Foreign affairs, secrecy, colonialism, Assange and democracy - Need for reform | Knowledge is Power
Horrific consequences of decisions led by ill-informed US Presidents, from South America to Ukraine, highlight a need to review accountability and structure of foreign affairs arms of ALL governments.
“It’s about the dangers of secrecy in government, which is what I worry about most.”
(This page is in progress, just pasted notes at the moment)
The UN is never going to work if countries are secretly sabotaging each other outside it. Just like no domestic government could work if everyone ignores it and attacks each other.
There should be no right to secrecy for crimes. I have seen it claimed there's no evidence anyone has suffered through Assange’s publication of materials re Iraq (though there may have been deniable occurrences). Overall I think it was good Assange exposed all of the info. It gave an opportunity to reassess what was going on, and the overall entire venture was bad. There should be far more openness and consultation, Foreign affairs missed out on being democratised. It should be the subject of a separate vote.
As to Hillary Clinton’s emails, they are public interest. (If the USA chooses to create a “right” to lie about her emails, that’s a separate problem.) There should be only the most limited protections along existing general legal principles: commercial sensitivity, public safety etc. All temporary with a sunset provision.
People with information become responsible. People without become tribal.
Was/is Assange ”pro Russian”?
Well, I don’t know, yet.
Darth Putin repeats says Assange's comment was made in 2016. Navalny was criticising Putin and campaigning for election until poisoned in August 2020 (3 months before Trump was voted out). "Putin's Palace" was released by Navalny 2021.
Assange's perception was justified in 2016.
A new structure for foreign affairs
Finally, the truth about Russia’ trespass on the UN is STARTING to emerge. The Iraq fiasco was exposed by Assange. Israel is up in arms about the murder of Gaza. Africa, South America, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Serbia, Syria, most of Africa have been unmitigated disasters.
They, not to mention the colonialism that preceded them, have been non-democratic ill-advised decisions by people vitiated by both ignorance and self-interest.
Half of the solution is knowing the problem. The next 40% is publicising it, so the public of the world can discuss, lobby, vote on, and oversee a solution.
This is the tip of the iceberg of the problem.
When you realise that, after the great (embryonic) democratic reform of the United Nations in 1945, the backslide into Chinese autocracy and cold war,
(a) The current disasters and world misery and concomitant immigration problems took their current form in 1991 with the destruction of change towards democracy in Russia, led by Yeltsin. Propped up by USA, AGAINST the Russian people.
And the lynch pin of the problem, is the continuing violation of the UN Charter by the lie that Russia is in the UN – which set up everything that followed, arming the Kremlin with the influence to spread corruption and terror, to be an object of admiration and emulation by vulnerable regimes, and also with the fictitious power to prevent the UN performing the peacekeeping function it was set up to perform.
The only cure for this is for the UNGA to formally recognise the violation and for the Charter to be enforced.
(b) The root cause of this corruption is outdated foreign policy administration structures in “democratic” Western governments. Those systems only democratised internal affairs. Their external affairs remained designed to enable colonial crimes to be committed in secret, without transparency or answerability, without knowledge or control by citizens, “for the good of the country”.
When the UN essentially abolished colonialism, the structures of these foreign affairs machineries became unfit for purpose. And were abused, as secrecy always is.
The only cure for this is
(i) Recognition that it is primarily USA, not Russia, which is culpable for enabling this state of affairs.
(ii) The constitutions and internal laws of all countries, but the US in particular, to be made compliant with the UN treaties they have ratified. It is time for an amendment to the US Constitution forbidding US from acts in other sovereign territories that would violate US obligations under international law, or would violate the Constitution if committed in the US.
(iii) And it is time to amend the secrecy legislation to provide that secrecy does NOT apply to criminal acts.
(iv) Foreign affairs should ideally be separated from the executive and directly elected, making foreign policy answerable to citizens (i.e. REMOVING it from control of invisible 5th column influences).
(v) (Underlying all of this, of course, is the bizarre structure of US Presidential elections which seem to prevent any candidates standing other than the bizarre results of the 2 major parties – an internal matter of US which has repercussions for the whole world).
This alpha male warmongering has got to stop, by eliminating the underlying causes and opportunity. Once gone, the freed resources It has sucked will make eliminating countries' domestic problems easy.
But what about spies and espionage?
Our legal systems make provision for undercover investigations of crimes.
There is no reason the legal checks and controls on those should not be applied also to external investigations and enforcement. Routing actions through the ICC rather that underground operatives will be far more effective in resolving disputes and minimising crime than essentially having gang wars between regimes outside the law.
It will become self-perpetuating as respect for it is gained.
A new structure for governmental secrecy and privacy
Public servants should have no greater rights to privacy than corporate employees.
Surveillance overall should be reversed as between public servants and the public. Public servants should have every aspect of their life public or at least monitored.
Conversely, there is good reason for protecting private members of the public from surveillance (other than collection of anonymous statistical data) as it is almost inevitably abused by those in power to control or persecute or exploit them. Personal lives of the public are not generally able to affect society as a whole, unless they are engaged in criminal activity.
There was no right to privacy in early democratic structures such as Ukraine’s het-men, who were elected by the community they lived in.
Public service is a choice. If people have something to hide, they are not fit for the position.
