Excerpt from It’s the establishment vs the web, written in 2010, just as relevant today:
‘Western system hollowed out’
What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the U.S. and U.K. in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the U.S. and U.K. in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger.