More Wikileaks Reverberations

From Legal Insurrection:

Throughout the day WikiLeaks supporters have been mounting denial of service attacks against Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, and others deemed to have impeded WikiLeaks. Reportedly, these supporters have disclosed large files containing Mastercard account numbers and expiration dates.

But don't call it Cyberwar, you might offend some people.

And of course, the government of the United States is standing idly by, twiddling its thumbs and dawdling.

And Eric Holder? He's still reading the Instruction Manual for Attorney General.

Interesting Wikileaks Take

From Theodore Dalrymple, in City Journal:

The idea behind WikiLeaks is that life should be an open book, that everything that is said and done should be immediately revealed to everybody, that there should be no secret agreements, deeds, or conversations. In the fanatically puritanical view of WikiLeaks, no one and no organization should have anything to hide. It is scarcely worth arguing against such a childish view of life.

The actual effect of WikiLeaks is likely to be profound and precisely the opposite of what it supposedly sets out to achieve. Far from making for a more open world, it could make for a much more closed one. Secrecy, or rather the possibility of secrecy, is not the enemy but the precondition of frankness. WikiLeaks will sow distrust and fear, indeed paranoia; people will be increasingly unwilling to express themselves openly in case what they say is taken down by their interlocutor and used in evidence against them, not necessarily by the interlocutor himself. This could happen not in the official sphere alone, but also in the private sphere, which it works to destroy. An Iron Curtain could descend, not just on Eastern Europe, but over the whole world. A reign of assumed virtue would be imposed, in which people would say only what they do not think and think only what they do not say.

The dissolution of the distinction between the private and public spheres was one of the great aims of totalitarianism. Opening and reading other people’s e-mails is not different in principle from opening and reading other people’s letters. In effect, WikiLeaks has assumed the role of censor to the world, a role that requires an astonishing moral grandiosity and arrogance to have assumed. Even if some evils are exposed by it, or some necessary truths aired, the end does not justify the means.

"Air Raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill!"

  

On a bright Hawaiian morning, war came to the United States. In a matter of hours, the core of the American Pacific Fleet was destroyed, American air power in the Pacific crippled, and American forces were under attack not only in Hawaii, but on Wake Island, Guam, Midway, and the Phillipines.

The men that survived those battles and served as constant reminders are fading quickly away, as time exacts its price. The lessons still hold, even if we forget them.

The cost of relearning those lessons is so very high.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

It's December, people. Time to break out the Christmas tunes.

Today's Selection: "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings," by the BareNaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan.