Ian wrote:Gawd wrote:Ian won't like this.
Yet again, you assume too much.
What should be the point of Wikileaks? That genuine whistle-blowers have a place to send their information and see it published, or that nobody anywhere has the right to classify anything? The way they've been acting, one would think they really do believe the latter. Sickeningly reckless and naive. If they re-orient themselves towards actually releasing those things which are or could be possibly considered whistle-blowing, I'll applaud them for their efforts.
Assange apologists seem to like Orwell quotes, so here's one for them: "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even realize that fire is hot." That applies to Wikileaks pretty well. They've managed to burn a few actual wrong-doers, a whole lot of people who didn't deserve to be burned at all, and the past two weeks they've burned themselves as well.
There are some valid reasons to keep shit secret: preliminary positions in negotiations, because renegotiation becomes impossible once concessions become public, and informants in enemy territory, because they'd be at risk, but transparancy should be the default, and it's the responsibility of the party keeping secrets to keep them under wraps.
If you're using informants, only their contacts need to know their identity. Any other party can just use the anonymous reports by the contacts. Giving access to their info to hundreds of thousands of people is just fucking stupid. It's bound to leak, and when it does it's better if it becomes common knowledge then if it gets into the hands of just the wrong people.
The leaking of diplomatic cables isn't the problem of Wikileaks. Neither was the leaked video of the crew of a combat helicopter shooting up a news crew. If the US can't control their flow of information, that's their fucking problem. And if they don't want their lies found out, they shouldn't fucking lie.
American diplomacy - at least since WWII, and probably before that - relied on the assumption that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". It has consistently yielded terrible results: installing fascist or criminal regimes in South America, "because the socialists were such a threat". Supporting theocratic or feudal regimes in the Middle East "because the socialists were such a threat".
American diplomacy is counterproductive, and with these leaks we can see why: America is stuck in a nineteenth century mindset of rivaling nation states, where peace and prosperity are functions of power and loyalty. In the interconnected world we live in today, peace and prosperity are the result of mutual dependence, and if the US keeps up its foreign policy, then over the next couple of decades it will alienate most of the international community, and it will lose its position as most powerful nation in the world. I hope the whole Wikileaks bussiness will prove to be a wake-up call.
