“Cablegate” actually works in America’s favor and its rollout quite possibly may have been sanctioned by pro-US interests, says Byron DeLear. He also finds cause for optimism, given the huge reach of the internet and the inability of governments (as yet) to control it or the information flowing through it.
Open societies (the West) will ultimately benefit from open-source government. Yes there is corruption in the Empire that needs to be rooted out, the folly of endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the unholy tryst twixt Washington & Wallstreet—but foreign nations lead by strongman thugs, monarchies, theocrats, narco-neocommunists, will never thrive under sunshine. The West possesses the cultural infrastructure to best metabolize this new “sunshine paradigm” and morph itself into a productive vessel for peer-to-peer democracy. The celebration of knowledge, human ingenuity—not to mention the DoD—have made it possible for billions of people all around the world to be connected with one another, making all this disinfectant (WikiLeaks) possible.
Let’s hope so (and it’s not just the West that can make this happen either.) But serious forces exist that do not want the internet open. Given its distributed structure and that it is vital for business, government, and commerce as well as for activism, it would be difficult but not impossible to strangle it.
So, while I hope what DeLear envisions happens, I think we’re in for some tumultuous and perhaps dark times first. John Perry Barlow nailed it.
