Are you enjoying Wikileaks? I am

[erudito]

Someone observed in a discussion group I was at recently that Wikileaks was confirming "our" (i.e. the mildly libertarian/conservative) view of the world. That Russia was a country of gangster politics, that China assertive authoritarianism bothered its neighbours, that even China was exasperated by the North Korean regime, that Rudd was a

Comments

Re: Good point

[catsidhe]

I agree with Assange to the extent that coercive power and secrecy is a combination prone to be exploited. I just do not see specifically American coercive power and secrecy as some unique (or uniquely noxious) problem.

Confirmation bias again. You expect to see this as a special and unique attack on the US, and so you do.

Wikileaks does host information from other countries, and has repeatedly requested people post leaks from all the countries of the world. They are just as interested in leaks from China and Russia and Burma as they are from the US.

It's just that they happen to have these communiqués, in great numbers, and by god they're publishing them. And what we are seeing reported are those portions which reflect on us, and on things we know about.

As far as other leaks go, it's difficult to point to them, given that Wilileaks has had to batten down the hatches because of the attacks from the US government and its proxies. But they refer to

• Dili investigator called to Canberra as evidence of execution mounts - the Feb 2008 killing of East Timor rebel leader Reinado
  
• Toll Collect Vertraege, 2002 - Publication of around 10.000 pages of a secret contract between the German federal government and the Toll Collect consortium, a private operator group for heavy vehicle tolling system
  
• Leaked documents suggest European CAP reform just a whitewash - European farm reform exposed
  
• Stasi still in charge of Stasi files - Suppressed 2007 investigation into infiltration of former Stasi into the Stasi files commission
  
• The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009 - Publication of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored from the Independent’s website. WikiLeaks has saved dozens of articles, radio and tv recordings from disappearing after having been censored from BBC, Guardian, and other major news organisations archives.
  
• How German intelligence infiltrated Focus magazine - Illegal spying on German journalists
  
• Inside Somalia and the Union of Islamic Courts - Vital strategy documents in the Somali war and a play for Chinese support
  
• Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009 - Over 60MB of emails, documents, code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, written between 1996 and 2009 that lead to a worldwide debate
  
• The Monju nuclear reactor leak - Three suppressed videos from Japan’s fast breeder reactor Monju revealing the true extent of the 1995 sodium coolant disaster
  
• The looting of Kenya under President Moi - $3,000,000,000 presidential corruption exposed; swung the Dec 2007 Kenyan election, long document, be patient
  
• Gusmao’s $15m rice deal alarms UN - Rice deal corruption in East Timor
  
• How election violence was financed - the embargoed Kenyan Human Rights Commission report into the Jan 2008 killings of over 1,300 Kenyans
  
• Eutelsat suppresses independent Chinese-language TV station NTDTV to satisfy Beijing - French sat provider Eutelsat covertly removed an anti-communist TV channel to satisfy Beijing
  
• Internet Censorship in Thailand - The secret internet censorship lists of Thailand’s military junta

Among others. Plenty there to piss off a lot more than the US government.

If they seem to be concentrating on embarrassing the US, then it's most likely a combination of 1. They get more stuff from the US, and 2. we hear the US screaming about it loudest. With possibly a soupçon of the US having more to be ashamed about. (NOTE: that doesn't mean that it's necessarily as bad as what happens in other places, but the US does put itself to a far higher standard, and most loudly denounces as hysteria claims of its hypocrisy, so they have put themselves on a higher pillar to fall from. A choirboy who shoplifts may feel more shame than an unapologetic psychopath. Especially if that choirboy is insecure in the rightness of their own actions, and overcompensates with grandiose protestations of honour and righteousness, which would be ridiculous if they didn't demand you take them seriously.)