> The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper
This is the bit that has me the most mystified...none of the released cables reveals anything particularly surprising (or at least not surprising to anybody who pays even minimal attention to world news)...yet the media is acting like these are huge revelations and it leaves me confused -- is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?
To the media, each Wikileaks dump is just another lump of fuel for the attention-gathering machine. Everyone knows this, including Assange, who acknowledges it openly.
One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; it might, perish the thought!, be boring. Where would we find the persecuted elfin protoganist? What about the sex? The gossip? To whom would we sell the movie rights about a policy process story?
> One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate;
This one is pretty real.
For one we now have official confirmation that the Netherlands hosts a foreign countries nuclear weapons inspite of numerous politicians being on the record to the contrary and for that alone I thank Julian Assange.
I'm pretty sure that there are lots of other bits and pieces that are relevant to various parties.
One thing this all shows is that you really can't trust governments with any collection of data and that's another useful thing to know with direct application to everyday life.
To the best of my knowledge the Dutch government, like the Belgian, never confirmed nor denied that US nuclear warheads were stored on Dutch resp. Belgian soil. Everybody knew for at least 25 years that they were there, and nobody was even coy about it - just that there was no 'official' confirmation. So it's not a new fact at all.
I disagree somewhat, there is revelation in these cables. There is a huge difference between "I know x is true" and "I know that you know that I know ...".
To use an example from Pinker's talk on language, in a dictatorship everyone knows the regime is bad, yet the value of public demonstrations is that you find out that others also know it and then you know that they know that ..., which is exactly why gatherings of people are usually controlled in a dictatorship.
>"is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?"
The media is doing what it usually does. It is reporting on the easiest things. Wikileaks is a bonanza because it contains thousands of documents which can be summarized with trivial analysis and hyperbolic rhetoric. All packaged in conformance with the no-gel foot orthotics fear mongering journalistic favored by the US main stream media.
I.e. Wikileaks can be used to signify pre-existing narratives.
What is fantastic and new is that these obvious things are documented and published, by people who are in a unique position to verify them.
We all know North Korea is nuts, but it's news when their BFF China calls it a spoiled child. Then China is forced to publicly acknowledge their desire for Korean unification.
China hasn't publicly acknowledged a desire for unification. We know the same thing now as we knew 3 years ago: that there are elements in Chinese officialdom that would like an end to the horrorshow that is the DPRK, and that the military still views the DPRK as a vital buffer against the west.
Right. In the great rock-paper-scissors game of ideology-nationalism-money, money wins every time. South Korea is a much better trading partner than the black hole in the ground that is North Korea. A hole in which China has dumped billions of dollars with pretty much no return outside of fulfilling a desire for a cold-war style buffer zone. Plus the bonus of South Korea not really being a threat to China anymore (you could debate they weren't ever a threat and the end to the Korean war was a big misunderstanding but that's a different debate).
What? Imperialism is seldom about money. Trade is much better to make money than war. War only costs money, and 'acquired' territories don't make money, they just cost it - so much that many a kingdom with too aggressive expansion policies has gone (nearly) bankrupt because of it.
One can argue that some resources are not equal to money -- say China's imperialist expansion into non-resource rich areas as a method of buffer zone acquisition against strong foreign powers -- e.g. resources = security model.
But from before Rome on, most empires adopt an expansionist policy as a method of acquiring resources to turn into money. Kill the inhabitants, take their stuff, everybody gets rich.
resource = money model.
Here's some relevant background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_EmpireDuring the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.
erp -- thought I read that somewhere, but that indeed would be a bit much to expect.
I love all the stuff about Afghanistan, the VP with $50MM in walking around money. There's abstract corruption, but the detail is what really stirs the pot.
There are five thousand results on Google News for 2009 on [karzai corruption] alone. Come on. This isn't "abstract vs. concrete"; it's "information vs. narrative". Narrative is addictive. We lap it up. That's why the press runs it. That's the vulnerability WL takes advantage of (for better or worse).
Comments
> The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper
This is the bit that has me the most mystified...none of the released cables reveals anything particularly surprising (or at least not surprising to anybody who pays even minimal attention to world news)...yet the media is acting like these are huge revelations and it leaves me confused -- is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?
To the media, each Wikileaks dump is just another lump of fuel for the attention-gathering machine. Everyone knows this, including Assange, who acknowledges it openly.
One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; it might, perish the thought!, be boring. Where would we find the persecuted elfin protoganist? What about the sex? The gossip? To whom would we sell the movie rights about a policy process story?
> One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate;
This one is pretty real.
For one we now have official confirmation that the Netherlands hosts a foreign countries nuclear weapons inspite of numerous politicians being on the record to the contrary and for that alone I thank Julian Assange.
I'm pretty sure that there are lots of other bits and pieces that are relevant to various parties.
One thing this all shows is that you really can't trust governments with any collection of data and that's another useful thing to know with direct application to everyday life.
To the best of my knowledge the Dutch government, like the Belgian, never confirmed nor denied that US nuclear warheads were stored on Dutch resp. Belgian soil. Everybody knew for at least 25 years that they were there, and nobody was even coy about it - just that there was no 'official' confirmation. So it's not a new fact at all.
I disagree somewhat, there is revelation in these cables. There is a huge difference between "I know x is true" and "I know that you know that I know ...".
To use an example from Pinker's talk on language, in a dictatorship everyone knows the regime is bad, yet the value of public demonstrations is that you find out that others also know it and then you know that they know that ..., which is exactly why gatherings of people are usually controlled in a dictatorship.
>"is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?"
The media is doing what it usually does. It is reporting on the easiest things. Wikileaks is a bonanza because it contains thousands of documents which can be summarized with trivial analysis and hyperbolic rhetoric. All packaged in conformance with the no-gel foot orthotics fear mongering journalistic favored by the US main stream media.
I.e. Wikileaks can be used to signify pre-existing narratives.
What is fantastic and new is that these obvious things are documented and published, by people who are in a unique position to verify them.
We all know North Korea is nuts, but it's news when their BFF China calls it a spoiled child. Then China is forced to publicly acknowledge their desire for Korean unification.
China hasn't publicly acknowledged a desire for unification. We know the same thing now as we knew 3 years ago: that there are elements in Chinese officialdom that would like an end to the horrorshow that is the DPRK, and that the military still views the DPRK as a vital buffer against the west.
Right. In the great rock-paper-scissors game of ideology-nationalism-money, money wins every time. South Korea is a much better trading partner than the black hole in the ground that is North Korea. A hole in which China has dumped billions of dollars with pretty much no return outside of fulfilling a desire for a cold-war style buffer zone. Plus the bonus of South Korea not really being a threat to China anymore (you could debate they weren't ever a threat and the end to the Korean war was a big misunderstanding but that's a different debate).
> In the great rock-paper-scissors game of ideology-nationalism-money, money wins every time.
Why did WWI happen, then?
Money.
Or if you want to get precise, imperialist policies (which are about Money in the end).
What? Imperialism is seldom about money. Trade is much better to make money than war. War only costs money, and 'acquired' territories don't make money, they just cost it - so much that many a kingdom with too aggressive expansion policies has gone (nearly) bankrupt because of it.
What is Imperialism about then?
It's always about resource acquisition.
One can argue that some resources are not equal to money -- say China's imperialist expansion into non-resource rich areas as a method of buffer zone acquisition against strong foreign powers -- e.g. resources = security model.
But from before Rome on, most empires adopt an expansionist policy as a method of acquiring resources to turn into money. Kill the inhabitants, take their stuff, everybody gets rich. resource = money model.
Here's some relevant background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.
Yes, though that's not the whole story.
Have you heard of principal-agent conflicts? What benefits certain subgroups / lobbies may not benefit the organisation as a whole.
I agree. Some people, like defence contractors do make lots of money with war, though.
erp -- thought I read that somewhere, but that indeed would be a bit much to expect.
I love all the stuff about Afghanistan, the VP with $50MM in walking around money. There's abstract corruption, but the detail is what really stirs the pot.
There are five thousand results on Google News for 2009 on [karzai corruption] alone. Come on. This isn't "abstract vs. concrete"; it's "information vs. narrative". Narrative is addictive. We lap it up. That's why the press runs it. That's the vulnerability WL takes advantage of (for better or worse).