So, is WikiLeaks a force for good?

These debates held in Australia are stimulating apart from challenging. The ABC, although not the organisation responsible for putting on the debates, has them on on-line. For anyone who has followed the whole WikiLeaks / Assange saga, this debate should prove of interest.

"US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a big fan of the concept of open governance, famously opined that "sunlight is the best disinfectant". Yet even the world's liberal democracies have claimed that sometimes they require a place in the shade, condemning WikiLeaks for publishing their confidential information.

Are governments justified in their condemnation of WikiLeaks and merely being responsible in protecting their secrets? Could the world really survive an unbridled commitment to transparency?

Tackling this thorny topical issue at an IQ2 Debate in Sydney were two teams featuring, on one side, a former foreign minister in Gareth Evans ... and, on the other, a Wikileaks insider in the form of Icelandic investigative journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson.

While the negative team gained ground on the night, according to the pre-debate polling of the audience, the affirmative team triumphed in the end with 58 percent of the vote to 33 percent against, and 9 percent undecided."

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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