact is, democratic systems and capitalist/communist systems have reacted vigorously by creating new “security agencies” and recruiting thousands of new graduates to gathering and analyzing “secret data”.

The public reason for expanding security facilities and pouring in hundred of $billion is keeping an eye on “counter-revolutionary” and  “terrorist” activities.  Fact is, most new secret agencies are created to preempt local mass protest movements and then disseminating wrong information and generating propaganda in order to reposition the reforming movements toward the standard ideological line of capitalist democratic system.

Capitalist/Communist china is using the numeric social platforms to extracting critical information and policing its citizens that its secret agencies apparatus are unable to watch constantly and effectively.

The numeric platforms are waiting for a couple of organizations to instituting a third function: Mining the trend of social protest movements and disseminating that knowledge to all classes of society.  Activities and organization of social movements are the key ingredient to credible reforms.  The first two functions opened the highways for the third executive function of uniting mass movements toward the benefit of the common people, their dignity, their civil rights, their human rights, the rights of children to be properly fed, to attending humanist schooling systems, and to instituting State healthcare system covering the downtrodden.

Note:  It is interesting that Russian Bakunin predicted 150 years ago what we are witnessing in political systems realization; he wrote:

“The technocrats (educated people) has but two alternatives: either they profit from popular struggles and take power and then, institute “red bureaucracy” that will exert terrible tyrannies; or they will be at the service of “democratic” capitalist systems of barons of industries.  In the second alternative, the technocrats will strike the people with people’s sticks.”