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== WikiLeaks - the state persecutes its idealists ==

WikiLeaks claims that authoritarian rule and authoritarian tendencies within democratic governments are characterised by their operation in hiding. However it is no secret that profit is the driving motive behind corporations, that the USA and its allies are fighting deadly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for their own national interests, and that the US government considers WikiLeaks to be an enemy of the state. These things are not suppressed information; on the contrary, they are openly declared and discussed. That Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years, that his police tortured and suppressed any opposition using a 30 year state-of-emergency law, that the USA backed this rule because of its interests in the region, that the EU negotiated a free trade agreement with the Egyptian regime and that the EU cherished Gaddafi's Lybia for its contribution to keeping refugees from entering Europe: all this is public record. There are also actions and policies by authoritarian and democratic governments which are secret, such as extra-legal killings, torture, intelligence gathering, renditions and some deals with other states or corporations. But this does not imply that these governments' rule is primarily characterised by what their subjects do not know about. On the contrary, a regime which tortures its enemies to intimidate them wants them to know about it, so that they shy away from their plans.

WikiLeaks proposes that transparency leads to good governance, to a better life for the subjects. However, if a government truthfully reports that the current debt crisis requires large scale cuts to social services, this is transparency; if the US government openly declares its enmity to WikiLeaks, this is transparency; if the law informs someone that his material needs count only insofar they are effective demand, this is transparency; if a state mobilises its population to militarily defeat the mobilised population of another state, this is transparency. Transparency in itself does not prevent harm: rather, most of the misery is wrought in the open.3