Here’s a video we made of Salman Rushdie accepting the Golden PEN award from our outgoing president, Lisa Appignanesi.
Month: December 2010 (Page 2 of 2)
As was debated a few days ago at Liberal Conspiracy, it is very difficult to know what to think about the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange. In such situations one can only hope that the evidence against him is presented in a timely fashion. Then he can be either charged and tried, or released, as the available facts dictate. We will know what to think in due course, there is no need to pre-empt a due process which so far seems to be progressing as it should.
But let us assert one thing right now: the personal exploits of Julian Assange tell us nothing about the morality of the Wikileaks project and it’s recent #Cablegate actions.
If Assange is convicted, watch out for those who use it to cast doubt on the idea and mission of the Wikileaks project. Such arguments will merely be an ad hominem that will add nothing new to the debate around Freedom of Information that the site has brought into sharp focus.
In the arts, many critics take the biographical approach when they analyse artists’ work. The classic questions: Is ‘The Wasteland’ reduced if T.S. Eliot was an anti-semite? Was Paul Gauguin a worse artist because he abandoned his wife and children? We might ask the same questions of political philosophies too: are we to abandon the American experiment because the Founding Fathers were slave owners? I don’t see how (especially when the principles which ultimately guaranteed the freedom from slavery were written by those same men in the Bill of Rights). Likewise, should we abandon the philosophy of Wikileaks if Julian Assange turns out to be a rapist? I think not.
Indeed, the very name of the website argues against this. It would be a very poor sort of Wiki that was vulnerable to a ‘decapitation’ strategy. Surely the whole point of a site worthy of the prefix is that it depends on a community, not an individual. Those who try to propagate the ‘Assange ⇔ Wikileaks’ meme in the next few weeks should be reminded of this.
It seems that the Wikileaks.org domain has been broken, due to thousands of distributed DDOS (Denial of Service) attacks by patriotic Americans. This is when you subject a site to repeated communication requests, and eventually it cannot keep up. EveryDNS, the organisation which passes on these requests, was forced to remove the link between wikileaks.org and its servers – They made a neutral statement explaining their reasons for doing this.
As a result, Wikileaks can only be reached via its IP address: http://213.251.145.96/.
For a paper that so fearlessly fought the previous Government over its Iraq war decisions, I am surprised by the Independent‘s coverage and comment over Wikileaks. It seems to present no more than rather superficial discussion of the deep issues at stake, equivocal over freedom of information and blasé about the philosphy behind Julian Assange’s actions.
On Saturday, Christina Patterson finished her column on Assange with this paragraph:
I thought that power without accountability was dangerous, and that politicians are accountable to the people who elect them, and people who run websites aren’t. I thought that people who are themselves very secretive probably shouldn’t tell people who need to keep some things secret that they can’t. And I wondered if the man with the website realised that what some people called “freedom of information” was quite likely to make people more paranoid. It was quite likely, in other words, to make people less free.
This is a terrible Apples vs Oranges comparison, which I suspect was included to round off a wry column with something profound. While it is true that The Media has some power, it is a different sort of power to that wielded by Governments with armies and a secretive security apparatus at their disposal. The ‘accountability’ we require of each is therefore very different… but in any case, the founder of Wikileaks has answered questions put to him, both online and in person.
Second, the leaked documents are state documents, taken from state archives. That’s not the same as revealing private documents, about yourself or anyone else. Everyone understands that these days.
Finally, the assertion that “Freedom of Information” makes people more paranoid seems without basis, as is the idea that paranoia necessarily makes people less free. In both cases, I think the word ‘paranoid’ is inaccurate and misplaced. Instead, I would say that Wikileaks has made people less trustful, more suspicious and more enquiring about their government’s actions and motivations. This is healthy and liberating, and I am surprised that an Independent columnist does not recognise this instinctively.
In the same paper, Howard Jacobson falls for a similar conceptual trap to Patterson. In a column entitled ‘It’s much better you don’t know my secrets‘ he also sets about equating the release of restricted government communications with private details about individual citizens, which is an illiterate understanding of what Wikileaks seeks to achieve. Jacobson goes on to write:
If there is a difference between Wikileaks and a hostile intelligence agency I am unable to see it.
This is preposterous. The difference is that Wikileaks hews closely to the idea that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, sharing everything with everyone. That is 180 degrees different from an intelligence agency, hostile or otherwise, which keeps what it learns to itself.
The way that Jacobson rounds off the column, staking the claim on some uncharted moral high ground, is similar in style to Christina Patterson:
But there is such a thing as an enemy. And there is such a thing as aiding and abetting him, and making him strong at our expense. Openness is a fine ideal, but it is criminal folly to embrace it unconditionally. Unconditionally revelling in the right to know is not a lot of use if others unconditionally employ that knowledge to destroy us.
Yet this is an argument which Julian Assange has already pre-empted and rendered void. Before the State Department cables were released, he asked them to suggest which ones should be redacted. They refused to answer this request. Meanwhile, no-one has presented evidence that previous leaks, on Iraq and Afghanistan, have “aided and abetted” the enemy or put people in danger.
Both these columns, which parrot Government talking-points, feel like great examples of what Jay Rosen calls the ‘Church of the Savvy’, that kind of superior and knowing journalism which eschews idealism and higher thinking about the big philosophical questions of our age. It is in stark contrast to the more principled stance we have seen elsewhere.
Having said that: Here is my own ‘savvy’ and sneering concluding paragraph. Why this attitude prevailing in the pages of the Independent, so recently the most principled and combative of the broadsheets? Why are the editors and columnists straying so tragically off-brand? Could it be because the paper was scooped to the leaked memos by the Guardian?
I have probably said before on this blog how delightful it is when someone else makes the point you want to make, only better, so you don’t have to. There is scant need for me to write much on the latest Wikileaks #Cablegate revelations, when there is already a lot of good writing being spread about. This is all grist to Glenn Greenwald’s mill, and he has a masterful round-up of the reaction to the leaks at Salon.com.
It’s staggering to watch anyone walk around acting as though the real threat is from excessive disclosures when the impenetrable, always-growing Wall of Secrecy is what has enabled virtually every abuse and transgression of the U.S. government over the last two decades at least.
Simon Jenkins makes a simple, powerful point: “The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment.” At the end of his column, he makes the following pertinent point:
But coupled with the penetration already allowed under freedom of information, the walls round policy formation and documentation are all but gone. All barriers are permeable. In future the only secrets will be spoken ones. Whether that is a good thing should be a topic for public debate.
This topic is analysed more fully by Zunguzungu in a post entitled Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government”. The author points to Julian Assange’s essays from 2006 on the nature of government and his definition of conspiracy, and explains the view that such conspiracies can be viewed as computer-like, network-like (or even Al’Quaeda like) in their form.
[Wikileaks is] a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets.
This is derived from none other than Machiavelli, from whose Il Principe Assange cites approvingly:
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no longer any remedy to be found.
I read The Prince at University and had forgotten this quote, but I think it is a crucial insight not just into the nature of conspiratorial governments, but of politics as a whole. I see now that it was the subconscious message of my last post, tapped hurriedly on the train yesterday morning. I’ve also tried to capture the same insight in discussions about Tony Blair and his squandering of political capital, but Niccolò makes the same point more succinctly. I repeat, it is delightful when someone else makes the point you want to make, only better.