The Wiki is a peculiar animal, if one can call it that. Those of you familiar with the Star Wars saga will remember a particular fur ball that accompanied Han(dsome Devil) Solo wherever he went in his Perennial Falcon. They are a peaceful and unassuming race, apart from their massive bulk and superhuman strength. Chewie, as he is known to his friends, is represented by the crack legal team of Skywalker, Skywalker & Vader and has been known to get away with pretty much everything. In fact, Chewie has been brought up on charges of all kinds, ranging from lewd conduct with troll dolls to the attempted murder of turnips and has gotten off scot-free every time. But Chewbacca is a Wookie, and this article is about the Wiki. Please try and keep up.
There are several species of Wiki on the net. The most commonly used is the dinosaur Wikipedia-o-saurus. Then there is the Wiktionary, Wikimapia and of course, everybodys favourite whistleblowers, Wikileaks. Their greatest hits include the leak of the US Special Forces manual on how to prop up unpopular government with paramilitaries and Change you can download: a billion in secret Congressional reports. They have also exposed the trigger happy side of the US military by releasing footage of how a chopper full of Marines mowed down unarmed Iraqi Reuters journalists in cold blood. Therefore, in the words of every Scooby Doo villain ever, Wikileaks are a bunch of meddling kids.
The meddling kids in question are some of the worlds bravest people, putting their lives, careers and livelihoods on the line to bring us raw data and revelations that would make your eyes snap, crackle and pop all at once. So it should come as no surprise that the US military-industrial complex, which has been at the receiving end of nearly all of Wikileaks revelations, has stepped up its attacks on the people behind the project. The National Security Agencys top hackers (remember Enemy of the State), legal eagles from Warchiovsky, Zimmerman & Goldstein and the best spin doctors from Fox News are all currently locked together in a room 26 floors below the Pentagon, trying their best to knock down a small website based somewhere in fjordial Europe. Theyve tried everything, from the character assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the attempted assassination of several Wikileaks plumbers.
But why is all this important, you may well ask. The answer is simple. The idea of a medium that threatens to expose every shady deal that goes down in the world on a governmental or state level gives every member of the ruling global Illuminati nightmares, and often causes George H W Bush to wake up screaming Damn you Assange, damn yous all to hell! And here, in the Blackwater that we call Pakistan, the idea of the truth getting out is almost as scary as all of Islamabads bootleggers running out of good Scotch unthinkable!
The truth, after all, is a scary thing. If given in the hands of the wrong people (meaning the good guys), the truth can set the masses free. And that is so not what The Man wants. Freedom of information, transparency, good governance and constitutional safeguards are all illusory safety blankets created to reassure the unsuspecting masses and keep them blissfully unaware of what the real deal is.
Never mind that Pakistan is the only nation in the history of black market arms buying to pay cash for all its acquisitions. No matter that weve pumped billions of taxpayer rupees into the procurement of weapons systems as outdated as 486 IBM-compatible computers. That our plutonium reactors and warheads are all duds, prepared using plagiarised Dutch designs that dont work in the first place. That our defence contracts are never open to scrutiny, the arms we procure were state-of-the-art when Jimmy Carter was in office. Weve long passed the banana republic state of affairs and are now heading towards acquiring most-favoured big hole in the ground status from the World Tyranny Organisation.
This has to end, and the only way to do that is to stop treating every single deal like a matter of national security. Let us decide what to buy and what not to buy. Im sure even Chewbacca could make better defence of the realm decisions than the current lot that we pay to drain our forex reserves.
The writer is a broadcast journalist.
