Unfortunately I cannot say I agree with Vinay completely. He himself lays out the premise that most of the political power is held by the old bureaucrats. I would in fact correct him and say that, at least in Western democracies, it's held by powerful lobbies and economical entities.
Neither the lobbies nor the corporations are entities that were ever voted or chosen by the people, and the only thing the last two years of politics in the West have shown us is that it's pretty astounding just how much they can get away with flexing their political muscle without suffering any consequences, even if the power they exert affect the vast, vast majority of the population negatively.
What that would imply is that the democratic process is corrupt to a point where supporting progressives is reduced to being merely a gesture; Obama won the elections because there was a certain expectation of correcting many perceived problems of the "old establishment". He was unable to fix any of them, and in fact contributed to furthering the power of these interests.
At this point, the calculated balance Vinay hints at just falls flat on its face. And while it's true that there are many political powers that are downright illegal and obscure in everything they do (such as the mafias he hints at, and at more contemporary level, some massive drug cartels), the reality is that the institutions that threaten out freedoms act very much legally and partially in the open. And against such institutions, Assange's plan works remarkably well, as evidenced by much of the political action that some of the Wikileaks papers has helped fuel in the past few years. Not only that, but it can still claim a certain level of moral legitimacy that many governments are willing to stand up for, and part of the reason they have to speak openly is because some of the world issues Wikileaks has raised are just too big to keep quiet. I doubt that other, more conventional methods of "working with the system" would have gone that far.
Indeed, I can see how he may need the state, but he has too much faith in the idea that the people running the show are trying to do the best thing for everyone. My inner cynic tells me that the people at the top are acting mostly in the interest of the other wealthy people they have dinner with, who fund their campaigns, who's kids go to the same school, etcetera.
Wikileaks is important because there needs to be more transparency in what the government is actually doing so we can make our own, reasoned decisions, as opposed to ones based on the biased, filtered, partisan commentary of the media. It's by no means perfect, but it's better than the mainstream media.
> He was unable to fix any of them, and in fact contributed to furthering the power of these interests.
the passage of the health reform bill would seem to refute your statement. it's chock full of fixes and attempted fixes to what many people felt was broken with the legacy health system. perfect? no. better than what you've done or I've done? hell yes.
Neither the lobbies nor the corporations are entities that were ever voted or chosen by the people, and the only thing the last two years of politics in the West have shown us is that it's pretty astounding just how much they can get away with flexing their political muscle without suffering any consequences, even if the power they exert affect the vast, vast majority of the population negatively.
What that would imply is that the democratic process is corrupt to a point where supporting progressives is reduced to being merely a gesture; Obama won the elections because there was a certain expectation of correcting many perceived problems of the "old establishment". He was unable to fix any of them, and in fact contributed to furthering the power of these interests.
At this point, the calculated balance Vinay hints at just falls flat on its face. And while it's true that there are many political powers that are downright illegal and obscure in everything they do (such as the mafias he hints at, and at more contemporary level, some massive drug cartels), the reality is that the institutions that threaten out freedoms act very much legally and partially in the open. And against such institutions, Assange's plan works remarkably well, as evidenced by much of the political action that some of the Wikileaks papers has helped fuel in the past few years. Not only that, but it can still claim a certain level of moral legitimacy that many governments are willing to stand up for, and part of the reason they have to speak openly is because some of the world issues Wikileaks has raised are just too big to keep quiet. I doubt that other, more conventional methods of "working with the system" would have gone that far.