Wikileaks–I love them. To be clear, I love the fact that the US government is having its dirty laundry aired. I hope they are embarrassed but more importantly I hope the American people are embarrassed. As much as the average American won’t admit it, our duly elected government leaders are doing what the majority of the population wants– maintain our quality of life at any cost. This is the main point of my little New Year’s rant but this Wikileaks fiasco plays a big part in how we live with our heads buried in the sand.

The real threat from Wikileaks is that the American populous is being exposed to just what the US government and government sponsored/supported corporations are doing on our behalf. The danger being that more and more people might start caring and our elected leaders and their corporate sponsors could be held accountable.

Here are some examples of cool things our government does for us:

• U.S. State Department ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on the leader of the United Nations, Secretary general Ban Ki-moon, and other top U.N. officials.
• U.S. manipulated — via spying, threats, and bribes — the Copenhagen global climate change summit.
• U.S. State Department requesting American diplomats to identify critical installations overseas.
• U.S. diplomats in the Middle East instructed to secretly collect personal information on Palestinian leaders and to closely monitor Israeli military and telecommunication capabilities.
• Shell Oil Company inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government giving it access to every movement of politicians.
• The U.S. State Department solicited “biographical and biometric information on key NAM/G-77/OIC Permanent Representatives, particularly India and China.

You spy in order to gain a strategic advantage and our government needs this leverage in order to acquire and control the resources needed to keep the general population content, docile and productive. Sadly, we can’t just go around invading everyone (watch out China–we’re coming after your rare earth minerals next!).

But along comes Wikileaks threatening to ruin everything by exposing things that the corporate controlled mainstream media refuses to. This in turn fuels an increasingly vocal minority demanding change because they recognize that pissing people off all over the world is what really puts us at risk and that maintaining our quality of life shouldn’t come at the expense of others. That’s why we’re seeing the massive assault on Wikileaks, but more importantly the underlying technology that enables it to be so successful, the unregulated internet.

A population can’t be effectively controlled unless you control the voices of dissension. Our government understands this and so far they are following the playbook when it comes to silencing Wikileaks: trivialize the information actually leaked, discredit their leader, classify them as a terrorist organization, classify their supporters as unpatriotic/terrorists, cut off their sources of funding and limit public access to their information.

One of the main sound bites has been, “Lives are at risk from this information being leaked.” This is the standard line they used after every other leak yet they just acknowledged that this is not true . Even if individual lives were at risk I’d certainly see this as the lesser of two evils. How many lives could have been saved had it leaked in the weeks prior to 9/11 that terrorists were planning on hijacking planes? Or that we knew prior to invading Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that we had been planning on fixing the facts around the policy [as to justify the invasion]? Or that we lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident which was the catalyst for the Vietnam War?

The attack on Wikileaks is completely unjustified. The information was leaked– punish the leaker, plug the security holes and learn from your mistakes (oh, and maybe stop being world class assholes so there’s nothing to leak in the first place). Does the government honestly expect to eliminate every media outlet on the planet so even if there is a leak there won’t be anyone to leak it to? I think that is certainly the intent. The mainstream media in the United States is well on it’s way to being under government sway. The threat now is the internet.

The internet is the only far-reaching form of communication within the United States that remains largely unregulated. Broadcast licenses for other medium are managed by the FCC and content is censored per their guidelines. The FCC has no legal authority over the internet although they are working hard to change that (and recently succeeded). With no legal means of oversight, the government has illegally taken steps to monitor our communications over the internet by utilizing warrantless wiretaps and existing NSA monitoring capabilities such as Echelon. In addition they are working to obtain unrestricted backdoor access to social networks, implement technology which allows for the management of internet traffic via net neutrality initiatives, provide a mechanism by which the government can shut down internet traffic and require that all internet services be capable of providing wiretap capabilities . This would include Blackberry messages and Skype. Encrypted data would also have to be accessible for wiretapping purposes. They are even pressuring foreign governments into adopting controversial website blocking laws .

The government recognizes that controls need to be in place so another Wikileaks can’t happen and if it does happen the mediums by which dissent can spread must be controlled. Those mediums being broadcast communications, the ability to travel and the right to assemble.

Public dissension can be managed and steps have already been taken. A national identification card has been proposed, individual movement can and is being monitored via GPS tracking and toll roads. Random stop & searches have begun on public highways and in major US cities. Citizens are being encouraged to contact hotlines/websites to report “suspicious activity” and heads of media outlets and anyone criticizing government security policies are being labeled “domestic extremists” and treated as such.

Our right to assemble hasn’t been quashed just yet although staging a peaceful protest is a good way to get arrested and could get you added to a government database for later round up. TALON used to be used for tracking protest groups until that secret Pentagon database was leaked to NBC News forcing the program to be shut down in 2005. Then Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) ran a database until 2008 when it too was shut down soon after it was revealed that it was being used to spy on antiwar activists (it may not have actually been shut down according to information leaked by anonymous US officials). These days it’s hard to say who is tracking us. Maybe the FBI with their Guardian 2.0 database? Or the Defense Intelligence Agency’s new (2008) Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center which took over many CIFA functions? Or maybe one of the other 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States? And of course there’s always the risk of the US military illegally spying on citizens within the United States. At least we don’t have to worry about any of the 72 new “fusion centers” set up around the country since 2003. They are charged with collecting local intelligence (police reports/public tips) so it can be shared amongst government agencies. They are fine. Except for that time they took part in illegal domestic spying or alerted police to be on the lookout for Ron Paul bumper stickers because the driver could be a member of the militia.

Major protests have taken place, the Iraq war being the largest focus of these, but these efforts have changed nothing. Protests are generally poorly organized and virtually ignored by the corporate controlled media which makes it next to impossible to garner any further support. Search Google News for “Anti war protest Ellsberg” articles. Of the 33 matches only 1 was from a mainstream news organization (CNN). As far as Iraq goes, it doesn’t matter anyway, demanding a troop withdrawal is pointless since we’re still leaving behind a massive private security force.

The United States government has proven on many occasions that it can not be trusted. They simply ignore the law, call what they are doing something else to avoid legal repercussions or grant retroactive immunity to companies that assist them in breaking the law. So for the good of the rest of the world and for our own salvation (and I use that term in a non-religious way), everything our government does should be scrutinized and the only means of unregulated mass communication should be protected at all costs.

That is why we need Wikileaks, we need an unregulated internet but more than anything, we need the American people to start caring. Apathy toward anything not directly affecting our quality of life is our biggest obstacle. The only people who care are the people who already cared and that’s not nearly enough. The silent majority needs to wake the hell up. The wealthiest 10% in the United States possess 80% of all financial assets. That means they control just about everything, including the government. With that control comes the ability to manipulate the free flow of information which is why it’s so important that the internet remain unregulated by anyone.

Unfortunately, I don’t see anything changing in the near future. The American Dream is that anyone can prosper and achieve success. The measurement of success is force fed into us from the time we can click the power button on the TV remote: He has who the most wins. This has resulted in a culture that fosters exploitation, waste, materialism and greed. The US consumes 25% of the world’s energy even though we only represent 4.5% of the population. The US and Canada are the top 2 polluters per capita in the world (the US is #2 in absolute CO2 emissions). Imagine if the other 95.5% lived like we do. This planet would be a smoggy, lifeless, dust bowl.

Since we’re more of a reactive bunch what it’ll probably take to get people motivated is a dollar crash fueled by the costs of maintaining our military presence around the world (54% of the federal budget is reputedly for military expenditures). Once gas goes through the roof, food costs skyrocket and unemployment is the norm then we’ll see some action.

Note: Any of the points I made or the sources I cited can be disputed. Nothing can be claimed with absolute certainty. However, when you assemble enough credible data you can start to see a pattern and if you can take that pattern and find historical similarities it’s distressingly easy to draw accurate conclusions./

I hear it might stop raining either Thursday or Friday. I’ll leave then.

The 24th or “Holy Night” is the end of a nine day celebration of the Nativity so it was a little louder around here than it normally is. Fireworks were going off (nothing extravagant) and toward the end of the night the kids staying here were outside beating a Piñata with a stick. It was actually pretty fun to listen to the kids yelling and the adults singing. Here’s a good site that describes how the holiday is celebrated in Mexico. A lot of places are closed but not everything and thankfully not the restaurants. PB&J on Christmas would be bad.

I noticed something on the trip map that I posted yesterday that kind of has me intrigued a little. OK, more than a little. Cuba is very close. I did a little checking and there are daily flights from Cancun to Havana. There are some considerations to making a trip like this; especially to a country that is considered an “enemy” of the United States. Legally I can fly there but I can’t spend any money. My status as a dual citizen (Canada/United States) doesn’t help me out here either. Could I get away with not breaking this law by bringing my own food and camping? For the sake of this publicly posted web site… you bet!

Lot’s more research is needed before I pull the trigger on this one. For one thing I’d need to figure out how to pack my bike/gear up for the plane ride over. I’ve read nothing but good things from the other touring riders that have been over there. Columbus even described Cuba as, “the most beautiful land human eyes have ever seen.” How could I not go there?