www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall WikiLeaks:Russian Church Leader's Conversation With US Ambassador

While I am certain that Stuart and I do not see eye to eye on many topical, political issues I do agree with him regarding the Wikileaks issue. I believe that representative democracies must be as transparent as possible in their business of governing (and as a local government administrator for thirty years I developed a state-wide reputation as being a vigorous defender of open meetings and a broad interpretation of the Freedom of Information Laws). However, I am not so naive as to believe that it is is our interests that all state secrets (at any level of government) be disclosed or be potentially disclosable.

We live in a non-perfect world and it is foolish to believe that it is possible to protect our national, state and local governmental and security, economic and personal privacy interests in a system where all information can be potentially made public.

Frankly, after reading much of what has been posted, including the comments about the Orthodox Church in Russia, can anyone who follows current events honestly say that the broad aspects of the revelations come as a any surprise? Perhaps the particulars are so, but the devil is in those very details. In the end, what has been gained by releasing private observations, strategic and tactical goals and the like?

Yes, the people are the rightful 'owners' of their governments in democracies. However, just as a stockholder of common stock is not entitled to all corporate information regarding the operations, contracts, patents, secrets and personnel of a privately held, publicaly traded corporation, citizens should view themselves in a similar light.

I think that liberals, progressives and libertarians who applaud Julian Assange and Private Manning are confused and deluding themselves. Finding and maintaining a proper balance between secrecy/privacy and the right to know is probably one of the biggest challenges facing democratic western societies in the ever-accelerating digital information age.

Of course not, because as I said before, private lives and the conduct of public servants in their public capacities are completely different things.

Unless we aren't talking about Wikileaks anymore?

That's a strawman you set up to knock down, nobody ever said that all state secrets at any level should be disclosed.

We should view the Wikileaks controversy in the larger context of American foreign policy. Rather than worry about the disclosure of embarrassing secrets we should focus on our delusional foreign policy. We are kidding ourselves when we believe spying, intrigue and outright military intervention can maintain our international status as a superpower while our domestic economy crumbles in an orgy of debt and monetary debasement.

That's what Ron Paul said. I can't find a word in there that I disagree with.

Well, if China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, Libya and the myriad other countries that are inimical to our interests were all run by Ron Paul, I might be inclined to agree with him, too. But as I deal with the world as it is, and not as I would like it to be, I find Ron Paul's views to be utterly unrealistic, verging on fantasy.

You'd have to explain how you view those countries as being inimical to our (we are both from the United States I assume) interests (first by defining what our interests are as you see it, as that word can have a very fluid meaning) and how our interventions in those countries have proven to be productive and successful. Government "intervention" in our lives domestically is often seen as cumbersome and counterproductive, I have never been able to understand how the same government magically works miracles once it starts promoting its "interests" overseas.

Our Middle East interventions have been disastrous from the beginning. But if by "our interests" you mean "Israel's and/or Saudi Arabia's interests" then perhaps you might be right.

Or was it the part about ignoring our domestic economic peril that you disagree with?

We are straying wildly off topic, however, so I guess this is all at the moderators' discretion.

When foreign investors, in particular China, decide they're no longer willing to finance our debt; we'll see which fantasy(ies) come to an end. My guess is half a trillion per annum on national defense will be one of the first to crumble. Hopefully people will not only wake up to the reality that we can't afford to be an interventionist state (before a major panic forces us), but that it doesn't make us safer either. The terrorists don't hate us because of our "freedoms", they hate us because we're on their soil.

The issue isn't Wikileaks, it's what wikileaks is exposing. The other issue is if secrecy is so vital, maybe we should be a little worried that a single PFC in some random location can get his hands on all this.

When a man owes someone a hundred dollars, he has debts. When a man owes someone a million dollars, he has investors. If China were to call in our paper, it might destroy us, but it most certainly would destroy China.


Ah, well that's the million dollar question, isn't it?

Imagine, though, that the one who owes a million dollars lives on barren land, and also buys everything he owns from his "investor".

Our production centers figuratively speaking have moved east and been replaced with Walmarts stocked with items "made in China". China will have others to sell to, what will we do when we have nothing to sell/produce and no money to buy it with?


Wow, a giant lumbering bureaucracy is unmanageable to the last detail. Whodathunk?

A panic isn't rational. China conceivably moving to limit its exposure to our debt could send a signal to others inadvertently touching off a wave of selling. I don't think it's a fantasy to picture that scenario.

More importantly investors have leverage with those they invest in. You identified China as an enemy. What kind of fantasy scenario is it that we can rely on an enemy to finance us without some kind of profound effect?


That is the real question. Wikileaks is just one avenue, there's an entire Internet out there. Who will be the next PFC Manning, and what will they have access to.

In my own opinion, based on what I've seen, I don't think any major secrets have been revealed. We've only gotten confirmation of things we might suspect like

- We're covertly operating Yemen.
- We've killed civilians and tried to cover it up.
- The Russian Church has gotten in bed with the Russian state.
- Russia acted to instigate the war with Georgia.
- Our Afghanistan policy is doomed because the Taliban have a safe haven in Pakistan.

and so on. I think it would have been good if there was a wikileaks around earlier so we could have found out sooner for instance that Orthodox church officials were siphoning off money and that Catholic bishops were moving around and protecting paedophiles. Think how much worse the effects of these were the longer they went on before coming out.