The Wikileaks “Transparency” Effect

You may no longer speak your mind, unless Wikileaks either wills it, or they blackmail you.

OHB-Technology CEO Berry Smutny was sacked for having an opinion that could easily be constituted as responsible advice to a client.

OHB is one company taking part in Europe's satellite project Galileo, which is seen as a challenge to the American Global Positioning System but has been plagued by problems and cost over-runs.

In the leaked cable, Smutny also called the Galileo project, which is due to come into operation in 2014, a waste of EU-taxpayers' money.

The ignorant and superficial, of course all hail Wikileaks.

Why a critic of Galileo was punished is rather obvious. It wasn’t for wrongdoing or misrepresentation, it was for catching on to the fact that the execution of the Galileo GPS array is a mess at best, and a racket at worst. European Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani rejected the additional €1.5-1.7 billion for startup and an estimated €750 million annual operating budget as exorbitant.

"I don't know where these figures come from," Tajani told a news conference, adding that any budget overruns would be calculated after all contracts for the projected are awarded.

So Wikileaks does a nice job of getting someone fired and/or silenced for “speaking truth to power”. It is, as more than one critic said, become a censor to the world.

As was the case behind the Iron Curtain, reality may now be discussed in hushed tones, and never, never, written down unless the defiant are suicidal in their bravery.