Monday, November 29, 2010

Wikileak's Latest Leak

People like Max Boot think the job of journalists is to blindly ensure the supremacy of their particular nation-state, but fortunately some people still think otherwise.

The best defense of Wikileaks that I've read is by Simon Jenkins in yesterday's Guardian:
Anything said or done in the name of democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be "world policeman" – an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables – that interest is global.

Governments at all levels seem to have completely forgotten this.

Wikileaks asked the US govt for a list of people who might be put at risk by release of the documents -- the US, typically high-handed, refused to answer. Jenkins writes:
It is for governments, not journalists, to protect public secrets. Were there some overriding national jeopardy in revealing them, greater restraint might be in order. There is no such overriding jeopardy, except from the policies themselves as revealed. Where it is doing the right thing, a great power should be robust against embarrassment.

2 comments:

David Appell said...

SBVOR: I've never blocked a blog commenter before, but you are coming very, very close to being an unthinking troll who detracts from the discussion here instead of adding to it.

I'm not going to let someone like you ruin my blog, and unless you start posting intelligently you will be blocked. I'm sure you know what I mean.

This is your only warning.

Dano said...

Block this attention whore nutter, please. He asked for it, after all. Spare the sane readers.

Best,

D