Posts by James Bremner
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Rather than the now defunct USSR, I meant Russia.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Old habits die hard. Rather than typing USSR, I should have typed Russia.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Steve Parks,
James, are you okay with the Wikileaks then? Let the public see this stuff, and they can make their own decision on the material, just as you have assessed it in a fairly favorable way for the USA.
Whether Wikileaks is a good thing or a bad thing is an interesting question. The good aspect is that by putting all this information out in the public domain it has debunked some of the negative stereotypes of US intentions and activities held not exclusively, but despite Simon's protestations, most fervently on the left. So in this regard Wikileaks has made the US look better and those that held the negative views of the US look worse and less credible. All good so far.
The problem, that has been widely discussed in the media and earlier on this thread, is that the disclosures and sense that the US can't keep a secret will make the practice of diplomacy for the US more difficult in the future, which as the US is the world's sole superpower is not a good eventuality. Governments and diplomats do need to have confidential communication on various subjects in order for international diplomacy to work. Of course what needs to be secret and what ought to be public will always be a grey area.
Additionally the world’s sole superpower having such weak system protections that a very junior figure was able to download seemingly the State Dept’s entire database of cables is not a good look. Imagine what a serious hacker or spy could do. One would hope that the Dept of Defense would have more secure systems, but who knows? Based on Wikileaks one has to assume that China and the USSR and who knows who else have just about any US secret that they want, which is not a good eventuality, in fact that is very dangerous.
So on balance, Wikileaks is in my view a bad thing. -
Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Simon Grigg,
That has to be a bit of a downer for those who were heavily invested in the "big bad USA" mantra
I didn't write that every voice on the left harbours grand conspiracy theories about the USA, but at the risk of stating the obvious, most of those voices inside or outside the US inherently most suspicious and critical of the USA are of the left. Surely you are not going to dispute that.
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The FT article makes the point (that has been made in a number of places) that no evidence of American grand conspiracies has come out of Wikileaks, and infact as RB commented earlier on this thread, for the most part (with a few the exceptions such as the request for credit card numbers et al, which is skuzzy rather than conspiratorial) the cables make the US diplomats look okay, if not quite good. And perhaps bored with nothing better to do if the report on the wedding in Dagestan is any indication.
For as long as I can remember, and for a good bit before that, the US has been accused or assumed to be up to no good. And now we find out things such as rather than trying to find an excuse to go to war with Iran over its nuke program, the US is the one with the cold feet while a lot of the Middle Eastern countries are urging the US to go ahead and bomb Iran's nuke program ASAP. Quite a turn up for the books.
That has to be a bit of a downer for those who were heavily invested in the "big bad USA" mantra, whether one calls them the tin foil hat brigade, nuttier than a fruit cake or what other pejorative description seems appropriate at the time.
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I like this take on Wikileaks. Bad news for the tinfoil hat brigade.
For the European and Latin American left, just as for the Chinese or Russian nationalist right, it has long been all but assumed that whatever the Americans say publicly about their foreign policy is simply a cover story for some sort of secret agenda. What that agenda is can vary, according to taste – the interests of a powerful company (Halliburton!), the subversion of a leftwing government, the weakening of a rival nation. But whatever the Americans’ secret agenda was held to be, they definitely had one – only the absurdly naive could believe otherwise.
Turns out they were wrong. The crackpots will have to find some other grand conspiracy to endlessly dribble on about. It must suck to foam at the mouth about something for decades only to find out that it isnt true.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/61f8fab0-06f3-11e0-8c29-00144feabdc0,s01=1.html#axzz18C9Fmzoe
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It is surprising to read that so many in the US and overseas don't seem to understand why the Dems are looking like taking a bit of a flogging tomorrow. This article gets the economic side of things quite well.
Is it really extreme to be worried about trillion dollar deficits and the consequent rapidly accumulating debt as far as the eye can see? Hardly. Add to that Obama's policies have created so much uncertainty that it has really cramped job creation, keeping unemployment high. How can companies invest when you don't know what their tax rates, healthcare costs or energy costs are going to be?
To that you can add that Obama hasn't been the president that he said he was going to be. Nothing worse than being sold a bill of goods. He was going to be a post partisan president, and yet he told the Repubs "I won" when they wanted to talk about the stimulus package. Much like Cullen's "we won, you lost eat it' comment. Obama said he was going to bring a new kind of politics to Washington, but the Dems' healthcare bill was rammed through against the expressed wishes of the Americans in the worst of corrupt old political ways. He was going to "review every line of expenditure" and he rammed through a pork stuffed stimulus package that was more a payoff to his union buddies than a genuine stimulus package, and it hasn't worked as promised.
After all that it would be amazing if the Dems weren't going to get a stuffing tomorrow, and if the American people were okay with all of the above, then American would be truly fucked. That they are rejecting it is cause for optimism.
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Jackie, apparently there are more than a few people in Wellington who probably don't share your enthusiasm for unions.
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Unions. Aren't they just great?
"This is going to damage the entire union movement.'
After this performance of union genius, one can only hope so. NZ can't afford too much more of this kind brilliant strategic thinking, or allowing themselves to be used as pawns by of all nationalities, an Australian, whichever has been the case here.
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Steve, how do you explain away Harry Read Me.txt?
Is it forged or phony or BS or is Harry incompetent or a nutter? I haven't seen any explanation from the AGW side that discusses Harry's musings.
How could anyone contemplate taking the East Anglia CRU seriously again until the data has been reviewed by outside experts to assess the validity of Harry's comments? No Nitrogen is required in this process.