#89 WHITE KNIGHTS
WHITE KNIGHTS SUCCUMB TO MYRIAD OF HUMAN FRAILTIES ALONG THE MARCH
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
W
hen the world is bad there is still hope, but quite often the systems are rotten beyond the point of repair and just so plane and so obviously absolutely rotten. The only hope then becomes the ease of the suffering when all anticipation of ending the suffering has disappeared.
There is of course darkness for the people to be led through. And so often, precisely when the inevitability of the approaching darkness is realized, white knights appear to guide people out of the echoey corridors of time.
But there are also the black knights leading people deeper into the darkness, leading them further down into the dark corridors instead of out into the light. This occurrence of a dark knight is often most effective when disguised as a white knight, but in truth, more interested in personal profit and gain, of one narcissistic sort or another, than saving other people from misfortune.
For this reason, a system of checks must exist to keep the world in balance, however so precariously so.
Prague allowed Slovakia to peacefully retreat as opposed to forcing the opposition toward the edge of the dark pool. This peaceful separation of opposing thought was in keeping with the Velvet Revolution during which political activists infiltrated the communist controlled state apparatus until sufficient numbers existed on the inside to be able to remove the occupiers.
Mahatma Gandhi split India into spheres of religious influences allowing the Muslims to traverse the lands of India into the territory now known as Pakistan, and for the Hindus in Pakistan to migrate into India before political borders between the two nations became enforced, while simultaneously obtaining independence for both entities from colonial England.
Martin Luther King Jr. led the blacks out of the impoverished American Inner Cities into the shining lights of the official Washington power company. Blacks had been existing in America with little political sway and substantially less freedoms as white Americans, particularly wealthy white American urbanites.
The March on Washington was a defining moment in world history for Black empowerment.
The times have changed very little though. This technological generation has an on-line reality that has become simultaneously emancipating and captivating.
Julian Assange attempted to provide definition to the metaverse by publishing originally sourced information that could then be commodified into mainstream news reports and social media posts. The problem was how the source materials were obtained.
Assange had been politically active for at least two decades before the government establishment began hunting him, him having proven himself too effective in changing perceptions about American operations in Iraq and otherwise causing sufficient doubt in American global policy so as to begin to change outcomes.
Assange had been playing chess with the American public consciousness. And he was winning.
The cyber activist was becoming a celebrity by informing the public about what the on-line world actually was and how individuals might be manipulated by government agencies and global corporations through on-line usage.
Assange was properly concerned with censorship, but he became consumed by celebrity and became too big of a public target to be ignored, as a result.
Official politicians create social media fodder for their adversaries when operating on the line between legal and illegal activities. Assange though was not even an official official, but more of a rogue element causing chaos and uncertainty by publishing the unofficial truth.
US Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning participated by releasing classified information to WikiLeaks in 2010. Manning was dishonourably discharged from the army and sentenced under the US Espionage Act to 35 years imprisonment before his sentence was commuted to 7 years, time served.
Former US National Security Agency computer intelligence consultant Eduard Snowden could not be found anywhere in the free world by the United States government after he released to the mainstream press classified information about government cyber surveillance programs.
Snowden revealed that the free world had crossed the line inside the metaverse by collecting metadata from corporate internet and social media providers, with metadata essentially being a mosh pit of individual on-line computer activity and personal information that government intelligence operatives could dive into from time to time.
Central intelligence had dumfounded activists by moshing up individual rights with the community good.
Snowden was eventually charged under the US Espionage Act, but the damage had already been done to the government’s secret cyber security operation, with Snowden obtaining asylum in Russia, far out of the reach of United States Prosecutors.
Behind Assange, Snowden and Manning are a number of high profile computer gamers that hack into the databases of corporations, such as the New York Times.
The difference between gamers that vandalize corporate secrecy for the thrill of the event and a white knight is the level of intent toward bettering the public good. Gamers are addicted narcissists. White knights are unofficial politicos.
Obtaining nuclear secrets for the thrill of the hack is not the same as disclosing corrupt government practices that contradict the public values individuals rely upon for freedom. The people have a right to know that the public image of government may be a sham.
Snowden represented himself as defending the individual freedoms protected in the United States Constitution. Assange worked as a journalist and publisher defending free speech against government and corporate censorship. And Manning worked for peace, wanting to disclose to the world that the war was unjust.
The world eventually surrendered to environmental activist Greta Thunberg as the public preoccupation with carbon footprints needed further definition. The child star from Sweden espousing green initiatives seemed preferable to the celebrity cyber punk from Australia upending internal government protocols in the on-line world order.
Thunberg has survived with an influential public following.
Thunberg, though, no doubt is just as reviled by corporations and governments as other activists, but her activism points in the same direction as stated government policies under the Paris Accord.
Assange on the other hand disclosed several secret government operations that were never intended to be disclosed. However secret those programs were, they were ultimately modified or cancelled as a result. Insiders preferred to disclose secrets to WikiLeaks instead of continuing to work for a government hypocritically operating the cyber surveillance programs.
Assange was so successful that the government likely feared becoming inept in keeping secret secrets.
Certain black knights may have profited from the disclosures, but essentially the white knight activity uncovered immoral conduct that was found to be unacceptable.
Humanity often turns from good to bad. The original good intentions often become clouded because of humanities myriad of imperfect constitutions. So much so, that when political activists become so persuasive as to be unstoppable, they become targets.
Russian activists have been disappearing. And over 300 journalists were killed in Russia between 1993 and 2009.
Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Journalists operating in corrupt realities are frequently killed because the power of verified information can be so persuasive as to enlist other actors to change policy.
The public want to know the truth, for sure, while deep down even democratic governments want to operate in secret, far away from public scrutiny regardless of whether their activities are moral or immoral.
But the state of truth today is that the facts are light, and the opinions are heavy when balancing ideas in the battle for control of the public agenda. Truth has fallen by the wayside in the metaverse with the establishment liking that quagmire just fine, thank you very much, because that particular environment of chaos is much easier to manipulate.
In the result, what constitutes proper justification may now be a bit of a quivering grey jelly fish, often seeming just in the circumstances of a shadowy ocean current, but eventually turning out to be unjust in the clear light of a new day.