Wikileaks

[poliphilo]

Thus far there's been nothing in the Wikileaks revelations that comes as a huge surprise. The Saudis hate the Iranians, the US State department spies on the UN, Russia is a kleptocracy, China mounts attacks on the Web, most of the aid that enters Afghanistan goes straight into Swiss bank accounts, Netanyahu is slippery, Merkel is dull, Sarkozy a blowhard, Karzai weak and paranoid, Prince Andrew obnoxious . These aren't secrets that are being disclosed. At most they confirm our best guesses. As someone on a Guardian thread put it, "Diplomats say in private what Joe Public thinks!"

is it right that this material should have been leaked? Oh yes. People have a right to know what the governments that represent them are doing in their name. That's why democracies allow a free press. It's part of the contract between ruler and ruled. Most of the time government manages to hornswoggle and subvert the press. Once in a while the press manages to hit government where it hurts. 

Government says lives have been endangered by the leaks. That's an example of hornswoggle. These revelations are embarrassing and inconvenient to government- that's all. 

Comments

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

I don't really see that.

To start, however, I worked in the government and I'm not surprised to see that the commentary of diplomats is a more interesting version of the commentary of bureaucrats.

I don't think the information on the Saudis is of real significance, it just makes makes totally undeniable a position which had been merely undeniable.

Like the original leak of Iraq War documents, there's nothing here of public value. It will prove useful to journalists and historians, certainly, but they're more in the business of telling stories than affecting policy.

Julian Assange has a problem in that his leaks aren't very timely. WikiLeaks comes down out of the hills long after the battle is done to shoot the survivors. Their next set of documents, form "a major American bank", will probably be nothing new to people who've been paying attention to what actual whistlebolowers have been saying for years, sometimes even decades.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the shift from "merely undeniable" to "totally undeniable" is of some significance.

But I agree there's almost nothing in the documents we didn't already know.