Transparency
Assange ... another point of view

Toronto's Globe and Mail editorial ... Ecuador should not give Assange asylum; and he should step out and defend himself

COMMENTARY
I have incorporated this opinion piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail in my dialog collection to show a view that is very different from. Sadly, the modern mainstream media has proved very ineffective in getting major organizations in both public and private sectors to be transparent and to be accountable to the society at large. The media's special role in society was recognized in the founding documents of the United States, but 200 years later there is a huge transparency deficit in modern society.

In my view modern society absolutely needs transparency and meaningful accountability. WikiLeaks has dome more to help society have transparency than the whole of the mainstream media who have 'dropped the ball' big time.

Governments at all levels hate the idea of transparency. Much of what they do is of embarrassingly low quality which does not matter if nobody is watching. My career was compromised when my work highlighted this issue ... but the hierarchy of big government preferred that my sort of analysis never saw the light of day.

Let's be clear ... Manning, Assange, WikiLeaks have dome more to make government transparent and improve the underlying work quality than anyone el;se in a very long time. And I would also ask, if it was really secret and sensitive material, why on earth could so much of it be accessed on such a scale ... something is wrong with the system. And why on earth is so much really mundane material classigied as secret ... it diminishes the whole idea of secret.

This 'secret' thing in government offices has been a personal joke for me for nearly 40 years ... all of my own communication with the the Nigerian Government was classified as secret ... even top secret. I never knew why, unless is was getting ready to hide inappropriate transactions that were anticipated. I think it was 'routine' ... but it does serve to hide information when the individuals do not want the files to be scrutinized.

Thank you Manning, Assange and the whole of the WikiLeaks initiative. Let's push very very hard for real transparency and real accountability in government and all places where there is concentration of economic power.
Peter Burgess

Ecuador should not give Assange asylum; and he should step out and defend himself

Julian Assange’s invocation of state power and international law, when he does not want to face a court, is in flagrant contradiction with the anarchism of the indiscriminate disclosure of government documents by the organization he founded, WikiLeaks.

Britain is caught in the middle. Mr. Assange has been avoiding a return to Sweden to make his defence against a charge of sexual assault. He has already spent two months in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, but on Thursday Ricardo Patino, the Foreign Minister of Ecuador, announced that it was granting him diplomatic asylum.

Mr. Patino spoke not of Sweden, but of the United States. If any American charges against Mr. Assange were the matter at hand, different considerations might apply. WikiLeaks’ illegal publication of U.S. government documents is a political issue, and Mr. Assange could with at least some tinge of plausibility argue that he had acted on the basis of political conscience. There are rumours that an American grand jury is investigating Mr. Assange for possible charges, but he is not now in flight from any U.S. proceeding.

In Sweden, however, it is a question of fact whether or not Mr. Assange assaulted two women; the charge is an ordinary criminal one, without political ramifications – but for the fact that Mr. Assange, an Australian computer programmer and hacker, is an international political celebrity. At this stage, the Swedish court is only trying to ask him questions.

WikiLeaks has published vast numbers of documents. A few of them disclosed real abuses. Most, by far, consisted of routine internal reports and communications, whose publication resulted only in mild embarrassment and inconvenience.

Ecuador has no special tradition of giving refuge to political exiles, but the President, Rafael Correa, enjoys annoying the United States. Ecuador should cease its interference in the Swedish case, and let Britain extradite Mr. Assange to Sweden. As for Mr. Assange, he should step out of doors and defend himself.