Nov 28 2010

Latest Wikileak

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None of these “leaks” are the slightest bit of surprise or news to the governments of our allies or enemies. The only import of these leaks is that they reveal to the non-elites of the western democracies that everything their governments tell them about international diplomacy is a complete total lie.

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1

skeptifem

November 29, 2010 at 2:17 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment

People have been writing and speaking about this stuff for years. It proves that you can tell the truth as long as you don’t get too much press for doing so, I suppose.
2

Juniper Shoemaker

November 29, 2010 at 4:22 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

I am depressed by the number of people who insist that anyone who doesn’t think that the Wikileak people should be prosecuted as terrorists is a hypocritical, unpatriotic liberal. I thought that most Americans across the political spectrum were in favor of transparency in government.
3

DrugMonkey

November 29, 2010 at 6:51 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

I’m having a hard time giving a shit about Wikileaks. Does this make me a bad American?
4

skeptifem

November 30, 2010 at 2:13 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

It makes you a wanker. I don’t that “bad american” actually means anything.
5

anonymous

November 30, 2010 at 3:17 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

It’s useful for diplomats to know that sometimes they are talking to one another in confidence. Like, you know, how you can’t stand your mother in law but not tell her to preserve the peace. But you might talk about it with your best friend to learn coping strategies.

I don’t really see the point in the whole world knowing that we heard from the diplomat of West Armpitistan that they think the leader of North Asscrackia is a poopy face.

I can’t see any justification for the guy releasing this info other than a personal powertrip. Which is what’s clearly going on if you read some of the shit this guy says.
6

skeptifem

November 30, 2010 at 3:48 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

Yeah, its like when your mother in law killed countless people with her economic and military policy and then…. oh yeah, its fucking nothing like a family. Do you not understand that tax payers pay the government to do this kind of shit? Everyone deserves to have this information easily available. Dishonesty only serves to make the masses compliant in all this ugly shit. If they know better they might *gasp* do something to prevent the war machine of a government that they pay for. Its really important.
7

Genomic Repairman

November 30, 2010 at 5:01 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

Agreed. Is there anything Earth-fucking rattling in them besides grade school gossip between embassies?
8

Juniper Shoemaker

December 1, 2010 at 12:05 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment

Personal correspondence between citizens is not equivalent to correspondence between government employees acting in an official capacity. They’re so different I don’t even know where to begin.

Meanwhile, the character of the WikiLeaks guy does not determine whether or not citizens have a right to read correspondence between government employees acting in an official capacity (on the taxpayer’s dime, no less). His character is an issue entirely separate from this one. If your rebuttal amounts to “WikiLeaks is wrong because its founder is a narcissistic douchebag”, then you’ve only made an ad hominem attack that’s just as worthless as ad hominem arguments usually are. Similarly, whether or not WikiLeaks reveals diplomatic correspondence that is any worthier than high school gossip does not determine whether or not citizens have a right to read that correspondence.

For the record, I don’t know where to draw the line between what citizens do and do not have a right to know with respect to their government. International diplomacy is complicated. I would rather err on the side of transparency, though. Ideally, the electorate would demand a government at least transparent enough to stop feeding us maudlin press releases in place of candid explanations of the current state of affairs. It’s stupid for politicians to keep talking to us as if we’re children in a 1950′s sitcom when we have the bleeding internet, and it’s stupid for us to lap that authoritarian shit up.

Isn’t this obvious? Shit. I’m going back to that fucking biostatistics project now.
9

Katharine

December 2, 2010 at 5:58 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment

The only thing the Wikileaks telegrams are is funny.

It gives me a new-found contempt for anyone in politics. These are people who don’t care how staggeringly cruel Saudi Arabia is, they just want to play nicenice and keep the oil flowing in – and they’re so afraid to offend sociopathic leaders of various countries. They all have very thin skin. Politics is an amoral, egocentric enterprise, and I mean this in a contemptuous way.