HopeChange Chronicles: the UK's Nuclear Info

More "smart diplomacy"?


UPDATE:  Nope?

Euro Notes: the Galileo Project

You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh:

Here’s a delicious WikiLeak revelation. The Galileo project – an attempt to launch an EU satellite system that would, as Jacques Chirac put it, challenge the “technological imperialism” of America’s GPS – was described as “a stupid idea” and “a waste of taxpayers’ money” by the Chief Executive of the German company that was about to be awarded a €566 million contract to develop 14 satellites for, er, the Galileo project.

Satire Alert: Santa's Naughty List Leaked

This is delightfully funny, not to mention disgustingly cute:

Another Thought on WikiLeaks: "Assange's Doctrine is Woefully Simplistic"

Well, sure.  Self-appointed, preening moral crusaders are usually short on the ability to appreciate the complications and nuances of the world as it actually is.  There is a distinct whiff of puerile, heedless glee in Assange's actions.   UPDATE: Julian Assange is no Daniel Ellsberg?

A Few More Thoughts on WikiLeaks

Try this, this, this, and lastly this by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Satire Alert: The Onion on WikiLeaks

The Onionistas take aim!  My favorite of their fake WikiLeaks "facts":

Kim Jong-il is registered with the Writers Guild of America under the pseudonym "Roland Emmerich"

Quote of the Day: WikiLeaks and the Destruction of Privacy

Here is a bit from an interesting piece by the always-readable British commentator Theodore Dalrymple:

The actual effect of WikiLeaks is likely to be profound and precisely the opposite of what it supposedly sets out to achieve. Far from making for a more open world, it could make for a much more closed one. Secrecy, or rather the possibility of secrecy, is not the enemy but the precondition of frankness. WikiLeaks will sow distrust and fear, indeed paranoia; people will be increasingly unwilling to express themselves openly in case what they say is taken down by their interlocutor and used in evidence against them, not necessarily by the interlocutor himself. This could happen not in the official sphere alone, but also in the private sphere, which it works to destroy. An Iron Curtain could descend, not just on Eastern Europe, but over the whole world. A reign of assumed virtue would be imposed, in which people would say only what they do not think and think only what they do not say.  

The dissolution of the distinction between the private and public spheres was one of the great aims of totalitarianism. Opening and reading other people’s e-mails is not different in principle from opening and reading other people’s letters. In effect, WikiLeaks has assumed the role of censor to the world, a role that requires an astonishing moral grandiosity and arrogance to have assumed.

Quote of the Day: WikiLeaks

What do you think?

In addition to their being no big lies, there are also no surprises–at least, no surprises for anyone paying attention to foreign affairs. Anyone really surprised by the fact that in private, Arab leaders are just as worried about a nuclear Iran as is Israel? Anyone really surprised that Nicolas Sarkozy has been said to have an authoritarian streak, that Silvio Berlusconi is too much of a party animal for his (and his country’s) own good, that democracy is dead in Russia, and that the Chinese are sick of the antics of the North Koreans? Oh, sure, the cables are very interesting, and informative. But are they all that shocking in their content? Hardly; we all are familiar with the storylines found in them. The titillating aspect of the cables is that they confirm what many have suspected regarding the opinions that are held by American diplomats, and that many of the cables make their points in interesting and colorful language.