Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys
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Sacha, in reply to
conspirational
Is that like conspiratorial mixed with aspirational?
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Juan Cole's Top 10 Middle East Wikileaks revelations so far.
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As a budding co-conspirator I am very conspirational in and about my plans.
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Sacha, in reply to
Oh I see you were discussing over at Word o Year. As you were.
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Greg Dawson, in reply to
I suppose I could be talked into the right utopia. I’d prefer to have, say, a vote in the matter though.
TBH, I hadn’t really thought through it to the point of how we might achieve any potential utopias for the new millennium.
I was more agreeing with the idea that it would be nice to be able to see a path to a better future (the equivalent of the jetpacks and monorails and space colonisation of 50’s scifi).
p.s. I for one am conspirational for New Zealand
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nzlemming, in reply to
Silly fellow. A jetpack is a better future ;-)
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And then it all takes another twist:
the phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilén boasting of their respective conquests after the “crimes”.
In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the “the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Niether Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of r-pe.
and a blogger at the New York Law School takes a fairly informed look at the Wikileaks releases and concludes there is no crime beyond the posturing of some government figures.
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Jamie Anstice, in reply to
And then it all takes another twist:
Although we should probably note that's an opinion piece from his Australian lawyer, who may not be an unbiased source.
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Kracklite, in reply to
Read William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum"? Rather a nice, wistful deconstruction of that sort of technocratic utopianism.
If I was in a world with jetpacks and whatnot, I'd be asking, "Where's my iPod?"
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Quite awesome piece on Salon by Glenn Greenwald about the schizophrenic moral standards of Wikileaks critics in the US media.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/wikileaks/index.html
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nzlemming, in reply to
I haven't, but I keep meaning to get hold of it. I do love his generally dystopian outlook
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You’re also missing the point that Assange is making no statement that you can question – he is merely making available material…
He seems to be making statements now.
Does this really affect anybody’s ability to think like a conspiracy? The most likely effect of this, as Yglesias (forgive me) put it, was that US diplomats will communicate confidential stuff over the phone from now on. That doesn’t degrade the ability to act conspiratorially, and in as much as it minimises openness and accountability, probably aids it.
I don’t think that any of the leaks really are that interesting. Everything is either stuff we already knew, or stuff that barely matters. Most of the diplomatic outrage is utterly insincere — Putin is upset that the US thinks he’s authoritarian? Well, yeah.I’ve been wondering this myself: won’t it just change the way diplomatic conduct is operated? What is really likely to be achieved by Wikilinks endeavours? (As much as I agree that Assange and co. should be able to release this information.)
I read the link to Aaron Bady’s reading Giovanni provided earlier, and it seems very robust as a reading of Assange’s motives and thinking. It also seems very uncritical of these, and is also notably speculative: “Early responses seem to indicate…”
But what if early responses are not good indicators? The political right’s response to the Wikilinks has been predicable and consistent; the left’s has not. (It’s the left arguing with the left on this thread, isn’t it?)
I think much of what Assange aims for is laudable in itself, but I question his approach. It isn’t a level playing field between states when it comes to this sort of thing: will the authoritarian regime of China be as affected as the current administration of the USA (which Assange apparently places in the authoritarian basket too)? I doubt it. The US-right may hate Assange and all that he stands for, and some may try to label him a terrorist, but he may serve a purpose they appreciate. I suspect the main practical result of Wikileaks will be that it adds to the list of ‘Bad things that have happened under the Obama administration’.
Yay? -
It isn’t a level playing field between states when it comes to this sort of thing: will the authoritarian regime of China be as affected as the current administration of the USA (which Assange apparently places in the authoritarian basket too)? I doubt it.
Assange comes across more like Lenin than Martin Luther King. There's a level of incomprehensibility combined with zeal and enormous over-intellectualised self-justification in what he says that adds up to something quite the opposite to humanism.
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Don Christie, in reply to
I like my vote as well. But it works better if I am better informed. Wikileaks and other forms of openness help that considerable.
I am very concerned that PA's editorial policy seems to be:
1. Assange's an arsehole
2. Government needs to keep secrets
The former you are welcome to (although assumption of guilt seems surprisingly strong here), that latter, as a default position, sucks eggs. Governments have far too many secrets, this is far more damaging and debilitating than the fact Vlad and his palls may be subject to the occasional embarrassment.
Oh, and don't you think it is pertinent that Sarah Ferguson's ex is open to the idea that a bit of corruption is ok?
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But it works better if I am better informed.
how are you better informed? This enormous amount of data is but a miniscule part of a far far greater amount of information. It's a very small snapshot of complex and on-going processes. There's a whole lot of remarks by officials - without any context.
How representative are these leaks really?
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This is great: Thomas Freidman in the NYT imagines a Wikileaked Chinese cable on the US political environment.
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Jeez Brown is desperate quoting Friedman, globalism's compliant whore.
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I am very concerned that PA’s editorial policy seems to be:
1. Assange’s an arsehole
2. Government needs to keep secrets
Don, please come down off the roof.
There is no "policy" -- that's a silly and somewhat insulting thing to say.
And I reserve my right to have some reservations about radical transparency. Our Official Information Act protects various forms of advice. I can go to the State Services website and read in some detail how and why that might apply, and what principles are served. The SSC will occasionally seek the views of the public, and any legislative change provides further opportunity for submissions.
It's not a perfect system, but I think I'm entitled to wonder whether putting a blowtorch to its principles in favour of a system, unique in the history of human governance, where no private conversation is possible isn't automatically the best idea.
And it is quite reasonable to scrutinise Assange when he writes things like this in internal correspondence:
"I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off.
Anyway, Der Spiegel has a story about the German Wikileaks splinter group:
Domscheit-Berg criticized WikiLeaks for concentrating on publishing material about the US while other information was neglected. "There was a lack of transparency about how decisions had been reached," he told the newspaper. "That's why I trust this organization as little as I would trust another organization with similar problems."
Domscheit-Berg has written a tell-all book about his experiences with WikiLeaks, titled "Inside WikiLeaks," which will be published in German by the Berlin-based publisher Econ Verlag in January 2011. A spokeswoman for the publisher told SPIEGEL ONLINE that there were no immediate plans to publish an English version, but that it was "entirely possible" that the book might be translated.
It does appear there's a bit of settling-out to happen yet. I'm quite happy to continue to express mixed feelings about the project, if only to be bloody-minded amid cheerleading.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Jeez Brown is desperate quoting Friedman, globalism’s compliant whore.
Perhaps you could actually read the column. It's very good.
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Jeez Brown is desperate quoting Friedman, globalism's compliant whore.
Elaborate?
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Jeez Brown is desperate quoting Friedman, globalism’s compliant whore.
Elaborate?
I certainly don't agree with Friedman all the time -- he was another of those Iraq-war-enabling public intellectuals -- but I think his constant reiteration of the need to act on climate change is admirable. He makes the point that China has set in motion hugely important projects in energy technology that will benefit the the world, and give China a decisive industrial advantage.
Yet China is a bullying security state. The US, meanwhile has recently freely elected a bunch of denialist Republican buffoons who have already begun their new war on science.
Nothing seems neat and tidy.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Governments have far too many secrets
On the post-Nixon history of which, see Aaron Bady, in a follow-up post. It doesn't apply to New Zealand in remotely those terms, granted, but.
Jeez Brown is desperate quoting Friedman, globalism's compliant whore.
Oh yes, we should start referring to other posters in the third person as if they weren't here, because it's not at all what a douchebag would do. I applaud this.
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Greg Dawson, in reply to
The Gernsback Continuum
I haven't read it either, thanks for the pointer Kracklite.
here's the text for anyone else interested.
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I'm not sure the Obama admin is all that concerned about the leaks, they generally show them in good light and the govts of North Korea and Iran in a poor light but other people might be worried -
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I tried to re-edit my original post on Friedman and failed due to the usual technical incompetence so here it is anew
Jeez Brown is desperate quoting Friedman, globalism's compliant whore.
Since I wrote that in one of those rushes of blood the mere mention of Thomas Friedman's name can invoke amongst humans who care more about other humans than things, I thought it would be better if I provided some substance to the wet bus ticket slap.Matt Taibbi is one of the writers not in awe of Friedman who is still relatively extant on the net post the Oblamblam election cleanout of non-democratic left sites, so in order to give a bit of substance to what I wrote earlier I thought a wee excerpt from Taibbi's review of "The World is Flat" would convey the reason for my distinct antithesis towards Friedman and his work better than my own inarticulacy ever could (I have no idea if that word 'inarticulacy' exists and was going to check but then thought "why bother some resident PA pedant will do that for me").
Anyway from Matt Taibbi’s [ [http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html| New York Press review]] of "The World is Flat:The book's genesis is conversation Friedman has with Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys. Nilekani causally mutters to Friedman: "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." To you and me, an innocent throwaway phrase the level playing field being, after all, one of the most oft-repeated stock ideas in the history of human interaction. Not to Friedman. Ten minutes after his talk with Nilekani, he is pitching a tent in his company van on the road back from the Infosys campus in Bangalore:
"As I left the Infosys campus that evening along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: "The playing field is being leveled."
What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened... Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!"
This is like three pages into the book, and already the premise is totally fucked. Nilekani said level, not flat. The two concepts are completely different. Level is a qualitative idea that implies equality and competitive balance; flat is a physical, geographic concept that Friedman, remember, is openly contrasting ironically, as it were with Columbus's discovery that the world is round.
Except for one thing. The significance of Columbus's discovery was that on a round earth, humanity is more interconnected than on a flat one. On a round earth, the two most distant points are closer together than they are on a flat earth. But Friedman is going to spend the next 470 pages turning the "flat world" into a metaphor for global interconnectedness. . .
I could go on about Friedman for days, many have but not only is the man a lightweight in drag he uses his limited talents exclusively for the purpose of saying whatever he believes the powerful would like him to say.
Yes China's a nasty place however at the moment WikiLeaks who have 'done' China from time to time in the past are attacking the moral turpitude of the american corporate state. Whenever there is the slightest hint of China leaning on NZ the media climbs on it as if some weekly journo special was on offer down the local wife shop.
The US diplomats have been revealed to be issuing orders to other sovereign states as if they were its vassals, which of course they are.Many people have pointed out that there are no surprises here and that is true in the sense that anyone with half a brain could see there have been many fitups at the UN for example. So it was really no surprise to discover that when all the UN diplomats of white western countries (NZ included) walked out at the commencement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech to the General Assembly, that was the result of orders form the US State Department.
The point is generations of people in those countries have been told that they are no-one's vassal, that other countries oppress any dissent from the weaker but that is what separates the US from those other 'superpowers'. Now we know that to be a proven lie thanks to Wikileaks and we need to be much more wary of what it is our government does in our name. Is it really in our long term best interests is it just because our elected representatives have been taking orders from those who didn't elect them?
I view all of the talk this week about Assange or what China does is just more work done by citizens to further the interests of a foreign power. It is the usual corporate media attempt to distract from the issue that makes them uncomfortable. When I was a kid we used to laugh at Bill Anderson's made in Moscow suits, just as we laughed at Keith Jacka trying to scurry up the rear passage of any US politician. For what the right to poison Taranaki? cause that was what NZ got for its support of the US in Vietnam, a factory to manufacture Agent Orange for which kiwis born long after Agnew Johnson and Nixon shuffled off are still paying the price.
Instead of this endless dialogue about what a perfect Wikileaks should do, why not accept this is the only WikiLeaks we have and be proud that some people are trying to show the truth.
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