benlehman

So, it's funny, I had no urge to blog about wikileaks until hearing the state department announce that people involved in international studies shouldn't write about wikileaks, or access the website, on the pain of not being able to get a government job (particularly a State job) afterwards. I guess I'm kinda perverse, because that makes me want to write about it. So, uh, hi any US govt. people reviewing my public posts during a job review! How's it going? Still freaked out about wikileaks?

Yeah, I thought not.

So here's the thing. The structured leak of a few hundred minimally secret and carefully redacted diplomatic cables is not that much of a big deal. (Yes, you've heard the number 250,000 but that's not the actual total that has been released, it's the total that wikileaks has access to and may eventually release in redacted form after a review process involving five international newspapers with an open invitation to the US govt to participate in.) Yes, it contains stuff that's embarrassing to the US govt. But ultimately very little that has been released so far is anything that everyone didn't know already. (A friend of mine from my program said to me "If I ran an international politics think tank I would ask 'how many of you didn't know all this already? Okay everyone who didn't you're all fired.'") The most damning thing -- that the CIA has been running spies in the State dept and in the UN diplomatic corps -- is pretty much already known. Americans have known for years that the CIA runs most of the government as its own private espionage playground, and just do not give a fuck. (or, at least, the rest of the government is unwilling to provide actual oversight and have an actual backbone.)

As an aside, we're increasingly facing the consequences of letting an espionage agency run vast swathes of our foreign policy, but that's probably a separate post.

There's a word for this, which used to be commonplace. A "scoop." It is not treason (even if it were committed by citizens, which it isn't). It's pretty much day to day journalistic behavior. It's certainly not a good reason to call for anyone's assassination.

It also doesn't make Julian Assange a hero, it doesn't make him untouchable, etc.

For instance: Twitter is not "censoring" wikileaks. The "trending topics" list measures increases in tweet traffic, not traffic in bulk, and wikileaks takes up a pretty standard amount of tweet traffic, so it doesn't show up on "trending" because, like Justin Bieber, Julian Assange has a consistent fanbase who won't shut up about him.

Assange being charged with sex crimes in Sweden is totally lawful, if selective. I wish every rape charge was taken so seriously, and clearly it's political, but it's also not unreasonable. His being denied bail in Britain is probably the most rational thing I've ever heard of: Bail is denied to flight risks, and if anyone is a flight risk, it's Assange.

This is not to make "a pox of both your houses" post. I mean, elected officials ignorantly calling for the assassination of someone who has committed no crime is leagues away from my friends ignorantly bitching on twitter. But could we all just calm the fuck down for a second? Thanks.