A friend messaged me yesterday to ask if I was planning on saying something about this unfolding Wikileaks saga. I was planning on steering clear of it, but since this is a blog that is in part about free speech, it might seem particularly conspicuous if I don’t say anything at all.
For the most part so far, it seems that most of the things that were leaked were diplomatic cables wherein people bitch about other world leaders. It’s the equivalent of someone printing out copies of a high school girl’s diary so that everyone finds out what she really thinks of them. I think Wikileaks is a good idea, since people in this hemisphere seem to be happy to ignore the hellscape that is our middle eastern foreign policy, but this particular document dump doesn’t seem to tell us much we don’t already know, and has instead raised people’s backs.
So much of diplomacy seems to be about appearance rather than substance, and it’s rather depressing to think that some of these leaked cables (which have little to no substance) will give recalcitrant states some puerile justification for throwing a tantrum on an international scale. Then again, it’s not like there’s a way for things to get much worse short of dropping actual bombs, and I saw very little evidence that things were getting any better.
But, as I am not a person with a background in international relations, or in possession of a great deal of knowledge about peace & conflict, I am happy to side-step this particular story. There are enough better commentators out there to give you an informed opinion on the subject, rather than my superficial from-the-hip analysis.
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Reading through an assortment, most are mundane and many are as you describe. Hell say even 99% are useless and image-only articles. Out of 250,000 messages though, that still leaves hundreds to thousands of gems – especially about middle Eastern opposition to Iran (for example).
It’s definitely full of win.
Most of the discussion has been about wikileaks itself and Assange, and not the cable content. I’m not sure that speaks more to how the media has shifted from journalism to celebrity stories, or to the banality of the cables.
The focus right now is on the rape charges, with the reaction from the internet largely being “it’s trumped up”. Here is where we get to see some of the skeptics toss skepticism aside because they like Wikileaks. I haven’t even seen anyone look up what a red notice is: http://www.interpol.int/Public/Wanted/Default.asp
I looked up “sex crimes” on the red notice search engine. There are more than 160. A red notice for this is NOT unheard of or even particularly unheard of.
It’s not ok to shrug off rape charges. Let’s keep the different issues separate and hope for a fair trial for the sake of, you know, everyone. I don’t see a reason to think that it won’t be a fair trial in Sweden.
Back to the existence of wikileaks, it seems like Assange is in the clear thanks to European laws. And he should remain free to travel almost anywhere in the world as long as wikileaks is considered legitimate journalism. I think it will be, in the end now that virtually every news organization has used material from wikileaks.
Well said, on all points.