But of course WikiLeaks turned the world upside down. The secret dossiers released contain candid and undiplomatic remarks passed about US dealings; correspondence that should have never been held in the first place. They are, sure as eggs are eggs, bound to raise hackles as confidential reports and assessments, in all candour and not written for public consumption, are put on cyberspace for all and sundry to read.
This has all happened before during the Afghan war but this time the various governments involved have become so het up about it they have strong-armed their way to getting the WikiLeaks mastermind, Julian Assange, arraigned over sexual charges that are vehemently and categorically denied by Mr Assange who voluntarily submitted to the London Metropolitan police on December 7.
So violent and unorthodox was the reaction to WikiLeaks this time around that credit card companies were bullied into withdrawing services to WikiLeaks subscribers. Mr Assange has been called reckless and dangerous by the White House, however, while officialdom thinks it knows best by coming down on him like a ton of bricks, the overreaction has given rise to many questions and opinions that undermine the credibility of those in positions of authority. It makes one wonder what governments throughout the world are so desperate to hide from the public and to question the fundamental right to freedom of speech.
We live in a very troubled world. Last week, rioters in London attacked the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall while in Milan the Apertura of the Scala was disrupted by violent protests. To me it looks like the French Revolution happening all over again on a global scale.
While in the 18th century it was the frustration of the unrecognised middle class that fuelled the fire that destroyed the last vestiges of feudalism, this time around it is all about the dissemination of knowledge about everyone and everything that has removed the respect if not awe in which politicians were held in hitherto. The dissemination of the so-called secret documents by a disgruntled officer and their subsequent release by Mr Assange was in my opinion unavoidable and inevitable. If it were not Mr Assange it would have been Mr Boehmer. Therefore, the sure knowledge there were far worse remarks than published written about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for instance, comes as no surprise.
There are hidden depths to being an ambassador we, the public, know little or nothing about; a web of communication deemed to not be in the interest of the public to know about; Byzantine intrigues resolved behind closed doors while all the public is aware of is the glitz and glamour of the diplomatic receptions and its de rigueur officialdom. When these networks are uncovered it is small wonder the usually calm and unruffled surface of diplomacy becomes a raging storm and the stability of the world becomes more at risk than it ever was as correspondence and reports that, like Mission Impossible tapes, should have been made to self-destruct after being read are revealed to the very people they are dealing with and about. It is utter madness.
I am trying to fathom what Mr Assange and all who support him had to gain by doing something like this. Although the official World War III has not yet broken out I am quite sure those in power know full well how many times we have been close to it over the last six decades and that the spectre of war is never very far as it breaks out with monotonous frequency in various quarters of the globe anyway despite the United Nations and despite the EU. Because the theatre of war has been removed from the European continent, it does not mean we in Europe can go on as if nothing has happened since 9/11. We are at war too and even if, like Malta, we do not have to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, the chain reaction to all this unrest and instability is bound to affect us in one way or another.
Therefore, the riots in Milan and Rome, the demonstrations in London and the seething violence in Paris are but reactions to the recession that is mainly the fault of those uninformed, greedy and mendacious politicians who, on pretexts of strengthening world security, invaded another country with promises of vast and lucrative contracts for its reconstruction being awarded even before Baghdad was taken!
Almost a decade later Osama Bin Laden remains at large, occasionally wheeled out like the proverbial bogeyman to keep us in thrall. Almost a decade later Afghanistan and Iraq remain as war torn as they ever were and those famous contracts are not worth the paper they were written on.
So much money has been poured down the drain for nothing that, yes, something had to give. Governments could not sustain the ever increasing subsidies and financial aids they use to garner votes election in and election out any longer, hence, the riots. Just think of Lawrence Gonzi’s promise of a 25 per cent tax reduction and there you have it, which is why there may be rhyme and reason as to why Joseph Muscat refused his €27,000 annual raise after all.
Have we reached the end? The light at the end of the tunnel that only too recently we were informed we had almost reached has proved to have been a mirage and just as that financial bird of ill-omen, Alan Greenspan, predicted, it seems the worst is yet to come.
kzt@onvol.net