[Itpolicy-np] Geopolitical Weekly: Taking Stock of WikiLeaks & looking at the big picture

[Bipin Gautam]

Comment: Indifference, akright! :)

Geopolitical Weekly: Taking Stock of WikiLeaks & looking at the big picture

( Source: http://app.response.stratfor.com/e/es.aspx?s=1483&e=161372&elq=73221a7f91ed426ca1eabfa91ead7ab6
)

Taking Stock of WikiLeaks

By George Friedman | December 14, 2010

Julian Assange has declared that geopolitics will be separated into
pre-“Cablegate” and post-“Cablegate” eras. That was a bold claim.
However, given the intense interest that the leaks produced, it is a
claim that ought to be carefully considered. Several weeks have passed
since the first of the diplomatic cables were released, and it is time
now to address the following questions: First, how significant were
the leaks? Second, how could they have happened? Third, was their
release a crime? Fourth, what were their consequences? Finally, and
most important, is the WikiLeaks premise that releasing government
secrets is a healthy and appropriate act a tenable position?

Let’s begin by recalling that the U.S. State Department documents
constituted the third wave of leaks. The first two consisted of
battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Looking back on those
as a benchmark, it is difficult to argue that they revealed
information that ran counter to informed opinion. I use the term
“informed opinion” deliberately. For someone who was watching Iraq and
Afghanistan with some care over the previous years, the leaks might
have provided interesting details but they would not have provided any
startling distinction between the reality that was known and what was
revealed. If, on the other hand, you weren’t paying close attention,
and WikiLeaks provided your first and only view of the battlefields in
any detail, you might have been surprised. Read more » :
http://app.response.stratfor.com/e/es.aspx?s=1483&e=161372&elq=73221a7f91ed426ca1eabfa91ead7ab6
)


ALSO:---[ Wikileaks: looking at the big picture ] ---

Sandra Keegan

PhD student
University of Edinburgh
School of Law
Old College
South Bridge
Edinburgh EH8 9YL
UK


The Unknown Blogger Who Changed WikiLeaks Coverage
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/the-unknown-blogger-who-changed-wikileaks-coverage/67936/


"Bady is a seventh-year PhD student in African literature at the
University of California, Berkeley who studies "the literature of
empire and colonialism in the last two centuries." He's finishing up
his dissertation on white Americans in Africa between the civil war
and the civil rights movement."

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/there-is-something-to-see-here/

....Julian Assange is not that important. Don’t give him a Nobel
Prize. Don’t demonize him. Don’t line up in solidarity behind someone
who may or may not be a serial rapist. Don’t demand the conviction of
someone who is only accused of a crime, and needs to be presumed
innocent until he is convicted. Demand justice for him — and don’t
pretend you know what that is, unless you’re one of the three people
who do — but don’t fall into the trap of thinking his conviction, in
the long run, has very much to do with the whole host of really
important issues that the Wikileaks revelations have brought up. Don’t
make him more important than he is.

Wikileaks is only a single part of something that is, on its own
terms, very important. They’ve given us a great deal of knowledge
about exactly how the American state actually acts, proof that many of
the state department’s secrets are simply a way of avoiding democratic
oversight, that our diplomatic corps secretly does horrible things in
our name. We already had a lot of knowledge of that, but now we have a
lot more, and much of it utterly and uniquely damning. Julian Assange
is a smart man who’s done some brave things in service of a good cause
— and we owe him a debt of gratitude for the gift he’s given us. Thank
you, Wikileaks. But that’s all we owe him, and them.

Which is why I want to say this, as clearly as I can: it’s exactly
because Assange and Wikileaks are relatively unimportant (compared to
the gigantic scandal of the anti-democratic security state in which we
now live) that the media has made him into a superstar, has tried to
make the entire story about Wikileaks and a single eccentric and
interesting character, rather than about the United States
government’s actions as a system. The more we focus on him – and I’ve
contributed to that, which is why I particularly want to write this
post — the more we take attention away from the real story, the
substance of the things Wikileaks has revealed.....

_____________________________________________________________________

---[