Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Hmm, now, where have I heard all this before?
Indeed. Henry Porter in The Guardian today:
Nothing is new. In 1771, that great lover of liberty, John Wilkes, and a number of printers challenged the law that prohibited the reporting of Parliamentary debates and speeches, kept secret because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would disrupt the life of the country if made public. Using the arcane laws of the City of London, Alderman Wilkes arranged for the interception of the Parliamentary messengers sent to arrest the printers who had published debates, and in doing so successfully blocked Parliament. By 1774, a contemporary was able to write: "The debates in both houses have been constantly printed in the London papers." From that moment, the freedom of the press was born.
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So Assange is Oscar Wilde's old cell. I'm not sure if there's an odd irony in that or if somebody simply wasn't thinking it through.
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We share the US assessment there is no requirement for the advice of the outcome of the US review to enter the public domain.
so said Simon Murdoch.
Yep - it's not as if the relationship between the US and NZ has been a very controversial cornerstone of NZ's foreign stance since, ohhh, 1984. This guy needs to be tossed out to the wolves.
Is it just me that sees a fatal conflict between our claims to openness and the way this government does business in our wee democracy?
Gone by lunchtime indeed.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Neil Morrison,
seen the film Matariki
Sadly no, although not for lack of desire. And I'm unlikely to in the near future - NZ cinema and TV doesn't make it this far usually.
The Europeans and the Australians are very proactive culturally in this part of the world. NZ is MIA.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Neil Morrison,
And on the same basis I think he's a very unpleasant person with all the characteristics of a cult leader.
they're all well know for that sort of extremism
Hell, Neil, even way up here in Bangkok I had to duck to avoid the wild swings...
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to chris,
A basic rundown of various fallouts
And a gathering of much of the better commentary
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Tim Hannah,
No one from Dyncorp is here, there's no one from Pfizer here
My comment on the lack of outrage was cast a little wider than the readers of PAS. Show me the outrage in the US media. Or Joe Lieberman's words on this.
I can but hope my horror is just a little part of a bigger noise. Hope....
And just noting that I think each of these cables is awful doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time.
And not noting this story is somehow better? In years past an investigative media may well have run effectively with something like this but that time seems to have passed, at least in the USA, where the mainstream coverage of the substance of much of what is clearly important in the cables seems at best and noticeably minimal.
The government had closed circle on the press, laundering its own manipulated intelligence through the by-lines of two experienced reporters, smuggling the deed past layers of editors, and then marching it like a trained dog onto the Sunday talk shows to perform in a lurid doomsday act
What they mean is really quite important too.
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Since the inane chatter that nothing of importance has come out of these cables seems to persist I thought I might post this harrowing paragraph from a fairly harrowing story which came to us courtesy of the Wikileaks releases:
Though the company is about as transparent as a lead-coated rock, most reports claim over 95% of their budget comes from U.S. taxpayers. That's the same budget that DynCorp used to pay for a party in Kunduz Province for some Afghan police trainees. The entertainment for the evening was bacha bazi boys, whose pimps were paid so the boys would sing and dance for the recruits and then be raped by them afterward.
There seems little evidence that those so offended by the cable releases are showing similar outrage or even concern over this story.
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Some of the global reaction to the cables makes the Guardian.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Sacha,
To splash those secrets all over the internet is simply to interfere with America's attempt to carry its noble burden, to perform its urgent and necessary task, to make the world a little less safe for democracy.
There is a national acceptance of their exceptionalism that is driven in from birth and rarely questioned.
I had an argument some twelve months ago with a fairly well, so he thought, educated gentleman from Arizona who simply couldn't come to terms with the idea that 1776 hadn't bought democracy™ to the planet - and, worse, that the United Kingdom had practised a limited (but growing over the centuries) form of democracy since the seventeenth century based on concepts and documents that went back much further.
These documents were the cornerstone of American democracy as we now know it.
The whole concept was as alien as good coffee was in Manhattan until a few short years ago.