Wiki Popbitch.
The Blogosphere is gorging itself on the Wikileaks banquet this morning; a triumph of style over substance. The Cuisine Minceur of the electorateâs fight for transparency from our political masters.
Wikileaks is a masterpiece in media manipulation. It proclaims itself the fearless warrior against a lack of accountability and âtruthâ from â primarily â the American government. Yet it admits no audit, publishes everything and anything which is sent to it. Such is our mistrust of our political leaders that we assume the release of documents marked âsecretâ to be a âtruthâ that is being suppressed by sinister Machiavellis. It is no such thing, it is an alternative point of view, and should be treated with the same cynicism that we treat the official outpourings.
The 250,000 snippets of gossip and tittle-tattle that have been disgorged to squeals of delight on the Internet, to an audience reared on conspiracy theories and celebrity press releases, are nothing more than the subjective opinion of various individual Americans stationed around the world tasked with filing regular âhelpfulâ appraisals of the political world in which they are stationed.
Donkeyâs years ago, I was interviewed by some âgentlemenâ from the Foreign Office in connection with people I had business dealings with. The ensuing reports were assumed to be confidential, but were released some 30 years later in connection with another matter. The final line of the reported interview has caused endless mirth to anyone who knows me. âThe interview was shorter than expected because Miss âRaccoonâ had to leave early to catch a train back to Paris to return to her job as a Bluebelle dancerâ¦â¦.Sandhurstâs finest Warrant Officers couldnât drill me into marching in time to music, sticking an ostrich feather in my backside and spraying me with spangles certainly wonât turn me into a Bluebelle dancer, I am tone deaf. Why the interviewer wrote that, I cannot begin to speculate, but there it is, in an official government document. If I release that to Wikileaks, does that turn my non-existent career as a Bluebelle dancer into the âtruthâ? â of course it doesnât. It remains the same speculative and subjective âopinionâ of an individual who never thought it would see the light of day.
Yet we have been treated to the sight of BBC âexpertsâ anxiously watching their lap-tops (and checking their Blackberries at the same time, lest they miss some snippet) solemnly declaring that this âleakâ has sparked a âglobal diplomatic crisisâ.
What? Nobody suspected that the Saudiâs might want Iran stopped from having nuclear power until Wikileaks leaked that information? You really thought the Saudiâs were backing Iranâs nuclear ambitions? Sheesh!
So far I have pre-supposed that Wikileaks, which has held onto this information for some months â so much for the necessity of getting it out into the open â has not interfered in any sinister manner with what was in those cables. One of the few âtruthsâ in this matter is that we donât know â for an organisation so keen on the American government being open, they are less than transparent themselves. If we give them the benefit of the doubt, that the documents are untouched, do we know that whoever uploaded them onto Wikileaks resisted the temptation to add titbits to them? What are a few altered words amongst 250,000 cables?
Add the word âvoluptuousâ to the cable describing Gadaffiâs nurse and you have ensured worldwide attention from an audience reared on stories of breast enhancements and illicit sexual shenanigans. Hague shared an apartment with a gay man? Whooosh! More headlines.
Sipnet, the internal cyber network that was the origin of this leak, was encouraged to âshare informationâ in the wake of 9/11. They apparently issued 2,500,000 access codes to the network. Any number of low level employees could have downloaded the material. The main suspect, Bradley Manning, has been reported as saying âit was ridiculously easyâ to do so.
I have given up counting the number of times that I have seen it written in the past few days, that the UK âhas issued a âDâ notice in respect of the impending leakâ. A nice rumour which only serves to enhance Wikileaks product. It didnât. It hasnât. There are five standing âDAâ notices, concerning identification of Special Forces troops â DA Notice 05, and the possibility of endangering troops in the battlefield â DA notice 01. Perfectly reasonable requests from any government. All that happened was that Andrew Vallance asked editors to seek his advice if they thought any of the material they were about to publish might conflict with those criteria.
Therefore, may I ask you to seek my advice before publishing or broadcasting any information drawn from these latest Wikileaksâ disclosures which might be covered by the five standing DA Notices. In particular, would you carefully consider information that might be judged to fall within the terms of DA Notice 1 (UK Military Operations, Plans and Capabilities) and DA Notice 5 (UK Intelligence Services and Special Forces). May I also ask you to bear in mind the potential consequential effects of disclosing information which would put at risk the safety and security of Britons working or living in volatile regions where such publicity might trigger violent local reactions, for example Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan?
Still those with an anti-American agenda sought to further enhance the news value of the Wikileak by claiming that it was âcensoredâ and they were somehow brave warriors themselves for refusing to be censored.
One quoted sentence from Manning should worry us all â
âWorldwide anarchy in CSV format ⦠Itâs beautiful, and horrifyingâ
â and Assange, the former hacker now restyled as âfreedom of information activistâ was only too happy to help that anarchy along â in his own good time, once commercial matters had been secured.
Panem et circenses â bread and circuses â to keep the Blogosphere occupied and distract us from our task of holding our government to task over serious matters.
The truly cynical might wonder who really leaked this dubious non-event to the Internet â and why.
November
29, 2010 at 14:37
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I guess I must be one of those âguardian readersâ or âtin foil hat wearersâ
Clarissa mentions above in that case.
Yes, there is lots of titilatting goss that has caught the eye of a lot of
the media.
Whilst your critical points on the nature of Wikileaks are well taken, I
find it very very hard indeed to write off a lot of what Iâve seen so far as
âtriviaâ. For godsâ sake â the directive to the diplomatic service spy on the
UN and gather â amongst other things â DNA from the targets is beyond the
pale! Reading through the cables one at a time, I found one in particular that could single handedly stop
Turkeyâs accession to the EU because of the stark assessment it gives of
Turkeyâs corruption and rising Islamism within the government.
And this is just from the first 219 released.
November 29, 2010 at 13:44
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Sorry, but voluptuous nurse did it for me.
November 29, 2010 at 13:38
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Andrew Orlowski over at El Reg agrees with you Anna, even
going as far as saying that this release of trivia helps keep the public in
the dark â because it is trivia that is satisfying the public whilst the real
secrets are still kept hidden.
The US government and others might be saying âOMG the world has come to an
end and all informers will be killedâ but in actual fact all the information
released was probably already known via their own security services and
diplomats â it would be criminal for them not have this info.
In actual fact, most of the information released is not a surprise. Just a
confirmation of what most people already think has happened, like the case
with Saudi â no love lost between them and Iran for yonks.
November 29, 2010 at 13:25
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But itâs not about surprises. Itâs about the embarrassment of the masters.
Come on, rejoice a little? Donât be so bloody sophisticated!
I know thereâs not much real information in it. But one day historians may
refer to the impact it eventually had.
November
29, 2010 at 13:06
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There are no surprises in this information. This isnât like the closing
scenes of âThe Rockâ.
Did anyone think it would be?
November 29, 2010 at 11:36
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I must admit to mixed feelings here Anna. While I take your point that
Wikileaks is probably not the altrusitic organisation they may claim, and
there may well be hidden agendas at work, there is nevertheless a welcome
pleasure in getting a bit of our own back on the political classes. Two wrongs
may not make a right, but when it comes to revenge they may combine to make us
feel better!
After all, these politicians are the very people who insist we
are photographed naked before we can board a plane, collect all our private
and financial details, scan our Internet use and tell us that if we are
innocent we have nothing to fear from transparency. Such leaks couldnât happen
to a more deserving bunch.
As for the leakâs actual importance I agree with
you, nothing I have seen yet creates the slightest surprise or shock, and we
should be very wary of drawing any conclusions from what is in effect
incomplete gossip.
Meanwhile on a brighter note can we look forward to your
posting some videos of your past employment â but really, what a bizare thing
to have written in a report.
November 29, 2010 at 11:13
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Maybe Iâm cynical (moi?) but Iâd guess that your mythical job as a Bluebell
dancer provided an excuse for a further âinterviewâ for the gentlemen from the
Foreign Office. One that you didnât actually attend but which they did, and at
your place of business. Iâm sure that, though you werenât there, they
subjected your colleagues to a very close scrutiny.
Ooh la-la! Quel surprise!
November 29, 2010 at 11:04
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Anna, you spoilsport! Canât we gloat just a bit?
Yoâre right about gossip, though. When we listen to gossip, we donât find
truth, we just find out what people are saying.
Even so, I am enjoying a bit of schadenfreude. Whatâs that expression that
the righteous use? Ah yes, âIf youâve got nothing to hide, youâve got nothing
to fear.â
I appreciate that thereâll be some regrettable damage. But, like it or not,
everybody has to get used to the idea that the hypocrisy of those in control
has been curtailed permanently by the âinformation ageâ. It will all cause
some pain, and upheaval. The invention of the printing press, and radio,
presumably did the same.
I take your point. We are getting a bit carried away. But donât be too
harsh on us. We need to party sometimes.
November 29, 2010 at 09:42
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@annaraccoon2010 Great post â (did you mean 9/11?)
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