Science and "Secrets"

"WHO GETS TO KEEP SECRETS?"

What have some scientists to say about the issue of "secrecy" in the "Age of Information":

"The Third Culture" has put the Inquiry to some of its "Minds" in an Edge Special Event! :

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hillis10.1/hillis10.1_index.html#andersonr

Given all the contributions "Wikileaks" made to the transparency (by proxy to Enlightenment/1) of the global political class in the interest of the wider mankind, it is beyond doubt legitimate (among others) to pose the (following) question, since the Wikileaks protagonists are vulnerable to all the failings of man like everyone of us!
2)
"The Cablegate raises, again, two issues that challenge the "Wiki" world and the Web in general: Internet popularity versus authority, and Internet popularity versus quality.

Wikipedia is impressive and popular, but can we trust it? Is it an authoritative source on the information it provides? WikiLeaks is powerful and is potentially an amazing "contre pouvoir", but have they been granted the authority — by any international organization — to handle material that involves the public good on a global scale? "(3)

1) http://berhane-aymero.blogspot.com/2010/12/age-of transparency.html

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_map_1024.jpg

3) AALAM WASSEF
Visual artist based in Cairo and Paris; Founder, PeerEvaluation.org

***

Wikileaks in Amharic philo-play (see blog sidebar):

የአዞ እምባ
****
ዊቂ-ሊቅ ያሉት ነገር
ገብትዋል አሉ ሥልጣን መንደር፤
መረጃ በመረጃ ሊያረጋቸው
ሀዘን መርዶ ሊያረዳቸው፤
ሰው፤ልቅሶ አይደርሳቸው ፤

አዞ ናቸው።
በማን ተልኮ ይሁን አልታወቀ
ማተ-ራመሱ ብቻ፤ ተደንቀ።

01.12.2010

H.B.

Wikileaks...Updates (8) & Views on EthioCables

http://cablesearch.org/
*
You cann't get a better resume`.

Cablegate Video Recap - What We've Learned So Far

http://wlcentral.org/node/580

Views on EthioCables-1
Views on EthioCables-2

Breaking News: http://wlcentral.org/
http://wikileaks.fi
http://wikileaks.fi/cablegate.html

http://wikileaks.de/cablegate.html

CableSearch: http://cablesearch.org/

...US with new eyes

"After 12 days of WikiLeaks cables, the world looks on US with new eyes"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-reaction-world-reaction

Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

...The Age of Transparency ?

It seems as though we are on the thresholds of another Era of Enlightenment -The Age of Transparency, if hundreds of the "wikileaks phenomenon" we are witnessing today come again and again to make us wiser and wiser by disclosing political conspiracies, until IT is established, that IT is our inborn natural right TO Know ALL what is at stake! The Right To Know is as basic as The Right To Exist!

The Big thing what wikileaks has achieved is showing How ridiculous "Liberal Democracy" can make Itself out Itself, in the way it is harassing the wikileaks-founder, Julian Assange - losing all credibility in the eyes of other political systems!

*
What a nonsense! The huge material of wikileaks remains in the air and the minds. You can block bank accounts but YOU CAN'T BURN E-BOOKS once they are in the air in all directions of heaven!

Wikileaks...Updates (7) -EthioCables

...The Age of Transparency ?

It seems as though we are on the thresholds of another Era of Enlightenment -The Age of Transparency, if hundreds of the "wikileaks phenomenon" we are witnessing today come again and again to make us wiser and wiser by disclosing political conspiracies, until IT is established, that IT is our inborn natural right TO Know ALL what is at stake! The Right To Know is as basic as The Right To Exist!

The Big thing what wikileaks has achieved is showing How ridiculous "Liberal Democracy" can make Itself out Itself, in the way it is harassing the wikileaks-founder, Julian Assange - losing all credibility in the eyes of other political systems!

*
What a nonsense! The huge material of wikileaks remains in the air and the minds. You can block bank accounts but YOU CAN'T BURN E-BOOKS once they are in the air in all directions of heaven!

Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

2010-12-08: Statement by WL Central

http://wlcentral.org/node/551

EthioCables Update:

Viewing cable 09ADDISABABA1318,

UNDERSTANDING THE ETHIOPIAN HARDLINERS

http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/06/09ADDISABABA1318.html

Viewing cable 09ASMARA47,

AN ERITREAN OVERTURE TO THE UNITED STATES

WikiLeaks cables: Eritrean poverty and patriotism under 'unhinged dictator'

http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/02/09ASMARA47.html

IS ERITREA UNRAVELING?
ERITREA’S SQUABBLING COLONELS FLEEING
********

....The Age of Transparency ?

It seems as though we are on the thresholds of another Era of Enlightenment - The Age of Transparency, if hundreds of the "wikileaks phenomenon" we are witnessing today come again and again to make us wiser and wiser by disclosing political conspiracies, until IT is established, that IT is our inborn natural right TO Know ALL what is at stake! The Right To Know is as basic as The Right To Exist!

The Big thing what wikileaks has achieved is showing How ridiculous "Liberal Democracy" can make Itself out Itself, in the way it is harassing the wikileaks-founder, Julian Assange - losing all credibility in the eyes of other political systems!

Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

*
What a nonsense! The huge material of wikileaks remains in the air and the minds. You can block bank accounts but YOU CAN'T BURN E-BOOKS once they are in the air in all directions of heaven!

*
Interesting Documentary links (films) in this context:

If you don't yet (or before you) care to dig into the huge mass of material in wikileaks, please take your time to look into the following excellent BBC Documentary films of Adam Curtis (if you have not yet come across it).

1. BBC Documentary - The Century of Self - Happiness Machines (4 Parts)

 - to understand how Man/the world was designed to be a
"consuming machine" made in USA!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#docid=-6707640545017425209

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#docid=-678466363224520614

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#docid=-6111922724894802811

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#docid=1122532358497501036

"...an excellent 4-part BBC documentary on the origins and power
of PR (public relations) in our culture, our politics, and our
government (http://bit.ly/PR-history-1)". (cf. Tom Atlee,http://bit.ly/GameChange-1)

1. BBC Documentary - Politics - The Power of Nightmares, (3 Parts),
“Baby it's Cold Outside“

- an interesting documentary film by Adam Curtis/BBC: - to end the illusion of importing "progress" and to understand the background of US global international political involvement! By analogy highly relevant to contemplate on the past 30 years trajectory of the Ethiopian political process.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#docid=2798679275960015727

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2798679275960015727#docid=4602171665328041876

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2798679275960015727#docid=2081592330319789254

*****
*

Thus:

There is no other way in which Humanism and Democracy can develop other than organic and indigenous to its own space and mind. Ethiopia and the Democratic Ethiopian state!

i.o.w.

The fishes get their prey, if only YOU "move, click and tick" (say... reflect) in the aquarium. If you "play & prey (even pray)" outside the aquarium...it is meaningless ...for the fishes!

Wikileaks...Updates (7)

The Summit of Hypocrisy - Liberal democracy in its ridiculous moment

Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates?CMP=twt_gu

2010-12-07: Julian Assange arrested on Swedish warrant

What a Pretext!

"...and to add to his troubles the government of Sweden has changed its mind, perhaps as a result of american persuasion and money, about sex charges that the Swedish government had previously dismissed for lack of credibility. If reports are correct, two women, who possibly could be CIA or Mossad assets, have brought sex charges against Assange. One claims that she was having consensual sexual intercourse with him, but that he didn’t stop when she asked him to when the condom broke.

Think about this for a minute. Other than male porn stars who are bored with it all, how many men can stop at the point of orgasm or when approaching orgasm? How does anyone know where Assange was in the process of the sex act?" http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12022010.html

The Happiness Machines...The Consuming Machines

The Century Of Self Part 1 (of 4) Happiness Machines

BBC documentary ...to understand how Man/the world was designed to be a "consuming machine" !

"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." - Adam Curtis
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#

PART II
"...controlling the hidden enemy"
PART III
"...controlling the hidden irrational self...by feeding the infinite desires"!
PART IV

"...an excellent 4-part BBC documentary on the origins and power of PR (public relations) in our culture, our politics, and our government (http://bit.ly/PR-history-1)"(1)

***
More from Adam Curtis/BBC; just to end the illusion of importing "progress" :

Again an interesting documentary film on the "Nightmare of the Free World" with tremendous consequences until today:

Politics - The Power of Nightmares (3 Parts)

Part II

Part III

(1) Tom Atlee, http://bit.ly/GameChange-1

Wikileaks...Updates (6) -EthioCables

WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists...

They invest (alias Al'a Moudin) and "grab the land" in Ethiopia and by the same stroke they finance "the fundamentalists in Somali-land". In other words, it doesn't need a big political insight to conceive that the Saudi-Arabian Sources finance "the fundamentalists" in Somali-land as well - Somalia/Horn of Africa, as one of the head-regions of Islam-fundamentalists - playing a crcial role in destabilizing the region.

No more words necessary. Here is the new classical "neocolonialism" at work.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-terrorist-funding

http://wikileaks.fi/cable/2009/09/09JEDDAH343.html

What else and how much more "intelligence" does the Ethiopian political class need for its ultimate national awareness and a political reconciliation (irrespective of its affiliations; political convictions and religious beliefs).

Even just for this disclosure on Horn-of-Africa/Ethiopia/ as one of the global volatile regions /with contemporary religious conflicts), I believe, Wikileaks deserves a good portion of gratitude from "The Ethiopian"!

Gratitude for what?...

For the BIG "secret" and "intelligence" disclosed.

Which "secret" and "intelligence" ?

Actually, Nothing more than the simple fact ...የአደባባይ ምስጢር ...(as Umberto Eco on the leaks correctly noted - a real secret is an empty secret)....that, TODAY, in post modernity, behind all the tirades of human, democratic and religious values reiterated by the political classes of different Nations /The Big Western World included/, there are big economic interests of their big "Capitals" lurking behind their front-humanist-masked-faces.
Unfortunately and by the irony of a perverted historical development all in contradistinction to the big objectives of Mankind's Enlightenment promoted in the past centuries by several great humanists of their own Nations.

Thus:

There is no other way in which Humanism and Democracy can develop other than organic and indigenous to its own space and mind. Ethiopia and the Democratic Ethiopian state!

*

Thus the metaphor in the logo of this blog:

The fishes get their prey, if only YOU "move, click and tick" (say... reflect) in the aquarium. If you "play & prey (even pray)" outside the aquarium...it is meaningless ...for the fishes!

*
At this stage; putting aside all other misgivings, including the responsibility for the ongoing new "neocolonialism"1) (cf. phenomenon "Land-grabbing"), it is necessary to show intellectual honesty by noting that PM Melesse has not missed the point in this context, albeit theoretical and his ulterior purpose of building the system of one-party-state.

http://berhane-aymero.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-updates-4-cables-on-ethiopia.html

"When people are committed to democracy and forced to make sacrifices for it, Meles said, “they won’t let any leader take it away from them.” But “when they are spoon-fed democracy, they will give it up when their source of funding and encouragement is removed.”
"....Democracy in Ethiopia must develop organically, and Ethiopians must organize and fund themselves and defend their own rights.....(my emphasis)."(cf. Melesse in the US-cables)
*
This statement; be it authentic, genuine or not, IT should be taken at face value to be a challenge for any political opposition of honest democratic nature!
***
1) Responsibility for all, including all the barbarous horror of atrocities taking place in the dungeons of his regime, depicting the serious edge of communal and individual psycho-collapse in which the Ethiopian society is submerged and showing how far & beyond imagination the perpetrators of the horror are literally mentally sick and perverted. (added after reading the report "Horrendous atrocities in Ethiopian prisons" 26.12.2010)

Wikileaks ....Updates (6)

Umberto Eco on Wikileaks:
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/414871-not-such-wicked-leaks

More from presseurop.eu:
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/editorial/415811-dictatorship-transparency

And more from "Counter Punch" - A furious version -

Paul Craig Roberts: What the Wiki-Saga Teaches Us

*
Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

Wikileaks ....Updates (5) - Ethio-Cables incl.

Ethio-Cables:

http://213.251.145.96/cable/2010/02/10ADDISABABA163.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/246644

*
Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

wikileaks has "migrated" to Switzerland until ...

http://wikileaks.ch/

The following are alternative Links :
http://wikileaks.de/
http://wikileaks.fi/
http://wikileaks.nl/
*

Wikileaks ....Updates (4) - Ethio-Cables

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/246644

The statement needs special attention:

"Summary

"...the concept of democratic accountability on its head. Democracy in Ethiopia must
develop organically, and Ethiopians must organize and fund themselves and defend
their own rights.....(my emphasis)."(cf. Melesse in the cables)

*
I will take it literally and ...reflect

What is the discourse behind the statement?
Why is it reiterated in such a manner?
Is it authentic?
Is it for a public consumption?
Is it played ...?
Does it originate from "bad faith"/Sartre/ ...? etc.
*
Whatever it is, what does it tell about the "source" of the "opinion"? "Nationalism" in Autocracy?
*
This has to be taken as a challenge to the Ethiopian democratic sphere !
*
The cables to download
*
Worth noting in a sort of footnote : Inspite of their great purpose - TRANSPARENCY- there is some internal controversy in the life of wikleaks behind the public face. No surprise. Everything has its own morphology! (cf. Spiegel Online /German/: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,732889,00.html and see "The flash of the day"/ sidebar on this blog ).

Nonetheless, we need the cables! and the following discourse is valid for all "Things" (wikileaks included):

"For the theorists of the art of government, such as Guillaume de La
Perriere, ‘government is the right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead
to a convenient end’ (quoted by Foucault, 1979a: 10): ‘things’, here, refer not
only to the territory and subjects of the Prince (as in the theory of sovereignty),
but primarily to their interrelations; and the ‘end’ envisaged is no
longer the ancient ‘common good’ of obedience to laws, sovereigns and God,
but instead ‘good government’: internal to the state, under the auspices of
multiple authorities (including fathers, superiors and teachers), and involving
informed and tactical – as opposed to divinely ordained – uses of the law
(Foucault, 1979a: 9, 13). Thus, this new pragmatic political rationality,
‘instead of seeking its foundation in transcendental rules, cosmological
models or philosophical-moral ideas’ (Foucault, 1979a: 14), was premissed on
the existence of the state: ‘the art of governing is rational, if reflexion causes
it to observe the nature of what is governed – here, the state’ (Foucault, 1981d:
243, original emphasis; 1988b: 149; 1981c: 355)."
An analytics of power relations: Foucault on the history of discipline
HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 15 No. 1
© 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 89–117

Wikileaks ....Updates (3)

Beaking Info: http://wlcentral.org/

wikileaks has "migrated" to Switzerland until ...

http://wikileaks.ch/

The following are alternative Links :
http://wikileaks.de/
http://wikileaks.fi/
http://wikileaks.nl/

***

http://www.reuters.com/subjects/wikileaks
*
http://berhane-aymero.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-updates2.html


Interesting and upsetting to read:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22211

Censors block WikiLeaks website; Interpol issues arrest order; Canada demands Assange be killed..
*
At the latest since wikileaks announced that it will publish highly charged "Bank Documents", Julian Assande, the Initator of Wikileaks is fugitive under an "alive or dead" warrant and siege.

Just to recall, commenting on Ethiopia and the "new foreign capital" grabbing the country (phenomena "land grabbing") I pointed in a flash of emotion, that....

http://berhane-aymero.blogspot.com/2010/11/flash-of-emotion-in-morning-ethiopian.html

"... an Autocracy is ... in such an environment, the most vulnerable form of Administration. If this happens to be radically "national" and a "nuisance" by hampering the "development" of the exogenous "new Capital", the latter can get rid of the "top man" by the "stroke" of the million dollars it pays to a professional "killer" or its "intelligence headquarters" at the service of the big capital dominating the region."

Imagine the fugitive Wikileaks initiator, Julian Assande to be "a leader of a State". He were a "dead man " long ago!
*
What a disaster for all the "masters" of Democracy.

Wikileaks seems to put all - the global "Masters" of Democracy on the test-bench ? "Mafiocracy" or Democracy?
*

Wikileaks ...Updates (2)

"For the past three days, the WikiLeaks website (http://wikileaks.org/) has been under a massive "distributed denial of service" attack, "exceeding 10 gigabits a second," according to the world's most widely used whistleblower website. Amazon shut down WikiLeaks servers, it reported today on Twitter. But that's the least of its problems. Yesterday, a senior advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister issued a televised fatwa on Julian Assange. Today, Interpol posted its call for arrest of the website's founder and Ecuador withdrew its offer of asylum."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22211

*
The real scandal is the fact that, all the merits of Enlightenment - "Human rights, democracy, rule of law etc." are mercilessly thrown overboard, when it comes to the point of transparency.
For the centres of power -political power- the crux of the rule seems to be "Law and Order" under the principle of "እኔ ከሞትኩ ሰርዶ አይብቀል።"
As the Ethiopian saying goes: ' The Ass said, " After my death, let all grass be cursed not to flourish".

Under "the rule of transparency" the whole affair of "wikileaks" is a testimony of how upsetting and primitive the history of mankind and specially "the modern man" is; to speak with the words of Foucault:

‘the general principle of a new “political anatomy” whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline’ (Foucault, 1986a: 208). (1)
*
1) As quoted in the essay : An analytics of power relations: Foucault on the history of discipline; ROGER DEACON (2)

Abstract: ".......Via techniques of confession and ascetic conduct, faith and empiricism, and selfreflection and everyday reality, western political rationalities, in the form of combined totalization and individualization technologies whereby some (struggle to) discipline others even as all (are exhorted to) discipline themselves, have come to dominate the globe." (my emphasis)

2) HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 15 No. 1
© 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 89–117
[0952-6951(200202)15:1;89–117; 021074]

Wikileaks...Updates

The Updates on Ethiopia may come in the following days. I think they will be published in alphabetical order - one top-down and the other vice-versa; interpreting the actual one: Brazil & UK.
*
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/reldate/2010-12-01_0.html

*
The website said has 1,395 cables that originated from U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia and a total of 1623 records on Ethiopia. Of the 1,395 cables that originated from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, 162 are marked “Secret” and 612 are marked “Confidential” and the rest as “Unclassified”. The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC.
*
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/
*
The period from 1966 up to 1991 would be more interesting for the future of Ethiopia (with a political reconciliation process), to find out how one whole naive generation, in its struggle for social justice, is played off to partially serve the dismantlement of its own state, instead of achieving an enlightened democratic and modernized state.