I have a hard time getting worked up about it- a government that views none of my personal correspondence as confidential really can’t bitch when this sort of thing happens.The links:
- Juan Cole (via)
The latest WikiLeaks dump is to American foreign policy what the Starr Report was to presidential politics—fun, in a voyeuristic sort of way, revealing, but not about important things, and ultimately, more trouble than it is worth.
-- Peter Beinart (via)
There have been a bunch of bullet-point lists of the most interesting revelations in the latest Wikileask dump. As you'd expect, there's lots of overlap, but not total. I thought this was the most interesting one.
But the truth is that the most interesting thing I've read on the Wikileaks document dump, by an order of magnitude at least, is this analysis on what precisely Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is trying to accomplish, and his broader theories behind that (via). Whatever you think of Assange and his actions, it seems worthwhile to actually grapple with what he thinks he's trying to do. Much of the other analysis I've seen simply doesn't. (Thus, repeated claims by lots of people that this will drive a lot of diplomacy from written cables to purely spoken communication seems like it could be a step towards Assange's goal, if I'm reading that right.) Highly recommended.
Update: Ok, two more quotes:
Where it is doing the right thing, a great power should be robust against embarrassment....and now my post title is untrue. Nuts .
-- Simon Jenkins (via)
In future the only secrets will be spoken ones. Whether that is a good thing should be a topic for public debate.
-- Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment