Posts by Sacha
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Assange hands himself in to London police station, is arrested.
Caroline Overington publishes a preview snippet of his op-ed in The Australian, available in full from midnight their time.
Mr Assange begins by saying: "In 1958, a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: `In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win'.’’
It goes on to say a few more things about freedom of speech; the `dark days’ of corrupt government in Queensland (where Assange was raised); the Fitzgerald inquiry; and it says much about his upbringing in a country town, ``where people spoke their minds bluntly.’’
It says that Australian politicians are chanting a ``provably false chorus’’ with the US State Department of ``You’ll risk lives! You’ll endanger troops!’’ by releasing information, and ``then they say there is nothing of importance in what Wikileaks publishes. It can’t be both.’’
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Lilith __,
They never quite got around to saying whatever it was they had come to say.
core of any successful technique - head em off at the pass
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Clay Shirky says unfettered transparency may be bad for governnance in the long haul, but the way the US government is handling Wikileaks now is not on.
Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls “counter-democracy”*, the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities.
On the other hand, human systems can’t stand pure transparency. For negotiation to work, people’s stated positions have to change, but change is seen, almost universally, as weakness. People trying to come to consensus must be able to privately voice opinions they would publicly abjure, and may later abandon. Wikileaks plainly damages those abilities. (If Aaron Bady’s analysis is correct, it is the damage and not the oversight that Wikileaks is designed to create.*)
And so we have a tension between two requirements for democratic statecraft, one that can’t be resolved, but can be brought to an acceptable equilibrium. Indeed, like the virtues of equality vs. liberty, or popular will vs. fundamental rights, it has to be brought into such an equilibrium for democratic statecraft not to be wrecked either by too much secrecy or too much transparency.
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I am conflicted about the right balance between the visibility required for counter-democracy and the need for private speech among international actors. Here’s what I’m not conflicted about: When a government can’t get what it wants by working within the law, the right answer is not to work outside the law. The right answer is to accept that it can’t get what it wants.
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to HORansome,
brewed by Celts, right?
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to nzlemming,
Ohhh
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to nzlemming,
P**l H****s
?
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Tim Hannah,
But go for it, talk about the cables.
it would make a pleasant change..
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to nzlemming,
We could always agree not to mention the "A" word further - if people actually want to talk about the content rather than the person.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
late entry as above, but I'd like to support the adding of egg as a superbly local word
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Hard News: Popular Paranoiac Politics, in reply to Russell Brown,
Just as Ms Woodham pulled a sane post out of the bag recently, I have to congratulate Deborah Coddington on her reasoned analysis in that column.
There is certainly enough unhinged money sloshing around to bankroll a spoiler campaign next year. I wonder if a dry redneck party might deny Winston enough votes to be a potential swinging coalition partner for Labour (much like Bob Jones' role in 1984)? Only the Nats could hold their nose long enough to negotiate with Brash or Newman but Key could make mileage by publicly refusing as he did with Winston and with Roger Douglas.