WikiLeaks dropped a bombshell on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7”, the whistleblowing site began releasing the largest publication of confidential documents that have come from the top secret security network at the Cyber Intelligence Center.
Hacking and “leaking” have become major news items. Are the leaks good or bad? The answer depends on the nature of the leak. Are the leaks exposing crimes or covering them up? Are they for or against the public good?
Following are some famous leaks or disclosures that have done good.
In Tony Gilroy’s underrated reboot of the Jason Bourne series, Bourne Legacy, Jeremy Renner plays Aaron Cross, Jason Bourne’s alter ego. Cross saves Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) at her home, where government goons are trying to kill her. Cross and Shearing flee, but not before offing a handful of bloodless CIA killers and setting fire to Shearing’s mansion.
Bloodletting as a medical practice flourished for thousands of years before finally yielding to more “enlightened” medicine except in special circumstances. One of history’s ironies is that America’s first president, George Washington, a bloodthirsty warrior before and during his presidency, died arguably from bloodletters called in to his bedside to let out one-fourth of his blood.
It appears that America has little awareness of the value of awareness since fake news and fake values arrived to take possession of the body politic. Solipsism appears to lurk behind a modus operandi of tough talking American empire-speak when it addresses its ire to other centres of power daring to challenge its hegemonic brand of self-centred conceits, now spreading across the globe.
While the basket of delighted deplorables dances in the streets, celebrating its right wing populist victory, and Clinton’s liberal legions still lament the unlikely, unexpected, unacceptable coronation of President Donald Trump, I’ve worn a raw, bloody hole in my scalp, scratching my head in wonder. Trump seemed to come out of nowhere. He made mincemeat out of his Republican rivals, then proceeded to make serial war criminal Hillary look like someone I wouldn’t trust to wash my car, let alone lead my country for the next four years. Come to think of it, Hillary did that all on her own.
The terrible truth is that a Cult of Death rules America and is hell-bent on world domination.
— Douglas Valentine
London — The great tedium of history is that those who refuse to acknowledge its immemorial works tend to see exceptional events everywhere. The next event of terror is singular; the next act of technology inspired hacking is remarkable.
We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the ‘right ‘, a Fascist century. Now liberalism is preparing to close the doors of its temples, deserted by the peoples who feel that the agnosticism it professed in the sphere of economics and the indifferentism of which it has given proof in the sphere of politics and morals, would lead the world to ruin in the future as they have done in the past.
Factionalism and fury are basic ingredients of the US Republic. Designed as a classic response to the lynch mob fantasy of direct democracy, and the weakness of unaccountable monarchy, those behind the US constitution contrived a select form of paternal snobbery: letting groups fight it out in the amphitheatre of politics. Such a battle would always adhere to certain demarcations of power along the separation of powers.
